Zvezda 1/144th I-16 Rata

 I was a picking up some planes anyway so I thought I'd add to my early war Russian air fleet. Like the Ju 52 I had a vague idea about doing this in SCW colours, but in the end I just did it as a WW2 plane. I don't play enough SCW these days to justify getting 1/144th scale planes for it when I have loads of 6mm ones. 

There it is all finished, waiting to deal with the fascist Hitlerites. I can't believe these old clunkers were still in service in 1942 and even later in some sectors. They have a bit of a Tin Tin feel to them.

Here it is in its raw state. It is a pretty basic kit! It only had a few parts but the nose assembly was unnecessarily complicated. It went together fine though and hardly had any flash. It has lovely fine detail moulded on, perhaps too fine in the case of the MGs, radio mast etc which are so thin it is hard to see them surviving any sort of handling. 

I opted for undercarriage up. It is a bit of a scrappy assembly as I haven't got the wheels flush, but I don't bother much with the undersides in any case. I've only just noticed that there are teeny tiny MG case ejection slits moulded onto the underside of the wings. Blimey.

Although I have my 'Soviet Aces of WW2' as a reference for paint jobs, I did a bit of digging into WW2 Soviet aircraft paint schemes and the modelling consensus now is that the predominant schemes up until mid war for VVs fighters is olive green with black or dark green disruptive No brown at all! Well blow me down with a feather (bombers and assault aircraft are different). Sadly it means my Mig 3s are the wrong colour, but my Lagg 5s in their late war grey/dark grey are fine.

Anyway, it looks rather smart in green and black with the wierd loop pattern on the wings, and it really makes the decals pop.

Just to emphasise how small the I-16 is, here it is next to a Lagg (by no means the worlds largest fighter).

And here it is flying over the dining table on its 'flight stand'. I've moved over to using acrylic cups for all my planes now, they are just so much more stable than flight stands. The only exceptions are my heavy diecast planes which use their heavy duty supplied stands as long as they are stable enough. 

Not sure how much action it is going to see, but it is nice to have one 'just in case'. I'm sure I can work it into a game somehow. 

Tigers at Minsk - training scenario 2

 Training scenario 2 for Tigers at Minsk introduces the basics of infantry combat: Infantry units, MGs, wire and smoke, but no indirect fire weapons (yet). 

For this one we are back to Kursk, and everyones favourite battle, Ponyri Station. The Elephants have rumbled off through the Russian lines, and the German infantry are struggling to follow. Naughty Russian infantry have infiltrated back behind the heavy tank destroyers and the Germans need to break through to support them.

On the German side there are three woods, while there are a couple of orchards (basically open woods), a couple of village hexes and a scrub hex on the Russian side. The Germans have 50 minutes to get one section off the Russian baseline. As before, these are 125m hexes, and each turn is 2D6 minutes long (I really like that game clock!). 

Here are the Germans, they have six rifle sections and an MG section. I've spread the infantry out to stack one per hex as there are fire bonuses against stacked infantry. Infantry get 2D6 fire, MGs get 3D6 but can malfunction if their total score is 15 or more. Hits result in pins, two pins will destroy a unit. Pins can be recovered like stun results on tanks.

I've set the Germans up to go left flanking with a base of fire in the woods (a rifle section and MG). They are close together to stay in command. They also have a Squad Leader style variable smoke capability and are guaranteed to to be able to lay one smokescreen, which I plan to use to get into the orchards on the left. 

Having seen the German deployment, the Russians set up. They have two rifle sections and two MGs. I put a rifle section in the left hand orchard and village, while the other MG goes in the right hand village. There is an awful lot of open ground for the Germans to cover! The Russians also have a section of wire which I put in the left hand orchard to cover their rifle section.

Wire isn't much of an obstacle, with a 1:3 chance of non tracked units getting hung up, but every little helps.

The Russians go first and lay down a withering barrage of fire which pins two German units and destroys a third. Ouch! The German return fire is ineffective but the Germans do manage to lay their smoke screen. To add insult to injury, the two reserve German units go out of command. Not a great start.

Next turn the Russian fire is less effective. One of the pinned Germans recovers and the reserves move forward (into nice big juicy stacks). The German firebase manages to pin the Russian infantry and MG in the left building.  Pinned units can retire to cover but not advance, and only fire with 1D6, so that is helpful. 

Although the Russian fire is weakened, it inflicts two hits on one German hex. The Germans destroy one of the units so they can advance with the other. Two Germans are now in the smoke hex, although one of them is pinned. The isolated Russian MG goes out of command and is pinned, which means it can't recover or remove its opportunity fire marker. The Germans manage to hit the left hand building and the Russians remove the rifle squad. The MG is left pinned and with an opp fire marker.

The Germans continue to advance inexorably up the left flank. The Russians manage to remove the pins on their MGs (it is easier in cover) and the various German units also rally.

In a decisive turn the leading German rifle section is pinned but the Germans manage to rout the Russian infantry in front of them. The Russian morale break level has been reached, but both MG teams pass their morale tests. One of the stacked Germans is pinned too but the spare Russian MG team is now moving left to cover the flank. The German smokescreen also dissipates now (it goes away on a 1 or 2).

The Germans finally unpin just as the firebase goes out of command! They manage to overrun the wire but time runs out before they can exit the board. A Russian win.

I enjoyed the overall feel of that, it reminded me of Squad Leader in lots of ways and felt a lot less plodding and clinical than WRG infantry combat. I need to try the scenario again to see if I can get the balance of fire and movement right - although the Germans did manage to suppress the Russian defences in the end, there wasn't enough time to get off the table as well.

There are probably some changes I'd consider making: I've spent lot of time thinking about obstacles in WW2 games and for wire I'd treat infantry as 'pinned' for firing purposes while they are in it. I'd also probably borrow the Crossfire concept of ground hugging for units in the open and let stationary units claim cover against direct fire.

 It also strikes me that this is the same size table and ground scale Phil Sabin uses for his Battalion level 'Fire and Movement' game so infantry ranges probably need a bit of thought. The effective range for infantry units in WW2 was about 200m, although LMGs and light mortars might stretch it out to 500m, which would be 2 hexes and 4 hexes in this ground scale. Tripod MGs would generally engage out to around 1000m (8 hexes).

I'll hold off for now until I've tried a few more games though, as it plays solidly and is both fun and fast. Hilariously I also failed to roll a single random event in this one, just like the last game.

Dettingen and Blenheim with Dominion of the Musket - a DotS variant

 After playing around with the Johns two player version of Dominion of the Spear,  we got onto what he'd actually wanted to do - a Horse and Musket version of DotS he had worked up. Essentially this is the Ancient set with a more restricted set of troop types, and a couple of tweaks for artillery and terrain. Again, it is designed as an opposed game so used his revised I itiative and reserve management mechanisms. 

We had a bigger turnout this evening, seven players and an umpire, but we each took it turns leading one of the sides accompanied by our 'Greek Chorus' of advisers.

First up was a generic Napoleonic battle. Four red 'missile infantry' and two red melee cavalry, vs two blue melee cavalry, one elite melee infantry, one normal melee infantry, and one melee infantry with attached artillery - which essentially gave it a +1 in combat. These might possibly by British and French.

Tonights innovation was a single use re-roll dice for each side, effectively similar to the 'rally' option in the Pike and Shot set, but the re-roll can apply to any dice roll. 

Jim and Mark took this one on. The British/Scots deployed in quite a Marlburian fashion with cavalry on the wings and infantry mainly in reserve. The French largely mirror imaged it.

As you would expect, the cavalry duly wiped each other out and then it was missile infantry vs melee infantry. If they made contact, the melee types would have an advantage over the missile types, but they had to weather the storm of British musketry first, which inevitably rolled a lot of '6's and shot the French off the the field.

Personally I'd be more inclined to make good quality infantry or those with good skirmishers, 'armoured' so they are more resiliant, not much point of giving them a +1 in attack if they get shot down in the same old way. I like the melee vs missile matchup, this is very like the relative troop ratings in 'Horse, Foot and Guns', however I'd be inclined to downgrade the melee cavalry against all infantry types. In this period, horse really need those flank attacks to be able to take on steady infantry.

That was nice and quick though, and food for thought going on.

Next up was Dettingen, using the 3x4 format. The real battlefield was constrained by a big river (maybe the Danube?) on one side and forested slopes on the other.

The French have two cavalry and four musket infantry. While the British have one cavalry, two regular musket infantry and two elite musket infantry.

The initial setup the French have packed their left flank with cavalry.

The British pull ahead mid game having gunned down a French infantry and cavalry for the loss of one British infantry.

But then the British centre collapses and it was game over soon after with an ahistorical British defeat.

In real life the French snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by advancing over the marshy stream they were defending to attack the British. As the onus of attack was on the British (being cut off), this was an insane manouvre and cost the French the battle.

In this iteration the French have wisely stuck behind their stream, which gives them a defence bonus. 

Hard pounding sees both sides whittled down!

And in the end it is a knife fight with just one unit left on each side, but the British are fortunate and get to go first, breaking the last French unit.

Both of those battles were fun, I think this rules variant works better for linear eighteenth century warfare as it has more in common with Ancients, than Napoleonics do. 

Next up is a bold experiment. Blenheim on a double width map! French at the bottom, Allies at the top. 

This is the historical (and rather unusual) deployment, which arose as both sides had two armies in the field and ended up deploying adjacent to each other. The villages give a defensive bonus.

Really, it is just a massive great slogging match, rather like the real battle. The Allies are burning through their reserves.

Not looking too good for Marlborough. Jerry declared that at this point that he would have retreated, having committed all his reserves, but we played on.

And inevitably the French superiority became more pronounced until the Allies fled.

That also worked quite well, but it has moved away quite a bit from the original DotS concept (although the Dominion rules do suggest options for bigger battlefields). Although it allows you to model the OOB better, it extends the playing time and I'm not convinced it adds much in terms of army level decision making, although if playing it as an opposed game it gives both sides a bit more to do.

Since we played these variants, Dominion of Frederick the Great, Dominion of Marlborough and Dominion of Napoleon have all been published, which cover much the same sort of thing but very sensibly breaks it down into sub periods as the troop type relationships change. I'll have a look at those in due course to see how they treat this period. 

Mysterious Metal 1/144th Fw 190D

 Courtesy of" Tims Second Hand Aircraft Emporium", I acquired this metal 1/144th scale FW190. 

I've no idea of the manufacturer, but I suspect it is True North. I don't have many metal planes in my collection, and those that I do have are all second hand. The world of 1/144th scale metal aircraft is outside my knowledge as I've never bought a new one. 

It is a nice clean casting though, with a few faint flash lines which came off easily enough. No panel lines either, hurrah! The extended nose identifies this as an Fw 190D, so only really in service from mid 1944. One of the finest propeller fighter aircraft to grace the WW2 aerial battlefield, and my favourite ride in both the A and D versions in European Air War and other combat flight sims. Much harder to crash on landing than a Bf 109! And packs a bigger punch. As Oddball might say "It is a beautiful aeroplane Moriarty" 

Although it is bit hard to see in the photos, this model is so old the silver pewter has tarnished to a sort of light bronze colour. The same tarnishing effect you get on the metal on those British bombers like the Blenheim which have metal rings on the front of the engine cowling. They started metallic silver end ended up metallic bronze with exposure to air and heat, so you can paint them any colour you like! 

There is a chip out the the rear of the port wing. Battle damage or something I guess.

Anyway, here it is painted up. I went down the rabbit hole of Fw 190D colour schemes, which is apparently a model makers favourite as there were so many variations. This is the scheme on a real aircraft taken from my 'Axis Aircraft of WW2' book, a fighter from JG4 in early 1945.

I did the cockpit dark blue with a light blue highlight, which looks OK on bubble canopies. I also spent the time to do the spinner corkscrew pattern, which was a bit of a pig but came out OK. Thank you Posca paint pens.

These planes were such a dogs dinner in appearance as many of the components came pre-painted (or unpainted!) from various subcontractors and were simply bolted together before being flung into the meatgrinder of 1944 air combat. After assembly a very minimal camo scheme was applied to the upper surfaces. The main colour scheme here is light green with sprayed dapple camo in dark green on the wings and elevators, and very light dapple on the upper surface of the fuselage. 

The front of the fuselage has a sky blue  underside, while the rear part of the fuselage is light grey, as is the entire tail assembly (with a very light bit of camo on the fin). This particular fighter wing used distinctive black and white stripes on the rear of the fuselage.

By this stage the Germans generally went for white outline crosses on dark surfaces and dark crosses on light surfaces. Strictly speaking the fuselage crosses should be dark grey, but I only had black ones in stock. These are a mixture of Zvezda and Doms Decals. Fortunately the DD tail swastikas are edged in white so stand out a bit better.

Although I didn't do underwing decals, I did do the under panels in a variety of colours. The leading edge is plain metal (apparently very common), the centre panels and forward fuselage are blue, the ailerons are light green and the rear fuselage is grey.

And here it is flying across the living room looking for bombers to shoot down.

I really enjoyed researching and painting that, and although it is only a wargaming piece of very limited utility, it felt more like a modelling project. It is also nice to bring this old warhorse to life, and in fact it has already seen action as a Jabo in one of the recent Normandy games I reported on. 

Tigers at Minsk - training scenario one

 My interest in tactical warfare has been rekindled by playing the WRG 1925-50 (neu) test games. Tactical games aren't really suitable for our remote sessions, well not the way I like to play them, but are fine for solo games and maybe f2f. 

Sitting on my shelf for ages has been Norm Smiths excellent 'Tigers at Minsk'. Unlike WRG they are played on a grid (yay!), don't take up much space (double yay!) and are quick (triple yay!). I've read through the rules a few times and followed Norms various Batreps, and thought it was finally time to give them a go. It will make a change from "Dominion of..." anyway. 

First up is a simple tank battle, set near Tamarovka in 1943. Regular readers will recall we recently fought a number of historical brigade/division sized engagements in the region, which was heavily fought over during Operation Rumyatsev.

The terrain is pretty simple, a low ridge, three woods (with two trees on) and two areas of 'scrub' which I did with single trees. Each hex is supposed to be around 125m, so this is quite a small battlefield. Each turn is 2D6 minutes, so the game has a time limit, but the actual number of turn is variable. 

I'm using my 'desert transition' boards (brown with green grass clumps) for Ukraine in summer as this is pretty much how our lawn looks after months without significant rain. 

The protagonists. The Russians have five T34/76d and the Germans a single Panther from 52nd Panzer Bn (attached to 6th Panzer Div). Although these are supposed to be individual vehicles, I can't help treating them as sections of 2-3, like Charles Grant.

The Russians need to KO the Panther before time runs out. The rub is that the 76mm guns of the T34s can't penetrate the Panther frontally, so they need to get a flank shot. If they can get adjacent, fire at such short range is treated as a flank shot (rather like the original Squad Leader armour rules).

As the battlefield is so small, there aren't any other range restrictions, just that infantry fire over four hexes is penalised. There are however facing penalties for AT fire (if you need to pivot and shoot etc), some of which are quite severe.

Game number 1. The obvious way to protect your flanks is sit in a corner, just like AHGCs 'Tobruk', so the Panther parks up in one corner. The Russians set up behind the scrub or in the woods. Woods are normally difficult terrain for vehicles to move into, but you can set up in the them. Both woods and scrub provide cover (well, concealment), woods block LOS but scrub only blocks LOS randomly as it is variable height.

The Russians need to close the range, but as this is a tactical game, units generally only move one hex in LOS of the enemy. Units can only activate if they are in command, and each side designates one hex plus two adjacent ones as being in command, you dice for the rest. Keeping the Russians bunched up like this keeps them all in command. The scenario stacking limit is 2 units per hex, normally it is three. 

Units can conduct opportunity fire, which precludes regular fire in the  future turns. The Panther pops off at the advancing T34s, at 500m it is almost an automatic damaging hit (anything but a 0 on a D10), and then the Germans get lucky and score a KO and burn. There aren't separate to hit/to kill rolls but a single 'effective AT fire' roll which combines AT vs armour values, cover, firing aspect etc. If you score an 'effective hit' there is a simple damage table with results from KO and burn to stunned. 

The T34s close in. The Panther KOs another one (with turned turret) and stuns a third (blue counter). I must have skipped a couple of turns to get to here.

The Panther opp fires (smoke puff on the barrel) the T34 at the top and it bursts into flames. Burning AFVs produce smoke which blocks LOS, but the smoke can disappear. Just two T34s left now.

Having lost 3 units (half their force) the Russian morale fails, but the two remaining tanks pass their morale tests.

They bravely advance next to the Panther, which only manages to stun one of them. To recover from a stun, units have to conduct a rally action in their own turn. 

The remaining T34 fires at point blank range, scores a damaging hit and the Panther is....stunned! Time runs out and the Germans win. I think that was five turns, maybe six? If you roll doubles on the time clock dice you get  a random event, but no doubles were rolled.

OK, that was a good trial run. The sequence of fire/opp fire/opp fire recovery takes a bit of getting used to but I'm getting my head around it.

Right time to try again. This time the Germans set up on their baseline, I had a vague idea there might be less cover for the Russians on this approach. As before the Russians managed to hide behind some scrub and stay bunched to retain C2.

The T34s roll forward, the Panther pops the end one in the open with opp fire, but just scores a stun. The Russians manage to recover from the stun in their own end turn phase. It is easier to rally in cover, but in the open you need a 1 or 2.

The Russians roll forward another hex and the Panther hits the end T34 again. Another stun!

The Russian horde rolls forwards. The stunned T34 fails to recover this time and the Panther (finally) manages to knock one of the others out, but three of them firing at point blank range demolish the Panther. A Russian win.

Next up Game 3. Norm suggests mixing in a couple of more powerful tanks at this point so you aren't just playing the 'rush the Panther' game.

Two of the T34s are swapped for T34/85s. These do actually have a chance against the Panthers frontally, albeit not a great one. 

The Panther goes back in the corner. The Russians set up behind cover. The plan is to get the T34/85s into a firing position to act as a base of fire while the T34/76s close in. As range is (largely) irrelevant, I just need LOS with the 85s.

The Russians roll forwards in a clump. The T34/85s set up the scrub. The Germans hit one of the T34/76s but just stun it. Although a bit dispersed, all the Russians are still in command.

The 85s take the Panther under fire and manage to stun it while the 76s close in. The already stunned tank fails to recover. Although fire through friendly units isn't allowed for small arms and MG fire, it is for AT fire, so the 85s can fire through the tank in front of them.

Being stunned rather dooms the Panther as it can't do anything as the Russians close in. Being in the corner already means it can't even back up.

The Panther recovers just in time for it to be demolished by a T34 at point blank range. Another Russian win. I think I'm getting the hang of this now, although obviously with such a small engagement the outcome is very dice dependant.

That was a good introduction, although hilariously despite playing three games I didn't get a single random event. I suppose that is the definition of 'random'. 

I like many aspects of these, particularly command and morale as they work well for a solo game. I'm not 100% convinced by the AT system as it rolls both weapon accuracy and penetration  into a single number. That is fine as a technique and many games use it, but it makes some of the more powerful weapons automatic hits on weaker targets whereas irl actually acquiring a target is often the hardest bit, and having the most powerful gun in the world (like a 128mm in a Jagdtiger) doesn't actually make it easier to acquire a target. Equally, if you want to actually model eg a Tiger being immune to a 37mm gun you have to have improbably high defence vs attack values which skew the relationships with other types of target. Or just accept that you have a very impressionist system which is going to produce some odd results from time to time. 

I really don't want to come across as being overly critical, it worked in the context of this game and Ishall reserve judgement for now. If it becomes an issue it would be easy enough to plug in another AT fire system which has separate to hit and to kill rolls should it be required. The lack of range dependency is as a bit odd though. It is noticeable in WRG how critical range bands are, even at such sort ranges as 250 and 500m (or two and four hexes in these rules). 

One change I am minded to do is  swap all the numbers around so that high numbers are always good though. I find it really confusing when some required scores are low and some are high, just how my  brain works.

Righto, next time training scenario 2, infantry combat.