Walmington on Bromley End, Bloodford - Homes for the Home Guard

As I slowly move through my lead pile of things Home Guard related, the realization set in that I would need terrain and a fair bit of it if I wanted to replicate Dad's Army, Went the Day Well or The Eagle Has Landed. I toyed with making up buildings out of foam core and other materials but practically, that wasn't a realistic option. With some Christmas money in hand, I went shopping. There are many good manufacturers out there with some very nice products in 28mm / 1/56. Some of the resin offerings were beautiful but expensive, and for many companies, their UK styled offerings were focused on terraced housing.

I decided to go with Sarissa primarily because of their very generous shipping terms and because they ship Royal Mail. (As mentioned in a previous post, courier companies like to gouge Canadians for customs fees). The order was placed and a few weeks later, my order arrived in my mailbox. It came in two separate packages, both properly marked as to contents and value and with no import fees payable - a double bonus.

First up is the L016 Stone Cottage.  This is  a pretty little kit with double walls allowing for the outer wall to lean in - see below and for prototypically thick windows and doors. The interior fireplace and flagged floor was an unexpected add on. A reasonable amount of stone detail is laser etched into the MDF but the effect was still too flat for my liking. At various points in the assembly, I used my Dremel tool to deepen the lines and add more texture. The material used by Sarissa is thick enough and robust enough that I was able to significantly improve the appearance especially around the chimney. I used a very small ball cutter to deepen the lines, followed by a grinding point to round the edges and a wire wheel to soften the effect over all. As always when working on MDF, proper breathing  protection against the dust is a must.

Godwin's Cottage

End view

Next is the N005 Small Shop. A basic two level building with removable roof and first floor, it is a great addition to the high street.

Sinistre and Sons Dry Goods

 The astute among you will notice that the front door and and window are reversed compared to the official version shown in the link above. This was intentional. Sarissa uses several standard sized components across different models in their ranges. On opening the shop flat pack, I was delighted to see that it included a wall section with a rather pretty arched door and window. Rather than use this at the back of the shop, I swapped it out with a standard wall and window section from the one of  the single story houses below. To keep the front and back doors in opposing corners, I reversed the shop window and put the door on the left. I like that the  replacement wall gives a barred window effect for what would be the shop stock room.

Anti-theft protection around the back

Which brings us to a pair of  N021 Single Story Houses. First is the stock version:

Foxglove Cottage

A simple little building that will make a good hiding place for a Vickers or an angry housewife with a brace of Molotovs. And the modified version:

The Irises

Swapping the walls gives me two versions of the same building while breaking up some of the same-iness common to MDF structures.

Last of the buildings is the N009 Small House. Another functional building that will blend in on the high street or act alone as a larger farmhouse.

Biggles' Farm

The last piece from Sarissa is the N048 Stone Bridge - Double Arch shown here with a Die Waffenkammer Neubaufahrzeug on its way to put the jackboot to an unsuspecting bucolic English village.

Bloodnok Bridge

It comes in several versions with up to three arches. I went with the double arch version for maximum flexibility. The ends and middle seem to be very stable as is, but I may add rare earth magnets to lock them together if required.  Size wise it is probably a little over scale width, but that is a positive for us wargamers.

With Warlord Sherman

The Sarissa products are quite a bit smaller than my Charlie Foxtrot pub but I don't think that will be a problem. The pub is a large piece for any table.

The Pub Next Door

 Laid out, I think I now have enough buildings for a rather exciting urban fight.

We are the only Germans in the Village!

Overall, I am happy with the results. The price was good and I was able to get some extra variety out of my purchase. There is a lot more work to do on painting, finishing and the roofs, but they're fine for play testing scenarios as is.

A week's work

I have been on a weeks holiday in part because family have been visiting. That doesn't mean I haven't found some time for a little painting and gluing down in the games room.

First up is some base work on my 20mm WWII plastics. Not much to see really, but when they were first done, it was more important to get them based rather than to get them based well, the immediate object being to give the finger to the black dog. They're still not perfect but they are good enough.

In the same theme, a long while back a friend  gave me some markings for the Canadian 4th Armoured Division. The Sherman was marked up as from the Governor General's Foot Guards - my old militia regiment, the M3 as the Lake Superior Regiment in keeping with the infantry. The Lake Sups were the Motor Regiment that worked closely with the armoured regiments of the 4th division.  I had the jeep kicking around so I remove the pintle mounted .50 and marked it as from the 15th Field Regiment - also from 4th Armoured div. It will be the ride for my FO. Many thanks to Richard for the transfers.

side view

front

rear

A couple of notes. The decals were a bit too big for the jeep and far too big for the rear of it and the front of the M3. The M3 is an M3 and not an M5 because that was what I had on hand. The Bren on the M3 is based on a photo of a Lake Sup vehicle. It was a bugger to attach and some creative use of super glue and baking soda was needed to make a solid mount. It passes the 3 foot test and that's all I need.   The stars are skewed intentionally - this was a period Canadianism - we are not always sure how to define ourselves but we know we are not Americans - no offence to those of that house.  The Sherman is the very old Airfix plastic kit - let's just say I felt a bit bad for putting such nice decals on it. Still, it also passes the 3 foot test. Once the decals were set up, I did some basic weathering with GW Nuln oil and earth shade purchased with a birthday gift certificate from my offspring. I am happy with the results - but the price....

|
That's it for now - more to follow.

20 mm Conversions for Chain of Command

First, a couple of warnings. The photos are not great - the camera is old and I am no Karsh. Secondly, 20mm is my cheap and dirty scale to do North West Europe quickly and with a small investment. Efforts are focused on getting toys on the table rather than on painting and I am no great painter to begin with.  Finally, painting and basing is not entirely complete. For those that were supposed to be, I was unable to find matte spray so had to settle for eggshell. Even though the can was very thoroughly shaken eggshells are apparently shiny. Everything will get shot of proper matte in the future.

One of the practical problems one can face when playing low rated forces in Chain of Command is the need to provide support. When playing a Canadian Motor / Infantry Platoon in NWE or Italy and possibly facing Elite Fallschirmjaeger the need becomes urgent since up to 26 points of support might need to be provided. To address this I need to make up a few teams that don't appear in the usual boxes of 1/72 plastics.  For others, I just wasn't happy with the provided poses.

Flame and Bren

First up is a flame thrower centre with a Bren gunner on the right. The source figure is on the left.  For the Bren I just cut away the barrel of the Enfield and replaced it with the forepart of a Bren cut from another prone figure,  The flame gun is just a length of stretched sprue. Having looked more closely at the life buoy unit, I would use a Thompson figure next time as the grip looks better. 

Back of the life buoy

I cut away the existing backpack to make room for the iconic fuel tank. I had hoped to use a tiny rubber O ring for the tank but I was out, so I used a 1/72 wheel retaining bushing from the bits box instead. It is too square in cross section but will do for now.  The fuel line is thin solder.

PIAT to Bangalore wire cutting figure

Just a quick slice operation to remove the PIAT and Sten then a hole was drilled to take a length of brass rod cut to length.

Demolitions Unit

A simple swap of the original PIAT ammunition carrier on the right to a satchel charge on the left.  The satchel is two 25mm US small packs glued back to back. An earlier attempt used two full packs but was well over sized.

Polish Mine Detector (right)

Another simple conversion by cutting away the rifle and using plastic sprue. The detector unit is a part number tab from from a model kit that just happened to be the right size and shape. Though the back pack had most of the detail scraped off to look more like an electronics box, I felt that trying to make the headphones was a route to insanity. There should be a counterweight on the end of the pole but I have yet to find a good picture.

Medic and casualty

This is not much of a conversion as all I did was cut away the Sten (see below) and add a medic bag using another US small pack and a bit of flat dental floss to make the strap.  All but one of the pictures of Canadian Medics I found show the armband on the left arm. I felt though that it was more obvious on the right and was also much less of a pain to paint (and I do have one supporting reference).

Officer to Platoon Sergeant

The original figure is on the far left. As noted above I cut away the Sten from another of the casualty figures - it was a bit delicate slicing it off the leg without damage - a sharp #11 blade is required. It was then a simple process to trim away the pistol and swagger stick and glue the Sten in its place.

  

Forward Observer

Very minimal work here. The radio operator is a stock figure. The FO is a kneeling Vickers gunner with  a bit of thin brass sheet cut to size and inserted in a small slit to make a map.

Sniper Team

Even less work on this one. Just a bit of stretched sprue for a scope.  Yes I know it's too big, he traded some whiskey to an American for an unofficial civilian model.... 

2" mortar crews - Conversion left and out of the box right.

Revell made a rather good British infantry set with all sorts of useful poses, Stens and support weapons. Sadly it is now out of production. On the left is my attempt to put together a mortar team out of mostly Italeri/Esci bits. The mortar was made from a bit of brass rod. The mortar man's arms were trimmed and re-positioned to hold the tube. Both the mortar man and the loader were originally less than useful Esci Bren figures who donated their weapons to create more dynamic LMG gunners as noted above.

After making one of these, a package arrived from certain paint sniffing dog.  In it was the much sought after Revell set! The mortar team from this shown on the right.  While I am proud of my little conversion, the pre-made one was a darn sight easier to put together.  Thank you Dog!

The Painting Challenge - the lead pile.

Getting ready for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and this is box one of the lead pile.  The 19 Gashant Martian cavalry mounts on the right are why I felt pretty confident I could hit 500 points.  Yes there are handful of figures with some colour on them. They will be painted up with the rest for consistency but not submitted for points as that would be ungentlemanly.

And the backup box:

As above anything beyond primer will not be submitted for points.  If I get really stuck, there's a whack of 20mm plastics in the man cave for backup.

The Painting Challenge

Maybe I am crazy but I have just put in for the Sixth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.

At a very modest 500 points, that will take care of all my recent 1889 purchases, force me to finish up my Home Guard / FJ and maybe even get me painting my 20mm WWII.

Wish me luck.

The Mighty PzKpfw Neubaufahrzeug V and VI for CoC!

Note: This is a re-post from the Lardie's Forum. I haven't posted here in awhile so I thought I would leverage it I mean share with you. ;)

A large portion of British Home Guard training was focussed on improvised anti-armour tactics. So naturally I needed to pick up some armour for the invading Jerries. To be accurate, this should be a Panzer II, III or IV or perhaps a 38-T or Stug III A at best. But ... none of those really fit into the British propaganda of the period which had fire spitting iron behemoths stomping their way through bucolic English villages (only to be cut down by the local green grocer and postman of course). I wanted something more epic, more menacing.

As it happens Die Waffenkammer does a rather nice resin kit of the Neubaufahrzeug and in Canadian terms at least they are "just up the road" from me so I ordered one (you can too at:  http://www.diewaffenkammer.com/_germany_page_no3.html)  All their stuff is lovely.

This vehicle was designed in the 30s and came in two versions the Rheinmetall designed PzKpfw NbFz V and the Krupp built PzKpfw NbFz VI. The only differences between them was that the two Rheinmetall vehicles had a 75mm L24 and 37mm L45 in the turret in an over under configuration and were made of mild steel, while the three Krupp vehicles had the same armament in a side by side configuration and were made from proper armour plate. Like many designs of the period they had two sub-turrets one each fore and aft. These were modified Panzer I turrets with only 1 MG each. Top speed was 30 Km/h and armour was no thicker than 20mm.  A planned, but never built, variant of the Krupp turret was to have a 105mm low velocity gun for throwing smoke.

The Krupp machines saw propaganda service in Norway, masquerading as heavy tanks. In actual action against the British also in Norway, one was lost when it became bogged down. A Rheinmetall machine was sent to replace it.  As the war progressed after the invasion of Norway, they disappeared into the scrapheap though at least once source says they were used in Russia.

But what does this mean in CoC terms?

Using the latest coculator, and I am very open to corrections, gives:

Rheinmetall PzKpfw NbFz V / Krupp PzKpfw NbFz VI. 
Historical 75mm & 37mm and projected with 105mm & 37mm

Armour: 3 Krupp, 1 Rheinmetall

HE: 6 (10 for projected Krupp 105mm)
AP: 5
Turreted hull and Coax MG
Extra turreted hull  MG
Slow

Support list: 4 (75mm) or 5 (105mm)
Special rules: Only one of two the turret guns or the co-ax mg can be fired using one command initiative. The sub-turrets count as hull mounted MGs. One can fire per command initiative, with the option to also fire by using a separate command dice of 1.  105mm equipped vehicles can fire smoke direct.

Panzer fans will notice that apart from the extra MG turret (and the 105mm variant), these stats are pretty much the same as those for an early model Panzer IV. I suspect this explains why they never went into serious production.

Now since these served as propaganda machines, below is my take on what Herr Goebbels would have liked the allies to think they were:

Neubaufahrzeug Propaganda Panzer - Heavy Tank
Armour: 6
HE: 10
AP: 5
Regular speed
The rest as above
Support list: 6

While the Neubaufahrzeug doesn't add much to the game in pure stats terms, imagine the look on your opponent's face when you say you have bought an entirely historical Panzer VI support for a 1940 battle. ;)

Sources:
German Armoured Rarities 1935-1945 - Michael Sowodny.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neubaufahrzeug
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/leichte-traktor-grosstraktor-i-ii-iii-neubaufahrzeug-pzkpfw-v-vi.htm

A CoC Challenge the Results are In!

What a great group of Chain of Command List submissions from the community.  For the official envelope opening see:  The Winners Is

Thanks to all the contributors and to Lardy Rich for a special bonus.

All quiet because there is too much going on.

Between work and life, it has been an extremely busy Summer.  I have started collecting 1/72 WWII for Chain of Command, created a gaming mat for 1889 and begun printing dungeon tiles on warprinter. I also won a PDF of Adventures in the East Mark an Old School Rules fantasy RPG and I even managed to type up a review - for someone else's blog of course. Head over to Tenkar's Tavern and check it out.

Pictures of all this to follow but here's a sample.

Chain of Command Contest - First entry!

Adrian Deacon of Bullets Bandages and Lard has posted the first entry in my Chain of Command Challenge.

It covers 3 kampfgruppe of the 21st Panzer Division in Normandy and contains a tasty selection of French armour and conversions in German service as well a good assortment of light armour.  Nary a Tiger or Panther in sight

Well worth a look.

Chain of Command Contest!

Lardie Rich has been cranking out lists like crazy and still people are asking for more.   So I figured some of those people should pick up the slack and let Rich get on with other things like In the Buff.

It's simple really make a list and post it to the Chain of Command forum or Yahoo group and get a chance at winning stuff. Details here: A CoC Challenge! 

Get posting and Good Luck!

More painting and some conversions

It was hot and humid Canada Day but I managed to get quite a bit of time in the man cave while the missus helped the offspring with their post school year room clean up.

A while back, I unearthed a pack of British colonial infantry. As I have quite a few in redcoats already and some more in the pile destined to be clad in khaki, I decided to do this bunch as ersatz Royal Marine Light Infantry.  They aren't quite right in some details but only those a purist would notice and they are destined for VSF so all historical objections are moot.

RMLI (or close enough to pass on the table)

The other project for the day was a couple of conversions. My fallschirmjäger were a little light in the support department so for my birthday I placed an order with Wargames Foundry for some reinforcements. This created a bit of a quandary. One figure in the  heavy weapons pack gives you a choice between slung MG 34 or Panzerbüchse 39 but not both. I needed the MG 34 for certain platoon organizations but I really, really wanted the ATR for use in early war operations.  I wonder why? My Foundry order was large enough to qualify for an extra pack so with some trepidation I broke out the razor saw and cyanoacrylate.

FJ Supports (and a couple of Martians)

The centre un-primed figure running with the grenade was my sacrifice starting point.  The flanking figures are the result. Pretty good I think and useful for punching holes in any light armour sniffing around the green fields of Eakring.  I didn't quite have the nerve to remove the slung Kar 98 but FJ are supposed to be beefy lads so they can carry both.  The double based figures on the right are a sniper team. The figures are stock. The sniper scope being a section of  1/72 Macross VF-1 Valkyrie landing gear strut from the bits box.

My second band of High Martians got a long awaited dip and I even managed to dye some tea leaves for home made flock. I didn't quite have the nerve to appropriate the food processor to turn a bag of foam chips into ground foam - maybe next time.

A very productive and satisfying day off.

edit: I really do need a camera with decent macro capability.

It's Here!

Too Fat Lardies Summer Special!

And yeah I have a piece in it!

Chain of Command Home Guard List Version 3

Some tweaks based on play tests and updates with the Coculator.  Still not perfect and overly complex but there we are ;)

Chain of Command Home Guard Version 3

Home Guard for Chain of Command

On last year's wonderful trip to the UK, I picked up some of Wargames Foundry's rather nice Home Guard figures. I tried them out with I Ain't Been Shot Mum but the company+ level of the game didn't really fit with the HG's intended role.  Then Chain of Command came out. Platoon level, limited troops on a reasonable table - Perfect! Along with a platoon of Fallschirmjaeger, I was ready to go - but... All the lists in the book were for Late War Normandy and Eastern Front - Not my cup of tea.

The Lardie's Rich Clarke said he was open to player produced lists so rather than mope around and wait for someone else to make one I got stuck in. Ross Bowrage from the Yahoo group was kind enough to send some information my way and gave some really good feedback.  The early drafts in true open source fashion came fast and furious and were posted up on the Yahoo group. Now I am ready with the first final draft* Sadly, the space on Yahoo has run out so I have had to put it up on Google drive - so why not share it as widely as possible? So here it is:

CoC Home Guard List Final Draft 1

Enjoy, comment, criticise :)


*Yes final draft 1. I have worked with enough documents over the years to know that "final" never means exactly that.

RAFM Summer Sale!

On now at http://www.rafm.com/ 35% off  when you use the code  SUMMER2013 - go, go now!

CanGames Days 1 and 2

Day one for me - the Friday was something of a non-event as all I did was go and pick up my package. I did take a shot of the outside of the venue. Being a bit too clever, to save batteries, I used the viewfinder on the camera instead of the display screen and didn't notice the camera strap across the image.

CanGames is held in a down town curling club, with the main playing space on what is normally the ice surface - about 20x50 meters. This gives a large unobstructed playing area but also means there is no sound absorption so it can get very noisy. There are about 37 tables in the main area for the most part each hosting one game. For larger tournaments, tables can be combined or multiple sets of tables used. There is a small dealers area in the back and board game and RPG  areas in the off-ice club section of the venue. A big plus is that the site is licensed - beer at the gaming table! (I only saw a very small number of people partaking though.)

Day 2, Saturday began with a walk around the dealers area. It was small with the majority of the space taken up by a local comic book/game store. There were some interesting things on offer but the prices could be wildly variable. For example a copy of Panzer Blitz was on sale for $15 at one booth and for $45 at the booth next door.  I nearly came away with some 20mm WWII Japanese but forced myself to be good and stuck to my plan to buy some more 15mm Ancient Brits. The convention price wasn't  any better than retail but I saved shipping. The bring and buy had some good deals and also some very "hopeful" prices. From one bring and buy, I picked up a 1/72 kit for VSF conversion and might grab a couple of 1/32 kits today for the same purpose.

My brief shopping trip over, I went to do my stint behind the awards desk.  I will not go into detail on the next five hours I spent filling out certificates, assembling trophies and filling in stats. The end of my shift does highlight one interesting event.  The food. The curling club provides on-site food services as well as the bar mentioned earlier. They also strictly enforced a no outside food policy. I can't really disagree with this as it allows them to pull in some extra money and provide a service to the convention goers as well. All well and good if the average war gamer had the same spending habits as a curling club member. A very basic hamburger with French fries was $11 and a hot dog with fries was $7.50. In the neighbourhood are a couple of pizza places and some of the best Vietnamese and Chinese food east of British Columbia. For contrast a bowl of Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) big enough to feed any war gamer for day or a small village for a week can be had for about $6. The uptake on the curling club offerings was minimal. Towards the end of the day, the prices had been dropped twice down to a much more reasonable $3.50 for a burger and $1.50 per hot dog with fries extra. Being especially cheap, I left the venue and supped on my home made lasagne in a serene curbside environment.

I chose to do the right thing and asked about the photo policy - no faces in frame without permission. As a result, I wound up shooting many tables with terrain but no players. This is a tiny small sample of the participation games that ran on Saturday.

Heavy Gear

28mm Sci-Fi Rules unknown

Another 28mm Sci-Fi - rules unknown

Fields of Glory

Computer moderated WWII

The gentleman in shot is Gordon one of my room mates from my early days. He is a very skilled gamer and used to run battalion+ level Squad Leader games on a ping-pong table set up in the middle of our apartment. Unfortunately in this game, the first of his tanks on the bridge was shot up leaving the rest of his armour trapped on the wrong side of the river.

Dr. Who 1812

Dr. Who 1812

This game was run by one of our club members Brian H. I would have participated but it was in the same time slot as my first game ever of Saga. I don't have all the details but The Dr. was on scene to thwart an invasion of my fair land by the forces of eeeevil and some Americans.

Saga - Normans vs Scots

This was the main event of the day for me. My first game of Saga! After hearing and reading all the hype from the other side of the pond, I was a bit concerned, but it did not disappoint. The historical scenario saw Norman and English forces descending on Scotland to lift the siege of a castle (Yes, I forgot the battle name - call me old). There were four war band per side with a young gentleman and lady  splitting one of the Norman commands.

My valiant troops - about turn 4.

I was on the Scots side. I had two units of hearth guard, a unit of levy and a warlord. My levy were mauled turn one but managed to stick around for the rest of the game. In return, I wiped out a unit of mounted warriors only to see more horse come around my flank. I moved my hearth guard out to inflict another mauling leaving my warlord unsupported. Unbeknownst to me they were mounted hearth guard who using some fancy Norman trickery galloped around my spear men and smacked into my warlord.  In the shot above, the banner is that of the Norman warlord and the greasy smear on the grass to the right of it is the remains of my mine.

I made more than a few errors including putting saga dice on abilities I couldn't use but on the whole I think I did fairly well taking out a good chunk of the Norman mounted on my wing and still having a strong force on the board at game end. A great experience I intend to repeat as often as possible.  In the end the two youngsters did the best decimating the Scots forces on their flank. A great performance that bodes well for the future of war gaming. The young man gallantly gave the trophy to his co-warlord.

That's it for Day 2. Today - Day 3 is 1812 and DBA!

Next Section

Flames of War - a trip to the twilight zone.

Last Sunday, I was able to head down to the club for an hour and watch a game of Flames of War. So my impressions? It is a very pretty game. The standard of modeling and terrain by the club members was excellent.

And that's about it. The table size was heavily compressed with off board artillery and front line troops all mashed together. I can understand the need for a logarithmic ground scale to allow off board artillery on board but it failed when in one game where Italian off board artillery came under fire from Aussie HMGs and in another where a Panther platoon drove off the main battle field directly into the Russian artillery park with no delay (poor Katushya).

The ground scale had further effects on the mechanics. I saw JS2s firing on Panzer IVs at a model distance of about a hundred yards. the resolution counted side armour factors, movement and cover into the equation. Mis-match between model size and ground scale is a given in most games but the distances on the table were more of the kind used in games where one model represents a platoon or company rather than one tank yet single vehicle combat mechanics were used. It just didn't look right.

Another scale issue was that of the Italian tankette armour. It was up against Universal Carriers but had the advantage of being closed topped. There are several levels of regular armour ranging from soft for no armour, through 0, 1 and 2 to 6 (I think) for Tiger level armour. However, there are only two or three top armour ratings with zero being open top and 1 being the minimal level of top armour. The end result was that the Semoventes with zero all round main armour had 1 armour on top - very odd. A final bit of strangeness was the Australian assault on the Italian trench line. The Australians slaughtered the Italians to a man then ran away leaving the tench vacant.  I understand the "win the firefight but fail the morale check" approach but again it didn't seem right to me.

So what good points were there?  It was fast playing, it was pretty and most importantly, the guys playing it - especially a young lad out with his dad - were having fun.

The verdict - Not my cup of tea and I'm not going to invest anything in it but if you're looking for quick beer and pretzels World War Two with some miniatures flavour it might be for you.