Another great AAR from the pen (table?) of Joe Patchen. This time the action takes place in the desert: in Tunisia, in fact, as the Americans wait for the might of the Afrika Korps to hit their line.
Can the US infantry get away before the panzers strike? Find out by clicking on the pic below:
Following on from my "Don't Forget the Officers" post, below, here are three mounted commanders for my WW2 Polish cavalry:
These are not actually Polish officers at all, but the remainder of the German mounted command pack from Peter Pig with a head swap into rogatywkas.
You can't see it very well from this angle, but the headgear they are wearing aren't peaked caps but rogatywkas: from the other side, they have a lovely mortarboard like flat surface that makes them quite distinctive.
The head swaps are, of course, because Peter Pig doesn't do a Polish range (but maybe they should, eh?) and I didn't want to buy an entire company of cavalry from either Battlefront or FiB just to get a few commanders.
Head swapping, btw, is really easy. All you need is a pair of clippers and a pin drill...oh, and some new heads from Peter Pig. Just snip the old head off, drill a hole where you want the neck to be, glue in the new head. It really is that simple.
Here's the two figures together:
Regular visitors will remember that I recently painted up a couple of squads of Peter Pig WW2 German cavalry that I'm using as early war mounted scouts:
Although you can see the squad commanders (two of them, furthest row) you'll note the absence of Big Man to lead the platoon forward. Well that's because as I was ordering them I was thinking that I had plenty of German Big Men, so wouldn't need any more. Problem is, of course, that although I have Big Men, I don't have any mounted Big Men!
This is where Peter Pig really come into their own. You can buy four "German Mounted Officers" in a pack rather than with, say, Battlefront, having to buy a whole blister or make some sort of never-arriving special order.
So here's the Big Man to lead the mounted scouts forward. Face looks vaguely familiar...
Another great battle report lifted from Burt Minorrot's excellent Las Partidas de Burt ("Burt's Stuff") blog.
This time, it's a big game involving the Soviets advancing on a German occupied-town. Worth having a look just for the pictures of the Russian katyushas and their effect! Click on the pic below to see all:
Monster tanks, heroic last stands, futile human wave attacks and a cavalry charge! And snow, lots of snow.Excellent I Ain't Been Shot, Mum battle report from Iain Fuller's equally excellent Tracks and Threads blog.
The action takes place on the Eastern Front, Winter of 1941, and seems to have had everything: as the author says: "monster tanks, heroic last stands, futile human wave attacks and a cavalry charge! And snow, lots of snow".
Click on the pic below to read all:
A couple of week's ago, I was complaining that I couldn't find any decent 15mm WW2 taczankas for my nascent Polish army: all that was on offer was the model from True North which was too solid, had four horses, and not enough crew.
Well as I still haven't been able to find any, and need to start play-testing the scenarios from my forthcoming September War scenario book (I've written the scenarios: just formatting it all now), I decided to bite the bullet and see what I could do with the four True North versions that I'd already bought.
So I now have are four pseudo-taczanka that will be fine on the tabletop but won't stand up to close scrutiny!
The base is the too-bulky True North wagon, with its horribly cast crew of two sitting figures, one in a forage cap and one in what I think is supposed to be a French-style helmet. I've cut the shaft (or tongue) right down, and put only three horses in front, evenly lined up as opposed to being driven unicorn.
The sitting gunners are from either the Battlefront or the Forged in Battle Polish MMG set (I forget which); the standing gunner is a spare Battlefront Polish anti-tank gun crew member, kneeling next to the True North (unmanned) MMG.
So I think that they will do for the moment, and can possible be replaced if anyone ever does release a better model. Now on with the play-testing...
The four scenarios in the IABSM v3 rulebook continue to prove a source of inspiration.
Here we have Vaggelis' pictorial battle report using the last rulebook scenario, A Canadian VC, played in 6mm.
Click on the picture below to see all:
You can see more from Vaggelis by visiting his blog: click here to do so.
Another great AAR lifted from the "Burt's Stuff" blog, which can be visited by clicking here.
The Soviets are advancing forward as part of Operation Bagration, the Germans have scraped together a kampfgruppe to stop them. Click on the pic below to see all:
Once again I feel honour bound to point out that I haven't been able to get hold of Burt to check he's happy for me to translate his work onto the Vis Lardica site. I hope, when he does find out, that he doesn't object, and realises that I am only trying to give his work greater coverage, and to make the VL site as complete an archive of the TFL company-sied games as possible.
Fellow Lardy Vaggelis ran a 10mm participation game of IABSM at this year's Strategikon, which seems to have gone down very well with everyone who played.
His excellent blog, Wargames & History, where this AAR first appeared, can be visited by clicking here.
And you can also read the AAR on this site by clicking on the picture, below:
I'm still working my way through uploading all of Mark Luther's excellent 6mm IABSM battle reports.
For those who haven't had a look, please do so now: Mark's tables could almost be taken as photographs of the action portrayed. Ridiculously good looking!
Mark is adding new AARs to his Flickr album all the time, obviously trying to stay ahead of me, but here's the latest of my uploads: Nieuwkerk. Click on the pic to see all:
As I get to the end of actually writing the Polish campaign book for IABSM, it's time to start finishing off my Polish army so that proper play-testing can begin.
I've got my infantry (Battlefront), and most of my cavalry (Forged in Battle), and what armour I need is readily available (Battlefront mostly, I think). The only thing I can't find anywhere is a Polish Taczanka i.e. the purpose-built cart to carry an MMG.
Both Battlefront and Peter Pig do Soviet taczankas...but they are very different, much heavier, than the Polish versions. They also have four horses, whereas the Polish version had three horses.
True North, via Old Glory, do a "Polish" taczanka, but having bought four, I can tell you that the cart is all wrong, it has four horses, no-one to fire the machine gun, and the sitting figures are horrible. QRF and Outpost both do Poles, but neither has a taczanka in their listings.
So...help!
Where can I find 15mm models of the Polish taczanka? Is there anyone out there who does one? Here are a few pics to help jog the memory:
As those of you who are regular visitors know, I like to think of this site as a bit of an archive for battle reports for the company-sized games produced by the TooFatLardies (IABSM, CDS, Q13 and their variants).
Many people now just send me in their reports direct, or drop me a line to let me know they've just posted a new AAR for me to lift from their blog or website. I always link to where I get the content from, so hopefully it's all mutually beneficial and generally promoting the cause of Lard...which means more potential opponents and therefore more potential games.
It's certainly not about money. For those interested, the 2-3 ad sites on Vis Lardica have been up and running for about nine months now, and have so far returned about enough revenue to buy a single battlefront tank, and a small one at that.
It's also great to see how other people have handled the games from the specials and scenario packs that you've played (or in my case often written!) yourself: seeing what they did when faced by the same situation.
I always try and get permission to lift content from other sites, but sometimes that's quite hard to get: not because of resistance (most people are very happy to help me grow the Lard!) but because of a lack of available content details or difficulties in communication because of language.
So here's a very quick AAR from Burt, from his excellent Spanish-language blog Las Partidas de Burt, which I'm going to translate as "Burt's Stuff". I have tried to get in contact with him to check he and the photographer are happy for the lift, but so far to no avail. Let's hope they are, as there's lots of good stuff on the site just aching for a wider audience.
You can visit his site by clicking on its name, above, and read the report by clicking on the picture, below.
Fellow Lardy Algiz runs a Russian-language blog called All the King's Horses and All the King's Men covering the various wargames he and his friends play. You can visit his blog by clicking on its name, above.
He recently played an eastern front game of IABSM involving the Germans defending a village in the face of Soviet assault, and has written a lovely battle report to go with the many pictures.
I haven't been able to get hold of Algiz to ask his permission, so I hope he doesn't mind that I have used Google plus my own writing skills to translate his report into something easier to read than a raw Google Translate translation. I'd love to hear from him to confirm he's okay with that...and to find out what mostochka are, as my previous source on all things Russian is now, unfortunately, unavailable.
Click on the pic, below, to see all.
Incidentally, for those interested, this is the first AAR written using the blog function that I've switched to in the face of lack of available webpages (see post Page Limit Panic!, below).
'Twas the week before Christmas, and I was off to Benson for the last game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum of the year with John, Dave and Bevan.
The battle would take place in the Ardennes as part of the Battle of the Bulge. A strong motorised force of Germans was thrusting forward aiming to capture a fuel dump that would provide them with the petrol needed to drive to the channel ports. In their way was a company of Shermans, supported by infantry occupying a small town, and expecting reinforcements from nearby British troops.
Click on the picture, below, to see all...and the AAR contains complete briefings for each side allowing you to play the game yourselves.
Still working on my 15mm WW2 Poles for the September War, and the Christmas break has allowed me to finally finish the lancers.
I don't know what it is about cavalry, but they seem to take four times as long to finish as infantry. It must be something to do with all the horse furniture!
Anyway, here are twenty lancers from Forged in Battle which, if I say so myself, have turned out quite well.
I've also painted up four two-man anti-tank rifle teams. These are in infantry helmets, but will probably serve as dismounted cavalry as well.
These look okay on the tabletop, but haven't photographed particularly well.
Right, that's it from my painting in 2016. Plenty on the painting table that will just spill over into next year...
Another great battle report from Mike Whitaker: this time featuring a scenario from the Cymru Am Byth scenario pack covering the actions of the Welsh Guards throughout WW2.
Click on the pic, below, to see how the game played out...
Try saying that the first time without pausing to work it out!
Yes, it's another great 6mm IABSM battle report from Mark Luther: this time featuring a clash of armour in Belgium, 1944.
See whether the Cromwells or the StuGs will triumph by clicking on the picture below:
Zipping down the Koerselsesteenweg!
You've got to hand it to Zvezda.
Of all the vehicles they could have released to compete in the WW2 wargaming marketplace, they release the Sturmtiger: a vehicle that no wargamer could possibly want more than one of (except for Kev: he needs loads). They only built nineteen of the damn things anyway.
But release it they have, and bought one I have...probably to use as some kind of objective or objective marker.
It's a nice model: easily up to Zvezda's usual high standards. Paints up well. As I said, the only problem is finding an excuse to actually get it onto the tabletop.
Here's a couple of shots of mine:
A stonkingly huge gallery of an AAR from Mark Luther: sixty-six pics covering a 6mm game of IABSM involving a Soviet counter-attack during the battle of Kursk, 1943.
Played back in October 1914, this is a great showcase of how I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! looks when played in 6mm.
Click on the pic to see all...
Ages since we had an AAR from Mr Luther: so here's one that dates back to June 2014.
A 6mm game played at Gigabites Café, the battle represents the Soviet counterattack by the tanks of the 2nd Tank Division, 3rd Mechanised Corps on June 24th, 1941 near Rossienie, Lithuania.
Clicl on the pic, above, to see lots of really big Soviet tanks in action!
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction)
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
If you need to contact me, you can do so at:
vislardica@gmail.com
If you have enjoyed visiting this site, please add a link to it on your own wargaming blog: www.vislardica.com.
