AAR: Belgorad-Kharkov
/Originally posted 12th April 2012
An Eastern Front game from the pen of Paul Scrivens Smith featuring action from the Belgorad-Kharkov offensive:
An Eastern Front game from the pen of Paul Scrivens Smith featuring action from the Belgorad-Kharkov offensive:
James Mantos reports on an early war game where the forces and terrain were generated using the new random scenario generator to be found in the IABSM3 rulebook:
A report on a D-Day game centred around the Paras' defence of Ranville. The scenario was taken from the Summer Special 2006, and you can see other AAR from the same scenario in the Games Day 2008 section of the AARs page.
Next on the list from the Plastic Soldier Company were some 76mm Shermans with wet stowage (i.e. the ammo was kept wet rather than dry).
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These built very nicely indeed: even the usually tricky tracks were not too much of a bother. Lovely kits that take the paint very well: almost too well, as they have come out looking a huge amount smoother than their Battlefront metal and resin equivalents.
Here are some shots of the platoon, and one so that you can compare the Battlefront and PSC tanks.
Here are the Battlefront versions:
And the PSC ones again:
Incidentally, I still prefer to game with the metal and resin tanks from Battlefront (there's something comforting about that weight!) but the PSC plastics are just so well priced, and so much fun to put together and paint, that I think that I shall definitely keep buying them...especially where I need ten to twelve of the same tank.
Next up: the Brits. Some PSC Fireflies and normal Shermans. Two boxes worth!
Here are my latest tank models from Plastic Soldier Company: a Zug of Panthers.
Although up to now I have focussed on the early war period and tended to buy Battlefront tank models, with my movement into the later war period I have expanded into using other manufacturers. These Panthers, along with the Panzer IVs, are plastic models from Plastic Soldier Company, and three out of four of the SdKfz 7/1s are from Forged in Battle.
The reason? Simple: expense. I can field five tanks from PSC for at least half the cost of the Battlefront models: worth it when you're buying tanks by the Zug even if in principle you prefer metal to plastic!
One thing to note, however, is that the track assemblies can be a real pain to put together. If you look closely, you can see the difficulty I had in matching the top and the bottom of the track up properly on the bits right at the front and back. I don't understand why they can't just cast the whole track area as one piece, like Battlefront do. It would make life much easier!
Here's another shot of the Panthers:
Two AARs from the pen of new-to-IABSM player Paul Scrivens Smith. Both describe fighting the North of Caen scenario from the IABSM v3 rulebook, although one re-fight has been transposed to the desert!
Buying Battlefront tanks can be an expensive business, so recently I've been augmenting my collection by adding platoons of Plastic Soldier Company 15mm tanks to my core Battlefront platoons.
Next onto the building/painting table were the T-34s...or, as I should say, the T-34s and the T-34/85s, as each kit comes with two turrets and guns allowing you to field both. That's one hull and two turrets per model : damn good value if you ask me!
Building them proved easy: even the track assembly wasn't too difficult (unlike the flipping Panthers I'm working on now which are a right pain in the arse). Painting them was equally easy.
So, in summary, PSC T-34s (and 85s!) are highly recommended, even if their weight (or lack of) does take some getting used to
Continuing the eastern front theme, here's another AAR from Tony Hobbs covering the defence of Kobrin.
The official, Gallery shot of my latest paint job: a PaK40 platoon from Battlefront. I've also included a couple of close-up pictures so the detail can be seen. Nice figures that paint up well.
Katzenstein reports on his first game of IABSM:
Here is the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel) set from Battlefront. The ships are nice models, and paint up well, but the infantry-being-carried were bloody awful: badly cast with none of the usual detail.
Incidentally, the infantry come in strips of four half-bodies. I mounted six strips in two rows of three on a thin base so that I can either have the LCVPs full of men, or empty, or put a vehicle in them.
These three are now all ready to carry the Rangers ashore for the fourth scenario from the Sicily pack: Gela 1!
Chris Stoessen converts one of the scenarios from the new IABSM v3 rulebook:
An AAR from Sicily courtesy of Victor.
More winter warfare goodness from Kev. Amazing terrain and figures.
Originally posted 22nd January 2012
A couple of Hummel's:
You can see where the wash hasn't taken to the underside of the far vehicle's gun barrel: something I shall correct in just a moment!
Some lovely 20mm action from Tony Hobbz: it's Operation Barbarossa time!
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Pascal posted a few pictures of a game of CDS that his group ran at the Nerviens convention in northern France.
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Great Eastern Front Winter Warfare AAR from Kev: fantastic scenery and figures.
A couple of Wespe self-propelled guns for my nascent later war German force. These are Battlefront miniatures, and painted up very nicely indeed.
With the forthcoming launch of my IABSM-based, company-sized, sci-fi rules, I also spent a lot of time painting sci-fi figures. The biggest holiday project was painting up the Chewks from Khurasan: they are cracking models a bit like the Jawas from Star Wars.
One of the best things about Khurasan is that they make an effort to produce figures that will give you more than just infantry squads: as a rule, each of their ranges (and they have many!) have infantry, command, support weapon and vehicle models...and lovely models they are too. Particularly good are the Chewk drilltanks: vast tunnelling AFVs which come with option to have a chewkannon artillery piece mounted on a boom arm. Here they are in troop carrying mode: click to go to the gallery to see the whole range.
Other manufacturers are also realising that they need to produce entire ranges rather than just infantry squad models. Highlander Studios, manufacturers of the excellent Space Bug range, have augmented their basic offering with anti-tank, anti-aircraft and flamethrower teams: also painted up over Xmas.
Finally we go back to Khurasan again for some APCs for the Karkarine Landser "shark-headed" infantry from their Pelagic Dominate range. Called, appropriately, Karkwagons, these are all plastic kits that are really nice to paint. They seem a bit small for the size of the Karks themselves i.e. it looks like it would be a tight fit to get a squad of seven inside...but they will look good on the tabletop anyway!
​So that was Christmas 2011: a couple of cracking games of IABSM3 (see the AAR below) and a load of painting. About 150 foot and nine vehicles: not Kev standards, but not bad! Roll on 2012!
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)
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