The Stipsicz Hussars play another of the scenarios from the Operation Compass scenaripo pack for I Ain't Been Shot, Mum!
This time they play the first scenario in the pack: the Road to Fort Capuzzo, featuring a British attack on a position manned by Italian/Libyan colonial troops. Click on the pic to see all:
Just back from a week north of the border, and have returned to find my inbox brimming with entries into this year's challenge.
Here are today's updates in, as always, no particular order:
Well that's taken me more than an hour to sort!
Today's pictures are from Carole, some of her Kra'vak; from Doug, some of his 6mm figures; and from Steve, some cataphracts:
Doug's British Dragoons and Horse for the WSS in 6mm
Carole's Kra'vak command in 15mm
Steve's Cataphracts in 28mm
Well we haven't seen one of these for a while: here's another of Mark Luther's amazing battle reports using IABSM in 6mm.
Here a mixed force of Soviets tries to scout out a suitable river crossing as they advance across Poland in 1944.
Click on the picture below to see all:
Recently, there have been a spate of people on the TooFatLardies Yahoo Group mentioning how good the Musée de l’Armée in Paris is.
Reading their recommendations sparked off an idea in my head: I had a few days holiday left over from last year that I had to take before the end of March and, never having “done” Paris before, thought I’d take the opportunity to do so, with the Musée being one of my main objectives.
A quick surf of the net secured me Eurostar tickets and three nights in a 3* hotel for only £240. With such a short time available, I planned what I was going to do with military efficiency, including pre-buying a Paris Museum pass and a Metro pass. For those interested, I ended up almost exactly cost-neutral on the Museum Pass, but really appreciated not having to queue for tickets anywhere; and used the Metro constantly: things in Paris are a lot further apart than the maps suggest!
I’d allocated Tuesday late morning for the Musée. The plan was to get up early and visit the Eiffel Tower first thing, then walk to Les Invalides, which is where the army museum is.
The Tower is amazing (get there forty-five minutes before opening time: I did so, and was first in the queue with, by the time it opened, some 500 people behind me!) so it was mid-morning by the time I arrived at Les Invalides.
I entered from the river side of the building, which means that I ended up in the central courtyard almost immediately. It’s impressive, with various bits of kit scattered around the walkway around the outside.
Pictured here is a Renault FT-17 tank, the world’s “first modern tank” that set the standard for AFV design i.e. tracks at the side, turret on top. What amazed me was how small it was, and how fragile the front hatch looked.
There are five main things that I’d recommend seeing at the Musée:
This is an amazing collection of the aforementioned old armour and weapons. Most impressive are the galleries of suits of full- or half-armour made for royalty or other noble-types. Also very impressive are the glass-fronted storerooms of full suits of armour such as the one pictured here. These are just the storerooms, not the main exhibits, and look rather chillingly like a scene from a Cyberman attack!
There are also a lot of weapons on show. A lot. This sort of thing is a particular interest of mine, and I spent a lot of time wandering round reminding myself of the difference between a morion and a sallet, and attempting to remember the difference between a glaive and a guisarme.
It’s nicely laid out in a rough circuit, and well worth doing.
Loved this gallery as well. Loads of uniforms on show, including an absolutely incredible gallery full of original Napoleonic cavalry uniforms (see pictures, below).
They also have loads and loads of hand guns and long arms, really depicting the transition from matchlock to wheel-lock to flint-lock etc. Lots of swords as well.
The accompanying history was also good. I made a point of watching their video displays of various important battles of the period: imagine a series of large coffee-tables with a screen instead of a surface, with the battles playing out on top of them with commentary through headphones.
Finally, I also liked all the bric-a-brac, with my favourite being dispatch cases printed with the name of the Marshall whose orders they contained.
I took a break for lunch at this point. I would highly recommend using the on-site restaurant. Here’s a picture of my lunch: delicious!
It’s worth differentiating between theWW1 and the WW2 exhibits, as they have a very different feel to them.
The WW1 bit is a bit like a continuation of the Napoleonic bit, above. Lots of original uniforms (amazing how colourful they were…at the beginning of the war!) and weapons on display, and lots of history written from a very French point of view.
WW1 isn’t really my thing, so I was quite surprised how much I enjoyed these galleries.
The WW2 bit, unsurprisingly maybe, has a very different feel to it. It’s a bit difficult to explain, but the other parts of the museum are displayed and written from the inside, as it were, whereas these galleries felt far more like you were reading something written from the outside. There’s quite a bit on the Free French army, which was very interesting, but again to me the best bits were the various pieces of equipment on show. I can really understand how big a Solothurn anti-tank rifle is now and, funnily enough, how small an MP-4 looks.
The attic contains a visually astounding collection of Plans-Relief.
What’s a Plan-Relief I hear you ask? It’s basically a wargames table designed to be used as a map…or a map that looks like a wargames table: take your pick.
These are huge, and are displayed in an attic that seems to go on for miles. It’s a spooky place, and a must-see.
Displayed as the centrepiece of the inside of the Dôme des Invalides, this is impressive both inside and out.
Do try and pick a time that isn’t full of school kids so you can appreciate the full majesty of the place. The school parties tend to clump, and are usually only in there for ten minutes or so, so if there are some in there when you arrive, go have another beer at the restaurant and wait until you seem them streaming back past you into the museum proper before visiting it yourself.
The Dome des Invalides (above) containing Napoleon's tomb (right)
So, there you have it: an absolute recommendation for the Paris’ Musée de l’Armée. Had I had time, I would almost certainly of gone back and had another look around. There really is just too much good stuff on display to take it all in first time around.
Superb battle report from Carojon and the Devon Wargamers covering a recent game using scenario #12 from the Welsh Guards supplement: Cymru Am Byth.
Loads of background information and some stunning photos make this a must-see!
Click on the pic, below, to see all:
A final Charlie Don't Surf! battle report lifted from the, I think, defunct, Tao of Lard blog (no posts since 2013).
Here a company of US troops are tasked with checking a village for caches of rice...but will Charlie let them go about their work unmolested?
Click on the pic below to read all about it:
A few pictures of a recent game of IABSM from the Stipsicz Hussars: a re-fight of the climactic battle of Operation Compass fought in the western desert in February 1941.
Click on the pic to see more:
The first lot of anti-aircraft guns for my Six Day War Egyptians. These are ZPU-4's: four HMGs mounted together on a towed trolley.
Figures and guns are Peter Pig, from their Modern Africa range (a very useful range for anyone looking for Soviet equipment from the Sixties and Seventies). The guns don't come with any crew, so I used standard "helmeted crew" for the chaps who are standing up; and one of their "seated in helmets for the gunner himself. The gunner actually has a Kalashnikov flat across his lap, but painted black and with all the gun-stuff, it looks like some kind of trigger mechanism...and, anyway, who's going to notice on the tabletop!
The pic above doesn't actually do the little blighters justice. For some reason I decided to use a slightly different technique on these AA guns than I did on the AT guns I've posted previously. Here I sprayed them black, dry-brushed in the colour I wanted, used black ink as a wash, and then dry-brushed again. Looks great on the tabletop, but a bit messy in close-up.
You'll note that I have mounted two guns in AA mode, and two guns depressed for shooting people on the ground. That's because a platoon is four guns-strong, but I can't really see me ever fielding four guns at a time, so now I can field one or two, and swap models dependent on what angle the Israeli attack is coming from!
Enough of you sent in entries over the weekend to justify a quick Tuesday morning update. So, in no particular order, we have:
Lots of pics today:
Just one of the many ships from WillieB
Amusing, from Owen
Exquisite, from Ralph
Plentiful, from Jon
Another Charlie Don't Surf after action report from Penfold, but this time, for the first time, he is using a scenario of his own devising.
Click on the pic to see more:
Another great battle report from Joe Patchen. This time, Joe describes the action from the play of one of the scenarios in the I Ain't Been Shot, Mum! rulebook: A Canadian VC.
Will history repeat itself and medals be awarded? Click on the pic below to see all:
I have updated the UAR/Egyptian briefing for the Six Day War, largely as a result of looking at the AA assets available in more detail.
All that's changed is a clarification of what AA assets are available, and the addition of separate stats for some of them.
To re-cap, the briefing contains an OOB and arsenal for the following forces for the UAR/Egyptians in the Six Day War:
This year's challenge is ticking along nicely: plenty of people sending in their achievements on a regular basis. Here's this week's batch:
Today's picture is of Mr Burt's Parthians and Mr Douglas' Gallic cavalry:
Parthians in 28mm from Navigator
Gallic cavalry in 15mm
Plenty of time to get your entries in, especially if you have entered in the past but have yet to do so this year. So come on, get painting and get photographing!
As I've said before, I like to think of this site as an archive of activity for the TooFatLardies company-sized wargames: IABSM, CDS, Q13.
As such, it's great to be able to archive/commemorate/celebrate the efforts of Abingdon Wargames Club in 2012 as they took their demo game of Charlie Don't Surf on the road to various wargames shows.
Click on the picture below to see a brief collection of words and pics from their UK tour...
A bit of a blast from the past from Dr The Viking's blog: with a pictorial AAR from 2008 covering a late war bash as the Americans fight their way back into Belgium.
Click on the pic to see all:
Another great Charie Don't Surf battle report from Penfold, this one using scenario #06: Playing the Beanball from the Surf's Up scenario pack.
Here the Communist forces learn an important lesson about playing as insurgents rather than playing as regulars...
Click on the Surf's Up cover, below, to see all:
My second platoon of anti-tank guns for my UAR/Egyptian force for the Six Day War consists of a couple of gigantic ex-Soviet 100mm BS-3 weapons.
These are truly huge: jutting out from their bases like...well, I'll leave you to choose an appropriate metaphor given their extreme capacity for, er, penetration!
Nice models, but I did find it very difficult to get the gun barrels straight after they arrived in the pack looking like Audrey Horne had done a cherry-stalk number on them!
The crews are again a mixture of Battlefront and Peter Pig.
Back in 2013, Joakim and some of his fellow Penguins took advantage of an empty house to set up and play a huge game of I Ain't Been Shot, Mum!
Here's the AAR, with some great pictures of a truly huge table! Click on the picture below to see all.
A fairly quiet week in the painting challenge, but still enough to justify a cheeky Sunday afternoon update.
In no particular order, we have:
Today's pics? Mr Naylor's Soviets and the Double G's Anglo-Danish warband:
Now that the infantry and armour are all sorted, it was time to add the other support weapons to my UAR/Egyptian force for the Six Day War. Top of the list had to be anti-tank guns.
Looking at my orders of battle (available here) I could see that the vast majority of Egyptian AT guns were ex-Soviet 57mm Zis-2 pieces (around 300 of them), followed by ex-British 6-pounders (about 100 of them), followed by a smattering of ex-Soviet 100mm BS-3 guns (maybe 70 of them). Off to the Battlefront website to do some buying.
Interesting...the only pack of anti-tank guns that Battlefront has for the Six Day War is a mixed pack of two 82mm recoil-less rifles (which you get as part of the company HQ anyway), one Zis-2, and two BS-3s. Yes, it's technically a three gun platoon, but why use the least common anti-tank gun as the mainstay? Another Battlefront mystery!
So I decided, by buying the two-pack of Zis-3/Zis-2 WW2 Soviet guns, to get two platoons of towed anti-tank guns: one of three Zis-2s, one of two BS-3s. Here is the first off the production line: the Zis-2s.
The crews are a mix of the crews included in the pack with the addition of spares from the helmet-heads within the Peter Pig Modern Africa range (a very useful range indeed for filling in the gaps in any Soviet-equipment-using force).
I decided to give my guns five crew members each, rather than the usual four, as I have a feeling that I might need every man I can get to turn back the eventual Israeli tide!
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.
