Here's another AAR from James Manto and the Mad Padre. As per usual, you effectively get two battle reports for the price of one: one from James and one from the Padre...

The Mad Padre

[My newly painted Soviets] had their debut on Saturday night in the battle of Turnipograd, at my mate James Manto's (aka Rabbitman) place.  This was in between him stuffing me with trifle, turkey sandwiches, ginger bread pudding, and delicious stout.  You can read his AAR below, and also see me in my very cool “I Heart CCCP” Tshirt, worn to honour my glorious Red Army soldiers.  Below you can see the opening stages of the meeting engagement, as the Soviets push into Turnipograd (The Turnip Capital of Belorussia) from the bottom and the evil fascist kitten eaters from the top.  The buildings are mine, a mix of 4Ground and Paper Terrain, also making their wargaming debut.  I have quite a few more Paper Terrain buildings to finish, from their Southern Russian Village set.

As the Germans were threatening my understrength HQ platoon in the large building, I ordered Lt. Nobsky’s platoon to make a glorious charge to oust the invaders.  Sadly, the attach was thrown back, and many posthumous martyrs of the People were made that day, but they did inflict enough casualties to check the German advance.

My T34s (also PSC models) advance on a platoon of PzIVs, and are doing some damage, just before a zug of Marders (visible top left) announce themselves.  The T34s were commanded by Comrade Mikey Barratt.

Comrade Mikey drives off the Marders, but between their fire and the Panzer IVs, he gets messed up badly while revealing his hand too slowly.  It would have been better if the whole Soviet tank company had advanced and fired together.  I must have Comrade Mikey shot.  Some of the T34s in this shot were painted earlier this year, and some will be in a forthcoming Analogue Painting Challenge entry, but again I won’t say which ones.

It wasn’t a very serious fight but it was fun to get these figures on the table. 

The Mad Padre

 

Rabbitman

Yesterday, after I got home from seeing Five Armies, the Mad Padre came over for some trifle, turkey sandwiches and gaming.

After dinner it was the main event. Mike's spanking new 15mm heroic defenders of the Peasant's and Worker's Socialist Revolution versus my Kitten-Eating Fascist Invaders (although my troops are all Heer, so they deny being involved in any kitten-eating and were studiously looking the other way at the time). This was the first outing for all of Mike's kit and since most of my games end up being 1944 on, it was the first time using my more mid-war PzIVG, Marder and 2 of my mid-war StuG models.

Mike toasts his heroic Soviet hordes with some Russian Gun Imperial Stout, which actually sounds rather counter-revolutionary come to think of it...

Turnipograd. Soviet tanks came around the left and Mike pushed his infantry through the town and around the right.

It was a pretty simple game, a village (officially called "People's Agricultural Collective 132" but known as "Turnipograd" to it's inhabitants) in the middle surrounded by orchards, copses of trees and fields. We both had 3 platoons of infantry and 10 AFVs in a meeting engagement.

I sent my panzers to the left and infantry to the right to attack the town. Mike, assisted by the other Mike, sent his T34s to his right and his infantry into the town and the fields on his left. By overhearing their pregame chatter (signal intercepts) I surmised where all the Soviet armour was and had to quick reshuffle the StuGs with the Marders so they could engage the T34s. The StuGs got sent to the right to support the grenadiers.

So Panzer IVs started engaging T34s.

Initial shooting went badly, by forgetting to apply some positive modifiers. Wierdy-Beardy's return fire put some damage and shock on me. Fortunately the Marders showed up and added their guns to the shoot out, brewing up a few T34s.

Another platoon of T34s rolled out of the orchard and opened up on the Marders, brewing one and knocking out the gun on another.

But then my Panzer IVs switched their fire to the new threat and earned their beer by brewing two and causing the third to bail out. This left the Soviets with 2 running tanks.

Around Turnipograd the Padre charged my advanced platoon of grenadiers with one rifle platoon and no support. My landsers were positioned among a few barns and got defensive bonuses, so I thrashed him badly but the survivors just hunkered down. On the far right I had a platoon in a bean field waiting for the StuGs to show up to support them, but Mike brought a platoon with a maxim gun through a wheat field to engage them. We engaged each other in a desultory fire fight. Mike was going to charge me with the rifle platoon and a SMG platoon which would have trashed me I think, but we were out of time.

So fairly even honours. I did a little better in the armour fight, but the Padre had a better grip on the town and was in a better position in the infantry fight. Plus we both knocked the "new unit" curse off a few models!

James "Rabbitman"  Mantos