Russian Front Game photos

It's been awhile since me last update, so I thought I'd put up a quick post suggesting you head on over to the Gettysburg Area Gamers website and check out the photo gallery for some pictures of some of the great games we've played in the past. There are also some pics of the recent 54mm Russian front game I ran using Arc of fire. The game was actually the same scenario as recorded in my last post with some minor changes. It was played on a larger table, and both the Russians and the Germans rolled much better on the additional units chart, with the Ruskies getting a 47mm AT gun and the Germans rolling the Sdkfz.222 for this game. The group played out the scenario very differently than Rueben and Clay did. The Halftrack was destroyed on the first turn by AT gun fire. The game quickly turned into an infantry battle for the stone bridge. We had to call the game at the end of turn 8 due to time restraints. I called it as a Russian Victory as they were still holding all of their objectives, however I think if we had gone another 2 turns the Reds would have been done.

Arc of Fire Game

This past weekend I hosted a small Arc of Fire WW2 game at my house. The intent was to introduce some fairly new gamers (My brother in-law Reuben and my cousin Clay "Claybird") to the rule-set and to further acclimate myself to the rules as well. I'll be running a similar scenario at an upcoming Thursday night G.A.G. Game. It was a pretty simple scenario, with elements of a larger German force advancing towards a town, and a small group of Soviets attempting to slow/stop them. The German objectives were to capture the stone house, the small hill to the south and to exit at least one vehicle off the eastern table edge. The Russian objectives were to simply hold either the stone house, or the Hill. The Game was to end at turn 12. Both sides had the opportunity to roll for additional elements at the start of the game, while the Reds rolled an extra squad the Germans rolled a 3, being one of only two results on a D10 that would result in no additional forces.

The Game started pretty well with the Germans playing it cautious and advancing slowly down the paved road towards the stone bridge. The bridge was the only place they could cross the freezing river. While the Russian platoon HQ took up position in the house, one of the russian infantry squad to up a position behind the house. The Russian assault squad was hidden in tall grass to the east of the bridge. The Political section and second infantry squad held the hill.

Suppressing fire from the Russians on the hill slowed the advance of the German infantry up the road, however the halftrack pushed relentlessly forward to the din of small arms fire. The Red infantry squad positioned to the east of the house attempted to sneak around the north side of the house for where they stayed for the rest of the game thanks to effectively suppressing German MG fire.
Turn three started with the Russian still holding both the Hill and stone house and the entirety of the German forces still to the west of the bridge. On the first German Card the Halftrack roared of the Bridge and poured Machine Gun Fire into the house. The Second card for the halftrack followed immediately afterwards and the Halftrack moved down the dirt road towards the table edge were it stopped to unload into the nearby russian infantry. The third turn ended with the halftrack stopped only inches from the table edge. The Political sections Commissar was dead ,the infantry squads on the hill and advancing around the side of the house were both broken, and the assualt squad was charging towards the halftrack.

This was as far as the halftrack was to make it, the Russain assault squad was the first card up on the 4th turn and some well placed Grenades from the Ruskies put it and most of the infantry still within out of commission. We had to call the game early at the end of turn four, I called it a tie, but it would have been interesting to see how things turned out. There were still 2 relatively fresh Gerry squads coming over the bridge, the Ruskies were mostly broken and pretty shot up.

The nearly impervious Char B1

The Char B1 Heavy Tank, the most powerful tank of the early part of ww2, with a forward hull mounted 75mm gun, at turreted 45mm gun, a Coaxial MG and armor that in some places reached a thickness of 65mm. At the beginning of the war the German's didn't even have a anti-tank gun that could pierce the armor except when a direct hit to the main vent was achieved. Of course they could be taken out by repeated hits, they could be slowly pounded into non-functionality. I'd imagine that repeated direct hits would have quite a negative effect on the crew morale.

Enough history though, I've recently finished painting six of these monsters. I painted three in a camo scheme and three a basic green paint job. This is the first real camo job I've tried on an AFV and I'm relatively pleased with it.

Early World War II French Armor

Ahhhh..... the Early War French army. The Early part of the War holds great interest for me, I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about 1940 France, 1939 Poland, and even the Winter War between the Finns and the Russians, I've been picking up miniatures for pretty much all the above as well. The French however are the closest to being done. I've uploaded some pictures of some recently completed French armor here.

They are all RAFM models, there are 4 Renault R35s, 2 Hotchkiss H35s and 2 Lorraine APCs.

I'm pretty pleased with how they came out. While the french had some great armor camo schemes it's my understanding (and in this case I'm going to stick by that understanding no matter how wrong it turns out to be) that a quite a few French tanks of the period didn't get the camo treatment, so for these models I decided not to go the way of camo. That is of course just a lame excuse, because I hate painting camo and I'm not very good at it either.