Dispatch Riders!

 

Just the other day I was reading an old Armed Forces magazine from December 1989 which had a report of Exercise “Roaring Lion” which was a 5^th Airborne Brigade exercise on Salisbury Plain.  Towards the end of the article the CO states the following:

“Command and control generally came together reasonably well, including the use of an aircraft as a command post.  Imposition of radio silence worked especially beneficially and that, and the inevitable communication glitches illustrated the continuing need for dispatch riders and liaison officers to get round such problems”

It got me thinking about Dispatch riders in Battlegroup and that maybe they needed a few more options in AirLand Battlegroup

Here’s the WW2 Dispatches Special Rule:

If radios and telephones won’t work, send a messenger.  A unit with the Dispatch special rule automatically passes a Communications check, because they have gone in person.  Remove the unit from play once they have been used.  It costs one order to send a Dispatch unit.

Currently in AirLand Battlegroup a unit with the Dispatches special rule looks like this:

I’m thinking of increasing the cost of a Dispatch Rider by about +5 points and making them Unique. I’m also thinking of replacing the Dispatches special rule in AirLand Battlegroup with this:

If radios and telephones won’t work, send a messenger.  A unit with the Dispatches special rule is Unique.  A unit with the Dispatches special rule can be used once per game.  Remove the unit from play once they have been used.  It costs one order to use a unit with the Dispatches special rule.  The employing player must select one of the following options:

- Automatically pass a Communications check as per the standard Battlegroup Rules

- Re-roll an Orders Dice after a roll of +3 on a D6

- Re-roll a D6 to determine the number of units arriving from reserve after a roll of +3 on a D6

This gives the Dispatch rider more of a role in Command and Control, rather than just dealing with Indirect Fire.  It will cost a bit more, but gives you some more options – with dice rolls so it doesn’t guarantee outcomes.

What do you think?

Thanks for looking

Richard

West German Fallschirmjaeger Battlegroup Army List

 You wait years for a new paratrooper army list to come along and then suddenly two come at once!  This is another one of those lists I had "started" years ago and never quite got around to finishing.  By started I mean perhaps the first 5% was sort of done...

So here your first opportunity to officially run a West German Fallschirmjaeger force on the tabletop in my completely unofficial Battlegroup Cold War variant!

As I've said previously, please bear in mind that this is a first draft.  As much as I've read it 100 times there will be errors.  Various sources display unit sizes etc differently and I have had to make decisions which may be based in incorrect info, but I done as best I could right now.

Anyway - here is the list:

West German Fallschirmjaeger Battlegroup Army List

For future use you'll also find this list in the NATO Army Lists Tab above.

I only need to add a couple of versions of the Mercedes-Benz 250GD Wolf softskins to the West German AFV Data Cards.  That's a job for the future!

Thanks for looking

Richard

UK 5th Airborne Brigade Battlegroup Army List

I thought it was time to add a new British list - one I first started working on this list 6 years ago!  Oh - that's a bit embarrassing!

So, who doesn't want to be able to field a force of British Paratroopers!  This 5th Airborne Brigade Battlegroup list gives you that opportunity to do just that.  I've also included some assets to allow you to field them in winter in Norway as part of ACE Mobile Force.

Please bear in mind that this is the first draft, so I'd really appreciate some feedback.  Anything you can say that makes it a better, more accurate list would mean a lot to me, from my spelling errors to my outright factual errors!

Anyway here is the list:

UK 5th Airborne Brigade Battlgroup Army List

Based on this list I need to add a few more soft skin vehicles to the British AFV Data Cards.  I'll get onto that next.

You'll also find the list in the NATO Lists TAB above.

Thanks for looking

Richard

56 Wheels later.....

 Time for another model update.  Today I finished 7 OT-64 SKOT Armoured Personnel Carriers.  This was a Czech/Polish jointly developed APC that these countries would use in-place of the BTR-60, 70 and 80 series and were considered to be better in many ways to the Soviet designs.

The models themselves come as STL files from Matt Hingley (of Elhiem Figures) and can be found at MyMiniFactory for the very reasonable price of $8USD.  I can't speak highly enough of them.  They are extremely well designed, robust, hollow and simple to print.  They are also very versatile as I hope the photo's below will attest. 

Matt's files allow you to print the following variants:

SKOT-2A

This version of the SKOT is fitted with a BRDM-2 turret with a 14.5mm HMG and co-axial 7.62mm MG.

SKOT-2AM

This version of the SKOT is fitted with the same BRDM-2 turret with a 14.5mm HMG and co-axial 7.62mm MG but is also fitted with 2 AT-3 Sagger ATGM on the side of the turret, protected by an armoured plate.

SKOT-2AP

This version of the SKOT is fitted with a new high-angle anti-aircraft/helicopter WAT turret with a 14.5mm HMG and co-axial 7.62mm MG.

All the turrets fit the same vehicles - so by printing additional turrets you can get a variety of forces with the same models.  I printed 7 SKOTs and here's some combinations I came up with:

This is the simplest and probably most commonly field option.  2 Platoons of 3 SKOT-2A and a Company HQ in a SKOT-2A.

Similar set up to the last set, but in this case the Platoon CO's vehicles and the Company HQ vehicle are SKOT-2AP.  I understand they were typically limited to one SKOT-2AP per platoon.

In this last set I've replaced the Company CO's vehicle with a SKOT-2AM.  Again I understand that these were fairly rare vehicles and the Polish ARmy Lists allow you to take them as a Platoon Support vehicle.

Perhaps I need to print off at least 1 more of these...  maybe next summer.

Painting wise I took a slightly different tack to my usual approach and tried something new.  I sprayed them with a black undercoat, then gave them a base coat of Vallejo US Olive Drab froma spray can.  I like the fact that they are a slightly different green tone to my standard Soviet stuff.

I then dry brushed them with a couple of coats of VMC USA Olive Drab lighted more with each successive coat.  Now the new bit.  I then used AK Brown and Green Camouflage Paneliner as a kind of pin wash.  I then took much of that off with White Spirits leaving what you see in the pics.  Next time I'll ventilate the room better as I was left with a massive headache! I then applied a mud/dust wash with some pastels and again took most of that off with Vallejo airbrush thinner. Finally I gave the whole vehicle a very light drybrush with Citadel Zandri Dust.

I'm quite happy with the result and I think it took less time than my normal approach.

So I love these Elhiem SKOTs - they went from zero to complete in pretty rapid time for me and give my Poles a really unique look they deserve.  Now if Matt could design an OT-62 TOPAS my Polish dreams would be complete!

Specialist Artillery Munitions

 Hi Everyone.

Time for a bit of bonus material - something to get your teeth into - to get everyone interested in this game talking, suggesting, offering praise or constructive criticism.

Please see attached the new Specialist Artillery Munitions section of the revised Unoffical Airland Battlegroup Rulebook. It covers:

• Illumination Munitions
• Thermobaric Munitions
• Chemical and Biological Munitions
• Nuclear Munitions
• Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions
• Area Denial Artillery Munitions
• Precision Guided Munitions
• Smoke Munitions

Thermobaric and NBC munitions are not discussed in detail in this section of the rulebook. Sorry.

But...

I imagine that there will be the greatness interest/controversy around the rules for smoke munitions - something standard Battlegroup has always steered well away from, argiung that this is covered well enough by the observation rules and some scenario specific rules.

I've never had an issue with this for the WW2 game, but for WW3 I could see some value in more detailed smoke rules. So that's what I've tried to do here.

As I said earlier this is an opportunity for you all to have a look at what I've done and let me know what you think. I know it's pretty wordy - that was just me trying to cover all the bases I could think of.

I'm also really interested to see if you think smoke rules are needed at all? Argue either way and if you think my ideas are wrong/too much/to restricting/too loose or whatever - again - let me know.

Anyway - enough from me - here are the Specialist Artillery Munitions rules in all their glory!

Specialist Artillery Munitions

Hope you enjoy

Richard

Hasegawa Norwegian F-5A(G)

 Well, well, well - once again it's been a while.  It's not like nothing has been going on - but still I've been slack with the blog.  So today I plan to rectify that with a completed model.  The first model of my planned Norwegian force which bizarrely is a Northrop F-5A(G) jet fighter. Just because...

So here it is:

This all started a month or two back when it was a nice day and I had a bit of black paint left in my airbrush so I decided to try something new (with aircraft anyway) which was well beyond my skill level.

So I black attacked a couple of planes I had sitting around with my shakey hands!

Obviously I decided the one that would get actually painted was the plane that required just one colour - the F-5.

So on the next nice day (few and far between here back in January/Feb) I got out my Vallejo Model Air colours and did this

And then added decals

Then I took all the stuff out of the cockpit

And now some fun shots:

Thanks for looking.  Hopefully the next post will be a bit closer than 3 months!

Richard

British AFV Data Cards - An updated version

 It's taken a while but I've finally finished an updated version of the British AFV Data Cards that should cover all of the vehicles in the 4 current British Army Lists.  (I do have plans to add at least 2 or 3 more...)

It was fun to add in a bunch of new vehicles - some were simply missing, some were slightly older vehicles which in my thinking could have been pulled out of storage and prepped ready for some kind of use, some were only ever prototypes, some are purely speculative but worth including because your imagined Cold War Gone Hot timeframe might be slightly different to mine.

So here is the link

British AFV Data Cards

I'll also put the link into the Data Cards tab at the top of the page and on the AirLand BattleGroup page on Facebook.

As I always say, there may be the odd mistake in these cards - I hope not, but it's quite likely.  If you spot anything, let me know and I will make the required changes.

Also if your favourite British Army vehicle is somehow missing - let me know and I'll see if I can add it.  There are 3 spaces available on the last page for anything I forgot.

The extra keen eyed will also not I've changed the AP values on the Scorpion, Saladin and Centurion 105 AVRE.  I've not been happy with the changes I made earlier so have updated them again to hopefully better reflect their lack of a kinetic AP round and reliance on HESH rounds.

The Scorpion and Saladin Data Cards now look like this:

While the Centurion 105 AVRE looks like this:

So that's it for now.

Thanks

Richard