Soviet Update & Work-In-Progress

Just a quick update this week - as I promised a few weeks ago to give a general update on the project from each participating nation I'm collecting.

As you would be aware the Soviets took up a lot of my energy last year - and I had hoped to be near the end of finishing the off (as if that's ever going to happen).

But in the meantime I have picked up the odd bit 'n piece and so now have a new pile of Soviet stuff to do.

So here's the pile:



As you can see I have a few more ACE kits including
1 x BMP-1 (yes - another one...)
1 x PRP-3 (kind of counts as yet another BMP-1)
1 x 2S1 Gvozdika - which I think looks really cool
1 x MTLB witha AT-6 missile (but it will be built as a straight MTLB)
1 x ZSU-23 (central in the small plastic bag).

The other 2 bigger plastic bags contain a Mil-8 Hip and a Mil-24 Hind.

All the troops are a variety of Libmin VDV in berets and jump helmets and these go a long way to completing my VDV force (about 15 mini's short now), which in Rapid Fire Modern terms will count as 2 mechanised airborne battalions - which is pretty damn cool!

That's alll for now. Next week an update and WIP on my US forces.

Have fun

Richard

Bundeswehr Training Films

On a bit of a West German bent - so yesterday I was trolling through this thread on militaryphotos.net when I came across a series of training movies set in the 1980's from youtube.

I watched the first one (split into 4 on youtube) and thought it was worth sharing. Now I don't speak German (yet another failing of my education) but found this relatively easy to follow - even with the sound right down.

This first one is more of a history lesson but has some good World war Two training footage of grenadiers attacking Soviet T-34s towards the middle. It also shows how an infantryman is seen from a tank which is quite interesting and a couple of the scenes appear to me to be direct copies of real actions from Normandy.



The second one is where we really join the action. A small Bundeswehr engineering detachment (well that's whatI think they are) are attacked by "Soviet tanks" and have to defend themselves with liechten panzerfaust. As I understand it (from reading a tranlation) the dialogue is appalling - but this is where not speaking German is a good thing. One interesting thing for the wargamer - German infantrty fighting in blue uniforms...



The third film has a "standard" infantry unit defending against an armoured attack. I assume that the armour is supposed to represent BMPs. These are hunted down by a panzerjager team with Panzerfaust 3's. One is taken out by a Marder in a classic scene. One of the things I found interesting in this part was the infantry defending a forest - not from the edge of the forest, but well back from the tree line.



The battle continues into part four - with some good scenes in trenches and with a Panzerfaust 3.



Take some time and have a look - it's well worth it.

Have fun

Richard

S&S Models + 15 Club

Just a quick post regarding S&S Models 15 + Club.

As you may or may not know S&S Models has a 15+ Club - meaning that if enough interest is generated in the need for a particular model of a vehicle, that will guarantee 15 or more purchases - then they could be prepared to put same vehicle onto their to-do list.

Samples of the S&S Models catalouge can be found here

The Guild amongst other website and forums is frequented by Shaun Matthews (one of the "S" in S&S Models)and they have a special 15+ club there as well - which Shaun appears to pay a fair amount of attention to. The particular thread can be found here

So what this blog post in aid of... Well I'm pushing for an M106 Mortar Carrier to be on the S&S Models +15 list. What's an M106 - one of these:









The first pics are US Army M106, while the latter are West German. Oddly enough I need them to support my US and West German Cold War forces. Some excellent line drawing of the M106 can be found here

Now I know that ESCI made an M106 - but it is largely unavailable - read rare as hen's teeth - and Britannia made one as part of their Vietnam range - but this is heavily Vietnamised - i.e. lots of crap all over it - and doesn't really suit what I'm trying to achieve and I'd prefer the later version shown in the photos above.

If you are interested you can drop Shaun Matthews and email (see his website) or join the Guild and post it up in the thread there.

Join the masses crying out for a new M106!

And have fun

Richard

BAOR Update & Work-in-Progress

While not much has been happening on the blog of late, much has actually been going on. With the best laid plans out the window as some WWII commission painting and life in general interrupt my Cold War plans - I thought I had better give an update.

Over the last few months my BAOR force has continued to grow. Next week I'll put up some photos of all the finished BAOR kit. This week I thought I'd lay out some of the unstarted or made up kits and models - that are yet to be painted and finished.

So it it all is minus stuff you've probably already seen before and another Warrior MCV that is winging its way to Oz via Old Blighty:







As you can see in the photo I've expanded my British collection quite considerably. You should be able to make out the following:

My BAOR Helicopter support - 2 x Lynx helo with TOW, 1 x Gazelle Scout helo
1 x Britannia Chieftain
3 x Britannia FV432 with a wombat recoiless rifle and 2 mortars (1 homemade by me)
1 x Liberation Striker
3 x Airfix Bedford Trucks
1 x Airfix Airfield Refueller
1 x Airfix Scorpion
2 x Airfix 105mm guns
1 x Airfix 1 ton Land Rover
1 x Airfix Trailer
1 x Cromwell Sultan
1 x Cromwell Spartan
1 x MMS (I think) 1 ton Land Rover
2 x Land Rovers of unknown origin
1 x Humber Pig of unknown origin

The boxes up the back are fairly self-explanatory and the unmade kits include another Airfix 1 ton Landie and an Airfix Saracen.

I now have 7 Revell Warriors, 7 Britannia FV432 (which I have a cunning plan for), 5 Chieftains and 4 Challengers - more Land Rovers than you can point a stick at and I also recently scored 30 plus fully painted Liberation British Infantry with SA-80s. So I'm pretty chuffed.

So all in all I have a lot to do. Soon I'll stick up my US Cold War W-I-P and my next Soviet W-I-P. Damn Soviets - once you get into them they are very hard to stop buying for!

Anyway - have fun

Richard

Book Review: Chieftains - The WWIII Novel

Well over 20 years ago I borrowed a book called "Chieftains" from a mate. It was a good dramatic read, and introduced me to a few concepts that I certainly had never heard of before. I returned the book and over the years had always wanted to read it again - especially in the last 12 months or so.

So on Thursday I once again borrowed the same book from the same mate, who probably found the book in the same spot that he placed it after I gave it back to him 20 years ago!

Here it is looking a little aged:



I finished it this morning and thought it worthy of an immediate book review as I think it is a relatively rare book now.

The book was first published in 1982 and describes a Third World War type situation set in around 1985. Whilst not much detail is entered into the reasons why it all kicked off - it appears to begin down in Yugslavia with the Russians intervening and the Americans providing logistical support to the Yugoslavs. As the Western nations have been going through a recession for most of the late seventies and early eighties, defence spending is down and it is implied that this is enough for the Soviet leadership to think "Why the hell not!" and invade Western Europe.

The story follows a number of different people - a little like Red Storm Rising - but only looks at things from the NATO point of view, is generally focussed on tankers, and is primarily about a Chieftain crew in particular.

Whilst the Soviets arn't shown as supermen or super-boogeymen per say - the sheer weight of the Soviet numbers is enough to be constantly driving the NATO forces back for the majority of the book. The book has a certain doom and gloom about it. Nothing is held back - war certainly is hell, and you don't want to form much of an emotional connection to the characters as its highly likely when you turn the next page that they'll die - often a somewhat senseless death.

Mistakes are made, either stupid little ones or massive ones - but it is done in a very realistic, totally beleivable manner. Artillery is massively destructive, gas is used - and I won't tell you what happens in the end - but I'm sure you can guess. Not a happy ending kind of story - a little like reality.

Team Yankee certainly felt a bit cleaner, less mistakes were made and the tactical situations were generally one sided - in favour of NATO. So whilst the story lines are similar - not much else is.

One of the things the book introduced me to all those years ago was the role of the SAS in West Germany in the middle of a Cold War Gone Hot. This aspect of the book is pretty cool, and if it had been written by Tom Clancy - apart from it being all about Americans - this section would have been greatly expanded.

Parts of the book are a little unsatisfying. It kind of felt like it was written to A) like John Hackett's "The Third World War" help convince the government to increase defence spending, B) convince the BAOR to train harder so they don't make stupid mistakes, C) to portray the Soviet Army as the big bad wolf that everyone thought it was in the 70s and 80s which kind of turned out to be not really so true, and D) try and convince everyone to avoid war at all costs (a good idea in my book). As such it was very, very grim.

Some parts seemed a little unlikely, the lack of NATO air support, particularly against massive inviting targets, such as a strategic Soviet bridgehead didn't ring true to me nor did the Soviet use of gas with seemingly no impact of the Russian performance. The timing of the book meant systems like MLRS, DPICM and FASCAM were non exsistent, and the performance of the M1 (refered to as the XM1 in the book) is woefully short of reality - potentially able to knocked out by an ASU-57 or RPG, no Thermal Imaging, no blast bins for the ammo etc. But still not bad for a book published in 1982, which probably meant it was written in 1980 or earlier.

That doesn't for a second mean that as a whole I didn't really enjoy the book. Some of the engagements are written extremely well, and you get caught up in action, especially as the Chieftain moves from firing point to firing point, hammering at Soviet armour and being hammered at in turn. It represent the chaos of battle extremely well.

Overall I think this book is well worth the read. The size of this particularly genre of books is pretty limited to begin with and this is a worthy addition to the panetheon. Its also nice to have a book that is written from a primarily British point of view and is more interested in showing what the authour considered to be the likely realities of the battle rather than having a happy ending.

If you get the chance to read this book - read it.

Have fun

Richard

Eisenbach Gap

A few weeks ago I went down to Canberra for the Annual Wargaming Convention there: Cancon. This year I went solely as a shopper rather than playing in any tournament. I'm rather chuffed with the result - in that I managed to pick up 3 boxed wargames, some 1/72 kits and a couple of 120mm mortars for my Soviets.

One of the games I bought was Lock 'n Load's Eisenbach Gap as seen above. I managed to get it second hand and complete - as in it wasn't missing anything!



Over the weekend I got to play it for the first time in a solo game. At least this way I was guaranteed to win (and to lose...)

I've made up a dodgy AAR - I'm sure many could do it much more nicely - but alas - all my desire to do so was not matched by an appropriate computer program (or the skill to use it!)

So the board looks like this:



however the actual playing area for the first scenario is more like this:



The Soviets are attacking from west to east across the map (couldn't really work this out in my head - but hey - I was just doing what the scenario said to do). They have 10 platoons of T-72s and an HQ. The US (Team Yankee - almost straight from the book it appeared to me) had 2 M1 platoons, an ITV platoon, and Infantry platoon with a Dragon ATGM and an HQ. This shows the initial set up of the game:



The Soviet set up (the red oval) is pretty much set whereas the US could set up anywhere from around the two central hills and to the east. I placed 1 M1 platoon in the woods on the hill to the south, 1 M1 platoon in the small central village and the infantry and ITVs in the town at Eisenbach. The US HQ was in the small village with an M1 platoon. The Soviets had to take Eisenbach to win the game - anything else was a US victory.

The NATO Plan was pretty simple. Start defending forward and then withdraw to Eisenbach. The ITV with its good range would defend the town and the infantry would be the last restort.

The Soviet Plan was likewise pretty straight forward. Beyond the obvious crush the imperialists - it involved taking the northern hill quickly and while part of the force swung around to take Eisenbach from the north, the main body would deal with the tanks in the town and the other hill and then attack Eisenbach from the south.



The game started quite well for the Soviets. They got a free turn (special scenario rule) and then I drew their activation chit first, so they got another move again. This got most of them into a pretty good position behind/on the northen hill with the loss of only one platoon. At the same time they managed to knock out the M1 platoon in the central village and degrade the Team Yankee HQ.



With the centre in trouble, the southern most M1 platoon began to withdraw to Eisenbach, while the soviets also enacted their plan by driving a couple of platoons to the northwest of Eisenbach.

The soviets (read me) then remembered that they had some artillery support so spent the next couple of turns raining arty down on the infantry in Eisenbach. This cunning sub-plan failed miserably and the infantry laughed in the face of the ineffective red artillery. Ha Ha Ha. They proved their contempt further by, along with the ITV platoon, managing to knockout the 2 T-72 platoons hiding in the woods to the Northwest.



The Soviet attack started to break down here and when a couple more T-72 platoons also tried to drive to the South they got hammered as well, while the reduced M1 platoon and the HQ traded shots with the Soviet units on the hill north of the central village.



Finally the US forces took out the remaining units in the central village and with only 2 platoons left, the Soviets decided to call it a day.

Unit of the battle:



The ITV platoon was totally awesome and did more damage than any other unit in the game.

VERDICT

Well - my bottom line is that I enjoyed myself. Its been years and years since I played a board game like this and after just 1 game, I started to realise I still loved pushing little cardbaord chits around. I'll be playing this game again.

LIKES

The grahics of this system are simply stunning. Lovely full colour counters and excellent map board. The counters can be a wee bit difficult to read - but that's me just getting old! I love the activation system and it caused some interesting swings backwards and forwards in the game.

Towards the beginning of the game when things were going well for the Soviets I couldn't see how the US side could win. I seriously thought they were going to get massarced. Later inthe game I couldn't see how the Soviets could move fromthe central area of the board without getting hammered. To me this actually felt pretty balanced - so I was happy with that.

Movement is dead easy and the combat system is pretty cool. I also generally liked the Command system.

DISLIKES

Bear in mind that this is after one game - so this may change. There are a couple of things I felt could have been explained better and I think the Player Aid card could have a lot more useful information on it.

I couldn't find anything in the Morale section that talked about the effect of loses on the force as a whole. Even as the Soviets were getting hammered they still just carried on and could theoretically have continued literally down to the last man standing. I hope I'm wrong and I have simply missed something.

CONCLUSION

I'm not the biggest fan of solitaire play - it just makes me think I'm Billy-no-mates, but it wasn't that bad in this game. Apart from having someone explain to me all the things I was doing wrong (which would have helped a great deal), and having someone else do the thinking for one of the sides, I'd be happy to play thsi again either by myself or with a mate.

And remember - ITVs rock. Have fun

Richard

2010 in Review – Soviets

Back in March 2010 I embarked on a year long Cold War Hot project. In fact it was meant to be over by August 2010 (so could be better described as a 6 month project) when I would hopefully organise a big game and would use all the stuff I had prepared.

In the end we played our “Big Game” in November, after the Australian Federal election messed with our original date so it turned into a 9 month project….. As things progressed I found out more and more about the way the Soviets put their forces together and had more and more thoughts about how I’d like to wargame that. You can see where all this is leading – I ended up “needing” more and more stuff and my Soviets began to turn to my next neverending project….aaarrgh!!!

But things have a funny way of turning out. I met Simon, and ended up buying a fair amount of unpainted figures and vehicles off him – he had contacts overseas that were selling stuff, which I was able to pick up and I ended up with some things that I have always wanted, other things which I hardly knew existed and even more things than I actually could have imagined.

Anyway – back to now. I’m very pleased with my Soviet output in 2010 – which really has laid the groundwork for what I’d like to achieve in 2011 (more on that later).

So to finish off my review of 2010 for the Soviets – here are all the Soviet vehicles I completed in 2010.





The Tanks



Minus the Tank Collection T-80s



The Motorised Rifles





The VDV





The HQ





Have fun

Richard