Late War Germans

It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally finished all my germans! Here’s some photos of all my guys – it’s 95% late war, but theres a few things in there for early war if i want to re-use the force. The Sdkfz 221 and the 5cm mortar for one. The last thing for me to finish was the nebelwerfer as I bought that while we still played Bolt Action, but since moving to Chain of Command it’s become somewhat redundant due to the rules not categoring for large artillery like Bolt Action does. Anyway, Andy’s come up with a scenario for us to use the nebelwerfer as a centrepiece so it’s only fair I got it finished so it would at least look good on the table!

What’s been going on?

So November last year I moved house, and with the distractions of solicitors and a rather long list of DIY, the blog ended up at the bottom of the things to do list. The hobby however did continue and my painting list has been updated rather substantially, especially with regard to my WW2 Germans. Sadly I’ve been extremely lax in taking photographs so I have nothing to show for work in progress.

In other news, as the german army is almost complete and I’m reaching the end of my painting backlog, we’ve started to investigate other periods/scales. Baccus minis were kind enough to send us some 6mm models to trial out, but Andy absolutely hates painting them and I’ve got to say I wasn’t a major fan of it either but I’ll persevere for the moment. We’ve also asked for some samples from Pendrakon which are 10mm so hopefully easier to paint while still having a relatively similar cost ratio to the 6mm.

Periods we’re looking into? Well, everything pretty much – my prime interests are smaller scale for a change of pace on the painting front (i’ve done 28mm for what seems forever). And preferably historical of some kind. We’re currently focusing on two areas, with Andy researching ancients and myself researching 18th century conflicts, mainly the 7 year war.

Hopefully I’ll get into the swing of taking photos soon and will get some in progress shots up onto the website.

Terrain Continued

Real life has been a little busy of late, so posting to the blog has had to take a little bit of a backseat. I’ve been chipping away at the terrain for Andy though and have a good number of pieces for him so far. I’m considering seeing if i can sell some on ebay to raise a few wargaming funds, but not sure the margins are good enough.

We had a game of CoC last night playing attack/defence. I had to post this picture of my dice roll to wound his vickers HMG, Andy was not best pleased. Sadly the joy was shortlived as that was my last decent roll and Andy started getting all the 6’s. Note cup of tea in hand, a true wargamers sustenance. The ploughed field on the left is one of my new pieces.

Entrenchment

Andy’s commissioned me to do some WW2 terrain for him, before I started on the main pieces I thought I’d do a quick entrenchment to get an idea of the style I’m going for. I’m pretty happy with the end result, just needs a coating of fixer to toughen it up a little.

First Late War German

I’ve had these miniatures since the warlord games day but have put off painting them in the hope of finishing as much of my backlog as possible. Well, after two games of Chain of Command and the enthusiasm I have for that I couldn’t resist painting up one of the germans to see how they’d look. The paints still wet and I’ve not completely done with it yet, but I’m fairly happy with the first take. I tried to get a shot of the equipment but the camera battery died on me. Enjoy

Chain of Command

Real life has been interfering with miniature progress over the last week, but I’ve gradually been reducing down my “to build” pile of figures and increasing my “to paint” pile. I now have all my germans built for the core platoon of Chain of Command, as well as the new additions of a panzerschreck team, a 5cm mortar and some metal NCOs and riflemen.

Last night saw our second Chain of Command game and the mechanics were starting to click into place for us. We played an attack & defence scenario  with my germans attacking, with a support roll of 8 I took an elite force of panzergrenadiers along with an Sdkfz 222 (from the early war list) and a 8cm Mortar Battery. Andy took along a British motor platoon supported by a Vickers MMG, a Grant Medium Tank and a Bren Carrier.

I got to place my patrol markers first, but andy closed the gap pretty quickly and locked me down behind the barn. My first go saw me getting 2 junior leaders activations and putting two sections on the table with them, setting one to tactical and the other covering the barn with overwatch. Andy took the next phase and deployed his vickers on the corner of the crossroads and fired what might as well have been feathers at my grenadiers behind the barn.

Skip along a few phases and andy had lined up more troops along the hedgerow of the crossroads, so it was time to call in the artillery, I decided on a ranging shot initially as I didn’t want to destroy my own guys if it deviated, but it ended up being dead on the vickers and gave the unit  a few shock. Annoyingly andy played his chain of command dice to end the turn and thus end my barrage, knowing full well if it hit on the next phase he was going to take some serious damage on most of his units.

While this was going on, my Sdkfz 222 had come on the table and made some pop shots at the vickers also, this prompted andy to bring on his Grant (imperial guard sherman proxy!) and fire all his guns at the 222  Amazingly the 222 survived the onslaught taking one shock and being forced to attack the grant in the next phase. An attack by andy’s PIAT team also didn’t do much damage, causing it to get stuck in fast if it moved.

I had activated my barrage at the beginning of the turn, and this time I wasn’t playing so coy, I went for a full barrage which deviated 8″ towards my lines, blast! It came down over my 222 and panzerschreck team but thankfully landed on most of the units andy had behind the hedge, causing more shock and a few kills. At this point we completely forgot to put any smoke down (not being used to the mechanic), so andy may have had an advantage escaping the area, but instead I laid down more LMG fire on his positions which eventually caused the units to break. After 3 units were running for the table edge I forced a turn end causing andy to loose the units. At a morale of 4 he conceeded victory to the germans.

Overall it was an extremely enjoyable game, theres so much more depth here than bolt action and even simple activations require some thinking. It did feel a little biase towards me in this scenario as there was no real advantage to andy defending and in actuality it felt more like I was defending the farmhouse and due to my superior force, it was pretty easy.

Deploying patrol markers

Germans dug in

Battle in progress

Chain of Command First Impressions

Last night saw our first game of Chain of Command, which inevitably was 50% playing and 50% referring to the manual. First impressions are very good though with the mechanics on offer giving much more tactical depth than Bolt Action.

We managed to get one whole turn in, which took us around 2hrs to play but was sufficient to give us an overview of the mechanics and give a point of reference for the rules.

The patrol phase was a fun mechanic, but neither of us felt comfortable we were doing anything tactical at this point, but I’m sure that will come through once we get more familiar with the mechanic.

Unit activation is great, although it took us some time getting used to how they activated and the differences between section and team activations.

The vehicle rules are much more enjoyable than BA, in which a single shot can take out a whole vehicle quite quickly thus making your investment of £20/200pts completely redundant in a matter of minutes! CoC handles things in a much more fun way which includes lots of dice rolls (13 from my panzerschreck) and then dependent on how many hits get through, a randomised effect on the target vehicle. In this case, I got 2 hits through onto Andy’s bren carrier which then caused it to reverse and take 3 shock, which effectively disables it until he rallies it, lovely!

Overall, a very enjoyable game and can’t wait to have another crack at it.

The Last Week

Since getting back from the holidays I’ve not been feeling too great so there has been little work done on any miniatures. I have managed to start on the Mortis Engine for my VC though which is great news as it’s been sat around for a fair while collecting dust, mainly due to a lack of inspiration combined with being intimidated by it’s size.

I have however been somewhat distracted from my VC progress as of the 22nd due to the arrival of the brand new Chain of Command ruleset from Too Fat Lardies, it’s a platoon level war game so can be played with the 28mm bolt action army I’ve been slowly putting together. Having read through the rules I’m very keen to give it a shot as there appears to be a lot more depth to it than in BA and it enhances some of the areas I feel BA is lacking such as vehicle combat. It also has a really interesting activation phase for the units. it needs a few more troops than I had purchased for BA, so I’m building the 25 from the germany pack but have now got on order some additional men and a 5cm mortar  (my 80mm is redundant in CoC as it’s off table). I was going to order another sprue of germans, but I hate putting these little buggers together so I got the metal single figures warlord do plus it’ll add some variety.