Thursday, 13 November 2014

Milites Christi for Saga: The Crescent & The Cross

The completed army
Having finished my Mutatawwi'a in double-quick time (see my earlier blog post) it was only common sense to make some opposition for them, so I set to work on a Milites Christi army. This is a good option if you want an army that is reasonably quick to paint as it doesn't need very many figures. That said, a lot of them are mounted, which do require a bit more work.

Apologies, but this time I've not posted pictures of work in progress, just the completed figures.

Army List and Figures

The unique strength of this army is the ability to field as many crossbow-armed Warriors as Hearthguard, so the obvious six-point Saga list is:

Warlord
16 Hearthguard
16 Warriors

I decided that I would make this army using plastic figures from Fireforge/Deus Vult, so bought three boxes of figures as follows:
  • Templar Knights
  • Templar Foot
  • Mounted Sergeants
And only then realised that I would be four crossbowmen short of the above list. So the list was modified slightly to:

Warlord
16 Hearthguard
12 Warriors (crossbow)
4 Warriors (mounted)

I also made up a banner bearer on foot to accompany the crossbowmen.

These are really nice figures but are intended to represent a slightly later crusades period than the 1100-ish date (end of the First Crusade, capture of Jerusalem) I wanted them to represent, so I planned to make the following modifications:
  • I would only use one of the barded horses, this for the warlord;
  • All Hearthguard were to have kite shields;
  • The mounted Warriors would have round shields;
  • I would preferentially use heads with Norman style helmets for Hearthguard, and not use full face helmets;
  • The Warriors would have simple pot helmets.

This raised a couple of issues:
  • There weren't enough kite shields in the combined boxes;
  • I would be two unbarded horses short.

I solved the above issues by scratch-building the five additional shields required from plastic card and stealing two horses from a box of Conquest plastic Normans that I had bought to convert to Crusaders (which will hopefully be the subject of a future article).

After much indecision I finally decided to paint them up as Knights Templar. I wanted them to be relatively early in the Crusades period, which restricted my options, and also didn't want to do Hospitallers like the ones in the rulebook, even though they do look very nice. The Templars wore a red cross on white robes - fairly straightforward to paint. The Templar flag was a black horizontal stripe over white and sometimes they used this design on shields as well as the red cross, so that would allow some extra variation.

Figure Preparation

A lot of limbs were cut and realigned during assembly, especially the crossbowmen, so that I could get more figures in shooting poses. I assembled half of the Hearthguard to have lances held upright and half couched. I trimmed the plastic lances away (these are massive, overlength, horrible things that look like they belong in a Warhammer game). Their telegraph pole weapons were replaced with sensibly sized spears made from brass rod. Once trimmed of lances, hands were drilled to take the new spears.

Parts were glued together with Humbrol liquid poly and when dry, visible gaps were filled with Milliput.

I put some extra effort into the Warlord figure, adjusting his horse so that it appeared to be rearing up in mid-turn with its head slightly to the left, and with rider's arm outstretched pointing his drawn sword aloft. I gave him a non-helmeted head from a Gripping Beast plastic Dark Age Warrior, just to be different.

Foot figures were based on 25mm repair washers to give a bit more weight. I added weight to the mounted figures firstly by filling the void space in the body of each horse with Milliput and secondly by adding coins to the bases (2p piece on a 40mm round base for the Warlord; two 1p pieces on each 2cm x 5cm base for other mounted troops). This doesn't add a huge amount of extra weight but it does make them a bit more sturdy on the table. I added cloaks made of green stuff to the Warlord and about half of the Hearthguard.

Bases were textured with a mixture of Polyfilla powder, builder's ballast, PVA glue and water, sprinkled over with very small stones followed by Chinchilla dust.

Painting

The figures were undercoated white, and the bases painted with Crown Brown Sugar and then dry brushed with Crown Biscuit. I then went back to each figure and undercoated armoured areas in black.

I normally use Vallejo paint but had recently bought some Coat d'Arms acrylic paints for horse colours and I used these for the first time on this army. They're good, but oilier than Vallejo and it took a couple of coats to get the colour depth right. Horses were painted in black, chestnut, brown and bay, with darker shades added for hocks, and manes and tails appropriately painted for the horse types concerned, finishing off with socks and nose markings in white.

When dry I painted the saddles, bridles and other tack in Vallejo Leather Brown, highlighted with Vallejo Saddle Brown and then moved on to the men themselves. Starting with the eyes, I painted the faces of each figure, progressively highlighting in lighter flesh tones to get the desired effect. I painted the hair and beard of the Warlord in progressively lighter shades of brown.

Armour areas painted black were then touched up and cloth painted in Vallejo London Grey. I then painted their crosses in Vallejo Dark Red, correcting minor errors as best I could as I went, then painted belts in Vallejo Leather Brown. I highlighted the crosses in Vallejo Scarlet and grey areas in a lighter shades of grey ending in white, and belts with Vallejo Saddle Brown.

Armour was lightly brushed with Vallejo Gunmetal and small areas of exposed metal in Vallejo Brass, Copper and Silver.

Crossbows and bolts were painted in Vallejo Beige Brown, highlighted in Vallejo German Camo Beige and flight feathers in light grey highlighted white. Finally, I painted spears in Vallejo German Camo Beige and spear tips in black with silver highlights.

All figures were varnished with a protective coat of Vallejo Gloss and, when dry, sprayed with Testor's Dullcote.


Standard bearer and Warlord

Hearthguard with raised lances

Hearthguard with couched lances

Mounted Warriors

Foot Warriors with crossbows

Saturday, 11 October 2014

Mutatawwi'a: The 20 Day Army

20 days later, the finished army
Question: how long does it really take to paint an army?

When I was last at the Wargames Club (Wycombe Warband - link) I was asked by someone who was watching my game and admiring my figures how long it took to paint them. And to tell the truth I didn't really know - except that it was a long time. My Anglo-Danes and to be honest most of my armies were bought over a year before they were completed and used in their first game. Now while this sort of situation is by no means unusual for me (and, I am sure, many other wargamers) it struck me that it really wasn't good enough.

Looking back on it I have no idea why it should take me over a year to paint an army, but it almost always does. The initial enthusiasm after first getting the figures wears off pretty quickly as the process of preparing them for painting gets underway and I think by the time I have got the figures ready to be painted I'm starting to get more interested in doing something else. I am certainly someone who has a lot of different projects going at the same time, the majority of them half-finished. It strikes me that this also is just not good enough.

So (ignoring my half-finished Rus Princes undercoated and ready to paint, and half of my Norse-Gaels half painted and just needing their shields done, and all the undercoated Dux Brit figures, the Gladiators, the half-finished terrain and the trays of unfinished 15mm WW2 figures (I am very good at half-finishing things) - I set my mind to the challenge of seeing just how quickly I could paint a six-point Saga army to a decent standard when I set my mind to the task.

With the recent publication of The Crescent and the Cross now is also a very good time to get an army for the Crusades painted. So the first decision was what army to choose. I chose Mutatawwi'a, mainly because their battleboard looks challenging (and likely to make for quick games), and also because an army that could quite appropriately be considered assassins or cultists sounded fun.

Army List

The starting point would be the army list. I chose:

1 Warlord on foot
2 x 4 Hearthguard
4 x 8 Warriors

To give some more flexibility with the troops I might field I also chose to add 4 x mounted warriors and a mounted warlord figure, and one foot figure carrying a banner. This came to a total of 51 figures (including 5 mounted) to assemble and paint.

Figures

With no figures at all to use for this army, after surfing the web for a bit I chose to buy the following:

1 x box of Gripping Beast plastic Arabs GBP04 (to make the warriors and the banner man)
2 x packs (8 figures) of Gripping Beast Ben Yusef's Black Guard figures MOR12 and MOR13 from their El Cid and the Moors range. These are the figures shown (beautifully painted) in the rule book standing on the left in the main image of the Mutatawwi'a army (page 84). I particularly like the figures with the teardrop shields.
1 x pack of Gripping Beast Moorish Commanders MOR16, to use one figure as the Warlord on foot.
1 x pack of Perry Miniatures Bedouin Cavalry MA16, to use as mounted warriors.
1 x pack of Perry Miniatures Bedouin Command MA15, to use one of these figures as the fourth mounted warrior, one as the mounted Warlord and not use the musician.

The figures took four days (Perry actually only took three) from placing the order to arrival. Very impressive!

Day 1: Assembly

The plan for the first day was to clean, assemble and base all the figures.

Mounted Warlord

This is a very nice figure with very little flash, with shield and sword cast on the model. I chose an appropriate horse for him and stuck the rider to horse with superglue, and attached him to a Renedra 40mm round base. Once the glue had dried I carefully filled the gaps between rider and horse with Milliput and textured accordingly.

Mounted Warriors

Again these are nice figures with little flash. They don't have shields (which is fine) and have open hands for spears (again which is good as I wanted to arm them with javelins anyway). As with the mounted warrior I attached figures to horses but this time to Renedra 50mm x 20mm rectangular bases. Again when they had dried I used Milliput to fill the gaps so that they sat more comfortably.

Their javelins were made from 1mm brass rod. To make each javelin I flatten the end of a length of rod with a swift hammer blow, then trim it to a point with wire cutters, and finally file the edges of the point down so that it forms a leaf-shaped spear head. The javelin is then cut to the desired length. It's a very quick process and makes spears that are in my opinion better looking and more consistently sized than cast spears, and that don't easily bend. For this small extra effort now the overall effect is substantially better. Having tried several different wire sizes I think 1mm looks better for 28mm figures than other sizes and, though this is just my opinion, much better than the ready-made wire spears that you can buy separately. Javelins were attached to the open hands of the warriors using super glue and the hand grip of the model lightly tightened with fine pliers to prevent the javelin easily snapping off.

Brass rod spears in progress (L-R) 1. brass rod 2. flattened tip 3. clipped to a point 4. filed to shape
I like the look of the figures in this army having their headgear wrapped across their faces, with only their eyes showing. This may be wholly unrealistic but I think it is a great look for Mutatawwi'a. So where the figures didn't come with this detail ready-cast I used a small amount of green stuff to add this detail to them.

Hearthguard

These figures come with open hands for spears (not provided) and cast-on shields (and headgear masking their faces). Some flash needed to be removed with a modelling knife and file.

I said before that I like the figures with teardrop shields, and on closer inspection I definitely didn't like the figures that don't have them - so some surgery was undertaken using a pair of heavy duty cutters and a file. Trimming off their cast shields, I replaced these with teardrop shields from the plastic arabs box and made good the detail round the edges using Milliput.

The figures were attached to Renedra 25mm round bases and given spears made from 1mm brass rod in the same way as the javelins for the mounted warriors, but slightly longer.

Hearthguard - shield replaced on three figures
Foot Warlord

The best figure from the Moorish command pack in my view was the unarmoured chap with raised open hand and open book. He looks like he is proclaiming to the troops, possibly from the Koran. So I decided to enhance this look by adding a rock to his base which he could stand on to address the army. I had a handy stone that was just the right size (I believe it is a small piece of slate). To do this properly I cut the figure from his base, drilled holes in his feet and the stone, and used a small length of wire to pin the figure and stone together. I first tested the stone to make sure that it could successfully be drilled, before cutting the figure from its base and drilling up through both feet and down into the stone at the point where the figure would stand. That done, I used two very short lengths of 1mm brass rod as pins and attached the figure to the stone with super glue.

I equipped him with a spear in his open hand rather than a sword or a standard, and stuck the stone to a 40mm round Renedra plastic base.

Foot warlord figure attached to a stone
Warriors

The bulk of the army were to be Warriors, so I assembled three groups of twelve figures. I cut off the plastic spears provided and drilled their hands and gave each figure a new spear made from 1mm brass rod. Each was given a round shield, and because there weren't enough round shields in the box to go around I equipped one unit of 12 with surplus round shields from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors plastic box set which I owned. The rationale behind this is that I wanted my units of foot Warriors and foot Hearthguard to be easily distinguished, and different shield shapes and designs would do the trick.

I used green stuff to ensure that all warriors had headgear that covered their faces except for a slit for their eyes.
Plastic Arabs with spears replaced and robes enhanced
Plastic warriors were assembled using Humbrol Liquid Poly and, where greater strength was required, superglue.

Previously I have attached plastic figures to 25mm round Renedra plastic bases but I find this leaves the finished figures very light and thus less stable on the table. After toying for a while with using 2p pieces (which are just a bit too large), after a eureka moment I went to the local DIY store and bought some 25mm repair washers to use as bases instead. They are exactly the right size (identical to the Renedra bases) and around 1mm deep, though a much better weight because they're made of metal. The central hole in them is too small to be a problem and can anyway be easily filled with Milliput if you like, and even better if you buy them from the right place they're almost exactly the same price as the plastic Renedra bases.

After basing the figures, small holes such as those between arms and shoulders were filled with a little Milliput and the figures were set aside to dry.

Overall a long day spent doing all of this, probably about ten hours work altogether.

Day 2: Base Texture

In an old margarine tub I put about 1tbs Polyfilla powder, 4 tbs builder's ballast, 2 tbs PVA glue and a little water, and mixed it all together thoroughly. Using an old and reasonably large paintbrush I then applied this to the base of each figure. When each base was finished I used a smaller old paintbrush with some water to spread the mixture more evenly over the base and wash it from any parts of the model it has accidentally touched. I then sprinkled a small pinch of very small stones (I picked up a handful of gravel from the edge of a road about a year ago and still have plenty left) followed by a more generous pinch of Chinchilla dust across the whole base.

Then I set the figure aside to dry, moving it occasionally so that it doesn't become attached to the newspaper covering my working area.

This process was repeated for every figure until they were all done.

Base texture added
A much shorter day, overall about 2.5 hours work. Unfortunately in my experience it takes at least 24 hours, and better still several days to dry fully, so Day 3 of army preparation would have to wait.

Days 3 & 4: Undercoat and base

There are two phases to this: priming the figure to be painted, and painting the base. It doesn't really matter which way round you do this but on this occasion I undercoated the figures first.

Figures were undercoated using a light grey primer. I use a matt emulsion bought as a tester pot from the local DIY shop. The colour isn't very important but mine is a light grey that makes the detail on the figure very obvious for later painting stages and does not leave the finished figure as dark as if you use a black primer.

I painted each figure, being careful not to paint the bases (this is just to ensure that chinchilla dust does not spread onto the figure as will tend to happen if you undercoat the base at the same time).

Once this was dry I painted the bases. For desert bases such as these I used a base coat of Crown Brown Sugar (again I use tester paints of matt emulsion bought cheaply from the local DIY shop) which I dry brushed when dry with Crown Biscuit.

Undercoated with bases painted
 It takes at least six hours for each colour to thoroughly dry, which meant I completed the three colours over two days, taking in total about 2.5 hours painting time.

Days 5 to 14: Figure Painting

I find the easiest way to speed up my painting is to have a plan and stick to it. For each figure type I list the colours that will be used, in order, and go through them one by one, leaving appropriate drying time where required. The plan I set out for this army is shown below.

My intent was to keep the painting as simple as possible. The only figures with particular detail would be the Warlords. Other special detail would only be required for the horses and the shield designs, but the majority of the troops would be simple, dressed in dark (near-black) robes with only their eyes showing.

1. Horse colours (Day 5)

I painted the horses in four phases as follows:
- base colour
- contrast and highlight colours
- white bits
- tack

Base colour

To do this I prepared a palette with five or so horse colours. I typically use black, white, a light brown, a mid brown and a chestnut brown. I then painted each horse in turn the base colour I wanted, mixing on the palette to increase the variety as I went. With only four horses, though, I didn't need to worry too much this time.

I gave it a couple of hours between each of the stages for the paint to dry.

Contrast and highlight

Using the palette (the paint would not have dried completely) for bays and chestnuts I painted manes, tails and the lower parts of the legs with a darker shade than the main colour. This can be almost black. I like to apply this almost as a wash (say a thick wash?) so that it fades into the main colour better. Once that was done I highlighted exposed areas with a slightly lightened shade of the main colour.

Again I left this to dry for an hour or two before continuing.

White bits

Socks and face markings. I applied the paint almost as a dry brush as it does not look right if it is too runny or too thick.

Tack

Finally I painted the reins, bridle and finished off with the saddle.

Most of this was painted in a leather brown colour, highlighted with a lighter contrasting colour and spotted black where there are metal fittings (I paint metallic colours later though).

I painted the saddles and tassles (the Perry horses have these around the horses necks) in dark red, highlighted in vermillion.

On and off, about 2 hours altogether, over one day allowing for drying time.

2. Faces (Days 6-7)

I use a simple but very effective way of painting faces on 28mm figures. It gives a slightly cartoony look, but I quite like that and for this army it seemed quite appropriate somehow.

I've shown the steps below one by one for the Warlord on foot figure.


First, I painted two lines across the eye area in white. There's no need to be particularly accurate. When that was dry, I painted a very thin vertical line in black downwards across the centre of the eye area. I dif this carefully so that both lines were pretty much the same width and position on the eye. I recommend using a very small brush! When that was dry, again using a very small brush and this time being even more careful, I painted around each eye in leather brown to get it to the right shape and size. I started across the top, then painted the nose, then beneath. I made sure to refer back to the other eye frequently because if the eyes don't match the figure will look very strange indeed!

I painted the remaining face area in this colour as well, and then painted the hands too so that this colour fills the indentations between fingers.

I wanted my Arabs to have a generally suntanned look, so when the figures were dry, I painted the main areas of the face, hands and fingers using a dark fleshtone mixed using about three parts Vallejo Medium Fleshtone to one part Vallejo Leather Brown.

I highlighted the raised features of the faces - the bridge of the nose, forehead and cheek bones - with a lighter fleshtone, again mixed using about 6:1 Medium Fleshtone to Leather Brown.

Finally, I painted some very small further highlights using Medium Fleshtone and, on the Warlord a little fine brushwork to bring out detail around the mouth.

About 5 hours work altogether spread over two days.

3. Clothing (Days 8-9)

With hindsight, this stage would have been quicker (although possible less effective) had I earlier undercoated the figures in black. The idea was to have all of my troops bar the Warlord wholly dressed in black, painting this using a black base coat highlighted in shades of grey. Painting black on the figures was fairly time consuming though because I had to be careful not only around the eyes but also where feet and base meet, and around the hands. Not difficult but definitely time-consuming. At the same time, I painted black at the edge between hands and spears, and about 5mm of the tip of each spear. Overall, this stage took about 4.5 hours, just for the one colour, and a day allowing for drying time.

Once dry, I painted raised folds of the robes using Vallejo Black Grey, highlighting this with a faint dry brush with Vallejo London Grey.

Robes painted and highlighted
I painted the turbans of both Warlords in Vallejo London Grey, highlighting when dry with white, and the lining of the foot Warlord's cloak in Vallejo Dark Red, highlighting when dry with Vallejo Flat Red. I also highlighted the turbans of the Hearthguard with small spots of white.

Belts of the Warriors were then painted in Vallejo Black Grey, and the sword scabbards and attached straps of the mounted Warriors in Vallejo Leather Brown. Finally I part-painted the knives of the Warriors with Vallejo Leather Brown, leaving some parts black so that I could paint them later with metallics. I finished these by highlighting with very small amounts of Vallejo German Camo Beige.

Finally I painted small details with metallics, including brass on dagger pommels and scabbards, gunmetal on a few helmets, in particular the Hearthguard, and the mounted Warlord's shield.

Highlighting and clothing details added about 2.5 hours and another day to allow for drying.

4. Shields and Standard (Days 10-12)

I base coated the face and rim of the shields of the Warriors in Vallejo Leather Brown and the Hearthguard shields in Black. One hour's work and an overnight wait to dry.

To better enable identification of units, I decided to paint three different shield designs on the warriors (12 of each) and a different design again for the Hearthguard (the latter intended to be a shameless copy of the excellent shields and paint jobs of the same figures in the rulebook). The warrior shield designs are broadly based on images of Arab and Moosish shield designs known from the time of the Crusades.

The designs I settled on and the approach to painting each are set out below.

Design #1 (Warriors)

This was applied to the 12 Warriors with shields taken from the Gripping beast Dark Age Warriors box. The original design (above right) is based on the shield (above left) which is that of an allegedly Moorish buckler that had been up for sale on eBay. I've retained the three crescents and central boss but added a painted rim. Colours would be bronze detail on a leather brown base. The detail is outlined in black to help it stand out. This was painted by painting the base coat with a black boss, black rim and three black circles where the crescents would be, then infilling these with Vallejo Brass (a better colour for bronze than bronze!). The crescents were made by adding smaller, slightly offset discs of black, then tidying them and the rest of the shield face with Vallejo Leather Brown. Finally, this colour was highlighted lightly with Vallejo Saddle Brown.

(L-R) stages of painting warrior shield design #1
Design #2 (Warriors)

The original model for this (above left) comes from a site about medieval weapons. The design I derived (above right) has drawn from the concept of a spoked wheel at the shield edge, but has less metal on the shield face. I painted the shield boss black and added a broad circle of black around the main body of the shield close to the rim, then painted inside this in Vallejo Brass, adding broad spokes across this in black and then infilling these and tidying up the edges with Vallejo Leather Brown. Again, this colour was highlighted with Vallejo Saddle Brown to finish.

(L-R) stages of painting warrior shield design #2
Design #3 (Warriors)

This design is one I made up in similiar style to design #2 but with an inner and outer ring. Shield boss and rings were painted in black, then painted inside in Vallejo Brass, adding spokes across this in black. The shield face was tidied up with Vallejo Leather Brown and finall highlighted with Vallejo Saddle Brown.

(L-R) stages of painting warrior shield design #3
Design #4 (Hearthguard)

This is pretty much a straight rip-off of the design painted on the same figures in the Crescent and the Cross rulebook. I did a little research, though, in an attempt to ensure that the script I was adding was vaguely relevant (this despite my owning a Chinese army that fly flags with characters copied from a Chinese Restaurant menu).

I know no Arabic whatsoever, so WikiIslam (www.wikiislam.net) did not seem too unreasonable a source of appropriate slogan material. The design shown above shows my attempt to write "Allah is great" in Arabic (any errors are entirely mine for which, if necessary, I apologise wholeheartedly). Painted the slogan in white on the back base coat and then very lightly highlighted the main body of the shield in a dark shade of Vallejo Black Grey.

Allah is great (or at least that's what it's supposed to say)
Standard

I used the same slogan on the flag, painted in white in exactly the same way as the Hearthguard shields above.

Painting shield designs and the standard was spread over two days and was slow work because of the fine detail - about 10 hours altogether.

5. Weapons (Day 13-14)

I painted the shafts of spears in Vallejo German Camo Beige as in my view this looks appropriate for untreated wood. I repainted spear tips in black and, when dry, applied silver around the top of the spear shafts and to the spear tip, and the mounted Warlord's sword. About 2.5 hours altogether.

After drying overnight, I went over all the figures to touch-up minor errors that had unfortunately occurred throughout the painting process. This took about 2 hours.

Days 15-16: Varnishing

Again I left the whole army to dry overnight, then varnished all figures, especially areas where I had used metallic paint, with Vallejo Gloss Varnish. This is an important step as it not only protects and strengthens the paint job, it also prevents any later risk of colours (especially metallics, that sometimes will do this) of bleeding when the final matt varnish is applied.

About 3 hours work altogether, with another overnight to dry.

Once dry, I gave the whole army a thorough spray with Testors Dullcote, to adds strength to the figures and give a uniform matt finish. No more than half an hour's work. Dry overnight and they are ready to take the field - on Day 17.

Conclusion

A total of 20 days then from ordering the figures to having them ready to use on the table top.

Breakdown of time actually spent as follows:

Preparation time:  15 hrs over 4 days (average 18 mins/figure)
Painting and varnishing: 32 hours over 11 days (average about 38.5 mins/figure)

For a total of 47 hours over 20 days (including time for order to arrive and final drying, averaging just under an hour per figure altogether). This is certainly a record for me, and is not a pace I am likely to keep up in future! 

The Finished Army

Mounted Warriors and Warlord 
Hearthguard and Warlord on foot
Warrior Unit #1
Warrior Unit #2
Warrior Unit #3

Friday, 10 October 2014

Omaha: Easy Red

An after-action report for a D-Day game using the Battlegroup Overlord rules.

Approaching Omaha (from Wikipedia)
Background

When I visited the Normandy landing beaches earlier this year (see my earlier blog posts Normandy parts I and II if you're interested), I promised myself that I would wargame one of them in 2014, given that this year is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. My mind had actually been set on the idea some time earlier; in summer 2013 I put quite a lot of effort into scratch-building some D-Day beach terrain . As usual, though, I got a bit overambitious (this is a tendency I have - for example I have two huge boxes full of a 15mm Stalingrad that has never been used, and a large quantity of desert fortifications for Tobruk - but no 8th Army to defend them with) and it wasn't actually finished until after Christmas. At least it was finished! But the point is that by this time I had made an invasion beach and defences, landing craft and DD tanks, and painted both armies.

Al and I decided to play out a scenario at the Heromeet in Bangor based on Omaha beach, E-1 draw, which is in Easy Red sector and was one of the times during our Normandy battlefield tour that we stood on the sand at Omaha.

This was a tough place to land. At the top of the beach was a short sea wall backed by dunes with bluffs rising behind. There was a narrow track leading down to the sea (the E-1 Draw) that was defended by Wiederstandnests WN64 and WN65, together forming a strongpoint of two 50mm guns in concrete casemates, along with multiple machine gun nests, mortar pits, and barbed wire sections, several of which were mined. The road was blocked with tank traps and the beach was filled with stakes, Czech hedgehogs and ramps, some of which again were mined. The beach was also directly in the line of fire of a distant 88mm gun in a casemate set into the cliffs a mile or so to the west at WN72, and a heavy artillery battery inland was also able to give supporting defensive fire directly onto the beach.

Game Setup

We'd not felt wholly satisfied using the Flames of War rules for historical simulation games, and in my view this is especially the case for the Hit the Beach scenario, so we decided to try out the Battlegroup Overlord rules instead.

Without a points system, we drew strongly from the Bloody Omaha scenario in the Battlegroup Overlord book (page 117), adjusted slightly to conform to what we knew of the actual battlefield and also to accommodate the troops I owned. We used the following lists:

US 1st Infantry Division and Support

First Wave
3 DD Sherman Tanks

Second Wave (arriving on Turn 2)
3 Assault Boat Teams in landing craft
1 Engineer team and Sherman Bulldozer in landing craft

Third Wave (arriving on Turn 5)
3 Assault Boat Teams in landing craft
1 Beach Landing Party HQ with jeep in landing craft

Fourth Wave (arriving on Turn 8)
2 Assault Boat Teams in landing craft

Fifth Wave (arriving on Turn 10)
5 M4 Shermans in LCT

Off-Table Troops
2 offshore artillery batteries of 3 x 105mm guns

Turn 1: 3 Timed 6" gun barrages
Turn 2: Timed B-26 Air Strike
Turn 9: Timed 5" gun barrage
Turn 10: Timed 5" gun barrage
Turn 11: Timed 5" gun barrage

2 1st priority artillery requests

11 Officers; Battle Rating 100

German Forces

88mm PaK43 casemate gun with loader team (WN72)
2 x 50mm PaK 38 gun casemates with loader teams (WN64/65) at the top and bottom of the D-3 draw
8 x MG34 nests
2 x 50mm mortar nests
1 x quad 20mm flak nest
1 x 75mm PaK40 in open bunker
1 x OP bunker
Anti-tank obstacle across the entrance to the draw
Barbed wire sections at top and bottom of the bluffs and defending the OP bunker
Minefields across top of the bluffs along barbed wire line
Beach obstacles all over the beach
1 x 75mm gun in open pit providing enfilading fire
1 x Rocket artillery battery at the table rear

Off-Table Reinforcements:
Understrength Grenadier platoon (HQ, 2 x squads, 2 x MMG teams all in trucks)

2 Officers, Battle Rating 40+D6

We set out the terrain on an approximately 8 x 4 table roughly as shown below.

Omaha: Easy Red - the battlefield 
The scenario in the Battlegroup Overlord book suggests a 6 x 6 table and has deeper beach and open water areas than our terrain allowed (note to self: when time permits I will make a new and extended beach). This will definitely have made a difference, the difficult conditions offshore slowing landing craft and DD tanks and increasing their vulnerability to defensive fire.

While we were able to extend the sea zone (hence the 8ft table length) the beach was fixed because of the way I had constructed the terrain (originally intended for Flames of War), so (we could argue) the tide was higher than expected.

The game has the following objectives, which are all in German hands at the start of the game. Obviously the German player cannot claim an all objectives held victory!
  1. Breach the anti-tank obstacle
  2. Breach the trench line at the top of the bluffs
  3. Capture the observation bunker

The game uses all the special rules from the Beachhead scenario (p.114).

The early hours of 6 June, 1944 and all is quiet on the Ste-Laurent-Sur-Mer seafront
The Game

The game began by deploying the defenders according to the map and allocating 2d6 units to be in Ambush Fire. This ended up being all of the big guns and most of the MG nests. The first wave of DD tanks was then deployed 10" from the shore and the second wave at the seaward table edge.

The sea was rough, with a Heavy Swell (as it was on the day). This meant that the landing craft and especially the DD tanks were really slow getting to the beach. During this time they found themselves under enormously heavy fire from the defenders. However, the defenders themselves took a pounding from off-table artillery and air strikes and while this for the most part simply ended up pinning forces down it meant that a lot of effort had to be put in by the Germans in particular to rallying units - and that meant taking tokens.

First arrivals on the beach
The allies had only got a single DD tank on to the beach by Turn 4 when the German reinforcements arrived and they were quick to deploy to the assistance of the defenders, detaching some of their men to reoccupy several of the MG nests that had become ineffective through taking occasional casualties.

At last, the German reinforcements are awake and on the way to the coast
The random effects of the tokens had some interesting game effects. There were at least three occasions when German air support (doubtlessly Pips giving the Luftwaffe its finest hour) happened, bombs scattered wildly with mixed effectiveness about the beach, narrowly missing the defenders on at least one occasion. And to the benefit of the Americans, the 88mm casemate was running out of ammo.

Wave after wave more Americans make it onto the beach
Gradually, despite losing all tank support, the Americans brought troops onto the beach and on Turn 10 took the first objective at the bottom of the E-1 Draw. At the same time the Germans took their final counter and their morale broke. We presume that this was the point the defenders lost hope and either abandoned their positions or came out with hande hoch. Common sense in the end wins over loyalty to the Fuhrer, at least where Ostbatalions are concerned!

Post-Mortem

My overall impressions of the game were all good. It was a lot of fun, and it felt right for D-Day and Omaha Beach. Play was quite slow but I put this largely down to our lack of familiarity with the rules - we definitely sped up as the game went along. It is clear, though, that the game does require careful balancing to make scenarios work, especially in appropriately setting the break point for each army. It was a little bit deflating in our game when the Germans surrendered - it felt a little precipitate; but the game does have to end somewhere and it is possible that we weren't doing the naval gunfire right (it felt too effective) and that may have skewed things slightly too far in the allies' favour.


Overall, though a great game and we will definitely be giving these rules an outing again soon!

Friday, 3 October 2014

Bovington Tank Museum

I've never been to Bovington before, so in late August Al and I did a day trip down there for the day to see some tanks.

There are a lot of tanks at the Tank Museum, and this article contains photos of a lot of them. If you don't want to look at lots of photos of tanks, turn away now, but if you do like that sort of think this may be the perfect article for you. So with very brief additional comments, here are the pictures.

Enjoy

"Rentokill? Sorry, can't talk right now, he's listening"
 At the start to the museum you walk through some replica WW1 trenches that introduce the reasons why the tank was invented in the first place.

WWI British tank

WWI German tank. Nice try but the design was not good enough to cope with the mud.
Al always wanted a Rolls Royce
Matilda I
One of two King Tigers. Almost too big to get a decent photo of
A miniature Sherman. Not really - it's a Locust (an intended replacement for the Tetrarch)
Pershing. As used by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge (the film, at least)

M8 Greyhound. Nice camo
Ram Kangaroo
Hetzer
You can almost hear the Jagdpanther: "I am your father"
The other King Tiger, with zimmeritt
PaK 43/41
Somua
A9 Cruiser Mk I
A38 Cruiser Mk III
Panzerbefehlswagen
M1A1 Sherman 75mm with a very small M1A4 76mm in front. The rear one is life size :-)
Information board for the (rubbish) Valiant
The Valiant. A very bad tank indeed
Thorneycroft Bison. A concrete bunker on a flatbed truck. Yes, really.
Covenanter - Cruiser Mark V
Churchill AVRE
Sturmi

The Stuart - a tank that is smaller than an armoured car
Panzer IV
After a long debate with Al I guessed this to be a Panzer IVH (though it wasn't quite right), and found I was half right. The tank is actually a Panzer IV D that was refitted later in the war to be compliant with the H standard, hence the up-armoured cab and spaced turret armour
.
Tetrarch (in the frame of a Hamilcar glider)
Sherman crab
The beautiful, monstrous, enormous Jagdtiger
The Jagdtiger, which looks like it is armed with a naval gun, is one of my favourites of all the tanks at Bovington (yes I know it's a tank destroyer really, not a tank).  I used to have the Tamiya model of one of these when I was a kid!
The Chafee, a good tank (though the glass window on the front isn't a good idea on this one)
SU-76. A thing of beauty
KV-1. Another excellent tank to see
Panzer II L Luchs
T-26 (in Finnish service)
LVT-2 Buffalo
Panzer III N (for some reason missing its tracks)
Italian M-14. Really pleased to see this one
L-3 Lanciafiamme
Crusader
Valentine
Japanese Chi-Ha
The TOG. Very big and no wonder it was never put into production
Challenger
Swedish S-Tank (is this really a tank?)
Something that looks even more ridiculous than the Jagdtiger
Centurion
Sherman Firefly
Va va voom. Not. Renault rubbish
A crazy tank from the twenties. This was the fastest tank in the world at that time, with a top speed of 8mph


Char B
Panzer II
British Light Mk IV
Tiger I
This is the only operational Tiger I anywhere in the world and is currently the pride of Bovington. It's recently returned to the museum having been used in a recent Brad Pitt film. It is not a replica but is made from many parts of Tiger I tanks obtained from many sources. And they're still looking for odd bits like ammunition boxes, in case you have any of them around you'd be happy to part with.

I love Kettenkrads!

Panzer III - this time with its tracks on
Grant
Matilda II
Cromwell
Panther (with very strange coloured camo)
Churchill Crocodile
T-72
T-62
There is another big shed at Bovington which you can go in, so we did. It's full of odd tanks they haven't sorted out yet or which perhaps they won't ever get around to. This includes tanks that do not have enough historical merit to warrant the cost of restoration as well as tanks that are extremely rare for which they don't have parts - or even for which paerts might not exist. Here's a shot of the shed, but don't ask me what everything is!

The T-72 in the foreground is the museum's newest acquisition, a straight swap for a Chieftain with a Polish museum
And finally...
Cobra. The smallest tank in the museum