A small part of Operation Bagration - a Chain of Command AAR

Operation Bagration was the USSR's 1944 Belorussian Strategic Offensive Operation, launched in June, with the aim of destroying the German Army Group Centre. Obviously, something that big is a bit ambitious for a game of CoC, but it provides a rationale for the game that Brian and I played out last Sunday at the club. The game was played in our preferred 15mm scale.

The Eastern Front was new ground for both of us but Brian had his Russians ready and I had another opportunity to field my late war Heer Zug.

The scenario we were playing was No. 6 - Attack On An Objective. Under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate that the Germans would be the defenders. The attackers, Brian's Soviets get 2D6 support points, with the Germans getting half, rounded down. Brian rolled a 7, which, applying the force ratings gave him a whopping 10 points. I had a measly 3 points. I just knew that Brian would be bringing some armour, so I chose a minefield, to block out one line of attack and a Panzerknacker team, possibly to counter his armour, but also because it would give me an extra MG42 to play with.

Here is the table after the patrol phase. I would be defending the fuel dump just behind the church in the village. I placed the minefield roughly in the centre of the table, which I hoped would prevent any frontal assaults.

Here is the table from the German viewpoint.

My plan was to deploy one squad in a fairly advanced position on my left, with the aim of occupying the farm near the minefield. This took longer than planned as the Soviet Wrath Of The Gods delayed my deployment.

I also had a squad on overwatch in the village church.

The arrival of the Beast From The East, a.k.a Brian's armoured support, a very large, nasty and worrying ISU-152. His infantry were deploying on his left, threatening in outflank my right. 

I had a squad deployed on my right and I used the MG42 team to good effect on a Russian squad which had occupied a cornfield in an advanced position on Brian's left flank. I really wanted to keep that squad out of the game, allowing me to move troops to enfilade the Russians from my left.

My right flank squad seemed to have things under control.

Unhappily, the ISU-152 was able to cause considerable damage to the church, forcing me to evacuate (no photos). Foolishly, I pushed the squad in the church forward into the area with the craters, in an attempt to outflank the Soviet advance. These suffered further casualties from the 152mm gun.

After first trying a long-range Ambush, which failed, I had to deploy my Panzerschreck team, pushing it forward until it was within a more effective range of the Beast From The East. The results were spectacular, with four net hits on the ISU's side armour, the Beast exploded. One thing less to worry about.

With the armour gone, I deployed my Panzerknacker team as an extra (and much needed) MG42 team. Its fire would be directed by my Zug's senior leader.

My plan to outflank the Soviets from the right continued, despite the weakness of one squad, reduced by the ISU-152 to a junior leader and a MG42 team.

My MG42s were causing the Soviets a lot of problems, mounting losses and plenty of shock, however, my own force was looking pretty threadbare too. Brian had a run of five game phases in a row, due to rolling a succession of four double sixes on his Command dice. This enabled him to push his troops right down my right flank, threatening to get around behind me and taking the objective, which was only lightly defended by this point.

However, as I much as I was losing troops and gaining shock. the Soviets were losing them faster, this was a race to see who would run out of men first.

I stopped taking photos, but I had the Squad which was reduced to an MG42 rout, later followed by both the Panzerknacker team and the right flank Squad being wiped out. My Force Morale was plummeting, but not as fast as Brian's. My 'Schreck team occupied one of Brian's JoPs and he also saw a Squad rout and have his last effective troops pinned. By that point, he was only rolling two Command dice, and was unable to remove any shock or end the turn (amazingly, we were still on Turn One, right to the end of the game). Finally, the game ended. With all his troops pinned and unable to do anything, the Soviet assault just petered out, but the cost to my defenders was huge. I'd won, but the price was so high that the Zug was no longer an effective force. 

So, perhaps this game illustrated the reality of Bagration rather well. Despite astronomiocal losses, the Red Army did manage to destroy Army Group Centre in Byelorussia. By the end of June 1944, the German 4th Army no longer existed and the 3rd Panzer Army was no longer an effective fighting force. Operation Bagration maked the beginning of the end for the Germans in the East. losing around 400,000 men and tanks and other vehicles that they were unable to replace. When you consider that, at the same time, in Western Europe the Germans were being expelled from France with huge losses. there was only really one end to the War possible.

Freyja's Wrath painting update - Freyja is finished

Well, there is always an upside to bad weather, and here is the proof.

Freyja will, naturally be the Warlord of my Saga Viking warband, so she has to be on a larger base, but because she is such a fantastic model, I wanted to make the base a bit special, so I added on two of her special cats. The name Freyja is Old Norse for "The Lady". She is associated with love, sex, beauty, fertility, gold, seiðr (a kind of Norse sorcery that Freyja, a member of the Vanir, taught to the Æsir), war, and death.

Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chariot pulled by two cats, is accompanied by the boar Hildisvíni, and possesses a cloak of falcon feathers. I did a bit of googling and discovered that a colour often associated with Freyja is russet, so I clearly had to paint her robe in that colour.

Anyway, this model is really lovely, I think that her cloak, with its feathers, is pretty amazing and I love the way her hair has been modelled. I really didn't want to overwork her, so I kept the range of colours to a minimum, but I wanted to link her cats into the overall colour scheme, so one is a similar russet to her robe and the other matches the grey of her cloak.

Wargames Foundry "Lord Of Chaos"

I bought the Wargames Foundry "Lord Of Chaos" figure at Colours in Newbury last year, undercoated it and promptly left it sitting around for months and months as other things leapfrogged up the painting list. Also, I really had no idea how I wanted to paint it. I simply couldn't think of a colour palette that worked for me.

However, I really wanted to get it finished off, because it is an amazing piece of work. I am thinking that I might use it as a Major Demon in Frostgrave, but it will just as easily work in Cthulhu games. I mean, all those tentacles! I can see it working in 7TV games too, and there must be other ways of getting it onto the table. 

I think that this colour scheme works OK. I'm not sure if it is 100% perfect, but it has turned out better than my original idea, which had to be painted over because it was just too garish.

My first Freyja's Wrath figures are finished

A week or so ago I posted that my Freyja's Wrath Kickstarter had arrived, and therefore I really had to get started on painting a few figures. I knew which one I wanted to do first (My Heroine, a personal favourite), but I wanted to work on a few all at once, because that would give me plenty of other things to paint while I waited for work done on one figure was drying.

The minis I chose were the My Heroine vignette, The Seer, Svala the Standardbearer and Dagmar the Champion. I also undercoated Freyja herself, but she is still a work-in-progress.

Here are the four finished figures together;

And here they are separately. First, My Heroine, a Shieldmaiden home from the wars greeting her girlfriend;

Next, Dagmar, a Swordmaiden champion, with a hand-painted shield design. As she is modelled with two swords, I am thinking that the one in her hand might be a legendary blade she has captured from a recently fallen foe;

Next, the somewhat sinister figure of The Seer, a supernatural creation from the chthonic darkness which is at the heart of much of Norse mythology;

And finally, Svala. Her banner is hand-painted, but taken from an image based on one interpretation of the raven Landeythan (land-waster) banner of Harald Hardrada, downloaded from the internet. I know that many images of this are triangular, but this one fits the model better.

I am really happy with how these have turned out. The castings themselves are incredibly clean and have lovely sharp detail, but are not unrealistically ornate. They are simply what Annie Norman does best, offering us believable and realistically-proportioned female miniatures.

Now, I can't wait to get stuck into the rest of these gorgeous figures.

The Barbarian Hordes are gathered for battle

I've wanted to photograph all my Hyborian barbarian troops, using 15mm Copplestone barbarians together for ages  and on Sunday I had the chance, when I played my first game of Sword and Spear Fantasy at the club. I wasn't able to use the entire horde for the game, but here it is in all its glory;

I think that is a pretty impressive horde, but I'd like to add some more units at some point, although it isn't a priority.

As for the game, Pete and I fought a game with twelve units a side without worrying about points values. His army is based upon the Eastern Roman Empire of the Komnenian period.

I began by pushing all my cavalry forward on my left, while holding back on the right.

Pete advanced with horse archers against my Heavy Infantry Trolls and a unit of skirmisher archers, who wouldn't last long.

I slowly pushed my heavy infantry forward, supported by medium foot archers.

The central battle developed into one between Pete's armoured lancers and my foot. Amazingly, my foot triumphed, forcing the cream of Pete's cavalry off the table. My pack of savage wolves were also engaged against some heavy infantry as my heavy cavalry attacked Pete's Giants.

Pete threw more cavalry into the fray against my infantry shieldwall.

Unhappily for Pete, the dice fairies weren't helping him and he continued to lose units, making his position pretty hopeless, conceding the victory to my hairy chaps with loincloths and bad table manners.

Of course, for a first game, we both made mistakes with the rules, which helped me more than it did him, but we will learn from that. We also took a while to really understand how to use magic users and how the magic rules work, but we'll get there.

We are basing our units on an 8 cm frontage, mostly with two 4 cm wide units together, which means that we can use figures already based for HOTT, DBA, DBM etc.

Overall, a fun game. I am looking forward to playing these rules again.

More Late Roman Archers

I've had a lot of Late Roman Gripping Beast plastics ready to paint for ages now, but I really needed a break from Romans, plus it was too hot to paint and I was also on holiday for a while. Anyway, I've completed all my remaining Late Roman archers, eight more designed as additions to my Saga warband, above and, below 16 archers based up ready to be used in Sword and Spear. Of course, I will be using all my Saga Romans for S&S too, I just need to buy a load of movement trays for them.

I am planning for my S&S army to be on 12 cm wide bases, mainly 6 cm deep, but deeper for cavalry, obviously. My idea is that foot units will be on 12 x 6 cm bases, which can be stacked one behind another to make up large units, with skirmishers also on 12 x 6 cm bases, but with only six figures per base. I am hoping that I can get Warbases to make these up as a special, together with a number of 12 x 6 cm bases with 4 rectangular 4 x 2 cm slots for cavalry. I need to ask about this, though.

Woo Hoo! The postman brought me a present

OK, so it wasn't a huge surprise, because I'd already had the email, but the postman delivered my Freyja's Wrath Kickstarter today. Here is the box;

Then the nice friendly extras that makes shopping with Bad Squiddo a fun experience;

And finally, the shiny bits. I have lots of lovely new toys here. Enough for a Saga warband with extra shieldmaidens to give me a nice choice of units, plus a few extra that I bought simply because they are really nice models, but which I am certain will find a purpose, because nice models always deserve to end up on the table. I am not going to stop with Saga. These women are going to crop up a a fair few futures projects, I'm sure. I just need to decide how best to use them.

The minis themselves are lovely crisp castings, with virtually no flash. The poses are terrific and there is plenty of detail to paint, which I reckon is definitely a Good Thing. I know which ones are going to get painted first, so they are heading for the front of the painting queue already.

So, shipping the Kickstarter was delayed a bit, but there are perfectly good reasons why that happened, so I'm not going to complain. Good things are worth waiting for, and these are certainly good things. 

IPMS Avon Show, Thornbury (near Bristol) this coming Sunday

IPMS Avon is holding its 28th annual show in conjunction with Lincombe Barn Wargames Society on Sunday 5th August 2018.

The show is being held at the Thornbury Leisure Centre, north of Bristol where there will be over 2,300m2 of display space spread over 3 large, well lit halls. There is also ample free parking for participants and visitors alike.

The club will be running the Bring and Buy sale, a display table showing the games we play and also a demo/participation game of What A Tanker in 15mm.