"Seven Days to the Rhine" Cold War Battle Report!

                                         

On the occasion of a recent visit by Conscript Greg I hosted a game of Seven Days to the River Rhine, a Cold War game that Greg has taken a shine to (our usual go-to rules for the period is Team Yankee and I was curious to see how these compare). And when I say "I hosted" that's what I mean - Greg supplied the scenario, ran the rules, and brought his lovely Canadian and Soviet forces here all the way from Toronto!

We set up a table located "somewhere in West Germany"... there's a secondary highway and railway lie running across it and a Shell service station (at top) and an Aldi convenience store (at bottom) along with several abandoned cars and trucks. We had to include the big electrical pylons too of course! Anyway the Soviets entered from the short table edge at right and had to push through and off the opposite short edge. The Canadians deployed within 12" of that short edge and had to stop the Soviets. Easy-peasy!

 

Conscripts Bill, Frederick, and I played on the Canadian side. We had four Leopard C1s, five M113s filled with infantrymen, two M113 TOWs and two Lynx recce vehicles. We split these assets pretty evenly across our zone, taking care not to occupy the open ground along the highway, as we were warned by Greg that vehicle weapon ranges are unlimited and "if you can see it, you can kill it." Duly noted!

The Soviets lined up across from us ready to come at the Canucks.

Here is the Canadian left flank.

                                        

And here's the right side.

                                        

Soviet deployment across their start line.

The Soviets moved some of their BMPs and their BRDM up the middle with the tanks coming up their left flank. You can see some of their vehicles on the road.

 

The T-80s hooked around beside the Aldi... you can see a flaming Leopard in the Shell parking lot... this is the result of an aggressive move by yours truly... I pushed one of the tanks up to put some pressure on the Soviet right and knocked out a light vehicle or two, but I wasn't mindful enough of the "dismounts"... one of whom knocked out the tank with an RPG :-(

While the T-80s seemed fairly impervious to our 105mm guns and TOWs, the Tornado airstrike did the trick!

Here's Bill surveying the scene. While the Soviets made a late push with the T-80s and the Canadians lost a couple M113s, a Lynx, and one or two Leopards (can't recall), as Greg predicted it came down to army break points. In SDttRR each model taken out contributes to army morale loss, basically the owning player rolls a die and the result is subtracted from your army morale . If your army morale total gores below 40, your force bugs out and you lose the game. On (what turned out to be) the last turn, we had some order tokens left and I decided to unload everyone within LOS on a Soviet infantry squad cowering in the Aldi parking lot. We ended up destroying the squad, which was the only loss on either side that turn. The Soviets rolled for the morale loss and it came up big, taking their army morale below 40 and losing them the game. We were lucky we hadn't lost anything that turn as our army morale was only at 42! It is entirely possible for both sides to lose, of course...!  

Here's the gang of combatants, L to R me, Dave V., Bill, Mike F., Hugh, Greg and Frederick. A great time was had by all, both in the game and in generally catching up. My thanks to Greg for running the game and supplying the models, it all looked very good indeed and the game was great fun! 

15mm Moongrunt Project from GZG

Well this is what I've been up to hobby-wise, instead of painting Plains warriors and Seventh Cavalry troopers. But now I'm done this and can get back to the Little Bighorn project. But let me talk a bit about this one first.

I posted a couple weeks ago about how visiting the Museum of Brands in London, England got me onto Space:1999 and the Eagle spacecraft, and how buying one of those got me back into 15mm astronaut combat, and this post is the culmination of all of that. I wrote about how I'd bought and painted some astronauts in EVA suits from Ground Zero Games, but together with that order came two "armies" from GZG's "Moongrunt" range - a Chinese PLA space force and some British that will stand in for NASA astronauts - I just liked the look of the British models and their suits better than the GZG Americans. The NASA gang I've painted from the GZG British is shown in these photos.

The GZG models are sold in packs of six, and I wanted a decent platoon on each side, so I ordered four packs, in this case three packs of "riflemen" and one heavy weapons pack. These I divided up into three sections of seven models each (fve riflemen and two with rocket launchers), and a platoon command section comprised of the platoon commander and two flunkies.

The models were painted pretty simply, with heavy overbrushes of Celestra Grey, Corax White, pure white, Nuln Oil wash, then pure white again. Guns were Leadbelcher with Nuln wash, and I painted a red armband on the platoon commander and blue ones on the squad leaders.

I also built and painted a vehicle and passengers for the force. This is a pretty cool little 8-wheeled buggy that carries driver, squad leader, and six passengers. 

I used some Lunar "NASA" decals on the vehicle.

You can remove the passengers. I superglued them together in groups of three (one on each side of the compartment) to make that easier.

I also added some weathering on the vehicle hull. I suppose that dust and tiny micrometeoroids would weather stuff on the moon.

Here is the opfor - the Chinese People's Liberation Army Space Force.

I organized the force the same way as the other one, but the Chinese have more heavy weapons, so they get four in each squad of seven men. I know that eight is an even luckier number in Chinese culture so I might either reorganize the force or just buy another pack of these guys.

First squad. The leader has a red stripe on his helmet. I first heavily brushed the models with Celestra Grey, then painted the suits Mephiston Red and Evil Suns Scarlet, then finished the helmet, boots and gloves with Corax White and pure white. Guns are Leadbelcher with Nuln Oil.

Second squad, contains two heavy rifles and two rocket launchers.

Here's the transport - a rocket-powered hovering sled. I made a base for it using magnets on the support post and underneath the vehicle.

So when the vehicle lands, you just take it off the flying stand.

Of course the passengers are removable (they are all superglued to the central seating construct) and the vehicle can be used as a cargo transporter!

I did a rough job on some cargo for the bed.

Well that's this project finished for now! This will let me get back to the Little Bighorn and I'm trying to motivate myself with some new reading - "Hokahey - A Good Day to Die" by Richard Hardorff, that chronicles the Plains warrior casualties of the LBH battle.

Anyway the next thing to do with these models is have a game of some kind. I also have to get a larger terrain mat, probably 4x4 feet. If you have any suggestions please put it in the comments!  

Space: 1999 Eagle and GZG 15mm EVA Suited Astronauts

OK so there’s a bit of a backstory behind this one, bear with me…

On my recent trip to the UK I stayed in Notting Hill at a place that just happened to be up the street from the Museum of Brands, a very cool little museum of… retail brands, that had some very cool stuff in it, including lots of old board games and toys. Here are some of my favourites:

If you say "it's popular," it's popular!

Not exactly Formula De I'm thinking

Frightening

"Hey who's up for a game of Sanctions?"

Well whoever decorated Goering got his armband on the wrong arm, for starters...

My absolute favourite. Mum is obviously drunk

Anyway the other very cool thing I saw at the MoB was their special exhibition featuring toys and collectibles related to two Gerry Anderson properties: Thunderbirds and Space: 1999. All the stuff in the exhibition reminded me how awesome a ship the Eagle was!

So I thought to myself, I should get an Eagle model to game with - it would fit great into the Lunar game! A few years ago a company called Round 2 designed a 1:48 scale Eagle (22 inches long!) that I figured would be great for Lunar. So I sought out and found a built and painted example on eBay. Unfortunately when it arrived it was definitely not the 1:48 Eagle as it was advertised to be - it was ancient MPC model, purportedly 1:72 but actually closer to 1:96 scale.

After getting a substantial refund from the seller, I pondered what to do. Hmmm, I thought, this Eagle is pretty close to "15mm scale"… I wonder if anybody makes 15mm astronauts? Well it turns out that Ground Zero Games makes lots, and I promptly ordered a bunch. These are the first of them - astronauts in heavy EVA suits. They look good with the Eagle don’t they!

Pretty simple paintjobs on these models. They were "overbrushed" with Celestra Grey to begin with, then Corax White. I used Agrax Earthshade to tint some specific parts of the suits, and then highlighted the white parts with a heavy drybrush of pure white.

 

I also painted six armed EVA-suited astronauts. Ironically after painting these models I started looking through a bag of 15mm SF stuff I had been holding onto for years... and found these same two packs of models. No harm though as they are easy to paint and I can always use more of these guys.

Paint style was similar to the other astronauts, I used Coelia Greenshade on these suits and I like the look.

I really like the look of the Eagle with these models and it'll be great "terrain" for 15mm lunar gaming. Of course the Lunar rules themselves are a bit too involved for larger games but I did find a mod for Bolt Action on the Internet that might be worth a try. And if we have a game with 20 or 25 models a side maybe we use Kill Team, Necromunda, Rogue Trader, or even good ol' Lord of the Rings as a basis for the game. Of course there needs to be some specific mods for low-G and suit penetration but that can be figured out.

I also bought a ton of GZG's Moongrunt models to paint up for a larger game, and am pondering what kind of 15mm "structures" to buy for lunar terrain. As you can see here I've already got a bunch of craters so that's covered, but some little domes or industrial structures would look good in a game as well. Suggestions in the comments please. Also I'm still on the lookout for a 1:48 Eagle or 3D printed model in that scale. I still think it would be awesome to see on a Lunar game table!