Armies on Parade: The Great War

After having my Great War armies out on Thursday for the battle of Lens game, I thought I would take the opportunity to photograph them before putting them away again.  So here is one mega-post with both German and Canadian forces.  First, the army of the Kaiser...

 

New snipers from Great War Miniatures.  Tasty...

Most of the figures are from Foundry's old "26mm" range.

Foundry 77mm field gun.

Granatwerfer by Foundry.

Flammenwerfer team from Brigade Games I think...

Chunky monkey A7V by Old Glory.

Here are the Canadians/British...

Infantry are again from Foundry 26mm range.  Football an added extra for Somme games...

Cavalry from Blaze Away! Miniatures.

Foundry Highlanders.

Cavalry with converted sabres.

Mk IV from Old Glory.

Ditto...

Field gun from Foundry.

Owls knitted by my wife.  Just to see if you're paying attention ;-)

15mm sci-fi project

Though the academy keeps me busy most of the time, I have managed to focus some attention toward the new project the group had pledged to begin. Below is a WIP pic of my alien force for the 15mm project.

These models are from critical mass games - excellent quality. I never paint things with red (most everything is either black, blue, green or metal) as I try to make things look as utilitarian as possible, but who the hell knows what an alien understands of utility. In truth, this project should have been finished a long time ago, but I've ignored it for some time now. Hopefully, I'll finish it up soon.

Armies on Parade - NATO

I also took part in the madness that included Eureka miniatures and shoddy tank kits (with the exception of some excellent resin and solido vehicles). As with any game period, I like to collect the British. I also collected my own small force of Germans (much like Dallas) and because I got a good deal on some French VAB's and some excellent French infantry from some company I can't recall - French! Below are some pics of the various NATO units.


Note the lack of gas masks on these British infantry. They tend to have a rough time in our chemical filled WWIII games.

Here are two Kitech Challenger 1's and a Challenger 2 from Imprint Models - Total opposite ends in terms of quality.
Frogmen from Eureka. I intended them to be used as SBS, but they seem to hunt zombies more often.
No issues with poison gas - well they have issues with it, but less immediate than with the British.
The French have played one game and I think they did ok - much to everyone's surprise.

Battle of Lens, 1917

This past Thursday I ran a Great War game for the lads, (loosely) based on the battle at Lens in 1917.  The Canadians rolled out with a combined arms force of infantry, tanks and cavalry (!) to face some seriously dug-in Germans.  We used the "Blitz" scenario and rules from "Warhammer- The Great War", a set which I like.

The view from no-man's-land, German trenches and Lens' ruined brickworks in the background.

Germans bring up their MG08/15 to wreak some havoc.

German 77mm field gun wrecked some Canadian stuff.

Canadians deployed behind their Mk IV tanks. 

Tanks approach the German trenches. 

The Germans mostly wisely kept their heads down in the opening turns!

 

Cavalry arrived in reserve, ready to make the "breakthrough"...

 

Tanks looked cool overrunning the trenches.  Tank commander Brian was flawless in keeping the big machines unbogged and running smoothly.

 

First line of trenches cleared...

German A7V arrived from reserve...

The game was pretty exciting and came down to the last turn.  The Canadian objective was to eliminate all German scoring units, or have a scoring unit of their own in the zone behind the trenches.  Random game length brought proceedings to an end with only one German scoring unit left in play and the tanks about to roll into the rear area (though they're not scoring units themselves).  The cavalry was left in reserve and poor reserve rolls meant they arrived about two turns too late to make a real difference.

The Canadians had about twice as many points as the Germans, as recommended for the scenario.  I thought that the Canucks would dominate but that wasn't the case, the Germans mostly kept off the firesteps in the bottoms of the trenches and waited for the Canadian assault, while whittling them down with MG and 77mm fire.  A fun game!

World War 3!!

Two weeks ago I hosted a fun WW3 battle between my Bundeswehr and Greg's Warsaw Pact army (aka the Chemical Commies).  I'd just painted some new BW tank-killers with Milan ATGWs and the time was right for a wall-to-wall Pact tank assault to test them!  We chose a "breakthrough" scenario that required the Pact to get into the BW deployment zone by the end of the game.  The BW had a few infantry sections and a couple Milan teams.  Pact had 3 T-80s and some BTRs packed with gribblies, plus some disposable scout cars...

 Milan team placed in a ruined apartment building.

 View from the town.  Pact vehicles just over the horizon...

Here they come!

 

Chemical dismount...

Lone BW trooper with Panzerfaust 3. "Dude - BEHIND YOU!"

Blowed-up BTR in the town.

Last BTR is threatening but Milan rains death from above (note absence of company command section)

Last man standing for the BW.  A newly painted model no less!

The game was great fun as our WW3 games tend to be.  We played with a "persistent gas" rule that meant my BW guys who were sans NBC gear suffered a slight penalty to morale and firing, that was cool.  The Milans and PzFst 3's were alternatingly deadly and useless as several Training checks were failed at key times, but they did enough to keep the Pact at bay.  The game ended with the last Pact vehicle blown up in the town - a German win.  But one can imagine the dismay of the BW survivors when 15 minutes later, another identical Pact task group rolls up the road...