Bolt Action Tank War Battle Report - Hungary 1945

Last Thursday the group gathered at Conscript Towers for a game put on by Conscript Greg:

"We'll play 'Bolt Action' - using the 'Tank War' supplement and 15mm models.  The game is set in Hungary, January of 1945, and 50,000 German and Hungarian troops are trapped in Budapest, surrounded by Russian forces. The Panzers of IV SS Panzer Corps have launched a relief attempt, hoping to reach the Danube and the trapped defenders in the city, and also buy some more time for Germany to fight on.  The Panzers have caught the Russian forces by surprise, but Soviet Guards Armoured Regiments are now rushing to block them. Germans will confront the Red Army and the winter as they fight to break through Soviet defences."

Here's the table: German short table edge at top, Soviet at bottom. Germans need to destroy Soviet units, but get more VPs for exiting their own units off the Soviet table edge. The rules used were "Bolt Action" of course, but unlike most of our BA games we played this one with 15mm models, most of which were tanks!

Conscript Mike F and I played the Germans and we had a straightforward plan: foot to the floor and devil take the hindmost! Our first activations were "Run" orders and we used the armoured troop leader's activations to order the other two Panthers with him. That worked well.

Of course the Soviets had to appear and mess up our plans... they had two IS-2s and three T-34/85s with two infantry sections against our four Panthers and two Pionere Hanomags.

Peter Pig tank riders get into action...

We started to run into problems about halfway across the table. The lead Hanomag was picked on by the Soviet tankers and despite surviving being set on fire, it was destroyed in the next turn.

Here the second engineer track veers away from enemy fire in the direction of the Panthers, while one of the big cats burns in the field. Just past the trees another knocked-out Panther is visible - it was supposed to anchor our flank after daringly driving onto a frozen pond. While the ice held, the incoming 85mm round finished it off...

More bad news on the German left as the remaining Panthers are knocked out. We did manage to mislead the Soviets somewhat as to which vehicle was the troop commander's, because we'd lost track of that ourselves and were therefore quite believable... "Oh no, there goes the commander!" "Oh no, that's not him!" etc.

The surviving Pionier zug beside its crippled vehicle...

The game itself was super-fun but Mike and I underestimated the hitting power of the T-34/85s for sure. Those suckers lit us up comprehensively and no mistake. I'm not sure if deploying differently would've helped as the Soviets had several turns to get into firing position while we steamed across the table. This made it difficult for us to maneuver to minimize their firing solutions. The big cats sure looked awesome though.

Thanks Greg for bringing out the amazing looking game and to the boys for playing!

Another 1/72 T-34 from PSC

T-34/85 in 1/72 scale - plastic kit from Plastic Soldier Company, metal barrels from RB Models.

I hate to switch back to WW2 after there has been so much awesome Adeptus Titanicus escalation, but here is another bit of 20mm armour - another T-34/85 in 1/72 scale from the Plastic Soldier Company.  The commander is popped out of the hatch, a useful gimmick to indicate a platoon or company commander as required within various rule sets.

Machined barrel from RB models.

The new metal barrel in place on the turret.

There is one slight difference with this T-34/85 - I swapped out the plastic main gun barrel from the kit and used a metal one from RB Models.  I have seen other super cool advanced modeling/painting folks doing stuff like this. I'm no IPMS-type, but thought I would try it out for myself. The metal barrels are awesome, look great, and it is very easy to cut the plastic one off of the PSC kit and replace it with the metal component. This was gonna be SO cool...

View from the rear, tried to have the exhaust look a bit mucky.

Another view of the metal barrel...

And in the end it looks...almost identical to the other T-34/85s in my collection. It's not a huge change...more of a subtle difference. I love the idea of the machined barrels (and will probably try something like this on some 1/72 German tanks I am looking to paint, which have some elaborate muzzle brakes) but, at least for the T-34s, it didn't really change anything. Oh well - still fun to practice!

Decals are 1/72, also available from PSC.

Pretty easy to build, and straightforward to paint...these kits from PSC are addictive!

That's six T-34s for my 20mm Soviet collection.  I still have several boxes of these things from PSC...while I feel like you can "never have too many T-34s" there are some limits...I'll probably paint at least one more platoon, and then start painting some others in winter white-wash camo.  

A column of T-34s moves out on the gaming table...a total of six T-34s finished so far, more to come...

Painting more T-34s might be something I try during the 10th Edition of the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, which begins on December 21st! Byron and Mike F are participating along with me this year, and while I encourage you to check everything out over at the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge blog page, be sure to watch this space as well, to see what existing and new projects are spurred forward by the Painting Challenge!

Some 15mm WW2 Soviet Stuff

15mm T-34s from the Plastic Soldier Company

 And now over to some more 15mm WW2 stuff - Russian WW2 stuff.  This is a mix of items, 45mm AT guns from Battlefront and T-34s from the Plastic Soldier Company.

These turrets can be switched out to make the tank into a T-34/76

While I am laughably unable to ever get the treads to connect properly, overall I find the T-34 models from Plastic Soldier Company to be easy to assemble and paint. I really like the option for the turrets. The price is very reasonable.  I got the "Battalion" deal, so I still have many, many, many more of these tanks to paint.

Six tanks painted - another 15 to go (!)

The Battlefront AT guns were not too bad to assemble - you can see I struggled with the gun shield on one of them. Crowding them on the medium Flames of War base was a little tricky but overall they turned out OK.  I was struck by the resemblance these weapons have to the early war German AT guns - but I understand these are in fact based on that design (maybe even manufactured under some kind of license or something)? At any rate, they will come in handy on the table.

Soviet WW2 AT gun battery - I think they are 45mm guns...

While I actually enjoyed our recent Flames of War game, my goal is actually to get a huge pile of this stuff done to play games of Spearhead in 15mm. Spearhead is an excellent set of division-level rules, with each base or vehicle model representing a platoon of men or vehicles, or a battery of guns. 

So I screwed up that one gun shield on the right pretty badly

I have played Spearhead for many years now using 6mm figures, but I've tried it a few times in 15mm and it is a little easier on the eyes without sacrificing too much in terms of the look vs. ground scale. I am aiming to get enough stuff painted to do some of the scenarios from the Spearhead scenario book "Where the Iron Crosses Grow".

These other ones turned out better...

The first scenario I am targeting - "The Devil's Cauldron" - has 101 pieces (either tanks or infantry stands etc) for the Russians.  I'm at 54 pieces painted so far, so almost half-way there.  Still need to add bits like heavy mortars and 76mm guns, and of course many, many more tanks and infantry stands. But in the interim, if we do another Flames of War game, the Russian side will have a growing stash of kit to build on. 

Big Cats, Small Figures - WW2 Pico Armor

Company of Oddzial Osmy T-34/85s

 I continue to dabble away at random projects, including some more 3mm scale Oddzial Osmy castings, this time in the WW2 setting. I've already painted a good pile for Cold-War-Gone-Hot games, and a budding collection for the Arab-Israeli wars, and I'm curious to see if the gaming fun in this scale can extend into WW2. In this post we have a small selection of late-war Eastern Front armour, T-34/85s, a couple of JS-2s and some German Panther As (which I think was somehow a later model than the Panther D - I am permanently confused by this...)

20mm square bases from Litko

These vehicles are all based on 20mm squares, with 20mm round bases used for command models.  The models are available in North America from the great folks at Pico Armor, who are a real pleasure to deal with - excellent service!  The bases are from Litko Aerosystems - another group of excellent folks.

JS-2s to punch through the lines

These bruisers are a tight fit on the 20mm base

I can't get over the detail on these tiny sculpts - artfully exaggerated so as to show up to the eye, without throwing off the overall impression of the sculpt.  As an example, the spare tracks are right there on the Panthers!! Incredible sculpting.

Panther As - round base for a command tank

I really enjoy painting tanks, and these models are real beauties!  It is a lot of fun to paint up an entire platoon of tanks in one short painting session.  Trying to come up with something that will show up well enough on the table for my gaming friends to enjoy using these tiny models is an entertaining challenge.

Ready for action on the Eastern Front

 As others often recommend, when it comes to the smaller scales, it helps to punch up to a higher/brighter colour than you might normally use otherwise. This is what I am trying to do with these tanks - the panzer yellow colour I used here, for example, would look like a traffic cone on 1/72 or 1/50 scale model. But I'm hoping it jumps enough for a gamer to go "oh, later period German tank...." from about three feet away. We'll see!

No camo on these, but I tried to soot-up the engine deck with weathering powder

I thought the recent game we did with individually based models in this scale went really well, so I'm keen to experiment with the WW2 setting.  The reason it might not work? Well, it all boils down to the infantry...

Panther D next to a (now-defunct) Canadian penny

In the modern gaming, particularly in the Cold-War-Gone-Hot setting, nearly every front line fighting unit has vehicles. The infantry are modelled, and fun to paint, but it's about the IFVs and the MBTs.  And they are big suckers - even the T-80BV is a hefty little casting - I mean, for a 1/600 scale tank.  The infantry castings are almost little terrain enhancements to the IFVs like the Bradleys and BMPs.  Even a third-tier Soviet formation will have BTR-60s to move them around the battlefield (however briefly) - so vehicles dominate the modelling and gaming action in that kind of setting - fair or not, it's how it goes.

T-34/85s next to Canadian Penny

In WW2 the mechanization of the infantry did not reach modern levels we see in the OBs of the 1980s.  The use of half-tracks grew and grew and by the end of the war some Allied units were heavily mechanized, but to represent WW2 on the table, you need to be able to come up with little stands of infantry that are cool and fun to play with, and stand out from their opponents...I'm experimenting with that right now - we'll see how it turns out.