In the Box: Warlord's 1/56th T34-85

Since I now have a platoon of 28mm Russians for Chain of Command, I went to Hold the Line looking for some armour, anti-tank guns, or transport. I was looking for a T34-76 or even more particularly, an anti-tank gun, but all I could find was a T34-85. Good enough for me!

Here's what you get. Two spues of tank and a decal sheet (not pictured)

 The box lets you have a buttoned up tank or have the commander sticking out of the hatch. When I first looked at the commander he seemed a bit small. When I compared him to a 28mm figure, my suspicion was confirmed. Either Russian tanks were crewed by pygmies or there's something wrong with the tank's scale. Since I cannot picture more than 6 28mm figures crowding on the back of this tank, I suspect that the tank is on the small side of what it should be.

Aside from the slight issue of scale, this model assembled easily and quickly. The join between the upper and lower turret was not as clean as the rest of the model but that was the only problem area. The tracks were a bit tricky at first to figure out how to assemble but once figured out, they went together cleanly.

I messed up the "Death to Fritzes" decal so I had to fall back to the "To Victory" one instead. I think I'm sticking to minimalist decals otherwise.

Here's the assembled version:

(OK Justin, I see your Pz II and raise with a T34. Don't make me purchase a JSII because I will if I need to.)

Hold the Line - Saga

For the afternoon session, I played in a game of Saga. Saga is basically Dark Ages skirmish. It's a pretty basic beer n' pretzels game. The only real twist is rolling saga dice (or really ordinary dice if you want to save some money). You then allocate the dice to move, attack, or gain some special abilities. The use of the dice really adds some nice flavour and brings some thinking to the game.

The scenario was a six way free for all. Not my favourite type of scenario, but at least I would learn the game.

 

I found the combat in Saga far too bloody to be satisfying. More than one battle resulted in mutual death and destruction of all participants. And it wasn't as if it was caused by extraordinary rolls or the elimination just barely happened.

I think if I'm getting into Dark Ages skirmish, Dux Britanarium is probably more to my taste.

Hold the Line - Impetus

So I went to Hold the Line a couple of weekends ago (I would have posted this earlier but my bout of elbow tendonitis is really curbing my typing). It was a small con, but that is to be expected for its first year. Nevertheless, there was a good balance between the number of games to play and the number of gamers to play them.

There were a few vendors there as well and I made a couple of purchases (more on them in future posts) .

The first game I played in was an Impetus battle between Normans and Byzantines. I took the right side of the Normans. My plan was to send my infantry forward in the centre and tire out the opposing troops before hitting them with my knights.

Things started really well for me (and I benefited from some really clutch rolling). After a couple of turns, I managed to take out the opposing horse on my right. In this shot, you see one of my knight units take a Byzantine heavy cavalry unit from the rear after they got distracted by my medium horse. Meanwhile, my infantry were closing in on the opposing line.

 

Meanwhile in the centre left, things look promising with Norman knights breaking through a cataphract unit and our infantry closing in.

On the far left, it's a confusing mess. But things seem to be progressing. 

Back on the right, my infantry continue to advance and my second knight unit on the right has a clear path to the flank of the enemy battle line.

In the centre, one of my reserve knights plowed into battle and started to push back the enemy foot and cavalry.

 

Then my dice deserted me and the tide turned.

On the left...Hey! Where did all of our units go? The only ones I see are a line of militia infantry.

Basically, the Byzantines won, but because I had such an advantage with my fresh or almost fresh cavalry, we decided that the Normans would withdraw unopposed.

A very enjoyable game. I really like Impetus as a set of rules and again they did not disappoint.

Beer interlude: King Brewery - Vienna Lager

Rating: 56

When I first tasted this beer, I was a little disappointed. It seemed flat and lifeless. It was OK in that you could have it cold and it would be fine.

However, it did have some redeeming features. First, it was free. My wife had won it in a raffle, and as she doesn't drink beer, I inherited it. Second, I had six bottles. I don't throw beer out (unless its Guinness, which I don't like and have never liked) so I ended up with five more bottles to drink.

With additional tasting, I've grown to appreciate its qualities. It has a pleasant tangy taste with slight hints of orange. It's otherwise mild on the palette but hits all parts of the tongue. Whereas my first tasting seemed flat, I now see it rather as mildly carbonated. When vigorously poured, it develops a nice head. But instead of big bubbles, they are the smaller finer bubbles you normally associate with bottle conditioned beers or wheat beers.

Would I buy more? Yes, I think I would. It might not always be my first choice, but it would not be my last either.

Chain of Command: Germans vs Russians

I put my semi-painted Russians up against Justin's Germans at Stephen's place a couple of weekends ago. We had finished a game of Grunts and we just got rid of the few pieces of Sci-Fi terrain.

The scenario was the probe and Richard and I took one of the narrow ends. We pushed hard on the left to claim a good chunk of the relatively close terrain. We topped off the success on the left by adding a minefield to make it hard for the Germans to attack. On the right, we came 4" short of being able to use some woods.

The Germans had a regular Heer platoon and a PzII. The Russians took a minefield and a ATR team. I forgot that I had an extra 3 pts and I could have bought a tank killer team.

The Germans started off by sending the tank down the road in the center and a section on the left. The latter advanced very cautiously.

Foolishly (as it turned out), I put a section on the right. My plan was to break off a team of two and send them off to threaten the lone semi exposed German JOP on the right. However, the Germans now had a target to shoot and the proceeded, over the space of several phases, chew up my section. We made a mistake and allowed the tank to shoot its 20mm cannon and its MG at the same time so my section died quicker than it should have.

On our left. the German advance stalled just before a stream. Seeing that my section was getting chewed up and that we had a double phase, we elected to bring on a section and shoot at the German section. We had some success.

For the next couple of phases, we traded shots, but then the Germans had a major success and pinned the Russian section. Despite a number of turns passing, we never got that section unpinned for the rest of the game.

Meanwhile on the right, I had my ATR team join the beleaguered section. It got one shot off that had no effect. It was gunned down (despite the fact that the shots were split between the section and team, the team took the deaths).

Eventually, my section could take no more and I pulled it back. The Pz went around the woods and took the Soviet JOP (via a double phase and good movement rolls.) At this point, the game was essentially over. The Germans could have advanced the tank to the edge to win, but they decided to shoot up essentially helpless Russian infantry until the Russian morale completely collapsed.

No photos but it was an interesting game. Next time, I'll hold off putting troops on the table until I have to.

Neglected Blog

I've been on the DL with elbow tendonitis caused by too much typing on a notebook. It's getting better though and I finally felt guilty enough to remember to post something. Anything.