Book Review: Encyclopaedia of German Armoured Vehicles

https://books.google.ca/books/about/Encyclopedia_of_German_Tanks_of_World_Wa.html?id=JSStQgAACAAJ

If you are building a WW2 German army that has any tanks in it, this is the book to get (but beware the prices!). Every major vehicle has an entry with multiple photographs (1000+ black and white). Each model (ausf) describes what changed and there's often a photograph that shows the changes. The armament for each model is provided along with production information.

But there's not just the important tanks. You can truly geek out on the obscure stuff where only one or models saw service or some of the truly bizarre experimental stuff that barely got off the drawing board. There's pre-war stuff and some last month of the war desperation stuff and the story in between stuff where the Germans extended the usefulness of a chassis for far longer than they thought originally.

The book also covers halftracks, armoured cars, and important captured tanks. There's armoured vehicles used to control rocket launches and vehicles that worked on land and on water. There's even a vehicle that was both an armoured car and a tank.

If you see a copy in a used book store for a reasonable price, grab it. I have immense gratitude to Alain for giving me his copy when he was downsizing his library.

Panzershrek teams

When I purchased my Warlord Germans, I realized that I did not have the Panzershrek team that the Chain of Command list called for. Fortunately, Stephen had bought a large number of German figures while they were on sale from Black Tree Designs. I bought the Panzershrek teams from him right away.


The figures painted up so nicely that I bought the rest of Stephen's Germans. Now I have more Germans to paint but they are going relatively quickly. Lots of detail but easy to paint.

German Platoon for Chain of Command

I finished the two boxes of Warlord Germans, which is enough to give me 5 sections. Though one box was actually Panzergrenadiers, I did them as regular infantry instead. (A comment on the photos; the actual color of the mat and figures is more green in real life)



The Warlord figures paint up OK but they are a lot of work as the detail is not as raised as on their plastic Russians or on their metal figures. For some of the MG figures, I substituted a thin copper painted piece of plastic instead the ammo box.

Here are the front of some of the figures:


And here is the back:


Now that I have painted them, there are a couple of details that annoyed me. First is the epaulets are under the webbing instead of under. Not only is that wrong historically, it is tougher to paint. The second annoyance is the Sam Browne style strap they added in addition to the Y straps. I'm not sure why the gave both types of strap because hat that is supposed to be doing but it is something you don't often see in pictures of German soldiers. Unfortunately, it's molded in so I was left with the choice of either painting it or scraping it off. Painting seemed like less work.

I have 60 or so Germans from Black Tree Designs and I suspect that they will see far more table time than the Warlord plastics. They are just better looking and far more durable. I've already had to fix more German plastic weapons than I have Russians and the Russians have seen twice as much action.

In summary, while the Warlord plastic Russians are excellent, the plastic Germans are not all that good. I understand that Warlord have redone their panzer grenadiers and they are better. If so, make sure you are buying the new ones and not the old ones.

A Horde of Russians

Having basically completed all of my 28mm Russians, I thought I would take a picture of them. I basically have a full rifle company according to the 1944 TO&E (of course there's lots of disagreement on what that actually looks like).

I also have a scout section and a tank rider section. I could easily make a full platoon by moving figures around. The observer doesn't actually do anything in Chain of Command but I have the figure so I put him in anyway. The observer and radio men were for communicating with the division, not for artillery (or they used flags if the radio wasn't there or working)

The tank hunters can use a molotov cocktail, panzerfaust, or AT grenade. I just remove whichever AT weapons they are not using.

The mortar is actually an 81mm but I'm going to use it to represent the 50mm mortar that was with Russian companies earlier in the war. I have another one that I haven't finished and a 120mm mortar that I will use to represent a pre-game barrage.

Not pictured are my two T34/85s. One is finished and the other is partially finished.

Oh, and there's also one rifleman who got placed into the wrong box.

Game day at Stephen's

On Saturday, Stephen hosted a day of gaming with three sessions on tap.

First up was Mike running home brew rules for ANZACs vs Turks at Gallopoli. The Turks had a full division with 4 offboard artillery batteries, two onboard artilleries, and two machinegun batteries. The Aussies and Kiwis had three battalions, three MG batteries, and 4 batteries. Here is the battlefield with the Turks on the left attacking the entrenched ANZACs:

I had the Kiwis (having been binge watching Outrageous Fortune over the summer) on the ANZAC left and this was what I was looking at:


The Turks surged forward (moving 2 zones per turn, shooting, or removing wire). On the first turn, the Turks used their artillery to remove wire from in front of the MG position. Our rifle fire was pretty ineffective (as was the Turks when they finally tried shooting) but artillery was nasty. We chose to target the onboard Turk guns to get rid of them. (In hindsight, we should have targeted their offboard stuff afterwards).

The Turks overwhelmed the MG position rather easily and swept up to the first trench line.



The Turkish assault removed 3 of my 4 stands (as a consequence of being a bit softened up by artillery and then not rolling very well infantry vs infantry). The lone stand fell back and reinforced the 2nd line. On my right, the Aussies were in a similar pickle. But way over on the right, Stephen's Aussies were repulsing the Turks and then wiping them out.



I was holding on and gradually wearing down the Turks. But on my immediate right, the Turkish artillery managed to wipe out the troops in the second line. We had no choice but to put our last reserve unit into the open and assault the Turks occupying our second line. Atrocious shooting by our artillery meant that our assault was repulsed. The Turkish artillery then blasted our troops into oblivion, leading the way open to the beach.


The rules were a one page affair and very simple. Maybe a little too much was sacrificed to make sure the troops moved and did not get shot up. It's impossible, for example, for one infantry battalion to kill other infantry battalion by rifle fire alone. I'm not sure rifle fire killed a single stand all game. The other thing that bothered me was how quickly battalions recovered. If you took some hits, you roll a die. Beat the number of hits and you recover automatically and can do stuff. Fail and you don't do anything. But you rally all of the hits at the end of your turn. Perhaps it shouldn't be so easy to rally hits. Give the player the choice of falling back one square and rally all hits or roll. If you roll and pass, you rally the number of hits the die roll exceeds the number of hits and do an action. If you fail, stay in place and rally 1 hit at the end of the turn.

The game was still enjoyable as it was but it really was just a game of artillery wiping out opposing units.

We also played a game of Chain of Command with two full Russian platoons facing off against 1 2/3rds German platoons (all I had painted at the time, which I am rectifying). The Germans lost the patrol phase and then consequently lost the game. I had the German left and was the focus of the Soviet attack. I really should have been far more aggressive from the start. I probably would have ended up with the same result though. No pictures (conveniently) of this defeat.

Cancer sucks

I've done some gaming and a fair amount of painting over the last two months. I haven't been posting very often though. There's a reason for this. I find it takes a fair amount of time to review pictures and create a post. I found in the last couple of months I don't have the energy to do either. It's far simpler to go to a gaming session or blob out in front of the TV and apply paint.

My wife was diagnosed with DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) a couple of months ago. We're extremely lucky that it was caught early. And the reason the doctors caught it early was all of the health problems she had earlier in the year. She's had the lumpectomy done (FWIW lumpectomy and partial mastectomy are one and the same operation) and now she's about to start radiation therapy. All of this has left the both of us drained emotionally and physically.

In terms of this blog, I've had neither the energy or will to post anything. But I am starting to come around again. I've finished my Warlord Germans and starting to feel the need to spotlight them. Painting 55 28mm figures is an accomplishment and I feel the urge to document it.

And I still don't have a complete group photo of my Soviets. I have a full company of them plus plenty of supports. That's worthy of a post or two as well.

UPDATE: I've just learned that my father has a small tumor in his bladder. He's going to have an operation to remove it in a couple of days. I guess we'll learn more about it when they do a biopsy on it.

Full Thrust: Convoy Escort

Back in August, we gathered at Stephen's house for some Full Thrust action. Stephen had laid out his star cloth and placed a large number of dust clouds. I arrived latest so I got command of the convoy and a few light escort ships. Here's the opening layout with my ships circled:

In the scenario, we knew that we were being pursued by a large force. We figured that we would also need to fight our way across the board. Most of our gunnery is forward facing so being aggressive seemed the best plan.

Our admiral had done a wonderful job of setting things up. The convoy could run at high speed and also avoid most of the dust clouds. We just needed them to make one turn. The dust clouds would start doing damage to any ships that go faster than 6. Because the convoy's course avoided the dust clouds, I gave them a healthy 12 initial speed.

Being experienced with Stephen's ways of running scenarios, I figured something was up. I scanned ahead and got a result. There was something on that large asteroid ahead. I didn't, however, roll well enough to identify and fire on that something until it fired a couple of very heavy beams. Being NAC, we immediately retaliated with missiles. (red dotted line is the convoy's track)

The thing about the missiles is that in Full Thrust, you plop the missile targets first, move, resolve the missiles, and then resolve other fire. Stephen had designed the scenario with a nasty base. Then just before the game, he decided to make it even nastier. I think he went from 40 points to 60 or something like that. He didn't think, though, that we would hammer it with our missiles. And missiles are the absolute best weapon to use against bases because they don't move. 

Meanwhile, the enemy finally showed up. I was delighted to see that they were behind us and on both flanks. We sent some missiles in their direction as well.

Our missiles devastated the base. It wasn't quite dead so we used the fire phase to finish it off. Our missiles also took out a couple of pursuing ships and a couple of ships to the right. It wasn't a one-sided fight as I lost a light cruiser and the biggest ship in our rear guard blew up.

The convoy continued its run past the destroyed base and we continued to send missiles at the enemy to the right. 

But we were running out of missiles and also losing ships. Most of our ships were NAC and the problem is that they are garbage once they've shot off all their missiles. Most importantly, the convoy was getting away.

Here, I've taken the pictures from the opposite side. The convoy is making the only turn it needs to make. A couple of smaller enemy ships are harassing it, though. The rest of our escorts are taking a pounding and are beginning to get severely outnumbered. 

But victory is ours as the convoy leaves the board. The sacrifice of most of the escorts is not in vain because the convoy lost only one cargo hold in total.