Second Thoughts: Warlord's Panzergrenadiers (30 figures and 3 vehicles) and Late War Germans (25 figures)

While I was initially impressed by these boxes, now that I've been assembling them, I'm feeling let down, especially when compared to the Soviet box.

There are a number of problems:

• There are only 5 poses so I now have 11 of each.
• Warlord compounds the above problem by repeating three sets of arms. 
• There is no prone figure so you have no choice but to make the LMG gunners into Rambo.
• The right hands of the rifle arms don't hold the weapon well, unlike the Soviet figures.
• The arms don't integrate very well with the bodies. The shoulders stick out far too much and you don't get a nice joint. Each shoulder requires some knife work to make them far more seamless.
• The one accessory that I expected was some MG ammo belts to add to the figures. The late war Germans, especially Panzergrenediers, are notorious for lugging belts of ammo around with them, but none are included. There's sort of an ammo box but it seems awfully thin. Belts would have been far more useful.

And on top of that, I cannot even borrow the extra Soviet arms I have. The Russian arms are significantly bigger.

It's my understanding that the Soviet box is a later product. The experience that Warlord gained from these inferior German figures shows up.

Bocage

I have created some test bocage. I' rather pleased with the randomness and bulk of them so I plan to go into production of them (about 3 feet worth at a minimum) after Hold the Line next month.

Yes, there's a rather lost Soviet officer but he's the only fully painted figure I have for scale.

Operation Brushstroke

Mission:

To complete enough 28mm troops and support units to run a game of Big Chain of Command at Hold the Line on June 20th.

Assets: 

I have an number of friends who have some German troops that I can use if I don't get mine done. I also have a semi-dedicated painting space. I also have a good uniform reference book.

Description:

As listed on my inventory page, I have the following things to paint:

• 95 or so Russian figures to add to my existing 46
• 1 45mm AT gun
• 58 German figures
• 1 T34/85
• 1 Hetzer
• 1 Sdkfz 222 armoured car
• 3 Sdkfz 251 halftracks

I have about 6 weeks to complete them.

Plan:

1. Assemble all the figures and vehicles, scrape flash, and clean joins. Status: 55 Russians done. Target: May 4th.
2. Prime everything. Target: May 8th.
3. Paint the Russians. Target: May 25th. 
4. Paint the vehicles and other supports (except for the halftracks) Target: June 1st.
5. Paint the German figures. Target: June 15th.
6. Paint the halftracks. Target: June 16th.
7. Dulcote everything. Target June 18th.

Other items:

• Scenario design
• Scenario briefing
• CoC reference sheets
• More JOP markers
• Moar terrain!

In the Box: Panzergrenadiers from Warlord

I traded a box of 15mm Flames of War Afrika Corps figures with Richard for a box of 28mm Panzergrenadiers from Warlord Games so that I would have an opponent for my rapidly expanding Soviet force.

Let's see what I got. First, here's the box art:

Inside, you get 6 sprues of 5 figures. Here's a front and back shot of two sprues:

Credit to Warlord here: they modeled the figures so you could load them down as ordinary infantry who need to carry everything everywhere or you can lighten their load as panzergrenadiers who leave their packs in their trucks.

Update: I bought the 25 figure Late War Germans by Warlord and they have the exact same sprues. So I now wonder whether they were helping their customers by allowing them to choose what type of infantry they could build or saving money by repackaging existing sprues, Probably both views are correct.

You also get some weapons sprues, bases, and decals:

As panzergrenadiers, the box also comes with 3 sprues to build 3 halftracks (and one gunner figure who, unfortunately, really cannot be used outside of the halftrack):

Here's one that I dry fit together:

Hot Lead 2015

On the last Saturday of March, I had my annual pilgrimage to Stratford. As was usual, Hot Lead was well attended and organized. After signing up for the first game session, I hit the vendor tables to pick up some more Warlord Russian 28mm soldiers. I also picked up a box of 28mm late war Germans. I then went to MeepleMart and pick up a 45mm gun to provide my Russians with a little AT support. Having spent my budget, it was time for some gaming.

Unfortunately, the game I had signed up for was a no-go. With the pickings being rather slim, I ended up in a DBR game set in 15th century Italy with the French attempting to exit with the Italians attacking to the flank and rear. I commanded the far right of the Italians acting as the cork to bottle up the French and prevent them from exiting to the right. Here is the general battlefield with the road that the French are on off camera to the right:

I did really well rolling to maneuver and get my troops into position. I did incredibly poorly rolling for combat, resulting in me losing a lot of troops or missing out on opportunities to destroy enemy units. Here are two shots of my rapidly disintegrating command:

Eventually, my command broke. The other Italian commander near me had his attention split between two separate commands. Unfortunately, he didn't realize how dire things were for me and wasn't able to get his units in position in time to exploit the gaps I had created. The game ended and the GM ruled that the French would have been able to push our troops aside and escape along the road. I have to agree.

In the second game, it was Barbarossa but with Romanians against Russians in a battle of tin cans with cannons and infantry. The rules were Brigade Commander and they are extremely simple and stripped down. A little too stripped down for my taste. The action was a meeting engagement with the Romanians tasked with capturing the village as their objective. I placed my artillery and mortar on the hill, T70s to the left and had my infantry run to the village to occupy it.

This game I had some pretty impressive die rolling and managed to take out half of the Romanian tanks before I suffered any losses. The Romanian tanks settled for dueling it out with my tanks. The infantry formed into a massive column and tried to assault the building held by my troops. It did not go well for them.

The third game was Dux Britannia, where the Britons were defending a village. It was pretty much laid out as three separate battles and stayed that way throughout. Here is the left of the Saxon line. I had the right.

It took me a while to work around the mine to engage the Britons actually in the town. The Saxon cavalry did manage to keep the Britons a bit distracted. However, while this was happening, the Briton cavalry charged the center Saxon units and wiped out two of them. The remaining Saxon unit did manage to hold its own and eventually defeat all of the cavalry units, with the assistance on one Saxon unit from the far left. On the far left, it was two Saxon units frontally against a British shield wall. Predictably, this did not go well and eventually the entire Saxon left routed.

On the right, things went much better for the Saxons. After an aborted charge, my second charge managed to break a two unit British shield wall. My other unit chased the third British unit from the walls and into the village. However, with the rout of the Saxon left, my attacks were just too late and my command had to break off because of the collapse in morale.

The third game was the most fun of the three.

Coniferous Trees

Early in December, Michaels (a big box craft store) had a sale on some Christmas "village" stuff (50% off). For example, fences, cobblestone street mat, and Christmas trees. I bought the mat and I bought two bags of trees. The trees come in multiple sizes and someone brushed thick white paint on them to make them more Christmas-y. I shall probably keep one bag with the fake snow and white bases. For the other bag, I gave the trees a bit of a trim with scissors to cut off most of the white paint and some green paint to get rid of the rest. Then some paint and flock to finish the base. Here's the after and the before:

Wings of War King of the Sky

Stephen and I faced off against David and John in Wings of War. We started by picking some planes. Those that brought planes chose to use them, which is why I ended up flying a UFAG two seater. It's a surprisingly good plane. All of the other planes were arranged in two rows, one per side.

I was doing quite well popping off with front and back guns and taking relatively little damage in return.

Stephen in the green Fokker triplane "Kempf" shot down one of the allied fighters, John's SE5a. I took one shot from long range and drew the dreaded explosion card.

 I reappeared flying a Pfalz DIII, which is basically a flying brick. John reappeared with a Spad XIII, which is also a flying brick, but also much faster. Meanwhile, Stephen shot down David's Sopwith Tripe. But in doing so, Stephen retired "Kempf" and returned to the fight in a Albatros DV.

 I bagged David with the lucky explosion card. His plane was relatively undamaged to that point. However, John then shot up my Pfalz pretty good. Despite taking some revenge fire from Stephen, John used the Spad's speed to escape.

 I took the hint and retired the Pfalz while it could still fly. I returned as the Baron but my flying was distinctly un-ace like and I got shot up pretty good by both David and John. I beat a hasty retreat with only one damage point remaining.

Good fun all around. 

David's report:

Friday saw Stephen, John and Ian joining me in the skies above Europe for a game of Wings of War/Glory.  We had a line of German planes and one of Allied planes.  Stephen and Ian were the Huns and John and I were the Tommies.  

We started with one plane and if you left the warzone you then put your plane aside and picked the next one in line so we had a continuous stream of planes. I don't remember all the details but my Tripe caused a beautiful explosion on Ian's plane (Pfalz ?) but was then shot down by Stephen who was the big winner with 2 victories for the night before he flew away. with one hit point left .  

My second plane was a Snipe and that suffered a fire and pilot wound and flew off the table just putting out the fire before landing with 1 hit point left.  I then came on with a Camel and retired after suffering a pilot wound.  I then came back on with another camel and Stephen and Ian withdrew while John (who was on his second or third plane) was shot up pretty bad but did a lot of damage to the Huns.