Train in vain

It's all a bit grim in the country

I've always been of the opinion that the rural idyll is a bit like thrilling to the fortunes of an association football team, a very fine thing no doubt - but not really my bag. 

However, proving that anything is possible, Savage and I packed our bags and set out for a trip to the country.  After the assassination of Foyski, local reprisals were swift and merciless. The Soviets rely on local commanders and civil servants to see to the day to day running of the Second Commonwealth. These folk, viewed as traitors by the Resistance, ensure the buses run on time and that the children get to school. Alistair McGallimaufry, a senior figure in the Loamshire local government and intimately familiar with Soviet operations has been kidnapped.  He is being held at a small farmhouse in sleepy rural Loamshire and is being interrogated by the Resistance.  Fortunately, a double agent in the Loamshire resistance organisation has leaked information to the Soviets and help is on the way. 

Savage sets his sentries out

This was an extraction mission played on the compound board. I played as the dastardly Soviets and Savage took up the cudgels for the plucky Resistance.  My job was to get in and rescue McGallimaufry while he still had some finger nails left. As the attacker, I had the choice of hitting the site either at night or during daylight. 

I opted to attack at night and took a small, high quality force of four spetznatz troopers equipped with night vision and silenced pistols.  These were led by buccaneering, cigar chomping Kapitan Gowovitch, a ruthless Muscovite, whose ancestors left their native Scotland to serve the Tsar. 

Note: During the last game, I used black and white pictures to represent night fighting. Did you think that added to your reading of the report or do you prefer this more traditional approach? 

One team of three at the front, one GPMG team at the rear

Savage set up his guards in two groups clustering them together so that I wouldn't be able to pick them off.  He used a conscript list, so we presumed that his fighters were made up of demobbed lads from the 2nd Battalion (Territorial) of the Loamshires, reservists who didn't make it to the colours in time to do their bit in Central Europe and who were keen to give Johnny Ivan a damn good kicking now that he was firmly ensconced on their native heath. 

Soviet Spetkatz conducts preliminary reconaissance

In the early hours of the morning, the Trev and Dave fingered their SLRs nervously and stamped their feet against the chill.  The thrum of a distant helicopter set their pulses racing, but soon faded. They tried not to listen too closely to the sounds coming from the out buildings where the prisoner was being interrogated. 

Looking at the board, I reckoned Savage had erred by grouping his sentries so closely together as it made it possible for my troops to avoid contact until they were right on top of the target. 

Do you see anything Dave?

I grouped my troops together and moved cautiously for the first two turns.  This meant trading time for certainty as the scenario has a seven turn time limit. However, moving slowly meant that I was able to get almost on top of one group of sentries before I had to commit. 

Did you hear something? 

Trev, Dave and Tony lurked about the entrance to the farmhouse, walking a beat and failing to spot the Spetznatz that were bellying through the trees towards them.

"Phut! Phut! Phut!"

Closing the distance, the special forces troops padded forward and drew their silenced PB pistols. Dave heard a fox barking far off in the chill night and turned to make a joke to Trev and Tony. 

As he turned, he saw four men appearing out of the shadows and his friends lying sprawled on the ground. He felt something whistle past his face as he stood open mouthed. 

"Oh Gawd, it's the Rooskies!"

Now this was where things were about to get interesting. My flurry of silenced pistol shots had been quite effective downing two out of the three sentries and hitting the third, who made his save. Savage opted to have him use his action to yell and immediately put two noise counters on the table.  The card draw would be key here, if Savage got another activation, he would be able to open up with Dave and put more noise on the table. I might be able to weather two noise counters, but four would be a much more difficult prospect. 

"Phut!"

Unfortunately for Dave, I drew a Red Joker and was Gowovitch was able to transfer his activation to his men and the dumb struck young territorial was silenced by eight rounds of 9mm Makarov. 

Spetnatz stack up at the rear of the building

However, Dave's sacrifice meant that Savage was able to roll to see if his commander had noticed the ruckus. He had, but just enough to arouse his suspicion, not sufficient to raise the alarm.  While I stacked up my lads at the back of the farmhouse, Bill Savage roused himself and went to investigate. 

"Phut! Erk! Phut!"

I had hoped to avoid raising the alarm this early, but decided to stick with the plan and eliminate the GPMG team that was covering the rear of the farmhouse.  

"Get moving you horrible bastard"

"I've a feeling in me water," said Savage fingering his shotgun and went to the outhouse where he rousted McGallimaufry out, just as the Soviet commandos stormed the building. Unable to get through the doors, they hurled grenades into the buildings, but their bird had already flown.  The game was well and truly up. 

A one man Bonegruppa

While the commandos tried to force their way into the out building, Gowovitch pelted for the side door. With only three turns left on the clock. things were beginning to look a little tight. 

"Urrah!" 

Casting caution to the wind, Gowovitch booted the side door in and charged into the yard. Bill Savage opened up on him having retreated to the outbuilding, but missed. Gowovitch fired his Tishina from the hip and the grenade skipped across the window sill to detonate inside the building. 

Yelling the traditional "Urrah" of the Russian infantry, he charged across the yard and shot "Bludger" Collins who was herding a limping McGallimaufry towards the door. 

Things were looking pretty grim for the resistance, but they still had a lewis gun team in the main

building overlooking the yard. If they got an activation early in the turn, they could riddle McGallimaufry and Gowovitch, denying the Russians an important victory. 

All was not lost. 

Get ze pekege!

Fearing this I charged the group of troopers, after they (finally) managed to batter the unexpectedly stout door down, into the yard and unloaded as much suppressive fire into the farm house as we could muster.  This forced the British to hunker down, while their radio man called for help. 

Oh I think they heard us. 

Operational security meant that the Septznatz were operating without the co-operation of local forces and so were out of reach of help.  Unfortunately for Johnny Soviet, Savage rolled very well on the reinforcements roll and got a full 25 points worth of troops. 

Here comes the cavalry 

(note the spetznatz smoke in the distance)

These turned up on the road leading to the farmhouse, but as footsloggers weren't able to get into the fight fast enough.  The Spetznatz deployed smoke to cover their escape.

Thinking about it now, an MG team in a vehicle might have been a better choice. 

Follow me!

With the clock almost out of time and the troopers covering their escape, Gowovitch got McGallimaufry away and we called a halt. 

But all for naught

So in the post game washup, we rolled for Intel and I managed to get a blunder which gave a point of Intel in the Resistance. It appeared that while we had managed to extract McGallimaufry, the leaked information blew the cover of a Soviet agent in the Resistance. This led to a major housing cleaning in the Loamshire cells and the rolling up of Soviet infiltration network. 

Curses! Foiled again. 

We rolled up the next mission, which will be a surveillance job at an airport. I'm not entirely sure how we're going to set that out, but I'm sure we'll have fun doing it. 

Eyes front!

I have tried out a couple of things and come to the following conclusions. 

1) Standard eyes - too manga-ish. 

2) Suggestion of eyebrow - this looked a bit odd to my eye as to make it visible it had to be quite far down on the face and didn't look right. I think this maybe an issue with the fact the bearskin comes down quite low over the eyes than anything else. 

3) Black dot - pictured above, this seems to work as it suggests without being too realistic. I might try it again with brown or dark blue. We shall see. 

Dapol Village Church

Time is a scarce resource at present, but I was passing our local model railway shop a few days ago and realised that my village was missing something vital, a village church. This is a plastic kit from Dapol and is I believe an ex-Airfix production.  I had one, about a million years ago, but rather foolishly left it on top of a gas heater with the result that it became rather wonky rather quickly. 

I also recall that storing it in a manner that preserved the crosses was also a problem.  

I swiped this picture from the Dapol website and it looks like a good paint scheme to me, not too dark.  I'm struggling to date this particular example. It looks early Victorian to my eye,but I know nothing of architecture.  It occurs to me that the village should probably also have a non-conformist hall. 

I'm not entirely sure when I'll get a chance to make a run at putting this little beacon of light together, but it has been run through the dishwasher and is sitting on the bedside table with some glue and a craft knife. 

I shall take a leaf out of Luke's book and in patience possess me my soul. 

Edward French

Lost Hearts by MR James

As I mentioned before reading or this year listening to the ghost stories of MR James is something of a Christmas tradition of mine, while I was doing so I came across this chap, Mr. Edward French of Boston, Massachussets.  Mr. French is a film make up artist by trade and by all accounts a very good one(1). However, he also has a liking for audiobooks and story telling and has taken it upon himself to read some stories in the public domain and record them on YouTube. 

The Time Machine by HG Wells

Mr. French tastes run to dramatic reading with some incidental music and they are, in my opinion, very good indeed.  He is a fine reader and obviously takes care in the recording and production of his work.  The quality is as good as any professional I've come across and there's a fine selection of early horror and science fiction literature to choose from. 

Herbert West Re-Animator by HP Lovecraft

Every so often, the Internet throws up these little gems. So if you've an idle hour and enjoy quality audiobooks for the princely sum of nada, free, gratis and fer nuttin' you could do a lot worse than pay Mr. French a call. 

Happy listening. 

(1) Emmy winning and Oscar nominated in fact. 

London Calling

I always enjoyed the old "Invasion" comic strip in 2000AD. It was created by Pat Mills, the man behind Charley's War and a man for all his faults, knows how to write a good yarn. The central conceit was that in the late 90s, the "Volgan Republic" was set up after a military coup in Russia. This state then invaded Britain (led by Ken Livingstone!) seeking to control North Sea oil. 

The hero was a foul mouthed, Sun reading trucker named Bill Savage, who joined the anti-Volgan resistance after his family were killed by a stray tank shell. He wrought grim vengence on the Volgs with a shotgun and whatever else came to hand. My enthusiasm for Bill has led to some interesting Elhiem figures. 

There's a large element of slapstick in "Invasion", but my thoughts have been turning to a slightly less cartoony Soviet occupation game. With that in mind, Du Gourmand, Capability Savage and I played a game of Black Ops on the 28th. 

Somewhere in the Soviet Second Commonwealth of England circa 1980

(click to embiggen)

After the brief, but bloody war of 1979, the Soviet occupation of what is now called the Commonwealth of England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales has begun. While the phony war continues between the US and the USSR in the Atlantic and the government in exile in Canada gathers itself together, resistance is growing to Soviet rule.  There were many acts of brutality, heroism and cowardice in this clandestine conflict and somewhere between London and the Liverpool Rad Zone, yet another is being played out. 

We played this as a variation of the Assassination scenario from the Black Ops rulesbook. I mustered 60 points of Soviet conscripts, while Savage and Du Gourmand raised 30 points of Militia each. This was our first time messing with the stealth rules (not solo) and on the whole I think it went rather well.  The resistance had learned that a particularly brutal and hated Soviet commander, Maximilian Foyski, was on a tour of inspection in the area and resolved to assassinate him. 

They had information that he would be in the pub for a pint after a hard days secret policing. 

After dark, a sentry walks his beat outside the Peoples Militia station 

(click to embiggen)

I set up the game and the boys started grappling with the stealth rules. One thing that I thought they handed very well was taking a good look at the ground before deploying.  I had snuck a small surprise into the game, by purposely putting two pub models on the board.  The boys quickly realised that there were two potential sites for Foy and adapted their plan according. 

The lads jump an unfortunate Russian

(click to embiggen)

Du Gourmands boys led by "The Guv'nor" sneak on to the board and run slap bang into a Russian sentry, who promptly fluffed his observation roll. He went down in a hail of rifle butts. 

Meanwhile, Savage's forces scout out "The Hare & Hounds"

(click to embiggen)

The boys had a number of close calls during the stealth portion of the game, which weren't helped by that we managed to balls up the rules at a couple of points.  I had played these before solo and had misinterpreted some key points, not realising that sentries were activated on their own cards and not by enemy action. We also forgot the cumulative effects of noise, which gave the attackers a bit more of an advantage. 

The guvnor plays it cool after being spotted by a Russian sentry

(click to embiggen)

Du Gourmand's boys surround "The Red Lion" when a Soviet sentry makes an observation check to spot the Guv'nor covering the rear exit. Fortunately for Du Gourmand, my observation check matched rather than exceeded the target number, so all the sentry could do was turn to face and then hope to spot something more damning on his next activation.  We worked this out after a hurried consultation of the rules, at which point Du Gourmand announced, "So I've been spotted, but not made? Excellent. I'll knock politely then."

The lads surround the pub

(click to embiggen)

One thing we weren't sure of was what to do with the bodies of deceased sentries. It didn't come up during our game, but I didn't see anything in the rules covering this particular situation. We decided that a common sense approach would be best and that bodies could be picked up as part of an activation. 

While the guv'nor covers the back, the boys go in the front and discover that the pub is full of locals rather than Russian troops. A jammy roll on the civilian interaction table reveals that Foyski is in the other pub. 

The balloon goes up - Savage (with shotgun) running from the scene

(click to embiggen)

Meanwhile, a recce of the Hare & Hounds led to a frustrating series of observation rolls for Savage.  There was no telling which part of the Hare & Hounds, Foyski was in. A resistance member entered the pub and tries to suss out the locals. This goes spectacularly badly with the inebriated local loudly announcing " 'ee's got a bloody gun under 'is coat!" 

This generated a noise marker (white block) and finally raised the alarm. Foyski, who was in the back lounge, immediately made a break for the police station. 

Shots ring out inside the Hare & Hounds

(click to embiggen)

But before he managed to get out of the pub, the rest of the resistance cell bailed into the lounge and riddled him with carbine fire. 

Savage had selected carbines for his troops for reasons best known to himself, I was wondering what that would be in the late 70s context.  Privately held .22 birding or small game rifles I'd imagine. 

Soviet reinforcements dashed out of the old police station and started for the two pubs. 

Soviets reinforcements brass up the rear of The Red Lion

(click to embiggen)

With Foyski dead, the resistance started to pull out, but didn't quite make it entirely unscathed. Savage's GPMG team who were covering the retreat were hit by a hail of Kalashnikov fire and went down, while Du Gourmand's boys in the Red Lion were subjected to a barrage of RPGs, grenades and bullets. Luckily for them, they managed to make their saves and fled the pub as quickly as they could. 

On the whole, we were very happy with how the game turned out. The stealth rules once we worked them out properly, there is no substitute for playing a game against an opponent, were slick and added a drama to what could have been a dull exercise for the defending player. The common sense approach employed in the rules was good and all concerned were eager to play again. 

The boys rolled for Intel and gained a point. Intel points are accumulated over a series of loose campaign games and are spent for the opportunity to trigger a final showdown scenario. We rolled for the next scenario while tidying up and got a hostage rescue scenario set in a rural farm, but with the resistance defending.  

We shall see how this plays out. 

Irish Guards

I was messing around with these over Christmas. These are classic toy soldiers from the Prince August range. I always think of the Guards as the archetypal toy soldier which is probably the legacy of Christmas biscuit tins and storybooks. They cast neatly and were under coated in red spray from army painter. Details were block painted in with Vallejo colours. I'm still in two minds about how to do the eyes as previous attempts have looked a bit odd, the sort of staring manga eyes that follow you around the room. I think some consultation may be in order. 

Uniform, as always, is that of the Irish Guards. 

Sent from my iPhone

30th Lancer

Quite an imposing sight

Over Christmas, I did some completely frivolous mucking about with some Prince August moulds. This is, of course, as opposed to the very serious business of building armies for wargaming.  I quite enjoy casting, there's something quite soothing about doing something with your hands.  This was my first time messing about with a cavalry mould in 1/32 scale, but for a first effort he hasn't come out too badly. The only flaw that I can see in this specimen is that one of the horses ears is missing, but I think a little green stuff will sort that out relatively easily.

 

I'm rather happy with how the lance turned out

One thing that I've noticed with cavalry figures is that they take a great deal of metal, but they have a pleasing solidity in the hand that is quite satisfying.

 

For the most part this cast quite cleanly, though I had to have two trys at the arms, which didn't quite cast correctly. The lance is a puzzlement as it comes in two parts, but with a little care they went together reasonably well. I'm not sure I like having the pennant as a cast on part, as I think I would have prefered to add my own. We shall try it as is for the time being. 

 

The figure was trimmed and glued with epoxy as standard superglue wouldn't be quite up to the job. If the epoxy does not do the job, we might have to consider pinning.

 

The uniform is that of the 30th (Royal) Lancers, though there may be possibilities for paint conversions for other regiments.

Sitting a little far back for my taste

 

Prince August describes the 30th as follows;

 

 

"This unit was raised in Hyderabad, India, in 1862, by Captain John Gordon of the Coldstream Guards, by a treaty with the independent Nizam of Hyderabad; who was forced to give up large tracts of his land to pay for its upkeep and maintenance. According the the treaty the regiment was to provide security for the Nizam, but for the British authorities it served the added purpose of keeping his own power in check. Thus, when the Nizam's younger brother rebelled in 1929, the regiment moved into Hyderabad City and restored order. Later in 1854, the units name was changed to the 4th Cavalry and it became part of the Hyderabad contingent. During the Indian mutiny (1857-1858) Gordons Horses served as part of the Central Indian Field Force and took part in the defeat of a large rebel army near Mehidpus. It took part also in the relief of Neemuch and the capture of Jhansi. The regiment later saw action in the opening phases of the second Afgan War (1879), in several action o the North-west frontier. It served in Burma from 1887, undertaking police and anti-guerrilla activities. In 1890 it was renamed the 4th lancers, and again in 1903 it was renamed the 30th Lancers."

I shall have to correct that lean

On the whole, I'm relatively happy with this first effort, though there was a lingering uneasiness that I couldn't quite put my finger on until I looked at the photographs a second time.  I can't ever recall having seen a clean shaven Indian lancer. While I could add a painted on beard, I don't think that mere paint could possibly do justice to the magnificent facial hair sported by our brothers on the sub-continent.

I don't think paint could do justice to this.

(Image property of Amit & Naroop from their Singh Project)