Happy Saint Patrick's Day

Leprecon - Part Two - Kursk

Over on the Soviet right, massive carnage ensues

My contribution to Leprecon was a Memoir '44 scenario, specifically the Battle of Prokhorovka.  Now in line with my policy of stealing over men's glory, it was an official scenario. I merely added our own slightly modified version of the Overlord rules and dollied the setup a bit. 

Some background on the battle, taken from the Official Scenario notes. 

The tank battle of Prokhorovka was a clash between two immense armored forces. As the SS Panzer Corps started its advance, the Soviet artillery erupted and soon after the 5th Guards Tank Army under Gen. Pavel Rotmistrov accelerated toward the German advance. Rotmistrov's plan was to close quickly to negate the advantage held by the longer range German tanks.

The fighting became a swirling melee and soon the battlefield was littered with the shattered remains of smoking armor. Losses on both sides were enormous. Combined, over 700 tanks were lost and because the battlefield remained in Soviet control the Germans could not recover and repair their losses.

The stage is set, the battle lines are drawn, and you are in command. The rest is history.

An unusual assortment of armour. 

A Matchbox T-34 from Ebay faces a diecast Tiger. The Lendlease Cromwell was assembled by an 11 year old Kinch with crazy glue. They were £2 in a bargain shop and I bought several of them, only to paint them twenty years later. 

I'm a little sketchy on the layout of the scenario, but I think this Build Up Area is meant to represent the village of Ponyri, also known as "Little Stalingrad". I added some smoke and a firepower light to represent the ruined town burning. I think I might try and use black smoke next time. But where to get black pillow stuffing?

  

Oh dear

A Revell Panzer IV finds itself facing a horse of Airfix T-34s. The Airfix T-34 has a number of weird ridges on the turret which make it impossible to add decals.  The Russians as you can see from the Frontline Wargaming explosion markers have already taken some damage.  

The battle entire - The Soviets won this one. 

I indulged into some Warlord Games firepower lights. Here's one showing that Revell Panzer IV catching fire.

I liked it so much, I took the same shot twice. The flashing lights were a real hit and lots of folks commented on them.

One of the pleasures of playing at conventions is meeting new players. I was introduced to Comrade Bob, a pal of Arquinsel's who led the Soviet armour on to do great execution amongst some overly bold German infantry.

Though the German counter attack was brutal.

 I was lucky that Donogh and Arquinsel volunteered vehicles or I would have been in serious trouble. As for rating the troops under Memoir '44, the German tanks were in Panzer Grey if they were regular armour and camouflage if they were elite. Despite thinking that I would never need any more German armour, it appears I will have to pick up a box of Plastic Soldier Panzer IV. 

A later game, the Russians romped to victory in this one. 

The German demonstrating serious pointy helmet wearing skills. 

Deep in conference with a representative of the Luftwaffe.

Overall, I was happy with the game. It didn't break the bank. It ran four times over the weekend and the honours were even for both sides. The game took about an hour, which is about right for a convention game I think. I think the bits that I enjoyed the most were the silly flourishes, like the hats, the firepower lights and the little diorama's that I set up (but forgot to take pictures of). I won't be bringing a Command & Colours game to Gaelcon this year as I've been asked to do a Little Wars game, but I think the system is sound and I like the opportunity to put on a bit of a show. 

Leprecon - Part One

Wallace & Gromit close in on the Telly Tubbies

Leprecon was a great success with over two hundred at the con, some great games and generally a very good atmosphere. I'll be putting up some pictures over the next few days - but I think special mention has to go to the Wild Geese Wargaming Club's Telly Tubbies Game. This was run a number of years ago, but the thinking behind it is this. 

The suits at RTE have cancelled all children's television programming barring the Telly Tubbies because their success makes all other programming superfluous. The now out of a job characters decide to take matters into their own hands and descend on the Tubbies in order to kidnap them and hold them to ransom, trading the captive Tubbies for renewed contracts. 

The South Park boys advance 

I'm not entirely sure what children's show these are from, Noddy I think? 

Of course, the other characters had exactly the same idea - so what follows was a tense game of "Catch the Tubby" with quite a bit of internecine strife. 

Hammer Smurf goes in for the kill

The band close in, working out very quickly that the randomly moving Tubbies are much easier to stomp into submission if they can be cornered. 

Eeeh Gromit! Smurfs!

The South Park Boys advance while Thomas & Co chase a running tubby towards the table edge. 

The fabulous Duck brothers - their purpose was obscure

The horror - the horror 

This was an extremely silly game and great fun. I believe the South Park Boys & the Band shared the honours at the end of the day, while the Smurfs and Wallace & Gromit had succumbed to mutual annihilation. 

Curiously enough this is the rare example of a game that I enjoyed, that doesn't have me considering a new period. Well done to the Wild Geese. 

The Freemasonry of the Hobby

Shell bursts from Frontline Wargaming 

I'm burning the midnight oil trying to get everything ready for Leprecon tomorrow. Like for example these resin shellbursts from Frontline Wargaming. I using these to represent hits on armour units in Memoir '44 as cramming three 1/72 tanks into a five inch hex would just look silly. 

I'm also indebted to the Freemasonry of the hobby as both Donogh and Arquinsel have helped me out with some 1/72 armour that I was short. Stout fellows the pair of them. 

Right, back to the grind stone. 

A plethora of Russians

Ivan and...

It's been a heavy few days in work and there's been little time for distraction - but I have managed to get some very necessary work done of the Soviets I'll need for Leprecon. These troops were based for Warhammer Panzer Battles, which should I think give you some idea of how long ago I painted them. They're perfectly serviceable however and I'll be using them for my Memoir '44 game at Leprecon this weekend. 

...his little friend

I finally got around to basing the Plastic Soldier Company guns. While I'm not particularly happy with them and I'd like to add some weathering, shell casings, etc to the bases - they will do for the time being. They are lovely little models really and I just wish I could do a better job with them. Needs must where the Devil drives. 

Soviet Heavy Metal with fancy rear firing MGs

Leprecon sort of crept up on me this year - but I actually think I'll have everything ready. There was a mild panic when I realised that about half of the thirteen T34's that I had were actually T34-85 and therefore rather out of period for the Kursk game I was hoping to run. The Soviets will therefore be fielding a rather motley assortment of Lend Lease material which I had already made, but not painted. 

The KV-1's above will be representing Elite Soviet Armour at the game, though marketed as "fast builds" - they're a little more complicated than Plastic Soldier Company and a lot more complicated than Armourfast. I got so frustrated with the construction of the wheels that I chopped most of the tabs off and jammed everything in with extra rations of glue. 

That said, once together - they look OK and they are currently sitting under their first coat of spray in the shed. 

At last some properly dressed Russians 

Customs have seized my copy of Command & Colours Napoleonics: Russian Expansion for tax. Not only do I have to pay E9.38 in tax, but also a E6 handling fee.

Adding insult to injury,  they would only accept a personal cheque (which I don't have) or a postal order as payment. I would have been less surprised if I'd been instructed to hand deliver payment in groats in a horse and cart.  The postal order cost me an additional E2.10. Bother!

Old Stuff Day

New life in something old

This is taken from Peter over at the Single Handed Admiral, who got it by way of Bleaseworld. 

"On this day, each blogger can go through their history and find posts that they’d like to shake the dust off and present again to the community at large. Some suggestions for content that would be good to post: 

* Posts that you considered special that didn’t receive as much attention as you thought they deserved
* Content that people liked in the past, but haven’t seen recently 
* Posts you might have created before your site received much traffic, and now deserve to be reshown
* Or any content you’re particularly proud of!"


Posts that didn't get as much attention as they deserved

Teenage Kicks was a piece I wrote that was part mediation on life, part kit review and part comic turn. It hasn't received many page views, but I thought it was rather good. 

Gangster Squad was a movie review I wrote recently and I actually think I made a decent argument. Not one that attracted many page views though. 

Staff Corps Dragoons is a post about an unusual unit I added to my wargames army. There aren't too many Staff Corps Dragoons kicking around in Peninsular British armies and I think Mark did a good job on them. 


Posts that people have liked in the past. 


Spanish infantry from Falcata and Hat, these were some of the first figures Krisztian painted for me and they are the single most viewed post on the blog. 

Airfix Waterloo Farmhouse, this was a series of work in progress shots from Capability Savages work on the classic model kit. Again stealing another man's glory and the second most popular post on the blog. 

Making the most of model trees is the third most popular blog post and the only one of the top three that is actually based on my own work!


Posts that I'm proud of

The March to the Boyne, this is hands down the post I'm proudest of. I was very happy with how it went and it was a real achievement for two not particularly athletic chaps. 

Happy New Year! was a post featuring a 120mm drummer that I painted for a family member. It's still the best piece of painting I've ever done. It also features Cousin Basil. 

One of the things that I'm proudest about my blog is that while I do post about modelling and painting and all that flapdoodle, I actually manage to post about games played. I know far too many wargamers who only get in a dozen games a year, I was one of them for too long. However, Peninsular Battles is a record of a succession of games actually played. 

Zvesda Lifeguard Cossacks

"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack companies,
trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if poured out
of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.

One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw the
Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just waking
up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and horses.

War & Peace Chapter VI, Book 13

A shipment arrived yesterday from our man in Budapest. I had intended to take pictures of them, but it seemed that I was unlikely to better the photographs taken by the man himself. 

These are Zvesda Lifeguard Cossacks and to be fair, they are generally considered to be some of Zvesda's lesser work. That may actually be the case, but I think that merely highlights the stellar quality of the vast majority of Zvesda sculpts. But that aside, I think TK has done some wonderful work on these. 

The Russian army in the latest expansion only requires one Guard Light Cavalry unit and I think these fulfill that role admirably. The Lifeguard Cossacks and the Lifeguard Hussars were a conjoined unit originally, though they were seperated soon after they were raised. 

The cossacks were raised by Czar Paul and reached a strength of seven squadrons (six field, one depot) by 1812. They look rather well, but I've found precious little about their service in the field. The few British observers I've come across rate the Russian Lifeguard rather highly, but the only reference I've found to their  deployment in battle refers to the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. 

In 1813 at the Battle of Leipzig the Lifeguard Cossacks counterattacked the French and Saxon cuirassiers from the front while the Prussian Neumark dragoons and Silesian cuirassiers struck from the eastern flank. It was too much for the French, they were pushed back everywhere and pursued until the positions of Drouot's batteries. The pursuers were halted only by artillery fire and counter-attack made by the Old Guard dragoons.

Marbot explained why this happened: "This treatment resulted in the enemy centre yielding and it was about to give way when the Tzar of Russia who had witnessed the disaster, rapidly advanced the numerous cavalry of his Guard which, encountering the squadrons of Latour-Maubourg in the state of confusion which always follows an all-out charge, repelled them in their turn and took back 24 of the guns which they had just captured." Tsar Alexander seeing the charge of the Lifeguard Cossacks, exlaimed: "They are going into fight as if they were coming to a wedding."

(taken from here.) 

Command & Colours Napoleonics rates Guard Light Cavalry as a four strength Guard unit. So they are equal to the French Guard Light Cavalry, in fact they may actually be slightly better as they may ignore two flags, which makes them particularly tenacious in battle. 

Regardless of any question of their effectiveness, they are handsome and I'm really pleased to have them on the strength as they bring tone to what would otherwise be an unsightly scuffle. This latest batch has pricked me to step up my infantry basing efforts, so that I can get the infantry and the regular cossacks off to Mark. 

So inch by inch my Russian army grows. 

It's probably a waste, but I still love having individualised casualty markers. I think I'm going to have to come up with some way of storing them efficiently.