Eight Guardia painted - the Seccion is completed

At Salute I picked up a couple of packs of Guardia Civil from Empress Miniatures to complete my Seccion for Chain of Command Espana.

Of all the Spanish Civil War factions I have painted so far, the Guardia Civil really are the easiest to paint, they are basically German Uniform WWI, Beige Brown, US Tan Earth, Flesh Tone, Black and Gunmetal grey, I reckon in total no more than 30 minutes a figure to do.

Once they have been given a coat of matt lacquer I repaint the headgear with gloss varnish.

Here is a selection of close-ups.

Finally a shot of the entire Seccion (Platoon), plus a few spare figures. You'll note the Warbases '1p Trays'  I also picked these up at Salute and this week textured and painted all thirty of those. These are just six of them.

All being well these will be used on Thursday evening when James and myself introduce Pete and Simon to Chain of Command Espana.

Making a start on the Warbases goodies

Today I have made a start on the lovely freebies I got from Warbases last week.

I have built the Albion truck and the Musketeers have been cleaned up and stuck on bases ready for priming.

The Albion goes together quite easily and probably took about 30 minutes following the very easy instructions on the Warbases site.

I made a bit of a mess of the tilt, but that was of my own doing!

The Gripping Beast French sergeant is to give an idea of scale.

Another dozen Poilu

I've not posted any painting updates since Partizan a couple of weeks ago and indeed I have been quite idle on the painting front but have completed a dozen more French for the Verdun project at a leisurely pace.

I've done another nine Gripping Beast and three Old Glory casualties.

There is a French Officer who has disdained the use of an Adrian helmet and instead wears a kepi.

He wears the traditional white gloves and carries a cane. I only noticed the dark splodge on the coat after taking the photos, that will get a quick tidy up.

I have done another pair of sergeants, again, one sports a red kepi, the other has his helmet in horizon bleu, made a change from the usual dark greys.

Another pair of bombers, one bandaged and the other in an horizon bleu helmet.

A V-B launcher team, the V-B cup is just made out of a blob of green-stuff.

The 40mm base is split down the middle to allow casualty removal.

A pair of Poilu armed with Lebel Model 1886 rifles. Again I broke up the helmet colours and did one in horizon bleu.

All the above figures are from the Woodbine Design Company available from Gripping Beast.

Finally, three casualty figures from Old Glory, certainly not as nice a figures as those from Gripping Beast, but they do only two different casualty markers so these add some variety. They look bloody awful when you get them out of the bag, but once cleaned up and primed start to look a lot more like something you may want to paint.

Opening up the goodie bag

Recently Warbases ran a give-away on their Facebook page, when their page hit 500 likes then a lucky winner would win a selection of products.

I don't consider myself very lucky, but this time I hit the Jackpot and Diane got in touch to get my postal details and yesterday a package arrived.

I was soon unbagging and here is the contents.

First up was six bags of their excellent laser-cut bases. I used loads of these so these will join the other load of MDF that is stuffed into a 9L Really Useful box and now doubt will be used over the coming months.

Recently they have started adding some laser-cut WWI vehicles to the range and these two will come in very handy with my latest project.

Firstly an Albion Lorry

Here is an assembled version from the Warbases web site.

Also included was a Model T Ambulance

Again a photo from the Warbases site of the assembled model

I've just about finished painting all my Poilu and the weather outlook for the weekend is poor so I may try to crack on with these over the next few days.

Finally a set of four very nice Musketeers

These are very nice sculpts and a great match for the characters from the recent BBC series. I recently purchased Flashing Steel from Ganesha Games, so I think these will fit in nicely.

I'm really chuffed with my goodie bag of freebies from Warbases, some great items that fit in well with both existing projects and ones in the pipeline.

Great stuff!

A bad day for Blighty

It's been a bloody long time since I last played Bag the Hun, but on Sunday Martin agreed to have a go at it on our Tuesday night gaming session. 

I set up a pretty simple scenario. A Rotte of four ME109s escorting four HE111 would be bounced by a flight of two sections of three Spitfires. I would play the RAF and Martin the Luftwaffe.

Rolling for the pilot quality the Germans rolled fantastically and ended up with four veteran fighter pilots while the British comprised three Regular pilots and three Sprogs.

Red section went immediately for the bombers while Yellow section tried to tangle with the ME109's this went disastrously, two Spitfires were immediately out of action with a dead pilot and a catastrophic structural failure. Yellow One was also wounded and blacked out was spiraling to the ground although our hero recovered.

Red section closed in on the bombers and let rip a fusillade of fire, the net result was two Spitfires now had jammed guns and one Spitfire did so badly he fell out of formation and all to show for it was slight disruption to the bombers formation.

Having dispatched Yellow section the Rotte went for Red section immediately shooting one down and damaging another so badly that it had to break contact and head for home. Yellow One having recovered came back into the fight and got on the tail of one one ME109 but badly loused up the firing and was picked off by a wingman.

For the loss of two pilots dead, three shot-down Spitfires and two damaged Spitfires the RAF had only succeeded in knocking one of the HE111 out of formation and that would likely still have completed its mission.

Only a handful of photographs, I was far too busy remembering how to play!

Very last minute replacements before Partizan

On Saturday I had the bright idea of painting just a handful more figures before our game on Sunday. So, that morning I did the base-coat and wash, the highlights after lunch, the bases during the half-timer break in the FA Cup Final and a spray of varnish that evening.

The two casualties are from Old Glory while the remainder are from Gripping Beast The VB launcher was made by removing the bayonet and adding a green-stuff cup to the muzzle.

Being a rush-job I did not have the opportunity to photograph them before hand, so just a couple of quick snaps before we started setting up the terrain.

Bois Des Caures at Partizan

Yesterday James, Dave, Matt and myself put on our Bois Des Caures game at Partizan.

Driants command bunker

The game is based upon the attacks of the 22nd February 2016, the previous day approximately 80,000 shell fell on the area of woods 1500m x 1000m and German patrols had seized the initial French line of supporting positions.

‘Of every five Chasseurs, two are buried alive in their dug-outs, two are wounded and the fifth waits.’ 

Having survived the two horrendous bombardments, Driant’s remaining men men are now facing a huge German attack in the confusion of the shattered woods.

We played with random forces on each side. The French were comprised of Colonel Driant (Ranking Senior Leader), Lieutenant Robbin (Senior Leader), six sections of Chasseurs (see below), three Hotchkiss machine-guns and an adjutant and a sniper.

Chasseur section
NCO: roll a d6:

• 1-2 Wounded Junior Leader with rifle (1 command initiative only)
• 3-5 Junior Leader with rifle (2 command initiatives)
• 6 Superior Junior Leader with rifle (this represents a heroic Sergeant or perhaps a young Lieutenant; 2 command initiatives;  can activate on a 3 or 4)

The NCO is accompanied by 2d6 Chasseurs with rifles.  If a double is rolled, the squad includes a VB rifle launcher team of 2 men.  For every 4 Chasseurs, 1 will be a Bomber.

The French had two special rules for this game:

EN AVANT MES BRAVES
A French officer spending all his command initiatives to rally a group or squad may remove and additional point of shock.

‘MY POOR ROBIN, THE ORDER IS TO STAY WHERE WE ARE’
Force Morale starts at 10.  The French players always subtracts two from his roll on the Bad Things Happen table, so that French morale is harder to break during the game.

The French jump-off points are represented by each of the defended positions in the second and third lines.

There were two German platoons. The first led by Lt Gericke (Senior Leader) with six sections (see below) he is supported by a Medium Machine Gun with 5 crew, a Flamethrower and a Sniper Team

The second German platoon was led by Lt von Friedrich (Senior Leader) with six sections (see below) he is supported by an off-table Medium Machine Gun, a Flamethrower and a Sniper Team

 The German sections comprise of an NCO (Junior Leader) with rifle and D6 plus 6 infantry. For every 4 infantry one will be a bomber.

The German special rules for the scenario are:

HANDGRANATEN!
When a German leader attached to a team or squad uses 2 command initiatives, he may lead a charge against any enemy within 12” preceded by a hail of grenades.  Roll 1d6 (-1 or -2 if enemy is in soft/hard cover respectively).  Scores as follows:

• 1-2 one grenade hits
• 3-4 two grenades hit
• 5-6 three grenades hit

Dice for the effect of the grenades, then the team or squad may move up to 3d6 into close combat.

FORCE MORALE
Force Morale starts at 10.

The German jump-off points are pre-set with three placed per player.

How the game played out....

James would play the French while Matt took the role of von Friedrich while Dave played Gericke.

Under the cover of the preliminary bombardment both German forces pushed on towards the second line of emplacements. Unable to man their forward positions the French deploy a Hotchkiss in the second line but accurate rifle and machine-gun fire soon have it in trouble.

Lieutenant Robbin rushes to the aid of the Hotchkiss rallying the crew and keeping the gun in the fight before it is panicked.

With determination von Friedrich seizes the right hand emplacement of the French second line while Gericke closes in on the left hand position. Robbin rushes to rally the poor Poilu in that position but when all seems lost rushes back to get the Hotchkiss back into the fight.

Both German players use Chain of Command dice to push up jump-off markers to their new gains and deploy reinforcements from their.

Another Hotchkiss in the French third line soon opens up on Gerickes force but they continue to apply pressure on that flank.

In the centre the German attack is stalled by the troops in the central revetment and stops completely once the Gefreiter is killed stone dead; However, with the Boshe holding the position on each flank that position is soon untenable.

The Germans consolidate their gains and then push on to the second line. Robbin redeploys the Hotchkiss to cover the threat on his right but accurate fire kills him and the troops abandon their positions in the line.

Things are looking  bad for the French and after losing two sections, the Hotchkiss, Robbin and three of their positions they are now in the end-game of their Force Morale track having only two points left.

Driant bolsters the third line of resistance but the French morale collapses as a stray bullet strikes the NCO commanding the Hotchkiss in the third line and the crew panic.

The game played really well and we had a solid five hours of action with chum James W filling in for a while while we did some shopping. Matt also provided a period feast for us, Port (in lieu of pinard), croissants, saucisses, pain, moutard and chocolat.

Resources 

The terrain is from the collection of myself and James a lot of scratch building, but emplacements, shell holes and suchlike from Kallistra, Early War Miniatures and Amera Plastic Mouldings. The snow is from Woodland Scenics and it took about 1.5 cannisters to do this area.

Dave painted about 1/3 of the Germans and 1/3 of the French, James painted about 1/3 of the French, I painted about 1/3 of the French and 2/3 of the Germans.

I think that all the Germans are from the Great War Miniatures range from Northstar. The majority of the French are from Woodbine by Gripping Beast, quite a few from Scarab Miniatures and a handful from Brigade Games.

The very talented James painted the 8ft of backdrop that really sets off the game.

As usual we met many old friends and made some new acquaintances.

My photos really do not seem to have come out that well but Darrell got some really god ones that are on his blog.

Here are a few more of my photos.