German Volksgrenadiers

 

Our club is having a a Chain of Command Gamesday on April 26th. Three of us have committed to putting on games and I thought it would be a good idea to play games in 3 scales just to show to gamers that CoC is not scale dependent. One of us has 15mm platoons and 2 of us have 20mm platoons. We did however as an early club project, paint up the Band of Brothers boxset from Warlord Games which contained German Grenadiers and American Airborne. I felt that with some additional figures, I could put on a 28mm game using these figures. I am limited by the fact that I have very little 28 WWII terrain but after some thought I decided to put on a Hurtgenwald game which in most cases just requires forests of which I have plenty.

CoC2 has platoon composition for a Volksgrenadier Platoon so I decided to go with this but after Graham checked the club figure count, I could see that I was short 8 STG-44 armed figures. I really did not want to spend any money on Warlord Games figures as I am not interested in collecting a 28mm WWII army and these figures would end up being a club donation. But I did have STLs for the Hurtgenwald campaign from the RKX kickstarter. There were 3 different STG-44 armed figures so I printed off 8 of these on my Elegoo 4k resin printer. 

The figures themselves are appropriately sculpted but I found that they printed with somewhat weak details. I am not sure if this was due to my printer resolution. I did find them somewhat difficult to paint because of this, but I soldiered on and ended up with this. They will do for the gamesday!

We are planning to do 2 games each on the same terrain but with different scenarios. I have decided to go with the Probe and the Attack and Defend scenarios. The first scenario requires minimal support but the 2nd scenario does have a significant requirement so I suspect I will be painting up a few more figures.  

German Vehicles in 1/72

 

I have had my resin printer busy recently filling in some gaps for my WWII German vehicle collection. I have a Mar 3 Pro and am using water washable ABS resin which works like a charm. I have all switched over to Lychee Slicer which offers much improved pre processing STL files. I have yet to have a failure with it and the hollowing and placement of drain holes is really quite good.

Almost all these STL's are off Thingiverse except the Hetzer which is from RKX kickstarter. It is a bit of work to figure out the scale sometimes but I have found that this online Scale Converter is quite useful. 

37 U304(f) P107

SdKfz 222

SdKfz 221

Pak 40 auf S307(f)

15cmsFH13 Lorraine Schlepper(f)

Hetzer

SdKfz 232

SdKfz 231

I went and counted my German vehicles and have 47! Too many maybe but I think I am close to finished. Probably need 1 more EW PzIV and a Jagdpanzer. 

Thanks for looking.

Troops for "O" Group-Finally

 

After several months delay, mostly because I hate painting 6mm infantry figures, I have completed pretty solid Early War German and Soviet forces to play Eastern Front games using Dave Brown's "O" Group rules for battalion wargaming in WWII.

We played a couple of test games virtually using plastic bases in March and April of this year when the rules first came out. I was not sure about going with 6mm troops but I really felt my 20mm WWII were out of scale for this game. I have a lot of AFV's in 6mm which were left over from my Rommel project so I thought why not. I am also having a lot of storage and transport issues and I really needed to decrease my wargaming footprint in our house (interestingly enough, all my 6mm stuff as well as some 28mm skirmish gaming figures and terrain for the FIW, Napoleonic's and SAGA will be taking a trip to Montreal to establish permanent residence in my apartment there). 

I also decided to play the game in centimetres rather than inches so I have put together quite a bit of terrain for this project. In retrospect, I might of gone with 10mm or 12 mm figures but now I am done, I believe I probably made the correct choice. But I have to say I got no pleasure out of painting these 6mm infantry. Now have to think whether I am going to add a Early War Western European force due to the release of the new source book for this theatre. 

Does not look like much but it took quite a bit of work and organization. I am playing on a 100x60cm mat, which I suspect will be fine. The Soviet vehicles are all resin 3D printed as are some of the German vehicles but most are metal from various manufacturers. The infantry and the guns are all from Heroics and Ros, the guns are OK but the figures themselves were not that great with a lot of flash, MicroArmor are much better. The bases are all metal and variably sized, but the infantry bases are 20x14mm. I had planned to go with a 1:1 scale but the infantry base had to fit with my plan to game in centimetres, so each squad (base) is around 1:2 scale with 4-5 figures per base.

Soviet OB

HQ Base

FO Base

4 Artillery Supports

3 Company Commanders-A,B,C

Company A-9 bases

Company B-9 bases

Company C-9 bases

3x Maxim sections

2x 45mm ATG section

2x 76mm IG sections

2x 57mm ATG sections

14x Gaz trucks

3x M3A1 Scout cars

2x T34 platoons

2x T26 platoons

2x T60 platoons

T70 platoon

2x BA10 platoons

SU76 platoon

German OB

HQ Base

FO Base

4 Artillery Supports

3 Company Commanders-A,B,C

Company A-9 bases

Company B-9 bases

Company C-9 bases

3x MMG sections

2x Panzerschrek sections

60mm Mortar section

2x Pak36 ATG section

2x IG18 sections

2x Pak38 ATG sections

12x Opel trucks

PzIV B platoon

PzIV F platoon

2x PzIII platoons

2x  PzII platoons

Pz38 platoon

Sdkfz 222 platoon

Sdkfz 232 platoon

Sdkfz 234 platoon

I appreciate some of the weapons listed above were not available in the EW Eastern Front.

For transport, I use a Chessex troop box which can easily carry 2 complete battalions with all the extras with lots of space to spare. Each army his adhered to a magnetic sheet. I suspect that I might be actually able to fit a 3rd layer in the box.......will it be French or Dutch!

It is funny to think that this blog started off documenting my progress painting 28mm Napoleonic figures and now it is almost completely devoted to Action Reports but I do have several nearly finished painting projects on the painting table which I hope to photograph before the end of the year.

WWII AB Germans

 

Over the last couple of months, I have been painting new German and British platoons for Chain of Command. I had been using Plastic Soldier Company 1/72 figures and they have done great service, fighting many battles. They were getting damaged and there were a few things I wanted to change as I was having problems with transport as well as wanting no multi-based figures. When transitioning from a 28mm Napoleonic to new 18mmAB army, I decided to go with metal bases that could be placed in magnetic drawers and easily transported. The troops have travelled back and forth to Montreal several times now without any damage so I decided to transition my WWII figures to a similar system.

As AB Figures has an excellent selection of German and British figures in 20mm, I decided to go primarily with them. I find WWII much more interesting to paint than Napoleonics (and of course easier) so I decided to take on the project myself. I have finally got around to finishing the painting and basing so time to take some photos.

Rifle or Panzergrenadier Platoon with Supports

Basic Platoon for Late War (extra SL)-3 squads of 10 men each with a 3 man LMG team and a 6 man Rifle Team. The single SL has a PanzerSchreck team in the platoon. As you can see the Leaders are marked with red flowers but the SL's also have a clump of bushes on the base. The LMG teams are aslo marked with flowers to make it easy to distinguish them from the Riflemen. I also used different coloured flowers on each squad.

I suspect this may disturb some as I do appreciate that Early War Germans and Panzergrenadiers had some uniform variations from LW Grenadiers. But for me this is less important. I am more interesting in playing the game with easily identfible weapons and teams. So above we have the figures to turn the platoon into a PzG platoon (2 three man LMG teams with 3 riflemen) or an EW platoon (2 SL's and a 5cm Mortar team without the PzSck Team.

5 man MMG Team

FO, Sniper and an extra PzSck Team

Dirty Nazi Tricks for EW games

6 man Engineer squad with Flamethrower Team. I plan to upgrade this to a 16 man Pioneer Squad for EW games, so holding off on a JL for now until I have this sorted. I should also point out that these figures are from CPModels.

Late War AT Guns with gun team and JL. The gun is easily changed out. Mixture of PSC, EWM, and Zvezda.

Early War AT and AI Gun Teams.

CI marker system: SL, SL with 2 CI, Wounded JL with 2 CI (no activation this turn), JL with 1 CI, and a Gun team JL with 1 CI. These should be all pretty obvious on the table during a game and i hope unobstrusive. These are mdf with rare earth magnets embedded so they attach to the metal base thus quickly changed out.

And finally on to the actual transport system:

I glued some magnetic sheet onto the heavy card separator. It has a cloth tab that I can use to easily remove the separator from the box with out having to reach into the box and pull out each figure. You will note 4 rare earth magnets in each corner. I am pretty confident I will be able to fit in Squad 4.

The Test!

This is a large hard plastic box that are perfect for 1/72 figures. It comes with 2 cardboard separators with cloth tabs. They come from Chessex dice and are easily obtained on ebay. I have my British Paratroop Platoon in their smaller box. The separator is held in place by 4 rare earth agnets that I glued into the base of the box.

So a few additions still needed, I am working on a Bison now but I believe I have most of the necessary AFV's for both EW and LW. I plan to paint a 4th squad as a support but all in time!

Going with a Bang

We had a very close and exciting game on CoC Monday night in Montreal. My favourite scenario in the 1940 source book is Going with a Bang. It is challenging to blow the culverts. This was a pickup game, and as I played the attacker in the last game, I went with being the defender (Chasseur Ardennais) in this game.

Chasseur Ardennais 1 Platoon (FM 9)

Core

SL

GdC 1
GdC 2
DBT Lance Grenade Section
Demolition Team

CoC Dice

Supports (5)
2 Demolition Teams
Franc Tireurs
Red Dice

Schützen 2 Platoon (FM 9)

Core

SLx2

5cm Mortar Team

Squad 1

Squad 2

Squad 3

Supports (9)
Shabby Nazi Trick Jean Claude
Shabby Nazi Trick 5th Columnist
MMG Team
le.IG 18 IG

The Patrol Phase

I will not bother with an AR but will follow with a few photos taken when the game was over.

Charge set!

DBT Team

I was able to quickly weaken the le.18 IG

The German left flank

Almost broke!

The German line of attack

Troops are actually in the house.

The Belgian line of defense

It was a fun game, I made a big mistake exposing my 1st demolition team early in the game trying to take out the exposed culvert. The game then settled in, Pierre-Yves deployed all his squads early on in hard cover behind the wall. He set up a pretty good base of fire. I countered by placing my 2 large Group de Combats in the two houses on my flanks. I then placed my DBT section behind the hedge on my left flank. They wew pretty successful with throwing down smoke mortars.

It was an odd game in respect to dicing, the Chasseurs start with a CoC dice and I was able to accumulate a total of 3 CoC dice before the game ended. I never got a double phase but I believe P-Y had 3, my to hit dice were great but my save dice were awful. I thought I was done for after my 1st demo team was wiped out, but soon enough both our Force Morale's were down to 5 and I had an oportunity to Interupt several of the German phases. I could blow the ciulvert but German FM was 4, I used another Interupt to fire at a team in pinned in heavy cover, they were 6 men with 10 shock. The CdG fired with 16d6, one shock only. The Germans fired back at the DBT team which was supported by the SL, the JL already being killed. Multiple shock and kills, my SL was hit and wounded, the DBT section broke, my FM was down to 1. Time to call it a day, a German victory in one turn!

It was really a great game, and P-Y although new to the game is a great player. I will see if I can get my revenge on Saturday when we start the All American: The Battle for Fière campaign. I am playing the American paratroopers, should be fun.