Belaya Smert

I finally have finished the layout and editing on my Chain of Command campaign for the Winter War between the Soviets and the Finns in late 1939 to early 1940. 

I have placed it on Wargames Vault for free, this allows me to update it easily. I am already finding some minor typographical errors and I would like to add more period photos gong forward. Here is the link to download the campaign. 

Comments and game reports are always appreciated.

 

Bridge over the Kuurtojoki-Chain of Command

This past Wednesday I had a virtual Chain of Command game. I have restarted work on my Winter War campaign and am starting to test some of the scenarios. I played with Tom who I believe is based in Northumberland, I met him through the Fangs of the Wolf campaign that Eero is putting on from Finland. he offered to playtest this scenario and I had a sense that he is quite an experienced player...which he certainly proved to be. I am also planning to present this game at the Huzzah gaming convention in Portland, ME in May of this year.

This is scenario 2 in my campaign and is based on the Going with a Bang scenario from the Blitzkrieg sourcebook. The scenario sees a Green Soviet Rifle Platoon advancing south towards Soumussalmi in early December 1939. A Finnish Regular Rifle Platoon has been tasked with blowing up a mobile kitchen and a bridge to slow the Soviet advance. Victory if the Finns blow both objectives or drive the Soviet FM to 0. The Soviets rolled up a 4, so they had 10 supports while the Finns had half. The Soviets did not have AFV's available this early in their advance

Forces

Finland FM 8 (5CD+Red Dice)

Regular Rifle Platoon with Demolition Team

Supports (5)

Pregame Barrage

Demolition Team

Molotovs for each of the 4 Squads

Soviet Union FM9 (4CD+Blue Dice)

Green Rifle Platoon from the 163rd 

Supports (10)

Wrath of the gods

Maxim MMG Team with 5 crew

Quad Maxim Team with Gaz truck and 5 crew

Game

Photos will tell the story.....

The JOP's are circled, Tom (the Finns) definitely won this part of the game. I should note that we both had 12" of PM movement but the Soviet Daisy Chain was 12" while the Finns had 18".

Mobile Soup Kitchen, had a task roll of 6 to blow, a JOP is within deployment range.

Bridge had a task roll of 12, again as you can see there is a JOP within deployment range.

Unfortunately, the game became quite busy and I forgot to take photos but I will do my best.

I initially placed yellow Soviet squad in the forest to the left and a MMG team as well as another green Soviet squad and a SL in the centre forest. The Wrath of the gods definitely slowed down the Finns deployment, as they were only able to deploy their green SMG squad. I had also placed my blue Soviet squad in the forest on the far edge.

My MMG team got shot up before I could advance the green squad in support by the ......

......green Finnish SMG section that deployed within close range.

Many photos were not taken, but now I had my yellow squad blasting the Finnish green squad and had advanced my green squad towards the cabin. You will also notice that a Quad Maxim has advanced up the road to fire their 16d6 at the green Finnish squad who now has attached a SL. By now the FM on both sides was rapidly falling. It still appeared to anyone's game.

A lot had happened in the farground around the small cabin, the Finns had deployed a demo team who successfully set the charge in one go. I had deployed 2 squads on this flank and the Finns had deployed 2 as well. You can see one squad on the frozen pond, another squad had already been destroyed to protect the demo team, but the Soviets had paid as well having one of their green squad broken with a JL. Tom threw a treble 6 and the turned ended. I believe our FM was respectively 1 for the Soviets and 2 for the Finns. The Finnish demo team as been unable to set off the charge to blow the mobile kitchen and were retreating.....

.....but despite having just 2 CD left the Soviets were able to activate their SL who was in range of both the Gaz Truck and the squad in the woods. They blasted the Finnish squad, the SL was hit and wounded. A roll on the Morale Table resulted in a minus 2, the Finn's FM dropped to 0.

The Soviet blue squad advances to take the soup kitchen hoping there might be some hot food while the Soviet green squad with the Gaz truck advance to the Bridge over the Kuurtojoki. The route has been secured for the Soviet advance to Suomussalmi.

So a very close game indeed. I felt it went pretty well but the tasks would be quite difficult to achieve. Once the charge is set, in the Demo Rules as written it requires a CoC dice to set off the charges. We are now discussing some modifications to this.

Thanks very much to Tom for helping me play test the scenario. 

Fangs of the Wolf-Game 3 (4 sessions)

 

We finished Game 3 in our Fangs of the Wolf campaign in the last week of September. Eero has just released the Action Report that I will link here. Each of our games is played over 3-4 sessions and in this game we see the White Devils attacking Ahola Farm (Table J) in attempt to cut off another group of Soviets as they were strung along the road north of Suomussalmi. 

This game took 4 sessions and I have to say the game was touch and go through out each of the sessions. The Soviets had yet to gain a victory and time was running out so myself and Janne really pushed hard in the fourth and final session to try to gain a victory. Well I will let you read Eero's usual excellent reports which can be found as follows:

Session 1

Session 2/3

Session 4

Here are a few photos but many more can be found in Eero's reports which are truly a visual feast.

The Table

Lots of Soviets

The White Devils

Trying to hold them off

They have Maxims

Time to get close

The attack from the east

Detail

Soviets on skis

Uraaaaahhhhhhhhhh

The Finns withdraw

Soviets armour seals a Soviet Victory

We have now started Game 4, already having one session with our next this coming Monday. But more about that in the future. 

Fangs of the Wolf-Game 2 (1 session)

 

We had our second game in our Winter War campaign on July 4th, Eero has just put out one of his excellent reports that I will link below.

As you will remember the Finns captured Konttipuro, thus cutting our forces in two. The Motti encirclement had begun. As I previously noted, a lot of the campaign takes place off line, so neither side knows where the enemies movements take place. During these off line manoeuvres both sides are moving about patrols trying to find the enemy forces.

As the Soviet Colonel Sharov, I have to make a decision about what to do each game turn and I decided that we should try to recapture Konttipuro.

Unfortunately, as it was, we had very few forces on the adjacent table with which to attack. I had a looks at the Wild Cards and decided that one might be useful in a stealth mission. We had only 2 infantry sections with no supporting units. It was Stalin's Birthday and because of this we had a booster to our morale. I guessed that the Finns might have left a minimal force on Konttipuro, I ended up being quite wrong. Notwithstanding my plan was to force the Finns to withdraw by loss of Force Morale rather then trying to defeat them by Force of Arms, I also imposed the Wrath of the Gods. 

We attacked from the north, I was hoping that if I held back our JOP's, it might cause the Finns to place theirs far forward, and that with the Heavy Mist wildcard (limiting LOS to 15") we could easily capture at least 2 of them, thus dropping their FM quickly. As it was the Finns, only placed 1 JOP forward but we went with our plan anyway. Nothing ventured nothing gained!

Well what do they say about Best Laid Plans; as you can see they seldom work from Eero's excellent report. Here are a few photos but many more can be seen in the report.

Well that did not go so well and Colonel Sharov's Outlook is falling rapidly, wish us luck in the next game.

Fangs of the Wolf-Game 1 (2 Sessions)

 

A few weeks ago my Finnish friends and myself started playing Campaign 11 from Eero Juhola's Winter of No Surrender Winter War campaign series. This is a massive project for using the Chain of Command ruleset with specific modifications for fighting the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland between late November 1939 to April of 1940. As readers of my blog will know, I have been much fascinated by this brief war and through this interest I connected with Eero some years ago.

As a CoC player, I thought the Bloody Bucket campaign was complicated to set up, it is simple in comparison to this campaign, Eero has really created quite an immersive experience for the players. You can find an introduction to  campaign 11: Fangs of the Wolf here. Quite a bit of the campaign takes place off table, with the two combatants moving about a series of 22 possible tables where combat could take place. The game is being hosted by Eero from his home outside of Helsinki on Discord. He usually uses a 3 camera set-up and acts as a non-playing games master. I believe it would be quite difficult to play this campaign without a referee of sorts.

Playing the game are 4-5 players, which include myself and Janne for the Soviets, as well as Jarkko and Mikko for the Finns, we are occasionally joined by Bill who travels to Eero's home, but the rest of us connect by the internet.

To put it simply, the Soviet 163rd Infantry Division has crossed the border near Lonkka with little opposition, their orders were to push to the southwest towards Suomussalmi to link up with the 44th Infantry Division. From there, they were to push west to Oulu, thus cutting Finland in half.

The vanguard of the 163rd Infantry division was the 81st Mountain regiment followed by the  662th Rifle regiment. The vanguard of the 44th Infantry division was the 759th Rifle regiment

The Soviet force in the game is from the 662nd Rifle Regiment, the actual force that I am in command of is Combat Group Sharov. Historically, the 662nd split into Combat Groups at Palovaara, with the group under Colonel Sharov heading north. Our campaign begins on December 19th, 1939, Colonel Sharov is on the road about 30km north of Soumussalmi, he is stuck there along a 12km stretch with one battalion with several support units, they are running out of fuel and provisions in the freezing weather. They have decided to wait it out for the 44th Infantry division, who are pushing along the Raate Road towards Suomussalmi to relieve them. The Finns under Colonel Susitaval, commanding Group Wolf, have encircled them. Thus the Birth of the Motti....a tactic resorted to by the Finns to take on a much larger attacking force. 

From here, I will let Eero tell the story in his two superb action reports chronicling  the attack of a small Finnish force on part of Group Sharov at Konttipuro (Table N).

This campaign turn took place over 2 sessions as detailed here:

Game 1, Part 1

Game 1, Part 2

We are on to Game 2 today, let us hope the Soviets are a bit more successful. I will leave you with some photos of the game.

Well, the Soviets are now split into 2, what will happen next.

It was a good game and as described by Eero in his reports, it could have gone either way. I believe I might of changed a few things in retrospect in how I played the game. There are a lot of moving pieces in Eero's scenarios but I did learn a lot in my first game so wish Janne and myself luck in our next game.

Some 3D Printed Finns

 

I have had these figures on the painting table for over a year now, they were 3/4 finished but just seemed to languish there. My first retirement project was to move them off.

They are all 3D prints from Just Some Miniatures, they really are fantastic figures. I would have liked to print them in 28 mm but I game in 20 mm. My present Finns are all metals from Warmodelling and Eureka and these were an excellent match scaled down proportionally unlike the Soviets I had printed. I am not 100% sure but I scaled at either 70-72%. These figures are from the Jakarta, Finnish Officers, and LMG packs. I think the only figure I did not print was the figure with the Molotov, I already have too many of those. Looking back I might of missed one of the officers as well. I would have liked to see more NCO's Officers with rifles, as well as a figure with a MP-18 but that is about it. As you will see I finally got a figure with Lahti-Saloranta M/26 LMG, until now all my Finns had been armed with DP-28's

All my Finns are in all white so I continued with that theme. 

From left to right: LMG team, JL, Rifle team and SMG team.

Warmodelling on the right

I got a bit out of control printing the SMG's, there is also a figure with a MP40 as well as another leader.

I also had some Russian guns that I had to finish up as you can see.

M1942 45mm ATG and M1936 76mm Divisional Gun

I should note that Propylene F. has added many more figures to his Finnish range, including some cooks, a flamethrower team, interchangeable infantry, skiers, ATG crews etc. etc. He also has a Soviet range as well as a Polish range. I am hoping he will do a Norwegian range soon. Finally I should note that he has a very interesting kickstarter with Finnish transports that finished up within the next 24 hours.