Tag Archives: wargaming

Flames of War: Fielding the FOW Universal Carrier

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British Universal Carriers in Normandy 1944

Used extensively by Commonwealth forces in all theaters throughout WWII, the Universal Carrier served as a transport, a towing vehicle and a quick-response weapons platform for machine guns, flamethrowers, anti-tank guns and mortars. So popular were these agile and flexible vehicles that production ran until 1960 and over 100,000 eventually rolled off the assembly line, making them the most-produced armoured combat vehicle ever produced.

With my new British forces moving along, I picked up a few inexpensive packages of Universal Carriers in the flea market at Fall In! this past weekend. The models from Battlefront come three to a carded package in solid-cast resin with metal crew and gun options. The packs I got were the early war models but I decided for gaming purposes I’d fudge them a bit to make them work in my late war gaming. Along with a carrier from my Royal Artillery battery I’m also working on, I’d wind up with seven vehicles to start.

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Carrier example with rear gun mounted

I chose to model my inital six carriers with extra 50 cal. machine guns, hoping to use them to quickly get into a fight and pin down German infantry with a hail of bullets. Adding the 50 cal. gun was a field modification during WWII, but without any extra parts on hand I simply clipped the barrels on the guns at the front and added a bit of plastic to make some semblence of a machine gun manned in the front seat.

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Carrier example with the rear gun carried in the back

Since construction is minimal, these glue-up fast. I modelled a couple of the guns in the back thrown in the back seat as if those guys were moving fast to get into action before re-mounting their guns. After a quick spray of green armor basecoat, the crew get hit with some drab, brown and flesh paints and washes. Tracks get a black base followed on with some metallic dry-brushing. Guns and other details added from some leftover tank stowage get some gun metal, browns and weathering. I decalled the carriers with the Guards Armoured markings, and then everything got a splatter of muddy earth tones.

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Guards Armoured carrier platoon ready for the roads and fields of Europe

With so many British troops cruising around Europe in these vehicles during the war, adding just a few of these to my growing menu of options in creating British company lists for my FOW gaming at Metropolitan Wargamers in Brooklyn, NY was a good place to start. I’ll fill in these early war models with another three of the late war models at some point, making it into a nine carrier transitional platoon of old and new model vehicles. One of the reasons I wanted to expand my Allies with UK forces was the chance to model different infantry, armour and artillery. Getting these nifty little Universal Carriers into the mix will definitely give my games some new interest on the tabletop and hopefully wreak havoc on my German opponents.

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New Game Weekend: Shoot N’ Skedaddle

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One of my favorite parts of attending gaming conventions is playing scales, periods and scenarios I usually don’t game. Getting the chance to play in scenarios run by the authors of rules is also a big bonus opportunity to experience a game “straight from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak. This past weekend at Fall In! I had one of those rare sessions that hit all these marks, playing in an Old West 28mm skirmish game of Shoot N’ Skedaddle by Oscar Turner.

Since I was a kid, I’ve been a big fan of Westerns. Starting with re-runs of the old Lone Ranger TV show and radio serials, I graduated up through American Western classics like Red River and The Searchers to the Italian “Spaghetti Westerns” of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. Over the years I’ve remained dedicated to the now-declining genre, and I’m an enormous fan of Eastwood’s later Unforgiven and Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained. 

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1992’s Academy Award-winning Unforgiven, produced, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood

Like a lot of American boys, my  interest in Western TV, radio and movies spilled over into my play time. I spent a lot of time gunfighting on my bedroom floor in the 1970s with Gabriel Lone Ranger dolls  and the earlier Marx Johnny West toys. I also had plenty of cheap dimestore plastic cowboys and indians, plus a pretty substantial collection of the cowboys and indians from Britains Deetail and a pile of Western-themed Playmobil toys.

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1970s ad for Gabriel’s Lone Ranger toys

Despite all my interest in Westerns, gaming the genre never became my thing. TSR’s Boot Hill, released in 1975 just as Dungeons & Dragons was taking off, has been a popular RPG option for years. There are a number miniatures ruelsets for the Wild West, and 1992’s Desperado by Monday Knight Productions seems to be the standard I’ve seen played at conventions. So, with nearly zero experience with shoot-outs on the streets of dusty tabletop frontier towns, I was really impressed with my three hours playing through my first game of Shoot N’ Skedaddle this past weekend.

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The Shoot N’ Skedadle cards, dice and equipment needed to play

 With a visually stellar town laid out with incredible laser-cut and plastic scenery, Oscar’s scenario presented a simple scenario of outlaws on the lam with lawmen in hot pursuit. In Shoot N’ Skedaddle, play begins with character cards dealt to players playing on either the Outlaw Gang or Lawmen Posse side. Main characters such as “Judge,”Doc” and “Bandit” team-up with neutral characters like “Thug,” “Cowboy,” “Townsperson” and “Thug.” Characters then draw primary and secondary weapons (if any) which can include anything from a deringer, knife or carbine to a gattling gun, buffalo gun or dynamite. There are 40 character and 72 weapons cards, making for tremedously fun variations in the player Gangs and Posses in Shoot N’ Skedaddle.

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The town set-up for Shoot N’ Skedaddle at Fall In!

After initial deployment according to the scenario, regular playing cards are drawn to randomly activate characters in turn. I really loved this thematically-appropriate mechanic, tying the iconic Old West card game into the play. On a turn, a player can perform a combination of movements and action. Special event cards are also randonly drawn for each side, allowing the resurrection of dead characters, the arrest of an outlaw or an extra character activation. With this simple framework, characters can perform a seemingly endless variety of feats including running, hiding, shooting, grabbing a mule by the reins, jumping between rooftops, crashing through windows, kicking in doors or starting a fist fight. Player imagination bordering on role-playing is really the only boundary to the game.

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Lawmen with guns blazin’ in Shoot N’ Skedaddle at Fall In!

To resolve actions, an incredibly elegant dice mechanic is used. Characters each come with key attributes — Strength, Agility, Scrap, Marksmanship and Guts — with each of these weighted with a D6, D8, D12 or D20. Success when using a particular attribute is resolved by rolling a 5 or better, no matter what the action and no matter what the die. For example, a poor shot would roll a D6 when firing their pistol while a more skilled character might roll a D12. In either case, the player would need to roll a 5 or better to succeed. Wounds, hiding in cover or other game conditions modify the dice downward, so that same crack shot with the D12 Marksmanship would roll a D8 when shooting at someone hiding behind a barrel.

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A local woman acting just a little suspicious in Shoot N’ Skedaddle at Fall In!

Shoot and Skedaddle’s wonderful card and dice structure puts the focus back on the fun on the table like any really great game should. Oscar offers his game as a free PDF ruleset or in a printed set of cards for $25 ($30 with a box). Check out his website at http://shootnskedaddle.blogspot.com/ for downloads, ordering info, development news and more pics and information. The basic rules contain scenarios and a campaign option for longer-term  storylines to be played. I can’t say I’m going to run out and invest in a dozen Western buildings and paint up a bunch of cowboys and local citizens, but if you’re a fan of Old West gaming, I highly recommend checking out Shoot N’ Skedaddle. It’s a bullseye.

Flames of War: Fielding the FOW Cromwell and Firefly Tank

dratsBy the time of the Normandy Invasion in June 1944, the British 7th Armoured Division had already seen plenty of war. The division first distinguished itself early in the war in the dusty North African campaign, going brutally head-to-head with General Erwin Rommel’s tough Afrika Korps and earning the nickname “Desert Rats.” In the mid-war invasion of Italy, the division adapted to the southern terrain of Salerno and Naples and helped in securing the Allied push northward.

cromwellA British Cromwell in WWII Europe

fftankSherman Firefly on a street during WWII

Back in the UK following its successes in Africa and Italy, the 7th Armoured rested and retrofitted with new Cromwell and Sherman Firefly tanks in preparation as a follow-on force in the D-Day landings in mid-1944. Over the next six months, the division’s 75mm-armed Cromwells and 17-pound-gunned Fireflies were present during Operation Perch, Operation Goodwood, the Battle of Villers-Bocage, Operation Spring, Operation Bluecoat, Operation Cobra and the final pushes into the Low Countries and Germany. By the war’s end, the battle-weary Desert Rats had cemented themselves as one of the most celebrated divisions in World War II.

fowcromwellAfter being introduced to British Armoured forces with the excellent plastic Sherman and Firefly models included in Flames of War Open Fire! box set, I’ve recently swung some significant focus on building-out a decent amount of UK late-war forces. Modelling the storied 7th Armoured Division seemed like a logical next step in bringing the UK to my Allied forces on the table.

Through some serendipity, I happened to score a couple of half-price box sets of the FOW Cromwell Armoured Platoon from a fellow club member at Metropolitan Wargamers in Brooklyn, NY. Between the two boxes, I’ve been able to assemble a company command of two Cromwells plus two platoons of three Cromwells and one Firefly each. The models feature individually-cast resin tanks, each with their own detail of stowage and ragged camouflage, along with cast metal treads, gun barrels, crew and other details. Compared to curvaceous US Sherman tanks, I also really enjoy the flatter hull profile and boxy riveted turrets on the Cromwells. Although pricier than alternatives from makes like Plastic Soldier Company and Command Decision from Old Glory Miniatures, official FOW models are generally hard to beat for their heft and historical accuracy.

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After assembly, my models were hit with a green armor base coat. Tank treads start with a black coat followed a slight wash of metal. Tools, stowage, ropes and the other stuff on the tanks all get a mix of built-up layers of browns, greens and metallic colors. I especially liked the tiny tennis rackets strapped to a couple of the tanks, a nod to the British gentlemen who came to Europe not only equipped for war but for hopeful yet unlikely leisure pursuits. These details really create a lot of depth, interest and personality among the tanks which can otherwise get very visually redundant en masse on the table. Finally, the exposed crews get a a bit of brown-drab uniform color and some flesh tones to finish off those brave Brits.

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I do have to say, the red-and-white Desert Rats vehicle marking has a really big cool factor for me. The FOW kits conveniently come with appropriate decals for the 7th Armoured Division, making finishing off the tanks one step easier than with competitor model-makers that don’t generally supply decals with their models. That said, I find the FOW decals to be incredibly finicky and fragile, and I found myself re-applying several to get them on just right. Once the decals are dry, all the tanks got splashed with mud here and there with some earthy dry-brushing.

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IMG_2352One platoon of three Cromwells and one Sherman Firefly

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In terms of gameplay, I can’t wait for the 7th Armoured Division to go up against some Germans. The combined one-two punch of the faster-moving Cromwells and the hefty-gunned Fireflies should reinvigorate my games away from the sameness I’ve had in just playing with my large group of US Shermans for a couple years. Already, I want more of these platoons to really get the division bulked-out. I’m thinking a follow-up with Cromwells and Fireflies from the Plastic Soldier Company will supplement the finished FOW models nicely. Until then, the 7thArmoured are ready to roll and there’ll be more to report soon on my post-D-Day British force project.

IMG_2348The Desert Rats ready for action in France and beyond…

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Gaming The High Seas

bbpicFor as long as there have been people putting boats to sea, there have probably been pirates close behind. Even though the classic high period of piracy perhaps only spanned a few decades in the 1600 through 1700s, pirates have loomed large in popular culture from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island all the way through to the Johnny Depp-fuelled blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. Piracy will also be the theme of the latest release in the Assassin’s Creed video game  series next month, and the game is already being lauded as a potential game of the year for its historical high seas combat.

Naturally, pirates find their way to gaming tables. I like checking in on the UK-based blog Shed Wars for a fellow gamer’s incredibly elaborate pirate miniatures gaming. While I’m rather certain pirate miniatures gaming is never going to be my thing, I have played my share of pirate games over the past thirty years.

broadsidesIn the early 1980s, Milton Bradley launched their Gamemaster Series. While Axis and Allies would be the one game to catch on, the series also included other historically-themed wargames packed full of some nifty design, tons of plastic miniatures and varying levels of gameplay. The two player Broadsides & Boarding Parties featured a card-based maneuvering “broadsides” combat phase of the game which then led to a close-quarters “boarding parties” series of turns. During hand-to-hand attacks, each player moved their pirate, canon and captain figures among the two large ship models in an attempt to capture the opposing captain. Like many of the games in the series, Broadsides & Boarding Parties was a great looking game, but the play was a bit simplistic and it wound up collecting dust on my game shelf.

pirateconstJust over 20 years later, WizKids introduced the Pirates of the Spanish Main constructable miniatures game. This still-popular game consists of collectible packs of ships in plastic credit card-sized punch-out packs. Each pack contains a whole game with a couple ships, rules, islands and playing tokens. The system went through a number of expansions with additional ships from varying eras and nations along with special island island fortesses and even sea monsters. Along with the movie series, a Pirates of the Caribbean series was also released with the ships, characters and story pulled right from the films. The ships looked fantastic although proved to be a bit brittle during gameplay which involved trade, combat and double-crossing across an open tabletop board. Although the game was officially shuttered in 2008, a huge secondary market continues for unopened packs of game cards.

lootWhen my two sons were younger, we played the heck out of the 1992 card game Loot. This surprisingly engaging and award-winning kid’s game by Gamewright allows for play as a merchant or pirate. Pirate cards come in four colored “suits” with a captain card for each suit. Each pirate card carries an attack value denoted by a number of skull symbols. Pirates compete to attack merchant ships carrying different gold values, and an Admiral card shows up to protect merchant ship. Each player manages their hand through a series of draws, plays and discards as gold is collected and attacks by other pirates are thwarted. While the original Loot features cartoonish graphics, an updated more historically-themed version was introduced in 2010 under the name Korsar. Whichever version you get your hands on, Loot is a pretty simple but engaging card game for crews of all ages.

This past weekend at Metropolitan Wargamers in Brookln, NY, I had the chance to get my sea legs with two more pirate games: Cartagena and Merchants & Marauders.

cartagenaCartagena is a quick game recreating the late-17th-century pirate jailbreak in Cartagena, Colombia. This wordless, diceless, easy-to-play game sets each player with five pirates making their way along a dock game board toward an awaiting getaway boat.

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Each player begins with six cards featuring hats, bottles, swords, keys, pistols and Jolly Roger flags. Playing a card allows a player to move one of their pirates along the board to the next empty space featuring that symbol. Players may double and triple-up placement on a space, and additional cards may be drawn from a face-up row of cards by moving backwards along the dock. Moving back to a space with one other purate gains a player one card, while moving back to a space with two pirates gets a maximum two-card draw. Players move forward and backward, acquiring cards and playing them as they progress toward the boat. Strategy comes in planning out your card moves with available spaces on the board, blocking other pirates and stealing in-demand cards from the draw row. The simplicity of Cartagena makes this a great choice for little pirates in your life while it also holds interest for some aggressive adult play like my first game this past weekend with some club members.

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Merchants & Marauders from ZMan Games is a beefier boardgame akin to the Viking exploration and conquest game Fire & Axe. Set among the islands and seazones of the Caribbean, the game allows players to play as merchant traders or dastardly pirate captains set on acquring gold, completing missions, following rumors and scoring points toward victory.

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Players begin with their ships at a home port island with each port offering varying bonuses to different types of players. In each turn, players may take three actions of movement, scouting or  port activities. While in port, captains may trade or sell goods, repair damaged vessels, acquire special crew and outfit or upgrade their ships with additional weapons and equipment. Each port shows goods that are in demand like tobacco, rum or spices, and trading in-demand goods scores extra victory points and special Glory cards that can add to a players effectiveness in particular situations. Pirates acquire goods agressively at sea but risk becoming wanted by the various nations looking to go to war with seafaring criminals.

There’s a lot of flexibility in the heading to victory a captain charts. Players may focus on trading or seizing goods, completing missions to other ports and attempting to chase down legendary rumors amid the islands. Attacking other ships can gain goods and gold but players run the risk of damaged or sunken ships that can set them back a few turns. Event cards at the top of each round inject additional elements to the game with storms and other sea-bound pitfalls reducing speed or even wrecking ships. Games of Merchants & Marauders typically run a couple of hours, and players must balance their own captain’s focus with what are other players are doing.

Like the legends of piracy, there’s a lot of variety to be found in pirate gaming. Aside from the games I’ve played and the many miniatures systems available, their are dozens of other pirate-themed games to suit an level of interest. The storied history and mythology of pirates yields a bounty of treasure for any gamer looking to raise a crew under the Jolly Roger and set out in quest of adventure, booty and intrigue on the Seven Seas.

Collector’s Note: Broadsides & Boarding Parties is available on eBay and elsewhere starting at around $50, Pirates of the Spanish Main is set to re-launch soon, but older expansion packs are likewise available via eBay in the $5-10 range and even cases of some card sets are available. Scalawags and bucaneers will find plenty of fellow pirate card, boargame and miniature action at most major gaming conventions. Arrrrrgh!

Flames of War: Fielding the PSC German Heavy Weapons and FOW Artillery Command

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After focusing on my Flames of War (FOW) Allied forces for a while, I decided to throw some energy back into beefing-up and diversifying my late war Germans. Although my German troops seldom see play, getting some infantry punch on the table led me to a number of mortar and other support weapons platoons the FOW rules offer.

Battlefront, the maker of FOW, has a number of good platoons which run anywhere from about $12-20 each. Having recently tried my hand at the Allied Stuart Tank set from the growing line of 15mm WWII kits from the Plastic Soldier Company (PSC), I spotted the Late War German Heavy Weapons box. At around $25, the set looked to be an excellent and economic way to get a lot more German infantry on the table at perhaps a quarter to one-third the cost of the official FOW models.

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The PSC box comes with four MG 42 teams, four 8 cm mortar teams, four 12 cm mortar teams, eight Panzerschrecks and eight Panzerfausts. Also included are four Panzerschreck loaders and four ammo carriers. With about 70 bits on the sprues, this set was going to add a lot of action to my already extensive German infantry collection.

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Cutting out and gluing-up the tiny pieces from the PSC sprues is a bit of nerve-racking task harkening back to my early years wrangling with assembling soft plastic HO scale Airfix soldiers. That said, following PSC’s simple assembly diagram (above) and keeping all the parts carefully organized on the workbench is key to getting the job done right and not losing anything along the way. Flames of War rules call for basing Panzerschreck teams in groups of four miniatures per medium stand, allowing for four total teams to be constructed from the PSC set with two Panzershrecks plus a loader and ammo carrier per team. The 8 cm mortar and MG teams likewise went on medium bases and the big 12 cm mortar teams were glued-up on larger bases. I had a few extra plastic FOW Germans on hand from a bonus promotional sprue I received from the Open Fire! box set, and adding those to the 12 cm mortar stands helped finished those off.

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With a bunch of new mortars in the field, I also needed to add some additional command and spotters to make them playable. FOW offers an artillery command headquarters blister pack which I added to the mix. The set comes with enough models that I was able to create three two-man spotting teams, a few command stands (adding in Panzerfausts from the PSC kit) and a nifty HQ vignette with a four figures surrounding a table with a radio operator.

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Painting Germans is a simple process for me with a base spraycoat in flat black followed by a darkish grey uniform and details picked out in flesh, blacks, browns and gun metal. The stands get finished off with some simple grass flocking and a matte varnish spray. Getting a consistent finish on the PSC models made them blend in nicely with my FOW models.

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For comparison’s sake, the PSC figures do tend to be a tad smaller and thinner than the typically-chunky FOW figures. Since most my PSC figures are being fielded on separate stands, I don’t see the minor scale differences being an issue at arm’s length on the tabletop battlefield. In addition, the extra poses in the PSC casting add some nice variety and animation in the troops once deployed.

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IMG_2217My FOW German force has long-relied on the strength of deploying large numbers of tanks in my games, so these new additions should be a nice compliment to getting more action from my German infantry. Now that it’s fall, I’m anxious to rush my new PSC and FOW Germans to the tables at Metropolitan Wargamers in Park Slope, Brooklyn and add a new season of playablity to my battleworn forces.

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Playing War

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Like so many kids, I grew up playing an abstract outdoor game called War. Spend any amount of time with a group of young boys and play aggression often naturally emerges, lines are drawn and any object within arm’s reach becomes a surrogate weapon. War takes this to the next level. Through the application of ever-shifting rules , a broad framework is created within which you split into teams and then spend hours hunting down your friends. Sometimes finding a secret base in a capture-the-flag scenario is the objective. In larger group games, a tag-like game of collecting kills can determine who wins.

For my childhood friends and me, anything from sticks to hand-made weapon replicas to store-bought plastic toy arms made up the main equipment for the game, and our imaginations filled in the rest. One summer in the late 1970s, my brother and I (that’s me in the blurry snapshot above on the right) built an estimation of a howitzer from some scrap wood, bicycle tires and the side exhaust pipe from a sports car. A friend of mine had a fort built in the woods adjacent to his house, complete with a lockable below-ground prison and a series of three-foot-deep foxholes dug at the defense perimeter. Other pals checked books out of the library to study old photographs of guns they would carve out of left-over 2′ x 4’s.

I logged many hours playing War among the fields, woods and buildings in and around my rural hometown in Western New York. One weekend I spent the majority of a Saturday hunting down one of my friends on a nearby SUNY campus in a one-on-one scenario where the first one to spot the other won the war. I found a set of shrubs to hide in where I sat for an hour until I saw my friend creeping through an open plaza. On another day, I was captured and locked in my other friend’s dungeon with another comrade. While more than ten other guys ran around shouting in the nearby fields, we two prisoners spent more than two hours digging a tight hole under the plywood wall to escape. Other times there were weekend sleepovers and night games chasing each other through the woods and over creeks in the darkness lit by flashlights.

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The new movie “I Declare War” from Drafthouse Films should resonate like a carpet bombing for anyone like me who can look back wistfully to hot summer days of trying to kill their best friends in a game of War. This isn’t a great piece of filmmaking, but its the sort of thing that’s sure to light up parental discussions and also conjure youthful memories of when play involved something without digital graphics.

Now in limited release and available through some streaming services, “I Declare War” focuses on a day-long game of War between two groups of adolescent boys (plus one girl). The serious intensity of the day’s game depicted in the movie captures the complexity of the time in life of being a care-free kid teetering on the edge of the ages to come.

Most of the kids in the film approach the game with the expected intensity of children whose imaginations are running full-on, transforming sticks and plastic guns into actual weapons. One boy adds a sci-fi flair with imagined lightning bolts streaming explosive death rays from his eyes. There’s also a clumsy protracted love interest that evolves with the young girl’s arrival in the game, but she too winds up being a skilled player in the game. And finally, there’s one truly sadistic kid who treats the game a bit too seriously, bordering on psychological and physical harm to a few unfortunate victims.

There’s a lot in this movie, and the game of War presents as merely a mechanic for the kids to work out their emerging pre-adult personalities. Within the group there are plotters, double-crossers, bullies, romantics, innocents and leaders. The kids yell, cry, laugh, fantasize, threaten and swear like kids do — a hot stew of thoughts and emotions most mainstream movies (and many parents) would rather avoid.

A couple of the guys I played War with in the 70s and early 80s wound up serving in the real-life military but the majority of us went off to college or started regular jobs after school. For the most part, I’d say we all grew up to be relatively decent human beings. On the balance playing War didn’t warp any of us in a negative way and it quite possibly taught us some early lessons in teamwork, negotiation, problem-solving and communication. For me, it mostly built something along the lines of friendship or strangely, compassion.

“I Declare War” captures the spirit of the kind of play which mostly exists now in an abstract virtual world for my own kids and their peers. Did my friends and I rack-up more life lessons playing War in the woods than my sons do playing war on screens with people who they’ll never meet? That question is going to be answered in a generation or so, but “I Declare War” is worth considering in how playing War shaped us a generation ago.

Flames of War: La Fiere Causeway 1944 Scenario

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In the late evening of June 5th and pre-dawn hours of June 6th, 1944, a steady flow of Allied paratroopers began dropping throughout the French countryside to clear the inland way for the D-Day beach landings to come later that morning. Like elsewhere, scheduled US Airborne drops near Sainte-Mère-Église left paratroopers scattered around the countryside. To the southwest of the town’s target area, a contingent from the 82nd Airborne found itself near a quaint French farm compound and a small bridge over the Merderet River. Recognizing the river crossing as a key defensive line, the assembled paratroopers established a perimeter along the river. A few hours later, the US troops were met by a German Grenadier and armored battallion hoping to stall the Allied invaders from moving inland. The battle that erupted at the river would rage for three days until the German force withdrew in time for the arrival of US infantry and Sherman forces rolling in from Utah Beach on June 9th.

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The Flames of War website offers a basic scenario of the encounter at La Fiere Causeway suitable for 1500 point forces on either side. This past weekend a visitor to Metropolitan Wargamers and I had a go at the scenario with my US Airborne facing off against his Germans. As with the historical record, my force held closely to the scenario’s outline with two parachute rifle platoons with plenty of bazookas supported by a platoon of light machine guns, parachute engineers, a glider artillery platoon and M18 tank destroyers. On the German side of the table, my opponent lacked the primitive French tanks that historically fought at the battle. Instead, he filled his force with a number of Grenadier platoons mounted in half tracks backed by two small platoons of Panzer IVs and a Nebelwerfer rocket battery.

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As per the scenario rules, each of us chose half of our platoons to be held in off-table reserve. Beginning with the Germans, we alternated deploying our starting forces on the table. My American engineers took up position in the courtyard of the farm on my left flank, the machine guns lined the hedge on the other side of the bridge and a rifle platoon deployed on my far right flank. As expected, the Germans deployed a tank platoon at the road entry point and the rocket battery and a mounted Grenadier platoon in the field on their left flank.

IMG_2165With the Germans taking the first turn, the first Panzer IV platoon made way for the river crossing at the middle of the table while the half tracks rolled for the ford on the American right flank. Deployed in and around the farm buildings, the US engineers quickly laid down mines at the foot of the bridge and an Airborne platoon crossed the river to meet the approaching Grenadiers and the rocket battery beyond.

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IMG_2167With turn three, German tank and Grenadier reserves appeared on the table edge opposite the farm and pointed their way toward the French buildings and the nearby bridge. Four US bazookas bailed one Panzer in the clearing across  the river but three other Panzers made it across at the middle ford. US tank destroyer reserves came on the table and immediately poured machine gun fire into the half tracks across the river. The Grenadiers bailed from their transports and the half tracks raced to the rear while the Nebelwerfers failed to score effective shots in the hearty US Airborne troops.

IMG_2171With the Grenadiers on the run back to defend the rocket battery, the US tank destroyers turned their attention on the Panzers and quickly destroyed one while the others continued to push on unharmed due to the protection of their side Schurzen armor. At the farm, the approaching Panzer and Grenadier platoons exchanged fire with the engineers and riflemen defending behind the stone walls. Even with heavy casualties, the engineers repelled a direct assault by two Panzers as a fresh rifle platoon rushed to reinforce the farmyard strongpoint.

Alas, by the fifth turn the game was effectively over for the Americans as the late-arriving US howitzers once again failed to hit in one final volley against the Panzers rushing to seize the objective. The Americans had chased both Grenadier platoons from the field and destroyed a couple Panzers, but the Airborne focus on defending rather than seizing objectives allowed the Germans to take the table.

At the game’s outset, both of us shook our heads with the difficult mission ahead of us. The Airborne never effectively engaged in a close-quarters assault that might’ve taken out more of the tanks sooner on in the game, and artillery on both sides contributed nothing to the game. As with the last few FOW games I’ve played, the engagement at La Fiere once again pointed out the strength and tactical importance that infantry played in WWII. Keeping men moving and in the fight is key to victory, and this time around the German troops got the better of the day.

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Flames of War: Fielding the PSC Panzer IV Tank

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One of the greatest military impressions Germany left on the face of warfare during World War II was in its feared armored forces. The famed Tiger I heavy tank gets a lot of the glory for its independence and near idestructability, but the Panzer IV medium tank served as the real backbone of German armored forces throughout the war. With improvements to its armor and gunnery made throughout the war, the Panzer IV would prove to be a tough nut for the Allies to crack until very late in the war. Especially in the period from the D-Day landings through to the Battle of the Bulge, the Panzer IV played an ever-increasing role in attempting to stymie the Allied advance right up until the eventual fall of the Third Reich in the spring of 1945.

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I already own a fair amount of German armor with Tigers, Panthers, Jagdpanzers and Stugs, but my force was sorely lacking in Panzer IVs. Most of my German tanks thus far have been from Battlefront, the makers of Flames of War (FOW). They offer a late war Panzer IV platoon in the pricey $50-60 range, depending on whether you pick the set up online or in a store. Going on some recent experience with the PSC Allied Stuart tank set, I went with the Panzer IVs from the Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) at about half the FOW cost.

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Unlike the FOW sets, PSC kits come with options to model miniatures in several periods. This allowed me to model my tanks as the later war Panzer IV Ausf H with its extra armor and gun power. Like the Airfix kits of my youth, the PSC tanks are comprised of lots of little parts. The diagrams included in the box offer clear color-coded keys to getting the correct pieces off the sprues and blow-up schematics for gluing the pieces together. If you’re like me, keeping your workspace clean and organized will prevent you from losing your mind during the multi-step assembly process. The sprues also leave some leftover parts which either go straight into the trash or into container of miscellaneous plastic for future modelling use.

Lots of parts means lots of steps. The turrets alone are compromised of 9-10 parts and aligning the tank tread sections needs to be done carefully. I also found the hole on which the turret sits to be a bit tight, so I carefully drilled those out slightly larger. My Panzer IVs were completed with a basic grey-schemed paint job over a flat black spray base to match my existing models. With assembly, painting, decals and a matte finish finishing coat, these tanks are ready to hit the table in just a couple work sessions.

Compared to FOW models, the PSC tanks take a bit longer to put together and parts can be finicky, but I really like the PSC models when complete. The PSC tanks offer crisper molding and some fine details like a slight sag in the upper parts of the treads and hangers for the  side and turret Schurzen. Models are light, making for easier storage and transport. Putting together kits from PSC just feels a lot more like model building than what you experience with FOW and some other manufacturers.

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With so much economic pressure on miniature wargame funding budgets, you can’t beat getting more armor in the field for the low cost and fine results from the Plastic Soldier Company’s Panzer IV kit.

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Donald Featherstone (1918-2013)

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News is being reported today that famed British writer and pillar of the 20th-century wargaming hobby Donald Featherstone (pictured above, right) has died at the age of 95. While by no means a household name, Featherstone was the author of more than 40 books and countless articles on the subject of wargaming, beginning in 1962 with his seminal book Wargames and the launch of his Wargamer’s Newsletter that same year.

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Heavily-influenced by H.G. Wells‘ Little Wars, Featherstone played a central role in the post-WWII development of the wargaming hobby. This was the era when a small group of armchair historians knit together the first loose networks of gaming groups, self-printed newsletters and early gaming conventions like the first one in the UK organized by Featherstone in the mid-1960s. Featherstone’s lifework was devoted to promoting the hobby of wargaming as a way of understanding military history, writing broadly on naval, land and air combat as well as specific military campaigns and eras. Many of Featherstone’s books are available in modern reprints via The History of Wargaming Project and the early editions of his books are highly-sought by collectors.

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For more on Featherstone’s influence on the growth of wargaming into the eventual worldwide phenomenon which would give birth to Dungeons & Dragons and modern gaming of all kinds, I can’t recommend enough Jon Peterson’s excellent Playing At The World. Anyone who plays a strategy game today — whether on the tabletop or on a video screen — owes a little something to Donald Featherstone and the little wars he started more than a half-century ago.

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Flames of War: Modelling European Western Front Buildings

153770I got into miniatures wargaming through a combined set of interests I developed as a kid: history, role-playing and scale modelling. One of the aspects of gaming I enjoy is setting up a realistic and engaging tabletop battlefield, both for the visual effect but also to reproduce the playable advantages and challenges found in waging scenarios within scenery.

I’ve been searching high and low for an affordable and well-made set of buildings to add to my 15mm Flames of War World War II gaming set in the post D-Day Western Front. Battlefront Miniatures, the makers of Flames of War, launched their own series of buildings last year. The pre-painted buildings are beautiful, albeit a bit too perfect and pretty expensive at $40-50 each. Miniature Building Authority (MBA) has been a long-time producer of fine pre-painted buildings. Like the structures from Battlefront, MBA models feature removable roofs but also convert into ruined bombed-out versions. At $40-50 for single large buildings or for pairs of smaller ones, the MBA buildings are also pretty pricey. MBA keeps a small line in stock, but they have dozens of out-of-production models which you can also find at conventions and occasionally online. JR Miniatures is another standby in the industry, but I find their relatively low-priced line of buildings is a bit of a mixed bag in terms of casting and playability.

markivWith building up my gaming real estate on my mind, I posted to the message boards at The Miniatures Page. Some suggestions pointed to the above manufacturers, but several posters also mentioned Mark IV Miniatures. The company is run by Jeff McCarron, a second-generation gaming modeller out of Colorado who obviously puts great care and passion into his work. McCarron sells his models directly and distributes them through Musket Miniatures, and I found him to be incredibly responsive to a couple questions I had before ordering. As it turned out, a fellow member of Metropolitan Wargamers had recently picked up the large church model and a couple houses from Mark IV. After playing with his models during our big Summer FOW event and Barkmann’s Corner scenario at the club, I decided these were the buildings to sink an investment into.

1148873_10201247963855523_305675209_nI decided to go with several two and three-story buildings, a barn, a courtyard and some walls, all ordered from Musket Miniatures. With all these models, I’d have the flexibility to set up a fairly decent-sized town or play with them as a separate farm estates. The castings arrived clean and required little tidying-up of residual flash with a knife.

20130830-233936.jpgI did have to put in a bit of work gluing plastic tabs to the undersides of the floors and roofs to provide a snug fit for each story of the buildings. The larger one-story bank building also required a wall and metal cast windows to be glued in place.

20130830-234253.jpgFor painting reference, I searched online for photos of European villages. After a light grey spray basecoat, the stucco walls of the buildings were dabbed with a bit of foam sponge in sandy gray-brown stucco and then dry-brushed with an off-white paint to add variety to the wall surfaces. Exposed stonework, the courtyard cobbles and masonry details at the corners, doors and windows all got combinations of varying shades of grays, browns and whites to create some depth.

IMG_2115Shutters, doors and windows were painted with dull blue, white, green and red trim, mimicking some of the variety in paint schemes I had found in photos online. For the roofs, a black undercoat was dry brushed in a couple shades of grey with a bit of browns and dark green shades mixed in. On the barn model I glued on some thin pieces of lichen to add the look of vines covering part of the walls.

IMG_2117The walled courtyard and modular wall sections got a two-part paint scheme over the gray primer. A watered-down brown-black wash over the bricks and cobbles filled the cracks with a dark shading finished-off with an off-white dry-brushed highlighting coat. The courtyard and wall gates started with a dark brown base with a lighter brown adding aged detail to the wood. Iron hinges got a black undercoat with some rusty metal dabbed over it. The result was some very realistic stone and brickwork walls.

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IMG_2125I couldn’t be more pleased with the buildings. They’ve already seen some action on the tabletop in my recent Singling ’44 game and combining them with my existing trees, roads and lichen hedgerows really brings the battlefield to life. I’m already eying a few of the other models offered by Mark IV, including some ruined versions of the same buildings which come cast in some exciting bombed-out interior detail.

At Metropolitan Wargamers, there’s some early plans being laid for another big day of gaming to coincide with the fall’s Flames of War Tanksgiving 2013 event and there’s certain to be plenty of WWII action before then. With my new buildings from Mark IV on the table, these miniature landmarks are certain to add even more depth an interest to all out future games.

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