New Year's Day Game - Chemical Commies vs. Bundeswehr!

On New Year's Day, in accordance with ancient tradition, a few of the boys came over for a game and some pizza. This year I teed up a Cold War Hot game with the infamous Chemical Commies facing the Bundeswehr. It was the first chance for me to get Greg's superb Soviets on the table, as well as my newly painted Bundeswehr Marder AFVs. 

I imagined the scenario as follows: D+5 and the Soviets have made significant inroads against NATO in Germany. Elements of a Bundeswehr panzergrenadier company are holed up in the middle of a city and while the Soviet spearhead has passed them by, the follow-up Soviet forces (i.e. the second-tier dudes) are tasked with mopping up.

A couple squads of BW troops are in the middle of the board awaiting reinforcement from the rest of the company, but the Soviet goal is to crush them quickly before help can arrive.

Here's the Bundeswehr...

... and here are the Soviets.

The Bundeswehr were pretty tough - too tough as it turned out. I'd made them "veterans" and that was an error, veterans on defence in the new Bolt Action are WAAAY too tough to beat. The dudes in the photo above finally got pinned out of the game after like 5 turns of Soviet fire. The combination of 5+ needed to hit them and a 4+ save from cover was just too much. They shoulda been regulars.

Soviet BMP brews up.

Soviets move in on the valiant defenders of the Reich West Germany.

The game looked great and it was really fun to get the Cold Warriors out on the table once more. But as noted, next time it'll be Regulars vs Regulars. Or maybe Soviets in Afghanistan fighting the mujahedin? We could do that too. But it was great to have the guys over and have a game, and continue the New Year's tradition.

Till next time!

Sukhoi SU-25 Frogfoot Attack Aircraft for Team Yankee

Team Yankee escalation continues with some Soviet aviation - a pair of Sukhoi SU-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft from Battlefront (TSBX20). Greg painted a couple of really nice Frogfoots (Frogfeet?) a few years ago, and since Battlefront's come out with an updated (and cheaper!) iteration of the models that I've just finished, a bit of a compare-and-contrast might be in order.

 

First of all, these are the latest and greatest SU-25s from Battlefront. While Greg's planes were resin, these are injection-molded plastic model kits. Like the Harriers I posted a short while ago, I believe that the sprues themselves were procured by Battlefront from a third-party manufacturer, Ace Corporation. However, while the plastic injection sprue includes drop tanks, rocket pods, and bombs, the Battlefront box also contains a sprue of resin KH-25 (NATO: "Karen") air-to-ground missiles. 

I elected to assemble the models as they would appear at the start of a sortie, with all 10 hardpoints filled with weapons. From inboard to outboard (fuselage to wingtip) they are: drop tank, KH-25, rocket pod, rocket pod, bomb. The canopy that's included is molded in the same grey plastic as the rest of the parts so I've painted it to match the rest of my aircraft. Speaking of paint, for the record I used Zandri Dust, Rhinox Hide, Castellan Green, and Vallejo German Uniform for the camouflage, washed Agrax Earthshade and re-highlighted Zandri Dust with some panel lines put in with Nuln Oil. The underside was painted with Mechanicus Standard Grey highlighted with The Fang (ugh) and Thunderhawk Blue. The canopy was done with Kantor Blue and Temple Guard Blue. Wingtips are Warpstone Glow. Rocket Pods are Leadbelcher washed with Nuln Oil.

The box comes with a full decal sheet as well, including these funky little flashes for the tailplane.

While the box instructions advise modelers to affix a provided clear socket to the underside of the fuselage, I elected to use magnets. The one advantage of the resin planes was that there is a recessed slot molded in to accommodate a magnetized stand, whereas the injection kits have no such feature.

 

All in all a pretty nice box set and should come in handy in games of Team Yankee. Can't argue with the price point either - $39 CAD compared to over $60 CAD for the old resin box set. The only downside of the injection kits is a slightly more fiddly way to mount them to the flying stands - but I'll take that tradeoff for $20 per box. Plus most of the weapons are injection molded and perfect - no worries about the crappy resin ordnance that plagued Greg in his build.

Onward to the West!

1:50 Soviet T-55 Tank

Who doesn't love the T-55?? Workhorse of the Soviet and Warsaw Pact armoured forces for nearly three decades (not to mention a stalwart part of many tin-plated dictators' armed forces even still), the T-55's squat silhouette just bespeaks "Cold War". For awhile now I've had this diecast T-55 sitting in a box, but in a sudden rush of inspiration earlier this week I decided to paint it.

The hull colour is a superb spray - Rust-Oleum Specialty Camouflage ultra-flat green. After removing the tracks, the model was sprayed all over.

This was followed up with Mechanicus Standard Grey on the roadwheel tires, Leadbelcher on the DshK machinegun, and XV-88/Zandri Dust on the mantlet, then the whole model was washed with Agrax Earthshade.

Decals from the GW vehicle sheet were used, and the IR lamp was painted gem-style red. Is that what an IR lens looks like? Who knows, but it looks cool.

I also tried, for the first time, something I've often thought of doing on tracked vehicle models with stretchy rubber or vinyl tracks. These tend to bug me because the track's top run stretches straight from drive sprocket to idler sprocket and don't "sag" onto the roadwheels like the real thing. So I decided to engineer a solution for that (above).

On the T-55 model I drilled holes above the first and last roadwheels on each side, a track's width above the wheels, large enough to fit a stiff wire through. I then ran a wire through the holes and fitted the tracks so they fit between the wire and the roadwheel. This pushes the tracks' top run down onto the roadwheels, giving an impression of sag. Not as good as link-and-length tracks by any means, but works well enough on a suspension setup like the T-55's, or on other tanks like Tigers or Panthers where the upper run of track is supported by the roadwheels.

Some light weathering done with GW Rhinox Hide and Mournfang Brown.

Eureka tank crew make another appearance. Scale of the T-55 looks good compared to these models.

Not sure what kind of game we'd use a T-55 in (as our Cold War 28mm gaming takes place in the '80s or '90s, after the Soviets had pretty much moved on from the T-55), but the model looks good and was really fun to paint. I think the tracks mod worked out OK and I might just use that on other models with vinyl tracks, in future.

Stay healthy gang!

Some More Eureka Soviets

This has to be some kind of record... my wife got me these Eureka Soviet Tankers in Gasmasks for Christmas and I've already painted them!

A nice project for a winter's afternoon off from work, to be sure. These Soviets will make an excellent addition to the Chemical Commie platoon already on my shelf.

Although they differ from the rest of the mob, not being dressed in full NBC gear, I tried to demonstrate some continuity by giving the tankers grey gloves and yellow webbing, same as their NBC-clad comrades.

The tankers were painted with Citadel paints: uniforms XV-88, webbing Zamesi Desert, masks and hoses Pallid Wych Flesh, flamethrower and RPG-7 Castellan Green/Camo Green, "wood" Skrag Brown, gloves Mechanicus Standard Grey/Celestra Grey, and helmets highlighted with Mechanicus Standard Grey. Belts were to be Doombull Brown but it was dried up in the pot, so I mixed up something similar from scratch.

The models were washed with Agrax Earthshade and re-highlighted with the base colours. Done.

These guys are just great little models and have gotten me excited to stage another WWIII game in 28mm!

Team Yankee Battle Report: Soviets vs. West Germans

My current mania is Team Yankee, Battlefront's new "Cold War hot" game set in the 1980s. While Conscripts Greg and Mike have extensive 15mm modern collections, and Conscript Byron is amassing a 6mm horde, my only forays into modern gaming in a small scale has been my 15mm Yom Kippur War Egyptians. However, fond memories of Airfix 54mm Bundeswehr figures I had as a kid, plus the fun of painting NATO three-colour camo, sucked me into collecting a force of West Germans.

Anyway... in honour of my completion of my first Bundeswehr troops (the "Kampfgruppe Mueller" box from Battlefront) Greg kindly brought his toys over for a game.

We set up the first scenario from the Leopard book - "At the Forward Edge of the Battle". This involved the West German forces trying to blunt a Soviet spearhead with a rearguard action. We used the five Leopard 2's and PAH helicopters I'd painted, reinforced by some truly lovely models (Marders, panzergrenadiers and Gepard AAA vehicles) that Greg had obtained from "tacobat", a modern wargaming enthusiast blogger well-known to many of us.

We deployed the West Germans mainly behind the treeline holding the first set of objectives for the Soviets. After a set number of turns, the objectives shift to locations near the West German home table edge. The Soviets have to motor on in order to gain these objectives.
 

Here are the Soviets - a horde of T-72 tanks supported by an entire Motor Rifle Regiment in BMPs (at least it seemed that way). Also seen here is my "period" copy of "Aim to Kill - Warsaw Pact Equipment Recognition Manual" previously owned by one "Captain George". A very cool piece of Cold War memorabilia, the manual comprehensively sets out the WarPac vehicles and equipment of the day, their recognition features, armament, strengths and vulnerabilities.

On to the game... Conscript Hugh rolled his main body of T-72s up on his right flank, aimed at the Panzergrenadiers dug into the treeline and guarding one objective (red die in photo). As the Soviet tanks approached, the Leopards swung the gate and lit them up. The PAH helicopters popped up to join in the fun...

...but suffered the fate of many a newly painted model, shot down in flames before blowing anything up.

The Hinds duly appeared, but fortunately for the West Germans they suffered the same fate as the PAH helos, two Flakpanzer Gepard AAA tanks were on the case and duly evaporated them in a hail of 35mm shells.

But then it started going a bit pear-shaped for the West Germans.  Stuff started blowing up and the weight of Soviet numbers really began to tell. The Marders began to pull back from the woods at left and the Leopards were getting dinged too... a bad morale failure for the Leos sent the remnants of the platoon skedaddling to the West.

Here's how the game ended. The West Germans really didn't have anything left to block the Soviet advance. The remnants of the Leopard platoon, of course, will regroup farther west to fight on (right?)... but for now, the Soviets won the day, but at a high price...

The scenario was the first game in a longer campaign, and of course the results have ramifications later on. I'm looking forward to playing out the rest of the campaign, adding in my own models as they get painted - so far I've added two Gepards and three Fuchs transports. Still need to paint some infantry and the Marders that are now assembled... not to mention the M109G SP howitzers I left in Brandon a month ago (long story...)

Early '80's Soviets

1:100 A-10 from Revell

Soviet Inf from Peter Pig

T-72's from QRF in one of Byron's excellent storage boxes

T-64's from QRF w/ ERA

ZSU 23-4 with scratch built gun because QRF didn't send one. This a blessing in disguise when one considers the quality of QRF gun barrels.

BMP 2's from QRF w/ replacement barrel's

Mi-24 Hind D from QRF. Metal bits are very soft. I think the molds are old as the resin was badly pitted. It is however, the only 1:100 scale Hind out there. There are a few details I had to add using green stuff that aren't sculpted onto the model.