Team Yankee/ Red Dawn - Canadian Iltis

Howdy everyone,

I hope all is well. Just a quick post to show off one of the new units that you can get with the latest NATO book…a Canadian Airborne Regiment Iltis patrol as part of the continental Canadian Army and Force Mobile Command (FMC). The patrol comes as a 4 vehicle blister with 2 x TOW mounted vehicles and 2 x MG vehicles.

I’m not going to lie, I had been waiting for these little delights for some time. At one point, I had been trying to find a suitable maker until Battlefront caught up and made these as part of their NATO release. These were in service with the Canadian Army from the 1980’s up until early 2000’s (03-04 if I remember correctly). These vehicles just seemed to takes constant beating and yet, kept on ticking.

Anywho, in the context of Red Dawn/Team Yankee, these patrols are available to the Canadian commander as part of FMC and the Canadian Airborne Regiment. 

The vehicles were fun to paint up…the only con that sticks to mind, is the finickiness of the figures and trying to work my brush around them to get them painted up. Otherwise, pretty quick build and paint. In my case, I went with the NATO standard camo pattern, and dropped the khaki tones only using green and faded black/grey.

I hope you enjoy the pics. Cheers.

Journey up Lead/Plastic Mountain

Painted

15mm         27, +14 (4 x Iltis and crew)  

28mm+         7 

Bought         8

Progress   +26

Painting Update - Random 15’s - Some Battlefront WW2 & Cold War

Howdy folk,

Todays post is all about painting up some figures with the idea of trying a few things out, making it so they fit in a few different game settings, and just working towards some small projects that I have stewing in the brainpan. On top of that, I found another find and got some discount Flames of War, so yeah…getting a variety of troops and settings off the work bench.

Anyone that has been reading the posts for the past year or so may remember my imagi-nation, the region of Afropia. While I have not gamed anything for that yet, I have continued to run a lot of mechanics and variables for those little countries in my head, all the while keeping mindful of the force structure and framework that would be applicable. The recent militia pack released by Battlefront as part of Red Dawn was an excellent source for insurgenty type figures that had a different setting or theme. Admittedly thanks to the GWOT and recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan a lot of insurgent figures are themed around Middle East themes…thankfully with the militia pack, I can add some variety to my little angry forces. As such, I base a half dozen or so for Force on Force (because thanks to CanGames, I’m really itching to FoF again) and go from there. So you will see these figs have red and/or yellow markings on them to highlight that they are either support or leaders…or in the case of Pswayze, both.

On top of that, my force structure for Petoriastan includes a large amount of WW2 era vehicles, so I was able to do up a box of M7 Priests that will work for any Canadian WW2 force that I want to field, as well as a post-WW2 Petoriastan artillery unit. So, win-win.

Finally, I had bought a Soviet T-34 tank many years back to go with a WW2 Soviet force that I had in mind, so not only will that work for my Afropia setting (as either part of Alarus or Oponwana) as well as formation commander for a Soviet T34 Battalion. So again, win-win.

I hope you enjoy the pics and will see you soon.

Insurgents for FoF or Danger Close ruleset…maybe even Spectre Operations…Pswayze rocking the leadership and the RPD…

WW2 and post M7 Priests…a few minor mods on the stowage that they’re sporting. Saw quite a few reference photos that showed the wooden planks in the front of the vehicle holding various kit in line.

The trusty ole T34, star of Soviet Russia and post WW2 puppets…

Painted 

15mm            93, +20

28mm+          39

Bought         131, +10 (the priests)

Progress      +1

Cangames - Flames of War - Battle Report

Howdy folk,

As my previous posts have shown, yes Cangames was back this year!! I’ve already shared a few random pics of the various tables and a few games that Mike was running. For the first year back, my buddy Serge  set himself the Herculean task of running 4 different games…and, not having played Flames of War for quite some time, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was one of Serge’s games - by this time I had already filled in fora few dice rolls in Serge’s Kursk game, but this one I had intentionally signed up for in advance.

So, Serge brought us Juno Beach with scratch built beach and sea wall terrain. It was a great looking table and well laid out. Serge really tried to maximize a simple approach to the game and make it as easy as possible for the players. We had a few that had low or no gaming experience (one of the players was attending their first Cangames!!). So, the setup - Juno Beach…

The attackers: Canadian infantry and tanks rolling in hard with special rule of recycling infantry platoons to emulate the waves of assaulters. There were a few specials in the form of Churchill flame tanks and I think there was a preparatory bombardment as well.

The defenders: German infantry with panzerfaust/shrek, attached mortars, and armoured cars and Tigers in  reserve…no special rules, but there were elements of the Atlantic wall - 4 x Tobruk mg nests, and 2 anti-tank bunkers (5cm AT guns) and an AT nest (8.8cm Pak43) along with some trench line for the soldats and  a few minefields/barbed wire that had to be cleared. 

Now I can’t remember exactly the comings and goings of the entire action…there were about 7 rounds with German reinforcements coming in late and having fairly low impact overall. The AT bunkers fell quicker than expected and the attackers bunched up, a lot, at the sea wall and took a surprising amount of time to consolidate and get past the wall.

All in all, a very enjoyable game and great reintroduction into Flames of War…now, the pics.

The lay of the land, looking inland…landing craft and attacking force on parade.

The Canucks storm the beach, making for the wall, throwing smoke down to disrupt the LOS of the bunkers and nests. Shermans take station near the beach road and wait for orders and targets. The first AT bunker goes up quickly following a skilled assault by our new gamer…

The Canadians press their attack, keeping pressure on the bunkers. The Tobruk nests do a good job of keeping them on their toes, several teams fall and are recycled by platoon…so more for the grinder. The attackers do a great job of rolling for landing craft placement, minimal disruptions from the surf - and practically no delay for the DD tanks

In spite of some good rolls on the German side, the Canucks keep stuff moving and the Churchill beasts are making their way past the wall to finish off the bunker and lay some hurt on the trench lines.

Puma’s with 5cm main guns roar in, but admittedly have little effect on the attackers.

You can see the Canadians making their way on the German left, clearing mines and barbed wire…the German right had some relative success keeping the attackers at bay, but the Canucks started going heavy on the other side. 

In the distance, you can see the Tigers coming on the field…great models, but little impact on the field and really not much shock effect overall…

A Canadian parking lot at the sea wall as forces consolidated their for the leap inland. Great game, good opponents, and a Canadian victory at Juno. Game well run!

Team Yankee - more 4CMBG grunts

Hello folks,

I hope all is well on your respective sides of the internets. We are slowly and yet quickly making our way towards Spring and all that brings, one snowfall at a time…which certainly keeps us busy clearing snow and whatnot. So, with the release of Red Dawn in the Team Yankee world, I made it one of my objectives this year to get back to the 15mm side of my workbench and also get back to one of my favourite projects: 4CMBG.

Adding to the battlegroup, I recently finished a second infantry platoon for my grunts. I followed the same paint scheme and approach as my first platoon. Again, as I was leaning towards representing the PPCLI, I have a good number of the platoon cam’ed up with green faces.

Not much else to say here, I’ll have to get a battlegroup or company pic in the future.

Take care.

Painted 

15mm            39, +29 (TY Canuck infantry) 

28mm+          16

Bought         120

Progress      -65

Team Yankee a Go-Go - more Combat Support

Hey folks,

I hope all is well on your end. Another week, another dump of snow…we got about another half foot or so thanks to some warmer temps compared to a few days ago. The year so far has been pretty productive and given the excitement around Red Dawn, I wanted to get a few more Team Yankee units completed and on the orbat.

For my Canadians and my 4CMBG force, I completed another 3 x M150 Tow carriers. Depending on the list you take, there are a few options for those launchers…I think you can have up to 2 x TOW sections (up to 3 x M150s per section) depending on whether your Battlegroup is Infantry or Armour based. Keeping with the overall theme of my 4CMBG build, these launchers are camm’ed up with netting and painted in NATO tri-colour. The main difference is that I haven’t included any national flags or emblems…there are some great pics online from back in the day of M113 carriers based in Canada that don’t have emblems or flags while their Euro-based counterparts sported the fancy decals. These carriers will fit in nicely with the Battlegroup, and they can also work for an at home defense Red/Arctic Dawn force for with whichever Canadian Brigade Group or formation would’ve remained.

For my Soviets, I was able to complete a flight of Su-25 Frogfoot...full disclosure, I have had these on my workbench since the time that Battlefront first released them as resin and metal cast…lol. But now is their time to shine, lol...anywho, I did some consulting of Google, found a really great modeling instruction that had a paint diagram and I also went to my stock of Osprey Publishing books and got inspired by their Air Vanguard book on the Su-25. Selecting two, I really like the variance of the schemes and for some extra fanciness, I di d NMM on the rocket pods and tried to give some impression of movement with the aircraft and added some extra highlights and contrast to give that sense...looks kinda neat, I'm quite happy with the result, and depending on the angle it makes me think that the aircraft are in a nose down attitude.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

Canuck TOW toting M113's ready for action. These ones actually have the metal figs/gunners that were intended for the model. I had robbed a couple of tubes from the BF Humvee model for my first section.

Bring on the frogs!

See...speed highlights...works in my brain, not much else to say about that.

Painted

15mm            10, +9 (Frogfoot and M150 TOWs + crew)

28mm+          4

Bought         24

Progress      -10