I painted these guys ages ago for a wargaming friend. It's been a while since our last game, so I haven't been able to hand them over yet. Some of these guys were obviously modelled with camouflage smocks and helmet covers, so I had to paint them up as mid-late war.
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| Battlefront metal miniatures, all. |
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| Camo at this scale is usually considered kinda pointless, but I still like doing it anyway. |
Many years ago I bought some second-hand Team Yankee 15mm British and Dutch infantry and painted up a few, intending to use them in Force on Force games set in an alternative history 1970s campaign I called 'Cod War Gone Hot.' This would have represented a war between the United Kingdom and it's neighbour Iceland over territorial waters and fisheries, envisioning an escalation of the 'Cod Wars.'
While I also bought a few 1/300 aircraft and 1/3000 ships from Heroics & Ros and Navwar respectively, I never got far with the project due to competing priorities and lack of interested gaming partners. Maybe one day I'll get back into it, but for now, this is all I've got to show for it.
My recent encounter with hex games, specifically Tactical Combat Series - Goose Green, prompted me to finally upload pictures of the similar-era British infantry, in a sort of segue-related post kind-of thing...
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| British LMG team taking cover. |
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| Around two sections of Brits, plus a pair of 84mm Carl Gustavs at the back (Battlefront miniatures). |
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| SLRs with two different sets of furniture. |
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| Although it does not show up very distinctly in photos and low-light conditions, painting the British camouflage was a lot of fun. |
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| If the project ever continues, these guys will be accompanied by more Battlefront miniatures, probably including Scimitars, Warrior IFVs and Fox armoured cars. |
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| 84mm Carl Gustav team. |
Of course real world Iceland does not have a military (the closest they've got is a coastguard of a couple of boats and some rescue aircraft and helicopters). In the Cod War Gone Hot campaign setting, Iceland has a tiny but well-trained and motivated military including infantry and armour with equipment from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Nordic countries, a navy based on Norwegian missile boats and German submarines, and an air force of Swedish SAAB aircraft (Mainly SAAB 35 Drakens because they look the coolest). While they would stand no chance in a total war against the UK, their aim would be to hold off long enough for international intervention and mediation from Britain's potential rivals (including Norway, the USSR, and even the USA if the latter thought it's Keflavik airbase was threatened).
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| These are the Icelandic Army troops who would have faced the Brits in the campaign. I gave them grey trousers and plain green jackets. I made Argentine-style goggles for two of them out of tiny pieces of paper (this was tedious). If the project continues they would have Marder IFVs, and ambush armour such as SK-105s and Stridsvagn S-Tanks. |
We had the first half of the first battle of our second Chain of Command France 1940 campaign today (called it part-way in due to time constraints).
A German motorcycle recon platoon supported by a platoon of three Sdkfz 221 or 223 armoured cars has attacked the southern section of Montmedy and has gained a foothold across the bridge into town. Two British platoons from D Company, 12th Derwent Light Infantry, with a pair of OQF 2 pounders and at least one Vickers machine gun are holding the crossroads, despite taking some heavy fire. They have inflicted casualties on one German section and destroyed one armoured car, but it remains to be seen if they can hold on...
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| Soldiers from 18 Platoon fire at the Germans (Peter Pig miniatures). |
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| The overall situation. Many of the British Junior and even Senior Leaders are wounded. |
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| German armoured car (Battlefront miniatures). |
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| OQF 2 pounder from the 68th Anti-Tank Regiment finally got a penetrating hit on an Sdkfz.223 (Old Glory miniatures). |
Edit: I painted a second section of a mate's 15mm Germans for Chain of Command, so I've added these at the bottom of the post for completeness.
In the second instalment of The Liveries of Others, this time I painted a section of German infantry (who will be either Aufklarungs troops or Schutzen) for a mate to use in our upcoming Chain of Command campaign to be set around the town of Montmedy in 1940.
These miniatures are, I believe, older Battlefront metals. One guy seems to be wearing a camouflage smock but as these will be depicting early war Germans I decided not to paint the camo and just consider it a field jacket that's a bit too big for him. (I will have to ignore that the guy in the hat is carrying an MG42 rather than an MG34 - at this scale, who will notice, right?) The corporal is missing the barrel of his submachinegun but that can't be helped (anything I add will just snap off again).
All bases are magnetised (cut-up P-Plates), and these guys are ready to race ahead of the Panzer columns to find and fix the undaunted Derwent Light Infantry.
Many weeks later, I painted the below, second section of Chain of Command Germans. These older Flames of War metal miniatures do have a good mix of poses that makes them fairly engaging to paint.
One of the the squares on my Hobby Bingo card for 2023 was to complete a plastic scale model kit. Fortunately I had an unbuilt Academy 1/144 scale MiG-29. While I have no compatible scaled gaming miniatures, it will probably do as a piece of terrain for 15mm (1/100 scale) Force on Force (or similar) gaming in the People's Republic of Slovetzia (they will absolutely need state-of-the-art fighter aircraft to deter any interference from America or NATO.
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| The pride of the Slovetzian Peoples' Air Force, a 1/144 scale MiG-29, with Battlefront Miniatures 1/100 scale infantry. (The scale difference probably won't be as jarring in tabletop battles with distance between figures and everyone focusing on the action). |
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| NATO intelligence reports that they doubt the air-to-air missiles are fully functional. |
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| National markings were hand-painted and turned out ok, if a bit rough. Unfortunately I had to re-do the area around the canopy due to a mistake with blu-tack while trying to protect it from Dullcote frosting (don't put blu-tack on painted minis, and seal plastic model kits before adding the clear parts). |
This battle was quite a while ago (last year), and was sitting in draft. Here it is, finally:
One of my usual gaming mates had not really played Chain of Command before (maybe once long ago). I kept going on and on and on about how good the ruleset is, so we finally decided to have a game. We played a scenario that would feed into my Very British Civil War campaign setting.
My opponent took command of a force of British Regulars fighting for King Edward's Royalists, specifically a rifle platoon with some armoured support scraped together from local depots. I took command of an infantry column of the Sheffield Workers Militia (SWoM) with an FT-17 and a field medic.
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| SWoM riflemen exchanging fire with British Army regulars across the Salteye Brook (all human figures: Peter Pig Miniatures). |
As the Manchester Commune's offensive to cut the Mersey Corridor has now commenced in earnest, Royalist regular army forces have moved to counterattack, striking at a gap in the leftists lines near the Peel Green cemetery just outside of the Manchester urban area. The Army unit was able to enter the Eccles neighbourhood and get in behind a SWoM column, which then had to send a reserve platoon back to remove the threat.
The fighting commenced when a section of SWoM riflemen opened effective fire on Army troops who had moved up to a tall garden hedge. Several men on both sides were hit. Taking the initiative, the Corporal of the Army rifle section took three men and attempted to cross the bridge to gain a better position, while the platoon's 2" mortar team attempted to cover the movement with smoke.
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| (Battlefront miniatures FT-17). |
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| (Paper buildings from Dave Graffam, Microtactix and Wargame Print - all through Wargames Vault). |
Seeing a direct attack across the bridge presently unviable, the Army platoon commander instead brought the two other rifle sections and a Matilda I tank across Salteye Brook further downstream and moved these up to attack the SWoM left flank, which was held by more militia riflemen behind a wall.
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| SWoM militia hold the cemetery wall. |
Spotting this movement, the SWoM section leader (who had a submachinegun and was keen on using it!) took one of his nine-man sub-sections and broke from the cover of the cemetery wall to attack the Army troops before they had a chance to emerge from the treeline.
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| SWoM rashly attempt an assault. |
While the SWoM militiamen had the advantage of their leader's submachinegun, the Army troops had a Bren as a counter. In a hard-fought assault about five were killed and wounded on each side, and both section leaders were wounded. The Army were pushed back, but they had blunted the SWoM assault, and had another section plus a tank backing them up.
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| Badly beaten up in the assault: the British Army lead left flank section. |
The remaining SWoM fighters pulled back to the cemetery wall, though in doing so they were fired upon and broken! As they ran back through the gate, they panicked the men of their other half-section, who started to believe they were about to be attacked by an overwhelming Army force. The SWoM section leader was too busy trying to bandage himself and run away at the same time to try to boost their confidence.
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| SWoM militiamen and their wounded commander flee through the cemetery gate, panicking their comrades. |
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| Regular Army Matilda I (Zvezda miniatures) approaches from the west. |
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| Regular Army Vickers Medium II (QRF Miniatures) heads through the town to counter the SWoM tank. |
A SWoM medic rushed through the gravestones to tend to the wounded left-flank section leader (he had just ran across from the right-flank section where he was providing first aid to that section's leader who'd also been wounded).
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| Medic Lionel runs through the gravestones, hoping to save his section leader from ending up beneath one (converted Peter Pig Home Guard officer and scratch-built gravestones). |
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| "Time to get goin' lads!! Get up Jimmy! What'r ye doin'?" |
Somehow (due to very lucky rolls on the Bad Things Happen table) the badly-shot-up SWoM remnants on the right flank were able to hang on for quite some time after the collapse of their left flank, but they were inevitably going to lose, so we called it after a few more Phases.
The SWoM offensive on this part of the Mersey Corridor front is definitely in trouble now, with skilled and armour-equipped Royalist units in their rear. What are they going to do about that?
This was a fun and educational game (educational for me as it turned out), and really showed the impact of wounded leaders, the risks of advancing in the open without smoke cover, and the riskiness of assaulting undamaged sections which still have their section automatic weapons fully operational.
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| Slovetzia is located in the fold of the map in Eastern Europe. |
Slovetzia is a tiny, insignificant (but don't say that to them) country in the mountainous Carpathians in eastern Europe, surrounded on all sides by vastly stronger, better-known and generally hostile neighbours. Well, the neighbours are sometimes hostile, sometimes not, sometimes even helpful. Most other countries, superpowers and supranational world entities ignore or, more accurately, remain ignorant of Slovetzia. This historical fact has no doubt contributed to the survival and freedom of the Slovetzian people and their nation from ancient times into the modern era.
Another fact that has ensured the survival and freedom of the Slovetzians is their martial strength, bolstered by their unflinching courage, of which all Slovetzians are immensely proud. Below is a manifestation of this Slovetzian martial strength in the modern era - a Motor Rifle Platoon of the Slovetzia Lidova Vojsko (SLV), the Slovetzian Peoples Army.
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| Slovetzian Motor Rifle Platoon, and typical supports (Battlefront Soviet Russians, Zvezda T-34/85 with conversion). |
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| Slovetzian Motor Rifle Platoon organisational chart |
The Motor Rifle Regiments are the core of the SLV. There are two regiments, each of three companies and organic support units, including a tank company, mortar, light anti-aircraft (including SA-18s and 23mm AAA), anti-tank (including plenty of AT-4 Spigots) and light support platoons with AGS-17s and various heavy machine guns. In each Company are three platoons, usually with armoured transport (a variety of Soviet, Czech and Yugoslav-made vehicles) but sometimes carried only in trucks.
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MANPADs are grouped at the regimental level.
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Despite their training and doctrine being focussed on mechanised offensive operations against NATO, the mobility, high morale and aggressiveness of the Motor Rifles means they are also the cornerstone of the SLV's anti-partisan efforts. SLV Reserve Infantry units make up the government garrisons around the country and conduct most of the patrolling. However, when rebel bases are located or the traitorous partisans reveal themselves by attacking in strength, the Motor Rifles are called upon to smash the enemy in detail.
The pride of Slovetzian armour, the more modern Soviet-era Main Battle Tanks, are concentrated in their Tank Regiment, which is intended to move rapidly to cut off and smash any invasion through a series of brilliant operational pincer movements and dramatic armoured assaults led by the most daring and fearless of SLV officers. These valuable MBTs are not usually to be wasted and worn out in limited battles with Slovetzian insurgent traitors.
The Motor Rifle units find themselves supported by whatever AFVs are leftover, in particular, reconditioned T-34/85s that were given to Slovetzia in the distant past by Stalin. With Slovetzian ingenuity, these archaic tanks have received an Explosive Reactive Armour upgrade to keep them relevant. It should be noted at this point that theft and black market resale of ERA materials across the border is absolutely and totally not a thing in Slovetzia due to the loyalty of officers, Q staff and maintenance personnel, and there are severe punishments available to ensure this. In the hands of skilled and courageous Slovetzian crews, these vehicles will remain a threat to be reckoned with by a few any opponents.
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| SLV T-34/85 with Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA). (Zvezda miniature). |
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| Hand-painted Slovetzian national symbol: the Boar's head on red and light blue-grey bicolour. |
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| I used too much paint on this national emblem so it's a bit 3D. |
The Slovetzian T-34/85 is a very limited conversion to a Zvezda plastic kit: simply attaching sections of square-gridded styrene sheet to represent the ERA blocks. If I was to do this again I'd use Green Stuff to make the ERA blocks rectangular, and add a cage of slat armour over the turret to intercept top-attack AT missiles. The tank could also benefit from ERA side-skirts and collar or something to intercept missiles that would hit the turret ring.
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| Very simple conversion work to up-armour the T-34 for the modern era. |
Slovetzia is the fictional country from a forgotten 90s movie. I was looking for a setting for modern platoon-level or counterinsurgency games using Eastern Bloc equipment and I remembered Slovetzia as a suitable location: beset by numerous domestic problems, an insurgency and the meddling of outside forces. The sturdy Slovetzian people are also worthy of their own expanded lore and their own timeline, and I intended to do this for them through the medium of model painting and gaming.
Day of Days: The 101st Airborne Division dropped in the early hours to capture key objectives to support the landings and disrupt German defences.
Soon after arriving at Company HQ in the first hour of daylight, Lieutenant Rich Summers was instructed to take as many men as he'd been able to gather from his and other platoons and take out a battery of German '105s' (which tuned out to be 15cm heavy artillery) that could be heard just a few hundred yards away shelling the exits to the landing beaches. Summers was a few men short of a regulation platoon, but he headed out nonetheless, with reliable comrades Lieutenant 'Stag' Crampton, Staff Sergeant Teas, and Sergeant Guardiner leading one of the squads, as well as a few French Resistance explosive enthusiasts and a lost British medic.
The assault that followed would, however, not be taught at staff colleges or infantry schools for decades to come as a textbook example of tactics and small unit leadership, nor would it become a focal point for TV series' and video games. At best it would enter the regimental history as a short note about some hard fighting that was done.
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| Thanks Google Maps and MS Paint. (The actual terrain differed somewhat from the map above of course, as you will see). |
I took command of my US paratroopers, and my opponent commanded the regular German infantry platoon. The American paratroopers had to advance out of the hedgerows and into the German trenches before the defenders could react. The image above explains the scenario and victory conditions.
The German defender had pushed his JOPs pretty far up the position to guard two of the four guns and the HQ dugout as well as manning the covering weapon pit. The paratroopers had most of their JOPs back on the board edge but at least got one in a hedge near the first gun.
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| The first phases of the action. |
Anticipating a German machine gun covering the open field behind the artillery position, SGT Guardiner first positioned his MG team to cover south down the trench line and moved his squad up close to the first gun. They then threw smoke grenades out behind the gun pit, rushed the crew and took the gun. The other squad also moved through a stand of trees to likewise cover the trench and got into a heavy firefight with a German squad moving up toward them. With the German section leader directing his squad's MG fire, the paratroopers had the worse of the exchange, and lost a couple of men - first blood to the Germans.
LT Summers established the 60mm mortar to start bringing down fire, and then sprinted toward the action, while S/SGT Tees set up in some bushes to snipe at the Germans near the HQ bunker. All his shots went horrendously wide though - possibly his sights got knocked out of alignment during the previous night's jump. He was much shamed by jeers of "jeep jockey!" from nearby paratroopers, who didn't know who they were paying out.
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| SGT Guardiner's squad rushes the first gun (15cm gun and crew from Old Glory miniatures). |
With SGT Guardiner busy demolishing the first gun. LT Crampton kept Guardiner's rifle team moving and hurling grenades, and kept the MG team firing down the trench. The firepower of two belt-fed machine guns started to tell against the Germans, and their platoon leader, who had been bringing down the shock levels and keeping his men in the fight, was wounded.
Right then, for some reason a Panzerschreck rocket projectile sailed past the Americans and landed somewhere behind them.
When a second German squad got out of the trench behind their own smoke grenade screen, SGT Guardiner realised it was now or never and took his squad charging down the trench into a close assault against the weakened first.
The hard fighting bloodied both sides, but in the end Gardiner's squad was forced to fall back from the trench and get behind the hedgerows, having lost several men. Guardiner spent the rest of the fight sorting his guys out [i.e. bringing down their shock levels so they didn't rout]. The German squad broke immediately afterward though, as a lucky 60mm mortar round landed near enough to shock the men. At this point the German platoon commander, who was certainly a grizzled veteran of many battles, rose to his feet despite his wound and directed the second German squad to hop back into the trench and hold the line. [The German player took the tough decision to use a Chain of Command die to end the Turn - this led the battered and broken first squad to rout from the table, but removed the wounded status from his platoon commander and getting this hardcore fellow back into the action. The Turn End also let the smoke dissipate and gave his tripod MG42 a clear shot at all the Americans].
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| Guardiner's squad assaults down the trench line. |
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| (Truck miniature from Plastic Soldier Company). |
With the attack falling apart, LT Summers, by himself, rushed forward and plunged into the trench. Seeing this, the three Resistance members, who had accompanied the paratroopers to bring explosives [a Demolition team support choice], followed him in. LT Crampton directed the two MGs to Summers' rush very commendably, but while Summers ran down toward the second gun a fusillade of MG42 fire peppered the lip of the trench. Sadly one of the Resistance fighters, Old Jean, was hit and killed as he followed the charging American.
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| Old Jean and the Resistance fighters follow LT Summers into the trench. (Left two are Peter Pig. Old Jean on the right is from Eureka miniatures). |
With enemy troops beginning to move up toward him, LT Summers quickly spiked the second gun and readied himself for a close assault. However, realising how far behind were his fellow paratroopers and with the fire from multiple MG42s not letting up, LT Summers prudently took the remaining two Frenchmen and pulled back.
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| A poor and blurry photo not doing justice to the heroic LT Summers destroying the second German gun. |
With two guns destroyed the American paratroopers got 2 VPs while the Germans retained 2 VPs for the surviving guns. No American got close enough to take a look at any classified maps on the table in the HQ dugout. American casualties were seven killed and wounded, plus one French Resistance fighter, while German casualties were about the same. Both platoons started with 11 Force Morale. While the Paratroopers' morale stayed high despite setbacks, the Germans were hit hard and brought down to five by a combination of a wounded Senior Leader, and a broken and routed squad and Junior Leader.
It might have been possible for me to carry on the fight to attempt to break the German Force Morale or at least push them back from the HQ dugout. I still had six Command Dice to my opponent's three, could have rallied Guardiner's squad (which was still five men plus an MG team), and charged back toward the trench, together with the remaining second squad and four (potentially) heroic SMG-armed leaders. However, it could also have gone very badly due to German fire superiority (five MG42s against my two M191A2s). With losses high and lessons learned, we decided to call it.
German MVPs were their platoon commander, who overcame wounds to keep his men together and fighting, and first squad, who bore the brunt of the combat, including defeating US paras in a close assault.
On the American side, medals will likely be awarded for LTs Summers for single-handedly taking out the second gun, and SGT Guardiner for his aggressiveness in attack and for destroying the first gun.
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| The German platoon commander directing the action, while first squad's squad leader signals across the open field to third section and their MG42. (Battlefront miniatures). |
I based the game on the Chain of Command scenario 'Brecourt Manor' written by one William Thorpe, but simplified it in several ways, including allowing each force to take their standard platoons, plus five points of support. To represent their already being in the position, the Germans were given D6 free initial moves with their patrol markers. On this occasion they got three, and occupied the positions of all but one gun. I, leading the US paratroopers, did not use their Patrol Markers all that effectively although it was probably good enough and actually led to deployment similar to what appears to have happened at Brecourt Manor.
Overall the scenario worked well, giving us a fun and challenging game that could easily have gone either way. The only thing I'd change would be perhaps give the Germans fewer support points than the Americans, as they already have the advantage of being the defenders, and start with a large extant network of trenches and weapons pits.
