AAR - Pikes and Panzers

A two-for-one after-action report today: a game of Pikeman's Lament followed by Iron Cross. (Scroll down for the Panzers)

Russell brought his 15mm miniatures and terrain over to the shed for a game of English Civil War using the Pikeman's Lament ruleset. PL is really easy to pick up, but provides some fun gaming as the uncertainty about passing the various activation tests means that nothing ever quite turns out as you want it to. Not knowing much about the ECW period hasn't really hampered me either: I've managed to win a couple of games out of the few that we have played over the last couple of months.

We both started with 24 points of troops, plus an officer, as per the rules, though because Russell had some "Commanded Shot" units, he had one more unit on the table than me. I had two units of Trotters (slower cavalry with guns), two units of pikes and two units of muskets, which I deployed on my table edge.

Russell advanced a lot more quickly (better dice rolling), so managed to bring his Commanded Shot into range quite quickly.

On unit of my pikes pushed forward as quickly as possible intending to have a "push of pikes", but never quite made it as far as his pikemen because of the infernal Commanded Shot.

On the other side of the table, my Trotters held off his Gallopers for a couple of turns, though after several turns of ineffectual combat, I lost one too many units (after Wavering) and my army routed from the battlefield.

Thankfully, my knowledge of WWII permits to write a more informed after-action report of a game of Iron Cross. We played the Capture scenario again, but with me taking the role of defender (Greeks) this time versus Russell as the attacker, who had a very well equipped Panzer army. 

All of my defenders started the game hidden, which caused the advancing Germans to cautiously move forward. The centre of the gaming table had a church surrounded by a stone wall, with an incomplete barbed wire fence flanked by trees and vineyards off to either flank.

I used my new terrain pieces on this board, which provided a bit of cover for the attackers.

One of the great advantages of being a hidden defender is that you get lots of dummy tokens to place around the battlefield.

As soon as some German infantry disembarked from their transport, the Greek sniper opened up from behind the church bell tower...where else are snipers supposed to go?  He successfully engaged the infantry placing down plenty of accurate shots before he was spotted. The heavy machine gun, also placed within the compound, opened up on the same units causing lots of damage.

A couple of turns into the game, the Germans started advancing on a broad front, necessitating the revealing of more hidden Greek troops. The supporting panzers were still hanging back near their starting point trading shots with a single anti-tank gun.

With the German attack stalling, Hauptman Russ ordered his scout units forward, only for them to stumble onto a hidden anti-tank rifle.

In the centre of the battleground, the Greeks, sensing victory, skirmished forward aggressively.

However, on their right flank, things started to turn sour. The Greek infantry faced panzers crashing through the barbed wire, their commander having foolishly chosen to place all his anti-tank weapons in the centre and left of the battlefield.

Back in the centre, the Greeks rapidly deployed additional units in form of some captured Italian CV-35 light tanks to start putting an increasing weight of fire onto the German infantry.

On the left flank, a couple of units of infantry and an anti-tank rifle caused more casualties to the German motorised units, who were lacking infantry support, who were in turn suffering a pounding from the resilient Greeks.

The gap in the right flank was plugged following the rapid redeployment of a mountain gun and some additional infantry units.

Late in the game, the Greeks, with their blood up, advanced incautiously and broke through the German line causing a rout.

The Greeks certainly benefited from being dug in and hidden for the first couple of turns, which enabled me to reactivate just a couple of units many times (and take several important morale checks), which slowed the German advance sufficiently. Another fun game and, unusually, one that I won!

Finishing off British forces in the Mediterranean

Some of the stuff featured in this post has been on my painting table (actually, in the cupboard) part finished for a few years. I did a little bit of work on them a few months ago, but have decided to crack on and get them finished. I've had a weekend of finishing things off, partly inspired by the new range of Greek miniatures that Great Escape Games are about to launch. I've already got a platoon of Greek Mountain Infantry, plus plenty of support weapons including a pair of CV-35 tankettes, but inevitably I'll end up with some of the new range when they become available.

I finished off basing all my Greeks, plus some Gebirgsjager and some British infantry yesterday.

The stuff from the cupboard includes 3 x Bren carriers, which are actually finished except for painting the crews, a pair of A13 Cruisers and a pair of Vickers Light Tanks MkVI. The idea is to use them for scenarios set in North Africa, Sicily, Greece and perhaps even Italy.

I tried out the Caunter camo scheme on the carriers first of all because they had fewer lumps and bumps that needed masking prior to spraying with the airbrush.

I then made a start on applying Caunter to the A13s, but then put them down again a few months ago after getting this far.

The paints are Vallejo Model Air and come from a set called British Caunter Colors. The base colour is 71.288 Portland Stone, the lighter green is 71.401 Silver Grey and the dark green is 71.012 Dark Green.

I masked off another section and applied another thick stripe of Silver Grey today. One trick that I have learnt when applying the masking tape (well, two tips) is to stick the masking tape to your trousers a few times to take a lot of the stickiness out of it, otherwise it sticks to the paint too well, which brings me onto tip #2. When removing the tape, pull it as gently as you can and go as slowly as you can, otherwise it will pull off flakes of the base coat.

This thicker light green stripe is going to have another dark green stripe painted inside it, but I need to leave this one to dry for several days, otherwise risk pulling parts of it with the next application of masking tape.

The other tanks that I will make a start on finishing(!) are a pair of Vickers Mk.VIb's. I had got as far as painting on the base colour, which I think is Vallejo Model Color Iraqi Sand. I'm not 100% sure what I am going to do with them yet, but definitely not Caunter because of the difficulty of masking all the various panels.

All of the models featured in this post are made by Blitzkrieg Miniatures.

Universal Carriers and Caunter Camouflage

To build out the support units for my Greek army for Iron Cross, I've added some British anti-tank units mounted in universal carriers. I have painted three resin carriers from Die Waffenkammer; I'm not a great fan of resin because I have had many bad experiences of paint flaking off no matter how well I have prepared the surface before applying the paint.

One of the reasons that I chose the Die Waffenkammer models was that they came with four crew members per carrier plus lots of stowage. I'm in the process of painting the miniatures at the moment. I'll add a little bit more weathering too to dull down the newly applied decals.

There are some great photos on the web of carriers in Greece painted in the "Caunter" scheme, so I ordered the 'British Caunter Colors' paint set from Vallejo and duly applied it. Having read around the Internet on the subject of caunter, it seems to be catnip for web trolls, but having used the colours supplied by Vallejo, and read both sides of the argument, I feel like I have achieved a historically accurate result and think they look pretty good. I even think that I have used the correct shapes! ;-)

Painting caunter is hard though! I had originally planned to use an airbrush on the carriers, but it requires so much fiddly masking that I ended up painting the straight lines by eye and a steady hand.

I've started to paint a couple of A13 Cruisers for the desert in caunter too...a bit more work to get them to a finished state though. Masking the A13s was easier, so I've been using the airbrush to spray the straight lines.

Operation Marita - German invasion of Greece

I've been working on painting up a German invasion force and defending Greeks, supported by some Brits, for a few months now. The armies shown here have been put together for Iron Cross, where a handful of miniatures represents an infantry or support unit and one vehicle per vehicle unit.

Other than adding tufts and flock to the bases, I finally finished all of the miniatures this afternoon. Here is the whole of the Allied forces, awaiting some armoured support...

The core of the force is made of an HQ squad...

...and four infantry platoons

A sniper is really useful when defending, which I am expecting to be doing in the majority of scenarios with this Greek army.

A couple of CV-35s (captured from the Italians), which are useful for putting down heavy fire onto infantry.

A couple of infantry support units: a medium machine gun (again, good for putting down a weight of fire and stopping infantry assaults) and a mortar team, which I mainly use to cause units-in-cover to move and lose their cover bonus, which is especially useful for disrupting support weapons and limiting their rate of fire.

A Skoda M.15 75mm mountain gun, an anti-tank rifle, and an 'Elephantino' anti-tank gun to provide some heavier fire against advancing panzers.

In support of the Greeks, I've got some extra British infantry mounted in a lorry. I've also got a British 2 pounder anti-tank gun on the painting pile to provide extra AT punch.

I've also got a few more armoured vehicles to paint for the British

• a platoon of universal carriers to add further mobility to the reserves, 
• a couple of Vickers MkVI's just for the nuisance value, and
• a couple of A13's which have a reasonable chance against the panzers.

I plan on making some terrain pieces too: trench works to give the defenders some protection and barbed wire and minefields to slow them down a little and channel the enemy's advance onto the AT guns.

On the attack are the Germans with 3 x Panzer 38(t)s, 2 x Panzer IVs and 6 x Panzer IIIs...

...and 1 x HQ unit, 6 x infantry squads (3 in trucks), a mortar team, an HMG team, a Pak36 AT gun, 2 x anti-tank rifle teams, and 2 x teams of Panzerjagers armed with AT grenades. A formidable force!

A selection of German armour. I have no idea how the Greeks are going to stop that lot!  I might need to "dig" a few anti-tank ditches in addition to making the other terrain pieces to stop the Greeks from being overrun immediately.

German panzers scouting ahead of the main force...

Greek anti-tank units concealed in the pine forest lie in wait...

I will crack on with making the terrain pieces now and also finish off the British armoured units and then maybe by then we will be out of lockdown and get some gaming in.