AAR - Operation Barbarossa

After many months of not being able to game, Stuart and I managed to get in a big game of Iron Cross a couple of weeks ago; I have only just got around to writing it up because I've been spending lots of time out of the house making the most of not being in lockdown. All the miniatures and vehicles that I have been painting during lockdown got a good run-out onto the table. Here's a mostly pictorial after action report from the game we played, which was loosely set during the German invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa) in June 1941.

I had about 780 points of a German panzer division versus Stuart's Russians. He was defending a village, so started the game with all units dug in and hidden with approximately 350 points. We were trying out a new rule for units in ambush positions too, which seemed to work well, other than my tanks being on the receiving end - see the photos below for the full visual impact!  

Stuart has moved to new premises and has the space to set up some permanent (large!) gaming tables. The table we were playing on was 18 feet in length by 6 feet wide; the fully motorised Germans had to attack from one table edge and advance rapidly up the length of the table with the objective of securing three key buildings, which was the victory condition we agreed beforehand. The vehicles are mostly from Rubicon, with a few Warlord models, the buildings and trees are all from 4Ground and the miniatures are mostly from Great Escape Games.

My German force was constituted of the following armoured units:

• 3 x Panzer (35)t
• 6 x Panzer III including a sub-commander
• 2 x Panzer IV
• 2 x Panther

And some lorry transported infantry and support units:

• 1 x HQ
• 1 x heavy machine gun
• 1 x mortar
• 5 x infantry platoons

I'm not entirely sure what Stuart had on the table because (spoiler alert) he destroyed my force before I could expose much of it. He definitely had some T34s, a couple of AT guns and a couple of units of infantry. In hindsight, I would have benefited from some lighter recce units to scout ahead and locate his units, especially the dug-in/hidden tanks and anti-tank guns.  These hidden units, combined with the new ambush rule, made mincemeat of my tanks at long range. It was still lots of fun though!

This first photo shows the German panzers blindly advancing.

This shot is taken from the German deployment zone down the length of the table towards the Russian held village in the distance.

At the bottom of this photo, you can see the Panthers advancing along the road protecting the lorry-borne units. So far, there has been no sign of the Russians.

As the Germans reach the outskirts of the farm, the infantry round the corner and come face-to-face with a well-camouflaged T34...

...which immediately puts a round straight into the lorry causing heavy casualties.

At the same time, the Russian infantry open up from the cover of a wall.

Now that the action has started, more Russian units a bit further to the rear start to move up in support of their comrades on the front line.

One of the German infantry platoons rallies, along with some fire support from the Panther, and causes the Russians to fall back. The other German unit, heavily wounded, falls back into the safety of the woods (at the top of the picture).

Following the early action around the farmhouse, the main panzer force creeps inexorably toward the waiting enemy. A well dug-in T34 fires off a shot at the rearmost Panther on the road, but misses. The Panzer Ace in the Panther returns fire and punishes the Russians for their poor gunnery.

The number of casualties per side is slightly in the Russians favour at this point, but the menacing clanking of tracks, the look on the Commissars face is definitely one of worry!

The T34 in the open field behind the farmhouse is also destroyed by the Panther's big gun, though the (red) tide is about to turn.

Seeing the oily smoke in the distance, the German medium and light tanks push forwards quickly sensing a quick victory.

Great Escape Games makes some great casualty figures, which look great when strewn around destroyed tanks.

The German panzers push forward in haste, but now lose the cover that they had, which was obscuring the Russian's line of sight. The Panzer III at the junction is about to come to sticky end at the hands of Russian infantry with Molotov cocktails.

The second lorry full of infantry rushes forward and disembarks straight into vicious combat with the group of Soviets who had just assaulted the Panzer III.

The main Panzer force on the left flank is now bogged down in fighting against a couple of T34s, so the Panthers attempt to turn the Russian flank and push forward into the open field behind the farm buildings...straight into the sights of an anti-tank gun in ambush position.

Meanwhile on the German left flank, a pair of T34s in good positions make very short work of several Panzer IIIs and 35t's. Pretty soon the assault grinds to a halt amid dense clouds of black, oily smoke.

In a last ditch attempt to encircle the Soviet line, the Panther (at the top of the photo) drives over the top of the AT gun and fires into the rear of the T34. Unfortunately, it is too little, too late: the Germans have reached their break point and fall back.

I think that we played about 7 or 8 turns, but for most of that time the Germans were being ground down in a war of attrition with some well-placed Russian units, rather than continuing to advance. The new ambush rule that we played gave the outnumbered defender a new tactic, which made the placement of units, with overlapping fields of fire really effective in defending.

The ambush rule, for any other Iron Cross players who want to try it out, is:

• A unit which starts the game in a hidden position may declare, as long as it has not moved at all, that it is going to fire from an ambush position. None of the opposing player's units may interrupt an ambush. As soon as the ambushing unit has fired then it is revealed. An ambushing unit, which does not have the initiative, may attempt to interrupt the active player, but is revealed whether the interrupt attempt succeeds or fails.

After reading a lot of books about the Eastern Front during lockdown, it made me realise that the Russians were very successful in camouflaging their positions and setting ambushes against the advancing Axis forces. Even in the featureless steppe, which is ostensibly open and giving no obvious cover i.e. an open field, they were able to successfully dig in and launch an ambush. This translates to the gaming table too using the rule described above; even if a hidden token is placed in the middle of open terrain, then it can start the game as being hidden and use this rule.

Lesson for countering this: take some fast-moving recce units. Next game I will dig out my motorcycle infantry and a couple of SdKfz 222's to screen ahead of the main force.

Some more WWII Greek Infantry

I've not been particularly productive so far in 2021...probably general apathy brought on by being in lockdown for so long. Anyway, I have painted some more Greek Evzones from Great Escape Games. I've fully finished, other then adding some vegetation to the bases, 21 individual figures now; 23 left to finish, plus the mortar and anti-gun models. 

Here are a few shots of a little vignette containing three infantry figures. I have started basing some figures on multi stands like this, even though they are 28mm, because it makes moving them around the gaming table so much easier. I intend to use this army for Iron Cross, so there is no requirement to have them based individually anyway.

I have also started work on painting two (captured from the Italians) CV-35 tankettes. I have only applied the base coat of dark green so far. I started off using an airbrush, but gave up with that after three coats: there are so many little nooks and crannies on the model that it is virtually impossible to get the airbrush angled correctly, so I ended up painting a couple of watery coats all over and into the many recessed areas.

I wish that I had bought a tank commander and stuck him in the top hatch to reassure me that they are the correct scale! Every time I look at them I think they are 15mm sized models! Here is a CV-35 with the Greek Lochagos.

These tankettes are tiny in comparison to every other armoured fighting vehicle; it must have been terrifying for the crews to go into battle during the Second World War in such a diminutive bit of kit. Here is what it looks like next to a Panzer 38(t) in the same 1/56 scale.

The CV-35s are only armed with machine guns, so won't be tasked with taking on the Panzers, but will certainly have to keep out of their way or get trampled beneath the tracks. It should make for some interesting gaming!

The CV-35s are from Company B, the Panzer 38(t) is from Warlord Games and the infantry figures are from Great Escape Games.

Aufklarungspanzerwagen 38(t)

The Aufklarungspanzerwagen 38(t) was a reconnaissance version of the German Panzer 38(t), which itself was based on the Czech LT vz.38 light tank. This model is from Rubicon and is made from the base Hetzer kit plus two add-on packs to convert it into a light recon tank with a 20mm autocannon.

Like all Rubicon kits, it is really well manufactured with lots of detail and clear assembly instructions. I do have one gripe with this conversion kit though. The resin superstructure piece, which sits atop the ABS plastic main hull, to convert it from a Hetzer into the recon version, did not fit correctly. No matter where I placed the superstructure onto the main hull, there was a gap of 1-2mm. In the end I flush-fitted it to bond together at the front of the hull and then used filler putty to fill in the gap at the rear. You cannot see the join after it has been sanded and painted, but it is not the quality that I have come to expect of Rubicon. (I have assembled almost 30 of their kits over the last couple of months and every one of them has been micromillimeter perfect except this one piece.)

I wanted to add this Aufklarungspanzer to my growing collection of German armoured units, so that I have a specific unit to use for reconnaissance in Iron Cross. I've been playing a game of Germans vs Russians with Stuart from Great Escape Games. In the ongoing scenario, his Russians are dug in and hidden from the advancing Germans, so a recon unit will come in really handy to expose the disposition of his troops prior to the rest of my tank units blindly stumbling onto his anti-tank guns. I've also got a small number of motorcycle mounted early war troops (from Crusader, I think?), so will deploy these as a recon platoon too.

Surprisingly, Rubicon do not have a Panzer 38(t) kit, so I recently bought a troop of them from Warlord. I quite enjoyed putting the Warlord kits together, but having now assembled the Rubicon kit, which is ostensibly modelled/based on the same Czech LT vz.38 chassis, I thought that they should be the same size. I thought that whoever mastered the 38(t) model for Warlord got some of the dimensions wrong. The length is the same as the Rubicon kit, and also consistent with them both being 1/56 scale, but the Warlord 38(t) is almost a centimetre narrower that the Rubicon 38(t), so cannot be correct to the 1/56 scale.

However, some members of the wargaming community have pointed out my misunderstanding! 

There are/were in fact two variants of the Aufklarungspanzer, which were based on the 38t. The Rubicon model is based upon the Hetzer chassis, which was itself derived from the chassis of the LT vz.38 chassis, but modified, hence the difference in size. The Hetzer-based version apparently never saw action and was a prototype developed at the end of the war. The second version, which did see action albeit in limited numbers, was built on the original chassis of the 38t and is far more similar to the Warlord models I have got. Rather than the tank turret shown in the photo below, the recon version had a 2cm autocannon and open top turret.

I'm still intending to use the troop of 38(t)s because they still look cool and are a bit different to the usual plethora of Tigers that grace too many wargaming tables. By the time the troop gets close to the same position as the Aufklarungspanzer on the gaming table, I am fully expecting the recon unit to be obscured by a smoke marker i.e. a blazing wreck!

Panzer 38(t) reinforcement platoon

I played a game of Iron Cross recently where I was playing as the Germans attacking an entrenched Russian position (Operation Zitadelle, perhaps?). In addition to several infantry units and a Pak36 AT gun, I had 6 x Panzer IIIs, 2 x Panzer IVs and 2 x early production (unreliable!) Panthers. These were pitted against a dug-in and hidden force of Russians, approximately 2/3rds the strength of my Germans, featuring 6 x T34s. Below is the Schwerepunkt led by the Panthers and a platoon of Panzer IIIs.

The objective of the scenario was for the Germans to push forward, puncture the Russian lines and wreak havoc in the Russian rear. Unfortunately, that didn't happen: just like on the first day of Zitadelle, the German advance started well, but bogged down in attritional fighting along the main road and eventually was beaten back by some superb shooting from the T34s. By the end of the battle, there were lots of smoking tank wrecks littering the battlefield, mostly German.

So, I have decided that for Day 2 of the assault, once the German field recovery unit had retrieved and repaired some of the knocked out Panzers, was to throw more armour into the attack. I have therefore bought a platoon of Panzer 38(t)s from Warlord and have assembled and painted them up.

These are really nice kits to build, on a par with my favourite manufacturer, Rubicon, who for some reason do not produce a standard Panzer 38(t) model. They do have a Hetzer and a conversion kit to make an Aufklarungs variant, but no standard 38(t). I feel like I need to get myself the recce tank now, though I am not sure whether the scale of the Warlord and Rubicon kits will be compatible. They look to scale when placed next to my Rubicon Panzer IIIs, but I guess I will have to buy one to find out.

These Warlord kits took about 45-60 minutes to assemble and have plenty of detail on them, plus a good selection of waterslide decals. I was building German 38(t)s, but there are decals for Romanian and Bulgarian vehicles too.

Here are the finished articles painted in plain panzer grey. I chose a basic paint job to match the rest of the models that I have done recently, so that I can use them in a number of early to mid war scenarios.

I have also painted up another infantry squad of panzerjagers to hunt down the T34s. They look a bit shiny still; a few years ago, I started coating my miniatures in Kleer floor wax, which gives them a protective coat, and then overspray them with Testor's Dullcote to take the shine off them. I find that this gives a nice finish and also prevents the paint from getting too chipped. For some reason, these 5 minis are still shiny even after two coats of Dullcote. I also need to finish off the bases by adding some vegetation, but I'll get around to that some time soon...I've got about 30-40 minis that need their bases finishing off.

Can't wait to get these bad boys out onto the gaming table for Day 2 of Zitadelle!