Lead Doesn't Bleed

Where, oh, where are my O8 ACW figs?

2011-02-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

Only Larry can understand my pain...

(Not complaining about the stellar service from the folks at Pico Armor, mind you. This is almost certainly a fuck-up that's meide im Brasil.)

Basing Suggestions for O8's 3mm ACW Figures

2011-02-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

The excellent "Steel on Sand" blog has beat me to reviewing O8's beautiful 3mm American Civil War figures. I'm still awaiting my order in Rio de Janeiro, but you can see them laid out in comparison to other microscale figures over there.

The one problem with these figs, as the SoS review points out, is that the command stand has its flags offset from the center. This isn't an issue if you base your figs on 40mm or 60mm wide bases, but if you, like me, base microscale on 20-30mm wide bases, having the flags removed from the center of the line might irritate your anal retentiveness.

To complicate things, O8 uses an aluminum-based alloy which is incredibly strong, but brittle, making it very hard to cut. Also, the infantry bases are not "pre-grooved", which would allow one to snap them into component figures with ease. I thus plan on using a Dremel tool with a cutting wheel to chop mine up. Still, no sense in making more cuts than one needs, neh?

With that in mind, I offer the following basing schemes for O8's ACW figures:

Note that by cutting the strips up, one can easily change the mix of headgear in the regiment, giving the Union more kepis and fewer hats and the Confederates the opposite. Personally, I think I'm going to go with the last option. I've displayed it here showing only the Good Guys, but obviously a Slaveocrat regiment can also be done up in this fashion. The advantage of this way of doing things is that it allows one to play at the tactical scale (150 men per stand) and move the commander and standards about as the number of units in the regiment increases or decreases. Additionally, it saves on skirmishers, who are now properly detatched from the main line and don't need to be represented twice. Also, with a 3x3 centimeter sabot, one can set up a brigade, as shown, and handily play Volley & Bayonet or other army-level systems.

One final basing idea, not shown above, gets rid of another small problem with the O8 figs at the cost of a lot of extra work. ACW units marched at 24 inches per file, but O8 has the troops at about 30 inches per file. If one were to seperately cut out every figure, one could probably get a historically correct spacing (with the cut taking out the excess metal) and could place 15 files on a 30cm wide base. With a Dremel, such cutting won't be a problem. The real chore would be hiding all the jagged edges and gaps when flocking.

I'm probably going to try one or two regiments like this (as well as another couple of regiments using skirmish figures) just to see how it looks, but it seems like too much work for it to be worth doing it for all the units.

Encounter at Ravelsbach, Part Two

2011-02-02T13:38:00.000-08:00

A Napoleonic Volley & Bayonet Battle in 1/900 Scale, part 2.

Napoleon pulls cards #3 and #13 as his deployment options.

Advance Guard would allow Napoleon to concentrate his forces on the left flank while conducting a holding action in the congested right flank. However, Card #13 allows this manuever with more security, given that the French right wing consists solely of poorly trained infantry, which would find it difficult to manuever in the woods and villages of the right flank.

Napoleon thus chooses Card #3, Advance Guard, Echelon Right. He will set up all his units on the board, but remove the right wing at the end of turn 1 and bring it in on the left wing on turn 4.

Ironically, the Austrians pull cards #22 and #23, which are both Turning Maneuver, Right. #22is marginally better, so that gets chosen. The Austrians deploy everything on the table and will remove the reserve and bring it in on right edge of the table (the French left flank) on turn 3. The Austrians figure that this will allow the French to either advance into a trap or have their defensive line quickly rolled up by an unexpected cavalry charge.

Here are the deployments, then:

Napoleon is betting all his chips on a concerted push up the left flank, crushing the Austrian right and rolling up the battleline from there. A couple of III Corps brigade will attempt to hold out as long as possible in the villages and forests of the right flank while Le Grande Armeé wins it for the team on the right.

By contrast, the Austrians will drive up through the middle and try to break the French middle. This will be aided by a surprise strike from the right on turn 3. With the deployment complete, the Austrian is happy he chose Deployment card #22 and not #23, which would have called for the reserve to be committed on turn 3. The Austrian player feels that three turns will be more than enough for the French to get well stuck in before the surprise blow falls.

Encounter at Ravelsbach, Part One

2011-02-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

A Napoleonic Volley & Bayonet Battle in 1/900 Scale.

In order to try out my new battleboards, I decided to put together a small (+/- 3000 points per side) battle using the new second edition of the Volley & Bayonet rules.

My 2mm armies are not completely formated for V&B 2nd Ed. yet, but I have a lot of them and, with a bit of hedging, I can use them with the new rules.

This battle was a "roll your own" affair using the campaign system represented in the book. It takes place somewhere in northern Austria in 1813. Napoleon at the head of two infantry and one cavalry corps and backed up by a division of Middle Guards runs smack into two Austrian infantry corps and assorted support units.

The two armies are pictured below. Note that in my V&B set-up, I don't use divisional commanders as these are faily useless , in my oppinion, and just clutter up the table. Seeing as how they are simply a marker notating a division's center of gravity and can be placed wherever a player likes, every turn, I simply point to a spot and say "the commander's here", drawing command from that point.

The French Army

II Corps, Victor

5 4-5 Infantry brigades, 1 2-5 Light Cavalry Brigade, 3 2-5 Artillery battalions

All infantry brigades have an extra skirmisher attached (so they are effectively 5-5), Basically, on legere regiment was broken down in each corp to give all the non-legere regiments a skirmisher.

III Corps, Souham3 4-5 Infantry brigades, 2 4-4 Infantry brigades, 1 2-5 Light Cavalry Brigade, 3 2-5 Artillery battalions
All infantry brigades have an extra skirmisher attached and all infantry are poorly trained. The two 4-4 brigades have no elites (they are effectively 5-4 with their attached skirmishers).

I Cavalry Corps, Latour-Mauborg
2 2-5 Dragoon Brigades, 1 3-5 Light Cavalry Brigade, 1 1-6 Horse Artillery Battery.

Reserve, Napoleon
2 5-7 Guards Brigades, 1 2-7 Artillery Battalion.
The Guards brigaes have inherent infantry skirmishers. Napoleon, of course, is also the army commander and a monarch (which means some special rules apply to him).

The Austrian Army

I Corps, Colloredo
8 6-4 Infantry Regiments, 1 3-4 Grenz Regiment, 1 3-5 Light Cavalry Brigade, 1 1-6 Horse Artillery battery, 1 3-6 Field Artillery Brigade.
All Infantry and Grenz Regiments have brigade guns and no elites. The Grenz regiment can break down and skirmish, but since I have no skirmish stands done for the Austrians yet, they're pretty much SOL.

II Corps, Meerveldt
8 6-4 Infantry Regiments, 1 3-4 Grenz Regiment, 1 2-5 Light Cavalry Brigade, 1 1-6 Horse Artillery battery, 1 3-6 Field Artillery Brigade.
All Infantry and Grenz Regiments have brigade guns and no elites. The Grenz regiment can break down and skirmish.

Reserve Corps, Nostitz
3 2-6 Heavy Cavalry Brigades, 1 1-6 Horse Artillery Battery, 2 3-4 Grenz Regiments, 1 2-5 Light Cavalry Brigade.
All Grenz Regiments have brigade guns and no elites.

The battlefield, divided into set-up areas.

The French line of communications leads off of the road in the upper right corner of the map. Austrian communications lead off board from the road in the lower left corner. Note that neither player has seen the map before organizing their armies into three sections and a reserve,. They thus cannot optimize their wings according to the terrain.

The French Army is organized as follows:

Right Wing
2 4-4 brigades, 1 4-5 brigade, 2 artillery. Souham.

Left Wing
3 4-5 brigades, 2 artillery and all cavalry from II and III Corps. Victor.

Center
2 4-5 brigades, 1 artillery from III Corps. 2 4-5 brigades, 1 artillery from II Corps. 1 Light Cavalry Brigade from I Cavalry Corps. Latour-Mauborg.

Reserve
2 Guards brigades, 1 Guards artillery, 2 Dragoon brigades, 1 Horse artillery battalion. Napoleon.

The Austrian army is organized as follows:

Right Wing
4 Infantry regiments, 1 grenz regiment, 1 horse artillery, 1 light cavalry brigade from I Corps. Coloredo.

Left Wing
4 Infantry regiments, 1 grenz regiment, 1 horse artillery, 1 light cavalry brigade from I Corps.
Meerveldt.

Center
4 Infantry regiments, 1 artillery battalion from I corps; 4 Infantry regiments, 1 artillery battalion from I corps.

Reserve
The Reserve Corps. Meerveldt.

30cm x 30cm Terrain Modules

2011-01-25T15:05:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Ana Paula's Christmas gift of a bunch of Microform 1/1200 scale buildings (which I've detailed here) and Depot de la Guerre's handcrafted terrain modules (reviewed here), I've decided to build my own terrain modules for my 1/600 and 1/900 (3 and 2mm) miniatures.

The ground scale in these things is nominally 1:10000 (or 1 centimeter equals 100 meters), which makes them useful for my 2mm centimeter scale Volley and Bayonet set up and my WWII company-level figs. However, they can also be easily scaled to 1:4000 (1 cm = 40 meters), which is what I play platoon-scale Cold War Commander at, most particularly my 3mm Blitzkrieg imagi-nation armies of Azurnerreich and Krasnynorad.

This was my first shot at producing "serious" modules, although you can see some earlier efforts for 2mm stuff on the 2mm Yahoo group (note that you must be a member to see them). This time, I made a concerted effort to keep everything in scale. I went for 1/1200 because it's been my experience that "scaling down" terrain a notch or two from the figure scale that will be used on it makes for a better-looking miniatures experience, especially in large battles (which, let's face it, is the main reason to game in 2 or 3mm).

I'll do a terrain tutorial later, if there's interest, but just give a basic rundown of what I did here.

First of all, I went to an art supply store and bought some 30cm x 30cm artists' paint boards. These come in two varieties in Brazil: chipboard and linoleum covered chipboard. Like an idiot, I bought the regular chipboard because, at 3 R$ (2USD) a shot they were half the price of the linoleum-covered ones. Obviously, if I'd gone the other route, I'd have much more warp-resistant boards, so that's what I will buy in the future.

As you can see in the photo above, some of the boards warped. I've been able to reflatten most of them by painting a mixture of glue and water on the backside of the boards, suspending the boards upsidedown on four paint bottles at the corners and setting a weight in the middle of the back of the board. Better, though, to not have the warping problem at all, so linoleum it is next time.

I wanted to make a variety of terrain types on geomorphic modules. I decided that placing streams on the boards would make them too busy, so later I'll build a few specific river and stream modules to slot in with these. My first six boards were (going from the upper righthand corner clockwise):

1) A wooded and hedged agricultural area.

2) A town.

3) An open, undeveloped area.

4 and 5) Small villages with fields and some woods.

6) A large hill.

Three other modules are currently awaiting completion and are not shown here: another large hill and two rolling hills, one with agriculture and one largely undeveloped.

The only major problem I had was with the hill, which I made with paper maché over styrofoam. First, it took a week to dry. Secondly, it shrunk quite a bit as it dried, leaving cracks and exposing the edges of the styrofoam core. I fudged this by painting them as steep slopes and the ultimate result is pretty good, if I do say so myself.

I'm having better luck making the rolling hills, which are smaller. These, I lay out on a thick plastic cutting board and then I stick them in the microwave for 15 minutes. Voilá! Instant hills to be glued down on the boards. I then use a bit of extra paper maché to smooth out the seems. Works pretty good so far.

For the basic modules, I first paint them all over forest green. I then paint on the roads as dark brown. I plot out where I want woods (painted dark green), fields (pained tan and in varying shades of green) and buildings (painted brown). I then use a selection of Woodland Scenics static grasses to flock the fields, followed by green and yellow flocking for the open areas (sometimes touched up with a hint of bright green static grass and dark green flocking). When that's all thoroughly dry, I place down clumps of coarse foilage in medium and dark green for trees, sometimes literally spruced up with a few of PicoArmor's pine trees, here and there. Building lots are then given a dusting of dark green flock and the buildings (which I have pre-painted) are glued down to them. After that, I detail building hedges and small clumps of trees here and there, fruit groves... whatever I think will be fun. Finally, the roads are painted in, grey or light tan, as the case may be.

Simple enough.

That's a Jack Daniels bottle and my hand, for scale. Six terrain modules give me a three foot by two foot set up which corresponds to your average 6x4 foot board at larger scales. Many people often quip "Why play with 3mm figures? It's like playing with grains of rice!" First of all, O8's figs are much more detailed than grains of rice. But more importantly, 3mm allows me to place a beautiful, full-fledged miniatures set up on a coffee table and still have room left over for markers, rules and dice.

Lovely Picoburg. Note the kit-bashed cathedral, made from a Microform house and some plastic strips. I've decided to not overly detail the buildings as that could easily make the modules too busy and distract the eye away from thr miniatures. I've also tried to keep to a generic architectural style which could be used anywhere in Western Europe from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Here, there's only one building that kind of breaks that ruke and even then it doesn't do so ostentatiously. (There are a couple of ranch-style houses, too, but they can easily be glossed as lower-class dwellings).

Looking over the rooftops of Picoburg to the Picoberg on the horizon.

Hedgerows, small villages, woods and fields. A module with congested terrain.

So how do the figures look on the new terrain? Pretty good, actually. For years I've been holding off building terrain modules because I've wanted to go with the drop-cloth and pastels method, putting terrain down and drawing around it so that it can be picked up if units occupy it. I've not liked the "infantry-on-top-of-the-woods" method I'd probably have to adopt if I used modules. After seeing Depot de La Guerre's suff, however, I realized that this was not such a big deal if the modules were to be at 1:10,000 scale.

See for yourselves. Here are some pictures of a Krasnynorad tank regiment forming up to attack a Azurrnereich Mechanized taskforce...

Big Red's 31st Tank Regiment forms battle order out of march columns. Two tank battalions flank Picoville, occupied by a motor rifle battalion, while a third tank battalion waits in reserve behind the village. A regiment of 122mm artillery is deployed to the right of the reserves.

The Thin Blue Line. A reinforced combined arms team occupies the Picoberg and Pico Farms to the left while another team guards the approaches to Picoburg on the right.

The Blue right wing, up close.

New Year, New Terrain: Microform Buildings

2011-01-07T06:35:00.000-08:00

...and a very Happy New Year to all you Lead Doesn't Bleed readers (all two dozen of you)!

I took a brief end-of-the-year sabatical in order to attend conferences and grade papers, so this will be the first post of the new year.

Lucky, lucky me: Da Wife bought me a passel of Microform 1/100 buildings for Christmas and they've arrived today!

As most readers of this blogknow, I generally play in 1/700 (or 3mm) scale, so I've wanted some appropriate buildings for quite some time now. Up to now, I've been using PicoArmor's monopoly buildings and these are fine, but they're also a bit too big for my tastes. Like many miniatures gamers, I prefer my terrain to be one scale step down from my figs.

Enter Microform Models, a company which specializes in castings for architects. Their 1/100 scale line is set to a model scale of 1/1200, which is perfect for 2 and 3mm figures (those of you who prefer more in-scale scenery will probably perfer Microform's 1/50 or 1/60 lines for 3mm).

Here are some pictures of the castings, set next to some O8 3mm WWII tanks and infantry and Picoarmor Monopoly buildings...

....and from another angle:

And finally, here's a close-up, which should give an idea as to how these things scale against 3mm figures:

What's really nice about these castings is that they'll still mesh with Picoarmor's Monopoly hotels, which now become 4 story tall townhouses.

Great stuff!

The Quarterly Report, V1. #1

2010-10-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Being a quadriannual report of all things Quarish in Rio de Janeiro

The 116th Provisional Brigade occupies a hilltop

15mm Quar Arrive in Rio
On my recent trip to the U.S. top take part in the Stop Trafficking! conference at DePauw University in Indiana, I took the opportunity to pick up a bunch of 15mm Quar from Zombie Smith.

The quar are a delightful ficticious race which has sprung from the ferbile immagination of Joshua Qualtieri, who has apparently been dreaming up these little buggers ever since he was a kid. They are a race of extremely pugnacious anteater-like omnivores which Josh has imagined as caught up in a never-ending cycle of clan-based politics and warfare. At the current point of the story line (i.e. the point the miniatures are modeled on), the quar have a technological base that's roughly on the level of World War I and the current round of the endless conflict (appropriately called The Long War) has lasted 700 years. A new messianical leader has arisen among the quar of the nation-state of Tok, however. Alykinder is part Napoleon Bonaparte, part Leon Trotsky and part Moe from the Three Stooges. He has held out the hope, to all quar kind, that the Long War may finally be ended through a widespread and thorough-going revolution which will overthrow the ruling clanlords and usher in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity across Alwyd, the quar's planet.

Fired by missionary zeal, Alykinder's Crusader catrawds (regiments) have overrun most of their enemies, partly due to the fact that their leader is something of a genius for military innovation (he pioneered the use of dirigible and zepplin-based airmobile tactics, for example). Alykinder's dream of peace through war seems to be going terribly astray, however. The intensified violence brought about by the Crusade has broken the bounds of the laws which the quar have traditionally used to keep total war at bay. Now, the four cadierquar of the appocalypse roam the face of Alwyd and Crusade seems posed to toss all of quarkind into an age of bloody chaos never before seen in their history...

The quar miniatures produced by Zombie Smith come in two sizes: 15mm and 28mm. Being that the quar themselves are somewhat shorter than humans, this means a "foot to headtop" size of 12mm and 22mm. My first batch of quar are four company-sized packs of 15mm figs for a total of about 200 miniatures. Josh very nicely supplied me with some extra mounted officer figs so that I could have a go at building a cavalry regiment as well. Josh claims that he plans to have the entire 28mm line of quar figs reproduced in 15mm "very soon now", but at this point, all you can buy are Crusader infantry. This is not such a problem as one might think, however, because many of the factions opposing Alykninder's forces use Crusade-style equipment. You can purchase 15mm quar with helmets, caps and bear heads, so I've made the helmeted quar my Crusader forces and the rest will be their Royalist foes.

Zombie Smith produces two sets of rules for use with the quar and both may be bought and downloaded on-line. This Quar's War is meant to be used with the 28mm or 15mm stuff for company-sized conflicts (40-50 figures per side). Meanwhile Songs of Our Ancestors is a skirmish set, geared towards battles with 6-12 figures a side. Both systems are excellent and are worth your money even if you plan to use your own rules as they come with background information about the quar and their world. TQW is especially good in this sense and many reviewers have compared the book to Osprey's historical volumes. Particularly poignant in TQW is the series of letters which open each chapter between a Crusader recruit and his young cousin back home. Understated and well-written, they give glimpse into the pathos and futilty of the Quar's conflict and warfare in general. For this reason alone, TQW get's a big thumbs up from us here at Lead Doesn't Bleed. Josh Qualtieri, like many wargamer's, seems to be something of a pacifist and is on-record as saying that one of the reasons he developed the quar is so that gamers could indulge in bloody mayhem without feeling guilty over representing real-life wars and battles. That may be so and is a laudible thing, but what's truly extraordinary is that Qualitieri and crew's fluff pieces can actually make you feel terribly sorry for these ridiculous little bloody-thirsty monomaniacs.

Regarding the quality of the figures, the 28mm line is excellent and on par with the best stuff Games Workshop or the Perry Twins make. It's also expen$ive at 4-6 USD a fig. The 15mm stuff is much more economical, but is sculpted by Qualtieiri himself and is not quite so breathtakingly detailed as the larger figures. However, it is very workman like and perfectly acceptable fort he wargames table.

Planning the units and basing
I plan to use my 15mm quar with Specialist Military Publishing's Future War Commander rules and also, possibly, with Rapid Fire. I've thus decided to base my figures at a scale of 20 quar to a casting. This means that a regulation sized catrawd of 9 line companies and 1 assault company will be made up of 20 stands of 2 castings each. I've decided to base light machineguns and light mortars seperately at a scale of six weapons to a stand. The average catrawd thus gets three stands of each. Technically, at the platoon/section level of play, these weapons would probably be factored in to the regular stands. However, being that this is WWI -style combat, with relatively few vehicles, I'd like to give players a wide range of infantry types to utilize during the game, so I've gone with seperate basing of company-level support weapons.

Each catrawd will also get a regimental command stand of 3 figures and a flag and 2-4 "battalion" commanders, mounted singly.

Zombie Smith makes heavy tanks for the 15mm line and I bought one. I also picked up some WWII German 150mm infantry guns from Pendraken's 10mm line. These are funky-looking castings which fit right in with quar's style. I figure that they are 75mm support guns. Finally, I did some simple conversions for the artilleryquar (basically cutting away their weapons) and assault engineers (engineers get a bit of small plastic tubing on their backs to carry their anti-obstacle and demoltion charges, while flamethrower quar have two bits of the same tubing attached to their packs as fuel tanks). I also converted some mounted officers into lancers by filing down their epaulettes and giving them plasticard carbines and paperclip lances.

Pendraken infantry guns employed by Crusaders

A column of assault engineers led by flamethrowers

My first unit will be a Crusader provisional brigade; a mish-mash of remnants of other units and, consequently, something of a combined arms force.

The 116th Provisional Brigade

The simultaneous revolts in Lower Barro and Kryst of 1772 took the Crusader High Command by surprise, though by all rights they shouldn't have. Both nations had been relatively quickly overrun before the Crusade even properly began. Lower Barro had always been one of Alykinder's main bases of political support, but the False War had resulted in the wholesale exile of the nation's royalist political class, who maintained their connections with the region's principal clans from their refuges in Fidwog and Creevin. The conquest of Kryst, while rapid, had been less than complete, with significant elements of the Krystian regular forces (most particularly the famous Sand Stalker Brigade) undefeated. Furthermore, like the nobility of Lower Barro, Kryst's most notorious royalist leaders were exiled, not killed.

By late 1770, then, both regions were passing through a marked upswing in partisan activity, which was barely kept in check by Crusader internal security troops and the local police. As overstretched as Alykinder's forces were, few regular units could be dispatched for partisan-hunting operations in the deserts and mountains of what was still generally considered to be the Crusade's backyard.

In 1772, several city states in Kryst openly entered into revolt as well as the city state of Mulf in Lower Barro. Initially, rebel forces consisted of militia levies, backed up by partisans and a handful of elite city guard catrawds (most notoriously the Sand Stalkers, in the case of Kyrst). The rebels' immediate opponents were a grab-bag of Crusader units which generally fell into one of two categories: tired and depleted veteran units which were in the region resting and refitting prior to redeployment elsewhere, or newly raised, very green reserve Catrawds.

The 116th Provisional Brigade was organized around several Crusader units which were in the southern portion of Lower Barro when the revolt began. It is an excellent example of just the sort of ad-hoc battlegroup which bore the brunt of the initial rebel assault.

The 116th Crusader Guards Catrawd
Sylwedl Yrseg, Commanding
5 Ryfler Companies, 3 Assault Companies:
41 Officers,
369 Enlisted
6 100mm Infantry Guns
4 Baeliog Armored Tractors

The core of the Brigade was made up of the remnants of the 116th Crusader Guards Catrawd under the leadership of Syrnol Cysrad, who was quickly breveted to Caernerol and brigade command at the start of the rebellion, leaving effective control of the 116th Guards to his second in command. Initially, the catrawd had only enough ryflers to make five understrength companies and only a third of its authorized support weapons (mortars and light machineguns) were available. Cysrad, however, quickly attached the faculty of the Welfyn Combet Engineer School to the unit, giving it an additional three companies of flamethrower and demolitions-equipped assault troops, two batteries of light infantry guns and four old, but serviceable, Baeliog heavy tractors.

Remnants 35th Gendarmie Squadron
Syrnol Dweezil, Commanding
1 Composite Troop
4 officers,
61 Enlisted

The 35th Gendarmie was a cavalry unit on internal security duty which had been largely overrun by Lower Barro militia in the opening days of the revolt. The squadron's remnants fell back on Welfyn where they were re-equipped and re-organized by Cysrad as the Brigade's reconaissance unit.

Sylwedl Yrseg plants the catrawd's flag behind the infantry gun battery.

To his left, two wedges from the 35th Gendarmie wait in reserve.

Three rhyfler companies from the 116th advance in skirmish formation through a small valley.

Light machineguns anchor the line's right flank and a light mortar battery has set up in reserve,

ready to offer fire support if necessary.

Two shots of the 116th's Baeliog Tractor squadron.

Future War Commander Stats for 15mm Quar

New Project: 15mm Quar

2010-10-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

I bought some of Zombie Smith's excellent Quar figures for a change of pace when I went up to the States in September. These figs were recently voted "Best Sci-fi miniatures of the year" by the crowd over at The Miniatures Page and they come in both 15mm and 28mm.

Here's some initial shots of my first batch of painted 15mm quar. The photo quality ain't great and I'm sorry to say I had to relearn how to paint 15mm after all this time painting 3mm stuff, so the paint job isn't as good as it could be. But these are just "rough" shots. I plan to do a mega Quar post in the very near future, with rules and stats for Future War Commander.

These are based presuming 1 figure = 20 quar, with two bases being a Quar company.

Above, you'll see the core of the 116th Guards Catrawd. 3 companies of Guards to the right, a Baeliog Armored Tractor in the middle with two batteries of infantry guns to the right of it and finally three companies of assault engineers on the left.

Baeliog troop. The vehicle modeled here is "Old Number 7" from the Welfyn Combat Engineer School.

Sylwedl Yrseg, and his retinué, commanding the 116th Guards Catrawd.

The newly raised 6006th Reserve Catrawd from Tok, at full parade strength.

Two wedges from the 35th Gendarmie Squadron escort a baggage train.

Close up of the 35th Gendarmie.

A flying squadron of Kryst's famous Sand Stalker Brigade. Obviously, the transport has been left behind somewhere, along with the machinegun carriages.

Depot de la Guerre: Handcrafted Terrain for Wargames

2010-08-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

I'm sure this is far beyond my budget, but it DOES give one some great ideas for 2-3mm terrain modules, no?

Depot de la Guerra

Just beautiful stuff!

Question: what do you all think he uses to get that field effect? I could definitely use some of that...

Is that washcloth material for the fields or what...?

And look at these Squad Leader boards! Now THAT'S how ASL should be played!!!

More Sci-Fi Tertrain Photos

2010-07-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more photos of the 1/600 scale science fiction city, now completely finished, together with a few long-range shots of the jungle.

As you can see, the "towers emerging from the hatches" pieces became something else entirely. In thinking that they are city-sized shield projectors or point-defence systems. Or something. Yeah, that's the ticket. My old plastic and wood block-based buildings form a suburb to the left.

3mm Sci-fi Jungle

2010-07-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

Mechas and infantry carefully pick their way through a tubetree jungle.

I wanted a suitable alien-looking jungle on the cheap. Inspired by adolescent memories of GDW's classic wargame Bloodtree Rebellion, I decided that I would do giant tubercular trees which catch water in their middles. Following C.J. Cherryh's sparse descriptions of "woolwood" in her Cyteen series, I decided I wanted the trunks to be a mass of tangled blue-grey branches.

So I bought a medium-sized loofa sponge for a dollar down at the SAARA and cut it up into chunks. I hot-glued the chunks to some old Mechwarrior cards I had lying about, then painted them black, using a fairly heavy black wash and squishing it into the sponge structure with my hands. When that dried, I dry-brushed the sponges with blue-grey. The result was the following:

I then painted the base terracota and did a tan drybrush over that.

When everything had dried, I glooped up the top upper 2/3rds of the sponge with white glue and dipped it in Woodland Scenics generic green flock. I then glooped more glue on the base and put down a layer of fine yellow flock, followed by more green flock. When that dried, I glued clumps of coarse dark green flock around the base and a layer of coarse light green flock along the top of the sponge. Finally, I laid a bead of white glue over the light green flock and dipped the top of the sponge in a tin of Gailforce 9's green summer static grass.

To finish it off, I painted the bottom of the hole in the center of the sponge blue, as if water was reflecting the sky.

Here's the result:

I made two smaller clumps like this and one big jungle piece, complete with path through the middle. Here's a top shot:

Total time taken for the project, maybe 2 hours all told, outside of drying time. Total cost, maybe 5 USD.

Big Red and Thor

2010-07-11T09:41:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of pictures of the House Möder-Fokker titans, Big Red and Thor.

These are Dream Pod 9 Earth Force Frames, done up as 60-foot-tall mega-walkers for my 1/600 sci-fi Furture War Commander project.

Building a 3mm Science Fiction City

2010-07-05T18:05:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, I took a stroll down through the SAARA to my favorite bead and bangles shop, where I bought 20 dollars worth of wooden and plastic beads and shapes with which to build some sci-fi urban terrain for my burgeoning 3mm mecha armies.

My goal was to make suitably phallic-looking towers a la Dream Pod 9's rendition of the city of Peace River. (I was also inspired by the One More Gaming Project blog's recent Martian city.) I didn't want the buildings to be TOO detailed, as that would distract attention from the minis, but I wanted the to be more than simply painted shapes.

Anyhow, here are the results so far...

And here's a few action shows with the painted main citadel and a few city blocks. Note also the presence of Big Red, the House Möder-Fokker Titan....

Dave's Sunday Drive

2010-06-29T18:24:00.000-07:00

In order to better test my new Massive units rules, I put together a wee battle on Sunday evening.

Dave has been tasked with clearing a desert road into the enemy's flank. The road is bisected by a low ridge line with some light cover and is held by a company of House Penn-Taylor main battle tanks. Dave has CV 10 from his off-board CO and the PT boys have a CV 9 on-board CO.

The Penn-Taylor company on the ridge. Note that the CO is within convenient command range of only two of the platoons.

Turns 1 and 2. Dave begins an oblique advance on the north end of the Penn-Taylor line. The southernmost platoons open fire and leave a nasty scratch on Dave's paintwork.

Turns 3-6. Dave closes the distance on the northernmost platoon and opens fire, doing sweet fuck-all. He launches his missile at the middle PT tank and catches the HQ in the burst, again, doing no discernable damage (Dave is preoccupied with an upcoming coumn deadline and a good part of his main processing unit is editing instead of aiming). On turn 5, the PT CO blows his command roll. The blunder sends the southern tank platoons charging straight towards Dave - a blunder which turned out to be sort of providential, actually, because it cut their range down to half.

(These accidental charges/retreats which turn out for the best are beginning to get to be a habit with the PT boys. See their last battle report here.)

The PT tanks change tactics to firing to damage and manage to whittle Dave down to two damage points. A critical hit also tanks out his secondary battery, leaving him with only his main gun. Dave manages to suppress the northenmost tank a couple of times, but that's about it.

Dave finally wakes up to the fact that there's a serious problem here and sets aside his editing work. Taking full stock of the situation, he decides that a full-fledged charge is in order and goes straight in on the northernmost tank. (Being that he has 9 assault dice and an additional die for charging versus the MBT's 3, this is not a bad idea).

Dave weathers the closing fire well enough but skunks out completely in the following assault: only two unsaved hits out of ten dice! He suppresses the tank, but that's it.

Meanwhile, cognizant of the fact that Dave's now down to only two hits, the Penn-Taylor commander urges his crews to fire for effect. All four of their shots hit and two make it through Dave's armor, finally bringing the nig cybertank to a halt on turn 8, the last turn of the game.

Luckily for Dave, a Möder-Fokker battalion is coming up the road behind him and will probably have their support echelon salvage his brain box. If the upcoming battle against House Penn-Taylor is won, Dave's chasis will also probably be towed back to the Fokkin Castle for refurbishment. Dave may be old, but he's tough and waste not, want not.

Dave waits for a tow.

The battle showed me that the system works fine, but needs a few tweaks yet. Principal among these si that I've decided that "fire to damage" hits will also carry over throughout the turn. Other than that, though, the game went well. Dave really stunk on his rolls and, to be fair, the odds were against him from the outset, what with having to chrage an equivalent force in a prepared position.

It was a fun little game for a half hour!

Shamelessly stolen from The Onion, no copyright challenge implied

2010-06-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

I'm Prepared To Give My Life For This Or Any Country

By Curtis Stalbank

THE ONION, March 28, 2007

As a true patriot, I would gladly die in battle defending my homeland. I love my country more than my own life. But I would also be more than willing to give my last breath in the name of, say, Mexico, Panama, Japan, or the Czech Republic. The most honorable thing a man can do is lay down his life for his country. Or another country. The important thing is that it's a country.

Like those heroes who spilled their blood fighting for independence against the British Empire, I, too, would forfeit everything to win for my countrymen the right to be governed by politicians in our own capital instead of in a capital located further away. Nothing is more profound or more sacred than to die for one's country, an adjacent country, or some other, foreign country.

The truth is, there are a lot of countries, each of which is the most noble cause possible to die for. I only regret that I have but one life to lose for but one country.

I would not hesitate to give my life for or against any other noble nation. Come to think of it, I would even die for a neutral third party caught in the crossfire during a heroic peacekeeping effort, just so long as my death would be in some way related to a country of some kind. That's how committed I am to the concept of nationalism.

The bottom line is that the current boundaries of a nation are worth protecting at all costs. Otherwise, what would so many brave and patriotic souls have lost their lives for?

I was lucky enough to be born in one of the 200 greatest countries in the world, and I promised myself long ago that I would never forget it. I can only hope to someday have the privilege of protecting this great land against whomever may seek to do it harm. Or to defend some other country against whomever may seek to do it harm. And vice versa.

Ideally, I'd like to die for a country that was at least in the Western hemisphere but it'd be just as heroic to expire bravely on the end of a pointed stick deep in the jungles of Africa. My wife would be widowed and my children orphaned, but they would take solace in the knowledge that I had given my life to a cause that the people of some nation believed in.

I only ask that I be given a soldier's funeral so that I may be buried holding the flag or flags of wherever it was I was fighting for.

There comes a time when all of us, no matter who we are, heed the call to the battlefield. It is a call we cannot and should not ignore, no matter where it is coming from. And if I must die, in the service of this or that country, I only hope I can at least take as many of the enemy with me as possible before I fall and breathe my last. Unless of course, they're also fighting for a country. In which case, their deaths, at my hands, will have been honorable—because they, like me, would have died for a country.

Without nationalism, our deaths in the countless wars we constantly wage to defend our own nations against others defending their own nations against us would seem arbitrary, almost meaningless. But as long as we have a higher purpose—the love of whatever country we happen to be fighting for—we will always know we did not lose our lives in vain.

Building the Big Boys, Part 1

2010-06-24T12:13:00.000-07:00

I'm such a lazy sod! Look at that frickin' mold line...!

The Commander series of wargame rules is a marvelous example of what Ty Bomba likes to call "design for effect", by which he means that it concentrates on producing a believeable looking game while not worrying about small details. Units are abstracted in the interest of maintaining a quick and fluid game experience and, by and large, this is a good decision. Few rules systems allow one to really feel like a commander on the battlefield. In the xxC system, however, because the system glosses the small stuff, one experiences something like the worries of a real-life military leader, concentrating more on the big picture rather than on whether or not a 76mm cannon can penetrate a Tiger II's front armor at 500 paces.

The only problem is that when we get to the sci-fi installment of the system, Future War Commander things seem just a tad TOO abstract. Maybe it's because I cut my sci-fi miniatures gaming chops on Games Wankshop's Adeptus Titanicus and Steve Jackson Games Ogre Miniatures, but one of the things I look for in my sci-fi games are large combat vehicles. I mean ridiculously fucking spectacularly unbelievably large vehicles. And for the game system to work well for me, these titanic monsters have to be integrated into the system in such a way that they simultaneously play differently from the small "popcorn" units, but don't absolutely dominate the game.

Those of you who play Ogre know what I'm talking about. In that game, one rarely sees more than two massive cybertanks on the battlefield and, when present, ogres are indeed a major focus of the game. But without appropriate support from conventional units and infantry, ogres will quickly find themselves ground down and worn out.

I think Future War Commander, as it stands, just misses this effect. Its massive units are not quite differentiated enough to give them an individualized feeling which, let's face it, is what you want to have when manuvering a robot the size of an office building through downtown Tokyo. As the rules stand, massive units are just regular units writ large and are generally too vulnerable to make them worth their cost.

This really isn't the fault of the rule's author, Peter Andrew Jones. After all, he was looking for an quick play, simple rules system which could, simultaneously, be stretched to fit any sort of sci-fi universe one chooses. And it is this flexibility which is ultimately FWC's saving grace. Peter hasn't so much given us a rules set as a nice big Lego box. By tweaking unit construction and inventing new optional rules and upgrades, it is very easy to take Future War Commander in any direction one wants. And that, of course, was Peter's main goal.

So now that my 1/600 armies have some titans and cybertanks painted up, I`ve decided to give some thought as to how I want them to work on the battlefield. What follows are some of my ideas.

Massive Units in General - Rules Tweaks
The following are some general rules changes which I intend to employ regarding massive units. They add a small amount of complexity but, in general, I`ve tried to hew to Peter`s "design for effect" philosophy and keep them as simple - and thus memorizable - as possible.

Suppression
As the rules stand, massive units are far too easy to suppress, being treated like a regular unit in this respect. Because of this, a lowly infantry unit with popguns can easily stop a massive cybertank in its tracks. Sorry, I feel this is far too much vulnerability. To fix this, apply the following rule:

Massive units only test for suppression when hit by another massive unit's primary armament. Shielded units (massive or otherwise) do not test for suppression until their shields are down.

Fall backs
It should be noted that massive units do not fall back under any circumstances and that multiple fall backs are one of the main ways in which units are killed in this game. This is probably a good thing, otherwise popcorn would be knocking massive units out left and right. However, it seems to me that massive units should be at least somewhat vulnerable to other massive units. For this reason, apply the following rule:

Any time a suppressed massive unit is hit, it must roll for fall-back normally. Massive units are never knocked out by fall backs, even if forced to fall back more than 10cm by another massive unit's primary armament

So now conventional units can force massive units to fall back if another massive unit has already suppressed the target beforehand, but you still have to kill the buggers the hard way. Also, the new rules on suppression mean that even if you concentrate a lot of conventional unit's fire on the massive unit, you're not going to do much good unless you take it out completely.

Firing to damage
Add the following rule:

Any unit may "fire to damage" a massive unit. This is declared after activation and before any attacks are made. Units firing to damage do not count damage normally, but for every X unsaved hits, eliminate one hit point from the target PERMANENTLY. X = the massive unit's damage threshold, which is typically "3". Note that an attack which is declared to be "firing to damage" cannot kill a Massive unit unless it makes X * Hit Points worth of unsaved hits.

Critical Damage

Add the following rule:

For every hit point permanently removed from a massive unit via "firing to damage", roll one die: on a "6", the massive unit suffers critical damage. Roll on the following table for each critical hit:

CRITICAL DAMAGE TABLE
1 Movement reduced by 5 cm
2 Shield generator destroyed
3 Secondary explosions cause two more permanent hits (roll for crits)
4 Secondary Armament destroyer (choose at random if more than one)
5 Secondary Armament destroyer (choose at random if more than one)

6 Primary Armament destroyed

If a critical hit can't apply (e.g. the primary weapon is already gone and you roll a "6", continue rolling until you get a result that can be applied.

Building massive units The following additions should be added to the rules for creating your own units:

Unit Attributes

Massive +5 for each hit point
Command Capable +1/2 CV cost Massive unit is also a command unit
Expendable +5 per four hits
Damage Threshold 1 -10 per hit point
Damage Threshold 2 -5 per hit point
Damage Threshold 3 0
Damage Threshold 4 +10 per hit point
Damage Threshold 5 +15 per hit point

Points formula for units

Massive units count each weapon seperately.
Regular units count a scondary weapon at half cost and a tertiary weapon at 1/3rd the cost

New or Revised Attacks

Stabilized +10 for regular units, +10 for each massive unit weapon
Half AV versus AFV (I) -25% from the attack points before tech upgrades
Half AV versus Infantry (A) -15% from the attack points before tech upgrades
Hard Attack only (#) -25% from the attack points before tech upgrades
Soft Attack only (*) -50% from the attack points before tech upgrades
Artillery Attacks AV x15, plus range points. Range cost for 200cm is 100. If off board, range cost is 150.
Divisable AV May divide the AV into as many attacks as player wishes, +25% of the attack points before tech upgrades
Restricted Ammo x25% per shot (so four shots is effectively unrestricted ammo)

Tech Upgrades

Electronic Warfare Suite +15 per attack value (note that this is simply Cryonics Weapons in a less orky guise).
AEGIS system +40/+70/+100 Works as a shield dome, but only against smart missiles and indirect artillery attacks. Does NOT absorb attacks from friendly units, but does attack enemy units moving through it in the same way as a shield dome.
Shields A unit can now have any number of shields, regardless of its hits.

Optional Rules
I also decided that I wanted artillery and missile rules which didn't seem like WWII on the game table. The following rules make both more flexible (and artillery more costly):

Smart Missiles

Smart missiles can be (*), (#) or regular. If they have a restricted target type, they gain the regular discount.
Smart missiles DO NOT have the "auto-linked" upgrade: they are strictly "fire and forget". However, smart missiles now IGNORE line of sight restrictions. If at least one friendly unit is within 30cm of the target and has a line of sight to it, it can spot for any smart-missile equipped unit or units, as long as it activates together with these firing units. Spotting in this fashion is considered to be an action.

Artillery

- Any HQ unit can now spot for off-board artillery using its CV value.
- Any friendly unit can now spot for off-board artillery using the CV value of its activating HQ/CO unit, -1.
On-board artillery can fire at units outside their LOS if at least one friendly unit is within 30cm of the target and has a line of sight to it and activates together with the firing units.Spotting in this fashion is considered to be an action.
- Artillery targets can attempt Evasive Action against indirect fire artillery.
- Artillery is now costed out according to the following formula:

     Artillery Attacks AV x15, plus range points.
     Range cost for 200cm is 100.
     If off board, range cost is 150.

Building the big boys
So now that we have some basic rules, let's build us some ridiculously large combat vehicles!

(By the way, I suggest that you make a little unit card for each type of massive vehicle you control, instead of sticking all its information on one or two lines).

Cybertanks versus Titans
In my gaming universe, cybertanks use strictly human technology and are thus considered obsolete. Walkers, of all sizes, use neural feedback network and shield technology acquired from the Siliaz Hegemony and are thus much more effective, though also quite costly. Walkers are they only units which can have stabilization and their field of view is 180 degrees (not restricted, as in the regular rules). So why does humanity still use cybertanks? Because they are relatively easy to build and maintain on colony worlds, using the technology and resources commonly at hand. Plus, the buggers are as tough as old horseshoe nails.

Mark III Cybertank
Let's start off with Fred, a Mark III Cybertank.

Fred was built as a colonial defense unit and still fulfills that role quite adequately, though without shields, he's increasingly vulnerable to enemy titans. Fred's chassis is about 50 years old, though his brain has been repeatedly upgraded with top-of-the-line AI softwear. He's close enough to self-aware as to be no nevermind. His hobbies include football and chess. Fred has been known to play an entire battalion of infantry, simultaneously, at the later game.

Mark II Cybertank
This is Dave, a slightly smaller Mark II cybertank, also built as a colonial defence unit.

(You'll have to forgive Dave for being a little dusty. Apparently some mold is growing under his starboard missile launcher).

Dave currently workd for Baron Hisa Möder-Fokker and is shown here in the colors of the Baronial Guard. Mostly, Dave stays stored in the basement of the Fokkin Castle, waiting to be called out to repell any invasion of the baronial lands. In his spare time (of which he has plenty), Dave writes a "lonely hearts" advice blog which is syndicated across the Human Sphere.

Next up, Titans!

Future War Commander in 1/600: Grey Army

2010-06-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

Here's the Grey Army (as yet nameless, though Lukas sent in some good ideas), finally completed for Future War Commander in 1/600 (or 3mm) scale.

This is the 3rd Combined Arms Combat Team, built around a titan regiment of five squadrons. Each squadron has two troops and there are four light squadrons and one heavy. The grey heavy titans are heavily armored and mount a uniqued area point-defence system which is designed to shoot down missiles and artillery rounds. Their main weapon is a starship-grade particle accelerator. The heavy titans are also HQ units and have an electronic warfare capacity. The light titans are built for speed and are the smallest vehicles in the Human Sphere to mount shield generators. The shield geometries available due to this unique design decision require that the rail gun be slung under the titan's belly rather than mounted on top, where it would be more effective.

The greys have spent a lot of money upgrading their titan forces in recent years and their mecha arm has suffered. Here, we see a small mecha battalion (two HQs, nine line mecha troops, three light mecha troops and a mecha artillery support battery), equipped with Hünds, a solid but now somewhat obsolete mecha design.

Two conventional combined arms battalions are also part of the team. These are composed of two HQs, six MBTs, 6 IFVs and 6 heavy conventional infantry platoons. A large mobile artillery battery is attached to each battalion and a rocket artillery battery serves as the Team's heavy long-range fire support. Also attached directly to Brigade Headquarters is a armored car recon squadron. Fast recon mechs are on the Grey's "to buy" list. In the meantime, the Grey's command staff is debating attaching a heavy scout squadron to this unit, which would include 3 missile-armed APCs and 3 scout platoons.

The Team's fourth and final main unit is an air cavalry regiment, made up of six attack helicopter troops.

Brigade support includes a squadron of light attack craft and an obsolete (but still very tough) cybertank named "Fred".

First Shots: Future War Commander Grey Army in 3mm

2010-06-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

My 1/600 scale Grey Army for Future War Commander is almost completed. By "Grey", of course, I mean the color and not the little anal-probing aliens. I still need a decent off-color name for this force, so all creative suggestions are welcome!

The figures are a DP9 Recon Armiger for the titan in the middle (the one with the Angry Marines graffiti on it) flanked by Trooper Drones from the same manufacture. In front of the titans, we have a line of Ground Zero Games Hound Dog mecha and in front of them, O8 Leopard IIs, Marders and Israeli infantry.

Still to go on this project: touching up another Armiger and 4 more Trooper drones, basing 6 Luchs armored cars for recon and applying some final color details to the infantry (I think they need a red shoulder patch so that they jump out a little more).

Dream Pod 9 Titans and Heavy Mecha Arrive for Future War Commander

2010-06-08T10:08:00.000-07:00

Reinforcements have arrived! From left to right, Frame 25, Flails, Arminger, Drone and Fleet Scale Gear. O8 U.S. Vietnam Infantry and Chieftain tank in front, shown for scale.

As followers of this blog probably know by now, I use Drean Pod 9's Fleet Scale Heavy Gears as 3mm mecha for Future War Commander, with tanks and infantry supplied by O8.

I just bought some of DP9's new regular scale Flails and Drones, as I figured they might make good heavy mechs. The flails are perfect! DP9's fleet scale gears are 15mm or 9 scale meters tall. The flails top that by another meter or two, making them perfect superheavy mecha.
The drones are a bit too big to be mecha and yet too small to be "Titan"-sized units. Still, they are beautiful figures and I'm going to make them small massive vehicles.

Finally, I bought the new Arminger Commando and Frame 25 regular-scale gears for "titan"-sized massive units and they fit the bill PERFECTY! The only changes I needed to make were leaving off the Arminger's rather odd "loincloth" and the Frame's jumpjets (which didn't quite fit in with the projected scale).

I need to say that it's a pure pleasure to work with DP9 stuff: they cost an arm and a leg but there is zero flash and mult-part figures practically snap together. The fits are sometimes so precise that the piece will actually stay in place without glue holding it - not "can game with" in place, mind you, but still...

Anyhow, beautiful stuff, if pricey. Around 20 USD gets you 10 mecha, 8 drones, 13 flails, or 2 Titans. I make one DP9 purchase a year of about 100 USD gradually build up my armies. For those who want to try this, I suggest buying 50 bucks worth of O8 modern tanks, infantry and IFVs, plus one pack of Southern and Northern fleet scale gears. That will give you a Mecha battalion for each side, backed up by a conventional regiment with air support for about 100 USD.

Another shot, showing the DP9 stuff exclusively. Note that the flails have been modified: their vision slots have been filled down and replaced with a sensor globe. Also, the chaingun has been replaced with a bead to represent a short-ranged plasma weapon. One of the flails is also armed with a heavy missile launcher, scavanged from the Arminger's extra pieces.

Future War Commander in 1/600: Infantry Units Comparison

2010-05-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Here are some a size comparisons shot to show the kinds of units I'm working with in 3mm for Future War Commander!

From the left to the right, we have a conventional infantry squad (O8 Israeli infantry), an armored infantry squad (Germy Bugger 2mm power armor sold through GZG), a power armor or walker squad (Scottia 6mm power armor) and a mecha (DP9 fleet scale gear). No, the conventional infantry unit didn't get overly excited: that's varnish that's still drying.

Same line up, this time doubled and with a GZG "Hound Dog" walker on the left (also by Germy Bugger). You'll notice that the infantry have found time to use their hankies and clean themselves up here.

Two pictures of the same crew from different angles and in different lighting conditions.

More spoogey conventional infantry.

Two power armor troopers and a mecha. In the game scale of 1/600, the power armor is about 5.5 meters tall, the mecha about 9-10.

And here are three shots of my power armor battalion's command stand. I attempted to make a mini-diorama. The commander pops the cockpit on his armor to oversee two armored infantry soldiers as they field strip the remains of a destroyed power armor suit:

Krasnynorad Tank Regiment

2010-05-16T11:34:00.000-07:00

Here're the first shots of the Big Red tank regiment. This unit has three battalions of tanks (1 HQ and 6 T-54 ea.), one battalion of mechanized infantry (1, HQ, 4 BTR-152s, 6 Infantry and 2 Machineguns) and supporting units (an heavy assault gun battery, a recon company and an engineering company). A battalion of 122mm towed artillery has also been attached.

The light on these photos isn't the greatest and, now that I'm looking at them up close, I notice that I need to brush some excess flocking off some of the figs. Anyhow, here they are...

1st tank battalion. I really like how the bases turned out on this group!

2nd tank battalion.

3rd Tank Battalion. Each battalion is based slightly differently for easy distinction on the battlefield.

Mechanized infantry battalion.

Headquarters and assault gun battery.

Blitzkrieg Airforces

2010-04-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of my first planes for the Avalon Hill Blitzkrieg Project. All planes are 1:600 (3mm) models from Tumbling Dice, with markings from Dom's Decals.

First up, we have two flights of Blue F-100 Super Sabres. I thought the white paint scheme on these turned out rather nice.

Here's the lead F-100 flight:

Here's the better part of a Krasnynorad (Red) MiG-19 squadron, escorting a Su-7 fighter-bomber:

MiG-19s up close:

Su-7 up close:

A Neutral (Walkurian) MiG-17:

And, finally, a lone F-100 from a second Blue squadron, this one in a more "Luftwaffe 1946" style paint scheme:

Building a Battlegroup for Cold War Commander on less than 20 bucks

2010-04-25T19:58:00.000-07:00

Over on the Specialist Publishing website (the publishers of the Commander series of rule), we’ve been having a debate as to whether or not 3mms are more cost effective than 6mm figures.

I’ve repeatedly sustained that they are, but some posters counter that if one places four vehicle castings to a base (in order to model platoons at 1:1 scale), the costs come out at more-or-less the same.

I disagree with this view.

First of all, a key consideration for these smaller scales is play area: typically, one wants to be able to play in about a quarter as much space as at 10-15mm (with a 3x2 foot table and half range and movement values being the norm). Basing four 3mm castings per base means one has to use 10mm-sized bases and, consequently, one gains no space advantage.

Secondly, a very satisfactory “mass” effect can be had using 6mm base sizes and doubling the number of figures used to 10 infantry castings or 2 vehicle castings per stand (weapons stay at 1 per stand, but use infantry-sized (half-sized) stands).

One of the great advantages of this sort of basing is that you can buy armies very cheaply and prepare them for combat very quickly. This allows you to build “marginal” projects – say the 1930s Chaco War, or my Colombia/Venezuela confrontation – without breaking the bank or taking much time away from other, more dear, projects. “Cigar box” armies of this type are fun to collect, paint and play and allow you more table time per hobby buck.

So I wanted to prove that one can build a 2000 point battlegroup for Cold War Commander on a budget of 20 dollars. This force will be a neutral “third party” army for my Blitzkrieg miniatures game project. This is what I bought:

1 pack, WSU-607: WW2 Soviet Infantry                3.50
1 pack, IS-617: IDF Infantry II                               3.50
1 pack, IS-606: M3 Half-track                                3.50
1 pack, MN-608: Strv 103                                      3.50
2/5th pack, WBR-636: 8th Army HQ                      1.40
1/3rd pack, UK-622: Ferret                                     1.20
1/5th pack, BW-622: FH-70 155mm Howitzer         0.70
1/4th pack, SA-664: MiG-17                                    0.90
                                                                 TOTAL: 18.20 USD

I picked up O8’s brand-spanking new Strv-103s because I’ve always admired this tank. Though technically, it’s a bit advanced for the time period I’m modeling (1950-1960), it’s not ridiculously so, having been projected in the 1950s. In my campaign, however, it’s main gun will be down-graded to 90mm and it won’t have stabilization in order to make it inferior to the Blue Centurions (which are supposed to be the most high tech tanks on the Continent).

To make the units, I put two vehicles on each 1’x 1’ stand. Strv-103s are Skorpions, Daimlers (or any convenient armored car) are Foxes and the MiG17s are Goshawks (1 plane per stand). I put ten infantry figures on each 1’ x ½’ infantry stand and used the heavy weapons to make the recoilless rifle units. I then used the HQ pack units and leftover Foxes, Skorpions and halftracks to build the command units. Guns are based on per infantry base. For the mortar halftrack, I simply modified on of the regular M-3s (O8 does make a mortar M3, but I didn’t want to buy a pack’s worth). Total CWC cost for the project to date:

Units                                Cost
1 CO                                90
2 HQ                                90
1 FAO                              30
1 FAC                              15
1 Fox                               30
9 Infantry w/bazookas     135
3 Support 90mm RR       150
6 Halftracks                    150
1 120mm SP Mortar        75
6 Skorpions                    600
1 Bridging Skorpion        105
1 Lt AA Tank                  40
3 155mm Artillery          180
2 MiG 17                       130
                        TOTAL: 1820

Optionally, I could keep the MiGs and 155mm Artillery off-board (which is perfectly OK in CWC, as they don’t ever maneuver on the board) and spend another 3.50 on a second pack of Strv-103s. This brings me up to about 20 USD exactly (or 21.60 if I were to buy it all) and, thinning out some command stands to form a second Fox Recon unit, I can field an additional:

1 HQ                          45
1 Fox                         30
6 Skorpions               600
1 AVRE Skorpion     125
                 TOTAL: +800

… for a total force of 2620 points. Chuck out the MiGs and FAC and add some artillery ammo and I can easily get down to 2500 points.

Now, how does this compare, cost-wise, to a similar 6mm army?

If we presume that you will buy GHQ miniatures (the only real equivalent to O8’s level of detail at the 6mm level), you’ll be spending about 2 USD per stand, given that a pack of five vehicles will run you 9.95 USD. This means you’ll pay about 74.00 USD for the 37 stands of the basic army and another 18 dollars for the optional stands.

92.00 USD for 6mm versus 21.60 USD for 3mm: that’s about a 4.25:1 price advantage for 3mm.

Painting and basing the force
In the unit pictured below, I still need to buy a second pack of Strv-103s and I need to paint up my MiG-17s. Also, I swapped out the Daimlers for some spare Italian AB-41s that I had lying around, swapped in some Italian 20mm AAA canons for the Lt. AA tanks and used some extra Russian infantry to beef up the heavy weapons stands. Other than that, everything is pretty much as described above. It took me about 4 hours of work to base and paint this battlegroup.

Because this is a fantasy unit, I can paint it up anyway I like. It’s meant to be a generic neutral unit for my Blitzkrieg set up, so the national markings are WWI American roundels, which feature both red and blue.

I decided to paint these up according to the same general scheme as my Italian WWII units, but made the base much darker in order to bring the units out. Helmets and other details on the infantry are also light green. Again, I painted red and white flashes on the tanks in order to make them jump out just that much more from the background.

This time I went for a spring effect on the bases. I flocked with Woodland Scenics Medium Green over dark brown painted bases. I then sprinkled some light green static grass over parts of the base where glue had seeped through. After drying, I lightly brushed the top of some of the thicker static grass patches with glue and dipped them in Gale Force 9’s summer flocking. The effect at this scale gives flowering bushes. Finally, I added some dark green coarse flocking here and there for regular bushes. The end effect is quite nice, if a bit festive.

The 16th Brigade

The brigade seen head on, infantry battalion to the left, armour battalion to the right.

A Skorpion stand.

Mechanized Infantry - bad shot, I know.

I realize that these photos are not the best: light quality sucked when I took the shots. I'll try to post some better pictures as soon as I can. Meanwhile, here are the CWC stats:

Azurnerreich Task Force

2010-03-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

As anyone who follows Consimworld's Blitzkrieg board knows, I am a big fan of Avalon Hill's Blitzkrieg. I don't know why - the game itself kinda sucks, actually. But for years now, I've done variants, scenarios and even entire new countersets for it.

Mostly, I think I'm attracted to Blitz because of its historical-yet-science-fiction nature. It's a fictional war in the universe next door between two fictional superpowers who have access to roughly 1950s technology. One can thus play a "historical" kind of war without historical constraints.

The reason I originally bought Cold War Commander and Oddizial Osmy 1/600 miniatures was to play Blitzkrieg. I decided I'd build three armies: Red, Blue and a Neutral Yellow. Red would have Soviet style technology and Blue would have NATO technology. Yellow would be made up of both, plus minor nation stuff. I set an arbitrary limit of 1960 for the equipment because I didn't want to deal with the wide-spread use of anti-tank missiles. Therefore, most equipment is ca. 1955.

Blue - or Azurnerreich - uses Centurions for their main battle tank and German SPW250s and 251s as infantry carriers. They also use Chaffees for recon and French AMX-13s for light tank killers. The Blue Air Force flies F-100 Super Sabres for air superiority and prop-driven Skyraiders for ground support.

Unlike my World War II games, I play CWC Blitzkrieg at the platoon level and half-scale (i.e. 10 cm in the rules are 2 inches on my table).

I've been having a lot of fun dreaming up OoBs for the principal armies and I've decided that Blue will have big, well trained battalions while Red will have smaller, less well trained battalions. This means a Blue battalion should be roughly the equivalent of a Red regiment.

My total Blue force, bought and based so far, amounts to two large battalions of tanks and mechanized infantry, two SPA battalions, a battalion of paratroops and an infantry (motorized) battalion. There are also supporting units: a company of mechanized engineers and two companies of AMX-13s. I'm also going to build a Armored Cavalry "regiment" for Blue (actually am over-sized big battalion).

The following pictures are of my first completed Azurnerreich combined arms task force. It is built around a tank battalion with one company of mech infantry swapped in. Here we have two Centurion companies and a mechanized infantry company (three SPW250-mounted infantry platoons, a mortar platoon and a self-propelled gun platoon). Also attached are a recon platoon and an armored engineer platoon (Centurions fitted with heavy support howitzers and bulldozer blades - I also presume that bridgelayers go with them). Another Centurion company needs to be painted up for this unit to be complete, but it's table-worthy as is.

Task Force Kreuzmann, in its entirety.

Mechanized Infantry company.

Tank Company.

Task Force Headquarters

Chaffee Recon Platoon

Task Force Kreuzmann from another angle.

Following my normal doctrine for 1/600 miniatures, I painted one color and flocked another. Here, the base color of the tanks is blue-gray with tan camouflage stripes. The base is a terracota wash over tan, with flocking built up in three layers: fine yellow towards the middle, green flock towards the margins and spring green static grass in clumps to make it really stand out. I wanted the whole effect to look vaguely Brazilian or tropical and I think I've suceeded at that.

More Azurnerreich will be coming soon, as will the forces of their arch-enemies, Krasnynorad (Big Red).

Re-done Brits

2010-03-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

I decided to flock my Brits to the Italian standard and am pleased with the results. Also changed here: the carrier unit is based, as per infantry and guns, on the 25mmx17mm "low visibility" base.

8th Hussars. Yes, I know that's a Daimler and not a Humber

That will be fixed with my next order from PicoArmor.

1st and 5th RTR, plus 7th Brigade HQ

2nd Scotts Guards and 7th Brigade HQ

The entire 7th Brigade, 7th Armored Division, ready for battle!

Mighty Eyeties: 132nd Ariete Armored Division, 1941-42

2010-03-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

I've finally finished the Ariete for Blitzkrieg Commander. A few changes were made from my plans as detailed in an earlier post. First of all, I've not yet provided Ariete with its engineer or anti-aircraft contingent (a detachment of German 88s are with the division in the meantime). We'll also have to wait until O8 produces some Italian 100mm artillery pieces and gets them off to Picoarmor before I can finish the artillery regiment.

132nd Italian Armored Division, 1941. Each stand represents a company.

Basically, everything's worked out fine. Ariete, as modled here, has two infantry battalions, three M13/40 battalions, an artillery regiment and supporting arms. I should point out that each unit represents roughly a company of 100-200 soldiers, 10-15 tanks, or 8-12 guns. Often, however, there isn't a precise map-over between units. The artillery regiment, for example, had 6 batteries of 4 75mm canons, here represented by 3 game pieces and a Forward Artillery observer. Also, my goal isn't to create a precise copy of the Ariete at any point in time, but a general overview of its capacities - sort of a "universe right next door" version of the Ariete. The division as pictured above thus has a battalion of L3 tankettes, even though these never shared the battlefield with the M13/40s, as far as I know.

The L3s are another issue. Since beginning this project, BKCII has arrived and I've done some further thinking about basing and decided that I will use 25mm x 17mm stands for all low visibility units (basically infantry, guns and support weapons) and 25mm x 25mm stands for everything else. Strictly speaking, then, the L3s should be mounted on the smaller stands and one could argue that the 88mm AAA canons should be mounted on larger stands.

I decided to keep them as-is, however. In the first place, the Italians used - or tried to use - L3 tankettes as if they were by-God tanks. Making them low visibility, in my opinion, would encourage an anti-historic use of them as weak ambushing units. As for the 88mm cannons, big they may well be, but the history of the Desert War is full of examples of British armor getting severely pwned by 88s operating under cover.

Here are some pictures of the painting process. Again, I followed the same recipe as before: base coat of sand, sepia wash, successive dry brushes of lighter sand colors and a final fake drybrushing of Valejo Light Sand, followed by detailing. Also, color flashes are again exageratedly big to help the miniatures stand out:

Flocking the bases for this one was difficult. As readers of this blog know, I flock bases in a different color from the figure's paint job because otherwise 3mm figures blend in too handily with the base. So far, I've been using dark bases set against light paint jobs. This has caused difficulties, however, when it comes to blending into my terrain backdrop: the bases are simply too dark.

This time I tried another tactic. I glued dark flocking near the figures and then added another coat of light yellow flocking around the base's edges. Here and there I laid down some dark green patches, then glued coarse light green flock over those. I'm pretty pleased with the result: the figures still stand out, but the base blends better into the terrain sheet.

Here are some pictures of the final units:

Infantry battalion of the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment

Headquarters of 8th Bersaglieri Regiment and supporting units

Headquarters of 8th Bersaglieri Regiment

Armored Regiment

VIIIth and XIth Armored Battalions

VIIIth Armored Battalion and Armored Regiment HQ

Ariete, Awreety, Awrighty! The Italian 132nd Armored Division in 1/600

2010-02-05T11:18:00.000-08:00

Go Rams!

Figuring out how to portray the 132nd Ariete Armored Divisions takes some thought. Though the unit was one of the major combat units in the Axis forces in Africa, it's relatively difficult to find clear order of battle information for it.

It's universally agreed that the Division's two major front-line combat units were the 32nd Tank Regiment and the 8th Bersaglieri Regiment, but it's somewhat harder to discover what was the exact composition of these units at any given time. Did the 32nd have three battalions or four? As for the 8th Bersaglieri, it seems to have started the campaign with two motorized and one motorcycle battalions and then moved to two motorized and one weapons battalion. Some sources have the regiment at 3 motorized infantry battalions, however.

For our purposes, the Ariete will have the following company-sized units:

2 HQ

1 FOA

9 M13/40 companies

3 L3/38 companies

2 AB41 recon troops

1 Motorcycle recon company

6 Infantry companies

2 Machinegun companies

1 Mortar company

4 47mm Anti-Tank Gun batteries

3 75mm Artillery batteries

2 Engineer companies

It will also have 2 German 88mm ATG/AAA batteries attached. I wish O8 would release the Italian 90mm AAA guns, but for now, these will do.

Basing is underway as I right this.

5th Panzer Regiment, DAK

2010-02-04T09:07:00.000-08:00

Planning this unit was fairly simple as there are excellent and acessable OoB sources for the 5th Panzer Regiment on-line. Again, I'm following my "universe slightlty to the left of us" philosophy and building an historic-ish 5th PzRgt rather than a perfect snapshot of the unit. The original mix of tanks is set for the Crusader-Gazala Battles period and includes 2 companies of Pz Mk II, 4 companies of Pz Mk III short 50s, 2 companies of PZ Mk IV short 75s, a Headquarters unit (on the circular base) and a composite recon company (on the house-shaped base).

O8 Pz IV shorts come with two different command tanks (both have the commander un-buttoned, one sitting and one standing in his turret) and they make nifty 1939-1942 command tanks. I added a MkII on the HQ's base as well. The recon unit gets one Pz Mk II and two motorcycle-sidecar combos.

The process for building this unit was much the same as that used for the British. First off, bases were spackled with Vallejo Sandy Paste, then the tanks were glued down and a base coat of Orange Ochre acrylic paint was applied. Once this was dry, Skin wash was applied over everything, followed by Sienna wash near the tanks. At this point, I was going for a light-colored tank on a dark-colored base.

The tanks and bases were then drybrushed with Sand, Highlight Afrika Korps and finally Dark Flesh. Note the needle in the picture: it's there to pluck out bruch hairs which detach during drybrushing. At this scale, they are very noticeable.

Finally, I pin-pointed highlights with Higlight Afrika Korps. The purpose of this is to smooth out the drybrushing and make the figure look less scratchy. You can see the effect in the above photo as the recon and command stands there have already been through the process while the combat companies haven't. Here's a picture of the whole regiment after the treatment was completed:

Now on to detailing. As was the case with the Brits, I'll paint black under gun barrels and sienna wash any bare or light spots on the treads. Tank commanders are painted black, highlighted grey and given a Dark Flech face. I then add in some red and white highlights here and there. Again, this scale is too small to see numbers and national markings. The bits of red and white, however, really make the models jump out and so are worth adding, even if they are too big for history. After detailing, I varnished the models with flat varnish.

Base flocking turned out to be difficult for this unit. As I've mentioned before, my philosophy is to base darker or lighter than the model, in order to make the miniature stand out. As you can see, above, this didn't work well in this case.

What I finally decided to do was a three part flocking method.

About 70% of the base gets covered in fine yellow flock, with 20-25% (generally the areas closest to the tanks) covered in fine dark brown flock. Another 5-10% of the base is left unflocked. Finally, bits of green flock are added here and there. The result is as follows:

Photo of two regiments in the palm of my hand

2010-01-03T09:01:00.000-08:00

A regiment from the 4th Armored Brigade and one fromthe 22nd Armored Brigade in the palm of my hand.

This should give readers some notion of the... er... compact nature of 1/600 scale figures.

Note that the 22nd Brigade stands still need to be flocked.

Painting the British 4th Brigade (three of three)

2010-01-02T15:00:00.000-08:00

Final touches
As I mentioned in the last post, I decided to put sangars around the artillery and machineguns. These are built up with Vallejo Pumice and allowed to dry. They are then painted with Burnt Umber and dry brushed with Mahogany.

Some of the painting is also touched up - particularly a few of the flashes and some treads. More Seinna wash is applied under the tanks to give the effect of shadows at high noon. The Armored Car company's base edge is painted in Sand. The other bases, being commerically bought transparent acrylic, don't need this final touch. In fact, they look better with out it.

Flocking
Woodland Scenics Fine Earth flocking is laid down in patches to cover up any obvious base lines or hairs that inadvertently got painted into the base. After the glue dries, small splotches of Green Blended turf are stuck on here and there - about three or so per base. Again, this is mostly done to highten the contrast between the tanks and their bases.

Finally, the miniatures are carefully brushed off to remove any lint or hairs and two more coats of spray varnish are applied.

Here are the final results (again, apologizing for the poor lighting):

The entire 4th Brigade, 7th Armored Division, finished. Three armored regiments and an armored car squadron lead the way, followed by a motor rifle battalion and an artillery battalion.

A tank regiment, Honeys in front, Grants in back. Looks like I missed a hair on that lefthand Honey base. More flock!

Motor rifle battalion. Infantry and machineguns in front, 2lb portee ATG and carrier company in back.

The 25 lbr artillery battalion.

Total elapsed time on this brigade was probably about two hours. Now onto the next brigade, which I have decided will be the 22nd Armored and not the 2nd, after all.

Painting the British 4th Brigade (two of three)

2010-01-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

Detailing

Now that everything's basically painted, I grab my smallest brush and go for the details.

Again, one must recall what scale you are working in. Details should only be those things that can clearly be seen at arms length. This means, basically...

1) Painting treads and wheels black and (depending on the model) lightly drybrushing them grey.

2) Painting under the barrels of guns. In order to support gunbarrels, O8 leaves in a bit of flash. This can't be removed without breaking the gun barrel. There are three ways to deal with this:
    A) Cut off the barrel and the flash, drill a hole in the model and mount your own barrel. I can't be bothered with this as O8's alloy is just too strong. It's too much work for too little effect, IMHO.
    B) Leave the flash the color of the model in general.
    C) Paint the flash black. This is what I do, as I feel it looks better. YMMV.
In any case, the detailing step is where any painting of the flash is going to be done, if it is done.

3) Paint windscreens black or dark blue. If you're a real nutter, highlights can be added, too.

4) Other details as come to mind. In my case, this means painting the Honeys' back storage bins varying shades of green, painting their auxilliary gas tanks light grey and painting any jerry cans green or grey-blue.

5) For the infantry, asms and legs are painted Dark Flesh, rifles and shoes get a coat of Brown and machinguns and other heavy weapons are painted Black. I occaisionally outline prone infantry figures with a Sepia ink wash in order to give a better contrast with the base. This being the Western Desert, I paint weapons crews' torsos in dark flesh, too.

6) Finally, little colored bits are added. It would be reasonable to assume, at this scale, that one wouldn't see national markings, unit badges and the like. But you want at least some color to further break up the camouflage effect discussed in the last post. In this case, I make little red and white scribblings on the tanks' front bumpers. Honeys get a white-red-white armor flash on their left turret side and Grants get the same on the left sand skirt. Finally, the infantry brigade's vehicles get a green motorized infantry flash.

Here are the pictures and I apologize for their quality (I REALLY need to build myself a light tent, but with the xmas bills coming in, that may take a few more months)...

Figure 1: The entire brigade in battle order.

Figure 2: The motorized infantry battalion.

Figure 3: Tank regiment, seen from above.

Figure 4: Tank regiment seen from the side.

At this point, it's a good time to pause and do two things: check for problems and apply a coat of matte spray varnish.

In the photos above, I can see two main problems that I'll want to fix in the next stage.

First of all, I live with two cats, so there's always fur and lint in the air. As you can see in Figure 3, the smallness of 1/600 scale means this stuff shows up even more than usual, especially on the naked bases. No matter how much I clean, some always gets in and this means that I'll have to flock these areas over.

Secondly, the bases of some of the figures - particularly the artillery - didn't get as covered as I would wish during the basing stage. I plan to solve this by judicious use of flock and by building sangars around the artillery pieces. This will be what I do next, using Vallejo White Pumice paste to build up the sangars. For better differentiation, I'm also going to add sangars to the machinegun unit's base as well. Mortars will be sangar-less..

Regarding varnish and 1/600 scale figures

DON'T brush on varnish: DO use a spray varnish.

While it is possible to brush on varnish in an emergency, you need to water it down and pay careful attention while its drying so that it doesn't pool. Tiny pools of varnish which could be overlooked even on 6mm figures are disasterous at 2-3mm.

For this reason, you should use spray varnish, wherever possible. Even then, you need to be careful to not over do it. Multiple light coats is the way to go here.

At this point, I prefer to put down one or two light coats to protect the figures' paint jobs from my fingers during the flocking and final basing stage. After that's done, I'll touch up any (hopefully few) raw bits and apply more varnish, after carefully brushing away excess flock and cat hairs with a dry brush.

Painting the British 4th Brigade (one of three)

2009-12-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

We'll take the 4th Armored Brigade as our test unit here.

So far, everything's gone mostly to plan and I have perhaps 4 hours of my time invested in the project. The next steps take about 10 minutes per brigade each and, drying time aside, an entire brigade can easily be completed in an hour's painting.

First of all, we need to take a step back and discuss some technical aspects of painting 2-3mm scale miniatures.

When I first began collecting 1/700 figures, I painted them as I would any other kind of miniature. This is a mistake. While O8's figs are definitely detailed enough for one to paint them very realistically, if you do this without thinking, you'll create a very bland effect on the table top.

2-3mm gaming is about looking at the grand scale, not the details. Because of this, one needs to be aware of three different visual planes when one paints: the ground, the base and the figure. Figures need to contrast with the base if they're going to be seen at arm's lenght on the table. Ideally, the base should blend with the ground, but this is not always possible.

One can't do much with regards to the ground except be aware of the general theater and season. In our case, it's the Western Desert so we don't have too much leeway. Ground can be brown, tan, sand-colored or greyish and bases will generally have to follow. There will be minimal flocking and very little - if any - green.

Now, this is a problem because both sides obviously painted their vehicles to blend in to the desert. If you do the same, you're going to end up hiding your handiwork and you might as well be playing with counters. For this reason, one should generally paint the base to contrast with the figure. In Africa, though, our palette is strictly limited.

The solution to the problem here, again, is not to try to adhere too rigidly to history. One wants one's troops to look generally correct and to stand out from the back-clutter of base and ground. One should thus choose a plausibly historical paint scheme for the troops which allows them to stand out. In my case, I also want to be able to tell each of my brigades at a glance.

Now, the most common British color used in the desert was plain sand or light stone. However, just before the period in which we're playing (1941-1942), they used what was called the "caunter scheme", and used up to six colors (including light blue) applied in straight lines. Towards the end of the period in question, the British went with "Desert Pink", occaisionally broken with green blotches.

What I've decided to do is to paint the Fourth Brigade in a pinkish plain sand scheme. The Second Brigade will be done in Desert Pink and Green while the 201st Brigade's vehicles and guns will be cauntered. In general, all of these schemes will be light, so the base will be painted relatively dark in order to create a contrasting effect. Of course, all of this probably was never together on the same battlefield at the same time. It's not screamingly out of place, however. My personal line is drawn when it comes to paint shemes that were probably never applied to given unit types. For example, you'll never see my Grants in caunter.

Step One: blocking in the base colors
Step one for the Fourth Brigade consists of painiting vehicles and equipment in Vallejo Dark Flesh, a pinkish tan color. The human figures are then painted in white and all is left to dry.

PROTIP: Taking care to paint within the lines during this phase will pay off in lowered clean up time later. However, if you do paint something you shouldn't. don't waste time correcting it now: you'll have opportunities to make good your mistake later.

The Fourth Brigade with its base colors blocked in

Step Two: wash

Now washes are applied. First of all, a heavy, dark wash of Vallejo Sepia Ink is applied to the base of the units and allowed to thoroughly dry:

Then, a light wash of Vallejo Skin Wash Ink is applied to the vehicles and equipment:

PROTIP: When you apply this wash, make sure you use the tip of the brush to work it into treads and along undercarriages. These should be very dark.

Finally, a very light wash of Vallejo English Uniform is applied to the human figures:

PROTIP: when washing the base, make sure that the immediate area around the figures in very dark for maximum contrast. You may even want to run another coat of ink around the vehicles after the first on has dried.

Washes applied.

Step Three: dry brush
Dry brushing will bring out the detail on the figures. First, I drybrush with DAK Sand. Following this, I mix up Vallejo Deck Tan and Dark Skin, about 50/50, and dry brush with that. Then I take my time and go back and pick out details on the vehicles with my smallest brush (this is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole project). Finally, I dry brush everything once again with DAK Sand.

Drybrushed.

Next up: detailing. Here's a small (and unfortunately not very good) shot as a sneak peek...

Basing the British

2009-12-30T11:34:00.000-08:00

Bases
One needs to walk a thin line (literally!) when it comes to bases for 1/600 scale figures. Too thin and you can't pick up the base: too thick and the base ends up distracting your eye from the figures. I find that a thickness of 1/32nd of an inch (roughly .75mm) is just perfect, though thicknesses of up to 1mm are fine. Beyond 1mm, however, and you run the risk of having your figures look like they're standing on platforms.

Because of the smallness of the scale, I try to make stand types immediately apprehendable to the eye. I use 25x25mm for armored targets, 25x15mm for unarmored targets and round 25mm for headquarters. FAO and FAA stands are mounted on equilateral triangles, 25mm to a side. Recon units are based on 25x25mm stands with an angled front edge. Finally, COs are based on 30mm round stands. The first three stand types I buy from Litko in 1/32nd inch thick transparent acrylic with rounded corners. The next three types of bases I cut myself from plasticard or artists' matte board (I use a fingernail clippers to trim the corners to Litko's standard.

Figure Preparation
There are two basing methods: one for freestanding vehicles and the other for units which come with a pr-molded base (generally infantry and guns). Both start, however, with basic cleanup and separation of the figures.

O8 uses some ultra hard and fairly brittle alloy in its figs. If I didn't know better, I'd even say it was aluminium. It has ZERO give, so you can't correct (the thankfully almost uneard of) casting errors by bending the metal back into place. If you try, the metal will snap. The strength of this allow is enormous, however, and it takes alot to get it to break, which brings up another problem: the tiny bits of flash on the figs can easily pierce your skin like little needles if you grasp the wrong.

I use a fingernail clippers or a small wire cutters to clean the flash off of my figs. First I clean the helmets of any spurs (they generally have some because that's where O8 likes to put some of its flow vents), then I snap off the big bits of flash. Finally, I break off any stands mounted in strips. To do this, I wrap the strip in cloth and simply snap it along the molded separation lines. The cloth is necessary to avoid mauling your fingers - as I said, this metal is strong stuff!

Fingernail clipper for cleaning up a 25lb gun. Note the molded separation line between the lorried and unlorried gun. Enough pressure will snap that cleanly in two, but make sure you protect your fingers while applying pressure!

Bases for free-standing vehicles are simple to prepare. I paint them with a thin coat of Vallejo "Sandy Paste" and Bob's yer uncle. After it dries, you glue down the vehicle. If you want to get fancy, you can drag a toothpick tip through the goop before it dries to create tread tracks. Be careful, though! Remember that you're working in a very small scale: tread tracks that are acceptably deep for 6mm will look like veritable canyons here! The key is using a very thin covering of sandy paste: almost a wash.

Even so, I only bother to scribe in track marks for bases which will have heavy tanks. Light tanks like Stuarts will simply ahve theirs applied with paint.

Units molded to a base need to be glued to the stand first, then have sandy paste applied around them with a brush or a toothpick. The degree to which you want to even out the base is a matter of personal taste. I just try to mute the molded base out rather than make it dissappear entirely. The second option is entirely too much work for me!

Bases being pasted. In the lower left hand corner, a 25lb field gun. To the right of that, you can see a HQ stand. The 40mm bofors has a molded base and so is pasted at this point. Further vehicles will be glued to the top once the paste dries. Moving upwards one can see some of my homemade recon bases and, at the very top, a set of FAA/FAO bases. The recon bases are being pasted now because the armored cars which will go on top of them are free-standing.

When you base, try to base to a standard which allows you to easily identify the units in question at a glance. For example, all my infantry has 5 figures standing and five lying down while engineers are all standing. Further differentiation can be done during the painting process later on, but a little thought now can save a lot of grief later. I should have staggered my mortar support units and kept the machinegun units based in line, but I didn't think of this until everything was already glued down. Oh well... This is mostly a problem with infantry, I find, as tanks are pretty easy to tell apart at this scale. The only difficulties for vehicles might be, say, distinguishing Panther As from Panther Fs. Again, here a distinctive basing method is called for.

I generally put down two vehicles per stand as I feel that this gives an acceptable feeling of mass without makiung things look too crowded. Even so, you can see in the pictures below that my Grants are pushing it. I should've moved these farther out to the base edges. Oh, well...

Applying the first coat of paint

After all the bases are done and the figures glued to them, I then apply a base coat of paint to everything. In this case, I'll be using an old pot of Howard Hues DAK sand that I had laying around (it's probably 20 years old now). The goal here is to get a thin coat over the whole works. One shouldn't get stressed out if the figures don't get covered completely, as they are will have another base coat applied to them later.

Now's a good time to sit back and re-evaluate the project. One will always find some things missing, new figures which need to be bought or swapped in, etc.

In my case, I decided that 4 FAO's were just too many, and I reduced their number to two. To adequately model British fire support doctrine with two FAOs, I'll have a house rule that only FAOs can call all artillery, but that HQs can call in any artillery assigned to their formation (in this case, to their brigade).

I also note that I forgot to buy quad haulers for the 25lbrs. I'll use other trucks for now and swap the quads in at a later date.

Finally, just as I began to type this up, O8 announced the release of a British 8th Army command pack. I will thus not build the CO stand for now and I'll leave space on the armor HQ stands for the anti-aircraft tank which comes in the new pack.

I've also decided against basing the trucks for now, except for weapons haulers. There is one truck with a lorried gun based for every two unlorried weapons in the division.

Other than that, Thunderbirds seem to be go. Here's a photo of the division laid out in all its basic golden glory...

The whole division in company scale (i.e. one base = one company or half artillery battalion.)

The 201st Motorized Brigade. HQ up front, followed by carrier companies, infantry, machineguns, 2 lber ATG portees and mortars. Mortars should have been based distinctively from MGs, so I'm going to have to visually define them better come painting and flocking time.

The 2nd Armored Brigade. Crusaders up front, Grants in the rear. To the left is its organic motor infantry battalion: carriers, infantry, machingun and portee. HQ is at back right.

My personal favorites: the 4th Armored Brigade. I mean, Stuarts AND Grants: what's not to like?

Protips to remember in this stage

1) Base look-alike units differently so that they can be told apart at a glance.

2) Base units with special characteristics (i.e. recon, command) on specially-shaped bases.

3) Leave a 5mm-wide strip clear of figures at the back of the base. A label decribing the unit can be affixed here later, if you like.

My Late 1941 / Early 1942 British Armored Division

2009-12-29T09:47:00.000-08:00

Vroom, vrooooooom. Dakadakadaka...

During our pre-Christmas sojourn in the United States, I bought my X-mas gift to me: a set of 1/600 WWII desert warfare minis from Oddzial Osmy’s U.S. supplier, Pico Armor. (And let me just take a moment to give a big shout out to John from PA for getting my stuff to me overnight and in a blizzard to boot.)

I had already decided that the period I want to focus on would be late 1941 to early 1942, the “classic” desert war period, encompassing the Crusader and Gazala battles. I’d thus eschewed buying early war British armor, at least for now.

Over the last few days, I’ve been scaring up OoB information for the British 8th Army, trying to figure out what kind of force I’m going to put together for the Blitzkrieg Commander II, which I eagerly await. (My copy’s probably made it over the Atlantic now and is pining away in Brazilian customs.)

This is my favorite part of any miniatures project: laying out the figures and building forces.

I play BKC in company scale (i.e. each unit is a company or, in the case of artillery, a half-battalion) and my OoB philosophy can best be described as “semi-historical”. I’m not a button-and-bayonet counter. I generally presume that my scenarios are occurring in a parallel universe just next door. This means I use historical OoBs to model my units, but I give myself some creative leeway, constructing “typical” units rather than perfect replicas of historical formations.

So the following is my first stab at a British Armoured division for this period. Note that I have extra units which I can swap in if I do want to make a historical formation, but I don’t have enough to do this on the divisional level. This means that I’ll only be able to play small historical battles, but c’est le guerre de plomb. (I should note here that I’ll also building a reinforced British Infantry division, complete with two RTR Matilda regiments, but that’s a future project).

Any comments are welcome. I’ll be following this project with photos as I go along. Hopefully, it’ll inspire some of you out there to take a stab at 1/600. Note that the following forces cost me about USD 35.00, all told: the equivalent of maybe 12 Pendraken 10mm vehicles, so I’m getting around 50 maneuver units for the cost of a dozen in a larger scale. This may not appeal to you WWII fanatics out there, but for those of you who play, say, FWC or CWC – or even those of you who specialize in another front of WWII – 1/600 allows you to take a stab at quickly and cheaply fielding entire armies outside your preferred period or theater.

And I think that you’ll agree, when you see the paint job that I’m going to do on these, that they are quite acceptable for table play – definitely not “counters with bumps” or “bits of rice”, as 2-3mm detractors would have it…

Comments, suggestions and criticism, as always, are welcome.

7th Armored Division, divisional units
1 CO
1 FAA
1 FAO
1 Grant (HQ escort)
6 Daimler Recon
4 25 lb artillery
3 Engineers
2 Bofors 40mm AAA
3 6lb ATG
12 Trucks

201st Brigade
1 HQ
1 FAO
6 Infantry
3 Machinegun
3 Carrier companies
3 2lb Portees
2 3” Mortars
2 25 lb artillery
13 Trucks

2nd Armored Brigade
1 Grant HQ
1 FAO
2 Infantry
1 MG
1 Carrier
1 2lb Portee
2 25 lb artillery
6 Crusaders
3 Grants
6 Trucks

4th Armored Brigade
1 Stuart HQ
1 FAO
2 Infantry
1 MG
1 Carrier
1 2lb Portee
2 25 lb artillery
6 Stuarts
3 Grants
6 Trucks

Colombia and Venezuela: The Strategic and Operational Situation

2009-12-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

Before I start. I should mention that I've never been to either of the countries discussed below. What follows is an analysis based completely on what I can glean from on-line and print sources.

Strategy
There are only two logical scenarios in which a serious war would develop between Venezuela and Colombia (as opposed to localized border skirmishings in order to create noise on the nightly news). The first would be a U.S.-led invasion in order to overthrow the Chávez government. This is unlikely in the forseeable future due to U.S. imperial overstretch.

The second would be a Venezuelan invasion of Colombia, which would probably only take place in after some major, world-shaking event which would guarantee that the U.S. would not be able to effectively intervene for at least a couple of months.

This is what we will presume happens for our scenario purposes...

On September 11th 2012, three nuclear devices are detonated on U.S. soil, one each in New York City, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. The U.S. is thrown into chaos precisely at a time when Colombia and Venezuela have upped their saber-rattling to new heights. With the Venezuelan military already completely mobilized, Hugo Chávez sees a window of opportunity and gives the green light for long-prepared invasion plans.

Even an ego as big as Hugo's, however, realizes that Venezuela will not be able to completely conquer and occupy Colombia, at least not over the short term. The upcoming offensive is thus designed to seize the northern border region between the two countries - precisely that area where a large part of Colombia's energy extraction infrastructure is located. Chávez believes that a successful Venezuelan blitzkrieg will be seen as a fait accompli by most of the west and is prepared to "magnanimously" withdraw the Venezuelan Army (after it's caused as much damage as possible) if he encounters serious diplomatic danger. Hugo hopes that such a victory will present the FARC and its allies with a golden opportunity to fatally destabilize the nation's government, bringing another Bolivarist state into being in South America.

Operations
The border between Colombia and Venezuela is a difficult one for offensive military operations. From the Caribbean coast on down to the Rio Arauca (about halfway along the border), Colombia’s three northern frontier provinces of La Guajira, Cesar and Norte de Santander are shielded by the northern extension of the Andes. From the Arauca on south, the frontier is covered by an almost completely trackless stretch of the Amazon rainforest.

The frontier is crossed by few paved roads, the main ones cutting through the mountainous Norte de Santander province at Cucutá. Though much ink has recently been spilled over Venezuela’s purchase of modern T-72 tanks and BMP-3 AFVs, it’s quite obvious that these weapons systems are less than ideal for use in the mountains and jungle which cover most of the Colombian-Venezuelan border.

Given the above, practically the only viable route for a conventional armored thrust out of Venezuela is along the extreme north of the frontier, out of the Maracaibo Basin and across the base of Colombia’s northernmost peninsula, with the attacker’s right sleeve practically brushing the Caribbean. Even this route is problematic, however, for once across the peninsula, the attacker faces the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta – a mountainous region which blocks off any further advance to the direct west.

At this point, a putative Venezuelan armored offensive has only one viable route: over the foothills surrounding the El Cerrejón open-face coal mine and southwest into the Upar Valley. The immediate objective of a strike in this direction would be to take Valledupar, the capital of Cesar Province, thus opening a route into Colombia’s low-lying Caribbean coastal region. An equally important objective would be securing the peninsular region and the Sierra Nevada against Colombian counterattacks in order to maintain a land supply line back to Venezuela. A successful operation of this sort would probably be followed up by a strike southeast into Norte de Santander province, in conjunction with infantry attacks out of the Maracaibo Basin, in order to open up the Cucutá highways as supply routes.

Phases one, two and three of a possible Venezuelan offensive operation through the Upar Valley.

Colombia apparently is aware of the threat of a strike of this sort as it is opening a new military base in an undisclosed part of Guajira Province. One would assume that this base will be located near the provincial capital of Riohacha. Still, it would seem that Colombia’s chances of stopping an armored thrust into Guajira short of El Cerrejón would be slight, given that Venezuela would have the initiative. But El Cerrejón poses a very interesting bottleneck which is potentially fatal to any Venezuelan offensive…

The northern access to the Upar Valley. Venezuelan forces would be entering this map down Route 88 from the NE, moving towards Hato Nuevo in the SW. The El Cerrejón coal mine is situated at Point A.

El Cerrejón is a open-pit coal mining complex: one of the largest in the world. Its operations close off the only relatively flat entrance into the Upar Valley. To the immediate east of the mine, Route 88 (which would have to be Venezuela’s primary supply route by default), winds through a narrow defile before opening out into the mining town of Hato Nuevo. In my opinion, this would be the region in which Colombia’s First Division would attempt to block the mechanized forces of the Venezuelan Fourth Armored Division.

Two views of El Cerrejón. Those things that look like 1/600 Tonka Toys are actually 154 ton-capacity Wabco haulers. I think we can agree that even Ogres would have difficulties tackling those slopes...

Operationally, Colombian armored cavalry and infantry would be looking to delay attackers in the El Cerrejón region while Colombia’s rapid deployment force (made up of several battalions of elite paratroopers supported by 120 Blackhawk helicopters) would prepare to counterattack along the thrust’s western flank. Meanwhile, Venezuela would be seeking to push through El Cerrejón at all possible speed. The terrain is not conducive to airborne operations, but Colombian airmobile forces would probably be deployed here on the first day in an attempt to seize and hold the mines and the Route 88 bottleneck for the follow-on armored forces. Obviously, 42nd Para Battalion would be the force most likely chosen for this attack, given that it’s an elite force integrated into the Venezuelan 4th Division – the operational unit which contains most of Hugo Chavez’ new armored toys.

Given this, our first scenario will represent an attack into the El Cerrejón mining complex by Venezuelan paratroopers, backed up by light armored units from the 44th Light Armored Brigade.

Merry December Solstice Consumption Season to all (even Hugo)!

2009-12-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

And a one-two-three, right face! Swish!

2009-12-10T14:43:00.000-08:00

With apologies to any IRL Venezuelan paratroopers who might be reading this and who find their masculinity threatened... ...or to IRL gay men who find the comparison disturbing.

(Tip 'o the hat to Nik Harwood!)

The mighty 42nd Brigade marches on!

New content will be up soon!

Basic Infantry Types for Future War Commander

2009-11-27T20:39:00.000-08:00

Now for a quick break from the Colombian-Venezuelan brouhaha. Not to worry: Colombia’s OoB and TO&E is coming soon. This week, however, I’m in São Paulo and without access to my normal net provider. I’m thus only able to write stuff from memory and/or imagination. Luckily, I brought along my copy of FWC for between-gigs lulz, so here I am, typing out this article.

One of the things Future War Commander lacks is a generic listing of infantry-type units. Each list provided by the book is well enough, but units differ from list to list and, in some cases, it’s unclear what, exactly, is being modeled. Furthermore, the worst criticisms of the book to date have to do with the fact that the differences in technology level are not distinct enough in terms of unit capacities.

With these issues in mind, I offer up a brief description of infantry types by tech level. Basically, each tech level introduces a new style of infantry and several subsidiary types. These are as follows:

Primitive Tech
This is basically a tech level more-or-less around what we currently have on planet earth. Perhaps a wee bit more advanced. Infantry are armed with weapons which throw slugs driven by chemical reactions (i.e. gunpowder or similarly exploding materials). They are equipped with helmets and maybe torso armor which is designed to stop shrapnel and low-velocity projectiles. They are supported my heavy slug-throwers and conventional mortars. All of these weapons are effective against other infantry but have very limited use against even lightly armored targets. (However, all infantry are assumed to be equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and thus have an anti-armor value at short range )The principal anti-armor weapon is the dedicated anti-tank missile. These are smart missiles, but their warheads are light and have little to no anti-infantry capacity. Drones and robots fly over the battlefield and deliver attacks in a manner indistinguishable from airpower. Primitive tech units include:

Scouts
Infantry
Heavy Slugthrowers
Light Mortars
Heavy Mortars

Here is a typical Primitive Tech Infantry Battalion (495 points):
   1 HQ CV8                            60
   2 x Scouts                             60
   6 x Infantry                            90
   3 x Infantry w/Smart Missiles 120
   2 x Heavy Slug Throwers      100
   1 x Heavy Mortar                 65

Contemporary Tech (Basic Future War Commander)
This is the default tech level for FWC. Infantry are now armed with magnetic induction slugthrowers and magnetically propelled grenades which have a short-ranged but significant anti-armor capacity. Infantry are equipped with light but full body armor, which gives them a limited save value. They are supported by “smart” gauss guns or light energy weapons and fire-and-forget multiple rocket launchers (which generally replace mortars). These weapons are effective against infantry and armored targets. The principal anti-armor weapon continues to be the smart missile, but warheads are heavier and thee missiles have extended range. Robots begin to be used on the battlefield itself, the two most common uses for these being cheap remote-controlled static defensive emplacements and reconnaissance units. Some artillery units are also now effectively robotically controlled, but they function for all intents and purposes as regular artillery. Contemporary Tech units include:

Armored Infantry
Light Gauss Gun
Light Energy Cannon
Support Rockets
Recon drone
Sentry cannon

Here is a typical Conventional Tech Infantry Battalion (720 points):
    1 HQ CV8                                          60
    1 x Recon Drone                                 45
    9 x Armored Infantry                            225
    3 x Armored Infantry w/Smart Missiles 210
    2 x Light Gauss Gun                             90
    1 x Support Rockets                            90

High Tech
At this tech level, the distinction between infantry and light vehicles becomes academic, at best. Infantry is now equipped with fully armored and powered exoskeletons and the average soldier stands some 3-4 meters tall and can sustain a 20kph run, fully loaded, for hours on end. The basic hand weapon of the foot-soldier is an energy weapon of some sort, powerful enough to punch through even heavy armor at short range. Smart missiles now have greatly improved range. Heavy support weapons include portable missile systems with variable warheads (good against both infantry and armoured targets)and heavy energy cannon, as well as light support walkers. Infantry may also be equipped with special equipment, such as jump packs (which allow them to fly over brief distances), recon suites (which turn them into recon units) and fire control equipment (which permits them to direct the fire of other units’ smart missiles). At this tech level, robotic combatants finally come into widespread and a variety of drones are used on the battlefield. Any unit can be designated as robotic by applying the “robotic” characteristic to it (see below). The Artificial Intelligence suite upgrade allows any unit to be turned into a self-commanding unit. AIs are expensive, however, and these are generally reserved for massive units. High Tech units include:

Power Armor
Heavy Energy Cannon
Missile Launcher
Light Support Walker
Jump Pack upgrade
Recon suite upgrade
AI upgrade
Fire Control suite upgrade (directs smart missiles and can be used to spot for InfantryMissile Launchers)

Here is a typical High Tech Infantry Battalion (1495 points):
   1 HQ CV9 90
   1 x Power Armor w/recce suite and jump pack 105
   6 x Power Armor 360
   3 x Power Armor w/Smart Missiles 360
   3 x Light Support Walkers 240
   2 x Missile Launchers 240
   1 x Power Armor w/Fire Control Suite 100

Robotic
Any unit may be declared to be robotic. Robotic units may only be controlled by robotic headquarters (which may not control non-robotic units) and use the Cyborg Tactical doctrine rules on page 54.Obviously, the rules regarding breakpoint only apply to robotic units. Regular units are affected by robotic losses as per normal. All robotic units under a headquarters’ control, excluding suppressed and transported units, must carry out the same order. (Sentry Cannons and Recon Drones, by the way, are not considered to be robotic).

Using infantry in your games
It would be an error to presume that just because a new technology level is reached, older technologies disappear. In my Arcadian campaign, for example, all three kinds of infantry are available to combatants.

Regular, unarmored infantry is generally citizen militia or corporate security forces and these units, as a rule, drive to battle in APCs or IFVs. Armored infantry represents regular troops of the main noble houses or corporate commando forces. Meanwhile, the Terran World Authority infantry units, as well as the various elite corps of the noble houses are equipped with up-to-date galactic technology and are fully power-armored. Not all galactic powers use the best available tech either. The Siliaz Hegemony, for example, prefers cybernetic power armor.

Venezuela Maps

2009-11-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

Over on the TO&E Yahoo group, people have been asking for maps. Here are some that I snicked from the Global Security website. There are plenty more over there, too.

There are maps of Colombia, too, in PDF.

Venezuelan Military: OOB and TO&E

2009-11-16T19:06:00.000-08:00

OK, here is a somewhat better Venezuelan OoB, as of 2008, provided through some stellar research my Mark Bevis. Rather than repost what he’s already turned up (and posted on the Yahoo TO&E Group), I’m going to attempt to synthesize the data at hand into a more consumable form. (Most of this information seems to come from the 2005 Military Balance, and “Venezuelan Armed Forces 1990-2000” by Jose-Mari Serrano. I’ve also added in data drawn from the SIPRI’s arms trade database).

Venezuela’s land forces total some 65,000 troops, 31,000 of which are National Guard and another 27,000 of which are 30-month conscripts. This gives the nation’s ground forces a professional military cadre of only some 7,000 soldiers, the majority of which, we may presume, are officers and/or technicians. The Army also has some 8000 reserves.

ARMY
In terms of major ground units, Venezuela has 5 divisional headquarters – 4 infantry and 1 armored. There are 12 brigade-sized combat formations:

1 Armored Brigade
1 Motorized Cavalry Brigade
1 Light Armored Brigade
6 Infantry Brigades
1 Jungle Infantry Brigade
1 Light Infantry Brigade
1 Airborne Brigade

These are further broken down into:

11 Infantry Battalions
7 Cazador Light Infantry Battalions
5 Jungle Infantry Battalions
2 Airborne Battalions
3 Armored Battalions (82 AMX-30, 40 AMX-13 90)
2 Light Armored Battalions (80 Scorpion 90)
1 Mechanized Infantry Battalion (25 AMX VCI, perhaps some EE-11s)
3 Motorized Cavalry Groups (100 V-100s, 30 V-150s)
2 Mechanized Cavalry Groups (100 Dragoon 300s)
6 Field Artillery Groups (80 105mm)
1 Heavy Artillery Group (12 155mm)
1 Self-Propelled Artillery Group (10 155mm)
1 Multiple Rocket Launcher System Group (20 Self-propelled LARs)
1 Anti-Tank Missile Battalion (24 MAPATS)
2 Air Defense Artillery Groups
4 Engineer Battalions
2 Special Forces Groups
1 Army Air Regiment
3 Air Defense Artillery Batteries (these may have been expanded into Groups by now)
2 Motorized Cavalry Squadrons
1 Heavy Artillery Battery (155mm)
5 120mm Mortar Batteries

The Army’s reserves, consist of:

6 Infantry Battalions
1 Ranger Battalion
1 Armored Battalion (which is probably equipped with WWII-vintage M18s)
1 Combat Support Battalion (this may be artillery)

MARINES
Marine ground forces include some 7,800 soldiers. Only 4000 of the Venezuelan Navy’s 18,300 effectives are conscripts, so we may assume that the Marines have a slightly higher level of elán and professionalism than the Army.

The Marines have a Divisional Headquarters which has 2 Marine Brigades These, in turn, contain:

6 Marine Battalions
1 Artillery Battalion (18 105mm towed artillery)
1 Air Defense Artillery Battery (6 twin 40mm self-propelled)
1 Amphibious Vehicle Battalion (25 EE-11, 10 Fuchs, 11 LVTP-7)
1 Engineer Battalion

NATIONAL GUARD
This is primarily a paramilitary security and internal defense force, though there are some indications that Chávez wants to turn it into a Cuban-style people’s militia, armed with light anti-tank weapons, mortars and machineguns. Its 31,000 soldiers are divided into 9 Regional Commands, 3 Border Detachments and a Rural Commando Detachment.

MAJOR ARMY FIELD UNITS, ORDER OF BATTLE
Note that I’ve removed most “non-teeth” units from this list. Each brigade, for example, generally has a headquarters company and a logistics battalion and several other small units – electronic warfare companies, signal companies – are sprinkled about the army. As these units are generally only abstractly represented on the miniatures battlefield, I have not included them here. Units are grouped by division and brigade, with the home station of these larger units listed in parenthesis. Where possible. I’ve indicated what weapons units are armed with.

Army HQ (Caracas)
3rd Air Defence Group “GD Asencion Barreras” (Roland 2, 40mm AA guns)
81st Air Regiment “Gen. Leon Fabres Cordero” (Caracas)
812 Air Transport Group (fixed wing aircraft)
813 Assault & Support Group (7 A 109, 10 Mi35, 38 Mi17, 13 other transport helicopters)
816 Air Reconnaissance Group (reserve)

1st Infantry Division (Maracaibo)
102 Mechanized Cavalry Group “ GD Francisco Esteban Gomez” (50 Dragoon 300)
103 MRLS Group “GB Jose Gregorio Monagas” (20 LAR-160 on AMX-13 hulls)
105 Engineer Bn “Gen. Carlos Soubiette”
104 Air Defence Group (Cadre – only 1 Battery – 40mm towed guns; Saab RBS-70 on 4x4s)
Special Operations Unit “Montero”
11th Infantry Brigade (Maracaibo)
1103 Air Defence Bty. (40mm towed guns)
111 Infantry Bn. “ Cor. Atanasio Girardot”
112 Infantry Bn. “ Cor. Francisco Aramendi”
121 Infantry Bn. “Venezuela”
114 Artillery Group (M101 105mm Howitzers)
13th Infantry Brigade (Barquisimeto)
131 Infantry Bn. “Gen. Manuel Carlos Piar”
132 Infantry Bn. “Gen. Jose Antonio Paez”
134 Artillery Group (12 M56 105mm light howitzers)

2nd Infantry Division (San Cristobal de Tachira)
203 Artillery Bn (Cadre. – only 1 battery – 155mm)
205 Engineer Bn.
21st Infantry Brigade (San Cristobal de Tachira)
2103 Air Defence Bty. (6 40mm towed guns)
211 Infantry Bn. “Cor. Antonio Ricaurte”
212 Infantry Bn. “Carabobo”
231 Infantry Bn. “ Gen. Santiago Mariño”
214 Artillery Group (12 M56 105mm light howitzers)
22nd Infantry Brigade (Merida)
2201 Motorized Cavalry Sqn. “Cor. Leonardo Infante” (10 V-100/150)
2204 Mortar Bty (12 120 mm Mortars)
221 Infantry Bn. “Gen Justo Briceño”
222 Infantry Bn. “Cor. Luis Maria Rivas Davila”
224 Artillery Group (12 M56 105mm light howitzers)

3rd Infantry Division (Caracas)
304 Air Defence Artillery Group “Gen. Jose Felix Ribas” (RBS-70)
73rd Light Infantry (Cazadores) Brigade (Maturin)
312 Light Infantry Bn. “Cor. Genaro Vazquez”
731 Light Infantry Bn. “ Gen. Pedro Zaraza”
735 Light Infantry Bn. “Cor. Francisco Carvajal”
733 Light Infantry Bn. “Cor. Juan J Rondon”
734 Light Infantry Bn. “Cor. Vicente Campos Elias”
732 Light Infantry Bn. “Cor. Celedonio Sanchez”
736 Light Infantry Bn. “ Cor. Jose Maria Camacaro”
31st Infantry Brigade (Caracas)
311 Infantry Bn. “ Lib. Simon Bolivar”
302 Mechanized Cavalry Group “ GB Juan Pablo Ayala” (50 Dragoon 300)
314 Artillery Group “Ayacucho” (12 M-101 105mm Howitzers)
305 Engineer Bn.

4th Armored Division (Maracay)
402 AT Missile Bn. “GD Ezequiel Zamora” (24 MAPATS ATGM)
403 Divisional Artillery Group “Gen. Bartolome Salom” (12 M114 155mm Howitzers)
42nd Parachute Infantry Brigade (Maracay)
421 Parachute Infantry Bn. “Gen. Jose Leonardo Chirinos”
422 Parachute Infantry Bn. “Gen Antonio Nicolas Briceño”
41st Armored Brigade (Valencia)
4104 Engineer Co. (Bridging)
4106 Honor Guard Co. “24 de junio” (12 120mm Mortars – probably used to fire 21-gun salutes)
41 Mechanized Infantry Bn. “GD Jose Antonio Anzoategui” (AMX-13VTT APC) *
412 Armored Bn. “ Gen Jose Francisco Bermudez” (41 AMX-30)
413 Armored Bn. “GD Pedro Leon Torres” (41 AMX-30)
414 Armored Bn. “Bravos de Apure” (40 AMX-13-90)
415 Self Propelled Artillery Group (10 AMX F3 155mm SP Howitzers)
43rd Motorized Cavalry Brigade (San Fernando de Apure)
4304 Mortar Bty. (12 120mm Mortars)
431 Motorised Cavalry Group “Vencedor de Araure” (40 V-100/150)
432 Motorised Cavalry Group “Cor. Francisco Farfan” (40 V-100/150)
433 Motorised Cavalry Group “ Cor. Julian Mellado” (40 V-100/150)
44th Light Armored Brigade (San Juan de los Morros)
441 Armored Battalion “GB Ambrosio Plaza” (40 Scorpion 90)
442 Armored Battalion “GD Jose Laurencio Silva” (40 Scorpion 90)
444 Field Artillery Group “Cor. Jose Cornelio Muñoz” (12 105mm Light Howitzers)

* Note: Most sources say that Venezuela has 25 AMX 13VTT APCs. However, the country received 66 from France back in 1972, along with 6 mortar carriers on the same hull. Perhaps only 25 are left in running condition, but Venezuela seems to have maintained its other French equipment intact during this period, so feel free to give the mech battalion a full complement of APCs.

5th Infantry Division (Ciudad Bolivar)
507 Special Operations Unit
505 Engineer Bn.
51st Infantry Brigade (Luepa)
5102 Motorized Cavalry Sqn “ Cor. Hermenegildo Mujica Ramos” (10 EE-11s?) *
5104 Mortar Bty. (12 120mm Mortars)
511 Jungle Infantry Bn. “Mariscal Antonio Jose Sucre”
512 Jungle Infantry Bn. “GD Tomas de Heres”
513 Jungle Infantry Bn. “GD Mariano Montilla”
52nd Jungle Infantry Brigade (Caicara del Orinoco)
5204 Mortar Bty. (12 120mm Mortars)
521 Jungle Infantry Bn. “Gen. Rafael Urdaneta”
522 Jungle Infantry Bn. “Gen. Francisco de Miranda”

*Note: Venezuela ordered 30 EE-11 Urutus from Brazil in 1984, though most sources say that they have 35. 25 of these are with the Marines. Given that the 5102 Squadron is attached to a Jungle Infantry Division and given that the EE-11 was precisely built for jungle recon, my guess is that if the other 5-10 Urutu’s exist outside of the Marines, they’re with the 5102.

Reserve Command (Caracas)
1st Reserve Infantry Bn “Batalla de la Victoria” (Caracas)
2nd Reserve Infantry Bn. “Combate de Maracaibo” (Maracaibo)
3rd Reserve Infantry Bn. “Combate de los Horcones” (Barquisimeto)
4th Reserve Infantry Bn. “Batalla de Boca Chica” (Maracay)
5th Reserve Armored Bn. “Batalla de Vigirima” (Valencia)
6th Reserve Combat Support Bn. “Batalla Queseras del Medio” (Caracas)
7th Reserve Infantry Bn. “Maturin” (Maturin)
8th Reserve Infantry Bn. “Tachira” (San Cristobal)

Note that the 816 Air Reconnaissance Group, apparently a special forces unit based in Caracas, is also part of the Reserves.

Marine Division (Meseta de Mamo)
Special Operations Group “Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda”
Engineer Battalion “TN Gerónimo Rengifo”
Marine Artillery Battalion (18 105mm towed artillery)
Marine Air Defense Artillery Battery (Saab RBS-70 on 4x4s)
1st Marine Brigade (Meseta de Mamo)
Marine Infantry Battalion “G Rafael Urdaneta”
Marine Infantry Battalion “Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda”
Marine Infantry Battalion “CA Renato Beluche”
Amphibious Vehicle Battalion “CC Miguel Ponce Lugo” (25 EE-11, 10 Fuchs, 11 LVTP-7)
2nd Marine Brigade (Meseta de Mamo)
Marine Infantry Battalion “G Simón Bolívar”
Marine Infantry Battalion “G José Fco. Bermúdez”
Marine Infantry Battalion “Mcal Antonio José de Sucre”

"To what lengths will Chávez go to get his name in the news?"

BATTALION AND COMPANY LEVEL TO&ES
Here’s my best shot at sussing out the Venezuelan’s battalion and company-level OoBs. This is mostly based on old data from the ‘90s, guesswork, extrapolations off of other South American militaries and clues gleaned from the SIRPI database.

Infantry Battalion – 1990s
HQ & Service Co.
Support Co.
AT Platoon:
    6 106mm RR
Reconnaissance Platoon
Mortar Platoon:
    6 81mm Mortars
3 Infantry Companies
3 Infantry Platoons (est.)
1 Weapons Platoon (est)

Notes: Mark scared this one up. I’m not sure from which source. It shows that Venezuela, like most South American militaries, seems to have used the U.S. army of the 1950s and ‘60s as a template. It’s anyone’s guess what the Reconnaissance Platoon is armed with. It’s probably a safe bet that at least all of the 11 regular infantry battalions are provided with truck transport or could commandeer it in relatively short order. My guess is that the Cazador, Marine, Airborne and Jungle Battalions follow this same general pattern, though with less motorization, foot-mobile recon units and perhaps no AT platoons (at least in the Jungle Battalions). Company-level TO&E is just a guess. I would presume that the weapons platoon has the usual machineguns and light mortars and it’s a pretty good bet that the infantry in general will be armed with RPGs.

Mark Bevis comments: Infantry Company TOE, I suggest...

CHQ: 2(8 man) squads
3 platoons at 4(9 man) squads
       3 GPMG, 1 or 3x 84mm Carl Gustav, 4-12x 84mm AT-4 (M136) disposable LAW
1 platoon
       2-3x 60mm Brandt mortars, 2x MMG (FN-MAG on tripod)
Purely guesstimate! The Infantry Battalion Recce Platoon is more than likely just 3 sections of 2x Jeeps armed with GPMG at best - could be 2 sections, or even 3 sections of 3 Jeeps. For gaming purposes allow 1x AT-4 LAW per Jeep.

Thad notes: Venezuela also has some 30 old M-8 scout cars as well, according to some sources. If these are still operational, they cound very well be in the Infantry Battalion Reconaissance Platoons as 2-3 per platoon, plus jeeps. This is another plausible fielding option.

Armored or Light Armored Battalion - 2005
HQ & Service Co.
1-2 Command tanks
3 Tank Companies
1 Command Tank
3 Platoons of four tanks each

Notes: This is just a guess. The Venezuelan armored units all have 40-41 tanks, so I presume that they either have this structure or four companies of ten tanks each. I’m leaning towards the above structure due to circumstantial evidence. In the first place, both the French and the Americans, whose equipment the Venezuelans use or whose TO&E templates they’ve copied, use larger platoons. Furthermore, even if the Venezuelans use a ten company tank structure, maintenance issues, especially with older weapons, would reduce the number of vehicles they could effectively field. I thus feel better with 9 maneuver unit battalion than with a 12 maneuver unit battalion.

Mark Bevis says: At 41 tanks to a battalion it would be Bttn HQ of 2 tanks and 3 Companies each of 13 tanks. Now the French use 4 platoons of 3 tanks as much as 4 tank-platoons, and my gut instinct is to go with that, but 3 platoons of 4 tanks is equally plausible for the reason you state. The two tank Battalions also have 2x AMX-30 ARV each. (Thad sez: I kept non-tooth units out of the listings for the most part).

Mechanized Battalion - 2005
HQ & Service Co.
Support Co.
AT Platoon:
    6 106mm RR or MAPATS ATGM
Reconnaissance Platoon
    4 APCs
Mortar Platoon:
    6 81mm self-propelled mortars
3 Mechanized Companies
1 Command APC
3 Platoons of four APCs each

Notes: This is also a guess, though SIPRI registers that the Venezuelans did buy enough AMX13 APCs to outfit the whole battalion and a battery of self-propelled mortars.

Mark Bevis suggests: I would also have the Mechanised Companies as...
CHQ: 1x VCI, 1 squad
3 platoons with 4(9 man) squads each
       4x AMX-VCI, 3 GPMG, 3x 84mm Carl Gustav, 1x 60mm mortar, 8x AT-4 LAW

Artillery Group - 2005
HQ & Service Bty.
2 Artillery Batteries
    3 sections, 2 guns each.

Notes: Venezuelans batteries seem to have six guns and a distinction is made between artillery groups and battalions. It’s my guess that groups have two batteries while battalions have 3 or 4.

Mechanized Cavalry Group - 2005
HQ & Service Sqd.
3 Mechanized Cavalry Squadrons
  1 Command Dragoon
3 Troops, each with 1 Dragoon APC, 2 Dragoon 90s and 1 Dragoon 81mm mortar carrier

Notes: There are two of these and there may be an additional independent squadron as well, all equipped with Dragoon 300s.Venezuela apparently has 11 Dragoon C3 vehicles, 25 Dragoon APCs, 42 Dragoon 90mm, and 21 Dragoon mortar carriers. Extrapolating off of the Brazilian Cavalry Squadron, we can presume that each troop has 1 APC, 2 Dragoon 90s and a mortar carrier. This would work out, roughly, to the TO&E above,

Motorized Cavalry Group - 2005
HQ & Service Sqd.
3 Motorized Cavalry Squadrons
1 Command V-150
3 Troops, each with 3 V-100s and 1 V-150 mortar carrier

Notes: Venezuela has 3 motorized cavalry groups and 2 independent squadrons. One or more of the independents may be armed with amphibious Brazilian EE-11s. The rest have a total of 100 V-100 and 30 V-150 armored cars divided between them. It may be that the V-150s are in fact mortar carriers, which would jibe with the general armored cavalry pattern in many South American countries. Thus the TO&E above.

UPGRADING VENEZUELA’S ARMY
As we’ve mentioned in previous articles, Hugo feels threatened and has recently gone on a weapons shopping spree. So far, this has netted him some nice SU30 Flankers and a bunch of Russian helicopters, as well as a load of new small arms and munitions. Hugo’s attempt to purchase 24 new Tucano ground attack aircraft from Brazil was blocked by the U.S., however, and there still seems to be some doubt as to whether the 90 T-72s and the BM-30 MRLs he ordered from Russia have been delivered or if he will ever receive the 135 BMP-3s he wants.

If you want to play with an up-graded Venezuelan military, though, here’s my best guess as to how this new equipment will be integrated into the Army.

The 90 T-72s will replace the elderly AMX-30s in the 412th and 413th Armored Battalions. The 414th will probably continue to use its newer AMX-13 90s, however. At least some of the surplus AMX-30s will go to Ecuador, but it’s possible that Venezuela could keep some or all of them for its reserve armored battalion.

The new MRLS will probably replace the LARS, though they may be made into an entirely new artillery group. In any case, they will probably be attached to the 4th Armored Division in any future conflict.

The 411th Mechanized Battalion will obviously receive some of the BMP3s, but there will be enough left over to arm one and possibly two other battalions. Rather than re-equip two existing battalions, it’s my guess Hugo will go for raising two new battalions, seeing as how he’s claimed several times that he wants to expand the size of the army. If this occurs, the 43rd and 44th brigades will probably be re-designated as part of a new 6th division – possibly a Light Armored or Cavalry Division. Alternatively, the 4th Armored Division could be continue as a four brigade unit, perhaps with 3 brigades each having a mechanized and armored battalion as well as a motorized cavalry group. Meanwhile, the fourth brigade would hold the 2 Airborne and Light Armor battalions. This option would allow the Venezuelan Army to use the 4th Armored Division as a sort of shock corps. In any case, we can presume that the 4th will be the spearhead of any invasion of Colombia.

The Venezuelan Military: How Do We Paint Our Toys?

2009-11-11T04:59:00.000-08:00

Here are some images of Venezuelan military vehicles to use as a guide for painting. The Venezuelan Army seems to use a dark olive green and tan camouflage scheme for its military vehicles and a three tone green/olive drab scheme for its helicopters and airplanes. However, as you'll see below, there's some evidence that the three-tone camouflage scheme is being generalized throughout the military.

Here's an AMX30V on its transporter, which seems to be a simple commercial 18-wheeler tractor-trailer which has been adapted for the job. Note the national colors on the lower bow. The second picture shows an AMX30V in the field. Note that they don't seem to be equipped with any night-vision aids except for a searchlight.

Below, you'll find a photo of a Venezuelan Army M-18 Hellcat, dating from 1987 and it's anyone's guess whether or not these vehicles are still in service today. It certainly looks good for a 40+ year-old AFV, though, and one would presume that the mechanical elements of these beasties are simple enough that they could be kept in service as long as one wanted them. Fast, light, hard-hitting and easy to maintain, it would seem to me that the M-18 Jackson would still be an effective combat vehicle for South American today.

A Venezuelan Cadillac Gage. I've also found photos of these done up in a dark blue color and it would seem to me that at least some of them are used by internal security forces and/or military police (in South America, they are often one and the same thing

This is a photo of a Scorpion 90 on excercizes. Note that they obviously train to support infantry and this, in turn, indicates that these tanks are part of Venezuela's light armored brigade. Obviously, this is the Scorpion which has been upgunned with the 90mm Cockerill. Below is a better picture of the Scorpion 90. Note that this vehicle seems to be using the same tri-color camouflage scheme used by the Venezuelan airforce.

A Brazilian-made EE11 Urutu of the Venezuelan Army, doing what it does best (i.e. mucking about in marshy terrain). The Urutu is a cheap and effective APC, on par with the Soviet BTR70. It is easy to maintain and operate and is amphibious, having been uniquely designed for combat in tropical third world environments. Sadly, its armored protection is on par with a cheap pair of kiddie jammies.

A Venezuelan Bell 206s. Note the tri-color camo scheme.

One of 10 Mi35 Caribe attack helicopters which Venezuela has recently purchased from Russia. Apparently, the guns on this one aren't standard Russian fair, so these may have been upgraded.

A Venezuelan F-16 rolls down the runway. One presumes that the beautiful tailflash would be painted over in the event of a war, but hey, you can paint your miniatures any way you like. Including the tail flash will certainly make them distinctive. Only about 8 to a dozen of these planes are still operational.

And finally, here we have a pair of the new Russian SU30 Flankers which Hugo Chávez has bought to equip the two squadrons of Venezuela's Air Group 13 (Escuadrón 131 and Escuadrón 132). These seem to have maintained the original Russian paint scheme. The Venezuelan Air Force is considering purchasing a further 24 SU30s, which would bring their total up to 48. Below is a nice shot of the Venezuelan SU30 showing the tail flash.

Here's a clear image of the usual tri-color paint scheme of the Venezuelan armed forces. Again, note that the SU30s appear done up in regular Russian paintwork. This may have changed by now.

"Feed me, Hugo!": the elite 42nd Parachute Brigade, of which Hugo Chávez is a veteran. By the way, the Venezuelan Army's "official" nickname is The Forger of Liberties. Obviously, they mean "forge" as in "create". Still, good for some low yucks, wat, wat?

Venezuela and Colombia Go to War, Part 2

2009-11-10T05:57:00.000-08:00

Separated at birth?

Venezuela's Army

Venezuela has an army of some 35,000 troops, divided into 4 infantry and 1 cavalry divisions. This is further broken down into:

1 Armored Brigade

1 Cavalry Brigade
1 Light Armored Brigade
7 Infantry Brigades
1 Airborne Brigade
2 Ranger Brigades
1 Air Mobile Brigade
1 Counterinsurgency Brigade
1 Presidential Guard regiment
1 Anti-aircraft artillery group
2 engineer regiments
1 aviation regiment

"Divisions" seem to include from 4-6 battalions of troops, with most of the armor being concentrated in the First Cavalry Division. These troops are backed up by some 25,000 members of the national guard armed with light infantry weapons and a few light wheeled APCs.

Currently, Venezuela owns 81 AMX-30s MBTs, 65 WWII-vintage M-18 tank destroyers, 36 AMX-13 light tanks, 70 Scorpion light tanks, 25 AMX CVI APCs, 100 V-100 APCs, 90 V-150 APCs and 35 Brazilian-made EE11 APCS. It's artillery is made up of 76 105mm pieces, 9 155mm pieces and 10 155mm self-propelled pieces. Battalion-level support includes 81mm mortars and 106mm recoilless rifles, while brigade-regiment support includes 120mm mortars.

Venezuela has recently gone on a shopping spree in Russia, however, purchasing or attempting to purchase 92 T-72 MBTs, 135 BMP-3 IFVs, 30 Mi17/Mi26 helicopters, 10 Mi35 attack helicopters and 20 BM30 "Smerch" Multiple Rocket Launchers. This material has been partially delivered, but U.S.-organized arms embargoes seem to have blocked at least some of it. With the arrival of the T-72s, Hugo plans to donate the old AMX-30s to his allies in Ecuador. One would assume that he'll not launch a war until he gets his new toys, but with Hugo, you never know...

Airforce
Venezuela's airforce is much larger and more capable than Colombia's - at least on paper. Arms embargoes and poor maintenance seems to have grounded about half of it, however, and a recent sale of Brazilian Tucanos didn`t go through due to Chávez's incessant saber-rattling. Air superiority aircraft include 16 F-5 Tigers, 16 Mirage Vs, 16 F-16 Falcons and 24 SU-30s. (That's right: if you play the Venezuelans, you get to field F-16s AND SU-30s. Now how cool is that?) Ground attack planes include some 20 Tucanos. Again, it would be a miracle, given Venezuela's lack of spare parts, if even half of this force could get off the ground. Still, even half the Venezuelan airforce is more than a match for all of Colombia's. Apparently, Hugo is also upgrading the country's air defences (before negligible), building a Soviet-style, multi-layered anti-air system.

Navy
The Venezuelan Navy is also slated for a major upgrade. Chávez seeks to purchase 9 Russian subs, 4 Italian frigates and 8 Spanish corvettes or patrol boats by 2015. The country already has a significant amphibious capacity and a brigade-sized marine contingent fitted out with 25 EE-11s, 10 German Fuchs, 11 LVTP-7s and 18 towed 105mm artillery pieces.

Cold War Commander List for the Venezuelan Army
Troops            Arm            Move    Attack    Hits    Save     Cost     Notes
CO CV8           Command   60          3/30          6          6             60          -
HQ CV7          Command    60         2/30          6          6             30          -
FAO CV6        Command    30         -                4          6             15          -
FAC CV6        Command    30         -                4          6             15          -
Scouts            Recce            10        2/30*        6           -             35          -
4x4s                 Recce            30        2/50*        3          -              30          -
Scorpion         Recce           30        4/60           3          6             90         #1
Conscripts     Infantry       10        2/30*        6           -             25         #2
Regulars         Infantry       10         3/30*        6          -             35
RPG Upgrade Infantry       -           6/40(H)     -          -              40
106mm RCL    Support       -           5/60(H)     4         -              60
HMG               Support       10         4/60*        5          -             50
81mm Mortar Support       10         3/120*      5          -             40
120mm Mortar Support      -          4/200*       4          -             70
Combat Eng. Engineer      10        4/30*        6           -             60
AMX13          Armour        30        3/50          3           6             50
AMX30          Armour        25        5/100        5           5             115
Scorpion        Armour        30       4/60            3           6             70           #1
T-72                Armour        30        6/60           5           4             130        R, S2, IR
M-18 SPAT   SPAT           40        4/70           4           6             105        O
Air Def. MG Artillery        -          4/30*         4           -             30
Air Def. 20mm Artillery     -           1/40           5           -             15
Air Def. 40mm Artillery     -           1/50           4           -             10
Art. 105mm      Artillery     -           3                3           -             45
Art. 155mm      Artillery     -           4                2           -             60
SPA 155mm     Artillery     30        4                3           6             80           #3
BM-30              Artillery     20        6                3           -             80           #3
Naval               Artillery      -          4                6           6             70
Tucano            Aircraft      -          5                 3           5            125
Mi35                 Aircraft     -          6/50            4           5            170         #3, #4
Truck               Transport 20        -                 3           -             10
AMX CVI        Transport 30      1/50*          3           6            30
EE-11 APC      Transport   30     2/50*          3            6            40
V100/150          Transport   30     1/50*         3            6            30
BMP3               IFV              30     4/80           3            6             85         S2, IR, A
LVTP-7            Transport   20     2/80           4            6            50
Transport Heli Transport   -       2/50*         4            6            60

#1 Terrain restrictions as infantry.
#2 Conscripts: may not use initiative to assault enemy. This should be the majority of Venezuelan infantry and all of the National Guard.
#3 Maximum of two.
#4 for an additional 40 points, unit may conduct 6/150 attacks against armour, guns, soft vehicles, helicopters and constructions using ATGW.

Special rules:
• Rigid tactical doctrine.
• Poor maintenance and low supplies: -1 to random points modifier.
• No counter-battery capacity.
• May schedule one ambush at the start of the game.
• Assets include Artillery HE (max 3 per unit, 10 points each), aircraft ground attack (max 2 per unit, 10 points each), Aircraft Air Assault (max 1 per unit, 50 points each).
• Air superiority +1 modifier as long as the U.S. is not an active enemy.

Venezuela and Colombia go to War, Part 1

2009-11-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

Venezuela prepares for war: South America yawns and says "Wtf? Again?!"

Chávez warns the imperialist ianquis that Venezuela's modernized armed forces stand ready to fight for continental liberation, causing epic lulz across the Western Hemisphere.

Yesterday, Sunday November 8th, 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez avised his armed forces to prepare for war against that notorious South American imperialist superpower, Colombia. Chávez is apparently buttsore over the fact that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe called the Venezuelan President "the most successful human imitation of a pineapple since Manny Noreiga".

Hugo's proclamations provoked an enormous sense of blasé across the South American continent. Typical commentary by the man-in-the-street ran from "ROFL!" to "Wtf? Again?!" to "Will someone please shut Pineapple Boy up?" You can read more about the Chávez gang's plans for continental Armegeddon here. Meanwhile, the top news story in Brazil this Monday morning involves a young lady who was expulsed from her university for wearing a miniskirt. I shit you not.

If Venezuela and Colombia do go at it, the rest of us down here in Pindorama are going to be treated to the spectacle of two one-legged men engaged in an ass-kicking contest. However, you might want to game this pathetic conflict, and with that in mind, Lead Doesn't Bleed offers up the following for your delight and eduficamation...

The Colombian Military

Colombia has an armed-forces amounting to something less than 300,000 men. Its army consists of the following units:

7 divisions, divided into:
2 Mechanized brigades
16 Infantry brigades
9 Mobile brigades
2 Jungle brigades
1 Airmobile brigade
1 Special Forces brigade (geared to anti-guerrilla operations)

These are further broken down into:
72 Counterinsurgency battalions
12 Special forces battalions (one of which is an elite "Lancero" (or Ranger) battalion)
37 Infantry battalions (including 3 cadet battalions)
7 Mountain Infantry battalions
4 Para Infantry battalions
1 Airmobile battalion
7 Armored cavalry battalion
3 Mechanized battalions
1 "Tank" battalion (sans tanks)
8 Artillery battalions
2 Marine battalions
1 Helicopter battalion
12 Engineer battalions
11 Infrastructure Protection battalions
1 Para Engineer battalion

Here's a link to a relatively complete OoB for the Colombian National Army.

Colombia's land forces are so anemic that their main AFVs are light Brazilian armored cars built in the 1980s: EE-9 Cascavels and EE-11 Urutus. The army has 120 of the first vehicle, which is a 6x6 armored car armed with either a 37mm cannon (scrounged from old M5 Stuarts) or a 90mm cannon, and 100 of the second, a 6x6 machinegun-armed APC. Colombia also has some 130 M-113s and no tanks to speak of. None at all.

Colombia's current main battle tank: the mighty Engesa EE-9 Cascavel.

For army air support, colombia can field some 60 UH-1 and 30 Mi-7 transport and utility choppers. It also has 60 U.S.-supplied Blackhawks, however, giving it one of the most powerful attack helicopter forces in South America. (I know: that's not saying much.)

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that with 178 "teeth" battalions in its OoB and an army of 235,000 soldiers, most Colombian units are going to be drastically understrength, perhaps only existing as a cadre or on paper. As a guess - and given Colombia's recent military escapades, which are mostly anti-guerrilla in nature - most of the available active military forces are concentrated in the parachute, air-mobile, special forces and counterinsurgency battalions. Their armored cavalry units are probably relatively operational, given the fact that Urutus and Cascaveis are very easy AFVs to maintain and operate. I have my doubts about the M113s, however, which are probably very old.

In short, what Colombia's going to have on hand in case of war is a bunch of light infantry units backed up by a couple of battalions of very light, mobile armor. The Army's 60 Blackhawk helicopters and its highly trained Lanceros will definitely be the main elite units involved in any future conflict with Venezuela.

Colombia's air force has 25 Brazilian-made Super Tucano prop-driven light attack planes, 11 OV-10 Broncos, 9 A-37 Dragonflys and (ooh, cool) 6 C-47 Spooky gunships. For air superiority, they have some 16 Kfirs and 12 Mirage Vs, though I'd be very surprised if more than half of these fighters were operational.

On the naval front, the Colombian National Armada contains 4 frigates, 4 coastal submarines, 31 gunboats and some 15 river gunboats. Of interest here is ARC Juan Ricardo Oyola Vera, a home-built, helicopter equipped and ultra-modern stealth patrol boat. Colombia apparently has five of these.

Like most South American militaries, the Colombian Armed Forces is made up of a mass of fairly inept, undertrained foot-sloggers, backed up by a handful of extremely professional veterans armed with modern weponry. Available munitions and supplies are likely quite low. In the (extremely unlikely) event of a long war, this force will be augmented by masses of hastily raised conscripts.

Cold War Commander List for the Colombian Army
Troops                 Arm                Move    Attack    Hits    Save   Cost    Notes
CO CV9               Command        60         3/30        6         6          90        -
HQ CV8               Command        60         2/30        6          6          45         -
HQ CV7               Command        60         2/30        6          6          30         -
FAO CV6            Command        30          -              4         6          15         -
FAC CV6             Command        30         -              4         6          15         -
Scouts                 Recce               10         2/30*      6          -          35        -
4x4s                      Recce               30         2/50*      3         -           30        -
EE-9                     Recce                30        4/60         3         6          85
Conscripts          Infantry            10         2/30*      6         -           25        #1
Regulars             Infantry             10          3/30*      6        -            35        #2
Lanceros            Infantry             10          4/30*      6        -          40         #3
LAW Upgrade Infantry            -             4/20(H)   -         -           20
HMG                   Support           10           4/60*     5         -           50
Spike ATGW     Support           10          8/100      5         -           190       #4
81mm Mortar    Support            10          3/120*    5         -           40
120mm Mortar   Support            -            4/200*    4        -           70
Combat Eng.     Engineer          10         4/30*       6        -           60
EE-9                    Armour            30          4/60         3        6          65
4x4 TOW           Anti-tank         20          6/150       3        -          205       #4
106mm RCL       Anti-tank        -            5/60(H)     4       -           60
Air Def. MG      Artillery           -            4/30*        4       -           30
Air Def. 20mm   Artillery          -             2/40         5        -           25
Air Def. 40mm   Artillery          -             1/50         4        -           10
Art. 105mm        Artillery           -             3              3        -           45
Art. 155mm        Artillery           -             4              2        -           60
Naval                  Artillery          -             4              6         6          70
AC47 Spooky    Aircraft           -             4/50         4        5           85      #5
Blackhawk          Aircraft          -             6/50         4        4           250     #5
Tucano or A37   Aircraft         -               5             3        5           125
Truck                  Transport      20            -              3        -            10
M113 APC         Transport      25          2/50*        4      6           40
EE-11 APC         Transport      30         2/50*         3        6           40
M-3 Halftrack    Transport      20         2/50*         3        6           25
Transport Heli   Transport      -           2/50*         4        6           60

#1 Conscripts: may not use intiative to assault enemy. This should be the majority of Colombian infantry, especially the lightly-armed anti-insurgency and infrastructure defence forces.
#2 Units of the Rapid Deployment force, Airborne, Marines, most Special Forces and other regular units, especially those with recent combat experience.
#3 Elite: no command penalty for assaulting and +1 in close assault.
#4 Probably not many of these. 1 per 1000 points, perhaps.
#5 Maximum of one. Treat as attack helicopter.

Special rules:

Special forces units can use flexible tactical doctrine.
Poor maintenance and low supplies: -1 to random points modifier.
No counter-battery capacity.
May schedule two ambushes at the start of the game.
Assets include Artillery HE (max 3 per unit, 10 points each), aircraft ground attack (max 2 per unit, 10 points each), Aircraft Air Assault (max 1 per unit, 50 points each).

Of course, the good ol` Yew Ess uv Ay has been looking for an excuse to bitch-slap Hugo Chávez for some time now. Given this, it's quite possible that a future war between Venezuela and Colombia would see ianqui military intervention on behalf of Colombia. I doubt very much that said intervention would involve large ground forces, but it would probably include air and naval support. If you want to play with this option, give Colombia automatic air superiority and allow them to buy air and naval support off the U.S. list.

Next up, Pineapple Boy's neo-Bolivaran forces...

A listing of 3mm miniatures blogs and pages

2009-11-07T05:41:00.000-08:00

2-3mm is a bit of the bastard child of the wargames hobby. Mention that you play in 1/600 scale and somw wag's sure to quip "Hell, mate, why don't you just play counter boardgames then?"

This bit of gratuitous "hardy-har-har" is really quite slanderous, because the new WWII and Modern stuff that's being sold by companies like O8 is just beautiful. Small it may be, yes. But I can easily distinguish between, say, Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs at arm's length and my 42-year-old eyes are definitely not what they once were.

2-3mm has several advantages to me, the first of which is simply extra storage and playing space. I have the entire Grande Armeé socked away in two cigar boxes, for example, and a few years back I did Leipzig 1813 for my students at UERJ on two medium-sized tables. Using Volley and Bayonet rules at centimeter scale (i.e. a brigade is 3cm x 3cm) a normal-sized 6 foot x 4 foot gaming table gives one 216 square kilometers of battle space, meaning that operational-level battles (such as the entire Waterloo campaign) are quite feasible.

What many people see as 3mm's main drawback - relative lack of manufacturer support - is for me also one of its main selling points. Back when I was a kid, learning to play miniatures with 20mm plastic Airfix figures, we didn't have the miniatures industry that's available today. Back then, odds were that if you wanted something special, you either had to adapt it from something else (say HO railroad kit) or build it yourself and, to me, that was half the fun of the game. 3mm miniatures gaming allows me to recapture that spirit. (But not too much of it, if you catch my drift. A brief look at Pico Armor's website, for example, will show that one can get pretty much everything one needs to play a full-blown game in one-stop shopping through John's excellent mail service.)

The one thing that does annoy me a bit with this scale, however, is the lack of hobby support. By that, I mean the relative lack of other players with whom one can compare notes and from whom one can swipe ideas.

So here're some links to 2-3mm miniatures gaming blogs and pages which have inspired me. Hopefully, they'll do the same for you:

First off, we have the three Yahoo sites. You'll have to subscribe to see these but it's well worth the effort!

2mm · A group for discussing 2mm miniatures is the grand-daddy of them all, concentrating mostly on Irregular Miniatures 2mm stuff. This is the site that got me started on this scale.

Then there's 1-600thMiniatureAircraftWargaming · 1/600th miniature aircraft and rules, a site which focuses principally on Tumbling Dice's aircraft, but which takes side-turns into O8 and TD's ground forces.

Finally, we have my favorite group, 3mm_miniatures · 1/600_miniatures, whose members primarily use O8 stuff.

For blogs and webpages, we have Tony Hugh's Atomic Ancients and Miniature Medievals, which is probably the article/site which has launched more 2mm wargamers than anything else. And there's also Tony's Gildas Facit, another of the great-granddaddy 2mm sites.

Here's an interesting 2mm Sci-Fi post from The Miniatures Page, and another from Lloydian Modeling Tips.

Bloggers who post decent 2-3mm material include Nik Harwood, Ozzie David's The War Depot, The Fighting Fantasist, and Steel on Sand. This last blog has a 2mm Web Resources list much more detailed than anything posted here, so go take a gander, now!

3mm sci-fi. A light dragoon regiment moves through the outskirts of Picoburg.

3mm FWC photos

2009-11-05T05:22:00.000-08:00

I play Future War Commander in 3mm (':600) scale and thought I`d share with you all how I do it.

DP9 has what they call "fleet scale" gear models. These are roughly 6mm scale (normal Heavy Gear being 12mm, IIRC). I use their gears as 1/600 scale meka and their landships as massive, grav-powered transports-cum-firebases.

I then buy Oddzial Osmy (08) 1/600 scale ultra-modern tanks and infantry to support them. After all, most of the 6mm sci-fi stuff out there pretty much looks like ultra-modern, anyhow, right? I also use some of Germy Bugger's 2mm stuff, sold through Ground Zero Games.

The only models "missing" are power armor infantry and hover tanks. The second problem I've solved by building some of my own out of plasticard (they can be seen on the 2mm yahoo group site, along with a tutorial and plans to build your own - this is a PDF and you'll have to be a member of the 3mm Yahoo Group to access it). They are a bit fiddly, but quite do-able.

For power armor, I've decided to use Scotia miniatures 6mm power armor troops. They're a bit bigger than I'd like: about 4 meters tall in-scale. Still, for "gear" style power infantry they work fine.

I'm building mixed regiments of meka and power armor for two factions, with about 20 meka and 20 power armor stands per regiment. These are backed up by conventional armor, infantry and IFVs. For air support, I use Aerotech fleet scale models provided by Iron Wind. I also have a mercenary regiment being built up with Iron Wind power armor infantry serving as mechas. Looks very nice!

So you see, 3mm sci-fi is very doable, at least of the Japanese animé-style variety.

I also play Steve Jackson's Ogre in this scale which is simplicity itself. American modern MRLs become missile tanks, my home-made hover tanks are GEVs, Abrams become heavy tanks and for infantry and howitzers, I use Germy's stuff.

My Ogres are kitbashes made out of 1/300 scale WWII German Mausses (Meeses? Only if they're American, I guess...):

(Going left to right, that's a MkIIIb, a MKV and a MKIII. In front and to the right of the MKIII, you can see one of my homemade hovertanks).

Half the fun playing at this scale is scrounging for useable figs from all the 1/300 sci-fi lines out there. There`s actually a bunch of stuff you can use if you look for it.

And did I mention the one main benefit of this scale? It is CHEAP. 15 O8 Abrams tanks will cost you USD 3.50. That`s cheap enough for me to order them here in Brazil, shipping and all. For around thirty dollars, you can field a very nice army.

The new 3mm stuff out there these days is quite recognizable and easily on a par with most 6mm manufactures in terms of detail. O8 isn`t as detailed as GHQ, but it beats Brigade hands down, IMHO.

There`re two ways of basing 3mm, each with its benefits. One can either keep larger bases and put 2-3 models on each, giving one a more convincing mass game (a platoon stand based to this standard really gives the impression of being a platoon), or one can cut base sizes by half and effectively quadruple one`s playing space.

I use the first method for WWII games, but the second for FWC. It allows me to play convention-sized games on the 3x2 foot coffee table in my living room. This is a definite boon for those of you out there who are urban apartment dwellers like myself.

I`d be interested in hearing comments from anyone else who`s attempting to play FWC in 3mm.

An ASS/HLS battlegroup containing tanks, infantry, mecha and a massive walker poses in front of a city block module made out of wood blocks and Monopoly buildings.

Hellzapoppin' Valley: A Future War Commander Battle

2009-11-04T19:10:00.000-08:00

This was my first time playing Future War Commander and, unfortunately, the battle report is only partial as I lost some of my archives in our recent move. Basically, this was the first battle in an on-going campaign between the forces of the Red Baron Sacha Möder-Fokker and the Arcadian Socialist Syndicates / Human Liberation Soviet (otherwise known as the ASS/HLS)

In any case, it shows about half of the game which was played out with 3mm (1:600) scale sci-fi figures from various manufacturers.

Enjoy!

Turn One

The Arcadians win both the initiative and the air superiority roll. They also achieve notably good luck on their deployment rolls. The mech regiment’s light squadron manages four successful command rolls and moves onto the board from the south edge in double time. Half of the light mechs occupy the agricultural station in the center of the board and take up covering positions around the crossroads, while the other half of the squadron, including the regiment’s recon element, occupies the ridgeline to the southwest. With the light squadron covering their advance, the heavy squadron follows up. Meanwhile, the Arcadians' massive walker moves to the highest point of the southeast ridge and takes refuge in the woods there, overlooking the battlefield. Finally, the Arcadian armored battalion pours in down the valley road from the east, led by their light dragoon squadron. The heavy dragoon squadron, backed by two tank troops peels off north and heads for the village in the NE quadrant of the board.

The Baron’s forces, by contrast, get off to a slow start. None of the armored regiment’s vehicles make it onto the map while the mech regiment only gets one successful command roll. They deploy from the west end of the valley, line companies leading and support company following. The light company scouts to the north of the road. Their massive walker manages to deploy onto the plateau overlooking the valley, but blows its subsequent command roll.

No firing occurs on turn one.

Turn Two

The Arcadians’ lucky streak soon comes to an end, however. Turn two begins ominously, with the recon units missing a communications roll to call in air and artillery support on the massed mechs in the valley below. A command bonus allows the heavy dragoon squadron to occupy the northeastern village and dismount its troops, however, while the unit’s attached armored support takes up a camouflaged covering position along the wooded ridgeline to the south. This effectively blocks the road to the eastern exit area, as well as securing the village, gaining two quick victory points for the ASS/HLS. Meanwhile, the light dragoon squadron enters the experimental station’s grounds and unloads its infantry while the rest of the battalion’s armor continues on up the road towards the complex. Unfortunately, in the south both the mech regiment’s HQ and the Arcadian CO blow their command rolls, leaving everyone high and dry. This is particularly devastating for the massive walker, which was counting on getting in the first strike against its counterpart on the other side of the valley.

By contrast, the Baron’s luck is as good as the Arcadians is bad. The Mech regiment wins TWO back-to-back command bonuses. They charge up the southwest ridge and unload a storm of poorly aimed autocannon fire into the Arcadian light mechs along the ridgeline. Quantity makes up for quality, however, and both the Arcadian recon troop and a light mech troop disintegrate in the hail of shells. The massive walker fires at its Arcadian counterpart and manages to knock its shields down by 50%¨. Meanwhile, the Baron’s tardy armored regiment finally puts in an appearance and comes barreling down through the northern pass in full combat order.

The Baron’s Guards storm the ridge while the Arcadian

heavy squadron is paralyzed by command indecision.

The Baron’s militia armor regiment finally make it onto the board

and deploy down the northern valley. Meanwhile, the mech

regiment’s light company scouts out the crossroads.

Turn Three

The Arcadian armor battalion moves into position to ambush the stike coming through the pass. Meanwhile, the light squadron mechs in the agricultural station open up on the Baron’s lead tanks. Disaster strikes once again, however, as the mech regiment commander misses his second consecutive command roll, leaving the light squadron without orders. The CO steps in and calls down a heavy artillery strike on the north pass. This destroys three tank platoons and disrupts another, together with the armored battalion’s commander.

The CO then orders the heavy squadron over the ridge in a charge on the Baron’s Guards. They are met by massed autcannon fire and half of them are disrupted. Luckily (!) however, the Arcadian CO bumbles his last roll and the command blunder table orders a retreat towards the board edge, which puts the heavy squadron behind the ridgeline once again. Unfortunately, the blunder also pulls the light squadron’s surviving mechs out of the woodsline, but still, I’d have to say the blunder worked in the Arcadians’ favor!

Luck does not smile on the Baronial forces, either. In the north valley, the only operative HQ manages to make one command roll, moving the recon company and part of the tank battalion into the treeline across from the ag station. The mech regiment commander misses his command roll and the CO directs an artillery strike onto the Arcadian’s massive walker, followed by two volleys from the support company and the Baronial massive walker. All this massive concentration of fire (40 smart missiles) manages to do is knock down the enemy walker’s shields and disrupt it, however.

Needless to say, there is very little movement this turn.

That's it for now! I promise the next report will be better.