Plastic Soldier Company Russians (1/72)

There has been a White Elephant in the room of Db-Variants. A period that never before dared rear its head. Maybe it's the lemsip going to my head this week but I've thought, why not!? Being ill this week and needing a pick me up I had to buy some Plastic Soldier Company Russians in Summer Dress (1/72) without any real plan as to what to do with them. I began thinking of how to base them and knew I didnt really want to base them individually, once I looked at the basing options it occured to me that I could base three on a 40mm x 30mm base very easily and this suggested a look of a DbA/M/C/N/ACW base. At that point the plan for a DbWWII game started to form.

In the box of Plastic Soldier Company Russians you get three sprues, each sprue can make three rifle companies, an SMG company and a command stand if you base three figures to a base. So the box can make a battalion of infantry. In theory.

I've yet to work out any DbWWII rules but I can see that (plus) value points can be given in combat for such units as the SMG company when used as shock troops. The 'push back' rule could be very useful with these elements and when tanks are used the usual artillery mechanisms from other Db variants can be adapted and applied.

I can see dedicated WWII wargamers reeling in horror at the limitations that these rules would have on a WWII game but the advantages outweigh them when you are trying to make a fast to play very easy game to get into. There is a lot of scope to turn this into a join in demo game for shows or at times when there may be people wishing to get involved who haven't wargamed before.

Update!

Managed to get my first Soviet batch finished today. So here we have 1 command stand, 3 rifle companies and an SMG 'shock' company. This is basically what you get from 1 sprue, you also get a prone light machine gunner and loader but I didn't have much use for these, not a fan of prone poses as they seem to take up too much base space. (T34's are quick builds from Pegasus and the BA-64B is a resin model from Under the Bed Enterprises)

Brittany Spears

Voici mes Normans. Ce sont les premiers de la boîte que j'ai achetée chez Vapnartak cette année.

 

York Library Viking Day

As Part of the York (Jorvik) Vikikng festival this week I had volunteered us to put on a Viking wargame or two at the Library.

We had free reign of any of the large oak tables in the records/archives room upstairs and much to the bewilderment of other casual library users we staged a number of battled through the afternoon. Mostly Viking vs Saxon. Prior to this we had made a very simple DbA based skirmish rules mechanism to fight 1:1 skirmishes with warbands of around 20 figures per side. Thanks to Alex, Peeler and Richie for helping come up with the rules last Friday! We were aiming for something similar to the Toy Soldier rules we have that would allow complete beginners and children to quickly grasp a basic knowledge of what wargaming is while playing out a 30 minute game.

At this level there was no scenery needed as the game simply focused on the clash of two or three warbands, although we did have a few tress around the edges of the gaming area for effect. We played about 6 games in all, with various kids coming along to join in for a game. Mostly it was a straight Vikings in mail armour attacking un-armoured Saxon Fyrd. It rarely went well for the Saxons, even when trying cleaver flanking moves. The aim is to contact your enemy while remaining in formation (shield wall) but this often failed when a warband went 'berserk' and charged. One game saw both sides doing this with equally devastating results. Mostly the extremely simple rules worked well and allowed for some thought to be given to tactics and manuovre within the battle. There is lots of scope to expand them and archers and cavalry can be added also. I'd also hope to add scenery/scenarios to future games.

As usual with our outings a plesant and laid back affair it was! Apparently the Library is having a Roman day later in the year so we may be back for that one.

Vapnartak 2011

Made it to the annual York Wargames show today. Saw this very interesting game using Schleich/Papo large figures for a medieval style skirmish, designed for 1 on 1 games. Written by members of the Society of Ancients, it uses dominos to factor weapon use and effects of the arms/legs/torso of the figure by using the pips on the domino. Very clever system! I bought their guide to it and will have a play with it someday. Plan on getting some of the figures for the nephews anyway.

I went with a shopping list today and managed to stick to it quite well, I swelled the ranks of my 28mm plastic Dark Age figures by aquiring a set of Gripping Beast Vikings and some mounted Normans, with a few Foundry metal single figures as cheifs. Got a DBA Saxon army (Magista Millitarium) and some single mounted Normans in 15mm from Museum Miniautres, never knew these were based in Driffield! Also bought some nice trees and a hillock from S&A Scenics for the 15mm DBA stuff.

Books: Ancient and Medieval Wargaming by Neil Thomas. I have his book on Napoleonics and it's excellent, this is very useful to for a newbie to the period like me. Also bought and old Osprey book on Vikings, which has some great plates inside for painting references.

I took the photos below at the Gripping Beast display case for reference when I paint up the new plastic boxed sets.

Had a good day but a bit frustrating amongst the crowds. Would have liked to have chatted to the traders a lot more and had space to do more browsing. Next events, York Library 20th Feb, Rydale Folk Museum 26th Feb, Ayton at the end of April and Durham 11th June.

First Viking Warband done!

Managed to get this finished this weekend. The final few figures were painted much faster and with less care but needs must and I needed this finished. I'm quite pleased with these fellows! Plastic 28mm is the way forward!

Small DBN game at Peeler's

Had a great little game at Peeler's new wargames room this week. Alex put on a small scenario with his DbN rules. Prussians, mostly enthusiastic Silesian Militia with a couple of brigades of Line and two gun batteries advance on a small town held by a small force of Frenchies. The winner would be whoever held the town after 12 game turns. French reinforcements were on the way but had to be diced for after turns five and eight. The scenario played out really well. A French cavalry regiment made a flanking charge at the massed Prussians quickly taking out the Deaths Head Hussars almost straight away and badly disrupting the Prussian advance in the early moves. Prussian persistence and force of numbers broke the town half way through and fought bravely to hold and garrison the town's buildings  until the end, one unit of French line proved a real problem and nearly won the game for the French had the reinforcements turned up in time and had they not been weakened on arrival by fast moving Prussian foot artillery. By move 10 the battle was still in the balance and the French could have fought to a draw by kicking out the Prussians from their garrisoned position. Prussian close combat proved too tough in the end and the town was held by the Prussians.

Prussians hold the town. Frenchie can only turn tail and head back to Paris!

Thanks to Peeler and Alex for a great game. Figures 15mm various makes from Alex's collection. Brilliantly painted and researched!

Pig Wars

I heard about this game a while ago at this year's Newcastle show but didn't pay it any attention at the time. I stumbled accross it while surfing the wargames boards recently then descovered that this was the skirmish game that Norman will be putting on at the Ayton show at Easter. I obtained a copy of the rules by joining their yahoo group and paypaling the writer who very promptly sent me the very lovingly made rule set, which is 40 pages of background history along with the game mechanics. The game is played with groups of around 20 28mm figures representing warbands of Vikings, Saxons, Normans or really anything from ancient to dark age history. I'm still reading them but will update on how our games go at a later date. It seems a really fun game! http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/PigWarriors/?yguid=40146765

I bought a box of Wargames Factory Viking Huscarl's from an ebay seller, I think they were about £16 with free postage which seemed good value for what you get. The poses are really nice and other than Valliant Miniatures 20mm WW2 figures these have been the first 28mm plastic 'kit' figures I have ever bought with a serious intention to use in a game and I am now a convert, they glue better that expected and unlike metal figures with spears and shields arn't as easily broken when dropped.

I'm not the best painter by any means but was quite pleased how quick and easy I managed this first one. They are undercoated in black and gun metal and silver paint is drybrushed over the mail to give it a bit of definaition and depth. The ground work on the base isn't finshed yet and there will be some static grass added. Really looking forward to getting the others done soon.

The only drawback with this box of figures is that they are all in chain mail and there are no standard bearers. The game requires more of a mix of armour and weapons, such as 8 mail armoured, 8 un-armoured, a leader, a standard and a couple of archers, though there are box and arrow options in this box. Luckily my mate has the Saxons of the same make, which do include unarmoured types, so we can swap about to make the right kind of warbands. In theory you could get three good warbands with figures to spare from just one box of Vikings and one box of Saxons.

* Update!

Got a few more of the angry little fellas done, they paint quite quickly even with having to hand paint the shields, which is quite satisfying to do. I've now ordered a box of Saxons and have my eye on some Norman cavalry from Warlord Games. Should very soon have two warbands ready for a ruck!