The HMPS in Norway

Had a small battle with an unusual force three or four weeks ago.  Here's the set-up:

Two HMPS trawlers (His Majesty's Patrol Service - made up of fishing trawlers converted for M/S and A/S work) are anchored on opposite sides of a narrow inlet in a fjord, when they are surprised by a Ju-52 fly across the inlet - almost directly on the line between the two trawlers.  In the few seconds they have, they open fire with their Lewis guns and are quite surprised to see the Ju-52 begin to smoke as it clears the second mountain range and disappears from sight.  They think nothing more of this, aside from gloating that it was their fire that hit the plane, but a short time later, a Norwegian fishing trawler sails up, hails the boats and announces that they saw a German transport crash and asks if the Brits would you like to investigate the wreckage.  The HMPS sends six armed men (five with rifles and one with a Lewis gun) from each trawler, all under the command of a lieutenant, on the Norwegian boat and it takes them to the site of the crash (on an island in the fjord), where they hope to capture the pilots, if they survived.  It chugs up to the shoreline near the plane, which, aside from having skidded some distance on its belly, appears to be amazingly intact. 

As they begin to disembark, all seems eerily quiet around the plane and they are disappointed, believing that the pilots must have died in the crash.  (This was a real event - described as closely as I can recall it.)

As the HMPS men get halfway up the beach, they see German heads disappearing from sight over the crest above them and begin firing. 

The Germans return fire with gusto and the British sailors, stalwart though they are, find themselves stonewalled, and eventually, they begin to get Out of the Fight results at an alarming rate as the firepower of the MG34 begins to tell.

As it is the British are outnumbered 3 to 2, but since the Germans completely misread the situation and set up two-thirds of their force on the plateau above, and only one-third on the crest, it looked like the sailors might have a chance.  Unfortunately, in the end, the British are almost wiped out to a man advancing towards the crest and trying to take down the German half-squad that they can see, while the Germans only lose most of the men on the crest.  The Germans had two more half-squads, plus the three aircrew (one of whom was wounded) from the Ju.

That's pretty much what happened in the real battle as well.  All of the sailors were captured or killed, except for two who jumped back onto the Norwegian trawler as it pulled away from the shore just after the fighting started.

In the pictures above, you might notice a couple of Germans in light brown coveralls - those are Peter Pig German aircrew.  The British Lieutenant, highlighted in the picture below the trawler, is a repurposed Peter Pig U-Boat officer.  The HMPS sailors are Eureka Early War US Marines.  I cut the American canteens off their heinies, but otherwise painted them up as is and they worked wonderfully as sailors in civilian clothes (the 'uniform' of the HMPS) and enough kit to get themselves in trouble with.  The Tante Ju is from Armaments in Miniature and the trawler is an HO scale resin model. 

Meanwhile, in the Channel...

So it's been a while since I've posted despite having two games in quick succession a month or so ago.  I'll post the first game here and the second game in a separate post.  Unfortunately at this point, I don't remember much of what happened in the first game except that everyone enjoyed it.  It was our second coastal game, but our first using Action Stations (for the first game, a few years ago, we used The Quick and the Dead).
 

We had a small German convoy, escorted by four R-boats, attempting to transit an area when they were accosted by a British patrol of two MGBs and two MTBs (below). 

 

The British came in from the German port quarter and in the initial exchanges of fire, a couple of the R-boats were damaged and forced to slow. 



 

 

This played havoc with maneuvering and timing, and resulted in the starboard R-boats not even really getting into the action aside from long range shots.  In the shot below, the good order R-boat is trying to pass the damaged one on the starboard, but can't get around it in time to affect the British attack.

 

 

In the end, the MTBs fired torpedoes at the freighters, which either missed or ran deep.  The port-side R-boats were in the thick of things from the beginning and both were heavily damaged in running fights with the British boats.  Here, two MTBs are closed by an R-boat, while an MGB turns away. 

 

 

I'm not sure we really decided a victor for this one, but I'd give it a marginal British victory.  They did more damage to the R-boats than they received, but the coasters - the real target of the attack - received no damage whatsoever.

 

We'll probably play some more coastal games in the near future.  It was quick and fun - it was actually the second game we played that evening.  Not to mention that I want to learn these rules well enough so that I can use them at conventions.  I have a pretty extensive collection of ships and can put together a convoy of fifteen or so freighters and trawlers, plus escorts, so the variety and replayability are pretty high. 





The Claim Jumpers

A couple of weeks ago we had another Old West shootout.  Usually we use Desperado, but this time we tried Six Gun Sound since we used NUTS! a few weeks ago for the battle for the Hornet and I use ATZ for zombie gaming.  Seemed to work fine - all we did was sit there and shoot at each other 'til one side was dead. 

Perry took this very nice picture of my Dixon wagon

(used with his permission). 

 

Basically, two miners were hanging around outside the mine, waiting for the wagon to return from town with supplies when three claim jumpers rode up and tried to finish them off. 

 

 

One of the claim jumpers stopped on a hillock in front of the mine (above) to try to hold the miners down while the other two rode up each side to outflank them.  Here's one of them taking cover behind some scrub (below).

 

If we had thought it out and done some prior planning, we (I was a claim jumper with Perry, while Doug and John were miners) might have at least been able to run off the miners pack mule, if not gotten control of the wagon and headed it off, also.  

 



In the end, if I recall correctly, one of the miners ran away and one was wounded, while one or two of the claim jumpers ran away and one died.  The miners saved their claim and went back to digging gold, while the surviving claim jumpers had to find their way back out of the hills without their horses.

Below is an overall pic of the table, also courtesy of Perry.  This is actually the third or fourth game we played on this particular table set-up, including a 28mm Sci Fi game and at least one other.  The mine entrance is at the top of the picture, behind the wagon, fire and mule.  You can see one claim jumper on the hillock in the center, one behind the bush to the left of the mine entrance and one partly behind the hill the mine is in, along with one of the miners.

 

We couldn't play tonight, but I'll be running another WWII game next week using NUTS! so stand-by for more action.  Next week's game will be Brits vs. Germans in Norway...with a twist!  In the meantime, though, happy gaming!







A New Generation Meets an Old Game

I frequently peruse the local Goodwill stores.  You wouldn't believe some of the books I've come across in them and at .50 to $1.50 or so per, it's a good deal for me.  I'm a book junkie and have actually read most of the hundreds of books that I own.  I never stopped to count, but I would guess in my life I've owned well over a thousand books, but have paired the collection down to pretty much just military history and the stuff I was studying in grad school.  My wife says I should get rid of them once I've read them, but I frequently go back to books looking for scenario ideas, details of battles or things of technical interest mentioned in them so I hang on to them.  But I digress.

On my last few trips, I noticed a Stratego game in good condition on the shelf, but passed it up despite fond memories of playing it against my older brothers as a kid.  I finally decided to go ahead and get it, and fortunately it turned out to be complete.  When I got home, I just left it on the piano bench in plain sight.  The kids saw it sitting there but didn't show much interest in it for a day or two until my 6-year-old asked me about it.  I took it out, explained the pieces to him and we set up and played.  I have to admit I slaughtered him, which wasn't too difficult, but each game got a little better and a little more difficult as I explained different strategies to him and he started to put them into play.  This was the final location of all the remaining pieces on our third game.  The little bugger almost got me!

I was blue; he was red.  As you can see, it wouldn't have taken much for him to win.  You can also see, he didn't quite get the idea of 'surrounding your flag with bombs'.  After seeing us play, his 9-year-old sister decided she wanted to play too, so they set up a game and played three straight with him winning each one.  A day or two later he won another one, but she beat him in the fifth game using his own strategy.  She complained loudly that he was putting his best pieces in the front line and killing her with them, because she put her weak ones in front.  I explained to her that rather than trying to make him change how he was playing to suit her, she needed to adapt her set-up and play to challenge him.  Obviously she put that advice to work for her. 

I guess some people would question my parenting, slaughtering my kids in games like that, but when I was a kid we were taught to play the game, then you played it to the best of your ability win or lose.  My parents never threw a game for our benefit and we had to fight long and hard to start to win games, which also carried over to playing against my brothers, seven and nine years older than me.  You learned to be a modest winner and not to be a sore loser.  I played my father in chess for five years before I finally beat him at age 12.  It was another two or three years before I could beat him fairly regularly, but no game meant as much to me as that one when I finally won.  I don't remember the placement of the pieces on the board, or the winning move, but I remember how good I felt. 

On the other hand, my daughter loves Settlers.  As a family, we have been playing it for a couple of years now and she has won a few games against the rest of us in it.  I think she even beat one of the guys in my game group when he came over to play with us one evening.  That is a source of pride for her.  The little guy regularly gets to 5 or 6 points by the end of the game and typically all he does is build a road in a circle around a tile with two or three settlements on it, then spends all his resources buying pick-a-cards.  He regularly has to or three victory points from that, and sometimes gets the Largest Army card out of it.

I'm getting ready to start teaching the girl some actual war games.  She played a game of Check Your 6! Jet Age with our game group, but it was her first game and she didn't really understand it.  I'm going to start her on the Blue Sky series (actually a World War I on-line variant of Blue Sky, then move on to Blue Sky WWII proper because the WWI planes are slower - I think that might help her learn to judge maneuvers against another moving plane) and work her up to CY6! and then JA.  Although the movement charts are right there in front of you in CY6!, I think it's a little more difficult to maneuver than in Blue Sky and the other rules aren't as intuitive unless you're a little more experienced and familiar with the game.  I also want to teach her Action Stations (mainly because I'm itching to do battle with my 1/1250 Figurehead ships and CAP Aero planes that I've worked so hard to paint). 

I have another post I'll put up later this week on the Old West game we played Saturday night.  Until then, happy gaming!

A Hornisse in their Midst

A couple of weeks ago we played our first all out NUTS! game, based on a real situation that took place in Russia around 1943.  Three Hornets were helping defend a small village against Russian counterattacks.  If I remember correctly, the village had changed hands a couple of times and they had been fighting over it for a few days.  At the point where the Russians were finally going to overwhelm the German defenders, two of the Hornets pulled back, the third having been disabled.  They had knocked out several T-34s amongst the attackers.  Concerned that the Russians might be able to fix the Hornet, or have another one that they could use to cobble together one functional vehicle, the crew volunteered to sneak back into the village that night with satchel charges and completely put the Hornet out of action.  With a covering force of a squad of grenadiers, they snuck in and blew up the Hornet, while the covering force had been discovered and got involved in a firefight with the Russians. 

The village included half a dozen buildings and two knocked out T-34s. 

The Russians only knew to expect a counterattack so set up in a 360 defense around the village.  Just by chance, they set up a full squad in the yard where the German objective was located.

The Russian HMG was located in the back of a smashed church on the opposite side of the village.  It ended up not playing a role as the Russians didn't know what to expect and kept it in place even after the attack started expecting an additional attack from another direction.

Half of a Russian squad set up in a demolished building.

The Russians in the other half of the demolished building.

The Germans made a direct assault with one MG section and the Hornet crew against the wall. Most of the game was trading shots back and forth across the wall (see below).  They shot at each other without hitting anything for a long time.  Then the Russians got the idea to prep grenades.  The Germans beat them to it and one grenade cleared the wall. 

 That solved most of the Germans problem.  The Russian in the Hornet pulled a grenade but was shot before he could throw it, dropped it in his death throes and rolled a 2, destroying the Hornet in the resulting detonation of the vehicles ammo.  Game over.  Since the Germans then retreated, both sides accomlished victory conditions of sorts.  It was a fun game and we'll definitely be doing NUTS! again. 

Painting, Part I

I finished up the truck and 20mm AA guns.  This will be pretty easy since Perry wants them in early war gray.  First, I prime them with whatever's handy.  I used to mostly use Testor's gray primer, but it's hard to cover with some colors.  I can't tell you how many coats of white I had to put on to cover my AWI figures.  Flesh tends to be a problem with the gray primer as well.  I was out of Krylon flat black, which I also use to some extent, especially with aircraft and microarmor, but I had some Rustoleum brown so I used that.

Then I gave everything a good solid basecoat of Vallejo German Grey.

Even so, I find as I paint along that I often have to touch up spots I missed with the base color as I go.  After the base coat, I add some white to the German Grey and drybrush the equipment to lighten up the color and highlight the details on the model.  Couldn't get a good picture of this so we'll just move on.  I think you can see it to some extent in the last picture.

Since Perry likes the 'lived in' look that I give my vehicles, I dabbed some Vallejo Green Ochre in the wheel wells to look like dried, caked on mud.

I then painted the tires on the truck and the AA gun trailers Vallejo Black Grey, and the guns themselves Gunmetal Grey.

 

I then dabbed some Green Ochre on the wheels and chassis to simulate splatter.

Finally, I picked out the details on the truck, such as the seats, the driver, the tarps, Jerry can, and other stowage in various appropriate colors.  When finished, I sprayed them with a matte fixative.  I think I used Grumbacher Matte for artists, which seems to work pretty well.  I've used Krylon's clear matte and Testor's also.  The Testor's tends to be a little finicky.  I haven't had too much trouble, but I did have a batch of ACW I was painting for on commission turn white on me and I pretty much had to start over.  That was frustrating as all get out.

Next, I'll finish up the Sdkfz. 7/1 in the same way.  Perry and I tentatively talked about crews for the AA guns, as well, so I might have a Painting, Part III, showing how I do the figures. 

Models built...

Yesterday I started a small commission job for a friend of mine.  I had really envisioned the blog as just a place to put games played or items of interest, and I've been tempted to put up pics of minis I've painted, but just focused on the games.  But he asked if I could do a step-by-step of the models I'm doing for him so he could get an idea of how I do it since he has a pile of miniatures, but is pretty much a beginner when it comes to assembling and painting.  I'm going to do this as a two part series so we'll start with cleaning and assembling in this post, then do the painting in the next post.

He brought me a Krupp 4 x 2 Boxer, a package of 3 Flak 30 20mm AA guns, and an Sdkfz 7/1 - that's the real flashy one with the fold down sides and the quad 20 on the back (the Flak 38).  These were all by Quality Castings/Battle Honors sold by Old Glory 15s.  The Krupp and the 7/1 went together surprisingly easy (still working on the quad 20 for the 7/1).  The Flak 30s took me a little bit of time because there were no instructions (such as Old Glory 15s instructions are) and I had to study some on-line photos to make sure I had a handle on how to assemble them.  There were three Flak in the box and we decided to do one in travel position and two in firing position. 

First, we need a work area.  My work area is the last foot or so of the dining room table.  My computer and job search stuff occupies the adjacent one foot edge so it's handy for when I get frustrated and need a break. 



Second, we need our tools.  I have a couple of sets of hobby files, though the best ones I've found are the Xacto set.  I just can't afford it at the moment.  I also have a flush nipper, three different pairs of tweezers, single edged razor blades, a craft knife, superglue of one brand or another, toothpicks and miscellaneous other items. 



With this, we can get a start on cleaning and assembling the models.  First thing I do is use an appropriate file to clean flash and molding lines off the models as much as I can.  Sometimes you really have to look and poke and prod, because some of the stuff that needs to come off can look like it belongs there - until you start to paint it and you suddenly realize that you should have filed this or that bit off - and some of it can look like it should come off when it doesn't.  I always like to check out photos of the real thing so I have an idea of what belongs on the model and what doesn't.  I also try to fit the pieces together to see how well they go together and to see if I know where they go as well.

EDIT:  From a comment left for me on TMP, I should add here that after cleaning up the parts, you should check the fit of the parts to make sure they go together properly.  Sometimes you have to file a piece down a bit to fit properly.  Thanks for the suggestion, Marcus!

Here are the truck and AA guns cleaned and ready for assembly. 





I put the wheels on the undercarriage first (as can be seen above).  Turned out to be a mistake as the one wheel was too far to the inside for the cab to fit over it.  I actually had to break the wheel off (Shhhhh!  Don't tell Perry!) then glue it back on once the cab was in place.  The gun barrels went on the frames pretty easily.  One I glued all the way down for the travel position, the others, I tried to point skywards at various elevations within the limitations of the molding.  They don't look too bad and you get the idea that they are shooting upwards.

I didn't glue the guns down to the ground mount for the two in firing position, but I did glue down the one that goes on the trailer, but first I glued the ground mount to the trailer because it actually goes under the trailer.  After the glue dried, then I glued the mechanism to the ground mount.  With that the AA guns are actually done since on two of them there was only one thing to glue.

The cab and truck back went on pretty easily. They just glue down to the chassis. There is a slot in them that fits the chassis fairly well. 



After the cab and back were secure, I glued in the driver and the windshield and the Krupp was done.



Next we assemble the 7/1.  First thing is to clean the pieces. 



Then we assemble the halftrack body and the the gun platform. 



Once the two separate pieces are dried, I glued the platform to the back of the halftrack. 



Finally we add the details to the halftrack and assemble the gun.

Glue the two gun halves around the center console.  I keep trying to glue this so that the guns can elevate, but so far, I've been too heavy handed with the glue and always glue the guns to the console.

Then we glue the gun assembly to the floor plate.

Next, we add the gun shields and the ammo handlers' seats.









Voila!  We're done with assembly.  Next time we'll work on painting the models.