15mm German tanks

During the play-testing we were using unpainted tanks, that was to get on and play the rules.

But painting tanks is quite quick and easy. Here are some Plastic Soldier Company German tanks. Painted over all with a sand colour, a dark wash to pick out the detail, then highlighted with a lighter version of the sand. Then camoflaged with washes of green and brown so that the sand colour just shows through.

Action All Fronts is printed and ready

 

 

The rules are now available on Amazon and Wargames Vault. With Wargames Vault having the option of a pdf download. Both sites have a preview feature. The printed product of the two sites is slightly different. The Wargames Vault version is darker and to my mind the picture on the front is slightly fuzzy. But the interior pictures are sharper.

Figures in Comfort have produced a clear acrylic artillery template (as pictured on the right), with the area of effect in both inches and centimetres.

The Yahoo Group for Action All Fronts continues to grow and includes a variety of files for the rules, free to download.

Action All Fronts, wargames rules for world war 2 land battles. With a figure representing one man. Company level battles with a player comfortably able to control 100 men and 10 tanks.

The rules feature:

1) Alternate unit activation, with a unit able to perform a number of different actions in a turn.
2) Covering all of WW2 in all the different theatres of conflict.
3) Visibility important with the requirement to spot a target before being able to shoot at it.
4) Artillery support from on-table and off-table artillery.
5) 5 scenarios, army lists for British, American, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian troops.
6) Rules for over-watch, weather, buildings, fortifications and heroes.

OK so Veni Vidi Vici goes WW2

Learning from my experience of writing the Die is Cast the next rules project is WW2. Currently under the working title of WW2 RD.

Again fairly scale independent its 1 figure equals one man/tank. Learning from TDIC its going to be slightly larger in size 7x10 inches which means that the font size can go up to 10 for easier reading.

Its IGo UGo but instead of that applying to the whole army, its a unit at a time. So players select a unit, perform all their actions with that unit and then the enemy get to do theirs.

Back in 2003 I set up a Yahoo group for this project and that where I will be loading the playtest rules and army lists. Its call the WW2RD group.

An early war Russian vs German Blitzkrieg Commander game

This is a game we played last Thursday night to try and see how an early war game of Blitzkrieg Commander would work. With a view to running a club campaign later this year. The scenario was a Deliberate Attack (p38 BKC) with the Russians having 3000 points split into 2 battle-groups and the Germans with 4500 points split into 3 battle-groups (one of those Jims Fallschirmjaeger with which I was destined to become well acquainted). The aim was for the Germans to capture the monastery within 12 turns, well they did it in 5! View of the Russian positions with the monastery the building on the left with the tall tower.
View of the Russian centre, with infantry (entrenched) out in front of AT guns and machine-guns.
On the Russian left, a reserve of tanks. Some T34s, KV-1s, a couple of T26's and 3 BT-7s. As much as possible, the idea was to limit the good tanks that the Russians could have and instead give them the light tanks which made up the Russian forces of the period. Models are 15mm and quite a lot of them are the Zvezda plastic snap-together kits.
The monastery, held by a large force of infantry, a machine gun in the tower and a tank reserve to the rear.
The German forces in the centre

Overall view of the table.
The Germans start the game off with Stuka attacks on the monastery. Russian AA fire damages the Stuka but the attack goes through.
The results of the attack, the red dice represent the damage (infantry can take 6 hits before being destroyed), the purple markers represent units which are suppressed. The defenders have been severely damaged and that was only the start of it. Eventually all the Stukas (the Germans had 3 in play) were shot down but they successfully disrupted the Russian defenders making it easier for the German ground forces to advance.
The German Fallschirmjaeger enter the table from the Russian right, steaming over the Russian infantry entrenched in the wood. It was at this point the Russian tank reserve should have moved to the right to eliminate the advancing paratroopers, however they fluffed their command rolls twice and the Soviet tanks remained where they were.
In the centre, the German advance is also successful. Coming down the road and forcing their way through the hedges. The Russian infantry fall back in front of them, trying to keep covering the road and delaying the Germans. The Russian machine guns move out into the road setting up a zone of fire, to try and keep the paratroopers away from the monastery.
On the right the Russian tanks get a move order and try a counter-attack, it is a dismal failure and the hedge is lined by burning BT-7s.
And its the same on the left, the German advance seems unstoppable.
The view down the road, as the Germans advance.
The Germans sweeping forward in the centre.
The Fallschirmjaeger advance toward the monastery, using the hedge as cover and supported by panzers.
Game over, the defenders break and it only took 5 turns.

Conclusions, well it all seemed totally believable. The Stukas provided flexible fire-power to aid their advance. It was not that effective but it did break up the Russian carefully laid out defences. This was the first game of BKC that I have been involved with that infantry really were important. The infantry combat was fast and brutal, units dying really fast. We even had a close-assault. The Russian BT-7s were almost useless, practically no armour save, easy to kill and with awful fire-power. The table was littered with burning Russian tanks, just like in the real war.

Zvezda 15mm WW2 tanks

Just to add, I am really starting to get into the Zvezda range. They truly are snap together models. The first ones I bought were quite hard to put together but I have just been building the KV1 and T34 models. The T34 is 5 bits, the KV1 has 6! Clip out from sprue and fitting together is a breeze. I am using glue, just in case but I am a very much a fan.

Visibility in WW2 rules

I have tried to come up with a simple yet realistic way to handle visibility in my WW2 rules in development. As players we can of course see the entire table but in battle it is often difficult even work out where the shots being fired at you are coming from.
The system
Two types of target; infantry and infantry support weapons, everything else.
Basic visibility distance; 1000m for infantry/infantry support weapons, 3000m otherwise.
Now this is modified by a series of situations that halve the spotting distance and these situations are cumulative:
Target neither moved or fired last turn
Target in or behind cover (a wood, hedge or building for example)
Target entrenched
Conditions of poor visibility like; heavy rain, snow, mist or night
Observer is a tank within 1000m of enemy – this is the situation when a tank crew ‘button up’, when they come under fire
So as examples; a tank driving across a field in the open could be seen at 3000m, the same tank behind a hedge and whilst snow is falling could be seen at 750m
Once a target has been spotted then it can be ‘seen’ by all the units in the opposing army and continues to be spotted, unless or until line of sight to it is physically blocked (something like a hill or building in the way would do the trick). Of course you cannot actually see through blocking terrain (see hill/building).
Now Recon units role is to detect the enemy, when they are performing a spotting action, they double the visibility distance, so for example could see a tank moving, at 6000m!
Seems a simple system that gives a bonus for being the defender and entrenched.