WW2 ‘German’ Don Cossacks

 

I've had these in stock for a while now and as I may have work for them in a forthcoming game it was clearly time to paint them!

They're certainly a colourful crowd.

Panzer people

I originally started work on this interesting set three years ago but promptly mislaid it. It surfaced again yesterday (while I was searching for something else entirely). I’ll shortly be menacing these poor chaps with the dangerous end of a paintbrush.

More Dominion of the Blitzkrieg

 A couple of weekends ago I played a few more games of DOTB.  Partly to get more experience of the game in different theatres of war and partly as an excuse to get out some 6mm toys which haven't been seen for a while.  I'm happy to report that the following dozen or so games all produced credible results. Total playing time including setting up and packing away was a little over two hours.

I hope you enjoy the reports and photos.

More Dominion of the Blitzkrieg. Khalkhin Gol, 1939.  Played on the big board with (generally) three stands to a unit.

Some of the Sov infantry is dug in

Tank brigades with light and medium tanks and armoured cars.

A Japanese victory!

Japanese artillery - all GHQ models.  These are quite 'new', having been painted c10 years ago!

Japanese tanks - Type a 95 and 97.

Game two. A very similar result.
Game 3. And another Jap victory!  Makes you wonder why they didn’t build more tanks!

At last, a Soviet victory! And a much longer game. The jap artillery was silent, the infantry line crumbled and then the (elite) Sov tanks overran the remnants.

A change of climate now, and back to the small board for Soumussalmi. Late war Germans standing in for the Finnish infantry (try to ignore the Panzerfausts!). The debut flight of the Finns' borrowed bomber.

A hard fought Finnish victory. The Sov artillery never fired and their tanks all broke down. Mind you, the bombers were pretty useless.

That was closer!  Again the tanks didn’t show but artillery shelled the Finnish airfield.

Bialystok—Minsk!  A very busy battlefield.

An appallingly bloody battle, ending when panzers overran the Sov airfields.

A less good result for the Fuhrer’s lads.  More were SB2 enjoying their combat debut. By contrast, most of the German kit has been in service since the mid-eighties. Some of it is even older.

In the third battle of Bialystock the Sov bombers don’t show up but the Heer is soon seen off by the workers, peasants and T-28s. The Luftwaffe is heard to complain of being ‘stabbed in the back’ by the army.

Jitra, Malaya 1941.  Two Japanese victories but the Brits finally triumphed third time round.

I say British - actually these chaps are Indians, built for the wars of 1965 and 1971.

The Kaiser's High Seas Fleet - The Great War at Sea 1914-18

 

This was another Christmas arrival which I'd pre-ordered some months ago and been looking forward to playing.  It's a development of the good old War At Sea system so I expected it to be a fairly straightforward play.  The components are very nice.

We begin with the obligatory shelling of Hartlepool

The Goeben dodges about in the Med.

The French find the Austrian U-boats. The hard way.

GT2:  a major engagement in the Baltic

Meanwhile the cocky Italians fall into a trap of in the Adriatic

The RN catches up with the Goeben in the Aegean...

...but the Goeben sinks the Indomitable and makes off to Constantinople!

GT3. Der Tag! Carnage!  Of the ships engaged, only one RN and 4 Boche are undamaged! But the RN always has more ships…

End of 1916.

End of 1917 and it’s all still to play for. But I’ve had a complaint from a Davy Jones saying that his locker is filling up with broken dreadnoughts….

By war's end it was all very close.  I need to re-read the rules and have another go before long.