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.

Dominion of...The Blitzkreig

 

Yet another Dominion of... variant now!  I confess that I approached this one with a degree of scepticism, but happily that turned out to be misplaced.  As with it's predecessors this book contains the rules, a detailed example game and a number of scenarios.  To give it a proper try out I decided on two very different battles using my 6mm toys.

First up is the battle of Mokra. The wicked Germans have panzers and dive bombers but the plucky Poles have an armoured train!  We’ve previously fought this with both Megablitz and NBC.

The Stukas didn’t show up and like our NBC game, it ends with panzers shooting up the train.

Second go. The Stukas were (very slightly) less rubbish. Panzer’s considerably more so. Clearly, the armoured train remains the weapon of the future.

A few days later the Poles launched a major counterattack on the Bzura. Again, I’ve done this with Megablitz many years ago - using these same toys!

This time the instruments of Blitzkrieg triumph in game one….

…with an almost identical story in game two!

Sidi Barrani.

Game one. Something of a walkover for the Brits.

Game two. The Italians make more of a fight of it but those bloody Matildas are nearly impossible to kill!

Great fun and nice to get some toys on the table.

The Twelfth Battle - Caporetto 1917

 

Santa brought me this. Great news, as you can never have too many battles of the Isonzo.  It's a solo game taking in the entire Italian Front over the weeks of the campaign.

Having sorted out the very nice components,  I set up the introductory scenario to try.

After the initial bombardment, in go the stormtroopers!

And the Italian 3 Armata starts to crumble

End of GT1. The defence has been breached in several places.

Meanwhile back on the Piave, there’s a lot of frantic digging.

Managed a draw (the historical result). Did I mention the counters are really nice?

I'm hoping to play through the full game in the next week or so.  Like many other solo games, I think it may adapt well to being played by a group over a Zoom link.