Romanian Emil - part 2

 Despite the lockdown this week I’ve actually been quite busy so having daubed the underside pale blue, it was only Friday evening before I got round to continuing the paintwork (above).

This morning I finished off the paintwork - such as it is - and hopefully I’ll be able to slap on the decals later on.

Stalingrad - the Matrix Game (part 2)

This evening we played through the second part of the game. Over both nights we took about two and a half hours to run through all 9 turns. Not bad considering the mix of experience among the players, including one who’d never previously endured a Matrix Game.
Eventually the Germans were thrown back to their start lines and much blood was spilled. I have summarised the narrative of the game below.
The clear winners were agreed to be Stalin and Chuikov, who each achieved their three objectives. Chuikov’ s survival was something of a surprise as he personally led at least half a dozen assaults!
My thanks to all six players for making this such an enjoyable experience.

 A couple of random photos taken towards the end of the game. 

Summary of narrative:

Turn 1. Panzers  conducted armed reconnaissance to the south of Stalingrad preventing Soviet surprise counter-attacks. General Chuikov Conducted aggressive close defence. Major German attack into Red October Factory by SS and assault pioneers supported by artillery fire.

Turn 2. Hitler successfully argues for German combined arms bonus to apply in future combat. Stalin busts Chuikov down to colonel and promotes Tarasov to general. Chuikov conducts passive defence. Attack on Red October factory is reinforced. Tarasov mounts passive defence holding off the SS. 

Turn 3. German reinforcements arrive. Chuikov leads counter-attack across river, Germans capture Red October factory.

Turn 4. Germans bomb, shell and attack Kurgan Hill, repel Soviet attack on Red October.

Turn 5. Soviet reinforcements arrive at Volga ferry, Chuikov reorganises his defence of Kurgan Hill, but massive German assault captures Kurgan Hill. 

Turn 6. Germans establish observation posts on Kurgan Hill, improving effectiveness of artillery Luftwaffe. German reinforcements arrive at Goumrak. Winter begins to take hold, Soviet reinforcements flood in via Volga ferry. 

Turn 7. Bitter fighting over Kurgan Hill - Soviet assault bloodily repulsed. 

Turn 8. Von Paulus digs in at the airfield. Massive struggle for Kurgan Hill is bloodily repulsing by exhausted German defenders. Abortive German attack to Southern Station sustains casualties. 

Turn 9. Hitler makes speech claiming great victory in order to boost morale on the home front. Stalin claims the job is done but continues to send reinforcements. Massive Soviet assault on Kurgan Hill pushes back Germans to airfield perimeter huge casualties suffered on both sides. Red October factory falls to renewed Soviet assault led by NKVD troops. 

Stalingrad - the Matrix Game (part 1)

While we’re unable to play face to face games it’s important to find alternatives. I’ve played matrix games before by email and it occurred to me that with systems like Skype we might be able to run such a game for several players over the course of a couple of evenings.
Thus it was that I found myself hosting a Skype call with six players located in Sheffield, Derbyshire and London.
I had decided to run the Stalingrad game written some years ago by Tom Mouat as this is a fairly simple military/political game on a familiar campaign. I printed the map onto a dozen sheets of A4 card and to represent the military units I dug out toys in what I hoped would be a truly offensive* variety of scales.

Last night we played through five of the nine turns, with part two to follow this evening.
The roles and (carefully cast) players are:
Hitler - Martin
Stalin - Jerry
Von Paulus - Simon
Chuikov - Bertrand
Hube - Tim C
Tarasov - Richard

The map at half time, with the front line marked in red. 

* 1/32, 1/48, 1/72, 1/144, 1/300. So far.

Romanian Emil - part 1

Searching for 1/72 air support for my 1/32 Romanians, I spotted in a pile of unbuilt plastic this Hobbyboss kit of the Bf-109E-3.  I remembered building a brace of Hobbyboss 109G a while back and that they had gone together very nicely. 

Confident that I had some crumbling Romanian decals, I opened the box for a look. Like the Gustav, it seemed a simple and well-moulded kit. But the best was yet to come.....

....yes indeed - as well as the Luftwaffe decals the kit also contained a Romanian set!

Crisp parts. And not too many of them!

15 minutes in and time to think about paint.