Category Archives: When Imagination Fails

Soviet vs. West German Playtest

Soviets begin their assault

Many months ago I ran a game with my son to test Fistful of TOWs 3.  The game was of a Soviet T80 tank regiment assault on two companies of West German Leopard 1A4s. My son played the Soviets and I played the West Germans. 

The Soviets attempted to flank the Germans from both sides and ended up destroying the German defenders, though at a loss of nearly half the regiment.  In retrospect, the center battalion should have held off its attack until North and South battalions commenced their attack.  Amazingly, the last stand of the center tank battalion managed to survive its morale check.  I put up a slide show of the game.

In addition to this game, I ran another game that I will post about later.  I haven't had much time to game, though I painted my LeClercs and YPR-765s.

Links 6/25/2012

Posted draft rule sets

I posted two of the miniature game rule sets I been working on over the last many years.  Both are not complete, but it is better that they are available for comment than that they sit alone and unloved (except by me) on my computer.  They are posted on the side bar, but you can also find them here:

Building IanH’s 6mm Cognac paper houses

I finally photographed the two IanH's 6mm Cognac paper houses I built awhile ago.

I printed the house, cut out reinforcements for the walls using thin styrene sheets, then glued the paper to the styrene sheets using rubber cement. After I put it together, I used styrene square tubes in each corner to reinforce it. See the next picture.

For the roof, I reinforced it using two really thin styrene sheets on either side of the roof, then glued it to the tabs I left from the paper around the walls. I am not satisfied with how the roof went on and need to glue them better in the future.

Looking at one of the houses from the bottom. You can see the thin styrene sheets I used to reinforce the walls and roof. After I put it together, I reinforce it by gluing styrene square tubes to the styrene sheet walls in each corner with Krazy Glue. The tubes were a pain to cut with a scissors, so next time I plan to use an L brace instead.

IanH's paper models are free and fantastic.  The only complaint I had was with the model on the left.  It looks to me like the sides were swapped and if you built it by cutting out in one piece, then the ivy on one wall wouldn't match the next one around the corner.  To get it to look right, I had to cut each wall separately and then glue them together in the order I thought they should be in.

On the first day of Christmas

For Christmas, my wife was kind enough to get me a set of C-in-C miniatures, including my first World War 2 miniatures:

  • 10 Soviet T-34D tanks
  • 3 Soviet KV-1 tanks
  • 5 German Panzer 3m tanks
  • 5 German Panzer 4g tanks
  • 3 German Stug IIIg self-propelled gun
  • 4 Dutch Lynx Recon vehicles
  • 4 German Leopard 2A5 (Improved) tanks

As always, the quality and detail of them was astounding.  They proved to be quite clean and had little flashing.  After cleaning them, I primed them with a gray spray primer.  For the Soviet vehicles, I then sprayed them with Tamiya Olive Drab (TS-5).  I fear that they are too dark and the fact that it was 43 degrees out today probably didn't help.  A bit of dry brushing with a lighter olive drab will hopefully help.  

I look forward to trying them with Fistful of TOWs 3 or Kampfgruppe Commander at some point.