15mm Hornisse / Nashorn Panzer jägers

I have repainted a few of my old models to complement my previous painted Fallschirmjägers. This time are they built from Grey Wolf and should fight against the mighty force of Soviet. So I needed some good mobile AT that could take care of the Soviet IS-2 tanks that seams to be very popular know.

My insperation and guide for this project have been from this blogg. http://www.heresybrush.com/2012/videotutoriales-como-pintar-tanques-alemanes-15mm/
It is one of the better sites on the net for help and improving my painting skills.

I will try to improve the mud effect, it´s to unified at the moment. But have some idea for adding contrast and life to the mud. Might comeback with an update.

DEFCON 2! Epic Cold war Command battle

Spring 1983: Soviet union diplomats have been harder and harder pressing land control demands towards the NATO countries. Minor border clashes and commando expeditions from Soviet side have been issued to test the responsiveness of the NATO forces. NATO´s war cabinet meets and decides to act before the WARPAC is in full mobilization and launch there expected offensive.

These are the grounds for our first major battle with the Cold war Commander rules. We where 4 people per side and each controlled one battle group. The mission was Deliberate attack where NATO was the attacking force. We made list with 4000 points/group for NATO and 2000 points/group for WARPAC.

We had tree objectives on the a board of 240x180cm. Objectives where in the two villages and the airport on the furthest right seen from NATO.

6mm game mat project

I might found me new project for 6mm terrain. I want to have easy transported terrain that I can bring to my friends and tournaments. A terrain matt full fills these demands and it can look good if you do it right. It can also work for 15mm models if your smart. I can buy a mat from 100£ or more so it´s not cheap.

I found a nice link of how to do it my self from War Artisan.
They use canvas cloth which the cover with latex and flock. They also model in the rivers and roads on the map. I am not 100% certain if I will model in the rivers or not. They usually have a big impact on the game so it can be important to be flexible. But the roads will be in the mat for easy use and visual appearance.

Short description of how War Artisan are doing there mats.
Step one: Outline roads and rivers. Cover the roads and rivers with flat layer of latex paint.
Step two: Use latex to cover the areas between the roads and flock them with allot of flock.

Step Three: Cover the roads with thicker layer of latex and make scratch marks to resemble wheel tracks.
Step four: Paint the rivers with brown and blue colours. Finish with Silk polyurethane varnish. Add bushes to resemble march areas and river foliage.
Step five: Go back and touch up the grass covered areas again with flock and add shruberies and grass tufts around the roads to add depth and variation.
These method seams easy enough for me to try. The price tag will not be huge and it will be fun to see what I can create. I will keep you informed on my progress.

British 6mm Cold war finnished!

I have finished my BAOR group for Cold war Commander or some similar rules system. I am pleased with the result. It was enjoying to air brush the camouflage pattern on the tanks and various AFV´s. Also the time it took to create a complete battle group was nice. I have only taken me 1 month to be ready and the last steps have been deliberative slow.

Here is the final result:

CO and HQ´s 

FAC and FAO 

Rec

Chieftain IV group 1

Chieftain IV group 2

FV438 Swingfire ATGW

FV432 81mm mortar carrier

FV432 APC

Carl Gustav equipped infantry

Combat engineers

Infantry

AA and 81mm mortar support

Swingfire ATGW support

GPMG support

Harrier

Lynx AH.7

The measurments for the bases are:

HQ & CO 30x30 mm
AFW 40x30 mm
APC, IFV and support vehicles 30x20
Infantry 20x40 mm
Inf support 20x30mm
FAO & FAC round base d20mm
Rec. hex base 20mm

So next time they will see the table is in one week. So that will be fun.

First Cold war Commander game

Hello all and a happy new years eve to all of you few people how read my blog!

As the topic says have been playing my first game of Cold war Commander. It was the first game for both me and my opponent. Yes you guessed right there was allot of rule discussions and looking in to the rule book to find the answer. But I was surprised how little time we spent searching for rules for being the first time we played.

We played 2000 points and used no Artillery or Air assets and neither of us had any helicopters. So it was a simple mission with only ground troops. We played the encounter and used fixed formations to give a more reality feeling to the game. The missions is simple enough, we should knock out as much as possible of the opponent. I played my Brits of the Rhine and they encountered a Soviet Marin division. We both had a mix of tanks and infantry and nearly no support. The Soviet marines are elite infantry so I had to watch out for them in a close assault.

The game starts with a moving battle which means that you place your HQ and CO at your table edge and role a command role to get that HQ formation on the table. This is when we realised that it is crucial to be able to role below 9 if you are a soviet player. My opponent where not that lucky with his commander for the marines formation I think he passed 2 roles of roughly 13 roles during the game. So when his major portion of his force did not arrive was it a pitched battle and I could concentration my force on his light tanks.Here is a some pictures I took during the game.

Second turn and the British Chieftain tanks position them self to counter the Soviet light tanks that are advancing towards the British infantry that have take a position in the village.

The soviet marines finally arrives and advance towards the village. They are already late to the battle so they try to make the most of it. The Chieftain tanks are trying to stop the Light tanks to reinforce the Marines.

We called the game of when the last threat to wards the Chieftain tanks was eliminated and the commander of the struggled to get them moving. The result was a major victory to the Brit.

So to summarize the feeling of this rules. I like the system it is fast but you still feel that there is plenty of complexity to Cold war Commander. We never got to a close assault so I had no time to try these part of the rules. But they seam to be pretty streamlined we did a small test before the game sins assaults tends to the be weak point and hardest part in most rules systems. There where a few question regarding the assault but I think we ironed them out.

We also tried the Helicopter attack and realised that they are power full. But when I read the FAQ afterwords did we used the ATGW attack wrong. According to the FAQ "ATGW fired from helicopters can only target a single unit in the fire-zone and they do not double their attacks when doing so." That we did it wrong is not surprisingly because the rules clearly states that you should follow the Air strike rules which makes the doubling possible.

So there are a few issues with the rules and how they are written. But most of it can you reason out and try to get the intention of the rule not the exact wording. I think when we have played a few times will it be more clear.

6mm Terrain

Sins I started looking in to Cold war commander have I started making some 6mm terrain for the battle field. Some time back did I buy model trees from China. They where to small for 28mm and 15mm terrain so they went in to the storage. But now where are they in perfect size for 6mm. I want to make a functional forest where the trees are free standing. So I bought washes and took grey stuff to mould and fastened the tree trunks to the washers. It worked nice I think and they have a nice heavy feeling. Then it was the usual pumice and dry brushing and some flock.

I have not spent many hours on these trees and it looks good. Now I need to finish my forest base plate. But I have an idea how to make them easy and fast.

British 6mm cold war continues

I have started the painting on my BAOR force. Because it's 6mm did I base all my models first. I needed some thing to hold on to when i start the compress dig out my airbrush. I used pre tinted pumice as basing material and used it to glue models at same time (I had re glue all the infantry models they had to small base for the pumice to be effective as glue).

My reference (pic. above) for my painting is the camouflage pattern that was used in Europe in the 60-90. Its s green base with dark grey patterns in lines from side to side. The colour choice is a bit of experiment for me. To find a good contrast on these small miniatures and the same time have a realistic look. So I will use a lighter colour than in real life. I also take in account the darkening when I apply the wash in later painting stages. 

Base colour: I use colours from AK interactive Olive drab colour modulation set. Light green base (AK 135) plus highlight dusting with Olive draw shine (AK 137).

Masking: Masked the area with blue tak

Camouflage: I use Tamiya acrylic paint Nato black (XF-69) 60/40 with Dark sea grey (XF-54) as base and a high light dusting with Dark seay grey (XF-54). I think the grey is a bit to light so I will make it darker next time, this was my first three vehicles of around 25.

Next step is to complete the remaining vehicles and shade them and then start painting all the small infantry models.