Some Rapid Fire on the Eastern Front

A couple of years ago and I only had a few armies to bring along to a club night, but such has been my productivity last year in particular that I'm actually now reaching the stage that I have stuff that I feel guilty I haven't got out of the cupboard in a long time.

So it was with my WW2 Eastern Front Rapidfire armies, and so I decided I'd put on a biggish participation game for all comers at the club. I referee'd and six players pulled cards from my scenario generator deck to determine forces (in the general chaos 4 players ended up on the Russian side and 2 players on the German....). We went for 4 battalions a side. The Germans were thrilled to pick an 'Elite SS panzer battalion' of shiny Panthers as their second card- all the rest were infantry battalions. The Russians just pulled infantry battalions, but I decided to even things up a bit by giving them a battalion of T34/76s as reinforcements, and they got a couple of companies of SMG armed tank riders as their other reinforcement card.

Russians who were defending rolled a lousy '1' to determine how far in they could deploy (which under my scenario rules means only one foot in). The Germans started the game by marching on the table. We used hidden movement, and the first units to be detected were the Panther battalion just as they took a ridge halfway across the board.

Overview from the Russian left wing

The Russians didn't waste any time bringing on their reinforcements, and their tank battalion with SMG armed tank riders came on from their right flank in turn 3. Next to be spotted was a German infantry battalion marching down the road into the main town on the Russian left, and a bit of accurate mortar fire took out half a company. Ben had rushed his Russian infantry battalion to try and take a smaller village on the Russian right.

T34s advance to try and stop the Panthers sweeping through the Russians who have seized a secondary village

The main 'fireworks' of the game was in the tank battle on the Russian right. The Panthers succeeded in taking out all the T34s in three or four rounds, but most of their tanks were left heavily damaged. One of the distinguishing features of the rest of the game was the very large number of '1's rolled on the combat dice. Ben's AT gun missed several times at point blank range against the Panthers, and Simon's didn't have much more luck, at an admittedly longer range, against the Panzer battalion's HQ company. Small arms fire in general seemed to miss the mark all over the place. Rarely have so many rounds been expended for so little effect, and it looked as if the Russians in particular had gone into battle without much weapons training!

Dug in across the river, the Russians make a last minute dash to try and stop the Germans taking the town

On the Russian left, the Germans pulled off a highly effective ruse of aggressively moving a hidden movement decoy base into the main town (contrary to the rules I allow decoy counters to be moved - I can't see why they shouldn't be) where they couldn't be spotted. Diggers commanding the Russian battalion on the Russian left was clearly spooked and kept his forces dug in on the other river bank, until a couple of moves before the German infantry battalion was just about to enter the town, when he and Simon, commanding the infantry battalion holding the woods in the Russian centre line, released a few companies to try to contest the town.

German infantry are already entering the town before they can stop them

It was at this point that we ran out of time. I hadn't had time to put out all the victory point markers, so instead of adding up points, I gave a marginal victory to the Germans, who had taken control of a road exit on the right, the ridge line in the centre and were contesting control of the town, while the Russians hadn't done much more than hold the bridge and grab the secondary village.

Thanks to Mac and Diggers with helping out explain the rules to the other four players who had not played Rapid Fire before, without which I don't think we would have even got as far as we did.

Personally I think I'd have brought my Russian reinforcements on the left flank (where most of the objectives were!) not the right, but if they had, the Russians probably would not have stopped the Panzer battalion smashing though the Russian centre, which they probably would have done if they had not been loading AT shells into their guns for most of the battle, and instead put some concentrated HE fire into the Russian infantry battalions. The battalion of T34s was destroyed, but they put enough 'heavy damage' markers on the Panthers to blunt their offensive.

Catching up on things done in 2011: US infantry finished

Another 'quick win' in terms of completing things was finishing off some of my US Infantry for Rapid Fire or Cross Fire. In truth all, like the US Marines, the hard work ie. painting, was done quite a few years ago, maybe even 10 years ago in fact, but I had only done the most basic job in terms of basing. This made them look decidedly unimpressive next to the Germans which I had bought to fight against them, and I'd nicely based up to match with the Russian army I'd completed.

All of these are Revell US Infantry, sculpted very much with the Ardennes in mind, many being dressed in heavy greatcoats. I have not, however, gone for 'snowbases' (but am thinking I might do a separate force, at least say for Crossfire, with them), but had added quite a few clumps of green (from Gale Force 9 basing scenics) to the bases along with static, to make them look right for Western Europe.

As time as gone on, and I've got to fight out some Rapid Fire games, I've become less and less 'coy' about using multiple basing, as it not only looks better, but is so much easier for moving them about and now have rules from 'platoon-level' to 'brigade-level' none of which absolutely need individual basing, and have more than enough 'singles' should I really, really need them for, say, a man-to-man skirmish.

Here are only around one battalion's worth of figures, but I also have an absolute stack of Esci US Infantry, in various stages of painting, including at least as many again that are completely painted. The only reason for not completing the basing on them is that, once again, I've used up all my storage boxes and until I get some more, there's no room to store them once they are based. So for now this is just a 'taster' of what the infantry contingent of my WW2 US army for Europe will look like.

WW2 Japanese

Bashing through several WW2 armies for Rapid Fire late 2009/early 2010 meglomania took over in the Cavalier wargames show in 2010, and I acquired a couple of boxes of Waterloo 1815 Japanese and a bag of old Airfix Japanese too from the Harfield's stand. Having finally finished the Eastern front forces in March of that year, WW2 fatigue overcame me, but by the end of the year, I was able to get the Japs out of the cupboard. After the enormous headache of trying to assemble all the vehicles to fill a Rapid Fire order of battle for a German, Russian, American or late war British army, I was quite looking forward to tackling an army with mainly infantry, which could borrow trucks from there German allies, and where a few light tanks and artillery pieces, and perhaps a plane or two would be 'the icing on the cake' rather than essential.

The main task was researching uniforms, which mainly revealed lack of much consensus on uniform colours. The basic colour was pea green, which often faded badly, and was apparently substituted for a light khaki in 'tropical' areas. All of this research led me to conclude: go for a colour that looks nice! I ended up mixing some green paint I used for basing with some buff paint I use for WW2 German tanks and washing the figure at the end with a brown wash. Seemed to work. You can judge for yourself from the pics.

I finished painting well over a hundred figures last winter. The pleasant surprise was how good the Airfix figs looked when painted properly. These must have had a thousand bad paint jobs and lain around unpainted or with chipped paint in thousands of play boxes, which is how a lot of us think of them, but this figure set sculpted back in the early 1970s actually stands the test of time and painted up they looked as good as the Waterloo 1815 figures released a year or so ago. The Waterloo 1815 box is crammed with goodies like HMGs, knee mortars, radio operators and flame throwers, so many in fact, I was glad of the Airfix to make sure I had enough riflemen. I've not including any of the Heavy Weapons in the shots, but barring a few extra 'ammunition carriers' I make up by trimming off weapons, so that under Rapid Fire rules I have enough weapons crew, virtually everything is painted up, if not varnished and based.

My chief innovation for this project was basing. As I'm sure I have bored Steve to death about already, basing for me has become something of a minor obscession, having completely ignored its importance for most of the time I've been painting figures. If you collect 20mm plastics in wargaming circles you develop something of an 'inferiority complex'. 15mm gamers smile and tell you big figures and vehicles like that are 'oversized for the table', while 28mm 'metal snobs' say, "gosh aren't they small, how do you paint those?" So to counter this, I am always striving to make 20mm plastics look as good as I can on the table. You can only go so far, by painting, and when I ran my online shop and took a professional interest in painted figures, I started to notice a 'well-painted' figure was usually a 'well-based figure', and a pretty averagely painted figure can look great with good basing. I started to notice the difference when I worked a bit harder on the look of the bases for my DBA elements. When I switched back to painting WW2 figures, I had based them on 5 peseta coins I had from when I lived in Spain. Smaller than 1p coins, they 'did the job' but I noticed that they seemed to 'diminish' the figure. I have variously experimented with 2p coins, but for WW2 I initially fielded by German and Russian armies on 5 peseta coins. I decided that it didn't do them justice, so started to study the brillantly well painted figures in the Rapid Fire books, noting the common convention of basing quite a few two-to-a-base on generously sized and well-terrained bases. I therefore, left my figures on peseta coins, for extra weight, but stuck them on larger card bases, which I then terrained with rough sand and also normal static grass.

For the Japs, I've gone one step further and to a further extreme. I want to make up some Jungle Terrain, for these boys, and bought a bunch of acquarium plastic ferns etc. and having so much, put a few sprigs on the base of the figures.

Although I principally intend to use Rapid Fire rules, I really used to enjoy 'Crossfire' rules too at my last club, which is a particularly good simulation of 'company level' infantry combat across dense terrain. This works especially well for jungle fighting. Most 'Crossfire' players I've come across use 15mm figures, but there is not as such any reason that 20mm figures don't work. Crossfire, does, however, mainly use 'element' basing, the size of an element not being fixed, and it can represent a squad/section or a platoon or even a company. After playing around I thought it would do no harm to base a few dozen figures on three figure bases, which could still be used for Rapid Fire, but looked the part as a 'Crossfire' element.

These looked particularly good with 'heavy terrain', but judge for yourself....assuming you can find the figure in all that foliage, of course! I haven't ruled out adding more 'tufts' and such 'high-end' basing accessories to these bases, despite my cheapskate nature.

Unfortunately one of the 'downsides' of using such generous basing, is that the army rapidly grew to require more storage boxes, which I had by this stage just run out of! The final pic is the full force, half based for now, until I have somewhere to store them all.

WW2 Australian/Commonwealth/Brits

Towards the end of 2010, I cracked out most of my WW2 Japanese army. Although I have plenty of US troops painted up, including some marines, although there is not actually much difference, I really wanted to get them up against some British/Commonwealth opponents. I was inspired both by a Rapid Fire scenario that I found based on a battle by Australian troops to defend the Kokoda trail in New Guinea (which can be found here http://www.worldoptions.com.au/fourpipers/rapid/scenario.html -see 'Isurava' under 1942 scenarios and follow up scenario here- http://www.worldoptions.com.au/fourpipers/rapid/efogirf2.pdf ) and the exploits of the Chindits, a force in which my wife's uncle, a colourful chap, was a captain. So in February my birthday order from Model Hobbies included a couple of boxes of Airfix Australians, and Hat's WW1 Anzac heavy weapons set, to supply HMGs and mortars and crews otherwise lacking. Having got to see the Ozzie film 'Kokoda', I also plan to use some Aifix 8th army figures too, as some troops clearly wore helmets and shorts, too.

As far as I can tell at this scale the Chindit uniform was identical to the Australian, and I also have 3/4 of a box of Gurka's for a Chindit force. Caesar Miniatures not long ago brought out some Chinese troops for WW2, who aided the Chindits and also fought the Japanese in Burma. Not a priority purchase, but could be a set with a lot of potential.

I've tried to find out what uniforms I'd need for the attack on Malaya and Singapore, and the retreat into Burma. Most units were drawn from the Indian army, so I could use my Colonial Sikhs and the WW1 Indian Infantry that are in the pipeline from Hat, plus 8th Army and ordinary WW2 British infantry (as long trousers and khaki certainly seems to have been normal in Burma), and possibly my recnetly acquired late WW1 British, once painted, too. Although I've found references to some unit dying their uniforms green for jungle fighting prior to the issue of 'jungle greens'-and some pictures on the Singapore wargaming clubs site, and they are the people most likely to know, seems to bear it out-, as far as I can see the basic uniform was 'khaki drill', ie. same as Eighth Army. I'm not planning on doing armies for North Africa, but if I invested at some stage in a unit or two of Eighth Army in 'Khaki Drill', I could also use them for places like Crete.

I cracked out most of the Australian infantry over a weekend back in March, while working on other things. I've got the heavy weapons and some figures lying down left to do, plus the 8th Army & Gurka figs, but its not a big job. One of the main things holding me up, though, is lack of storage boxes.

As the pics how, I've for basing I followed what I tried out on the Japanese. I have really carried to extremes testing the view, that especially where 20mm plastics are concerned, the basing is more important than the painting. The figures I've based up so far I've done 3 to a base, with some sprigs of 'fish tank' plastic foliage added as well. This base would look good for 'Crossfire', not my intended main ruleset for these figures, but a ruleset which works well at simulating 'company' level infantry fighting on a tabletop covered in terrain. And you don't get denser terrain than in jungle-fighting! I'll also be basing some up in pairs and singly for both 'brigade level' Rapid Fire, and 'platoon level' Disposable Heroes.

This shows the three bases I have done so far.

An the final pic shows all the figures so far painted, plus the storage problem of the relative space taken up by the 9 figs on fancy bases taking up a quarter of the box, and the other 60 fitting happily in the remaining space!

I've been putting off ordering new storage boxes, but with other things spilling over I'll have to soon. This will also hopefully mean I'll have somewhere to store the jungle terrain I plan to knock up for these guys, the Japs, Vietnam and Darkest Africa.

Russian Army for Rapid Fire

When I started buying up kit for WW2, Matchbox kits were still available (before being rebranded Italeri). They were at the time considerably cheaper than comparable kits (I seem to remember about £3.50 rather than £5.00). As I knew them to be great models it made sense to snap them up. One model that was in the range was the T34-76 and, although I was mainly buying German and US, I put 9 of them on my order from Hannants, as I reckoned I wouldn't have the chance to get them that cheap again. They were a simple kit to put together. There is not much painting involved (all Russian tanks came out of the factory painted green, and only in snowy winter did they bother to camo' them), they were all painted and assembled early on.

I got some Russian infantry at the same time, but unlike my Germans and Americans didn't get around to painting them until 2009, starting them at a time I was getting frustrated with the slow pace of getting everything together for my German and US army. I got them all finished by March 2010.

The great thing about the USSR in WW2 from a wargamer's point of view is that they are a fairly simple army to equip. Where as the German army that changed their main battle tank four times in the course of the war, the Russians found a star in their T34 early on and switched most of their production to it, only making significant modifications when they upgunned it to a 85mm in 1944. They didn't manufacture any half tracks of their own, so no armoured infantry, just motorised. They go a lot of equipment from the US and the British under lend lease. So I could use the GM trucks that I'd made up for the US army, and a M1 half track or two for HQs, towing etc.. That really just left the AT company of a tank battalion to equip, and a set of two SU-85s from Armourfast did the trick. Pegasus's 'two-to-a-box' kits yielded a pair of armoured cars and a light tanks (all of which actually looked pretty similar). Italeri's excellent 76mm gun set yielded a couple of heavier AT/artillery guns, and a blog site which pointed out that the Russian 45mm was basically indistinguishable from the German 38mm, so Hat's German set supplied my infantry AT at the lighter end.

The net result was that once I got stuck into painting the Russian infantry it started to look a lot easier to reach the finishing line for the Russians than the US or the British, so they jumped ahead of the queue.

Battalion of T34-76s, with an AT company SU-85s, with light tank and A/C for HQ & Recon

A conversation at my last club left me doing a swap and getting eight Armourfast T34-85s, to help equip an elite late war tank battalion. Once they are painted I have all the essential equipment to take me to 1945 (and indeed beyond as I could use the T34-85s in Vietnam!).

Battalion of T35-85s for later 1944 onwards

The hardest work was getting all the infantry battalions together. I used Revell's Russian infantry and Siberian Rifles sets, a lot of Esci figures and a box of Airfix. Although the figures in the main Revell set are a bit larger, and Airfix a bit smaller than the rest, it is not that noticeable once all painted. The mix gives a good variety of poses and plenty of heavy weapons, including AT rifles which are only found in the Revell Siberian rifles set. Unlike the various German sets, there are plenty of mortars as well as HMGs, although I thought for a while I would come up short having mislaid some Maxims for a couple of months. The Esci set has a lot of female radio operators, which are good for identifying HQ units.

Motorised infantry Battalion equipped with lend lease trucks and half track

A Rapid Fire battalion is around 40 figures, but the three rifle companies only require 24 figures. The HQ, weapons and gun companies making up the balance, so you actually need quite a few 'ammunition carriers' etc.. These I have made by trimming the weapons off a few figures, especially those lying down etc., a lot of which and a 'wounded' figure, that can stand in as a mortar loader, are in the Airfix set, so I've drawn a lot from this set. The Italeri 76mm set has a few spare figures good for FOOs. The result of using what I thought initially would not be useful figures, is that in the end I had a lot more riflemen/SMG figures than I'd reckoned and so ended up making no less than six battalions up. This should be more than enough for any eventuality.

All of the sets have a lot of figures carrying SMGs (as indeed was the case) so there is no problem picking enough out if you want to form an SMG battalion.

One of Six infantry Battalion. This one is equipped with the lighter 45mm AT gun

I have a few more figures to paint up. Notably the ski troops in the Siberian Rifles sets, which I have started to paint, but there is no point finishing until I get around to buying a 'snow cloth' to put on the table. I initially added a workers militia/partisan battalion card to my unit deck, and in my first game with them just used ordinary figures to represent them, but I have since bought to sets of Caesar's partisans, painted up a battalion and they've already seen action. I've not taken any pics of them yet, so will do so for a later post.

Like my German army, I tend to think of this as a 1943-45 army, but in fact as T34-76 saw wider use earlier than this, and in fact German armour found itself completely outclassed for a while, this actually represents the Russian army over a longer time frame. But as I can't field it for the time being against a German army much earlier than '43, it won't be re-fighting the battles of 1941-2 until I get some PzIIIs for my Germans.

My new regular gaming buddy, Steve, turned up at the last game with a whole battalion of mounted cossacks, which he was keen to field. Unfortunately they ran straight into a Panzer battalion hidden behind a hill, which with the help of some off-board artillery wiped them off the board in record time! With a bit more practice they might prove more useful. In fact might have been exactly what Steve could have needed to seize an important objective very early on in the last game, if Steve, who is not at heart a pre-20th century gamer, can get his head around thinking of cavalry in WW2 as mounted infantry, and not look for something to charge!

The whole lot (including the US 'lend-lease' stuff)!

There are now a couple of very nice new infantry sets recently released, notably the Pegasus Soviet infantry in winter and Soviet infantry in summer (in caps) . There is also a Naval set which would be handy for WW1 and the Russian Civil War too. These are tempting, but with six infantry battalions all ready not a big priority in the big scheme of things and maybe an 'add-on' I can do later if I get a lot more of my unfinished projects done.

There is never any shortage of extra kit that you can buy for a WW2 army. A few Katusha's, and some different assault guns (SU-76s and SU-110s), and some KV1s would all be nice. But probably if I shelled out some more money on this army I would probably do it in line with my plans for my German army, and add more light tanks to be able to represent better 1941-2.

76mm gun. An excellent field artillery and AT piece

German Army 1943-45 for Rapid Fire

If you want to do WW2, one of the main things that your likely to need is a German army. When I first started to collect figures and kits for this army (about ten years ago - scary!), I was planning on matching it up initially against a US army, so bought Revell's German infantry, which are for late war. I got one of Osprey's highly detailed 'Order Battle Books' for the Ardennes campaign, so even though I hadn't chosen the Rapid Fire rule book, the choice of kit that I bought wasn't too far out. In the event, I ended up getting my Russian army ready before my Americans, and by this time, I had added a fair number of other figures including Revell's (earlier war) Panzergrenadiers, Italeri's re-issue of the Esci set, a box of Airfix, and some figures from Airfix's Africa Corp figures to get some field caps in there. Although Airfix are a tad smaller, all scale well when painted and based. I painted some of the Revell in late war camo, picking a couple of different camo patterns to help distingush different battalions, which I tend to use for Panzergrendiers. All the rest are in standard grey-green, and the Italeri and Airfix in early war uniform (ie. jackboots).

I have enough 'early war' infantry, and some early war kit (such as 38mm AT guns) to represent German infantry battalions from 1939-45. But partly because I'd started buying kit for Normandy onwards, and partly because later war kit is more popular among manufacturers, I tend to refer to this army as my 1943-45 army. This is because the main battle tanks are Panzer IVs (the Panzer III being considered obsolete by '43) and Panthers (introduced in the summer of '43). To take it earlier, I would mainly need to equip a tank battalion with Panzer IIs (for '39-'40) and/or Panzer IIIs (for '41-'42).

Elite Panzer Battalion equipped with Panthers and AT company of Jadpanthers

Prior to picking the Rapid Fire rules, I'd already bought 9 PzIV Airfix kits and 5 Panthers (I think Matchbox, which were still around when I bought them), 3 Jadgppanthers, 4 Jadgpnzer IVs, 3 Wespes, a Puma Armoured Car, and 6 Hanomag half-tracks (all Matchbox). I also had a couple of Airfix German Recce sets (with kubelwagen and armoured car) and three boxes of Revell's 105 mm artillery. With the addition of a couple of sets of Armourfast kits which gave me 4 more Panthers, this gave me enough for a Panther battalion, a PzIV battalion and most of an armoured Panzergrenadier battalion, with a couple of spare half tracks. Reading through the various unit organisations in the Rapid Fire supplements, I ordered a set of two Stugs from Armourfast, a set of two PAK 40s from Italeri, and five Opel Blitzes from Ready-to-Roll, three uncovered and three with the cover on. I later also got the Hat sets of 75mm IG and 38mm AT gun (although the latter more to use as a Russian 45mm).

Panzer Battalion equipped mainly with PzIVs (unfortunately some painted pre-'43 grey. Damn!!) and an artillery company of Wespes

I worked out with a bit of swapping here and there (eg. using a Hanomag as an HQ unit for a Panzer battalion or a tow for an AT gun), I could probably then put on the table, up to two tank battalions, an armoured Panzergrenadier battalion, a motorized Panzer Grenadier battalion and several fully equipped infantry battalions.

My main 'faux pas', was the first kits I painted up and decaled (6 Pz IVs). I didn't feel like following the camo pattern on the box/in the kit, and thought I'd do them grey. This was before I did much research, and I was subsequently discovered that the grey camo was dropped in 1943. PzIVs were around before then, but most of the 'grey camo'ed' tanks that rolled into Russia in 1941 were PzIIIs, the PzIV initially being considered an 'infantry tank', and gunned with the short-barelled 75mms (which come with the Airfix kit and I have kept, and have not glued the long barrel 75mm's into the turrets).

One of six infantry Battalion with HQ & all heavy weapons, this one has an assault gun company represented by a couple of Stugs

The hard work was actually getting together all of the different elements to represent such as HQs, forward observers, heavy weapons, mortar, gun companies, AT companies, trucks and tractors in the right numbers. HMGs or mortars, for example, in Rapid Fire usually have 3 man-crews, but most manufacturers only model two with the weapon, so I general made a bigger base and cut the weapons off some figures to represent ammunition carriers etc.. For some reason, mortars are not a popular item for manufacturers to put in WW2 German sets, and I ended up adding a few mortars from a US set, on a large base, with a few extra figures trimmed of weapons, based separately. That way I can always use them with another army.

An Armoured Company of a Panzergrenadier Battalion

The great thing about having all the main elements of the army done is that I have been able to generate a 'scenario' generation system that involves pulling 'battalion cards' and 'reinforcement cards' from a deck, and after a lot of blood, sweat and tears can be sure that I can field any combination of battalions or reinforcements, without finding I don't have the right kit.

Obviously there is always stuff you can add. The German army in contrast to say the Russian, had all sorts of different AFVs. It would be nice to add some gunned support half-tracks to the Panzergrendier battalion, some command tanks/half tracks, an '88' or other AA, some more towing half tracks and/or trucks, a Tiger etc., etc.. But altogether all the essentials are there.

The whole lot!

If I was to extend it in a serious way, I think probably get three boxes of Armourfast PzIIIs to give me 6 models, and some more PzIVs (probably 'Ready to Roll' with 'schutzen'). I'd paint the PzIVs in late war camo, and replace the barrels for some of my existing PzIVs with short barrels, so I could have a 9 tank battalion with companies of two PzIIIs and a PzIV. That way I get to be able to field both a 1941 Eastern Front Army, and get enough PzIVs in late war camo, so I don't have to put the grey painted ones on the tabletop for post '42 battles. After that I'd probably add some PzII's to be able to do the invasions of Poland and France...

PAK 40 and crew