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 2011: Russian/French Resistence Partisans

While I'm catching up on things that I got done in 2011 but didn't get chance to photo, I've added these snaps of some Caesar figures that I completed. They come from two figure sets variously referred to as 'WW2 Resistence Fighters' and 'WW2 Partisans'. The two sets have a slightly different feel to them, but can easily be mixed to provide a bigger force. When I made up a deck of 'battalion cards' for Rapid Fire (basically a card deck with details of a battalion to be drawn at random to put together a scenario 'on the fly'), I had included a battalion of Partisans or Workers Militia for my Russian forces, without at the time having the figures, so this was a little gap to fill in. These guys are mainly drawn from the Partisan set and probably more closely resemble Russian (or Eastern European) partisans.

While these are mainly from the Resistence set, and probably look more like French Resistence Fighters. Some have armbands, which were worn instead of uniforms once the allies invaded, and they could claim at least the protection of the Geneva Convention.

This guy looks more like a Gestapo agent to me. He's from the Resistence set.

My word! Is that my regular wargaming partner 'Steve the Hat'?

Another of the less conventional poses. A prisoner destined for the Gestapo cells a summary firing squad perhaps.

This is what I have painted up so far which is plenty for a Rapid Fire battalion. I've got the same number again left to finish painting, but not in any great hurry to finish them. A couple of interesting figures that come in the Resistence set are some nuns (not pictured here). Can see that they might be handy to 'dress' a scene or for skirmish scenario (like Black Powder), and as they will fit with any period from the Dark Ages through to modern day.

As I could see that I might be using these in skirmish scenarios two, I based them on 1p coins. Not sure that was the right decision, as once again the smaller bases just don't look as good on the table top. Still it is an easy matter to put them on my larger WW2 card bases and add a bit more basing sand and scatter grass if I change my mind.

I did start dreaming up a scenario just for Partisans once - had Yugoslava in mind - German's have a numbers of train carrying various things -supplies, ammo, troops- and a number of convoys of troops and supplies to get across a board set out with mountains and mountain villages, and some patrols and maybe an armoured car or Panzer II to try and root out Partisans and there weapons caches. Partisans, possibly assisted by some British commandos, start with hidden movement-lots of blinds shepherds etc. and caches of weapons- and need to sneak around moving weapons and explosive caches from place to place and ambush convoys or sabotage or blow up trains without getting caught.

I've also seen some people have recommended using these for doing a 'Very British Civil War' in 20mm, and as it happens I've also painted up some WW1 British Infantry who might serve...

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