Fighting for Angola: FAPLA figures in 20mm.

I have just finished some of Under Fire Miniatures recently released Angolan Government troops [clicky]

They represent soldiers from the FAPLA (Peoples Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola) who were the armed wing of MPLA (Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola) who had fought against the Portuguese up until 1974 when Portugal granted independence to its African colonies. After this MPLA formed a government and started moving Angola to a single party Marxist state. (The Soviet Union/ Warsaw Pact and Cuba send military aid as advisors). This led to a civil war in Angola between the MPLA/FAPLA and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) as well as the FNLA (National Liberation Front of Angola). This ended up as a something of a Cold War proxy battleground between East and West. Furthermore South African forces frequently crossed into Angola due to MPLA’s support of SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation: a guerrilla force fighting in what is now Namibia against the South Africans). It makes for a rather long and complicated war that didn’t really end untill the 2000s.

With military aid coming from the Warsaw Pact and Cuba I’ve painted the figures to reflect this.

This group of figures has been painted in a Cuban Lizard pattern camo. They are armed with the usual mix of Soviet weaponary.

This second smaller group are in the East German Rain pattern (fiddly to do on 20mm figures and the zoom of a digital camera isn’t kind to my so so painting), three of them wear the DDR’s NVA helmet.

For support they have a Recoilless Rifle.

As well as a Plamya AGS17 Automatic Grenade Launcher.

 

Great figures that will make for nice opponents to the South Afrtican Defence Force figures I painted some time back.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Some more 6mm reinforcements.

I’ve been busy expanding my 6mm Cold War collection again.

First up we have a very mixed bag for my Americans: M60, M109s, M551 Sheridans, A battalion’s worth of troops in HMMWVs, some recon and anti- tank HMMWVs and finally some leg infantry.

The models are unknown for the M60, Heroics and Ros for the Sheridans and M109s and Scotia for the HMMWVs. All of the infantry and HMGs are from Irregular.

 

Moving onto the Russians we have a handful of vehicles: a ZSU23-4 and 4 MTLBs, 2 portee-ing the ZSU23-2 AA gun and 2 the Vaselik auto mortar.

The ZSU23-4 is from Irregular and the 4 MTLBs are Scotia models.

Finally lots of infantry and support weapons (HMGs and mortars).

All from Irregular this time.

 

I’ve based everything for use with Nordic Weasel’s 5core: Brigade Commander rules. I use a 50mm square base for a company stand and a 30mm square base to represent a platoon sized attachment.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

Fictional vehicles for fictional wars

I know that in some circles ‘What if?’ get a bad press (and certainly in the case of the Nazi fan boys obsessing about Maus tanks it is justified) but I’ve always been drawn to them. I think thios is because know why something wasn’t used tells you a lot about why other things did get used. I find that knowing about what technological blind alleys were peered into fascinating. Like my old math teacher said don’t go straight to the answer, show your working out…

On that theme here are a few vehicles that didn’t really exist (in one case) or see service (in an other) that I’m looking forward to adding into my 6mm Cold War games of 5core: Brigade Commander. [Edit- both models are available from Scotia ]

First up we have some 130mm Russian self propelled guns. These ‘existence’ of these were first revealed to the west by the controversial Cold War defector Viktor Suvorov who made a career of exaggerating the strength and martial prowess of the Russians.

Supposedly they were to equip Motor Rifle Division to give them some long range firepower. (In fact a similar vehicle was made in the 1950s in very small numbers the Su-122-54. There is a very good article in Armor if you can find a copy). Either way a copmany or a couple of supporting platoons are now available for my Soviet forces.

 

Secondly, and most importantly to Twilight 2000 players, we have the LAV75, I mean, RDF light tank. This little thing was a possible US Army acquistion as an air transportable light tank; it was armed with a long barrelled high velocity 75mm gun.  Although the project got to prototype stage  it progressed no further.

Again, I got enough so that I can field either a company or supporting platoons.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete

Future plans… ideas brewing.

Now that a couple of weeks has past since my Case Blue ’42 megagame I have recovered and can start looking to future projects.

I’ve hada chance to look at the feedback from the game and, with one exception, it is all positive. That is really gratifying that so many people enjoyed the game. As for the less than glowing feedback I know what went wrong and how to fix it in the future. Either way it hasn’t put me off running more games. I’m not sure if I’ll do another big game next year by myself or as co-designer but I’d like to help in a supporting role to someone else; a few ideas have been mentioned that I’m looking forward to helping out with… watch this space. The year after I’m looking at developing a 1919 post WW1 German Freikorp  game with the nascent Wiemar republic struggling with both internal and external threats. I was rooting through a pile of books today looking for something else and found a few that will be useful for research purposes so have left them somewhere accesible (OK there are currently a trip hazard).

I was thinking that given all the resources that I have made up for Case Blue it would be a shame just to have them sat in a box for ages so I put my mind to thining what I could use them for. The feedback on the game said that the core mechanics are solid but just need a few rough edges rounding off, a second or third large scale run should do that. The obvious thing would be to use the maps to game Operation Uranus (the Soviet winter attack that encircled Stalingrad) and possibly let the Germans attempt to relieve Paulus and his troops stuck in Stalingrad.

The decision to be made would be should the game start with a roughly historical set- up or one extrapolated from the end of the megagame? Given that players on both sides were arguing over who exactly won it could be a controversial choice… Doing it has a half sized game with 20 or so players would be an easy enough proposition.

Another option for using the components could be do stage something of a prequel: Karkhov in May 1942. Most of the units could do duty there but I would need a new map. It has a lot to offer in that it saw a large and argueably overambitious Soviet attack that caught the Germans unaware that resulted in some very large tank battles. The Germans did rally and inflict a heavy defeat on the Soviets but would it go that way in a re- run. I should dig out the excellent David Glantz book I’ve got on the battle and have a think.

Given that none of the players or units got onto the Stalingrad map in Case Blue ’42 I thought of a nice way to use the map. I’ll develop a Stalingrad urban combat game to take round the local wargames shows to drum up some interest in Pennine Megagames and what we do.

Moving away from megagaming I’ve some other plans too: a VBCW game set within Huddersfield with all the players nominally on the same side but with hidden agenda; this will probably end up being  a RPG/ commitee/ map game mash up. I’ve written up a scenario for a multiplayer game of 5core: Brigade Commander that I’d like to try, nothing too big- probably 7 players or so. We’ve all collected so much stuff in a short period of time it would be nice to see it all being used at once. I’d like to run a Vietnam campaign at a skirmish level based on actions against the Ho Chi Minh trail, be nice if I could integrate low level air and ground gaming in that one.

I cat sat for friends of mine last weekend (seven rescue cats, some with health issues, and a snake) and they very generously got me some Necromunda figures as a thank you so that will be a project for the next few weeks. I hope that I enjoy the new version as much as I did the original. I bought some GW Chaos Cultists to have a practice with so I can get back into the swing of painting that stule of figures again. I’ve had a hankering for doing some sci fi gaming recently so the Van Saar figures scratch that itch nicely. I’ll mix them in with some of the nice Copplestone sculpts that are still available from Moonbase and North Star that I’ve long coveted.

Well, that turned out to be a longer post than expected guess I had more ideas than I thought. Best get cracking.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.

 

2nd Quarter 2018- progress report.

This quarter I’ve not been in the shed as much as I’ve been working on my megagame so the numbers are a little low… that said over the last 3 months I have :

 

painted 5 28mm, 60 20mm and 123 6mm figures, painted 5 1/72nd and 29 1/300 vehicles as well as reading 32 books.

 

Cheers,

 

Pete.