1914 German Kurassiers

One of the many early war German cavalry units that I am rebasing and touching up from my resent acquisition is a Kurassier troop. The Kurassiers were the heavies of the German cavalry. They no longer wore the breast plates of yore but were still large men on large horses. For my EW force I want a full troop (nine stands) so I will have to purchase a few packs from Minifigs to finish this unit. One thing that all German cavalry shared was the lance, leading to confusion within the allied armies as to whom they were actually dealing with.
The lances all had pennants distinguishing there region. I used some medieval ones off Warflags.com and painted them. I will do a different region for each type of cav unit I created, Hussar, Uhlan, etc. I found the Renegade Miniatures article very helpful and it matched up with the pictures on the Landships website.
I am very much looking forward to seeing them on the table in mass.
I have some Peter Pig Kurassiers figures but they are a wee bit smaller so they do not work on the same stands. The nice thing about the Peter Pig figs are the pennants are already present and the lances are much sturdier.

Online sources:

http://www.renegademiniatures.com/article13.htm

http://www.landships.freeservers.com/german_earlywar_uniforms.htm

http://www.germanmilitaria.com/Imperial/photos/G005957.html

EW Armies, O' my!

I just purchased a large collection of EW Armies. British, German, French, Serbian with some Russians, Italians and AH thrown in. It is huge and I am a little over whelmed. Most are Peter Pig but a good amount of Minifig and then Eureka.

A large amount is painted but then again a lot is not.

I have started to rebase the British for FOW1918 and then will be doing a little touch-up painting. This will get the EW gaming going fairly quickly.

The things we find on eBay!

I search eBay regularly for WW1 15mm figures. My latest score are these Serbs. I am not sure the manufacture since the only current line is Eureka and these are different. I rebased them on to Litko bases and have no idea when I will ever game with them since I will need a EW AH or LW Bulgarian force as an opponent. They sure look cool!

The little things that can be done.

With my bicycle training hitting its most demanding period and starting a new job I have had very little time for gaming. I did manage to 're-base' my WoW WWI aircraft in the few minutes I could find. It is a really neat way to enhance the gaming with the miniatures but I can not take the credit for it. Harry did something similar for his Check Your Six miniatures.

It is a steel ball hot glued to the stand and a ring magnet glued to the plane. It allows total variance in yaw, pitch and roll of the plane with little effort and it stays in place. It makes a difference when using the miniatures and the plane to plane rule instead of the base for shooting.

Now to just find time to game!

Trench Battle Game - FOW1918

The other day I hosted a game for the DAHWG's (Dulles Area Historical Wargamers) at the Monday night fights. It was a pure infantry attack based in 1917. I used a combination of The Big Push mission in the main FOW rule book and the D-Day mission. I will work it up as a FOW1918 mission and post it on the Yahoo group after a few more play tests.

The British had four infantry platoons, a Stoke mortar section, a rolling barrage and a counter battery barrage. The Germans had two full platoons, one with three squads (no bombers), a HMG section and a Defensive (SOS) barrage.

The Pre Lim bombardment was fairly effective in clearing some wire but did little damage to the one German platoon on the table.

By turn three some of the Tommies were through the wire and into the trench. Will the Hun finally got their SOS barrage only to have it blasted away by the British counter battery. On turn four the German HMGs come on the table as his ambush.

Turn six the Germans finally get their reserves (both platoons) and they rush to cover the objectives.

It came down to a real nail biter at the end of turn 11 beginning of turn 12.

Jan wrote up a more detailed review from his point of view as the British CO at http://knightrecoil.blogspot.com/2009/05/western-front-wwi-tactical-combat.html

I think we may actually have it. The feel is good the game flows. The different weapons and FOG is good.

Turkish duldroms

I have been working on my Middle East project, specifically the Arabs at the moment. With the limited number of figures available I will be using 19th century Mahdist/Ansar figures which has sparked an interest in the Wars in the Sudan and other British colonial affairs. The variety of units makes it a very colorful period and looks to be a lot of fun to paint and play but what it has done is dampened my enthusiasm for my Turks. The Turks generally come in two flavors, regulars or Arab. Both wore the same uniform with the Arabs donning a keffiyeh instead of the kabalak. They did have cavalry and even a Camel Corp but generally it was foot sloggers with some HMGs and Artillery. Nothing really fancy or flashy, not that you have to have that to have good troops but it sure does help motivation when painting. You can add some German support if gaming Palestine 1918 but no one makes any 15mm figures for them. I have looked at some Peter Pig EW British to modify. They really did not have any air support so that is out. There are pictures and documents that discuss Stoss troops but that again is Palestine and there uniform is the same just with a Turkish version of the German M1916 Stahlhelm.

They fought on a number of fronts, so your opponents can be varied but Johnny Turk stays the same. I know I should just buck up and get at them since I only have one infantry platoon, one 10.5 How and some limbers and then they can hit the gaming table but it seems like taking medicine to do so. I have been reading "In the Clouds Above Baghdad" by M.C. Lt Col J. E. Tennant. It discusses the war in Mesopotamia with a focus on the air operations. It gives a variety of possible wargame scenarios but sadly nothing to increase the motivation. Hopefully when I finish some Arabs I will move to the Turks and finish them.

Going over the top

What is a WWI gamer without his own set of trenches?

I had created trenches a year or two ago but they were very blah and I think if the terrain is blah the game is more than likely to be blah.

Well, I got side tracked, not sure how or why, from my ME project these past few weeks and started looking at the trench battle side of FOW1918. I purchased a copy of "Through the Mud and Blood" to see how they handled a few things that I thought were week in FOW1918. This with some discussions with Robert Dunlop (GWSH designer and historian) and I think we are on our way, just some play testing.

Back to the terrain, I started looking for pictures of other peoples trench terrain and actual photos. I modified my existing pieces. I think the angle pieces make a big difference. The sand bags are modeling clay and the metal sheets are some plastic sheet I got at the local train store supported by small dowels (logs). The actual trench is made from foam cut on my table saw (very messy).

One of my inspirations was this from Landships.com http://www.landships.freeservers.com/new_pages/trench_schematics.htm

I think it makes a big difference.