Pokhlebin house by house

The last scenario of the first chapter of Winter storm. In our last game, a platoon of Soviets made it to Pokhlebin before the Germans cut the road. Pokhlebin is now encircled and the Germans must take it before the attack towards Stalingrad can start and Operation Winter Storm really begins.

I got to play the Germans this time and tried to get as close to the buildings as possible in the patrol phase to minimise the amount of time the Germans would need to cover the open ground.

Not as close as I would like

A German squad deployed to the west of the road but found that approach blocked by an entrenched squad of Soviets.

A second Soviet squad deployed in the forward building west of the road and the Soviet sniper found a spot in the outhouse. A third Soviet squad deployed and moved to take up positions in the forward building east of the road.

My German squad was quickly taking casualties form all those Soviet troops.

I rolled lots of 5's, 4's and single 6's, but eventually some mechanised support arrived!

Too late to save the German squad, which was broken and fortunately retreated out of Soviet line of sight.

The Soviets now concentrated their fire on the German vehicle. With devastating effect!

Multiple 6's when firing on a soft skin vehicle is bad news

It only got off one shot before being destroyed.....

I decided to commit all remaining Germans to an attack on the area to the east of the road and managed to deploy a German squad which started laying down fire. After a long awaited double 6, I deployed my support engineer squad in the open,

and engulfed the Soviet occupied house in flames.

Forcing the surviving Soviets to leave the building. The engineers then quickly moved forward to engage a Soviet squad which had deployed in another building.

The Soviet squad took out 2 engineers and caused some shock, but the flamethrower guy survived and tried to set the building with the Soviets on fire. However, not enough 6's rolled meant his third and final attempt (using a full chain of command dice to interrupt) had to be succesfull. Unfortunately for the Soviets it was and the squad had to exit the building, carrying a wounded junior leader.

Meanwhile the last German squad deployed, ready to take advantage of the hole burned in the Soviet lines.

Their task completed, the surviving engineers got out of the way so the other Germans could fire on the Soviets exposed in the open in front of the burning building. The Soviet junior leader was wounded a second time and the squad was hit hard.

A lone surviving LMG gunner dragged the twice wounded junior leader to safety.

The German senior leader now ordered the German squad to fire on the Soviets that escaped the first burning building and were trying to cross the road.

In the open, taking fire from two German belt fed LMG's, only the two leaders survived, the junior leader wounded. Soviet force morale was now down to 1. The Germans were still going strong with a force morale of 7, so we called it a day.

The loss of the vehicle and German squad early in the game got me worried, but fortunately the plan with the engineers, supported by a base of fire provided by a German squad worked.

Encirclement of Pokhlebin

Scenario 5 of the Winter Storm campaign. This time a Soviet convoy is attacked by the Germans.

The scenario warns that this is a tough one for the Soviets. Since all 4 previous scenario's were pretty tough for the Soviets too (look here), I gathered that this one must be particularly tough. We rolled the dice to determine who would play the Germans and who would play the Soviets, and indeed: I got the Soviets....

The scenario requires the Soviets to get reinforcements (2 trucks with 2 squads each) to Pokhlebin. The Soviets also have an AT gun with a captured RSO and a Maxim MMG. The Germans must prevent the Soviets from reaching Pokhlebin. They have 2 Panzer IIIJ and their usual abundance of LMG's with the Panzergrenadier platoon.

I wasn't too happy about the patrol phase.

German jump off point in an ambush position
 next to the road

My plan was to get the convoy as fast as possible off the other table edge. I wasn't very confident in the Soviet ability to withstand the German firepower if they would dismount and get caught up in a protracted firefight.  But very soon the Panzers turned up on the ridge overlooking the road plus a squad of panzergrenadiere....

The Panzers opened fire on the trucks but the damage was limited to some shock and 2 men killed. Only once multiple sixes and that turned out to have no effect! The convoy kept rolling towards Pokhlebin and was already half way across the table.

 Meanwhile the Maxim was deployed and killed the  junior leader of the panzergrenadiere on the ridge.

Another squad of panzergrenadiere deploys next to the road and a hail of fire strikes the convoy. With very little effect fortunately.

But all luck must eventually run out. The two trucks make it to Pokhlebin, but the RSO is tracked and moves slower.

Feuer frei!

It explodes, killing 3 of the AT gun crew. Two others and the junior leader manage to bail out.

But are then cut down by the machine guns of the panzer.

With the Soviet platoon safe in Pokhlebin for the most part I decide to try and get the Maxim to safety and deploy the senior leader to rally them. Instead of moving slow and taking cover by adopting a tactical stance I decide to run and count on the senior leader to remove the accrued shock.

They don't get very far however and German fire kills everyone except for the senior leader who is now trying to save his  own skin.

For a moment I think he's going to make it...

But then a bullet grazes his skull and knocks him unconscious.

The Germans move in to capture him...

But I now have a full Chain of Command dice and end the turn, waking him up.

He wipes the blood from his eyes and empties his Tokarev at the Germans, taking 2 of them down before being killed himself.

The Soviets succeeded in reaching Pokhlebin, achieving their objective, but lost their AT gun, Maxim and their Leytenant. In addition, the Germans cut the road to Pokhlebin.

We decided it was a victory for the Soviets, but certainly not a major one.

My plan to race across the table ended up being succesful. An unexpected win for the Soviets. 

Project Star Wars Part 4: Jawa's

I liked the Jawa's in the Mandalorian and the original films. A small band of them for use in games would be great, but there are no Legion Jawa's (yet) and there is only one for Imperial Assault. So to get more Utinni for my Euro I went looking for proxies and came across some second hand plastic GW night goblins.

Although they are a bit stunted for Jawa's they look acceptable to me and I can field 15 of them for the price of 1 Imperial Assault Jawa!

I cut away the Goblins face (luckily the face of a Jawa is hidden by his clothes so no need to sculpt a tiny face. I intend to paint the goblin's jaw as a scarf hiding even more of the Jawa's face), cut away the shield, trimmed down the hood, removed the hands and replaced them with smaller ones from my bits box. A few spare weapons, US, British and German WW2 pouches and presto: Inside every night goblin there's a Jawa trying to get out.

Comparison shot with a Legion stormtrooper (on a thin base):

Project Star Wars Part 3: Legion models

The Star Wars Legion stormtroopers and scout troopers I ordered have arrived. I'm impressed with the quality of the miniatures: excellent overall. Certainly better than the Imperial Assault miniatures.

From Leadadventure forum I already knew the Legion miniatures were larger than the Imperial Assault ones. But how bad would it be? Would mounting them on a thinner base work?

For me mixing the stormtroopers in a unit works when the Legion ones are mounted on (in this case a Warlord games) thin base. Although the movies suggest a minimum stormtrooper height, armies have been known to relax their recruitment criteria to fill the ranks. 

I'm less pleased with the scout trooper match. I think it is because of the quite small and differently shaped helmet on the Imperial Assault one. Maybe giving the Imperial Assault scout trooper a Legion scout trooper helmet will work, or a bare head.

For the Rebels I'm thinking of ordering a set of Star Wars alien heads to put on spare figures to increase their Star Wars look.

 

Project Star Wars Part 2: Vehicles

Although the types of Star Wars games I intend to play (platoon level or smaller) don't require a lot of vehicles, having a few on the table as objectives or terrain would be nice. Through the years I received some as birthday presents or bought them on occasion to be used in generic sci-fi games. I don't think I ever actually used one in a game, mostly because of the too distinctive Star Wars look.

For my Star Wars project I excavated them from my storage to see how they scale with the Star Wars miniatures.

First the Star Speeder 3000, scale: ?. A toy I picked up during a Disneyland visit.

T-47 snowspeeder. A Revell easykit, scale 1:52.

Small Firespray. Fighter pods toy, scale: ?

AAT:  Revell easykit, scale 1:50

Lambda-class T-4a imperial shuttle: Revell easykit, scale 1:106.

  Delta-7 Aethersprite-class (Obi Wan's Jedi starfighter), scale 1:39

The Star speeder, Snowspeeder and Obi Wan's starfighter look good. The Lambda shuttle and Firespray are obviously too small, but I'll use them anyway. Why couldn't there have been a market for Kuat and Sienar to build smaller versions of these ships for operations within a solar system without the need for lightspeed engines? Besides, the cockpit windows don't look too small to me. 

The AAT looks huge at first sight, but the hatch is the right size. I'll probably cover the Trade Federation symbol by a Rebel or Imperial symbol. After the battle of Naboo, a number of these tanks would probably have been captured intact by Naboo forces after the droid control ship was destroyed. These would then later be smuggled off planet by rebels during the occupation by the Imperial forces or pressed into service by the Empire itself.

I did some paint work on the Star Speeder but am planning to do some more weathering and highlighting on all of them (not going for a complete re-paint). The Lambda shuttle will be fitted with an extra landing strut, since the model is really unstable and the struts easily break off.

Looking for other suitable vessels I came across a spare Tau Devilfish model that wouldn't look out of place with some conversions.

And three Thunderbird 2 toys.

The one with Luke in the cockpit will mostly be kept in the original colours. The other ones will be re-painted and get some Aurebesh markings.

Flyers I have enough, but only one land vehicle. Since Star Wars seems to hate wheels, using my wheeled sci-fi vehicles would look a bit wrong somehow. So I'll have to find or scratchbuild a couple of suitable land speeders.