Another WIP Wednesday in the books! We're light on "progress" this week here at SOC as work seems to have just taken off so the painting has mostly slowed to a crawl however Afrika Korps basing continued apace and with the British 8th Army and Desert Rats project kickoff imminent, I realized I needed about another 80 bases to prep😱...
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| Flames of War small sized bases - which is how I base all of my microarmor - told the wife we're gonna need a shedload of green spray paint, sand, flock etc! |
I've been talking to Martin Rapier a bit about the OOB from his excellent Kasserine Game back in 2020 which I was ashamed to admit I somehow missed on his blog! If you haven't read Martin's KP Battle Report/AAR, go back and take a look and I'll apologize to Martin in advance for an unexpected influx in comments or blog traffic😁
I'm currently planning the OOB for the "big" Kasserine Pass game coming up, hopefully in March sometime. Peter's WWII rules are a "go" and Dave and I had a blast during last week's Kharkov "practice" game. The crowded nature of the 36" matt came up though, and I may "Scale up" the Kasserine game to Regiment/Brigade/Combat Command, and Martin gave me some excellent pointers and suggestions for a potential OOB which I will share in a future post. We'll do what we can to keep the battlefield from looking like a "parking lot" especially considering Kasserine Pass had a considerable amount of maneuver.
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| The AFVs from 10th Panzer Division close up! (This is not a 1:1 OOB for the battle - just showing off the vehicles I initially set aside for 10th Panzer - ditto on 21st Panzer) |
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| 10th Panzer Division w/501st Heavy Panzer Battalion - the trucks are now based. |
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| 21st Panzer Division - the prime movers for the 88s have been based, and the 88s have been painted - you saw them in the Kharkov game! Also the halftracks were replaced with trucks as they should be! |
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| Posted last week but I've doubled the amount of palm trees, and Peter from "Grid Based Wargaming" is going to be providing some of the trees for the Kasserine Game! The SOC staff is preparing something nice to send Peter's way. I love when gamers trade stuff and contribute to each other's collections straight from the blog-o-sphere. |
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| Another gratuitous shot of my middle eastern wood and "milliput" buildings of which I need to make more. |
I was racking my brain thinking of how I would put supply dumps and army command centers on the table for kasserine when it dawned on me that I ordered an irresponsible number of 6mm modern military tents from Gamecraft minis. These are resin and based on 20th and 21st century military HQs tents (affectionately known as "TOCS" or "Tactical Operations Centers" where I spent MANY hours as a battle staff officer)
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| Resin command tents |
So that's it. 10th and 21st Panzer wrapped up for the most part, now I need to work on the Americans and finish them, then British and Italians who have their basecoat but their actual bases need finished before they can be mounted to their stands. I also have a BATREP to post later this week featuring Peter's WWII rules "Scaled Down" for a more tactical level engagement with everyone's favorite OHW scenario but with a huge twist.
You're getting us all eager for the big release (or should I say 'drop' in these streaming days?) with all these teasers Steve. You don't work in movie publicity do you ;-)
ReplyDeleteMaybe I have a future in branding or promotions :) If the current job doesn't work out I'll put that on thr board as "plan d" somewhere after Alaskan King Crab Fisherman, Real Estate Agent, and French Foreign Legion!
DeleteAll kidding aside, Chris, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting excited for the kasserine bash!
DeleteI know you mean, Chris. With the hype, I am waiting for the line, “But wait! There’s more!”
DeleteAnother interesting progress report, Steve.
I didnt think my reports were that cheesy.
DeleteNot cheese; enthusiasm.
DeleteOoh, nice tents! And very flexible as game markers for all sorts of things. Glad the project is coming along and it was good chat about Kasserine.
ReplyDeleteThanks Martin I almost forgot i had them! I appreciate your insight and it's certainly given me food for thought! I'll be posting some scenario and OOB info in the coming days
DeleteI meant to add, thank you for the kind comments about my Kasserine game. Looking back on it, it was great experience to run it, and in the middle of lockdown it was nice to be able to play any sort of game at all. That was partly why I went with 15mm stuff, even though it was a bit big, so that the remote players could see what was going on. I did Operation Goodwood in 6mm though, as the battlefield was so congested.
ReplyDeleteAs I said before I was shocked I somehow missed your game report. I think the game would not feel like Kasserine with too many units on thr table if that makes any sense. OTOH, Goodwood should feel crowded as Antony Beevor alludes to in "D-Day" that the Normandy battles were very crowded!
DeleteGood move to look at the density issue for Kasserine. From memory (and this is very distant memory) the Kasserine game by GDW had breakdown counters for the armour. I am guessing it was a division breaking down to constituent regiments perhaps, but perhaps in your scaling attempts, there might be some mileage in that sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteI agree Norm. I had not thought of running the game at larger than
Deletebattalion level, but if that was to be the case, I'd need a much bigger map! You are quite right sir, the counters have some very powerful German armored units (with the tank silhouettes!) Broken down into smaller unit counters.
Another nice teaser up date and looking forward to seeing all of this stuff in action in due course:).
ReplyDeleteThanks Steve. The WIP Wednesday posts have been keeping me honest and actually have kept the brushes moving and the rattle-cans...rattling?
DeleteYou still seem to be making some steady progress Steve, a nice mix of different "stuff" on display.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Keith! Always an eclectic mix over here on my blog. It's a miracle I get anything done☺️
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