New Megablitz Units

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you a good time where ever you.are. I'm hoping to do a special Megablitz game for the 75th anniversary of Bastogne. So I've been spending the past few weeks painting up new units. Here are a few of the new Germans. First the Panzer Lehr Division, which I painted up a couple of weeks ago.

The 130th panzer regiment with a Pz IV and panther and the 130th AT battalion with a JgPz IV. The Pz IV barrel is bent to the right have to fix that.

The 901st and 902nd Panzer Grenadier regiments. Panzer Lehr was unusual in the all its infantry battalions were carried in Sd251 halftracks.

The 130th Recon Battalion with 2 armored cars and 2 halftracks

The division combat support units which include the artillery regiment, Flak battalion, and pioneer battalion.

Here we have the division HQ and staff.

Finally the division also had a number of army level support units attached to it during the battle. These include: the 559th heavy AT battalion equipped with Jagdpanthers, the 243rd StuG brigade, and the HEER 311th AA battalion.

Last week I painted up 26th Volksgrenadier Division. Buying some winter German infantry from H&R I decided to make them my first true winter unit (I'll flock the Panzer lehr for NW Europe after the game). I'll probably also use it as a regular infantry unit in early war scenarios, as like most Volksgrenadier division the 26th was originally an Infantry division.

Here's the whole division together. You may have noticed that the supply unit only has one wagon. I'm changing the basing of my support units to make them less awkward and also less expensive. I'm knocking them down to one miniture per 30-40 vehicles. 

Here is the unit with its unit designations. The 26th Volksgrenadier was unusual among infantry divisions at the time in that it still had 3 battalions per regiment.

While I was painting the 26th Volksgrenadiers, I also painted a the rear support for the Panzer Lehr division. I also painted a corps support unit the 55th Werfer Regiment.

I now have all the major units I need. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the 101st Airborne. I'll try to post them up next week.

Megablitz: New Aircraft

Managed to do some painting over the weekend. This time I decided to paint some aircraft for late war eastern front. First off we have some new German fighters. A Me109G and Fw190.

The Me109 is an old In-Service Miniatures model, while the Fw190 is from Scotia

Next we have a Ju87G with autocannons and a Fw189 reconnaissance plane.

Both models are by Scotia

Of course these aircraft need someone to fight, so I also added to my Red Airforce. First up is the fighters, an La-5 and Yak-9.

The La-5 is a Scotia model, while the Yak-9 is GHQ.

For Ground Support we have a IL-2M and Pe-2 light bomber. Also in the background is a Po-2 bi-plane. A versatile little craft, they where used as light bombers, or reconnaissance planes.

Both the IL-2M and Pe-2 are from Scotia, while the Po-2 is from H&R. 

That's the new stuff for now. A few more odds and Ends and I'll be ready for a another game of Megablitz. I'm not sure what I'll work on next.

Megablitz: The Red Hammer, Supersized!

    I actually got some painting done this month. For some up coming games of Megablitz I decided I needed some army level artillery as well as other assets. So I just came up with this Monstrosity, the 6th Breakthrough Artillery Corps.

   This unit is based on one that fought in the battle of Berlin and will be providing army level artillery for the forseeable future. The corps is made up of two breakthrough artillery division. First is the 2nd Breakthrough Artillery Division.

In the first half of the division we have the 20th Light Artillery Brigade, 10th Guards Howitzer Brigade, and the 16th Guards Gun Brigade.

Next we have the 48th Guards Heavy Howitzer Brigade, 121st High Powered Howitzer Brigade, and 5th Mortar Brigade.

The other division is 14th Breakthrough Artillery Division.

Its first half is made up of the 169th Light Artillery Brigade, 172nd Howitzer Brigade, and 176th Heavy Howitzer Brigade.

The other half has the 122nd High Powered Howitzer Brigade, 21st Heavy Mortar Brigade, and 6th Guards Mortar Brigade.

In addition to the artillery Corps I also made some other army level assets. Two Anti-aircraft artillery regiments and a medical unit. (For the horses)

Finally while I made a couple of modern Pact units for FFT. Two upper level command vehicles. These were part of a Shapeways command set I brought for fun. They will mainly serve as possible objectives in any FFT games.

Next up I think I'll paint up some aircraft.

Update: Starting a new army.

Hello
I was going to do some more Megablitz units last month, but there was a problem in shipping so I wasn't able to start the project I wanted. So instead I decided to get started on a new Sci-Fi army either for Stardust or some other rule set. Being an anime fan, I've been thinking of doing a Principality of Zion army for some time now. So I've decided to start with some mobile suits. Particularly Char's Red Zaku II. Here it is with it's standard weapons of an autocannon and a heat hawk.

I haven't decided if I'm going to put him on a base yet. 

The kit however came with a number of extra weapons including this bazooka...

...as well as this very large "anti-ship" rifle. In the anime the rifle was used to attack starships.

This is just the start. I have a few ideas for the infantry and hopefully I can get a hold of some the old tank and fighter kits.

New buildings, Soviets, and Rebs

This week I managed to finish up some projects that have been sitting around. First painted up some commercial buildings for FFT/CWC. First up we have this gas station.

All these buildings were brought from Game Craft. 

Next up we have a Taco Hell.

Finally last for buildings we have a Seven Eleven store.

This one gave me all sorts of problems

 Here are the 3 buildings together. I looks like the Taco shop is getting a drive through costumer.

That would be a BRDM-2 from this Soviet Divisional Recon Battalion. This is one of my old units that I just rebased.

Here's a photo of the first heavy recon company, with the long range recon company behind it.

And this is the second heavy recon company with ELINT company behind it.

Finally we have this 10mm Confederate regiment for Fire and Fury Regimental. I just started working on units for this, so won't be doing a game anytime soon. still it's a start.

Well that's it for the new stuff. In the next few weeks I'll be working on some projects for Megablitz.

Shipwreck Sunday

I actually manage to get the time to play a game. Me and Christian met up at Morning Star Games to play some Shipwreck. The scenario was based on one from Harpoon, in which a small German force had to intercept a small Soviet Amphibious Assault Group. Both me an Christian roll to decide who got which side. I ended up with the Soviets. I had two cruisers, a Kara and Kresta I, and one frigate, a Krivak II. They were escorting a group of 4 LSTs. Christian got a Ex-US Charles F. Adams missile destroyer and a Bremen class frigate. Both sides also had air support on the way.

The game started with bad weather, rough seas and light rain. In addition the war had just started and there was lots of civilian shipping traffic. Radar search was hindered by the bad weather and ESM wasn't effective due to the fact that all the civilian vessels had their navigation radars on. The civilians were also running with their lights on, making them easier to spot visually. Here's some pictures of what happened.

A pair of Civilian vessels spotted early by my Ka-25 helicopter, just before it was shot down by a standard missile.

A contact detected with radar from the German Lynx. There was a special rule that allowed for groups of ships that were close together could be represented by a single marker. (A group of markers in formation, would have been a dead give away,)

On turn 3 both sides received air support. Christian got a pair of Tornadoes. They check a some possible contacts only two find a tanker and a ferry.

Meanwhile my MiG-21s had better luck. Spotting both the German destroyer Rommel and the frigate Emben. 

A short while later his Tornadoes find my LSTs and fires 4 SSMs at two of the ships. Igla SAMs on the ships manage to shoot down 2 of the missiles. One missile missed the rear LST but front LST was hit suffering heavy damage and losing its gun and rear Igla launcher. 

The next turn the Lynx fires a Sea Skua at my Kresta I.

The Sea Skua hit destroying my port torpedo launchers. At the same time the Lynx was shot down with a missile from the cruiser Kerch. 

The tornadoes then fired off their remaining missiles the rear LST. This time the missiles hit sinking the ship

My remaining MiG-21 (the other had been shot down by a standard missile) tried to intercept the Tornadoes on their way out. Unfortunately it was no match for the more advanced planes. 

The next turn the ships started firing missiles at each other. My Kresta I fired two SS-N-3s will the Kara fired a single SS-N-14.

The Germans for their part fired five harpoon missiles. Three at the Kresta I and two at my Krivak II. 

The Krivak managed to shot down one of the missiles with an Osa SAM, but then one another was decoyed on to it. Both missiles hit sinking the Frigate. The Kresta took a hit that took out one of her guns and a ASW mortar. For my part, the SS-N-14 missed the destroyer, but both SS-N-3s hit the frigate. Being heavy missiles they made short work of the Emben. 

After that last turn, my phone battery gave up the ghost and died so I don't have anymore photos. The final turn the seas finally calmed down. The Kara fired another SS-N-14 at the German destroyer. Meanwhile the Christian fired three Standard missiles, at the heavily damaged Alligator. The standards hit the Alligator first sinking it; and they had just gotten repaired too. Shortly after the Selix hit the Rommel taking out its missile launcher and crippling it. This was when we called it. Christian won but it was a pyrrhic victory with the loss of a very modern frigate and the potential loss of a DDG, of which the Germans had only three.

It's been a long time since I've played any shipwreck and mistakes were made in both game play and the scenario, which was made up a bit rushed. But over all the game was really enjoyable. I really should have given the Russians four MiGs instead of two, or may something more modern then MiG-21s. I also might look into the weapons arches for some of the ships, particularly the Russian cruisers.

    The game also gave me some useful insight on my future invasion game. The biggest thing being the playing area. I'll either have to increase the table size/length or use centimeters instead. If I can get the players, I'm thinking of trying the invasion game on first weekend of June, it being the 75th anniversary of D-Day and what not.

More Terrain

A little while ago I decided to make some more terrain. This time it was some bush markers. I can use these as either bush in FFT or CWC games or I can use them as woods in megablitz games.

A total of 36. Originally I was going to only have two colors but I kind of liked the mixed ones better.

I'm back.

No I'm not dead. My work ended up taking almost all of my time last year and good amount of this year as well. But, now I have a new schedule and I finally got my work desk in some sort of order.To celebrate I decided to paint a few new things.

Now if I could only get some time to actually play a game. Right now I'm still working all hours on weekends. Anyway here's the first item. I added more units to my Naval Infantry Brigade, starting with the 1612th Artillery Battalion.

The unit is made of 3 batteries of 2S1 122mm howitzers and an FO mounted on a ACRV.

There should also be 3 ammo trucks (one for each battery), I'll probably add them later.

Next up I have the 112th Tank Battalion.

I decided to change things up a little and paint the tank battalion camouflage as I found a color plate from the 112th battalion T-55 painted such a way in the early 90s. 

The main part of the battalion, 3 companies of PT-76 amphibious tanks.

The MBT company which larger than the others. The unit is made up of 3 T-55AM tanks. This will allow me to support each infantry battalion with 2 PT-76 and 1 T-55.

Next up I have some Meddle Eastern Building by GHQ. I based them a LONG time ago but I never got around to finishing them until now.

The bases are a bit large. This because I originally based them for Spearhead. 

Not exactly sure if I'm OK with the road color I might change it later.

Finally I decided to spend some of my Christmas Amazon Money. In addition to buying a couple of books I also brought some LITKO barrage markers.

Well that's the new stuff for now. I hope to get more done soon. until next time.