Tactica - Living With Hen And Chicks

Hello All

I have spent most of the last six or so months playing Soviet armour and I have both loved it and found it frustrating as hell. Why I hear you ask? Hen and Chicks is the simple answer, it's both the Strength and weakness of any Soviet tank list and learning to live with it will either win or lose you the game.

So what is Hen and Chicks? For those of you who don't know, Hen and Chicks is one of the Soviets National rules.

The rule is:-

Breakthrough Assault 2 AAR and Photo Dump

Hello All

This weekend was the second Breakthrough Assault tournament, but the first to be held in Dorset, UK. 28 gamers mostly from the area but some from all over the UK (the Cairns brothers came from Aberdeen the mad men!) come for the two day four game Late War event.

The nicest thing about the event was see a lot of new faces to the tournament scene as well as some of the better players in the country making their way down to sunny Bournemouth. A big surprise to everyone who come was the number of tank armies, of the 28 lists 16 were tanks and only 6 were infantry.

Beyond The Foxholes Episode 9 - On The Road to Corrivalry

Hello All

Welcome to Beyond The Foxholes Episode 9.

We join Ben, Winner Dave and Adam in Adam's car on the road to Corrivalry.

In Act 1 the guys talk about their lists, goals for the weekend and how little sleep they have gotten....

In Act 2 we have an interview with Steve Chalton who talks about his up and coming event The Art Of War. We also have Doctor Alex talk about his weekend.

In Act 3 the guys talk about their weekend, while Adam tries not to fall sleep at the wheel.

AAR - Italian Alpini Infantry Vs Tankovy - Hold The Line

Note:- This AAR was posted on the WWPD blog, but for completeness it felt right to post it on our site too. (especially as it's our first MW AAR) Hello everyone, James here and today I'm writing up an AAR the first Mid War AAR for  Breakthrough Assault! Ben and I made our way round to Dave's house early to get a few games in, so I could practice and actually go to events with more than one game under my belt. During the course of the day both Adam and Alex dropped in as well so it was a good day to learn, understand and gain some pointers! The game I'm going to write up was against Ben's Tankovy in 'Hold The Line' and was a 1650pts game with one of the Italian Alpini lists that I'm adjusting and finishing ready for Brighton: Blood in the Snow in a few months time. I Defended with the Tirano Battalion of the Alpini against the mighty tanks!

Italian Alpini Infantry HQ with Passaglia Bombs 10 Infantry with Passaglia Bombs, 1 AT Rifle, 3 HMG & 3 45mm Mortars 10 Infantry with Passaglia Bombs, 1 AT Rifle & 3 45mm Mortars 3 Mortars 4 47/32 AT guns 4 75/27 Cannons 4 L6/40 Light Tanks 9 Pioneers, 2 Flamethrower 4 100/17 Howitzers 2 20/65 AA guns Sporadic German Air Support: Stuka

Tankovy HQ T34  10 T34, 3 upgraded to T34/57 10 T34, 3 upgraded to T34/57 8 T70  3 BA64

British Sextons and Bofors (SP) AA

Ok the penultimate unit for my Brits! This is my second platoon of sextons I've painted, I did a platoon a couple if years back but the way they were painted didn't fit with the army hence the second platoon. The models themselves I like, they fit together easily have enough details and the crew are easily separable to paint. 

I've painted them in the same way as the rest of my Brits, base colour, highlights and army painter dark tone, followed by Matt varnish. I had a spare Sherman from open fire which has become the OP tank for the unit as well.

Basing the Japanese Hohei Chutai

Ages ago I painted a Japanese Company, but I didn't base them, so they've sat in a show box covered in tissue paper on top of my wardrobe since October.

One of my new years resolutions is to get my Japanese army sorted out, so it's high time I got these bad boys based.

I've not used water effects before and have been looking forward to giving it a go.  I've also been stocking up on MiniNatur tufts, so I went for it.

Review - Italy Battles (FW229)

Hello All

The guys at Battlefront were nice enough to give me some prize support for my tournament, one of the prizes is the unreleased Italy Battles book. Well, I couldn't just leave the book unread now could I? After a read through I thought I'd be nice to you all, and do a review.

I will apologise now for a few of the photos, the paper was very shinny and so reflected the light.

The book itself is 120 pages and has three sections, the first section covers the history of the Italian campaign, looks at a selection of the battles and historical missions for those battles.

The second section gives you the rules for the Axis of Attack campaigns and two campaigns. Finally the last section is an updated version of the Infantry Aces campaign including a campaign report from the guys in the studio. The book rounds out with a look at the WWPD world wide campaigns and mentions what the next one is going to be (I'm not going to give it away here but surely it must be obvious!). So first impressions are if you like campaigns, this is the book for you!

53rd Welsh Division Themed Objective Markers

Mae'n ddrwg gen i os yw hyn yn erthygl tramgwyddo unrhyw un, yn enwedig y Gymraeg. yn dda mewn gwirionedd ychydig o dynnu coes yn cael ei awgrymu felly efallai y byddwch yn cael ychydig yn troseddu.

Hi everyone, I thought I would return to that great tradition of making themed objective markers for an army.

I thought I would explain a little bit about what I know about Wales and why I've chosen these themes for objectives.

Corrivalry 2014 Photo Dump

Hi All

Last weekend myself (Ben), Winner Dave , Doc Alex and Adam all went to Corrivalry for the first comp of the year. A great run event by Nobby as normal with 84 gamers from the UK, France, Italy, USA and New Zealand. A poor weekend gaming wise for most of the Bournemouth group but a well done to Adam who finished 11th. You can listen to our weekend in the next Beyond The Foxholes.

Anyway here are our pictures from the weekend

Specialism vs Generalism

Hi all 

I'm back with my second article on improving at FoW and this time it's a more practical affair.

I said in my first article I think that I am a better FoW player than I was a year ago, yet I'm not completely sure about that! The reason for that being is that my 'best' army - my British para's I don't use as much now - and when I do use them, don't find them performing as well as I remember!

AAR- Tankovy Vs Fallschirmjagers - Break Out

In our final game in the build up to Corrivalry myself and Winner Dave decided to try out the  Break Out mission from Wargames Illustrated as it's one of the possible missions for the weekend. Dave was using his Fallschirmjagers (as his Soviet army for the weekend is still not quite finished) so I would be attacking. The mission itself looks quite interesting with the defenders reserves coming on behind the attacker. So Dave picked a table edge to defend and we got got started.

6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment Von Der Heydte+ 2 Trap Teams HQ + 3 Panzerschrecks Full FJ Platoon + Faust Full FJ Platoon + Faust Short Mortars Short Scouts 3 Pak 40s 3 StuHs 4 Heavy Mortars

Tankovy HQ Matilda 10 Matildas 10 Matildas 10 Stuarts 4 SU 122's 5 SU 100's Short Spetnaz Limited Sturmokiv

Please Note:- In the text for the mission it says that the defender is in Delayed Reserves, but in the special rules it says Reserves. It has been decided for the weekend that the mission will use Reserves and I think thats how it should be played.

A Tale of One Rushed Gamer

So, I had someone else make some New Years resolutions for me, I objected to this but was told to suck it up. The main ones I can be bothered to remember were that I needed to do one post a month. Which I have failed as it's now February.

The other one was that I needed to put together an axis army and use it in a tournament. Now this weekend (literally, it's Thursday 6th Feb as I'm writing this) is Corrivalry. I was planning on taking my British rifle company as a good list which has been complete for the best part of a year, but no, at the last minute I decided to take a stupid axis list. This means as many king tigers as I can fit in the Ausbildungs abtielung 500 list from Desperate Measures.

Winner Dave's Charge to Corrivalry

Hey all,

Last night I dutifully sent in my army list to the tournament organisers for the Corrivalry.  Despite my plans to take my BOFJs (boring old Fallschirmjäger), I sent in a list that Ben made for me.  It's a Tankovy list from Desperate Measures.

21 T34/85s, 4 BA-64s and 6 Heavy Mortars with observer - as Fearless Trainer that's 1640 points.

However as we all know I take ages to paint anything and as things stand I have 1 platoon of T34s painted and the Heavy mortars half completed.  I've got 2 weeks to get this lot up to scratch, so i'm going to attempt to do this in the most economical way I can.

2 Weeks, the race is on CHARGE!!!

Soviet Lend Lease Support

Hello All

I have finally got around to painting the Stuarts I have been talking about for a while now and have seemingly done everything in my power not to paint! At the same time I also painted up the Sturmovik I also need for the event and a company of Sherman 76mm for a future Lend Lease only force inspired by Steve's one.

The Stuarts are from the Plastic Soldier Company and our technically the wrong model, but they were the only Stuarts I could get my hands on in time for the event and the difference is only the turret. Also the way I look at it is a Stuarts a Stuart, as long as I don't use the same model for both types of Stuart it shouldn't be confusing. Also I loved the model so much when I did my US versions I wanted to build and paint them again.

AAR - Kampfgruppe Peiper vs Tavkovy - Surrounded

Hello All.  As part of my New Years resolution I said I would do 9 AAR's this year, well this is my first, a Corrivalry practice game with Cid. Cid was using Peiper with 3 King Tigers, this was a good test for my list as King Tigers are the paper to my rock.  We rolled up surrounded which I thought would be great as we had talked about defensive missions in episode 8 of Beyond the Foxholes. Cid choose to auto attack and so I deployed for the defense.

Kampfgruppe Peiper HQ 2x King Tigers 1x King Tiger 4x Panzer IVs 3x Panzer IVs 3x Punas 2x 3.7cm AA 2x 251/9 D

Tankovy HQ Matilda 10x Matildas 10x Matildas 8x Stuarts 3x BA 64s 4x SU-100s 4x SU-100s Limited Sturmokiv