Early War AAR - French Escadron de reconnaissance vs Hungarian KÖNNYÜHARCKOCSIZÓ SZÁZAD - Cauldron

Hi all another ahistorical AAR this time it's EW and my French have some Hungarians to deal with!
Dave P was bringing his Hungarian tanks to the table for the second time, he rolled up cauldron.

Beyond The Foxholes: Eyes and Ear Episode 5 - Early War German Armour

Hello All

Welcome to the third episode of Beyond the Foxholes: Eyes & Ears, our premium content podcast available on Libsyn.

In this episode we join Ben and special guest Wild Bill Wilcox as they talk about Early War German Tank Armies. The guys look at all the special rules, tactics and all the different list builds.

ETC List Discussion

So I'm currently going through all the ETC lists to try and find some kind of strategy/ edge that will help us plucky Scots on the day. Now I won't divulge our cunning plan but I thought i would look at some of the popular list types at this years event.

For those of you who have no idea about the ETC it involved teams of 6 representing their nation (or other nations depending on mercenaries etc...) against other nations. This year it's held in Prague (Czech Republic) each team has six players, it's EW 1550 and two players must be infantry, 2 mech and 2 tank - oh and you can't have two of the same nation in the same slot, so no two French tank companies, but you could have a French infantry, mech and tank list.

Winner's Recent Mad Behaviour

Mornin' all, Winner Dave at your service.

Driving to work has given me more time for reflection, "Damn, I'm hot", "Adam's awful" and "I wish I'd had breakfast" are among some of my favourites.  I also end up thinking about painting...a lot!

Coupled to this I rarely manage to listen to the interviews Ben manages to do before we record, so I end up listening to them at the same time as you guys.  So, I sat down to do some painting (Soviet Infantry) and after listening to "News from the Front" I remembered there were a couple of interviews I needed to listen to.  As I was listening, diligently applying Black Grey to the boots of my infantry, I heard Evan say something along the lines of "I hate having to do the same thing over," and that struck a chord with me.  Now I don't know about you, but I got the feeling Evan may have experienced that scenario in a recent time frame to the interview and he needed to get that off his chest.

The Infamous FJs...just begging to be re-based

Like Evan, I hate having to do the same thing a second time and currently it seems this can be extended to I hate having to paint another couple of armies so I can play early war and mid war again. I wouldn't mind if I already had armies for those periods and I was simply extending them or painting new armies as a slow burn project, but because I'd made them a necessity, it just felt like work.

Cossacks in Flames of War

Hello All

Today we have a guest post from Christian - a Beyond the Foxholes fan all the way from Germany! I have been chatting to him about Cossacks, an army I keep almost collecting. He sent me his thoughts on the army and I thought they were too goo not to post on here. Anyway thats enough from me, here's Christian.

Here are my ideas and experiences concerning Soviet Cavalry, I will first go over the rules first and then move onto the individual lists in the different eras. The disadvantages, most of these are actually of no concern, and advantages of the Cavalry rules:

Road to Nowhere - New Minis

So I return to my French, after Art of War I'd come to really appreciate the weakness and strengths of the list, and following some rather extensive discussions with my friend John, some reinforcements were needed - thankfully I owned the models already!

Alongside that I realised I only had another couple of platoons left, so decided that they would also get painted - so I split it up into two painting batches - the tanks and AT guns in one batch, and the infantry in the other.

Missing Lists - Panzer-Abteilung 211 (Russia 1941)

Hello All

Welcome to a new series of posts I'm planning to do monthly or bimonthly. In this series I'm going to look at some of the missing options in Flames of War, platoons, lists or campaigns that haven't been covered yet and work out how to get them onto the table top.

I'm starting with the Panzer-Abteilung 211 - a tank battalion fully equipped with captured French tanks that operated out of Finland at the start of operation Barbarossa. The unit took part in Operation Silver Fox, a joint Finnish and German offensive to capture the Soviet port of Murmansk, before sitting out the rest of the war until the Finnish swapped sides.

Campaign Team Tournament 2015 - AAR

Hello All

A few weeks ago myself, Cid and Alex represented Breakthrough Assault at the annual Campaign FoW National league. For those of you who don't know the National League is a yearly event with a round-robin league that has promotion and relegation between three divisions. Division One has some of the best players in the country and is always hotly contested. Our 2013 performance (we wasn't able to attend in 2014) meant that we were now in Division Two. Our aim was to get a spot in Division One for 2016...

Within the team you all play a different period and then play the opposing player of the other team who is also playing the same period. I was playing Early War and took my trusted Japanese Infantry, Cid was playing Mid War with his Romanian infantry horde and finally Alex was playing Late War with Motorstrelkovy from Desperate Measures.

Building an EW Polish Army - Armour Part 2 The Rest

As promised in my first post on my new EW army, here's the rest of the armour.

The armoured cars...

I couldn't be bothered to try and source some decals, so I had a go at painting the eagle.  Naturally some are better than others.

Early War AAR - Japanese Infantry Vs Soviet Heavy Tankovy Batalon - Free For All

Hello All This weekend is Campaign, the yearly flames of war team league. Each team of three players are split between the 3 different periods and play all the other players in the same period. There is promotion and relegation and this year myself, Alex and Cid are representing Team Breakthrough Assault A Team (the B team is Marc, Matt and Steve). I'm playing Early War with my Japanese and as the format is 1500 points for EW I needed to change my list up from the one I took to the Art of War. I was struggling to find time to practice when I got an email from Army Dave asking if I was free to play a game at Entoyment. So off I went to try out the list, I turned up expecting to face Army's infamous Confident Conscript Soviet Infantry but instead I was facing 8 T-35's (gamesmanship Army?) which I knew I was going to struggle against with my great AT of 5... Still he would struggle to dig me out.  We rolled up Free For All and we would have tried out our changes as talked about on episode 29 of Beyond the Foxholes if this wasn't a tournament practice game. I won the dice off to attack and so I choose to make it a night fight so I could manoeuvre without getting shot at in the first few turns.  Quick note guys, this game starts off slow but gets bloody fast towards the end.

Japanese Hohei Chutai (7th) - Fearless Veterans HQ + Regimental Banner Full Infantry Platoon + Banners Full Infantry Platoon + Banners 2 Type 41 75mm 2 Type 97 Chi-Ha (Fearless Trained) 4 Type 89 Chi-Ro (Fearless Trained) 4 Type 89 Chi-Ro (Fearless Trained)

Heavy Tankovy Batalon HQ T-35 5 T-35 2 T-35 9 KhT-26 Full Unarmed Sappers Sportadic I-153 Chaika

Building an EW Polish Army - Armour Part 1 The Train

Hi, so i'm keeping a diary of my progress, partly to keep my momentum up, partly so in a year's time I can come back an see how I did something and partly because that's what blogging's about.

Enjoy!

Winnerski

[14-03-2015]

Today I start this year's project, which is my EW Polish army.  Because of the way I paint, I'm most efficient if I combine similar models, so I'm doing all the armour assets together...which includes the train...yay!

Unfortunately my enthusiasm quickly waned, as the train did not want to go together nicely and I'm left with a fair bit of filling to do.  At least its just the loco, the carriages seem fine.

Not a bad day's work though, one train, three armoured cars, three 7TP tanks, and 5 Tankettes.  I own an assortment of rare earth magnets now, which is really handy as you can easily adjust for each turret.  I have some that are thinner and some that are thicker than the standard BF issue sized magnets.  Right now everything is soaking in soapy hot water.

Road to Nowhere - List Destruction

So I'm back from Art of War, and my French have had their first outing, 3 wins, a mutually lost fair fight, and a loss - no 6-1 loss so happy on that!

It was a learning experience, with only one previous game vs armour, I found defending - especially in a mobile battle tough. The Czech 38t is my nemesis! (On a side note I've ordered two boxes from PSC!) The difficulty with this list against the 38t is that I have units which can hurt them - panhards/lafflys and units which can take a hit from them - hotchkiss, not one which can do both. Combating them was also problematic for the hotchkiss, with the 38t having a longer range - and my one man turret getting to shoot at them effectively was tough.

The other problem was against infantry - with lots of no HE I needed to assault to clear people off objectives, and with lots of HMG's the recce Hotchkiss were not relied upon. 

Thankfully I only faced barbed wire in one mission, but in my practice games it was noticeable how tough that made things for me.

Banzai! - Road to the Art of War Part Four - Tournament AAR and Photo Dump

Hello All

As you have probably seen I have been collecting a Japanese army for the Art of War Early War Tournament (click on the links to see parts one, two and three). The event was just over a week ago and I thought to round off the series I would post up an AAR of the event.

After a stop over at Alex's place in Northampton (and a few too many beers) we rocked up nice and early at the Sanctuary Gaming Centre. The day started with a bit of a shock as the Scottish team for the ETC (including Adam and Alex from Breakthrough Assault) turned up in full Scottish dress (not what I wanted to see at 8am!).

Banzai! The Road to Art of War III - Part Three

Hello All

As this post goes live it's the day before the Art of War and I only finished the army two days ago. In the last post I had just finished the infantry and I had hoped to get two more posts in before the event, as you can probably tell things didn't go to plan and so this post will be it.

I have been busy and also have a little playing on easy army one night at work I found a list I loved, it did mean buying some more Japanese tanks to be able to run it but I think it will be totally worth it in the end.

AAR - Czech Panzer's vs French Recon - Cauldron

Hi all and welcome to another AAR. I traveled up to Matt's place for a few games, and we started off with an Early war game. I broke out the French Escadron de Reconnaissance against Matt's Czech Panzer's from Barbarossa, for some Art of War practice. We rolled up Cauldron and so Matt was the attacker. As you may know from listening to the podcast Cauldron is one of my least favourite missions. But it is a mission that is common at tournaments so it's always good to get some practice in.

Matt's Czech Panzer's HQ 2 38t B 4 38t B 4 38t B 4 Panzer 2's 2 8-Rad's 4 Nebelwerfers 1 Flak 88 with Extra Crew

Adam's Escadron de Reconnaissance HQ Hotchkiss Long Barrel 5 Panhards 4 Panhards 3 'Recce' Hotchkiss 4 Hotchkiss 'short' and 1 'long' 5 Renault AMR 4 Mortars 5 Laffly SP Anti-tank 4 105mm Artillery

Road to Nowhere - Laffly and Renault AMR-35 Army for Art of War

Hi all another update for the project - and more importantly the list and practice games so far leading up to 'Art of War'!

Firstly the AMR-35's, I've got 5 of these mobile MG's, I still view them as being an assault unit more than anything else, with TA1, and half tracked mobility they can get to the enemy pretty quickly, they may still be able to be pinned by 5 shots, but unlike many of the other units can hopefully pin and even remove a couple of infantry teams on the way in with their 13.2mm MG's.

Banzai! The Road to Art of War III - Part Two

Hello All

Last time I spoke about this project I had just picked up my first box sets and blisters. Since then I have been very busy building, painting, writing new a list, rewriting the list, re rewriting the list (still not 100% happy with it...), etc, etc. But what I have done which was successful and a solid fixture in all the list writing is the first two infantry platoons.

As you might remember from the last post I'm painting up my Japanese as the Special Naval Landing Force, this seemed like a simple task thanks to the work Mike Haught had done on his blog, but it wasn't quite as simple as I had hoped. The uniform seems to have changed quite a bit over the course of 1939 to 1943 and I wasn't able to find the an exact uniform to work off. With this in mind I decided to paint the infantry as I thought was best and chose the colours I liked the most out of the options available.

Road to Nowhere - Hotchkiss

Now another two units done! I've done enough of these little guys for an HQ and 2 5 tank platoons, though for my EW french currently I only need 9 of them - in three different ways.

The obvious one is for my HQ, and it's one of the long barreled Hotchkiss, I'm strangely annoyed I can't choose long or short, as I can see my poor CO being gun tanked easier, but with a little extra range and AT I shouldn't complain.

Giving Up Infantry For Lent!

Welcome to the first ever ramble by Jersey, normally the sort of post Adam brings to the blog, looking at branching out away from the infantry lists and platoons that dominated my tactics and games over my first year in the hobby. This was written before Battlefront explained their schedule for 2015... the project I propose in this blog will be started after Brown Water Navy, which I'm very excited about but hopefully the sentiment is of use for those of you stuck in a "rut" with an army which you want to escape!

After playing Flames of War for a year, I’ve collected and finished painting two armies; a huge Italian infantry army with tanks and guns for three periods and a PAVN Local Forces Company for Vietnam games. At the start of the year I set myself a challenge in the form of New Year’s resolutions to finish companies from four different time periods and four different company types and if possible, use them at events. The last few units of PAVN were finished after this promise so count as Infantry and Vietnam time periods… now I just need something new!

Some Mid War Italians... where it all started.

Road to nowhere - French artillery

So another unit completed, - once again I remember how much I hate painting gun teams/artillery! Why is that the case you may ask? Well to me it's because I use very different styles and techniques when painting armour and infantry - and artillery requires armour techniques for the guns and infantry techniques for the infantry...

This shows up the difficulties in painting a cohesive army, the infantry look too clean next to the guns, so I've added dust to the helmets and a brown drybrush over the boots too, just to make them fit more.