Pocket Panzers

  Happy New Year, all. I figured I'd take a bit to look back on what I've gotten done this year. Since I started the blog in March, a lot of it has been documented, but I think a summary is in order. This is the first year I've tracked my painting progress, balancing new models gotten against those painted. I'm happy to say I ended up in the black this year, which I don't think has ever been the case. First, some numbers: 2021 Models Acquired: - Figures: 181 - Support Weapons*: 5 - Vehicles: 14 - Buildings: 4 - Scatter Terrain**: 2 - Animals: 2 2021 Models Painted: - Figures: 200 - Support Weapons: 5 - Vehicles: 11 - Buildings: 5 - Scatter Terrain: 50 - Animals: 6 * Artillery, tripod machine guns, etc. Anything not handheld. ** Entrenchments , tree bases, rubble patches, etc. I almost forgot to include my winter tree bases here, which boosted my numbers quite a lot. I nearly broke even with about 40 new figures and a tank gifted for Christmas, but still managed to c...

  Merry Christmas all, and warm thoughts to those that don't celebrate this Frankenstein's monster of a pagan/Christian/consumerist holiday! This is the second game of a two-game set played earlier this week. They're both short games where the outcome rested almost entirely on one or two units. Check the previous post if you want more info. Without further ado, I'll get right into it. For the second game, Alec and I swapped sides. He would take the defending Germans, and I would attack with the Soviets. We re-played the patrol phase, and this time the Jump Off Points ended up skewed to one side of the table. Both sides had 8 Force Morale this game. The Germans had 7 support points, the Soviets 11. We intentionally duplicated the error I made last game of giving the Soviet platoon too high of a force rating. You will see this ends up biting me in the ass later. I purchased a pre-game barrage as support, and because of the Russian special rule "Wrath of the Gods,...

  I'd like to take a look at two games that were over remarkably quickly - almost before they began. This is the first of them. For context, many of our Chain of Command games drag on for several hours, as a result of maneuvering, lots of shooting, plenty of chatting between turns, and of course the delays from me taking photos and notes for the blog. These big games are still enjoyable, but it's interesting to see a much shorter and sharper game. My opponent, Alec, is relatively new to the game, with just a half dozen or so games under his belt. He was my opponent for this game , where his attack started alright but had trouble breaking through the few valiant Soviets. For these two games, we went to Russia (perhaps the Ukraine or Belarus, really) in 1941 for a game that saw the Germans defending a small cluster of buildings on the outskirts of a Soviet village. I wanted to play Germans, as they are my main interest and I haven't gotten to in a bit. Alec chose to attack, w...