Pocket Panzers

After taking a bit of a self-enforced break from wargaming at the end of August, I was fortunate enough to snag two games at Virtual Lard 7, hosted by the Too Fat Lardies (makers of Chain of Command, Sharp Practice, etc) community. This is the first of those, a Chain of Command game set on the eastern front during the late summer of 1941. As I've discussed previously on this blog, these games, hosted virtually through various video-conferencing apps, were the community's answer to the pandemic. For me, though, they've given me a great chance to play games with members of the Lardy community in the UK and elsewhere that I never would have gotten otherwise. In this scenario, the Germans are tasked with advancing quickly across the steppe (shown above on right) and reducing a pocket of Soviet stragglers held up in the factory complex. To accomplish this, they'll have a three-squad infantry platoon with its light mortar team, plus a tripod-mounted MG-34 medium machine gun, ...

  It's been a busy week here (and productive, I swear!) but I'm left with a pile of half-finished products and longer battle reports to write up. And here I am, out of time to get in a post this week. So I hope you'll accept some photos of a game from back in December, pitting Germans against Soviets (on this blog? are you shocked??). It was a bit embarrassing for me, fending off the German attacks and losing the game when I attempted a counter-charge that went totally awry. Full disclosure, this is an excuse to show off my friend's bizarre little tank - a French R35 hull mated with a Soviet T-26 turret seen in Axis service in one photo . It's a 3D-printed model here, and actually the paint has since been touched up a bit, so that the different colors covered over with German grey is more apparent. But, on with the photos: Soviets dug in near the T-junction Germans are bringing firepower to dig them out Germans deploy in force on one side, but a Soviet reaction make...

  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,...