N. Blockov's 1985 Soviets

[leopard]

First few pics of some new toys for Team Yankee.

As yet unweathered ZSU 23-4



Of course two is no use...



Same basic paint method I've used on the rest of them, primed Soviet Green, Gloss varnish, a black oil pin wash, bit more varnish then dry brush oil buff titanium before a final gloss then matt varnish.

WiP on a pair of Gophers showing up to the black il wash stage



Blockov now has some defence against those horrid A-10s

[leopard]

Bit more of an update..



Gopher air defence rockets





Shilka air defence artillery



BM-21 Hail battery



PRP-4 Observer



2S1 Carnation battery


Figured they may perform better if actually finished.. Just the rest of the T-72 to weather now.

[Baldie]

They look great.
Will get round to finishing mine off at some point.

[leopard]

Couple of new bits for TY



BRDM-2 Recce, there is a slight variation in the paint scheme, the pigment mud is dropped and replaced with a burnt umber paint filter, faster to apply and doesn't rub off.



2nd 2S1 battery, same paint method as the BDRM-2

Now have a nice range of support options to try out

[leopard]

Another day, another battle, two of them in fact for Blockov and his merry bunch of misfits.

First up a raid against some West Germans, which was successful with light casualties among the supporting units as the capitalist pigs attacked our supporting artillery leaving the key objective unguarded leading to an easy capture and securing, following which the battle raged for a while further.

Secondly a less successful raid against some Americans, while we managed to eliminate most of their heavier units reinforcements were starting to arrive and the motor rifle division was unable to take advantage of earlier gains.


Both interesting games, discovered a few things of note:

1. The "small platoon" concept is surprisingly workable, largely due to an unforeseen benefit, that of vastly easier traffic management as the units stop treading on their own tails and can fight effectively coupled with the ability to actually be everywhere at once, if not in enough strength to hold gains made.

2. Dug in infantry can be surprisingly stubborn and difficult to actually shift, especially if the elect to go to ground, artillery is effective but takes valuable time, Graham's Americans are brutal when used in quantity and defending.

3. Improved target priority actually works, gun for enemy assets that can hurt the T-72s first is good, the Mil-24D can take a surprising amount of punishment from non dedicated flak units and as such is able to ignore such and focus on its primary mission - elimination of enemy armour before they are shot down or chased off for good.

4. NATO lists seem to seriously struggle if they want toys with missions using the various flavours of reserves if they wish to try for a defensive posture - this is what cost Reece's Germans the first game, by trying to use a few toys they simply didn't have the infantry to hold ground while waiting reinforcements, I've noticed this in FoW (v3), and have seen many otherwise impressive forces flounder when only half of them are on the table.

5. The cheaper Soviet stuff is interesting, but worth its points, and not a point more - I think the little BRDM-2 scout cars for example are going to be highly situational but are a useful way to boost the platoon count and providing a threat later in the game, I think they will come into their own in larger games on larger tables where their speed could be a lot more useful.

6. I need more practice...


80 points in interesting, I gather the idea is to trade off less capable NATO forces while limiting the ability for the Soviets to simple spam everything if they ignore armour.

The way reserves impact NATO at this level is interesting, and actually pretty nicely fitting the theme of a force desperately trying to hold a line while help races to the rescue

[Old Longy]

Nice write-up

[leopard]

Another game, Defending in "Hasty Attack" v Reece, this is a mission that gets a bad reputation as impossible for the defender as there is no win condition other than the objectives, which go live on T1.

To be honest I actually don't think the mission is that bad, but could do with a condition about the attacker not being over the half way point by T6 as a "get on with it" and alternative way to win by pushing them back. It is however what it is..

Usual 80 point lists, Reece had his West Germans, looked like 4 mechanised infantry, three Jaguars which I assume are missile carriers, the mandatory six geopards (Reece assures me these are a mandatory part of the list and who is a humble leopard to question this), four missile launcher artillery things that look like the Soviet Hail but a lot more expensive and a pair of leopard IIs.

Blockov had the usual, a T-72 company with two minimum sized units, supported by three carnations, a pair of gophers and a pair of BDRM-2 scout cars plus a BMP-2 company with two minimum sized units, one with a Gremlin team attached, a pair of Shilka, three more carnations and two more BDRM-2, this backed up by a PRP-4 observer, three Grad rocket mortars and a quartet of Mil-24D.

Hmmm.. Defending with Soviets...

with 12 units, six ended up in reserve, the first of which was easy as the Gophers were wasted points here, joined by the scout cars, all of them for three, the next two being the T-72 then finally the Hinds.

Logic being the T-72 cannot operate until the Milan teams have been thinned out, and the Hinds are a waste of points while the Geopards live so actually the reserve rule helps here, indeed wish you had the option to always leave things in reserve then decide not to roll for them until you wanted to.

We started with the infantry dug in around the objectives, for some reason Reece put both of his next to each other so covering both was easy, all three artillery batteries deployed, pre-ranged on some likely looking corn fields and the carriers started largely out of sight, the larger of the two units in ambush again really just to keep them out of sight for now, the Shilka starting behind a building.

Reece deployed the geopards and infantry...

We settled in for a long slog, largely noted for a few things:

1. Reece being very cautious in his advance and really not making any mistakes, effetely screening his units and failing to fall for a few traps laid
2. Reece failing to fail pretty much any infantry saves all game (as in two platoons taking circa ten rounds of fire from two batteries of artillery and losing two teams to it in total... Another two platoons taking similar from one battery but not being dug in and losing no one to it... Excreta occurs so to speak (my Shilka were firing all this time, and killed one infantry team)
3. Reece failing to make pretty much every firepower test against dug in Soviet artillery (it took him a similar number of turns to shift about six Soviet teams blocking his way)
4. Most motivation tests on both sides passed, nothing important stayed pinned and very little ran off (except the surviving leopard after some BMP-2 killed the other one)

In the end a West German victory as the surviving Soviet infantry finally broke, not that there was much left, the T-72 having fallen to Milan fire pretty much as expected.

An amusing game, if a drawn out one.

Points for the future:

1. need to have a think of terrain, its needed to avoid having two rows of buildings/cover parallel to each other and the long table edges with an open killing ground between them, the game ends un the same every time, such features should be diagonal and include fences etc in the middle to break it up a bit

2. Reece needs to train his dice that firepower rolls matter, I need to trim my crews to load the guns

Blockov is wondering if BMP-1 or BTR-60 based infantry but more of it may be more useful, specifically some grenade launcher teams (its a pity the LMG teams are integral and not optional upgrades as one of them in a small unit would be useful). Also wondering about leaving the T-72 at home and running a second infantry formation (even a small one) to free points to bring a 4th artillery battery - they had rubbish dice this game but with average results they would have done the business here.

All good fun though

[Old Longy]

Did u use the new new missions?

[leopard]

Did u use the new new missions?

From the book (printer is, like a great many things, in a box), slight nod to stop transport units claiming objectives though.

Couldn't remember the changes so left them out

Wanting to try them, and the mission selector though

[leopard]

Another run against Alex's British, 53 points (as thats what Alex had, using a few proxy models for infantry carriers), we went with the first mission in the book as at this level neither of us really had the units to cope with reserves.

Starting to get the feel for how the Soviet infantry works though, the medium sized units seem to be better than the small ones - but specifically because they have the LMG teams - which really should be an attachment but are a core part of the list. meah...

Seems the rate of fire from the LMG is useful when facing the dug in infantry just for getting enough hits to get through the save to even try the firepower role - expect the Grenade Launcher teams (RoF:9!) to be very useful when I get them added.

Thinking on the carriers the BTR-60 may actually be more useful than the BMP-2.

Reasoning being the lower front armour doesn't matter as most weapons can either punch right through both anyway or the save they get hardly varies, the AT:21 Spandrel missile is nice, but against frontal armour of a battle tank its too much of a long shot and its expensive, the only real downside is losing the rapid fire cannon that can handle light armour reasonably well down to a heavy machine-gun (with the same FP, so same ability against dug in infantry)


Does mean getting some BTR-60 of course