Battle Report - Baltic Crusades - Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, Historical Mod

Hello Folks, so had another day of Wednesday wargaming. This time I had just enough Rus painted to give a practice game of what I am painting for can games a shot. Always good to try a few things out, and playing games is the best incentive to get painting! Been working on these guys for awhile so good to get them fighting.

Here is the army lists and stats that I was using:

Everyone just has what ever weapon they are holding, so no shield guys have 1 less armor, the Knights have a lance, allot have a spear ect.. I forgot to label the columns but if you are familiar with this game it goes Fight, Strength, Defense, Wounds, Attacks, Courage, Might, Points.

I think based on our results I will change things up a bit, give the commanders more might so they can make more command type actions, and maybe make the Bishop a bit less fighty so he mostly wants to boss guys around.

So unto the games, I took the Rus and Serge tried the Teutonic Knights. I tried to convince him he had to use the unlucky SS dice since but not such luck. Terrain wise we said it was winter so you would have to roll on crossing the river to see if you fell down or were just slowed.

Game 1:

For the first game I gave the Knights the goal of escaping off the board, having just lost the Battle on Lake Peipus they are now trying to escape. I spread my guys out to try and block them in.

The Knights were coming down the West flank so I held me militia back to try and corner them while the heavy hitters went to defend the ford. Meanwhile the plan was for the Levy and the Boss to cross the river and engage the cross bows.

Sadly the crossbows were very effective at putting down my troops, and the Knights out flanked back to the ford splitting my army. A big scrum for the ford thus ensued as you can see. My Varjazi rallied to the banner and gave it their all to keep the knights at bay.

But luck was not really there so my forces were ground down pretty heavily. Eventually leading to a routing Rus force.

I think the main things we learned here are that Crossbows can be really good if they are lucky so have to be careful about giving one side to much advantage that way, and the heavy Teutonic guys are really hard to kill.

Game 2:

Had enough time to give it another go so we decided to try one of the scenarios from the Legions of Middle Earth book. In this one the goal is to kill the other guys commander, so time for the bishop to go down. He had taken a wound at the end of turn 1, so just need to get him a bit more!

The Teutonic guys ended up defending the ruins, with the cross bows placed high up and the Kngihts ready to strike out. I split into 3 groups, with the Levy across the river to fight the Knights, the high quality guy to go down the middle, and the medium infantry to attack across the river.

Right away the Knights charge for the Levy hoping to make the Sinners pay, but they advance and bring one down with their javelins. Meanwhile my elite troops are devastated by the cross bows. No wonder they were outlawed in Europe by the pope!

The Levy then clean up the Knights and my troops advance. Not as much greatness for the Cross bows this time. But the levy are really impressing me.

Now we are getting into a real battle in the ruins. Most of the levy died throwing javelins up at the cross bow guys, and most of my tougher guys are bolt filled corpses. So it's going to be tough.

A few guys climb up the ruins to fight the cross bow guys but not having much luck with that. Down on the bottom floor I have a good battle going. But my guys need a 6 to get through the tough crusader armor, so I am being ground down again. But really just need to trap Herman.

The back and forth presses on until I am ground down. One heroic militia man did manage to get a wound on the bishop thou. I think the Teutonic's had a wound on my boss as well. My force routed here without any of the commanders dieing. At the time I was assuming this was a loss for me, the Teutonic's are almost broken being below half but not quit. But it may be technically a draw due to my leader being alive.

Anyway I found the battle in the ruins to be allot more fun so I probably will set it up similar to that again at Cangames. I am hoping to have allot more Rus so we could have a Teutonic for with the Bishop defending the ruins and a force of Knights trying to rescue him. Then the Rus can either attack with 2 forces or try to block the Knights.

Let me know what you all think, suggestions and comments appreciated.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Pagan Rus Levy

So bit of a small update, I got half of the levy from my Pagan Rus box done. Just enough to try out a practice game for Cangames. Going to use the Historical mod for the Lord of the Rings game. Just 6 more of these levy to do and then it's on to the Rus Princes. Starting to get a bit burnt out if I am honest but the press continues.

These guys are not fancy at all so don't get any kind of shield transfer just a solid color, only 2 of them even have shirts or boots which can't be great so far north in Russia. Also the battle I am doing took place on a froze lake in winter so maybe not the best figures, but you have to buy what is being sold!  Probably should go back and add a bit of weathering to the bottom of the shields but we shall see.

Paints Used:

Foundry:
Flesh Shade, Flesh, Flesh Light

GW:
Leadbelcher, Mithril Silver, Kantor Blue, Khorne Red, Wazdaka Red, Chaos Black Spray

Liquitex:
Black Ink, Umber Ink

Army Painter:
Soft Tone, Electric Blue, Bondi Green

Vallejo:
Brown Violet, Chocolate Brown, Deck Tan, Dark Sand, White, Black, Ivory, Dark Grey, Wood Grain,  Flat Earth, Neutral Grey, German Camo Beige, Smoke, Japanese Uniform, Luftwaffe Green, US Tan Earth

Baccus Basing Kit for bases plus some flock


Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 142 (2 P47 Thunderbolt, and Patton)
Painted: 79 (6 Rus)
Total: -63 

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Pagan Rus & Intruder

So got some more guys done over the weekend. The second half of the warriors from the Pagan Rus set.

Making decent progress on these guys, the next bit is a unit of 12 Levy, I got a real good start on those as well. Hopefully will be able to finish off at least half of them by Wednesday so we can try a test game of this. Then it is on to Nevsky and the Rus Princes. Starting to get to the point where production needs to increase but still should be ok for Cangames. Going to be a busy couple of weeks thou I guess.

Paints Used:

Foundry:
Flesh Shade, Flesh, Flesh Light

GW:
Leadbelcher, Mithril Silver, Kantor Blue, Khorne Red, Wazdaka Red, Chaos Black Spray

Liquitex:
Black Ink, Umber Ink

Army Painter:
Soft Tone, Electric Blue, Bondi Green

Vallejo:
Reflective Green, Chocolate Brown, Deck Tan, Dark Sand, White, Black, Ivory, Dark Grey, Wood Grain, Orange Brown, Flat Earth, Neutral Grey, German Camo Beige, Smoke, Japanese Uniform, Luftwaffe Green, US Field Brown

Baccus Basing Kit for bases plus some flock





Finished off another Infinity model, the Intruder.

Paints Used:

GW: Chaos Black Spray, Leadbelcher, Khorne Red, Wazdaka Red, Wild Rider Red

Vallejo: Black, Dark Grey, Neutral Grey, DEck Tan, Ivory, White, Choclate Brown, Flat Earth, Dark Sand

Warpaints: Electric Blue


Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 140 (8 few more Infinity guys)
Painted: 73 (4 Rus, 1 Infinity Guy)
Total: -67 

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Flames of War - Late Late War Tank Battle

So I decided that we should do a late late war tank battle, with no rivers! We agreed to pick a list from Blood Guts and Glory, Devils Charge, or Nuts. So we are playing a game maybe somewhere between the Loraine and the bulge.

We played 1500 points, so I decided to go with the Veteran tanks option, and since I had recently painted Abrhams and some M10 Tank Destroyers I wanted to give them a try so took those as well. This is what I then ended up with:

Serge went for a disguised Panzerbrigade, really I don't know where these bizzare forces come from some times! But their stuff is disguised as Americans so you can't shoot them unless you make a skill test or they have already shot first. But I talked them into using the evil SS dice which never roll well so there is that.

A big unit of 5 Panthers that is some scary stuff.

I figured it would make sense to play a mobile battle and we flipped a coin to see if it would be Breakthrough or Counter Attack, never felt like doing Cauldron or the other one. I quite like break through so sounds cool. I ended up being the attacker so I put the Tank Destroyers in delayed reserve as the breakthrough unit and deployed everything else. The Germans have the 5 Panthers in the big hill with the wooded top, and the StuGs hiding behind the small hill. The German commanders are tucked away somewhere.

I decided the best idea really was to get in with the StuGs right away and avoid the Panthers until later. So I deployed that way, and here we are after the 2 spearhead moves that Abrams gives ready to start things off.

So after my move Abrams is ready to shoot up some tanks, but I failed the roll to see through the disguise with both of these units, and the other tanks by the church, so the nasty guys would get the drop on me. Abrams then tried to do his storm trooper move with this unit but promptly rolled a 1 so that was not happening. Not the decisive start I was hoping for.

The Germans moved the StuGs into a firing line, but only got 1 kill. Meanwhile the Panthers made their way out of the smoke and the hill getting into position towards some shots next turn.

Turn 2 I kept up the pressure on the StuGs, they had shot now so I was able to return fire! The stabilizers and easy ride really helped me out here so was able to get a nice 2 kills and 2 bails. They passed the roll for platoon morale but I can't really complain. My other tanks moved at the double to try and hide from the Panthers. My plan is to draw them across the train tracks and have Shermans on both sides of them to get some side shots. It's not a good idea to get in a long range gunnery duel with 5 Panthers!

I even sent the company commander off on his own.

Now is was the Panthers turn to have a not so stellar turn, they only managed to bail the commander and the 1 tank from the other platoon the could see. But the StuGs killed another 75mm Sherman, and Abhrams didn't manage to un-bail! In the bottom you can see the rude second in command German team coming up to kill some of my mortars.

On my turn I finished off the StuGs, so one problem down. Then I smoked the Panthers on the cross roads to force them to move, and doubled my tanks again trying to hide behind the next woods.

Getting Excited now so blurry pictures

This turned out to be pushing things a bit to much and 3 Panthers caught them and eviscerated that platoon in one go. The bailed out guy left behind failed his platoon morale and was also gone. Meanwhile the religious guys by the blown up church killed my commander.

To make matters worse lieutenant rude snuck up in the woods and murdered the  mortars commander! Things are looking very bleak for the Americans. Don't worry though the mortars got him back a few turns later after he killed one more team.

But my tank destroyers had come in on their break through so I now had the Panthers surrounded, and it was getting close to turn 6 so the Germans had to start thinking about defending the objectives in the vineyards. So there were opportunities for me to get some revenge. The tank destroyers heros that they are deployed from their seek and destroy doctrine into the forest on the hill and took out a Panther. Someone also bailed the guy across the tracks at some point, and he failed his roll many times to un-bail. Abrams and my remaining Shermans though were forced to start a long risky journey across the open plain.

The Panthers struck back against the tank destroyers, but only managed one kill, hah! I later had to change which was the killed one as we found out I needed a team within 16" of an objective to not loose. Still that Panther was bailed so the mocking really ramped up about here. Really enjoying those evil SS dice I think hah.

My tanks continued their trek up the side of the table, while Abrams drove down the road. Now I have the Panthers on 3 sides so really in the position I wanted! The tank destroyer decided that discretion was the better part of valor and went gone to ground instead of shooting to make it hard for the Panthers to get a hit.

I think they did and only got 1 bail! But some other guys killed a Sherman. The poor guy on the left of the tracks is still bailed out, so the German Commander raced down to give him some encouragement. The Americans were very luck and passed all their platoon morale rolls so I am hanging on with just 3 vehicles!

Now was the Americans time to be lucky, Abrams destroyed the bailed out guy finally, and the tank destroyers took out the side of the Panther in the woods. The Panthers then failed their platoon morale roll, and since the commander had raced off he couldn't give them a re-roll! With just the German half track left we called it a win for the Americans!

I really enjoyed this game, because I won for once! No hah because of all the manuvering and cat and mouse games. Also there was a fair big of back and forth and some fun moments.

Let me know what you think. I am really starting to not be crazy about the green GW mat so going to have to replace it soon maybe.

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Pagan Rus, WW2 Americans & Infinity

So time for another painting update, cangames is just a month away now so getting time to really be stepping up production. But still have a few distraction projects that keep getting in there.

First up I finished off some more medieval Russians, half a point of warriors. I am finding that doing them in groups of 4 has been working well so keeping on with that. Just have to finish 4 more warriors and then a unit of 12 levy to finish off the Pagan Rus set, then have to do Nevesky and some more fancy Rus.

Shield decals are from LBMS.

Paints Used:

Paints Used:

Foundry:
Flesh Shade, Flesh, Flesh Light

GW:
Leadbelcher, Mithril Silver, Kantor Blue, Khorne Red, Wazdaka Red, Chaos Black Spray

Liquitex:
Black Ink, Umber Ink

Army Painter:
Soft Tone, Electric Blue

Vallejo:
Reflective Green, Chocolate Brown, Deck Tan, Dark Sand, White, Black, Ivory, Dark Grey, Wood Grain, Orange Brown, Flat Earth, Neutral Grey, German Camo Beige, Smoke, Japanese Uniform

Baccus Basing Kit for bases plus some flock.

Next up I have a unit of M10 Tank Destroyers, painted these for one of my compatriots in the campaign to borrow, still have 2 more to finish out the squad. Have had these assembled and in a box for years so still good to get them done finally! Not sure how well they did, but M10s are usually pretty effective if you can get a good shot, really need all 4 thou I guess.

Paints Used:

GW: Chaos Black Spray, Leadbelcher

Vallejo: Black, US Field Drab, Kahki, Brown Violet, Reflective Green, Flat Earth, Neutral Grey

Liquitex: Umber Shade

Foundry: Flesh Shade, Flesh, Flesh Highlight

Rust Effect

Finally I have a pair of guys for infinity that I finished up last Thursday.

Let me know what you think.



Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 132 
Painted: 68 (4 Rus, 3 Tank Destroyers, 2 Infinity Guys)
Total: -64 Crossed the half way mark again!

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Firestorm Lorraine - Turn 1 Battle 4

So second battle for more in the Lorraine, once again trying to get across an impassible river, but at least time there are no Metz defenses so at least that is something.

I was a bit lazy so I just went with the exact same army, just that the firestorms were a bit different, the extra platoon of tanks got switched for some infantry. Not really useful but you get what you get. The Air Support is proving itself to be totally useless in this one but that is life also hah.

I don't have the German list but there was a platoon of 5 Veteran StugGs, 2 of infantry, some AA guns, and some anti-tank guns.

We rolled and got Forced Withdrawal, so the Germans were trying to slowly pull back. Figured I had a reasonable chance at it this time around.

Here we are after my first turn I think, basically moved up with everything and fired a smoke bombardment to limit the fire from the StugGs as much as possible. I decided to start with everything massing on the right side, actually I am starting to think this may be a mistake, but that's what I did. The Recon moved up to the river on the far right to block the Germans from ambushing that wood on the flank.

The Germans shifted down and started some firing, killed a few infantry stands and 1 Stuart so not to bad. The plane came on in the first turn and failed to range in, second turn got shot down by AA. Didn't get a third due to rain.

The StugGs were almost destroyed by this point, and the far left objective had been left totally open, so I decided to try sending the Stuarts after that. I moved them down at the double which was risky as I knew the German ambush would be forced to deploy, but I also knew they would have to be a long range so figured it would be worth a shot at the win. I kept pressing with my tanks and infantry on the right, infantry were starting to get worn down, but still good for Shermans so far.

On my turn I moved the Stuarts around to the side of the anti-tank guns and tried an assault. I hadn't got enough hits for a pin and didn't get any kills with my firing. But I need to kill them to be able to claim the objective, they will just kill the Stuarts otherwise. Unfortunately I was about half a cm out of getting totally behind their firing line so one gun got to fire in defensive fire and I lost both stuarts. I still think this was worth the shot, but should have been moving down there from turn 1 really.

On the other side of the table the last fire from the StugGs managed to kill 2 tanks which was not great for me.

On my turn I finally got rid of the SutgGs and pulled back the infantry so I didn't loose the platoon. The Germans then began to redeploy their guns and get ready for the next attack.

On my turn I put down some smoke and then made a pair of assaults with all the remaining Shermans. Both of them never really went my way. I did push the infantry back off the objective and pinned them down. But I was bleeding tanks to defensive fire hits from Panzershrecks and Panzerfausts. But I was on the objective now so there was something. I think my mistake was that this assault happened one turn to soon, if I had sat with all the tanks and fired I may have killed a few teams and would have been in a much better position.

The Germans used the far infantry platoon to mount into trucks and drive to contest the objective so they didn't loose. I shot them all down with machine guns, without much trouble and kept up the smoke to minimize the fire from the anti-tank guns.

But in return the Germans managed to know out my remaining tanks and my company broke. As you can see the last remaining German infantry is almost below half so really was a close game that could have gone either way. But in the end another failure.

We actually lost all 4 attacks across the river in the campaign, which is not super great. The river is very difficult to get across, and really negates the maneuverability bonuses of the American Shermans, you almost need a specailized force for this kind of thing but they aren't really available in this campaign. But the Canadian forces with amphibious transports would be super helpful!

Hopefully we can do better in turn 2.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Firestorm Lorraine - Turn 1 Battle 3

So last night we started off the Lorraine campaign with the local club for real. Turn 1 got started with me and Serge playing mission number 3 at my place since we were down a player, and no one really wanted to play this mission for the allied side.

This is the attack into Metz across the Moselle, so we are attacking a heavily fortified position across a river,  so no real question as to why this wasn't a popular battle.

The campaign requires there to be an impassable river going down along the center of the table, and we were playing a defensive mission with the Germans always defending. This has a huge effect on the battle and makes it very tough, it's a hard choice in list building as well really, especially depending on what the defender chooses. You either have to go with tank or infantry, tanks can only cross the river at bridges or fords so you are funneled in a massive way. Infantry can paddle across but are very vulnerable and can be hard to get an assault at all.

I went with the tank option so I would get to use some of the new stuff I had been painting, plus I went into this knowing a win was very unlikely. So I decided to try some fancy shermans and give it a good try.

And here is the German list, firestorms were an SS infantry platoon, a replacement infantry platoon, a bump of 1 platoon to fortified, and the artillery in gun pits, plus I am going to say an impassable river the best of all! Using pioneers to defend is smart, I had not considered that possibility when making my list. I am now tempted to take a parachute engineer platoon, or maybe spend the next few days painting bulldozers hah!

We rolled for a defensive mission and got hold the line, so typical defensive battle the Germans get 2 ambushes but are in delayed reserves.

Here is the initial set up. As you can see we already had to make some changes to the normal set up to even make this a game. We played across the long edges so there would be 3 crossing, normally this missions goes the other way, and secondly we agreed it would be unsporting to put anti-tank obstacles in front of the bridge. In reality there could have been just two crossing with impassable barriers making it impossible for me to cross at all.

So I had a look at the defensive set up and decided that I did not want to attack into the artillery on the hill as after ambushes I would be fighting 3 platoons of anti-tank guns basically which I thought would be to much. So I massed on the other side. This would mean driving across mines but that is life.

My plan was to move the recon up to the forest so the ambushes would not be able to deploy within 16" and move my tanks up to shoot the guns when the came. I smoked one of the artillery guns to find out the wind direction and tried to kill one with the plane while I could still call it.

This went ok I guess. It was pointed out after that I could have made a guess where the guns would go and smoked the infantry in front of me which has merit.

The guns then popped their ambush and eviscerated one platoon of my tanks, the artillery killed one. I had the jumbo left but failed platoon morale. In this shot I decided not to try the jumbos rule for some reason which was a mistake. I didn't want my platoon command to die but he was still gone. The AT 16 of the cruciform 88 makes things really tough.

On my turn I moved up and tried to smoke some guns and kill the others. My armored mortars smoked one of the 88s, and then half my tanks did smoke and half tried to kill. I was still moving into position this turn so didn't get many kills but got some good smoking done so really limited their ability to murder me a bit. Actually now I think about it another option for me could have been to double move towards the far crossing and avoid these guns altogether. But due to their long range I did want to try it, maybe I should have?

Pretty sure my tank commander is staring at the beer

Well next turn things are looking a bit better for me, couple of guns destroyed most of the rest smoked, not so bad it seems. My guys are bunched up allot thou which is never great.

So lost a few more tanks but killed off the last AT 16 88, and only one AA 88 is left, now is the time to be driving through mines I guess. Which is good as I loose on turn 6 six if not across the half way mark on the middle of the bridge.

The Germans broguht in some tanks to fill in for the 88s, and then I tried a crossing. I jiond my company commander with the Stuarts and gave it a go, only one got blown up by mines so not to bad. The other tanks failed the morale test to cross as they were just not interested in that.

The Germans then killed the stuart and assaulted my commander. The other 3 tanks were to far back just slightly out of range to defensive fire, so should ahve thought about that a bit more. Captain thirsty here gave it a good attempt thou and got 4 out of 5 hits in his defensive fire, so just off pushing them back, but none died. Then he took 4 hits in the assault and was only bailed, letting the Germans capture him. So I would start turn 6 with nothing across the river and take a loss.

So I think I gave it a real good try, but this was an attack that I was not super likely to succeed at, still it was fun to give it a shot. At least after the modifications that we agreed to.

Thanks;
Mike