It's dangerous looking at other people's blogs as it results in distracting you from current projects and often produces unforeseen results......
Progress has been slow,,,or rather s-l-o-w....
Weekend before last saw some Landesknecht cleaned up. Due to the weather they have not received a spray primer yet, here they are in the RUB awaiting drier and calmer days.....
I'm hoping to do another lot today....
As a balance for the last blog entry, purchasing for the neglected SYW project continues, this time the Prussians....
The Alte Fritz is a Willie figure that came in a lot of painted figures. Needs a bit of work, but I was quite taken with the figure. I may have an unpainted version somewhere. The horse is quite nicely done (the Mollwitz Grey?). He was stored away until I saw the aide figure on eBay. Expensive, paint job is workmanlike if not exquisite. I only bought it as (1) I couldn't identify the manufacturer and (2) thought he would make a good counterpoint to Fritz. Need some Italian greyhounds or an additional figure for a nice command stand.
Anyway, back to the blogs and distractions.....
There I was looking at Martin Rapier's blog (https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/) and he had a post about Decision Games Khe Sahn:
https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2024-12-02T00:23:00-08:00&max-results=7
I thought I'd kicked my Vietnam fixation long ago, but I was intrigued. A quick visit to Second Chance Games (https://secondchancegames.com/) and before I knew had added these to the basket...
And this....
The two solitaire mini-games were purchased with the idea of actually playing something, KS as mentioned and the other as I cannot resist anything North Africa.....
Pavia was an attempt to re-start the Pavia Project to see how someone else looked at it, especially the terrain....
Unfortunately, in the solitaire section I spotted this.....
A solitaire campaign game for the Mexican Revolution.....this led to digging out the unstarted 15mm project figures. It looks as if the game will make a good battle generator for these....
Previous to this, the distractions had already started. Richard Crawley's blog featured his long running mythical Caucasian Imagi-Nation, engaged in various C20th (and C21st?) conflicts:
https://thelandofcounterpane.blogspot.com/2024/11/attack-on-northern-hills.html
This set me off on revisiting my own Post-Soviet Imagi-Nation, the Central Eurasian Republic (geographically vague but somewhere between Kazakstan and Georgia - modern Stavropol and Kalmykia).
This emerged as a game to make use of my then collection of Soviet 1/87 armour and vehicles and 20mm figures in a post-Soviet break-up. Vague details of such conflicts had filtered out and it seemed plausible to use everything from T-34s and JS-III to T-72 . As my then collection was sparse (now much increased) I simply divided up what I had painted and the Nationalist "Government" and Rebel forces diced to see what they got. There was a third force representing the Russians controlling some KGB, Birder Guards and with the opportunity to call in Airborne forces and airpower.
The game involved a battle for a city centre (Krasny Gorod) complete with government buildings, KGB HQ, People's Park of Liberty with Fimo statue of Lenin. Off table, was a small table representing the Airport and a card table for forces transiting between the two.....
President Danniken (Danny O'Hara) ended up with a small force of Motor Rifles and some reasonably modern tanks and apcs. These he deployed in front of the Government building where he himself was sheltering, The Rebels under Markov (Mark Daly) had a mix of veteran MRs with modern equipment and a mob of militia and some older T-34 and JS-3. He dispatched his most effective troops towards seizing the airport accompanied by a JS-III (he was much taken with this model) which unbeknown to him slowed down his progress significantly. His militia and some more effective MR supported by T-34/85 would assault the Presidential palace.
Menawhile, Petrov (Pete Foggin) as representative of the former Soviet, now Russian forces could negotiate with either side. Following self-imposed mandate of "never negotiating with rebels" he opened discussions with Danniken. In a canny move, he deployed what few troops he had at the airport and called in the Desentniki...
I was using Combined Arms, the modern version of Command Decision, so the game remained unfinished when the players left, but I concluded it solo the next day.
Markov's assault on the palace consisted of successive "pasadaran" human wave assaults backed by T-34s which eventually petered out after losses caused morale failures. An appearance of an Hind gunship crewed by rebels promised much, but Mark as an inexperienced player attacked the front of a T-72, failed to do any damage and contented himself with shooting up the palace with remaining cannon, while Danniken cowered in the basement but survived any risk of becoming a casualty. His column trundled towards the airport (slowly) and was straffed by Russian aircraft, losing artillery and softskins and causing further delay. The Desantniki would arrive in a randome number of turns (diced for) so any delay was crucial if they were to arrive on time.
As it turned out, their transport planes touched down just as the rebel assault on the airport developed. They could have opted for a parachute landing at either the airport or city, but instead taxied down with the warning the landing zone could be "hot!.
The Rebel MR managed to breech the defences of the Border Guards, broke in the main gate and suppressed the KGB in the main control tower by dint of shooting it up with BTR-60 cannon/MG!
With the BG suffering a morale collapse, the MR had only to break down the perimeter fence and overrun the trenches. Tearing across the runway, the Desantniki shot in by BMD2 apc managed by the skin of their teeth to reach the trenches landing in and among their shocked BG comrades. There followed a furious fusilade of small arms, MGs, Cannon, tank guns and AT missile fire between the two sides, with the rebel MG getting the worst of the exchange, despite dealing out damage and knocking out at least a platoon of BMD. In the morale phase, the cumulative losses were enough to cause the rebels to melt away leaving bodies and burning vehicles....
I had ideas to develop things further and since then have acquired many more suitable vehicles and figures. Like many projects it simply stalled. The last work I did was some S&S Models Russian MR to represent the inevitable "Peacekeepers" that would arrive.....
As the stash of x-Soviet equipment has increased, I feel like a revisit to the CER is in order.
That is after I finish the Pavia, Soldier King and AIW projects!
So much for maintenance of the aim!
