US in Vietnam

I found this and it made me think of Steve from WWPD and his current enjoyment of Flames of War: Vietnam.  I also really liked the part about how the Marines used a combined arm team with Air Assault and amphibious landings supported by fast air.  Both this video and the one about the invasion of  Sicily talked about the need to have administrative support that immediately followed the fighting forces to make sure the civilian population know their future is going to be better than their past.

Allies taking Sicily

Another great video from Nuclearvault.  This one is about the Allies invasion of Sicily.  Very cool to see the footage and of interesting note they were using Piper Cubes as AOPs this early in the war.  Battlefront, in the unlikely chance you ever see this post or video, what do you think?  I'm hoping to have some WIP shortly for the AI.

82nd Airborne video

Thanks to Nuclearvault for uploading this video.  If you don't subscribe to him your missing a ton of amazing videos from WWII to present day.  This one is all about the 82nd Airborne.  Did you know they made 4 combat jumps in the war instead of the 2 that the 101st did?  They fought in Italy and then came up for D-day and they were also in the Battle of the Bugle.  I hope you all enjoy this as mush as I did, it certainly help get me motivated to work on the Avenger's Initiative.

Paths of Glory Battles

 

 The Panthers growl as they advance on the Stuarts

Army List - Panzer Pioneers 1750 CV

HQ

OC and 2IC with Knackers

Combat 

Full Armoured Pioneers with Knacker

Under strength trucked pioneers

2 x 8 cm mortars, 2 x MG42s

Support

2 x Panthers

4 x Marder IIIs

2 x 8-Rads

2 x 2cm AA (SP)

Paths of Glory 13

This Sunday Perkins Hobby House held a 1750 MW tournament.  There was roughly 24 players with both the Axis and Allies being well represented.  As always Gary from Perkins had great tables, great food and some great times.  I'm not going to do a battle report for all of the games but I will do some posts on the limited photos I did take.

Armies

 Joyous Oblivion's US Armour (Top Overall)

More army shots below

Bolt Action Australian 1000pt Far East Army

I bought the new Armies of Great Britain army book for Bolt Action over the weekend.
Its nicely laid out, and has rules and armies for the entire war.  This goes from BEF early war Europe, the African campaign, Normandy, Market Garden, and even the far east is split into 2 parts, the fall of Singapore (early, 1941/42), and the Burma Campaign (later).  It also "covers" all commonwealth troops but really that's assumed in the special rules that you can give your army (so no Australian vs Canadian vs Polish special rules as FOW does).  This was by design and allows you to decide how you think the different nationalities showed themselves.

My Australian 28mm troops fit perfectly with a reinforced platoon of the Burma Campaign.
The entire army is veteran.
Probably give them the "Rapid Fire" special rule giving the a bit more firepower.

1 x 1st Lt commander - 90pts

1 x Medic, 30pts
1 x Forward Arty Observer, free for Brits

1 x Sections, 9 Men, 1 NCO+SMG, + LMG, SMG, 156pts
2 x Sections, 9 Men, 1 NCO+SMG, + 2xLMG, SMG - 176x2 = 352
1 x Sniper Team, 65pts
1 x Med Mortar Team, 65pts
1 x Med MMG, 65pts
1 x Matilda Frog, 186pts

Total: 1009pts

And I have all the parts that I need.  I would have preferred to use the regular Matilda tank with them, but that isn't allowed in the far east.  Only the flame throwing FROG/Murry that the Australians used. Really looking forward to when the Japanese book comes out so I can buy a proper tank for them.

If I find that they need some more AT power, then I might drop the Lt down to 2nd, maybe make the Frog Regular, and add a PIAT section (although technically I don't think the Australians used PIATs at all, and certainly not in the jungle).

I will say the army books seem a bit "generic", but there are some special rules in there which make it worth it.  Generally speaking, veterans are the same the world over.  And all infantry sections has an NCO, 10 guys, and a machine gun.  The real value of the books come from the vehicle section which contains all the different vehicles that each country used.

I will probably also have to do a Fall of Singapore army for Kokoda, but will give the green Aussies lots of defensive cover etc. against experienced Japanese troops, or give the Japanese hard objectives to get, and the Australians play a rear guard action.  It will also have to be a smaller army since I don't have any more.  No tanks in that one either (maybe Milne Bay)..

Bolt Action AAR

I was visiting the Bay Area last week and was able to attend my old gaming group.  Even though generally people are more pre-20th century, we do go in for WW2 every so often.  This was our first outing with Bolt Action by Warlord Games.  The pictures are not my own, and generally don't follow the action, but I figured I could give an overall idea of how the game plays.

We were playing Russians.  Our squads were split up, and we had far more armor on the table than would normally be the case.  It was 1000 points a side, with the Russians trying to take a center objective.  The Russians had several squads with Sub-machine guns, a KV-1, and 2 T-34s, including an MMG and higher up teams.

 The Germans setup to defend the objective with reserves.  The Germans were effectively a Panzer Grenadier force with a Pz IV, a Wespe armored artillery, a half track, a Pak40, a couple of trucks with infantry squads.  The objective had an MMG in the bottom of a building.

Here's a shot of a green unit of Russians trying to assault the Pz IV.  They were unsuccessful both times, but it was worth it to see the assault rules.  Assaults are very bloody.  The Russians were able to pin down the MMG in the building and shooting was able to kill the 3 crew.  Small crews are quite vulnerable as far as we could tell.  The pak40 crew also fell to shooting.  I suspect we did something wrong.

This was a faceoff between the Wespe Gun and 2 T-34s across the main road...

The Wespe nuked one for the T-34s. I do like that there are no templates to worry about.  The 2nd T-34 took down the Wespe with a stationary fire shot.  Moving and shooting gives a small disadvantage to firing.

I really like the rules.  Its like 40k in its simplicity, but without any special rules for a great many special troops. Of course there are special troops and rules, but everybody is human, and all troops have a use.  Some people might find the tank rules a bit bland (light, medium, heavy, very heavy guns, and softskin, light, medium, heavy, and extra heavy vehicles) but you definitely think like a tanker in support of infantry, and you generally only get 1 tank per 1000 points anyway.  Great stuff.  Can't wait until the British and Japanese source books come out.  I can finally finish my Australian force and start the Japanese.