History and wargaming

The keen-eyed can see the lack of part 2 of the AAR, or any update so far, and that's because I finished writing 90% of the AAR and then manage to lose about 50% of it somehow. I'll make a short one with all the good pics at some point soon but these kinds of things really swats the motivation out of me, especially when writing AAR's are taken from the little time slot between the rest of the family going to bed and me having to go to bed. Oh well, at least I have made a little progress on the USMC platoon. Fire team one/1st squad/1st Plt/B Coy/1st Btn/ 4th Marine Reg. These are the first figures from Flashpoint Miniatures that I've painted, and I'm really happy with them! Overall great variation and interesting poses and they look the part, and very distinctly identified as marines!  

We played this game almost three weeks ago, but as the whole family have been enjoying a rather vigorous season flu for two of those weeks I’ve had to postpone writing this until now, and consequently with some loss of details. I had two new players taking control of 3rd squad bringing the plt HQ and one M60 mg team as support on a local security patrol mission. So far so good, sweeping a jungle scrub area with an abandoned Montagnard village and a logger camp. This time though the threat level had risen to medium(Mike), with some reasonably well armed regional VC rather than the local guerillas encountered last mission. Mission 2, part 1: MISSION BRIEFING Operation: Jungle Sweep – Pilot Recovery & VC Presence Recon Date: 12 February 1968 Location: Vicinity of grid coordinates XT 123456, I Corps Tactical Zone, South Vietnam Unit: 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Division OBJECTIVE Conduct a reconnaissance patrol in the desig...

Here's some more reinforcements (as I keep postponing writing up an AAR for our last game): a UH-1 Huey and a downed helicopter crewman. The huey is a Battlefront kit and the crew from Peter Pig. 

Life's been busy lately but I'm slowly getting some more Vietnam models finished, with a new game scheduled for next Sunday if nothing unforeseen happens. I also had a package of various VC and a whole platoon of US Marines from Flashpoint miniatures arrive all the way from Australia, and quite happy with their look so far! Honestly surprised how the cost of shipping from Australia is just slightly more expensive than getting a package from France or Spain... Anyways, here's the latest arrival, a M48 Patton that I painted up as in USMC service. I'm not sure I succeeded with the tone of green, but afaik USMC vehicles were more dark green-ish rather than classic american olive drab...    

 Another batch of US grunts for Vietnam, finished up both fire teams of the second squad and a few additions to the platoon HQ, i.e the medic and the platoon sergeant.

I finally got to run a game of Nam’68 with two mates of mine visiting the scorching hot(!) north. We rolled up a Search and sweep scenario with 5 search points, sweeping down a main road in the late evening(the approaching night sub-plot). I gave them a reinforced squad and a M60 team (dividing the two fireteams between them and sharing the M60 team), a slap on the back and let them out into the jungle. Oh yeah and a partly generated Mission briefing to set the scene (not necessary to read): MISSION BRIEFING • Date: 14 January 1968 • Location: Village of Phu Lac, Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam • Unit: 1st Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. OBJECTIVE Conduct a search and sweep operation in the village of Phu Lac, a small rural settlement suspected of concealing Viet Cong supply caches. The village is located approximately 12 kilometers southeast of Quang Ngai City and lies adjacent to Highway 521, a ke...

I've managed to finish up another US piece, a Forward HQ unit used in Battlegroup, or some kind of senior command for other wargame rules. They're all 15mm Peter Pig, well fed and nice little pieces to paint up.

I've finished the last of the current batch of vc figures, very much a bits and pieces set. I Will have to go back and finish up a few more SKS and bolt action riflemen, but for now I have a few of each type of gun that can come into play early-ish. Next up is terrain, civilians and the US second squad. But we'll see how quick I can work through that, as of course we go into summer vacation mode, which entails... going outside...  

Time for a few new more VC models, mainly freedom fighters with smg's. I haven't really found proper VC's with smgs in 15mm, so I had to improvise a bit. The lad with the slightly oversized mp40 is a Peter Pig vc sapper, the rest are actually from the PP Montagnard range. The guy to the far right is a VC NCO model, but he'll work double shifts as an infiltrator with pistol when I'll need him to.

After a few productive nights I've managed to finish the second fireteam of 1st squad, the Plt leader and staff Sergeant, as well as a second M60 mg team. The second fireteam from left: M16 rifleman, Rifleman with LAW, M79 grenadier, team leader From left: Ammo bearer, m60 gunner, Plt Sgt, RTO, Plt Leader

Hobby time has mostly been focused on Vietnam rather than WW2 the past month, but I did manage to finish this Bazooka team on the side at least. The usual Skytrex figs, quite decent poses really. I get a distinct ambush vibe from them.  And as a brief interlude from the US infantry with this 3d printed Sdklfz 223 I got from the Plastic Soldier company. Overall very impressed with the print detail, the few visible print lines I tried to cover with some stowage. The packages got absolutely destroyed by the Swedish Postal service Postnord (a common enough occurence as to spawn the loving company nickname Postmord ), but to PSC's credit all the 3d prints survived scot free, and they definitely feel less brittle than other 3d prints. I left the paint job quite simple as I wanted it to mesh with my old, not too that well painted Sdkfz 222's which were one of the first ww2 vehicles I did back in 2019 when I returned to miniature painting after a brief 20 year hiatus....  ...

Finally got around to basing a few Vietcong fighters I painted ages ago, still issues with an order I put in back in january that hasn't been sent, including a lot of plastic bases I was planning on using for this project.  Anyway, I've resigned to go with metal washers for now though I find them just a smidge to thin to easily pick up for skirmish level play but eh, one can always go back and rebase them later. Next up is basing another batch of US and after that it's civilians. The weather has at last proceeded into spray can season here in the frozen north, so there will be terrain to come too.

New year, new army project as they say. As my 1944 British and German Wehrmacht forces are more or less complete for playing most set-up's for Battlegroup, and needing a break from the Fallschirmjäger uniforms, I've decided to get going with an US army infantry force.    I do have quite a few american units from before: two of Sherman M4A1's and two plt's worth of Airborne with some extra support teams, but no regular grunts.   A troop of Sherman M4A3's and Stuart M5's are built but unpainted on the workbench, but I have finished up one M20 and one infantry squad.   The 7 man rifle team   Rifle team from the back   BAR team   BAR team from the back The full squad