Canadian LAV-III in Afghanistan

It has been a long time since I have posted anything here, mainly because I've spent the last several months doing nothing hobby-wise except assembling my next 1/35 plastic model kit.

I thought that doing the Tiger with the photo-etched metal add-on had prepared me for intense model building, but this one has taken me far longer than building the Tiger did. Not only are there a lot of key, structural details that are made with PE, but tons and tons of tiny details like washers and bolts and almost-microscopic cleats for strapping on stowage. Add to that the fact that the model was very complex to begin with, and that I had to do a lot of modification to the base plastic kit, and it goes some way to explaining why I have been working on just the assembly for so long.

The modifications I had to make to the base model kit were:

-cutting off a piece of the rear upper deck and side hull to change the angle of the side panels

-slicing off and sanding down the bolts and washers that were molded in to the model, to be replaced by thinner, smaller PE bolts and washers;

-reducing the size of the rear basket on the turret;

-adding non-skid treatment to the upper surfaces of the hull

When those were done, I could start adding all the PE details. The detail kit I got was a mixed bag - a lot of the bits are really nice and well-done, and necessary to update the LAV to the period I wanted to work on, but there were a lot of problems too. The instructions were decent, but I had to refer to photos of models done by other people to figure out how to use some of the parts. Several parts were mislabelled in the instructions. There were quite a few unused pieces left on the photoetch frets, which isn't a problem, but there were also several pieces missing from the frets which were called for in the instructions. Not least among the missing pieces were bolt-heads to go on top of the PE washers all over the hull; I had about half as many as I needed, so I had to make my own out of thinly-sliced styrene rod, and they won't match to the PE bolts.

Also, several of the PE pieces just didn't fit. The rear fenders, especially, have large gaps where they are supposed to join, simply because, once folded, they don't fit the surface they are supposed to be covering.

The resin pieces that came with the kit were about what I expected: highly detailed but fragile. The inner hub of the spare wheel broke while I was cleaning off the flash, coming apart under the gentlest pressure.

I have several more parts to add after painting, which are not shown in these photos: turret hatches, stowage, the turret MG (a model kit in itself) and four figures: two for the turret, and two standing outside (again, a medium-sized project in their own right).

Next stop: primer and base coat.

Battle Report: Busy Day In Kandahar

I had a game of Force On Force with a friend today. We played Busy Day In Kandahar, which is a slightly modified version of a scenario from the Operation: Enduring Freedom sourcebook (modified to turn the USMC soldiers into Canadian Forces troops, plus some victory condition tweaks).

The game lasted about 4.5 hours and it was a blast. Every time I play FoF I like it more. Between the way the battle played out and the random events thrown in by the Fog Of War cards, a proper little narrative develops - events not directly related to the battle situation begin to snowball and turn into full-fledged side-stories.

The scenario pits a Canadian Forces (CF) platoon, with support, against a whole bunch of Taliban. The CF have divide their attentions among three objectives: first, in the NW quadrant, they are tasked with recovering a wounded soldier and extracting him across the board to the Helicopter Landing Zone in the SW. Second, in the NE, they have to provide protection to an EOD team disarming an IED under the guns of the Taliban. Third, they have to clear the HLZ of all Taliban in line of sight to provide a safe area for the helo to land. Together, it's a pretty tough list of objectives for the Canadians to achieve.

The Taliban, as usual, earn victory points for killing / wounding / capturing CF soldiers. The Taliban are terrible troops, but there's a conveyor belt of reinforcements arriving all the time, and their victory conditions make no mention of losing troops, so they can sacrifice whole squads in the hopes of doing a bit of damage to the Canadians.

On to the photos:

Initial deployments, viewed from the SW. CF section 1 stacks up in an alley with the EOD team up ahead, waiting for the infantry to clear the area. The LMG takes an overwatch position on the roof to their left, and the CF sniper is badly placed at the start of the fight, out of picture to the south. To the NW, Canadians deploy in a compound ahead of their attempt to retrieve their injured comrade (that little black dot visible at the very top of frame).

Looking at the west side from the north. In the clearing between the compounds you can see the injured CF soldier, looked over by a couple of Taliban cells. The Canadians suffered a serious casualty in the firefight with the Taliban, but wisely called in a smoke mission from the off-board artillery to mask their recovery of the soldier, and were able to get him to safety .
Meanwhile, at the top of frame, a cluster of civilians emerged from the building where the Taliban were taking cover and approached the Canadian soldiers, begging for help with a child who had been wounded in the fighting. The CF were able to render assistance, but the presence of the civilians complicated matters a great deal.

Canadians set up to cover the EOD team on the east side. Farther up the street, the EOD robot examines the IED while the Taliban gets ready for action. West of the IED you can see a Taliban sniper team flipped on its back, having been PID'ed and wiped out before getting off a shot.

After a few turns the battle has begun to take shape. A Taliban cell at hotspot 3 hunkers down to cover the HLZ - this hotspot was key, as the Taliban kept funnelling troops into it as they got mowed down by Canadian sniper and LMG fire so that they could deny the HLZ to the Canadians. The Taliban had bigger and better plans for that area, but that building was a killing zone so they couldn't form up for a counterattack.
Meanwhile, to the north, The Canadians in the compound engage in fire coming from the compound in the north and the smallish building to the west. The civilians in the courtyard of the small building make it very hard for the Canadians to bring fire to bear on that building, which will have a huge influence on the outcome of the fight.

The sniper and LMG on the rooftops that caused the Taliban so much trouble in the south. To the northeast, the Taliban had been pretty much wiped out entirely and the IED had been disarmed, so the Canadians were beginning to fall back to the HLZ.

Here we see a bold play by the Taliban that eventually cost the Canadians the game. The 2 Section command element (leader and medic) had approached the civilian base to try to disperse it, but fell casualty to Taliban fire. Before the Canadians could get another team in place to check on them, the Taliban darted out of the building and took them captive. The Canadians were reluctant to shoot into a group that contained their own people (and was interspersed with civilians), and couldn't quite catch the Taliban to launch an assault, so the CF command team was still captive at the end of the game.

The Canadian medevac helo waits above the battlespace for the call to land and pick up casualties, but the call never came. A sandstorm had blown up, restricting movement, and it became impossible for the CF to extract to the HLZ in the time they had available.

The EOD team, with the IED disarmed and no Taliban remaining in sight, hunker down and wait for the resolution of the fight elsewhere.

Canadians scramble to assist the fight in the west, but with the sandstorm forcing them to move slowly, they can't get there in time.

A single Taliban sniper covers the HLZ, but it's enough to render it too dangerous for the helo to land.

Final disposition of the fight in the west. The Taliban disappears into the field with their captive soldiers, while the CF clears the building and gets ready to give chase. It's too late, though, as the Taliban have just enough of a head start to make good their escape.

The game was great fun and the result was very close. The Taliban won by a literal inch, as the escaping cell with its captives was just that far ahead and, the way the turn cycle worked, they couldn't be caught. With some more turns in the game they would have been dealt with, as there was really nowhere for them to go and the other CF section was on its way to cut them off, but we reached the end point before that could happen.

Force On Force (the scenarios in the OEF sourcebook, anyway) give the Coalition forces a tough job. The Coalition victory points are all objective-based, so they have to control the battlespace and stay focussed on the mission; the Taliban, on the other hand, get victory points for injuring, killing, or (especially) capturing Coalition soldiers. The Canadians can (and often do, like in this game) take out dozens of Taliban troops, but they gain no direct advantage from causing casualties. The Taliban have pretty terrible troops and they have a hard time getting casualties on the Canadians, especially when the Canadians are in hard cover, but they just need to keep throwing out firepower in the hopes of causing damage. Add in all the counter-insurgency restrictions on the Coalition actions, and the Canadian game becomes a very difficult balancing act. The Canadians performed extremely well in this scenario, and just lost by that crucial inch that made the difference between recovering their captured soldiers or losing them to the Taliban.

IHMN: Society of Thule vs. The Mole Men!

My friend Dave and I had a game of In Her Majesty's Name tonight, pitting the Society of Thule (Dave) against the Mole Men (me).

We played the Bad Jack scenario, where there is a bloodthirsty mutant in the centre of the table, and both forces set out to kill it. The rules for Bad Jack (who came to be known as Swampy Jack for reasons that will be clear when you see the miniature) were sparse, to say the least, so we made up some very basic movement and decision-making rules for him as we played. 

The Mole-Man sniper watches over the bridge where Swampy Jack came from as his comrades advance.

On the other side of the bridge, the Prussians had only just deployed when Swampy Jack came slurping out of his hole and attacked one of the Jaegers! What manner of horror lies obscured by the tree?! Only a better photographer would have been able to find out!

One of the Mole-Man riflemen peers out of the window and down the alley to the corpse of the Jaeger who had been hiding behind the wall. But wait... why is the body moving??

A zombie appears and shambles forward, trying to save Dr. Kobalt from the menacing Mole-Man!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, two Mole-Men gang up on a lone Jaeger and hack him to death with their axes. But that's not the last we'll hear from this particular Prussian!

Just when things are looking grim for poor, asthmatic Dr. Kobalt, one of the dead Jaegers rises and shambles to his aid! 

Swampy Jack abandons the body of the Jaeger he had been fighting, killed by some Mole-Man Marksmanship, and slithers back under the bridge to fight the Auto-Shotgunner. The Kapitan stands by, trying to decide if he should get in there or just let them sort it out amongst themselves.

Krieg lies dead as the auto-shotgunner gets ready to open up a lead hose on another zombie!

Dr. Kobalt's escape plan goes horribly awry when he is caught and murdered by a Mole-Man. The Mole-Man's position doesn't look much better, though, as he is caught in turn by a zombie and Swampy Jack! Below, the leaders square off in single combat as a crazed Mole-Man pyromaniac tries to burn one of the zombies with his molotov cocktail! (It was a no-avail cocktail, though, as he missed with both of the bottles he carried)

Final dispositions before everybody decided to stop this crazy war and just be friends instead. 

In Her Majesty's Name: Society of Thule

I finished my Society of Thule guys. I liked painting them quite a lot, though I wasn't too excited about doing green uniforms. The figures are cool, especially the zombies, who really look like they are shambling around spastically.

I learned two things after taking these photos: one, I need to go easier on the clear varnish, because it really goobed up some of the eyes... the bodyguard guy in blue especially. They will have to be repainted. Two, I need to clean the sensor on my camera, because the amount of defocused dust and crud I had to paint out was ridiculous.

In Her Majesty's Name: Mole Men

I decided to put together a Mole Men list so I could use my Quar in IHMN. I want to use my Partisans, because I think they are such cool minis. There are only 8 of them, so I made them pretty tough.

I also invented an "automatic shotgun" weapon for my shotgunner.

In Her Majesty's Name: Scotland Yard Company

It has been a long time since I had anything worth posting. I finally got motivated to work on some minis again when my copy of In Her Majesty's Name, plus three teams: The Society of Thule (Prussian occultists), Lord Curr's Company (British adventurers) and the Scotland Yard Company (Scotland Yard and associates). I had a hard time deciding who to paint first, but the Scotland Yarders came out on top, so here they are:

Scotland Yard constables.

Scotland Yard constables.

Scotland Yard Special Branch.

Scotland Yard Special Branch.

The Consulting Detective and the Good Doctor.

The Consulting Detective and the Good Doctor.

The Sergeant and Chief Inspector.

The Sergeant and Chief Inspector.

The whole gang.

The whole gang.

The miniatures have lots of character and they were a lot of fun to paint. I feel like I'm still getting better at pinstripes and tartans.

The figures had fairly prominent mould lines, so they required quite a bit of filing before they were ready for the paint. After filing and gluing on the (very fragile) power cables for English All-Electric Truncheons, I epoxied them to washers and then evened the bases out with plaster. I think the cobbles might have looked better if I had carved the grout lines into the bases, but a) the pewter bases of the figures come right up to the top level of the bases, so I would have had to cut lines into the metal as well as plaster, and b) I already spent a lot of time on the bases as they are, and I would rather be painting figures than bases. I think they look all right as they are, and it's definitely possible I could have made them look a lot worse if I tried to carve out the bases.

One thing I did on these guys that I don't normally do is paint eyes and pupils. I think painting the eyes on miniatures looks goofy 99% of the time, but these turned out okay. I think eyes on miniatures look better the smaller they are, and I went back and overpainted the upper and lower lids with my flesh base colour so the eyes are narrow slits rather than big saucer googly-eyes.

Next up: The Society of Thule.

Coming soon-ish: A Force On Force campaign

I spoke to a few people at Trumpeter Salute about starting a Force On Force campaign. I'm going to have to miss the May game night, but I would still like to start it up in June. I'll post more details later, but here's the basic idea:

- The campaign will centre around a (fictional) platoon of Canadian soldiers fighting the Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan, around 2006-7. We'll be using the Force On Force campaign rules.

- We'll be tracking the progress of the 'characters', not the players. So anyone can drop in for a game, or miss a game, or even switch sides from game to game if they like, without interrupting the continuity of the storyline.

- For the first little while, the games will be small. We may even be able to get in several games per session, depending how things work out. Later, the battles could get larger with more support options (like when I get my LAVs!!).

- I'll post AARs here, on my photo log, and on Facebook, in case people who aren't playing in the campaign are still interested in watching the progress (and/or decline) of the soldiers and the insurgency.