Partisan Action

This is a short report on a special PBI game last week … a playtest of a little ‘behind the lines’ game Martin has been thinking of as a taster scenario.

So I’m not going to go into the rules (they need refining and then Martin will doubtless put them out when he’s ready) – but it did give me an opportunity to sort out some of the new PP Partisans and get them into a game.

The fugitives

a mix of Peter Pig figures

The partisan player has a cluster of bases, which I had made up using a mix of Martin’s new Partisan, Home Guard and SCW figures (well, those and a French Resistance lady who has been waiting for a mission for some years in my ‘spares’ trays)

The dummies … of course what the Partisan player has might really look a bit more like this …

... or what's really out there?

… a couple of gangsters lurking amongst either the shadows or some frightened civilians (but that nun has been waiting for some soldiers to chase her around the woods for almost as long as the Maquis girl.  Good things come …)..

The Germans

most of these soldiers sat in their billets drinking ersatz coffee!

It is night-time, and a small number of the Germans are responding to intelligence that some Partisans will be attempting to slip through the net.   Most of the Germans are ‘off table’ and need to be diced for.   However, they will be too late if they don’t get a move on!

We played it through a couple of times, trying out various interpretations of how the dummies might work, and generally getting the hang of it …

scenes from the games

Graham had put the scenery together, and I brought the figures: one or other Airforce has clearly given this place a pasting at some stage and most of the civilians seem to have fled or must be living in the cellars.  Actually, of course, it looks like we are closer than I thought to a big Stalingrad game (but that’s another story …).

'building cleared, sir! ...'

Hopefully, with some refinements, a good little game will emerge from the basic we tried out … and maybe you will see this become available at some point.Yes, we replaced the figures in the ‘surrender or the nun get’s it’ shot – although that isn’t how the game works (you just remove identified dummies, pretty much) – because .. well, you just have to, really …

OK, OK – yes, pretty much the partisans got away and the hapless Germans were given the run around …   Well, it was meant to be dark…

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Quick look – Zvezda Sturmovik

I’m hoping not to make this blog a Zvezda show case, but I know, like me, plenty of you will want to know what this one looks like.   Zvezda’s art of tactic models are rapidly becoming available and are an economical plug for a number of gaps.  Economical and so far pretty good.

After a bit of deal-doing, I got this one for £2 as part of a bundle, which has got to be good value.  I actually made it up on the Society of Ancients stand during a quiet moment on Sunday afternoon.  It took a couple of minutes and no tools were required.   It’s that easy …  I reassembled it with some glue and painted it this evening.    The stand is the one that comes in the box.   It is a wargames stand (stable but with that ‘C’-shaped base that will fit in amongst other kit on the table) – it looks like a good design to me.

Zvezda's Sturmovik

I painted it up with the usual tank technique, which is fine, but the detailing isn’t very deep, so dry brushing doesn’t work very well.  And though I hate them, as this was a quick look, I used the fairly crude waterslides from the box (painted would have looked much better) …  I’m no aero-modeller, so I won’t be reviewing it as such (it seems to be fine so here are some pictures) …

I’m not too precious when it comes to scales for planes.   They are things that arrive over the battlefield very fast and at a range of heights – so as long as they’re fairly small, they don’t need to be true scale to each other.     And inexpensive (Toyway diecasts, Poundland, that sort of thing) …Still, Zvezda’s 1:144 seems to fit well enough with the other bits and pieces that have ended up in the Soviet boxes …

Not quite a May Day fly past, but these represent air missions of varying types, so those Panzertruppen are starting to get twitchy …

Good enough for my purposes I think.  A quick inexpensive solution to representing air power over the battlefield.

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