Flashpoint Miniatures US Platoon Blister–First Impression

Time for another update about the Vietnam project. The initial batch of minis has arrived from Australia at the beginning of this week – in other words, a bit over a week for a delivery to Europe. Quite impressive in its own right.

The figures… well, to be honest, I am less than impressed. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending whatever time I could find for painting on excellent Xyston Spartan hoplites, but those Flashpoint minis seem awfully small. Also, not the most detailed 15mm minis I ever held in my hands.

As picture below illustrates, there are 35 minis in a US platoon blisters. Standard grunts are presented by 16 miniatures with M16, 3 with M79 Thumper and two with what I assume is a LAW launcher (although if that’s the case, then the tube is awfully short). Heavy firepower is added by two M60 gunners and one ammo carrier (a bit strange distribution). Then there is a total of eight minis for your lieutenant, non-coms, a medic and the poor guy who, judging from his state, has earned his Purple Heart the hard way.  I am totally clueless about three minis to the right in second lower row – they seem to be holding some sort of short tube, but your guess is as good as mine about what it’s supposed to represent.

I am rather pleased with the variation among the figures in the blister. The choice of sculpts should allow a bit of the ‘dynamics’ to the bases. At the same time, I am a tad disappointed that there aren’t any machine gunners in deployed (lying down) position and the fact that only a single MG assistant is somewhat baffling. Guess I’ll have to make a supplementary purchase from Peter Pig or Quick Reaction Force.

But overall it’s a pretty decent blister. Now, time for some painting.

 

Review of “Tank Tactics–From Normandy To Lorraine”

Well, since it looks like May will be another barren month in respect of gaming and I haven’t done one of these in a while, here’s another filler… eh, I mean book review.

I picked up this book based solely on its title and who published it. Based on that, I expected a volume dedicated to “real” tank tactics, perhaps in a form of some sort of comparative analysis of low level tactics, equipment, training and real world experience of opposing sides. As it turns out, this book is a completely different animal and author of this book could not have chosen a more misleading title for this book if he tried to. Precious few pages (in my opinion, maybe five or six) deal with the actual tactics of armoured warfare on western front during 1944.

The real topic of this book is the implementation of armour on battlefields of World War Two at operational level, or more precisely during Normandy breakout attempts and subsequent allied race across France. Books dealing with this aspect of art of war are few and far between - it is a vast topic, encompassing a multitude of aspects, some of them quite mundane, other rather diffuse and difficult to define in clear and definite manner. Uniqueness of this book's topic makes it a valuable contribution to a library of any WWII buff all on its own.

Author deals with the subject matter by splitting it into three logical parts. In first section, Jarymowicz analyses the post-World War I development of armoured forces in armies of what would be major 'players' during the conflict. Theories of the time and how they translated in practical implementation in England, France, Germany, Soviet Union, United States and (oddly enough) Canada are dissected in detail. The author attempts here to compare and contrast different ideas and resulting doctrines. While a bit heavy on internal politics, this part of the book is something of an eye-opener, which answers a lot of questions reader may have about choice of the equipment used in World War II as well as about the rather varied quality of the leadership of armed forces during the conflict.

Next, the author, proceeds with an account of the actual events that took place during the period specified by the title of this book. It needs to be repeated - the narrative deals with the events on operational level, so those looking for exciting tank vs. tank combat descriptions are bound to be disappointed. Goodwood, Spring, Cobra and Totalize are picked apart and analysed in a search of explanation of failures and successes. I won't go into the details of Jarymowycz' analysis, but limit myself to observing that I don't believe I have ever had the pleasure of reading another book where Montgomery is so soundly and consistently trashed and belittled. If you're a fan of Monthy, you better stay away from this book. Of course other allied leaders are dealt with in similar harsh manner – Jarymowycz doesn’t have much good to say about the allied commanders, with the possible exception of Patton and some his lieutenants. To be honest though, it is hard to argue against author's ruthless and at times devastating critique.

In last part of his book Jarymowicz gives us his final analysis of deployment of armoured forces by Western allies during second part of 1944. In this section, besides the 'traditional' examination and comparison, the author does something rather unique and compares the doctrine and usage of armour by Western nations with that of Soviet Union. For me personally (after reading Glantz and Ericson) his conclusions weren't much of a surprise. I do however suspect that many, if not most readers from Western Europe and United States will find this part of the book as rather controversial, maybe even 'heretical'.

Personally, I find the topic of this book absolutely fascinating and was very pleasantly surprised when I realised what “Tank Tactics” was really about. It is therefore a great shame that I have now to say that this volume suffers from a couple of rather severe problems, all of them related to the writing style of Jarymowycz. To put it bluntly, the author doesn't strike me as a very talented writer. I found his style choppy, almost bullet-point-like. The flow of information felt disjointed, with abrupt, unannounced jumps between often unrelated topics every couple of paragraphs. This choppy impression was deepened by author's rather annoying tendency of using 'naked' personal quotes to emphasize the point he's trying to impress on the reader. I was a bit surprised over how disrupting this approach to quotations was for me - if I wanted to find out who said those words, I had to look up the reference at the end of the chapter, thus breaking the flow of often rather complex reasoning. Not a technique I would recommend for frequent usage in a book with this level of complexity.

Finally – how useable is this book from wargamer’s perspective? Well… if one disregards its obvious value as a source of information about otherwise often ignored aspect of modern warfare, its usability is probably limited to being an inspiration for ruleset and army list designers wishing to incorporate operational facets into their creations.

'Tank Tactics: From Normandy to Lorraine' is a solid, in some respects maybe even ground-breaking contribution to literature about World War II. Its main merit consists of the fact that it is solely dedicated to a topic that is almost totally overlooked by “popular” authors writing about that conflict. The effort is however somewhat spoiled by a writing style that fails to engage and makes it difficult to absorb the information contained in this volume. Thus, not the easiest read, but nevertheless worth the effort if you're interested in something else than battle depictions and personal recollections.

Jungle terrain–test piece

If there is one thing I’ve learned from my work with GHQ’s terrain hexagons (or rather from the mistakes I’ve made while working with them), then it is this – if you’re about to make a large number of similar terrain pieces, make a test piece first. There is nothing worse than finishing 20-30 elements and realising that they don’t look so good.

All right, that was the sermon of the month, let’s now move on and get some new terrain on the table.

Preparation

Things I needed before getting started:

a) Base plates – I cheated here and ordered a bunch of laser-cut 3mm MDF bases from Warbases, a British company I’m buying all my bases from. Since they didn’t have bases with irregular shapes I was needing, I drew rough sketches of six different shapes in a graphics program and sent the pictures (with dimensions) with a request for a quota. A prompt response informed me that five bases of each type, including p&p, would cost me about 400SEK. Maybe a bit pricey, but considering how much time, sweat and quite possibly blood I would have to spend if I was to cut thirty such bases on my own, it was actually a bargain.

b) Trees and palms – one word here – Ebay! Gone are the good old days when you could find sweet bargains from fellow wargamers, but those Chinese shops using Ebay as outlet for all possible kind of crap are sometimes godsend. In this particular case, I’ve got some 100 trees and 40 palms for another 400SEK. Sure, they’re not as nice as those from Faller or Heki, but on the other hand I didn’t have to mortgage my flat to afford them.

c) Sand, cat litter and herbs – pet shops, DIY shops, or even your own backyard are all great sources.

d) Flock, turf, scatter materials – every wargamer should have a bunch of this stuff, but if you don’t, pleaaase find a well-sorted miniature railroad shop and get what you need from them. A single bag from Noch, Faller or Woodland Scenics will last you a lifetime and costs about the same as those laboratory petri dishes GF9 is trying to push.

e) Paint – all DIY shops usually sell acrylic wall paint, which is perfect for ground work. An added bonus lies in the fact that the colors usually come in at least five or six different tones – perfect for shade, midtone and highlight. Finally, a 0.5 litre sample can usually costs the same as two GW paint jars.

f) Plastic plants – see previous post.

h) Hot glue pistol – new experience for me, more about it below.

Think before doing

Now, let’s stop for a second and think one last time one last time about what I’m trying to achieve with this project. “Douugh… jungle terrain!” – you say? Sure, that’s the most obvious part. Couple more things need however to be considered, before cutting and gluing ensues. First of all, the scale. The terrain is intended for 15mm, so the plants can’t be too high. Second, is the terrain piece to be impassable or would I like to be able to put the miniatures on it? If I wanted the second option, then sticking all the plants onto the base perhaps isn’t the best option. For this test piece, I wanted to see how many plants would be needed for dense coverage, so I decided to stick everything permanently into place.

Making the piece

Once again, let’s clarify couple of things before we proceed. I am not a professional terrain maker, just a guy who needs a bunch of terrain for a new project. The faster I’m done with it, the better. I use basic techniques familiar to anyone who’s been working with terrain before. If the finished piece looks adequate for the task and doesn’t fall apart, then my task is done. If it looks good, then it’s great news. If it looks great, then it was pure damn luck and I’m probably more surprised over the final result than you are.

 

1. Texturing the base – the usual procedure – paint the base, cover it with sand, remove the excess sand. Once the paint is dry, paint a second layer of paint to seal the sand. Since I wanted an extra rough texture, I put some cat litter and dried basilica onto the second paint layer. Once the second paint layer was dry, I sealed everything in with a final paint coat.

As a final step, I drybrushed the base in two steps – first a heavy pass with a lighter shade of same brown colour and finally a lighter one with cream-coloured paint.

 

2. Cut the plants – when cutting the plants, I tried to think about the scale the piece was intended for. It became rather obvious that the plant with long, wide leafs would perhaps not be as suitable for this project as I first though.

 

3. Gluing – well, I won’t bore you with the details. Using hot glue gun was a bit of a new experience for me, but there really isn’t much to it – heat the glue up, put a blob of glue onto the base, stick the plant in, wait until the glue cools down. Hot glue tends to leave thin strings of glue all over the base, but those can easily be removed  with pliers once the plants are in place.

As can be seen in the picture, I didn’t use any trees. The reason is simple – larger plastic plants were the same height as the trees and things just didn’t look right. I have some thinking to do – do I make the plants a good bit shorter or do I leave the trees out of this project altogether?

 

4. Final steps – I was a bit surprised over how unseemly and protruding hot glue looked once it dried. It was positively ugly and I had to do something about it. At first I tried to cover those blobs up with some sponge flock (from Heki, I believe) stuck into… more hot glue. This method worked pretty good and actually added some variety to the vegetation. However, some of the glue blobs “inside” the base were hard to get to with the hot glue gun. Those were hidden with good old-fashioned combination of white glue and flock.

Musings “after the battle”

Well, here is the final result. Purely by the gut feeling, it looks to me more like something you’d find in Africa or on an alien world than in Vietnam. Some further experimentation will be needed – shorter plants, maybe a bit of clump foliage and stones. Still, considering that it’s the first effort, I’m quite happy with it.