The Valentines are done 👍

Whilst painting Polish infantry and Napoleonic British I diverted to get the remaining Tanks in my Western Desert army completed.

Here they are Five Valentines, plastic soldier company, these much easier than the Honeys so perhaps it was just them. Slightly different markings just to allow identification on the table. I built them all as MkIII’s

These were a Christmas present for the project, at first I struggled thinking they weren’t used in the desert but I then found photo evidence of them used by the Hussars as recon and command vehicles, with the odd open topped cupola ?.  I’ve run out of desert rat decals so mixed this up a bit. Most likely they will provide command vehicles.

That means I only have the Lloyd Carriers and the 6lbrs left to build and paint. With the replacement box now arrived I have quite a few choices. The box set does allow some variation in guns so that helps, and I think I can pull together 6 Lloyds in total with perhaps a couple of wrecked vehicles for terrain or objectives ? No rush for this though at this stage. The only thing I am then considering is some infantry to round out the force. I’ll post a parade photo in the next couple of days.

Smolensk

Some of you will have read George’s AAR for our second Smolensk campaign battle. He has covered the brave German defensive action very adequately. Just a couple of shots of his lovely eastern front terrain setup, a pleasure to fight over.

One of the benefits in the campaign is the Russian infantry resets each battle, with lots of support points I mixed things up from last time. A BT5/7 really so I could try out tanks in CoC, another mortar, the sniper really because I know she gets under the Germans skin ! HMG this was a revelation 

With a flank attack and the Russians coming from the two blue arrows, the Germans were pinned into the woods in the corner, my objective in the patrol phase (not so hard really) was to keep the Germans out of the buildings and give my guys as much cover as possible from the German LMG’s. I have marked the locations of our jump off points.

As George has covered in his report the Germans failed to get their force on the table quickly enough, this meant the Russians were able to really concentrate heavy fire from mortars, the BT5 and three infantry squads on the isolated Germans artillery. This was a lot of fire which very gradually pinned and eventually forced the gun to pull back. Unfortunately with the attached leaders this proved decisive for German morale 

The HMG was a revelation and really hammered the German infantry in the woods.

Another shot of the lovely battlefield.

With continuing problem with my leg I haven’t been out walking so sadly few shots of the local environment, however, when up in Scotland last week I camped in the van close to this Loch and had this lovely morning view 👍

Finally it is Vapnartak this weekend over in York and we will be travelling over. A chance to catch up on wargaming stuff hopefully get some bargains and of course buy loads of stuff I REALLY NEED !

Anybody out in the blogosphere who is attending and fancies catching up, over a cup of tea, putting a face to a name etc let me know more than happy to say hello 👍 discuss projects etc…

Matt 😀