This weeks Chain of command and more ECW painting 🙂

Another good hobby week, (the ‘force’ is strong) first up I travelled down to George to resume our early war Chain of Command campaign. This week having pushed the French back the Germans have to break through and finally the campaign allows the Germans to bring up some armour.

The Germans deploy the bulk of their force behind the small wood looking for some cover to get on the table. The challenge is the french deployment is pretty much hidden in the buildings along the road where they are well protected !

Germans PzIV / 222 and infantry support gun deploy on the left, pushing up the road

I only took a few photos, the Germans take some serious fire from the buildings and the lead squad are forced back, the french ambush the PzIV with an antitank gun but it survives the first shot and eventually the gun is knocked out.

The least effective and perhaps comical parts of the battle were the two tanks who faced off shooting multiple rounds into each other phase after phase hitting but having no significant effect other than probably deafening each other.

Eventually the German firepower started to tell and the french morale started to breakdown. With in the end the death tally being quite unbalanced. The Germans also push forward their 222 to show they are breaking through.

A fun game and hard fought even if the end result was a clear German victory. As always a pleasure to play with George’s wonder WW2 collection. The next campaign battle is a tough one though !

Some painting this week…..

I had one Curassier left over so I painted up another command base.

Another Pike and Shotte regiment off the production line 

And…..another Cavalry regiment. These are Peter Pig Figures, two more metal cavalry regiments to complete before I decide how many more I might want ?

I have also been pondering whilst out walking the Thirty Years War and how/if the ECW collection would need to be amended for this wider European conflict. Obviously the warlord figures are theoretically designed for both conflicts many Europeans used the same ‘Dutch’ system.

My thoughts on what a Tercio would look like on the table.

I would probably need more cavalry and I’m likely to stick with Peter Pig as they match pretty well and have a good range. The flags of course are a problem but I’m thinking if I create separate command bases I might be able to live with the wrong flags after all at 3feet they are actually pretty indistinguishable. I have looked ant how the flags could be interchangeable but it may be too much of an faff.  Any thoughts welcome on other differences between the two conflicts and how to adapt the collection ? as I am no expert.

With Cruel seas on the agenda for the future i was looking for something slightly different and found this kit on eBay at a reasonable price, some 1/300 kits are massively expensive. Anyway a US escort ship USS De Long. Nothing fancy in the paint scheme just grey and some fiddling to cut the bottom off, the flags are made up and the central mast can be removed for storage. The British Vosper shown for scale ! I found a few old 6mm figures and stuck them on the ship as crew.

Finally the rain has cleared for a while at least, a shot of the Penrith Beacon on the hill behind the town. In the distance a snowy Lake District. 

That’s it for this week although I have another game planned for the weekend and some painting after family duties. And some more fiddling with the railway setup. A question to loyal readers should I share some photos of the railway here ?

Thanks as always for taking the time to read what I have been upto 

Matt 👍