Modern Chinese Marines

Another Lockdown project, but yet to see the table....Modern Chinese Naval Infantry / Marines. When I saw the blue camouflage the Chinese were using I decided I didn't care if it was for show, I neeeeded an army painted like that as all my other Cold War/Modern armies are somewhere on the dirty green / muddy brown (or both) spectrum. 

When I saw Heroics & Ros did their amphibious landing craft/troop carrier the deal was sealed. All I had to do was work out how to render it. I wound up using medium and thin nib paint-pens (from China, natch) and it worked out quite nicely. (Based for FFOT, still deciding on whether to base for beach or more inland, I think the beach sand colour sets them off very well though.)

Another bonus - the colours and model size/shape in 6mm works for 40K Epic, I'm working on the Dreadnoughts, attack bikes and Terminators next...

The Cthall of Cthulhu

During the various Lockdowns, like most gamers I did quite a lot of projects I otherwise wouldn't have had time to do, and this past summer some of these outfits were fielded in real games with actual opponents! 

One I built from Cthulhu Wars figures, its a boardgame using models. I loved the models when I saw them and Lockdown was the opportunity to build an outfit with them. They were built to play Kings of War ( KoW), a Fantasy wargame ruleset that's more "beers and pretzel" than Warhammer (but being simpler and faster to play means larger armies!) as well as other games that could do with Bad Monsters. 

Anyway, there is no "Cthulhu" army list in KoW but the "Forces of the Abyss" list is a relatively easy convert. My Abyss is just a lot wetter....instead of fiery Balrogs think fishy Behemoths and lots of tentacles

Here is Ole Cthulhu himself getting painted. The models are single colour plastic, I mainly used inks/washes on the base colour though I had to paint the bases (eg Cthulhu's rock here) and some other parts. I hope I have done a reasonable job with them.

And there are many various minor monsters in the Cthulhu Mythos, and a big battle game like KoW lets you go to town - here are Mi-Go (red, holding human brains in their pincers), a Hunting Horror (purple), and some dark grey Shoggoths. 

 

 And here are some Cthool Ctholourful Cthultists in production.....

 

There are Star-spawn, floating in the sky, they'd like to come and meet you, they want to eat your mind..... 

And finally, First Game against my friend's Wood Elves (likewise a Lockdown project). I added Mantic Fishmen and Games Workshop Skinks as Deep Ones (aka low grade warriors/fish dinners in the Cthulhuverse). Still thinking about how best to base the figures when they have to play as mass units but you also want individual models for other games.

....and I mentioned Big Games - Here is Cthulhu + Ogres vs. Undead  + Wood Elves - played outside. Al Fresco Gaming is so Covid.

Its good to be gaming vs real people again...

Trabazond - New Byzantium's Enclave on the Eastern Black Sea

Old Trabazonde - pearl of the Eastern Black Sea

One of my gaming friends has started an Imagi-Nation somehere in Mesopotamia, and I thought it may in some way come into contact with the New Byzantine city of Trabazond, on the Turkish coast so it may be worth thinking about its forces as it is a "special case". 

The Turkish province of Trabazond was taken from them by Rssian in WW1 (This is true). To reward Russia for going all Bolshevik, and Turkey for being on the wrong side, it was given to Byzantium after WW1. The real reason was mainly to give the French and British navies a permanent base in the Eastern Black Sea. (This is Imagi-Nation)

The presence of these great powers kept it safe from acquitive hands in the Interwar years, but oddly being taken over by Germany when they overran Byzantium at the beginning of WW2, and then by the Soviets at the end, probably kept it "safe" for Byzantium during the war. It resumed its role as a Great Power naval base after WW2, with the US and USSR now also having access. It was to be returned to Byzantium in 1955, at the same time as German occuption stopped. This probably kept it out of acquisitive hands in that period as well, as Byzantium was in no state to defend it.

After the Suez Crisis in 1956 it was clear to Byzantium that the Great Powers were now the US and USSR and the latter were far closer to home, so it was time to cosy up to the Soviets a bit more. As part of this, a large part the naval facilities at Trabazond were offered to the Soviets for 20 years, the rest would remain "multi national". This probably kept Trabazond in Byzantine hands, and made it an "interesting" city in the peak Cold War years, (but that is the subject of a series of spy novels ;)   

At any rate, New Byantium managed to extricate the Soviets in the mid 1970's but then had the very real problem of keeping it from various acquisitive hands in the region. This mainly meant stopping attacks from over the mountains, along the shore, or from the sea.

Population was in the high hundreds of thousands, about half that of the European Themes, so the Thematic forces are about half that of the other Themes. Because of this (did I mention the acquisitive neighbours) there is always a part of the full time Tagmata stationed here, and it is a major Naval base and Air Force base.

Each Theme is supposed to have a full size full time Thematic Brigade and a divional size force of reservists. 

However, Trabazond hasn't that level of population, and a lot of hidden strong points in the mountains need are manning. so a lot of the military population is required for that.  

The area is essentially full of separate mountain valleys and passes, and each needs a fully capable force to defend it. So the resrvists of all stripes are organised in independent Demi-Brigades per valley area, and deach Demi Brigade has a force with most of the support functions elements of a Brigade.

Ditto, the standing Regulars may need to be split among a number of valleys so they too are organised into 3 self supporting Demi Brigades rather than a full Brigade. There is also a higher use of helicopters here to move forces quickly.

The structure of a Demi Brigade is essentially an allocation of Brigade level support assets into companies (eg of Armour, Artillery, AA, AT, Comms Recconnaisance etc) attached to a Battalion level of troops (and this Battalion may not have the standard 3+1 companies of infantry ). 

  

More Czechoslovakia

 

(Alt-Czechoslovakia in 15mm begins - OT 66, OT 65 and OT-810s in front OT-64s and an OT-62 in reserve)

 Well,it's been a while since I wote something here - gaming hasn't stopped but its been the more pedestrian "use a set of rules/build some models/play" nature, not really the Imagi-Nation terrain of this blog. (OK, I built a British pith-helmeted Praetorian Guard outfit for 40K Epic - you can guess how the Leman Russes were done, Mother...)

But, with the increase in popularity of Cold War gaming, modern Imagi-Nationing in 15mm is now an option. The 15mm game is at a lower level than the Brigade+ level ganes we play in 6mm, so you're really looking at snapshots of TO&Es of c reinforced platoon size. So where to start with a 15mm outfit?

The obvious answer (to me) was to start with the Recce Brigade of the Alt-History Czechoslovakian TO&E (based on the 1938 Fast Division structure - see here) as no doubt they would be in the vanguard of finding trouble.. In 1938 it comprised an:

• Infantry Company on motorcycles 
• Armoured Car Company – using the big 6 wheel armoured car, not the light 4 wheeler
  
• Light Tank Company – using older light tanks, while they waited for re-equipping with the new one (what became the Pz38t in WW2)

In the original discussion 2 years back on translating these into Cold-War speak, the plan was essentially as follows:

• Infantry Company using the smaller OT-66s as the APC - the original idea 2 years ago was to also have an ATGW platoon in jeeps with ATGWs but gaming experience in 6mm showed these are a bit vulnerable so an OT-65 with AT missiles replaved it.. 
  
• Armoured Car Company – modifying the big 8 wheeler OT-64 SKOT to carry something with more unch than a heavy machine gun
• Tank Company - using the older "Letak" tank design (much like a Soviet PT-76 but with a more poweful anti-armour gun)

For 15mm I got the OT-66's and OT-65 from QRF, and Team Yankee do the big SKOTs in resin. Sadly QRF stopped doing  moderns in January so the PT-76s aren't coming (you can get them 3D printed but I don't like the surface finish at this sort of scale, so the replacement light tank has become more urgent :)

(Another reason for selecting the Recce force first is the gear is more "existing gear with a few mods" rather than the huge amount of modelling / bodging all the heavy armour and special weapons will need)

But anyway, the force is assembling (see pic at top), the existing elements are shown, basecoated in the best approximation I have of the Czech Grey-Green drab. I also couldn't resist converting some SdKfz251s into older OT-810s (aka "Hitler.s Revenge") for pre-OT-55/Reserve unit gaming plus getting an OT-62 for some odd-jobbing (yes it's plug ugly, but you name it, they've tried stcking it on the old waggon. Ditto the OT-810s sported all sorts of add-ons, so ideal for an Alt-Army.)

Another decision in 15mm is infantry uniforms - in 6mm I just have green-brown and brown-green blobs on bases, but in 15mm it is necessary to paint the little buggers. Given they didn't copy the Russian uniform in reality, I assumed Alt-Czechoclovakia would have come up with much the same uniform as they did in reality. (Conveniently, given of course the common stuff will be used for a Real-Cz army!)