All,
First, my apologies for the lack of blogging over the past six months or so. I haven't had much time for wargaming, and what time I have had has been spent painting, but I'm ready to kick off (another overly) ambitious campaign. 2021 was supposed to be the year of the Western Desert, but… I couldn't leave well enough alone. The forces I'd completed for the Western Desert weren't suitable for the early part of the war in North Africa, so I went and bought a bunch more stuff. Work continues on getting it all table ready and, of course, my wargaming butterfly got out and convinced me to try and run about five more projects simultaneously.
I'm happy to report that I've actually finished one, and I'm ready to back into gaming with both foot. Or, hopefully, six feet: mine plus those of my two boys. And where are we going? A massive campaign to play out the bulk of the "Battle of the Bulge," in 15mm. It's not perfect, but here's a look at the forces and my plan.
The whole mess, with Yanks on the left and Germans on the right. You can see a bunch of winter terrain above them. And it's quite a mess; the vast majority is from Battlefront, with some Plastic Soldier Company vehicles and a couple Old Glory guns and crew thrown in. The keen-eyed will notice that none of the vehicles are 'white-washed'/painted in winter colors; sorry, I want to be able to use these for Northwest Europe as well, and there's no way I'm doing all these vehicles twice. I'm already way too far into 15mm WWII, just wait and see (for the posts about other 15mm WWII projects I've been working on)! And here I'll admit, all of this is not my work. I did my fair share of cleaning, building, painting, and basing, but I also bought quite a bit of this force online. Some of it was bought off Ebay or the TMP Marketplace from fellow wargamers, about half the infantry came from Gajo Minis, and quite a few of the vehicles came from AJ Rice, a professional painter. Both Gajo and AJ are fantastic to deal with; nice cost, very responsive, great looking minis, and packed well to make sure no damage.
Some Shermans.
Some M7 Priests.
Some US infantry.
Some Panzer IVs.
PanzerJaeger IVs.
And some German infantry.
Now, for my plan! This might seem funny, but long before I ever got into miniature wargaming I played wargames on the computer, and my favorite computer wargame(s) was "Close Combat," particularly the 2nd one, "A Bridge Too Far," which is definitely on the docket for stuff to game. In any case, I also had the 4th Close Combat module, "Battle of the Bulge." It doesn't cover the entirety of Wacht Am Rhein, but a good portion of it, and it has an outstanding campaign map and details all the units, their composition, their locations, and the reinforcement schedule.
And here is the Day 1, Phase 1 positions for the Yanks and the Germans. There are eight 'overlaps,' meaning there will be eight tabletop battles. The campaign will be ten days, and each day has three 'phases.'
And for the first battle we have chosen Losheim, a duel between the U.S. 14th Cavalry Group and the German 8th Regiment, 3rd Fallschirmjager Division. My winter table, a humble stab at Losheim. North is up, the Germans will attack from the east (right) and the Americans are defending in the west (left). It's funny, I may have picked the only map in the whole campaign that is flat! And the one thing this photo shows me is, you can never have enough trees…
To see a bunch more pictures of the troops and table, and for a detailed explanation of how I intend to carry out the campaign, please check the blog at:
link
Just a reminder, I post pics of my completed minis and the odd batrep here, but I have a dedicated blog for WWII in the European/Mediterranean theaters, so all the battles of this campaign will be posted to my "Little Lead Crusade in Europe" blog, located here:
Little Lead Crusade in Europe (hakunamatatawars.blogspot.com)
So, there it is, new forces and another campaign, let me know whatcha think. The stage is set, everything is set and ready to go, the boys and I kick this off first thing in the morning!
V/R,
Jack
worries about not losing his rules stuff.
