Photos - 6mm CV33s

A company of Irregular CV33s advance from cover in the woods...

Italy sent entire armoured formations to fight in Spain. Their most (in)famous vehicle was the two man tankette, the CV 33. Machine gun armed, the tankettes had thin armour and slow speed compared to the new breed of tank appearing at the time. Never-the-less, their appearance in small raids peppers many accounts of the fighting.

A surprisingly high number of them were armed with a flamethrower instead of machine guns. I will use some ammunition carriages that came with some of my artillery models to fashion fuel tanks to be towed by a company of such flame thrower equipped CVs.

Photos - 6mm Fiat CR 32 biplanes

A prominent feature during the Spanish Civil War was the tactical use of aircraft. Russia and Germany 'donated' planes and pilots to the Republican and Nationalist rebellion early in the war. Franco in fact relied upon Junkers to fly his rebels from North Africa to the mainland prior to the advance on Madrid.

One of the joys of wargaming the conflict are the biplanes (at least, I find it so). Here are a couple of Italian CR 32s waiting for clearance...


Irregular make models of many of the famous planes used in the war. Sadly, not the Hs 123. Does anyone know where I can get models of these in 6mm? If so, please let me know.

Photos - 6mm Italian Support Weapons

Italian mortars open up from the edge of town...

Here's a view through the trees ...

An Italian machine gun company lays down suppression fire under direction from their battalion commander.

Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War came early in the conflict. Perhaps better equipped than many of the Spanish, Italy sent thousands of combat troops and a great deal of support to General Franco. Although less famous than the German Condor Legion, Italian regular infantry played a major role in much of the fighting in Spain. Besides infantry and artillery, Mussolini sent air, armour and naval support in large and regular shipments. Irregular miniatures produce models based directly on the Spanish experience.

Photos - 6mm trucks, tractors, heavy guns

This is another Irregular Truck - I think this one's from their WWII German range (?)

WWI artillery tractor (one of my favorites) and limbered heavy artillery...

... to join up with the battery.

Photos - 6mm trucks and cars

The Spanish Civil War was, by all accounts, a very un-uniform civil war, with lots of surplus WWI and civilian weaponry and transport seeing service. Thus, I have used Irregular miniatures' WWI 6mm figures to keep up the variety. Here is a lorry and the 'Paris taxi' from that range...

The war was also one in which the latest prototypes from the arsenals of the chief communist and fascist dictatorships were supplied in largish numbers. Hence, I have also used Irregular's WWII line to further add variety. Some of these models, however, look too 'modern' for the thirties. Not this truck though, I can't remember which catalogue item it is exactly, but it looks the part...

Believe it or not, there are still more trucks to come in future ...

Photos - 6mm Army of Africa Column

A good campaign within which to set early war scenarios is that of General Mola's drive North towards Madrid with the Army of Africa. This was composed of flying columns of roughly company to battalion strength. Besides the famed Moors and Foreign Legion, there were also regular army units and disgruntled Civil Guardia which joined the rebels. With the exception of the armoured truck shown below, I will feature the Foreign Legion and Moors at another time.

An armoured truck of the Legion, closely followed by a (WWI) Austin armoured car, leads the charge...

... closely followed by a company of mounted regular infantry.

The first of lorry mounted infantry arrive (WWI truck ahead of the Fiat) ...

... while, elsewhere in town, the Guardia Civil seize control of the streets in the name of the Junta ...

... as their headquarters elements look on.

All figures are Irregular 6mm. More to come in future. For now, it's back to East Front II ...

Photos - 6mm trucks

These are pictures of two Irregular Miniatures 6mm models which I painted up years ago. The models are a bit knocked around, but holding up pretty good. This is a reposting of a previous entry which had used photos taken 'hot' from the camera. These photo files are processed and cropped to make them more technically suitable for the web (and better looking).

Fiat with militia (could be workers, could be Falange, judging by the blue).

Fiat truck with Army of Africa nationalists.

Expect more photos soon, this is fun!

Al Front! update, and miniatures photos coming soon.

I've been asked to post a few pictures of my miniatures that show a bit more than the previous two snapshots did. They were to give you an idea of what it is we were doing as we tested out our draft Al Front! ruleset for the Spanish Civil Wargame in 6mm.

I've scored a camera now, so I hope to put up a few more specific pictures before too long.

As to Al Front!, it's got to the point (a year after the first printing) that it has been tweaked so much that it actually needs a rewrite. What should be comforting is that it will actually become simpler, although it will still come in at about 20 pages in Word with arial font and few pictures - I'll use the space to make it hopefully easily navigable on first reading (possibly second) and concentrate the charts together after the text. The design challenge there is to try and group and locate the charts on the page so that they don't cause players to have to continually shuffle pages through there turn (I hate that in a game).

Anyway, I'm waiting for the camera to charge up, and try and get something up here in the next couple of days...

Update EFII - Western Gate

We worked out how to play East Front II by email, yipee!

We are now working our way through The Western Gate scenario. I am the Poles, attacking parts of an SS regiment that blocks the way to help in Warsaw. I have just sent Wayne the second polish turn. When I have more time I will post up a bit of a report on the game.

It is a classic game, and pbem is a great way to play it.

East Front II update

One of my favouritest ever computer games is Talonsoft's East Front II. Although it is now getting quite old (seven years?!) they certainly got it right as a good computer sim that comes closish to the Squad Leader experience. Very good fun with another serious gamer if you have the time to play through a game, or meet often enough to enable enough frequency of turns that the game won't lose momentum. It is involved enough that you don't want to wait too long between turns.

Anyway, Wayne and I are looking at playing it by email, now that he is connected. We are just working out the file protocols etc, and then I can look forward to the computer age's closest aproximation to the classic wargames experience without the downloading and mucking around with beta versions of simulation software.

PF - Mission success

In Pacific Fighters I finally flew the first mission of Squadron 30'2 campaign well enough for it to be applied as a success. I managed to shoot down three fighters, destroy 3 AA guns, five cars and two ships (freighters). I flew most of the mission with a cockpit view and map, and the difficulty level is set at 'easy'. Never-the-less, and not just because of the glitch (see previous post), there is a deal of satisfaction in the victory.

The next mission is a scenic flight along the southern face of the Owen Stanleys from Port Moresby to Milne Bay. Will be interesting.

Pacific Fighter glitch

I have found a fustrating bug in Pacific Fighters. In the first mission of the campaign based upon Squadron 30 (RAAF Beafighters, New Guinea, 1942), the rest of the flight crashes into a cliff face before they've gotten half way to the target (Buna airfield). That makes it fairly difficult for one's surviving beafighter to work its way through AAA defences to score sufficient hits on transport assets to enable the mission to be a 'success'.

Upon reading reviews, it appears that this bug is not peculiar to my experience of the game. You'd think that in such a generally brilliant game, such glitches wouldn't find their way into the final product...

Friend on line

My 'son in law' is now on the web and is a keen gamer, so we are looking forward to playing East Front online and various other things (perhaps cyberboard versions of all the games we wished we had time to play even before kids and other associated interuptions to quality gaming time arrived). Will keep you updated.

Easter Presents - Pacific Fighters and Ghost Recon Expansions

My 'Easter Present' this year was a couple of computer games, Pacific Fighters (Ubisoft, 2004, realistic combat flight sim) and the Gold Edition of Ghost Recon (2001, with expansion disks of Desert Seige and Island Thunder, first player special forces shoot 'em up). So guess what I've been doing since Easter?

That has, of course, impacted upon my painting schedule, which has ground down back to stationary. I managed to paint up all of my new vehicular and ordinance elements (exception: london bus, horse and cart, Bf 109s). I have also painted most of the bases of all the painted troops in a matt green. Previously, they were painted with an impossible to replace Prussian Green acrylic, didn't look good (way too dark) and couldn't replace the bottle when it ran out. The next two steps in the project will be to complete the base painting, and then matt varnish the entire army.

That still leaves me the following to paint:

2 Bf 109s
Bus
Horse and Cart
Half company mounted troops
2 Battallions soft hatted troops
3 Battallions helmeted troops
1 Machine Gun Battalion
1 Carlist Company
6 Flag Groups.

That should give me something to do over winter ...

And, I found my tractor!

Possible rules changes and painting update.

I am thinking of some rule modifications (after a hiatus of over a month from thinking of such things) for my 6mm SCW rules. Firstly, simplify written text - to something I won't feel a need to explain when it gets put up on the web for the public to access. Secondly, alter a few of the mechanics, and their limitations, to more reflect what I want to draw out of the SCW.

Examples of the later include, adding limitations to who can combine with who into a fire group. For example, small arms can't support MGs, though MGs can support small arms, similarly with armoured vehicles and ordinance, and these weapons able to support any number of attacks - the point of this being to make support weapons be used more as such. Similarly, I am thinking of making it a bit difficult for units from different formations, nationalities and troop types to combine into groups - reflecting command and control difficulties of the war.

Related to this last, I am thinking of a way that will enable a bit more continuity of command mobility without removing entirely the quandaries my present system of command points imposes upon play.

I also want to make artillery a bit more of an area affect weapon, with barrages in a boxed area rather than the present blast radius (circular).

Finally, I also want to look at the interaction between my Unit sizes and the limit on the number of supporting fire elements that can increase an element's attack percentages.

I did think of changing the single dice theory of rolling to a standard 'two dice' roll, but on reflection I think I like the straight line probability of the later as opposed to the bell curve of the former. It makes dice modifiers a bit easier to quantify.

In terms of painting, I am painting my Condor units up - 5 Pz Is, 1 Pz II, 1 T 26, 2 light trucks, kubelwagen up in a 'panzer grey' (with 'dark brown' camo striping on the AFVs). I have done all of the grey and brown, it is now down to doing the detail (tracks, tyres, canvas, guns, people).