Avalon Hill: Panzer Blitz Combat Rules

The Power of Three: What am I attacking, what am I hitting it with and how is it affected by terrain and/or range modifiers?

Panzer Blitz is a classic game from the early Avalon Hill era best recognised from hexes, symbolic terrain, movement points, attack points, defence points and the ratios between them in a Combat Results Table (CRT). A statisticians heaven. Importantly it also brought in the concept of how you breakdown an attack on a hex containing multiple targets (see below, selective attack on one target [the weakest] - multiple targets but not all attack [working from the weakest up] and finally combined attack [everything attacked as if were one big unit]):

There were plenty of opportunities for "wargaming cheese" here (or unrealisms) that exploited the mathematics of certain situations however the purity of the design principles is clear. In fact the Spearhead rules by Arty Conliffe seems to draw indirect inspiration from it in its target assignment and prioritisation of targets depending on weapon type. Another consideration apart from the power (as in attack points a counter has) is the weapons inherent capability aka purpose: Infantry Weapons, Anti-Infantry Guns (HE: High Explosive) and Anti-Armour Guns (AP: Armour Piercing), plus if it has indirect "Mortar and Howitzer" characteristic (see below, nicely summed up in a little chart):

There then follows range and target type considerations (see below, the rows read Infantry Weapons, AP Weapons and then HE Weapons):

The terrain of the target hex counts too (see below, +2 DRM with cover from Woods, Swamps and Towns, with slopes and hills significantly affected the AF because of good cover):

The above consolidated into an odds-based Combat Resolution Table (CRT) as seen below, where "X "X" is a KIA, "-" is 'No Effect', D equals Dispersed (with no action other than to rally at the end of the next player's turn, so effectively missing a go) and DD is a special chance to kill units already Dispersed this turn (see below, a special tactic in Panzer Blitz seemed to be suppress with long range fire and close assault to kill - that was one unit can be attacked twice in the same turn):

The above formula seems to have stood the test of time!

The "Joy of Nurgle"

Following the recent posts about GW Fantasy figures that "took my eye" it may come as no surprise to you that yet another set has come my way .. this time that of Nurgle - yes the mark of chaos is truly on me now. The appeal of a set of figures that could be as easily used for 40K or Age of Sigmar was completely of secondary interest as I play neither - but I could do in the future if my kids want to. No the primary appeal was that of "The Dark of Nurgle"; the fact that I just "took to" the look and feel of the Nurgle Plaguebearers with their sprawling guts and infestations (see below, "plastic hell" comes your way):

I suspect this is how the Horus Heresy started (see below, as they come closer you just have to know that little bit more about them):

Each one seems just a bloated sack of bile and hatred for the "clean living" beings of the multiverses, but the closer you look you notice how each one has their own mark of uniqueness about them (see below, isn't there something to love about them?):

From a horned creature with abominations erupting from its stomach to another horned being of decay being tormented by a "Nurdling" hanging from its intestines (see below, what's more I can see no complicated army painting schemes being needed here):

In fact each Nurgle is unique, but that uniqueness is lost in the squabbling hoard intent on its mission of death (see below, who needs smart uniforms to look nasty?): 

Why try and be nice when you can be simply mean! This Nurgle in a former life was probably a "Tax Inspector" or "secondary School Teacher" - there must be sufficient pent up anger and hatred to freeze the blood of a Terminator or Pilgrim Priestess (see below, my guess is that this fellow does not care what you excuse is, you're guilty in his eyes and the sentence is death

As if the larger terrors were not cause in themselves to like Nurgel, these tiny terrors that "hang along" are reminiscent of the hoards of seemingly harmless small Snotlings that cavorted around Green Skins armies - harmless that is until they got in close with numbers and evil pointy things (se below, it is that insane mad grin that means you know you are in trouble - a bit of artistic license is taken with a few Nurgle Plaguebearer spare parts and a disembodied hand chasing a tiny Nurgle after it has obviously been "naughty" and needs punishing!): 

My initial use for these beasties will be to scare the pants off some unwary adventures in the bowels of the castle of a (very) Mad Mage! They will initially kill them easily enough, but then the when dying bodies explode, the splattered guts will cause mayhem in themselves and the adventurers woes will truly start.

Useful WWII Italian Painting Guide (Flames of War)

Please see from Flames of War: https://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=110&art_id=413

I was looking after the Western Desert in particular but the guide covers all (well mainland European "Grey" too) theatres:

Just what I needed for my 10mm Pendrakon Italian Desert miniatures

What to do with all this Sprue?

One of the strange questions I was left with after a lot of 28mm kit assembly (and it was not the wife's "Why, oh why did I not check out his hobbies deeper before I married him!") was - "What do you do with all this left over sprue - it seems too good to throw away, think about the planet". When you clip apart metal kits all spare "lead" (I will call it lead even though we all know it is not really lead) into the jar for melting down at a later date "for something ". I have taken to keeping strips of sprue thinking that it also will come into use at a later point (see below, a solution looking for a problem - a term often used in a nasty way to describe AI):  

I have amassed quite a bit of it now and it is becoming a bit of a storage problem (three full cartons of plastic [empty] ice cream boxes and still growing) and something I need to consciously hide from Great Tumberg as it does not endorse my carbon footprint positively! The closest I have come is a useful link from Renko:

https://iagsmgm.blogspot.com/2016/12/minefields-barbed-wire-exploded-mine.html?fbclid=IwAR3bCPqjw8RqXAdmcYSgJIVYSYTqh0_djmA-m-HWMqckmzT1eqEW4MpuXmc

Which means instead of strips I should be keeping corners and rectangles (pass me another empty plastic ice cream container and don't tell Greta). I should add that to save a small portion of the family's carbon footprint I am using the empty butter boxes (very thoroughly cleaned I may add .. so the detergent usage has gone up significantly) as perfect 28mm Squad boxes! My initial thoughts on sprues as they would be perfect as battered interior supports for broken buildings and making a frame for other buildings has yet to be "instantiated".

More 28mm but it's not WWII rather it's Fantasy instead - Khorne Bloodletters

Following the perverted logic that if you leave me alone long enough in a shop (particularly one where there is models of any kind in) I will find something I like and invent a reason sufficiently plausible to my vulnerable mind to persuade me to buy. I have so acquired a pack of Bloodletters of Khorne - why? Well they fit into both Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres (well, at least to Games Workshops taxonomy of things - 40K and Age of Sigmar compatible) looked easy to build and fun to paint. They also came in a back of ten which meant they were a standard army box and not one of the exotic expensive specials. If I get as far as painting one up then it can prowl the dungeons of the D&D universe (or should that be multi-verses) scary the whits out of the shorter (20mm) adventurers! (see below, a horde of assembled monsters waiting to be processed):

I am thinking they will get the dunk and dip treatment and be painted to individual colour schemes, as opposed to an army formula. After all there are Fire (Red), Cold (Blue), Bile (Green) and Sun worshipping (Yellow) demons! I feel the need to go "Nurgle" in the not so near future ;)

My "last" set of 28mm WW2 Russians?

Again the 28mm assembly line is churning out the assembled figures, akin to a Space Marine factory with all the "snipping off the sprue". It does wear on the fingers and thumbs though and is best done in short bursts. A squad a time so to speak. One of my completed projects (or so I thought) was my Stalingrad Russians. Now looking closely at the early orders of battle, at the outset of the battle the Russians had eight riflemen to their squad (much in alignment to the rest of the world's armies), but soon as attrition set in this came down to six (as per the "Two Fat Lardies" order of battle anyway and who am I to argue). Looking as this hole in my collection I spied the Warlord Games KV1/2 pack that came with a useful sprue of eight little Russians so a perfect match in heaven was made (see below, Ivan and his friends, all sturdy run-of-the-mill riflemen of the Soviet Union, no sexy SMGs to be found here):

Could this be the end of the Russian infantry component to my 28mm collection (a collection I remember swearing never to start on several years ago)? I suspect not as there will always be little add on extras (my fellow wargamers laughed at me when I announced this). It was also pointed out to me that the official roster at the start of Barbarossa had "ten" Soviet riflemen to a squad. Have I a need for a second KV1/2? I wonder, but I think there are other nationalities I need to consider first!

28mm LRDP or SAS

These came from a Wargames Illustrated "free" sprue of figures with the magazine and have been lurking around for some while now. Seeing as I am in 28mm assembly mode they passed through the production line quite quickly (see below, balaclava and Arab headdress a plenty):

The only trouble as such with the free sprue was that they did not fit int the 8th Army collection I was assembling which was from the Perry's 8th Army pack. Warlord figures are just so much chunkier and bigger than the Perry's equivalent models. The solution is that these troops serve in different sections and don't mix in my order of battle.

Note: I also had to use some "too hand" wooden bases (purchased from The Works a while ago) to give them a stable platform.