Saturday, September 9, 2023

Status of My Barbarrossa Campaign

My Operation Barbarossa campaign has become the big project of the year with preparations nearing completion and the start of the campaign lurking around the end of the month (maybe).  For now, I'm focussing on the 6mm side of things (rather than 15mm), as I expect that all of the early battles in the campaign will be played in the smaller scale.

Despite all of the work I've accomplished, I still have some stuff to do on my checklist:

Biuldings - Primarily, I need to paint most of the buildings that I've purchased for the campign.  Additionally, I'd like to acquire more buildings, but am finding either scale or sculpting style issues stopping my purchase of some buildings on the market.  I may have to fall back on mastering and casting some stuff, which i'd like to avoid, if possible.

Brest-Litvosk - I haven't figured out how to represent this on the table yet.  Right now, I'm leaning towards making a simplified fortress approximatly 1200-1800 meters across (roughly one third to half actual size in terrain scale with a combination of foam and plastic.  

Terrain - I need to make a wider river.  Right now, the widest 6mm river that I have is around 200m wide in scale.  The new one will be 450 meters wide, which I think will be wide enough to provide a problematic water obstacle.  This is a fairly simple build that should only take 2-3 week nights to complete.  

Additionally, I need a couple village/town terrain tiles, and a few city tiles.  These are also simple builds, with the village/town tiles probably being built as needed for battles, much in the way, I've done for my WWIII 1958 games.

Aircraft - The miniatures have been acquired; now, it is just a matter of several still needing paint.  They are on the painting table, in various stages of completion.

Defenses - Both field fortifications and the fixed defenses of the Molotov and Stalin lines still need to be built.  I've done a ton of research on this, but not reading Russian has probably lead to me my missing some of the best material.  Despite all of my time on this, I have only a stack of notes and sketches to show for it at this point.  The plan is to build earth and wood field fortifications over the coming week, and the masonry bunkers of the "Lines" during the next.


I feel pretty good about everything, maybe with the exception of the extra buildings and the Brest fortress.  Well, even if those two things drag my start back into October, I'm still months ahead of where I expected to be on this, when I outlined my future plans back in September of last year.

Guess I should get moving on the remaining work; I'm off to the basement now.

7 comments:

  1. With a start date of end of September, you are very close, indeed.

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    1. It does seem to be coming together without a hitch. Kind of odd for agaming project.

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  2. Good luck with your project. I’m following your progress with interest as I have been planning something similar using 20mm figures and vehicle.

    All the best,

    Bob

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    1. Thanks Bob. I've been following your effort as well. Your newly flocked figs are looking good.

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  3. Convergence! I am sorting out at the moment how I'm going to adapt Andrew Rolph's East Front May 1942 campaign to my armies. Blog entry coming up in a few days...

    I'm always interested in campaign narratives others create.
    Cheers,
    Ion

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    1. Oh interesting. I was just looking at his offerings last week. I look forward o see what you come up with.

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  4. Good luck with the project. You certainly have the scope for so many good games.

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