AAR11: Opportunity Missed (African Imagi-Nations at War: The Mugabia/Uwanda War)

This is the third of three land battles, in which, Mugabia tries to secure the Pettu tribal territory along the Uwanda side of the border.  The battle took place just east of the city located at objective A60 roughly centered in the map below.

Map of the border (black line) area between Uwanda (left) and Mugabia (right). 

Red lines indicate roadways between villages/towns/objectives.  Dashed

black line indicates Pettu tribal territory.

The Mugabian plan of battle was to simply steam-roller a large force through the Uwandan defenders and take the city at A60.

A series of air battles left Uwanda with marginal control of the air and good intel about the advancing enemy forces.  Uwanda planned a defense in depth with a light screening force of armored cars making the first contact with the enemy.  Armor would then pick at the Mugabian advance, eventually withdrawing behind and reinforcing a line of dug in Uwanda infantry.

Major Bola surveyed his forces.  Well trained by Russian and Cuban advisers, the major knew that he could count on his men.  Major Bola had fought many battles during the power struggle in Mugabia after the French left.  But, never had he fought with such a fine force, so well equipped.  As he admired the scene before him, he felt an excitement  unknown to him since his youth.

The Mugabian advance was lead by recce consisting of a platoon of BRDMs and a couple sections of scouts in BTR-152s.  Some distance behind was the main force, a company of T-34/85s, an infantry company in BTR-152s, a couple of ZSU-57s and a battery of heavy mortars.  Major Bola was in his special command tank with an artillery spotter attached.  Two additional motorized infantry companies would follow on as needed.

 

The Mugabian view  looking west into Uwanda.

The battle force advanced.  In time the BRDMs found the line of Uwandan light armor; where, three Saladin armored cars made short work of the BRDMs.  As no report was made by the BRDMs prior to their demise, the infantry scouts were forced to deploy from their transports to search for the enemy, taking much valuable time.

 

An easterly view from the Uwandan perspective (above).

 

Mugabian BRDMs smoke alongside the road to Uwanda.



The Mugabian scouts eventually found the Uwandan screening force, and engaged in a brief skirmish with a Uwandan artillery observation post.  Again the Saladins were called on, subduing and destroying the scouts, but losing one armored car to an RPG.

The observation post was lost, as was communication with Uwandan artillery for a time.  The commander of the screening force pleaded for reinforcements, having lost artillery support.  Reinforcements arrived in the form of a troop of Centurion Mk. IIIs only moments before the Mugabians did.

 

Uwandan Centurions strengthen the line.

 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Major Bola's T-34s formed up for battle in the trees along the stream opposite the Uwanda left.  The Mugabian infantry would wait until the T-34s began their advance,  then move forward through the farm opposite the Uwandan right.

 

Mugabian T34s prepare for the attack.

T-34s erupted from the woods, and immediately, the Centurions unleashed their 20PDRs.  T-34s exploded, while their shells either missed or bounced off of the Centurion's thick hide.  Major Bola maintained control over his rapidly diminishing force, while mortars were called in on the Uwandan  armor.

 

The T34s take a beating from the Uwandan Centurions.

 

 

T-34s burn to the right, while serious hurt is about to descend on the infantry

advancing in BTR-152s to the left.  Mugabian mortar strikes can be seen in the distance.

 

After a very brief and furious exchange, only two command tanks remained alive, afforded cover by trees and burning T-34s.  The mortars damaged a Centurion and destroyed a Saladin, but had no effect on the outcome of the battle.  The Centurions refocused their attention to the Mugabian infantry to the southeast, adding their fire to that of the Saladins.

 

A Centurion's view of the Mugabian infantry advance.

With the T-34s no longer distracting the Uwandan forces, the Mugabian infantry were rapidly demolished, having little cover and no long range anti-tank weapons.  Command failed to maintain order, and the attack turned into retreat .  Major Bola regained some order, eventually halting the fleeing troops, but the battle was badly lost.

 

Mugabian infantry head in the wrong direction.

 

Most of Uwanda's losses are depicted in this photo.

 

Though this had been the biggest battle of Major Bola's life, a bigger battle for his life was about to begin. His lingering thought was," How could we lose so completely, so quickly?  Do I even deserve to live?"

This battle was the last of four failures for Mugabia on this day.   The President would not be happy, and if the President was not happy, no one would be happy.



This battle was over almost before it started.  I had no expectation that the T-34/85s could be so out-classed by the Centurions, but they were.  Additionally, the Mugabian attack originally involved air-support, which was lost prior to the land battle taking place. 

As it was, two thirds of the Uwandan force never made it onto the table, and my elaborate plans to have a "rolling" battlefield, where I added terrain to the west end and slid the entire tabletop to the east was a waste of time.

Losses were as follows:

Mugabia:
29 infantry KIA or missing
  9 T-34/85
  8 BTR-152
  3 BRDM 

Uwanda:
2 infantry KIA
2 Saladin
1 Ferret

14 POWs taken
  4 BTR-152s Captured.

Now the "Fate Tables" (directing political and popular unrest) will be consulted to determine how the defeats will impact the politics and further actions of the armies.  This could get real interesting.



Irishserb's Twelve Days of Christmas

In September, I decided to take a bunch of time off around Christmas with the intent to work on many of the gaming projects that keep getting bumped by work.  I lined up materials, photos, plans etc.  Projects were to include making molds for my Humvee Tow vehicles, finishing a couple of M113 Variants, maybe finish the M60A1 master, build some more houses for my modern African games,  and a presidential palace and an airport inspired by the one in Malindi, Kenya, and lastly to paint my "space bubble" from earlier this year.  Got my work table organized and everything was ready to go.  As it turned out, I lost the first couple of vacation days to projects at work, working 14 hour days to save as many vacation days as possible.  I ended up with twelve days off over the holidays.  Here is how things went:

 
The "first day of Christmas" revealed a new problem with one of the cars, we band-aided it to delay the big repair until after Christmas.  No time for gaming projects.

The second day of Christmas brought a flood in the basement after a couple of days of pretty heavy rain.  The flooding was minor in scope, but ruined a bunch of game terrain and a few other things.

The third day of Christmas was spent sorting out the basement and picking up anything else on the basement floor that might be damaged by more flooding.  Most of the stuff ended up on my main work table and shelves around it.

The fourth day of Christmas brought the breakdown of car number two.  So much for the last minute Christmas shopping. 

The fifth day of Christmas (Christmas Day itself) brought flood number two, while we were opening gifts on Christmas morning.  This was unrelated to the first flood, and was caused by a problem with our sewer line.  Curiously, in our old house (by American standards anyway) there is no sewer drain in the basement floor.  The lowest point in the system is an unused drain (from a previous owners washing machine) located behind my work table about five and a half feet off of the basement floor.  This sprayed like a fountain, covering my work table, shelves, supplies,  molds, vehicle masters in progress, and most of the stuff picked up off of the floor a couple of days earlier.
     From a house standpoint, the damage was minimal, but my hobby took a major hit.   Truly a memorable Christmas, largely spent in a hotel room, watching Big Bang Theory, snacking on Munchos.

The sixth day of Christmas brought the plumber and a repair to the sewer problem.  Or so we thought.  Flood number three occurred about twelve hours after he left.  Lost a little more of my hobby, but not too much.

The Seventh day of Christmas brought the return of the plumber, discovery of a major problem that will result in digging up and replacing part of the sewer line, and a temporary fix in the mean time.

The eighth day of Christmas was spent fixing car problem number two.  I really need a heated garage.  And a new car.  And a new house.  With better plumbing.  And a lot of new game terrain.

The ninth day of Christmas was to be one of cleaning up the basement, and hopefully arranging to work on something hobby related.  It went well, until shortly after I got up, when I got my shower and broke my toe.  The bathroom doorway dodged me, seriously.

The tenth day of Christmas brought the realization that the replacement part that I installed in my car on day eight was defective.  Starting to loose my sense of humor at this point.  Used my wife's band-aided car to do a thing for work, and discovered that one of her co-worker's thought that it would be funny to put sticky stuff on the door handles the night before.   Wife didn't notice it as she had gloves on and didn't really grasp the handle to open the door.  Two things came to mind; blow torch, pliers.

The eleventh day of Christmas brought a forecast that indicated that I was going to have to take my second car somewhere to get defective fix fixed. It is just too cold to lay under the car all day.   Otherwise, my new found paranoia about the sewer consumed me for the day.

The twelth day of Christmas (New Years day) brought a desperate desire to get back to working 14 hour days before anything else went wrong.


I sit here a few days after the last round of chaos, the ghost of Christmas floods past at my side. The basement is clean, but a confusion of displaced shelves, bins, boxes, etc.  I don't have a work table any more, and my game table is covered with much of the recovered and displaced materials.  Only a single miniature was damaged, but I am missing a bunch of small parts to various masters that I was working on.  A 20mm M151 Jeep master is simply MIA.  Some portion of my scratch-built terrain for just about every period I play has been discarded, a collection dating from the 1980s.  I simply won't live long enough to replace it all, so some gaming periods/armies/subjects will be abandoned as a result.  I'm really not sure of what will stay and what will go, and mostly just feel kind of numb about it all.  Tired.   I guess the most important thing is to keep it in perspective.  After all, they are just toys.

Maybe tomorrow I'll paint something ...

Simple Technicals (15mm Moderns)

A while back I bought the Old Glory African Pick Up Crew with HMG pack, but hesitated to mount the MG and gunner in my pick-ups, as I also needed them as transports for my games.  So I ended up mounting them on styrene plastic bases, cut to fit in the beds of the pick-ups.  I had minor concern that they would tend to fall out of the trucks during movement, but they turned out to be pretty stable.

The bases were cut to allow the gun to face forwards or to the rear, and allow the machine guns to be used independent of the trucks in static positions such as bunkers and whatnot. 

Eventually I will buy a few more pick-ups and light vehicles and make a some more dedicated technicals, but in the mean time, these give me a little greater flexibility when using the pick-ups.

Weak W(h)ine, no Cheese

Been a tough Couple of weeks.  Two major car repairs have radically altered the holiday  plans and now my US forces for Vietnam received a devastating setback.

I went down stairs a couple of days ago to work on some 15mm moderns, and found a box of 20mm Vietnam vehicles and helicopters sticking out edge-on from behind a set of shelves.

 

 

I guess that I should be happy that only the M113s and UH-1s took a beating, the others are okay, other than a few scratches.  But the M60 MGs on the M113s are trash, I'm going to have to scratch-build a master and cast replacements.  Never even got them onto the table.

Oh well, where's my glue...

My First 15mm M60A2 Starship Completed

While I still don't have a production model, I did manage to paint a single M60A2 casting from my first try reject mold.  I plan to field a company of these in the same MERD-C pattern as my M113s.  Here are a couple pics:

 

It looked really dusty prior to clear coating it.  May have to go back and dirty up some more, once I get more castings painted.

My Old 6mm (1/285) Middle East Buildings

As I've been going through my stuff and finishing some old projects, I've also been rekindling some of my old interests.

I am  a long time micro armor player (some modern C-n-C miniatures being the first purpose manufactured historical miniatures that I bought), enjoying both WWII and Cold War games.  Several years ago, I made a number of simple Middle East buildings based on those in photos from the '67 and '73 Mid-East wars. 

The idea was to make simple masters that could be easily cast, and allow me to customize the buildings, hopefully yielding a diverse city in a relatively short period of time.  Like all of my projects, this is still waiting to be completed.  Here is the first batch of completed buildings:

As soon as I had some castings, I realized that I really should have made some ruined/battle damaged buildings.  So I got to work on that as well, and quickly had a set of damaged buildings.  I took some of the buildings and made minor variations as originally planned.

More of the damaged buildings below.

As soon as I had a set of damaged buildings, I started working on composite buildings made of two or more of the originals.  The building in the lower left of the above photo was the first example.

The composite building was made from the two other buildings shown above with a partial base added to it and some detailing with styrene strips.  Working backwards, I then completed the pre-battle damaged building.

Another example of  a composite building below.

 
The second batch of buildings includes a couple more complex shops, a mosque, and three more houses.  After digging out the unfinished models, I think I will finally get around to completing them in a coming months.  Though I will probably finish them as solid models, as I would rather have a little greater detail and am not concerned with placing infantry stands in the buildings, as I was a few years ago.

It was my intent to add some of these models to my site this past January, but never got around to it.   I will add the damaged buildings (or at least some of  them) to my sale site in the next few days.  Also, I'm going to re-visit the original building models and rework them into more detailed solid models to make them more interesting, ease casting, and add them as well.  I think that I can get this done in December, as I am supposed to have some time off.  Wonder how may day job will derail this one...

15mm M1115 Humvee TOW ATGM

Among the kajillian (hah!, spell checker thinks that isn't a word, silly gizmo...) unfinished gaming projects that I have setting around is an unfinished chassis for an unfinished M1167 Humvee Tow model.  As part of my now never-ending "clean up and finish unfinished projects that have been setting around my basement for way, way too long" effort, I started making a TOW missile launcher for the M1167.  Along the way, I got distracted and ended up with a TOW turret for the M1115 armored Humvee.  Don't worry, the M1167 is still going to happen, but I still need to make that goofy armored turret.  It will turn up around here soon.  Really.  What?   In the mean time, I figured that I'd post a few pics of my M1115 contraption.  So here goes:

 
The unit comes with an open hatch and a tub to fit into my Humvee model, and it may get "tweaked" a little before it is available.  But that is more or less what it will look like.

 In addition to the M1115 TOW vehicle, I will have the M1167 in the near future, and the M150 (M113 TOW) soon after that.  Now... where is that turret for the Leclerc?