Terrain - Hikki Trees, Pine Forests

The draw back about wanting to use T-72s in your Soviet Force is that your main opportunity lies with the Central Group of forces and there likely invasion routes took the deep into Southern Germany and that means fighting in Bavaria which in turn means Forests and hills. To be fair most of Germany is a large pine forest. So a decent heap of Pine trees is key to fighting on the Central front.

Tools for terrain making are always bigger than those used for other tasks, these three I consider to be essential. The jigsaw allows me to create decent terrain bases from either hard board or MDF, the electric sander is essential to tidying up the resultant bases and a drill with a range of medium to large size bits ensures you can deal with the most difficult of modern trees. In addition for building woods I use a hot glue gun and a range of large flat brushes.

I found these the other day Hikki 40mm - 100mm Pine trees 100 in total for £30 how wrong could it go. they arrived densely packed in a very uninspiring plastic bag, which once I had emptied it turned out to contain 103 trees of sizes, 150mm, 100mm, 75mm and 50mm.  Note the tree ends in a very unfriendly stump to use these  you need to build bases and drill holes, having said that they were cheap.

I decided to base them in either threes or fives and set about creating the 24 bases it would take to mount them from MDF and Hard Board.  

Base creation is a simple two step process, cut out some irregular shapes, chamfer the edges with the sander then round off the corners, ensuring that your wearing a suitable mask whilst your doing it to avoid the harmful effects of inhaling small fibrous particles. Then its down to finding an appropriate size drill bit and drilling out the holes for the trees, which then get filled with hot glue prior to planting, much easier than gardening.  

The bases are then coated with white glue and sand before painting.  Painting is done with kids liquid poster colours in a range of browns using some big brushes.  Then the bases are  dressed with more white glue and a range of scatter materials.

End result looks like this 24 bases of either 3 or 5 trees and a few left over for the odd back garden

Whilst this post took a relatively short time to write the trees took the best part of three weekends to complete, the cost was low and they are relatively effective and bulk out my pine tree collection nicely. They started a terrain frenzy which lasted from late May to early August, so more on Terrain Items to follow.  The critical point to remember when doing trees is that it is very difficult to have too many.

Other Terrain related posts include: 

Terrain - Byzantium 20mm, German Buildings

Terrain - Modern Farm Buildings

Terrain - Modern Supermarket

Terrain - Making It Modern

Terrain - Camouflaged Hides 

Web Resources - Fire and Fury, Cold War Orbats & Modern Resources

Fire and Furry is a games website covering 2 Rules Systems, Fire and Furry and Battlefront World War 2.  What makes the site a phenominal resource is the ammount of suplimental material produced for the Battlefront set in the Modern Period this includes:

• A Modern Forum and Discussion Group
• A free Modern Suppliment for the Battlefront Rule Set
• An extensive set of Modern Equipment Cards
• An Extensive set of Modern Orbats
• Modern Scenarios

The Orbats are what first attracted my eye they have a very consistent structure and style and are visually appealing which makes them easy to use.  The Orbats are relativly easy to work back to the real world organisations or translate to other approaches to unit representations. Clearly there are generalisations applied for the rule set in question but this can be refined by following up with your own research or through purchasing lists from other sources such as MicroMark @ Wargames Vault.

For the Cold War gammer they cover all the main central front players extensively with some excellent research sitting behind the products.  In addition a significant number of the surrogate wars are covered including the Ogeden, The South African Bush War, Granada, the Falklands and the Arab Israeli Wars. I have used these on Numerous occasions but keep forgetting they are there.  It is the very best of start points for working out Orbats for the Cold War Period and the lists are revised and updated as new information comes to light. Just what the internet was made for really, sharing :)

Cold War Orbats covered include:

Warsaw Pact - Soviet, East German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian
NATO - British, US, West German, Canadian, Belgian, Netherlands, Danish, Norwegian, Greek, Turkish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and French

Modelling -Scratch Build, 20mm Milan Firing Posts

In 1981 Soviet tanks attacking a British Infantry Battalion in Germany would have been confronted by this, which would have scared me if I had been the British Gunner.  The Wombat was replaced by Milan as the principal Anti Armour weapon of the British armed forces in the early 80's having been fielded by the Germans and French in the lates 70's.  It saw service in the Falklands and both Gulf Wars before being replaced by Javalin in Mid 2005.

Milan is a SACLOS wire guided system with a range of 1850m.  It was updated with the MIRA thermal imaging system in the mid eighties (assumed, I have not been able to identify a date for the introduction of this upgrade),which provided the first thermal imager into most British infantry battalions.  Initially battalions deployed 12 firing posts, moving to 24 in the mid to late 80s. liberation Miniatures, S&S and Elhiem all currently do a milan system in 20mm. I however decided to scratch build mine using card stock and these pictures as a guide.

The key thing for me when approaching a task like this is that you can tell what it is when its done and it looks allright. So I am not really one for measuring anything although in this instance because I wanted 4 I did need to achieve some level of consistency.

I used missile tubes produced by liberation for their TOW system as the launch tubes although I could equally have used some plastic rod.  The remaining component were all cut from plasticard strips of different thickness and widths.

The three elements of the launcher were then constructed with the tripod being built onto a thin plasticard base to give it strength and ease attachment to the figure base later.  The launch unit consisting of the launch rail the flash guard and site unit were shaped and assembled and then attached to the tripods, Finally a representation of the MIRA thermal site was fashioned and the launch tubes added.

The figures were from a mix of sources SHQ SS, liberation legs and Britania crew commanders, with the various components being joined together with greenstuff webbing and based on 20mm wooden circular bases.

Bases were then covered in sand and the figures painted DPM in line with the tutorial referenced below.  Missile launchers were painted with Russian uniform, highlighted by introducing buff and then had a representation of the various stencilled markings on the launch tubes added in white and yellow.

Whilst the modelling is really quite crude with little small detail the painting and scale means that the representation is fairly effective even at close quarters.  As viewed on the table they do the job well.  In total I produced 4 acheiving a good degree of consistency primarily due to the use of cardstck and the creation of simple shapes.

As I write this Matt at Elhiem figures is putting a MIRA on his Millan and creating a British Crew set so less effort required in the future.  Having said that if you have not tried it scratchbuilding isn't that difficult and when you can add something thats not commercially available, builds a better army - so give it a go.  The key thing to remember is the brain is very good at filling in the missing detail.

References:

ORBAT - 1980's British BG, Part 7 The Infantry Battalion
Wargames Unit - 1980's British BG, Support Company
Painting - British Army, DPM
Encyclopedia of The Modern British Army,3rd Edition,Terry Gander

ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Units Part 1, Overview and Lift Assets

The Soviet Army included a number of dedicated Air Assault battalions and Air Assault Brigades at Army and Front level and was capable of generating Air Assault assets from motor rifle units at divisional level with up-to 1 MRB being trained for this purpose in each division.

The Air Assault units were used in support of tactical and operational manoeuvre often in conjunction with Divisional and Army level forward detachments.  Missions were generally tactical in nature and conducted at company or battalion level within 50km of the forward line of own troops often as close as 15km in order to ensure artillery support and rapid link up. Tasks for Air Assault units included:

• seizing key terrain, dominating features, defiles, crossing points road junctions
• screening flanks
• strikes against artillery concentrations, nuclear weapons and head quarters
• blocking counter attacks
• ambush of movement in rear areas.

A total of 8 Air Assault Brigades were identified supporting the 4 Fronts in the Western TVD.  This fits an assumption that not only did each Front possess an Air Assault Brigade, but that each of the Tank Armies forming the Operational Manoeuvre Groups of each of the fronts were also given an Air Assault Brigade, the Combined Arms Armies each had an Air Assault Battalion.

Whilst airmobile brigades started being formed in the early 70s, the Air Assault units being to appear from the late 70s early 80s and were largely fully formed by 1990 in the Western TVD. They were another method available to Front and Army commanders of focusing combat power on the main effort and could be supported by a range of Air and Aviation lift and attack assets. The Air Assault Units were capable of insertion by Parachute, Helicopter or Tactical Air Landing but had no lift capability integral to the unit.

Aviation Capability

Significant lift and attack helicopter units were maintained at all levels from Division to Front and these in conjunction with the Front Air Army and Transport Aircraft from the VTA would support Air Assault operations.  Aviation units included:

• Divisional Fire Sp Squadrons of 4 Hoplite, 6 Hind and 6 Hip.
• Army Attack Helicopter Regiments of 2 Hind Squadrons of 20 Aircraft and 1 Hip Squadron of 20 Aircraft.
• Front Transport Helicopter Regiment of 2 Heavy Lift Squadrons of 12 Halo or Hook and 2 Medium lift Squadrons of 16 Hip,  A Front could have upto two such Regiments.

The Total Helicopters of each type available to a Front with 2 CAA and 1 TA and 1 Air Army comprising some 14 ground divisions was potentially:

• Halo/Hook 48
• Hip 214
• Hind 210
• Hoppolite 60

In addition Air Assault operations would be supported by the Fighter and Fighter Bomber Squadrons of the Fronts Air Army and Aircraft from the VTA (military transport aircraft) could be used to air land or parachute either armour or troops.  Air landing was probably the preferred option due to the reduced mounting time but required a suitable airport/field to be secured.  The Insertion of the Airborne and Air Assault elements in support of 40th Army during the invasion of Afghanistan demonstrated what could be achieved, though clearly in a far less hostile air environment.

I have found nothing that describes how Aviation assets were distributed or task organised between the echelons but could see that some of the policies associated with the distribution of Artillery Assets might apply.

• 2nd Echelon Armies Attack Helicopter Regiments and divisional fire support squadrons could initially be available to support 1st Echelon Armies within a front.  This would provide an additional Attack Helicopter Regiment to reinforce the main axis along with up to 14 Divisional Aviation Squadrons.
• If the Front in the 2nd operational echelon could contribute assets to the fronts in the first then an additional transport helicopter regiment, and 3 Attack Helicopter Regiments would be available.
• This would create significant lift capacity on the main axis of the first operational echelon

Whilst some sources point out that armed Mi-8t in the Army Attack Helicopter Regiments would not be used for troop lift it is clear from records of operations in Afghanistan that they were.  Other tasks placed on aviation assets include resupply of forward elements, obstacle creation and armed action in support of ground units, so whilst a considerable amount of aviation capability could potentially be gathered, it was not for the sole purpose of moving Air Assault Units.

References:

FM 100-2 Specialised Warfare and Rear Area Support, Chapter 3 Heliborn Operations
FM 100-3, Soviet Troop Organisation and Equipment
Reorganisation of Soviet Ground Forces, CIA 1983
Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army, Isbey, 1988
Soviet Bloc Elite Forces, Zaloga and Loop, Osprey 1985
Soviet Airborn Operations in Theatre of War, SASO, 1988
16va.be Web Site - Excellent resource for Soviet Air Force in GDR
Wargames Unit - Soviet VDV Regiment

Terrain - Making It Modern

Each period in History has a distinctive look and feel to the terrain, this tends to live in the representation of the man made features, buildings structures, roads tracks and the nature of things like cultivated land.  So wanting to game the Cold War on the central front I wanted to think about what would make the cold war game distinct from World War Two.

Some very common features of the Modern world that scream "today" are of course a little too modern certainly for the early 80s game, in this Category sits mobile phone masts and wind turbines.  Although these are probably good for the early nineties and certainly for any fanciful late 90s Games.

Another thing that says modern is the juxtaposition of the old with the new, histroical buildings and ruins can sit happily along side modern buildings, so all those churches castles and WW2 buildings, Medieval bridges and even Iron age huts can be put to good use.

Some of the Key things that say Modern to me are Roads and Road networks that include Motorways with central barriers embankments and big Blue Signs, bridge construction methods are also quite time specific. Car parks are distinctively modern weather multi storey or open tarmac and marked ground.

Another distinctive element is the 60's and 70's low rise and high rise flats Office blocks and public buildings which tend to be landscaped complexes.  Mixing a variety of buildings in close proximity with car parking fencing lighting roads and trees can achieve the required effect.

Some building functions say modern particularly when the function and building materials are looked at together. Supermarkets started in low numbers pre war but did not really start to take off in numbers until the 50's Tescos didn't start till the 60s so they are inherently a modern feature, originally housed in traditional large buildings they now occupy structures that exploit similar materials to light industrial buildings.

The industrial base of Europe has evolved significantly transitioning from heavy to light industry and services, these types of activity are associated with buildings of a particular look and feel, together with the clustering of these activities around the edge rather than in the centre of Built up areas.

then there are a whole range of services ranging from Power distribution with high voltage electricity pylons, through telephony with its distinctive telegraph poles to trafic control systems with lights at junctions water treatment plants and water towers to street lighting and petrol distribution.

In the country side the main impact of the modern age other than the ubiquitous services are the impact of modern structures within the Agricultural community and in this the most obvious item is the prefabricated metal barn.

In addition to it looking Modern it also has to represent some part of the world and for me thats the Central front in Germany North or South depending on which armies I am fighting with, the Germans have fairly distinctive housing, the signs are in German, they don't love the roundabout, they don't tend to enclose there fields or houses as much as we do, they have an awful lot of Fir trees and they do love rail ways.

So thats the recipe for the central front not being WW2 revisited:

• A Bunch of old buildings
• Petrol Stations
• Supermarkets
• Low rise, Flats, Offices and shops
• Light Industry
• Modern Barns
• Modern Services Power, Telephony, Water, Lighting

and a German Flavour created by:

• German Building style
• no hedges
• no roundabouts
• German signs
• Fir Trees

For this summers game I produced a number of terrain items from the list above which I will be covering over the next few months.


Terrain - Byzantium 20mm, German Buildings
Terrain - Modern Farm Buildings
Terrain - Modern Supermarket

Terrain - Hikki Trees, Pine Forests

Terrain - Camouflaged Hides