10mm WWII Action: Attack on Uden

British infantry in the foreground defend "Hell's Highway" the village of Uden in the background...American paras under assault in the far distance.

Today I had some time to set up and run a small WWII action in 10mm using some terrain boards and my new Pendragon 10mm figures. The battle was just to have a go at the rules (I've not played them before) and to see how the terrain boards look and work with the figures.

A British 17lbr rushes to aid the Paras

The boards are made of 1/4" mdf with sections of outdoor carpet adhered to the surface. The sections are 2x4' and though they are abstractions of the real terrain in Holland, I tweaked the roads to make them "geomorphic" for more variety. The mdf color makes a decent road surface that will get some further texture with paint and foliage to make the roads a bit rougher. The buildings are 6mm paper buildings from GHQ's website. They have a nice selection of Dutch buildings and since I'm modeling the Arnhem battles, they work perfectly.

Elements of Panzer Brigade 107

The hedges are homemade using sections of 3M scrubber dipped in glue/paint and then dipped into flock...simple and fast... Still working on how to make convincing forests.

A Bren carrier scout platoon in some serious peril...

So far I'm enjoying the project and the rules as the figures paint up easily and look good, and the rules are interesting. All in all a nice break from my usual larger scale stuff.

(also...I've put up a link to some 15mm WWII Desert War unpainted stuff that I'm liquidating this week, just click on the For Sale link in the header.)

Jumping On the 10mm Bandwagon

There are a lot of guys out there who are doing some really great gaming in 10mm so I'm a bit late to the party, but this summer I'm scaling down all my WWII stuff to 10mm. I think the figure lines have really taken a leap forward in coverage and detail so it makes something I always wanted to do become something I definitely need to do now.

10mm Pendragon Germans and GHQ 6mm paper houses

What you are seeing here is an initial batch of Pendragon 10mm Germans next to some 1/285 GHQ paper houses (available free on their website). I'm finding a lot of 10mm players use 6mm buildings for less table coverage and it seems to look right with the minis...so initially, I'm doing it too. I'm going to collect armies for the Arnhem operations of WWII. There were lots of different troop types involved and that always makes for some fun army building. I'm using Blitzkrieg Commander rules for a start.

The initial German force I'm building is going to model Panzer Brigade 107...a unit that figured in the attempts to cut the main highway to Arnhem. It's an interesting unit typical of the period and is outfitted with Panthers and Jagdpanzer IVs so fun to paint. I just used the OB from the "Rapid Fire Rules" supplement, and just converted it to 1 stand = 1 platoon level.

These are just a few workbench pics of the Brigade as it is getting finished. Since I'm in the US I'm ordering these from "The War Store" online...and getting the usual great service even if Neal has to order the Pendraken stuff every 2 weeks. I was able to produce this brigade for around $120. USD...a real advantage over my usual 15mm Battlefront/Flames of War purchases which, though they are a quality product, really sting the pocketbook!

I'm pretty excited about the quality of these Pendragons and will post the British Grenadier Guards Battlegroup in a few weeks.
In the coming months, ultimately I'm hoping to rebuild my North Africa collection in 10mm as well since my 15mm desert collection has all been sold off to fund new projects...(and other more pressing financial things as well).

New Features and a New Battle!

A meeting engagement generated by random card draw.

My dear wife let me in on a "Blogger" secret that has until now gone unnoticed by normally technically savvy self... she showed me how to put a line of page links just below the banner, so henceforth, there will be a header with links just under the Lead Gardens blog banner...just like a "real" webpage. Now I just have to figure out what goes there...most importantly I'll be able to post my eBay figure auctions easily with out having to make a new post each time. They will be listed as links under the "Figures" button. Also be sure to check in on the "Downloads" page...there I will be putting up links to some free stuff to download. So hopefully more interesting stuff to come soon.

The Grolstein main body enters in column

Also today I'm posting some pics of a recent meeting engagement between my ImagiNations. The battle was interesting in that I used a deck of "mission cards" from a "Risk" boardgame that have images of an infantryman, a cavalryman, or a gun. I dealt to each side three rows of cards, the first of two cards would be the advanced guard, the second of 4 cards would comprise the main body, and the final row of 3 cards would comprise the rearguard. I dealt the cards and then rolled 1D6 for the main body to determine the turn of arrival, and 2D6 to set the arrival of the rearguard. I didn't turn the cards until the turn of arrival so as a solo game it gave a bit of uncertainty as to how the forces would be played in the initial stages of the battle. Both side deployed their advance guards one move in from the table edges.

Colonel Gluklich ("luckyshot") deploys his battery in preparation for longrange bombardment.

both sides moved on from the short table edges so the battle developed a bit more slowly...and each side manuevered to control a large hill at mid table.

the light cavalry of both sides initially contested the hill, but as more cavalry moved up the hill became a major site of a large cavalry engagement.

Height of the battle with infantry and cavalry hotly engaged!

The battle rages at turn 12

I was not able to finish the fight so I'll hopefully have some time later this week to complete this AAR.