Operation Case Yellow : Week 2

After the minor set-up back suffered against Arzmi's French mechanized company last week, the elite pioneers were eager to get back into the fray and prove themselves worthy. An enemy movement of a French tank company was detected and the Luftlandesturm were quickly dispatched to stop them.

Mission : Hold the Line
Opponent : Shukur's Escadron de Combat
Points : 1750

I'll not get into the nitty gritty of the game only because I'm lazy/don't know how  to write a proper bat-rep. Suffice to say we managed to win this encounter. Deployment for the gliders and parachutes were faster this time because of the experience gained previously. The picture above was during my first turn. The wind was good and all gliders managed to land near the enemy...though 2 gliders crashed resulting in the deaths of 2 teams.

1st and 2nd platoon together with the CC managed a first turn assault resulting in 3 destroyed enemy tanks. Guess the pioneers got over their fear of French tanks this week. I passed all of my tank terror rolls. What a relief.

3rd platoon was equally successful in their landings on the other side of the table. Though they needed an extra turn to get rid of the French tanks which they ambushed.

This picture was taken the round after the tanks were destroyed. Should've taken a picture without them...amateur me :P

Playing the Luftlandesturm is super fun. You've got to be super aggressive landing those gliders and hope for good dice rolls. I won't say there's less tactics involved but it's fun once in awhile to just immediately dive into the attack.

Though my supporting parachute platoons veered so far away from their weapons canisters. No wonder the glider pioneers cost so much. You get to land right into the enemy's face and assault :)

Thanks to Mousier Shukur for a nice game. Next up is Captain Mark Smith of the British infantry company.

Operation Case Yellow : First game with the Luftlandesturm

Played my first game using the German paras last Friday. It was against my younger brother who played a French Compagnie de Chasseurs Porters....whatever that means haha.

I'm not going to do a battle report but just want to share my experience of the game I had. I lost the game in the end but it was a very close fight. It could've gone either way but in the end it didn't go my way. We played the Death from Above mission.

Lessons learnt.
1. Deploying your gliders and 3 parachute platoons is gonna be fun but time consuming. I had 10 gliders and platoons dropping by parachute. First you have to place your gliders and weapons containers. Then roll for the distance each gliders and containers. Lastly place the infantry teams. All that will take some time. But fun!

2. The French Chasseurs are MG teams. That means pinned down they still shoot at ROF 2. A full platoon has 7 teams. Pinned down, they still have 14 shots for defensive fire. I couldn't assault his infantry platoons the entire game. Too much fire going back at me

3. Against tanks, we're quite helpless. I only had my Pak36 which is only AT6. Against CharBs, they were practically useless....and my brother had 6 of them..ouch. I tried to assault them with my pioneers but would you believe that I failed 2 consecutive tank assault rolls.

4. After the initial rounds, you're gonna be defending like mad. Even dug in paras are gonna find it tough to last 6 rounds trying to defend objectives without effective long range AT elements.

Overall I had so much fun playing the Luftlandesturm Company. It's an aggresive list and you have to play it such.

This Friday I play against a French tank company. Let's hope I can manage to assault some pinned down tanks this time around.

Luftlandesturm Company Completed

That's right gents, my 1750/2185 points  elite glider assault force is completed and ready to fly in and invade France this Friday night :)

I wish i had more pics to share but i need to learn how to take better group shots. Plus you've seen the painting progress for the past couple of weeks. I'm really not sure how effective they will be. I'm hoping the extra troops i get from the Death from Above mission will help me at least put up a fight.

I'll share my experience after i've played the first game. 

What should i paint now.....

Fallshirmjager Anti-Aircraft Gun Platoon Completed

I'm really counting on these AA guns to provide my pioneers with much needed fire support when they land and start assaulting. With ROF 4 each and  AT 5, they will help to clear enemy infantry as well as tanks.

I've made the guns facing forward instead of up for this reason alone. I don't think the allies have any air support capable of bombings in early war/blitzkreig....i might be wrong..

Should've made them tilt up slightly more...Not too happy with the way they look once i had painted them up. Can't do much now since its already super glued in place.  Ahh well..hope it helps them to hit their target more :)

Almost reaching the final line with this army list. Just the MG and FJ platoon to complete. Should be able to get a trial game this week. 

Who wants first shot at the elite of the elite pioneers?

Fallschirmjager Pak36 Light Anti Tank Guns

Got these guys done tonite. Nothing special...just wanted to achieve a table top decent painting standard. I had fun painting these gun teams after finishing 2 full infantry platoons and 7 gliders. Nice change of subject for me :)

As befitting a parachute infantry support option, they can be parachuted straight into enemy held territory. Lets just hope :
1. They land adjacent to their weapons container;
2. They don't land on top of any enemy team;
3. They don't land in rough terrain;
4. I don't roll 1s when they land in safe open terrain.

Hmmmm...why is 3/4 of my statements negative?? 

May the winds guide them to a safe landing ready to shoot at pinned down and/or bailed out enemies. ROF 3 AT 6 for each should be fun :)

DFS-230 Assault Gliders

Seeing as how these 10 assault gliders will the main attraction when I display my army prior to deployment, its only fair they get a post on how i painted them up. First off, these gliders are really nice models. Details are crisp, very easy to build up. 

Excuse some of the low/dark pictures...used my handphone again when the camera was unavailable.

Not showing it here but i first primed the model with Vallejo grey primer, airbrushed directly from the bottle. Then airbrushed the underwing and fuselage with vallejo model color 907 pale grey blue.

Once dry, i start with masking these area off. You'll notice :

1/ i'm using normal masking tape which you can buy at any arts shop. The cheap stuff basically. Just make sure to stick it a couple of times to a slighty dusty surface to lessen the stickiness. In my hobby room, dust is aplenty :)

2/ i didn't assemble the wing struts to the wings and fuselage. This is so it'll be easier to mask the fuselage and underwing area.

Then 2 layers of vallejo 890 reflective green. For camo schemes i've always sprayed on the lightest color first followed by progressively darker ones. This will ensure that light colors remain light and don't end up looking a bit darker.

Now comes the fun/tedious part. Masking the camo. Tedious but its gotta be done to get that effect. This is how i do mine.

Same cheap masking tape. Stick some to the cutting mat and draw shapes on it. The gliders camo scheme are geometric straight lines so i just used my imagination and drew some. Might not be historically correct but it's not my objective. Its for gaming after all.

Apply the mask and make sure you end up getting a 50/50 ratio of light green and dark green. Again i just used my imagination on where best to apply a certain shape...nothing fancy.

Then the last color to be sprayed on, 979 german camo dark green.

Now comes the fun part of peeling off the mask and seeing the result. Again, sorry for the dark picture.

Presto!! Camoed gliders :) Now i fix the wing struts and paint them pale grey blue. 

From here i proceeded with the decals and they're done. Apart from the first glider, i didn't do any line washing or weathering. Too much time which i don't have. Maybe when the whole army is done i'll get to that. But for now......and then there were 7!!

Looking good so far. Just another 3 gliders to go :)

For those interested to know how i store my gliders, a simple solution that i've used when transporting aircraft models to painting competitions.

I cut the foams that you get in most FoW blisters or boxes. Cut a line/hole to fit into the wing tip and put double sided tape on the bottom. Another foam i leave uncut but also apply the double sided tape. Fix the foams to a box and you'll end with something like this.

All nice and snuggle and ready for battle!! As you can see, there's only room for 6 gliders in this box so i'll have 2 for the company.

Cheers all. Hope you had a good weekend.

Luflandesturm 1st platoon gliders and 2nd platoon completed

Completed painting 1st platoon's 3 DFS230 gliders over the weekend :) Plus the Company HQ's, I now have 4 fully painted gliders. I must say they will look spiffy on the tables when i deploy them using the glider assault rule. Just have to make sure the Company Commander's glider doesn't crash...killing him and the 2iC even before the fight has started.

4 down and 6 more to go. That's not all i managed to get painted from the last post. 2nd platoon minus their gliders are also done. My list has 8 platoon so that means I'm at 2/8....again since their gliders aren't done, they can't actually be considered done....ahh well. Group photo so far. CC, 2iC, 1st and 2nd.

Apologies for the low res pics. Left my camera at the office and this was taken using my hanphone. Next up is 3rd platoon.

But am feeling tired of painting infantry so these guys will have to wait. I'll paint the anti-tank PaK36 platoon first while painting 2nd's gliders.

Ohhh and I managed to get my hands on this over the weekend. Very nice reference and history book.

 Guess what my next late war army is gonna be :)

Take care everyone :)

Luftlandesturm 1st platoon completed ...almost

Finally got these guys done. They're taking more time than i expected.

Am quite happy with how they turned up :) I've never been good with bases. Either from lack of imagination or plain lazy. The latter i believe. To not make another plain grassy base, i decided to stick some barbed wires to them. Not sure if they work though...but better than my previous FoW bases by far. Plus these guys are elite pioneers and they'll be gliding into fortified enemy territory. You'd figure they'd come across barb wires here and there huh.

The barb wires were made using Gale Force 9's basing accents new iron cable product. I actually experimented on the company commander and 2ic before deciding to do for all the forces.

Unfortunately, technically the first platoon isn't done yet :(   That's because i haven't completed their gliders yet....

Ouch...9 more gliders to paint. Masking, spray light green, mask again, spray dark green, gloss, decals, detail works, matt varnish... what have i gotten myself into.....

Last post i mentioned that the next post would be on the Me262 jet plane. Due to technical reasons that will have to be postponed to sometime mid August ;)

Cheers everyone and do have a good day.

Luftlandesturm Kompanie 1750 EW

Fearless Veterans, they are listed as "an elite within an elite force" in the FoW Burning Empires armybook.

I admit i had a tough time deciding which force to build for our early war invasion of the low countries campaign set to start in September. That is until Jeff suggested i build the Luftlandesturm company. After reading their the airborne assault rules and the death from above mission scenario...i fell head over heels for them. Probably isn't a coincidence that my other infantry army are the 101st Screaming Eagles ;)

Although we're using the Blitzkreig army book, i've managed to get an exception from the other campaigners.

So i went out over the weekend and managed to get this last copy of the book which is a must for any fallschirmjager nut.

And armed with that i present my Company Command and 2iC pioneer SMG team together with their cool ride...a DFS 230 glider.

Haven't been so stoked to paint up an army since my paras.

Next post will be about this beautiful bird :)