Nuts! Patrol in Poland, 1939

I wasn't sure what I wanted to get on the table - and then would actually play - so I picked Nuts! 

 

This comes after two 'failed' games: another attempt at White Mountain, and then a WW2 company action.  So just to feel the excitement of the dice in the hand, and wanting something different than another One Hour Wargame scenario, I decided it was high time I got my 15mm WW2 Poles on the table.  I set up a 'patrol' scenario, with the Poles attempting to recce through some woods and hills and scattered farm buildings

For those, who know Nuts! Polish investment level in this sector was '2' and '4' for the Germans.  Since it has been a while since I played, I just used very generic ratings: the Polish were led by Sierzant Suszczyk (5) and consisted of him, an LMG gunner(4) and 7 riflemen(three (4), four (3).

n.b. I didn't take too many pictures here, it has been a while since I played Nuts! and I wanted to focus on recalling exactly how the rules worked.

The Polish squad stacks by an empty house.

A wider shot: the German PEFs (potential enemy forces) are on the far side of the hill, with one in the woods in the centre.

The Polish LMG team occupy the farmhouse, with a sentry left outside, while Sierzant Suszczyk leads the others into the woods (right); however, just as they have entered the wood, a German AFV (a StugIIIB) arrives in the rear of the Polish position...and proceeds to kill the sentry with machinegun fire, then demolish the house with the Polish LMG team inside it.

Meanwhile, a German MG34 team wanders into the sights of the Polish patrol...

And a particularly deadly volley of rifle fire kills two and incapacitates the other...

The patrol continues on, carrying out the rest of its mission

Avoiding the Stug, the Polish skirt back through the woods...

Well, despite the heavy Polish losses (4 killed and the squad machinegun lost!) the mission was in fact a success.  Very luckily, only one of the PEFs resolved into an actual contact with the Germans, and they walked straight into an ambush.  Obviously there was pretty much nothing the Polish could do about the StuG turning up...but that it is the beauty(?!?) of Nuts! you can be over-matched and a simple mission can get hairy very quickly.  The game actually worked fine, but I was a bit rusty with the 'flow' of the game, Nuts! goes a lot quicker if you intuitively understand which table you need to be looking at at any given moment.  It was generally fine, I really like Nuts! I have never been totally convinced by the wording of the In-Sight tests, but as long as I play it the way I like it, not much harm done...

I can't now remember who made the 15mm buildings. I think the Polish figures are Forged in Battle, the Germans were Battlefront.  The StuG...Zvezda, possibly?

Hobby Update 23rd July 2022

 Still not dead...but I have been pretty busy and pretty ill with COVID in the last little while, so hobby stuff has been intermittent at best; and hobby stuff has been less intermittent than gaming! Still, I have managed to get the odd thing done and the odd game played, so my hobby is still painting and gaming, rather than thinking about gaming!

The first project involved a little bit of painting but was mainly a re-basing exercise. I wanted my C17 pike and shot troops to serve equally well for the War of the Three Kingdoms and for The Thirty Years' War.  I had the standard bearers integral to the unit but what I did was take out most of the figures from the first rank, just leaving an officer and drummer, and then creating separate standard bearers on small circular bases to be placed in front of the unit.  It is not a perfect solution but it feels like a reasonable compromise between aesthetics, functionality and economy.

Anyway, some bases of Protestant Foot:

And some bases of Imperial/Catholic Foot.  Using some of the figures spare after the re-basing added to a few extra pike, I created some double depth Foot bases to represent the earlier, heavier tercios used by some of the Imperialist and Spanish forces in the TYW.

(All the above figures are Baccus 6mm).

Next up, there are some early WW2 French more-or-less complete.  The infantry are from Forged in Battle, the vehicles are from QRF.

 As long-suffering blog readers will know, I use 15mm and 6mm for my WW2 gaming, depending on the scenario.  There are some 6mm Early War French, with the figures from Adler and the vehicles and 25mm anti-tank gun and crew from Heroics & Ros.

I have also picked up a few additional items for early WW2 British: a few Matilda Is, a few Vickers VI light tanks and a few Boys anti-tank rifles.  These are all from Heroics and Ros.

Continuing the Early War theme, here are some 15mm WW2 Poles: again, infantry mostly from Forged in Battle, vehicles and anti-tank riflemen from QRF.

And yet more WW2: I have managed to get some paint on some of the 1/300 Plastic Soldier Company Battle of Britain aircraft - some Hurricanes and some Bf109Es.

The 6mm WW2 Germans got some extra LMG teams in smock:

 And I also picked up my first buildings (as far as I remember anyway), from Battlescale Miniatures.  These are really rather nice!  And of course, you cannot really have too many buildings...I will be getting more.

From L-R: a Culloden croft, a rendered farmhouse,  a water mill, a rural house with annex, a dunker church and a ruined terrace,

And a couple more bits of 15mm WW2: Germans with anti-tank rifles from QRF.

So I haven't been entirely unproductive, but there is still (for me) quite a lot on the painting pile.  Off the top of my head, I think it looks like the following:

Some 28mm WW2 British Paratroopers (these are for my son rather than myself)

Some 28mm Frostgrave Barbarians

Some 28mm Stargrave Crew

Some 28mm Skaven

A few 28mm Vikings 

Some 6mm WW2 US vehicles 

Some additional 15mm vehicles and figures for Cold War Gone Hot/Twilight 2000

Finish off the batch of 1/300 Battle of Britain aircraft.

A few additional 6mm Vietnam War extras (both US and VC)

There are also some 6mm Napoleonic French (these are for adding additional French Allied units, as and when I need them).

There isn't much on the shopping list at the moment, since the above lot should keep me busy over the summer until the early autumn shows.  So FWIW it looks something like this:

Some more 15mm Cold War Gone Hot/Twilight 2000 figures (East German infantry, West German infantry)

Some additional items for early war WW2: particularly some additional tanks, reconnaissance vehicles and anti-tank weapons for the Germans, although the French and British could use a few more too.  Plus I really need to to think about my WW2 collection in terms of basing and organization and stuff.

I don't think there is much else that should go on there at the moment, although I do have quite a lot of ideas for the next batch of projects.  But I want to get these ones done first.