USMC HMMWV - Revell 1/72 M966 Tow, M977 Maxi Ambulance

I feel like I'm finally making some progress on something. I finished my first two HMMWVs for my modern USMC force for Force on Force. Since I finally managed to score the 4 M1114 versions made by Dragon I figured I better practice on something first. These are secondary vehicles and will only appear in a couple of the Scenarios for the Road to Baghdad. So I wasn't to concerned with how rusty I am putting together plastic kits. I had forgotten just how many pieces they can manage to cram into one of these kits. There is one more box with these two models to put together and hopefully by the time I'm done with that the others will have arrived.
These are Revell 1/72nd scale kits so I threw in an Elheim modern US Marine and the S&S Cougars just to give a visual on sizes. I think the 1/72nd scale kits maybe a little on the small size, but it won't be a problem for the game.
Revell M966 TOW Missile Carrier and M997 Maxi Ambulance

Revell M997 Maxi Ambulance

 

Revell M977 Maxi Ambulance and Elheim US Marine

  

Revell M966 TOW Missile Carrier

 Revell M966 TOW Missile Carrier and Elheim US Marine

 

Revell M997 Maxi Ambulance and S&S MRAP Cougar 4x4

 Revell M966 TOW Missile Carrier and S&S MRAP Cougar 4x4

 Revell M997 Maxi Ambulance , Elheim US Marine and S&S MRAP Cougar 6x6

   Revell M966 TOW Missile Carrie , Elheim US Marine and S&S MRAP Cougar 6x6

Force on Force - British Paras vs Taliban

This was my first game of Force on Force. Nick Johnson had the night off and brought his miniatures and boards to teach us the game. This is his standard convention scenario and features 2 squads of British Paratroopers against a horde of Taliban. Their mission objective is to find the cache of weapons rumored to be in a building in the back corner of the board. Nick and Lee Schultz built the boards up from a wood frame with half inch Styrofoam on top as the base. Trees and buildings (Gamecraft Miniatures) are separate pieces but everything else is built directly on the boards. Its a good looking setup and has survived traveling pretty well at this point. Its been used for six games at Genghis Con XXXIII (in Denver last February) and traveled around for about another 15 games at this point. In this game Ray and John ran the British Paras and J (John's son) and I ran the Taliban forces. I'll let the pictures tell most of the story but a quick synopsis had the Taliban taking out the British GPMG team on turn 1 and then fighting a delaying action for the rest of the game. The Taliban sniper team died on turn 1 without causing a casualty to the advancing Paras. From there on it was just stubborn resistance (and some really good die rolling) to slow the British advance. In there somewhere a Taliban news crew managed to show up and promptly caught the attention of a fire team that spent two or three turns taking them down. A fortunate placement of an IED cut off one of the British avenues of advance forcing them to split up. It came down to the last turns as two British fire teams converged on the weapons cache. One team lost two members trying charge the building. The other team managed to get in the building but couldn't wipe out the remaining Taliban. This was a great game and well played by both sides. I picked up the win for the Taliban this time as the British Paras ended up with 2 KIA and 2 seriously wounded and did not control the objective. I took a lot of pictures and here are some of the better ones.

At the start of the game British in the LZ and a Taliban sniper team on the roof.

A wider view of the initial positions

Taliban occupy a building on the right flank and open up on the British GPMG team

British fire teams taking cover in the irrigation ditch

British fire team takes on a Taliban flank attack head on, and takes a casualty while doing it.

Paras finish off the Taliban right flank.

Advancing Paras discover more Taliban

Paras continue the advance on the right

Taliban in the Para's rear tie up the second squad and occupy the landing zone

Paras take out the Taliban taking cover in the second irrigation ditch

A Para fire team, with casualties of its own, defends against the Taliban attacking from behind

Para squad closing in on the hidden weapons cache

Paras take a group of Taliban on top of the building under fire and take down the entire unit. Things are looking up but time is short.

The Taliban news team goes down. No video is getting out about this action. (Taliban lose 5 victory points for the news team not surviving).

Para fire teams converge for the final assault.

Another angle on the Taliban holding the building

The British point of view as another unit of Taliban suddenly appear to block the way.

That's a bunch of AKs!

British contest but do not hold the objective. Two Para casualties, one KIA, one serious. Nick has AARs as well as modeling info on his blog at: http://littlenickysgameroom.blogspot.com (I have tried getting this URL in here about 5 times, blogger doesn't like it very much for some reason).

I'm Weak - New Minis, New Scale

My friend, Nick Johnson (let's put that in perspective, he could be my son), ran a whole bunch of Force on Force games during Genghis Con XXXIII. I think he ran two different scenarios for a total of eight sessions over the course of three days. Very dedicated! I like to support a fellow gamer when they have put so much blood, sweat and tears into putting on a game and it looks like Ambush Alley is going to as well. Of course my version of support means buying more minis! I ended up ordering modern 20mm US Marines last night from Elheim and a bunch of buildings from Gamecraft Miniatures. So not only did I manage to increase the amount of unpainted material coming to the house but I did it in a scale that I have never worked with before and have nothing else to go along with it. Perhaps what is even worse is that five Death Kingdom minis arrived right before the convention and the rest of the couplers for my freight cars arrived yesterday. I'm also a bit behind on my school work at this point. I need to set everything aside for a bit and get caught up there before I even contemplate getting the brushes out again, although there is another bunch of WWI US Marines demanding to be painted too, and an entry for the Iron Painter Competition............arghhhhhhh!