Battlefront: Let's collect 15mm miniatures - or not, I guess

Painting all this Star Wars Rebellion and Armada stuff has made me realize how much I miss 6mm Epic. Now that I have a proper hobby space, I'm going to have to bring what remains of my Epic collection home; until then, the closest thing I have to that is a random collection of 15mm miniatures. I painted them, bought several more, and ended up frustrated by the whole thing.

To make a long story short, Battlefront won't sell me their products. I tried ordering a whole bunch of their World War III stuff to our friendly local gaming store; some of it showed up, and some never did. I made the order in July and eventually cancelled it in December. We also ordered some stuff direct from them, and got it, but when we tried to get several boxes of stuff from their plastics sale in November-December, our payment was declined and after a frustratingly pointless email exchange, we gave up. Judging from other things I've read online, this isn't exactly a unique occurrence.

I'm disappointed, because I liked painting these models, but if they won't sell me any, what can I do? So here are all the 15mm models I made, sadly with the caveat that I can't recommend trying to buy any of your own! We order from quite a few miniature companies online, and no-one else has ever treated us this miserably.

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What I have here is another summer surprise: an ancient Flames of War starter set I have no particular recollection of buying, but here it is. I've misplaced one StuG III, but that leaves one German assault gun and three M47 Shermans. The rest are Zvezda 1:100 snap-fit plastic models, which are very cheerful, decent quality and ludicrously cheap, so I've randomly bought some that have met my eye as I shopped at our friendly local hobby and gaming stores. There's a Pz.38(t), an SU-76M, an M3 Lee and a Sd.Kfz.222, I think.

Here's a selection of the models painted up in Ooarai Girls Academy colors.

I was originally thinking we'd try the ancient Flames of War rules I found, but then they came out with a new edition and a fairly cheap Stalingrad starter set, so I got that instead.

As a curiosity, here's a side-by-side view of a Zvezda T-34/85 and a Battlefront T-34/76 from the Stalingrad set. There's not much to choose from here!

The Zvezda model is obviously easier to assemble, being snap-fit, and the Battlefront one comes with loads more doodads like different stowage and weapon options. The Zvezda hard plastic was marginally nicer to work with. Here's a Zvezda Panzer IV D and a Battlefront Panzer IV with a longer gun. Here the Zvezda tank is noticeably smaller.

All in all, the plastic tanks in the Stalingrad box were fun and easy to assemble. There's a paper guide and more extensive assembly guides on the website, and I had no trouble. Here they all are:

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Because I have no interest in the US Army, I decided to paint the Shermans in Soviet colours (the only alternative I considered was the Brazilians). I'm delighted to report that Vallejo's Camo Olive Green seems to be exactly that slightly unpleasant shade of green drab that I think Soviet tanks were; at least I'm very happy with how they look. Also I had a great time painting slogans on them!

I know Soviet Shermans didn't actually have red stars on them, but they look so cute I couldn't not do it.

And here's the SU-76 and KV-2.

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As for the German tanks in the new starter set, I wanted to do something a little bit more interesting with them. For the long-barreled Pz.IV, I decided to create a completely ahistorical Finnish paint scheme: the very dark green of the winter war era, combined with a late- or post-war roundel. Frankly, I'm no fan of swastikas. I also got a Vickers 6-ton and painted it with the same scheme; the base color is Luftwaffe Camo Green. You could argue it should be darker, and I'm still thinking about it myself.

Finland never operated Pz.IIIs, though. But you know who did? Turkey. I've had very little success finding out anything about the way they were painted, beyond a picture of a dark green Pz.III at a Turkish military museum, and a claim that early Turkish tanks simply used a red roundel as identification. Therefore, I give you this:

So this is now a Finno-Turkish armored detachment. After painting these models, I learned that several entire corps of the Ottoman Army fought on the Eastern Front in Word War I, as did the battalion of Finnish volunteers; so maybe it's not as far-fetched as I had originally thought!

And here are the starter set Soviets, plus the Zvezda T-34/85.

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Incidentally, I also got this Battlefront T-28.

I find the early Soviet multi-turret tanks absolutely fascinating. Several countries came up with these kinds of behemoths in the interwar years, but as far as I know, the Soviets were the only ones who actually went through with serial production and deployment, which led to a number of T-28s being captured by the Finnish army and put into use. I have a quibble with the Battlefront site, though. It shows the T-28 in Finnish colors, with the shorter of the two main gun options. I've looked through all the pictures in the Finnish military's wartime photograph archive with the keyword T-28, and I can't find a single one with that kind of gun. They all have the longer one. So that's how I assembled mine. Like the Shermans, this is also a resin and metal model, but it's very good quality and I enjoyed assembling it.

Finally, one last Zvezda model: an ISU-152.

During the Continuation War, the Finnish army managed to capture two ISU-152 assault guns. One was refurbished into a recovery vehicle; the other was fixed up, repainted - and lost in combat almost immediately afterward. However, for a very short span of time during the war, an ISU-152 in Finnish colors existed, and so I've painted one.

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While I was at it, I also ordered the Hammerfall starter set for Team Yankee, which they're now calling World War III. I had a look at the previous edition rules earlier, and was disappointed by how badly they modeled the Soviets, but Oil War held out the promise of doing something completely different, so I thought I'd have another look.

I'm somewhat entertained by the fact that Hammerfall is basically identical to the Flames of War starter set: three Soviet tanks and two tanks from the other side, the same cardboard terrain, the same scenarios. I mean I sort of get it, but then I also feel like someone could have made a bit more of an effort? I was going to come up with a different scenario for us to play, but then I never got the central scenery piece I ordered, so...

The models, though, are superb. Battlefront's resin and metal stuff is good, but their hard plastics are excellent. Especially the two M1 Abramses were a joy to build, and gave me serious M1 Tank Platoon flashbacks.

I ended up going with Refractive Green for their base color, as I wanted them to look quite drab.

The T-64s were also fun to build, although to be honest, I never did quite figure out where the snorkel attaches to exactly. 

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That's the starter set; what I was really interested in, though, was collecting an Iranian army. Here's some Chieftain tanks:

And some BMPs.

By the way, I absolutely call bullshit on the M113 having a higher front armor value than the BMP. The BMP had steeply sloped steel armor; the M113 is a tall aluminium box. Giving an APC from the 1950s a higher armor value makes a mockery of the whole concept of the infantry fighting vehicle. What turned me off Team Yankee initially was how the force structures and scenarios in the original book just made no sense from a Soviet point of view. Of course you can argue that a wargame based on an American novel about Americans was always going to do this, especially in conjunction with the deep brain rot that set in a lot of military minds about Soviet hardware after the Gulf War. But still, an M113 being more heavily armoured and no easier to hit than a BMP is beyond absurd.

Here's my first platoon with their BMPs: that's 4 rifle teams, 3 RPG teams and an M47 Dragon team.

Because Battlefront wouldn't sell me any US infantry, these guys were the only 15mm infantry I painted, but I enjoyed it. The weapons are Gunmetal Grey and Black, except for the RPGs in Soviet Uniform and the M47 in US Olive Drab; the uniforms are US Dark Green, and the webbing and suchlike is Khaki. I'm quite happy with the result!

I also painted some M109 SP guns in Iranian colors.

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So that's my 15mm collection; apparently it won't be getting any bigger! My search for a smaller-scale wargame to collect continues.

Team Yankee: Where on earth is the Soviet artillery?

I picked up the rulebook for Team Yankee on a lark over the winter break. Based on the novel of the same name, it's a miniature game that depicts combat between Soviet and American forces in a World War III being fought in Germany. Given the choice of those two sides, I'd definitely be inclined to pick the Soviets - if not for one major problem: artillery.

In Team Yankee, each Soviet battalion gets one battery of 2S1 122mm self-propelled howitzers, and you can also select one battery of divisional artillery, also 2S1s. Were you to select a division's worth of troops, you'd end up with 17 batteries, 102 guns in total, and the single divisional BM-21 rocket launcher battery.

As FM 100-2-3 The Soviet Army: Troops, Organization and Equipment (pdf) tells us, a Soviet tank division mustered four battalions of 2S1 122mm self-propelled howitzers, one per regiment, and an artillery regiment with two 2S3 (152mm) battalions and a rocket launcher battalion. That's a total of 72 2S1s, 36 2S3s and 18 BM-21 rocket launchers (FM 100-2-3, 4-13). In terms of raw numbers, then, Team Yankee is close to the organic tube artillery held by a Soviet tank division, but the 152mm guns of the divisional artillery have been replaced by 122mm ones. With only a single battery present, two thirds of the division's rocket launchers are missing.

There are two problems with this. First, this is a highly counterintuitive way to handle Soviet artillery. As Chris Bellamy (Red God of War: Soviet Artillery and Rocket Forces. Brassey's Defence Publishers, London, 1986) reminds us, the basic Soviet fire unit was the battalion, not the battery (185-190). Divisional artillery in tank and motor rifle divisions was grouped into battalions at regiment level, not penny-packeted to the battalions, which would have been a decidedly un-Soviet thing to do. Motor rifle battalions did have an organic mortar battery, which is missing from Team Yankee. Individual artillery batteries charging around with battalions was not Soviet practice.

Also, what we've looked at so far is just the organic artillery, i.e. the artillery units permanently attached to the division. Team Yankee is set in West Germany, which would have been the crucible of any NATO-Soviet shooting war. There's just no way that a first-line Soviet division would be participating in an offensive in the key theater of operations with just its organic artillery. Bellamy estimates (194-197) that a division advancing along a main axis would be supported by or even allocated artillery from both the Army and Front level; in his hypothetical example, two battalions of 152mm SP or towed guns from the Army, and three battalions of SP guns, self-propelled mortars, 203mm guns and heavy rocket launchers from the Front, for a total of over 300 equipments. In other words, support from higher echelons would more than triple the artillery strength of a front-line division along a major axis of advance, purely in terms of numbers of equipment; because some of the higher-level artillery is heavier, the increase in firepower is actually even larger. To take a World War I comparison, Bellamy estimates that the artillery fire in support of a Soviet breakthrough would have been six times more intense than the initial German bombardment at Verdun.

The heavy breakthrough battle is a special case, though. The scenarios of Team Yankee are set in a more fluid post-breakthrough environment where NATO forces are conducting a mobile defence, and are apparently able to engage the Soviets in smaller engagements. In a sense, then, the whole premise of the game is that NATO strategy has been succesful, and the Soviets have failed to overcome their defences through mass and tempo. However, how would Soviet artillery have been deployed in mobile operations? According to Bellamy (199-200), while artillery control would have been heavily centralized during the breakthrough battle, during the exploitation phase afterward, artillery battalions would be allocated to forward maneuver battalions. In this special case, it might have been possible for individual artillery batteries to be allocated to companies, but at battalion level, a forward tank or motor-rifle battalion would certainly have been supported by an artillery battalion. Existing tactical protocols for meeting engagements, a form of battle the Soviets would have actively sought, deal with an artillery battery attached to the company forming the march security element, with the rest of the maneuver and artillery battalions close behind.

In both the heavy breakthrough battle and subsequent engagements, then, we would expect to see a Soviet maneuver battalion supported by at least a battalion of artillery, if not more. Using the Team Yankee formation charts, the first battalion-level formation would be supported by at most two batteries of SP guns. Adding a second battalion only raises this number to three, meaning that a two-battalion force would only have half the minimum number of artillery support we'd expect to find. Admittedly, the rules make it possible to select "companies" which are actually barely platoons, but at this point the nomenclature and organization become thoroughly confused. An easy solution would be to increase both the battalion- and division-level artillery, and include equipment like the 2S4 Tyulpan 240mm self-propelled mortar, or even the 203mm 2S7 Pion.

Perhaps the most pointed example of the neglect, if not even disdain, the designers have for Soviet doctrine, is the scenario on pages 108-109, called "the Battle for Hill 214". The scenario depicts a Soviet motor-rifle battalion, reinforced by a handful of tanks but with no indirect fire support whatsoever, assaulting a US mechanized battlegroup in prepared positions over open ground. From the Soviet point of view, such an operation would be inconceivable, and the circumstances in which it would come about are exceedingly difficult to envision.

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Unfortunately, this neglect of artillery has more or less put me off trying the game, along with the price of the miniatures; at our friendly local gaming store, the 2S1 SP guns set you back 10€ each. One look at the prices for the Team Yankee models, which I didn't by any means think are all that unreasonable, forcefully reminded me of how cheap living card games are! But at the end of the day, while I was hoping for a combined arms battle on the Inner German Frontier, my impression is that this is a system more geared toward charging about in tanks. I'll probably take a look at the West Germany supplement, because if we're going to do Girls und Panzer, then why not go for a proper Panzer; however if they ever put out a rules supplement for the 1985 French army, I will definitely reconsider my decision to not get involved.