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Tagged: Oriskany
This topic contains 58 replies, has 11 voices, and was last updated by oriskany 6 years, 5 months ago.
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June 2, 2018 at 10:52 pm #1199255
Thanks for putting this up @torros. This sort of position maps are right up my ally and I can spend hours pawing over them. Just love to see how it really was. 🙂
June 2, 2018 at 10:58 pm #1199287@jamesevans140 No worries. I found it here
June 2, 2018 at 11:03 pm #1199290Yep. Most of the scatter scenery I see are from battlefield in a box.
I chased down a number of the smashed forests and muddy/marshy ground for my Finnish games. Russian bombardments have a tenancy of turning thigh primeval forest into match sticks.
I prefer to do my own creators. I don’t know what it is about the battlefield in a box creators but they don’t do much for me but I can’t put my finger on what I don’t like about them.
June 3, 2018 at 4:47 am #1199435Glad to see this thread is still going. Here are the last images I have from @neves1789 –
German infantry has broken into this stretch of French trenches!
“Aerial” view of French and German trenches, with no mans land between them.
Some French infantry and barbed wire.
Two shots of French artillery positions behind the forward trenches.
June 7, 2018 at 12:31 am #1203185Looks like it was a great battle. The second last photo posted here demonstrates an issue I have with Battlefield in a Box.
If you buy all the terrain you need for a table all at once there is no issue. On the other hand if you purchase the same thing but several months apart there can be a huge difference in the paint colors, just like the cratered roads above. I have the same problem with my river sections. Yes you can re-paint every section to the color but the main reason for buying a Battlefield in a Box product is so you don’t have to.
There are times when this could be an advantage such as my dessert houses. My old ones are all finished in shades of mud brown and they look like natural mud rendered houses in similar colors to the buildings you find Afghanistan villages. My new dessert houses are painted in off whites so the buildings look white washed like some of the Arab houses found along the Mediterranean coastline. The two types mixed on the table look good as it gives a “everyone is doing their own thing” look and feel to the village. It is just not a good look for a river that has 3 different blues on its sections. When I added their river tributary set I added another different blue to the table. I have been trying to avoid having to paint up all the river sections but until I do it adds a toy like fell to the rest of the table.
In general the quality of their products are great. I have their (Russian) Railway station and the detailing on the model is just awesome.
June 7, 2018 at 2:24 pm #1203436Thanks, @jamesevans140 – Apologies I’ve been a little MIA on this thread lately, working on the next article series. I know I suggested that I would put up another V&V 1918 game last weekend (note I say suggested – I never promised ) … I will seriously try again this weekend. I have a longer weekend so I’m getting a +2 on my die roll … but that next big project is still chewing up a lot of cycles at “Battle Bunker Oriskany.” 😀
June 8, 2018 at 10:29 am #1203778Truly no problems at all mate. Your here when your here and this is not enough to make me file for divorce, you have to try harder. 😉
Trying to get an article up for the centennial and 75th celebrations is a massive and taxing effort. Too much for anyone to properly do by themselves covering every one of them. So I was pleased that you involved other contributors to the effort. However being the project lead nearly all the pressure falls on you. To this end I believe you have more than held up your end of the deal.
Given this I don’t expect you to cover this battle or that battle. What I am looking forward to the ones you do create an article for and the awesome conversations we will have generated by the articles.
By chance this weekend is a long weekend here in Australia so I look forward to catching up with you. However if your workload prevents this, I am cool with that as well. True friendship is given unconditionally and as such I place no conditions or demands here. That is pretty much my life. I can make commitments with the greatest of intentions of fulfilling them. However on the day it is not my choice whether I can fulfill them or not. This is why I try to avoid commitment as I don’t like disappointing others. If I have to live this way I don’t have the right to expect more than this from others. For those who commit to something and fulfill them I have great respect for them as this is something I cannot necessarily do myself. I look up to what you have done as this is something I could NOT have done, so here’s to you mate.
😀
June 10, 2018 at 4:25 pm #1205907Thanks very much for the very kind words, @jamesevans140 – it really does mean a lot. Things ave been a little “soggy” for me here as of late, both in “real life” and on the site – so well-timed! 😀
Definitely setting up that Great War V&V 1918 game today, come hell or high water. Actually, a little of both hell and high water – as I’m also setting up a no-bullshit, full-scale, fully-researched, whole friggin’ thing, PanzerBlitz game of Prokhorovka. Yes, that will be over a thousand counters. Definitely don’t expect to finish that game today!
June 10, 2018 at 10:02 pm #1206325Okay, @jamesevans140, @jemmy, @neves1789 – well … I have tried. As promised, I really tried to set up a “trench digger” game of Valor & Victory 1918 Edition set up. And actually, I did get it set up, and functionally this game would work, but I think you can see from the photo that playing on this kind of set up really requires a custom board.
Actually these are all custom boards (I almost never “buy” my wargames, to be honest) but they were drawn, printed, and mounted for “patrolling no man’s land, post-trench breakthrough” kind of scenarios like we see at Belleau Wood, Hundred Days, St. Mihel, etc.
This many counters just to set up the topography (and clearly I don’t have enough “Trench” counters, so I’d have to use “Sandbags” as proxies … yes, they both give the same +2 bonus so functionally would work, but this would be a pain in the ass to play on.
I’ll try to Photoshop draw a trench-themed map in the coming days. Who knows, maybe while I have some time set aside and the Photoshop open, I’ll make up British / Australian counters while I’m at it. 😀
June 10, 2018 at 11:16 pm #1206355(One hour and 10 minutes later) – There, that is much better. 😀
Now I’ll just have to make 2-3 more of these maps and get them printed and mounted. But this is the kind of V&V 1918 board I was picturing.
Do you like the duckboard? That was the most time consuming part.
June 14, 2018 at 5:32 am #1208715Okay, @neves1789 , @elessar2590 , @jamesevans140 , @jemmy , @torros , @damon , @rasmus – since the Projects feature seems to be where the “action is at” – I have started to put some of this 1918 Wargaming material in a new project, found here.
Give it a look when you have a second, I hop you like it! 😀
June 14, 2018 at 6:10 am #1208723Looking great @oriskany ! The whole hex wargame reskins really appeal to me as a part of the hobby!
June 14, 2018 at 6:34 pm #1209154@oriskany if the project were designed for anything, this was it – great looking boards up above as well
June 18, 2018 at 11:48 pm #1212706Good afternoon @rasmus – @torros – @elessar2590 – @jemmy – @neves2789 – @damon – etc. 😀
I figured out how to post images already in the “projects” feature also here in the threads, just in case we want to keep this thread going (absolutely no worries of not) – the advantage of a forum thread being that other people can add their own photos, etc.
Still setting up the forces and opening deployments for the Valor & Victory 1918 game with the new trench boards.
The first American attacks on the breached German trench go in. I still have to resolve American artillery fire (pre-planned, so technically that should have already been done) and German opportunity fire.
June 20, 2018 at 5:17 pm #1214281“Marine Corps Flanders: Between dunes and trenches”
A few days ago I came across an interesting article in my favourite historical magazine. It dealt with something I hadn´t known before, and it is from WW I. I want to share this with you. Everyone of us history enthusiasts knows about the Atlantic Wall from WW II. However, did you know there was also an Atlantic Wall in WW I?
According to the article it was situated in Belgium.
Its purpose was to protect the German naval bases in Belgium and to fend off amphibious landings by the British. An invasion there would have been a threat to positions behind the German front and the German high command wanted to avoid this.
The text of the next picture says: “On Flander´s coast” “Our war journal”
There is one picture in the article showing soldiers at a shooting practice right on the shore. They are standing behind a parapet consisting of sandbags and wooden stabilising wall, about breast high. In front of them are barbed wire entanglements. Another picture has trenches, small bunkers and sandbag positions that remind of a typical trench system on the Western front.
Behind the trench system on the shore there were artillery batteries and huge naval artillery pieces, the latter to target ships and landing craft. One of the artillery batteries was called “Tirpitz”.
The harbour protection group “Blankenberge” had 28cm howitzers to their disposal. Those are really big. The gun on the picture is from Oostende, presumably protecting the port.
The Marine Corps Flanders was the infantry force manning the defences. They pushed back British invasions, but not only this. They also fought defending the front against British attacks on the Somme in July 1916, and some more elsewhere. It was formed in 1914. Their leader was Admiral Ludwig von Schröder, nick-named the Lion of Flanders.
It consisted of three Marine Disions, each made up of several infantry brigades and including field batteries. Some special platoons were also part of the divisions, like for instance mortar batteries, telephone groups, pioneer companies. They were also, later in the war, trained in the newly-developed infantry tactics.
From 1914 to 1915 their attire was typical Marine, later on they wore the field grey uniforms and had the 1916 helmet. Before they had had Marine caps or kepis, making them look like ordinary sailors. Some of the men were experienced soldiers from the German colonial wars, some were from the sea Bataillons Wilhelmshaven and Kiel.
So, if you want to try something different for your WW I wargames, you could simulate a British invasion on the Belgian coast. It has a historical background and will be fun to play, and it may also be fun to figure out how the British have brought their troops to the shore and the effects of air power in that kind of landing.
I hope you enjoyed this. C U.
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