Ultramodern Wargaming – Ukraine 2024

Special thanks to Damon Brentnall for providing us with a gorgeous gallery of high-resolution photos from the recent Partizan Wargames Show held on May 21 in Newark, UK. These amazing tables (most of them created not by a single hobbyist but a whole club of wargamers) range through history from the Wars of Alexander’s Successors in the 4th Century BCE to the Entebbe Raid of 1976.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself inspired to push myself on table presentation after looking at what these hobby lords have accomplished!

Join us for the fiery conclusion of our “what-if” wargame using Seven Days to the River Rhine, where we’re imagining a hypothetical Russian invasion of the Baltic States.

A key bridge over the Nemunas River in southern Lithuania has been taken by Russian VDV Guards air assault troops. A Bundeswehr mechanized brigade is among the responding NATO units, and they’ve now clashed with spearhead elements of a Guards Tank Brigade that’s arrived to relieve the hard-pressed Air Assault troops on the bridge.

It’s “A Bridge Too Far” – Russian Edition! Who will wind up holding the fateful bridge when the smoke clears?

15mm “Gepard” (Cheetah) Self-Propelled Air Defense Systems (Flakpanzers)

Here is the edited replay of last night’s stream, where I build and discuss the Gepard “flakpanzer” SPADS that Blair Fenning sent me.

These are almost indispensible vehicles for your Bundeswehr modern Germans, to fend off the Mi-24 Hinds and SU-24 “Frogfoot” ground attack planes Soviet and Russian players will try to throw at you!

Hope you like it! Might make for some mellow listening while working on your own hobby or painting!

Join us as we use the “Seven Days to the River Rhine” game system (Great Escape Games) to explore a “what-if” scenario we certainly hope never happens.  Current conflicts have expanded elsewhere across Eastern Europe, and the Russian Army has moved into Lithuania, making a bid to open a permanent land corridor to the Kaliningrad Enclave along the Baltic Coast.

Of course Lithuania is a NATO member state, thus triggering Article V of the NATO Charter, and a German Bundeswehr mech brigade is among the responding units.

Russian “VDV” Air Assault Guards have taken a key bridge over the Nemunas River, and are holding until spearhead elements of a Russian guards tank brigade can reach them.  But the Bundeswehr mech brigade is also driving hard for the crossing, intent on overrunning the air assault guards.  Who will reach the bridge first?

Join me as I work on some recent 15mm acquisitions – M113s left over from my Yom Kippur War IDF Project and some big honkin’ “gun trucks” purchased from Mark Ritchie.

People often underestimate the importance of vehicles in Vietnam. But because so much of the terrain was dominated by mountains, jungle, or swamp, control of the precious few ROADS became all the more important.

Operation Barbarossa was the initial Axis invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the largest single military operation there has ever been. In its opening week, huge Soviet tank and mechanized armies mount gigantic but uncoordinated counterattacks at German panzer spearheads, triggering some of the largest tank battles in history.

One of these is the Battle of Dubno-Brody, where huge numbers of archaic and ill-supplied Soviet armor are hurled at expert (but much smaller) German tank forces. Part of this battle takes place at the village of Plycza, where elements of Soviet 34th Tank Division (8th Mechanized Corps) is counter-counterattacked by units of the 11th Panzer Division.

Among the Soviet tanks are the monstrous T-35, a gigantic oddity of tank design that seems more akin so something you’d find on a Warhammer 40K table . . .

Some shots from this Sunday’s game of Seven Days to the River Rhine by Great Escape Games.

15mm – 8×4 table – Oriskany Jim referee – Tom and Mark playing (I have a small force in the game as well).

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Join us as we finish up our 15mm game of “Seven Days to the River Rhine* by Great Escape Games – recreating a historical battle during the closing days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Recovering from the shock and early defeats inflicted by a resurgent Egyptian Army, Israeli forces in the Sinai Peninsula have now crossed the embattled Suez Canal. Establishing a bridgehead on the canal’s west bank, the Israelis are now maneuvering south to cut off the Egyptian Third Army.

Units include elements of Egyptian 113th Mechanized Brigade (6th Mechanized Division) and 3rd Armored Brigade (4th Armored Division). Their missions is to stop via flanking counterattack elements of Gabi Amir’s 460th Brigade (Adan’s 162nd “Ugda”) reinforced by elite light infantry of the 890th Paratrooper Battalion.

So far we’ve had an Israeli air strike go awry, long-range tank duels, and up-close RPG ambushes. At least one Israeli tank platoon leader is down, and is that the sound of incoming Egyptian artillery I hear?