Preparing for Operation Supercharge

The time is nearing for our annual demo game in some suitable local convention. The idea is to game something that happened in WW2, 70 years ago. So something from 1942 then. We originally envisioned a 20mm game with skirmish-y rules featuring the LRDG attacking an italian airfield in the desert. For various reasons that plan fell through, and we redirected our goal to something more realistic perhaps. Still bent on the desert the obvious plan was to game El Alamein.

No, not the whole battle, obviously, but some part of it. Operation Supercharge, the break-out operation during the second battle of El Alamein was deemed suitable. This is where Monty finally managed to smash through the DAK lines and started to roll up Rommel's lines.

Montgomery anxiously watching the advancing british tanks from his Grant command tank.

Itsy bitsy teeny-tiny gondorians

Warmaster is one of my favourite GW games and I love it. One of it's inspiring spin-offs is the Battle of Five Armies boxed game that GW released a couple of years ago, based on "the Hobbit" by Tolkien. It's main drawback is that GW never supported it, releasing more armies. So I was thinking that one could use historical figures for the various human factions, and Normands look pretty Gondorian to me, at least in 10mm scale.

I just had to try it and ordered a couple of packs from Pendraken Miniatures.

Size matters not.

Plastic Soldier Company SdKfz 251/1 D.

Another essential release from Plastic Soldier Company is the german half-track Sd.Kfz 251, or "Hanomag" as it was called after the main automobile company that produced it. It went through four different versions -- A through D -- and was in production for the whole of the war. Each version was further modified into different variants depending on the their battlefield role; the /1 is the basic troop carrier and the most common variants. Other variants include the /2 which is a mortar or rocket carrier (given the same designation as they are both mobile artillery), the /3 which is a radio carrier and the /10 which is a platoon commander. All in all there were over 20 variants produced.

The WW2 equivalent of an SUV?