Aliens

 An aliens army, all figures from Pendraken, what you see above is a £13.00 battlepack and 3 packs of figures in addition, Aliens, little aliens and face huggers.  Overall a great little army, only had one game so far but it went well.  Marines got owned!  The figures are great with not much painting needed either, what with aliens been basically black.  The figures are based with grey basetex (made by myself)  and is has a good effect I think.  So here they are.

 Alien queen based with some spare eggs

 Face guggers and opened eggs, these look great and as I mixed the two types up it gives a much better look than just a line of face huggers.

 The core of any alien army, the alien warriors themselves

 the little guys, supposed to be dog bursters but as I am old fashioned and hate Prometheus and I am usig these as immature aliens, basically 1 setp from a little chest burster.  Basically I think aliens look like aliens regardless of what life form they chestate in, after all why do all cuckoos look the same, if you dont like it read the old comic strips, much better than the terrible new films.

Here is the centrepeice of the army, the alie nest.  Made of milliput with pendraken egg cases added in with casualties.  The casualties/victims are dressed as both marines and the guys from AVP (Aliens Vs. Predators)  So they are in winter/snow/cold wether oufit, hece the orange/yellow.  The reason for this is thats what I was watching when making it and I am thinking of fighting over an abandoned whaling station.

Predators

 Predators for hunting those nasty aliens

Colonial Marines

 Here is my first little collection of marines for my aliens game, its very much a work in progress, but this little group is enough for a small game.

 The marines, on an express elivator to hell

 Robot Centries with operators, you get 3 in a pendraken heavy weapons pack so I got 2 packs and did 2 to a base with operators seperate so I can use them as officers and command aswell.

 The APC No marine unit is without, armed with lots of good heavy gear!

2 marine squads, each of 2 fire teams, after deciding on a basing theme this orgonisation works quite well.

Japanese army WWI

 

This is my Japanese WWI Army.  The army is only small at the moment but its still under construction lacking medium artillery.

Although Japanese army did not play a direct role in the war it did play an important one. At the outbreak of WWI The British asked for Japanese help against the Germans in china, the Japanese sent 28,000 troops and 2 squadrons of ships to help.

What followed was the Tsingtau Campaign. Japanese troops supported by a small number of British and Indian troops took the German colony. The campaign was a small one but its success managed to keep china out of the war on the central powers side. 

Of-course as the war continued Japanese troops also fought against Indian troops in china as well as a considerable naval commitment in both convoy escort and the Gallipoli campaign. 200,000 troops were made available to the entente powers on the western front or the middle east but this was turned down. By 1919 Japanese troops were heavily committed supporting the Tsarist Russian forces in the Russian civil war.

 
The army consist of:

 

2 cavalty Squodrons

2 Guard Battalions

4 Infanty battalions

2 Aircraft

6 Field guns

4 Heavy Naval guns

 Japanese Cavalry

 Japanese Infantry

 Japanese Guard Infantry

210mm Heavy Naval Guns

75mm Field Guns

Farman MF11 Seaplanes (flown from the worlds first operational aircraft carrier) 

 

A rare British Advance in East Africa

  For the game we decided on a defensive game where the Germans were dug in and the British attacking. The main reason for this layout was from an argument that the British always lose and Indian troops always get shot and run away. So I decided to play on the British team and let the usual (losing) British team take the Germans in a well defended dug in position. And so the battle lines were drawn. A few historical notes were changed, with the addition of British tanks freshly arrived from palastine and some German heavy guns and an extra marine and german Battalion to even the odds. Basically to see how well the tanks worked.

The defenders had 3 battalions of Askari, 2 battalions of German infantry and a battalion of marines, each with 2 HMG per battalion and supported by 4 Koenigsberg guns and a battery of heavy guns and a battery of Field Guns. 

 

The British had 2 Imperial battalions, 3 Indian battalions, 2 Askari battalions and 1 south African battalions, each with 1 machine gun. Supported by 3 Batteries of howitzers, 1 battery of field guns and 6 tanks.

The battle started off with myself arresting General Smuts and placing blind chickens as commanders, there by doubling the British generals competence. Joking aside the British deployed in a 3 battalion deep line that was designed to pivot onto the German left defences, tanks in front as shell magnets.

British troops advanced under shellfire, losing the tanks and the south Africans got a beating, the imperial troops leading the Indians took most of the flank fire, the Indian troops moved through the depleted British and began clearing the wire as British gunners pounded the German trenches, then the whippets took the trench line allowing Indian troops to take the German defences. All that tanks were lost but We held the German forward trenches.

 

With the left hand defences in Indian hands the British Askari swept the surprised German Askari from the gun line and the German guns to the left fell silent. The German troops now moved into the village behind the German defences and formed a fire line but to little effect, after 2 turns of shooting at each other the British guns drew up and thinned the German line. The Germans now realising that the battle was over with the main hill under British control decided to bug out, the marines formed a screen allowing the safe escape of 1 Askari battalion and a badly mauled German battalion and their heavy guns. The victor for the British!

With celebrating in camp that night the British pattered themselves on the back and shared a pink gin. We had proved that the British can win and that in fact it was the Indian troops that won the day, taking the trenches and well supporting the Askari. Among other things the Germans discovered that in east Africa sitting on one's behind isn't the best state of play. The Germans best feature is movement, the British weight of numbers and lots of big guns, and despite a few alterations such as tanks the battle was quite a good show of how well British can fight when well led, (yes I was commanding). Keep the German heads down with heavy fire and advance on them as fast as you can. As a normal German player I know the fear of those 'dam guns', For the Germans they shouldn't hug defences, and keep mobility.

Overall a Fun Game.

Shackled to which corpse?

Preamble:

Like most men of my age, I was put to bed with a bedtime story (what with the TV going off during the hours of darkness and all that) My mother regaled me with tales of lost dogs, and children killing witches or been eaten by wolves, where my father read to me the works of M.R.James (which explains why I never got any sleep) and Lord of the rings and history books, (which is why I became a wargamer, and heavy caffeine drinker) I digress but to cut a long and slightly tall story short I remember the phrase from one of the history books 'shackled to a corpse'. Apart from childhood visions of German soldiers marching into battle alongside zombies the subject of the phrase took my interest.

To the point:

During the First world war a German officer noted that been allied to Austria was like been shackled to a corpse. It had a slight ring of truth. But was it, if you look at the whole picture during the great war, who was shackled to a corpse?

Central powers

Austro-Hungarian empire:

The Austro-Hungarian empire was a hodge podge of an empire, made up of a dozen countries with very little in common, the Austrian army spoke a dozen languages and so English was used to issue orders as English was the only common language spoken due to amount of people who wanted to live in America rather than their own country. Some provinces were not all that loyal, Slavic troops were poorly treated and considered pro-Russian. Despite this Austria did fight well, considering a war on 4 fronts if you include Runamia, while been starved of material and food (most of it going to Germany) and taking up half of the eastern front the Austrians had a lot to contend with, so Austria did not do all that badly, although the Austrian army never lived up to German expectations they did take on considerable odds and still held the line with a cohesive force intact, unlike the Germans in 1918.

Turkey:

The last vestige of the crumbling empire, the 'sick man of Europe' possibly so, but again, turkey fought a very wide campaign. The Turkish troops were no worse than any other and had long military traditions just like most nations, although the declaration of Jihad in November of 1914 didn't seem to help their fighting ability much, the troops did fight well and proved particularly stubborn without much cajoling. Most of its troops fought in Russia, and only a hand full defended the line from Palestine to Iraq, barley more than a picket. So their defeat by the British was not as surprising to the Germans, especially as turkey itself cared little for the war in the south as the eastern front was the most important one to turkey, after all their biggest campaign of the war was fought in 1918 in Russia.

So the central powers primary allies were not all that bad, to describe the allience as to be shackled to a corpse may have been a little disingenuous. Germany may have been the powerhouse of the central powers, it relied on Austrian wheat and coal, and certainly was in need of the vast manpower both of these gave them during the war.

Entente Powers

England:

At first I should point out that I was originally thinking that if Germany was the leader of the central powers then one should assume the British empire as the leader of the entente powers, however, in reality it was really France who led the central powers, and France who bore the brunt of the war, so I will regard England as been 'shackled' to France, rather than France been the lesser power. So the vast British empire as an allie of France will be considered here.

Firstly, the vast and mighty British empire was anything but. London considered its entire war aim as keeping open the vital jugular vain of merchantmen that kept the beating hart of the empire alive. Of anyone can be described as the sick man of Europe Britain would surely fit the bill. Socially the Empire was falling apart. India was ripe with revolts, Japan had to put down 2 rebellions by Indian troops during the war because Britain could not spare the troops. In Africa half a million imperial troops couldn't pin down one German general with 30,000 men. There were rebellions in South Africa, Ireland and 30,000 British troops had to be kept in northern England to keep law and order. To be short many of the troops brought in to fight the war were used to keep order in an increasingly rebellions empire.

The British army was terribly led, at least at the mid level of command, troops training was (after the BEF) not all that good, Colonial troops had the enthusiasm but again were badly led and poorly deployed. What made things were was the fact there was no grand battle plan. Britain repeatedly failed to liaise with French and Russian troops on the western front. Also British artillery was terrible, for instance the 6” howitzer fired 22 million shells during the war, and 8 million of them never exploded. British munitions had no quality control and the French even refused to use British artillery, only 2 out of 3 shells ever detonated. Overall all the British were good for was stopping bullets while the French did the proper fighting holding Verdun.

The royal navy, the largest battle fleet ever seen on earth turned out to be an expensive borble. The fleet was kept in port mostly due to fear of loosing ships, so much so that Japan and later America were relied upon to protect Britain's trade routes, which made England look even weaker to its allies which it would pay for in the next war. When the fleet was used it fared very badly, poor training and even worse leadership led to battles that should have been victories.

Russia:

Tsarist Russia is seen as a bit of a shaky allie of the entente powers. But bare in mind Russia bore the brunt of the fighting. Russia took on 80% of the force of the Austrian empire, 70% of the Ottoman empire and drained millions of Germans from the west, in fact the eastern front took so many Germans that the Germans entire battle plan for the west was to hold until troops could be brought back from the east (which took about 4 years). Overall 60% of German forces were pinned in the east, another 10-15% were pinned in turkey and Italy. Also despite fighting the Germans, Austrians and Turks the Russians also managed to space 20,000 troops for the western front to bolster their allies. While all this was going on the Russians even found time to have 2 revolutions and a civil war while still fighting for their Entente allies. To be short the Russians although they can be considered to be a little unwell were certainly no corpse, and without them probably both Britain and France would have been eating sausages and speaking German by 1916.

Summarise:

All in all there were pro's and cons to all the members of both the central powers and Entente. I know I haven't mentioned the Italians or Americans and only mentioned the Japanese a little but by the grand picture none of these allies amount to a hill of beans, and before any Americans start to complain by the time they arrived in any useful force a million German troops dropped dead of influenza there by ending the war bar the shouting, although they certainly fought with enthusiasm, even though the war was all but over, if only the top brass would have realised it. 'hell we just got here'.