Saturday, 10 February 2024

Exploding Puppies!

 

I am perfectly aware of my many limitations as a war gamer. The most crippling of which is a lack of focus on any given project for any length of time.   To be clear these projects are never totally discarded, but rather hang in suspended animation awaiting their time to shine once again.  So to complete the basic units required for a 1000 point Bolt Action Soviet Army was, by my standards, going to quite an achievement. I had deliberately left aside the more esoteric units as something to look forward to, but with the return to work hobby time evaporated, that’s not to say that it disappeared altogether and there would be small steps forward, often snatched over a weekend, but the momentum built up through the longer breaks was inevitably going to stall.  
Returning to the esoteric, the inclusion of the dog units was always going to be a controversial choice here at ‘Awdry Towers’.  The Saintly Mrs. Awdry will not bat an eye as the massed ranks of my toy soldiers are massacred wholesale following another tactical blunder by yours truly, but suggest that an animal might be injured, even one made of white metal, and oh my goodness me - the horror!
 So when we discussed the fate of these poor mutts, that had explosive charges strapped to their backs and then encouraged to go and lie under the advancing tanks, it was clear that I needed to present the grim reality in a more palatable way.  No longer would they be referred to as Anti Tank Teams, but instead good doggies being taken for a walk by their caring handlers!  
All of this nonsense aside, it would appear that there is some discrepancy as to the effectiveness of such tactics, not the sanitising of history to appease your wife you understand, but stories abound of dogs so terrified by the metal behemoths that they run back to their own lines, much to the chagrin of Uncle Ivan.  I am led to believe that any stray dog seen on the streets of Mother Russia was exterminated by the German invaders. Still there was something so absurd about all of this that made them a must have inclusion to my force. 
As hinted at earlier, tactics are not my strong point, so anything that throws a certain semblance of chance into the proceedings is most definitely up my street so I picked up the ‘Warlord Games’ pack and planned to paint them as they were, but give them the ‘wintery’ treatment to tie in with the rest of my force.  Unfortunately the pack only had one handler wearing a Telogreika, but as I wanted to add additional units to this team I was going to need more winter clad warriors to swell the ranks.  Fortunately I fell upon on a series of posts on the wonderful, Dramatic Katastases blog.
This was a veritable gold mine of ideas, and you can expect to see more of them shamefully plundered here in due course, but the dog unit in particular gave me food for thought - I could make my own!  A couple of snow suited veterans that had been abandoned, as I was looking to make a unit with SMGs and they had rifles, were conscripted to the cause. The bits box also yielded some scraps that I thought would work well for me and as luck would have it, a pack Warlord Games Ancient Britons Mastiffs!*
*Everyone has these lying around, right?
The build itself was relatively straightforward and I am genuinely thrilled with the results, although already thinking about the possibility of using markers to show that the dogs had been deployed.  With regards to painting, I simply followed the same steps that I used with earlier units, finished off with a dusting of ‘snow’.  For the time being this is where I am going to leave my Soviet forces.  By my reckoning, I have enough options to field a competitive 1000 point force, although there are still some pieces I could call upon, including the ubiquitous T34 waiting in the wings.  As to what pops up next here at '28mm Victorian Warfare' is anyone's guess.  A quick check revealed 54 draft posts, the earliest dating back to 2013, in various states of completion and detailing an inordinate array of periods and projects.  That said, I am enjoying getting back to writing and catching up with friends so determined to keep going for a little while longer. 

24 comments:

  1. Aw, cute. Shame they were trained to recognise T34s

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    1. I had read his too, not the nost reliable of weapons then.

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  2. Excellent work Michael, using the spare bits to build these very effective looking units. As for the use of animals in war, in such a barbaric way, is consistent with the human condition of using anything we can, to get an edge, and not worrying about the poor animal we do it to ! Look forward to seeing what hits the blog next.

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    1. Thank you Dave, really enjoyed putting these together, but there was definitely a sense of uncertainty about using them, all very strange.

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  3. I have some sympathy with Mrs A's POV. There seems to be something especially cynical and heartless about using those four legged reservoirs of unconditional love as 'suicide' bombs. Zzzzz. ps nice models, I too have hit hobby ennui and struggled to give any projects, even the one's I'm super keen on, any attention.

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    1. Thank you, hoping that by getting the posts underway it will kickstart the painting. Seems to be working, albeit slowly.

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  4. As Martin C hints at, what I heard was - the dogs, being dogs, when first released, headed straight towards the "thing" they had been trained to run underneath - ie the nearest Russian tanks, rather than the totally unfamiliar panzers! Maybe on a roll of a 6 they will run under a German tank, anything else, the nearest Russian one?!

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    1. I do like the idea of a random chance element, seems a fitting revenge for man's best friend.

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  5. Great looking figures, Michael - although a sad history for the poor pooches.

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  6. Nicely esoteric indeed. Now let’s see the T34!

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    1. Thank you Dave. The T34 has been mothballed at present. It is builts and undercoated though, ready to be brought out when I have a tantrum at losing my first game!

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  7. Poor pups! Great looking figures though!

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  8. Excellent post, I am missing this unit currently but if you've got it I guess I can? Of course I have some Warlord ancient Briton mastiffs so I guess I must?!
    Best Iain caveadsum1471

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    1. Thank you and look forward to seeing you mastiffs in action Iain!

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  9. Interesting conundrum with the dogs, I've played a few Paleo Diet games and always feel a bit guilty about killing animals, even though it's just a game and it's only for food, not for fun Humm.

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    1. It isn't an easy aspect to wrestle with, but I suppose by extension neither is wargaming as a whole. Probably best to not overthink these things and enjoy the hobby.

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  10. I read somewhere that when the German command learned of this tactic, they rapidly spread the rumour that all front line dogs had rabies. Result was that all dogs were shot ASAP.

    Do you play in a club? I am in your area and would like to play historical games regularly. Am not keen to put my personal details on the open internet, but would happily attend an advertised club.

    Regards. Martin

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    1. So sorry to take so long to reply Martin. Sadly not in a club, very much an infrequent wargamer.

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  11. You've done a beautiful job with these and they look fantastic, despite the grim subject matter. As a dog owner, I think I'd share your disquiet at using them in anger on the table-top though!
    On a related note to those uneasy aspects of wargames, I do remember actually playing one WW2 game. It was one I put on for the lads in the Explorer troop I helped run and was part of a Remembrance Day troop night we ran. I had a set of miniatures of the German characters from Cross of Iron (I forget the manufacturer) painted as well as some Black Tree Russian infantry - the explorers each took on one character (their only miniature on the table unlike most games when you can be a bit blasé about casualties) and were given some character traits that they'd have to role-play with that miniature - particular ways they might react to certain situations like shell shock, self sacrifice for your squad mates, being naively over zealous and suchlike. I also seem to remember writing to parents to let them know we'd be tackling some mature themes, although I have to say we didn't follow the events of the film too closely! It wasn't an anti-war thing in relation to Remembrance Sunday - more a "War is hell so don't romanticise it without considering what those involved actually went through" kind of thing. It stimulated some really interesting discussion with the lads and I found it a really interesting experience as GM to run a game that didn't sidestep those uneasy aspects. I wouldn't want to play every game like that but it was worth doing that once.

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    1. The idea of story telling or a RPG element to wargames is certainly of interest to me, especially as I tend to work in isolation or small skirmish level games. Your club sounds amazing and what a clever way to engage the pupils and still maintain a level of 'fun'.

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