My 10mm Basing Solution, Ready for Operation Barbarossa!

[Just Jack]

All,

I’ve been hard at work getting Kampgruppe Klink, fresh from their victory in Greece, prepared for Operation Barbarossa.  On the one hand, I needed to pick up some additional vehicles, troops, and buildings, while on the other, I wanted to re-base my Germans and Soviets as I was tired of them looking shabby and not uniform.

Along the way I stumbled a bit while looking for a basing solution that would allow me to use the same vehicle models for both summer and winter (snowy) fights.  I had based my vehicles and was looking for the best way to transition back and forth; I’d posted earlier asking for help, and I appreciate everyone that chimed in.  Here’s what I came up with.

The whole mess, with Germans on left and Soviets on right.  I haven’t finished the winter infantry and guns, but when I do these forces should be able to take me all the way through the ‘gray’ period, up to about summer of 1943.  The forces are a mix of Pendraken and Minifigs, with Minifigs making up about 90% of the infantry and Pendraken making up about 98% of the vehicles and guns.

Here’s what they look like on the table, at gaming distance.

A closeup of the German stands, consisting of an MG squad, a Pz IVG, and a Flak-36 88mm ATG.  Astute observers will note that the infantry and guns are based differently than the vehicles; this is because I have separate infantry for summer and winter, but the vehicles will pull double duty.  The only change I made from my previous pics of the vehicle basing was that I put a dark inkwash on the vehicle’s base and I added some clump foliage.  I think (hope?) this makes the vehicles blend well enough with the infantry and guns, but then for winter all I have to do is pop the clump foliage off and paint them white.  We’ll see…

To see a bunch more pics and descriptions of what I’ve got, please check the blog at:
https://blackhawkhet.blogspot.com/2020/05/my-10mm-basing-solution-ready-for.html

So, there they are, all set for Barbarossa.  Let me know what you think.

Regarding Panzergrenadier Brigade Klink’s (AKA, “KG Klink”) route, I’m looking at Minsk to Smolensk, then getting called back to Kiev, then back up through Smolensk to Vyazma, which should take me all the way to Zhukov’s counteroffensive in December 1941.  What I have to do now is make up campaign maps and counters, and that’s proving a bit difficult.  I don’t have detailed maps or unit data, so everything I draw up is way out of scale; hell, it’s proving hard to get anywhere near to scale!  How do you follow a brigade-sized element on a front that swallows up whole divisions every day!!!???
So I need help; if anyone can help me with simplified maps that make sense to take KG Klink from their starting positions in Army Group Center to Minsk, then from Minsk to Smolensk, then from Smolensk to Kiev, then from Smolensk to Vyazma/Briansk, or can point me at something that helps me do that, I’d be greatly appreciative.

The sooner I get that squared away, the sooner I can get this party started.  Personally, I’m shooting for 29 May to be my D-Day for Operation Barbarossa.  Just gotta get this figured out first!

V/R,
Jack

[kyoteblue]

The bases look good but could you do a sample one in its winter colors?? As to maps, I don’t have anything like that that would be useful to you, sorry.

[Steve Johnson]

Great work Jack!

[Ruarigh]

Nice stuff. On the map front, a couple of options occur to me:

1. The Command Decision Barbarossa/25 campaign is a bathtubbed version of the campaign and includes maps, so all you need to do is to add counters.
2. Any of the commercial board games on the topic that comes with a map could form the basis of your campaign.

Barbarossa/25 scales the orders of battle down by a factor of 25 which would mean that a platoon on the table would represent a regiment in real life. This would mean that Kampfgruppe Klink would represent a much larger formation, and thus would not disappear into the morass of larger formations on your campaign map. Bathtubbing an order of battle like that requires some compromises, but it could work for your needs.

Using a commercial game has the advantage that you can use the board game system to adjudicate battles that Kampfgruppe Klink is not involved in, and it comes with the counters already. You would just need to allocate Kampfgruppe Klink to one of the counters in the game and follow the action from there. There are a lot of board games that cover this operation, so it comes down to cost and aesthetic preferences. I like The Dark Valley and War without Mercy, but there are a lot more. You could even find an old copy of Fire in the East which the maps in Barbarossa/25 came from and use that, assuming you have a very large table to set the maps up on.

If you don’t want to buy a board game for this purpose, you can also access many of the maps from them using VASSAL. It is possible to print out the maps from VASSAL modules, but you could also just use VASSAL as your campaign map. It has the added advantage that your map cannot have drinks spilt on it or get knocked by passing dogs, cats, children or spouses.

Reading your description, it sounds like you have a fairly linear idea of the campaign, so perhaps you could just mark up a map like this one or these with the battle areas and not worry too much about counters and moving on the map in between games. Your campaign diary would then just show on the map where Kampfgruppe Klink had fought each time.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

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[Just Jack]

Kyote – Negative, you’ll have to wait for the winter basing, I’m done basing for the moment! 😉  And no sweat man!

Steve – Thank you, Sir!

Ruarigh – Wow, thank you very much for your detailed response, I appreciate you taking the time.  I think the boardgame/hex map option is what I’m going to go with, as I don’t want to represent KG Klink to be represented by a single counter, I want its sub-groups to be represented on the map by counters.  I’ll take a look around and see what I can find; thanks again!

V/R,
Jack

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