Over the last few years we have had a WRG Moderns competition at the local convention Battlecry here in New Zealand. For
the 2012 tournament we(I) decided to do something a bit different and we went for a cold war theme with a cutoff year
of 1983. This looked like a reasonably balanced cutoff but there was a lot of T80Bs fielded by the WARPAC players and
they are a tough tank to crack.
The tournament had 10 players and we were using the WRG 1950-2000 rules and our figures were in 6mm scale (1/300th)
scale. We managed to get an even number of players on each side even with the late withdrawal of a couple of people. The
only concession was with the Swedish army who sided with WARPAC rather than NATO (it was either them or the French).
There
were 4 rounds of competition spread over 2 days and each round was 4 hours. We
setup the tables at the beginning of the tournament and then rotated tables to save repositioning the terrain each time
(although a few pieces were shuffled around after some obvious flaws were noticed). The desert table was redone on the
second day to save some time packing it up later on for the player.
There was a good variety of armies :-
NATO
West German mechanised Infantry with lots of infantry in M113 and a few Leopard 2s and a lot of LARs rockets
2 British Armoured with Chieftains and FV432s
French armoured with AMX30B2s and AMX10Ps
US Armoured Cavalry with M1s, M113s and a few M2 Bradleys
WARPAC
3 Soviet Motor Rifle - T-80Bs, BTR80s and BMP1/2s
1 Soviet Motor Rifle - T-72As, BTR60PBs and BMP1s
Swedish Mechanised with S Tanks, Centurions and PBV302s
Overall the competition went well and everyone enjoyed themselves A few people dropped out of the last game of the second
day as some had to leave early, so most only played 3 games. Some of the armies played better than expected with the French
and Swedes holding their own. Unfortunately not everyone kept their results so I have no idea which side came out on top.
And finally a special thanks to Dan and Gavin for the Flames of War GT who let me steal a bunch of their photos from their
photobucket sites, which meant I had a surplus of good photos which makes a change from last year.
I thought I'd start with my new terrain boards which I spent about 6 months making. A lot of work but worth it in the end. There's too much to explain here so for more details visit the "Terrain" section of this site for more details on the boards and the terrain on top.
Steves great terrain which has been admired for years by fellow gamers. You can see the very nice hedge lined roads and fields and the rows of popular trees. Also there is a scratchbuilt Motorway and bridge and the town is mostly Timecast buildings. The trees are all K&M I think and there is also some Z scale railway track in the last photo.
And some more photos of my terrain boards. The first photo gives a pretty good shot of the road network and how twisty it is! The second photo show a small lake I made and in the last two you can see some of the removeable trees and power poles I made.
Although it was a NATO-WARPAC theme we did have one desert table in our tournament. This table had some great Gamecraft buildings with a Old Crow monorail and cork tile hills. The roads are resin I think and you can see a few Hovels buildings in there as well. More details on these are in my Terrain section on this site.
Once again Als lovely ferry and container ship models by Old Crow make an appearance. You can also see the Old Crow port and the coastline from Miniatureworld maker in Australia. The last photo shows Steves table which we used on the first day as a desert table and it includes some nice power pylons and a homemade motorway.
And some more pictures of my table. You can see the river better in this picture although I never finished it in time for the convention. It still needs a couple more layers of resin water. The third photo shows the airfield with my Mainly Military buildings and a Timecast control tower.
Another T80 with BMP2s army which gave the NATO forces a hard time. All GHQ models and nicely painted although its hard to see in these pictures.
Dereks army consisted mostly of mechanised infantry in M113s with some Jaguars and Leopard IIs in support, and lot of very nasty offboard artillery like the LARS rocket launchers. A very effective combination as the German infantry is very well equipped with good quality AT weapons.
British forces containing Chieftain 9s, FV432s and a couple of platoons of deadly Swingfire. You can see the FV438 Swingfire with the detached controllers in the middle photo. Very hard to stop because it is hard to see a couple of infantry from more than 600 meters away in these rules.
A modern army with M1s (105mm version), M113s, a few Bradleys and some M901 TOW launchers. Very nicely painted in the MERDEC European scheme and with nice basing.
More shots of Steves US forces. These photos show the Bradleys, M1s and a slightly blurry photo of M1s and Bradley advancing past a Granary. All GHQ from what I can tell but the camo really breaks up the outline of the vehicles.
My army consisted of T72s with BMP1Ps and BTR60PBs. The first couple of photos show the T72 company with supporting ZSU23-4 SPAA and a ACVR battery commander vehicle. The T72s and BMP1 are CNC and the ACRV, BRDM3 and ZSU23-4 are all GHQ. My BTR60s (not shown) are from Scotia and nice models.
Some closeups of mostly burning vehicles. The first picture shows a couple of BRDM3 AT and a BRDM2 command vehicle. The second picture shows a common site during my games - burning T72s! The third picture is a burning BMP1 platoon which I think got taken out by Swingfire missiles.
These three pictures are from my game vs Simons British. Not everyone had photos of their games so I don't have pictures of some of the armies like the Swedes and other Soviet forces.
Some more pictures of my Soviets vs Dereks Germans, and some more Chieftains in the middle picture.