SCS Karelia 44

I haven't played any Hex & Counter games in a while. I'll post this so this doesn't turn into a 100% miniatures blog :)

Finnish troops hold the line (SA-Kuva)

At the end of August we'll be playing the new Standard Combat Series monster title from MMP, Day of Days. I have little experience with the system so me and another guy who will participate in the game thought we're going to need some practice beforehand. I have on SCS game, Karelia 44, and have played one scenario from it by myself before, so we put the whole game in the table this time.

The scenario is set during the 1944 Summer offensive of the Soviet army against Finland., which happened at the same time as the Normandy offensive. For historical details, check the wiki.

My camera hadn't recharged when we began the game so I don't have a picture of the opening setup. The pictures start from the Finnish first turn after the Soviets have launched their first "prepared offensive". The prepared offensive is a special turn the Soviet player can activate every three turns or so, giving him a lot of extra artillery power, better offensive strength and greater mobility.

Commentary is in the photos as usual.

We had to stop as it was past one AM on a weekday. We wouldn't be able to resume the game later because there was no space to leave the game open. At this stage the game was still undecided. The VT line was about to break and the Finnish army had taken a lot of damage, but they were far from beaten. The Soviets still had a long way to go in the way of victory points. Oddly enough, Stalin's patience was still good as it hadn't decreased a single time yet (the Soviet leader's patience is tested every round an it has a 50% change of decreasing. When the boss point meter reaches zero, the game ends and VP's are calculated. This forces the Soviet player to rush forward as capturing the lines is the only way aside from disbanding troops that replenishes the meter). It would have been interesting to see how this would develop. The game did however reveal that the boss point mechanic is a low point in the design of the game as a relatively few rolls on a D6 have a huge impact on the tempo of the game.

Strelets-R 1/72 Finnish army 1944: Summer uniformed Finns for your Continuation War project.

I noticed Strelets made a box of plastic 1944 Finns last year so naturally I had to get a box to see what they were like. The advance reports were not promising so I didn't expect too much. If nothing else, they would be cheap as a box of 52 figures costs less than 10 euros.

Strelets box art is quite unique :)

The box doesn't take much space and contains four of these sprues:

Each sprue has an officer with a pistol, two riflemen with panzerfausts, a Light Machinegun, three SMG's and six vanilla riflemen. You should get two boxes to field a full rifle platoon as there are too many SMG's in the mix in relation to the riflemen.

The plastic is soft and the casting is bad. It is as expected. I saw the master models from the Strelets site and they're not that bad, actually. The molds and the plastic clearly dont do the figures any favours. The worst offender is the LMG, all the sprues have the MG bent like this:

That machinegun has been fired A LOT!

The thing is, if you want to do summer uniformed Finns in 1/72, and my gaming group does as there are already suitable soviets painted up in that scale, there are pretty much just two options. These ones or the ones made by CP Models, and they're not that handsome either. If you know others, let me know. I think I'll have to mix the two to get a force I can game with. Good thing vehicles and guns are pretty much German hardware or stuff captured from the Soviets.

Here's a rifle squad painted up. I didn't spend too much effort on them as they're pretty mushy where it comes to detail:

In the end I'd say they look ok for wargaming. They look appropriate from a wargaming distance and shouldn't raise any eyebrows. Unless you take a closer look:

derp.

K-k-kill me!

Well, at least they paint up quickly. I'll aim for a platoon sized force with some supports so I can game some fighting by my countrymen in the Continuation War.

Digging up my family's war history

My family isn't exactly known for passing down oral history. I know my grandfather was a year or two too young to participate in the Continuation War, but he lost two brothers to the front. My grandfather never spoke about the wartime and died in 2005. My parents don't seem to know much more. So, all I really knew was that my grandfather's brothers had died in the war and they have been buried in the town of Säyneinen as I've visited their graves once.

In the past few years the Finnish state archives have been releasing materials on the war on the Internet, which would ordinarily been either classified or on a microfilm you have to go and view somewhere. I've been doing some genealogy research on my free time and bumped into records containing the date of deaths of my grandfather's brothers and the units they were serving with. Not much to go on.

However, a while back the Archive released the war journals of companies and regiments online as scanned images. Tonight I took the time to try and find the journals of the units the brothers served in and see if I could find any insight into how they died. I found more than I hoped for.


The eldest brother was the first to go. Arvo Einari Asikainen, unmarried, aged 23. Died 29.7.1941 in Ruskeala in the service of the 51st infantry regiment, company 7. The matching entry above says:


"29.7. Arrived 1.00. Tents up and to sleep. Artillery fire on both sides. Alarm at 11.00. Departure at 13.00. At 12.00 ammunition and handgrenade resupply. At 14.00 a russkie mortar round hit our march column. 3 dead and 13 wounded, including ltn. Esko Soininen. At 21.00 departure. Attack to the starting line. H-hour at 24.00. Before it lively artillery preparation in which small losses from our side."


Not too prosaic and they don't mention Arvo by name, but I assume he died when the marching column was hit by mortar fire, or in some sort of a firendly fire incident before an attack late that night.

EDIT: I showed these to my father and he said that grandfather had sometime mentioned that Arvo had been killed by friendly fire, so I suppose it's the latter then. So, I guess there's a bit of oral history there after all, If I can just dig it up :)

The second brother, Veikko Olavi Asikainen fell in Kusra at 24.7.1943. He was 21 at the time and also unmarried. He served with the 30th infantry regiment, company 3. It was a slow year in the war and the company spent their time doing drills, delicing, holding sports competitions and building a corduroy road. I read the journal back and they didn't seem to have had a hostile incident in a month or so. Then this happens:


"24.5.1943 13:00. Russkie shot approximately 15 grenades on the corduroy road between 'Nuoli' and 'Pönttö'. Pvt Hiltunen, Viljo fell. Pvt. Asikainen, Olavi seriously injured and pvt. Koistinen, Eino mildly injured. During the day we improved the position in the 'Summa' base and in front of 'Sarvi'"

Olavi is mentioned by name as being seriously injured and since the entry is from the day of his death, I assume he died on his way to the field hospital or something and the company commander didn't get word of his death.



Pointless, random deaths without glamour, but that's war for you. The entries were excting finds since I knew next to nothing about these young men.