"My Way", WWII from the Korean Point of View

I had a chance to check out the Korean WWII film "My Way" the other week when it popped up on Netflix streaming. Like all wargamers I'm a sucker for war movies, and I'm more than happy to branch out to non-English movies. "Downfall" is fantastic, and Kurosawa's samurai films are classics, but "My Way" was the first Korean historical piece I'd seen. My thoughts after the jump.

Here's the trailer that doesn't give too much away, but you're not going to watch this flick for plot twists and turns anyway. You're a wargamer so you're going to be counting the rivets on the tanks or trying to figure out what sort of leadership rating you'd give to each of the Japanese officers:

 

"My Way" starts off strongly, introducing our main characters as children: Hasegawa Tatsuo, the grandson of an occupying Japanese general and Kim Jun-shik, the son of the Korean servants to the Hasegawa family. Both boys enjoy running, their primary school foot races giving way to competitive marathons and culminating in a rivalry for a spot on the Japanese Olympic team. Europe gets a lot of attention in World War II flicks, but I found the pre-war exploration of the two character's growing adversarial relationship and the cultural tensions between the Koreans and Japanese quite interesting.

Our hero gets involved in a riot that sees him and a number of his Korean comrades arrested and drafted into the Imperial Japanese army as punishment. Before you can say "a training montage usually has more than one shot" we're at the front lines with our band of Korean soldiers trying to survive the horrors of war as well as their sadistic Japanese overseers.

All because he didn't fill out his TPS report...

Over the remainder of the film this band gets involved in a number of battles — or defeats, rather — as they are constantly captured and pressed into service to fight for their latest set of captors. The battles are fairly well done, with a mix of combatants you rarely see on film (Soviet BT- 7 tanks vs. Japanese infantry charge for example), are suitably brutal and have a decent (though not complete) amount of historical accuracy.

Check out that weird cylinder turret on the tank. BT-7, right?

In some cases the battles feel like nothing more than a mad lemming-like rush into overwhelming enemy firepower, but they're still gripping enough to be worth watching. With each defeat comes an obligatory death scene though, and here's where the film broke down for me. These death scenes are played very melodramatically, almost like parodies of "Oscar bait" death acting. One or two would have been fine, but when one of Kim's allies gets three (THREE!) death scenes after charging a German machine gun position my eye-rolling became too much to bear. Like a villain in a bad horror movie, just when you think he's dead he pops back up, lashing out with more drama soaked monologue-ing.

"No, your friend is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead."

Get to the Good Stuff

As a wargamer, you'll likely be looking at the film from a different perspective than most audiences. The annoying melodrama I mentioned can be overlooked if the film gets the battles right. Here's what you get in "My Way":

• Japanese unit under sniper attack in Mongolia. Interesting skirmish scenario fodder. 
• Japanese infantry charge against Soviet attack using BT-7 tanks. My favorite battle of the movie. 
• Soviet infantry charge against German positions in an battle scarred urban landscape. There's a strange looking German tank involved, but shots were too quick for me to make it out. 
• D-Day, but from the German perspective. Pretty historically inaccurate, but interesting to see the battle from the entrenched German perspective.

Other than the increasing levels of melodrama and the historical inaccuracies (check out the airborne troops dropping onto the beaches of Normandy under a clear blue morning sky!), I still think "My Way" is worth watching. The battles are engaging, the non-Western perspective on the war in novel, and the character development over the first half of the film are all worth your time. Just have some figures to paint once the battle dies down and the actors get around to dying dramatically.

WWII Germans in Color

I've seen color WWII photos and films before, but I still find them rare enough to be novelties. A set of German propaganda pics popped up on Reddit. I found them interesting and thought you might too.

Panzer III?

Is that a lend lease Sherman and T-34 on the easter front?

In researching German uniforms I was aware that the Hollywood gray was much lighter than what the Heer actually wore, being darker and greener like the dirty faced fellow below:

But check out the uniforms on this anti-tank crew. Even taking into account the altered hues in this early color film, their uniforms are nearly black. Is that a "trick of the light", or did the uneven production quality of German textile mills produce such sinister looking uniforms?



More photos available from the original imgur album.

Late to the Party: HBO's Pacific as Wargame Inspiration

There are a lot of materials that are necessary for painting miniatures: good paints, brushes, a tidy workspace, and good lighting, but there's one essential that's rarely discussed: binocular vision.  I recently had eye surgery and have spent the last few days sporting a truly boss gauze eye patch. Very stylish; the ladies have been fawning all over me. Attempting to finish up some wargame projects has been right out though, so I've been catching up on HBO's "The Pacific" instead.

I loved "Band of Brothers" (while watching the series I did some internet research to find out more info about Easy company and stumbled onto a page about a wargaming the Brecourt artillery battery, my first exposure to historical wargames), but I'd heard mediocre reviews of "The Pacific".  I binged on the first half of the season while healing up from surgery, and while not as tight as BoB, I'm enjoying The Pacific a lot more than I expected. I was surprised to see the Battle of Alligator Creek in the first episode which was very similar to the Fireball Forward scenario I played at Fall-In a few weeks ago.

As a campaign for wargaming, I've always found the Pacific a tough area to wrap my head around. The ETO during WWII is "easier" to game. The forces (U.S, British, German, Soviet, Italian, etc.) all behave in familiar ways. I've grown up watching war and action movies and read my share of history, and the concepts of firing, taking cover, moving and flanking are ingrained in the way I think a battle should play out. The Japanese tactics of holing up in caves or launching human wave Banzai attacks are strange. The geography of the Pacific is equally alien. Fighting across Europe soldiers needed to capture strategic crossroads, or fight in towns or woods. The Pacific doesn't have the same sorts of landmarks, each battle playing out within a "fog" of dense foliage or across barren hellscapes of blasted earth. In comparison to BoB, "The Pacific" throws these differences into relief: the battles are more chaotic, the fighting closer and bloodier, and the sanity of the men fighting in these horrible conditions breaks down faster and in more disturbing ways than shown in Band of Brothers. It seems to me that the enemy and the terrain were so alien to the Western mindset that simply coping with the strangeness took a toll on their spirit.

My knowledge of the Pacific campaign is fairly weak, so I'd like to research and game it, but it seems it would be better suited to solo or coop games against a programmed enemy, a bit like Reiner Knizia's "Lord of the Rings Board Game". I could be wrong though, as the Fireball Forward game I played and the beach landing that was running nearby at Fall-In  proved two sides facing off across a pacific jungle could be a heap of fun.

As a side note, I also did some initial playtesting of a scifi rules set I've had on the back burner for years. I'm writing it for myself, but if turns out to work I'll throw it up on the web.

Completed Plastic Soldier Company Soviet Infantry

Plastic Soldier Company "Soviets in Summer Uniform"

My soviets are done, but I can't say I'm entirely pleased with how they turned out. I botched the primer and found the mix of colors in the Battlefront Soviet Paint set a little too similar in shade to create the contrast necessary to make these figures. Still it was good to get some 15mm figures under my belt, and these should be fine for learning Fireball Forward and Flames of War.  I may slowly replace these plastics with Battlefront or Peter Pig figures over time.

These guys should provide good support for some T-34's and KV-1s

The Last Hurrah of my 20mm World War II miniatures

20mm tanks by Revell and Italeri, SS infantry by Pegasus

I started my wargaming career with two sets of opposing forces: Revell and Italeri World War II Germans and Americans. I had stumbled across wargaming after trying to find out more information regarding HBO's "Band of Brothers" while it was on the air. In the image search of my Google results I saw a number of World War II miniatures staged on some intricate European terrain. I was familiar with  the fantasy side of gaming, but this was my first exposure to historicals.  That single image lead me down the rabbit hole to Crossfire, TMP and the whole world of WWII wargaming, but with a limited budget at the time, I jumped into the hobby with the cheapest option available: 1/72nd scale plastics.

Apparently the Germans didn't really use the shoulder mount? Too bad, I was really proud of my custom job on that.

I slowly put together the antagonists, fumbling my way through uniform research, painting German oak leaf camouflage, basing, and trying to figure out what the heck a "Stug" was ("they made tanks without turrets???"). My gaming group played quite a few Crossfire games and I had grand plans to expand into the Battle of the Bulge, the Eastern Front, and Italy, but I became distracted by ancients and over time my additions to my WWII collection slowed.  We still broke Crossfire out occasionally, but the lack of tanks and the focus on platoons didn't quite scratch my WWII itch.

With my latest surge in interest in WWII gaming, my long time game partner Mike taking his first steps into painting up and army, and our decision to drop to 15mm in order to get more vehicles on the table, it looks like my 20mm collection may be shelved for some time. As a send off we got them on the table for at least one more game, but this time trying out the Blitzkrieg Commander demo rules just to see how they compared to the other rules we've been looking at. Pics after the jump.

20mm American Infantry

20mm German and SS Infantry

Blitzkrieg Commander

Americans arriving, facing Germans setting up behind the farm house.

US tanks swing around the German flank

US tanks knock out a "Stug" (tonight the part of "Stug" will be played by Jagdpanzer")

We gave the demo rules of Blitzkrieg Commander a whirl, but pretty quickly found that we were grossly misreading the rules or they were lacking some essential elements. As far as we could tell, there was no opportunity fire for units to interrupt attackers advancing on their position, a key part of Crossfire and something we felt was important to a WWII game. Checking the BKC forum after the game I get the sense the full edition contains such rules, but for whatever reason they were not present in the demo, or we simply failed to comprehend them. Suffice it to say, they weren't our cup of tea.

Quick Review of Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Soviets

The Soviet hordes ready to be primed for the Motherland.

After dithering with the idea of doing Eastern Front in 10mm, Historicon finally pushed me over the edge into 15mm.  My buddy Mike and I really enjoyed the North Africa armor game of Fireball Forward we played, and with 40 tanks on the table it convinced me that a 15mm game with tanks could look reasonable. At least it looked reasonable to me at the time. I've even begun to soften towards Flames of War which I've managed to resist until now.

Mike and I loaded up on rules (Fireball Forward and the Flames of War Starter Set), some Zvezda tanks (50% off at the show) and we each grabbed a boxed set of plastics. He took home some Wargames Factory Late War Germans, and I grabbed a Plastic Soldier Company Russian Infantry in Summer Uniform.

I've built plastics in the past.  I started wargaming with 1/72 Italeri, Revell and Airfix and even when I moved to 28mm I built a number of plastic WGF and Warlord Games plastic kits. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the Plastic Soldier Company Soviets.

Like most plastics, the detail is softer than metal and the poses are a bit flatter, but there was still a lot of decent poses, and no real "stinkers" that are unusable. The plastic is much harder than the soft plastic in 1/72 kits, and there are also a number of multi-part sculpts, that require arms or heads to be attached separately. Unlike the 28mm plastic kits Iv'e built, these aren't multi-pose kits. The arms and heads only attach in a single configuration, but the precision with which the pieces fit together was frankly shockingly good! Most likely as a result of the computer modeling from which the molds are made, the pieces fit in snugly making the build fairly easy. Some of the bits are quite small (the officer's arm in particular is quite tricky), but with patience and good lighting I didn't run into much of an issue.

Basecoated Plastic Soldier Company Soviets. Ready for Army Painter dip and basing.

I totally botched priming them though and managed to obliterate the detail on a few figs, but it was totally my fault. On the 90% that I managed to give a nice even coat, the detail is still crisp and clear. I've started painting them up, and while I'll likely pick up more metals in the future, I'm really happy with the PSC plastics which went together easily, had zero flash, and are half the price of metals.  Certainly the most painless way of starting up World War II in 15mm.

"Eastern Inferno", an Eastern Front Kindle eBook

I've been reading FIFTH GUARDS TANK ARMY AT KURSK to get a handle on the Eastern Front. I'm enjoying it as a high level perspective on the lead up to the Battle of Kursk, but so far there have only been a few snippets of company sized engagements that could be turned into a wargame scenario. I have the German counterpart volume, but I'm betting I'll have to dig into some more personal accounts to construct scenarios for potential games.

I happened to see Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjager on the Eastern Front, 1941-43, a Kindle eBook mentioned on the WWPD forum, on sale for less that $2.00. I haven't read it, but thought I'd pass on the news in case anyone else was searching for personal accounts of Eastern Front combat to turn into wargame scenarios.

My Battlefront Soviet Paint Set Confusion

I've got a hoard of soviet infantry and armor to paint, and the one shade of Vallejo paint I don't seem to own is Russian Green, the ubiquitous shade the Russians slathered on their helmets and vehicles. I didn't have the time or patience to research the paint colors I'd need for Russian uniforms and audit my current paints to see which I'd need, so I put my faith in Battlefront and ordered their Soviet: Paint Set.  As a basic paint set, I figured they'd have all the shades I'd need to get my Russians on the table quickly, and if it turned out I received a duplicate shade it would get used eventually.

What I didn't expect was for Battlefront themselves duplicate colors in the paint set.  The set has 6 bottles of paint, enough to cover uniforms, bedrolls, satchels and helmets, but surprisingly, they send two different shades of green (Russian Green and Luftwaffe Camo Green) and khaki (Khaki Grey and Khaki). The Luftwaffe Green and Khaki are both listed as "alternatives" in the paint description. I guess this is to represent the varying quality of Russian dyes and paints which varied throughout the war? Why not include a bottle of flesh, or even black? I'd even like two identical bottles of Russian green as I'll be using it on hordes of T-34s.  Oh well, maybe their wisdom will come to light once I put paint to figure.

Contents of Battlefront's Soviet Paint Set

 Russian Green (894) A useful colour for helmets and painted metal surfaces, such as on tanks.

USA Tan Earth (874) For greatcoats, bedrolls and other such gear for your Strelkovy troops.

Flat Earth (983) Used for tank camouflage and SMG pouches.

Khaki Grey (880) Soviet uniform colour

Khaki (988) Alternative uniform colour. It is also a good highlight to Khaki Grey.

Luftwaffe Camo Green (823) Alternative painted metal color for tanks and vehicles.


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Want a kubelwagan? Maybe Toyota can help.

Toyota released some photos of their new concept car, the Camatte.

The first thing I thought of when I saw it:

I must have too much WWII on the brain...