Saturday, October 7, 2023

Microarmor in North Africa


Well, this post has been a long time coming.  It has been 8 months since I last posted.  My painting and posting mojo has been at a nadir although I have been gaming with my local group, the Jackson Gamers.  But now I've been energized to renew my interest in gaming the actions in the Western Desert of North Africa in 1941 & 1942.

I originally got involved in these campaigns years ago with "Blitzkrieg Commander," playing several games.  But interest waned.  Now that I've been playing games using the "Memoir 44" rules, I've found my interest again.

I'm able to use the forces I've already painted and based, just adding infantry and 'special weapons assets' - antitank guns, mortars, and machine guns.'

Because I'm using 1:285 scale figures and vehicles I procured a 4" hex gridded desert mat from Cigar Box Battle.  After a brief exchange of messages my mat arrived posthaste.  For terrain, I using hexes cut from various colors of thin craft foam and the hills from 1/2" extruded foam insulation board.  The units are mounted on bases from Litko.

A Test of Units and Terrain Pieces

In the above image (please click for a larger version), the two dark brown pieces on the left are a wadi with a unit of DAK infantry at the mouth.  Next is another unit of DAK infantry behind a sandbag emplacement along with a unit of Pz-IV tanks.  The tan pieces are a desert track with another DAK infantry unit along with its AT gun special weapons asset.  And finally on the right is a small sand hill with a unit of heavy antitank guns (50mm PaK 38).