The Greatest Day: Sword, Juno and Gold Beaches

This past weekend I had the pleasure of helping to play test The Greatest Day with a group of excellent people in Nashville, TN. The Greatest Day will be a new addition to Multi-Man Publishing's Grand Tactical Series. When I heard Mike Curtis's group was going to do play testing of this, I was very eager to try and be a part of it. I have not done any historical board gaming in a very long time. Probably at least 8 or 9 years and I do miss it. I have been trying to get the young man (15) that lives across the street from me to play Squad Leader, but so far he just played one scenario. He said he liked it and wants to play more, but I fear I am competing with the likes of PlayStation 4 and other computer games.

The Greatest Day is very appealing to me due to the nature of the game: company level D-Day. Actually, to be more exact, the first week of the Commonwealth side of the Normandy invasion. The level of research and detail that went into the game was exceptional. Detail on the map and counters is also very high. The rules were a little bit more general though. Most of that is the writing style of the game designer. It is written more in a conversational style and less like stereo instructions. This makes the initial read of the rules very easy. However, it made (for me at least) going back and finding specifics on a certain rule for a particular situation a little more challenging. An index would have been smashing.

As for the rule system itself, I really liked it. The activation process (think initiative) was very nice. It was also a little nostalgic. As soon as I read the rule, it reminded me of some of my first historical miniature gaming 30 years ago. My local group played the venerable The Sword and the Flame miniature rules a lot....colonial period 25mm miniature rules. One of our local rule modifications was to its initiative rules. We assigned a playing card to each unit (squad level) and when its card was pulled from the deck it was allowed to move. After everything moved, reshuffle the deck, start pulling cards and that is the order all the units conducted fire combat. A random system that comes as close to a simultaneous feel as can be done and not totally bog the game down. Obviously, TGD (The Greatest Day) rules are more sophisticated than that, but just as fun. It adds in a nice nail biting element as you don't know exactly when your units are going to get to do their thing. Also, there are a number of global events that have an impact on the current situation at hand. If a global event chit is pulled before or after your activation chit, it can have a very large impact on what your units can and cannot get accomplished.

The combat system was also a plus. I very much liked that the die roll was never modified; only the different combat factors or Troop Quality Ratings get modified. While this seems minor, I think it produces more consistent results. It also made the learning curve a little easier. Occasionally, a modifier might be overlooked. But that had fewer effects than you would think because if the die roll was a "1" then it was still a "1" and the results did not change even with the addition of the forgotten modifier. The only time it changed something is if the the die roll was near to a no effects result.

Supply and command were abstracted out with the Command/Dispatch point system. I think it will produce good results, but we did not get far enough into the game to say for certain. It did "feel" as if it would and the system worked hand-in-hand with the activation system. It did take a while to get what/when you could spend your command points on down pat.

There really was only one thing that I personally felt needed revision and that was wheeled/tracked movement in woods, towns and some other terrain. The rules require the formation to be in column in that terrain which is a poor rule and not accurate. However, it might be in the rules for other reasons. When we discussed this as a group, I believe it was Mike who suggested it was to reflect other aspects. So a tank company that is in column, in clear terrain should have its attack valued lowered and its defense value raised (lower is better for defense) when compared to being in line. However, and I can say this from personal real world experience, vehicles (company size elements) do not need to be in column to negotiate in woods or towns. However, they may have less firepower and be more vulnerable similar to as if they were in column in open ground. The best we could come up with was the rules just merged it all together so there would not need to be multiple, different rules. I would like to see this revised since being in column has some other important limiting factors such as stacking and movement. There are some other issues with vehicle movement in terrain other than clear that I felt could use a little tweaking, but was very minor. Other members of the group also had issues here and there with a rule or two such as the Royal Marines and the large number die rolls that have to be made. Those are their issues, though, so I will not try to put words in their mouths Overall I got the impression everyone was happy with the system as a whole; after all it was a play test and you expect things to not always be perfectly smooth.

Due to having to work, I did not get there until the last hour or two on Friday night. When I got there they were just finishing up the Naval phase of the June 6th, 0600 turn. I was assigned Gold beach and the British 50th Infantry Division.

My inexperience with the rule system did cause a couple of issues that would cause problems with the 50th's effectiveness over the next couple of turns. The biggest was poor Gap selection. Not all gaps off the beaches are created equal. I chose poorly. This caused a slow go off the left flank and almost stopped me cold on the right flank. Now eventually all gaps were opened, but key assault forces were already committed to poorly chosen gaps. 

My second mistake was not realizing how truly powerful independent units attached to my division were. This is directly tied to the activation process. Due to the compact nature of a beach landing, most of my independent units were in the command radius of all of my brigade commanders and therefore able to be activated during each of their formation activation. Sounds simple, but it's huge. This gives these independent units multiple chances to move, fire and rally. 

Things started to go better after the 0700 turn. I started to get the hang of the rules and get a better understanding of the game play. I pushed an armor company out of the far left gap and took some high ground with an observation post on it. This gave that unit increased line of sight and better contact numbers to call in artillery fire on enemy positions. The Germans had little choice but to fall back with more and more units getting through the gaps while getting hammered by naval guns. I was stymied on the right with a long series of bad die rolls though.

The right flank was still an issue for me. By the time I got my head on right and got the rules sorted out in my head, I had moved the bulk of the division off of the beach through the left. Artillery fire had the desired effect in the defenders and was pushing them back.

With the exception of two pill boxes on the far right of the beach overlay, the beach was clear. When we stopped for the weekend, it was going to be a close call as to whether or not the 50th would meet its 1300 objective. It was in the hands of the Royal Marines.....

I really enjoyed the game and the camaraderie. I am seriously thinking of getting both Where Eagles Dare and The Devil's Cauldron. These two games use the same basic gaming system as TGD and cover Operation Market Garden. I have no idea what time I will have available for gaming, but a company that puts out this kind of quality product deserves the support.

What does any of this have to do with my Brummbär? Not a thing, but it was a good time none the less.

A weal of wheels

Progress is really starting to pick up. We'll that is a little disingenuous. I'm spending about the same amount of time each week working on my tin beast; but instead of primarily cutting out stuff, I am instead mostly assembling various components from the stuff that has been already cut out. Gives the appearance of being more productive I suppose. It certainly is more gratifying. I also have two video updates to share. That is mostly caused from just being lazy and not updating my blog. :)

Let's get started with the drive sprockets. As of right now, I am not 100% satisfied with how they have turned out. All of my dissatisfaction revolves around the center cones. Since they are very important to the drive sprocket, I chose to have a machine shop roll them up into their cones shapes as opposed to doing it myself. I had thought that professionals would do a better job than what I am capable of. Unfortunately, I was very much in error. They are neither round nor consistent. It will not effect the drive sprockets while in use, but it does case some cosmetic issues. Once everything is hard welded in you will be hard pressed to find the errors, but it does make getting the cone centered a real pain during the assembly process.

Here are some shots of the drive sprockets getting lined up in the jig I made for assembling them.

Jig is together and welding is about to begin.

The drive sprockets have been tack welded together. I will go through a do the final welds at a later time. Mostly I am letting the idea of dismantling them simmer. I am trying to convince myself that I do not need to tear them apart and cut out/roll up a new set of cones.

Now for the road wheels. After getting the issue with the rims hammered out or rolled to be more accurate, the road wheels went together very easy. As of right now, all have been tacked together and about 3/4's have been completely welded. I started welding the road wheels onto their hubs to start playing around with how best to assemble them.

You can see here the stack of road wheels.

Here are two different angles on a pair that have been welded onto their hub.

Moving forward, over the next few weeks I need to finish the road wheels and get the pairs welded on to their hubs. I also need to hurry up and finish the threads on the axles and spindles. 

Lord of the Rings

Previously I have discussed the problems I have had in rolling the rings that will become the rims of the road wheels and return rollers. So I decided to make my own ring roller. To be perfectly honest, I had no idea if my fabrication skills would up to the challenge. To be effective, the rollers don't need to be perfect, but a close approximation there of. This is complicated somewhat by my desire to do this with as little cash outlay as possible. Yeah I can be real cheap at inopportune times.

My idea was pretty simple; take the basic tube bender design and modify it for flatbar and the rollers to be compressed from the bottom instead of the top. The rollers are a section of schedule 80 2" pipe with a piece of 1" road bar through the middle and 1" washers on the ends. The hard part was getting everything lined up and centered when they were welded together. I used some blocks of wood and drilled appropriate sized holes to help center everything up.

I thought about using bushings to keep the rollers in place, but I have a number of pillow block bearings sitting around. The bearings will be used in the final drive for the Brummbär; however, I'm sure they will not mind being put to work a little early.

Everything went together fairly easy. No big surprises. All of the rollers center axis seems to be parallel (important) but a couple of them were off center by about 1/64". Not too bad for a rookie and quite usable. Normally a slip roller has two rollers that turn (feeding the material) and the third is used to adjust the distance between all three. I did the opposite. Only one roller feeds the material (top roller) and the other two (bottom rollers) move up and down to adjust the distance between the rollers. One of the concerns with this approach is that one feed roller may not have enough "grab" to feed the material through the three rollers. However, this was not an issue as there was very little or no slippage.

Everything worked well. I was able to use this to fix (mostly) the rings the Harbor Freight ring roller twisted in the Z axis. There was an issue with flat spots on the ends of the ring, but a few love taps with a small sledge took care of that with little fuss. All of the rings for the road wheel rims are rolled. I still need to cut and roll the rings for the return rollers. That will be for another day though....

Twisted

Brummbär Video Log Update

A little more work was done this week. The good news is the road wheel axle hubs are tack welded and ready to go.

The bad news is I broke my ring roller. However, the good news is I broke my ring roller. Probably a blessing in disguise. It rolled some terrible rings. It put a twist in the Z axis. I am in the process of making a ring roller from scratch. I hope to have it done before the coming weekend. I also hope that I can flatten out the remaining 6 or 7 seven rings I rolled with the old roller and then run them through the new one and get the twist out. I hate to throw 20' of flatbar in the recycle bin. :(

I did play around with some of the rings I do have on some extra road wheels. Did not go all that well. The twist in the ring caused all manner of issues. I probably will not try tacking any more until the ring issue is resolved.

In the next couple weeks, I hope to have my ring issue resolved and the drive sprockets assembled.

All Stressed Out

Making a scale tank is not a new idea. However, making one without a frame is. I have yet to see anyone's scale project that didn't have a frame. Real tanks don't have a frame. The armor is thick enough to provide ample support for the vehicles weight and any stress that may be encountered. That's not to say that there are not "frames" inside a tank, i.e. support frame for the transmission, main gun, engine & etc. Most of these sub-frames merely provide attachment points for the various equipment in a tank. The big reason none of the other scale projects are frameless is mostly due to weight. A frame with a skin of plywood or sheet metal is significantly lighter than steel plate. But being hard headed, I decided to buck the trend and go the heavy metal route.

The big question was what was the minimum thickness the steel plate needed to be, but still provide adequate support? From I planning standpoint, I started out with 1/4" plate. I was pretty sure that if the whole skin was made from 1/4" plate, everything would be strong enough. That would put the weight of the body (outer skin only, not tracks, suspension, engine & etc) right at about 2000 lbs. Which means by the time I added everything else in, I was looking at about 5500 lbs. 5500 lbs is starting to push the limit of my suspension, hydraulics and tracks design. So in an effort to reduce weight, I asked for some help from an engineer who frequents the scaledtanks.com forum.

He took my CAD design and fed it into a program to evaluate stress on the body of the tank. We went through several different combinations of steel plate thickness before we came up with a winner. The combination I finally settled on was the floor of the tank in 1/4" plate and the rest of the tank in 1/8" plate. In addition, there was some angle iron added to specific joints to help reinforce high stress areas.

In the first picture, you can see the effect of a 2.5 G (61625 Newtons) strike on the left front road wheel axle hub.

The color scale shows the "buckling" of the plate. Blue, green and yellow are ok; red is bad. As can be seen, there is just one small area of red in the front corner of the right side sponson. The next two pics are of different angles.

So what does all of this mean? By using the thinner plate with some reinforcement in key welded joints, approximately 800 lbs and $600 in material costs will be shaved off of the project. I'll call that a victory any day of the week. :)

A thread on threads.

I have continued to cut out parts for the suspension. Almost all of the stuff being cut out of 1/8" plate is done. I am also trying to make my torch a little better at cutting out multiple parts. I have a cutting jig that works well for circles. However, cutting straight lines and cutting out multiple copies is not the easiest. The plasma torch does not have a drag tip so it has to stay a certain distance from the cutting surface. Also, the sides of the torch's head are angled making it harder to be perpendicular to a fence. So, I took a piece of 1" schedule 40 and made a doughnut for it to sit in. This keeps the tip at a consistent distance, gives my a perpendicular face to drag along a fence and allow the torch to sit in a consistent vertical position making the cuts more accurate. I would love to have a CNC table for it, but even a used one is big dollars.

However, I have spent most of my time battling threads. Each road wheel swing arm has a 1" diameter spindle and a 1" diameter axle that has to have threads cut into them. Plus each return roller (6 total) has a 1" diameter spindle. That is 38 total. I was having quite a problem initially. The round bar kept slipping in the vice. I then took and tack welded some pieces of flat bar to the round bar giving the vice enough flat surface to keep it from slipping. Even with the fix in place it is still a very tough go at it. It takes a lot of horse power (man power more accurately) to turn the die around the round bar thereby cutting the threads into it. I have five done and am seriously thinking about trying to find a machine shop that would take pity on me and give my a good price on cutting the rest. They would use a lathe and probably cut 20 in in the time it takes my to do one.

I have also had a couple of other smaller projects that have been a pretty big distraction. I made a friend at work a small waggon for his four wheeler to pull through the woods and I made my loving wife a new plant stand. Both projects were good for the tank project though. I used them to practice banding metal which I will have to do, in spades, on the tank.

Next up is cutting out the parts I need from 1/4" plate. Hopefully I have learned enough cutting on the 1/8" plate as mistakes made cutting 1/4" plate get expensive, fast.

A quickie...

Had a few extra moments today to play in the garage. Started work on the drive sprockets. The base is just a cone. To that cone a ring will be welded on each end. The actual sprockets will then be bolted to the rings.

Brummbär Progress Video Log

The Brummbär begins.

First off, a little of the back story.

This build is intended from the beginning to be a PAV (paintball armored vehicle) for use in paintball/airsoft games. It is intended to have a minimum crew of 2, though I am trying my best to cram three in the thing.

The Brummbär was selected as the model for this build for several reasons. First of all, construction is pretty straight forward and in line with my skill level. Second, it has a very high profile (unlike the Hetzer) making it easier it fit in the thing. Third, it has a big gun. What I mean by that is the original had a 150mm main gun with a short barrel. This gives me a lot of options for designing a scale version. And fourth, it is casemate (turretless) design. Though not having a turret will be a slight hindrance on the paintball field, it is safer without one. I have several ideas to make a turreted design safer, but that will have to wait for future projects.

This project will progress a little differently than the last one. The first items on the "to do" list is suspension, drive sprockets, road wheels, rear idlers, return rollers and tracks. After all of that is done, I will then start tackling the frame/hull and what not. Since this project will be much heavier than the Hetzer project, it is important to have all the suspension and tracks ready to put on the hull as soon as it is done so the lower hull can be moved around. How heavy do you ask? It is my goal to keep the finished tank under 5000 lbs.

I have had a couple days so far working on the Brummbär. So far, it is not very exciting. Just cutting up the little pieces that will get put together for the suspension. Progess has been slow as I am still learning how to effectively use my plasma cutter. I also had an issue with my circle cutting jig not fitting the torch of my plasma cutter. Everything was correct, except for some reason the diameter of my torch head was about 1mm too big. Just enough to keep it from sliding into the jig like is suppose to. I fixed that problem by carefully sanding the torch head.

First picture is some of the small pieces I chopped up last week.

The next is of some discs that I cut out. These ultimately will become the road wheels. 20 down, 16 to go. 

One other item of note: I have started a video log for the project. It can be seen on YouTube here:

Brummbär Progress Video Log 04-12-14

First video I have taken with my phone. Audio went in and out a little. I will try and correct that in future videos.

Every ending is a new beginging.

Everything in life does not end the way we thought it would. This is very true where my Hetzer is concerned. An ambitious project to be certain, but achievable. However, it will not come to fruition. My biggest mistake with the Hetzer was not fully articulating the projects goals. I said early on that I had no idea what I was going to use it for, I just wanted to build the thing. As I continued to work on the project, I began to realize I had some serious design flaws. No not in a mechanical sense, but in the capabilities of the finished project. It simply was not enough to just build it; I wanted it to be able to do more than it was designed for.

Specifically, I wanted it big enough for more than one person to fit in the thing. The Hetzer, even at full size, is not very big; knock it down to 60% and one person is all that is going to fit in comfortably. This "problem" is made worse by the fact there simply is no way to make it bigger without re-doing everything. So, several months ago I made the decision to scrap this project and start another. I used the winter hiatus (read: cold weather) to chose a new tank and work up the CAD drawings for it. I also made several key upgrades in my little tank factories capabilities. In the Hetzer project, I tried to use as many parts as possible "off the shelf" due to my limited fabrication skills/equipment. This made me make many compromises in how close to scale I was staying. I added a plasma cutter, metal bending equipment and a new welder to the arsenal. Moving forward, I will fabricate almost everything from scratch. Outside the engine/hydraulics package, about the only thing I am not making myself is the bearings and nuts & bolts.

So , last week the Hetzer was cut up for parts. I salvaged the longer pieces of square tub and will use the springs and bearings in the next project. The hubs, rims and wheels will be sold or traded away.

So what is the next project you ask?

The Brummbär......

Finishing the main frame and axles.

After the suspension was completed, I completed the main framework. There will still be additions to it for support of various item and attachments, but for the most part the frame is complete.

The primer is weld thru, so I do not have to clean it off before welding an area again. So far, with the exception of the framework, most parts have been "off the shelf" items. The front drive sprocket axle will be made from 1018 1" round bar with pillow block bearings providing the support. The hubs are go kart live axle drive hubs and the rims are for a trailer. 

The rear idler was a little more of a challenge. The hubs and rims are for a trailer. The swing arm is custom made. The spindle is welded in on one end and the swing arms axle is on the other. The whole assembly is supported by two pillow block bearings. Not completed yet is the attachment point on the swing arm axle for a turn buckle. The turn buckle will be used to move and secure the rear idler thereby adjusting track tension. There is some additional support framework needed as well.

Progress so far has been fairly swift and I am significantly ahead of scedule. Next up will be the tracks and sprockets. I have taken most of the winter off from the project. It has been very cold this winter and I just didn't feel like paying out in the cold. :)

Spring is fast apporaching and I am preparing to upgrade/add several items in the garage that will significantly improve/increase my metal fabrication skills. I will no longer be dependant on "off the shelf" items to use for my parts. Till the next time I will give you a look at the full progress. This picture was taken on 09/22/13.

Trying to Grow Legs

One of the most important pieces to the puzzle is the suspension and road wheels. Everything is riding on them, literally. Early on I made the decision to use as many parts "off the shelf" as possible. The trick is to know what is usable/economical and what is not. My plan is to use a 20" cart wheel as the base for the road wheels. My intention was to fashion a hub cap to go over them to give them a solid appearance. In reality, I am going to need to fill in the spokes (at least partially) to stiffen up the rubber thread in addition to the "hub cap". Hindsight is that I would have less time and money involved in making them from scratch then modifying an existing wheel. One other thing that was disappointing is the size. Officially listed as a 20" wheel; however, it actually is 18.5" in diameter.

Of course the wheels are only as good as the suspension they are attached to. Luckily for me, the Hetzer's suspension is very straight forward and no frills. The road wheel swing arms are in pairs facing away from each other. On top of the road wheel swing arm, directly above the road wheel spindle, rests one end of an elliptical leaf spring. The spring is anchored to the hull in between the road wheel swing arms and can pivot.

While this setup is not nearly as clean cut as a torsion bar; it is something that I am able to fabricate without having to get assistance from a machine shop. I basically took the original design and scaled it down and modified it with over the counter parts.

An interesting aspect of my design is the spring resting on the swing arm past the road wheel spindle. This will add mechanical advantage to the spring thereby "stiffening" it. This allowed my to use a smaller less expensive spring.