I first heard about these interesting little vessels about twenty years ago when I found a collection of Soviet era commemorative postcards on a local flea market. I took them home and framed them it, to hang on the stairs to the games room (err loft). Several of them showed these funny little barge things doing undoubtedly heroic acts. Sadly the staircase was in the sunlight, so they've now faded, as did my memory of them, till now.
The Lagoda tenders were a series of boats initially built in Leningrad during the siege and used to get supplies in and civilians out of the besieged city. They were a VERY simple design, probably the epitome of function over form, basically a welded flat bottomed barge made from crude metal plates and powered by an engine taken from a truck. When I said crude I did mean it - the bow is basically two metal sheets welded into a straight V shape, in fact there are no curves anywhere on the boat, and they're steered by a tiller rather than a rudder and wheel. They were at least two versions, the larger being 43 feet long, weighed 25 tons and chugged along at about 6 knots flat out. While undoubtedly basic they were equally robust and they could carry about 50 passengers or cargo, and could be armed with a DshK HMG for anti aircraft defence. That simplicity did however mean they were incredibly robust, and the shallow draught and flat bottom meant they could land just about on any beach or shore. During the siege they built 118 of these and between them they made over 10,000 trips to and from the city, carrying 150,000 tons of cargo in and taking thousands of civilians out, constantly under threat of air attack. Many were damaged, but none were reported lost, quite an achievement. It didn't end there. As the tide of he war turned the design was so successful they became an integral part of Soviet amphibious operations, taking part in landings both the Black Sea and Baltic. The Lagoda Tenders are held in high regard in Russian history, similar to the Little Ships of Dunkirk here in the UK, and gained the nickname "Comrade Tender".
So back to the games element. I discovered Scotia \ Grendel did a 1:300 model in their Ship to Shore range. I bookmarked them, but had "a Cunning Plan". My regular oppo Paul had just acquired a 3d printer. So far he's been printing out models that are designed by others and made available for personal use on Thingyverse and the like. I've been tentatively thinking about dipping my toe in to doing 3d design myself, but so far lack the time or talent to really get it to work. Surely the Lagoda Tender, a boat that consists of straight lines, would be a good project to start with? I mentioned this to Paul too, but he seemed sceptical. I think with hindsight he knows me better than I would like to think:-) - after a couple of tries at various programs I did the equivalent of screwing the drawing up into a ball and throwing it in the bin! I went on to the Scotia site and ordered three from them. However unbeknown to me my comments had lodged in Paul's mind, and a couple of days later he sent me a pic - I'll follow that up in another post.
Meanwhile Scotia delivered, and the model is rather nice. Resin cast and with crisp detail they painted up quickly. Proportionally they look about right, with a bit of exaggeration to the height to allow them to have a bit of depth in the hold, which is no bad thing in my view. Price wise they are £3.50 each which initially I pulled a bit of a face at but with hindsight is about the same as the equivalent Warlord LCMs (with the added bonus that being resin they will hopefully take less damage to the paintwork when handling) so not so bad.
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| a pair of Scotia Lagoda Tenders |
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| Size comparison with a Warlord Vosper |
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| the real thing preserved |
In Cruel Seas
One of the oft repeated issues with Cruel Seas is there is no explanation of how they arrive at the stats or points, and the points system provided manages to miss out on a couple of really crucial factors. All that being said, after having a look at some of the boats already in the rules it should not be too difficult to come up with some stats. There are three small landing craft available in the Cruel Seas rule book. the Japanese Daihastu, and the UK and US LCM. These all have 20 Hull Points. The Lagoda is slightly bigger and made of steel rather than wood, so 25 Hull Points seems fair. This will also mean it is almost always going to survive the 5 D6 damage you would expect from an air attack in Cruel Seas, which seems to fit too. It is Small sized, and immune to torpedo attack due to the shallow draught. Comparing it with the others it would either be free (ie zero points) if unarmed (like a UK LCM) or 5 points each if up-gunned with a fearsome DshK HMG. Turns will be the normal 45 degrees per move phase, and speed breaks down into 2\4\6 cm which is painfully slow but correct, and helps balance out the points compared to the LCMs which are faster.
So there you go - if you're looking for something to add to your Soviet Cruel Seas collection these are worth a try.
Links
Scotia Lagoda Tender
Some useful history and pics from the Engines of the Red Army website - worth a look
Something a bit bigger next time
Cool and Interesting
ReplyDeletePlease note: I had trouble making out the text associated with the voting buttons over the background colour
I've also been expanding my soviet fleet beyond Warlord's stock! It's funny you mention 3d printing again. https://www.thingiverse.com/Monkeyhanger/designs. This fellow here has done 3 designs, all for soviet small craft/barges at 1:300. There's a Lagoda, an open barge with a flak option (nothing like the Siebel, just one gun), and a Siebel like floating battery with one 100mm gun. I also delved into some 1:100 files and scaled down some soviet 150mm howitzers to use as shore batteries.
ReplyDeleteThe coup de gras of this print is a design purchased from Wargaming3d.com - Three US wind class icebreakers were Lend Leased to the Soviets during the late war, and were in use for 70 years after. With 2 twin 5" gun mounts, 3 twin 40mm mounts, and a Grumman J2F duck ready to launch off the stern, this boat will be a bit of a Goliath relative to Warlord stock models, and hopefully more of a match for a German opponent than the current soviet fleet. I, like you am wondering just how I'm going to point this out - somebody on the facebook community for this game developed a hull point algorythm based on the length and displacement of a ship, but he disappeared a while ago.
Yes Monkeyhanger is my opponent Paul - his designs are om but probably could do with a rework to make them more gamer friendly - the guns look very "weedy" when compared to the "official" models, even though I suspect they are correct for scale. I'll certainly look at those Icebreakers. It looks like Warlord are releasing an MO or BMO too
ReplyDeleteI saw that about the MOs. On one of the official facebook communities, somebody with access to the rough draft of the upcoming expansions mentioned specifically the soviet navy getting some love, rather than any of the other navies, even though the Japanese are getting the No.13, and the Germans are getting the Kriegfischkutter, so it's possilble we'll see even more boats for the Soviets.
DeleteOn the subject of Soviet expansions through wargaming 3D, it's worth a look through their entire library of 1:300 files. In addition to the icebreaker (Which is a somewhat simple, and rudimentary model with enough features - the plane, the LCVPs, the guns, etc - to make up for the designer's usual blockiness in his models), there are other soviet designs from multiple authors that probably won't be considered by warlord - I've yet to print the Zheleznyakov and Udarnyi river monitors that I purchased for about $7.
As far as weedy guns go, Warlord definitely scales their guns up, and the materials they use are more resilient to fingers than my resin. I downloaded a file of various "chunky" guns that were designed to help with this problem, but in addition to 20mms being identical to 37s and a lack of navy specific designs, I STILL break my barrels on the small guns. I'm throwing in the towel and just buying packs of warlord's guns for all of my future prints - I also plan to upgun my Fugas, D3s, R-boats, and Fugas to late war armaments.