Weekend Movies: Two world wars in about 4 hours.

I watch a lot of war-themed movies - luckily for you, I don't post all of them here, but I watched two interesting ones this weekend.

The first one is a Russian film (with subtitles) called Battalion. Proving once again that there are no feel-good WWI movies, this one is about the first Russian "Women’s Battalion". Good drama, lot's of battle sequences and an interesting unusual focus for a war movie.




Tonight was The Devil's Brigade. I can't say I've seen a lot of movies featuring Canadians in WWII (I live in the US  so maybe that explains that). The movie is about the First Special Service Force. It features some great battle sequences set in Italy plus a bunch of fun training sequences prior (see, a feel good war movie. No one does this for WWI). [Edit: not that it is all puppies and rainbows or doesn't end on a heavy note, but it's the kind that still leaves you feeling something positive and not sinking into a dark pit of existential despair. ]

Cossacks! Urrah!

I finally had a chance to get a picture of the Cossacks together.

W. Britain's Cossacks riding to the sounds of the guns.

They are quite a satisfactory little group.

I find whenever I get out my Britains, I think, "I should just collect these and not worry about painting."

Then my wallet weeps and wails and I remember that I have to eat and pay for housing and all that.

And now, to honor our newly arrived troops:

The Silent Mountain (movie)

I had hoped to play some kind of game this weekend, but alas it was not meant to be. I did manage to get some time to watch another WWI movie - this time, The Silent Mountain.



Set at the start of the war between Italy and Austria (my current favorite topic!) in 1915, the plot largely, and unfortunately, features a completely forgettable love story (which the trailer pretty much beats you to death with). On top of that, it's a rather short film with its 98 minute run-time and its brevity works against it: the characters seem barely fleshed out (and much of that rushed via exposition), save for an amusing Italian commander who would make a great character in a wargames campaign journal, and the combat sequences, while impactful,were few and brief. On the plus side, there were several historical realities that were either explicitly shown or at least hinted at.

What made the viewing worthwhile for me was the incredible visuals presented by the mountains themselves and the perspective the film gave for how encounters between the two sides might have looked in that environment. For someone like me who really has no sense of this region other than from still photographs and written descriptions(a lot of written description at this point), it was eye opening.

From a gaming perspective, I do not see how one could possibly hope to model the terrain on the wargames table unless you either focus in on small actions, where depicting massive elevation differences is unnecessary (gaming an alpini attack up a sheer cliff face withstanding), or zoom so far out as to show the terrain as flat, or nearly so, maybe a corps per side and a regiment per base, or by playing a hex-and-counter game a la Burning Mountain. You might notice that this conclusion jives with the plans I already have, so it's more than possible I'm only drawing this conclusion to suit my own ends.

In any case.

While it's nice to see a WWI movie not set on the Western Front, it's probably not worth making an effort to see this one unless you have an interest in the period and the Southern Front in particular, or forgettable romantic plots tickle your fancy.

Cossacks! (A teaser)

The mail arrived just a few minutes ago.

Contrary to my previous statement about painting the AiP cossacks and not getting the Britains,  I found a good deal on these on eBay that I couldn't pass up.

Proper pictures of the set to follow and perhaps a small skirmish game of Gintania vs Vodkya.

Bolt Action: Learning Game #2 - Key Positions

For my second game of Bolt Action, I opted to play the Key Positions scenario from the rule book which involves trying to capture and hold more objectives than your opponent.

As a basis for the terrain, I used the Pitched Battle(2) setup from One Hour Wargames. The remainder of the terrain was generated via Platoon Forward's random generation tables.

Since I am only playing two squads per side, I kept the total available objectives to 3, and to make it more challenging for me, as I play solo, I decided to put the third objective on the German table edge (hill, crossroads, church).

Turn 1

The Germans quickly moved a squad into the church and an MG to cover the crossroads, supported by the platoon HQ. The German 2nd squad was held in reserve.

The Americans opted to concentrate on capturing the cross-roads (determined by die roll), with the intent to nominally hold the hill with their mortar, which could also cover their retreat if necessary.

2nd squad was tasked with supporting 1st squad's advance on the crossroads, using the village for cover, with the order to fall back and cover the hill in the event of a German counter-attack.

Turn 2

The American 2nd squad raced for the red-roofed farm house but unfortunately there was just enough gap for the squad to be in the machine gun's sights. One rifleman goes down (the squad takes a pin marker) but the rest made it into the farmhouse. As soon as they got inside, bullets erupted from the church and the NCO was killed by the German LMG.

The American first squad moved up by clinging to the right edge of the woods to prevent fire from the church and the MG team, as the mortar setup behind the hill.

Turn 3

The German reserve squad advanced into the woods to the left of the machine gun to allow them to support both the squad in the church and the gun team.

Turn 4

US mortar fire hit the roof of the church and exploded on impact with little to show for the effort.

Meanwhile, the US first squad advanced and the MG42 opened fire - killing the NCO and a rifleman. The squad's return fire was ineffectual.

German platoon HQ advanced to assist the MG42. The platoon leader opened fire and killed another US rifleman.

With things looking grim the US platoon HQ moved up to support first squad.

The German reserve squad charged the church (they fell short by a few inches).

Turn 5

US first squad was in chaos and instead of firing at the enemy, they hit the dirt.

The MG42 continued to chew them up (another casualty).

The US second squad opted to charge the oncoming Germans (Captain Danjou anyone?) to close assault the German 2nd squad and it was the one bright spot for the Americans as they destroyed their opponents.

A lot of good it did them - the German squad in the church promptly mowed them down.

A US mortar blast struck the roof of the church, yet again, and did nothing but explode on impact.

Turn 6

The US was pretty much decimated by this point and continuing seemed kind of silly.

*****
It was another good time. Took about two hours, start to finish, not counting setup and cleanup. For me, that's a long game - which relegates it to weekend nights only for me, generally speaking.

I think I corrected most of the mistakes I made last time, while making new ones this time. I also raised some questions that I need to look into. That's why these are learning games after all.

Project Updates

We're about 2.5 months into 2019 and I thought I'd check in on my plans for the year to see how I'm doing. Not that I need to rigidly adhere to them, after all this is a hobby, but I think it helps to focus me when I feel a bit adrift or overwhelmed by options.

1. Complete a basic force for my Imaginations/VSF British and Russian forces.

By basic force I mean 1 infantry unit, 1 cavalry unit, 1 gun + crew, and 1 character (a reasonable force for G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.  for each side and enough to make a game of)

I finished a Russian infantry unit in February. Next up are the Cossacks - although I keep checking Britain's Cossack and Russian (albeit representing early 20th C. and not late 19th) cavalry sets on Ebay.

While I'll probably paint the AiP figures, I would love to have matched opponent for my Britain's lancers.

Also, running a bit low on Delta CeramCoat Green - my base color of choice for this project, so an order is due.

2. Bring my 54mm US and German WW2 armies up to three 10-figure units.

The first four Germans are on the painting table.

They aren't pretty but I wanted to include a picture on this post.

3. Touch up the paint, reseal, and re-base my WW2 armies.

Re-basing is mostly done for individual infantry, but team weapons and prone figures remain. I haven't even thought about touching up paint and resealing (I will probably make them glossy. It's an unpopular decision for WWII figures I know, but I like them that way).

With sheet magnets, the plastic figures adhere nicely to the 12"square of sheet steel that I lined my figure case with.

I need to order more bases, magnets, and Vallejo German Camo Green.

4. WWI Italian Front Gaming

I've played or, more correctly, started to play Burning Mountains twice. It's definitely a learning process.

For miniatures gaming, I'm leaning towards Price of Glory, Through the Mud and Blood, or another platoon level set, or maybe even using One Hour Skirmish Wargames.

What? I know, but hear me out.

With few exceptions, at the higher levels of organization, much of the Italian front was trench warfare - and while hurling a force at a prepared defensive position might be telling in the loss of lead and plastic lives, the movement and variety is in the infantry patrols and small groups of strumtruppen and arditi causing havoc.  

A Soldier on the Southern Front has quite a few stories of small groups of infantry (not arditi) involved in small actions and if I recall The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 had some as well (it's been awhile since I read it).  Currently, I'm reading Hell in the Trenches: Austro-Hungarian Stromtroopers and Italian Arditi in the Great War which is really whetting my appetite for this level of game for WWI.  Expect a whole post very soon on the agonizing and life defining decision of which miniatures I'll decide to use.

For larger battles, I think I'll stick with hex and counters - and I'll eventually pick up Der Weltkrieg: The Italian Front 1915-1918 from DCG to cover more of the war than the 1916 Strafexpedition. Of course, as I write this, the idea of 6mm scale divisional games comes to mine. Moving on.


5. Social Gaming

Primarily by this I mean Bolt Action. I wrote the vendor to get an update on delivery of my minis. Apparently the delay has been caused by some paints that I ordered along with the Warlord Games 500pt French starter and they should be there in a week or so. So that's a plus. And I had my first Bolt Action learning game on Saturday with my 54s and more to come.

I will definitely be picking up the Italians as well for some early war Italian Invasion of France solo gaming.

Random Thoughts About Bolt Action That Will Surprise Few People

While tossing and turning on Sunday night, trying to fall asleep despite the ridiculous one-hour time change (spring ahead and all that), and being fairly certain I would never sleep again, my thoughts turned to gaming.

My old school setup - at least, this is how I picture old school tables.

Here then are some random thoughts on Bolt Action (I'm really late to this party, so I doubt any of this is all that revealing to most people):

Although by design, everything is based individually, in effect, because each squad stays together, moves together, shoots together at the same target (with few exceptions), and is targeted together, it is not much different, mentally speaking, than a game where 1 base = 1 squad. You could probably use bases and a roster system just as well (but if you're doing that, why not field a company and play Company Command, Crossfire, Morschauser, etc.?)

The randomization of unit activation works well for solo gaming. Horses for courses of course, but as I noted previously, it feels more fun to draw the order die from the hat than roll a die for initiative; still not as fun as turning cards over though.

The fact that the rules as written require just 5 figures to field a squad means you don't need a lot of figures painted to start playing. You also don't have to worry about adjustments or breaking the game because of the lower-than-normal figure counts (originally I typed "having a small unit" and then laughed until I could't see, so I changed it. But here I have obviously just re-added it.).

I bought the rules on PDF - this may have been a mistake as it's not a small book by any means. There's a multi-page rules summary  (calling it a QRS would imply a much shorter document) that I'll have to print out for next time, but even then, I'll still have to lookup a lot of the details for the rules during play and I much prefer flipping physical pages - so much faster to get to the section you need.

BA gets a bad rap for being gamey and not enough of a simulation, but I don't fault oranges for not being apples - I like both for what they are.

Undersized Squads: A Tale of Two Games

This week was stressful and hectic in a myriad of ways and I had virtually no time or energy for much of anything most days, but I did play around with the idea of fielding undersized squads for 1:1 platoon-sized WWII games - particularly so I could begin learning Bolt Action.

In 54mm, I find 5-7 figures gives the impression of a squad, has a 'playing with toy soldiers' appearance to my eye, takes up less space than a true full strength squad does, and works with my existing figure collection so I don't have to wait to play while I paint up the figures in the queue.

Two US squads (BAR team of 2 figures, and rifle team of 3, with NCO) and Platoon HQ. Wall prototypes in background.

Friday night, I gave it a try with an old and arguably familiar set of rules, Disposable Heroes / Coffin for Seven Brothers (1st ed.) using Scenario J from Platoon Forward, 'Patrol'.

US squads arrived on the table on turn 5. By that point the blinds for the German patrol had nearly crossed the entire table. 

BAR team peeks around corner. Rifle team in the background would enter the building. And be pinned there until eliminated eventually by ...

The German MG., once set up it didn't move - it just pelted the US team in the farmhouse repeatedly. 

Mechanically the undersized squads worked pretty well. Unfortunately, two-figure BAR fireteams go to man alone rather quickly. I think if I do this again, I'd use 7 figures (which my current painted collection supports, at least for two squads), split into 4 and 3 . It could have been the late hour (I started playing at midnight!), my table setup (randomly generated from Platoon Forward), my rusty-ness with the rules, or maybe the scenario, but I was more drained than enthused by the end of the game.

Frankly though, I think it was because I was in the mood for something more beer & pretzels and less serious.

Enter my first attempt at Bolt Action.

I acquired these rules for the sake of playing with others at a (relatively) nearby game store. That my 28mm French starter force has been delayed two months now with no sign of being shipped any time soon has put a damper on that, but I had time Saturday afternoon unexpectedly and I thought I'd give the rules a go.

The scenario is Meeting Engagement. Terrain by Platoon Forward. Putting the squads in line, combined with my peculiar wargame table aesthetic looks something like an 18th C battle at this point.

Squad 'Matchbox' runs from building to building. They would be intractable

Squad 'Airfix' makes life hell for the US squad in the woods opposite.

US squad 'Winter' sweeps behind a hill to try to take out the HMG, but the Germans move to stop them. In a contrived test of close combat, the US squad was destroyed.

The US mortar went to work to rout the Germans from the farm house, but it was not to be. Instead, the opposite happened: they were taken down by squad 'Matchbox' at the end of turn 6. A die roll decreed the game over, but the US had little left anyway.

This had a much more game-like, beer & pretzels feel to it and I rather enjoyed it. The rules are mostly well laid out and drawing order dice is fun (not as fun as turning over a card but more fun than rolling a die).

Admittedly, the inability to split your squad into fire teams felt odd. I'm not a snob about historical tactics, but I like the idea of being able to duplicate the things I've seen in manuals and Ospreys - like  have my LMG laying down suppressing fire while my rifle team advances to lob in some grenades and destroy the target. However, keeping the entire squad together prevents the problem of the BAR fireteam being decimated in a single exchange when using these undersized units.

As for the learning the rules, I spent a lot of time flipping virtual pages (I have the PDF), and I got quite a few things wrong I'm sure, not the least of which was how terrain works with LOS, and not having enough terrain, but it was definitely closer to what I want when I'm not feeling like a 'serious' game. And, rather conveniently, Bolt Action builds squads from just 4 infantry and an NCO so I don't feel the need to rush painting the necessary additional figures to fill out my squads - 6 figures worked fine.

That said, I'm not really sure how I feel about games of this scale (platoon-ish + support).

Even though I have played platoon-sized games and enjoyed them, I very much prefer games like Company Command and Morschauser  w/figures on stands and fielding a company or fielding a squad in a cinematic fashion, a la One Hour Skirmish Wargames. This middle ground often doesn't feel quite right to me but I'll be damned if I can figure out why.

On the other hand, I like a challenge and I think I might be able to come up with something that takes what I like from Bolt Action and DHC7B and adds greatly simplified artillery and armor rules - maybe using a heavily modified G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. as a starting point (in G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., you activate by squad, but figures can do different things).

Meanwhile, I'll probably stick with Bolt Action so I can learn the rules in case my French force ever arrives.

Weekend Miscellany

Friday evening, I setup Burning Mountains again.

It's a fairly low counter-count game, although there are a few piles of reinforcements off-camera

Starting the game after midnight probably shows either my great optimism or a lack of forethought. In truth, it was probably some of Column A and some of Column B, as they say.

Although I did much better grasping the combat calculations and modifiers this time around, the game still takes considerable time to play compared to my typical fast-play miniature games, and I completed just three turns. Never the less, even though  I forgot an attacker can advance to take the space of a retreating defender, and I did far better job of maintaining supply lines for both sides, it was quite obvious that the Italians were in a bit of a pickle from the get-go.

I opted to have the Italians retreat from the attack to regroup, and to meet up with reinforcements, in an effort to hold the Austrians off at a second line of defense. Time ran out before I could determine the success of that, although I'd like to believe it would have worked. Barring conclusive evidence otherwise, I will rest easy with my decision.

End of turn 3, before I called it for the night.

Saturday afternoon saw not a game, but this fun set up of an amphibious assault with my 7-year old son and his vast supply of "army men" figures (the water is the brown, the other color is the beach). I present it as a reminder of the kinds of things that ultimately got me into this hobby:

"American" forces approach the landing beach through shark and sub infested waters while under heavy fire. The tank turrets are submarines.

"American" air superiority buzzes the beach to clear a way for the attack.

Lead by an armored battalion, the assault presses home!

The "German"defenders, armed with a mish-mash of outdated and highly advanced weaponry, hold their ground in the face of overwhelming odds.

Saturday night I watched They Were Expendable and 30-seconds Over Tokyo. The former I have watched many times and have no great love for, but my undying crush on Donna Reed compels me to watch it. The latter was a first for me and I rather enjoyed all the stock bomber footage. I am also pretty sure I have heard that Van Johnson spent more time on screen in a uniform than any other actor and I believe it. He pops up in every other old war movie it seems.

Finally, I have been experimenting on creating some low cost "stone" walls for my table. In the past, I I tried foam-core, ink, and thinned paint. While that worked well enough, I want something different now. If the latest tests come out OK, I'll post details. Otherwise, it's best we never talk of this again!