1:1 WWII Vehicles and Kit

This past weekend was the annual WWII Heritage Days celebration in Peachtree City, GA, not far from Atlanta. I've taken my son three years running - each year is better than the last. What I found most interesting this year was the increase in female participants doing historical impressions - homefront and service. I didn't take many pictures of people - I'm there for the hardware - so you'll have to take my word for it.

The event includes plenty of WWII vehicles and weapons on display (or driving/flying around as the case may be), historical impressions, ceremonies for WWII vets, seminars, reenactments, etc.  and runs over two days, plus a Friday night dance.

If you're in the area, I highly recommend checking it out - and if you have the money, you can even ride as a passenger in vintage aircraft (including, a rather out of place Vietnam-era helicopter).

More info about the event can be found here: https://wwiidays.org/

OGRE!

I'm traveling this week for a work conference, but wisely (it happens sometimes, don't roll your eyes at me!) I packed a game with me that I have had for some time but never played:

pictured: a square black chit with a white silhouette labeled MARK III OGRE on an off-white map with a hex-grid and a portion of the OGRE logo.

I'm not going to really review the game - after all, this is the Ziplock pocket edition of Ogre that came out a few years ago from Steve Jackson games as part of a Kickstarter, and later for retail sale (I acquired my copy at a DragonCon several years back). But I do want to mention that the components are rather nice - and while the map may not match the Burning Mountains map for paper quality, the counters are thick and easy to handle. Helpfully, the rules are straightforward, mostly, and are presented in a slim staple-bound volume.

Here's the setup I came up with for the first scenario - Basic (Mark III) Scenario. The  defender set up a defensive line with a mix of Ground Effects Vehicles (GEVs) and heavy tanks. The idea being that the GEVs, with their two moves per turn, could race up, fire and fall back, while the heavy's could pummel the Ogre with their attack strength of 4.

The Ogre set about destroying the opposition from the get go - launching a missile to instantly blow up a GEV as a sort of warning about what was to come if the defenders insisted on standing in its way. Even when it appeared to be at an extreme disadvantage, it proved surprisingly difficult to damage. In retrospect, the defenders should have concentrated on taking out the treads, not the weapons systems.

The defenders think they have this all figured out.

Time and again a wall of defenders set up perfectly, only to be destroyed, disabled, or overrun.


The Ogre took several turns to systematically eliminate all enemy armor and then proceeded to steam away from the remaining infantry, past the lonely howitzer, towards the command post.

A showdown between the howitzer and the Ogre. The howitzer's immobility would be its downfall.

The howitzer managed a little damage before being rammed out of existence. The CP fell shortly after.

The Ogre stands upon the broken ruins of the command post.

I called the game at this point. The Ogre still had a secondary battery remaining and all but one anti-personnel weapon. So, while they might not have been able to overrun all of the infantry, the odds seem high that it would have,

Victory to the Ogre.

Verdict:  A fast, fun game that I am looking to playing again.

One Hour Skirmish Wargame: The Patrol

Saturday night, after the plastic eggs were hidden for the Sunday morning hunt, I cut up a coconut fiber doormat for use as fields in my games. Combined with an itch to field my British paratroopers was all of the motivation I needed to set up a game.

The rules were One Hour Skirmish Wargames, the scenario was "Scenario J" (the patrol) from Platoon Forward.

Paratroopers enter the table in heavy woods.

The lighting is much better in this shot.

I stole the idea for using farm animals as blind markers from someone online - I can't remember who, but they are a genius. Much less obtrusive and kind of comical even. In this case, the cow was not the real force.

The firefight does not go well for the paratroopers who had split up to enter the fields. I was playing that the fields were fully grown and limited visibility (this is not part of the OHSW rules). I'm not sure I liked it. One high point for the Brits - the Deetail PIAT trooper made his debut by taking out two Germans with a single HE round.

Germans fall back to a defensive position at the farm. The paras, their numbers slightly reduced, opted to try to further engage the Germans - to their detriment.

Black and white because the new light bulb in the kitchen really washed out the ground cloth in this one.

The Brits were beaten soundly. In large part, the Germans benefited from having three leader figures on the table (generated by the tables in Platoon Forward) - a squad NCO, jr. NCO, and the Platoon Leader. Lot's of extra cards for attacks.

Maybe it was the scenario, but something just didn't work for me for this one. It was fun, to a point, but I ended up feeling like there were too many grey areas and question marks. I suspect, ultimately, the OHSW rules work best when there is a clear objective or turn limit. A patrol with a sort of vague objective (scout this terrain but give the enemy a bloodier nose than they give you) isn't really ideal. 

Also, as this is the second time I've played scenario J this year, I've decided that the way the blinds appear doesn't work for me. I think maybe Nuts! (at least the older versions, I can't speak for the newest) provides a better system for randomly generating the location and composition of the enemy in a patrol scenario.I probably won't go back to using the Nuts! rules mind you (too much dice rolling), but their Possible-Enemy-Force (PEF) system is pretty great in my opinion.

Bonjour mes amies!*

After much waiting due to supplier back log (my order was placed in January), the store I ordered my 28mm early war French WWII force from was able to ship them out.

Here they are in their packaged glory:

This amounts to a 500 point force in Bolt Action but of course the figures are usable with other rules (and will most definitely be used with other rules).

I chose the French (and soon the Italians) as my forces for this endeavor for a few reasons:

The primary motivation was a general dread of painting another American paratrooper or a German infantry figure in yet another scale. I wanted something that I didn't already have in another scale (I am saving British 8th army and Afrika Corps. for 6mm).  The French and the Italians can fight each other as well, with the failed Italian invasion of France, without need to paint a single German.

 Another was that I assumed (and rightly from what I can gather from the pictures on the Facebook groups) that almost everyone in the local area has troops for the big four while the rest are underrepresented, if at all. I look forward to eventually fielding one of those wonderful early war French tanks or armored cars (or both!). That both the French and Italians perform pretty poorly in Bolt Action is of little concern to me.

That I don't know a ton about the French or Italian armies in WWII just means I have an excuse to expand my reading and research.

And finally, and this is a huge bonus - the figures are metal and require minimal assembly. Compare that to the plastic sprues of arms, heads, weapons, gear, etc. that have to b clipped free and then glued together. My anxiety rises just thinking about that!


* That phrase almost uses up the entirety of what I remember from my high school French classes.

Not-Quite-a-PIAT

A little while ago, I picked up two Deetail British paratroopers firing an anti-tank weapon of some sort. While the gun is not an accurate representation of a PIAT (from what I can find on the Internet), it's close enough to suit my needs. However, the paint job on the figures left something to be desired - for one their berets were not red, which is kind of a biggie.

I did a very quick paint conversion on one of them the other night and while not perfect, I'm pretty happy with the result - it fits in well with my Conte and Britain figures.

It still needs a second coat of paint on the base and then a sealing with PVA.

For comparison:

This gives my British paratroopers some anti-vehicle capability for not much cost or effort (my favorite way of doing things).

More boardgaming (no I have not forsaken my miniatures)

Last week, time to game was in short supply and by Friday night, I couldn't take it anymore. However, I didn't have any suitable scenario in mind for miniatures nor did I want to paint, so I broke out one of the only other hex-and-counter games I own, Worthington Games' Hold the Line.

There was a time when I thought for sure I'd paint up forces for the American War of Independence in 54mm. For awhile, almost every other title I listened to on Audible related to that war (plus I lived in Philadelphia for 13 years and it's hard to avoid the history there even if you want to. I used to ride my motorcycle through Valley Forge Park and for about two years, I lived just outside Germantown).  I purchased figures, primed and even painted some. Then I got Hold the Line and it scratched the itch, so that project stalled (stopped even). However, it's been at least two or three four years since I last played it (how did that happen?!?).

It's a fairly straight forward system, and feels very much like a miniatures rule set to my mind. Stacking is minimal - artillery and leaders can share a hex with another unit, but that's it - and there are no additional markers for statuses either. It's solitaire friendly, in that you have a random number of command points to spend each turn and so you can't just move everyone whenever you want. And of course, combat is dependent on a die roll. There are a number of optional rules as well, to up the complexity if desired - and I think they are quite useful additions, like making leaders have more of a role, improving artillery range when fired from a hilltop, that kind of thing.

I opted to start with the first scenario, which I've played at least once in the past, Long Island Heights, Sept. 16, 1776. The rebels have a specific setup, but the British do not, save for being limited to certain hexes. I probably set up the British poorly. To win the Americans must evacuate 7 units after turn 11 but before turn 22 or eliminate 6 British units or deny the British their victory conditions. For the British, they could win only by eliminating 7 American units by turn 22.

Maybe 6mm minis would work on this hex board?

You can see my British plan taking shape - to try and bash through the lower left and to swing the fast dragoons and light troops around behind the enemy on the right.

I decided that the American plan was simply to get the militia out of harm's way as fast as possible - they can only take two hits after all. And then, assuming the defense held, start evacuating as soon as possible.

I love the counters - they are thick and they make satisfying clink when you drop them in the box.

British light infantry and dragoons run down retreating militia.

These three units of Continental regulars threw a spanner into the British plans and refused to go down. They out fought the British handily - giving their fellows ample time to retreat to safety.

It came down to the wire but the Americans evacuated 7 units and won the game as a result - which is the historical result if not for the same reasons.

It will probably be obvious from the above picture that 1) I did not make good use of the commanders on either side and 2) the British get bogged down in fighting on their left and consequently a lot of their troops never saw action. The first was all my doing as I was re-familiarizing myself with the rules. The second was largely the result of poor dice rolling -both for command points and in combat. Especially in combat.


I am certain I could have done a better job for the British and I think a replay is in order - the whole game only takes about an hour - before I move on to the Harlem Heights scenario. The Americans will follow the same plan, but I'll have to rethink the British approach.

A New Book for the Wargame Shelf

There are only a handful of published wargaming books that deal specifically with solo wargaming and the other day, I finally picked up the second one published (at least that I know about), a copy of Stuart Asquith's Military Modeling: Guide to Solo Wargaming.

Admittedly the coverage of solo gaming methods feels kind of skimpy and light on details. It's certainly not revelatory for anyone with an Internet connection. When it came out, however, in 1988, Featherstone's classic on the subject had been out of print for some time and I'm sure this book was undoubtedly helpful in encouraging someone to try their hand at solo gaming.

Had I encountered this book in 1988 it would have blown my mind - I had an interest in wargaming after an encounter  some years earlier with what I believe now was likely a Featherstone book, but my mind could not conceive of how I would play such games by myself. I had managed to wrangle my friends - who were all much cooler than me - into playing Dungeons & Dragons  and it seemed best to quit while I was ahead.

In any case, it's not 1988, and I have access to the Web, a reprint of Featherstone, and a back issue collection of Lone Warrior going back about 10 years, so I bought this out of curiosity, not for solo mechanisms. The stand out for me is that there are quite a few scenarios for inspiration, all the way from"Small Scale Actions" to a sample programmed scenario borrowed from Grant's book - to my mind, these make the book worth the price of admission  (which in my case, was less than $9 USD).

For a more in-depth review, here's a review on the Lone Warrior site.

Once more into the Burning Mountains

Last Friday, I decided I would try and play the full 14-turn game of Burning Mountains. As mentioned in an earlier post, this hex-and-counter game covers the 1916 Austrian offensive into Italy, also known as the strafexpedition or sometimes, the Battle of the Asiago. Each counter represents a regiment or a brigade.

Once I finally managed to find where I misplaced the map, I got started - 8:30 PM. This was a good deal later than I had hoped to start but it took me almost two hours of turning my room upside down to find the map. It took less than half an hour to set up the counters in their start positions.

I finished around 3:30 AM and the result was a draw (the results are point based and primarily reflect what the Austrians can capture. Italy's goal is to deny points to the Austrians as much as possible).

I'm not sure how I feel about the draw. On the one hand, historically, each side claimed victory - which sounds kind of like a draw to me. Despite the fact that the Austrians held more of the map than at the start, it felt like I spent 7 hours to end up essentially back where I started. Although, as I think about it, I guess that's a good summation of a lot of the fighting on the Italian Front : a whole bunch of effort, but nothing really changed as a result except a bunch of people died.

Regardless of my feelings on the draw, the overall game did seem "historical" and it felt "right".

The Austrian advance slowed as the campaign wore on (I believe historically the reason was that the supply lines were stretched, but that was not an issue here as they maintained connection to their baseline via roads. Assuming I understood the supply rules. Here the issue was units being needed to hold the towns and geographical features captured.). Meanwhile the Italians lacked the ability to stop the Austrians because they were largely unprepared for the attack (represented by some first turn advantages for the Austrians, and the Austrians going first each turn), lacked sufficient artillery (this was a killer), and forces arrived piecemeal.

As a solo game, it works well enough. At least there is no simultaneous or hidden movement/starting dispositions. However, other than combat there is no randomization, never mind enemy AI. Helpfully, it took me so long to play each turn, I often forgot what counters were in a given stack, making attacks against an enemy stack something of a gamble.

Speaking of stacks, in some cases they toppled over in the most annoying fashion - but I suppose that is to be expected from an eight counter high stack.

I still have some rules questions - but I honestly am not motivated enough to seek out the answers to them yet. Much of my time was spent head down in the rules and not eyes up on the table, so the immersion factor was low. If there was an emergent narrative, I missed it while doing combat calculations. I suspect my general lack of familiarity with hex-and-counter gaming general contributed to this. So, perhaps I should give the game another chance.

If I could find a way to store this game part-way through, so I could return to it over a few nights, I would like to play it again to try a more aggressive Austrian assault and to see if the rules come more easily.

However, barring a way to store the game away from cats (one in particular), it was an interesting and engrossing experience but not one I can repeat any time soon.

A Quirky Little War

Of course, it would be an 80 degree day that my son would (finally) decide to take a handful of his army men outside to play. Despite the heat, I wanted to join in the fun and fortunately, I was invited to as soon as I finished work for the day.

What started out as playing with toys evolved by his own suggestion into a full-fledged game - albeit with some shifting rules of the kind common with 7 year-olds, but also an interesting initiative mechanism I would have never thought of. The young general commanded Army Tan, while your most humble and unbiased correspondent commanded Army Green. The rules appear below the pictures.

The dastardly Tan tank well hidden. 

The main body of the glorious Green Army advances against the despicable enemy.

A sneaky and underhanded Tan mortar - clearly an individual of dubious character.

The feline kaiju known as "Archimedes" approaches the Tan vanguard.
All shudder in fear of his fuzzy foot.

The devious Tan general contemplates his next move.

The Rules as They Were Played

The armies: Each player gets 5 figures and a tank.

The setup: All figures and tanks are to be well camouflaged at the start

The turn:

The Older Player asks the Younger Player to spell a word (in our case from this week's spelling list for school)

If the Younger Player spells the word correctly, they may take an action. If the word is one which has caused the Younger Player difficulty previously, an extra action may be awarded as judged fair by the Older Player.

If the Younger Player misspells the word, the Older Player may take an action.

After the action has been resolved, play continues with the Older Player asking the Younger Player to spell another word. The same word may be reused as many times as desired (or necessary if you're preparing for a spelling test).

Actions:

• Move - Generally as much or as little as desired and does not seem unreasonable. After movement, camouflage may be reapplied at no additional cost.
• Fire! - A ranged attack made using sticks and twigs gathered from the detritus on the lawn is thrown from a reasonable distance proportional to the player's skill level to attempt to knock down opposing figures.
• Melee - Close combat - move figure into contact with enemy. The enemy figure is knocked over. Any tank touched in melee is automatically destroyed.
• An enemy tank cannot be attacked until all infantry are knocked over.
• Medic! - Any 1 knocked over figure may be returned to standing.
• Cloverfield -  aka the nuclear option. According to the International Standards Committee of 7-Year-Old Rulesmakers, this option may only be employed by the Younger Player and at their discretion once per game. The Younger Player rips up a bunch of clover from the lawn and drops it from a height above the enemy soldiers. Any figure (not a tank) touched by the clover is knocked over.

Winning the Game: Destroy the enemy's tank. The enemy's tank cannot be attacked until all enemy infantry are knocked over.

Notes:

• Knocked over figures may not move, fire, or melee.
• The prone pose figure is impossible to knock down in ranged combat and therefore can only be defeated in close combat. This should be given to the Older Player as they cannot make use of Cloverfield.

The Dawns Here Are Quiet

It's become something of a habit for me to post whatever war related movie I most recently watched and so, here I am again. Please pardon my failure to give Midway it's due - I watched it last week but had no time to write, or rather I spent it doing other things. Today's feature, or more properly Sunday night's feature, was the 2015 extended 4-part version of The Dawns Here are Quiet.

I am aware of the 1972 movie, which is also available on Amazon Prime at this time. I chose this one because I liked the idea of it being in four parts, and I could watch just one part, as it was late on Sunday night.

As a word of advice for anyone considering following in my footsteps, starting a gripping four-part series late on a Sunday night is going to lead to a rough Monday. Each episode ended on a cliff hanger, and thus it was impossible that I not watch all of them. It would be like starting Game of Thrones now and thinking, "I'll just watch the first episode."

I have given you the benefit of my experience, but, of course, whether you heed my warning is up to you.

For those who like gaming small encounters, this movie offers a treasure trove of inspiration - being that it revolves around a handful of Soviets. Unlike, say The Pacific or Band of Brothers, these few are not just part of a larger group that the camera is focusing on, this is the entire group. Thus the encounters are of the kind of ripe for something like One Hour Skirmish Wargames or something like WW2 Operation Whitebox, an RPG set in WWII.

Unfortunately, a side-effect of watching this movie as a wargamer was suddenly being overcome by the need to field an all female Soviet squad in 54mm. The options, without doing some conversion, are few and far between (and mostly 1/35). For now, I'll stick with re-watching the movie.

In Good Company : Some Thoughts

In response to requests for a copy of the rules on my previous post, and in light of my lack of scanner I went to the Lone Warrior site hopeful that perhaps the rules had been uploaded there. To my great surprise, I found that In Good Company is available for download as of March 2019.

I recommend checking out the entire site - especially the downloads of rules and sample articles, and if you aren't already a member, consider it. The price is reasonable and you get four PDF issues of the magazine per year.

In any case, I digress.

My purpose here is just to add some of my thoughts on the rules as I played them the other night, what I liked and what I thought was missing, etc. There are barely three pages of rules, and a  "quick reference sheet", so it should come as no surprise that I might have questions or encounter areas where I felt something could be added.

Modifications:

The first thing you'll notice if you follow the link above is that the rules use hexes for measurement. As I have been reading Lone Warrior on and off for ten or so years, I recalled that Mr. White mentioned on more than one occasion that his table had 1.5" hexes. Knowing that makes converting to inches easy enough.

That said, for my game, while I used the conversion for movement, my table space was a bit spare - I was too lazy to get the plywood out. So, I opted to shorten the weapon ranges to about half of what they are listed as in the rules.

The second is that the game mentions Zulus specifically and I chose to treat that as "native" units - Martians in my case.

Now on to the rules themselves:

The hospital is clearly the most obvious point of interest in the rules. I chose to remove the figures from the table, but you could leave them in place, on their side for example. Removing the figures though did lead to the question, if the entire unit is in the hospital to where do they return?

I chose to have them go to where they last were. With only three units per side, it was easy enough to remember.  But, I think a good case could be made that if the entire unit is in the hospital, then it is out of the game.

Melee worked well enough - there was a chance for back and forth, and I liked that the lancers got +2 on their first attack (At least that's how I interpreted the rules). But I didn't like that cavalry stopped dead even if they defeated the first figure encountered.

For some reason, this doesn't bother me with multi-figure bases (as when I play Neil Thomas's OHW Medieval rules) but it bothered me with individual figures. I imagine I'll have the same problem playing G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.  In the future I might house rule that cavalry can continue on into the second rank if they defeat the first figure they encounter.

The machine gun jamming on two ones was a nice touch and happened in my game on the first attempt to fire the gun. I assumed the roll to un-jam replaces the roll to shoot (and  no movement allowed) but it never came up as the crew was overrun shortly after.

Now, with three-ish pages of rules, obviously not every eventuality is covered.  Morale is missing and there are no way to differentiate troop quality explicitly defined. However, as I'll mention in a bit, there is a way to account for this rather easily.

Perhaps my favorite part of these rules and something I will try with G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. is that it uses multiple cards per unit. For a small game, this means the deck still has some size and shuffling feels like you're actually doing something. In comparison, G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. decks for a game this size are too small to really feel like you'll be able to mix up the cards enough to not know which is which.

It should be obvious (but wasn't to me until I thought about it), but you can simply adjust the cards up or down to reflect leadership / morale / troop experience. Say, 1 card for green infantry, 3 cards for veterans and so on. It requires no changes to the rules otherwise and allows for better units to possibly take more actions per turn, although not guaranteed, of course, because of the Stop card.

In Good Company: Battle of Firefly Church

Last night, I had the fortune of time to set up a game to try out In Good Company, a set of simple colonial rules from Lone Warrior #168. The rules have intrigued me for some time, not the least reason is that they feature a "hospital"- an idea borrowed from Pith Helmet - wherein casualties disappear upon being "hit" and either return to their unit, die, or stay in the hospital.

For the scenario, I borrowed a bit from the classics.

The Gentle Reader no doubt recalls that Firefly Church is located on a hill to the north and east of Hook's farm. While many battles throughout history have raged across this area, in this particular case, the forces of Army Khaki and Army Green, concentrated solely around the historic church.

Army Khaki has orders to capture and hold the church, while Army Green is to drive Khaki from the field.

The armies approach the fabled church.

The belligerents:

• Army Khaki - 1 unit each of cavalry, infantry, and a gun+team
• Army Green - 1 unit each of cavalry, infantry, and native infantry (Martians in this case, who suspiciously look like Saracens)

I will let the pictures tell the story and save my impression of the rules for another time:

The Green advance!

The machine gun unloads lead death, then jams in the face of the enemy!

The Khaki cavalry charge!

Chaos in front of the vaunted church!

Green cavalry set their lances. The stalwart Khaki troops hold their ground like so many statues.

With the thunder of hooves the Green cavalry crashes into the Khaki wall!

Khaki's cavalry turn to the din of battle at the church.

And charge into the fray!

The victors!