One Hour Wargames Scenario Idea: Pozzuolo del Friuli

I am house/cat/plant sitting this week and I am away from my wargaming paraphernalia - so, I began looking at some of the non-painting/non-playing options I could pursue. 

Of late, I've been inspired by people taking historical battles and making scenarios from them. The problem, for me, is that I only rarely if ever have the necessary kit or space for those kinds of games. However, One Hour Wargames scenarios often approximate a historical situation (beyond the ones that inspired their creation), and those take up very little space and are forces I can muster.

So, taking my interest in the Battle of Pozzuolo del Friuli (October 1917, part of what is commonly called 'Caporetto', and which features Lancieri), I applied the OHW approach. 

None of this has been play tested yet and I probably won't until I get home. 

Rules will be some version of my modified One Hour Wargames Machine Age rules (here and here and here).

The Map:

Click to enlarge

The result is a sparse looking map admittedly - just like those in OHW. 

In this case, the land around Pozzuolo del Friuli is pretty flat and is mostly farmland, at least in modern photos. Scattered trees won't look out of place (but provide no cover bonus), but there are no forests or woods playing role in the battle according to my one and only source (see link below). 

Situation:

Battle of Pozzuolo - Wikipedia

Army Sizes:

Austria-Hungary 60th Infantry Division:  8 units

• Two Heavy Infantry
• Four Infantry
• Two Assault Infantry

Options: 

• May swap up to one Assault Infantry for Forward Observation Officer
• May swap up to two Assault Infantry for Infantry
• May swap up to two Heavy Infantry for infantry

Italian Force: 6 Units

• One Heavy Infantry of the Bergamo Brigade
• One Infantry of the Bergamo Brigade
• Four Lancieri of the Lancieri di Novara Regiment

Options

• May swap up to one Lancieri for one Infantry
• May swap up to one Heavy infantry for one Infantry

In the historical event, the Austro-Hungarians had a division vs an under-strength infantry battalion and an under-strength cavalry regiment. To reflect this, rather than doing a 6 vs 4 game which Neil Thomas does, I went with 8 vs 6. I get to use more of my toys this way.

A variant to consider is to allow eliminated Austro-Hungarian stands to enter via the road north of the village on subsequent turns to better reflect their numerical superiority.

While I came up with representative forces, I thought it might be fun to have some "legal" tradeoffs, for replay value. Note, my tradeoffs are limited by my collection, not by anything remotely historically influenced. I left out arditi as a swap for the Italians, as they were not present, but I suppose if you want to go down the "what if?", why not?

One reason I wanted to formalize my scenario idea is to lend some direction to my figure painting queue - having a defined scenario I know I need to focus on making two more cavalry stands, so 4 more figures.

Deployment:

My layout is inspired by the Flank Attack (1) scenario but adjusted to reflect the historical situation. The deployment zones I've specified allow for some options while keeping the general idea intact.

1. The Austro-Hungarian 60th infantry division approaches Pozzuolo del Friuli from the Northern table edge.
2. The two Bergamo infantry units are deployed in the village of Pozzuolo del Friuli.
3. The Lancieri di Novara deploy to the east of the village.

The downside for the Austro-Hungarians is that they may not all make it onto the table on turn one, depending on base depth (which might be a thing that becomes official later, now that I think about it).

 

Game Length and Turn Order:

The game lasts 15 turns. Austria-Hungary goes first each turn.

Victory Conditions:

        Austria-Hungary:

• For minor victory, must occupy the village by the end of turn 15.
• For victory, must occupy the village by the end of turn 15, uncontested (no Italian unit within range to attack)
• For major victory, eliminate all Italian units and occupy the village before 15.

Italy:

• The Italians win a major victory if they still hold the village with at least one unit at the end of turn 15.

I decided to give the Austro-Hungarian force the opportunity to achieve varying levels of victory, while the Italians have only one objective - hold out until turn 15. It might more in keeping with the historical event to have to move units off the map for the Italians, but they are a delaying force, and I felt that it can be presumed that when a unit is removed, it reflects that in addition to wounds, men retreating due to failed morale.

Plus, with so few units, I really hate moving them off the table.

Once I get a chance to play this a few times, there will likely be some changes, but I figured I'd share what I have so far just in case it's of use to anyone else.

Birds of a Feather

Originally, I had picked up a few (four) Dollar Tree pterosaurs to paint up as sort of a stand-in for "Parrot Men" of Venus. But that seemed like a lot of work to paint in the way I was imagining. And so they sat in the dinosaur bin (yes yes, i know they are reptiles, not dinosaurs).

Recently, I had the obvious idea to use them for Dactyl Riders for Age of Fantasy. The figures are rather plain looking but they have a lot of texture (Fur? I don't know. It's a Dollar Tree toy, I make no claims of paleontological accuracy), so I slathered them in Agrax Earthshade and then touched up beaks and claws. 

They looked good enough, if a bit drab, so one I did with Carroburg Crimson to give it a reddish look. 

And then decided that one looked vaguely male cardinal like, hence the black around its eyes and its orange beak.

Armies in Plastic legionnaire for scale.

Here is one in its naked state:

 

 

Now, I did try to use Wargames Atlantic lizards as riders but their legs just wouldn't fit easily and since Age of Fantasy is not WYSIWYG, I'll just pretend they have riders.

Still, since I had the Wargames Atlantic lizard box out, I figured I'd make two more red-tailed skinks:

Pilots posing with their planes.

Why two?

Because I paint in threes, and since I had done one as a demo (a long time ago), I needed two more to count as the first three! 

My plan, now,  is to eventually paint ten to use as a unit of Saurian Warriors when fielding an all 28mm force for playing Age of Fantasy with others (who typically don't game in 54mm).

Run Through the Jungle

An Allied Venusian Expeditionary Force  (AVEF) patrol is returning to their base at Fort La Fin du Monde.

Unbeknownst to them, the lizard folk have been watching their movements and have laid a trap.

With the tantalizing flank of the patrol exposed to them, the lizard warriors erupt from the jungle!

Sacre bleu!

As the mass of lizards crashes into the patrol's left, a second threat emerges, heralded by a rain of arrows. 

The situation goes from bad to worse

Carnage ensues!

For those who dislike knocked over soldiers, eventually I removed them as they were getting in the way of subsequent combats.

The AVEF at first gave better than they got, but soon find themselves outnumbered by waves of the fierce jungle fighters.

And then, as suddenly as it began, the clash is ended - not a European left alive.

Singing their disconcerting chorus of hisses and rumbling growls, they fade back into the tangled jungle.

Soon, scavenging dinosaurs will descend on the scene to claim their share and it is best not to stick around too long in celebration.

*****

Rules used were based more or less on In Good Company

More Lancieri! (finally)

Well, it took me way too long, but I finally got around to knocking out two more WWI lancieri :

As with the previous two, the heads are provided by Dulcop grenade lobbing arditi. The bodies and horses provided by Armies in Plastic - I believe a set of Egyptian lancers in this case, maybe? 

With these two, I can now field two squadrons for my reduced-base-size One Hour Wargames army:

And this is plenty for the standard OHW force builder (a max of two cavalry).

I am aiming to do some OHW Battle of Pozzuolo del Friuli scenarios (the cavalry played a role in the rearguard as the Italian 3rd Army retreated from the rapidly advancing Germans and Austro-Hungarian forces in 1917) and 1918, Vittorio Veneto (the cavalry pursued the retreating Austrians in the last battle of the Southern Front). 

However, not to be unduly limited by the ruleset, I want to allow for the possibility of fielding a full regiment of 5 squadrons and an MG section.  As it happens, I have the figures on hand, I just need to keep at them. This has the benefit of giving me something to paint without spending anything further.

Those will have to wait for my Blessed Sisters to at least field a "legal" 300pt Grimdark Future: Firefight force (5 models - canoness, sgt, banner, storm rifle, and HMG).

I hope to have all of the above figures (11 models total) finished well before the end of the year.

But that requires deciding on a paint scheme!