More games!

This weekend featured quite a lot of gaming again, but almost entirely D&D, so there are no pictures.

For your viewing pleasure, here are photos for one of last weekend's many games:

How it started ...

How it was going ...

How it ended.

I thought the greater firepower for the Russians would offset the numerical disadvantage. 

I was wrong.

Rules used were G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.

This was the last game for the Cossacks. They are heading to Canada. The Imperial Russians are heading to a new home near me.

 ***

The D&D campaign we started on our vacation, continues. Although school started back up on the 1st, it's barely put a dent in our gaming.

Indeed, I haven't played this much D&D since I was a kid.

My son asks to play almost every day - so much so, that we've churned through almost everything I prepped in advance. And, having little to no time between sessions, I had to call last night's session short.I felt like the quality of my DMing was dropping rapidly. 

I've been using a couple of sample dungeons (Holmes and the one in the Swords & Wizardry quick start, both of which I've run many times before), and some of the many freely available one-page dungeons for this megadungeon - reskinned to connect them thematically. However, we have gone past what I reskinned, and I was having to do that on the fly.  While I can improvise easily with an unkeyed map, I can't help but feel compelled to refer to the key when one exists. That led to disjointed play with me flipping back and forth between pages.

I'll spend some time tonight finding or creating some unkeyed maps, make a quick list of what occupies the level and generate contents on the fly so we can play unhindered again. I don't need detailed descriptions of room contents to run a game, I just need to know in advance the relationships between the entities on that level and their relationships with entities on other levels.

I'm a big fan of dungeon economies (which gives PC's an access point to gold without having to fight, if they can find a way to become a part of it) and preparing relationships between factions that the party can get involved with. The latter produces emergent story, and that's my preference - rather than a particular plot (the only hook for this campaign is the PCs are seeking fame and fortune), I like the players to decide what matters to them, and for the game world to react to their actions.

We are using the Moldvay/Cook Basic/Expert rules (I was in 6th grade when I got them. He's in 7th now.), supplemented with some OSR-created products, including the Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion and some new classes.

So far, it's working like a charm.

 **** 

We played Blitz Bowl together this weekend and he had a great time. That he trounced me by 11 points might have something to do with it. I'm not bitter - he made a great use of one of the bonus play cards to score the winning touchdown - but I demand a rematch! 

It also made me want to get paints for the Nurgle team but there's a bunch of stuff in the paint queue currently.

In related news, my son has expressed interest in possibly playing 40K (he's met some kids at school who play). My wallet weeped a little, but I do like a lot of the figures.

We primed some of fantasy figures from my Pile of Plastic this weekend and one of his sci-fi looking "army men" and we'll do some painting sessions, so he can find out if it's something he likes enough that he'd want to paint up an entire force (Kill Team only requires 10 figures per side, so that sounds like the best entry point to me).

His birthday is coming soon, and I would be happy to buy him a 40K starter set(he likes the set with 5 marines and a bunch of Tyranids), or a box of figures and paints, if that's what he wants.

Bridgehead of Fantasy

The other night, I decided to play another round of Age of Fantasy and pit the medieval humans (Chivalrous Kingdoms) against the Tanitians (Dark Elves). For a scenario, I chose scenario #5: Bridgehead, from One Hour Wargames. 

The forces had around 800-850 points I believe.

Using OHW for the scenario setup required some adjustment - instead of using the turn arrivals, because AoF only has 4 turns in a game, I used each sides activations for unit arrival. This worked pretty well.

Victory for the scenario is that there is to be no enemy unit north of the bridge, but for AoF, which uses the conceit of objective markers, I put 4 markers down in the vicinity of "north of the bridge" that would effectively mimic the same thing.

The Chivalrous Kingdoms started the game with a 10-figure unit of foot knights, north of the bridge. 

This resulted in something of a log jam - which is not atypical even when using One Hour Wargames rules. Although the High Champion had "War Duty" which allowed him to command the foot knights to move towards the woods to their left (war duty allows him to command any unit within 12" to move 6" even if they have moved already), he himself was blocking everyone behind him.

The silver archers ended up in a crowd with less-than-ideal lines of sight.

End of Turn 1.

The Dark Elves/Tanitians concentrated their deployment on the flank behind the thick jungle. An unfortunate decision as this greatly hampered the advance of the infantry. The Abyssal Beast (elephant) arrived in a boulder field which hampered its movement as well.

Seeing the advance of the Black Guardians to the north flank of his foot knights, the High Champion charged into the fray. 

Unable to do anything resembling damage, the High Chamption braced for a terrible counterattack. Indeed, it was devastating - the High Champion, struck down. With the Dark Warriors still struggling through the tangled jungle, the foot knights turned to face their flank and crashed into the Black Guardians. Overwhelmed, the Guardians were wiped out to a warrior.

Retribution!

This left the Snake Lady to deal with the foot knights in the absence of "the lost battalion".

Her magic was strong and brought down many, but it was not enough. She too fell.

Meanwhile the mounted Realm Knights crossed the bridge to attempt to intercept the Abyssal Beast. 

This seemed like a good idea. Until it wasn't.

Run away!

Although the Dark Warriors finally clashed with the foot knights, neither was eliminated. Meanwhile the silver archers rained arrows from a nice safe distance, however ineffectively, at the Abyssal Beast, who lumbered about undisturbed. 

Both sides had lost their leaders and both sides were fairly well whittled down. Realizing there was nothing to gain and everything to lose, the sides broke off (end of the 4th turn)

Neither side met the OHW condition for victory. The Dark Elves controlled two objectives, one was contested at game end, and one was completely ignored by both sides because the random arrivals (per the scenario) had led to a lopsided deployment for the Dark Elves. 

So, at least in AoF terms, the Dark Elves/Tanitians won.

I have decided a final battle is needed to determine the overall winner, and so the lizards/Saurians will face the Tanitians/ Dark Elves in the near future.

One-Off Fantasy Battle

Yesterday, I finished painting up another 3-figure batch of the SCS Direct lizard warriors (the marine iguana themed ones). I've also been re-basing my Deetail knights individually so they can be used either on Venus or in small fantasy skirmishes. 

It seemed like a good as time as any to put a small battle on the table. The rules were the Ancient rules from Developing the Portable Wargame. The scenario was "Take the High Ground" from One Hour Wargames. The "table" is 7 grid spaces wide by 6 deep. Grid spaces are 5" square.

Deployment grid spaces were determined by die roll.

The foot knights were heavy infantry, the archers were treated as close order. The mounted knights were heavy cavalry. All foot lizards were light infantry, while the triceratops was treated as a war elephant. The spinosaurus was treated as heavy infantry with a +2 bonus in the first round of close combat, +1 thereafter.

Turn 3 or 4:  Flank attacks aplenty.

I was quite pleased both in how the game played and the look of the thing.  Unfortunately my phone died not even half-way through!

However, I did manage the classic "rule book with the table" photo before that happened:

I will undoubtedly play more games like this as my Venusians slowly build up. There'll be no painting this week though, as I'm off to Philly tonight. I plan to show my son my favorite city and gorge myself on soft pretzels and Goldberg's Peanut Chews.

For the flights, and for late evening downtime, I have some research planned: Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pirates of Venus.

It's definitely of the "summer reading" variety of research, but should provide inspiration and fodder for planning while I'm away from my toys.

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Table Top Teaser #1 is one of my favorite scenarios. So I thought it'd be a good test of my Frankenstein's monster of a grid-based rule set for WW2 for 1 base = 1 company. Friday night, I broke out the card table and setup.

With a 6x6 grid, the table gets very crowded very fast despite the attacker's piecemeal arrival (the attacker has quite a few units for so few grid spaces). In my first game, several German units suffered losses very quickly due to an inability to fall back(I use the hit result table from The Portable Wargame) without colliding with another unit. But, because they have staying power, the situation didn't improve for the remaining units.

I chose to ignore the exhaustion point because had I not, the game would have been over by turn 5 or so.

Turn 6 or so - the last arrivals, er, arrive.

I reset the table and tried again using the two-hit variant for strength points originally proposed by Ross Mac and incorporated into Developing the Portable Wargame. This was a much more exciting game. The Germans still suffered some losses early but as they were eliminated whole cloth, it left breathing room for the remaining elements to maneuver. 

This isn't really an issue with the rules so much as recognizing that a large (for me) scenario in a small space, where stacking is not allowed, requires adjustments.

The Soviet defenders had lost two complete units by this point.

But on turn 10, they managed to blow the bridge . Admittedly, stranding their HMG company and a tank company on the other side of the river. Sacrifices for the integrity of the Motherland.

It occurred to me after the game, that in essence, my rules are really just a modified version of The Portable Wargame. 

I use a different firing mechanism (Similar to Memoir of Modern Battle (Cordery) and Hold the Line! units roll 3 dice to hit at 1 space, 2 at 2 spaces, and 1 at three or more spaces - the limit being dependent on the unit type), all hits count, hits are 4 or 6 in the open, 6 in cover, MGs hit on 2/4/6 or 4/6 against targets in cover (these are Morschauser's "to hit" numbers). Close combat is more violent than in The Portable Wargame, with infantry rolling 4 dice, and others rolling two or three, with the same hit numbers given. The number of dice doesn't change regardless of the hit points remaining. This makes close combat potentially decisive and possibly swingy even with mismatched units - closer to Morschauser (who, if it's not clear, I am a big fan of) than The Portable Wargame. There are some other rules changes that I like (units have to fire before moving, a unit can't initiate close combat unless they start adjacent to the enemy unit, and a few more).

All that said, as much as I *like* my modifications, I think I really ought to give The Portable Wargame a try again as written, but this time with the two-hit variant to see if that difference makes the rules-as-written close combat more acceptable to me.

Operation Citadel Campaign Points Scoring

Ran through another play test of my Cherkasskoye scenario last night. I wanted to try out some things, but more importantly, Steve8 reminded me of Featherstone's approach to conducting a point-to-point campaign as described in Solo Wargaming. One difference is that there, the battles happen regardless of the outcome of any given battle being counter to history.

Soviet 199th Guards Rifle Regiment including the regiment's 1 medium mortar battery,  with 67th Guards Rifle Division AT Batteries that arrive as reinforcement.

But, what really struck me is how Featherstone's scoring method is *much* simpler than my convoluted approach and I think I'll be using it. Points for win or draw, and points for every 20% losses inflicted.

Armored panzer-grenadiers attempt to dislodge Soviet defenders. The defenders had already taken a battalion of the panzer regiment out of the fight.

I need to settle on a few points - such as, if the Soviets are completely eliminated but GrossDeutschland can't reach the village before game end, is that a draw? Or if the Soviets hold onto a part of the village (which is the way the game ended last night), is that a Soviet victory because the Germans didn't achieve the objective or should i call that a draw because they occupied the other village grid space?

A 67th Guards Division AT battery making use of captured PAK 38s.

On the one hand, it really doesn't matter. On the other, the idea with campaign points is to provide an extra layer of challenge for the player (me, but also anyone else who tries to play my scenarios) to achieve victories without unduly risking troops.

Rumors of My Demise and a Developing Set of Rules

I am deeply humbled. I disappeared and did not consider that during the times of the pandemic that this might cause concern.

Just before the US plummeted into lock downs and rising COVID infections, I found myself being called to return to music (I mean my own music. I'm in a band but I don't do much writing for it). Music, like wargaming, can demand a ton of time, but unlike gaming, drains me of energy in all sorts of ways. The creative process, for me, is not an enjoyable stroll in the park but the tearing of some hideous thing from the purple-black tendrils of doubt and pretension, hurling the putrid sputtering mass into this reality, and wrestling it into something less horrible, through the power of blood and sweat and tears, presumably for sharing with the world. The latter opens up gaping dimensions of doubt unknown to those who have never walked that path.

But I digress. The point is, writing and recording sucks up free time and I am terrible about balancing my interests.

I returned to gaming in June however with a handful of G Company games, including revisiting D-Day with the US Army's 1st Infantry Division. Some thinking about what I wanted from my games led me back to company element games, and then some more reading led me to battalion element games with a goal of playing GrossDeutchsland's advance during Operation Citadel (more to come on that, including five scenarios with painfully simple maps made in Google Draw, suggested orders of battle, etc.).

It may be hubris speaking, but this reminds of me of the pictures in older war games books. Please note the card stock buildings are prototypes, and not finished. I wanted to make collapsible Russian style buildings. They work, I just need to make more and finish them.

As an apology for disappearing without so much as a word, allow me to present a draft of what I call Divison Squares (I was calling it Space Wars early on as a joke, because that implies outer space and perhaps even Star Wars, when it's not about that at all. Which tells you all you need to know about my sense of humor.) There is nothing new in there, just an amalgamation of mechanisms that work for me, written for me, but now cleaned up a bit in case anyone else finds use in them.

The Division Squares rules began as Battalion Squares where each unit is a company. I'll revisit those eventually. This picture is an early game using those - hence the mixed heavy weapons company for the Germans.

Although I have played them for at least two dozen games, there are still things missing and it's a living document (for instance air-to-ground rules are missing, as are mine fields. Both of which will be added eventually). These are intended for playing WWII on a grid with a regiment to a division+ per side in a smallish space.

A German divison (GrossDeutschland in the scenario, but could be a generic Panzer Division) advancing against a Soviet rifle regiment (199th but could be any) in trenches- one tank unit has already been destroyed (off camera bottom right). There are three scales of vehicles in this picture, for those following along at home.

They work for One Hour Wargames scenarios as well, at least in my limited tests (mostly I've been playing GD at Cherkasskoye - a table layout and scenario based on a historical battle.) However, expect most OHW scenarios with OHW sized forces to play in about 8-10 turns (not unlike OHW rules in my experience).

From a OHW scenario. I adjudicated the game, but little monkey (he's 8, so maybe not so little) controlled both sides.

 Please accept them in the spirit they are intended.

Morschauser Bridge Demolition

Two battalions of Panzer-Grenadiers (insert your favorite regiment number) with two panzer companies, raced to the village of Krasnya to prevent the Soviets from blowing the bridge there.

So goes the flimsiest setup for not one but two plays of Tabeltop Teaser #1 : The Bridge Demolition (courtesy of Steve the Wargamer's wonderful resource). These pictures are from the second play, which occurred Sunday afternoon. The Soviets can blow the bridge on turn 12 based - based on doubling the turns it takes for infantry to reach the village.

I accidentally left some rubble on the table while setting up and didn't realize it until turn 3 or 4.

View from the German recon unit.

The random arrival of Blue force was particularly unfortunate for the Germans: on turn 1 the only unit to arrive was an ATG (represented here with the Sd.K. which is "towing" the gun). They got no further. The Soviet tanks caught and destroyed them . Turn 1 and one unit down.

The recon unit raced for the road but came under fire from the other Soviet tank company. Turn 1 and two units down.

With no arrivals on turn 2, the Soviets held their position. By turn six the entire German force was finally present for the festivities.

The half-track is another ATG tow. I modified the infantry vs tank rules due to the 1" = 100 yard scale I was using. The Soviet tanks were forced to fall back.

On the Soviet left tanks clashed north of the woods.

An overview of the situation around turn 7 or  8?

Gratuitous close-up.

The Soviet tanks on the right fell back to the river to buy some time to reorganize.

On the German right/Soviet left, the 2nd battalion / ATG arrived and deployed.

A view from the German left.

And the German right.

The German ATGs setup within rifle range of the Soviet infantry in the hamlet, so that ended the way you would expect it to. Before the ATGs even fired once. On the bright side, the German infantry eliminated the Soviet rifles from the woods.

Things started to take a turn for the worse for the Soviets in the hamlet. Their commander kept them beyond the bridge too long.

And the Huns overran their position. 1st and 2nd battalions link up at the hamlet before heading south to the bridge.

On the Soviet right, tanks shoot out at 500 yards.The Soviets tanks are pushed up to the river - is this a last stand? [that 1 sure makes it seem like it]

Panzers win the tank battle on German right / Soviet left and the P/G companies surge forward.

Turn 11. The Germans clear out the buildings north of the river. Panzers return fire on the Soviet ATGs. But lo and behold the Soviet tanks (upper right in the picture) still hold on!

 Panzers reach the bridge, and the Soviet engineers suffer devastating fire on Turn 12!  There's no chance the bridge will be blown. A last minute German victory! Given their start, I was pretty surprised.

*****

Rules for both attempts at this scenario were variants on Morschauser, but today's game was pretty much just the version I played at Thanksgiving SoloCon, with modifications for range and movement where 1" = 100 yards, and a tweak for mixed heavy weapons companies.

Friday's game was more of a mashup and did feature a strength point recovery/resupply method that I prefer stylistically, but that doesn't really work with Morschauser's recommended strength points. I may write it up eventually because I think it works well

Battalions and Regiments! Oh my!

As I continue work on my Eastern Front WWII forces, I've been playing around with the idea of fielding WWII games with a company per stand and a battalion or more per side - both on and off grid .This would let me tackle some larger battles - in theory, in practice they'd be no bigger than a One Hour Wargame "army" one one end, and twice that on the other. Indeed, many people treat the stands in OHW as companies, not the suggested platoons, given the force composition.

Nominally, for the sake of building my forces, I'm treating a stand, gun, or vehicle as a platoon - this means I'l have enough variety to field just about anything for squad vs squad (unusual, given my figures are based two to a base) to a battalion or two where 2 infantry bases or 1 gun/vehicle equals a company. I'm using TO&Es from the GHQ WWII TO&E series available on wargamevault to guide this process by the way, and prevent me from buying everything that catches my eye (my empty wallet helps limit the acquisitions too!)

Anyway, here is some goofing around just setting them up on the table to get a look at the idea of two base companies (4" base frontage for infantry)- my Soviets are not following doctrine for deploying in depth by any means:

Dark grey PAK is 21st C. / Unimax / 32x / Ultimate Soldier

Above, two Panzergrenadier battalions with two companies of PZ IVs prepare to attack a Soviet rifle battalion with artillery support and a battalion of T-34s. And here is a close up of one of the battalions:

Mortar is 21st C. / Unimax / Ultimate Soldier and MG is CanDo Pocket Army. PAK is Italeri 1/32 model. Unpainted crew are CTS. PZ IV's are CTS as well. Soviet ZiS is Italeri 1/32.

In the above picture, the MG and mortar together represent a Panzergrenadier support company (2 MGs platoons, 1 mortar platoon), while the  PAK-40 represents the P/G heavy company (1 ATG platoon, 1 infantry gun, and 1 Engineer platoon, which I admit doesn't make sense given this representation - I am thinking of basing the guns on 4x4 squares, and putting the engineer base alongside)

I decided for giggles to quickly modify Morschauser Moderns and play a game. I settled on 1" = 100 yards (which meant a 400 yard frontage for infantry stands, and adjusting weapon and movement ranges) and played a small game on a 36" x 36" table (representing 2 miles x 2 miles roughly), using the roster option. The scenario was based on my faulty memory of a OHW scenario: a Panzergrenadier battalion had to capture a cross-roads and dislodge the Soviets from a hill, while the Soviets had to hold the hill and capture the cross-roads.


For fun, I decided to break out my transport vehicles, which I don't have nearly enough of, nor do I know anything about how they were used in actual combat situations. Looking at the photos, they're a bit, no make that WAY too spread out for battalion frontage I believe - but this was just a proof of concept so I'll forgive myself.

A mix of vehicles including 21st C., Marx (yes, it's a US vehicle. I was desperate!), Deetail, and CTS. The PAK next to the transport is a convenience to take up less space - this is how I'd do it in a square, but really it's trailing the vehicle

None the less, non-combat transports probably shouldn't move into small arms range of the enemy before disembarking their troops!

In any event, 1st and 2nd P/G companies race forward and attack the hill:

2 P/G companies with support attack the Soviet support companies - in this case the Britain's gun is playing the role of a Soviet ATG battery (of 2 ATG platoons). The kublewagen is for transport only - it's MG is not part of the fight. Ditto for the Sd.Kfz 251s MG, which snapped off anyway.

The Soviets sent three infantry companies on foot to take the crossroads from 3rd P/G company, who was supported by the battalion's heavy company:

I had a hard time remembering that the rifle company range was 6"(remember it includes all rifles, lmgs, and support paltoon weapons including any light mortar if present) and not the 9" spotting distance (these ranges come from a set of company-per-base rules which I'll talk about in its own post and work well with 1" = 100 yards).

At the hill, the Germans were driven back handily and the crossroads fell to the Soviet attackers in close combat (Morschauser close combat is deadly and gun bases have very little melee power).


*****

I realized when all was done that I had forgotten my morale recovery rule, used back during my Thanksgiving SoloCon. Perhaps the game would have gone longer than 30 minutes if I had remembered!

In any case, visually this game worked for me (ymmv) - I would go so far to say it felt more "toy soldiery",  which is always a  plus in my opinion. The feeling was no doubt aided by wonderfully simple rules, and by the presence of the transport vehicles, which look both wrong in a practical sense (they're like 600+ yards long) and right in a smiles sense. I found I had no problem thinking of 4-figure bases as companies (perhaps because that's how many other people game in other periods, if not WWII) and that confirmed for me I'm on the right track with this idea.

I think a grid might be even more effective, particularly when buildings are involved, but I haven't tried yet - I can definitely see using the Portable Wargame for this kind of thing if I go down that road. As for the rules I used this time, I have some thoughts for another post.