Some Updates from the Administrative Offices

My new Saracens arrived yesterday, but I was on my way out the door to go to rehearsal (I play rhythm guitar in a swing orchestra), and so had little time for more than a cursory examination and sadly, no pictures.

Some quick thoughts about the Supreme Saracen figures:

• they are BIG. I mean, I knew they were billed as 60mm so I expected some difference. I was thinking it'd be comparable to my Toy Soliders of San Diego Germans vs Airfix Germans, but it's much more noticeable. The new Saracens will have to be on their own sabots. 
• the silver/red/blue figures are kind of garish, but the gold/red/green figures look the part to my mind.
• The horseback archers stand just fine as foot archers, and so no conversion necessary - just some blu-tac to hold them to the sabots.
• A small (3 or so) figures are suitable as levies for Neil Thomas's OHW army lists.
• The war camels are pretty cool but, fresh from the package, only about half of them could stand on a flat surface without toppling. I have no need for cavalry in my OHW Saracen army, so I expect to put them to use in my VSF game.

Speaking of the VSF project:

• Armies in Plastic Highlanders have been primed with white gesso. After I primed them, the mold lines seemed omnipresent and, while I ordinarily try to avoid cleaning such things off of figures (I do a horrible job no matter which method I try), I couldn't let them go. I did my best to trim them away and then gave a second coat of gesso. Now if only I could figure out what color their coats are supposed to be!

• Of course, a day later, the Britain's Seaforth Highlanders over which I drool regularly, were available on ebay for an astoundingly reasonable price, including the shipping. I am fighting with all my will to not make the purchase.
• I have decided upon the AIP Northwestern Indians from the French & Indian War line to act as yellow martians.
• Technolog orcs - if I can acquire them priced reasonably - would make nice green martians.

WW2 and Hook's Farm

Although I started wargaming largely because of a chance read through of Wells's Little Wars, I have never tried to play out the Battle of Hook's Farm. So, given the strength of my WW2 collection, I decided to update the period and give it a try.

I made a post about this over on Little Wars Revisited. The short of it is that I will probably randomize forces by letting dice determine what "3 guns" means for WW2 forces.

My son's clone troopers man a very badly damaged PAK-40. The victim of a crushing blow from a giant's foot. These are the hazards of letting children play with your toys.

VSF Project Begins

The first troops of my Victorian Science Fiction project in 1/32 have arrived!

I split the difference and decided to purchase Britain's set 8806 (from Ebay at a steal of a price) and use AIP Highlanders (although, of course, some 5188 sets have appeared at reasonable prices now).

Yes, the flag thing on the lance is upside down. I was too excited by their arrival to rotate it. The guns are firing Britain's models and are for my WW2 games. Pretend they aren't in the picture.

I don't think I've ever been as excited by any figures as I am by the set of lancers. They feel like proper toy soldiers, if you will - heroes of another age, full of lead and derring-do .

Here we see the first unit of 10 Highlanders mustering for basic training. Uniforms will be doled out as time permits.

The glue is intentionally sloppily applied at this stage. I swear.

I'm am as undecided on the color of their coats as I am the name of these fictitious units and their fictitious country.

Possibilities, unsurprising if you have read any of my WW2 blogs entries, revolve around characters from As Time Goes By, Are You Being Served?, and Keeping Up Appearances. So we have things like the Queens Own Fighting Pargetters, the Hardcastle Highlanders, The Hyacinth Bucket Brigade (pronounced 'bouquet brigade'if you please), etc. running about my brain.

If the Brits or Scots had a suitably named wine, this would be a lot easier (see my Riesling and Sauvingnon-Blanc forces, for example).

Airfix Battles Scenario #3 and Morschauser

In addition to painting MDF coasters and basing my medieval armies, I re-based my WW2 Germans and Americans on 3" squares of card, painted the same Ceramcoat Green, and mounted 3 figures to a base (inspired by a re-reading of Morschauser). As with all things basing related, it remains to be seen how permanent this is (I used blu-tac, which probably says more about my level of commitment than I'd like it to).

Much to my surprise, the universe aligned and I had time to put toys on the table last night. Since I have an order of Saracens on the way to fill out some of the medieval ranks, the WW2 forces were chosen to break in their new bases. And as I had recently perused the free Airfix Battles Scenarios PDF and was intrigued by the 3rd scenario, with its abundance of armor on the table, it seemed like as good a decision as any.

You can download the PDF and read the scenario set up for yourself. What matters here is that I opted to play what is, from my limited understanding of Airfix Battles, a 1:1 skirmish, using Morschauser's Modern rules. I used 1 base per squad - which arguably looks a little skimpy, but not unlike a typical Neil Thomas OHW set up.

Initial deployment of Allied forces - randomized placement.

Morschauser might not be the obvious choice for such a game, but if using the roster system, its not much different than hit points in RPGs really. Or, at least, that's how I rationalized it. Treating them as abstract measures of combat effectiveness and not casualties helps.

There were some modifications however to make the scenario work.

First, I set the turn limit to 10. I have no idea about Airfix Battles rules, but the four rounds specified would hardly yield a game with Morschauser.

I went with my usual one-die per unit for attacks rather than one per strength point. Mortality is too high in my opinion when you have so few units on the table - this is the reason I have adopted this procedure whenever playing a One Hour Wargames scenario.

The part that required some serious thought was how to handle the fact that the Tiger I needed to be superior to the Shermans (they make a big deal about it in the scenario set up). Fortunately the simplicity of Morschauser's rules means modifications aren't difficult to bolt-on. I opted for three modifications to address this.

1) Instead of giving the Tiger a roster strength of 2, as standard tanks are given. I gave it 4, making it the equivalent of two Shermans.
2) The superior gun on the Tiger could hit on a 2, 4, or 6, the same way MGs do,
3) Any shot at the front armor of the Tiger would only score a hit on a 6.

In this way, the Tiger would be a force to be reckoned with but the Shermans would still have some chance of eliminating it.

In fact, if you look closely below, you'll see the topmost  Sherman managed to score a hit on the Tiger early

The Tiger responded in kind, and thanks to winning the initiative on the next turn, brewed up the Sherman in payback.

The PZ IV and Shermans were equally matched so it wasn't too surprising when the two leftmost Shermans coordinated to take out the PZ in a single turn.

One thing that flummoxed me was how to handle a tank overrunning infantry.  When a stand takes a single hit, it's an easy thing, but what about with the roster? I decided the overrun would have the same effect, but I'm not sure that's the right decision.

I really thought I could get the infantry close enough to use bazookas or AT grenades. SMH,

As the game began to wind down, a showdown took shape.

The German infantry AT weapons were useless against the Sherman to their left (I rolled 1s several times in a row) - leaving the Tiger to deal with both of the Allied tanks.

It took a few rounds but in the end, the Sherman's prevailed:

Anti-personnel MG fire took care of the remaining squad on the 2nd half of turn 10.  The Allied possessed the objective and had destroyed the Tiger for a decisive victory, despite the loss of 1 tank and 2 squads.

The Grass is Always Greener

As mentioned in the previous post, MDF coasters were given a coat of Ceramcoat Green and figures were to be attached with blue tac.

The last part is done and here are my current medieval forces, based for Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames.

The Europeans

The Saracens 

Figures are mostly Deetail. You will notice a general lack of archers on both sides, and levies (as NT classifies them) for the Saracens.

To rectify the Saracen situation,  I have placed an order with The Toy Soldier Co. for this package which includes 36 figures, many of whom are usable as levies, and a kneeling archer pose which will give them at least one base of archers, so the armies will be equal.I will also get a few bases of war camels out of the deal, which isn't necessary for OHW but could be useful with other scenarios.

Eventually, possibly later this month, I will make a play for some European archers to fill out the one base I have. Some day, I suppose, I will try to hit two bases of archers each, and thus  'complete' these armies.

Many of my unused medieval figures from this project will ultimately find their way into my imagined VSF game - at least if I go the G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. route, with its individually based figures - or ,perhaps, some skirmish gaming of a sort.

An Update for the Sake of Updating

In order to keep my posts going at least once a week - here's what I've been up to.

Nothing.

Ok, not entirely true. I finally got around to painting my 4" MDF coasters a lovely shade of Ceramcoat Green.

I take that back, it's not a shade, it's literally just Green.

This picture was gathered from Pinterest. Not a photo of the actual bottle of paint I am using.

None-the-less, it's very toy soldier appropriate, even if it contrasts strongly against the green used on the figure bases - which varies from a dark forest-y green to bright Deetail's green.

I have a few more I can paint before I semi-permanently mount my medieval figures to them with blue-tac.

Not sure what I want to do for my WW2 figures yet - I keep bouncing between the 4" bases, per Tim Gow's lovely Little Cold Wars, and the 3" bases that I used to use (settled upon by a mere doubling of what people typically do for 1/72 figures (not to mention it's what Morschauser did for his 54mm)).

WW2 Small-Unit Skirmish: Capture the Bridge

With all of this thinking about a possible Colonial game, I was itching to get something on the table in the mean time. So, Saturday night, after I put my son to bed, I set up the following.

Scenario: Two British "fire teams" of para-troopers are to capture a lightly held bridge  from the Germans. The Germans at the guard house will call back to the farm house in the even of attack, at which point, German troops from within the house will come to the defense of the bridge. The MG-42 team is stationed in the yard behind a rock wall at the start, with a  clear view across the river, and a line of sight to the bridge. After 10 turns of defense, Germans can blow the bridge by reaching the base of the bridge on the farmhouse side.

OOB:

Team BBC: Hardcastle (3 HP), Deacon (2 HP), Peacock (2 HP)
Team Backups: 2 British and 1 Polish paratrooper, all 1 HP.

Guard house rifle team: 1 HP each
MG-42 team: 1 HP each
German rifle team: 1d6 rifles (1 HP each) + 1 squad leader with SMG (2 HP)

Rules:

Improvised / home-brew


*****

The Allies got off to a slow start - held up by the two riflemen in the guard house. Once they were dispatched, Hardcastle stormed the bridge and the rest of Team BBC followed, while Team Backups fired from cover at the Germans across river in the woods.

For a minute, it looks like things might work out just fine for Team BBC.

The MG42 would prove to be devastating for Team BBC, despite the cover the bridge afforded them. Deacon engaging the German left in hand-to-hand at least temporarily silenced the gun.

Not going great, but still, victory is possible.

Team Backup charged across the bridge too late and the whole of the Allied force was mowed down eventually.

So much for that idea. The bodies of Team BBC and their reinforcements pile up at the bridge.

In retrospect, some grenades might have been useful.


Figures are Conte (Brits), King & Country (Brits, Polish), Airfix (Germans) and Matchbox (Germans). 

News of My Return to Gaming May Have Been Premature

OK, so my other project (I'm a musician) has taken over the lion's share of my free time, and until just recently, I was OK with that. But one can only stay away for so long before the pining for toy soldiers reaches a fevered pitch.

Unfortunately, it returns at a time when money is tight - I unexpectedly had to acquire a new vehicle  just the other day (which I rather like driving, so it's not all bad) - and yet I want to start a new project.

Or rather, revive an old project, but in 54mm: Victorian Science Fiction (VSF)

VSF with its lost worlds, alien invasions, and wild contraptions all in support of adventure and exploration, was my first real wargame's project. It began with French Foreign Legion and lost world lizard men and dinosaurs, and later became the basis for my longest running campaign, the Battle of Helvetica (follow the link and scroll down), between Sauvingnon-Blanc and Riesling, with their lizard men conscripts filling out the respective sides.

That project is a 15mm project and I do not wish to duplicate the set up in a larger scale. Instead I want to take a more British bent to the whole thing, being the Victorian-age after all.

One option is a "lost battalion" type game - where highlanders, hussars (or lancers maybe?) and a gun crew, wander through a lost world as they look for their way home and come face to face with Romans, Greeks, ancient Egyptians, monsters of all kinds, and yes, perhaps one of Riesling's armies

Another option is that the Brits find a "Star Gate" which leads to battles against the same enemies, but on distant planets. It seems almost certain then that they would face off in battle against the green Martians on the red plains of that planet
(AIP Boxers painted green might work for that). Trekking through the thick vegetation of a Venusian jungle, dodging dinosaur-like fauna would surely follow.

Because I prefer to game than paint, ideally, the highlanders would be W. Britain's set 5188 (2 sets even,), and the lancers set 8806 (again 2 perhaps), but reality is that they will be AIP highlanders and hussars. Ditto the gun and crew.

The opponents will mostly be pre-painted plastics, available cheaply on Amazon and elsewhere. This helps minimize my painting efforts.

Rules will be G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T. or Portable Wargame, Space: 1889 Soldier's Companion, or quite likely home-brew that blends many of those together, depending on what type of game I decide to play.

With father's day coming up next month, I already know what I'm asking for!

******************************************************
And since walls of text are sort of boring, here's a picture from a very impromptu and improvised skirmish game I played last night.

Team BBC storms the French farmhouse

The scenario was based on the example given in older versions of Nuts! by THW: An MG42 crew is in a farmhouse with a clear shot at the road, making transport hazardous for our troops.Three British paras (Team BBC: Cpl. Hardcastle, Lance Cpl. Deacon, and a young, Pvt. Peacock) are to assault the house and take out the gun and crew.

Figures are Conte (Brits) and Airfix (Germans, which I placed behind the house, though they were, for the game, inside), the wall is from W. Britain I believe (It came with a Waffen SS MG42 team), the house is scratch built (clearly). Rules, as I said, were improvised. They involved card activation, d6s to attack (1 for bolt action rifles and pistols, 2 for SMGs, and 4 for the HMG), saving rolls a la Featherstone, and hit points for Hardcastle (3), Deacon (2), Peacock (2), German Officer (2).

Hardcastle and Deacon both ended the game with 1 HP each, Peacock, who fired from cover most of the game remained unscathed, while the Germans were thrashed soundly and the next transport would make it through unimpeded.