Some Things for Under the Christmas Tree

Despite having yet to plan the Christmas game for this year, I've been gathering up a plan for 2024!

While thinking over my collection and what kind of games I most enjoy playing, it dawned on me that  "games my son will play with me" top the list. Historical games have some appeal to him, especially if they involves tanks (Panzer Kids Deluxe for the win!), but it is sci-fi and fantasy that really capture his attention and enthusiasm.

I can't say I blame him - I was the same way at his age.

Last year, he did a book report on  Skavenslayer, and this year he did a report on Trollslayer. We've been playing Age of Fantasy: Skirmish lately - he's running an orc warband (Reaper Bones miniatures) through a very loose campaign  of the best-of-five variety. And, as I may have mentioned previously, we've been playing a b/x / 1e D&D mega-dungeon campaign since July - sometimes playing three or four times a week. He is also in a 5e D&D campaign as part of an after school club he is in, and in our family & friends 5e campaigns.

As much as he enjoys all of the fantasy settings and creatures, 40K lore has more or less taken over his life (thanks, YouTube). 

While he plays some of the video games, and has mods for other games that add 40K skins, he has not been particularly driven to play anything on the tabletop. Possibly in large part because I have nothing to entice him with - although we have on occasion raided his toy bins for Star Wars figures to use with Grim Dark Future : Firefight.

I have, then, after much deliberation, decided that 2024 will be the Year of Grimdark.

Although I got him a starter paint box with three Infernus space marines for his birthday, if I can get him to paint those three, it may be a miracle. So, it's safest to assume that all of the painting will fall to me.

In that case, I might as well acquire and paint figures I want to paint. 

However, I couldn't justify buying figures for myself - austerity measures and all that - EXCEPT, I realized if these are Christmas presents for myself and I cannot do anything with them until Christmas Day, AND i'm travel immediately after until New Year's Eve, they are really just 2024 purchases that arrived early.

"The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma." - Patrick Star

Here then are much of what will be 2024's painting queue and what will be waiting under the tree for me this year.

First up, Plague Marines / Death Guard:

My son loves Nurgle. I don't know why. I guess slime, snot, and disease are fun? 

In any case, I find the Plague Marine/ Death Guard compelling as figures - sort of Lovecraftian abominations.

These were acquired fully assembled and primed from Frontline Gaming - the neoprene mat people. They also, I have learned, do a brisk business in second-hand figures. The price was quite reasonable - less than the cost of a single box of the same figures shrink wrapped on the sprue and it saves me from having to decide on options which I couldn't care less about.

Next, Space Marine: The Board Game:

This is a Target exclusive. 

You get 22 Tyranids and a single space marine character, and some other stuff that might be handy(like the play mat) plus the game itself, for $39.99 usd.

The character figure will bulk out  my son's three Infernus (the ones he has yet to paint) to a 200+ point Grimdark Future : Firefight force. The 22 Tyranids will give us a similar point force, using about 15 of the models! 

My son tells me no one non-ironically likes Tyranids, but I do. I think they're cute. Especially in light of the Tiny Tyranid shorts on YouTube.

Finally, while there is a three Intercessor and paint starter box (which would bring the space marines up to 7 total figures), there is a better deal to be had with a used copy of Fireteam which also includes enough Necrons for yet another Grimdark Future: Firefight force, in addition to a whole separate board game that looks intriguing.

That order was just placed so it's on the way and I was too impatient to wait for it before I posted. 

Speaking of board games (how was that for a slick transition?) I also picked up Der Welterkrieg: The Italian Front. My son won't play this with me most likely, but that's fine - I bought it to play solitaire:

Picture from BoardGameGeek because I'm too lazy to walk to the back of the apartment to take a picture of my copy.

I haven't been this excited for my own Christmas presents in awhile!

One Hour Wargames: Static Defence, Somewhere in Italy, Spring 1917

Two battalions of Austrians supported by a field gun battery advanced on an Italian sector in the foothills of the Isonzo mountains. Ordered to hold both the hill and the town, the Italian commander split his force - an understrength battalion to hold the village, while two companies reenforced by a own field gun battery, would hold the hill. He opted to hold a rifle company and a squadron of Lancieri in reserve in the center.

The Austrians committed to taking the hill but advanced one column under cover of the woods which had somehow survived shelling. The Italian reserve rifles advanced to meet them, supported by a company from the village. Fierce fighting followed.

Meanwhile, the attack on the hill began to disintegrate under fire from the Italian battery and machine guns.

The Italians held their own in the woods, leaving the second wave of Austrian companies to dislodge them, while on their right, their fellows still comfortably held the hill.

The Lancieri waited patiently for their moment and then struck out in a thunderous charge!

Meanwhile the Austrians in the wood were crumbling engaged on two sides by Italain troops in close combat.

The Italians held the woods, the Lancieri drove off their opponents, but the Italian defenders on the hill had suffered under the relentless pressing surge of Austrians. 

With their attack dwindling, Austrian rifles entered and crossed through the trench to dislodge the field gun battery in a final mopping up operation. The Italain commander sent the Lancieri to support the town, in case of Austrian reinforcements, while a unit of Italian infantry made for the hill to aid in the fight for the trench.

To the surprise of all, the artillery crews drove off their attackers. With nothing left, the Austrians retreated behind their starting positions.

****

Rules were One Hour Wargames "Machine Age", with my modifications. Eight units per side didn't really extend the playing time but felt more substantial as a game than the usual six.

The playing area was 3' x 2' and never felt cramped nor too large for the size of the forces involved.

The Austrian plan was determined by die roll and the Italian distribution of troops was similarly randomized.

My rules modifications are working well, but I haven't tried playing any games set in the later years of the war, where Arditi and strumtruppen might appear. I'll have to give them a go soon to see if my modifications make them overpowered.

Battle of the Alps Squared

June 1940, the Italian army, ordered by the outsized ego of Il Duce - who was desperate to have a piece of France before Hitler had captured it all for himself -  trundled across the northern alpine border into France.

The stalwart defenders of ennui and champagne had expected as much and were dug in and ready.

The Italians used the woods to cover the left wing of their advance.

The French infantry were well dug-in and extricating them proved more difficult than discretely hiding ten pounds of good salami into your rucksack.

Calling a meeting of L3s with the FT17s a "tank duel" or a "clash of armor" stretches credulity. Let us say, they fired shots at each other while snacking on loaves of bread and drinking bottles of wine, with the wine merchants being the real winners, judging by the ineffectiveness of both sides.

Eventually the French armor, despite damage incurred from the Italian battery - drove back their Italian opposites - can you blame those poor Italian pilots? They only learned to drive the L3 a few days ago. 

It was all for naught, as they were just in time to find the Italian infantry had successfully captured the village. A halfhearted attempted to dislodge the Italians met with no success.

The French had run out of time and would have to fall back. Here is the battlefield at the end:

The scenario was "Late Arrivals", a favorite of mine from One Hour Wargames. It works equally well for Austrians streaming into Italy as it does for Italians invading France. The game lasted the OHW standard 15 turns. 

The rules were improvised, based on my own squad-per-base rules - a mash of Crossfire, Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit, and The Portable Wargame - but moved up a few levels of organization and no stacking allowed. I also used ideas borrowed from Ross Mac's Fast and Furious Fifties

Initially I thought of the units as companies of infantry, platoons of tanks, three or so guns, etc. 

However, while writing my narrative it didn't really seem to matter and I could just as easily think of them as battalions. I hear Memoir '44 is a bit like that - where the nominal scale changes based on the scenario? I don't know, I've never played it, but that's my understanding.

It seemed to work here at least.

One Hour Wargames : Flank Attack (Played twice)

With some time to spare the other night after band practice before retiring for the evening, I opted to play a game of One Hour Wargames Ancients rules. I had wanted to try Peter's rules, but with limited time, I stuck with the rules I already know.

For the scenario, I chose Flank Attack (scenario 6) from OHW. It's not one I have played much and thought it would be nice to try my hand at it again.

• Bokrug Confederacy (lizards) : 4 infantry, 1 skirmisher unit, and 1 cavalry (a feathered raptor thing).
• Tanitia (orange and black Carthaginians) : 4 infantry and 2 skirmisher units (it was supposed to be one skirmisher and one archer but because they don't have bows, my brain sees skirmisher and that's how I treated them).

Both sides were aggressive in their battle plans:

The Bokrug Confederacy planned to strike first, gain that advantage and win the battle of attrition before marching off the table. The Tanitian planned to engage the lizards early,  hold up the advance while inflicting losses, and cause them to run out of units and momentum (i.e fail to get three units off the road by turn 15).

I missed taking pics of the first few turns because I was caught up in playing. However, I wanted to document the game, so we pick up around turn 3 or 4.

The cavalry in action!

 

 

By turn 9, the defenders had been eliminated at the cost of a unit of Bokrug skrimishers.

A resounding victory for the Confederacy. Their die rolling wasn't particularly poor, but by running into the threat, they had exposed themselves to flank attacks which did not help their cause.

Since,  I still had some time before bed, I reset the table and decided to try playing the defense more conservatively. The Tanitians would avoid contact for a bit, to force the Confederacy to use up their turns with movement, rather than in combat - the idea was to have the Tanitians stay stronger longer. I also chose to start a Tanitian infantry unit on the hill - giving them one quarter damage if attacked. Mostly though the Tanitians would avoid advancing until the last minute.

I do love the advancing column of lizard warriors.

 

The Tanitian skirmishers peppered the lizards but the infantry kept their distance until the opportunity to gain some decent advantage presented itself (a minor tweak to the plan). Eventually came the inevitable contact.

 

The Tanitian infantry on the hill were forced to abandon their position to protect the flank of the skirmishers on their right - so much for quarter damage. However, this time the Confederacy exposed their flanks and suffered for it - not one but two units found themselves facing an attacker to the front and one to the right.

 

The defensive plan worked - the turns spent drawing the attackers out, chewed up the turn counter. The melees had largely gone in the Confederacy's favor, but it was no steamroll like the previous game. Here is what it looked like on turn 14:

On turn 15, the Bokrug infantry finally eliminated the Tanitian infantry blocking the road.

 

However, that left them with no turns to actually get three units off the board via the road. I declared it a tactical victory for the Bokrug Confederacy, but a strategic Tanitian victory.

Probably the Biggest Influence on My Wargames Aesthetic

I was thinking about this, this morning.

Sure, there's Wells, Morschauser, Grant, Young & Crawford, Featherstone ... but those all came later in life and I didn't read most of them until after I had been gaming a bit.

However, permanently emblazoned in some part of my brain is this scene from a Warner Bros. short:

 No fancy terrain, just a grid map and toy soldiers!

Once More to Take the High Ground

With my son occupied watching memes on Friday evening, I decided I wanted to see if the same scenario I played the other day ("Take the High Ground") would be as close, given my modifications to the "Machine Age" rules for One Hour Wargames.

For what it's worth, in my mind, the infantry are companies, the guns are batteries, the cavalry are squadrons.

• The Italians are defending and have four infantry, one heavy infantry, and one unit of Lancieri.
• The Austrians are attacking with four infantry units, one heavy infantry, and one field gun battery. 

The opening layout. I interpret Neil Thomas's instruction "arrive on the Southern table edge" as literally meaning, place the unit on the edge of the table - and that counts as the attacker's movement.

After a taking a hammering from the Austrian barrage, the Italians in the trench opened fire, with the heavy infantry making a strong argument for the Austrians to reconsider this whole thing.

However, the Austrians launched a trench assault, with two companies supported by a third.  The carnage on that portion of the battlefield would be terrible and not in the Austrian favor.

Meanwhile, the Lancieri launched a heroic, if ill-advised, charge against the Austrians who had taken a position holding the road south. 

 

The cavalry needs their bases changed to the Medium Foliage Green

Their first effort was repelled, and the Lancieri took heavy fire as they regrouped for a follow-up attack.

Meanwhile an Italian company advanced through the woods to engage the Austrian flank and the Austrians continued their assault on the hilltop trench, aided by the field gun battery.

A red die means they've taken 12 + whatever is showing in damage. A yellow die is 6 + whatever face is showing.

The Austrians repulsed a second cavalry charge, and the latter was forced to disperse under oppressive rifle fire.

Still, the assault on the hill had faltered and although the Italians had lost their heavy infantry (no doubt routed in panic after several rounds of intense melee), they had a fresh unit ready to take its place, with another unit providing support on their flank to keep the Austrians from maneuvering around the hill.

Green dice show the number of hits taken (1-6). No die means no hits. I do sometimes move the out of the way for pictures, but only if it's one or two dice.

An Italian victory seemed neatly in hand. 

The incredible firing by the plucky Austrian battery was a bright spot - it took quite a few hits but shrugged them off (the Italians rolled 1s and 2s) while dealing a good bit of damage. 

Eventually, the Austrian heavies disposed of the Italians in the woods and were able to come to bear.

It still wasn't a sure thing.

On turn 14 the eliminated the Italians and on turn 15 moved onto the hill.

With casualties high and morale failing on both sides (morale being abstractly handled by Neil Thomas in OHW by the loss of hit points), momentum (and turns) was running out.

With a last burst of effort, the Austrian heavies managed to capture the trench and establish a defensive position of their own (they cleared the trench on turn 14 by fire, and then claimed it on turn 15). 

From there they could cover the advance of the troops coming behind them.

Austrian victory.

*****

A second One Hour Wargames game that came down to the last turn. 

Maybe I was playing them wrong all of the times before? I don't know. I was surprised though. 

Here are the modifications I used:

• Shooting: 
• No shooting along a trench line (what is shown on the table is a straight line but in reality, it is full of zigs and zags). 
• Units may fire into close combat on a turn when a unit on their side initiates close combat (shooting occurs after movement but is assumed to be accompanying it).
• Trenches:
• Units in trench have 360 LOS with respect to being flanked (i.e. they can't be)
• Units in trench may only shoot as normal(45-degrees forward). 
• Units in trench take half-damage from shooting. 
• Mounted cavalry may not cross trenches
• Close Combat: 
• Infantry units that charge into close combat, stay in close combat until one side is destroyed. 
• Attacking uphill reduces damage caused by 1/2
• Close combat long a trench, e.g. enemy units occupying sections of the same trench, does half damage - reduced numbers of men able to engage immediately and twists and turns of the trench. 
• Otherwise close combat ignores all cover - woods, trench, buildings - (they are lobbing grenades, leaping into the trench, etc.).
• Cavalry charges
• see Rifle & Sabre rules.
• Field Guns: 
• May not move once fired. 
• Field guns may rotate in place (counts as movement for the sake of firing).

I opted to use the barrage option from the rulebook, and defenders would start in a trench. 

Dice rolling played a bigger part in how this one went I feel - poor rolls kept Austrians in the open from being routed. 

I wanted infantry close combat to be a decision to make - in keeping with the history (strangely missing from the rules) but also from a game play perspective. It's a gamble because you are stuck in at that point and you lose the ability to maneuver that unit to other parts of the table where it might be needed (such as the failing assault on the hilltop).

In the Ancients game, I used that fact to pin enemy troops - I had skirmishers advance far ahead to stop reinforcements from arriving as fast as they might otherwise. With everyone in the "Machine Age" rules having the ability to shoot, stopping a unit from advancing is less of an issue and you can wait for them to come into range (and you'll get first shot as they can't move and shoot). 

Engaging just to stop them from advancing makes little sense if they aren't in cover.

The Austrians who fought the Italian company that had advanced through the woods, and taken cover at the edge, received the intended benefit of engaging in close combat - no halving damage at all. Thus, it was worth making the effort to get unreduced hits in (and aided by their +2 for being heavy infantry, they were pretty devastating), even at the sacrifice of being able to move.

The hilltop assault was not the best test of my infantry close combat rules, because attacking a unit on a hill still halves the damage, putting it on par with shooting (since rifle fire is not halved for shooting up hill, just for the cover). You could argue that they should have simply moved into range and fired, with the benefit of being able to fall out of range to be replaced by a fresher unit if necessary.

The default "Machine Age" rules assume cavalry are dismounted/shooting for the sake of combat. I wanted to field Lancieri. The "Rifle & Sabre" cavalry rules worked and gave what seemed to be a reasonable result.

The bounce off in the event of failing to destroy the target does allow them to move somewhere else - giving them an advantage over infantry in close combat, but I didn't take advantage of that. 

Instead, they just repeated their charge and eventually this was to their detriment. I should have kept them out of rifle range as long as possible. Had I saved them for when the enemy was weakened and preferably was otherwise engaged, and THEN charged, they might have been more effective and had more influence on the outcome.

We'll see if I learn these lessons for next time!

One Hour Wargames : Ancients

I had never played One Hour Wargames's Ancient rules. Last night I decided to change that. 

Using my Tanitians and Bokrug Confederacy figures, and for now, ignoring cavalry, I generated two forces:

• Tanitia (orange and black) - 4 infantry units, 1 archer unit, 1 skirmisher unit
• Bokrug Confederacy (lizards) - 3 infantry units, 1 archer unit, 2 skirmisher units

Not a big difference there in composition, but I wanted to play the rules straight before I modify them with elephants and dinosaurs just yet.

Cavalry probably won't be added for Tanitia until 2024 as that's part of my planned army expansion - either using HaT Spanish Cavalry or LOD Amazons (the set comes with two figures on horseback). For Bokrug Confederacy, it occurred to me that smaller raptors would be sufficient and we have tons of those between my son and myself. I might even try to put some Wargames Atlantic lizard warriors on their backs as riders.

In any case, I digress ...

The scenario was #4 - "Take the High Ground"

Two units of Bokrug infantry hold the hill. They will be quite hard to remove - they halve any damage received due to armor, and halve again due to their hilltop position.

The Tantian archers pepper the units on the hill - the Bokrug units don't get their hilltop advantage for archery fire - while their infantry assaults the hill and skirmishers advance through the woods to engage the advancing Bokrug skirmishers.

The Bokrug archers stay out of melee, but everyone else is locked in it or on their way to it.

With one unit of infantry fallen and the other with 9 points of damage, things don't look good on the hill for the Bokrug Confederacy,

Yet somehow they hold out! But for how long?

Not that much longer as it turned out. This is around turn 11 or 12.

The Bokrug skirmishers launched several ineffective volleys of javelins. The archers were far more accurate with their attacks, but time was against them.

After 15 turns (One Hour Wargames standard game length) the Tanitians are the sole occupants of the hilltop. The Bokrug units, seeing victory slip away, melted into the jungle to await the next time they are called to duty.

A OHW game that went the full 15 turns! It's a rare occurrence indeed. It did get me wondering if that turn limit works better with the older pre-gun powder eras. Something that future games may shed more light on.

Units are on 3" x 2" steel-on-MDF trays. I'm not a fan of the green for these figures but I don't have enough steel to have one side sand and the other side green. Santa may resolve that issue! I'd also like to be able to put 8-10 units on the table not just 6 - so again, more steel! Santa is going to need a reinforced bag this year!

The playing area was 24" square - 3/4 the size of the standard OHW table. Ranges were adjusted in proportion. This makes the 3" base equivalent to a 4.5" wide base on a 36" table.