Tuesday 26 March 2024

I am the passenger...

 I ride and I ride and I ride. With many apologies to Iggy Pop.



I've had these old Peter Pig Horch cars for decades, originally in desert yellow for my old 15mm Desert armies, these survived the turn of the century cull and were repainted grey as you can never have too much transport. I never bothered with crew, but sometimes that rather limits their use, so I finally got around to adding some passengers. 



These fine chaps are pretty much all that is left of my PSC seated Germans from the Sdkfz 251 set. Very useful figures indeed, and mercifully slight, so easy to get into vehicles. I added in a spare PP officer who can be looking around for trouble. I just did these in plain field grey uniforms. 


And here they are crewed up. Ideally they'd have three figures in each, but even just a couple looks OK. 


Driver and bloke in the back. I had to chop the legs off the drivers,  but you cant see they are legless.


Driver and standing officer. I gather from Chris K that the vehicle commander was supposed to stand up in tactical situations. Better awareness etc. He looks rather business like.


This one has three figures, the standing machinegunner is a spare Sdkfz 251 gunner with MG34 in the firing position. He fits neatly behind the windscreen. 

I'm very pleased with those, they will do nicely as Panzergrenadiers now. I should probably rebase them too, as they still have their old desert bases of sand on top of corrugated cardboard! I've been using artists mount board since the late 90s, so goodness knows how old these are.


Sunday 24 March 2024

One Hour Napoleonic - Wavre f2f playtest

 I met up with John at the club Xmas games day to try out my One Hour Napoleonic variant as a face-face playtest as there are still a few wrinkles I'm trying to work out. I just went with Wavre again as it is an interesting scenario and I still had all the toys based up. I took the Prussians and John the French ( I generally find attacking is less confusing in a brand new game). I didn't take blow-blow photos but did take a few of the game in progress.


I set the Prussians up exactly the same as in my original playtest. Pirch lined up to exit to Waterloo, most of Thielmanns Corps in Wavre and a detachment at Limale with the cavalry in reserve in the centre. 

The French came on in much the same way I did in my solo playtest too, Gerards Corps on the right, Vandamme on the left, Army Artillery in the centre and cavalry in reserve. John was quite intrigued by the possibilities of Light Infantry, and went with a different lineup to me - two Lights with Vandamme and just one with Gerard.


Vandamme, supported by the Army Artillery, was soon pounding away at Limale. Gerard skirmished with Wavre, at some disadvantage with two Line Infantry facing off against troops in buildings.


Under fire from four units the Limale garrison was soon reduced to one hit, and scuttled away, hoping to become one of the mandatory exit units. Sadly it couldn't quite get out of the arc of fire of the French artillery and was routed by long range artillery fire. The Prussian cavalry pulled onto the forward slope of the ridge.


Back at Wavre the firefight was more even but fairly slow, both sides average hit potential per turn being one and a third. Both sides concentrated fire on single units and the hits slowly mounted. Not sure what I think about that from a simulation pov, but it works in game terms.


The French put their Light Infantry over the river, accompanied by their Cavalry Corps. The Prussian cavalry manouvered to set up a charge, while trying to avoid flanking fire from the French artillery. Very unfairly the French light infantry ducked into the woods! Eagle eyed readers will note I've based up the cavalry units as columns, looking at Lithographs of the battle, they appear to have been the favoured cavalry formation (fairly thick columns mind).


The Prussians got their charge in first but were hideously unlucky, only inflicting a couple of hits on the French. The French response was....devastating as the Prussians were in range of three French infantry divisions and also flanked by the French artillery.


The Prussian cavalry reeled back, reduced to two and one hit respectively. While this had been going on, the Prussian guns had re-deployed to the central hill and unlimbered and at Wavre one of the Prussian infantry had fallen back exhausted, to be replaced by reserves. Most of Pirch's Corps had now left for Waterloo.


The French cavalry followed the Prussians, and one of the Prussian cavalry was routed, but the other maintained a screen to hold them up - I've started using the same Zone of Control rules as in the WW2 variant, to avoid 'units running around' silliness. The French Light Infantry Divisions meanwhile were going artillery hunting.


The guns limbered up and pulled out, retreating across the plain. There were only four Prussian brigades left now, so exiting the mandatory units was going to be hard. The limbered artillery was a sacrifice to allow other units to escape.


The Prussian artillery was duly overrun, but the Prussians pulled an infantry brigade down the road in march column, and put the cavalry on the exit hex. If the Prussians were really lucky, they'd get the last two units off and still hold Wavre at the end of the game.


Sadly the French cavalry sabered the Prussian infantry columns. All very Lawrence of Arabia.


Wavre was still holding out though, and had managed to rout one of Gerards divisions. The garrison was completely surrounded by French units and under fire from all directions.


The Prussians failed to exit a fifth unit on turn 11 and lost, despite Wavre still holding out. I think the scenario needs a slight tweak to make it four units exited, as exiting five is really tough.

That was a very useful playtest and John raised a number of questions about things which needed clarifying, and we also had a discussion about command and control, leadership and rallying of formations. John raised the very obvious question - how likely is it that an entire infantry division or cavalry corps is going to usefully 'rally' in the time frame of the game? The obvious answer being that it wouldn't (eg in Napoleons Battles, divisions only rally overnight at least five miles away from the enemy). 
I'd also drafted some overly complex C2 rules, which I didn't use in the event, but had a chat about that too as I'm keen to include a role for leaders in the game rather than just adding narrative eye candy.

We eventually came up with a morale type for leaders in the game, and also a simple C2 system which owes something to BBB and Fire and Fury (and also something leaders can influence). I had vaguely thought about some sort of exhaustion mechanism like the PW, but really, it is fairly obvious when units are exhausted, and the 'routed' ones are just combat ineffective to varying degrees which is much the same thing. I could always adopt Richard Brooks approach of leaving the routed units on the table, but cowering in the rear waiting to be sabered by vengeful enemy cavalry. Actually that isn't a bad idea.

Anyway, I can feel another playtest coming on. I've put the current version of the rules up in my One Hour Wargames section, but they are still a work in progress. 





Thursday 21 March 2024

Edington 878 AD

 Off to the Dark Ages with the Table Battles system. Tim had come across this user created scenario on BGG, covering the climatic encounter between Alfred the Great and Guthrum, the Danish ruler of East Anglia (and Uhtred Ragnusson, for followers of the Last Kingdom novels and TV series!).



This is a really interesting scenario, each side only has three units, two wings of troops and their commander. The commanders can rally their wings  a (very) limited number of times, and allow the allocation of command dice to both wings simultaneously.

The Saxons can form a shield wall, and the Vikings can attack without loss unless the Saxons counterattack. All the actions are controlled by various combinations of command dice, it is much easier to activate Aelfred than Guthrum for example.


It really is a minimal setup, but both sides wings have masses of SP. The leaders are behind. They need the special command blocks on them to do their command magic. Saxons on the left, Danes/Vikings on the right.


Pleasingly, there aren't any restrictions on how many command dice per turn you can place on the combat cards either (apart from the usual ones relating to dice numbers and total number of dice available) - so you can quickly build up strong attacks. The Saxons need dice on both wings  to be able to claim their 'Shield Wall' defensive bonus.


A big effort from the Saxons! Alfred seems to have burnt all his command points though.


Mmm, that could have gone better. We've both lost a wing, but this disadvantages the Saxons as they can't form Shield Wall now.


Everyones front lines have broken, but Alfreds ran first, so Guthrum wins! I guess he won't be converting to Christianity this time then.

We set it up and went again the next evening with sides swapped.


So far much the same.


Hard pounding Gentlemen! The Saxons seem to be doing better in the battle of attrition though, however once again Alfred has committed all his reserves early.


The Danes are fading faster, just.


One Danish wing goes.


And then a Saxon wing.


But Alfred breaks the last of the Danes with SP to spare. Aelfred wins!

That was very quick, so we did it again.


And Aelfred wins again!

That is more in line with the historical result where Guthrum was just outclassed. 

That worked really well and felt very much like a Dark Ages battle, even though it didn't have many moving parts. It reminded me a bit of the board/minis game 'Battle Ravens', which covers similar ground.



Wednesday 20 March 2024

Pipe cleaner fir trees

 I was very taken with the pipe cleaner trees demonstrated on Stephen Balagans blog: https://balagan.info/making-copses-of-6mm-scale-trees-using-bumpy-chenille-pipe-cleaners, so I thought I'd have a go myself to supplement my existing 6mm pine trees. I had the horrific experience last year of running out of trees for a scenario! I'm certainly  not paying current commercial tree prices to buy any more.


The green pipe cleaners come in these enormous bags, but don't cost too much. They come in a couple of different shades of green.


The individual strips have four bulging bits, which will become the basis for our trees. There is thin wire running through the centre, but following Stephens experience of blunting scissors cutting them, I used a proper wire cutter.


For my first trial, I was just going to make 20 trees, so I roughly painted up 20x1p coins with brown emulsion paint to act as bases. I could have sprayed them I suppose, but there are more layers of stuff to go on top of this bit.


I used one of my model railway trees as a height gauge. I don't really want them any taller than the existing trees, as they work fine for 6mm and 15mm stuff, I even use them with 2mm but they are a bit big for that, so some smaller trees would be good.


Work in progress. I cut each strip into eight 'trees' of varying heights to go across two bases. I was planning on doing two single tree bases, and the rest clumps of two. So I cut two of the four bulges into a tall tree and a short tree, and the other two into a slighter shorter 'tall' tree and a slightly taller 'short' tree, which gave me a mix of heights. 

The Loctite Glue Gun is there as I tried UHU on a couple of trees, but it needs a stronger bond. There is only a stub of wire to glue to the coin, so it needs to go into a big dollop of strong glue. The glue gun is perfect for that.


First batch of five. Two singles and three pairs. They don't look too bad next to the railway tree, but obviously they are thinner.


All 20 bases now planted up, en masse they are looking quite good. I went over the bases again with brown paint to give them an extra coat, and also hide any spilt bits of glue. I also put a dab of paint on the tops of the 'trunks' as the metal core showed. 

You could probably use them like that, but I prefer flocked bases, and Stephen also suggests spray painting them to stiffen them up a bit.


I gave them a quick spray of Humbrol Grass Green, this lifted the colour a lot and made them look much better.


They are a much  better colour now, although the bases are now bright green. 

One issue I came across was that in handling the trees, a number came off the bases. They were firmly stuck in the hot glue, but the hot glue hadn't bonded well to the emulsion paint on the bases, and I ended up having to stick them back on with UHU. Next time I'll use a spray primer on the bases before sticking the trees down.


I wasn't sure how best to finish the bases. I tried painting some brown, and I flocked a couple with fine sand. The flocked bases looked much better, but were hard to do as I ended up getting glue (and flock) all over the bottom of the trees.

OK, that was a good start, now I've got a method which works, time to do some more. I've a mind to paint some of them as winter firs with snow on the tips of the branches, but I need to get a load more based up first.


That is more like it. 60 bases of trees, all flocked. I think I've got enough pipeleaners left to make a few hundred more! 


 





Saturday 16 March 2024

More Panzerblitz Lite 3 - Vyazma 1941

 As these posts seem to be popular, I'll change my usual cycle and post this today rather than next week. I'm away this weekend in any case, so posts/updates will be a bit less frequent. 

Another day, more Panzerblitz Lite. After the Kiev game, I went through all the terrain boards and came up with a standard layout for each board mapped onto my Hexon boards. It is then possible to cut up the template and arrange them just like the original game. Much easier and faster than trying to do it from scratch each time.

I fancied something a bit more low density this time, so I picked Vyazma 1941 as the scenario.


View from the west. It is amazing how the terrain layout changes with each different configuration of the geomorphic map boards. Like Buchach, the Germans are trying to open a corridor from west to east, this time uncovered by Russian units or fire. Well, given the weapon ranges and terrain configuration, that will be interesting...


Here is the scenario card, and my patented mini-geomorphic terrain layout cards. The cards made it much easier to set the terrain up, it only took 25 minutes, which is OK for something so complicated.


Unlike Buchach, this is a very low density scenario! The Russians have a Rifle Regiment (three battalions of two stands each), plus a company each of 76mm Field Guns, 120mm mortars and an AT company. The guns are horse drawn, the only motorised unit being the AT guns, so the Russian defence is going to be quite static.

The German force is miniscule though, two companies of Pz III, one of Mech Infantry, one towed AT company and a company of 'mortars' (which I modelled as 75mm infantry guns). Not much stuff at all.


As in the original scenario, the Russians have to string their troops out to cover the entire width of the board. The obvious spot for the artillery is the wood on the central hill as it can cover five hexes across from there, and observation post in the village at the bottom of the hill is vital. I've put some Russian infantry in gullies - they can only spot and be spotted at one hex range, but it will force the Germans to move adjacent. The 120mm mortars are also in a gully to the rear of the open board. 

The Russians do have some reserves, there is a rifle company with the 76mm guns and the motorised AT is on the road junction in the top right. Once the Germans are committed, they can shuffle to form another line of units/fire across the board. The rough ground on the right is a nightmare, but the bigger hexes make it easier to lock down with continuous fire, there are two units in the foreground, linking with the artillery arc of fire.

As most of the Russian force is slow, you need to put a lot of thought into the setup. I enjoy stuff like that.


Conversely, the Germans don't have much stuff, but it is (mostly) armoured and mobile, so they need to pick a route and concentrate all their fire power to break through and keep it open. I can't actually recall the optimum strategy for this one, and it felt like cheating to read the scenario guide, so the Germans went for the open board on the left. It just seems easier to lock down one board edge, rather than going up the middle, although killing those guns looks very attractive.

The Germans advance up to the edge of the gully, with the mech infantry and guns in the town, tanks in the open. No Russians can see them here (mmm, I really need to think about spotting!)


The Russians respond by moving the AT guns west, a bit. The Germans pile into the gully and set up their guns in the village. Again, they are hidden from view here, even from the spotters on the hill. The Russian AT has made it to the central road by the end of turn 2.


Panzers advance! The Germans rush the village, 75mm guns in the gully in support. Now, in the original game, we could have bypassed as there are no ZOC, however my guys are now stuck adjacent to the Russians.

The Russian infantry in the village can call in the 120mm mortars, and the infantry in the gully can call can the 76mm guns. I had thought quite a lot about this defensive setup beforehand... In fact my wife commented how absorbed and thoughtful I looked. The chess with tanks thing was always something I loved about PB, unlike Squad Leader, which was far more random. 


Blam! Blam! Russian artillery, mortar and small arms fire rings out - resulting in a disrupted mech inf and a disrupted tank. The Russian 76s also rolled a '6', so have disrupted themselves. I prefer units to run out of ammo on a high roll, it seems more logical.


The 75s fire at the village but miss, and the disrupted Germans fall back into the gully to reorganise. The Russian return fire disrupts the AT company but nothing else. The Russian AT company is now on the far road next to the top left village and a rifle company has moved to support the mortars. The mortars are 'in' the gully and the infantry are outside so they can spot. Mmmm, I need to think about that too.


The Germans finally get there act together - the 75s disrupt the village and direct fire from two units finishes off the defenders, and the mech infantry and guns occupy the town. That is more like it!

The Russians have filtered a couple of units into the gully at the bottom, and the rifle company with the mortars has moved east to create a blocking line with the AT guns. The Russian artillery (finally) manages to reorganise, but now the 120mm mortars run out of ammo.


The Russians put an infantry unit on the hill at the top, and another one comes 'out' of the gully to spot for the guns.


That is a mistake. It is disrupted by the 75s and finished off by direct fire while the other Germans reorganise or push forwards. The Russian AT guns are in the village at the top now, but the German 75s rolled a 6 and are disrupted. That is a bit of a problem as hundreds of angry Russian infantrymen are next to them! 


The 75s 'retreat' east to reorganise and the Russians occupy the village at the bottom, re-establishing the line. The AT guns get lucky and disrupt them though.

Somehow (I must have forgotten to take some photos), the rest of the panzers have destroyed the Rifle Company on the hill and are threatening the 120mm mortars, who have retreated back onto another gully. The Germans are now surrounded! But the Russians have lost three units, so are stretched to keep a line.


A big turn for the Germans, the guns manage to knock out the disrupted Russian infantry in the village, which reopens the corridor west, and the rest of the them occupy the hill under a storm of artillery, mortar and AT gun fire. Two German units are disrupted but the 120s run out of ammo, again!

 

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The disrupted German units fire on the 120mm mortars rather than rallying, and destroy them opening a route east. The last good order German panzers advance to pin the AT guns in place in ZOC and stop them moving to re-establish a line.


In the south the 75mm guns move into the gully to block the Russian infantry from moving and re-establishing the line. I later realised I didn't need to do that as the Russians were stuck in a ZOC anyway.

Astonishingly the Germans have pulled it off, with the slenderist of corridors from west to east. Even more astonishing, they haven't lost a single unit, although lots were disrupted en route and in fact the game ended with 80% of the Germans disrupted. In contrast the Russians lost four rifle companies and the 120mm mortars. I guess that is the difference between a large dispersed force vs a small, concentrated one.


If anyone fancies trying this at home, this is my 'geomorphic' map template which converts the PB boards into 1km hexes. Print it out, cut it along the lines and you have three geomorphic maps which replicate the PB layouts. I ignore the half hexes on the outside as I was a bit generous with the width. I've also realised that for the scenarios with the maps end-end they are a bit too long. I guess ignore the top and bottom hex rows and they will be OK?

Another useful game with things to think about. I'm really not sure about ZOC - in the original game units could just zip past each other, whereas the ZOC make it a bit too easy to block units, otoh it compensates for the less granular terrain model. What to do? 

I'm also not sure what to do about spotting or artillery calling. I don't see why armour can't call IF, at least not German armour which was well equipped with radios. Some of the scenarios just won't work with the current rules (eg Positional Defence), so I think I'll free it up a bit on a scenario basis to start with. I also really need to think about how gullies work, in my head they are still the PB ones.

So, a few things to think about before the next game. I'm going to have a crack at one of my absolute favourite scenarios, Stalino, which is as asymmetrical as it gets, and also features fixed defences. I'm afraid you'll have to wait a couple of weeks for that one.