Category: Wargaming

Yesterday at our usual club gaming night, I ran a Combat Patrol(TM): World War II game with a Winter War (1939) scenario.  A Russian convoy, consisting of a T-35, two BT-7s, and two squads of infantry was assigned the mission to push up a snow-covered road.  The Finns, including a captured Russian AT gun, were waiting in ambush.  This was a play test of the scenario I plan to run at the Cold Wars convention in March.  The game played well, but there are a few things I will tweak before Cold Wars as a result of this play test — which is of course why you should always play test your scenario before a convention.

I haven’t had my 20mm Winter War figures on the table in quite some time.  The Finns were OLD Foundry 20mm WWII figures.  The Russians were a mix of manufacturers, but I think most were Platoon 20.

I let the Finns deploy anywhere on the table they liked, and their initial deployment was quite good.  They hid the AT gun down a narrow valley and hoped that the Russians, focusing on moving forward would bypass them, giving the AT gun rear shots on the Russian tanks.  To keep the Russians’ attention focused away from the gun, the Finns deployed Don’s Finns with rifles in a wood line.  Don opened fire on the first turn, and although his marksmanship was pretty poor most of the night, he did keep the Russians’ attention.

A that point, one of the Russian BT-7’s rushed forward, and the infantry began to deploy.  At about that time, the Russians realized just how slowly the T-35 moved.  While bristling with weapons, Duncan had difficulty bringing all the weapons to bear, because many of his shots were screened by his own men.  He did fire quite a bit of 75mm and 45mm into the woods against Don’s infantry — and later against Eric’s infantry to his right front — but with little effect.  He was hitting his target, but the Finns must have had great cover or the blasts were being muffled by the dense show, because very few of his shots resulted in casualties.  Meanwhile Don kept plinking away at Duncan’s infantry, and one of Duncan’s team leaders decided to run away (morale failure result), leaving two soldiers in the open to be picked off by Don.  Zeb had one of the BT-7’s rush ahead of the infantry to try to get some shots on Don’s Finns.  Zeb too must have been firing Nerf balls, because he did very little damage.

Then the Finns sprung their ambush.  A team of Finns deployed in the woods opened fire on Greg’s advancing Russians.  The Russians had advanced without clearing these woods, so the the Finns opened fire at short and medium ranges with submachine guns at Russians in the open.  The results were predictable, with this Russian team being wiped out without causing any casualties themselves.

That team of Finnish infantry had actually been placed in the woods to protect the captured AT gun.  If opened fire from ambush on the lead BT-7.  It’s first shot bounced (he needed anything but a 1 to penetrate, and he rolled a 1!).  His second shot penetrated, and the lead BT brewed up.

A turn or two later, the Russians advanced the second BT-7, and it too was air conditioned by the AT gun.

At this point, Eric and Don had pummeled the leading Russian teams, and Kurt’s submachine gunners had decimated Greg’s Russians.  There was little likelihood the Russians were going to do anything other than die to a man in the snow, so we called the game.  While it was a decisive victory for the Finns, a little better luck with all the HE fire from the tanks could have really changed the scenario.  The Russians just didn’t do much damage.

For Cold Wars, I plan to give the Russians an extra squad of infantry and replace most of their submachine guns with rifles.  Also, I think I’ll start the T-35, which is a hulking but lumbering beast, a little farther forward on the table.

The game played well, and even the Russians said they had fun, despite the lopsided results.

 

I have previously mentioned that I want to build a modular space ship for SciFi skirmish gaming — probably using Combat Patrol(TM). A couple weeks ago I also showed some 10mm buildings that were constructed from plastic boxes and then covered with facades.  I had a eight of those boxes left over from that project and decided to use them to make shipping containers for the cargo hold of my spaceship.

These plastic bricks or boxes are 3/4 inch by 1-1/2 inch.  I used PowerPoint to make a sheet of box coves that I printed card stock.

I then cut out the boxes and glued them to the plastic bricks.

The whole project took less than two hours, got some clutter off my project table, and resulted in a pretty good terrain item for an upcoming game.

 

 

I have been getting quiet queries in Email from people who are already playing Combat Patrol(TM): WWII (http://www.bucksurdu.com/Buck_Surdu/Combat_Patrol.html) about Combat Patrol for other periods than WWII.  The title should suggest that I have always had it in mind to apply the Combat Patrol(TM) system and the GAMER(TM) engine to other periods.  Even during play testing, before the rules were published, Duncan Adams was already using the rules for the Napoleonic Wars.  I think they would work really well with few (or no) changes for modern skirmishes.  The next period I think I am going to go after (subject to customer demand, of course) is science fiction.

In that vein, I have been collecting science fiction figures for a couple of years.  If you look back through the archives of this blog you will see photos of the Colonial Marines from Aliens as well as science fiction figures from the Reaper Bones line.  At Fall In, when I renewed my Old Glory Army, I picked up this package of Old Glory science fiction figures as my premium for renewing.  These were nice figures, even if they suffer from the Games Workshop ridiculously oversized weapons phenomenon.  I really like the plastic bubbles over their heads.  I couldn’t sleep much last night, so I got up a 0400 and knocked these out.  I painted them in gray, thinking that that is sort of shipboard camouflage.

I am not sure when these figures will see action.  I have been collecting solidly constructed cardboard box tops.  Ones from Apple for iPads and iPhones are terrific.  Over the winter I plan to spray them gray and then decorate them to make rooms for a space ship.  I will then lay these rooms out to make corridors.  This will be my space ship for a Firefly / Alien / generic science fiction mashup using Combat Patrol.  I think it will be quite fun.

Several years ago I picked up a batch of 20mm Dutch soldiers for gaming Dordrecht in 1940.  I began work on a Dordrecht scenario book for Skirmish Campaigns many years back, but the effort got shelved in favor of other projects.  When I was still pushing Beer and Pretzels Skirmish (BAPS), some gamers in the Netherlands wanted to translate the chart card into Dutch.  In those days moving money internationally was painful and expensive.  I authorized them to do the translation and sell/give it away in exchange for a copy of the chart in Dutch.  I also asked if they had some maps of Dordrecht they can share.  I have great maps of the city now, and wrote the first four scenarios before putting that project on hiatus.

I am getting ready to resume the project.  I had these 50 Dutch filed, based, and primed for six years or so in my “project box.”  Last weekend in preparation for resuming the Dordrecht scenarios — this time for Combat Patrol — I pulled them out of the project box and began painting them.  I finished them yesterday, and now they are ready to fight off Nazi Fallschirmjaegers.

It is NOT too late to order Combat Patrol and receive the cards in time for Christmas gift giving.  Give that war-gamer in your life — even if that’s yourself — this really exciting and innovative rules set for WWII skirmish actions.  Order them now and have them in time to start the New Year on a high note!

Set A can be ordered here:  http://www.drivethrucards.com/product/158116/Combat-Patrol-Set-A

Set B can be ordered here:  http://www.drivethrucards.com/product/158122/Combat-Patrol-Set-B

You need EITHER set A OR set B to play the game, but having both sets lets you run games for larger groups.  The basic rules can be downloaded for FREE form the sites indicated above.  The advanced rules are separate pdf download.

 

 

I haven’t had much hobby time the past couple of weeks with holidays and work.  I received these “helper” figures from Sergeant Major’s Miniatures in the mail and took a break from a mob of 20mm Dutch WWII figures to paint them up.  I typically prime figures in gray or black, but for these I first primed them in gray and then tried to spray them yellow, since yellow has such poor coverage.  That didn’t work.  I ended up gunking up some of the details and had to brush paint a couple coats of yellow anyway.  Still, I think they came out okay.

Now back to those Dutch…

At Barrage 2015 I picked up three Graham Farish 10mm (N scale) railroad building kits.  This weekend I finally took the time to assemble them.  While my assembly wasn’t perfect, I think the final outcome is passable.  With more practice, I think I could do a better job.

This is what the kits look like in the box.  There were apparently many different kits at one time.  I got these in a flea market, and I have not looked to see if they are still available.

When you pull them out of the box you get a bunch of these building blocks that have to be cut from the sprues and trimmed.  You get some instructions, and you get several sheets of facades to be applied to the building blocks.  I suspect these kits were quite old, but the gummy backs on the facades was still quite strong.  They are not die cut, so you trim the backs from the sheets, peel off the wax-paper backing, and stick them to the building blocks.

They assembled quite easily.  You almost don’t need the instructions.   There are some extra facades, so you can do a bit of customization.  The facades are meant to be photo realistic, and look pretty good once assembled.

There were even a couple of extra bits so that I could make these small sheds / garages.

On the whole, while a little large, I think the effect is good.  I really like the middle kit in the top picture that had the three stores.  The buildings will look okay in 10mm games and also some 10mm near future / science fiction games.

To mark the recent death of Larry Brom, author of the seminal and influential rules, the HAWKs ran a game of The Sword and the Flame last night.  It was fun to pull out those venerable rules and play the game.  TSAF was the second set of rules I ever owned.   Below are some pictures from the evening’s events.  The basic scenario involved the Pathans holding a hostage, young Wee Willie Winkie (the Shirley Temple version, depicted by a 15mm highlander in an otherwise 25mm game).  While a column of British and Indians moved to rescue her, additional Pathans were arriving as reinforcements.

The game ended when the defenders of the fort took enough casualties that they routed.  Then a group of Pathans charged to try to clear the way for the routing troops to take Winkie with them, but the were destroyed in a combination of rifle fire and melee.  The game was a resounding British victory.

In my last post, I talked about how I thought the firing mechanic in The Sword and the Flame did a nice job of representing volley fire — that felt like volley fire.  I want to talk about volley fire form a different perspective in this post.

I was reading one of the Wally Simon game design books that are being published by On Military Matters.  In one of the articles, Wally talks about a mechanic he envisioned in which reaction to volley fire is incorporated.  His thoughts dovetail with discussions in Brent Noseworthy’s books on the Seven Years War and Napoleonic Wars.  In Anatomy of Victory, Noseworthy discusses how difficult it is to get troops moving again once they begin a firefight.  There is an inertia created when lines begin to fire.  This may be due to the noise and smoke, the fear of the bayonet, etc.  But he makes the claim that when a charging unit fails to close and instead begins to fire that it is very difficult to get them to move again.  I actually incorporated this idea into Wellington Rules as an optional rule but left it out of Fate of Battle as being just a bit too detailed for those rules.

Back to Wally’s mechanic.  His thought was that when a unit fired, the target should immediately make a reaction test, which ranged from “remain under control” through “return fire” to “retreat.”  So a unit that is the target of the charge might discharge a volley.  The charging unit would immediately make a reaction test.  The most likely result would be stop and return fire.  Then the defending unit would make a reaction test, most likely returning fire.  Then the formerly charging unit, and so on.  The idea is that these units would begin blazing away at each other until one or the other broke or a commander on one side or the other was able to get his unit to close with the enemy.  It’s an interesting mechanic that has some appeal to it — particularly in an IGO-UGO activation scheme in which all the chargers are declared and everyone moves before fire is resolved.

In another article Wally talks about not counting casualties so much as disruption.  Of course, removing figures form the table does not always represent real casualties but some notion of disruption, stragglers, etc.  In Santa Anna Rules and Wellington Rules, I borrowed a mechanic I first saw almost 30 years ago in Ron Prillaman’s penny rules.  In those rules stragglers are represented explicitly.  Some hits remove stragglers and some remove casualties.  Stragglers can be recovered through rally-like actions by the unit’s leaders.  Casualties can never be recovered.  With this mechanic I was able to eliminate the need for morale checks.  When a unit had more stragglers than effectives, the unit routed.

So the idea is percolating in my head that combining these mechanics might make a really nice way to represent black powder era linear warfare in a novel and intuitive way.   Unit A fires, and unit B picks up some number of stragglers and casualties.  Unit B makes an immediate reaction test based on stragglers, casualties, remaining effectives, table situation, etc.  The response is often quite out of the leaders’ hands as the two lines of soldiers blaze away.  This goes back and forth until one side breaks or charges.

Right now, I am busy trying to promote Combat Patrol and and working on additional optional rules that I’ll make available as .pdf downloads, so these ideas are on the back burner.  One never knows when they’ll leap to the forefront and find themselves in a draft set of rules.

I like mechanics that “feel right” as well as being good approximations of the physical effect being modeled.

I had a recent Email exchange with Lori Brom — just prior to the death of her dad, Larry.  In my note to her I mentioned that I might have been the only person who really liked the original volley fire mechanic in The Sword and the Flame.  For those of you who don’t remember it, her it is:

(I intentionally only show part of the card and didn’t put a lot of effort into making it look good, because I don’t have permission to reproduce it.)  So for British rifles, as an example, I would roll a SINGLE six-sided die.  If the roll was a “4,” the result is “1/3.”  That means that I would count up the number of firing figures and for every three figures, I would inflict one casualty on the enemy.  Then you would draw cards to tell if the casualties were kills, wounds, leaders, etc.  It was the “1/3,” “1/4,” etc. mechanic that appealed to me.  Then the question arose, “what about remainders.”  In the original rules, reminders were lost.  In an issue of the Heliograph, someone proposed a method by which you rolled on a separate chart with a d10 to see if the remainder turned into an extra casualty or not.

Clearly many folks who played TSAF didn’t like this mechanic, because in subsequent editions of the rules, Larry moved to a d10-based mechanic, and I think a die roll for each figure.  But the elegance of the original approach — as well as the single die roll — always made a lot of intuitive sense to me.  When you fire by volley, you KNOW most of those bullets don’t strike a target.  This mechanic replicated in an elegant way that felt like volley fire to me.

When we were developing GASLIGHT I initially toyed with this idea, but dropped it in favor of rolling for each figure.  I figured Larry know what he was doing when he dropped this mechanic from TSAF, probably the single most successful set of wargaming rules ever.  As I said earlier, I like mechanics that “feel right” as well as being good approximations of the physical effect being modeled.  To me, this felt right.