Category: Wargaming

At Historicon, these figures called to me.  They are Eskimo cavalry riding polar bears and some sort of yak-like animal produced by Sergeant Major’s Miniatures.  I just had to have them to add to my Northland Adventures collection.

The mounts were cast in two pieces.  The rider’s right hands were separate and had to be glued onto the arms.  I am looking forward to seeing them in a game.

I recently finished eight more battalions of Russian infantry.  To finish the VII and VIII corps, I just need to complete several regiments of cavalry and many leaders.  It takes 30 figures to make an infantry battalion but only 10 for a cavalry regiment, so I suspect it won’t take long to complete the order of battle.  I’ve figured out what I need to order from Old Glory and will probably place the order soon.

I have been storing my 10mm figures in cardboard, computer keyboard boxes.  With 10mm WWII there are only 10 infantry figures on a base.  The density of figures for Napoleonic bases is much higher, and the cardboard boxes are beginning to crush.  I mentioned that I was looking for something better, and my buddy Mark turned me on to Really Useful Boxes.  After perusing their Web page, I determined that the 4-liter box would be the right size.  With the lipped tray, you get two roughly equal height storage levels that are perfect size for 10mm infantry, artillery, cavalry, or leaders.

Here is what the box looks like when it’s closed.  One of these boxes is shorter, but slightly taller than the thin keyboard boxes I’ve been using.  They also store a few more figures than the keyboard boxes.  For 10mm WWII, I put two battalions in a cardboard box.   It will be excellent to put two battalions in one of these, one on each level.  Then I can just hand a player either a box without the tray or a tray without the box, and he will have his total command.  Two players won’t have to fight for access to their keyboard box with another player, particularly when they enter the game on different table sides.

One of these 4-liter boxes will be just about right for most of my 28mm figures with the trays inside, but any figures that have their arms or anything else above their heads will only fit if you don’t use the second-story tray.  They also make two more boxes that are slightly taller but have the same footprint at the 4-liter boxes.  I was thinking that one of these with the tray would enable me to store the taller figures on the bottom level and the shorter figures on the top level.

On their Web page, these boxes are $15 each, but at Staples I can get the boxes for $8 each.  The trays are an additional $4, but you must order them on line, as neither Staples, Office Depot, nor Office Max carry any of the inserts for the boxes.  The boxes are much more sturdy than the cardboard ones, and after I fully convert — in several years — my shelves will have a pleasing, uniform appearance.

If you have been following this series of posts, you’ll recall that I am developing some concepts for a new skirmish-level World War II game.  In previous posts, I’ve provided examples of some of the action cards as they’ve evolved.  Above is a sample unit record sheet for a player.  Note that each player is supposed to lead a squad, consisting of two half squads for most countries.  (Marines, on the contrary, divided their squads into three teams.  One might also argue that a US Army squad was divided into three teams as well.)

Below is an example of a vehicle record.  This is very early in development of a vehicle record, as I haven’t thought through all the vehicle rules yet.  I am also desperately in need of another play test of the basic infantry rules.

Note that the layout of the “back” of the vehicle card.  This is designed to give the players guidance on how to resolve the various results of hit location from the action deck.  I would guess that after a game or two most of the back of this card will be no longer needed.  I am hoping to develop some fun items for the non-penetrating hit table.  Also, I think that any penetrating hit will also include a roll on the non-penetratin hit chart.  I’m not artist, but I’m trying to lay out the back of the card in a way that is intuitive.  What do you think?

To this point in development, the only need for a die has been to roll for movement distance each turn.  To resolve these kinds of combat effects, I think I will put a 1 through 10 in the top right corner of each card.  You could then flip a card to “roll” a d10.  If players prefer, they could also use a d10 already sitting on the table for movement instead of flipping a card.

For the first time since May I had a chance to do some painting.  Sam Fuson has made sheets of labels for Fate of Battle that reflect real orders of battle.  For my Russian force, I am building out Bagration’s VII and VIII corps.  My current Russian force was an ad hoc mixture of things I was able to find on ebay.  That was enough to get me started and do all the needed play testing for the rules.  Now I am building out the missing bits to create those two corps.

At Historicon, I had pre-ordered several bags of Russians.  Two bags of infantry and a command bag make eight battalions with two color parties extra.  I’ll eventually mount the color parties on the bases for the corps commanders and Bagration.  I couldn’t sleep this morning, so I wrapped up these eight battalions of Russian jaegers.  The uniforms are just about the same as Russian infantry, except they have white plumes and green pants.

I also knocked out several batteries of artillery.  Of course the Russians in the Napoleonic Wars are known for their masses of guns.  Looking at the order of battle for these two corps, I’m not sure I want to face them on the table.  This picture just shows the light artillery in the VII and VIII corps as well as some attached directly to Bagration.

This is the heavy artillery.  As a comparison, the two French corps that I have painted have a total of 8 artillery batteries, mostly 8-lb ones.  Later in the wars, the French began to compensate for lack of well-trained infantry by adding artillery batteries to their corps — in many cases supplied by the enemy.

In the top third of the card, I thought all the modifiers and things looked too cramped and busy.  It occurred to me that the players could start in the right “column” and then apply fewer column shifts.  So in the example above, all the cards have the “EVT” labels under the first three “columns,” standing for expert, veteran, and trained, the three ratings for accuracy and melee.

I had envisioned a multi-step process using the existing mechanisms for resolving HE and other forms of indirect fire:  flip a card to see if you hit the right area [if no, then scatter], then flip a card to see if where you wanted to hit is blocked (e.g., by a window) [if so, then scatter], then figure out which figures are in the short, medium, and long radii from the point of the blast, then flip a card to determine if each figure was hit, then for each figure hit, flip a card to determine wound location.  Argh!  One can imagine the game coming to a screeching halt and folks heading out for a meal every time someone throws a grenade!

It occurred to me that I could make three octagons that are just “rings.”  These would be different sizes, representing different blast radii for indirect fire.  While a bit of an oversimplification, the smallest one would be for grenades, the second would be for small mortars (say 81mm and below), and the larger one would be for large mortars and artillery.

The process for throwing a grenade, for instance, becomes flip a card and look at the small numbers above the row of checks and x’s.  As with direct fire, the starting “column” used would based on the accuracy rating of the thrower.  The top row of numbers indicates the number of radii of scatter and the little knife indicates the direction.

In these examples, a veteran unit with no other modifiers would scatter two radii, zero radii, and one radius, respectively.  One can imagine that the scatter distance might be doubled for off-board artillery.  Or, you might imagine that HE fired in direct fire would use the radii as indicated on the cards, on-board indirect fire would double the scatter distance, and off-board artillery might triple the distance.  The beauty of this approach is that a weapon with a small burst radius thrown from a short distance, like a grenade, would scatter a smaller amount than a light mortar fired from some distance.  This was a problem I’ve tackled in different ways in other rules, such as BAPS.

Now, here is another nuance.  See the three blast symbols on the top figure?  They represent small, medium, and large burst radius weapons.  When all three are shown as indicated above, if the soldier is within the octagonal ring of either a small, medium, or large weapon, he has been hit, and you flip the next card for damage, just as with normal fire.  You would flip a card for for each figure in the burst radius.  Some convention might be used, like go from inside out or left to right.  The manner doesn’t really matter as long as one card is flipped for each figure.

There are 50 cards in the deck (plus two extras).  Twenty will be misses, meaning that the figure for which you are flipping takes no damage.  Ten will have all three symbols, ten will have just large and medium, and ten will have just large.  (I need to think about this math a little more, to make sure I’m including the right number of each type of effect.)  One can imagine ways to reduce this to one symbol showing the smallest radius weapon that scores a hit, so instead of having to use all three symbols, the “small” symbol would be read as “small or larger.”

What does this mean mathematically?

If there are four figures in the large burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.6 x 4 = 2.4.

If there are four figures in the medium burst radius, the expected number of casualties is 0.4 x 4 = 1.6.

If there are four figures in the small burst radius (a difficult task), the expected number of casualties is 0.2 x 4 = 0.8.

It might seem odd that everyone within the radius has the same probability of damage, but on average, I think it will work out fine.

See how this gets away from complicated templates, having to break out the calipers to determine who is in the short radius and who is within the medium radius, etc.

The HE procedure now is significantly streamlined from what was discussed above.  Now you flip one card to determine whether the round landed where you want it and determine the scatter direction and distance all on one card.  Then for each figure in the burst radius you flip one card for damage effect, ignoring the counting (which figure is hit) diagram.  Indirect fire, instead of being onerous, has just one more card flip (on average) than direct fire.  Pretty cool.

I’m going to bed now.

Yesterday the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers (HAWKS) ran our annual gaming day, Barrage, in the Havre de Grace community center.  Above is a picture of the team that put together this very successful gaming event.  At it’s peak we had about 130 participants, and we presented 42 miniatures events along with a Flames of War tournament.

We all converged on the community center Friday evening to set up tables and chairs.  After we were all set up, Chris ran an “all comers” fantasy game, using Bear Yourselves Valiantly.  At the same time, Russ from On Military Matters ran several six- to eight-player X Wing Fighter games.  The community center is a 60-90 minute drive for me.  We wrapped up around 2200 and needed to converge again by 0800 Saturday morning.  As I didn’t relish the long drives or short night, so I had determined in advance that I would camp out Friday night in the community center, which has both a full kitchen and a shower.  Geoff elected to remain overnight as well.  After all the HAWKs had departed we watched an episode of Man from UNCLE on my Mac and a few other short videos before going to sleep.  The next morning he cooked sausage and eggs from his chickens for breakfast.  By the time the HAWKS began to arrive again, we were reasonably well rested, clean, and fed.

Don and Geoff manned the registration desk in the morning.  Don manned the desk most of the day.  Dealers and game masters began arriving at 0800, with gamers arriving a little before 0900.    HAWKS ladies ran the food concession throughout the day, offering hot dogs, snacks, drinks, and (later) pizza.  Food was inexpensively priced and allowed folks to stay and game rather than wander around town looking for food.

We had several dealers.  Steve, from Age of Glory, has been supporting Barrage for 13 years.  For the past two years, Russ, from On Military Matters, has been coming to Barrage.  In addition we had several other folks selling books, games, and figures.  The dealers told me that they did well.  We even had a couple of folks come to Barrage just to spend money with our vendors.  Barrage is an “old school” convention with the dealers arranged around the outside of the gaming area.  This allows players to slip over and sample their wares between turns and in many cases allowed vendors to participate in a game or two while still watching their tables.  Russ had an X Wing Fighter game going most of the day, and Steve got to participate in a Force on Force modern Afghanistan scenario.  Bob from the I-95 gamers hosted the second annual Barrage Flames of War tournament.  By all accounts the tournament was very successful, despite another Flames of War tournament being scheduled on top of ours elsewhere in Pennsylvania, which sucked away at least five participants.

Above and below are samples of some of the excellent games we had on offer at Barrage.

The game pictures above used some ‘beer and pretzels” rules from Bill Molyneau.  This was the first tabletop gaming experience for the three young men in the center of the picture.  They got to play in three games (Dr. Who by GASLIGHT, Aerodrome, and this ACW battle), and they expressed interest in coming to a HAWKs club meeting.

Bill and William ran this very interesting War of 1812 game of a battle in which Bill had two ancestors.  He used John Bull and Patriots for the game.

Once again, Mark and Sean, the authors of Fireball Forward, supported Barrage.  The game looked great, and the players were engaged the whole time.

Brian Cantwell ran this beautiful ancient naval game.  The ships are paper models with 15mm figures deployed on them.  I think Brian had 10 players, and the game seemed to go very well.

In addition to several kid-friendly game, the HAWKs normally dedicate one table to games designed for kids.  We didn’t have very many kids this year compared to other years, but here is one youngster who enjoyed Geoff’s Lego pirate game with his aunt.

I think this game was a play test for Fall In.  Chris said the game was “intense” and went down to the wire.  I never did find out who won, but the players all had a great time and left the game looking like they had survived a real battle — in a good way!

Above is a small piece of a Dr. Who game using GASLIGHT, featuring an elaborate tunnel system and lots of chaotic action.  This table was a source of lots of whooping and hollering during the morning.

For the second year in a row, Bendan Watts ran his Eat Hitler game, in which Nazis in their time machine hunt for dinosaurs to help with their war effort.  In this case, all the Nazis became dino-snacks.

The last couple of years we had a monotonically increasing number of gamers and games.  While the trend continued, the increase this year was very modest, which was a bit disappointing.   Attendance was impacted by a huge accident on I-95 that affected the Philadelphia and New Jersey gamers.  It was also affected by a competing Flames of War tournament that siphoned off 5 to 8 of the players we expected.  Despite the lower than expected attendance, all but three of our scheduled games were run (as a policy we try to push folks into the guest game master gamers, so the three games that didn’t run would have been put on by HAWKs), the dealers did well, and all the participants had a great time.

If you didn’t make it this year, and you live between DC, Frederick, and Philly, you really need to make Barrage 2014 part of your plans next September.

I started work last weekend on eight battalions of 10mm Russian Jaegers.  It was the first time I’ve picked up a brush since May.  Between the move to a new house, Summer vacations, and other events, I just haven’t had time to paint.  I have been trying to fill out my Russian forces IAW the order of battle and labels that Sam Fuson prepared for Fate of Battle (available as a free download from the LSNC Yahoo Group).  I bought eight battalions of jaegers at Historicon, but this is the first chance I’ve had to paint them.  I will have some time off the last week in September, and I hope to finish them, along with 24 batteries of artillery.

Last weekend, Dave, Chris, and I travelled to War Horse Farm in Gettysburg to run some games for Sam Fuson and folks from his work.  There were 16 gamers, plus the three GMs, including several kids.  We ran two morning games and two afternoon games.

In the afternoon, Chris ran his Nijmegen WWII Look, Sarge, No Charts game that he will be running at Fall In.

In the morning, Dave helped me run a Fate of Battle game from our upcoming 1814 Campaign book.  This was also a play test for Fall In.  The scenario was really quite good, and the players had an excellent time.

In the afternoon I ran a multi-sided GASLIGHT undersea game.

Various international factions were competing to get secrets off of the Nautilus, which had recently been discovered.  The native denizens, the local fauna, and Nemo’s crew had other plans.

The game was a good time and a nice, light change of pace after the more serious, four hour Napoleonic game.

It was also the first time I had had a chance to get these underwater figures on the table.

In the end, I think only Dave and the weird fish were able to accomplish their mission — killing and eating one soldier from each of the five attacking factions.

It was another successful outing at War Horse Farm.  Sam says that the folks he works with are getting ready to start buying and painting their own figures.

I have updated all the action cards based on comments I’ve made in the previous four posts.  I think I am ready for another play test before taking on indirect fire, HE, and tanks.

During yesterday’s run, I came up with what I thought was a solution to my morale dilemma.  After a few minutes with Excel, I think it will work.

What I envision is that the card will have a target number, between -3 and 4.  When making a morale check, the player will subtract the number of morale pips from the Guts # of the unit.  If this difference is greater than the target number, the unit passes.  Otherwise the result of the morale break will be found on the card.

This will allow a single card draw for the morale check, rather than one card draw per morale pip as currently envisioned.  It gives about the right percentage of pass and fail results.  I think I’m ready to give this a try.