Author: Buck

I wrote a longish article on the design process for Combat Patrol(TM): World War II.  It was originally serialized and posted on The War-games Website.  After the six-month exclusive period expired, the articles have been reposed on Cigarbox Battles.  The first three parts of this four-part article are posted now.  Please give them a read and let me know what you think.  I have always found reading about how other serious designers go about their design process.  If you haven’t heard of Combat Patrol(TM), see the rules’ Web site here.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 will be published in February.

While you are at the Cigar Box Battles site, this is a fun article.

I have been collecting figures to adapt Combat Patrol(TM): World War II for science fiction skirmishes.  I have the Woodbine figures from the movie Aliens, the Sergeant Major’s Miniatures Firefly crew, and a bunch of Reaper Bones science fiction figures.  Chris pointed out that for an open-field type science fiction skirmish we needed some vehicles and support weapons.  I am working on a a scratch-build APC (more on that when I finish it).  Someone directed me to Pig Iron’s Web page, where I ordered a bunch of heavy infantry with support weapons.  Until those arrive, I found this box of Games Workshop Warhammer 40k support weapons.  This weekend I assembled and painted them.  The interesting thing about this box of figures is that it comes with crew for three weapons, but enough parts to make three each of several different weapons.  I guess you are supposed to choose which weapons you want to build; however, I wanted to be able to use any mix of them in a game.  As a result, I assembled them for maximum flexibility, sacrificing some aesthetics.  The figures don’t look as much like a permanently-mounted two-man crew any more so that I can mix and match them during a game.

With a sharp hobby knife I scraped off most the GW wings and skulls to make them more generic.  There were MANY to scrape off.

There were also a bunch of extra canteen, rifles, ammunition, and other bits.  When I build my space ship, I will use them to equip the arms room.

Even though the flexibility meant that the figures didn’t fit as nicely behind all the weapon, and some of the poses are a bit off, I am happy with the final outcome.

Friday night we had two miniatures games at the club.  Eric ran a Hogwarts themed game with Blood and Swash.  The other was Zeb’s cowboy free for all using the old TSR Boot Hill rules.

The game was a wild affair with various groups fighting to break a prisoner out of the jail, keep him in the jail, and/or pump him for information.

In the end I was able to hold onto the prisoner; however, Bruce and his “opportunists” won the game by bartering their services for gold.

It has been many, many years since I have played Boot Hill.  It was in many ways nostalgic to play a game with percentile dice.  While it had quite a few modifiers and charts, it didn’t take too long to pick it back up.  Everyone had a good time.

I was in Orlando this week for work.  This evening I had a chance to play a largish X-Wing game with a guy from work at a local hobby store, Paladin.  My dice were characteristically cold, and I was down from 6 to 2 ships in just a couple of turns.  The game was nonetheless fun.

I posted another Combat Patrol (TM) demonstration video to the rules’ Web page:  http://www.bucksurdu.com/Buck_Surdu/Combat_Patrol.html.

The question came up on The Miniatures Page about how people store their X-Wing ships.   I found this to be the most cost-effective — and safest — way to store mine.  I started with a 4-liter Really Useful Box.  I cut a piece of 1/2-inch blue insulation board to fit inside.  Then I drilled holes in  the foam that are about the same diameter as the slight stand sticks.  I leave the top stick in the ships and then stand them up in the foam.  They don’t bounce around or bump into each other.  It also minimizes the risk of breaking the tiny little flanges on the bottom of the ships.  Cheap and easy.

As has been our tradition since 2008, I hosted a New Year’s Eve gaming event at my house for members of the Harford Area Weekly Kreigspeilers.  We began at about 3:30 in the afternoon with a 14-player GASLIGHT free-for-all set in Egypt.  My New Year’s Eve pulp games typically feature Duke Morrison and his buddies (“Wrench” Web, “Boats” Morgan, and “Struts” McPherson), often trying to rescue Gianna Nannini or her genius scientist father, Dr. Serafini Nannini.  This year was the same, with the added bonus of Indiana Jones, Salla, Short Round, and Marion hunting for artifacts.  A hapless archaeologist had uncovered several valuable and mystical artifacts in a remote pyramid near two Egyptian desert towns.  Once news leaked out, Nazis, Duke, Indy, Russians, Turks, Indians, Highlanders, Australians, mercenaries, and Arabs all converged on the area with competing goals of either capturing the artifacts or ensuring they stayed in the valley.  In addition, Sergeants Cutter, MacChensey, and Ballentine leading a group of Indian infantry sought to rescue the colonel’s daughter.  The sailors and others also heard a rumor of a lost keg of rum being hidden in one of the towns and had an objective of capturing this rare and valuable shipboard commodity.  A renegade group of French Legionaries had the mission of blowing up the platypus idol (Why?  How cares?  It was fun.).  Finally, a secret Papal group, the Order of the Blessed Crucifix, had the mission to retain possession of a religious relic with mystical properties.

You can imagine that with all these competing missions the game was a wild and woolly affair, just the kind of light hearted romp you want on New Year’s Eve.

The first two turns didn’t see a lot of shooting.  I deliberately set groups with competing goals far enough apart that they needed to move a little first.  One player with two units (cultists and Indians) got the missions of his two forces confused, so the cultists began firing erroneously on the Germans defending their flying wing on turn 2.  It did make for a lot of excitement.  The German defenders included a handler for a pack of guard raptors.  These quickly made a snack of a group of US soldiers, but then the cultists began blazing away at the remaining German defenders.

There were two towns on the table, an “older” one (made of Miniature Building Authority buildings) and a newer one (made from Crescent Root buildings).  The newer town didn’t see a lot of action.  The Order of the Blessed Crucifix (OBC) brothers were hidden in one of the buildings.  After a brief skirmish between a group of Arabs and the OBC, the Arabs got bloodied and decided to focus on other objectives.  The Americans who started in the village headed for the German flying wing.  The Gestapo (right of the picture above) bypassed the town to try to kill or capture Duke Morrison.

There were four groups of Nazis, each with slightly different but not opposing missions.  The Nazi cavalry with submachine guns entered the older town, battled for a while, then went to help the She Wolves maintain control of three of the four artifacts they had “acquired” from the archeologist.

A group, calling themselves (inappropriately) the Girly Girls, had the mission to settle and old (romantic?) score with Duke Morrison.  I say “inappropriately,” because the group was composed of tough-as-nails women like Lara Croft.  They decided to steal a truck in order to get to Duke’s entourage more quickly.  This began a major kerfuffle in the village that eventually involved Arabs, Nazis, Indians, and the “Sergeants Three.”  The Girly Girls eventually sped out of town with a truck.  Later in the game, they made it to Duke Morrison, but by then the Gestapo had incapacitated him, and the Russians were dragging his body off the table.

Meanwhile the French Foreign Legionaries and their Wild Bunch mercenaries made their way toward the platypus idol.  They stole one truck easily enough, but then they got greedy and tried to steal a second one.  They thought a Model T on the table had just a single Arab driver and attacked it, only to discover it was full of Arab soldiers.  In the ensuring melee, all of the Legionaries attacking the car were killed.

While this was going on, the She Wolves easily “acquired” three of the four artifacts from the archeologist, but then inherited the pyramid’s curse and were attacked by a mummy.  Despite his excellent Save number, the mummy was eventually vanquished.  He took down two She Wolves and two U.S. soldiers before turning into dust.  The She Wolves then spent the rest of the game holding out against enraged dock workers (commanded by “Boats” Morgan) and U.S. soldiers (commanded by “Crusty” Philpott).  Toward the end of the game, the Nazis on raptors provided reinforcements for the She Wolves, Arabs fired at everyone, and the Foreign Legion showed up to plant explosives on the platypus idol.

Duke Morrison began the game in a building with a truck parked next to it.  The cards didn’t come up in Duke’s favor, so he immediately had to fight a group of Arabs who were trying to steal the truck.  While Duke knocked off many of the Arabs, eventually one drove off with the truck.  His victory was short lived, because the Wild Bunch jumped on it and eventually killed the driver and hijacked the truck themselves.  The Foreign Legion used this truck to transport themselves and their explosives to the platypus idol to complete their mission.

So, how did all the carnage end?  Duke Morrison was incapacitated with the Russians and Girly Rights fighting over his limp body.  Indy, Salla, and Short Round were eaten by Nazi guard raptors while Marion fled into an oasis to hide.  The Cultists retained control of Gianna Nannini in the oasis near the flying wing and were preparing to sacrifice her.  Someone had crushed one of the artifacts by driving a truck over it.  Most of the Arabs were dead, as were the majority of the Nazis, sailors, and soldiers.  The Indians rescued the colonel’s daughter.  The Highlanders and Australians had mopped up the remaining defenders around the flying wing and had it firmly in their control.  The Golden Skull, a mysterious Nazi leader, was dead.  The French successfully blew up the platypus idol, but the explosion killed most of the remaining Legionaries.  The big winners (with 30 victory points) were the OBC, who held onto their religious artifact and did enough damage early in the game to the Arabs in the new village so that no one thought to attack them the rest of the game.  The U.S. soldiers (aligned with Duke Morrison) were the big losers, with negative 57 victory points.

The game was a hoot.  It lasted just over three hours, with everyone fully engaged throughout.  We had one player who had never even seen tabletop miniatures before, but he seemed to have an excellent time.

After putting away the pulp figures, Kurt ran another GASLIGHT game on the same terrain.  Traditionally New Year’s Eve gaming sessions have included a Santa Claus game.  This year Kurt ran a game that featured Santa, his Elves, Moonraiser’s Marauders (misfit toys who parachute in with umbrellas), Rudolph, Yukon Cornelius, teddy bears, and others launching a raid on the stronghold of the evil goblins who have repeatedly attacked the North Pole in previous years.

The Santa forces had launched their raid to rescue a bunch of snowball throwing kids and carolers who had been captured by the Goblins.  I was a goblin defender and held on reasonably well, having defeated a teddy bear unit, their artillery, a bunch of elves, and most of a unit of fish-throwing penguins before losing my last goblin.  Since all the defenders had been destroyed, Kurt determined that Santa and his forces could search all the buildings and free the prisoners at their leisure, so the game was a resounding victory for Santa.

We finished the evening with a game of Five Year Mission (a cooperative Star Trek dice and card game) and a strange game of Red Dragon Inn.  We play this game frequently, but this time, a couple of players had a lot of gambling cards while most of us did not.  After two rounds of gambling, and before I even took my first turn, only four of the original 12 players were still in the game.  Tank (with the beard in the picture below) eventually bested my daughter to win the game.

As is also HAWKs tradition, soon after midnight we old fogies poop out.  By 1 AM everyone had gone home, ahead of the bar-closing traffic.  It was a fun evening and a nice way to ring in the new year while avoiding crowds and slobbering drunks.

As is the HAWKs holiday custom, Duncan hosted a game at his house last night.  He has been hosting a game sometime on or about Christmas and/or New Year’s Eve, depending on how the holidays fall in the week for some years.  This year he chose to use Combat Patrol for a semi-reprise of one of his WWI 28mm scenarios.

In the scenario, we Germans had gained a small foothold across the canal (to the right of the picture above), and our mission was to expand that hold and push the British off the table.  There wasn’t enough time to actually push every Brit off the table, but Duncan said capturing the bridge pictured, the church in the background, and the other buildings around the courtyard would be evidence that we were achieving our mission.  While we initially outnumbered the British, we expected them to be reinforced at some point in the game.

Duncan’s figures were mounted for another system and were mostly mounted in pairs.  This occasionally created some issues tracking wounds and figuring out how to represent some morale effects, but in general it worked fine.  The buildings were a mix of manufacturers, including Grand Manor, Old Glory, and Miniature Building Authority.  I think the table was very nice.  As with all games involving a large number of buildings, there was some effort involved with getting figures in an out of the various floors of the buildings.

In Combat Patrol (which was written for World War II) squads are generally broken into two or three teams (depending on the country), which are the atomic unit of the game.  Duncan treated each early WWI squad as the atomic element.  I was a little worried at first that letting then men fire at the same time would either slow the game and/or prove too deadly to one side if the other got advantageous activation card draws early in the game.  The Combat Patrol mechanics didn’t seem to bog down with those large atomic elements, and the dense terrain with lots of protection seemed to mitigate the deadliness of fire.  In general, I’d say the rules worked fine for this historical period.

In addition to a platoon of infantry, I was assigned a Minenwerfer.  I only got to fire it twice, because of difficulty of my spotter being able to see targets and the slow reload time.  My first shot did some damage to British infantry ahead of Geoff’s advance, but it drifted a bit and caught some of Geoff’s men in the blast as well.  The second shot took the roof off a building in the courtyard, doing a lot of damage to Don’s men inside, but not before Don took out one of my advancing squads (to be described later).

The onus was on the Germans to advance, so while Geoff engaged Rob in a bloody firefight, I advanced through the alley and into the courtyard of a British held building.  In the next couple of activations, I pushed into the first floor.  The doorway was defended by just Rob’s platoon leader as most of the men in the building were on the upper floors where they had better fields of fire.  I eventually captured the first two floors and was ready to assault the third floor when we ended the game.  Aided by Geoff softening up Rob before I got there, I only lost half a squad in taking the building.

Meanwhile, Dave advanced his platoon across the canal at the German-held foot bridge and moved into position to pass me and continue the advance.

I know there was a LOT of activity on the other side of the table, but I was focused on my side.  I know that Kurt’s field gun and machine-gun silenced the British gun.  Also Eric eventually got some good long-range shots against our company commander who was observing the fight from a rubbled building, forcing him to seek cover.  Eventually the reinforcements arrived from that end of the table.  They didn’t have a major impact on the game, because the German attack was pretty well spent by the time they arrived.

We needed to keep advancing toward the church.  While I was busing in hand-to-hand combat with Rob, Geoff advanced two of his squads up the alley to the right of the picture (above).  That had me advancing up the street in the center of the pictures.  I thought that Dave and Kurt had silenced the British in the building on the other side of the courtyard, because I didn’t see any fire coming out of it.  Not so.  As I advanced up the street, I was cut apart by Don.  I eventually lost four men and accrued eight morale markers.  On my second morale check, the remainder of my elite squad of pioneers ran off the table.

In retaliation, I dropped a minenwerfer shell on Don’s building.  It took out the roof and wounded many of his men on the top floor.  About this time, it was getting late and all of us old guys were getting tired, so we called the game a convincing British victory.

Combat Patrol worked really well for early WWI, with a few scenario-specific and period-specific modifications that Duncan made to give it an earlier feel.  For instance in the basic rules for WWII, any infantryman can re-man a machine-gun, but we thought that in 1914, not all infantryman would have been trained on this new-fangled weapon.  Also, he used the larger squads, which gave the units a bit of an unwieldy feel compared to the more nimble teams of WWII.  The game was a success and great fun.

I found two interesting sets of figures a month or two ago in the local hobby shop.  These are Bolt Action figures.  Though I don’t play Bolt Action, the figures are nonetheless useful.

The first is a three-figure set of a .30 cal machine-gun team on the move.

The second is a .50 cal machine-gun team with the gun in action.

I decided to block paint these and then dip them in the Army Painter dark tone wash.  I don’t think I would like this effect on Napoleonic figures, but on these WWII figure, I like the look — and it was very fast.