Buck's Blog

I found these figures recently and couldn’t resist ordering them.  These are the characters from the classic Princess Bride.  Inconceivable!  I now need to find an opportunity to get them on the table.

A bunch of us participated in “JJ Con” in January.  My laptop died the next day, so it has taken me a while to get the pictures off my camera and post a few.  JJ Con is an annual gaming event, hosted by my high school buddy JJ.  It has become a three day gaming weekend / reunion of buddies.  In addition to some X-Wing, chariot racing, a fantasy variant of Blood and Swash, and the old Flying Buffalo card game, Nuclear War, we played several games using Combat Patrol(TM).  Not only is Combat Patrol(TM) the best set of rules ever written, but running five games using the same set of rules was easier for the guys who only game once a year.  This way, they didn’t have to learn a new set of rules with each game.

Poland 1939

JJ ran a Combat Patrol(TM) scenario from the Skirmish Campaigns book based in Poland in 1939.  I was on the Polish side, and we were attacking.  Our objective was to capture two of the three buildings or knock out all the German vehicles.  The Germans began the game mostly hidden, and then a bunch of tanks arrived as reinforcements.

I advanced with three tankettes and an armored car (represented by the light tank in this picture) to outflank one of the German-held buildings, but I ran smack into a German AT gun and some infantry.  The Germans kept trying to toss grenades into the tankettes while I kept trying to maneuver and machine-gun the infantry. In the end, Duncan’s infantry and AT crew knocked out all but one of my tankettes.

The armored car was able to get off a couple of shots, knocking out an advancing German tank.  In the picture above, the yarn was denoted woods.  When the German tanks came out of the woods, I took a reaction shot.  In Combat Patrol(TM), there is not opportunity fire rule, per se.  Instead, figures have a reaction number.  A figure may attempt to interrupt enemy movement by drawing an Action card, looking for a result lower than his reaction number.  In this case, I succeeded and hit the Pz II with a 37mm shell and knocked it out.

In the end, the game was a German victory.  We Poles were advancing steadily, but we had no hope of capturing two of the three buildings — we just didn’t have enough infantry — or knocking out the last German vehicle.

Boer War

The next game was a Boer War game.  Dave Wood has been working on a Boer War supplement for Combat Patrol(TM): WWII for a couple of years.  This scenario, which he’ll re-run at Cold Wars in March, is based on the raid that is discussed in the movie Breaker Morant, in which Morant’s commander is killed.

Dave had to take heavy license with the historical battle.  We British were advancing through the open at dawn to capture the Boer commander.  All of us failed out player morale after about two turns as were were getting slaughtered by long-range rifle fire, and there appeared to be no hope of success.  Unbeknownst to us, Dave had a surprise.  British irregulars, some of whom were Boer deserters, entered the table behind the Boer position.  This provided the support we needed to give us hope of success.

In the end, we British still lost, but there we made a fight of it.

Dave really only made a few changes to the rules.  Most had to do with how he handles command and control, since the units of this day were quite large, not organized into small squads like in WWII.

War of 1812

The next game involved American sailors landing to seize supplies from a British port in the Caribbean during the War of 1812.  Duncan has run this game before, and it is always fun.  Many of the British begin the game asleep, which gives the Americans an early advantage, but they quickly awake and put up a stiff defense.

The battle hinged on fight in the compound where the supplies were being stored.  The British were asleep in the compound when the Americans arrived.  The Americans attacked.  Then the British reinforced, and so on.  The battle seesawed back and forth throughout the game, with melees and short range fire.

Melee in Combat Patrol uses essentially an “opposed die roll.”  The British and American forces had essentially the same abilities.  The outcome was in doubt until the end.  When the smoke cleared, it was declared a British victory.  We still held the supplies.

Moros in the Philippines

We used the same terrain from the Napoleonic game to run a similar Moro game.  In this case, a band of Moros was advancing from the jungle to seize the supplies in the compound.  The Americans and Filipinos began with a few units near the supplies, but many were out in the town and had to race back toward the compound and safety.

I made a mistake in the scenario by not making the male train protected by Americans move a little slower than the infantry.  This made it difficult for the Moros to catch them in the open.   As usual, the Moro players feel disadvantaged by their small number of firearms.  The Moros had 50% troops than the Americans, and they could afford to lose a few in charges, but players don’t seem to like to have to play that way.

For the Moros, I use the Japanese Action Deck from the South Pacific supplement.  The only difference between these decks and the original Combat Patrol (TM) Action decks are the morale results.  To represent Japanese morale in the South Pacific, these cards have more unit morale results and fewer individual results. There are a number of cases where on the original Action Deck one or two figures would sprint toward the enemy, but on the South Pacific decks, the entire unit conducts a Banzai charge.  This seems to work very well for the Moros in the Philippines.

I also added a rule for juramantado.  These were Moro assassins who conducted suicidal charges.  Taking the idea from the movie The Real Glory, I gave each of the four Moro players one juramantado figure.  This figure had an increased Endurance attribute and enjoyed the benefits of the Banzai charge rules from the South Pacific supplement .  They had to charge toward the American overall leader to try to kill him.

This was the second time I ran this scenario.  The first time it was a swirling melee and a running retreat across the table.  This time the Americans raced to the compound and then went into Fort Apache mode.  In the end, it was a narrow Moro victory, which was ironic, since the Moro players felt like they were losing the entire game.

Conclusion

I think that using one set of rules for most of the games worked well.  It made it very easy for the folks who game once a year at JJ Con.  By the end of the second game, they infrequent gamers had mastered the basics of the rules and could focus on the game.  All of them were able to easily grasp even the nuances of Combat Patrol(TM), and they really enjoyed the rules.

Zeb Cook and I are planning to run a car race game on Sunday at Cold Wars in a couple of weeks.  Months ago I got my hands on the Pulp 1930’s race cars from Eureka Miniatures, and Zeb did as well.  So we thought that a short game on Sunday morning would be fun.

I saw a video play through of Gaslands and ordered the rules.  They weren’t supposed to have arrived until a day or two prior to Cold Wars, but they arrived this week with all the plastic templates, skid dice, and markers.  This weekend, after our monthly Ghost Archipelago game, I put a couple of cars on the table to try to figure out how the rules worked.

The game is pretty fun.  It’s not awesome, but it is a light game that will work great on a convention Sunday, like chariot races.

This provided the impetus for me to finish these cards that have been base sprayed for a couple of months and have been sitting on my painting table taunting me.

I have four of the Eureka cars (which is all they make, I think), but I felt like I needed more of them, so I tried to make one from the cheap cars often found at the supermarket checkout line.  They are slightly out of scale, but I think they look pretty good next to the Eureka ones.  I used some Dixson seated gangster to drive.  I have a few guns and plan to make one or two more before Cold Wars if I can, but I am running out of time.  Thankfully Zeb has four as well, so we have enough for the convention.

This is the second installment of Brian Ivers’ Black Jackals battle report using Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.  The Jackals prepare to retreat toward Battalion.

I use red rubber bands for wounds, black for stunts, and white for out of ammunition, but any mechanism that works for you is fine.  Sally 4th also makes some nice markers from MDF.

The platoon retreats into the forest to link up with another battalion.  Theirs has retreated and is miles away.  Lamb has lost four men, with three wounded.  2nd section disappeared completely, as they continued moving into another part of the forest and were scooped up by another retreating company.  Lamb has his mortar, but no ammunition.  The ATR is damaged and is now even less useful.  His little command is not just one officer and 21 men.  Jerry outflanked the canal, and the Belgians and French are retreating.  The British are now trying to avoid being “put in the bag.”

To be continued…

 

Yesterday I held an impromptu play test of the version of Combat Patrol for pre-flintlock ear warfare.  The initial impetus for this project was to game the border rievers period, but the guys in the club want to use it for various fantasy projects.  I think it will also be good for dark ages, medieval, and ancient skirmishes.

This was meant to exercise the rules, so the scenario was sort of an afterthought.  I had ten “teams” or “gangs.”  Players drew record cards randomly to determine which forces they commanded.  Then they drew a poker chip from their bag to determine which side they were on.  It didn’t result in as convoluted a situation as I had hoped, as all the “good guys” ended up on one end of the table, making it easy for them to protect the herds of sheep and cows.

To make it easier for players to distinguish their figures on the table, the gangs are color coded, where the predominant color is easily discerned.

As expected, the game started with long range musketry and archery fire.  The ranges are pretty short, so it wasn’t long before the melee began.

It looked like the blue gang was going to easily overwhelm the brown gang and capture the house, so the defenders began herding their livestock away from the house.  They also ran the women out to where the herds were moving.  Apparently the defenders did not trust the brown gang to defend their daughters.

The Action Deck was re-designed to include more melee information on the Action Cards.  Also, melee is no longer a single simultaneous “flip,” as in WWII.  Each weapon has a “reach” value, which determines who gets to attack first.   Weapons with the same reach attack simultaneously.  These changes worked quite well.

We used the mounted rules from the Napoleonic supplement to Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.  They worked just fine.  In the Napoleonic supplement, when firing on mounted figures, you flip an Action Card and look at the d10 icon to determine if you hit the man or the horse.  I put an icon to help with that on the Action Cards for this version of the game.

There is now a new “cover” icon on the cards.  It looks like a shield.  If you see the shield icon, and the hit location indicates a body part with armor, the amount of damage is reduced.  Metal armor reduces damage by 2.  Non-metal armor reduces damage by 1.  Shields also reduce damage by 1.  For this scenario, most figures had not armor, but a few had metal helmets or breast plates.

Weapons also have a damage modifier.  For instance, a two-handed axe is a +1 weapon, so it would add one point of damage after a successful attack.

In the end the defenders were able to retain most of their flocks (and women).  The green gang captured a few pigs, but the sheep and cows (and women) were safe.

Again the object of this first play test wasn’t so much the scenario as the rules.  As a result, I’ve made a few changes and am ready for another play test in the foreseeable future.

This morning I received an Email from Brian Ivers, a Combat Patrol player in Colorado about the first game in a campaign he is running based on the books The Black Jackals by  Ian Gales (https://youtu.be/LONqUKlrC2U).  He kindly gave me permission to repost his battle report on my blog.  The campaign begins at the Driel Canal in Belgium in June 1940.  Lieutenant Lamg’s platoon from the 51st Highlanders is ordered to defend this bridge and blow it up if the Germans try to cross.

Brian mixed in some random events, like a Stuka attack, reinforcements, communications breakdowns, etc.  When a random event occurred, he rolled on a special table he made to determine what happened.  The Combat Patrol Activation Deck includes optional cards to trigger Game Master and Random events.

A Stuka attack misses the men on the British side of the bridge.  Refugees race across to the British side of the bridge.  Lamb wants to blow the bridge, but he doesn’t want to kill innocent civilians.

Lamb gets a radio message to withdraw.

 

This past weekend, the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers hosted our annual, two-day, gaming convention, Barrage.  The event was a big success.  There were a number of Combat Patrol: WWII games on offer.

Poland 1939

I ran a game set in Poland in 1939.  The Poles were conducting reconnaissance and ran into a German force moving to capture a farmhouse to establish a battle position.

Star Wars (Rebels Era)

Greg ran a Rebels era Star Wars game using Combat Patrol.  The Rebels had attacked the cargo hold of an Imperial ship to steal supplies, but it was a trap.  Stormtroopers and Darth Vader attacked from both ends of the hold, turning the scenario into an escape and evasion mission for the Rebels.

Star Wars (Clone Wars Era)

Greg ran a second Star Wars game using the free Star Wars supplement to Combat Patrol.  This one was a battle between droids and clones on a jungle planet.

Moros in the Philippines

Moros advanced to a small farm house to seize cattle for food.  An American patrol was sent to stop them.  The Moros had very few firearms but made use of the ones they had.  One American squad was caught in the open and was badly mauled until reinforcements could arrive to bail them out.  In the end, the Moros escaped with the cattle.

Combat Patrol(TM) works very well for the Philippines.  Typically I use the Japanese decks for the Moros, but I forgot to bring them this time, so they had “normal” morale.    If the Moros make good use of cover and concealment they can mitigate the American firepower advantage.  When the Moros hit the Americans in hand-to-hand combat, the Americans feel suitable overwhelmed.  The Moros are difficult to defeat in hand-to-hand combat, but not impossible.

Tekumel

Bill Acheson ran a Tekumel game using the under-development Combat Patrol(TM): Dark Ages and Fantasy (working title) rules.  Tekumel is the world in the fantasy role playing game Empires of the Petal Throne by M.A.R. Barker.  The races, flora, and fauna are not based on Earth mythology, so the feel of the game is quite different.

His scenario involved humans attacking into a tunnel system occupied by bug-like creatures.

By all accounts the new Combat Patrol(TM) rules that focus on melee more than shooting worked very well.  There were some quibbles about the magic that Bill is bolting on and some scenario tweaks before he runs it at another convention, but in general, I think the players felt the rules worked for a melee-heavy period.

Finland 1939

Zeb Cook ran a Finland 1939 game with the free Winter War supplement to Combat Patrol(TM): WWII.  The Russians were advancing against hidden Finnish opposition.

Barrage was a great success, but on Sunday I was pretty tired and couldn’t really get motivated to do any of the other stuff I needed to get done, so like any good war gamer, I painted.

I have already painted one platoon of Pig Iron figures.  I really like them.  I bought an enemy platoon.  They have been assembled, filed, primed, based, and awaiting paint for some months.  I figured they would be quick and easy to paint, since I didn’t plan to paint them in any elaborate camouflage patterns, just territorial beige.

I organized my platoon into three rifle squads a heavy weapon squad, and a couple of extra teams.

In addition to final prep for Barrage, I also managed to get a few figures painted.  The first were some science fiction civilians I ordered a month or so ago.  These were kind of fun to paint, since I really used mostly block painting to give them a cartoon look.

In addition, I finally painted the Steampunk George Stephenson figure that I received at Partizan last year.  Partizan is held in the George Stephenson exhibit hall.  I don’t think he really had a mechanical arm.  🙂

Finally, I had this little elephant pendant (about an inch long) that my buddy Ma’k gave me to see what I might do with it.  I made it a heavy weapon platform for my space ducks.

See pictures here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/142143895@N06/albums/72157668763280169/page1