Two in One!

Last week was a good week for games.

Been a very long while since I got two games in within seven days, but I did it this week.

A game at home on sunday first of all; we rolled out the Epic 40k figures. As you can see from the arrayed armies of Orks and Imperial Guard, what they lack in size they more than make up for in numbers. In total the game involved around 250 figures and 120+ vehicles.



An Ork assault developed on the ruins of a regional penal colony on Armageddon. At first only an Ork supply station was occupied, but the fast moving forces of the Kult of Speed and forces of Battlewagons sonn applied some pressure to a defending Company of the 181st defence militia regiment. Although reserves for the 181st were arriving, it appeared it would be too slow to stop the Orkish advance.



A wide advance by the Orks was then backed up by infantry and the slow progress of the Ork Great Gargant. But now the long range firepower of the 181st and their tanks and artillery started to make an impression. Several ork units were pinned down whilst a Tank company made a rapid advance on the left flank:





Whilst some Ork forces advanced, others stalled and the first force was outright destroyed, sent into retreat. The artillery and concentrated fire of the Baneblade and Shadowsword tanks stopping the main attack. On the left, Orks were trying to counter the Tank advance.



As many Ork units broke, the Gargant finally came into play, in doing so attracting a mass of fire from the Reaver titan and Shadowswords. Sorely outnumbered, the Leman Russ tanks broke, but not without inflicting many losses on the Orks. The 181st and its' command company held in the centre. Overall a hard fought,but inconclusive draw; cut short a turn by the start of the final F1 race of the season!
....

The second game was at the Leeds club last night, and as promised I took along my Medievals; but not alas my camera! Two 1600 point armies for WAB - Flemish and French - put about 250 figures ont oa little 4x4 foot table.

A solid line of Flemish Pike were under my command, with a little help from some foot knights, Swordsmen, handgunners, bowmen, a cannon and a troop of mounted seargents. My opponent had a typical French array; two units of knights, some crossbowmen, heavy spearmen, light spearmen and a mass of peasants.

Terrain played a major part, as the French knights got lost behind a wood for the first three turns (moving back and forth in column trying to find a point they could attack without my cannon and handgunners getting them first). on the opposite flank the peasants occupied a farm, whilst my pike line advanced over a low hill, slowly forming an oblique line.

A misjudged manoevre on my part left my seargents - attached to the General - exposed to the smaller unit of French knights, near the farm. He should have pounded me on the charge, but even needing 6's to save, I made 5 throws and escaped unscathed, my horse cut two of his down and they fled. I'd turn his flank through pure good luck! He now had to try to block me with his knights, from charging his fighting line in the rear. He also turned his crossbowmen in fear of my horse.

The rest of his line had come well forward, whilst his general tried to chase down my skirmishers. Some of his spearmen tried to occupy the woods, but handgun fire and a pikeman charge dealt with them. My cannon enfiladed his crossbows, and the fled with heavy losses. Neverthe less a charge in the centre by his heavy spearmen stalled my advance and initially put flight to some of my troops. Only the foot knights held.

His king rode down the handgunners and threatend to do the same to my cannon, but by this point my centre had consolidated, three units outflanked and then destroyed his spearmen, whilste my last unit of pike flushed out the peasants from the farm. My horse failed to charge again, but by this poiunt the game was over. A Flemish victory, Hurrah!

All good fun, and my figures received a favourable response from the other members. Leeds seems to be one of the clubs where they think 28mm is dead; Oh how very wrong they are! still, it means my stuff gets some good attention. Other games on last night were a WW2 skirmish, a Vietnam game in 20mm; and as ever 15mm DBA (the same 2-3 players as always, with the same armies, and so far as I could tell, the exact same terrain) - apparently it's all they ever do.

Ork's'es!

Posted a few shots of my Warhammer 40K Ork armour on Warhammer.org the other day and they seemed to go down well. Granted I am not a great figure painter, but the ingenuity and variety of the models impressed the people there; which was all I was hoping for.

Honestly the quality of their painting knocks my socks off; I'm learning a lot just looking at the pages. But it isn't practical for the purposes of my mass-production painting schedules. You cant knock out 24 figures a week, if you are doing three highlights, a shaded glaze and then three MORE hightlights to finish up, each colour!

My models are a mix of GW's own models heavily converted with plasticard, and the contents of the bits box. And low cost 1:35th scale WW2 tank models with varying degrees of conversion carried out.

They certainly don't lack for imagination!

Leeds Wargames Club

As an alternative to the murderous journey to Harrogate; I've now tried Leeds' best known games night. To be fair there are several in Leeds and its' immediate area. But this one had the advantage of being nearby, and after the DBA tourney - discussed some months back on this blog - I knew how to find it!

Fisrtly with Phil in tow, and then on my own, I've visited their last two regular Wednesday evenings. Compared to harrogate, the set up is not disimilar, but nowhere near as permanent feeling, though a steady arrangement from what I could judge. The club has arrays of scenery available in cabinets, and a few club owned games appear to be stored. The attendance was reasonable on both nights, about 16 players and a couple of hangers on/loiterers. Thankfully there were some games on too.

Over the course of the nights there were games of Flames of War, Blood Bowl, Crimson Skies, Block Wars and DBA played. For myself and Phil it was a game set in the English Civil War, using Peter Pig rules (Regiment of Foote I think). An entertaining little affair. Whilst this week America beckoned, with a refight of part of Antietam, using Fire and Fury.

Observations include a preference for small scales, in figures and games. 15mm on a 3x4 foot table seemed to be the norm, whilst the ACW game stretched to 4 foot square, but was only in 6mm. Additionally despite a pretty extensive scenery selection, presentation of games could best be termed as functional. Maybe I was spoiled by the Grimsby club for all those years, but 20mm and 25/28mm games played on great terrain on big tables is what I really expect at a club!

Still another friendly bunch; and crucially a 15 minute drive from my home, on roads I actually know! I think I shall introduce them to my 28mm medievals, and see how we go from there...

Photo bonanza

Well; I finally scraped together the savings devoted to a camera: £50 from the contract paint job of Russian infantry, and £100 from selling my Flintloque figures. With that I was able to replace my aging digital camera; all the photos on this site to date have been taken on a simple Vivtar 2mp point and click I got from Argos a couple of years ago. Adequate for ebay and generic holiday/celebration photos; it really suffered in delivering quality shots. Now I've upgraded to a Samsung 5mp camera with a decent range of settings, manual override, and a decent macro function (amongst other things). So here are some new shots.

Firstly, here are the 15mm Egyptians I was working on earlier this year in all their glory. About two months work, thanks to the varnish-wash technique, they look pretty respectable!

All figures are by Essex, a mix of their Early and later New Kingdom Egyptians, along with some Sherden allies.

Finally for these, the general gives his orders, beside the entranceway to a regional temple...

Next, to test the range of options, I dug out my WWII 28mm Americans.

M4A3 Sherman (IIRC) by Bandai, figures by Black Tree; and yes they are rather too green!

Some B&W shots to give more atmosphere; more Black Tree Americans support a Solido/Verem M20 utility car.

A general view, someone's got wind of enemy, nearby...

All these shots were taken without modification, on basic settings on a Samsung Digimax V50. Uploaded without scaling or post-production. I'm quite pleased, the results should only improve when I run them through potatoshop.

Lastly, the burden of the wargamer:

Harrogate Wargames Club

As a new inductee to the world of motor vehicle transportation, I took an outing to one of the local wargames clubs. Although Leeds is nearer, I opted to have a look at the Harrogate Wargames club first, they are on paper a fairly easy drive from where I live, and had a good reputation. There website is not much help however, and as it turned out the roads in Harrogate are a nightmare.

After a 35 minute drive and an hour long trundle around Harrogate and its' environs, I finally found the place. The RAFA club is one of many servicemens clubs in Harrogate, I should know, I visited three trying to find the right one! On entry I found there to be a large range of board and card games going on, darn I thought, no figure gamers.

But this was only the first floor, I soon found the historical gamers - at the bar - and was introduced around and given a tour. It turns out this is a healthy group of 30 to 50 (!) regulars with a more or less permanent residence in the club and the use of 5 rooms over two floors! masses of terrain, storage for regulars armies, and a huge selection of their own boardgames. Thankfully the emphasis did not seem to be on tournament play of a limited set of rules, but on a 'bring it and we'll play it' sentiment.

I was impressed.

Eventually we got round to a game, a modern version of the very trendy Flames of War rules, played in 1/144th scale (12mm) on a 8x6 table. British and Dutch forces against Russians in the sort of WW3 - cold war - scenario every modern gamer used to do in the eighties. Painted up, it all looked pretty good.

So after a couple of hours play I realised it was gone 11, and they showed no sign of stopping; I had to call it quits and drive home. A missed turn resulted in a 15 mile detour and rally driving conditions along pitch black country roads. Gulp!

Overall, I liked the place, and will give it another chance, but at this stage I just couldn't do that drive every week; even if I did get the right turns each way. Maybe as a monthly treat...

Next week I hope to try the Leeds club, and see how they compare

Resolution

So after failing to buy a copy of the new Warhammer last week, I bought the Battle for Skull Pass at the weekend. And much like Chinese food, I already want another! The rules are subtly different to the previous version, but there are many place to find out in what ways and how it affects the game; to be honest I haven't finished reading them yet. The main appeal was the figures.

When GW has a reputation for charging upwards of £2-3 for a rank and file figure, and even over a quid for a plastic trooper, it's refreshing to find that for £40 the new boxed set is crammed with over a hundred varied and well made models. Many of them are of course quite small, nothing like the massive orcs or empire knights of the previous edition, but in value terms I think its a better deal, producing two reasonably balanced armies to oppose one another. The sculpts show, particularly in the goblins, but also in the better of the dwarves (miners, cannon crew), that Games Workshop are masters of plastic figures in fantasy games.

Inclusion of cavalry, monsters, artillery and characters helps round it out in a way earlier versions never seemed to as a starter set. Granted many board games and figure systems now come with excellent plastic models - even painted ones - but the quality shines through for me here.

They may end up playing more HOTT than Warhammer, but they do look nice. I'm now tempted to buy a second box, funded by painting and ebaying the dwarves. It'd allow me to round out my goblins to a neat 200 foot, to accompany my orcs...

Sigh, here we go again. And still the Samurai stand untouched.

Frustration

So I've been away, as my limited range of readers will have noticed; no dwelling on the details here as they're nothing to do with wargames - but it was for good stuff.

Still, I came back looking forward to picking up a copy of the new Warhammer; only to find my favoured local independant stockist hadn't had his supply yet. I suspect the sneaky hand of GW holding back supplies to independant retailers - an old trick, to maximise their sales. Went to the other stockist nearby, who was shut. Drat!

Dilemma now is whether to order online from Maelstrom games (10% off) http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/index.php?sou=worg post free and wait a week; or walk into a GW tommorow and take one away with me. Sadly that means buying it whilst at work and getting it home, trying to avoid cries of "GEEEEEEK" all the way.

Maybe I can wait a week for online orders to turn around...

Down the tubes

Airfix are bust once again; not for the first time either. Sad news to some in the hobby; I've found their stuff to be woefully dated of late, and their efforts to flog cheap Russian Sci-fi wargaming seemed desparate and misguided. I find it hard to credit their claims of there no longer being a market for model kits, when one sees the explosion in kit firms on the market, and last year had the highest number of new releases of 1/72 scale plastic figure packs Ever.

I feel that Airfix have failed to move with the times, the ardent modeller is an adult now, and wants precise scaled, accurate kits with photo-etched parts and so on. Their models never held up detail wise, barring a small number of exceptions. Kids may not be into models, but there's obviously a tonne of money in the market that they failed to exploit.

My main worry is that as a user of enamel paints, I may finally have to switch to acrylics. If Humbrol don't surface from this debacle, I'm going to have to look elsewhere for a solution; thing is I've yet to be convinced by acrylics, having tried and disliked GW paints years ago. I may have to switch to Revell enamels for a while, or try Vajello...

Life will go on, I'm not sentimental for a badly moulded Spitfire, but I'm sure many are...

Freshening up old armies

With the immenent release of 7th ed. Warhammer Fantasy, I dug out one of my oldest, ugliest armiest and refreshed the figures.

to be fair the characters and cavalry were all new and fairly recently done; the elite infantry were a few years old, but competantly finished. However the rank and file skeletons in my Vampire Counts army looked rotten. They were some 18 years old, crudely painted and badly based.

The full array; being Vampire counts this small number of figures is worth over 3000 points.

To freshen them up, I repainted the dismal shields and drybrushed the bones white - to hide a dreary brown wash that had failed when first tried, and been left ever since. Simply finished I think the army looks pretty good now; tabletop standard only, but not bad nonetheless. The main thing that draws this army together is the cohesive basing scheme. An extremely simple one, just a layer of filler for texture, painted green and drybrushed yellow.

Black Knights, converted from Empire knights and Skeleton Horsemen. Black Tree Ghouls in the background.

For a weeks work, I've got a 3000 piont selection and something I can stick straight on a table in a GW shop without feeling ashamed. They won't win any prizes, but they'll play well enough!

A Banshee supports my only recently painted Skeleton unit.

Barak Sawa 1944 - Crossfire

A return to Crossfire to get some use out of my new Japanese forces. I set up a hypothetical scenario, based on a small offshore island during the recapture of Biak in the Dutch East Indies (yet again, I can draw a line back to the Low countries, as usual Holland or Belgium come in for it in one way or another).

Using crossfire it is pretty easy to assemble force, so long as you apply a 2 to 1 ratio in favour of the attackers. Their brief was to seize what they were informed was a lightly defended island; as such the attackers were thus:

91st USMC battalion

Force Arthur:

• Company commander with observers
• Weapons platoon with 2 HMG squads and a mortar squad
• 3 Platoons, each of 3 rifle squads and a platoon commander, 2 out of 3 platoons had bazooka teams

Force David: the same

Force Hunter:

• M3A1 Stuart tank squadron
• M16 Half tracked air defence

Fire support from minesweepers Elliot and Bakersfield (equivalent to 10 heavy artillery fire missions)

Total approx 220 points

The defence did not meet the enemy suppositions of being light, and as stated before on this blog, the defender in Crossfire games does hold a lot of the cards . The japanese had a reinforced company available on the island, tasked with protecting lines of communication on the southern coast of Biak:

67th Infantry Regiment (elements of)

• Company commander with standard bearer
• Support Platoon with 1 HMG squad and 2 knee mortar squads
• 3 rifle platoons, each of 3 rifle squads and a Platoon commander
• Company artillery; 70mm mountain gun
• Mixed tank squadron - 1 Type 97 Chi-Ha medium tank and 1 Type 95 Ha-Go light tank
• 1 47mm anti tank gun

Total approx 110 points

Chris and Phil took the roles of the Americans, I got to defend. They were sent off to one room with an arial reconnaisance map and a briefing to formulate their plan and detail where their boats would land. I took the time to select my dispositions. As mentioned in the past the defender is deployed hidden and can within reason maneouvre freely when the enemy can't see him. I deliberately denuded one defensive position, knowing I was spread too thin to achieve effective total cover of the island.

The Americans had been given the day (20 initiatives) to seize control of the island, the main objective being to reel in belts of mines securing approaches to Biak Island north. if these were removed the approach of the main assault would be with fewer losses. They decided on a tactic of attacking only the Western flanks of the island in force. an initial probing landing was delivered by force David near the only natural bay of any size. A platoon of Marines was allowed to hit the beach before Japanese gunfire from caves and a bunker stopped them in their tracks.

The Americans began to deploy on the headland, and used reconnaisance by gunfire to discover a Japanese patrol in the largest area of jungle. Nevertheless, the enemy slipped away. The Americans were beginning to think they had been lucky in their decision to attack this, the most accesible and seemingly undefended part of the island.

Their next move was to push force arthur into the jungle and land elements of Arthur and David on the beaches between the bay and the headland. An assault into the jungle produced an early success for the marines, but the Japanese simply melted away. As the Americans moved into the woodland, and ambush opened up on them, mortars, rifles and pistol shots stopping them dead.

Command and control was the down fall of the Americans; they showed themselves unwilling to advance into fire, and both commanders failed critical motivation rolls in succession. Costing the marines almost half their initiatives during the game. In the large jungle the troops refused to advance so force David was ordered to bring up it's commander and support weapons. They were fatally ambushed by the Chi Ha tank, who killed off two squads immediately, before melting away into the cover.

This prompted the Americans to land their tanks, redoubtable little Stuarts. The other Japanese tank and a 47mm gun tried to ambush them but to no avail, the tanks advanced. Meanwhile the troops on the beach near them were being slowly picked off by withering fire.

Light losses and a need for ammunition forced the Japanese to withdraw from the jungle, taking fresh defensive positions in the cliffs. Unknown to the Americans the hillside and the position atop it were defended by a whole platoon, and when a squad of marines tried to move to assist force David's mangled support troops, they were ambushed by savage gunfire.

Nonetheless, the Marines of force Arthur were finally able to make it to a position to see the enemy and attempt to call in minesweeper fire; meanwhile around the beach, the Japanese hardware assests were floundering, first the 47mm gun, then the Ha-Go, and at the end of the day, the Chi-Ha were destroyed.

Motivation in the face of fanatical Japanese infantry was still the biggest problem for the marines. Force Arthur stagnated again, whilst the hillside platoon picked them off. at least the minesweepers finally began firing, though the dispersed targets were hard to hit.

At last, as the sun began to set the americans attempted to seize the top of the hill. The withdrawn jungle fighters fired on them again; stopping the commander from following his men in. It turned into one attacking squad against the survivors of a Japanese squad and a mortar crew, defending a bunker. A brief, savage fight at bayonet point left only bloodied American joe's, crying for their mothers.

On the beach the last of the marines were being carrid back to landing craft bloodied and defeated.

As darkenss fell the marines dug in; the island was less than half theirs, they had captured no defenses and lost some 50 dead and 80 wounded out of an attacking force of some 250 men. On the other hand the Japanese had lost around 30 dead and wounded, and actually had as many fit troops left as the marines, having originally been outnumbered over two to one.

The American gains by the end of the day in red

However on the following day they would be out of artillery ammunition, lacking tanks, and only possibly able to recain the 47mm gun. On the other hand the Americans would commit the rest of the 91st, and two companies of the 93rd in an attempt to wrestle the island from the enemy.

...

Phil and Chris conceded defeat, and agreed it was a well balanced game. We all felt that motivation had been the Achilles heel of the marines. Who repeatedly failed to get moving. As far as mistakes, well they did forget to land the M16. These vehicles were known as "meat choppers" in the Pacific; a rather pragmatic, ghoulish term for their ability to stop japanese attacks and clear defences. I felt they missed a trick in leaving this off shore.

...

In one obvious respect this was an ambitious game. The forces were not large, but the terrain was demanding. Not wishing to spend months, or hundreds of pounds on custom terrain I couldn't use for much else afterwards, I stuck to cloth, boxes and books. The folds this created lent a slightly untidy look to the table, but added to the realism, Crossfire is a game that rewards fiddily terrain. Not having ten landing craft models handy either, the USN Pepperoni (box) supplied a disposable navy. The original inspiration for the scanario was again CS Grant's Scenario's for wargames, an excellent book full of ideas for any game system.

Finally the Crossfire army lists. All through the above I have referred to the forces as they are composed in the rules, and as they operated in real life, but in the photos you'll see the troops grouped in threes. Three men represent a squad of 8 to 12 men, 4 figures a squad of 13 to 20 in the game, one tank probably represents three in actuality. I find this is a reasonable compromise of scale, and as a whole the game plays very like historic tactics. The defender has to exercise some restraint in hidden movement (it would be easy to rig it), but otherwise it feels very realistic.

And never one did I have recourse to use a tape measure!