Radio silence

I shall be away in Scotland for the coming week so there'll be little word from Stately Counterpane Manor for a few days. 

By way of a teaser for this year's Steel Lard game, Puebla 1863, here's a picture of part of the French forces.

Jijiga has fallen!

Phil G and Richard P came over yesterday and we played out a TacWW3 game based on Bruce Rea-Taylor's scenario The Battle for Jijiga - the WSLF versus the Derg. 

The rules were TacWWII modified by means of stats for post-WWII units such as T-54 tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, and by adding some draft rules for ATGWs and shoulder-launched SAMs.

In general the changes were pretty light-touch; I don't want to move away from the simplicity of the underlying system. 

The game saw Phil's Ethiopian infantry of the Black Banner Regiment closing on on the Somali-rebel-held town as Cuban "volunteers" in T-55 tanks rushed to support their attack. 

Richard's Western Somali Liberation Front forces were backed up by "volunteers" of their own in the form of a company of T-54s that looked remarkably like those used by the Somali Army.

The scenario is somewhat peculiar in that the actual Ethiopian forces can begin right up close to the line of contact with the WSLF defenders of Jijiga whereas the Cuban armoured battalion arrives from the edge of the table a good (scale) 2km away.

Richard had deployed his WSLF armoured company (two platoons of T-34/85 and a BTR-152 mechanised platoon) on the right in a hedge-lined field. They drove off some Derg infantry but then came under fire from the Cuban T-55s and eventually by Sagger fire from the BMP-1s. This gave us our chance to try out my draft ATGW rules.

Phil put the BMPs into Defence Mode and then declared that he was firing on the T-34s. The WSLF tanks made a Tac roll to see if they detected the incoming missiles. They succeeded by one. This meant that they would automatically evade.

An evade may or may not (at the owning player's discretion) actually involve the model being moved. In this case Richard chose to move the tanks because doing so would put them out of line-of-sight and safe from the in-coming missiles.

Our conclusion was the rules appeared to work OK at first testing with the following tweaks:

• The firer declares which company he is firing at and can target any element of the company he can see when the missiles impact, and
• ATGW fire must be declared first in any given Fire Phase (so as to allow units eligible to direct fire in this Fire Phase to do so at the ATGW firer if they make the appropriate Tac roll).

With the T-34s cleared out of their initial defensive position (shortly afterwards they'd rout after taking casualties) the Ethiopians were able to move forward towards Jijiga.

Time was moving on and I wanted to give Phil a chance to try out the air support rules. I made up my mind that if he didn't roll a 10 to call in his airstrike this turn, I'd declare that it was going in anyway. As it happened of course he did roll a 10!

Bruce Rea-Taylor's original scenario calls for a flight of Su-17s with rocket pods to make a series of passes over the table. Looking online I could see no indication that the Ethiopian Air Force ever had Su-17s so I gave Phil a flight of F-86 Sabres instead.

I treated the F-86 as a Good Fighter in TacWWII terms. This meant that its fixed weapons (strafing with guns) are more effective than its dropped ordnance (bombs or presumably rockets) so we planned to use the Fixed Ordnance factors for both of the two passes the F-86 flight was allowed to make. I say "planned to" because in fact Richard, taking advantage of a test-rule +1 modifier when firing from the rear arc of a jet with an early SAM, managed to shoot down the Sabres after their first pass.

Shortly after the air strike, the Somali T-54 company fled as a result of a fatally bad morale roll and Richard decided that the WSLF would pull out of Jijiga. 

In general we thought the Cold War tweaks worked well but we need to do a battle that involves more ATGW combat to properly test the rules. Perhaps the Israeli counterattacks in Sinai on the second day of the Yom Kippur War would be a way to go, although Phil's keen to try some of the early ATGW use in Vietnam.

Terrain test: Jijiga

Tomorrow sees a first somewhat serious attempt at play-testing some Cold War modifications to TacWWII. Richard P, Ned and Phil (chosen because of their relatively recent familiarity with the rules) are coming over to have a go at the battle of Jijiga.

This is a 1978 battle during the war between the Ethiopian government (the Derg) and the Western Somali Liberation Front. I've adapted the scenario from the late Bruce Rea-Taylor's book Battlezones.

I'm mostly using models already in the collection but I've added a few 3D-printed toys including brightly coloured Somali houses...

...an Ethiopian Air Force F-86 Sabre...

...some Somali T-54s in delightfully bright camo...

...and a BTR-152 to carry the B-10 82mm recoilless rifle I've modified from an H&R piece.

Selling my wet palette

I've decided the wet palette idea doesn't work for me. I can see how they might work for some people but I keep finding myself going back to my trusty ceramic tile for mixing paints.

If anyone's interested in trying one out there's one going cheap on eBay right now courtesy of yours truly.

Puebla siege works part two

So, after best part of a week with Kingspan, coffee stirrers, Polyfilla, paints, and static grass, I'm at the point where the French siege works for Puebla 1863 are in a usable state. If I needed to run the game next week I'd be happy with them as they are but doubtless I'll be inspired to add some additional improvements as we go on. 

Some bits to make the place look lived-in would help. A bucket and rope by the well for example.  I'd also like to do more to disguise the joins between the modules. I have some ideas of how to do that. I'll let you know how they go on.

With this work finished and a large portion of the scenario design done, I'm really looking forward to presenting this game. 

As an experienced designer of wargames scenarios I can tell you straight up that this one shouldn't work. A frontal assault on a defended enemy position could be a bloodbath. However, this is Sharp Practice; it's a game that emphasises the narrative and the interactions of the significant leaders on each side. This going to be a game where victory may look very different to what you expect!

Late War Luftwaffe

As a break from building Mexican trenches, I did a bit of 3D printing followed by painting recently. The result was this...

It's a Dornier 217K-2 medium bomber in 1/300th scale, resized from a 1/350th scale model I found on Thingiverse.

The K-1 and K-2 versions of the Do 217 were distinctive for their bulbous nose. They were equipped to use the Fritz-X and Henschel 293 glide bombs. The model is based on a picture of one based in western France on anti-shipping duties in 1944. In addition, though, they were also used by the elite KG200 to target Soviet-controlled bridge in 1945.

Clearly with its visible print lines the model is far from perfect but I'm happy enough to use it in my TacWWII games.