Trying out Templars

At Vapnartak I picked up some figures from a new (to me) manufacturer, Templar Wargames. Looking at their website they seem to make quite a range of 28mm figures but it was a small range of 20mm modern types who caught my eye. Note by the way that, contrary to the labels on the packaging, the website is templarwargames.com and not templarwargames.co.uk.

They make a range of modern British troops. These will allow you to tailor your models to your chosen regiment; you can choose to get troops with helmets, berets, Tam-o-Shanters with hackle or Special Forces with a variety of doubtless unofficial headgear. 

By way of opposition for the British Templar make Islamist and African irregular types. Whilst chatting to the owner I picked up a couple of packs of these to see how they would blend in with my Andreivian collection.

Just off the workbench is this Islamist medium mortar team.

Wearing keffiyehs and salwar kameez, they fit nicely with the Elhiem Al-Qaeda models I use as Arab volunteers fighting alongside the Andreivian Turks.

They aren't as nicely proportioned as, say, AB Miniatures; they're a bit dumpy and the hands are rather cartoonish but they fit nicely with Elhiem or the old Dave Allsop-designed Hotspur minis.

The mortar comes as two castings; the mortar tube and the bipod. These are each cast with half of the base and they slot together very neatly to make a good, solid model. I decided to base them all together on a 40mm MDF circle with some sandbags I'd made previously out of left-over Milliput. 

The castings were reasonable; I just had to do a little cleaning where the mould half alignment was not quite perfect.

I also picked up a pack of Africans. I had wanted some guys with AK-47s but in error I grabbed a pack of eight chaps with RPGs. I've since decided one of them would make an excellent Andreivian militia leader. I quite like the idea of a squad- or even platoon-leader who routinely carries an RPG-7.

As you can see, there's nothing particularly African-looking about this chap. In fact I could see him passing very nicely as some kind of southeast Asian.

The pack contained eight figures; four pairs of duplicated poses. Most of them are more obviously African in appearance:

I think I'll paint this chap up as an African volunteer fighting with the Andreivian Turks. I'll probably use one of each pose and put the rest (when painted) on eBay. I don't want to side-track myself into wargaming Angola, Sierra Leone or Somalia; that would defeat the whole point of inventing Andreivia in the first place!

Port Gibson, May 1863

On Saturday Andy and John came over to play the Port Gibson scenario I designed as a reserve game for last year's Steel Lard. 

The scenario covers the initial contact between the pickets of Union and Confederate armies on 1st May 1863. The Union army has just crossed the Mississippi and is about to begin the march that will see it besiege and eventually take Vicksburg. The following text is from a historical marker at the site:

Confederate Gen. Martin E. Green on the afternoon of April 30, 1863, posted his brigade near Magnolia Church, with an outpost here.

Shortly after midnight, Green rode forward to check on his pickets. Reaching this point, the general found Mrs. A.K. Shaifer and the ladies of the house frantically pilling their household effects on a wagon. Green assured the women that there was no need to hurry, since the Yankees couldn't possibly arrive before daybreak. Hardly had Green spoken before there was a crash of musketry -- the pickets had exchanged shots with the Union vanguard, soldiers of the 21st Iowa. The women leaped into the wagon and headed for Port Gibson, while Gen. Green returned to Magnolia Church to alert his troops. The Confederate pickets fell back before the Federal advance.

Our game begins with General Green reassuring Mrs Shaifer just as the first shots ring out.

I briefed John, as the Confederate player, that Green would not step on the toes of the officer commanding the pickets but that he would be available to help if needed. The following scenario rules applied:

• Green could be activated by spending one Flag card,
• If attached to a unit he could rally off 1D6 points of Shock,
• If he rolled a six he would immediately be removed from the game, his staff advising him to withdraw and take command of his brigade,
• He could be voluntarily removed from the game by spending four Command Flags, and
• If wounded or killed he would count as a Level IV Leader for the purposes of the Bad Things Happen roll.

The game began with Andy choosing to place the Union's Deployment Point as close as possible to the Shaifer house. 

John countered this by deploying Sergeant Jeb Bush with one Group of Confederate infantry between the farm and the Union DP.

Andy aggressively deployed two Groups of dismounted Union cavalry under Lt William J Gore and John countered with his own two Groups of skirmishers led by Sgt George W Reagan.

Gore's cavalry were equipped with breech-loading carbines. Their firepower would prove key to the result of the battle. They rapidly started to inflict a fair amount of Shock and casualties on the Confederate skirmishers.

Until a wall of dense smoke grew in front of them (as a result of Tiffin card being drawn immediately after they had fired twice).

Andy had the cavalry step forwards so as to be clear of the smoke but in the process Lt Gore was knocked to the ground.

At this point a small patrol of "Union cavalry" appeared in the sunken lane. 

They would ride through the defile and head off to the east with their true identity not revealed to the players until after the battle. 

John, not having acquired the command flags needed to evacuate General Green, decided to use him to rally off some of the Shock accumulated by Sgt Bush's men in front of the farm. The resulting die roll removed but a single point of shock. Almost immediately after that the Union cavalry inflicted a single kill on Bush's men. The following exchange then occurred:

Umpire:    Roll a D6 to see if a Leader is hit.

John:        One!

Umpire:    OK, one of them is. Roll again; on an odd number it's the General, on an even number it's the sergeant.

John:        Five!

Umpire:    OK, roll again to see if he's knocked out, lightly wounded or killed.

John:        One!

Umpire:    OK, he's dead. Roll for a Bad Thing Happening.

John:        Six!

Umpire:    Hmm, so that's three off your Force Morale bringing it down to... six.

Despite these reverses, John had managed to get the Shaifer family away with their waggon-load of personal belongings and a formation of Confederate infantry under Lt Tim Trump was advancing the threaten the flank of the Union troops in front of the farm.

Trump's men were ideally placed to fire into the flank of Bush's single group of Confederate infantry but yet more unfortunate die rolling by John meant that they didn't spot them through the gloom (I was using my night fighting rules) and instead they wheeled to face the muzzle flashes from the main Union line under Lt Harris Biden. 

Again, though, things didn't go John's way. Shot at by Union infantry and those devastating dismounted cavalry, Trump's men broke and ran carrying the Confederate Force Morale down to zero and handing victory to the Union.

In the end it was a pretty one-sided action over in a little over two hours. John's bad luck hamstrung his efforts at delaying the enemy's advance. His consolations were two. He'd avoided the bear trap of firing on the "Union cavalry"; they were actually a party of senior Confederate officers (prefiguring events at Chancellorsville the following day where Stonewall Jackson would be fatally wounded by his own men). 

He'd also got Mrs Shaifer away safely with her load of household goods. The Union troops had been tasked with securing any wagons or carts they could. The army, recently landed from boats, was sorely short of transport on land.

I was initially of the impression that the scenario was badly unbalanced because of the Union cavalry's ability to fire twice a turn. On further reflection, though, Andy did handle his force very well, aggressively getting to a range where the carbines were murderously effective and concentrating his force where it mattered. John, a less experienced player, was behind the curve as soon General Green stopped that unfortunate Minié ball without a meaningful contribution to keeping the Rebs in the fight.

I think things might easily have gone very differently. I'll probably give the scenario another run out at some point but with some tweaks to the unit stats and briefings.

 

On the workbench

At the moment I have a few games in mind and I'm working on models to improve them. Let's review what's recently finished or soon working in order of when the games will take place...

On 22nd February I plan to re-run the Port Gibson scenario I designed as a spare game for Steel Lard. Hopefully it'll look much better on one of my recently acquired Geek Villain mats. In an effort to make the terrain look a little more North American I've created some lengths of split-rail or snake fencing.

They're made from balsa wood to a design from Mark Bretherton. I'm copying so much of his stuff at the moment!

For the same game I've also carved some spare Kingspan insulation material to go under the terrain mat and make a sunken road. I've not photographed that; I'm sure you can imagine it!

At the start of March I'll be going to Hammerhead to help Simon Miller run The Battle of Moonbroth,  a Gloranthan To The Strongest! scenario. Recently finished is a 12cm square base representing Oakfed, the Praxian wildfire spirit.

The idea was to portray fire burning across the chaparral leaving scorched earth and burned-out undergrowth in its wake. 

The base is one of Simon's wavy-edged laser-cut bases with two layers of foamcore on top. This allows me to mount three switched battery holders in the bottom layer. To them I soldered flickering LEDs from cheap tea lights bought from my local supermarket's discount section.

The LEDs shine out through holes cut into the top layer of foamcore over which I've glued patches of slightly dirtied interfacing material. I'm quite pleased with the effect but I fear it might be overwhelmed by the lighting in the Newark venue.

The bushes are made from twisted wire. The presence of an as-yet-unburned one indicates the front facing of the unit. I look forward to seeing how Simon's rules handle this.

In April I'll be running Action on the Northern Hills at Crisis Point. I've described the scenario previously and it requires a couple of artillery pieces for the Andreivian Armenian rebels. I'll be using WW2 Soviet artillery to stand in for them. I've recently completed this 122mm M1938 howitzer using one of the AB Miniatures crews I picked up at Vapnartak.

The guns need to be dug in for the scenario so I've made a sandbagged emplacement to represent this.

Also for the Northern Hills game I need an Andreivian Government platoon. I decided to upgrade my paratroops, which are based on the venerable and not-particularly-authentic Airfix paras.

The platoon has a small HQ with a commanding officer, a radio operator and a two-man LMG team. The latter was made by replacing the rifle of a prone para with the barrel of a modern British LMG from (I think Italeri). There's also a two-man bazooka team, a three-man medium mortar crew and two eight-man SMG squads. Some of the Airfix figures had badly moulded helmets. Where this was the case I added camo by painting the helmet with matt Modpodge and dipping it into mixed flock. After the Modpodge has dried I apply a second coat to seal in the flock.

This force is going to have excellent firepower but only at close range. It should be an interesting challenge for the Government player. 

Further down the line is the plan for Richard P and I to play some 1812 Sharp Practice. I already had one Russian village house from Charley Foxtrot but decided another would be useful. Unfortunately I asked for the wrong one for Christmas and duplicated the one I already have! 

In an effort to make the new one look different, I swapped the sides around. This was OK until I realised I now had both external doors in the same corner of the house! To fix that I built a lean-to extension out of foamcore clad with coffee stirrers.

The colour scheme of the windows (Vallejo Mahogany Brown and Cream) was taken from a colour photo of a modern Dacha.

Yet again copying The Tactical Painter, I decided to make some gardens to go with the houses. This is the prototype in production.

The base is a piece of PVC board. Mark used balsa wood for his fences but I wanted to produce something stronger. I designed the (currently white) supports in Tinkercad and then 3d printed them. Having super-glued them in place I added cut-up coffee stirrers to make the fence boards. The base is painted in Modpodge onto which I've poured sand. I did this in sections in case doing it in one go cause the base to warp. The next step will to give everything another coat of Modpodge before painting.

Finally for now, we'll soon play the final game of our Siege of Hachigata campaign using The Pikeman's Lament. I want to represent one side of the castle for our Takeda players to assault. A couple of additional wall sections will help with this...

The doors added to the two existing gateway sections gives a length that matches up with the new longer section in front. These two lenghts will let me deploy the existing walls sections nearer to the middle of the table (we established the layout of the front of the castle in a previous game).

That's all for now. I'll try to remember to post finished pics later.

Simple Arc of Fire Air Support Rules

The following air support rules came to me whilst I was out walking the dog the other day. I think they'll be helpful when running the kind of larger Arc of Fire game we tend to play at Crisis Point.

Random Air Support

Each player starts the game with an Air Support card that they can play on any unit that is subject to a random event, before the die roll has been made to determine the nature of the random event. Once the card is played it is used and cannot be played again.

The unit on which the card is played is subject to an air attack and must make a Tac roll. The result of this Tac roll is as follows:

Example: 

Andy, Bruce and Catherine are playing a game using the alternative activation system where each unit rolls a D6 at the start of the turn to determine its Activation Number.

The first card drawn is the Black Joker. This is followed by Black 1. Only Andy has a unit with an Activation Number of 1 so he activates that unit.

Next the Red Joker is drawn.  Because the Black Joker has already been drawn this turn there will be a random event and it will affect the unit whose card comes up next. The next card drawn is Red 3 - all units with an Activation Number of 3 may activate (including, because it’s a red card, wounded figures). All three players have a unit with Activation Number 3 so we quickly dice-off to see which unit is affected. It turns out to be Bruce’s squad of Andreivian Turk militia crossing a stream.

Before the Random Event can be rolled for, Catherine (running an Italian NATO detachment) declares an air attack on the Turks. 

Bruce’s Turks are Tac 7 so he needs to roll a D10 and get 7 or more to succeed with his Tac roll. He rolls a 4 and fails. Each figure in the Andreivian Turk squad must make an immediate Morale Roll. 

Later in the game the NATO headquarters unit is the subject of a random event and Bruce decides to get his own back. He plays his own Air Support card on Catherine's HQ.

The NATO HQ is Tac 5 and with a roll of 10 it seems that either they are very well camouflaged or the local NATO air defences are on high alert. Catherine's second Tac roll is an 8 so it seems it's the latter. The Andreivian Turk aircraft is shot down and the game continues with the NATO HQ taking its turn.

That's it then; an attempt at a set of air support rules that will give us an excuse to get the nice aircraft models onto the table without too much risk of an unlucky die roll completely unbalancing the scenario.

Obviously variations are possible. If one side has overwhelming air superiority, they'll be the only ones with Air Support cards. If a force has plentiful AA-capable elements we might allow them an increased chance of a shoot-down result.

Please let me know what you think. 

Sharp Practice Markers

I've been inspired by Mark Bretherton's blog The Tactical Painter, where he's produced a wonderful set of markers for use in his 20mm scale Chain of Command campaigns. I decided to create something similar for Sharp Practice giving thought to some of the changes that can happen during a game, particularly those things that require us to keep track of past events. 

One example would be "Spitting Feathers". This is a possible "Movement Random Event" that causes units to move more slowly until they can find a source of drinkable water.

I used a rectangular MDF base to create this micro diorama that should remind us to reduce the affected unit's movement when it next activates:

The wine bottle is made from a piece of cocktail stick turned to the right shape with sandpaper using my Dremel as a makeshift lathe. 

On the rear of the base is a written reminder:

Another random event is "Fouled Barrels". A similar base, a spare carbine from the Warlord WSS Cavalry set, and jammed ramrod made from a piece of Peco track-fixing pin from my model railway days, gives me this:

Again there's a brief note of the effect written on the reverse.

Also in the movement random events is one where the unit discovers that the ground in front of it is worse than it thought. I've done three variants on this one for use in differing settings:

Some older markers that I've had for a while are these banks of smoke. They can persist as a result of a firing random event or under some circumstances when breech-loading rifles are in use. These have become increasingly necessary as I've started using Union cavalry with repeating carbines.

These are made on larger bases, sized to cover the frontage of a line infantry Group, made from cardboard textured with my usual gloop. Teddybear stuffing material is glued on and them dirtied with black and dark brown paint.

Finally, not random event-linked but very definitely stolen from Mark are these "Wounded Leader" markers.

The bases are discs of MDF, not actually bases but left-overs from some long-forgotten building project. The bloodied bandages are from strips of pocket tissue soaked in Modpodge. Placed next to a Leader, they will remind us that his Command Initiative has been reduced.
 

Vapnartak 2025

Jamie, Andy and I went up to York on our annual Vapnartak pilgrimage on Sunday. As usual it was a chance to catch up with friends and to get some it's-my-birthday-next-week purchases.

My impression is that trade stands increasingly dominate the scene at the racecourse. Demo and participation games being exiled to some pretty cramped spaces upstairs. However, what games there were were pretty good.

The guys from Sally 4th had an excellent Midshipman Hornblower Versus the Pirates game. 

This was played using Pulp Alley; a wonderful game that I really ought to get back on the table some time soon.

Ken Reilly and the Leeds club, as usual, had a massive game; this time an Italian Wars bash.

A group called The Brompton Bankers presented Alloway Creek, an AWI scenario. The terrain was basic but effective with the road and river sections being printed on mousemat material.

John Savage and the Harrogate crew put on a wintry Midgard battle between Romans and Celts. This was surrounded by players and on-lookers all day and I was only able to capture one overhead shot.

In between chatting to several of the Lardy community around the table (great to see Charley W back on his feet after he's been so ill) I was struck by how effective John's terrain is whilst remaining practical. I think a key factor is that all of the terrain pieces are well integrated into the theme. Using and reusing the same winter printed base cloth John adds appropriate terrain pieces that work together to create a seamless whole. Even though the units are on verdant bases, the whole effect is chilly.

East Leeds Military Society put on the Battle of Tabaruzaka, 1877, a Satsuma Rebellion battle using the Black Powder rules. An interesting choice of period.

Another game that caught my eye was Somewhere in the Western Roman Empire, 376AD. This was by a group called Westow Academy and used the Art de la Guerre ancients rules. I get the impression that these rules have become quite popular with the kind of players who previously would have been playing DBM and similar. Not a set I'm familiar but the toys were lovely.

Vapnartak is always a great chance to catch up with wargaming friends from across the North. Andy C is another friend who's been poorly recently and it was great to see him and Simon G from the Elton club near Chester. I'm hopeful of persuading both of them to come to Crisis Point this year.

I always make a point of saying Hi to Annie of Bad Squiddo Games as we share a birthday that's always shortly after Vapnartak. Occasionally we grab a selfie.

And finally, the shopping. With my birthday just around the corner I tend to splurge a bit.

One of the retailers (Gripping Beast?) had a table with some books at sale prices. I picked up these five for just £20. My ACW library is building nicely.

A pack of six Perry Russian peasants armed with assorted captured weapons looked like it might be useful for the Livonia campaign. The Warbases water cart will go with the cart horse I have awaiting painting - great for pretty much any Sharp Practice force.

AB Miniatures provided crews for my 20mm Soviet M1938 howitzer and 57mm AT gun. These are generally expensive by high quality figures. I'm a little disappointed by problems with flash and mould alignment on a few of the castings in the 122mm crew set.

Finally I encountered a new (to me) manufacturer; Templar Wargames. They make 20mm modern figures. At present the range seems to cover British Marines/Paras, Islamic insurgents, and African irregulars. On a suck-it-and-see basis I picked up an Islamist medium mortar team and a pack of African types. I'd meant to pick up guys with AK-47s but by mistake I got a pack of eight with RPG-7s. The figures are quite small in stature but I think I can use at least some of them in Andreivia.

All in all I very much enjoyed the trip to York and thanks are due to Andy for picking up the tab on our usual call into Tadcaster for beer and pizza on the way home. My shout next time!