Wargaming Haute Couture

Mick the Postman came by this morning and delivered my new, personalised Steel Lard polo shirt from Matt at Saddle-Goose Designs.

Thanks Matt. Sorry we won't be seeing you at Steel Lard this year. Maybe next time.

Running from Bull Run Again!

This afternoon I had a very productive run-through of my Running from Bull Run scenario prior to next weekend's Steel Lard.

The objective was to test the changes I made to the Union Leaders, to the options the Fate players have for spending Flag cards, and to revisit the calibration of Victory Points. I also wanted to see how the game looks with my recently painted terrain bits and using the "Rocky Grass" Geek Villain mat.

I was pleased with the visual effect on a 6'x4' table.

This was the first outing for my piles of stores and discarded equipment and for half of the twenty ACW-period telegraph poles I created this last week.

At least part of the turnpike road to Centreville was asphalted (new technology at the time). My version includes an asphalt section made from a couple of lengths of MDF that turned up among the packaging of some household goods. I may add a bit of sponged or stippled paler grey to give an appropriate texture.

I'd already painted a Union officer as a surgeon (a green sash is an indication of his status) and a hospital steward with his medical knapsack (actually not issued until 1862; I guess this was an experimental one being field tested) but today saw the first appearance of the 1st Corps stretcher bearers.

The game begins with Groups of varying sizes strung out along the road. They are from more than one regiment and they begin with two points of Shock per figure. At the start of the game the Union Leaders need to rally them into some kind of order.

Since the last play-test I've added a Surrey (without a fringe on top) to carry the party of members of Congress who followed the army to observe the inevitable Union victory and who now find themselves caught up in the retreat.

The 1st Corps ambulance is another recent addition to the collection. Contemporary reports have ambulances being used by unwounded men who simply didn't want to walk back to Washington!

The feared Black Horse Cavalry again made an appearance.

And Confederate artillery brought the Cub Run bridge under long-range fire.

Confederate infantry were late arriving. This time they took the form of some Louisiana Tiger Zouaves.

It's hard to say who won on this occasion as I was playing the game to calibrate the victory points to be awarded. I think I'm happy with this. Balance is part of the equation but more relevant is how the victory points incentivise players to behave in a way that captures the historical feel of the retreat from Bull Run.

I'm really looking forward to giving the game its first serious outing at Steel Lard.

Making the most of spare parts

Since I first got into making models as a kid I've always followed the advice (from books and magazine articles) that you should hold onto any unused kit parts. You never know (goes the theory) when they might come in useful for later conversions. I have boxes full of bombs, missiles, undercarriage components and other parts from Airfix and Matchbox kits that I completed (or in some cases didn't complete) in the 1970s and 80s!

With the advent of 28mm plastic soldiers from the likes of Victrix, Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures, and Gripping Beast I now have a multitude of limbs, bodies, and heads awaiting a future use.

Manufacturers want to make their sets as flexible as possible so you aren't limited to building a single type of unit from a given set of sprues. As a result they often provide multiple options for particular parts.

The Warlord Games War of the Spanish Succession Cavalry box is an example here providing heads with tricorns and cuirassier helmets and alternative torsos (torsi?) with armour or in a variety of unarmored uniforms. Coupled with bits from other sets, the extra bodies have contributed to my American Civil War armies as reported here and here.

The ACW figures are generally produced by sticking together existing parts in new ways. The amount of surgery needed to change an arm holding a sword into one holding a revolver is not beyond any modeller's capabilities, particularly as hard plastic figures can be cut with a craft knife and glued securely with liquid polystyrene cement.

The next stage in using spare parts is to try some more advanced surgery.

Having bought some Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Hussars 1792-1815 to act as the basis of French contre-guerilla cavalry in Mexico, I had enough parts left over to cobble together a wounded French hussar officer for my A Spy in the Suburbs Sharp Practice game.

This involved taking modelling tools to a pair of overall-clad hussar's legs. After carving off the stirrups and associated straps (not done in the picture below) a number of cuts were needed on each side. First the green cut took the leg off at the groin. 

Next I made a cut at the level of the knee (turquoise line) and bent it outwards to remove the slightly bow-legged effect. A bit of plastic filler and maybe a small piece of plastic card to wedge open the cut were used to repair the join.

Next I removed a wedge of plastic (between the two red lines) and glue the leg back on; effectively gluing the two red lines together. When that was set, I rebuilt the outer thigh with Green Stuff. Because the "red wedge" was half the width of the thigh, the effect was to preserve the overall length of the leg.

With the other leg done in a similar way I had a reasonable standing figure.

In this case I didn't have a hussar torso but I was able to make a figure in shirtsleeves using a body from the Warlord WSS Cavalry set and a pair of ACW arms. A hand with a pistol from the Warlord set, a scabbard, sabretache an busby-ed head from the Perry Miniatures French Napoleonic Hussars 1792-1815 box completed the picture.

The Perry Napoleonic Allied Cavalry box is particularly guilty in terms of providing an excess of body parts. Because it includes parts to make both Russian and Prussian dragoons in short jackets (Kollet) or longer coats (Litewka) the box contains enough parts to make twice as many riders as there are horses!

I've used similar techniques on this set to produce some dismounted Russian dragoons...

The running figure was made by cutting one of the legs at the knee, again removing a wedge of plastic, and rebuilding the front of the knee with Green Stuff. The arm with the musket is an ACW infantryman's with the bayonet carved away.

Finally, I've built a Prussian Deployment Point base using the same set and similar techniques.

The figures are gathered around a chess board (plastic card with tiny pieces of fine plastic rod) glue onto a 3D printed tree stump. A 3D printed anvil provides the seated guy with somewhere to perch.

The two bare heads are stolen from Wargames Atlantic's Citizens of Rome set. Shakos were carved from unused heads and glued to the base beside the two bare-head guys.

Even more supplies littering the road...

My order from 1st Corps has arrived and the first products of a seriously concentrated period of painting and gluing are ready to use.

I ordered "Ambulance with driver and two horses", "Stretcher bearers wearing kepi" and "Battlefield Debris". The last of these has provided more debris to be strewn along the side of the Warrenton Pike.

The Battlefield Debris pack includes about a dozen small resin castings with discarded muskets, kepis, haversacks, pistols, careens and the like. They are generally well-cast although there were a few bubbles that had to fill with Humbrol Model Filler.

Taken with what I did previously, I now have about 12 inches length of debris. It's not enough the truly match the described state of the road after the Union defeat but it should go some way to reflecting historical picture.

“Supplies littered the road back to Washington”

For my "Running from Bull Run" game at Steel Lard, I need to capture the feel of the Warrenton Pike being scattered with stores abandoned by the collapsing Union logistics system as well as personal equipment discarded by fleeing Yankees.

I have some suitable castings on order from 1st Corps but whilst I'm waiting for them to arrive, I thought I'd have a go at creating some of my own.

This pile of crates was 3D printed from an STL 
downloaded from Thingiverse

Richard Phillips gave me these barrels. I've scattered
around some bits from various plastic sets

Likewise: 3D printed ammo box, hatchet from Warlord
Colonial Militia, shako and drum from Perry ACW infantry, 
carbine from Warlord WSS cavalry.

The bases are off-cuts of cheap floor tile from Poundland. I painted them with Modpodge and then poured on sand. Once the first layer was dry I sealed the whole with a second coat of Modpodge before painting and dry-brushing.

More to follow when the 1st Corps order arrives!

Ebor Lard 2025

I drove up to North Yorkshire on Saturday for this year's Ebor Lard. It's one of my favourite wargames events of the the year and I was disappointed to miss it last year due to a family holiday.

In the morning I played in Johno Rollinson's lovely-looking Western Desert game.

The outskirts of Bardia. The Australians were expected from the road 
at top left of the picture.

Using the Chain of Command 2 rules, this was a platoon-a-side affair depicting the first action of the 15th Australian Division. The Diggers (commanded by Steve Porter and Ian Hammond) were pushing into Italian-held Bardia and were tasked with capturing a supply dump before its owners (Jason South and I) could blow it up!

The Supply dump occupied the triangular compound in the picture above.

Jason and I chose a 47mm AT gun (in case the Aussies brought tanks), a roadblock, and a couple of lengths of barbed wire. We also got two free entrenchments but we ended up deploying them stupidly and they were of little use during the game.

The roadblock is between the two houses near the 
damaged truck, the barbed wire beyond at the base
of the hill.

The Patrol Phase was over very quickly, somewhat to the surprise of both sides. We ended up with a skewed battle with the Australians' centre of mass way over on the Italian left.

Italian Jump-off-Points in red, Australian in blue

The game kicked off with the Australian players rolling three sixes thus ending the Turn and with it their pre-game bombardment. However, things went well for them from that point onwards. Despite a hastily deployed Italian anti-tank gun...

... their carrier section were able to rush forward and lock down the  Italian JoP beside the roadblock  before killing the gun crew at close range.

The Diggers surged forward over the next few phases.

Reduced to two, poorly placed, JoPs the Italians were in no position to put together a defensive line with interlocking fire. We managed to get an attached Afrika Korps section into the front of our position and decided that much of the Italian platoon should concentrate on setting the explosive charges.

One Italian squad moved up on the right, though.

Italian squads are huge and frequently
difficult to manage

2" mortar smoke reduced casualties on both sides and an Australian close assault was beaten off by the Germans.

Two Italian light machine-gun teams managed to occupy a building that gave them limited ability to enfilade the road in front of the German position but they lost their corporal putting the defenders' Force Morale down to dangerous levels.

In the end the Italians got their charges set and started the Final Countdown mechanism. With phases running out they were in the process of bugging out when an Aussie lieutenant made a dash into the compound to try and cut the wires to the explosives. 

He needed to score an 8 or higher on his movement dice but rolled seven! The retreating Afrika Korps men tried to drag him out of the compounds gateway as they passed but were unsuccessful.

Johno declared the game a marginal Italian victory but to be honest I think their Force Morale would have reached zero had the casualties for Germans caught in the blast been correctly assessed.

This was a fabulous game played in a great spirit (both sides pointing out things their opponents had missed), that both sides thought they'd lost at several points, and that went down to the last die roll of the last Phase. Terrific stuff!

I tried to capture some shots of all the other games:

David Hunter's Of Gongolfin and the Ruin of Maerbad,
Midgard Heroic Battles rules

Joe Bilton's Normandie '44
Chain of Command 2

Matt Slade's 1066 And All That (Hastings),
Midgard Heroic Battles

Ian Hemingway's What a Scaver,
What a Cowboy variant

Charley Walker's The Nelson Touch,
Kiss Me Hardy 2

John Savage's Tet à Tet, Vietnam variant Chain of Command 2

I'll share more pics in a future post but now on with the afternoon game.

This was Malcolm Bowe's Yom Kippur '73 game using the What a Tanker game system. I'd played WaT a couple of times previously and found that it worked OK but wasn't something I'd rush back to. The experience of the afternoon did nothing to enhance my opinion of the rules.

Malcolm's 10-12mm scale models were nicely painted and the use of dummy tank markers to disguise the enemy until actually acquired was interesting.

The MDF tank "dashboards" worked well and the terrain was convincingly Sinai-like.

Ultimately though, for me, the game failed. Let me express this in terms of the Simulation-Game-Narrative triangle.

As a simulation of Cold War era tank combat I couldn't buy it, particularly as on several occasions tanks were able to drive right up in front of an opponent, circle around behind them, and then shoot them a close range in the rear armour! This might be just believable among the hedgerows of Normandy but in the flat plains of Sinai it was simply ludicrous.

As a game, ideally testing opponents' skill and rewarding astute and informed play, it also failed. Apart from the complete inability to defend against the unrealistic tactics described above, the Israelis' only defence against the Saggers was to hope for improbably good luck. 

A further thought on mature reflection: the game was set on only the second day of the war so the Saggers were a new factor and making them impossible to defend against might just be realistic. 

Finally as a narrative, I found the game unengaging. Because the above factors made progress across the table of only marginal value and because the automatic replacement of casualties with new tanks meant there was little progress towards achievement of aims, the game devolved into a series of largely unconnected, mechanistic interactions.

I'm genuinely sorry to be so brutal in my assessment. Maybe it was just me; the other players seemed to enjoy it despite agreeing that the game bore little resemblance to reality.

I want to give some thought as to how WaT might be used to simulate modern warfare on the open plains of Sinai. Certainly some kind of overwatch/interruption mechanism is essential. 

As I understand it, once the initial shock had worn off, Israeli tank commanders adopted a number of measures to respond to Sagger ATGWs including popping smoke, reversing into their own dust cloud and having friends on overwatch to fire at and hopefully suppress the missile controller. Maybe something could be added to the scenario to reflect these factors.

-o0o-

On to happier matters. The whole event went off in the friendliest of manners and the evening social, with steak dinners at a pop-up restaurant on a local beef farm, was definitely the best of any Lardy Day I've attended. Well done John Savage for a stellar job of organisation despite some challenges in the months prior!

The Brawl

On Sunday Gus, Andy, Ron and Phil came over for a first go at Gangs of Rome.

I set the terrain up using most of my current Roman terrain on my Deepcut Studio mat. 

The horrea are warehouses, one of them newly built from a Warbases MDF kit and the other scratchbuilt, originally as a Late Roman church!

The foricae is a block of public toilets. I propped a ladder up against it and scattered some tools about. The aim was to encourage someone to climb up but also as a clue that the roof constituted dangerous terrain.

The Temple of Minerva and the "town house" are also Warbases kits, the latter a villa repurposed by means of some walls (part Hovels, part scratch built). The "temple under repair" is an old resin model I've had for years. Don't know the manufacturer or why I bought it but it was a good excuse to deploy my homemade scaffolding. 

I used a variation on the rulebook scenario called The Brawl. This struck me as a good way to introduce new players to the rules. Two street gangs were to fight each other with points being scored for putting enemies out of action. Double points were awarded for style, something achieved by taking out an enemy in a single activation by two or more means (e.g. missile combat and melee).

I departed from the published scenario in a few ways. Firstly I created 11 pre-generated Gang Fighters and allowed the opposing sides to choose from them. Two of the fighters (Junius the Thief and Molendinarius the Brawler) had additional abilities. If one side had ended up with both of these, the other side would have received the eleventh model. As it was both sides ended up with five members.

Molendinarius the Brawler
(who ended up in the Blue gang
despite his green cloak)

Junius the Thief

Both sides then picked a Leader, Scaevola for the Blue Gang and Lucretius for the Greens.

Scaevola - leader of the Blues

Lucretius - leader of the Greens

My final departure from the scenario-as-written was to allow deployment anywhere on the board. Not sure why I did that but it got the action sorted quickly!

Januarius and Lucretius fighting on the roof
of the small house

The action began with a fierce fight on and around the small house. Januarius of the Blues was put out of action almost immediately. As he took damage in melee and was then thrown off the roof by Lucretius, his demise was considered to have been achieved with style and two points were scored for the Greens. 

As the fighting continued, Lucretius was then attacked by Scaevola and Aerugo (he dodged Aerugo's pilum) before both he and Scaevola were in turn attacked by angry mobs!

At the end of the first turn all three Mobs (I only have three) were angry and the Disturbance Counter was down to six.

Game turn 2 began with Molendinarius being menaced by a Mob. Some childish amusement was had from the fact that the Mob in question was represented by a shepherd and his sheep.

Further amusement came from Rufinus and Parum Icarus throwing sacks at each other and missing.

The continued fight between the two Leaders, Scaevola and Lucretius, culminated in the latter being taken out. This gave the Blues three points (they missed out on doubling this as the crucial activation involved only a melee attack). 

Having just taken out Lucretius, Scaevola is attacked from
behind by an angry mob. Aerugo is still on the roof
of the small house.

The fight left Scaevola badly wounded but fortunately he'd brought with him a vial of Miraculous Ointment so after taking refuge in the walled garden of the townhouse he was able to recover.

Another mob had by now become scared...

The third turn saw mostly the two gangs throwing rocks at each other. The only point scoring coming when Molendinarius hit Musca with his gladius before throwing him bodily into one of the columns of the old temple. Two more points to the Blues!

Keep chucking the rocks boys!

Turn 4 saw more of the same; lots of brawling but no points scored. The shepherd and his sheep were now scared and the Disturbance Counter came down to 4 but that was as low as it would get in the game.

As the last turn started the Blues were well ahead on points but with a little more luck the whole action might have swung in the final moments. Although Blue leader Scaevola had made good use of his Miraculous Ointment, he had continued to take damage, not least from being attacked by the one remaining angry mob.

In almost the final action of the game Parum Icarus ran past Scaevola and onto the manicured lawn of the town house garden. In doing so he inflicted a point of damage using his Subtle Dagger. Reaching down he prized a rock from the sward and threw it a the head of Scaevola. 

Sadly for the Greens the rock missed and Scaevola would live to brawl another day. The Greens had just missed out on a potential six victory points!

The final action saw Rufinus take down Junius for a final point to the Blues.

Rufinus (right) attacks Junius while Molendarius (rear) assists

In the end, then, the removal of Leader Lucretius and Junius the Thief, along with the very cinematic fate of Musca saw the Blues finish with 6 victory points. Their opponents managed only to dispatch Januarius (albeit with style) and scored just two points.

Gangs of Rome proved popular with the players and we're seriously considering a campaign going forward. More on that and my thoughts so far on the rules to follow in a future post. 

On the workbench

I've been fairly busy over the last couple of weeks with a wide variety of modelling projects, fully illustrating my usual magpie-like approach to the hobby.

For Gangs of Rome I decided I'd like some Roman manhole covers. Access points to sewers and underground locations (I'm being careful to avoid spoilers here) appear in at least two of Lyndsey Davies's Marcus Didius Falco books and I wanted the option to include them in games. A little Googling found some images...

I played around with Tinkercad and managed to produce some approximations. I then stuck the prints to thin plasticard and added my usual Milliput crazy paving round them.

Suitably painted I think they're OK but I'll probably ditch the contrasting stone colour.

Also recently printed was this 1/300th scale Hungarian Air Force Me109:

Not brilliant but it'll do the job when my Magyars need fighter support.

Finally, I'm in the process of completing a second unit of Prussian dragoons for the 1812 campaign. Pictures of these when they're finished but I'm also playing with left-over parts to make a Sharp Practice Deployment Point. 

Not sure why the trumpeter is on foot while the rest of them are fighting; maybe his horse was killed?