Sharp Practice night fighting rules

My Puebla 1863 scenario involves night fighting in a built-up area. As there aren't any rules for fighting at night in the Sharp Practice rulebook, I'm forced to come up with my own.

In the first playtest, a couple of weekends ago, I wanted to keep things simple and concentrate on the character motivation parts of the scenario. Accordingly I just had two rules:

1. All units count as one cover level better when fired at, and
2. Any unit firing removes one in every three dice.

Subsequent discussions (Mark was particularly helpful, thanks mate) led to the conviction that uncertainty as to whether a unit was going to be visible would make for a more dynamic game. With this in mind, the second playtest will use the following rules:

1. All units count as one cover level better when fired at, and
2. When activated a unit make an alertness check rolling one die as follows:

Regulars or Light Infantry                        3+

Conscripts/Volunteers or Skirmishers       4+

Militia or Irregular Skirmishers                5+

If successful, the unit receives a marker:

3D printed telescopes as spotting markers

Enemy units are spotted at the following ranges:

Line Units in the open                24" / 12"

Skirmish Troops in the open       18" / 9"

Units in cover                              12" / 6"

Units firing                                  48" / 24"

The distance before the slash is used if the spotting roll was successful. Otherwise the distance after the slash is used. I may create some additional markers to remind us which units have fired from their current location.

If you can see the unit, you can fire at it (remembering that it counts one cover level better thanks to the darkness).

More plane buildage

My kit-building for display has continued to proceed slowly and I've recently completed another two 1/72nd scale jets.

First up is this British Aerospace Hawk in Red Arrows colours by Revell.

This kit is a bit of pig. As well as the instructions being a bit vague in places, following them as written will lead to you gluing on half a dozen parts that make it impossible to then apply the decals!

At one stage I nearly binned it but in the end I decided to get it sufficiently finished to go into the display cabinet at least until I manage to build a better one. I may go for the Airfix version but not until I've had a chance to recover from this one!

Next we have the Armstrong Whitworth Seahawk from Airfix.

This mould dates back to 1959. I've wanted to build one for years, ever since I obtained an ex-lending-library copy of Airfix Magazine Guide 16 - Modelling Jet Fighters. 

The original plan was to improve the kit as per the guide and build it as an Airwork Services Limited target tug; it would look so cool in all black! In the end, however, I couldn't source the necessary markings so I decided to build it as a West German Marine Mk101.

The improvements involved replacing the over-thick undercarriage doors and underwing pylons (the latter requiring moving too), drilling out the cannon ports, adding cartridge ejection chutes, and adding the aerial and radar fairing to the rear fuselage. I also added some scratch-built cockpit detail but you can't see it through the canopy.

The Seahawk was much more enjoyable than the Hawk. If I found another one going cheap I'd certainly buy it with a view to making a Fleet Air Arm example.

Another rescued miniature

Another mini rescued from the to-be-melted-down bag has now had a visit to the painting desk.

As you can see, it's a D&D-style druid, somewhat heavily armoured for use in Glorantha so I may stick him on eBay.

Anyone know who he's by? I haven't been able to find an image online. 

A foray into 15mm

I have some self-imposed rules to prevent my getting sidetracked into projects that take up too much space and effort. One of these is that I avoid adding new scales beyond the 6mm, 20mm and 28mm that I'm already heavily invested in. The only exception to this is that I have some legacy Hordes of the Things armies in 15mm scale.

A few years ago I acquired some 15mm English Civil War / Thirty Years War figures. Not sure where they came from, I suspect in a box of various figures that passed through several hands before and after mine. For a while these guys sat in a drawer but after a bit I decided they were poor quality and unlikely to get used so I consigned them to the bits-of-white-metal-to-get-melted-down-one-day bag.

Last week I came across them whilst looking for some scraps of metal to weight down the nose of a jet aircraft kit. I decided to paint a few of them.

I decided to paint them in colours roughly inspired by a plate in the Osprey book on Gustavus Adolphus's infantry - men of an English or Scottish mercenary regiment.

In line with the advice of Dex (who suggested they may be old Peter Laing models) I've based them in 40mm wide elements.

They'll be going on eBay shortly as I don't have any use for them. A few more may follow if I feel the urge to keep painting these little guys.

ACW Sharp Practice gold

A trip to a local antiques centre yesterday threw up this book, Spies, Scouts and Raiders, potentially marvellous source of American Civil War skirmish scenarios.

It's part of a series of 27 books published in 1985 by Time-Life Books. Apparently the series is quite well-known among ACW enthusiasts but I hadn't come across it before.

This book covers intelligence work, codes and signals, guerrilla operations, the damage and repair of railways, and finishes with some notes on some of the more bizarre technological developments during the war.

There are plenty of contemporary photographs that just cry out to be reflected on the wargames table...

There were lots of these books on sale but at £7.50 each I didn't want to blow my budget. I did, however, sneak a photograph of this plate from First Blood: Fort Sumter to Bull Run. 

It depicts a scene during the Union retreat from first Manassas, a situation I've thought for some time could make for a fascinating Sharp Practice game. Now should I start sourcing mule-pulled supply wagons?

First Puebla playtest pics

This weekend Andy, Ron, Mark and Dex came over and we had a first run-through of the Puebla game. 

I don't want to reveal too many details here because chunks of the scenario need to be kept confidential but it was a very valuable experience.

A siege is very much in danger of producing a static firefight. It was my intention to design the scenario such that this doesn't happen. Unfortunately on this occasion by best-laid plans went awry. Mark's in ability to roll more than three on 2D6 delayed. matters considerably and led to a long period of ineffective firing between the two sides.

Mexican defenders of the penitentiary

The Renowned Hero of France Capt Lacharde's
men threaten a front-line Mexican position

The Turcos defend a front-line trench

A Mexican conservative gun crew. Their
commander has been lightly wounded by a 
French marksman

Mobility was brought to the battle by the Mexicans, with Captain Victor Vectra leading his men towards a ruined house on the French siege-lines. Unfortunately, just before they got there, Sergeant Ben-Hammim arrived (unaccountably late) with his group of Turco skirmishers.

Ben-Hammim's men let out a deafening blast of musketry that.... had no effect whatsoever! 

The Mexicans (of the Puebla State Militia) charged into the Turco position and fierce hand-to-hand combat ensued. The Mexicans were marginally beaten but being classed as 'Stubborn' they fought on but and were soundly defeated not least because we forgot to add on 3D6 for a second supporting group.

At this point the historical narrative becomes unclear. That is to say I will reveal no more other than to say that a fortunately timed chapter end brought us to a convenient place to stop the action with the French having made some progress in clearing the Mexicans from the first row of buildings within the city.

I've since, in discussions with Mark in particular, decided on some tweaks to the scenario and the special rules bringing it. In particular I'm planning on some night fighting rules derived from Arc of Fire.

I'd like to get in another test game before Steel lard but it'll depend on finding volunteers and finding a weekend when the kitchen isn't full of family-related junk!

Puebla ready(-ish)

I've reached the point where I'm happy to run a first playtest of the Puebla scenario for Steel Lard. Hopefully I'll get a game in this coming weekend.

The terrain looks like this at the start of the game:

In the foreground are the French siege-lines. To the right is the penitentiary. The rest of the built-up area is divided in blocks or manzana in Mexican Spanish.

I want to add some rubble to the board before it sees action at Steel Lard but it'll do for now.