A much delayed debut

As I've reported previously, it's the Joy of Six show this weekend and the Cold War Commanders group are putting on a game. Operation Vijay (or Sample Appreciations of Tactics, the Wargame), represents a slightly fictionalised version of the Indian seizure of Portuguese Goa in the early 1960s.

The game will offer a chance for what I believe is the first serious deployment of some of the oldest models in my collection:

Portuguese EBR armoured cars

At some point in the late 1970s I acquired this book:

Up to then, the only set of wargames rules I'd managed to understand well enough to play with was the same author's Airfix Guide to WW2 Wargaming. 

Keen to try another set of rules I determined to spend some of my limited pocket money on some white metal micro-tanks from Games of Liverpool. Unfortunately, my knowledge of French-manufactured armoured cars was limited and I accidentally purchased EBRs instead of AMLs.

As such, the EBRs never got used other than in a couple of practice sessions to learn the rules. They were based for Cold War Commander and repainted in olive green about two decades ago but Sunday will see them used in a "proper game" for the first time ever. Just goes to show; you never know when your time to shine will arrive!

The what now?

The Russo-Turkish War of 1711 was a short-lived, obscure sideshow of the Great Northern War. The Kuban Campaign was a short-lived, even-more-obscure sideshow of the Russo-Turkish War of 1711. As such, it's ideal for those of us with penchant for lesser-known historical settings.

I've been wanting to make more use of my 6mm Great Northern War miniatures for some time so in the hope of inspiring myself, I pulled off the shelf Nick Dorrell's Peter the Great Humbled, The Russo-Ottoman War of 1711.

The problem is that I'm not presently motivated to relearn Shot, Steel and Stone or to learn Twilight of the Sun King, the two sets of rules in my library that are most obviously relevant. I decided therefore to see if I could use my 6mm chaps to fight an action from the period with The Pikeman's Lament.

I set up a scenario based on a Russian column advancing towards a small Tatar settlement. A single road (little more that a muddy track) crossed the table and there were scattered woods and areas of broken ground.

The Russians would have three contingents; a Dragoon company supported by a field gun, and two sotnyas of Cossacks. 

The defending Tatars would have two companies of cavalry with a single unit of militia holding the village and counting as a company on its own.

The field of battle seen from the Tatar side

I used colour coded mini-dice to distinguish between the various types of unit on the table. In the picture below we see, from left to right, a white die indicating one of the more experienced groups of Tatar warriors (classed as Veteran Dragoons), a blue die showing that the militia (Raw Shot) were at full strength (they would switch to a yellow die when at half-strength) and a green die showing another, less-experienced Tatar unit (classed as Dragoons). The numbers shown on the dice would be reduced as casualties were taken. In addition, silver mini-dice indicated contingent commanders. 

I was treating this as a solo test of a future Saturday Afternoon Wargame. Worth doing as it soon became clear that I'd started out the two forces too far apart. Quite apart from a delay in getting into action, the non-mobile Russian field gun would never be in range of a decent target throughout the game!

Tulpar's contingent of Tatars prepares to move forward

I did roll up characteristics for the named contingent commanders but they didn't play a major role in the game. The only significant impact came when the recklessly brave Sotnyk Horobet's company were led into a Wild Charge that decimated their already-weakened numbers.

The Russians advanced with their regular dragoons in the centre and a Cossack sotnya on each flank.

Tatars (centre) surrounded by already-weakened
Cossacks including the wavering Horobet

The action on the Tatar left looked like it was going the way of the opposing Cossacks until Captain Horobet's unit was routed. The resulting morale tests saw the rest of the company routed off the table.

In the centre it looked like the Russian dragoons of Captain Likhanov's company would capture the village but the Tatar militia proved a tough nut to crack. They drove off Likhanov and his immediate followers who were then hit from the flank by Tatars previously victorious on the left.

This led to a rout which triggered tests for the rest of the company. Again the Russian dice were unkind and the dragoons left the field en masse.

Despite this, it looked like Sotnyk Nepyipyvo’s still-fresh Cossacks, sweeping around the Tatar right could still save the day.

The Cossacks would need to hit the settlement in repeated waves to take out the militia but I'd decided at the start that the end of the scenario would be determined at the end of any turn where a D6 roll exceeded the remaining units on either side.

With victory in sight the Cossacks were recalled by higher command as the D6 roll finally ended the game. On this occasion a victory for the Tatars as the village was still in their hands.

 

Shadows of plastic

The Gangs of Rome rulebook has been on my shelf for a few months but I've now taken the plunge and bought a box of the Wargames Atlantic plastics that tie in with the rules:

The box contains five identical frames each allowing the construction of six 28mm miniatures. However, there's plenty of variety in there. They are divided at the waist so you can mix and match torsos with abdomens/legs. There are well over a dozen, I think all different, heads per sprue and a fine selection of arms with and without various weapons.

In addition, a quick comparison suggests that spare heads from my Victrix Republican- and Late Romans will match very comfortably with these Wargames Atlantic models. Legionary helmets in particular may be useful in turning some of these guys into Vigiles Urbani.

I've got a couple of figures, built straight from the box, on the workbench now and they seem to go together and paint up very nicely.  

If there's any disappointment it's with the mix of poses provided. My understanding is that a player starting Gangs of Rome will want about ten gang members to do the actual fighting and twenty-odd civilian types on "mob" bases to represent the more-or-less law abiding citizens of the city. 

This set will give you thirty figures in very dynamic, combat-oriented poses. Whilst there are a number of "empty" arms, and a couple carrying amphorae, I'd like to have seen some more statically posed models to represent the crowds of onlookers that play such a significant part in the game.

Given the need to allow for mixing a small number of basic poses, it was never going to be practicable for Wargames Atlantic to provide us with both male and female characters in this set but fortunately they do a fine range of suitable white metal miniatures. I can see another order going in soon!

Seafox!

My latest modelling output is the Matchbox 1/72nd scale Fairey Seafox I bought in Warwick.

There are two schemes included in the kit. I chose to build the one in bare metal; an aircraft of 713 Catapult Flight, HMS Arethusa at Kalafrana, Malta in 1939. 

The kit is not the easiest to build. The thin struts mean that several stages have to be glued up and then left to dry for quite some time. In the end I found myself applying superglue to fix joints that came apart when handling the model to fix later parts.

The decals went on remarkably well for their age. The only problems were with the small stencils on the undersides of the wing trailing edges. These mostly disintegrated but as they aren't visible from most angles I'm not too bothered.

The Seafox was a naval reconnaissance aircraft used for finding enemy ships at sea. It's unlikely I'll be playing WW2 Mediterranean naval combat in 1/72nd scale but I included a magnet in the body of the model just in case I want to deploy it on one of my magnetised flight stands.

There should be rigging wires between the wing struts and a wire aerial between the tail and the mast but for now I think I'm happy with the model as it stands.

I've done a lot of aircraft in bare metal recently; the Vallejo Air Aluminium is fabulous paint. However, I'll be taking a break from it now. Next on the workbench is a camouflaged Vampire T.11 in Chilean Air Force colours using an after-market decal sheet.

Indian summer

This year's Cold War Commanders' game for the Joy of Six convention in Sheffield depicts a somewhat tweaked version of Operation Vijay, the Indian annexation of Portuguese India in 1961.

The game was inspired by an Indian Army training manual Sample Appreciations of Tactics by Major H W Kulkarni of The Maratha Light Infantry. I had originally hoped to persuade the guys to run the game using the TacWWII rules but on mature reflection it will be more of a visual spectacle on a 6'x4' table using Cold War Commander 2 rather than the 3'x'2' space that the former would have needed.

Sample Appreciations of Tactics sets out half a dozen situations in which the student is required to create a written appreciation of the situation along with proposed orders to the force (usually as reinforced battalion) under his command. Effectively, in wargames terms, it's a book of six scenarios along with a demonstration of the correct way to format a plan to fight the resulting battles.

As we'll need some suitable models for the game, I've been busy with the 3D printer:

These Indian Shermans are my approximation to M4A3E4s. These were VVSS Shermans with the standard 75mm turret but up-gunned to carry a variety of 76mm weapons. In this case I was aiming to represent the US 76mm tank gun. They didn't have muzzle brakes but the threaded attachment site was still present. A spot of gunmetal on the tip of the barrel represents this. They are painted in Vallejo US Dark Green to represent the jungle green used on Indian tanks at the time.

Although Kulkarni's book envisages the opposition forces being equipped along Indian Army lines, we thought it would be more interesting to imagine a scaled-up version of the fighting around Goa in 1961. As such we need some Portuguese forces to fight. Andy Taylor is providing them (mostly; my French EBR armoured cars will be joining in) but I've 3D printed an F86 Sabre to support them.

I've done some display information for the game and a suitably colonial-looking church for Goa's Christian community is printing as we speak. Now I just need to remind myself how the rules work!

Haulin' our asses from Manassas

On Saturday I had Ron and Mark come over to try a first playtest of Running from Bull Run with live victims... sorry, volunteers.

This was the first time I'd set up the game on a 6'x4' table. 

Running along the table is the Warrenton Turnpike, at the far end of which is the Cub Run where some Union engineers were working on the bridge.

It turned out that Ron had driven along this road a few years ago. Mark and I learned some interesting stuff about the operation of toll roads in the USA!

The game began with various wagons strung out along the road and among them four clumps of fleeing  Union soldiers. As the Union player, Mark's aim was to organise them into a coherent rearguard. By doing so he might perhaps salvage some personal renown from the disaster and maybe mark himself out for higher command later in the conflict.

Ron's role was that of Fate. He would control all of those factors conspiring to make life difficult for the retreating boys in blue (and often grey too - in these early days of the war national uniform colours have yet to become established).

One such factor that made an early appearance (determined by Ron's drawing Event Cards) was the Black Horse Cavalry. This greatly feared confederate unit caused a couple of groups of Union soldiers to rout in panic before they were revealed to be in fact stampeding artillery draft horses!

Despite this, Mark did manage to organise some Union units into, albeit fragile, fighting stance. This was just in time as Sergeant Dexter Slab turned up with a group of Confederate infantry.

Mark thought the two Groups of Union infantry he'd managed to rally could take on Slab's Rebs, particularly if he could rally off some more Shock before the range closed too much.

Unfortunately at this point the Union commander's status was somewhat reduced when he trod in a pile of day-old racoon shit.

The bandage marker indicates the leader's
reduced status

Mark was some what peeved...

Fortunately Mark was able to get a couple of stragglers from the 13th New York to manhandle over an abandoned water bowser and clean off the crap!

As Mark got his Union battle line formed up they found themselves facing a similar Confederate formation let by Lt Jessop West.

It looked like the Confederates, with an advantage in terms of the amount of Shock taken, would be victorious in the coming firefight but then they fell victim to a "damp powder" random event.

The "fouled barrels" marker doing duty to
show "damp powder".

Another Union group joined in from the turnpike.

Lt West was injured by a stray Minié ball.

In the end, after about four hours of leisurely play (including tea breaks) we reached to end of the scenario with the exhaustion of the Event Card deck. Counting the ratio of routed or dead Union troops to rallied ones, I declared a Confederate victory.

It's very difficult, after just a couple of test runs, to have a real handle on the balance of the scenario in terms of either side being able to win but I'm reasonably happy with the way the victory conditions incentivise play that recreates the historical narrative.

I'll be making a few tweaks to the scenario before the next test:

• Restructuring the game as two Union players versus two Fate players,
• Adding a fourth Union Leader (a sergeant with a special knack for finding stragglers), 
• Reducing the card count slightly by adding one of the late-arriving wagons to the initial traffic jam, and
• Creating some more options for the Fate players when it comes to using command flags.

A first run from Bull Run

Today I essayed a first, tentative, alpha test of my Steel Lard scenario Running from Bull Run. 

It's an exploration of the Union retreat after the first battle of Bull Run in 1861. The emphasis is on the Union players attempting to impose some kind of order on the fleeing troops. An officer who can march back to Washington at the head of a formed body of troops, rather than as just one man among a fleeing multitude, may be destined for greater things in the battles to come!

I didn't lay out the full terrain this time - just enough to get the basic mechanisms tested.

This is quite different to just designing a Sharp Practice scenario. Because I'm dealing with troops who are effectively already routing, I'm pretty much designing a new game. The first contact between what I thought was a pretty good plan and the wargames table has already led to a load of changes!

I wanted to capture the impression of a road crowded with fleeing men and vehicles. I think this worked reasonably well....

At one point a few Confederate pursuers made an appearance. Led by Lt Jessop West, they let fly a volley needing 5s and 6s to hit. Rolling ten dice they could surely expect some success...

...or perhaps not.

The Black Horse Cavalry kicked up some dust. More on them as play-testing proceeds.

I'm reasonably pleased with how this is going. If it proves to be a functional scenario it may also see the light of day at Posh Lard in November. The drive down to Peterborough in the morning is a chore, being directly into the rising sun, but it's always a good laugh and great to catch up with Mike Whitaker and the Posh Crew.  In the meantime I'm hoping to get in a first test with actual players this weekend.