Gangs of Rome - Episode 1, Wagons Roll!

Yesterday I finally managed to kick off the Gangs of Rome campaign. Gus, Graham, Jamie and Ron were able to visit Stately Counterpane Manor for what will hopefully be the first of six episodes (seven if you include episode 0, which was more of a learning/teaching exercise).

Jamie and Ron were already established as Green gang members so Gus and Graham were signed up to represent the Blues.

Each of the two street gangs has a list of six objectives that will need to be fulfilled over the course of the six-game campaign. The two lists are not the same and each side chooses a mission for each episode. Thus, at the start of the campaign even I as the umpire have no idea what each scenario will entail.

In this case the Blue gang of Tarquinius Caerulius elected to "dispose of a body". This saw them having to get a body to one of two manhole covers and chuck it into the cloaca maxima (Rome's main sewer). To add complications, they had to do this while no-one was in line of sight! At the start of the game the body was in a raeda, a four-wheeled, ox-drawn carriage.

Meanwhile the Green gang of Spurius Verdius had to escort a wagon-load of wine to the gates of the Spurius townhouse.  

With both sides driving wheeled vehicles this had to be a night-time scenario as they are banned from the city during the day. I created a new Action for the driver of each wagon. Drive would allow a wagon to be moved four inches. A given vehicle could only be subject to a Drive Action once per turn. Obviously the Fail State for the Drive Action is "The vehicle doesn't move, Activation ends here."

Junius encourages the oxen forward

My creative input to the process is in deciding on the detail of the objectives, such that conflict is at least reasonable if not actually required! In this case the Greens had to cross the table diagonally and the Blues had to get to a location near the centre of the table so a clash was likely.

And a clash there soon was. The action opened with Maximinus (of the Blue gang) shooting an arrow at Plinius. He missed and to add insult to injury his bowstring broke! Almost immediately further injury was added as his target closed the range and beat him unconscious.  First blood to the Greens!

Maximinus (top right) shoots at Plinius (off camera)

Things continued well for the Greens as Laetius shot Januarius and took him too out of the fight.

The Blues, given a choice of two manholes down which they might dispose of their incriminating cargo, elected to move to the one nearer the centre of the table rather than the one nearer their opponents' deployment area. In retrospect this was the wrong choice but with limited intelligence as to the Green gang's mission this was definitely forgivable. They reached the manhole but with both Greens and vigiles milling about, there was never a quiet moment to ditch the body.

The raeda has just crossed the manhole
but the vigiles are nosing around

The German slave siblings Clovis and Arminius fought fiercely for the Greens, Arminius mostly against the vigiles and Clovis against a series of Blues.  In the end Clovis was stabbed by Pomponius and breathed his last just outside the temple of Minerva. 

Pomponius (in the purple tunic) prepares to stab
bare-chested Clovis as Musca and Titus look on

Arminius holds his own against the vigiles

In the meantime Junius of the Greens had got the wine most of the way to the Spurius mansion.

For a while it looked like Balbus might have a go at interfering with the delivery of the wine as he lurked behind one of Spurius Viridius's ornamental trees,

but in the end, with the law on the scene, he decided to withdraw.

In the event, with time moving on we decided that the Greens were close enough to the mansion to claim victory and that the Blues, who had finally decided to try the other, now deserted, manhole would be able to dispose of the corpse.  

Both sides were therefore awarded three points for achieving their main objectives. In addition, both sides had put out of action two of the opposing side (one of them permanently). They each therefore received a further two points. The campaign score is therefore now as follows:

Blue Gang - started with six VP, spent one to make sure we were playing a nighttime scenario, gained five this time around, new total = 10 Victory Points.

Green Gang - started with one VP, spent none, gained five this time, new total = 6 Victory Points.

Several gang members came away with injuries. For the Blues, Maximinius has a sprained ankle and will be unable to benefit from his personal ability for episodes 2 and 3, while Januarius has a head wound and won't benefit from any re-rolls for the rest of the campaign. 

For the Greens, Plinius has severe lacerations and will be limited to three Actions per activation for the rest of the campaign whereas the unfortunate Clovis has gone to feast with his ancestors. Doubtless his brother Arminius will be out for revenge next time!

-o0o-

I was slightly disappointed with some aspects of how the game went. The rules for using vigiles in a night-time scenario are unclear to me. I need to do some more reading of the rules and perhaps ask a few questions on the dedicated Facebook group. Whatever, I'm confident that we can come up with an acceptable solution, even if it means house-ruling the situation.

Thanks are due to those who contributed to the planning stage and to playing the scenario. Watch out for the next episode soon!

 

Gangs of Rome - the Patrons

With Episode 1 of our Gangs of Rome campaign coming up this weekend, I knew that sooner or later I'd need miniatures to represent the patrons of our two gangs. The way the campaign is organised, there's always the possibility that one side or the other may have to deploy their patron on the table during an episode.

What luck, then, that issue 462 of Wargames Illustrated, out this week, provides just the minis I need! As a promo for a gladiatorial combat game called Blood on the Sands, WI this month includes a cut-down version of the rules and a sprue of suitable figures from Wargames Atlantic. 

The sprue provides the parts to build two gladiators (a murillo and a thraex) as well as these two:

They're intended to represent a pair of lanistae (owners/trainers of gladiators) and as that pretty neatly reflects the day job of our two gang-patrons, it was a no-brainer to pick up a copy.

They've had a fairly rushed paint job because I wanted them ready for the weekend. The basing is designed to work in either the arena or on the streets of the city.

-o0o-

Because a rule of the campaign is that player characters don't appear if their player is unavailable, I needed a few more gang members. A quick rebase of the servi castrensi from my Polybian Roman army gave me some useful additions:

Secundinus the Assassin

Plinius, who thinks the blood
of a snake can cure poison

Titus, who prefers camel meat
to pork or chicken

Maximinus, who only uses
arrows with barbed heads

Iovianus, born half a world away

and Balbus, who once killed
his landlord with the leg of a chair

Sharp Practice terrain sources

On Friday Baroness Counterpane and I were at Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire to see our daughter give a talk about the history of the estate's private fire brigade. 

The talk, a ticketed affair, took place in the Harley Gallery and while we were waiting for it to start, my eye was taken by a seventeenth century oil painting.

Apparently 'View of Antwerp' has been attributed to a number of artists including the elder Breughel and Peter Paul Rubens. What caught my eye, though, was the foreground detail.

When building terrain for northern European Sharp Practice games this kind of thing is gold dust.

This one, for example, has a nice old cottage with washing drying on the grass outside, a field of enormous cabbages, and a couple of fence lines overgrown with long grass...

While this one has a wonderfully tumbledown fence...

...as well as a nice little chapel.

Finally this one shows an interestingly wide street as well as a nice selection of outbuildings.  

Worth noting by the way that at least one of the horses towing the wagon in that last section is hitched centrally. That's going to be pretty typical. It's my belief that the country lane we're familiar with today, with its central strip of grass between two channels of bare earth, is an artefact of the internal combustion engine. It shouldn't be seen in horse-and-musket-era or earlier terrain.

Gangs of Rome - The Campaign

Chatting with a few fellow gamers after the installation of the new Lord Mayor of Sheffield (congratulations Andy), I was reminded that people are keen to do some more Gangs of Rome.  This prompted me to finalise the structure of our campaign. 

I wanted something that be low-maintenance, time-limited and capable to progressing when enough of us could get together to play, rather than needing all participants every time a new episode took place. Ideally, players who aren't able to get to Sheffield to sit around the table should also be able to contribute. This is what I came up with.

Spurius Verdius and Tarquinius Caerulius are competing big-wigs in Rome at the time of Emperor Vespasian. They are deadly rivals whose followers contend to control the neighbourhoods where their territories overlap. This contention is often violent in nature, at least until the Vigiles Urbani turn up to restore order!

Our campaign will consist of a maximum of six episodes (in addition to The Brawl scenario that some of us played last Christmas, which counts as Episode Zero). Each gang has a list of six missions they must complete over the course of the campaign. Each mission may be selected once. Note that these lists are not the same for both gangs. The Gang with the highest total of Victory Points after six episodes is victorious in the campaign.

Each player in the campaign is associated with either the Spurius Verdius (Green) Gang or the Tarquinius Caerulius (Blue) Gang. In addition, each player has a personal character that only they will play. If that player is not present, their character will be replaced by another, either the personal character of another player or a non-player character to be run by the rest the gang’s players.

Choosing a Scenario

Before each episode of the campaign, the umpire will ask the players of each gang to agree which of their six listed missions they wish to carry out.

At that point, Victory Points earned in previous games may be spent to influence events:

Victory Points spent in this way are lost to the Gang’s running total.

The umpire will work out the details of the scenario taking account of the missions chosen by the two Gangs. Where the chosen missions clash, for example if one side has chosen a mission that can only take place at night but the other has chosen a daytime scenario, priority will be given to the side that has spent most Victory Points to influence events in this episode.

Status Quo Ante

Following The Brawl, the Blue Gang have six Victory Points while the Greens have only a single point! The Greens are going to have to work hard to catch up.

Finally, a Fairey Delta 2

Following shortly on the recent Jet Provost model, I've completed a kit that's suffered a very chequered past.

The Fairey Delta 2 was a British research aircraft from the 1950s. In 1956 test pilot Peter Twiss flew one at 1,132 mph, beating the previous world speed record by over 300 mph! Information learned from the aircraft would later inform the design of Concorde's delta wing plan.

I received the Dora Wings 1/72 scale model of the Delta 2 as a Christmas present in 2024. It looked like a challenging model to build as it included photo-etched brass parts, something I'd never encountered before.

Nevertheless I made a start early in 2025 and got as far as completing the main airframe before disaster struck. The front part of the canopy was meant to slot into a cut-out in the sides of the fuselage. However, it was at best a tight fit: as I forced it into place there was a sudden 'click' and a piece of plastic flew off past my head!  

On further investigation it emerged that the windscreen had split in two and half of it was now missing. Failing to find that half I sadly consigned the remains of the kit to its box and accepted that I would probably never finish the Fairey.

But then, a few weeks ago whist clearing the workbench to make room for a large painting job, I came across a small piece of clear plastic. Yes, it was the missing piece of canopy! My Fairey Delta would never be a perfect model but it could at least be finished.

It's far from perfect; I'm not happy with the attachment of the etched-brass wing fences and the long nose probe that survived initial construction and storage got broken in the process of applying the decals! It is moulded as part of the fuselage rather than as a separate part that could be fitted towards the end of the build. I just knew I'd not get through without breaking it but I'm furious to have got so close to the end before doing so!

In posing the thing for these photographs I've also noticed some stray bits of decal that have somehow ended up near the tail. They'll have to come off or be painted over!

Things to watch out for if you're building this beast:

• the ill-fitting canopy,
• that delicate nose probe (I never even attempted the tiny, etched-brass airflow probes that should be fixed to it), and
• for some schemes a yellow stripe decal needs to be added below the nose before you attach the lower aerial and pitot tube.

All in all I don't think the Dora Wings kit is bad; it's just better suited to a more experienced modeller than I am currently. If I saw one going cheap (unlikely) I'd probably pick it up and model one of the preserved aircraft taking advantage of the option to depict the nose in its Concorde-style drooped configuration. 

Gabr-el-Ahmar

Regulars here will be aware that a month ago I managed to get my 3D printer working again. By way of celebrating the return to productivity I decided to start some WW2 Western Desert armies in 1/300th scale. The resulting burst of creativity means that four weeks later I've not only completed Italian and British forces and accompanying terrain, I've also managed to play a first scenario!

On Thursday evening Alex and I took advantage of a table booked at Outpost Games in Sheffield to play Frank Chadwick's Gabr-el-Ahmar scenario.

Gabr-el-Ahmar, the Red Tomb, my own 
3D design (let me know if you want the STL file)

The scenario appears in the Benghazi Handicap sourcebook for Chadwick's own Command Decision rules. I amended it to fit with the TacWWII rules and was pleased to get this chance to give it a first run-out.

At TacWWII's 1cm = 40m ground scale the table is just three feet square. I set it up on my 6'x4' desert cloth folded in half. I have some left-over Venetian blind slats cut to various lengths to mark out the small tables often required by TacWWII. Our tiny models got some odd looks throughout the evening from the surrounding Warhammer players!

Alex took charge of the Italians.

This left me with the Brits. Gabr-el-Ahmar is an odd scenario for the British player; you're out-numbered badly by the Italians. Your few 2-pdr-armed A9 Cruiser tanks out-gun the Italian M11/39s but they're in mixed companies with Light Tanks Mk VI that are in turn out-gunned by the Italians!

Alex handled the Italian force very well, bringing his infantry forward to occupy the ridge beside the tomb and concentrating his tanks where their firepower could do most good.

I managed to stop a couple of M11/39 companies with long-range fire...

... but then decided to throw the British forward to get the Light Tanks' heavy machine guns into effective range. 

The resulting debacle saw 6th Royal Tank Regiment failing a battalion morale test at which point I conceded the battle.

If I recall correctly we had the action completed in a couple of hours of play, which I think was pretty good considering Alex hadn't played TacWWII before and I was explaining things as we went along. 

Alex kindly agreed that he'd give the rules another try. He's keen to try them with later war tanks so next time we're going to try using Bob Mackenzie's "Attack towards Valkenswaard" scenario. I think Alex should be able carry off an impression of Michael Caine in A Bridge Too Far!

Jet Provost

The latest addition to my collection of small jet aircraft in 1/72nd scale is this beastie from Airfix.

It's a Hunting Percival Jet Provost T.4 painted as an aircraft at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell in 1962.

The model is built straight from the kit using one of the two decal sets provided. The only change I've made is to paint in the red and green navigation lights on the tips of the wing tanks. In the Airfix instructions these are shown as black.

It's an enjoyable kit to build and goes together with only minimal filling and sanding required. The hardest part of the build was the sweeping curve of orange paint under the nose. I couldn't find a way to mask it so I had to handpaint it. I'm pretty happy with how it worked out.

I think I might get another of these kits. The other paint scheme also has a tricky curved demarcation line to paint so I might invest in a pack of Xtradecal after-market decals to finish it.