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.

Operations near Morris, Mississippi

Word recently reached Stately Counterpane Manor that our good friend Ron had been rather poorly but was now keen to get back into the social whirl. So knowing his predilection for the American Civil War I volunteered to put on a Sharp Practice game.

The scenario was loosely based on operations by the Union's Mississippi Marine Brigade in 1864. In August of that year a Mississippi Ram Fleet flotilla was operating along its namesake river with orders to intercept civilian river traffic:

During the operation, the quartermaster boat Fairchild, lagging behind the fleet, came under fire from near the riverside village of Austin. The fleet returned and dispatched mounted and infantry elements of the Mississippi Marine Brigade to deal with the enemy forces. The result was a rather poorly handled engagement near Beaver Dam Lake that involved the marines accidentally trapping a Confederate cavalry force between their infantry and mounted elements!

I used the outline of the Austin engagement to create a smaller game more suited to Sharp Practice. Ron had five Groups of Confederate cavalry, three of them mounted and two operating on foot as skirmishers. The skirmishers had been given all of the force's available long arms and so were treated as armed with muskets. The horsemen had pistols and operated using the Sam Colt's Equalisers rule. The Confederate plan was that they could ambush any Union troops sent to capture the (actually recently withdrawn) artillery that had fired on the flotilla.

The field of battle from the south - the Duck River is mostly off-table to the left but you
can see the hill from which Confederate artillery yesterday bombarded the ram fleet.

And Union troops there were, mostly entering from the northern end of the field. Mark commanded two groups of MMB infantry with a single group of skirmishers attached. The latter were armed with breech-loading carbines, which yet again proved their worth in this game. 

Also available on the Union side were two groups of cavalry but these would arrive at the southern end of the table with their time and place of arrival somewhat randomised.

The Confederates had two usable Deployment Points and a third, dummy one on the riverside hill. At the start of the game Ron chose to deploy two-thirds of his cavalry in the woods to the left of the advancing Union boys.

The Union advance - Confederate cavalry start to appear in 
further clump of trees

I'm afraid this was a mistake by Ron; there was little room to manoeuvre and the presence of fencing along the road would make a powerful charge difficult.

However, the Union forces were commanded by Mark and he can always be relied upon to get the wrong end of a random event. Major Wilbur Warnefield slipped and fell and would spend an inordinate amount of time getting up and dusting off his uniform!

This did, however, allow time for Captain Falke's Union cavalry to complete their ride around to the southern end of the field

Ron also took advantage of Warnefield's delay by deploying two groups of dismounted cavalry, causing some casualties to the Union line.

On the Union left the dismounted skirmishers advanced up the road to oppose Ron's horsemen...

and then took up a position behind the snake-rail fence.

Meanwhile Falke's cavalry advanced. Mark was keen to keep his options open - should he charge the enemy skirmishers in the open or engage the cavalry in the rather cramped space alongside the road?  In the end, the opportunity to put in a proper cavalry charge won out and blue-clad riders began accelerating towards the Confederate skirmish line.

The result was slaughter. Both Confederate groups were routed and out of the battle. Confederate Force Morale dropped from ten to six in an instant!

Another random event saw the cavalry discovering that the ground was rougher than they thought (perhaps slick with Rebel blood?) so I had a chance to deploy one of my specially designed markers.

At this point, as Mark carefully marshalled his dice, we realised that the Union line was firing in an uncontrolled manner.

It would continue to do so for several turns, the men firing mechanically into their own powder smoke despite the presence of their own cavalry to their front. I'm sure some harsh words were exchanged once the cavalry managed to extricate themselves from the position.

On the left, Ron finally managed to manoeuvre his cavalry into position to charge the Union skirmishers but, attacking a defended obstacle and rolling spectacularly poorly, they were forced back with significant losses.

At this point, despite the late arrival of more Confederate cavalry under Sergeant Wilkins...

...with just two points of Force Morale left, Ron ordered a general withdrawal and the Union had won the day!

It was great to get the ACW collection on the table for a game other than Running from Bull Run, lovely to catch up with Ron and Mark, and pleasing that a scenario planned in relative haste worked so smoothly. We must do this more often!

A bit of Western Desert

Inspired by the newly working 3D printer I've carried on producing a few models for Gabr-el-Ahmar, 1940.

Two battalions of M11/39 medium tanks appeared in my last post but here's a slightly more close up view of a few of them.

I've also done some L3/35 tankettes.

For the Commonwealth forces, I started off with a couple of portee 37mm Bofors AT guns. The only portee set-up I could find on Thingiverse was a 2pdr. When scaled down to 1/300th scale the AT didn't print properly but the truck was okay. I decided to scratch build the AT guns using one in my 1941 Hungarian force as a scale guide.

Stretched sprue of various thicknesses gave me the wheels, gun barrels and trails while the gunshields were fashioned from thick paper. I'll add some crew figures when my order from H&R arrives.

The scenario calls for A Squadron, 11th Hussars in the form of two troops of Rolls Royce and one of Morris armoured cars. These were my first attempt at the Caunter camouflage scheme. I used Vallejo Dark Sand as the base with overlaid patterns of Basalt Grey and Pastel Green.

Finally (for now) I delved through the bits box and managed to find an old Irregular Miniatures Bren Carrier and some Heroics and Ros British infantry. Together I think they make a reasonable KRRC carrier platoon. I'm quite pleased with the way they remind me of the work, in 20mm scale, of the late John Sandars, one of my earliest wargaming inspirations.

Return to 3D printing

A few months ago my 3D printer (it's an Ender 3 S1 pro) stopped working. Filament would no longer feed into the extruder and application of a cleaning needle wouldn't change that even with the head heated up.

Some searching on line suggested that I had a broken-off piece of filament blocking the mechanism. Unfortunately the same investigation also suggested that disassembling the print head was a really tricky job. When I couldn't find a Sheffield-based company that did printer repairs I began to think my 3D printing days were over.

Last weekend, though, I decided to stop being a wuss and to have a go at the disassembly job!

It turned out that what I needed was this video by The Edge of Tech, a few tools, and a very systematic approach to documenting the process as I went along.

I took photographs of the work at each stage. 

Also each time I removed an assembly and/or some fixing screws I placed them in a specific location with a label keyed to the corresponding minutes and seconds in the Edge of Tech video.

I ended up with about nine labelled piles of tech before I managed to remove the offender; a 3mm long piece of filament stuck in the guts of the hot end.

After reassembly the printer seemed to be working okay and within an hour I was the proud owner of sheet of Roman roof tiles:

Since then, inspired by the recent review of Benghazi Handicap, I've produced and painted two battalions of 1/300th scale M11/39 tanks for the Gabr-al-Ahmar scenario.

This in turn has led to my putting in an order to Heroics and Ros for some British and Italian infantry and support weapons.  I'm just incapable of sticking to a single project!

Some Pliocene progress

The initial wave of enthusiasm from the wargaming-The-Saga-of-the-Exiles idea has carried me though the process of painting (or in some cases repainting) some figures that were already on hand.

First completed was this macrauchenid. It's a pliocene member of the giraffe family. Too slender to serve as a riding animal, it'll just provide some exotic flavour as a background element in games taking place outside the Tanu cities. The model is a cheap, Chinese-made toy I picked up years ago when I briefly toyed with the idea of a 15mm scale Pliocene army for Hordes of the Things.

Another pliocene animal is Stephanorhinus etruscus. Another cheap plastic toy, this one depicts a 4 metre long giant rhinoceros. I enjoyed airbrushing this model. It and the marcrauchenid benefitted immensely from a coat of AK Ultra Matt airbrush varnish.

Stephanorhinus makes a challenging target for a Tanu hunter.

The Tanu is a very old Mithril Miniatures model that's been sitting in a drawer for decades. The product code on the base enabled me to identify it as "32mm Lorien spearman" from their old Lord of the Rings range.

My paint job is a long way from what this quite nice sculpt deserves. It was my first attempt at depicting coloured glass (vitredur) for the partial armour and the spearhead. 

Another old model (I suspect early Games Workshop but I'm not sure) is this Firvulag stalwart in obsidian armour. Nothing much to say about this repaint of a figure that was unlikely to be used in any other context.

Another Firvulag is this troll-like creature. Also ancient, I think it came from the collection of my friend Alan Slater. I've repainted it as its original 1980s paint job was looking its age.

Finally, another attempt at a glass-armoured Tanu. This guy is in the rose and gold colours of a member of the Psychokinetic Guild. I probably didn't choose the easiest set of shapes to try and depicted as glass but practice eventually makes perfect (I hope).

I don't want to spend a fortune on this project - a few additional figures and perhaps one more building to add an alien element should be enough to give me a chance to play-test some suitable rules. At the moment I'm considering a What A Cowboy-based system as an alternative to Song of Blades and Heroes. Although Pulp Alley is another possibility... hmm....

Further into the woods

Production on terrain for The Iron Hand of Mars continues apace. One of the locations in the game is an abandoned Roman marching fort, now overgrown. It was left behind in 9AD when the legions of Varus set out to over-winter back on the Roman side of the Rhine.

Standard procedure would have called for its destruction before the homeward march. That it remains intact serves as a chilling indicator that Varus's men thought themselves in friendly territory. They expected to return the following Spring and reoccupy the place. Instead they were ambushed and slaughtered by the German tribes under Arminius.

By the time Marcus Didius Falco arrived in the forest, the defensive ditch was clogged with brambles and the interior of the fort was a dense thicket of saplings.

Obviously I wouldn't have room to represent a whole multi-legion fort on the table so just a corner of the rampart appears on the table edge.

The base is 2mm MDF rescued from the packaging of a framed picture bought on line. The rampart was built from layers of foamcore and all but the ditch received a coating of brown wood filler for texture.

The brambles are rubberised horsehair (an advantage of being married to a traditional upholsterer) glued in place with matt Modpodge over the black-sprayed ditch. A light airbrushing in burnt umber then gave a suitably bramble-like colour.

The rampart got my usual layering of static grass over fine flock. I deliberately let some areas remain as bare earth. This is not a manicured lawn.

Finally I added some vegetation inside the fort. The silver birches are cheap Chinese-made trees tarted up by painting the trunks and dipping the tops in fine flock after a good coat of Modpodge. A few 2mm clumps in mixed colours and clump foliage bushes complete the picture.

In the book, Lindsey Davies indicates a more substantial structure with a rotting wooden palisade. Given the constraints of table space I decided to go with a simpler (and perhaps more believable?) structure for my abandoned fort.