TacWW3?

I've been having a go at a couple of small games of TacWW2 with some adaptations to the Cold War era. Here's what's just happened.

Sometime in the mid-1970s a Soviet tank battalion (Tac 7, Normal Morale, in T-62s, supported by a Motor Rifle Company in BMP-1s) is attacking an area held by a small British battlegroup (Tac 5, Normal Morale) with a squadron of Chieftains supported by a company of infantry and a couple of reconnaissance troops in Scimitars. The positions after the Movement Phase are as follows:

The table, after the Move Phase

I began by making Tac rolls for the two Scimitars to communicate with their HQ (on the assumption that they would have located the enemy units previously). One of the two Tac rolls was successful so the British Tac score improves from 5 to 4 this turn (this is one of my version 1.5 additions to the rules).

In the Spotting Phase all of the British rolled 4 or better to pass their Spotting Tac tests. Of the Soviet units, only the BMP company managed to pass. This would make no difference, though, as none of the Soviet companies was close enough to spot the infantry and the Scimitars would bug out before they could be fired at. 

In Fire Phase A the Chieftains (in Defence Mode) fired at the left T-62 company. They needed a base 5+ (up to 128mm gun in the 80cm range bracket) to which I applied modifiers of +1 (superior fire control - a new addition) and -4 (assumed T-62 armour) meaning they needed to roll 8+. They scored 3,5 and 7 - all misses!

The Milan team elected to hold their fire (for reasons that will become apparent).

In Fire Phase B the left T-62 company returned fire. They needed a base 5+ modified by -1 (cover) and -5 (Chieftains' armour). In this case (target number = 11) they score Neutralisations on a 10. They rolled 10, 10, 7! Two Chieftains were Neutralised, the Soviet commander having declined the option of a Tac roll to specifically target the HQ Chieftain (another recent rules addition).

In Fire Phase C, the remaining Chieftains (two including the battlegroup HQ troop) could fire again. Scores of 4 and 9 led to one T-62 of the left company being Neutralised.

Also in Fire Phase C, the Milan platoon fired at the centre T-62 company. The T-62s got to try a Tac roll to see if they could respond to the incoming missiles but failed so the combat was resolved unmodified. I'd decided that at this range the Milan needs 4+ to hit and that the T-62s' armour would be ignored. If they had been T-80s with modern composite armour I'd count their armour modifier at half effect. The Milans rolled a 4 so a T-62 platoon was Neutralised.

In Fire Phase D one of the BMP platoons could now see the Milan platoon but at extreme range for the 73mm low pressure gun it failed to get the 10 it needed to cause suppression.

Company Morale Tests were now required for the Chieftains (passed rolling a 10 despite having two out of three troops Neutralised), the centre T-62 company (passed with a 7) and the left T-62 company (a Halt result on a roll of 4).

With the British still effectively on Tac 4, one of the Chieftains immediately rolled successfully to become unneutralised but the rest of the Neutralised elements would remain so for the next turn.

For those interested my current working ATGW rules are as follows:

Each ATGW has a minimum and maximum range (for the Milan this is 1cm to 50cm, for Sagger it's 12cm to 75cm). Each is rated 10(vs soft)/7(vs hard) at its minimum range band and 10/4 at all other ranges. Armour is ignored unless modern composite armour which has half its usual modifier.

ATGWs can only be fired once per turn and only by units in Defence or Prepared Defence. They may fire in phases A or C at the owner's option.

When the firing player declares ATGW fire and nominates a target element, the owner of the element may make a Tac roll for the target's company. Only one such roll is made per company per Fire Phase. The effect of this Tac roll is as follows:

Failed Tac roll - resolve the fire as normal.

Tac roll succeeds by 0 or 1 - target element(s) may evade, company immediately enters Default Mode.

Tac roll succeeds by 2 or more - elements of the target company may make one or more of the following responses:

• pop smoke
• evade
• return fire.

Evade - ATGW fire is resolved with a -2 modifier, the target element may move up to one increment and if this takes it into cover the usual -1 cover modifier applies in addition. If the move takes the target element out of line of sight, the ATGW automatically misses.

Pop smoke - place as more marker on the element, the ATGW shot is resolved at -3. Any subsequent fire (in either direction) this turn is blocked by the smoke.

Return fire - any elements of the target company may, if they have an unused opportunity to fire this turn, fire at the ATGW-firing element. If the firing element is Neutralised or knocked out, the ATGW misses.

Examples:

In Fire Phase A an Egyptian Sagger platoon fires at the centre troop of an Israeli tank company that's in Deliberate Attack mode. The Israeli company (Tac 6) roll a 7. They get the -2 for evading but as there's no nearby cover the Israeli player elects no not actually move the model representing the target troop. The tank company immediately goes into Default mode.

In Fire Phase C another Israeli tank company is also targeted by a Saggers in identical circumstances but this time the player rolls an 8 (passing by two). The targeted tank elects to pop smoke and is now targeted at -3 to the die roll, while the other two tank troops shoot at the Sagger team (as they have an unused fire opportunity this turn in Fire Phase D).

That'll do for now, I'll report back later on progress.

A bit of random painting

At a bit of a loose end this morning, I decided to paint a couple of random figures.

Jamie has a significant collection of the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings figures, mostly unpainted or painted before he'd reached his current skill level. They're now largely abandoned as he's moved on to other projects. Every so often I paint one or two. I may have them all finished in a century or so.

They are nice sculpts and very rewarding to paint. Looking through the Khazad-Dūm sourcebook I think these ones may be Khazad Guards.

Maybe one day we'll do something with them, perhaps with Song of Blades and Heroes?

Jo6 Purchases and what's on the bench?

As I said previously, Joy of Six wasn't much of a shopping trip for me this time; I was much too busy running the Cold War Commanders game and talking to punters.

What I did buy came from our two nearest trading neighbours at the show, PG Studio and Kore.

From PG Studio I got these:

I like to have a variety of sizes and colours of static grass on hand and these will greatly improve my options. They are marked as 500ml and I have to say the containers were very full; great value for money.

I had quite a long chat about 3d printing with the chap from Kore. I ended up buying a small pack of his 1930s/40s cars. 

They are very clean 3d resin prints. They were generally in very good condition. The only quibbles were a slightly damaged bumper on the highly streamline car in the front row and the fact that the Autobahn bus (rear right) was slightly sticky - I guess it needed a bit more curing under a UV light.

I'm happy with how the vehicles have turned out. I certainly recommend them if you want so different vehicles for a WW2 or early Cold War game. I have contacted Kore to find out what each model represents but haven't heard back. If I do, I'll amend this post to tell you what's what. 

Also recently on the workbench are these 6mm Soviet infantry.

They were originally painted about forty years ago but I've recently rebased them. A couple of points to note are the first use of the PG Studio Wild Autumn 2mm static grass plus the fact that the two Spigot ATGW teams are on 20mm square bases. I think this is going to be my new standard for infantry ATGW platoons and anti-tank rifle units.

Finally for now I've also been extending the collection of 20mm Cold War Polish marines.

The third section of the platoon should have a man with the SVD sniper rifle (already done) and a tripod for its PKM machine gun. The standing figure on the left has an MG. He might have to represent the platoon's SFMG gunner for now.

The two unpainted figures on the rear right were sculpted with breeches tucked into Soviet-style jackboots. I've used a little Green Stuff to sculpt long trousers bloused over ankle boots.

Finally, I freed up a little storage space by means of some eBay sales. This chap:

... a couple of old Triang railroad cars...

... a Scotia dungeon thingie...

... and an old GW hobgoblin have all gone off to new owners:

That's all for now. I'll be off to work out what else I could sell on.

Joy of Six 2024

On Sunday morning I got up early to drive down to Sheffield Hallam University's city centre campus for the annual Joy of Six event.

Unfortunately Richard Phillips was unable to join us thanks to an automotive failure so the terrain needs of the game we met by Andy Taylor, Neil McCusker and myself. Although I'd have preferred to have Richard's Mat-o-War as our base cloth we managed OK with a couple of Games Workshop battlemats.

Neil moves Soviet airborne troops towards
the Phase 1 target

The game depicted the events at Stary Boleslav which, in our alternative timeline, was the site of a Soviet airborne attack to seize a bridge over a major river.

Looking towards Stary Boleslav from the east

We played the game in four phases:

1. Soviet pathfinder troops take out an anti-aircraft battery outside the city,
2. A Soviet airborne brigade lands and moves to capture the bridge,
3. Czechoslovak troops counterattack from the west,
4. Soviet ground troops attempt to fight through to the bridge from the east.

Stary Boleslav with the AA site in the background 

The game went OK in its little periods of action but we spent most of the day talking to people about the models, the alternative history, and the rules. Unfortunately, being so busy, I forget to take any pictures of the progressive destruction of the city. 

I also failed to take pictures of many of the other games but here are the few I did capture starting with the Battle of Guarda by the Legion of Blokes:

Then there was an interesting-looking ancients game using Matrix Game mechanisms:

Charles Rowntree put together this fabulous Omaha Beach game using a set of rules called All Hell Let Loose: 

Right next-door to us was the battle of Soissons, 1918 by Robert Dunlop. WW1 Spearhead I think:

Also near our table was this game using rules called Sabre Squadron:

Finally for the games I got any pics of there was Per Brodén and Nick Dorrell's lovely Great Northern War offering:

Purchases at Joy of Six were few and far between but I'll get back to you about them in a few days.

My City of Ruins

This Sunday sees the Cold War Commanders putting on a game at Joy of Six in Sheffield. We're once more going with the Prague Summer 1948 setting, this time depicting the Soviet airborne assault on the city of Stary Boleslav.

We want people visiting the table more than once to see progress throughout the day so we'll be playing out the action in multiple phases. The terrain is the most visually obvious part of a 6mm game so our terrain will change as the day goes on. 

Among the changes during the day will be a gradual increase in the number of damaged buildings. This means having intact and damaged versions of the same urban modules. I had a couple but I've completed a few more in the last day or so.

These farm buildings have been part of my collection for years. They have been rebased multiple times. I've long forgotten who they were sold by. The colour schemes don't quite match but that's not too much of an issue as they'll never be seen together on the day.

These buildings are typical of many Eastern European cites, Riga in particular. The blue-grey intact building is by Stephen Oates of The Baggage Train. I have two each of the two variations Stephen sells. For a bit of variety I designed and 3D printed the yellow (it's actually pale green; a peculiarity of the lighting) to accompany the Baggage Train models.

The two damaged buildings are based on the same print, one completed and then hacked about a bit and the other part printed and then covered with a variety of texturing material to form a pile of rubble.

The factory complex is largely 3D printed; only the boundary walls are made from cardboard. In the case of the ruined version I chopped cardboard into brick-shaped pieces and stuck them down with Modpodge before painting more over the top to seal them in place.

I actually have a 3D print file somewhere for a damaged version of the chimney but in this case our ruined one is built up from parts of a failed print and the same rubble mix as above.

The ruined and intact versions of the factory buildings are 3D files downloaded from Thingiverse.

If you're going to Joy of Six, please do stop by and say hello.

 

Another Early Jet

The 1/72nd scale early jet aircraft kick continues. This time I've gone for one of the newer Airfix kits; the Meteor F Mk8. Apparently, in design terms, this is scaled down from their 1/48th scale version and it shows in the complexity.

The aircraft kits of my youth rarely included more cockpit detail that a floor, a pilot's seat and maybe a control column. This one takes thirteen parts and twelve diagrammed steps just to give the (undersized) pilot somewhere to sit. 

The fit of the parts is generally pretty good. A few issues presented themselves, however. The tolerances on several of the undercarriage components are very fine. It may be better to assemble them all before painting. In addition the fine tolerances make it tricky to seat the air brakes properly in the closed position. I opted to glue them in the open position. 

As you can see I went with the Royal Belgian Air Force markings. The kit also comes with two RAF options one of which has a full bubble canopy and differently shaped jet intakes for which alternative parts are supplied. 

The decals are by Cartograf, which basically means they're excellent and go on with practically no problems. This is just as well as Airfix have not skimped here. Somewhere in the vicinity of 90 separate stencils are provided, some of them less than half a millimetre long! I stopped applying them when I felt I'd reached the point of diminishing returns.

There are also a few unused clear parts so I suspect a photo-reconnaissance version is not far away. 

If you fancy having a go at a more complex kit and/or want to see how Airfix's modern products outshine their earlier output, you could do worse than trying the Meteor.

Arc of Fire unit activation redux

This post, prompted by the solo game I played yesterday, is a revision of a piece I included in the Andreivian Tales blog back in 2017.

Arc of Fire (my go-to set of skirmish rules for small actions from at least the mid-19th century onwards) uses a card activation system. Each unit (typically squad-sized) is activated twice in a turn on the turn of a pair of nominated cards. 

Thus in a WWII game with three units a side we might allocate the two red aces to the first US infantry squad, the two red 2s to the second squad, and the two red 3s to the accompanying Sherman tank. Likewise the German units might be allocated the black Jacks, Queens and Kings respectively. A couple of Jokers are added to our abbreviated game deck and we're good to go.

This works fine for smaller games but we (the former SOTCW and current Crisis Point communities) have tended to use AoF for bigger, multi-player games. 

We therefore activate multiple units on each pair of cards with competitive Tac rolls to see who gets to go first in the event of a clash.

The following alternative method was designed to address the needs of a player who had trouble remembering which unit was which when comparing the units sheet with what's actually on the table. The next card's a red Ace... yes that's one of mine... Oh yes, it's second infantry squad... now which one was that...?

The approach is adapted from Buck Surdu's Combat Patrol. I haven't read these rules but they were described on the Meeples and Miniatures podcast.  

At the start of each turn we roll a D6 for each unit. This gives the unit its Activation Number. A micro-die in a die holder can be placed next to the unit to show this.

The new Activation Deck consists of:

• Red cards numbered 1 to 6
• Black cards numbered 1 to 6
• The Red Joker
• The Black Joker, and possibly
• The "Roll a D6" card.

Because I'm producing my own cards I can include all of the relevant info on them. Wounded figures previously didn't activate on their unit's second card. Now I no longer need to go back through the previously dealt cards to check this. 

Note the reference to "Command Chit" is now out of date - I'll be replacing it with "Units with Activation Number 2".

Similarly the Joker cards themselves remind me which sequence of cards triggers a random event and who is affected by it. Obviously there may be more than one unit with the relevant Activation Number. We dice to see which single unit is affected by the random event.

Finally we have the "Roll a D6" card. 

This triggers the eponymous die roll to select an Activation Number. Units with that Activation Number may get a special activation if designated in the scenario.  Examples from our Andreivia 1918 games included:

• If unit is rated Aggressive, it may activate a third time this turn (including wounded models).
• British Mark IV tank - one vehicle immobilised by engine failure, normal immobilisation rules apply.
• British Mark V Tank - crew must abandon one vehicle for two whole cards due to overheating.
• Early armoured car - get an extra move if on road, bog down if moving cross-country, normal immobilisation rules apply.

I'd been reading the book A New Excalibur about early tank designs. The peculiarities of some of them were clearly in the forefront of my mind at the time. You could use something similar for unreliable early Panthers at Kursk. 

I'm sure there are other characteristics of units that might be applied in this way. Perhaps "If unit is rated Steady, any Broken models may make an immediate attempt to rally"?

I'm tempted to go back to Arc of Fire. Maybe for Crisis Point 2025?

 

More Muddy River pics

The Muddy River Blues campaign continues. We're now seven campaign turns (three-and-a-half days) into the story and as previously I can't give away too much at this stage. Suffice to say there has been a small skirmish somewhere in Hendricks County, Mississippi.

With just a dozen or so men involved, the game was too small to play out with Sharp Practice so I dusted off Arc of Fire, a nice, flexible set of rules that'll cope with smaller forces.

The top of my plan chest was big enough to represent an area of woodland with a patch of denser undergrowth created using my Woebetides elephant grass pieces.

I played the game solo and used the session to remind myself of the variant activation system we worked out for a past Crisis Point. I'll do a post later this week to explain this in detail.

Some random Poles

Last week I was at a bit of a loose end and fancied painting something so I dug through a few bags of spare 20mm figures and pulled out a random one. It was a Warsaw Past soldier in a beret but not the kind worn by Soviet VDV (airborne troops). Somewhere in the memory banks I knew I'd seen something like it and sure enough, a check on the bookshelves turned up this from the Osprey book Soviet Bloc Elite Forces. 

Digging through the other bags in the same drawer I worked out that I might have enough models to make myself a platoon of Cold War Polish marines!

Some research suggested that a Polish marine platoon for Arc of Fire would be something like this:

Platoon HQ (Tac 5)

Platoon Commander        Assault Rifle, Pistol        5L

Platoon Sergeant               Assault Rifle                   5L

1st Squad (Tac 5)

Squad Leader                    Assault Rifle                   5L

Gunner                             Belt-fed LMG                 5

Loader                              Assault Rifle                   5

6 Riflemen                       Assault Rifle                    5

2nd Squad (Tac 5)         As first squad

3rd Squad (Tac 5)

Squad Leader                    Assault Rifle                   5L

Gunner                             MMG                              5

Loader                              Assault Rifle                   5

5 Riflemen                       Assault Rifle                    5

Sniper                              Self-loading rifle              5

Here (with judicious use of Green Stuff to convert some Russian-style jackboots to ankle boots) are a couple of squads and the platoon HQ to be going on with:

The platoon command element consists of the pistol-armed officer and the platoon sergeant in the distinctive blue beret.

The squads each have a squad leader (single figure on a 2 pence piece), a machine-gun team with PKM light machine-gun (two figures on a 2 pence piece) and six guys with AKMs (on pennies) one of whom has an underslung grenade launcher. 

I do have a few more figures to add and they'll probably end up forming an under-strength third squad. One of the riflemen needs an SVT sniper rifle, which I have, but I'm lacking RPG-7s for each squad.

I don't know who these miniatures are sculpted/sold by. I thought they might be Platoon 20 but I can't see them on the East Front Miniatures website. Now all I need to do is to come up with a suitable scenario to use them.

A Barn Full of Lard

On Friday, Stella and I drove down to Bristol so I could spend Saturday running the Harpers Ferry What A Cowboy game at Lincombe Barn. This was the first of what will hopefully be a series of Lardy Days rejoicing in the name "A Barnful of Lard".

The day saw five Too Fat Lardies games set up in the Barn's main hall. As usual I was too busy running my game to get more than a few snatched photos of the games.

Lloyd Lewis ran "Bejabbers I Want That Cuckoo" a Peninsular War Sharp Practice game involving attempts to capture, recapture, and, on one occasion, re-re-recapture a French eagle.

Next we had another Sharp Practice game run by our host Carole Flint. This time it was a 15mm American Civil War action.

I'm not usually keen on smaller figures for Sharp Practice as they can end up too widely spaced. However I think for ACW, where firing lines were increasingly "loose" it's probably believable.

Brian Shipp ran a 15mm Chain of Command game with two US platoons, supported by Shermans, attacking against a single German platoon.

Brian and I had a good chat at lunchtime. Lardy Days can be a great opportunity to share ideas on scenario design.

The scenario was from the Pint Sized Campaign 29 Let's Go.

A very nice-looking Star Wars game was run by Kev using modified Chain of Command rules.

And finally there was my own Harpers Ferry game, seeing its third outing at a Lardy Day.

The players in both runs of the game were mostly new to What A Cowboy so things ran somewhat more slowly than they did at Posh Lard but all involved seemed to enjoy it. This was despite my forgetting to allow the victims of the first couple of hits to dodge!

A highlight of the day came in the second game. The player in charge of the townsfolk of Harpers Ferry had struggled to get his head around the use of the "Other Townsfolk" activation card. Eventually things clicked into place with this exchange:

Umpire:    The Other Townsfolk card!

Player:       What can I do with that?

Umpire:    Lay down covering fire, remove opponents' covering fire, or perform a Task.

Player:       What's a Task?

Umpire:    Anything you like.

Player:     Could we build a bomb to blow a hole in the wall of the engine house?

Umpire:    Sure that'll have a Task Value of...  

<grabs a couple of 12-sided dice and rolls them>

Umpire:      ...seventeen! Roll me a D6 to get started.

Player:       One!

Umpire:    OK, the townsfolk are one-seventeenth of the way to building a bomb.

After three more trips though the game deck and three more d6 rolls by the player concerned (all of them ones) we got as far as:

Umpire:       OK, the townsfolk are now four-seventeenths of the way to building a bomb!

Needless to say the bomb didn't get completed before the insurrectionists completed the job of moving their hostages into the engine house. 

Each time I run Harpers Ferry I come up with a couple of tweaks to improve the design. This time I gave Mayor Fontaine Beckham a musket rather than a handgun. The longer range made it more likely that his player might deploy him to the railroad trestle where, historically, he was shot dead by Edwin Coppock.

I also firmed up the rules for what happens when either side tries shooting near the hostages and misses! A table in the rules now allows for the death or wounding of named hostages or non-player insurrectionists including one of John Brown's sons.

Shotgun-armed Thomas Boerley (foreground)
heads towards the hostages...

... who are escorted by "Emperor" Shields Green,
Oliver Brown and Jeremiah Anderson.

In general I was pleased with how the games went. We didn't get to Act Two (the US Marines assault on the engine house) in either case but the What A Cowboy rules engine always gives a fun game. I think the players appreciated the research that went into providing the historical context of the events at Harpers Ferry.