Harpers Ferry tested

On Saturday I hosted Gus, Ron and Mark to play a first game of the Harpers Ferry scenario. I'd spent the previous two weeks getting the terrain to a finished-enough state.

We played out Act One of the game, representing the attack by the Martinsburg militia from the northwestern end of the rifle works. This was historically rather poorly co-ordinated with advances by the citizens of Harpers Ferry from the southeast. Gus commanded the militia in the role of Captain Alburtis while Mark played three of the locals.

Ron looked after the insurgents. On this occasion he had John Brown, Edwin Coppock, Emperor Shields Green, Aaron Stephens, and Dangerfield Newby (all lovely castings from Old Glory). His aims were to keep Brown alive and to move some hostages from the paymasters office to the engine house.

Shields Green moving hostages

Ron managed to successfully move the hostages but lost Coppock and Newby in the process.

I was generally pleased with the performance of my scenario-specific house rules. These were "Loopholes" and "Other characters".

We needed to capture the fortress-like character of the engine house with its brick walls and lack of ground-level windows. I declared that the insurrectionists would begin the game with 1D3+3 (revised to 1D3+2 in future games) loopholes in the walls or doors. These would be placed whenever an insurrectionist wished to fire from within the engine house. I made little markers to represent their locations and the 60 degree arc of fire through the loophole (in either direction). Shooting into the engine house through the loopholes required an extra Spot dice.

Two loophole markers

There were many more people involved in the events than we could realistically represent in a What A Cowboy game (20 insurgents and about 3000 townsfolk). To represent their influence I included "Other Insurrectionists" and "Other Citizens" cards in the game deck. When these came up the relevant side could:

• Snipe - lay down an area that required an extra Move dice to cross and an extra Spot dice to see through,
• Counter-snipe - remove the enemy's sniping marker by keeping their heads down,
• Attempt a task - battering down a door perhaps, and for the insurrectionists...
• Advance the Uprising Count.

Aaron Stephens finds his way blocked by 
sniper fire, perhaps from the Wager House

The Uprising Count is a measure of the extent to which slaves in the counties around Harpers Ferry are taking up arms in rebellion. I'll not reveal the effects of this until the game has had its first outings at Steel Lard in Sheffield and Posh Lard in Peterborough.

The What A Cowboy rules were well-received. I can see us using them again in other settings. As a lover of obscure history, I'm half-considering the 1839 Chartist Riots in Newport, South Wales.

Finally the terrain. I had got it to the basic minimum standard I was happy presenting to my Saturday Afternoon gaming group. 

Fontaine Beckham near the main gate of 
the rifle works

Since then I've started making improvements. I'm picking out individual paving stones in slightly differing colours and I'll be adding a flagpole and a couple of additional trees.

The retaining wall above the Potomac has been given a dark wash and will get some more weathering while the bridge over the boat ramp will get some rust marks and a coat of varnish.

The next playtest session will hopefully get on to Act Two - the US Marines' assault on the engine house. I've also designed a post-game phase to explore the effects of the insurrection on public opinion North and South. 

More later!

Another Harpers Ferry Update

Another (brief) update on Harpers Ferry progress.  I've finished basing the buildings and started the process of adding texture to the baseboard.

The white strips of PVC board on the railroad tracks are going to form the main structural components of the bridge over the boat ramp.

When I'm not adding layers of tile grout to the base, I'm using off-cuts of timber to make piles of boxes to go in the warehouse or underneath the railroad trestle.

Harpers Ferry Update

Last time we visited Harpers Ferry I'd built the railroad trestle (but not yet laid the track), made a start on building the engine house (aka John Brown's Fort), and glued down the perimeter walls.

The tracks are now in place. Not the most exciting picture but here you go.

The engine house has been a significant undertaking. I knew that I wanted to build it out of foamcore and card but integrating a 3D printed cupola I found on Thingiverse and the windows I designed myself. The plan was to clad the whole building in printed brick paper.

Unfortunately when I came to assemble the building I found that I'd cocked up the process of scaling the model from the available plans. The windows in the end walls were far too high compared to those in the front and rear walls.

The windows should be at the same height all round

I glued the walls together and then sat back for a week or so, trying to decide if I could live with the error. In the end I decided I couldn't so I took the model apart and rebuilt the end walls.

This is what I ended up with after building the roof and applying laser-cut slates from Charlie Foxtrot Models.

I want to make the interior of all the buildings (except the water tower) playable so I've made the roof removable and added a floor from brick paper over cornflake-box thin card.

The shelf unit on the rear wall is simply supports from a 3D print job!

Since taking the pictures I've rebased the fire engines using the same brick paper.

Finally, I had second thoughts on the main gate to the armoury compound. The 3D printed main gates would be far to delicate to transport glue in place on the main board. I decided to construct a gateway module that could be transported in its own box and slotted into place for play.

The gates are now glued in place to a piece of artist's mounting board. This slots into a space defined by glued-down spacers from the same material. I'm hopeful that when I come to texture the board, I can make the join almost invisible. A little scattering of sand will probably help.

I've added Italeri plastic bollards beside the gates and spent about three hours cutting and laying cardboard paving slabs to create the footpath past the engine house and the paymaster's office.

So after all that, the current state of play is like this.

Next steps are the base the warehouse, add thin card "frames" for the buildings to sit within and then to start texturing the baseboard.

Some 6mm terrain experiments

Inspired by Al Sheward's brilliant Oosterbeek terrain at Ebor Lard, I've been thinking about how I might apply some of the techniques in 6mm scale.

Al's terrain consisted of modules (e.g. a building surrounded by gardens and outhouses on a single base) that could be placed side-by-side to fill the area of the table. There are advantages to this including storage and flexibility. A terrain module that fits exactly into the space at the corner of Utrechteseweg and Stationsweg will also work perfectly well in some alternative fictional setting.

One way to have modules that fit together is to give them all right-angle corners. This is something that Richard Phillips has done to great effect in his terrain for the Cold War Commanders games at various shows.

I've done something vaguely similar with some fields I've produced recently.

Because I want to use them for Germany and Czechoslovakia, I've eschewed the use of hedges, the field boards just have chamfered edges covered in a contrast colour of flock/static grass mix.

I then wondered if there was some mileage in producing small modules specifically designed to slot together but more irregular in shape. Using a few offcuts of PVC board I've knocked up these over the last few days.

The oddly-shaped road junction was a piece I'd made from a left-over scrap of cheap vinyl floor tile; my go-to material for 6mm tarmac roads. I cut a piece of PVC board to slot up against its wavy edge. I chamfered all the edges of the small field, coated it with quick-drying Polyfilla, and stuck in some bits of cat litter along the roadside edge to represent stones moved from the field by the farmer.

I then realised that a straight road piece attached to the junction would create an inconveniently shaped triangular space so I quickly made a small grassy extension to the field. With a bit of clump foliage to hide the join, I think the effect's OK. I'll do some more of this sort of thing.

The use of clump foliage to hide joins is important, I think. In the pics below are a couple of areas of broken round I've made from recycled bases of old forest pieces.

I think the use of clump foliage, even only partially covering the join, in the second picture really makes a difference.

I've now got plenty of terrain for at least one Prague Summer 1948 table. Just another five to do!

Meanwhile, back at Harpers Ferry...

As well as working on 6mm terrain and playing Chain of Command at Ebor Lard, I've been trying to keep  making progress towards having the Harpers Ferry terrain ready in plenty of time so I can playtest my Steel Lard game.

I've built the main structure of the board out of insulating foam. Thanks Fay Hield for the use of your offcuts!

One edge represents the stone wall that separates the armoury from the Potomac River. Here we see it from the Potomac side:

Between the two blue foam walls is the "boat ramp" a slope down to river level used to allow boats to load or unload directly into or from the armoury grounds. A couple of years later a Union Army pontoon bridge was anchored at the foot of the ramp. Abraham Lincoln would walk across the bridge and up the ramp to visit "John Brown's Fort".  

Atop the wall is the raised Baltimore and Ohio railroad line. In reality it was double track but space and considerations of What a Cowboy ground-scale preclude reproducing that.

The track bed is made from 7mm PVC foam board courtesy of Richard Phillips's local coffee shop. I added wood grain using a wire brush and then scribed in planking.

The cast-iron pillars are 3D printed.  A pile of storage boxes carved from insulating foam helps to support the inevitable join between pieces of board.

The space under the railroad was used for storage so I'll be adding some more boxes, barrels, spare columns etc. Obviously I've had to paint much of this part of the project at this stage because it'll be harder to get at it later.

I've added track from Sarissa Precision.

I've glued the 3D-printed fence sections in place too...

I've printed out a pair of cast iron gates to go between the two sets of stone pillars. I think they'll be too delicate to transport safely if I glue them in place so I'm going to create a base that fits in the space to carry them. It'll also carry the bollards that were positioned to prevent wagons bashing into the stone piers when trying to pass through the gate.

The next stage is to build the last and most important building; the engine house or John Brown's Fort itself. I started putting craft knife to foamcore this afternoon:

More pics when I've got further into the job.

Converting Rapid Fire scenarios to TacWWII

This is an update of some ideas that I think I presented on the original Land of Counterpane, the website I had back in the time of dial-up Internet.

The following examples come from this book of scenarios by Richard Marsh:

I can't seem to find my copy of the Rapid Fire rules. I suspect I may have sold them at some Bring and Buy as I haven't played RF for years. However, I can remember enough to comment on the RF-to-TacWWII conversion process.

First up we need to convert the maps to the right scale. This is going to be a challenge because RF plays fast and loose with ground scales! Looking at some of the scenarios in the book, we see that the default is an 8'x5' table. However, no scales are shown on the maps. Looking at Google Earth I estimate that for the following scenarios that eight feet corresponds to:

• about 6km (60" for TacWWII) in the Crossing the Bug scenario
• 9-10km (96" for TacWWII) for Nalchik
• about 5km (48" for TacWWII) for Yuzhnaya Ozereika 
• about 2km (20" for TacWWII) in Central Pest. 

I think, then, we're going to have to use the RF maps just to give us a general idea of the location of the battle and use modern (or ideally period) maps to give us our wargames terrain.

The position with orders of battle is a bit more healthy although RF uses a peculiar scaling process. One (usually 20mm scale) figure represents about 15 men, whilst one model gun or vehicle represents five in real life. I therefore convert artillery and vehicles between the two rulesets on a one-to-one basis. Infantry companies are converted as follows:

• 2-4 figures in RF = one platoon in TacWWII
• 5-7 figures in RF = two platoons in TacWWII
• 8-10 figures in RF = three platoons in TacWWII
• and so on.

Let's have a go at an example. This table shows the Soviet forces for the Hill 253.5 and Ponyri scenario from Marsh's book:

The HQ of the 1023rd Rifle Regiment is shown as six figures, which would probably suggest two rifle platoons at TacWWII scale. As they're shown riding in a single car I'd be tempted to simplify this to use one of my Soviet HQ bases motorised by adding a staff car model.

The other HQ assets can be represented by the same number of models in TacWWII (ignore the listed numbers of crew figures). The only question is how to allocate them to companies. Given that the Soviets are all dug into static positions in this scenario, I suggest the following:

HQ Company            1x Command rifle platoon, 1x car, 1x Quad AAHMG, 1x truck

AT Battery                 2x 45mm ATG

Mortar Company      1x 120mm mortar, 1x 76mm infantry gun

Putting the infantry gun and the heavy mortar in the same company gives them a little more robustness from a morale point of view.

For similar reasons I think for the Rifle Battalions I would move the mortar and MG elements into the rifle companies:

Bn HQ                     1x Command rifle platoon

1st Company           2x SMG platoon, 1x MMG platoon

2nd Company         2x Rifle platoon, 1x 82mm mortar platoon

3rd Company         2x Rifle platoon, 1x 50mm mortar platoon

The artillery support doesn't need much organising for TacWWII. Clearly we have two 122mm howitzers and a single Katyusha model. I'd suggest that they be subject to the Obsolete Doctrine rules (can only be called in by units in PD or D modes). I might also insist that the Soviet player allocate particular batteries to particular defending battalions. Remember in TacWWII we don't have separate forward observer elements.

I'd organise the AT Regiment as a single two-gun "company" again for reasons of morale robustness. I'd probably attach it to a defending battalion for command purposes but you could deploy the Regiment as a single-company battalion in a situation where you want to give them unique orders.

The air support presents some interesting questions. The La-5FN is a fighter and contemporary with the Bf-109. I'd be inclined to rate it as "average fighter" in TacWWII terms. I've not seen any reports of them carrying PTAB anti-armour cluster bombs. I'd be inclined to replace it with a Pe-2 if you want to use the latter. In that case I'd probably treat the Pe-2 as "good light bomber" with a +1 to the dice roll when using dropped ordnance against hard targets.

We need to think about Morale and Tac ratings. Rapid Fire just uses Poor, Regular and Elite categories that affect both infantry firepower and morale. By far the majority of troops are rated Regular in most of the scenarios. Occasionally we see the rating split; for example the Soviets in the Stalingrad scenario are rated Elite for morale purposes but Regular for firing. In that case, raise the Morale but leave Tac unchanged. Overall I'd suggest something like:

Rapid Fire Rating                        TacWWII Morale            Tac Rating

Poor                                                Shaky or Poor                    7 or 8

Regular                                           Average                              5 to 7

Elite                                                Good or Excellent              4 or 5

The exact Tac rating will, as usual, depend on your assessment of the army's command flexibility, communications equipment, and any other technological factors like a predominance of archaic vehicles.

Finally we can consider the passage of time. My gut feeling at this stage is that a Rapid Fire game turn probably represents a slightly longer chunk of a typical battle. My tentative suggestion is that you increase the time allowed to achieve an objective by 50%. For example in the scenario above the German have 12 RF turns to penetrate to a designated objective line. With TacWWII I'd be inclined to make that 18 turns. 

                                                                                                                                                             

Ebor Lard

I was up early yesterday to travel up to North Yorkshire for the annual Ebor Lard gathering organised by John Savage. It was well worth the drive. Green Hammerton Village hall is a nice venue, clean and bright, albeit it can get a bit warm when filled with 40-odd wargamers!

Unlike previous events I was scheduled to pay a single game throughout the day (most people get a short game in the morning and a different one in the afternoon). I won't pretend I didn't find that quite intimidating. What if you get half an hour into the game and find that (a) you aren't enjoying it and (b) you've already cocked up so badly that you've no chance of achieving any of your objectives? 

I needn't have worried. Al Sheward had designed a game that was well balanced and engaging throughout. 

Al's game was one of the Oosterbeek Chain of Command games recently demonstrated to great approbation at the Airborne Museum near Arnhem. It was gorgeous.

I was interested to note that Al didn't use a printed terrain mat. All of the terrain was in the form of irregularly shaped boards that fitted together jigsaw fashion with lichen used where necessary to disguise the joins. I think this is something I'm going to try adapting for use in my 6mm games.

Utrechtseweg from the German end

Mark Pullan and I took on the roles of German platoon commanders attempting to break through the ring of British paras holding the Oosterbeek perimeter. Our opponents were old friend Ned Willets and new friend Neil Hepworth. Both German platoons were made up SS pioneers - far from elite troops. The two SS divisions near Arnhem were refitting after being badly mauled in Normandy. Mark was reinforced by the addition of a tripod-mounted machine-gun while I had a StuG III available.

An important location in the game is the Main Dressing Station - the pair of hotels used as hospitals for wounded during the Oosterbeek battles.

These provided barriers to manoeuvre as both sides seem to have respected them during the fighting.

On the right flank I tried to infiltrate around one of the hotels but the restricted space made it impossible to concentrate fire on the enemy.

In the end, the British were slightly ahead in terms of remaining force morale so Al called it a narrow British victory. It was a pleasure to lose on such a pretty battlefield!

I didn't get to see much of the other games, but here are a few pics.

Simon Walker ran Death in the Donga - an exploration of the death of Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial in Zululand that used the What a Cowboy rules:

Jeremy Short ran Getting Hitched using the Dux Brittaniarum rules translated to Medieval England:

Charley Walker can always be relied upon to produce a lovely Kiss Me Hardy naval action and this time it was The Nelson Touch:

Ade Deacon ran another What A Cowboy game, this time in the Mexican setting of Rancho Delmonte:

Host John Savage's own game was a Sharp Practice affair set during a fictional Prussian invasion of Victorian England and called the Battle of Westcott. 

David Hunter ran a Flashing Blades game called Stink in Brie. Very nicely presented!

And finally, Theo Street ran another What A Cowboy game, this time in a modern setting. I understand it was called Chocolate Hostage. I have no idea why as I was too busy playing my game to investigate.

After the games we retired to the Bay Horse Inn for stimulating conversation (with Richard Clarke as usual talking bollocks), Keralan beef and, in my case, one pint of Ruddles (I was driving). 

If you get the chance to attend a Lardy Day you really should.