Fall Blau, another run through

 We were casting around for something to do, and another run through of Catastrophe Games 'Fall Blau' seemed in order. Avid readers will recall our great victory in the last game, amassing no less than 30 VP (27 required) and taking Astrakhan in the Caucasus. I won't overly rehash the game info, you can read about it here: https://catastrophegames.net/campaign-fall-blau/ but essentially this is the 1942 invasion of the Caucasus covering July through to the end of October at three turns a month. The game uses an abstract point to point area movement system, each area being unlocked as a 'campaign' in an expanding sequence as you advance deep into Russia.

Previous game report here: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/05/fall-blau-by-decision-games.html I had incorrectly attributed this title to Decision Games before.

Variety in each play through is via the Armies the players are allocated, which are drawn as cards. Last time we had Italian 8th Army, German 17th Army and German 4th Panzer Army. The 8th and 17th were mountain warfare specialists.

This time we drew an all-German force, 2nd, 6th and 1st Panzer Armies. Each commander had special characteristics - Von Salmuth (2nd)  was good against counterattacks, Paulus (6th) whistled up extra supply and Kleist (1PA) could recce upcoming event cards. 2nd and 6th Army were also city warfare specialists, while 1st Panzer had the usual panzer trick of getting double hits on 6 in combat and being able to manouvre against two Soviet armies in a turn instead of one.

Given the Army specialisms, we were going to be relying on special event cards to take on the stronger mountain areas and would probably have to focus more on city busting - which meant Schwerpunkt Stalingrad instead of Astrakhan.

Sorry about the in-game photos, there is a lot going on and the screen display is lousy. We relied on Tim for a lot of verbal description of what is happening. John, Jerry and I were the players for this one, and as we had two infantry and one panzer army, we followed the same broad scheme of tactical manouvre as last time - we used Kleist panzers to manouvre one or two Soviet armies into position, then rearranged the front for the powerful infantry armies to attack them.

Early in the game the areas aren't very well defended and aren't worth many VPs, so we focussed on opening up the road net to expand our operational options.

We managed to capture Rostov fairly early, This was a tough fight and it left us very low on supply as we'd done a lot of manouvre up to that point. After losses sustained and to rebuild our supplies we were forced to mainly halt for two turns (iirc we reorganised four of the armies over two turns). This at least allowed us to build up some decent event cards, and we also drew both(!) 'Major Soviet Counterattack' cards, which Von Salmuth fended of at some cost. At least they were out of the deck.

At maximum supply, albeit not full strength, we pushed into the Caucasus and managed to capture Maikop (or Grozny? I can't recall) burning our fortuitously acquired mountain troops in the mountains. The far Caucasus was looking increasingly out of reach though given the attack and supply restrictions. I t had been so much easier with our two mountain armies in the previous game.

Time for Drag Nach Stalingrad. We took on the fortress at Kalach, the most heavily defended area we had encountered so far and which makes an automatic counterattack when activated. This managed to reduce 1st Panzer Army to 1SP! We were forced to commit both 2nd and 6th Armies along with the Luftwaffe to reduce it, but finally the Russian defenders were crushed and the road to Stalingrad was open.

That seemed a good time to break for the night.

The following evening was mainly the Battle for Stalingrad. We had to make up scads of victory points to even come close to winning our best bet was to pick up the 4 and 5VP areas of Stalingrad Centre and Volga Riverbank. 

We'd attacked Stalingrad in the previous game and knew that ideally you had to take Mamyan Curgev before attacking the Centre. In a very timely fashion the Luftwaffe and Assault Pioneers turned up and we ground our way into the city. As October wore on, even Dora the rail gun turned up and we were able to capture the centre of Stalingrad, but only by throwing in Italians and Hungarians to reinforce our depleted formations.

 Finally on the very last turn of October we actually captured the Volga river bank for another 5 VPs! Unfortunately we had a total of 25VP and needed 27 to win. We had two more areas we could attack (Elista and Stavropol) each worth 1VP, but sadly after capturing Stalingrad we only had Kleists shattered 1st Panzer Army left.  Throwing in 3rd Panzer Division, Kleist amazingly managed to capture Elista against the odds giving us 26VP but sadly the Germans ran out of puff out at that point and the Soviet winter counter offensive started with the Germans just short of victory.

Agh, pipped at the post! Rather like Market Garden, the operation was 90% successful.... That was a very different game to last time, it felt like a real challenge and those are always fun to play. Unlike the previous game, we had tons of supplies but our forces were perennially under strength as losses were so heavy. The supply situation was probably so good as we'd not pushed far into the Caucasus, but we came so close to a win. There were a couple of turns where we were perhaps a bit more cautious than we needed to. If only we'd attacked Stavropol earlier... well, we didn't. Time for an unpleasant chat with the Fuhrer.

What a great game, very entertaining and good value for money. Tim says this is the ninth time he's played it.

It is all a question of bridges....

 Rather like lorries, you can never have too many bridges. I was musing to John A recently that I wished I had three arched girder bridges rather than just two, so I could do Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges properly in the highly likely event that I run yet another Arnhem operational game. Sadly now that Leven have apparently ceased production, I couldn't simply buy another one. 

And lo and behold, John produced this. Originally it was some sort of game piece (a Monopoly variant perhaps?). I stupidly didn't take a photo of its original form, but it was mounted on a tipping base and had a  big question mark moulded into its road bed.

I cut it off its base and covered over the question mark. Sprayed the whole thing grey then picked out the shadows in black and gave it a light drybrush to pick out the highlights.

And it goes very nicely with my Leven bridges. It is a similar height to the arched bridge, but a similar length to the Bailey Bridge. Either way, it will work fine with my typical terrain layouts, so a  good addition and much more sturdy than a resin bridge. 

Two player Dominion of the Spear

 John A was interested in the possibilites presented by Dominion of the Spear after helping playtest 'Alexander the Brief'. We'd already discussed some options around  deployment and management of reserves. For this weeks Tuesday  game he presented a two player variant!

The mods aren't enormous, but change the game a fair bit - there are players on each side and the initiative roll determines who is the active player. The activate player (only) can initiate combat in one or more sectors. Reserves use fixed sectors and cannot stack, although there is a separate 'reserve phase' at the end of each turn turn when players can shuffle their reserves one square either way. He has also  borrowed my re-roll rule for notable commanders from Alexander the Brief. 

First up was Johns version of Carrhae. Jerry and I were one player team, Tim and Simon the other. Parthians have 3x Horse Archers, 1 x Elite Armoured Cataphract and 1 x melee infantry. Crassus has 3 x Armoured Legionaries and 1 x Ferocious Gallic Cavalry.

Jerry took the lead for our team, and Simon the lead for the other. Things not going too well for Crassus here, down one Legionary and the Gauls. 

The Romans battle back. John had made up a virtual battle set in Powerpoint using Tom Mouats Mapsymbs military symbols font, so we could easily play remotely over a shared screen.

Parthians get the upper hand again.

And having outflanked the Romans, down went another Legion and Crassus ended with his head on a stick. We had a bit of a discussion about outflanking, John thought the free attack was sufficient bonus, but I went through some of the combat modifiers, how the outflanking bonus changes those and we reinstated it.

We swapped sides and did that one again, and the Parthians lost this time. It is all down to the initial wave of horse archers, against whom the Legionaries are even and the Gauls do have an advantage, but if the Parthians roll a lot of sixes, they shoot the Romans down before they can make contact.

Next up was a hypothetical - Julius Caesers planned campaign in Parthia (he was assassinated before this happened). Same Parthians as before, but this time Caesar had a Republican Roman Army, with 2 x armoured Legionary, 2 x Auxilia (melee infantry) and 1 x Cavalry (no bonuses). Caesar was rated as a notable General, so could re-roll one combat in his turn.

I took JC for this one and was defending. The army was a tricky one to deploy, a conservative deployment would have put a Legionary in the centre, auxilia on the wings and the other Legion and Cavalry in reserve to await developments.

But I went with the bold deployment, Legionaries up front, cavalry on the right (I'd completely forgotten they were regular, not ferocious). I put one Auxilia in each corner as they can reinforce frontally or diagonally. It will look nice and symmetrical on the mosaic as well.

And the bold deployment paid off. We trounced the Parthian front line, although JC had to re-roll one combat to finish off the Cataphracts. Wit their centre broken, it was all over for the Parthians - I  managed to roll the initiative, made the centre flanking attack and re-rolled the result to ensure a win. Game over.

We did have a chat at that point about how powerful the re-roll option is, and for lesser Generals than Alexander, JC or Napoleon, just one or two re-rolls per game might be more appropriate. The 'rally' option in the Pike and Shot set is effectively a re-roll, and you only get one of those in the standard rules. 

We set it up again, I took the Parthians and Tim the Romans. Funnily enough the Romans set up in exactly the same deployment (well mirror image, but you know what I mean). Perhaps this will be known as the Caesarian Deployment in future?

I just went boring with the Parthians. Horse Archers up front and Cataphracts in reserve. I stuck the infantry out of the way, they can shuffle over once the Cataphracts are committed.

Well, that sort of worked.... after some bashing, we'd killed a Legionary and the Roman cavalry but lost two horse archers. We'd got some good matchups now though - Cataphracts vs Auxilia and Horse Archers vs Auxilia, big advantages to us. I won't say anything about our levy infantry vs the Legionaries in the centre.... 

The Cataphracts duly routed the Auxilia opposite, and the Horse Archers finished off the other Auxilia. Head on a stick time for Caesar.

That worked really well - it was still very quick, we played four games in just over an hour, but the opposed aspect was good fun. Very much 'mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be corrected' as Von Moltke the Elder would have it. There isn't any reason why you can't play standard Dominion of the Spear as an opposed game of course, and I think that would be rather good fun. 

 I'm not 100% convinced about the all-or-nothing initiative roll, but it is Johns game so I'll go with it. An alternative might be, initiative winner picks one or two sectors, loser picks zero or one. On a draw, both sides pick zero or one, scenario attack goes first.

We also had a chat about what John's ideas for a Horse and Musket variant based on the Ancient set although to a large extent that has been trumped by the publication of various eighteenth century sets already. 

I have been to... the Archaelogical Museum of Naples

 On our trip to Naples back in May, one place I was determined to visit was the Archaelogical Museum, which is just to the northwest of the old city centre. Many of the best pieces retrieved from Pompeii and Herculaeum ended up here, and the Farnese collection was once a 'must see' for aristos on the Grand European Tour.

The building is enormous and packed with stuff. You could easily spend all day here. It was also packed with school groups and other visitors, but the size of the building absorbed them. 

Augustus, presumably when he was a bit younger.

This is Balbo, prefect of Herculaneum. There were quite a few statues of him, retrieved from the wreckage of Herculaneum.

And some absolutely stunning frescos.

I really liked this one as it just showed everyday life. Roman art of this period has a very distinctive style. 

Very exciting, Roman wargames figures! Romans vs Barbarians, these are maybe 60mm figures?

This is Socrates, not someone whose bust I can recall seeing before.

Euripedes. Some of these busts are Roman copies of the Greek originals.

A Vestel Virgin.

Xeno.

And Hippocrates.

This rather larger bust in the 'Gallery of Emperors' is good old Julius Caeser.

And here is Athena without her lance.

This massive statue is known as the 'Farnese Bull' and it is just gobsmacking. It is hard to capture it's sheer size in a photograph. 

It is just enormous, and packed with all sorts of little details. Just incredible.

Heracles resting after his labours. 

And I really liked this (one of a pair) - "The Kneeling Barbarian". Presumably the platform displayed some sort of loot at one point. He is beautifully sculpted in mixed materials, and complete with trousers, barbarian moustache etc. He looks just like one of the figures from the Revell 20mm Gallic Warriors box. 

A rather fine "Mounted Warrior" who could grace any wargames table. 

And one of the centrepieces of the museum, "The Tyrannicides" - depicting the start of the Greek Republic after the overthrow of the monarchy. 

The original statue was cast in bronze around 514 BC but was stolen by the Persians, so a later version was made in 477BC and this is a Roman copy made of the original in marble at around 50AD. The statue is interesting in tracing the development of Greek art as the musculature is so well detailed, but the faces of the two heroes are quite primitive.

Neptune (?) with a cornucopia and a Sea Dragon.

Anyway, having run around the statues, it was time to head up the stairs to meet Alexander the Great and Darius at Issus.

Only to be confronted with this! Agh!!! The mosiac is lying on the floor behind that tatty plastic window being restored, and the museum hadn't even bothered to put a proper picture of it up in its place. If you  look through the aparture it is on the floor in bits surrounded by consevators with trowels. 

Well, there is one of the endlessly reproduced snippets. This is clearly the horse furniture the Newline figure is based on. 

And Darius looking a bit anxious. At least I've painted his hat the right colour. 

I was really disappointed about that, the Alexander mosaic is one of the most famous in the world, and it was just out of reach. The museum is fairly notorious for closing exhibits, removing them etc at short notice. Just my luck.

The other mosaics were just stunning though.

I'm used to just seeing fairly crude floor mosaics made with larger tiles, but these were just amazing and made from tiny chips of stone.

This one looks like a painting.

As does this one.

This dog is a bit cruder though.

Hippos, Crocodiles etc. I am always rather drawn to naive representations of "wild beasts". 

There were lots of other galleries stuffed with things, including this rather grand picture gallery.

Interior walls from the "Villa of Postumo" in Pompeii. There was a whole section of Pompeii domestic artefects.

And this rather grand 1/100th scale model of the (ruined) town.

Down in the basement was an excellent Egyptian collection, and rather less crowded than the museum in Cairo.

I was very taken with these archaic statues, dating from around 4,500 years ago.

Burial figures and their container.

The museum cafe offered, among other things, Pompeii Cake - supposedly based on a recovered recipe. It was quite doughy bread packed with nuts and dried fruit, but I don't imagine the Romans had a great deal of icing sugar to sprinkle over the top originally!

My wife is a big lover of art history, and we discovered that there was one of the very few paintings by Artemisia Gentilesci on display at the Church of Santa Chiara. Well, four trips later we finally managed to get there when it was actually open, and discovered it wasn't in the church at all but the monastery museum around the corner.

The monastery cloisters were absolutely exquisite, covered in painted tiles.

And tranquil gardens (with orange and lemon trees).

The garden was lined with benches covered in hand painted tiles depicting historical or mythical scenes. As with some of the Roman frescoes in the museum, many just depicted ordinary life. 

And the cloister walls were covered in frescos.

As were the ceilings.

The site had been heavily bombed in the war, but the nearby Greek ruins had survived and there was an extensive section of excavations. This is a Greek sauna.

And we did finally get to see Artemesia Gentilesci's 'Mary Magdalene'. Well worth all the trouble.

I was also very taken by this 14th century bible in the monastery library.

And this astonishing Nativity diorama! The Neapolitans are very big on both model figures (typically religious, historical or celebrity) and many of the churches featured large dioramas on a range of subjects. 

Anyway, despite the absence of Alexander, they were both very enjoyable places to visit and I'd recommend both if you should every find yourself in Naples.