Phalanx

 My never ending quest for simple grid based Ancients games continues, largely with an eye to remote play, so no Command and Colours Ancients I'm afraid. Back in the dim and distant past before Legion, Strategos and Lost Battles, Phil Sabin wrote a simple diceless set of Ancients rules called 'Phalanx', a mashup of DBA and Chess.

It was originally published in The Slingshot in early 1993, and it also appeared in the Lost Battles Yahoogroup, but sadly the files were lost in horror of the migration to groups.io. 

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the rules are now impossible to find unless you want to wade through very old copies of The Slingshot. 

I was aided by the kindness of a fellow gamer, who sent me an electronic version he had garnered many years ago (many thanks Chris).

Hooray, we can finally get going. The board is a smaller version of that found in Legion, 10 hexes x 9 , but tapering towards each side so it is like a big hexagon.

The game comes with over 30 historical scenarios, this one is Heraclea iirc. Each side has a camp on its baseline, the Roman one is nearest the camera and Pyrrhus is on the far side. Terrain features are located in relation to one of the six hex vertices, in this case there is a river over in the top left.

Armies are all abstracted into ten unit armies, this concept is developed a bit in later iterations of the Legion/Strategos/LB cycle. I've adopted the same convention as LB, so average units have two elements (and I'd normally use 3 or 4 for levies and 1 for Veterans as they all generate the same combat power requiring more of fewer men to do so). 

The Romans here have six Heavy Infantry (Legionaries), two heavy cavalry, two light infantry (Velites) and a General. I gave the Legionaries appropriate proportions of Hastati, Princeps and Triarii, an advantage of using multiple DBA elements per unit. The General is with one of the infantry units.

Pyrrhus. His army has five Heavy Infantry (they aren't classed as Phalangites in this scenario so I just used hoplites), two light infantry, two heavy cavalry and an Elephant. Pyrrhus accompanies one of the cavalry.

Unlike DBA, the armies have to deploy from the their camps. I really, really like this, and it is similar to the deployment phase in Strategos. Each army can activate up to three groups of adjacent elements per turn, two if they have lost their General. This isn't an issue at first, but as fighting starts, command can be a problem. Infantry move 1, cavalry 2, but with various restrictions on wheeling etc. Lights and elephants can double time on odd numbered moves, giving them a slight move advantage over heavy infantry. 

It will take a couple of turns for both sides to deploy, and obviously it pays to keep an eye on the eventual matchups of troop types. As a first tryout I got each side to favour their right flanks, but generally with heavy infantry in the middle, and cavalry on the flanks.

The Romans have got their Velites and Cavalry two hexes out of camp, and four Legionary units. Unit facing is towards a hex vertex, with interesting ramifications. Heavy types are very restricted in their movement and facing options - basically they can change facing at the end of their move.

Pyrrhus has also got his cavalry and light troops out. The Elephant takes advantage of its turn 1 double time as well. Pyrrhus has some sort of cunning plan based on using the river to shield the right flank of his combined cavalry/elephant force. Or something.

The Romans shake out into some sort of line. It will actually be quite hard to get all the Legionaries in the front rank, but at the moment they are all still a single activation group.

Pyrrhus also has everyone out now. All units have to leave camp in the first three turns. The Greeks have put both light troops on their left flank. The hoplites are looking a bit raggedy as they form up. 

The Romans are starting to look a bit scary now, five Legionaries in line, flanked by Velites and cavalry on each flank. The Triarii in are reserve. 

Combat is based on numbers of opposing units attacking, infantry and elephants are routed by three enemy, other types by two. The required number to rout the enemy is modified by troop type, terrain and situation eg Light Troops are penalised if attacked by heavies. In the original game combat is entirely diceless, but in a supplement it is suggested rolling a 'fortunes of war' D6. 1 adds one to the defender, 6 adds one to the attacker.

This essentially means that the matchups are critical, and you really, really need to be able to gang up on enemy units, ideally via outflanking them. 

Pyrrhus moves his right into attacking range of the Roman Velites and cavalry. The Greek cavalry get a +1 due to the General, so will automatically beat the Roman cavalry if they can make contact. Ouch!

Over on the left, the Greek cavalry get stuck in, supported by lights. They can opt to attack either unit in their front facing hexes, and gang up on the Velites. Normally 2:1 would fail against infantry, but the heavy cavalry get a bonus against light troops. 

Then throw a 6 in combat, so now it is 4:1 and the Romans leg it. An Army is defeated when it has four elements routed AND the enemy has lost fewer elements. All a bit DBA. One up to the Greeks.

Having seen the fate of their pals, the Romans cavalry and light troops on the left run away from Pyrrhus. Instead they push up the Legionaries, who are pretty tough in frontal combat, especially against cavalry etc. The designers notes in the rules suggest that a fair amount of this sort of threatening and parrying will go on in the game.

Over on the Roman right the Greek cavalry advanced into the vacant hex after combat, supported by their light troops.

The Romans promptly counterattacked with the Legionaries, led by the General and supported by the cavalry. They routed both the Greek cavalry and one of their light troops! I can't quite recall how the matchups went, but it was scary stuff. There is now an isolated Greek light element on its own, which will need an extra command point to activate.

The Greeks refuse their left flank, while Pyrrhus and the elephants press forward on the right. The Elephants could only move 1 this turn.

The Romans in turn counterattack. Elephants are vulnerable to light troops, and the Velites get stuck in, supported by the Legionaries.

The Romans completely outmatch the isolated Greek light troops.

And rout them. The Hoplites are somewhat stuck in Roman zones of control. The ZOC rules need reading a couple of times to figure them out, but it is possible to pin enemy units frontally. Very handy when you are about to outflank them.

Over on the Roman left, Nellie succumbs to the Velites. When elephants rout, neither side can enter the hex for a turn. I assume this represents rampaging elephants, so I left the model in place with a yellow marker. This also prevents Pyrrhus riding across the front of the Legionaries and routing the Velites (cavalry+general+attacking lights = 3:1). 

The Romans have routed three units  now.

I just can't get enough Hoplites into contact in one place to rout a Legionary unit. The Romans however put two Legionaries and their General against a Hoplite, rout it and win the game.

Having got an idea how it hangs together, I set the scenario up again.

The Greeks went for a balanced deployment this time, lights and cavalry on each flank, Elephants in the middle. Pyrrhus took the left flank cavalry.

They extended their line so that one cavalry was actually in the river. I have a cunning plan. The Romans are a similar deployment to before but have their General in the centre this time.

The Roman right looks a bit overextended. There is a unit of Princeps on their way to support the cavalry, but most of their strength is centre and left.

The Greeks spend another turn sorting their line out. The Greek cavalry even crosses the river.

The Romans push up behind the river. Very cunning, there are penalties attacking across a river, so the Greeks are bottled up now. Unfortunately they slightly miscalculated movement distances on their right, and they end up in range of Pyrrhus.

Who duly charges and routs the Roman cavalry, needing anything but a '1'. The lone Legionary unit can't do much against them.

The Romans move up to smash the Greek centre, relying on their General.

The Hoplites are routed and the Velites move next to the Elephants, hoping to destroy them next turn. 

Meanwhile Pyrrhus envelops the isolated Legionaries.

It is a right mess around the river. The river penalties essentially prevent anyone attacking anyone else. There was something in the rules about an unmodified 4:1 being an automatic victory? I need to re read that bit and get my head around it. I do find Prof Sabins presentation style a bit challenging sometimes. 

The Greeks counterattack and destroy the Velites, but in turn the Romans attack back and destroy another Hoplite unit.

Pyrrhus gets ready to roll up the Roman line.

The Elephants change direction and crush another Legionary under their feet! The Elephants really have been decisive in this battle. 

The Elephants finally succumb to a concentric attack and rampage before routing.

The Greeks come back again though, and rout a fourth Roman unit.

Game end. Three Greek to Four Roman. So a pyrrhic victory for Pyrrhus. 

I probably need to solo play a couple more games to get the hang of it, but so far it is all looking very promising. It suffers a bit from the usual Sabinisms - a subset of Barkerese, but on the whole the intent is clear and it is possible to draw a line from the concepts here to his later iterations of Ancients rules.

The huge plus for me is a manageable board size, which will fit nicely into my laptop camera, and a whole bunch of ready done scenarios. I'm not convinced how well it will translate into multi-player, it is certainly a battle of wits, but certainly worth a go. My first thought is to make the combat system a bit more dice heavy, and have some sort of hit tracking on the units ie a version of the CnC system. But I'm liking the unit density and movement system here. Even the (very) simple command system works - I found in the second game that as units became more scattered, I ran out of activations to move everything.  Very pleased to have finally tracked this down.

15mm QRF Crusaders

 My desert British needed some armour, and what better than some Crusaders. It is a shame the PSC don't do them or I'd have been strongly tempted. Among the metal offerings, QRF are by far and away the best value, £11.50 for a 'troop pack' of three, compared to £9 for a single Skytrex one. Forged in Battle are sort of contenders, but I really don't like the moulded on bases. Anyway, QRF it was.

I got six, as six is a useful number, whereas nine would just be silly. I mainly play grand tactical and operational games, so this is plenty for the sorts of things I'm likely to be doing. I tried quite hard to make sure that every single vehicle ended up different, for that rather individualistic British desert 'gypsy caravan' look.

The QRF Crusader I/II models come with MG turrets or hatches to close off the aperture. I didn't go for the models with sand skirts as I didn't fancy trying to stick those on. I did two with turrets and one without. 

They come cast with the hatches moulded shut and I spent a fair bit of time trying to find photos of early model Crusaders with open hatches. There aren't vast numbers of photos of the tops of Crusaders, but I did find some. Apparently the early hatch can either slide (and lock) back, or hinge, but the vast majority of pictures seemed to have it slid back, so for one of this trio and made up some plastic card the same size as the hatch and added it on top. The commander is a cut down PSC one.

There are a few bits and pieces to stick on apart from the turrets/hull hatch. There is a separate fuel tank and the exhausts are also separate and proved quite fiddly to fit but I got there in the end. Although the castings aren't brilliant (I think the moulds are a bit old), there is a fair amount of moulded detail which you can see on the engine deck etc. which works well with my preferred method of washes and drybrushing.

They sit quite nicely and look fairly racy, rather like the Airfix one albeit without the overlong hull. I spent a long time thinking about colour schemes but in the end decided against Caunter (which was more of a Battleaxe type scheme for Crusaders). 

I did the three of them in plain Light Stone, as favoured by 22nd Armoured Brigade in Operation Crusader. Essentially VJ Desert Sand heavy wet brushed over a dark grey undercoat, then a brown inkwash, a heavy drybrush of Desert Sand again, followed by a very light drybrush of Pale Sand. I normally use Iraqi Sand for the final drybrush but on these desert vehicles it is too dark.

I did the other three in one of the sand/black patterns which included painting variable numbers of road wheels black.  They got the same Light Stone paint job as the plain ones, and I added the camo afterwards but before I did the Pale Sand drybrush. The final drybrush weathered it down nicely.

These three also got two commanders, done the same as the plain sand one, with one PSC commander and my last Peter Pig British commander. Must buy some more of those. I painted the open hatch recesses black, and following a very useful painting tip, edged one side of the aperture (or at least, asymmetrical sides to represent catching the light) in a light highlight colour. Astonishingly they suddenly became 3D recesses into the turret.

As these vehicles are camo'd up they really would not be Mark Is with MG turrets, so I did them all with plain hulls, although I did mount a spare Bren on the turret of one of them in AA mode. 

For all of them I went very light with the national recognition symbols. I went with Crusader Stripes (white/red/white) but just on the lower glacis plate, and only on a couple of them. Crusader stripes were more prevalent on I tanks, presumably due to their proximity to infantry and trigger happy AT gunners!

I didn't bother with formation signs, squadron markings etc. I might do those one day, but after having painted them out on all my Shermans and Churchills I probably won't bother with these either. I also thought about doing radio aerials, but again, didn't bother in the end. They are easy enough to add later.

I'm pleased with how they came out, and it was interesting how much better the ink wash worked over metal instead of APL, which stained the latter terribly. With the various combos of commanders, armament and paint schemes, they are all different too.

Siege of Rhodes 1522

Russell produced this interesting "Postcard" game covering the Siege of Rhodes in 1522. There are actually several games in postcard format (the board, rules and counters all fit on a postcard) including one on the Battle of Westerplatte in 1939 that I'm very keen to play. 

Anyway, the Siege of Rhodes was a new one on me. Ottomans vs Knights Hospitaller, and I gather Rhodes had been besieged many times before. 

Russell converted the board and pieces into PowerPoint so we could play remotely. It is also a handy way of playing the game anyway. Who needs VASSAL. 

The Knights are in the big fortress, with one unit holding each section of wall and one in reserve. The Ottomans are outside trying to breach the walls and force the knights to surrender. The game covers four months of the siege in eight turns each of two weeks, starting in July 1522.

This was a excuse to wear a very silly range of hats. Pete, Mark and I were the Ottomans, John and Tim the Christians. 

Each game turn is divided into a variable number of phases. The phases and actions for both sides  are determined by card draws from a normal deck of cards. Generally each side will get one action, sometimes two and on average (we did the sums) there will be fifteen phases per turn. 

This allows for some of the more laborious type siege activities, like mining, counter mining and bombarding. Coupled with sort lived but exciting stuff like sallies and assaults. 

The whole thing is very attritional, as the Ottomans try to breach the walls, and the Christians shore them up again. Both sides have a 'resistance level', which is increased or decreased by various things, and to win the Ottomans have to get the Christians RL down to 0, which is actually very hard. The variable number of phases each turn keep the game quite unpredictable, but not random, so you can actually plan around mining and breaching. 

At this stage, the Ottomans have several breaches, and have even managed to storm one section of wall in the south. The defenders have concentrated around the big cluster of breaches in the North, as each breach can be used for an assault. 

The Ottoman artillery is a vanishing asset, it is powerful early on, but is rapidly reduced by counterbattery fire and the odd heroic sally.  We used it as much as possible to create breaches, but were soon reduced to mining, which is much slower. The Christians can countermine to block them up again, or to reduce our mining activity. 

A mass assault on the French gate! Combat is differential, so it really pays to get a marginal superiority. We figured out the best assault tactic was to get a breach (or two), then on a 'two actions' phase, blow the mine you'd spent six turns preparing, and launch an immediate assault before the defenders can react and move more units up. 

The Christians do have one unit which can act as a fire brigade, if placed in reserve, but it is a die roll to activate. Sadly for us the Fire Brigade reacted, so it 9 v 9 in terms of combat strength, however our earlier success in storming one of the walls had reduced the enemy resistance level so our attack succeeded on a 3 or more. We duly knocked a step off one of the defenders, and more important, the fire brigade was committed now. 

The cycle of breach and assault continued, interrupted by counter mining etc. We were slowly wearing the defenders down and several of the defenders in this picture have lost a step and have been flipped. 

Although we'd lost most our guns, our resistance level stayed high as it could only be reduced by failed mining attacks, failed assaults or if the Christians managed to remove two breaches in a turn. We were careful to put a lot of effort into mines so they had at least an 87% chance of success and the Christians never quite had the impetus to close two breaches in a turn. The dodgy thing was the assaults, but once we had begun to weaken the defence, they became less likely to fail. 

The main problem was that all this stuff took time, lots of time, and reducing Christian morale to zero essentially required us to have cleared the bulk of the walls by turn 5, and for the enemy to fail a series of morale tests. 

After two sessions, we'd got about halfway through (it started going much faster once we'd figured out the rules and interplay of options) and the plan was to finish it off the following week. 

That was a very interesting game, well worth the price, and an entertaining take on gaming that most challenging of subjects, a siege. 

I have been... to Boston

 We have just got back from a tour of North Eastern Canada, which started in Boston. I've been to Boston briefly before, but always wanted to go back for a longer stay, and this time we made it. 

Lots of interesting military stuff in Boston, and for fans of Fallout 4, many familiar landmarks, although not quite so radioactive and infested with monsters and zombies. 

The USS Constitution, claimed to be the oldest commissioned warship still afloat. HMS Victory is older of course, but while still commissioned as the flagship of the First Sea Lord, is in dry dock. 

The ship is having some work done on the masts, hence the odd appearance. 

There were lots of (very young) US Navy personnel swarming up the rigging. 

The gun deck is beautifully preserved, one of the best I've seen and very spacious. I could even stand up straight(ish). 

You can sort of make out the 20" thick Hull of 'Old Ironsides' 

The Captains Quarters are also very generous indeed. 

Carronade on deck. I like a carronade. 

Pretty busy on deck. 

Moored nearby is the USS Cassin Young. 

Quite a large destroyer. 

Quad 40mm AA mounts. The ship was hit and badly damaged by a Kamikaze in 1945.

Main armament. I don't know who that suspicious character is hanging around. 

Lovely view across Boston Harbour from the stern. The old castle is dimly visible in the distance. 

There is a small museum display near the ships, this is a model of the navy yard at its height. 

Ready for sea! 

And a lovely Lego model. 

A huge bonus is that the ships and navy Yard museum are completely free. They can be found at the far end of the Freedom Trail just before you get to the Bunker Hill monument. 

I didn't bother going up to the monument, but this is slope leading up to Breeds Hill. Now a quiet suburban street. The redcoats will have advanced up here. 

You can see the monument on the Ridge above the navy yard. 

In Boston Park is a memorial to the 54th Massachusets Regiment, as commemorated in the film 'Glory'. 

Samuel Adams grave in the Old Town. 

A couple of nice ships in the harbour. An old square rigger converted into a restaurant and a Nantucket Sound lightship. This is one of the larger ones. 

And finally, supposedly George Lucas inspiration for Imperial AT-AT! These low slung container cranes opposite Boston Logan Airport. They are low so the planes can land safely across the harbour. 

A very enjoyable city to visit, and lots of good stuff within easy walking distance around the Old Town. There is a subway if your feet get tired. 

15mm BPM 2pdr Portee

 My British needed some AT guns, and what better than a 2pdr portee. At some point I'll get some dismounted guns and maybe even some 6pdrs, but for now a pair of portees will do fine. 

What could be better than these delightful Morris portees, with the added bonus that they are much smaller than the Chevdolet version. Back in the day, in my much lamented original 15mm 8th Army, I had to convert these from Peter Pig 15cwt trucks and unlimbered 2pdrs. BPM have saved me the bother. 

They are supplied in just two major parts, the truck and gun. The 3D process has struggled a bit with the curved bumpers but they aren't too bad. The fine detail is just exquisite though. 

One problem with 3D prints is they don't come with any crew, and this was crying out for them. The driver is a BF US jeep driver with his helmet filed down, and the gunner is another Old Glory carrier crew with the rifle cut down into a shell and the scrim trimmed off his helmet. The deck was usually padded with sandbags, but I couldn't be bothered to make those. 

The gun wheels are also seperate. I tried a few different mounting configurations, but in the end just stuck them on the back. I couldn't find any decent photos of the Morris with the gun mounted, so that will have to do. 

The power of 3D printing can be seen in the circular holes in the wheel hubs. 

These just got the same plain 'light stone' finish as the other stuff. Various layers of dry brushing with an inkwash in the middle.