Blogger, Edge of Empire and Button Up!

Many thanks to Palouse Wargaming Journal for coming up with a potential workaround for the blogger dead feed issues (for those of you who use the built in blogger reading list gadget). The details are here: https://palousewargamingjournal.blogspot.com/2026/09/bring-in-cache-buster.html  

Essentially it involves setting up a proxy server on googles Feedburner service: https://feedburner.google.com/  for your blog, then refreshing the Feedburner feed manually which seems to kick the duff google reading list gadget into life too. I've already got a few other peoples blogs appearing in my feed now, which of course it what makes it all worhtwhile.

For good measure I also updated every blog I'm following to use https (a rather tedious manual editing job), as a lot of them were originally just http and in some cases the workaround doesn't seem to like that. Anyway, here is a bit of a test post to try some of this stuff out.

I recently read 'At the Edge of Empire' by Edward Wong, a fascinating account of his families relationship with China in the twentieth century, but also a very interesting account of the development of modern China and its history.

Edwards father was an enthusiastic communist and served as an officer in the PLA, but fell foul of one of Mao's ideological purges and was exiled to Xinjiang, politically suspect due to his family roots in Hong Kong. After being rejected from the Airforce he was assigned to a Chinese cavalry division, who knew such things existed.

I was struck by the parallels with Ai Weiwei's family while reading the timeline at his recent 'Button Up!' exhibition in Manchester.

His father was also an enthusiastic communist and even sat on the committee which designed the new PLA flag in the 1940s, but he too was exiled to Xinjiang. I've been to quite a few Ai Weiwei exhibitions, but this was the most overtly political, covering Chinas relationship with imperialism, censorship, repression and the refugee crisis as well as some observations on the loss of craftsmanship.

It was fairly monumental!

These are representations of the flags of the eight Imperial powers which intervened in China in the nineteenth century. The Opium Wars etc. 

An interesting exhibit was this 'bomb wall', with representations of various types of munitions arranged in chronological order. iirc the blurb said they are all 1:1 size and they are all made out of Lego type plastic blocks. The big one on the left is a 10 ton Grand Slam. 

The Wave done in lego blocks but with refugee rafts substituted for the original fishing boats.

I loved this sculpture made out of rather grisly skeletons, particularly with the light behind it.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps, but riding a zebra. Also made out of lego, the original image is also inverted, so I flipped it over.

I'm not quite sure what this structure was, temple or tea house? It was impressive nonetheless. The dragon flag is the original Chinese flag.

Closer view of the flags. The patterns are made of buttons, purchased from a very old British button making firm which went bust a few years ago, and of course sewn onto cotton - one of Manchesters primary industries back in the day.

The designs are very intricate, and took 33 craftsmen 281 days to sew together (so around 30 person years of effort).

Tea houses made out of actual tea leaves and resting on a bed of tea.

A huge vase in traditional style, but if you look carefully it is illustrated with soldiers, insurgents, fleeing refugees and there is even a T72 (or similar) on the very top one. 

I'm the Year of the Ox, so this is my birth animal. The originals were actually made in France and located in the old Imperial Palace in Beijing.

More of the bomb wall. The big one is a Tsar Bomba, the highest yield nuclear weapon ever manufactured. Fat Man and Little Boy are above it an to left.

Apologies as this isn't my usual fare of painting or pushing toy soldiers around, but given the rise of China as a superpower and the decline of the USA I've been keen to find out more about modern China and how it got to be how it is. Partly why I sat through all 30 episodes of the Chinese adaptation of The Three Body Problem, which had some very entertaining depictions of the west among other things.

Amerika Bomber - He 277

 More missions in alt-history 1947 with 'Amerika Bomber'. Unaccountably I seem to have failed to report our previous adventures in the Fw 300 on the blog. Regular readers may recall our first foray ended in our plane being shot down in flames over the US and our entire crew captured. We put together another crew and flew five missions in the Fw 300, then for this run, the survivors were assigned the He 277 and all awarded the EK2 for surviving five missions. By now I was an Ace gunner and John A was an Ace pilot

Now, who doesn't remember the venerable Airfix kit of the He 177, a four engined bomber with only two propellors. What a typically strange Germanic design. I had one of these and made a diorama of it crashed in the UK with converted Airfix WW1 infantry standing in as MPs rounding up the crew which my Dad claimed were a pretty good match.

Well, the He 277 is an upgraded version of the 177. Still four engines but now it has the correct number of propellers. A large bombload but sadly only four turrets, unlike the six of the Fw 300. As usual, this is a typical bomber management game, fly missions and deal with various events on the  way in and way out, tracking systems damage on the various boxes.

Encounters with fighters are resolved on the attack chart, with various directions and altitudes (the two yellow ones are vertical - climb and dive respectively).

During May - June 1947 we flew four sorties from the Azores against mainland USA in the He 277.

Target 1: Union Carbide, South Charleston

Intercepted by a total of 8 x Fighters (4 shot down) and encountered heavy Flak over the target. Missed the target completely and the plane was shot to bits with only a couple of airframe hits left, but we made it back safely. The plane landed OK but was written off for parts.

Target 2: Westinghouse Electric, Pennsylvania

Astonishingly we evaded all enemy fighters on the way in and out again, with only light Flak over the target.  20% of bombs on target and back home safely and undamaged. A good mission.

Target 3: Heinz Foods (!), Pennsylvania

Intercepted by a total of 12 x fighters of which we shot down 4. Moderate Flak over the target but only10% on target. The plane was pretty shot up by fighters and Flak, Heinz in the ventral turret was killed.

The damaged plane made a rough landing and all the surviving crew were wounded. So we got wound badges to go with our EKs and the plane was patched up. Could have gone better!

Target 4: Merck, New Jersey

At least we didn't have to fly quite as far this time, but the plane suffered a complete electronics failure on approach to the target. Apparently losing electronics was helpful as a mighty 50% of bombs were on target but we were shot to pieces by Flak as we'd lost our AA jammer. We were bounced by two fighters when almost back at base and barely made it back with just one airframe hit left.

The plane crash landed and was written off, the entire crew suffered wounds of varying severity but no-one was killed.

We left it there as there wasn't quite time to do another mission. The next will be the crews tenth and if we survive that we will all get the EK1. At some point some more modern aircraft will become available. We are a long way off getting a Horten yet though. I did eventually find the aircraft file for the Fw 300 from the previous game:

What a magnificent beast it is. Essentially an upgraded Fw 200 Condor and boasting no less than six turrets, although it only has about half the bombload of the He 277.

I don't seem to have made any mission notes during the game, although I did find a tally of enemy fighters I  shot down, no less than seven, hence my 'Ace Gunner' status which gives a bonus in air gunnery.

Blogger feed problems

 Just a a note to all the blogs I follow that Blogger has stopped updating my blog feed entirely and I haven't had an new post for almost three days now. I can still navigate to blogs individually and see updates, but it is of course a bit tedious to go through every single blog in my follow list.

So many apologies, I probably wont be viewing and commenting on other peoples blogs quite so frequently until this is fixed. I do rather wonder if Google is planning to kill Blogger by neglect. That would be a shame as I started doing this in2008, and it would be nice to get to the 20th anniversary.

Tigers at Minsk - The Road to Beaumont, 15 May 1940

 Time for some more TaM, and yet another Fireball Forward scenario converted to TaM. Once again the map looks identical in style to a Skirmish Campaigns one, and I imagine the original scenario was based on that and scaled up. I dimly recall a Squad Leader/Crescendo of Doom scenario covering the same engagement, but possibly I'm misrembering and I cant be bothered to look in the SL box to find out.

Anyway, this engagement features a clash between 1st DCR and 7th Panzer Division in the vicinity of Beaumont. 1st DCR had lost almost all its heavy tanks (Char B) in the previous days fighting but the 2nd Demo-Brigade with H39s had far more operational vehicles. Rommels advance had cut the French off so on the 15th, 1st DCR attempted to break out of encirclement to the west, handicapped by fuel shortages.

Battlefield from the north (confusingly) - if I'd realised it would end up this way around I'd have reversed the setup, but never mind... there is a very obvious road running down the centre, a couple of hills and various open woods. There are also two boggy fields which don't block LOS but do force a mobilty test on vehicles trying to enter them.

Two of the fields have tree lines at one side which block LOS, there is also a hedge running north-south behind the top hill, and a pair of buildings (a farm and a barn complex).

The French enter from the left (east) and to win must gain 3 VP. They get 1 VP per AFV or squad exited off the right (west) side and 1 VP per building controlled. The original scenario lasts six turns, so in TaM terms that is 12 turns or 85 minutes. Given the distances involved, getting even one unit off the far side is going to be a struggle, assuming the Germans manage to maintain LOS and restrict the French to one hex move per turn.

Here is the French horde, two platoons of motorised infantry with six sections and a pair of lorries. The lorries are just for colour as no-one in their right mind is going to drive these onto the table. They also have a motorcycle section and no less than six(!) H39s. Now, I dont actually own six H39s, so they are actually two H39s, two R35s, a gun armed FT 17 and a 25mm armed armoured car. I'm using the Spearhead stats for armour and gun performance, and wierdly these are all identical, 3/2 armour and AT 3 guns. If any vehicles get knocked out I'll swap the models around to remove the anachronisms.

A pair of the H39s enter on turn two which becomes after 15 minutes in TaM terms. I'm going to give the French poor command (so only the leader hex plus one other), average morale and round down their breakpoint. So with 13 elements that is a BP of six.

The Germans have one Schutzen Platoon with three high firepower sections plus a lorry and a Horch to ride in. The KG HQ has an anti-tank rifle section riding in a kubelwagen and a tank 'platoon' with a pair of Pz 38. Very similar rating to the H39s in Spearhead terms. but I'm going to make the German veteran with good command.

Arriving reinforcements are a pair of Panzer IIs (only AT 2 with their 20mm cannon) arriving after 20 minutes, and a towed 75mm infantry gun (AT 3) arriving after ten minutes. All of these arrive from the northern edge.

These guys have a break point of five.

I set this up in the afternoon so I'd have time to think about it as it is a quite tactically complex scenario due to the force density and terrain configuration. Those tree lines and hills are a complete pain! In this iteration I'm trying to keep the forward area under observation to restrict the French movement, but it necessitates a very forward defence due to the terrain. A more cautious approach would be a defence in depth  but obviously that gives the French freedom of movement in the early game. Choices, choices...

So in this sector I've occupied both the buildings with infantry and put the ATR team in the forward building. The tanks are split onto different ridges to try and produce interlocked fields of fire across the whole front while protecting their flanks from AT fire. Complicating factors are the tree lines and a dispersed defence like this is going to be hard to control.

On the rest of the front I've parked up the transport in cover and Pz IIs and towed 75 mark the boundaries of the reinforcement entry area, which will nicely shore up the left flank. I considered keeping one section in reserve, but in the end I put it in the field at the top left to lock down that flank more - I'm terrified the French will just use to tree lines to dash forwards under cover otherwise. The field provides cover from direct fire to infantry so it isn't as daft as it looks, and they can always pull back if needs be, using the tree line to cover their escape.

I just lined up the French horde on the table edge. There seem to be an awful lot of them!

Final bit of admin, break point counters and the turn counter set to 0 minutes. I'll leave that overnight and re-visit it from time to time to consider different deployments and a viable attack plan for the French.

I re-visited the German setup overnight but didnt make any changes apart from to downgrade the Germans down to average morale. I think the French task is quite hard enough as it is (in the original scenario both sides have the same morale). I kept the more restricted French command though.

For the French faced with attacking over mostly open ground I opted to overload the defence by simply swamping the front. I spread the infantry out to minimise losses from bunching, and deployed the tanks along the front, focussing on the right flank more. There were two squads stacked up in the woods, but I think the time and distance constraints are such that the French don't have any time for fancy tactics. Essentially this challenged the Germans to stand and fight or run away, but like the Germans, the dispersed deployment ran the risk of C2 problems.

Naturally one of the Pz 38s went out of command, but the German CO focussed on the forward infantry positions and the German infantry managed to pin the three left hand French squads. The other Pz 38 managed to hit an H39 but it bounced off.

The French suffered C2 problems of their own and two hexes went out of command, including the tank/infantry team in the wood. The other two squads in the wood advanced as did the motorcycle section, while the two H39s blazed away to cover the infantry rallying.

The German response was fairly ferocious, and they gunned down one of the French rifle squads and the intrepid motocyclists. Ouch! German anti-tank fire remained ineffective. Looks like the German had committed themselves to fighting, whereas I'd originally planned to pull the left hand squad back after delaying the Germans.

And of course the following turn every single French tank was in command and a wall of steel fire spitting monsters managed to destroy the Germans in the field and pin the ATR team in the building. The only bright spot for the Germans was that two of the French infantry failed their command rolls and a third failed to rally.

The German 75mm gun now came on, but I wanted to unlimber it in the wooded hill hex, so it just parked up out of sight at the base of the ridge so it could dash forwards and unlimber next turn.

Now it was the turn of the French reinforcements arrival, and both tanks just moved onto the vacant road hex. The French infantry in the wood managed to fail their command roll again (I guess those woods are really thick!), but one squad made it into the field behind the treeline.

All four H39s were in command so opened up on the building inflicting two hits. The Germans removed the already pinned ATR and the rifle squad was pinned. With French infantry closing in, I figured infantry would be more useful.

The Germans pulled the battered squad back into the field to rally next turn and the Panzer IIs rolled up, parking in the field just in front of the tree line to set up flank shots across the table. The 75mm gun managed to fail its command roll but the Panzers finally stunned one H39 and destroyed another, which burst into flames.

With the German withdrawal, the French were able to push up the newly arrived armour, and the French infantry in the woods finally got to move forwards as well. One of the surviving H39s went out of command and the other fired ineffectively on one of the Pz 38s. 

In all the excitement I'd managed to push the H39 in the woods too far forwards, and the Panzer IIs duly blew it up with flank shots. The 75mm gun also made it up onto the ridge and unlimbered. The French now only had two more losses to go before their break point. The Panzer 38s hit the two H39s on the road but only managed to stun one of them. The German squad in the field rallied.

At turn end I rolled a double, so random events. The Germans got 'tank fright' (very appropriate!) while the French got 'men of action' which allowed one unit to move and fire.

In a huge turn for the French, concentrated fire from the French infantry destroyed the Germans in the field behind the building. The H39s on the road then knocked out a Pz 38, while a third H39 used the 'men of action' to advance to join them and knocked out the second Pz 38! That took the Germans to their break point.

This triggered a series of morale tests which led to all the surviving German unit falling back a hex, the only unit to stand was the 75mm. The last German infantry abandoned their building while  both Panzer IIs retreated behind the tree line.

The French infantry in the wood now advanced to the eastern edge, poised to move across the ridge in future turns, while the last H39 advanced into the fields behind the first tree line.

The Germans dare not move the Pz II back into the field as they would be in the arc of fire of four French tanks, so instead they moved back towards the ridge while the 75mm shelled the French infantry in the wood. The last German infantry squad reoccupied the building. 

Next turn the French essentially pushed forwards under cover as far as possible, French infantry took the building in the centre and two H39s drove up the road to join them. On the German left, the lone H39 and French infantry just advanced one hex to keep behind the tree line and out of LOS.

The Germans engaged the H39s by the building, stunning one and destroying the other. The French were one loss away from their breakpoint.

But it was the Germans who broke first. The stunned H39 rallied and combined with the other H39 in the wood, knocked out one of the Pz IIs. The German morale failed and they all fell back again. The 75mm ended up on the reverse slope, the German infantry abandoned the building again and the last Pz II headed up the hill.

Taking advantage of the confusion the French pushed forwards, with two squads cresting the ridge near the last building, and another squad and H39 pushing up to the last tree line.

In their turn, the Germans reoccupied the building while the Pz II fired ineffectively at the nearest H39. The 75mm limbered up prior to relocating.

Too late, the H39 in the tree line despatched the last Panzer II and another wave of German morale failures saw the 75 retreat off table and last German squad abandon the building once more. On the French left four squads and two tanks pushed forwards as far as possible, occupying the hedgerows next to the building.

All the Germans could do was double time back into the building. On the French right the tank and infantry made their way over the open ground towards the ridge, and on the left, the French tanks shot in....

A mass close assault! Three French squads vs one German. The German troops were better and occupying a building, but they were outnumbered 3:1.

In the ensuing melee, the Germans took three hits and were wiped out, the CO ran away over the fields as the jubilant French occupied the buildings and searched the dejected prisoners.

After all that, there was 82 minutes on the clock, only three to go!

Most of the French units could only advance two hexes cross country on the last turn, but one H39 was on the road, and simply drove off the table giving the French their third VP. A hard won French victory!

That was really good fun, very enjoyable and well done to the French for pulling it off even though I doubted their chances. In the end they managed to concentrate their fire against single German units to destroy them, and although they lost half their armour and a third of their infantry, they just managed to pull it off. It was a high risk strategy as it relied on blasting a hole through the Germans so they could charge off in the last few turns, but tbh the alternative of a more step by step approach risked just handing the Germans advancing units piecemeal.

I didn't make any changes to the rules, just plugging in the relevant Spearhead armour/AT factors, so they seem to have settled down. That was also quite a complex scenario to solo play with a lot going on and a lot of decisions to make, so I didn't feel any great inclination to replay it either. Combat debut for my new 3D printed Panzer IIs though, which of course led to their inevitable destruction.

Earth Prepares - preparation

 Mark planned on running a game at the Conference of Wargamers (COW) this year based on following up a session at COW 25 last year. The latter explored likely options for an alien invasion of earth using our current level of technology, and potential responses to repel it. This game notionally generated a report which was filed by the UN/MOD, but roll on a few years and several hundred sinister objects have been detected flying through the Oort Cloud in the direction of Earth.....

This was essentially a game development session to help Mark flesh out his ideas, stress test some of the concepts and come up with a workable session for several players in a two hour slot. Doing it remotely over Zoom obviously isn't ideal for collaborative development, but given our geographical locations scattered from one end of the country to the other, there wasn't any other option.

Nonetheless we put on a fine show of hats! Jerry and Jim went for in tin foil and a colander respectively. Tim had a rather fine Stetson with 'Space' on the front (Space Cowboys?), John rocked his very futuristic painting headset which even has a spotlight and targetting reticle. I took my cue from all the RAF adverts on TV which stress that space defence is the job of the  RAF, so wore my RAF Officers side cap.

We were cast as various blocs - authoritarian regimes, liberal democracies, old industries, future tech etc. I ended up as Future Tech and played "Elon Bezos Altman", mainly because I've read all three volumes of The Three Body Problem AND sat through all 30 episodes of the Chinese TV adaptation of the first book. In my past life I was also head of research computing at a large University, so do know something about technology. Should have bought shares in Nvidia 20 years ago... 

The original game had postulated insterstaller travel using Orion Project type ships. Unlike liquid fuelled rocket ships (essentially mass ejection propulsion), the Orion Project in the 1960s suggested using nuclear detonations to propel ships as it is a far more compact form of energy. Various prototype designs for nuclear powered ships above.  

An artists impression of one in operation. The design was canned after the ban on atmospheric nuclear testing was agreed. While it is a very efficient means of propulsion, it has the unfortunate side effect of generating an awful lot of radiation (!). The supposition being that the alien ships were using this form of propulsion, which achieves enough of a fraction of light speed for viable interstellar travel.

As you might imagine, the game rather fell apart at this point as we all had questions as to why we should be assuming what was presumably an approaching alien fleet was using this rather dubious technology. A discussion ensued.... 

Linked to the mode of propulsion was the mode of transport. In the absence of workable cryogenic suspension, we have the aliens arriving as genetically modified seeds, which can survive for centuries and if distributed on earth, will grow into plants and then into actual aliens. See example method of distribution above. As you might imagine, another discussion ensued at this point....

We suggested that all this stuff needed to be presented, but succinctly as just a hypotheses rather than a detailed explanation as there was a real risk you'd just end up running the previous game again. The players at the original session had come up with various defensive suggestions, the main one being a sort of earth based weeding project. A minority report suggested that if the aliens ever landed, we'd lost, and their ship needed to be destroyed in space. All duly noted...

Anyway, what we actually faced was 500 or so unknown contacts, around 100,000 Astronomical Units (AU) away at the very outer extremity of the solar system and with an estimated arrival time 1400 years into the future! Essentially this was a planning game, hampered by the extremely long timescales involved and competing views of the various factions.

Unfortunately as it was largely a discussion thereafter, there isn't really anything to show photo wise. The general game framework was a simplified representation of the solar system with ten significant sectors going right out to the edge of the system, but due to the mind boggling distances involved, the scale was logarithmic so eg the distance from the Sun to Earth was 1 sector and 1AU, whereas the distance to the Kyper belt was four spaces represented about 70 AU, and the Oort cloud which started around sector eight was 100,000+ AU.

As our technology improved we were able to put probes to into space, build bases on the Moon etc and eventually garrison the asteroid belt with railguns etc. There was of course the 'Forever Wars' problem that tech launched into space was completely outclassed by the time it arrived at its destination.

Unsurprisingly the Aliens technology also advanced and a second fleet appeared travelling rather faster than the first with an estimated arrival time of a few hundred years, and suddenly time was running short. 

Towards the latter stages of the game this rather scary looking yellow Star Destroyer appeared, it still hadn't achieved FTL travel, but was due to arrive in 30 years or less. At that point we wrapped it up having built Earths defences as best we could based on a range of Sci Fi novels and films!

That was a very brave session and made a real change from our usual fare of finished games. Well done to Mark for bringing it along and bearing the arrows and slingshots of constructive criticism. There are some very clever ideas in there, and lots of interesting information based on hard science rather than Star Trek. It reminded me in some ways of Mark and Ians game on contemporary satellite warfare which also risks being mind bogglingly complicated and suitable only for rocket scientists, but they managed to make into something quite playable. 

I think we came up with a more tightly structure framework to run the game in, particularly to avoid excessive discussion of the overall premise at start, and also to ramp up the pressure as time starts to drop by orders of magnitude. Unfortunately I was unable to attend COW this year but I'll look forward to seeing a writeup of how it went.