Peter Pig 15mm Horch Car

 Along with their Opel Blitz's, I wanted some lighter softskin transport for my DAK troops, and an obvious candidate was the Peter Pig Horch Heavy Car. I've already got some in panzer grey (featured in a recent post), so a few in sand would be useful additions.

Here they are. I was slightly surprised to find they turned up packed with crew figures! (my old ones are empty). That is OK, but it means they are a bit less generic as I'll have to pick a certain uniform variety.  

The model itself is easy to put together. Very little flash to clean up and just four wheels to stick on, which have nice big locating lugs. It has lots raised detail and is well cast and very crisp.

The figures were a bit more fiddly as they all came with separate heads, one officer, one peaked cap and three helmets. The neck holes are pre drilled but the necks themselves are far too long and need trimming.

If I'd known they had separate heads I'd have ordered some heads in field caps, oh well. 

The crew all look very cosy crammed inside, and they give the car some character..

I just did them plain Iraqi Sand over a grey undercoat with a light drybrush to pick up the highlights. I went for greener uniforms so they will do for North Africa and Europe/Russia, but there wasn't much I could do about the helmets so I did them tan.

Nice little models which go together well and look good. 

Hammerhead, March 2024

 I fancied a day out at a show, and Hammerhead was calling, just an hours drive down the road. Sorted.

I got there around 11.30 and it was rammed, really packed. I was surprised, it seemed much busier than Partisan. I'd only really come to say hi to friends and buy some modelling supplies. I meant to get there earlier but I had to wait in for an electrician.

I bumped into Neil of https://aufklarungsabteilung.blogspot.com/ fame right at the entrance.

I did actually get to play a game! Thank you Wakefield Wargamers.

My plucky 6mm Commandos had to land, find their way inshore, and blow up a wicked German gun emplacement. Mission accomplished, but at hideous coast as we ran into no less than three German patrols en route.

There were some fairly impressive games on show! I gather they were all supposed to be participation games.

Well, except the DBA competition. The elite team of Wargames Developments DBA players discuss strategy, or how to roll '6's. It was good to chat to Graham, Chris and Chris.

The DBA games were all played with massed 6mm armies on 25mm scale bases, and very nice they looked too. Hundreds of barbarians.

Otherwise I had a wander around and took a few photos.

Lovely Pegasus Bridge.

Two nice Nam games which caught my eye.

I managed to pick up some paint, and discovered an urgent requirement for some I94 decals, but no luck finding any 6mm bridges or adobe buildings. The Brigade stuff is lovely, but too small for what I had in mind.

I was only there a couple of hours but it was a fun trip. We are planning on going to Partisan in May, but I'll be running a game at that.

I am the passenger...

 I ride and I ride and I ride. With many apologies to Iggy Pop.

I've had these old Peter Pig Horch cars for decades, originally in desert yellow for my old 15mm Desert armies, these survived the turn of the century cull and were repainted grey as you can never have too much transport. I never bothered with crew, but sometimes that rather limits their use, so I finally got around to adding some passengers. 

These fine chaps are pretty much all that is left of my PSC seated Germans from the Sdkfz 251 set. Very useful figures indeed, and mercifully slight, so easy to get into vehicles. I added in a spare PP officer who can be looking around for trouble. I just did these in plain field grey uniforms. 

And here they are crewed up. Ideally they'd have three figures in each, but even just a couple looks OK. 

Driver and bloke in the back. I had to chop the legs off the drivers,  but you cant see they are legless.

Driver and standing officer. I gather from Chris K that the vehicle commander was supposed to stand up in tactical situations. Better awareness etc. He looks rather business like.

This one has three figures, the standing machinegunner is a spare Sdkfz 251 gunner with MG34 in the firing position. He fits neatly behind the windscreen. 

I'm very pleased with those, they will do nicely as Panzergrenadiers now. I should probably rebase them too, as they still have their old desert bases of sand on top of corrugated cardboard! I've been using artists mount board since the late 90s, so goodness knows how old these are.

Where Seagulls Dare!

On our latest Friday games day, Tim took us on an adventure of extreme silliness, Where Seagulls Dare, modelled on a popular war film from the 1970s. It bore some similarity to its predecessor, the magnificent Guns of Toblerone, which I've played a few times. 

The basic premise is that the players are a team of "elite" Commandos, tasked with foiling some dastardly Nazi plot, so once we've sorted ourselves out, off we go and biff the Hun, in the manner of an Alistair Maclean novel. 

In this case, we were off to find out what the Germans were up to on an island off the south coast of France. 

I very cleverly forgot to take a photo of the entire island, here are various key features marked out with index  cards, including the town, hospital, church, various villages etc. Consider it an area movement type system. 

And the mighty fortress perched on top of a huge mountain/box covered in a cloth. It can only be approached by a precipitous track or cable car.... This also has verious key locations marked in and around it was including something ominously marked as "Secret Base". 

The German garrison in the town included the inevitable M60 daubed in big German Crosses, as well as halftracks and a Kubelwagen or two. All Tim's 54mm stuff. 

This fine figure was in the SS HQ on top of the mountain. 

Each player had an individual figure. As I was assigned the role of Fifi, the Swiss/Dutch female SIS spy and "blonde bombshell", I got this charming figure. We were all to be parachuted into the island disguised as Germans, and before the mission, we had to sort out our equipment, much of which went into five cannisters, Although I was able to carry a pistol, knife and 50 feet of para cord. 

We wisely packed two radios, a flare pistol as backup, and lots of explosives and climbing gear, split across the loads. 

We also had individual objectives, some of which may have conflicted with other players. 

There were reports of flames and explosions, and for our LZ (disguised as German Paras), we dropped on some "mysterious scorched fields". Sadly we didnt find any obvious clues as to what was going on, and even sadder, a cannister went missing and poor Fifi died in the drop! 

Tim had a spare character, and I took over as Marcel the Corsican, leader of the local (communist) resistance, who liaised with the British agents. 

After much wandering around the island, the British finally worked out the delivery schedule of the airlanded secret supplies being delivered to the castle, and they managed to hijack a truck up to the top of the mountain, making it as far as the secret base. 

I'm amazed they even managed that, as before making it up the mountain, the team arrested one of their own men, and then another one murdered the Major in his sleep! Evidently there was some sort of treachery afoot. The (surviving) OSS Lt took over. 

Then they had a curious change of heart, and decided to head back down the mountain having had a good look around. 

Sadly Marcel and the Maquis chose this moment to Ambush the "German truck" coming down the road, and blew it apart with explosives looted from the "missing" supply cannister. 

A terrible misunderstanding? Or special orders from Stalin? Who can say, suffice to say I achieved all my characters objectives. In fact some of the team did survive, John (as the OSS Lt) infiltrated the investigating German patrols, and Pete (as  a war weary but irrepressible Cockney sergeant), managed to steal  a boat and escape to Spain! 

What was all the fuss about? Wunderwaffen of course. Tim had even made four of these magnificent rockets specially. 

That was rollicking good fun, even if it turned out to be more  grim and dirty John Frankenheimer type WW2 movie than Ealing Studios. 

One Hour Napoleonic - Wavre f2f playtest

 I met up with John at the club Xmas games day to try out my One Hour Napoleonic variant as a face-face playtest as there are still a few wrinkles I'm trying to work out. I just went with Wavre again as it is an interesting scenario and I still had all the toys based up. I took the Prussians and John the French ( I generally find attacking is less confusing in a brand new game). I didn't take blow-blow photos but did take a few of the game in progress.

I set the Prussians up exactly the same as in my original playtest. Pirch lined up to exit to Waterloo, most of Thielmanns Corps in Wavre and a detachment at Limale with the cavalry in reserve in the centre. 

The French came on in much the same way I did in my solo playtest too, Gerards Corps on the right, Vandamme on the left, Army Artillery in the centre and cavalry in reserve. John was quite intrigued by the possibilities of Light Infantry, and went with a different lineup to me - two Lights with Vandamme and just one with Gerard.

Vandamme, supported by the Army Artillery, was soon pounding away at Limale. Gerard skirmished with Wavre, at some disadvantage with two Line Infantry facing off against troops in buildings.

Under fire from four units the Limale garrison was soon reduced to one hit, and scuttled away, hoping to become one of the mandatory exit units. Sadly it couldn't quite get out of the arc of fire of the French artillery and was routed by long range artillery fire. The Prussian cavalry pulled onto the forward slope of the ridge.

Back at Wavre the firefight was more even but fairly slow, both sides average hit potential per turn being one and a third. Both sides concentrated fire on single units and the hits slowly mounted. Not sure what I think about that from a simulation pov, but it works in game terms.

The French put their Light Infantry over the river, accompanied by their Cavalry Corps. The Prussian cavalry manouvered to set up a charge, while trying to avoid flanking fire from the French artillery. Very unfairly the French light infantry ducked into the woods! Eagle eyed readers will note I've based up the cavalry units as columns, looking at Lithographs of the battle, they appear to have been the favoured cavalry formation (fairly thick columns mind).

The Prussians got their charge in first but were hideously unlucky, only inflicting a couple of hits on the French. The French response was....devastating as the Prussians were in range of three French infantry divisions and also flanked by the French artillery.

The Prussian cavalry reeled back, reduced to two and one hit respectively. While this had been going on, the Prussian guns had re-deployed to the central hill and unlimbered and at Wavre one of the Prussian infantry had fallen back exhausted, to be replaced by reserves. Most of Pirch's Corps had now left for Waterloo.

The French cavalry followed the Prussians, and one of the Prussian cavalry was routed, but the other maintained a screen to hold them up - I've started using the same Zone of Control rules as in the WW2 variant, to avoid 'units running around' silliness. The French Light Infantry Divisions meanwhile were going artillery hunting.

The guns limbered up and pulled out, retreating across the plain. There were only four Prussian brigades left now, so exiting the mandatory units was going to be hard. The limbered artillery was a sacrifice to allow other units to escape.

The Prussian artillery was duly overrun, but the Prussians pulled an infantry brigade down the road in march column, and put the cavalry on the exit hex. If the Prussians were really lucky, they'd get the last two units off and still hold Wavre at the end of the game.

Sadly the French cavalry sabered the Prussian infantry columns. All very Lawrence of Arabia.

Wavre was still holding out though, and had managed to rout one of Gerards divisions. The garrison was completely surrounded by French units and under fire from all directions.

The Prussians failed to exit a fifth unit on turn 11 and lost, despite Wavre still holding out. I think the scenario needs a slight tweak to make it four units exited, as exiting five is really tough.

That was a very useful playtest and John raised a number of questions about things which needed clarifying, and we also had a discussion about command and control, leadership and rallying of formations. John raised the very obvious question - how likely is it that an entire infantry division or cavalry corps is going to usefully 'rally' in the time frame of the game? The obvious answer being that it wouldn't (eg in Napoleons Battles, divisions only rally overnight at least five miles away from the enemy). 

I'd also drafted some overly complex C2 rules, which I didn't use in the event, but had a chat about that too as I'm keen to include a role for leaders in the game rather than just adding narrative eye candy.

We eventually came up with a morale type for leaders in the game, and also a simple C2 system which owes something to BBB and Fire and Fury (and also something leaders can influence). I had vaguely thought about some sort of exhaustion mechanism like the PW, but really, it is fairly obvious when units are exhausted, and the 'routed' ones are just combat ineffective to varying degrees which is much the same thing. I could always adopt Richard Brooks approach of leaving the routed units on the table, but cowering in the rear waiting to be sabered by vengeful enemy cavalry. Actually that isn't a bad idea.

Anyway, I can feel another playtest coming on. I've put the current version of the rules up in my One Hour Wargames section, but they are still a work in progress. 

Edington 878 AD

 Off to the Dark Ages with the Table Battles system. Tim had come across this user created scenario on BGG, covering the climatic encounter between Alfred the Great and Guthrum, the Danish ruler of East Anglia (and Uhtred Ragnusson, for followers of the Last Kingdom novels and TV series!).

This is a really interesting scenario, each side only has three units, two wings of troops and their commander. The commanders can rally their wings  a (very) limited number of times, and allow the allocation of command dice to both wings simultaneously.

The Saxons can form a shield wall, and the Vikings can attack without loss unless the Saxons counterattack. All the actions are controlled by various combinations of command dice, it is much easier to activate Aelfred than Guthrum for example.

It really is a minimal setup, but both sides wings have masses of SP. The leaders are behind. They need the special command blocks on them to do their command magic. Saxons on the left, Danes/Vikings on the right.

Pleasingly, there aren't any restrictions on how many command dice per turn you can place on the combat cards either (apart from the usual ones relating to dice numbers and total number of dice available) - so you can quickly build up strong attacks. The Saxons need dice on both wings  to be able to claim their 'Shield Wall' defensive bonus.

A big effort from the Saxons! Alfred seems to have burnt all his command points though.

Mmm, that could have gone better. We've both lost a wing, but this disadvantages the Saxons as they can't form Shield Wall now.

Everyones front lines have broken, but Alfreds ran first, so Guthrum wins! I guess he won't be converting to Christianity this time then.

We set it up and went again the next evening with sides swapped.

So far much the same.

Hard pounding Gentlemen! The Saxons seem to be doing better in the battle of attrition though, however once again Alfred has committed all his reserves early.

The Danes are fading faster, just.

One Danish wing goes.

And then a Saxon wing.

But Alfred breaks the last of the Danes with SP to spare. Aelfred wins!

That was very quick, so we did it again.

And Aelfred wins again!

That is more in line with the historical result where Guthrum was just outclassed. 

That worked really well and felt very much like a Dark Ages battle, even though it didn't have many moving parts. It reminded me a bit of the board/minis game 'Battle Ravens', which covers similar ground.