Back to Khe San

 Our scheduled game was postponed due to illness, so Tim put Khe San on again, as it works well as a team game.  We played this a few weeks ago, so we're a bit more familiar with what works and what doesn't from a tactical pov.

As before, the VC setup is pre-determined, although the units are allocated randomly. A couple of stacks in trenches next to Khe San, big stacks in Laos and the DMZ, and a couple of units along Route 9. We had half a dozen units to start with, most of which weren't great, although in the last game we found the USMC Tank Company very useful as it was quite mobile. 

We had to put the SF unit at Long Bai near Laos, otherwise we put two units in Khe San and the Rock Quarry, with an outpost on one of the nearby hills (the triangle). As we found in the previous game, the US have to attack to win, they can't just hide in their Firebases, and it is important to clear the VC trenches next to Khe San. Losing Khe San is an automatic loss.

Unlike the previous game, we were allowed to choose the US action cards this time, so we plumped for a Reinforcement card - which we used to pick more Marines, some AirCav (who apparently have integral choppers now) and some helicopter gunships.

We stonked one VC stack with B52s, while we assaulted the trenches with our other units, supported by the Skyraiders.

Well, that went well! The VC are pushed back away from the Firebase.

The VC responded with a Major Attack action card, and those big stacks rolled forwards.

One of our positions was completely overrun!

And we were driven out in confusion from another. Well, that could have gone better.

Time to counterattack. Our guys roll out again to take on those big stacks, supported by all available air.

Our guys are repulsed in the north, and in the south, discover a huge concentration of VC.... I'm not sure even the Marines can take on all those guys. 

Another disaster. We are defeated and take heavy losses. The survivors fall back.

The VC follow up with a direct assault on Khe San and the trenches next to the Rock Quarry. Clever this game AI isn't it?

Fortunately the assault on Khe San is (just) repulsed, but the ARVN are overrun. As Mr Springsteen sang "Had a brother at Khe San, fighting off the Vietcong. They're still there, but he's all gone. Gone, gone away maan". 

Fortunately we managed to whistle up some more reinforcements, so it was time to attack again. We concentrated all our spare stuff against one VC stack near Long Bai, taking advantage of the special Firebase Support card which gives a combat bonus.

At least that worked, and the VC were driven off. There is still that huge VC stack top left though. 

More VC assaults near Khe San in the trenches. 

We managed to beat that attack off as well, and the dead VC pile was pleasing high. However the US had by now lost no less than six ground units, and there was no coming back from that as we simply couldn't kill enough stuff and take enough ground to offset the big VP penalty for all those destroyed units. We called it at that point, US Tactical Defeat, the worst result so far.

What a clever game, with endless replay value.  

Some bridges too far? Leven 6mm bridges.

When I put on my recent Memoir 44 Arnhem game I realised I could do with some more metal bridges (as opposed to stone ones, with which I am well supplied) for more modern games. I use my existing pair of Leven Bailey bridges all the time as they are just the right size and look for many situations. I was ordering some stuff from Leven anyway, so I added another Arched Girder bridge and four more Bailey Bridges to the order.

And here are the finished articles. They are all resin 3D prints and were printed to order and shipped out very quickly. I've got some of these already, but you can never have too much terrain.  

The arched bridge I just did dark grey over a black undercoat with a light overall dry brush at the end. I left the gaps between the girders black (that bit where my brush slipped I touched up after the photos!) and just added a light overall drybrush and some mud on the roadway.

The Bailey Bridges I did dark green over a black undercoat, although bizarrely it looks brown in this photo. Like the arch bridge, it got a drybrush and some added mud on the roadway. 

The Bailey Bridge sections are really useful as general purpose bridges, they can also be pressed into service as impromptu Bridgelayers. Here is one perched on top of a 15mm Valentine III.

Last time I checked the Leven website was down, I think they were hit by the same outage as a number of other gaming sites. I hope they are back soon as they make excellent products. 

 

XXX Corps breakout with NQM, Corps level, another go

 Having set the XXX Corps breakout scenario up for NQM, I thought I'd give it one more go, having carefully re-read the sections in the rules on who can and can't reorganise under what circumstances.

Pretty much the same setup as before, the Germans and British both  had the historical deployment, SS Heinke East of the highway, 6th FJR to the west and KG Hoffman holding the road  and the Irish Guards leading off for XXX Corps. I shuffled the mass of Allied artillery around a bit on the far side of the canal to make it easier to resupply. I should have added a couple more hexes of leg room I think. 

One change I did make was to allocate a lot more planes to the initial bombardment, twice as many medium bombers in fact, so the entire road as far as Valkenswaard was bombed, as happened historically. The Spitfires went for the Jagpanzers in Borkel as usual and the Tiffies stonked the AT guns in Kolonie. The air attacks were hilariously ineffective, inflicting a total of two hits between them, but they did put barrage markers over lots of German units. 

The Allied bombardment used all the field guns against the German front line, and both regiments of mediums on counterbattery fire. Even on an un-recced target this was quite fearsome and inflicted no less than four hits on the German artillery. This didn't stop them firing one barrage on turn one as hits apparently don't take effect untit the combat outcome phase. I should probably have treated the bombardment as a separate turn. 

The opening attack was a catastrophe for the Allies, although the Germans took some losses, the defenders rolled a plethora of sixes which inflicted hits on 231 Brigade and, combined with the 105mm barrage, a whopping four hits on 1/Irish Guards. The Sherman battalion just disintegrated.

The only bright spot was that at least two German units were out of ammo, and even more amazingly, two out of the three British attacks succeeded in pushing the Germans back. The SS held firm however. Kolomie was occupied by the Irish Guards infantry battalion who took losses from the German barrage, but then were lucky and recovered them in the reorg phase.  Both the German and British ambulance drivers get medals as they both drove through barrages to save the wounded, taking hits in the process (I really like that rule, Richard Brooks had similar mechanism in one of his WW1 sets).

The 6th Penal battalion and Hoffmann AT gunners fell back parallel to the road.

As the Tiffies and guns stonked the German positions on the edge of the forest, reinforcements moved up. The Household cavalry went to support 231 Brigade against 6th FJR, and the SPAT Regiment went to support 231 Brigade against SS Heinke. The Welsh Guards moved up into Kolonie to attack the German positions on the edge of the forest.

Another catastrophic British turn! The Household Cavalry managed to overuun the FJ west of the highway, but 231 Brigade bounced off SS Heinke again. The Welsh Guards annihilated KG Hoffman, but the Germans still inflicted enough losses that the British managed to lose the outcome advance dice roll, so failed to advance into the now vacated hex. I really need to ask Chris if this is how it is supposed to work. There are casualty, out of supply and disorganisation markers everywhere now.

I think I'm getting the hang of how the reorg/resupply works now, but the restricted space means I'm only enforcing the stacking limits at the end of movement, not during it. Something else to ask Chris about. 

The Cavalry were disorganised last turn and unable to reorg due to being under bombardment, but I can't see that it stops them recce'ing, so they drive through the gap in the German lines, occupy Petter and recce the Germans at the crossroads! The British now commit 32nd Brigade as the Irish Guards are fought out, and the 10th SS Jagdpanzers assault Petter, supported by the 6th Luftwaffe Penal battalion. Those penal guys are really keen to get their epaulettes back.

231 Brigade and the tail end of 32nd Guards Brigade hold the corridor, and SS Heinke and 6th FJR are still holding out!

The Jagdpanzers retake Petter, pushing back the Household Cavalry and the Welsh Guards bounce off KG Hoffmann, they are too weak to continue the attack now.

The Germans start to dig in around the crossroads, but now 32nd Guards Brigade fully deploys to resume the attack. General Adair, the Divisional CO himself, goes to reorg the Household Cavalry, while General Walther tries to reorg KG Hoffman, as they have lost their KG HQ. The SS Panzerjagers sort themselves out as they are an independent unit. 

The remains of the Irish and Welsh Guards pull back and 231 Brigade holds the corridor along with various divisional bits from Guards Armoured. SS Heinke have extended their front and managed to dig in (I'm pretty slick at the digging in times now), while 6th FJR are just hunkering down in the woods. 

The 32nd Guards Brigade attacks go in supported by all the Divisional and Corps artillery. Once again the Germans manage to roll a six (the SS engineers vs the Guards Cromwell Regiment, ouch!) but the last remnants of KG Hoffman are overrun and the Jagdpanzers are also forced back with some losses. 

The SS choose to make a longer post combat outcome move (I'm finally getting the hang of the Reorg phase) and fall back to cover the bridges. I've also finally been playing the formation HQs correctly, I think. 32nd Guards occupied Petter and the crossroads, but laagered for the night, just short of their D-Day objective at the edge of the woods (hilariously just 'held' by General Walter on his Kettenkrad). 

Back down the corridor, SS Heinke was still holding hard up against the highway, but 6th FJR was bottled up against the canal. Both would have to withdraw in the night to avoid encirclement. Irl SS Heinke ended up joining with 107 Panzer Brigade further north for the attack on Veghel which cut the corridor. 

The situation at the end of the game at 2400 on 17th September 1944.

That all felt a bit slicker, there are still some things I'm not sure about, particularly how orders are supposed to work. There doesn't seem to be a functional difference between 'attack' and 'move to contact'. There still seems to be too much going on to run this as a remote game, but I'll try some more scenarios and get a bit more confidence. I've been pondering how it might work for 1914, and perhaps for f2f play, borrowing the OP14 card activation system might work well. I was somewhat inspired by Graham Evans recent Jarama game, so I might dig out one of my own Jarama scenarios and give that a go. 

I had a chat with Chris at Partisan about some of the situations thrown up by these games, and it seems that the bombardment hits should have been applied immediately. I guess that is the difference between the pre and post move shoot phases. I'm not at all happy with the concept that artillery fire automatically prevents units attacking, it turns artillery into laser guided nuclear strikes from space, and I much preferred the mechanism in the old NQM where artillery had to hit units in a hex to disorganise it and even then could still shoot, just not assault Instead I've adopted the convention that if you advance out of a barrage you take an automatic hit, which is included in the outcome dice roll. I might just borrow some stuff from my own rules: artillery barrages are bad going and units disorganised by artillery fight at reduced effect (drop a column on Table 12), which would then give harassing and counterbattery fire a point. 

Pax Brittanica

 Back in the mid 1980s, Victory Games were an innovative challenger to the dominance of Avalon Hill and SPI in the boardgames world, and published a number of excellent titles. I had quite a few VG games, but never owned Pax Brittanica. It was one which we had a look at, but never thought we'd have enough players to do it justice.

Anyway, nearly 40 years after it was published, I finally got to play it, thanks to Tim and Russell. 

It is a point-point movement game of Empire Building at the end of the long nineteenth century, and it ends when The Great War breaks out. The players take various Great Powers, and vie for dominance and influence, while trying to do down the other players without provoking the Big One. For this game, I was Britain, John A the USA, Tim was Italy, Lloyd was Prussia, Bish was Austria, Russell was France, Andrew was Russia and Jerry was Japan.

Jerry is busy setting out counters in the photo above. We all had stacks of stuff, representing Army and Navy units, merchant fleets and various types of 'control' markers ranging from economic interests to outright annexation. 

The map covers the entire world (!) and turns are two years long, so units can go a pretty long way, particularly if you control the international shipping lanes like Britain with a vast merchant fleet. The game starts in the 1880s, so well after the ACW, APW, FPW, Crimea, Risorgimiento and all those other unpleasantnesses. Just like VGs 'Vietnam', the victory conditions are sprawling and opaque, and each player has quite enough to be managing each turn in terms of income and expenditure without trying to minmax what other players are doing. The game just sort of emerges from the flow of play chart each turn, and the non player nations are represented by a very wide range of variable events.

Fundamentally it is a resource management game. Territories generate revenue, how much depends on their basic worth and how much influence you have in them, and territories also cost money to maintain, the most expensive being Dominions (like Canada). Military units also cost money to buy, and to maintain as well, as do the various types of influence. It costs a lot of money to go for a Protectorate or Annexation. VPs are determined by your gross national income at game end, plus lots and lots of other VPS for various county specific objectives eg you get 15VP for being first to build the Panama Canal, Britain loses 50 VPs if it controls less than five provinces in India etc etc

For me the game didn't open brilliantly. There was unrest in New Zealand and Kuwait. I thought the Kuwait rebellion was a brilliant opportunity to get a foothold in the Gulf region, so despatched a task force to establish a protectorate (the big black triangle) there and deal with the rebels. It turned our later that I should have paid more attention to the colour purple in the box. More on that later. 

Each area has a combat rating, which is used in a CRT type combat system, unless it is occupied by actual enemy units. Kuwait had a defence value of 2, so my two seaborne brigades with a total strength of 6 handily defeated them at 3:1.

New Zealand was another story. The NZ garrison was a mere brigade with 1SP and a 1SP naval unit, neither being much use against the Maoris, who had a combat value of 5. Fortunately I had shipping in  the South China Sea and a whole 10SP Corps in Australia, which I hurriedly despatched to NZ.

If you don't defeat a rebellion in a controlled area, you lose it and get kicked out, and it is a very, very expensive business to get it back again. It would have taken two entire years worth of British budget surplus to buy another 'Possession' marker.

Anyway, the Ozzies got 2:1 on the rebels, managed to avoid rolling a 1, and we beat them. Hurrah! That was a really bad start to the game for me, I should have been going full steam ahead in the Race for Africa and building railways in South America, not pratting about fighting wars everywhere.

India and Indochina late in the game. Japan starts small but now has taken over Korea, while France has taken Vietnam and the Dutch (an NPC) have busily taken over Indonesia. My main job here is to hang on to India. I need to keep control (as in, keep a 'Possession' marker) on at least five provinces AND maintain an Indian Army with at least three full strength 10SP Corps.

So it was just fabulous when rebellions broke out in both Baluchistan and Afghanistan. 

I can safely ignore Afghanistan unless the Russians are there, and it has a combat value of 10, with an income of only 2. Baluchistan however is part of the Indian Empire and I need to keep that, so another maximum effort is needed.

To keep a controlled area, you need to garrison it, so I shifted some units from South Africa to India, while one of the Indian Army Corps rolled into Baluchistan. With a combat value of 3, my 10SP Indians plus a 3SP Division of South Africans, rolled over the Baluchis and firmly took it over.

The Russians took advantage of the confusion to establish a Protectorate in Central Asia, and also set up trading posts (the purple circle) in the coast.

I had endless trouble in Africa. The South Africans kept rebelling, and in the end I had to grant them Dominion status which both cost a fortune and reduced their net worth. it was that or keep bleeding VPs. This rather distracted me from the rest of Africa, although we established a Possession in Kenya and a few trading posts, it was Italy and France who pushed their traders hard into the interior. All those orange stripes are Italians, and the blue ones are French. The Italians also managed to take control of Egypt! Another one of those mysterious purple boxes.

Back in the Pacific, although the Japanese were spreading around the rim, the Russians now had a lot of influence in northern China.

Still lots of space in Africa though.

South America was curiously untouched. Mexico had a combat value of 20(!), the US contented itself with taking over Hawaii. I had a major presence in Brazil, next stop Argentina and Chile, and I also had trading posts in Panama. My plan was to build the Panama Canal next turn and expand the rail network further, as the South American provinces were very profitable although they were existing states so we couldn't invade them without good cause.

It was at this point that Tim realised the 'purple boxes' at Kuwait and Egypt were actually the Ottoman Empire! Britain and Italy had inadvertently invaded the Ottoman Empire, by both putting down unrest in the relevant provinces. The Ottomans declared war on Italy and Britain, and Russian and France both weighed in on the side of the Turks. The Great War duly erupted, and the game ended at that point, in 1896. France was penalised 50 VP for starting the war so early.

Then it was VP totting up time. When the smoke cleared, France was last, with 1VP. Third was Germany with 84 (they had been busy taking over the Balkans and building a huge battle fleet), Britain had a mighty 100, and Italy scraped in with a win at 103, bolstered by all those traders in Africa. If I'd not had the South African revolt, I would have had 105, and won. I think the lesson is that Britain is going to win (as the Empire is so huge at the start) unless the others take some considerable time to build up Empires of their own, and don't start WW1 in the 1890s!

That was loads of fun, and now we've all played it once, we will have a better idea of what to do and not to do next time. Although the game has a daunting rulebook, in fact it flew along quickly, and the various flowcharts and aid sheets covered much of what we needed to do.  

Doctor! Doctor!

 Now that I seem to be playing a lot of One Hour WW2 which needs some logistics vehicles, as well as reviving Megablitz for our occasional Tapton games and dabbling in NQM, I thought I needed a few more medical vehicles to sustain the troops. While my Ambulance fleet will never rival that of Mr Kemp of NQM fame, I could at least have a few more. My mission was aided by acquiring a set of I94 Ambulance decals at Hammerhead a few months ago.

And lo, a small group of Ambulances.

First up is this Austin K2. A lovely model from Battlefield 3D. This is an exquisite single piece print amd highly recommended. It even has the gear sticks in the cab. 

Lovely panel lines and it has rolled tarpaulin covers next to each door as well. I did it in the colour scheme from the Airfix Recovery Set for nostalgias sake, just plain SCC2 brown with various red cross markings. I would have preferred to put a cross on  the main roof, but the air vents are in the way and I didn't want to start cutting decals.

Next up is a Dodge Ambulance, another Battlefield 3D print. I had a mind to use this as a US Command Vehicle, but I've already got a QRF ambulance in that role.

Another beautiful model, well proportioned and finely detailed. 

Here it is next to the QRF one, which looks like a lump of clay in comparison. It also has a great big air vent in the middle of the roof, so I used the resin model as the ambulance and the metal one for the HQ truck. 

And finally this is my ancient (late 1990s) Peter Pig Granit Ambulance which has served as a command bus for decades, but has now become an actual ambulance.

I had a bit of a decal disaster on the right hand door. It sort of disintegrated as I was putting it on, but it doesn't actually look too bad now it has dried. Maybe one day I'll scrape it off and re-do it, but for now it is fine. Scraped by a passing bush perhaps? 

Hopefully I'll get those into action fairly soon.