Queen Laodika 's War

On the Sunday morning at the  Society of Ancients Conference back in September, I signed up for John Bs 'Laodikas War'. This was one of Johns big Ancient operational games and covered the Seleucid succession crisis of 246 BC, something about which I know absolutely nothing, although various characters involved do pop up in Shakespeare plays.

This was a pretty big game, able to accommodate anything up to 20 players although in this case there were maybe a dozen of us. I was cast as Prince Seleukos, the rightful heir to the Seleucid throne and the God King, Alexander the Great.

Apparently my father had quite complex personal life, and although me and my younger brother Prince Herax 'The Hawk' (played by Richard) are the rightful heirs by his first wife Laodike, he went and married King Ptolemy's sister, Eurydike (boo!) who went and produced another son, Prince Antiochos (boo!).

Although it is obvious that the first born is the rightful heir, Queen Eurydike has the odd idea that Prince Antiochus is heir. Something her brother, King Ptolemy, is keen on too for some reason.

The playing area was a couple of modern maps of the eastern Mediterranean, marked out into historic towns and joined by road or sea transport routes. The little plastic pieces indicate faction ownership. The Seleucids are green, Antigonids red and the Ptolomies (boo!) are blue. There are also various smaller states such as Sparta, Pergamon, Pontus etc.

The Antigonids control most of Greece and have regular dust ups with the Ptolemys in the Cyclades. The Ptolemys control Egypt and the coast through Israel and Syria and the southern coast of Turkey. The Seleucids have Iran/Iraq and much of Anatolia and we have regular scraps with Ptolemys in the vicinity of Syria. 

View from the east. Babylon, Antioch and and Ephesus are our major power bases with elements of the standing army in each (those big piles of green cards). There were four of us on the Seleucid team, myself, Herax, the Governer of Persia and and General Adromachos whose daughter is my wife. Eurydike and Antiochus (boo) were in Antioch, while myself and Herax were in Ephesus. Ptolemy had a suspiciously large stack of stuff near Issus (the blue cards).

My aim was to assert my authority over the Seleucid Empire, remove Eurydike and Antiochus from the picture and boost the Treasury reserve to 100 Talents.

You get income in the winter phase based on towns and ports controlled and peasants tilling the fields instead of fighting. Plenty of mercenaries are available to hire, but cost lots of money although they fight much better than peasant levies. Otherwise there are three campaign turns a year outside winter. 

There was a certain amount of horse trading with other powers, in particular we came to a mutually beneficial understanding with the Antigonids. Pontus was very helpful indeed but Pergamon just went around being a pita. With so many players, there was plenty of scope for skullduggery and I did notice that Herax disappeared from the room for a suspiciously long period of time along with one of the Ptolemys. 

Mercenaries were raised by a bidding process which was very entertaining and also a good way of depleting your rivals treasuries through cunning bidding. We determined fairly early  on to march on Antioch to deal with any potential insurrection and raised a moderate force of mercenaries (ten contingents) to accompany the standing army. I had an eye on our treasury reserves.

Meanwhile it all kicked off in Greece as the Antigonds began clearing the rest of the peninsular. There is a battle in progress on the left of the map, each card is a unit with a to hit number (from 7+ to 10 on a D10) and  strength points (from 1 for levies etc to 4 for elite phalanx). They fight one or two rounds and the loser retreats or can opt to fall back into a town or city and be besieged. 

The Ptolemys curried the favour of the gods with oratory and stole a march on us. Xanthippus took our fleet in port (!) while Ptolemy himself led the main army to Antioch. Queen Eurudike tried to raise a local revolt with very mixed success, only one unit defecting to her, the rest melted away into the countryside. The Ptolemys also landed an expeditionary force near Ephesus, which presented a threat.

Prince Herax demonstrated his youthful, aggressive nature by leading a small detachment (three units) against the Ptolemys, and beat them, despite being outnumbered 2:!! The enemy fell back into the town and Herax laid on a siege.

You can see the Ptolemys have left a large force to guard Alexandria, even though we don't have navy. This would cause them problems in the future.  

Meanwhile I led the main army to Antioch, where I was joined by loyal King Pontus. 

A good job too as the Ptolemaic army was quite strong. Our guys at the bottom, theirs top right. We fought an indecisive action as winter was setting in and fell back from Antioch as a winter siege would be horribly costly in terms of attrition. The Ptolemys meanwhile established Prince Antiochus as a puppet king, although to no great popular acclaim. I did notice the Governer of Persia in a long conversation with Ptolemy though. I need to watch that one.

Still heavy fighting in Greece. The Antigonids taking on Sparta, the Spartans are on the left, heavily outnumbered but very tough fighters.

In the final turn of the year, we adopted an indirect approach. Herax went on an 'end run' along the Anatolian coast mopping up the Ptolemaic towns while leaving the small enemy expeditionary force besieged. I led the main army against Xanthippus who was guarding our captured fleet.

In the ensuing battle (above) it turned out he was heavily outnumbered. We destroyed his army, although not before he'd burned our ships, and we captured Xanthippus himself.

This manouvre also left Antioch isolated and completely surrounded by Seleuicid areas. By now the somewhat shifty Governor of Persia had finally joined up with my army.

Over the winter the extra territory we'd captured, coupled with Xanthippus' ransom (Ptolemy seemed very keen to have him back) boosted the treasury very nicely. We kept on the best mercenaries and purchased some more, and I still had over 100 Talents in the treasury.

Prince Herax marched to join us in spring and we launched a massive attack on the Ptolemaic forces at Antioch. It turned out we had quite a bit more stuff than them, possibly because half their army was sitting in Alexandria.

The Gods favoured us big time. Those two D10s are my Silver Shield phalanx rolling 10,10 for its combat roll. Prince Herax led from the front which gave his entire wing a combat bonus at considerable personal risk and even Pontus gave a good account of himself. The combination of numbers and good fortune absolutely hammered the Ptolemaic army, and they retreated from Antioch back into Syria.

We called it at that point. The Antigonids had captured much of Greece and the Cyclades although Sparta still held out. King Pergamon had launched a mini offensive in western Anatolia and was threatening Ephesus, but tbh we could just have turned around and crushed him like a bug now the Ptolemys were finished.

John B doing the washup. 

As you have probably gathered, my faction of the Seleucids had done rather well. It transpired that the Governer of Persia had struck a tentative deal with Ptolemy but could see very well which way the wind was blowing and stuck with me instead. Historically he led a revolt which split the Iranian part of the empire off. Herax had proved to be loyal if rather impetuous, historically he tried to establish his own power base around Ephesus but was eventually killed fighting with some Gallic mercenaries. Ever the thrill seeker.

In real life Eurydice and Antiochus tried to raise a revolt in Antioch but were siezed by the crowd and torn to pieces, which didn't stop the Seleucids and Ptolemys having a good old scrap. This period marked the high point of Ptolemaic power, and the Successors in general. After this, Rome became a serious player.

John observed that it was one of the more battle heavy outings of this game, but we only had three hours and it seemed to be a quick way to a resolution. The game worked extremely well, and as with Johns other large multi player games, there are so many moving parts you just have to try and focus on what is most important.  

The general situation in Anatolia at the end. Apologies if I've missed out anything important, as the Duke of Wellington observed "One might as well try and describe a ball as a battle" and this big multi player game certainly captured a lot of that confusion and fog of war.

Resin Tiger Trio Pt 2. The Grey Tiger

 Lets face it, who hasn't wanted a panzer grey Tiger 1? Back in the distant days of the school wargames club in the early 1970s, it was pretty common to paint late war German tanks grey, just because it looked so cool. Now, I do have a few grey 6mm Tigers, aimed at the Russian Front in late 1942 and early 43, but this is my first 15mm one.

Woo, and doesn't it look great. This is the early production Battlefield 3D one I previewed earlier with the straight turret bin. It isn't one of the very first Tigers catastrophically committed near Leningrad in 1942 with the pair of turret bins on each side of the turret though, as that is such a niche vehicle. 

These types saw a fair bit of action on the Eastern Front over the winter of 1942/43, before being repainted dunkelgelb in early 1943.

I've already described the model in an earlier post, but the paint job brings out the moulded on detail nicely. It was undercoated Humbrol Sea Grey and then given a wash of VJ Panzer Grey to darken it and give it some lowlights. It has also come out with a pleasing bluish tone. 

The turret number is 103, which I'm going to claim was Hauptmann Hans Bolter from the 502nd Tiger Bn (as featured in the 'Paw of the Tiger' scenario in AHGCs Squad Leader/Cross of Iron). He was in the same battalion as Otto Carius, but Carius' number was 217 which is so non-standard it doesn't exist in my decal sheets. I assume the 502nd numbered vehicles by company but then just counted the individual vehicles, not the platoons. Or something. 

The stunning moulded detail on the engine deck is even more obvious now it is painted. I did a pinwash around all the tools, tow cable etc to highlight them more. I also picked out the engine deck fire extinguisher in red for some contrast (Tiger 1 fire extinguisher colours are another delightful AFV modellers rabbit hole, they were done in a range of colours).

I applied a certain amount of mud on and around the tracks and running gear. I even had a go at picking out the rubber tyres on the road wheels. The biggest problem was the left hand hull balkan cross, as there is a tow rope moulded onto the hull. I vaguely thought about trying to cut the decals in half, but in the end I stuck the cross over the tow rope, then painted the cable on top of it and it gives the illusion the cross is behind the cable.

The turret numbers came out a bit shuny (Doms Decals) so I covered them with matt varnish and discovered that VJ varnish lifts Doms Decals off... a certain amount of cursing ensued but I got it all to stick down eventually.

The whole thing was finished off with a light drybrush of VJ Iraqi Pale Sand. Now really it should be in snow camo but I couldn't bring myself to do that and I don't have any other snow camo vehicles either so it would just look out of place. The grey will look pretty good against a snow background anyway. 

The '45 with Dominion of... Part 3

 Well, we have finally made it to the big one, Culloden in April 1746, but first there is the small matter of Littleferry, which was fought the day before.

Prince Charlie was concentrating his army at Inverness and had sent the Earl of Cromartie north to look for supplies. This force was marching back south towards Littleferry when it was ambushed by loyal Scots forces (mainly Sutherlands under Ensign Mackay) and attacked in the rear. This was a tiny engagement, a few hundred men on each side, so in 2mm is actually over-represented, figure wise. 

Battlefield from the south. Descriptions of it are a bit vague but I've put the river on to represent the shore of Loch Fleet which is in the Jacobite rear with Littleferry as the town with their baggage. There should be some hills on the right, from whence the Sutherlanders came.

The Jacobites have six units of (surprised) Claymores and are nearest the camera facing north. The Sutherlands have two Elite Muskets (Independant Companies) and three normal muskets (local militia). The two Elites are on the British right. I didn't mark them, but they have different flags to the line units.

Claymores against muskets doesn't bode well in the absence of any Jacobite advantages.

The British are attacking and engage with one of their Elites on the left, which is indecisive. The Jacobites attack the line unit on the right are are shot down by musket fire. This was a better matchup, but the muskets are still hitting on 4+.

Both flanks engage again, and this time the Hanoverian Elites mow down some Highlanders.

More carnage among the Highlanders, no government losses so far. The routers are piling up in the Loch (where irl many of them drowned trying to escape).

The Highlanders finally manage to rout one of the muskets, but another steps up to take its place. On the left more Highlanders are mown down. Not looking good now, and the Scots fail to rally.

Last round and a complete wipeout of the Scots, which was the historical result. Charles had to make do without both these troops and their supplies at Culloden the following day. The Earl of Cromartie was captured after the battle and put on trial for High Treason (and amazingly escaped execution).

Well, lets give that another go and see if it is as onesided as it seems.

Well, in a shock development the Highlanders manage to rout one of the Elites in turn 1! But lose a unit themselves. Reserves move up.

The Sutherlands are obviously not feeling it today. Another one heads for the rear, but so does another Jacobite. The Sutherlands still have one Elite left in the centre so that is where they focus their energy (as it hits a Claymore on 3+ and gets to fire first).

And suddenly things aren't looking too good for the Jacobites. Two more of them head for the rear, no losses to the Sutherlands.

The Scots do manage to rally one unit though, who moves up to fill the gap. It doesn't help as the Elites blow a big hole in the Jacobite centre.

And then we are back where we were in the previous game, with lots of Highlanders fleeing across the Loch or surrendering. I think that fairly amply demonstrates that melee infantry in this period don't really stand a chance against muskets, unless they have some sort of terrain or morale advantage, which is as it should be.

Righto, onto Culloden, which was fought the day after Littleferry and followed a catastrophic attempt by the Jacobites to make a night attack on the Duke of Cumberlands position. The attack fell into confusion in the darkness and Charles' army fell back before making contact and left the army exhausted and demoralised the following day.

The field of Culloden (near Inverness), view from the east. The Jacobites are drawn up in the west between two enclosures (which I've marked with walled farms) and with a river in their right rear. The front line is Claymores, the one on the left is Elite the rest normal to reflect demoralisation. Normally I'd swap 'Elite' for 'Disciplined' but as the Jacobite attack in this battle was an act of desperation I've left them as Elite. Their second line are two musket units, one of which is Elite (The Royal Ecossaise) - the Elites have white and yellow flags. Prince Charles is in the rear with the baggage.

Cumberland is nearest the camera with an all arms force, artillery and two Elite muskets in the front line and Cavalry (Dragoons) and a line musket in reserve. The Jacobites are attacking in this scenario.

The action opens on the left, as it did historically. The first round of fire is ineffective but the Jacobites attack here too and rout the guns. It is a much more favourable matchup here than charging those elite muskets.

The next round is pretty brutal, two of the Claymores are routed and the Jacobite muskets move up to fill the gaps (The Royal Scots are on the left).

The Royals and their opponents suffer mutual annihilation! The Dragoons fill the gap, as they did historically.

But the Jacobites have got the bit between their teeth now and win both the fights on each flank. Cumberland fails to rally and Charles Stuart is the winner. History is reversed! Bonnie Prince Charlie has beaten the Hanoverians. 

Well that was exciting, time to try again.

This time Cumberland routs the Jacbobite right in  the first round, the Royals fill the gap.

A very bloody turn sees Cumberland rout both the left and right Jacobite flanks, the Royal Scots take out one of the Elite musketeers as well though. The British artillery are doing a very fine job!

The Scots rally their line muskets and this time it is Cumberland who loses a unit. The artillery hang on but the other Elite in the centre is routed and the Dragoons go in.

The battle is suddenly going 'oblique' - each side routs the others right flank. No-one has any reserves any more now.

Mutual flank attacks rout the centre of both sides. 

The last Jacobite musket needs a 4+ to hit the British artillery, and gets to fire first as it is a flank attack. They duly roll a 5 and it is game over for Cumberland. If they had missed, the artillery would have returned the favour with their own flank attack.

Another Jacobite win but that was actually very close. The Culloden scenario is very interesting in terms of the troop and types and matchups and seems very well balanced. One change to try would be to make the Elite Claymore into a Disciplined Claymore instead.

I really enjoyed that series of games, it really brought the Jacobite Rebellion to life and each of the scenarios captured the essence of each engagement with its own unique flavour. I know this sort of thing is too lightweight for a lot of peoples tastes, but for me it very much met the AHGC mission of 'Bringing history to life'. I'm looking forward to trying out more games in the series, particularly those I can link into a mini campaign, or at least historically sequential in the real campaign setting. I must get some more 2mm bits and pieces as well, now that the Irregular 2mm range is available again. It makes dong these sorts of things so easy, without having to paint loads of larger scale soldiers who are lucky to get used more than once.

Sink the Bismarck!

 Another week, another team play outing on a solo game, this time Worthington Games 'Bismarck'. Rules summary etc here: https://www.worthingtonpublishing.com/bismarck-solitaire

The solo game is aimed at playing it from the German players pov, but for this game Jim also had some British player(s), namely John and Jerry running the Home Fleet and RAF/Coastal Command respectively. 

The Kriegsmarine were Mark (Bismarck and CinC), myself (Prinz Eugen) and Tim (U Boat Fleet).

The Germans roll up a random mission, and ours was help the effort in North Africa by staging a strong raid into the North Atlantic, sinking at least 8 points of ships and ideally at least three convoys, then returning to Bergen or Brest at some point after turn 15. To give an idea of VPs, Hood is worth 3, PoW 4 and a convoy just 1, so we'd need to do rather better than historically to 'win'.

The campaign was plotted on this map of the North Atlantic, it has an 8x8 grid of major sea areas, each subdivided into four quadrants. Our ships started at sea east of Iceland and north of Scotland.

The ship stats can be seen underneath, combat is really simple in these - ships have flotation boxes (eg Prinz Eugen has six as does Hood) and they are sunk when they are all crossed off. Ships typically fire 2-3 dice each round of combat, hitting on a 1-3 (why not 4-6 ffs?), so combat is very attritional. No sinking Hood with one salvo.

The Germans can try and close or extend the range with various bonuses and penalties and both sides can opt to break off after a round of combat, but breakoffs aren't automatic.

On the first turn, the Germans declared where they were, but after that we used hidden movement, communicating via the Zoom chat function.

And here is the Bismarck! A fine old ship. Its speed was 2 sea quadrants, but could burn extra fuel to move 3, whereas PE could do 3 quadrants, 4 on maximum speed. Extra fuel was limited however, Prinz Eugen had two loads and Bismarck four.

So what made the whole game work is this fearsome looking chart. There are several different versions of these (you dice for which one to use for a particular mission), and each turn you dice to see which of the twelve sub charts are used.

The various different coloured boxes show effect patterns on the main map for different types of encounter ie they semi randomise the encounter types in the various boxes of the main map. eg the pink boxes are Hood and Prince of Wales, the light blue boxes are various types of RAF/RFA activity, the orange boxes are convoys. If any German ships are in any of the coloured boxes for a particular chart, then a potential encounter takes place. On this sheet charts 1, 3 and 2 are particularly depressing as the entire Home Fleet scours much of the North Atlantic. Presumably this mechanism is to maximise the solo replay value, but it is an interesting concept I've not come across before.

Anyway, briefly our sortie via the Denmark Strait was intercepted by Hood and Prince of Wales. Admiral Lutjens was a bit gung go and closed the range and we managed to sink both Hood and PoE! Sadly this was at the expense of damage to both our ships, which didn't bode well for the rest of the trip. Prinz Eugen actually delivered the final blows to both British battleships (torpedoes maybe?).

While this was going on the U Boats were having a fine old time attacking convoys and we rapidly gained 9 VP, more than enough for mission success. 

After that the Germans played it safe and skirted across to Greenland and then due south. Prinz Eugen was released to head south to the convoy routes and then to Brest, while Bismarck played at fleet in being and floated gently back towards Bergen. 

Prinz Eugen did make it down the convoy routes and found a convoy, only to discover it was escorted by HMS Repulse! It turned out on encounter sheet 2 that all the convoys were escorted by battleships, which we hadn't realised.

Taking on a Battlecruiser in an 8" cruiser seemed a very foolhardy thing to do, but the Germans were forced to fight one round of combat anyway. I focussed on the convoy and hit it, but Repulse in turn hit the Eugen. Down to two hits left I tried to break off, failed and took another hit!

I finally managed to break off and headed for Brest at top speed sailing due west. I burned all my extra fuel and made it to the map square just outside Brest. At this point, inevitably, the RN rolled chart 12 and poor old Prinz Eugen had an encounter with King George V just outside the port. I managed to extend the range which saved me from one salvo, but then  although the breakoff attempt succeeded, took another hit and poor old Prinz Eugen limped into Brest with irreparable damage and was classed as 'sunk'.

What a shame. With hindsight I should have sailed south into Biscay then run into Brest from the south at top speed, which would have avoided the British patrols, but hey ho, hindsight is a wonderful thing. At least Bismarck made it back to Bergen, albeit missing half its flotation points.

Totting up the the VPs, we got seven for Hood and PoW, five more for convoys sunk and lost three for losing PE. Net total nine, so a decisive victory, as we'd sunk more than three convoys as well.

That was really good fun, although the game itself is so abstract in many ways it barely bears much relationship to naval warfare apart from the map plot. Not so much the operational decision making which was OK, but the minutiae of the combat system, such as it was. It worked very well as a team effort, even if Admiral Lutjens couldn't figure out how to use the Zoom chat function, but we are used to doing this sort of thing.

I couldn't make it to the Wednesday session but they were going to try it with a different operations map sheet. Many thanks to Jim for putting it on. 

Battlefield 3D Resin Tiger Trio Pt 1.

 As regular readers will be aware, I already have a number of (metal) Tiger 1s, so why on earth do I need more of them? Well, Tigers crop in all sorts of interesting places and I've frequently been vaguely unhappy with eg using a midwar Tiger as a stand-in for Panzer Company Hummel at Arnhem in late 1944 etc. Anyway, I thought it was time to bite the bullet and scratch this particular obsessive itch. My metal Tiger 1s are all fairly standard mid production models.

And here we are, three Battlefield 3D resin Tiger 1s undercoated and ready to be painted. They all look so similar and yet.... 

Being quite large vehicles, these are all four part models. Hull, turret and a pair of tracks. The master STLs are by Night Sky Miniatures who also did some of the excellent US vehicles I recently got. These are proper scale models, so some of the detail is quite fine.

This is an early production hull and turret. You can see the primitive commanders cupola.

And obviously the engine deck is festooned with all the gubbins which makes up the Fiefel air filters. This one has the smaller straight sided turret bin.

The second Tiger is also an early production model, identical to the first except it has a mid production angled turret bin on the early model turret. This was a custom print very kindly made up by Phil at Battlefield 3D.

And finally we have a vehicle I've never owned before (unless you count the very bodged Airfix kit and a few 6mm ones), a late production Tiger with the Tiger II style steel rimmed wheels. These were far and away the most common types in Northwest Europe in 1944.

Along with the turret being festooned with track links, it also has the later cupola and AAMG mount.

The engine deck is also free of Feifel gubbins. If you look very, very carefully, the hull and turret sides are also covered in Zimmeritt, although in this scale the corrugations very fine.

I don't usually put up pictures of vehicles in undercoat, but it illustrates how they end up when I've prepped them. I usually do them in matt black, then mist them with white spray from about 2' away. It gives an excellent 'tooth' for the top coat and also provides some instant highlights and shading, if you put the paint on thin. The contrast is more marked than the photos show. Many thanks to Dr Faustus Painting Clinic for that method. 

I've got specific plans for each one of these, and I'll post up each model as they are done. That will be bring me up to six Tiger 1s, four Tiger IIs and one Jagdtiger.