The virus, gaming and the Battle of Actium

With the current virus lock down, I suspect I'm not going to get much face to face gaming done in the next few months. There has been some talk among the chaps about doing things via computers, but as I'm currently spending hours every day in video conferences, it isn't hugely appealing. I want the feel of lead in my hand and the social contact, but perhaps I'll come around to virtual gaming in time once I've adjusted to the new situation.

So, I shall continue to work my way through my backlog of game posts, and if I have the energy, perhaps run some solo games and write them up. I've painted all these toys and I'm damn well going to play with them.

I wish all my Internet pals well and hope that we all get through this OK. It rather reminds me of the oil crisis, the three day week and ensuing severe stagflation of the mid 1970s in terms of social dislocation, whereas my mum says it reminds her of WW2 breaking out! (in particular when men came to cut all the railings down, which she found very jarring).

Enough of that, and back to gaming.

John had come across interesting One Hour Wargame variant for ancient naval warfare, which bore some resemblance to our Dreadnought game. He put on a game of the Battle of Actium using his collection of 1/1200th scale galleys.

Mark Anthony and Cleopatras fleet floating around off the western coats of Greece. These were mainly rated as heavy battle galleys(Quadriremes? I'm very ignorant about this stuff), although Mark Anthony had a very big Grand Galley (a Quinquereme maybe?). Jerry and Tim took on the role of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra respectively.

Ah, the good guys. A bunch of 'fast galleys' (Triremes), decent at ramming but somewhat lacking in the boarding department compared to the Egyptian galleys. Our ships had professional crews which helped a bit. Simon was Agrippa, Graham was Arruntias and I got to play Octavian riding one of Lurius's ships (left, centre and right wings respectively). At some point in the future I will no doubt turn into Brian Blessed.

The well defined shore of Greece, I guess this is Actium. I'd always thought the battle was fought near Egypt!

The Egyptian left wing.

Roman centre.

The Antonine fleet set off towards our left flank. They obviously had some sort of plan. Cleopatra hung back in the rear.

We just rolled forwards in a big long line. Typical Romans, no imagination.

We used our superior speed to get within ramming range, and then things went a bit pear shaped. In this variant, initiative is rolled each turn, and naturally the Egyptians rolled a six to our five, and go the first strike in.

The first strike was pretty devasating as not only did the rammer get a ram attack, they then conducted a boarding attack too. Our ships were soon covered in hit markers. What we should have done was hung back and used our superior speed to close the distance when we did eventually get to play our turn.

The Egyptian right wing smashed into our left as well.

Our right however soon swung around the Egyptians exposed left and proceeded to conduct a series of flank and rear ramming attacks on the enemy ships pinned in boarding actions. That was a bit more satisfactory, you get double hits on a flank ram, which made up for the smaller size of our ships. Now it was the Egyptians turn to take some serious damage.

A particular success was sinking Mark Antony's Quinquereme (I rolled a six which with a professional crew meant a whopping 14 hits on a rear attack). In the real battle he'd already skulked off by now in a lighter to join Cleopatra.

Some of the Egyptians managed to batter their way through our left.

My chaps set off in pursuit, and as we were undamaged, easily caught the crippled Egyptians. While may chaps may have been good at ramming, they were utter rubbish at boarding, rolling a series of ones.

Cleoptra was meanwhile making good her escape. Jerry is helpfully pointing out that they can outrun our crippled galley.

And off she goes.

The rest of our fleet in some disarray sets off after the retreating Egyptians.

The initiative dice cruelly roll a series of draws.

But we do eventually manage to catch the last of Mark Anthony's retreating ships.

And down it goes, that is the end of Anthony's fleet, although Cleopatras Egyptians have made good their escape. So, despite the vicissitudes of fortune, the good guys won in the end and it was a remarkably historical result. I expect when I become Emporer Augustus someone will write a great poem about that one.

I'm relatively ignorant about galley warfare, but that seemed to capture the essence of the thing and was a tense and very enjoyable game to boot. One Hour Wargames triumph again.

15mm KleinepanzerBefehlswagen

While sorting to my 15mm interwar figures, I came across a very ancient SDD 15mm casting of the command version of the the Panzer 1. I think I must have bought this back in the late 90s when SDD were doing vehicles to complement the Peter Pig figure range, and I dimly recall buying it from their stand at Triples in the Octagon Centre. I've got a few other SDD castings, including some staff cars, a couple of Sdkfz 234/1s and an Sdkfz 251/1. Sadly my old SDD 25 pdrs and Quads were sold in a fit of madness along with the rest of my 15mm western desert stuff. What was I thinking!

Anyway, I thought this old warhorse could do with a bit of TLC. You can tell it s an old model as the photo is so grainy.

It was in a rather dubious paint scheme. I'd originally done it when I was fairly new to acrylics and 15mm vehicles in general. I thought it would be fun to do it in the interwar/early war panzergrey and rotbraun disruptive scheme so I slapped on some red brown over the faded panzer grey. I also added a radio antenna to makes it command role more obvious (0.5mm brass).

It is a fairly blobby casting, as was typical of a lot of early 15mm stuff. In fact it looks like it has a cast hull instead of the welded armoured box fixed to the chassis. It has got some engraved detail though.

I was going to put some command platoon decals on it (II01 sort of thing) but the hatches were so raised it was impossible. In the end I just managed to get a balkan cross on the back of the turret. I then gave the running gear a good going over in mud, and did a light tan drybrush overall to blend in the new disruptive colour.

The dust highlight obscured some of the detail so I went around the hatch edges etc with a micon lining pen. You can see how rough the track castings are compared to more modern offerings in metal or plastic.

I think it is a nice little model despite all my moaning about the casting, in fact it isn't just 'little', it is tiny. Tinypanzerbefehlwagen? Here it is posing with a WW1 Russian infantryman to show just how small it really is. Why is my command panzer 1 in the same box as a WW1 Russian infantryman? All will be revealed in due course....

Meanwhile, my little tank will no doubt appear commanding a horde of Pz IIs or Pz 38ts or similar at some point. They were retired from panzer battalions in 1942/43 but hung around as armoured command vehicles, ammo carriers and ambulances until the end of the war. 

Calatafimi 1860

Tim put on a game using an interesting new concept - Battle Cry with 54mm figures! The scenario was from the Italian Wars of Independance, in this case some of Garibaldis adventures in Sicily.  The Battle of Calatafimi was fought on May 15th 1860 betweens Garibaldis 'I Mille' and the Kingdom of Two Sicilies aka Naples.

The great joy of Battle Cry (and Command and Colours generally) is that you don't need loads of figures, to represent the units (although I usually go a bit overboard in the smaller scales), but that is ideal for 54s, especially for a relatively obscure period.

The battlefield from the Neapolitan side.

Garibaldis troops are over in the centre, and this bunch of bandits are in support. As you can see, the figures fit in the Hexon hexes fine.

The main challenge is the vertical scale, as figures which are much taller than the scenery look a bit silly.  Tim made these special hill sections out of insulation board, and we used my Hovels 15mm Mediterranean buildings as they are tall but with a very small footprint. The only slight squeeze is the cannon, but it looks OK.

The rebels had an exuberant array of hats. Over on this side we can see the single Neapolitan cavalry unit.

The bandits again, iirc these are repurposed defenders of the Alamo! In the real battle they sort of lurked around looking for opportunities.

Garibaldis 1000 men. Bixio is in the natty red shirt and kepi, Garibaldi is a bit further back. These chaps are various ACW types as Kepis were a favourite form of headgear in the mid nineteenth century.

The Neapolitan reserves. In the real battle the action was largely over before they could intervene. The reactionaries were various Napoleonic figures, close inspection might reveal repainted British Infantry and French cavalry...

The Garibaldini got extra VPs if they captured two spots on the central hill (indicated by the red dice). The Neapolitan infantry were poor quality and had o retreat two hexes on a retreat result. this made quite a big difference.

Battle Cry is a bit more leisurely than the later CnC games, and both sides ended up playing a lot of 'activate one unit cards'. The obvious choice was our cannon, which drove back and inflicted losses on one of the Garibaldini.

We had some slightly better cards and off the cavalry went, to occupy this hill. We were trying to get within charge range without being shot to bits in the process.

One of the Neapolitan units pursued the retreating Garibaldini and set off into the vineyards in the valley.

The rotten rebels occupied the woods on the other side.

Their accurate musketry forced our cannon to rereat, there also weren't many gunners left. Ooer. The Neapolitans had all been driven off the front the the ridge. That extra retreat result was proving to be a real pain.

The cavalry attempted to intervene and charged the mass of rebel infantry. That went as well as could be expected and the handful of survivors fell back.

While the rebels were distracted shooting horses, the Neapolitans put in an unexpected counterattack (we finally got a decent cente card).

That actually went well and inflicted heavy losses.

The victorious reactionaries continued along the ridge.

And pushed back even more rebels. They were all back in their wood now.

The rebels counterattacked.

The leading Neapolitan unit was destroyed but their officer fell back to the supports behind.

And in they went again.

When the smoke finally cleared, poor old Bixio was left all on his own! That was all very exciting.

The victorious reactionaries pushed into the valley, trying to run down Bixio and get the last flag required for victory, but he skedaddled.

In an alarming development, the rebel left wing now activated as Garibaldi himself, and the horde of bandits surged forwards.

Garibaldini crested the ridge and laid down withering fire on the Neapolitans. Things weren't looking too good.

But in a stunning reversal of fortune the last reamaining Neapolitan infantry managed to shoot away the unit with Garibaldi, and he was left all alone on his hilltop.  Time for him to run away.

Well, that was a close fight. It was interesting to contrast the ebb and flow in Battle Cry with the later games, but it all worked very well and the players had lots of decisions to make. The 54mm figures worked fine on the Hexon, and were very pleasing the handle and manouvre.

1/144th BF-109T

Well, this is a rare old beast, the BF-109T, the carrier version of the BF-109E. It was originally designed to fly off the Graf Zeppelin (and the carrier lifts were designed to be wide enough to accommodate the wings without folding). Essentially the wings, flaps and ailerons were redesigned to operate in a carrier environment and an arrestor hook attached.

As Graf Zeppelin was never commissioned, the planes were assigned to fighter units in Norway and Heligoland where their STOL capabilities proved very useful. Their performance was similar to a regular BF109E and they were eventually retired from front line service in 1943.

This model came courtesy of Mr Gow from last years club Bring and Buy, and is an exquisite 1/144th Hasegawa pre-paint. Well it says Hasegawa on the instructions, the rest is in Japanese.

It still needs assembly and has some microscopically tiny parts, but went together fine.

I do like its very intricate paint scheme, I'd have had trouble doing that myself. The antenna and tiny air intake beside the engine are but two of the microscopic parts. The parts fit so well there are few visible seams. The prop rotates, as long as you don't get glue all over it by accident.

The join is a bit more obvious on the underside. The land based 109Ts didn't have arrestor hooks so I left it off. It also has some teeny tiny tailpane supports which I did manage to fit despite my sausage sized fingers.

And off it goes, no doubt escorting some wicked German torpedo bombers attacking PQ17 or HMS Ulysses or something. A worthy addition to my ever expanding 1/144th plane collection.

1812

Tim C has been working on a design for our next participation game, this time covering the 1812 campaign in Russia. It was worked up enough for a playtest at the club.

This is designed to be one of our fast games, 10-20 minutes at most, for a single player and all the components need to be easily transportable.

A suitable sized box for putting the whole thing in.

Fundamentally it involves the Grand Armee marching to Moscow and back again, having various adventures on the way. Movement is regulated by areas, with cards (here represented with scraps of paper)  with various exciting things happening. Turns are roughly monthly.

The key concept in the design is dealing with the strategic consumption which decimated the army both on the approach and the retreat. The army starts off huge and wastes away alarmingly quickly.

The basic mechanisms seemed to work fine and much of the discussion centered on how to model the key decisions the French had to make, in particular choices of march routes and how long to wait in Moscow (assuming they get there at all). I think we came up with some decent ideas, so hopefully we've done enough to come up with a more polished design and the build of some proper components. Watch this space!

15mm 17pdr

My shopping list of 15mm artillery has included some 17pdrs for some while to add some later war firepower to my British formations. Since my fortunate aquisition of some M10s and Achilles, the need reduced somewhat, but I was pleased to come across a 17pdr at the last club Bring and Buy.

Here it is, a dangerous looking beastie. The real gun is enormous (the Cobbaton  Collection in Dorset has one), and I think the model captures the size well. I've no idea who the manufacturer is, it is made of metal and if I had to hazard a guess I'd say Battlefront.

It was painted already when I bought it, so I just dirtied it up with some drybrushing. I was pleased with how it picked out the detail on the tyres.I'm not sure about the bronze green colour, but I couldn't be bothered to redo it in khaki drab  green.

There weren't any crew figures with it, so I had a rummage in the spares box. The loader is a QRF gunner from the 5.5" gun and gunner is a Battlefront seated horse cart driver (!). Well he is wearing a side cap.... I wanted to have someone actually sat in the gunners seat. The ammo box is  from the PSC Russians 76mm gun set.

It is all based up on my usual builders sand+static grass base and ready to go hunting some Big German Cats. Funnily enough I might have a scenario lined up which features a 17pdr battery.