Wargaming Projects - 3 of 4 - The Present

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects

Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending

Part 3 - Present Projects: which if not complete (is a project ever complete?) are at least currently being gamed with when I can, for which reason many of these have already been featured on the blog.

This post will be a bit different, as many of my projects which have reached gaming status have already been featured on this blog so many will just have one photo and a link to previous post.

This time I'll go in, more or less, chronological order - fantasy comes last on the basis that it hasn't happened yet.

25mm Ancients (Hinchliffe, with a few Minifigs and Lamming)

I started this army back in 70s and, as discussed under 'pre-historic' projects here, were originally intended as an Alexandrian army but became a generic Successor collection, and the above photo shows all my pike, 250 all told, i.e. just enough for a single syntagma, the smallest tactical unit.

These guys have been used for various versions of 'Ancients' rules by the Wargames Research Group (WRG) and while currently based for the DBx rules series they also get used with 'To the Strongest' (TtS), albeit having to provide the armies for both sides.

The TtS rule-set also encouraged me to make special markers.

The latest use of these troops (here) was for a sort of mash-up of DBM with TtS, i.e. using a grid-based movement system like TtS but DBM for PIP activation and combat.  

Although some further mods will be required to handle recoiling troops (a grid square is too far for a recoil) this is likely to be the way I will continue to use these as the game was quick and fun.

15mm Gladiators (Chariot Miniatures)

A quick filler of a project to make an equally quick game to fill the gaps between bigger games during gaming weekends with friends.  This uses the Ludus Gladiatorius rules and has been featured before on this blog e.g. here.

15mm Normans (Essex Miniatures)

An old project that was originally going to be a First Crusade Army, but not too keen on the Essex Byzantines, I decided to switch it to 1066, but couldn't find an Anglo-Danish and Viking range that I liked.  Luckily my friends have suitable opponents so, while I don't have any opponents for them, they do get used.

15mm Wars of the Roses (Minifigs, Roundway, Peter Pig, et al.)

When DBA first came out, I thought that if you used three armies on each side you would get something like the three Battles that Wars of the Roses armies tended to form up in.  Of course, before I'd finished the armies, many of which I sent off to get painted, DBM came out so I've tended to use those instead, albeit the photo above is from a game using 'The Perfect Captain's' A Crown or Paper - Coat of Steel battle rules. 

These troops get fielded reasonably often, especially in Chit games as described in one of my early posts on Chit Game here.

25mm ECW (Hinchliffe with just the odd Minifig, Warrior or Garrison interloper)

These were mostly Lee Gramson's collection from his now defunct 'Going Back to the English Civil War' blog.  We had corresponded via that blog when he said he wanted to sell the collection as he was moving to Spain, I jumped in the car and drove down to Hythe (IIRC) to pick them up.  My incipient OCD forced me to re-base and re-retouch many of the figures, including: head-swaps; replacing Blu-tack modelled elements with Milliput; adding reins to the horses; replacing swords with steel rod; and, painting new aluminium-foil flags.  The latter was triggered by the kind present of a hand-painted Royal Standard from 'Wellington Man' of the 'Hinton Spieler' blog ...

... which encouraged me to get back into painting flags rather than printing them.

What I was surprised to find during this project, was that I found it much easier to refurbish old figures rather than start from scratch with bare castings, and all this work was done in far less time than I had feared.  I have since added several units to expand the collection further, and Hesilrigge’s Lobsters are the only unit left on my 'To Do' list.  I am pleased to say that these have become one of my favourite collections and get regular use and should be familiar to readers of this blog, like their last post here.

30mm Toy Soldiers (Spencer Smith Miniatures - SSM)

My SSM War of Austrian Succession (WAS) collection, like the ECW collection above, is another of my favourites but unfortunately gets less use than I would like.  I'm also waiting on the new owner of the Spencer Smith moulds to put them back production to complete a few loose ends.

The genesis of this project, inspired by the 'Charge' rule-set, was one of my earliest posts (here) so I won't repeat it here.  Several battle reports are also posted, including a five part series on a refight of the Batte of Mollwitz (here).

15mm 1745 Jacobite (Essex Miniatures plus the odd Freikorps)

This project was started after reading a blog on adapting DBA for the '45 Jacobite Rebellion, and seeing the very nice 15mm Essex highlander sculpts.  It stalled a bit when I found that the rules didn't give a very good game but the project was rejuvenated (and re-based!) by the use of Sam Mustafa's 'Maurice' rules for the '45 on the 'Shrine of Sadness' blog.  

They don't get a lot of use and I think this post is the only time they've featured on the blog. 

6mm Napoleonics (Heroics & Ros, with some Adler artillery)

When these came out in the 70s, they were the ideal answer for students short of cash, space and time to paint.  A group of us all picked an army, and I chose the Prussians (post 1808) and now have three 'brigades' (a Prussian brigade was the equivalent of other nations' divisions) each in its own magnetic storage box like the 'East Prussian Brigade' shown below.

Unfortunately, the problem with everyone doing a different army became apparent when the guy with the French emigrated after Uni leaving lots of allies with no enemies so I also started to put together some French.  I now have four French divisions based on Reille's Corps at Quatre Bras plus Kellerman's entire cavalry corps - at a figure ratio of 1:12 for infantry and 1:15 for cavalry.

Better still new wargaming colleagues have built Austrian, Bavarian and French forces one, even built some sculpted terrain for Waterloo.

The rules for these games have typically been home-grown, based on many others, but recently we've been getting good games using Neil Thomas' 'Napoleonic Wargame Rules' (NTNWR) - the latest being here, and it's likely that, with a few mods, we'll stick with these for a bit.

20mm Vintage Naps (Hinton Hunt, Alberken, DK, etc. - mostly copies I fear)

This project is entirely down to bloggers like 'The Hinton Spieler', 'Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargame Figures' and others who seduced me with the charm (yes, I know it's subjective) of glossy vintage 20mm Napoleonics.

I have a long way to go to get anywhere near completing the planned armies, and the number of unpainted castings in the loft is a bit disconcerting, but at least I've now done enough for a game, the last being here.

28mm Old West Gunfights (Guernsey Foundry)

This project was originally built for use with 'The Rules With No Name' by Bryan Ansell, a free download from Wargames Foundry who now produce these figures.  They have also benefitted from being one of the few projects for which I've actually put together a decent amount of terrain - in this case a scratch-built township.

Nowadays, they tend to be used with the Too Fat Lardies 'What a Cowboy' rules, but have so far only made a single appearance on the blog here.

 

1:2400 Russo-Japanese Naval (Panzerschiffe)

Inspired by a campaign system by David Manley published in both Miniature Wargames (MW) and Wargames Illustrated (WI), this project proved very quick to complete with resin ships from Panzerschiffe.  The entire campaign as played has been posted in four parts: Intro; Part 1; Part 2; and, Part 4.

Wings of War (Commercial 1:1444 WW1) 

Not much to say here, as it's a complete game system produced commercially, requiring no modelling or painting so hardly a 'project'.

20mm WW2 Normandy (FAA, SHQ, MMS, et al)

This project originated with an article entitled 'BOCAGE ‘44' by Andrew Grainger in WI#15 with rules for fighting an Infantry platoon in Normandy.  I was drawn to this by the way troops were more often pinned by fire rather than killed or wounded.  For this I put together an infantry company of three platoons (at about 80% strength) and a troop of tanks (3 Cromwells & 1 Firefly).  I then ran games as a 'Dungeon Master' with players commanding a platoon troop and working together to achieve an objective against a motley collection of Germans.  I as umpire would roll to see if any enemy were present every time players exposed themselves to a new line of sight - the games had a real sense of jeopardy.

But then along came Chain of Command (CoC) and the collection is now used almost exclusively for that.

1/1200 WW2 Fletcher Pratt Naval (Airfix)

Although they haven't been used for some time now, I still consider this project active, but it requires a church hall or similar to play.  These very old rules, that had predicted the demise of the Graf Spee if she met a group of cruisers are very simple but give really convincing results.  At my last club we fought every action of the Bismarck's short career and got an almost identical result to history in every case.  Unfortunately, there's a lack of 1:1200 kits, I had to kit-bash an HMS Prince of Wales to make a Rodney ...

... and getting up and down from the floor plays havoc with my knees so, I'm not sure these will get run out again - shame.

 

28mm LotR Breaking of the Fellowship (Games Workshop)

A lovely quick project that allowed me to game with Games Workshop's (GW) delightful Lord of the Rings figure range - I wanted to paint some figures but didn't want to build armies.  I designed a game to just represent the breaking of the Fellowship from when Frodo has fled from Boromir who tried to take the Ring, until he departs, leaving his companions behind, to take on the quest to Mordor by himself or, hopefully, with Samwise.

The use of playing cards for a very simple movement and combat system was stolen from a Three Musketeers participation game I saw at a convention, and the 'hidden movement' system I read about somewhere so long ago I don't recall where.  This was all described here.

28mm LotR Dragon Rampant (Games Workshop)

This project was really just an expansion of the Fellowship project - see above.  I had been picking up cheap GW LotR figures from eBay for a while with view to doing different scenarios when I encountered the Dragon Rampant rule-set.  This fired me up to send off the stored plastic to Fernando Enterprises for painting as I knew I'd never spare the time from my historical projects for this.  The end result, some fun games of Dragon Rampant like that here.

Well, that's all for this instalment of the potted history of my wargaming projects past, present and future, the previous instalment can be found here.

A Rough Wooing

For a long time I have been wanting to try out a hex-based rule-set for the Italian Wars from Issue #7 of Battlegames called 'Sans Peur et Sans Reproche' (SPeSR).

Neither John nor I have armies for the Italian Wars but John does have some for the Tudor period and we opted pit his Scots, commanded by me, against his English in a battle a little bit like Flodden?  The set-up below shows the Scottish army to the right atop a steep hill, with the English army, arrayed facing them, to the left.

The armies consisted of[1]:

Unit Type	Order	Scottish	English
Pike Blocks	Close	4 (Large)	2
Missile Foot	Open	3	5 (Longbow)
Gendarmes	Close	1 (Poor)	3 (1 Elite)
Light Horse	Open	1	1
Missile Horse	Open	1	1
Artillery	Open	2	2

The Scots pike blocks, like the one below, and had Panic and Disperse[2] levels set as if elite to represent their large size, but they were not elite in any other way. 

For 28mm figures, the Hexon terrain tiles are quite small so, we allowed units to spill over into an adjacent hex and enforced a unit separation (between units on the same side) of 1 hex to allow space to do this.

Not wanting to change the rules too much, and create a new 'Bill unit' type, we gave the English just 2 pike blocks, but allowed their Longbow units, like that below, to move and shoot without penalty and increased their shooting range by one hex.

So, without further ado, both armies got underway[3], the English advancing their Bowmen towards the centre and their more numerous cavalry against both wings, while the Scots advanced towards the edge of the steep slope.

As expected, there was little action in this turn except for some fairly ineffectual shooting.

The following turn things got underway with English gendarmes charging some missile horse who neatly evaded[4]. 

At this stage the Scottish pike remained content to sit as the 'king of the castle'.

The Scottish missile horse then came bounding back to shoot at the gendarmes that had chased them off, while the artillery and missile foot tried to shoot down the next English gendarme unit.  Also, just visible at the bottom of the image below are the lances of the 'poor' Scottish gendarmes coming out of reserve to prop up the flank.

On the opposite flank the Scottish light horse (Borderers) charged their opposite numbers, supported by some missile foot and another artillery unit.

In the centre the Scottish pike remained steady despite the clothyard shafts raining down on them.

But the King was beginning to have second thoughts about desirability of just sitting there as such a large, static target.

Clearly, with the wheels coming off his battle-plan, the Scottish King was fully absorbed in deciding what to do next and as a result forgot to take photos.

So, we rejoin the fight after the Scots have decided to come off the hill and break the English centre before their wings get overwhelmed.

As can be seen in the above image the Scottish right flank has gone pear-shaped.  The missile horse have been chased off table (and will not return), the artillery is bout to be overrun and the Scottish gendarmes are losing their fight against their opposite numbers.

On the Scottish left flank things are not a great deal better, their light horse have been beaten back and the missile foot are in grave danger of being run down by the English gendarmes

And just to put a cherry on the top, in the centre the Scots lost one pike press and only drew the other.

And that's pretty much how the rest of the fight played out.  On the Scottish right it ended with the last unit being chased off by the English missile horse.

On their left, their light horse, after a brief rally, was chased off by the English light horse, but at least in this case the English Border Horse pursued them off-table and did not return - no doubt both came to an agreement to join up and loot everyone's baggage.

In the centre the pike slugged it out ...

... but the first to break was a Scots block.

While it took three Scottish pike blocks ganging up to break the other English block.

We then hit the agreed turn limit and with the English army now twice the strength of the Scots the Sassenachs took the win.

Post Mortem

Trying to hold a strong position against a foe that outmatched one in both shooting and cavalry (to turn the flanks) was a very poor decision.  Then when the Scottish pikes were let off the leash, they immediately took some disorder for having to descend the steep slope.  What's worse, is that units cannot rally while moving so, that disorder plus all that from shooting that they had picked up and received advancing to the attack saw them enter combat in a rather ragged state.

As for the rules, we both enjoyed the game and the rather different mechanisms used and will try them again, albeit I am not sure it gives a better game than other rule-sets.  That said the simultaneous movement did make a nice change from I-Go-U-Go.

Notes:

[1.] I'll stick with using the unit type names as in the rules.

[2.] Units acquire Fatigue Points (FPs) from shooting, combat, routing/retreating and moving across difficult terrain.  These can be rallied off but when the FP total hits the Panic level the unit must take a Morale Test, and if it ever reaches the Disperse level the unit disbands and flees the field.

[3.] Movement is simultaneous in the rules and wherever there is a conflict ("if you do that, I'll do this") then the conflicting moves are sequenced by the unit with the highest priority, or failing that the higher quality, and finally by a D6 roll.

[4.] Evading is compulsory for open order (OO) troops charged by close order (CO) troops unless in difficult terrain or behind an obstacle.

The Paras Have Landed! And About Time Too!

I have finally finished painting and basing my 20mm Airborne platoon[1], and support units for Chain of Command (CoC).  This has dragged on far longer than I hoped, and as usual the obligatory photo session shows up the faults like nothing else; albeit some are helped out by the poor focus in some of the photos.

So, with no more ado, here they are, in their new magnetised storage box.

The platoon commander and his platoon sergeant ...

... have at their disposal three sections like this one, consisting of a superior junior leader (Sgt), a 3-man Bren team, 5 riflemen, and a corporal with a Sten gun.

They also have a sniper in the platoon (I have painted 2 more as support options).

When it comes to support, they have the option to reorganise one section with two Bren teams, and they can also call on an additional section.  As the platoon lacks any integral anti-armour capability (other than Gammon bombs) I have four PIAT teams they can call on, all slightly different.

There are also three 2" mortar teams in the support pool.

Heavier support can be supplied, courtesy of a 5-man Vickers MMG team ...

... an Airborne 6-pounder anti-tank gun with a junior leader and 5-man crew ...

... a slightly blurry 75mm Pack howitzer, with junior leader and 5-man crew ...

... perhaps called up by their forward observer (FO).

And if I want to get really nasty, I have a 3-man flamethrower team.

Unfortunately, the opposition will also get nasty, with the inevitable consequences, 7 men hors de combat, 1 walking wounded and another being carried in for the medic to treat while two others rummage through supplies looking for more meds.

Finally bringing up the tail, are some bailed-out tankers (that got included in the painting batch).

The Jeep crews are also finished, but their mounts are not, so they will have to await them before they get a photo-shoot.  I also have the discarded parachute canopies, supply containers and wrecked Airspeed Horsa to complete before I can move on to something different.

Notes:

[1.] The vast majority of these figures are by Figures, Armour, Artillery (FAA), now in the States.  A few, such as the Vickers gunners are by Adler, and some figures used the Adler separate heads.