Continuing on with more 28mm Germans for my Iron Cross / Bolt Action army, here are two additional support stands. These are all Warlord figures, painted by me. I've chosen to base them on elongated D-shaped bases. This will allow to use the front straight face for measuring firing arc, while maintaining the esthetics of the round bases in the rear matching other support squads in my armies.
The first stand is a Schweres Wurfgerat 41 - AKA 'Howling Cow' rocket launcher. In terms of Iron Cross this will play like a mortar. I mostly wanted it because of the uniqueness of the model. this was fun to paint up and not difficult to assemble. I highly recommend this model for painters looking for a fun unique unit.
The second unit is a 7.5 cm leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18 infantry gun. This is more of an early war piece, but I still wanted one since it gives a nice small artillery option on the table, providing the German command with some direct HE fire. A good all-purpose tool. This Warlord model was acceptable to assemble, but required some hand work to get it all to look right. Figures included were great with the operator even having a hand reaching down to the gun trails. I'm counting these as eight (8) figures in my painting totals, counting each weapon as a single figure.
I posted two articles today. Please scroll down to read the other one.
This past Friday we had an excellent turn out at the Northern Conspiracy's monthly game night. All three games were full of players and great fun was had by all. First on the bill was Robert's Napoleonic 15mm game using his own rules, Robert's Rules of Disorder. I got a couple of photos of Robert's game but didn't play in it. From the sounds coming from the table next door much fun and carnage was had by all.
Next up was Peter's ACW Naval game using Sail and Steam rules.
The third offering was a Crusades skirmish game using the Saga rule set hosted by Mike. I played in this one. Below the Muslim commanders, Rob and Michael. I was teamed up with Dick as the Christians. Mike's scenario has each player with different victory conditions and conflicting goals. Although I didn't necessarily want to attack fellow Christian, Dick, his goals were in direct conflict with mine so care needed to be taken. I was interested in keeping the caravan leader in the middle of the table (run by the GM Mike). Dick wanted him dead as a hammer. Dick won that battle, sending his mounted knights in to the caravan like a cruise missile and sealing the most valuable victory condition on his mission briefing on turn two.
Michael and I met in the middle of the table and while I got the favor of fortune early, Michael's constant pressure and a reverse of fortunes put him on top late, although at a high price. Rob was happy to fight to the last of Michael's troops. I'm not sure how that played with his victory conditions, but in the end he and Michael were both close to Dick in victory points. I pulled up a distant 5th (out of 4 players). Still I found Saga to be great fun for 2-4 players.
Special thanks to volunteer assistant GM Greg, who helped everything go smoothly. Greg's help allowed the rookie at the table (me) keep pace with the other three veteran Saga players as far as understanding the rules went. I found Saga to be initially confusing, but after a single game I feel that I have the system fairly well understood. I look forward to the next game.
These are three units of 28mm Austrian Napoleonic infantry I picked up on Ebay. They were nicely painted, but suffered a bit from the American Tourister Gorillas at the post office. Here they're seen after a re-basing, touching up and with the addition of a flag. They will fill the ranks of my Austrian army nicely. My 28mm figures bought numbers are pulling away from my 28mm painted numbers. Time to return to the painting table and correct the deficit.
My friend Ed from Ed M's Wargame Meanderings Blog invited my friend George and I to his gaming loft for a play test of the game he's going to run at the Huzzah! Convention later this month. Ed's game is a 30 Years War skirmish using his own rules. The game featured Ed's wonderfully painted figures with both mounted and matching dismounted figures as well as beautiful terrain, mostly from Miniature Building Authority, with other various bits tossed in. The scenario is set in a post-battle-ravaged town, with Croats, Cossacks and other various looting troops trying to raid a supply depot that was put in the town during the battle, but guarded by an inadequate force. I was given command of a squad of Croats - just my style! They're pictured to the left, mounted and dismounted. Each figure is used as desired to represent the character on the table.
Ed goes over the rules and the scenario. The rules feature a points budget for each figure from which it buys actions, move, shoot, fight, manipulate the environment, etc. The system is very straight forward and easy for convention goers to pick up quickly. Figures last a little bit in combat and are rarely 'one shot'. This means a small squad of figures with which you get to do a lot. Fun.
Ed's known for his work with the word processor and desktop publishing software. His game's QRS and troop tracking cards are helpful and easy to understand.
As for the game, because it was a play test, we only played a few rounds and then had fun talking about the rules and scenario to help Ed tune the game for Huzzah!
I dashed in with my Croats, dismounted two with muskets and two with pistols. My officer tended to the horses and shouted orders. I bribed one of the quartermaster's men who shot at Ed half heartedly and then ran. My muskets placed a scalding volley on George causing absolutely no damage. My other troops fired on Ed causing only a minor wound. The Croats weren't very good shots rolling five ones out of six die rolls including a 'snake eyes' roll to damage on the one shot I hit.
Ed and George fought a melee in which Ed charged in mounted against one of George's kneeling musket-armed troopers. George counter-charged with another man who drew his sword and made the affair an even fight. Ed still carried the battle due to the fortunes of war. Speaking of fortunes, George picked up an array of small arms in the looting and 10 guilders. Ed scored a couple guilders from two different loot piles. I got only two guilders from the loot store under the Quartermaster's table. Never hide the best loot in plain sight I guess.
This was a fun relaxing evening with friends. The game, for Huzzah! looks to be a fun one; as George would say, 'a ripping yarn'.
Last Friday, a group of us got together at my uncle Ralph's house to play Iron Cross. Ralph set up a gorgeous table with his fake fur table cover and beautiful Miniature Building Authority town. The table also featured his recently painted up Quonset huts and a scratch built farm using my laser-cut parts. The Quonset huts were set in a compound surrounded by home made barbed wire barricades and a scratch built sentry gate.
The scenario was for the Americans to capture impressed Polish scientists in the compound. Of course the scientists were present in model form, nice touch there. The Germans were to protect the compound and escort the scientists to safety if the Americans attacked any of the Scientists. There were other zones of the table that were also in play as far as scenario objectives are concerned. I was on the German side with Ralph. Rob, Earl and Bob were the American liberating force.
The research compound was flanked by a pillbox. I put a squad of my volksgrenadiers in it. I also stationed a prime mover near the gate for a hasty exit should the compound come under fire. In the stone tower in the town I set up an MG-42 as an overwatch asset. The rest of my teams took up positions behind the stone walls further from the town.
The Americans: Bob, Rob and Earl plan their attack.
A German SdKfz 251/5 engineer command half track with a Panzerbüchse 41 AT gun looks over the open field hoping to stop the American half tracks. During the battle it would redeploy on the left flank to try to counter an American Priest SP gun.
The American force bivouacked overnight on the rear of this large hill after encountering resistance from a pillbox left of the farm (not pictured). The scenario starts at dawn as American reinforcements arrive. To kick off the battle, the Americans brought up a Priest SP gun to neutralize the MG bunker near the farm. Accurate HE fire from the priest did its job very effectively.
Soon after that, Earl gets aggressive with one of his half tracks to
try to put some more effective .50 cal fire onto the farmhouse to destroy the remaining defending infantry. Ralph
aggressively moved forward and blew up the half track with a
panzerfaust.
Mid game. One of Ralph's squads hold behind the hedge row on the road, as my command squad defends the crossroads. The Prime Mover and scientists are on their way back to Berlin after Bob's American infantry killed one of the scientists. Intent follows the bullet Bob!
Late in the game Rob made a great aggressive play on the Farmhouse with two of his squads bringing Ralph's volksgrenadiers in the farmhouse near their break point. Fortune favored the young Germans as rousing words from their commander brought them back into the fight. A fortunate turn of events that stopped an otherwise perfectly executed assault by Rob.
This was an excellent evening of gaming. Good company, beautiful table and easy to play fun rules.
Next month at the upcoming Huzzah! 2018 convention I will be running a Monmouth Courthouse AWI scenario I've titled 'Lee Attacks!'. The scenario is a hypothetical re-match of the historical forces asking the question, 'What if General Lee had convinced Washington to allow him to attack with volunteer regiments instead of limiting him to only volunteer soldiers?'. The battle uses the historical order of battle, but when soldiers from a particular regiment were present, I instead give Lee the entire regiment (or brigade as the case may be). To make this a fair fight, I've brought an appropriate amount of the British column back to aid in the rear guard.
This and the Huzzah! game use my computer moderated rules, The Electronic Brigadier. While I've been happy with the system for AWI for about a year now, I'm always looking to improve thing as I work on the other periods. In order to give the convention gamers the best experience possible, I prefer to play test my scenarios with friends from my club when possible. This game was the dress rehearsal for the upcoming Huzzah! game. With a good mix of Electronic Brigadier veterans as well as less experienced players, I'm pretty sure this game gave the rules a good run through. I had my video camera running, so there are some short videos of the game interspersed in this report. Below, a quick view of the table.
Below left photo left to right the Americans: Earl, George, Mike and Rob. Right photo left to right the Britsh: Bob, Ralph, Kevin and Byron. In the background you can see I've only managed to get part of my collections into my new cabinets featured in the previous blog post.
This scenario is a meeting engagement with the British strung out in column of march on the road past the Courthouse (represented by the shabby shack in the middle of the table). The British rear guard has just managed to react to Lee's approaching attack from table left (south west). The British column is under the most pressure from the rear by Scott's, Grayson's and Wane's detachments, but further up the local New Jersey brigade bolstered by local militia approaches through the west ravine.
Both sides chose to attack on their respective right flanks. The photos above show Scott's detachment commanded by Earl, pressing Byron's rear guard ad-hoc brigade on the southern end of the battle. Earl's continentals took early advantage of Byrone's over-aggressive Hessian grenadiers, focusing fire on them eventually pushing them out of the British line. Byron's elite light infantry held the flank from collapsing while Kevin filled the void with fresh British grenadiers.
On the north flank, seen in the distance of this photo, Bob and Ralphs' troops pressed Rob's New Jersey brigade hoping to drive off Rob's two militia brigades. The British failed to close due to very effective fire from the militia on several attempts thanks to support from the New Jersey battery and a bad case of the jitters from one British regiment. The one British attack that did close with the militia sent the bayonet-less locals running to the rear.
As the battle continued the British suffered higher losses than the Americans, and as we called the game, the state of morale for the American army had a slight edge over the British.
The end of battle statistics were as follows:
British Rear Guard
Army cohesion: 83.3%
Total Casualties: 389 / 6240 (6.2%)
3 units shaken, 1 battery abandoned guns
Honors to: 123 - 64th Foot
American Advance Guard
Army cohesion: 84.3%
Total Casualties: 309 / 7420 (4.2%)
2 units shaken, 1 battery abandoned guns
Honors to: 233 - 3rd & 4th New Jersey
Both sides played competently. Although there were successes and failures on both sides, I think most were 'in the dice' that Electronic Brigadier rolls during combat and morale. Well fought game by all. I had great fun hosting it. Thanks to everyone for helping me play test the game.
Electronic Brigadier Extras
For those interested in the Electronic Brigadier rules in general, I was also able to get a nice video of Byron's move while Earl entered his information into one of the tablets. This gives a neat window into what goes on during a typical Electronic Brigadier turn for two opposing players. For more videos on Electronic Brigadier, you can view my YouTube playlist for Electronic brigadier. If you're interested in following the progress of Electronic Brigadier, you can join or view The Electronic Brigadier Google Community.
I've never had a way to store my figure collection that could be easily viewed while gaming. My uncle uses some store display cabinets in his game space that I've always been very envious of. They can be seen in the background of this photo. I've been looking for something similar, but to date have been unable to put my hands on any similar store displays. My solution - go with some off-the-shelf glass front book cases from Ikea. These are their REGISSÖR glass front cabinets. I picked them up on sale, but they were still a significant investment of money and took about five hours to assemble and install.
I'm still trying to decide if I need to put some lighting inside them. Before I received and installed these I was considering LED strip lighting on the underside of the shelves. After seeing them with my room's daylight spectrum fluorescent lighting they may have just enough ambient light to not necessitate the additional lighting. Until I decide I'm going to hold off on filling these with figures. If I decide to add the lighting I'll need to empty them. I'm trying to not have to do that.
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