Storm Leave, Day Three - Playtesting, It's not you, it's me

I spent Day Two of my storm leave finishing Beyond the Reach of Empire. The intent was to try playing a game, but I procrastinated.

Facebook friend Howard Whitehouse kindly sent me a playtest version of his gridded War of Spanish Succession rules, titled Beef and Beer. Then I procrastinated again.

I'm using my green Melee Mat, which I had to strip of the tape I used to run The Portable Wargame. The sides are composed from the Wofun WSS starter set - three infantry and two cavalry regiments a side, plus one gun and one general.

Units receive a Combat Value (CV) of four apiece, while the generals have D6 Leadership Points (LP) per turn, to be used for moves, rerolls and rally tests.

Unit frontages are the three squares ahead and to either side.

A 1 is always a success, and a 6 always a failure.

There are about 15 steps in a turn - each fairly simple, and a few (like charges) unlikely to occur every time. Still a lot to consider. I find it easier to learn and understand rules if I write them down in my own words, like so:

1. Initiative roll
2. Move generals (up to six squares).
3. Roll for LPs.
4. Allocate LPs - movement costs one per unit, but connected units (think "brigades") may move together. Batteries move, unlimber and fire at once.
5. Rally units, for one LP per attempt. Rolling a CV or under returns one CV point, while a routed unit may be stopped for one LP. Major generals need not be adjacent to units to attempt, but CinCs must. Units may only rally to 2+lowest point, so it may be impossible to return to "full strength."
6. Declare charges.
7. Move. Infantry two squares, cav three, artillery two, with bonuses for columns and charges, and penalties for rough terrain, wheeling and interpenetration. Movement is orthogonal but may not be sideways into combat.
8. Other side fires. There is a "template" denoting the roll according to the target square's position. First volley gets two dice at close range, while a 1 at close range does double damage. A hit reduces the opposing CV, making their movement and fighting more difficult.
9. Your side takes reaction checks - when losing a CV, charging, charged, or a nearby friendly unit routs or is destroyed. Roll twice - on two successes, continue; on one success no forward movement; on two failures, retreat 1-3 squares; on two sixes, rout.
10. Your side fires.
11. Other side tests reaction.
12. Your side completes charges. Includes supporting units.
13. Charge targets test reaction; successes permit countercharge, firing, evasion, etc.
14. CC. Both sides roll 1-2 dice per fighting unit. Some complexities regarding supporting units. Flank/rear attacks require another pair of rolls vs. CV (for the defender), with differing results depending on number of successes. There is also a CC modifier table with results for the unit rolling, mostly negative. CV are lost when hits are taken. Under normal circumstance both units will then retreat, but if one unit takes more casualties than the other (and here is where supports come in), there will be serious consequences. Cavalry that win may go out of control.
15. Goto 1, from other side.

Game ends according to scenario, when one or both sides lose 1/3 of units, or when one or both sides lose 1/3 of total CV.

Generals may be at risk and there is a fun chart for the result if they are attached to a unit that takes casualties - not just serious injury, but insouciance that improves morale.

That's about it.

I tried this and immediately got confused because there are so many steps that I started doing them out of order. Will print the above sequence and start again. The game in general seems pretty straightforward, but the player (me) needs patience and practice. There is simply a lot to consider and track. Since my gaming interests are generally more simplistic, this may not be for me. Moving is easy at a remove, as most steps can be skipped - it is once units reach firing and CC range that things become more complex.

That said, it's not a mark against the game, which is generally well-written and interesting - a brief treatise on period tactics is included. After Seven Days to the River Rhine, I can understand the appeal of "reflexive" actions during a turn. I think it may be more the fact that I must play it solo, and the fact that both sides fire and react in a turn can lead to confusion unless there are two players who are both clear on what steps they are taking. I will try it again after a re-read and a sharply reduced order of battle (a brigade apiece, perhaps?).

Storm Leave - Time to Read

 As Hurricane Ian raises merry hell in central Florida, my workplace has shut down, thus providing me with another unexpected three-day weekend. I spent most of today reading. I've been reading a lot of Mike Snook's histories, the latest being an account of the Camel Corps' failed attempt to relieve "Chinese" Gordon at Khartoum. Besides seeing the classic Charlton Heston film in childhood, I haven't learned much about this period, but Col. Snook has a keen interest in it. Also an antipathy towards Garnet Wolseley, who managed to make a scapegoat out of the brigade's fallback CO, Charles Wilson.

Interesting takeaways:

The camels were worst off during this campaign. The British did not know how to care for them, and the old saw about them storing water in their humps seems to have been in full flow, as they were rarely watered on the apparent assumption they didn't need it. They were poorly-loaded as well, leading to increasingly-bad saddle sores. A great many of them died, and the delay caused by redistributing loads was part of the delay in reaching Khartoum. Yet at the same time, they seem to have been fairly immune to bullets, able to plod on with multiple wounds, and tended not to panic. Even when the square was broken at Abu Klea, they got in the way rather than stampeding, and may have prevented disaster by physically blocking large numbers of Mahdists from getting in.

Snook is a perfectionist academic, reconciling a great many reports and memoirs to determine, for example, exactly how many men, and from which regiments, were in each face of a given square. (One face being longer than the others is part of the reason for the break-in at Abu Klea.) The Camel Corps was particularly complex because it was a local expedient, built from half-companies from over a dozen different regiments, so Snook uses references to various officers being at specific locations to extrapolate the locations of their subunits and times of events.

Wolseley, not well known today but a popular hero then, does not come off well at all. The key issue in the Gordon Expedition was the attempt to travel down the Nile, when cutting across from Suakin on the Red Sea would have been much quicker and less consuming of resources. One almost has the impression that Wolseley regarded it as a chance to test pet projects - the Camel Corps and a Canadian voyageur unit - in Egyptian conditions. His blaming of Wilson is in line with his blaming of Wood for the loss of the First Boer War - and even if the Desert Column's faults were to blame, much of the delay was owing to its first commander, Sir Herbert Stewart, who (among other things) attempted a night march in unsuitable ground and with untrained animals and -handlers.

The other volume I'm reading today is a short mystery novel set in the Congo circa 1958:

It's not specifically historical - nothing to inspire gaming here - but it's well-written and brings out the feel of Africa, in the vein of the better-known Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency. It's about a white infant girl, abandoned during a kidnap attempt, who is rescued and raised by an African tribe. As the tribe avoids external contact, it is thirteen years before white missionaries and police discover her. She finds herself torn between tribes (by their choice - she considers herself a member of the African tribe and is content), as the Congo prepares for independence, and the shadowy figure who stole her in the first place tries to complete its plot.

Tomorrow - a game, perhaps?

Seven Days to the River Rhine

 I've got an online subscription to Wargames Illustrated, mostly for the older issues with many different rulesets. A few newer ones are free to subscribers, one of which is this one about the Cold War turned hot:

I haven't tried it before, for the obvious reason that I have no modern models or even much knowledge (beyond some aviation) - collection-wise I stop at the colonial period. Our local club, the South Florida Miniatures Gamers, tends to stick with colonials (primarily TSATF) and Napoleonics (primarily General de Brigade and Limeys and Slimeys), with occasional diversions into other rulesets and periods and an increasing interest in DBA. I have never played a WWIII game; for that matter I have not read the classics Team Yankee or The Third World War (and I really should).

This weekend is Hurricon, the yearly autumn gaming convention in Orlando, and most of our regular members are going. (I will sadly miss a Northwest Frontier game run by Jeff AKA Sgt Guinness.) I was itching to go but couldn't get leave - I will certainly make time next year in plenty of time. Ironically, there's an actual storm on the way as I write.

So it was kind of Oriskany Jim of SITREP Podcast to offer to run Seven Days on the River Rhine for the rest of us on short notice. Well, for two of us, as it turned out.

I reread the rules, which are relatively simple. I say relatively because for me, they still took getting used to. There are QR codes in the rulebook, linking to video demonstrations of the different mechanisms; since my phone can't read QR codes, I searched on Youtube for the videos directly. 

They weren't there, but Oriskany Jim was. The first videos on the list, in fact - a review and two solo playtests. That was useful, and I came to Das Krieg Haus (the clubhouse) ready to play.

The base of the terrain was a subtly camouflaged sheet that Jim swore
he found in a store - and cut to eight by four before he discovered we
could have done eight by six.

A representative handful of terrain.

A couple mechs for comparison!

15mm scale T72 and Leopard.

More terrain and a Mil24 Hind.

The roads and water features are paper; the bridge
is a historical model sized for 28mm swiped from the
club collection.

The buildings were tough mid-weight card with 
beautiful color and detail.

Tanks and transports of both sides.

Infantry and a handful of American vehicles.

M42 Duster proxies as a Gepard Flakpanzer.

Jim continues to populate the table. It took us an
enjoyable, relaxing hour to set up a busy
and realistic-looking battlefield. Most firing range
is infinite and cover for vehicles is minimal, so we
needed plenty of LOS-blocks.

From the other end - almost done.

T80s. Speed is in inches, range unlimited. Armor
is separated by frontal/side-rear. To-hit is with D10;
penetration is D10+weapon score vs. armor.
(Tie: immobilized; otherwise destroyed.)

A typical infantry team and card. Infantry units take
morale hits rather than damage. Letters next to attack
and armor values represent special armor or piercing
weapons that provide extra dice (choosing lowest or
highest as appropriate).

BMP-2s.

Soviet infantry teams. with heavy weapons team to left.

German Leopard tanks - better than the Russkies
but outnumbered.

Marders...

... and Bundeswehr infantry proxied by US WWII infantry
and a Desert Storm heavy weapons team.

A beautiful AH64 Apache.

A BO-105 - an indigenous attack chopper I'd never
seen before. I mistook it for a Huey.

We left aviation and AA out of the scenario. The game is smaller-scale than the more popular Team Yankee; a typical game is a Soviet company versus a couple NATO platoons, plus a couple helicopters. At this size game, it's scale-agnostic, and I've read battle reports ranging from 6mm to 28mm.

My entire army, discounting the ZSU23 at left. This is
about 800 points, a medium-sized game.

There are also use-and-discard cards for special events.
We each got five at the start of the game.

Turn 1: My opponent used a preliminary bombardment
card! White chips denote negative morale, which affects
activation (basically a suppression mechanic).

Dark chips are activation tokens - you get one per
unit plus two for your HQ, except for transports and
helicopters. Here I shoot at and miss the Leopard at
top center by the trees.

"Panzer Vor!"

The Leopards from the previous photo score first blood.

My own first kill.

Activation has several facets. Tokens are the "currency" of the game. You must attempt to activate by rolling higher than the number of activations and suppressions presently on your unit (so an uninjured unit gets its first move for free). But your opponent may also spend an activation counter and roll to react, interrupting your move with a move or shot of his own. This sort of thing normally leads to analysis paralysis in my case, and most of our club are not enamored of rules where you need to pass an activation roll to do anything. But this is different - a turn in Seven Days is very busy, and unlike the normal IgoUgo method, players are constantly engaged. I was not bored or distracted. It is even possible to steal the initiative from your opponent (if you roll a 6 for your reaction roll), and the turn only ends when both sides run out of counters. It is useful to deliberately turn the initiative over, as well; once you use up your counters, you can't react in your opponent's turn and he can roll all over you.

Losing your command vehicle, as we both did, takes away your counters - D6 for NATO units, 2D6 for Warsaw Pact. Since I started with 15 and my opponent with 13, this is not a good thing.

And tank warfare in this era is deadly. The only reason we didn't wipe each other out in the first two turns is that we both rolled an awful lot of ones. The game lasted just over four turns, and that only because I brought in a reinforcement tank which upped my army's "break point" (two-thirds casualties).

Here a Leopard gets round my flank - his 11 gun
vs. my 16 side armor means he needs a 5 to 
immobilize or a 6+ to kill on a D10. I tried to react
(my turret's pointed at him), but failed.

Special delivery of flaming death.

Tank duel. The yellow "cap"
on the cargo crate is an objective
marker.

Here I spent a "reinforcement"
card to bring in a tank on an
opposing tank's flank. Didn't
do me much good.

My center gets the crap kicked out of it.

These photos are all from my left and center; I failed to take photos of the right, where (swiftly losing many tanks) I raced two infantry teams forward into LAW range. We both used cards to allow reservists/Spetznaz to surprise each other's command tank - he killed mine, I only immobilized his.

Infantry in this game are very durable - they're easy to suppress, but hard to kill. Basically they don't take damage, but suppression, and must take their morale score (either 3 or 5) in suppression counters to be eliminated. (It is possible to remove suppression counters, but this can be a laborious process - normally one activation counter per suppression counter, unless you roll a 6 to remove all of them from a single unit. Makes sense.) At the end of the game nearly all my tanks were gone, but three of my four infantry teams were still intact, one of them with four morale counters on it, virtually unable to fight because it was hunkered down behind a hedge with German autocannon and 120mm fire whining about its ears, yet still alive. The one team that did die was wiped out in one blow by a nearby exploding tank - within four inches, infantry teams take multiple suppression tokens at once.

So a game with lots of tanks is spectacular but explosive, while a game with lots of infantry will be more a slogging match.

End of game, testing out
aviation mechanisms for fun.

A good game, and for once I felt I was getting the hang of it by the end. I'd be happy to try it again. It looks like a good candidate for solo play, in fact. Thanks to Oriskany Jim for the introduction. He did record the game, so there will be a far better narrated and -photographed report on his channel in a week or so - I'll link to it when it turns up. Thanks for reading!

Literature of interest

When I visited the Kodiak public library (lovely place), I picked up a used copy of The Devil's Oasis by Bartle Bull.

It's a WWII adventure novel, a sequel to two previous novels about the protagonist Anton Rider and his friends. Set in Cairo, Alexandria and the Western Desert, it starts at the beginning of the war, and culminates at the Battle of Bir Hacheim. Viewpoint characters include:

• Anton Rider, a safari leader who joins the Long Range Desert Patrol
• Wellington, his young son who joins the 11th Hussars
• Gwenn, his estranged wife, a doctor
• Giscard de Neuville, a French archaeologist and reluctant spy in a relationship with Gwenn
• Olivio Alavedo, a Portuguese dwarf and hotelier of many talents, friend of the Riders and rival of Giscard
• Ernst von Decker, a veteran of the Lettow-Vorbeck campaign and old friend of Rider, whose American wife Harriet is in a relationship with Rider

A few real-life characters also brush shoulders with the heroes; Rommel, of course, and two others who get their names slightly changed, Ralph Bagnold and Richard O'Connor. Rommel, I suppose, is too famous to bother.

There is intrigue in wartime Egypt as Giscard spies and both he and Alavedo spar over antiquities; combat as von Decker, Anton andSoWellington find themselves on opposite sides of the reconnaissance war; angst as Gwenn works in hospital and worries about her menfolk and Alavedo worries about his family; and lots of sex.

The best description of the feel of this is USA Today's "a cupful of Casablanca, a dollop of Isak Dinesen, a pinch of Indiana Jones and a touch of Tender is the Night," for a previous volume.

It's relatively short and a bit superficial; the plot is pedestrian, but it does capture that wartime and desert atmosphere and has some seeds for both military and gangster-type scenarios (Giscard and Alavedo fight over a tomb both are looting and hiding from the authorities).

The other two books, which I haven't yet read, are The White Rhino Hotel (set in Kenya immediately after WWI) and Cafe on the Nile (set during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia). He's also written two other novels, Shanghai Station and China Star, about a White Russian emigre in the Chinese Warlord period. Should be some useful inspiration for late colonial skirmishes!

Still more Mutiny

The same day Bob Cordery posted on his blog about the concept of "button boxes," I received another unexpected box of Mutiny figures.

As he describes it (I hope I'm getting this right), a button box exercise serves two purposes; to organize a collection (as with the collections of most wargamers), and to provide busywork at need (whether to relieve boredom, or because you have students to keep busy). As a librarian who often does crafting, I can confirm that that this is totally a thing in more institutions than just schools.

And now I have another box of assorted minis to sort.

(Huh. Does a-sorted literally mean UNsorted? I never thought of that before!)

Let's see what we've got.

Three camels with cargo boxes (in which, I suspect, the
half-musketeers are intended to sit), and a palanquin.
Have never heard of this sort of troop.

A gun, a handful of British officers and a scenic base.
The colour is of the 78th Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs).

Eighty assorted "badmashes" and sepoys.
A quarter are in full uniform so can be loyal in a pinch. 

Some of the latter are wearing shorts - did this occur
 among loyal units, for example when unsupplied,
or were they expected to have full-length trousers?
Those with trousers also have satchels,
presumably for ammunition or supplies.

A handful of Company cavalry.

This army is burgeoning - at this point I've got something over 350 troops (over 90% infantry) and no idea what to do with them. Will have to talk to the club, because I know someone else in it has a Mutiny collection; perhaps we can work up something.

OGRE!

 Some years ago I picked up this retro reproduction of a hex-and-counter game, first produced the year I was born:

This classic is clearly based on Keith Laumer's excellent Bolo novels, which I read in childhood and have been reprinted and new stories published by the SF publisher Baen. For the uninitiated, they're military SF, but the heroes are artificial intelligences in massive supertanks, occasionally supplemented by human crew. The conceit is that the intelligence is real; despite the combat and significant nods to esprit de corps (the Bolo tanks have their own Dinochrome Brigade and unit traditions), the plots usually focus on the characters of the tanks themselves, and how they react to intangible values like honor, loyalty and bravery. Despite their sheer power, the battles are rarely one-sided, and when they are, there is something else at stake, like time or innocents.

The game doesn't focus on character, though. It focuses on the massive battles between freakin' huge tanks and perfectly ordinary (if nuclear-armed) tanks and armored infantry.

It does have a solo mode, of sorts - tips for programming units are provided, mostly along the lines of "unit moves directly towards target." Given the sheer power of the Ogre, moving into its range is practically suicidal, which explains why the basic scenario is one Ogre counter versus approximately twenty "conventional" counters. An Ogre has (at least) seven powerful weapons and 45 "hits" before its tracks are disabled and it can't move; tanks can move generally faster, come with a single weapon apiece, but can combine for greater chances of damage. Infantry has a move of two, short range and combat strength according to the number of infantry present.

I played this whilst on vacation, for two reasons:

• I have so much junk in my apartment (books, games, modeling bitz) that a clear table is hard to find;
• One of my cats is young, playful and sees all that stuff on the table as something to step on or nudge. This is especially problematic when I want to take a break and come back to the game later. (Or the model - I came home to find out she'd scattered the Paperboys I was working on and had left on the table.) Just for example, I must work on this post in between her stepping on the 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
  
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The board - 8x13". Lines represent
ridges, and black hexes impassable
craters.

Initial deployment, with good view of many typical units.
The typical scenario requires the Ogre to take out the CP
at top (Command Post), and either escape the board
(Victory) or wipe out all units (Total Victory).

And redeployment, after I reread the scenario and
realized twenty points worth of counters could be 
placed forward of the "line of departure."

There is a single Combat Result Table, which relies on relative attack strength vs. Defense strength. (4:1, 3:1, 2:1, 1;1, 1:2) Pretty easy to grok, with a couple exceptions such as that hitting the Ogre's track units is always done at 1:1. Tanks and infantry can be disabled (taking them out for one turn), but the parts of the Ogre are either destroyed or continue at full effect. Even a disarmed Ogre can continue rolling over the field, ramming its opponents, but losing track points in the process - lose all and it is immobilized.

Turn 1 - I used both the expendable
missiles from the Ogre to kill two vehicles.

In Turn 2, the Ogre killed two more tanks, one by ramming (losing two of its track points), and lost its main battery to a tank hit.

Turn 3 - tanks are getting close enough to combine fire
on the Ogre (the first number at the bottom of a counter
is attack strength, the second is range in hexes). They kill 
two of the Ogre's four secondary weapons, but lose two
more vehicles.

Turn 4 - lost my howitzer (longest-range unit on the
board, but immobile), and a missile tank. The mostly
intact Ogre is past my main line, in the clear, and I
clearly need to slow it down because most of my units
can only move two spaces while it can still move three.

Turn 5: three infantry counters
threw themselves at the Ogre
and died to no effect.

No pics of Turn 6, wherein the Ogre overruns and destroys the CP. Now it must turn about and either escape off the bottom of the board, or kill everything. That doesn't sound difficult.

Turn 7: The Ogre drove over the next-to-last
tank, now reduced to a move of two.
I spread out the remaining "conventional"
units (see next photo).

At this point, I took a break to take a sunset boat tour on Blackwater Sound near Key Largo:

This is one of the perks of (uninterrupted) solo play. After I got back to the hotel...

Turn 8: Carnage. Ogre finishes crushing the disabled tank
it's sitting atop here, destroys the last tank, kills one more infantry.

Turn 9 - Ogre killed two more infantry
with secondaries.

Final turn. There's one infantry
counter left, but it is out of 
range and has the same movement
as the Ogre. Hence, it can't be 
killed and the Ogre is limited
to a normal victory. I think.

A fairly simple game (the booklet is 20 pages long), but clearly with plenty of scope for expansion. There are movable command posts, more powerful Ogres, and several different scenarios, whether between Ogres, Ogres and conventional units, or Ogres and conventional units vs. Ogres and conventional units. (There is also just playing the conventional units against each other, but that might be missing the point of the genre.)

Playing always helps me "grok" a game better than simply reading it, and I now feel confident that I can run it again. Quick to play, easy to set up, the sheer fun of blasting through enemies; what's not to like?