Part-Works

First, Part One of Jim Johnson's Saipan report, in which he rakes my poor tactics over the coals:

Trying to finish my Very British Civil War lot, with a squad of ten French Resistance.

I'm guided by a page on '30s fashion in The People's Armies sourcebook by Dr. Paul Cunningham. This actually has lots of factual information about the British socialist movements of the period - valuable beyond the alternate gaming background.

Caps are stated to be generally grey, as are trousers (in the city at any rate), so I've done all the figures in Wolf Grey except for two helmets and a military cap. Suits could also be blue, black, or brown, but I'm doing all the pants and caps this way as a "uniform" element for the squad.

Militarum Green Contrast shirts on the more militaristic types.

Then the coats, footwear and gunstocks, varying between Hardened Leather and Skeleton Horde.

With a few shoes and a helmet in black:

Haven't yet got to the skin, metallic bits and basing. I hope to finish them by Saturday to show off photos for the Virtual Wargames Club.

Finally, a few photos from an interesting but frustrating game I probably won't fully report on. As run by Mark Ritchie to his own rules, the fictional Battle of the Western Solomons, mid-August 1942. I was on the American side, tasked with defending Guadalcanal against unknown odds and objectives. I took a small squadron of surface ships, while my partners took a rather larger squadron and a carrier battlegroup of Enterprise and Saratoga.

The theater of battle from the south, with Guadalcanal at center
and a third from the bottom. Clear plastic denotes observation radii;
Coastwatchers and a pair of submarines at top, air scouts spread out
in center, carriers and two cruiser squadrons at bottom.

Typical models.

The "tactical battle board" for aircraft interception, very stylized.

It turned out air-to-sea attacks were also very abstracted, and on two occasions entire naval battlegroups were eliminated - carriers, cruisers, destroyers and all - without us needing to put the planes on the table. That felt a bit unrealistic.

The surface combat, on the other hand, was tactical and fun, though an Allied attempt to pincer Japanese fast battleships seeking to bombard Henderson field did not come off well:

At bottom, my squadron of USS North Carolina, 
two Australian cruisers and two destroyers discover they
are in a poor position vis-a-vis Kirishima, Hiei, and
a bunch of destroyers and cruisers.

Torpedoes are launched. Impressively, the Allies with their
Mark 15 torpedoes came off better than the Japanese, with 
three destroyer kills to one.

I ended up running like hell, with North Carolina and
HMAS Hobart crippled but Kirishima burning behind us.

The Allies lost in the end, as we'd hurled all our air groups at two light carriers ("Scratch two flattops!") and one battleship (Kirishima blew up, only two die-rolls into a sequence of twenty-five). In the meantime, two Japanese heavy carriers got past our air patrols, straight down the Slot, in broad daylight, and destroyed our own heavy carriers with overwhelming air power. I found the tactical surface action exciting and the cat-and-mouse double-blind reconnaissance suspenseful. Spotting submarines and scout-planes, and guessing at opposing intentions, was extremely interesting. But the method for determining air battles was basically rolling opposed buckets of dice. (Granted, the surface attacks were too, but the numbers of shots more limited by range and number and the ships heavy enough to take significant hurt - I was amazed that light cruiser Hobart managed to escape despite two torpedo hits and a couple hits from 8-inch cannon.)

Mark says he has used the surface rules for Mediterranean games, which would definitely interest me. Or maybe a VBCW game with '30s Royal Navy? Hmm...