Hurricon 2024: Friday

Stayed home Thursday due to 30+mph gusts on the highway. Made it to the con today despite low-pressure tires (and help from a kind gas station attendant despite our lack of a common language) in time for a 2pm game.

Magnetized planes on collapsible antennae.
The green Fokker is in a spin.

The first was Aerodrome, a remarkably simple WWI air game with an absolutely magnificent presentation:

It looks like a plane's dashboard but neatly shows every move required to play. There was even a little electronic switch with a light to show when we had completed our "orders."

To left and right, .22 shell casings to denote ammo.

Around the dials, movement orders - three per turn. Wooden dowels are placed here.

Above the dials, the number of shots we chose to take.

Below, damage points and height levels - ground, low, medium, high, very high (which neither the DR1s or Camels could reach). Colored plastic dowels denote these.

Movement is simultaneous, but you must plan three moves ahead, with little certainty of having an enemy in your sights. So fairly strategic, as you must anticipate enemy moves. Maneuvers include sideslips, Immelmanns (really Split S's), ordinary turns, stalls, and double right turns (aided by torque). Hits are automatic, provided you chose to fire during that segment - I was advised by a veteran player to always do this even if you weren't sure of a target, because the "field" was small enough that we were close in. A firing table cross-references range, crossing targets, height difference and whether you fired one burst or two. When hit, you roll a D20 against the number of hits you took, and if you fail, D10 on a crit chart that may set you afire, knock out your guns, screw up your steering, etc. The rate at which we were hit meant this was unlikely - you need to roll pretty low to take a critical but you only need to be hit two or three times to run out of basic HP.

A typical turn. On the first segment, I move forward two hexes
at medium height. In my second, I turn left and fire (If there are
no Germans in my line of fire, I'll be out of luck). In my third,
I move forward one hex. I have 12 hp and 20 bursts of
Vickers fire, four of which I'm using this turn.

A Belgian Camel.

My own ornery steed.

My Camel and a Fokker, one hex apart at the same height
with no deflection, automatically do 8 damage to each other.
Behind me, two planes in the same hex. (No chance of collision
unless you meet in cloud.)

Me spinning after an ill-advised attempt to turn in place.
That's a stall, and it's a 30% chance to fall into a spin.
One of my partners, last convention, had failed every single
stall he tried; this time out he passed them all.

After five 3-on-3 games, I'd been shot down four times, but gotten five kills (three of them shared) thus gaining the coveted title of ace and a few nice badges. I ran out of ammo during the fifth game, then escaped off the board.

The second game was the much-anticipated Quar: Clash of Rhyfles, which I'd spotted on the Quar Discussion Facebook group. There were two 1-on-1 games played simultaneously, with six or seven Quar a side.

Michael, who thus far had played two games but was not that familiar with the rules was running the game but had brought only one Rhyflers' handbook, so I had to take over with my experience of Youtube battle reports and Stew's sample AAR, but nothing else.

And I got it badly wrong, confusing activations with actions. We took each "leaf" of the activation cards to mean that one figure could take two actions, which stretched out the first turn to the point that it was effectively two turns. But the game was quite friendly, and we quickly got the hang of shooting. However, we also missed the Gobsmacked rule for much of the game - it's quite easy to get Gobsmacked but it took a while to get used to how it affected the Quar.

It didn't help that we didn't have activation or Gobsmacked markers.

My board.

My side - the dastardly Crusaders.

My opponents, the dashing Coftyrans.

A poor wounded Quar has been dragged into cover by his buddies.

Two of my chaps garrison a house.
(It was solid)

... beleaguered by advancing Coftyrans.

... ending with a climactic hand-to-hand brawl
inside the house.

End result - I had three dead Crusaders and two seriously wounded, and had killed only one Coftyran and seriously wounded another. It didn't help that a grenade had gone in through the window of my impromptu redoubt.

That said, it was a fun game that is clearly best played in a spirit of friendship and roleplay, and we both enjoyed ourselves. As we were cleaning up and talking with and buying from the GM, we had a few drop-ins curious about wargaming and had a welcoming little conversation.

A few other games:

Pete Panzeri's 80th anniversary Market Garden game.
Like the D-Day game he ran at Krieg Haus recently, it
is operation-scale with each base or vehicle standing in
for a company.

A colonial game - Russians vs Persians.

A display of the new Bolt Action set.

Vietnam air war.

A lovely WWI Middle East set up - Brits vs. Turks in the town.

See you tomorrow! (or rather today...)

Hurricon: Living Up to its Name?

As Hurricane Helene sweeps up the west coast of Florida and towards Georgia, a lot of folks are reconsidering attendance at the HMGS convention starting tomorrow in Orlando. The venue should not be hit, but about half the attendees are in the path of the storm. I'm not concerned once I get there, but I am rethinking driving up I-95 tomorrow - I don't mind rain, but 30mph gusts might be another matter. I still intend to go, but it might be smarter to miss a day and wait until Friday, by which time the storm should be in Georgia. I'm still undecided, but leaning towards going for it. A scheduling glitch at work meant they'll be shorter tomorrow than expected, but my boss declined my offer to come in, in part because I am spending some leave time for this that cannot be used after October 1!

In other news, I received my Quar: Clash of Rhyfles starter set. Plenty of nice stuff as expected, but I at once demolished the bottom of the box while trying to assemble the terrain. Unfortunately, the card is too heavy to easily cut and the sides were glued back-to-back so that some of the terrain would be plastered to the back of other terrain. So ultimately I did what I should have in the first place: printed it on cardstock. What I did successfully assemble suggests that it will be enough for the "base" size of table - 2x2 feet.

Also a few books - one on WWII aviation, one on the 82nd Airborne Division (these picked up from the donation bin at work) and one on the Seminole War that I bought last year and only found in my suitcase today as I started packing for the Hurricon trip! (I still have a book on the Tet Offensive yet to read, bought during last year's Recon convention, so this is not atypical of me.) So I'll have plenty of reading material in the evenings this time around, not counting anything else I manage to pick up.

I dunno yet whether I'll be in a fit state to have a "running commentary" on the convention as I did last time, but I still intend to take plenty of photos and notes. See you tomorrow, at the con or otherwise.

Quar Incoming

I bit the bullet and used my Wargames Illustrated subscription coupon for a Wargames Atlantic purchase. I have this on the way, and it should come on Monday.

It doesn't help that the box illustration is by Peter Dennis.

I've always been a sucker for self-contained starter sets, and this one even comes with enough card terrain to cover the 2x2 board.

Speaking of Peter Dennis, I stopped at Michaels today. Couldn't find any "greycard" (the stuff at the end of notebooks), which is a bit heftier than the business cards I'm used to using as Paperboys bases. So I decided to try some "chipboard" for Cricut machines. I also picked up a knife and a small cutting board, as more Paperboys now include "cut-out" spaces, particularly the terrain.

Finally, I'm going to Hurricon next week - the autumn version of Recon, which I attended in April of last year. I left the decision a bit late, as my elderly cat eats only canned food. But then I found a petsitter app and a sitter near me to visit, so that's sorted. I have signed up for a Quar game next Thursday, but am probably too late to get into most other games. I hope to sit in on Sgt. Guinness' Northwest Frontier event, but beyond that it looks like morning games in particular are often open, so I'm not too worried. Signing up for what games I can is the next step, however. Wish me luck!

Reading and Rereading

Less gaming and more reading this past week. In the coming week I am taking off work for a staycation, mostly self-care. I had been thinking of taking a week's journey somewhere, but left the planning too late. There is enough to deal with at home, but a little gaming and gaming-adjacent activity won't go amiss. I also have time off for Hurricon at the end of this month, though I've left getting tickets and a room late as well. In the meantime, here's what I've been reading:

The original 1978 version, so goofily out of date almost as soon as it was published. Ascribes far more effectiveness (and speed) to the Soviet Union in the Third World than I suspect was warranted even at the time. There is significantly more than one "turning point" to the timeline here.

• Communist Jamaica?
• Communist southern Africa ganging up on white South Africa? Including Botswana?
• Iran, of course, on the side of the "good guys" still.
• A China-Japan alliance?
• And a limited nuclear exchange that doesn't turn into MAD, even though this was the doctrine on both sides at the time.

While the political intent of the writers is overwhelmingly obvious and breaks the suspension of disbelief, the Seven Days to the River Rhine plan is well and grippingly described. I read this with intent to read Team Yankee next, and that part certainly prepares me for it. The rest of the book I can take or leave. I won't return it to the club library; the copy is badly damaged enough that I will discard it and use the cover as a cutting board.

A compulsively readable account of the Huon-Finschhafen campaign, which otherwise sees short shrift in depictions of the WWII Australian Army - even in Australia, I suspect. The story of Australia in the Pacific tends to stop at the Kokoda Track.

Back when I first read this, I was still playing a lot of 40K, with my Australian/14th Army inspired Imperial Guard:

I used metal Cadians and got Eureka Miniatures to make me
custom bush-hats. Then, ten years later, Victoria Miniatures
came along with the Van Diemen's World Devils... too late.

I ran a small campaign with these guys based on the campaign in the book, with a willing opponent's Chaos Marines as the enemy.

Opposed river crossing - advance towards Lae

Beach landing - Scarlet Beach

Beach defense - Japanese counterattack

Jungle crossing - Road to Sattelberg

Taking the hill - Sattelberg

Another poorly-known campaign and battle. Even though I've read Bill Slim's classic account of the war in Burma, and the Japanese invasion of India is better-known these days, this early battle - four months before Imphal-Kohima - is one I hadn't learned much about before. It is where the British first tested the concept of the "defended box," resupplied by air, to stop Japanese advances cold. It leans toward oral history, focusing on one or two dozen of the British individuals involved; the author apologizes for having no Indian perspectives, though the lack of a Japanese perspective is far more understandable! Jungle warfare is one of my particular interests, so a new book on it (new to me, anyway) is always welcome.

Next up:

Mincepie Pass

Two birds with one stone here - trying the Minceheim "mass battle" rules and finally getting round to the third scenario from Grant's programmed wargames. We'll be following up on my last Minceheim game, in which a dwarf mining team had a bad time with goblins. So the dwarves are going to go after the gobbos in force - which means they have to clear a pass.

Appropriately, the figures I'm using are from the old Warhammer Battle for Skull Pass box!

Three warrior units, two handgunner units, two miner units.
(one miner unit not shown)

Three goblin spear units, one archer unit, one spidercav unit.

The field of battle.

Gobbo light troops are up front, while the spearmen
won't appear until the dwarves reach the second third of the table.

Turn 1: The dwarves, limited to 2" movement due to heavy armor, shuffle forward on the center and left. (The miners on the flank are limited to 1" thru the trees.) The handgunners and archers exchange fire; the requirement for the gunners to reload a turn is balanced by +2 to wound.

Turn 2: The handgunners deliver another volley to the goblin archers - the survivor fails morale and runs.The spider-riders, however, line up for an attack on the forward miner unit, which faces left towards them.

Turn 3: The front handgunner unit turns to face the spiders, though at this point they don't really have line of sight with a melee about to start. The other forms column to get by them. The spider riders charge the miners, but in their heavy armor only kill one. However, only one goblin dies in return. Neither unit is under half strength.

Turn 4: The melee goes on, though the spiders now have dwarves approaching on both flanks. They take a casualty each. The surviving archer rallies and returns to the edge of the trees on the ridge for free sniping (the dwarves won't be able to shoot him in cover).

It occurs to me at this late stage that the dwarves shouldn't have been able to shoot the other archers either. Hm. Fortunes of war?

Turn 5: The miners eliminate the spider riders and the whole army lurches forward another two inches. Just 36" to go!

At this point we're close enough for the goblin back line to deploy - on the heights. I'm undecided whether to reinforce with another squad of archers; under the circumstances - right now the defenders are outnumbered two-to-one - it seems fair. The dwarves advance on a broad front; the goblins' programmed response is to "attempt to draw the enemy into the pass and envelop them." Well, it can do that with the warriors, but probably not the handgunners or miners.

Four turns later, the dwarven march is starting to straggle, while a clash looks ready to start on the goblin right and center. The handgunners will have to get thru the trees before they can assist, and by that time they might have to fire into melee to be of any help.

Turn 10: More maneuvering. The goblins are out of position to fight the handgunners now at the edge of the treeline, but at least they're on a lower level so can't be shot at yet. I draw the front-line dwarves up to avoid a goblin charge next turn; both sides are trying to gain positions where two units can gang up on one.

Turn 11: The first charge goes in. Let's see how this goes - the goblins get double attacks for their polearms. Two (!) of the attacks pass their armor saves, and eight of the fourteen resultant hits are kills (5+). The first dwarf unit is eliminated. Oh, and the lone surviving archer has been killed off.

Turn 12: A nice little scrum:

The dwarves are overwhelmed and broken, with three figures remaining.

I've just realized I'm not sure I'm doing melee correctly. In many games, both sides fight in a turn of melee - I've been doing it only on the side's turn, so that when a unit is broken, it loses its chance to fight. This has the effect of encouraging aggression.

Turn 13: And again:

Six more dwarf casualties.

Turn 14: The dwarves hold their own, as the forward dwarf regiment marches stolidly towards the goblin back line. Goblins assault, their spears proving key with all the extra attacks. One regiment of handgunners breaks, a warrior regiment holds its ground with but two dwarves remaining.

Turn 15-16: The handgunners are run down, but the second line fires a volley into the goblins and breaks them. Two survivors flee. One of the spear-gobbo regiments on the far side of the valley sees off its opponents, but the survivor meets up with the dwarf rear guard.

From victorious to sitting ducks.

Back-and-forth fighting but the dwarf reserves are hastening to the rescue.

"Where are we going, chief?"
"Away, young dwarf. Away."

Turn 17-20: More internecine warfare. I did not determine an army breakpoint for the game, but there are now three decimated dwarf units remaining, and one goblin one (in a position to be shot at in another turn). The dwarves have carried the pass, but at grievous cost.

End game.

The rules are very simple, more so than the skirmish game - though I may have missed some subtleties. I did give handguns a bonus to wound, for example, but didn't do so for the dwarf axes. The table size and fighting down the length made it seem longer than it really was. Perhaps the army break point can be the same as for individual units - at half strength, roll a 5+ or retreat.

I also played turns "turn and turn about," rather than with an initiative roll. The fewer steps to recall, the better, and it would have made for a swingier, messier game anyway. I didn't play either side very well; one thing I've noticed with the Grant Programmed Rules is that the AI instructions must of necessity be vague. I ended up being more aggressive with the goblins than their instructions called for - though with their spears this actually didn't go too badly!

The "campaign," such as it is, is in stalemate, and I'd either have to have a truly massive battle (maybe not a good idea with this little experience at the rules) or start a skirmish campaign as the sides try to find a lateral path to victory. I look forward to trying it. "Please let's not go through Mincepie Pass again, milord."

A good game, but definitely something smaller next time. I did enjoy the speed with which it could be played, even if I overlooked a few steps. Til next time.

Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge

OK, it wasn't Napoleonic - it was AWI. Specifically, Moore's Creek, February 27, 1776, fought between Loyalist Scottish highlanders and Patriot militia. This time, the rules were Mark's Firelock, as seen here.

The field of battle,with the titular bridge at center
and a redoubt to its south. Behind the redoubt in the gap
will be placed a "camp;" these are the three objectives.

Closeup on the center; I'm tempted now to convert 
a canvas roof for Paperboys log cabins!

The Patriots (my side) could place at any side on the south of the river, defending the objectives. After that, the Loyalists could place anywhere on the north side. Wider river strips, incidentally, took longer to ford. After a bit of analysis paralysis again on my part, we settled on roughly the center, splitting our forces in the hope that one could support the other once we knew where the opposing main effort lay. The Loyalists immediately took the east (our right).

Swarms of highlanders, with mounted commanders dotted around.

Patriot militia, an infantry gun, a few detachments of rifles,
and a small cavalry reserve.

The blue-green swamp patches, incidentally, are impassable, but do not block Line of Sight.

Closeups of the troops engaged. All 15mm, a broad mix of manufacturers. Each base represents a company-sized formation; yellow tabs indicate commanders with a two-hex command radius (flags are good for ten hexes).

On turn 1, the Highlanders crossed the river (well, creek) to the northeast and swept down on the line of Patriots. The Patriots hastily shifted to the right to cover their advance. Closest were our gun and rifle companies, but these had bad luck on their rolls and failed to slow the Loyalists. On they came.

Here's the problem: Which way are they going -
left or right of the forest?

The other cautionary part was that in this scenario, the Loyalists can declare a highland charge. This is akin to a Waagh! in 40K rules - everyone gets to move towards the enemy, and they lose any morale markers! AND, as it turned out, they could also do this every turn. Granted, they had to pass a leadership check to do it - but in these rules, any adjoining bases roll once for all. This is useful when you are limited to so many actions per turn, but unuseful when your opponent does it and has bonuses in CC...

Standoff fire is effective, but not enough, and not for long.

As we hasten to extend the line.

The highlanders are closing, and we're not really slowing them down!

We tried a cavalry charge to stem the flank, but it got countercharged
and did little good. We also lost its commander, though in these rules cav
are more independent and can be controlled at distance.

Charge goes in on the right - as you can see from the morale
"caps", it's going badly for the Patriots.

Devolving into a general melee, which is worse.

The northern end of the line holds its own - barely.

By the ninth turn the Patriots were still barely winning on points, only because we still held the objectives. Shades of the previous game at Guantanamo! But ultimately we were ground down to the point at which Loyalist horse were able to get through the line, capture our HQ unit and advance on the objectives behind us, and at that point it was over.

We had tried a similar end-around, tackling enemy command units at the back with what remained of our fast cavalry. (Infantry moves four hexes, cavalry twelve.) Mark pointed out that we could have reach the very far north of the line and maybe picked up a few points by picking on Loyalist stragglers along the river, but it would have been iffy. Our units would have been isolated, and mutual support from other units and commanders is big in this game.

Not happy with how it went. Mark says in his playthrus the wins have been about fifty-fifty (and dependent on the success of the Highland charge), which is a) a sign of a balanced scenario and b) a sign that the players are the ones in control, which means that as a commander I did a really bad job. But then, I usually do, which is one reason, I think, that I like solo play as well. I'm a better GM and solo player than conventional player, though there is also the fact that I'm very slow to get used to the rules that are now most widely played in the club.

Jeff is increasingly eager to run Picacho Pass with me (he has been doing research and has all the minis we'll need) so I will start work on that. I am hoping to go to Hurricon at the end of this month and participate in one of his NW Frontier games.

Speaking of Highlanders, I recently watched the entire wargames campaign run by Arran Johnston of the Prestonpans Trust, a refight of the '45 Jacobite Rising from after Prestonpans. He's now on a second runthru, this one starting from the beginning at Glenfinnan, with the viewers on Facebook taking the role of the British this time instead of the rebels. The second video has just come out and I will be following this one and participating to the end.