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The original 1978 version, so goofily out of date almost as soon as it was published.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:

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!