Breakout

Yesterday's game was a snapshot of the Anzio breakout, May 1944, as run by Oriskany Jim under Battlegroup rules. Like Mark Ritchie's Tactical Combat, these are one-to-one rules, but a little more abstracted. Like Seven Days to the River Rhine, there is an emphasis on pinning rather than killing.

My opponent was Devon as the Germans, while Mark and Jim helped me out with the Americans (Mark arrived late and left early). Having placed most of the infantry and artillery to my left and tanks to my right, I took the former and my partners the latter.

The field had very rolling terrain, primarily obscuring but I was able to block Devon's biggest AT guns from seeing my own tanks.

As usual with Jim's tables, very crowded and tons of detail.

US:

A platoon each of Sherman tanks and armored infantry in M3 halftracks
One mortar and two machine gun teams.
A forward air controller with access to a P-38 Lightning.
An artillery observer which I misplaced almost at once among the terrain.
Three artillery pieces - one M3 with 75mm, and two M7 Priests with 105s.
An M10 tank destroyer.

Some American units:

Germans:

Artillery observer team
Four Mk IV panzers
Two StuGs
Panzer Grenadier platoon with MGs and 37mms on their halftracks
37mm flak gun on truck
88mm on cruciform base
Two off-table guns

Some German units:

Each vehicle had seven to ten shells available and we had to choose between high-explosive and armor-piercing.

Loss is based on drawing token when a unit is destroyed;
after a given amount, the side bottles out.
However, it's also possible to draw tokens for mines and airstrikes.

Tracking ammo. Order choices are at the bottom.

Sides must roll for the number of units they can activate - this is based on a roll of dice plus the number of available officers. Shooting requires an observation roll before the attempt to shoot. Players must choose to fire to pin or for effect - and pinning is likelier. Artillery fire always scatters, but given an observer this can be minimized.

Some of the setup - I didn't take many battle photos:

Turn 1: I moved up the board and fired smoke with my artillery - it mostly missed. I scored a direct hit on the 88, with minimum scatter, but you also have to roll for kill or pin, then the opponent gets to save. He saved easily against the pin check. Not much use!

In his turn, the smoke helped a bit as it increased difficulty both to observe and hit - Devon's light AT gun missed a loaded M3 halftrack, but his 88 took out one of my M7 Priests.

Turn 2: With so many rolls to make a single shot "stick," it was hard to do much damage. I kept advancing towards the rail line (and turned over the armor to Mark who arrived at this point). Our M10 tank destroyer killed an STuG, but otherwise little result, while the Germans pinned a few of our units and otherwise selected overwatch for next turn.

My infantry starts to debus.

Turn 3: My dismounts started exchanging fire with his, and dropped artillery on their heads, but much like in our River Rhine games, we mostly pinned each other a lot. Each American squad had a bazooka, so we also got hits on enemy armor, particularly in ...

Turn 4, when the P-38 finally turned up - and then was shot down by multiple rolls of 6 from a truck-mounted flak gun!

Note the mess of exploded tanks - part victims of 5" rockets,
part tank fire, part bazooka from that squad on the left.

In Turn 5, the Germans resurged on my side of the table and ultimately destroyed two squads with a combination of tank fire and infantry close assault. Our tank destroyer narrowly escaped a mine when Devon needed a four on 2d6 - and rolled a three.

All the tanks rolled poorly to fire into
the church - but then I rolled poorly on
my saves!

My infantry behind the hill at top, his infantry and a Pzkw
with 37mm about to take me out. The ACW-style fences,
btw, are cunningly made of toothpicks!

By Turn 6, we'd taken out the 88 and a couple adjacent units, and US armor was pincering the Germans. We were both nearing our "break-points" as determined by token draws, and Devon hit his this turn. While on the tabletop it was certainly an American victory - Germans down to a handful of pinned units and the nearly unhurt American tanks swarming over their left flank - late dice rolls could easily have gone either way. When destroyed, a unit with an officer draws two tokens (numbered 1-5, with break point at 32), and given the mix in the box the Americans would likely have bottled out earlier. As it was, all five American lieutenants survived the game, which also provided a significant bonus to the rolls for how many units we could activate. We never had to make a decision about which units to leave out of a turn, although Devon eventually had so few units that he didn't either.

The Americans also made the mistake of firing about twice as many artillery shells as the rules said we had in stock; a combination of me forgetting to track in later turns and Jim thinking we were using reloading rules (with a couple supply trucks off the table) really should have made the US assault more difficult towards the end.

That and both sides rolled badly a lot. There were times early on when we both should have taken critical losses that would have made a difference - if we had had average rolls. But c'est la guerre, I guess...

A good view of the very nice 88 team.

These rubber wildlife are doubtless traumatized.

Still, an interesting set of rules, a lovely table and miniatures led to a fun game. Sometimes the end result is not the point. At least that's my perspective, but it should be remembered that my side maybe shouldn't have won!

Jim had trouble with his recording; hopefully there will be enough for a video in around three weeks. I  also kept rolling dice when he didn't have the camera on ... sorry.

I am hoping to get in one of Jon Freitag's remote games next. Schedules will have to be juggled... see you next time.

Roads, Buildings and Mud

Another rambling post about what I've done over the past week or so. I do have a WWII battle coming up today at the club, so that'll be next.

I've been drooling over a newish sort of RPG terrain, Tenfold Dungeons. They are designed as dungeon maps, with a selection of doors, stairs and connectors, but the handy thing is that their outsides are also nicely patterned. So long as you don't mind your buildings with flat roofs, and you use them more as obstacles than strongpoints, they might make an okay village. So I picked on the Town set, which has boxes representing a large inn, a church and a town hall.

My cat in the nice new box.

Everything is compact...

...And nesting.

To go with them, I broke out some roads I got last year, and a box of period vehicles from the club:

I particularly like this one!

A few closeups:

Gotta use your imagination a bit, but that's what these games
are all about, right?

A simple layout.

With two roads side-by side, I can even have a runway!

So this will help with terrain for VBCW. The plane (a 1937 Lockheed Electra) even suggests an airlanding scenario...

Last of all, I experimented with a Games Workshop technical paint, here Stirland Mud:

... and turned up a few 3d-print vehicles that came with the road pieces:

A little mobile artillery.

The VBCW collection is booming at this point, I must get around to actual play. Perhaps in summer. First comes an Anzio game, which will be the subject of my next post. See you next time.

Pilum at Canusium

Played an Ancients game today with Mark Ritchie, whose Tactical Combat rules are now available on WargamesVault. (I'm vaguely thinking of using or modifying it for VBCW, as it's a ruleset our local group have become very comfortable with.) The rules we used today were instead the hex-based Pilum/Firelock, which we used to play a medieval Polish game last year.

This battle was Canusium, fought betwen Hannibal and Marcellus in southern Italy in 209 BCE. It was just the two of us - most other regular members are in Orlando at the Recon convention this weekend. (I intended to go, but one of my cats has developed a refusal to eat anything but fresh food, so I can't leave her alone.) I took the Carthaginians, partly to see if I could be successful with elephants for once.

Scenario and forces.

The field of battle.

The Roman forces. Leaders are the ones with purple-spotted tags
at front - there are lots of them, the advantage of the legions.

Setup. Romans along the line of the river, Carthaginians
on the flanks.

My left. The tilted base in the center indicates hill carpet-tiles
under the felt. Slingers in the woods.

My right, with elephants.

My infantry slams into his cavalry. Not good - cavalry double
their dice rolls against foot troops. As a reminder, pipe-cleaners
denote hit-point loss, and yellow caps denote failed morale checks.
Two fails or 6-8 HP eliminate a base.

My heffalumps hit the Roman left. Unfortunately, they have very
good morale and it takes time to knock them out unless they roll
boxcars on morale. This actually happened twice, but that's not
all that useful when they had 20+ bases!

A special unit - flaming pigs to terrify the elephants. A
tactic I hadn't heard of.

Slowly stomping the flank (and the occasional pig) flat.

Closeup on Roman war machines and commander.

Closeup on the town of Canusium.

My left is battering itself into insensibility. At lower left a
unit is attempting to rally off its yellow cap - indicated by a
white cap. Hannibal has not got stuck in, because he only
has a leadership radius of two hexes, and is trying to keep
the slingers on-side.

My right is also winding down.

Ultimately, three of the elephants were driven into a rampage. An incredible roll by the pig-handler managed to kill one before it crushed him. With the pachyderms thundering off into the distance, I lost 19 points to 13  (1 per lost base, with occasional additions for commanders). But I did have the distinction that for the first time since Mark has run this scenario (including yesterday in Orlando) all four Carthaginian commanders survived.

The rules, particularly the Combat Results Table, are remarkably simple, and this was a fun, fairly quick game. I'd be happy to play it again. Though, as usual, I have no grasp of tactics... Till next time.

VBCW forces

Now that I've been working on the partisans for a while, I have more than enough Very British Civil War units on each side for a full game of Xenos Rampant. Since on one side I have regular 8th Army troops and on the other a mix of Navy, Canadian and LDV, this would seem to represent somewhere in northern England, on the border between the Albertine enclave and the Royalist Army of the Severn Valley.

Albertines (Defenders of Sautmeat-on-Rye)

Heavy Infantry: Canadian regulars. 2 points.

Recon Infantry: Canadian Mounties. 2 points.

Light Infantry: Naval infantry. 1 point.

Light Infantry, Reinforced: Naval infantry. 3 points.

Since this squad was eight strong, I've added leftovers from other squads.

Light Infantry Reinforced, Heavy Weapon: Naval Infantry with Lewis gun. 5 points.

Light Infantry, Reinforced, Heavy Weapon, Guerillas, Undisciplined: LDV with MG34. 5 points.

Support Infantry, Artillery: LDV with French 75. 7 points.

Soft-skin Vehicle, Civilian, Technical: Open-topped vehicle with pintle Vickers. 3 points.

Royalists (2nd Wessex Regiment, formerly of the Mobile Division)

Light infantry, Reinforced, Heavy Weapon: Infantry squads with Bren gun. 5 points. (X2)

Light Infantry, Reinforced: Infantry squad. 3 points. (X3)

Support Infantry, Heavy Weapon: Vickers team. 7 points.

Support Infantry, Indirect: Mortar team. 6 points.

Fighting Vehicle: A13 Cruiser tank, 6 points.

Fighting Vehicle, Light Armor: BUF L6/40. 4 points.

Either side:

Fighting Vehicle, Light Armor, Anti-Personnel: Rolls-Royce armoured car. 3 points. (X2)

Soft-skin Vehicle, Transport (10): Bedford QLT truck (I think!) 4 points. (X2)

These are well-oversized for normal games (24 points). In fact, if I give the extra vehicles to the Albertines, it's 42 points apiece. Legal armies, even, because only one fighting vehicle is allowed per 18 points. So this is enough for perhaps a small campaign, or a large game played at the club with two or three players a side.

A Little More VBCW

In a further, slightly convulsive effort to do something hobby-related every day, I've glued together my Warlord partisan infantry squad, and begun painting the partisan artillery crew.

Ten partisans, that can be divided into five-man sections.
One with an MG34 and the other with submachine guns.

Caps and trousers painted in Wolf Grey. (The People's Armies
supplement for VBCW has some useful details on period clothing.)

At this point in my reading of the VBCW background, my "forces" are starting to gel. 

• The 8th Army types are Regular troops of the Royalist Army of the Severn Valley, backed by a single BUF light tank.
• The rest are Canadian, Navy and LDV units loyal to Albert.

This may seem a little overwhelming on the part of the Royalists. But there are a few vehicles left over, and perhaps the Army woutld be the attackers into a town. This sounds like a village on the border of Yorkist territory.

Edit: Here's the mostly-completed gun crew:

Matt Black and Bugman's Glow for the shoes, Highlord Blue 
and Hardened Leather speedpaints for the shirts and sweaters,
Hardened Leather for straps, and a mix of Bugman's Glow and 
Wraithbone for skin.

I have next weekend off and am thinking of running something at the club. Most regular members will be at the Recon event in Orlando, but some will stay at home and I just might try to run Xenos Rampant with this lot - if I can finish painting the LDV.