A Bit of Bolt Action

I went to Finn-Con yesterday, a small local convention in the library of Miami-Dade College. I spent most of it manning a table for the public library outreach, but got to take my lunch hour with a demo of Bolt Action. Second edition I think. (There was no point taking actual lunch, since the lines were half an hour long.) I've been meaning to try it as a test for Very British Civil War, so it was nice to see these books:

No historical scenario here either, just a handful of units on the board to demonstrate mechanics and a decidedly un-WWII table:

Not a bad trench table, with corrugated cardboard for the metal
sides and matchsticks for the flooring.

No idea what sort of armored car this is.

Finnish ski troops.

Assorted troops of many lands.

Australians.

We played across a third of it, and I came in during the first turn of a demo against Gabriel, who was playing British. I got Germans. Both sides had three infantry squads, a transport (SdKfz251 v. Bren carrier), a tank (StuG v. Cromwell), an officer base, and a special weapon (Germans: heavy mortar, British: sniper team).

The report will be a bit incoherent and misremembered, as I lost what few notes I had partway through writing this. Fun game, anyway.

While I've bought the small 3rd Ed. "beginner" set as a test for VBCW, I haven't yet absorbed the rules; in particular, the "pinning" rule stymied me. When a unit takes a casualty, it also takes a pin test, which if failed must be passed when the unit attempts to activate. Activation checks must also be taken if an officer isn't close by. They are roll-low on 2d6.

What I do like about the system is that it isn't entirely IGoUGo. Activation dice are drawn and the side that comes up gets to activate a unit. There also aren't saving throws, and an infantry unit that loses CC is wiped. (The rules may have been simplified a bit, though; for example the squads were only armed with rifles - no smgs or light machine guns.)

So, Turn 1: "The British are coming, the British are coming!"

Yeah, the Brits climb out of their trenches and head for the German lines. What is this, the Somme?

Well, no. A bit more like Cambrai.

One squad just walked across the top, another overloaded itself into the Bren carrier and drove. A perfect target for my StuG! ... which had already activated that turn. An 8cm mortar round into the open-topped vehicle? ... eh, needed a 6 to hit and missed. They could hit on a 5+ next turn if they chose the same target and it hadn't moved. Well... The British sniper team took out my command element, while my rifles and 251 MG concentrated on the dismounted squad, killing about half of them but failing to pin or break them.

In Turn 2, the Brits got closer - but not close enough for my back line, as rifle fire has a range of only 12". So I had to scramble my third squad forward. The StuG readied to take a point-blank shot at the loaded carrier - but had been pinned last turn and failed to activate - the lost command element would have provided a bonus to the roll. My rifles continued throwing fire into the leftward British infantry, driving them down to two men - who still didn't break.

The rightward Brits about to assault - their third squad can be seen coming behind.

In Turn 3, the Brits got into the trenches. I failed my rolls to fire into them as they closed, and lost the first combat. (Like 40K, dead casualties don't get to fight, and the attacker goes first, so...) My second squad assaulted back... and still lost the combat. My third finally cleared the trench, thus preventing the Brits from winning the scenario at this point.

During combat.

At some point during this kerfuffle, the StuG and Cromwell exchanged fire. I missed (damn dice!) and Gabriel hit, eliminating the StuG. My leftward rifles took on the leftward British infantry and eliminated them. And that was the game, from my POV at least, as I had to get back to work and presumably the GM took over again for the Germans. At that point, they had an intact Hanomag, mortar team, and a battered infantry squad, while the Brits had their Bren carrier, Cromwell, and an intact infantry squad and sniper team. I think I'd hurt his command squad at some point but not killed it.

While I'm certainly misremembering some of this, my impressions of the game as a whole are favorable. If Gabriel turns up in the comments I'd welcome his recollections. It was an enjoyable outing. The GM was one of the Bolt Action club that plays at a local store on Monday evenings, so I may see him again too one of these days. Thanks for reading.

Lastly, here's what little progress I've made so far
on my 30 BEF troops...

Vacation and a Bit of Inspiration

Visited family in Tucson for a few days, the first real vacation I've taken in years. Need to do a couple more soonish. The flowers were blooming:

I visited the Miniature Museum, which has a pretty fantastic collection, if weak on military subjects. I did find a few:

A Victorian parlor with a few South African souvenirs
on the back wall.

An ECW-era tower.

19th century toy buildings with printed paper for details -
very much the sort Wells might have used.

The glass screwed it over, but this is a 
tavern ripe for VBCW.

Details from a living room.

Napoleonic house with party going on, some officers in attendance.

The entire house.

Part of a WWII home front street scene.

A Scottish band, around 54mm.

A modeler's table.

A T34 diorama.

Part of an antique shop - there were a LOT
of miniature antique shops!

A village street corner - would love to borrow
this and play a cityfight game on it!

A few details.

A room in a "great house."

Another shot of the village.

A "green army man" installation made by 3d-printing local residents.

A magnificent and naturalistic Japanese house.

An enormous Christmas village that reminded me of 
Oriskany Jim's Christmas Carnage.

An 18th-century Jacobite house with weapons hidden under the floor.

I also got to visit my brother, who is really good at painting 40K. (Sorry, I really should've taken some pics.) He offered to paint some of my historicals for me, so I think I will build up the 30 BEF figures and send them with appropriate images and links for him to work from.

The first two Wargames Atlantic Scottish militia.

Belated Blogaversary

In comparison with last year's post, I see that my posting rate has fallen even more, to 41 in my fourth year of blogging. Perhaps that's my "normal" rate now. This year did at least start off with a bang in the form of (heh) Blasthof.

I'm not as disappointed as I might be. Plenty of non-gaming stuff has happened this year to distract me. I haven't taken a real vacation in years, so am planning a couple visits to family and friends. After that ... who knows? I want to visit southern Ireland and Gibraltar in particular, lots of history to be found there. Also St. Augustine, which has been within reach for a decade but I still haven't gone.

• At home I've just figured out how to fit a third 2x4 table in my bedroom, so I now have a full-sized isolated table to try larger games on.
• Planning both some more Charge! test games and some small 40K experiments.
• Still have a bunch of Quar to paint.
• Lost a copy of Charles Grant's Scenarios for Wargames in the mail, but I have his different Scenarios for All Ages on the way as well.
• Also waiting on a squad of British police and two books for VBCW.
• Have volunteered to run a paint-and-take during a library DnD event in August. That will need a bit of planning, as my previous tries were exercises in what not to do...

Thanks for reading.

Battle of Blasthof

This is a game I've wanted to play for close to thirty years. Well, to be fair, I did play it with my first pack of 28mm AWI Wofuns, years before I started this blog, but I was using the original "beginner" rules then. This time is with the Athena Books edition which I hope to run at Das Krieg Haus. All moves and ranges are converted from inches to centimeters.

The forces:

2nd Foot, Yorbourne Dragoons, and Blew's Battery

 Saillant Regiment, 1st Cheval and Jaune Battery.

Deployment. My apologies: closer examination
will reveal the refuse of the farmer's feline harvest.

I did not play a true solo game with intent to win, I simply put the "Electoral" Brits on the defense while the "Imperial" French aggressively moved to seize the bridge. As it proved, this wouldn't be good tactics, but it did provide opportunities to test all the mechanics.

Turn 1: Both sides move, Brits cautiously - except to
cross the river with cavalry.

Turn 2: Closer to bridge. French cav reforming,
with intend to hold off Brit cav from preventing
a crossing.

Turn 3: Brit cav tempt French to charge. Notice that
the British guns have been plinking at the French horse,
who thus far have three casualties.

Turn 4: Cavalry charge. French lose due to 4 casualties
from crossing artillery fire, though killed two Brits
in melee. Infantry crossing bridge.

I used the SCRUD method for the 1-1 fighting. One combat was 2-1, so its side got to double the score and I rolled separately. Infantry melee is simpler, one die-score of casualties per 10 men fighting.

Notice that until this point, the French battery was entirely masked. It fired its first shots and killed one British gunner, who was immediately replaced by a nearby infantryman.

Turn 5: French cav retreats one move past guns while Brits rally.
Infantry gets onto bridge but takes 11 casualties
from guns and musketry. I forgot that canister allows full score
to hit between 6-12", so it could've been even worse.

Turn 6: French horse retreats second move. French infantry charges. British canister causes only two casualties! Also I think I forgot to roll for British musketry on the way in - there should have been three dice of long-range (ie half casualty) fire.

19 infantry a side, at one die per 10 men (I'll use full dice, though the second ought to be halved). The French win the melee, 9 casualties to 3! (plus two prisoners), but are now at half strength of their original 32 and must retreat. They fail to capture the colour (on a 6), which would have been a consolation.

I should have tried column attack here, which would have allowed four ranks of the column (16 figures) to fight versus two (eight figures) of the line. It probably would have come out the same.

Brits, recovered, charge the French guns, taking two casualties to canister on the way. One gun is contacted. Gunners cannot fight and are automatically deleted.

Turn 7: French cav rally. Both sides' infantry retreat.
The Yorbourne Dragoons take the second French gun,
whose crew do not have time to spike
(would be hit during the spiking move).
Brit guns fire canister at the retreating infantry on the bridge,
again causing only two casualties!

Owing to the order of actions, in which artillery fires before charges go in, it would normally be possible for the French gun to get a shot off, but the cav are too close (less than 3cm).

Current casualty score: 

• Brits: 18 of 60
• French: 34 of 58.

Turn 8: The now understrength French have clearly lost, but as the bridge is the objective and they're still on it, we'll do one more turn. Infantry fall back again, Saillant are now off the bridge. To prevent them being charged by the dragoons, ten rallied French cav charge six Brits, meleeing among the guns. Three casualties to one, plus a prisoner - the British horse are down to two men and (at 1/3 strength or less) out of the game. This will give the French the opportunity to retrieve their guns, even under fire from the intact British battery.

Just for the heck of it, the British battery gets off two more rounds of fire before the French are out of range. They cause two more casualties to the infantry.

Turn 11: Both British units are done rallying.
They can both return to the bridge by turn 15,
so, like Soubise's Electorals, have thoroughly won.

End total: 

• Brits: 22 casualties, including three prisoners. Serious casualties to infantry regiment, cavalry almost eliminated.
• French: 38 casualties, including entire gun crew and over half an infantry regiment. Guns retrieved from field.

I think this went pretty well. And it was surprisingly fun. At this small scale, the inch-cm conversion worked very well. My first thought for playing this scenario at Das Krieg with more than two players is to raise each base to a regiment, thus having five battalions and two horse regiments against four and three respectively. The two guns would remain, being appropriate for the size of fight.

My other thought is to run "Kleine Krefeld" from Charles S. Grant's first Wargaming in History volume, but that is a less "setpiece" action. I may try it myself in the cm scale at home. 

Speaking of which, I found Grant's Scenarios for Wargamers on ebay and have a copy on the way. Looking forward to reading it.

Thanks for reading.

Getting there

 I've cleaned up a quarter of my 4x4 "table" and put my 2x2 carpet square on it.

Look familiar?

I'm planning to test out the Asquith version of Charge! by converting inches to mm. Giving me a battlefield effectively five feet on a side. This isn't quite in scale with the minis (18mm vs. the original 30mm), but their flatness and thus ability to cram more figures in a small space should help. I'll start with the original Blasthof Bridge scenario - 40 infantry and 12 cavalry vs. 32 infantry and 18 cavalry, plus guns of course.

The house is obviously dilapidated (and doesn't have a door), while the bridge is crude. I've tried toothpicks underneath to help it stand up, but may make a Paperboys one instead. I printed out a couple sheets yesterday, then forgot to bring them home!

I've been vacillating between this and my new Kill Team box:

I really like the MDF terrain.

Speaking of Games Workshop, I volunteered to help out with a planned D&D day at another branch in August. As I'm not a D&D player, I offered to do a paint-n-take activity instead. (The event will be four hours and more than just the games alone.) The planners jumped at it, so I have another painting event to plan. They were interested in paper minis, too. I'll also attend a couple local conventions during the summer for work.

I've been doing some reading three books too, of course - two Helion and one Black Library. I finished You Have to Die in Piedmont!, an interesting account of the bloodiest battle ever fought in that part of the world - and Marlborough's Other Army, a fairly staid book about the War of the Spanish Succession in Spain (ie, a Peninsular War a century early.) It has a lot of statistics, useful for planning a campaign or reenactment-game, but not that interesting to read.

The third is Gotrek and Felix: The First Omnibus - the first three novels in that popular series. I'm two volumes in, just started the third, and quite enjoying it. There are at least a dozen more, the latest of them set in the Age of Sigmar. Good rollicking fantasy adventure, and inspiration for Minceheim.

That's it for tonight. I'll try and get a solo game in on Sunday. See you then. Whether it's Kill Team or Charge! is up in the air; for comparison with the first photo, here's what curious cats have made of Blasthof Heath:

Urrgghhh

And then - appropriately, given my preferred periods of 18th Century and Colonials - came the plague.

I'm slowly recovering from a couple weeks of bronchitis. About five of my coworkers also came down with different things the first week, but it wasn't all the same - one had RSV, another Covid, etc. I've been back to work for a week but my voice hasn't improved yet enough to sing; a problem for a children's storyteller. I did manage to wrangle a three-day weekend, but whether I'll accomplish anything with it remains to be seen. I spent the sick week watching - but not imitating - painting videos.

I bought Helion's You Have to Die in Piedmont! when it appeared in ebook form, so I have that to read.

Of course, two days later Helion had a
Bank Holiday sale...

I'm still waiting on an order from the FLGS of the Kill Team starter set and thinking about Kings of War Champions. The latter appeals to me as it is "rank-and-flank" drained to the dregs, with single-base units and no morale rules (so that regiments simply disappear when they lose a combat).

Before going home yesterday I printed out some Color-Your-Own crusader/Rus knights and infantry Paperboys; I am thinking of making singular units with them for basic games. They have a Brettonian feel to them and I will try to reproduce some fictional heraldry, with Staedtler pens.

I am forced to admit that my "closet of shame" has pushed its way out into my bedroom, to the point at which I'm finding it difficult even to play small solo games:

I've just committed myself to run a Charge! demo at Krieg Haus sometime in the next few months, so I really need to either clean this off or at least play something on it already.

Then there's the painting backlog.

Yeah.

Well, hobbies are just that, something to relax with rather than bother you. Have I taken that too much to heart over the years? At least I have a few things to work towards. See you soon, hopefully in less than a month...