Jutland in a Day

Yesterday whilst most of the UK wargaming population were at Salute I took part in another refight of the battle of Jutland. This was run at the Berkeley Vale club in Slimbridge and was organised by Stuart Machin from the Naval Wargames Society. Stuart and I have been working on a WW1 set of fast play rules for a while now, drawing on my "Jutland in a Day" project, "Broadside and Salvo" (my pre-dreadnought rules) and the extensive work that Stuart put in to organising the NWS Jutland game at the NMRN on the battle's centenary.

Setup was completed at 1000, first moves at 1030 once a few players had downed a hearty breakfast supplied by the venue (the Tudor Arms pub in Slimbridge, home of the BV club and the site of a very nice skittle alley which serves as the games room). The initial setup was not quite as the actual battle as Stuart had run a pre-came mini campaign to determine starting positions. In the end things were not that different from reality, the main difference being that the German pre-dreads were left to guard Horns Reef, rather than being dragged out to slow down the fleet and act as a liability. Thus the High Seas Fleet looked rather small when compared with the Grand Fleet.

The Grand Fleet deployed in squadrons in line ahead. The ships used were Stuart's collection of 1/6000 Hallmark models, so no sneezing!

Ahead of the Grand Fleet, Beatty's battlecruisers and the supre-dreadnoughts of 5th BS probe towards the Germans. Contact has already been made between the light forces of both sides.

The High Seas Fleet - the German plan was to maintain much closer liaison between the main fleet (closer) and the battlecruisers (middle top). This was to prove to be a most useful decision

Initial exchanges proved costly to the light cruisers of both sides, which at times were the only targets for the enemy's battlecruisers. Echoing Heligoland Bight they were often rapidly dispatched.

Pillars of smoke denote the final resting place of two British light cruisers....

To the right of the shot the battlecruisers prepare to engage each other.

Between the line of the German BCs (lower) and the RN's BCs and 5th BS (top) a vicious destroyer melee is fought out. Both sides attempted to launch torpedo attacks on the heavy ships of their opponents, but these were frequently frustrated, the few attacks that were launched all failed at this stage of the battle. 

The battleships of the High Seas Fleet turn in echelon towards the battlecruiser action, seeking to engage 5th BS

Inexplicably, and against the best traditions of the Royal Navy, Beatty turns away from the Germans and opens the range. There will be some busy redrawing of track charts in the official histories (or maybe not....... 

5th BS in trouble. Despite roughing up the head of the HSF's battleline the QE superdreads came in for some punishment themselves. Barham, training the line, was heavily damaged, suffered a "fire" critical hit result and was unable to stem the flames. Damage escalated and the ship was lost! If nothing else this represented a severe moral blow to the RN, and the cheers of the Germans could be heard throughout the pub!

Despite their success at putting one of the QEs on the bottom the HSF found itself in a pickle as the  Grand Fleet hove into view. Discretion now being the better part of valour the decision was made to head for the hills (or at least for Horns Reef) and darkness (night was 3 hours away). However, several of the German dreadnoughts and battlecruisers had been damaged and their speed reduced slightly as a result. A tail chase was about to ensue.

A second disaster for the RN! Beatty decided to re-engage to sow the escape of the German battlecruisers. Lion found herself under heavy fire and she succumbed to multiple salvoes that sent her to the bottom. Beatty himself went down with his ship (so in the event no need to amend those charts!)

At that point your intrepid reported was forced to take his leave as emergent domestic requirements forced me to be elsewhere. Final details of the subsequent action are eagerly awaited from Scapa and Wilhelmshaven!

The game itself ran very well. The objective of fighting "Jutland in a Day" was ably achieved as I was informed by one of the players that the game drew to a suitable conclusion. And the rules worked very well, just one or two minor glitches hat were easy to resolve. Once a few turns ha been played everyone knew what to do and we progressed without many hitches (mostly caused by food and drinks breaks and inadvertent shifting of the tables!). So I think a great success.
 

Eve of Lepanto

A fun evening at the Berkeley Vale club last night and a welcome chance to get a game in after a few weeeks of enforced absence. Dave N and I took to the Mediterranean yesterday as we tried out my fast play Renaissance galley rules. "Lanterna", a set that some readers may be familiar with,  is a set I wrote some 15 years ago  which were featured in Wargames Illustrated, but which I had largely forgotten about in the intervening decade. A chance find of my old galley collection and a bag of unpainted models that had languished in a box for a decade got me painting up a new mass of ships and fired my interest in developing the rules further, so what we played with was a slight tweak of the original.

Dave and I set up between a string of islands in a fairly traditional linear formation. My fleet had the initiative in the early stages but I wasted the opportunity and over extended which allowed Dave to sweep in and fire the opening shots, which were quite telling as two of my galleys and my Lanterna (flagship) succumbed to incoming fire and were wrecked. I pushed ahead into melee with my right flank, my left holding off and shooting Dave's ships from a distance. 

My flagship and galleass in the centre, a gaggle of bergantias in their wake

My right wing closes to attack. Gaps indicate loses in the gunnery phase of the previous turn, and where has my flagship gone?? (sunk!!)

On both sides the casualties mounted and for a while it looked as though my attack on the right was bearing fruit, but Dave's ships on his right shattered my left wing and my galleass (the Renaissance version of a battleship) succumbed to a boarding action from three enemy galleys and surrendered. As the battle ended my two surviving galleys on the right boarded and destroyed Dave's last Capitan (large galley), but were then hit by a hail of fire. With defeat inevitable my remaining ships surrendered.

My right wing engages. Green markers indicate ships that have fired their main guns (slow reloading), red markers indicate ships that have suffered heavy crew casualties

Near the end. My left wing and centre has been wiped out, only my two galleys on the right (attacking Dave's Capitan) survived to this stage

A fun and very quick game, played to a conclusion in about an hour (one of my aims was to have a set that was quick and easy to play, and suited to aa one day or weekend campaign). I think the rules worked well, as with all things a number of quick and easy improvements were noted and have been embodied in the next draft of the rules.

Thanks to Dave N for an excellent game.

DM

Circus Maximus

As 2015 draws to a close the Berkeley Vale club has embarked upon another new project, Roman chariot racing. Steve brought along a decent set of card driven rules that he found on the internet and adapted them to his existing "Circus Maximus" table cloth. Add a selection of 28mm chariots and seven insane drivers and the stage was set for a fun evening. Three laps later and we had four crashes, Shaun killed as he was dragged behind his bolting team, Steve run over and killed by Andy as he swept to victory and three more crashes on the last lap.

In the end only three chariots made it intact to the finish line. Andy won a well deserved victory, I came in second and New Dave was third.

Great fun and we will be starting a league in the new year. I'd love to put together a chariot team of my own using Steve Barber's models (I'd like to include the dragged driver and "pedestrian" figures) but they seem to be unavailable. Anyone who could help in tracking down a set please get in touch!

First Run Out

After a few playtest sessions at home the Stingray game had its first "public" run out at the Berkeley Vale club. We played  a couple of games, both of which I would say were good "learning experiences".

In the first the Aquaphibians scored an easy victory. On reflection I think they scored an early lucky hit on one of the Stingrays and that skewed the result. But in any case it did point to a need to make the combat a bit more interactive, so we introduced the idea of an "evade" roll when a torpedo or missile enters the same hex as a target. We gave this a go in the second game, which turned into an easy WASP victory - the Stingrays becoming rather too adept at evading.

We didn't have time for a third game but I picked up enough ideas form the two games we did play to plot a happy medium in terms of an evasion rule (and an idea that a successful evade results in a proximity hit rather than a clean miss).

Other good thoughts on clarifying the order of play, improving damage control, simple record keeping, adding a few bits of "chrome" in terms of  heroic commanders, special effects, etc. oh, and a better way to keep track of who launched what missile!

Tune in next week** for another thrilling episode!

** weekly updates not guaranteed!

White Line Nightmare

Just a quick post with an update on the developing "Mad Max" collection. I decided I needed some bigger vehicles so I've just completed a post-apoc "bendy bus" and the obligatory petrol tanker.

I'm quite pleased at how they came out, although the corrugated "cardboard" looks a bit too neat so I might distress the edges a bit more. The next job will be to do a few figures from the Caesar plastic figure sets I picked up at Alumwell.

One of my chums, on hearing about the bus, said "why didn't you do a Routemaster?" - looks like the subject for my next model is decided!

Dispatch War Rocket Ajax.....

Last night saw the first outing for my "War Rocket" collection at the Berkeley Vale club. My previously completed Galacteer, Valkeeri, Imperial and Pirate fleets were just recently joined by a Zenithian saucer fleet (which had made a circuitous route from Wargames Emporium to True Cambridge via that fake one over to the East). War Rocket is a quick play and very deadly set of rules, as we found out in the two battles we completed.

In round one Imperial (me) and Valkeeri (Rodger) squadrons joined to face off against the Zenithians (Shaun) and Galacteers (Graham) in a small asteroid field.

The Zenithian squadron menaced by Valkeeri  Class I rockets whilst the Valkeeri Class III and Imperial Class Is make their way around a small moon.

 Carnage ensued, but the gallant Imperials and their lovely Valkeeri allies were vanquished. Some useful learning points - large Imperial ships are slooow, and the small Galacteer fighters, if handled well, can be a game changer as they activate last and thus have the drop against most opponents.

The Zenithian squadron before firing ensued

My Imperial Class III cruiser navigating the asteroids

Round two saw a space station (actually an old sink plug) added to the mix, whereupon was an OOGV ("Object Of Great Value"). The object of the game was to board the station, take the OOGV and exit the table.  We mixed up the sides and now the Galacteers (Shaun) and Valkeeri (me) faced the Imperials (Graham) and Zenithians (Rodger).

Zenithian and Valkeeri ships square off whilst Zenithian and Galacteer Class I rockets make their boarding attempts. At the end of the next turn the table was MUCH clearer!

The initial Zenthian and Galacteer plan was to send small ships in to board the station whilst the rest of the fleet provided cover. Easier said than done though, and made harder by the fact that docked ships counted as "stunned" and so were far easier to destroy - everyone who attempted to dock was bown to smithereens in short order. As was the Zenithian squadron which succumbed to some good tactics (and a few lucky shots) from the Valkeeri. On the other side of the table the Galacteers and Imperials chased each other around some asteroids and things were looking tense for a while as one of the Galacteer cruisers found its line of fire blocked for a while by a large lump of space rock, allowing the Imperials to make a (slow) dash for the station. But in the end the Galacteer/Valkeeri alliance prevailed, the last enemy ships were destroyed or driven off and victory was called.

The slow-moving Imperial heavies on their way to a destination with disaster! 

More learning points from this one - docked ships are incredibly vulnerable (seems reasonable), so the best way to "cover" them is to kill off all the bad guys before moving in to dock.

The Galacteer Class IV moving to engage the Imperial heavies

Anyway, a fun time was had by all, even Rodger despite being on the receiving end of a pasting in both games. More games will undoubtedly be played and some more interesting scenarios developed as we introduce more of the advanced and special rules.

Great fun, and next time I must remember to upload some Flash Gordon sound clips on my phone to play at opportune moments.

My only regret was that club member Gordon wasn't there last night..... :)

Donner und Blitzen at Devizes

I went along to the "Attack" show at Devizes on Saturday helping to run a participation game with the "Wings of Glory Aerodrome". As usual a lovely day out, we ran a number of exciting games and managed to get a whole load of new players into the game (we were so successful that the traders who were stocking starter sets sold out completely during the afternoon!)

Attack is one of my favourite shows, mainly due to the number of old friends who attend. So I spend a lot of time chatting with people whom I probably haven't seen since the previous year. I also had a long in depth chat concerning an article that may be appearing in the wargames press later this year - watch this space :)

The high spot this year was of course the weather - a thunder and lighting storm that shook the building and had the power going on and off, torrential downpours, floods into the halls through the doors (and valiant punters - your author included - getting soaked trying to get the latched doors closed against the tide) and then the lightning tripping off the fire alarm, which blared out for the next hour or so. It sounds like a pain but it really was good fun. No-one will be forgetting the show in a hurry!

I picked up a few useful bits and pieces, including the new Tumbling Dice 1/600 lake steamer models (which will be appearing here once they are painted up in a couple of weeks time), a Japanese SPG in 20mm for my WW2 Burma Skirmish project, and a copy of the new "Jugula" gladiatorial rules. I'm reading them through now, and they look like a lot of fun (but a pain that you have to shell out another seven quid over and above the cost of the rules for a set of cards for each player - I'm sure there is a cheaper way of doing this). Anyway, something for me to try out with my small collection of gladiator figures and the Berkeley Vale crew in the autumn when I've managed to make up a small arena.

Rumble in the Jungle

One of the nice things about the Berkeley Vale club is that we get to play lovely looking games with great sets of rules. Most of the time.

Yesterday wasn't one of those times.

Last night's game was a modern African skirmish with a set of rules apparently being published soon. It looked lovely, nice crowded terrain, great buildings, figures full of character.

The rules were probably the worst set of skirmish rules I've ever has the opportunity to play. Bizarre mechanics, illogical activities, no "finesse", the best tactics to use were to line up and blaze away.

Alan indicates his view of the rules. Possibly scoring 1 out of 10?

Alas I didn't take note of the title of the rules otherwise I'd let you, dear readers, know so that you could avoid them in the (hopefully unlikely) event that they should ever be published.

But the game did look really, really nice**

** always end on a happy note :)

Bombs

I've been quite busy recently with work stuff and helping Laura with her new pony, but today I managed to get some time to do a bit of modelling. I'm looking at running some connected FLoB games at Berkeley Vale using my PP small ships and thought that a bomb ketch or two might be useful. one particular variety of these craft had the mortar located forward, the mainmast and mizzen mast set back to make space. Obviously a conversion was on the cards

Something a bit like this, but fitting in with the PP range, that's whats needed

The source model for the conversion was the "Small Ship - Schooner" from Peter Pig's "Pieces of Eight" range. I drilled a large hole in the foredeck, expanding the original hole there. the bottom of the hole was blanked and a scratch built mortar on a turntable added.

The foremast was located in the hole intended for the mizzen mast, and the mizzen relocated to a new hole drilled in the poop deck. To be accurate I should have sanded away the channels and made some new ones, but to be honest I felt it was a lot of effort that could have damaged the hull sides for little effort, so i decided to leave them alone. All in all a fairly simple conversion, not entirely accurate but in keeping with the style of the original PP models.

All in all I was quite pleased with how these turned out. All being well they'll be in action tomorrow night.

The Battle of Sherbert Dab - Bolt Action on the NWF

After a few weeks enforced absence I got along t the Slimbridge Club this week to find that Rodger had organised a North West Frontier game using our modified Bolt action rules. The variant this time was similar to the "Colt Action" variant used for western gunfights; one activation die is drawn per figure - and with seven squads on the table that was an awful lot of dice!

Our first thoughts were that things would progress sloooooowly. However, Rodger was an excellent MC in the opening turns and kept us moving at a steady pace and the game ran very quickly indeed.

The scenario involved a British force sent to the tower of Sherbert Dab to remove a flag that was flying there and serving as a rallying call to the irregular forces in the area. Our Pathans were out to stop the infidels from achieving this aim.

All went well initially and we had secured the tower when disaster - and a marksman's bullet - struck! The flag was shot away from the pole (requiring a treble six to be thrown!) and it luttered away in the breeze Fortunately it fell at the feet of a Pathan tribesman who grabbed it and began a sprint back to the tower. Bullets flew, Pathans were struck down, infidel British and their native lackeys were shot down in a veritable bloodbath quite in contrast to the relatively genteel preceding turns as our brave lads formed a "relay" to get the flag back to the tower. Alas, although we got the flag back inside the tower "last orders" was called before we could get it back to the top and so the game was declared a British victory. Damn the infidels!!

As always Rodger provided some gorgeous 28mm figures and the game was both great fun and extremely funny (that may also have had something to do with the main topic of side conversation - don' mention curry, red wine and yoghurt!!)

All being well its back to the NWF next week too.

Colt Action

One of the things I really enjoy about the Berkeley Vale club is a very strong tendency to apply rule sets out of their intended time frame. We have, in the past, enjoyed Alan's adaptation of "Battles for Empire" to ancient Britain, and recently we've tried Bolt Action for near future SF games (and I'm working on a Vietnam adaptation and another for Pony Wars). Last night we tried "Colt Action", Alan's adaptation of the rule mechanisms to western gunfights.

Rather than activating by squads or teams we had one order die per figure. Wounds and injuries were determined using the drawing of damage chits (although in the end I think we decided that a simple die throw might be more effective). The system of activations, pins, etc. was pretty much as for the standard rules. The result was, I think we agreed, well worth the effort and I expect we'll be fine tuning (aka "buggering about with") the system over the next few months.

Here's my gang from last night. 

From left to right, Cool Hand Phil, Wild Bill Murray, Al the Alien, Big Sam, Tails and Gentleman Jim

Last night's action saw a horde of gold (possibly fools? who can tell?) in saddle bags carelessly left on a horse in the main street of Whitewash City. Five teams of desperadoes sought to cut out the loot and, as always much hilarity and gunfire ensued (plus an awful lot of fisticuffs, once we realised that the system as it stood made hand to hand fighting far more effective than gunfire - an area for mods in the next iteration).

The action, as always, was confused. Rodger and Mike squared off against each other, whilst Alan found himself caught between myself and Shaun. Billy the Kid, one of Shaun's gang, nabbed the horses and made off down the street but earned himself a new nickname of Billy the Bullet Magnet as he was opened up on from all sides, and eventually Billy the Corpse as the inevitable end came. Rodger's gang were next to grab the ponies and they made off along the street away from the station. Unfortunately for Rodger my team of cowboys, deadly ladies and aliens** were in position, having dispatched most of Alan's gang. Rumours abounded that Rodger, Alan and Shaun were planning to team up, so Mike and I decided to split the gold - Rodger's horse thieves were dispatched, Alan's last survivor booked his ticket to Boot Hill and Shaun's survivors decided there were easier pickings elsewhere and made a discrete exit.  

As usual, loads of fun and plenty of ideas for modifications for the next game!

** each gang was supposed to have three gunfighters with pistols, two rifle armed cowboys and another with a shotgun. I was short of one rifleman so "Al the Alien" (actually a Predator) was subbed into the fight. Alas without his usual array of advanced weaponry!