2016 in Review

So, as 2016 (a truly dreadful year) comes to a close we have the traditional review of “the plan”. How did I do this time?

1) River Plate at the Naval Wargames Show
Success, at least in terms of preparation. All the models were completed, two sets of rules sorted out, long tape measures sourced, large flags to stick in the lawn of the museum made. Alas the weather didn’t help, with rain coming just as we had set up so the game was scrubbed. But at least the preps were completed and we got some photos of the game to show what it would have looked like. I may try to run this again in 2017.

2) Coastal Forces

I got  a bit of his done. Some models spruced up and a batch of new ones purchased when Stuart Barnes Watson sold off his collection. I also got my North and South Korean models finished off (inspired by my visit to Pyeongtaek in the Spring). Ore work needed here in 2017 though.

3) Form Line of Battle
Almost total failure, with none of the projected models sorted out. I did however manage to refight the 1811 battle of Lissa on the island of Lissa (now Vis) during the summer.

4) Pre-Dreadnought
A big push here at the beginning of the year. I painted up my Chinese fleet and then sorted out US, German and Italian squadrons as well as sprucing up my French and British. The rules are working OK and I’ve sorted out a WW1 version as well which seems to give sensible results and plays very quickly. Not much progress on the campaign rule front, although what I have for the RJW seems to work well as is. Another area for progress next year.

5) Burma Skirmish
No, I didn’t sort it out at all. However, I did work on an alternative….

6) Iron and Fire
My remaining 1/600 ships were duly painted and completed, and a clutch of new models bought in. other than that, not much progress and the formalising of the ship data for the Crimean War didn’t happen either. However, this period may be developing in another direction in 2017.

So, a pretty typical year in terms of goals hit and missed due to circumstances and distractions. But some of those gaming distractions were pretty successful in their own right, in particular….

Broadside and Ram

Prompted by the 150^th anniversary of the battle of Lissa I published a set of fast play tactical and campaign rules which have been moderately successful (and which have spawned a supplement covering the Second Schleswig War). They got a good run out on the 150^th anniversary itself as we refought the battle on the island of Vis. The basic system is similar to that used in my pre-dreadnought set so I can see this being developed more in 2017.

Eastern Front Skirmish

One of my favourite WW2 setups when I was at school was the Eastern Front in winter, with whitewashed tanks and troops in greatcoats or snow camo gear. In those days I used 20mm plastic models. I decided to recreate this, but this time in 15mm (taking advantage of the lovely models from Zvezda and PSC). So now I have a German and Russian force (both mustering a strong platoon or a weakened company plus supports) all painted up and ready, and after Reveille in November I also have a US force which needs some work to bring up to scratch. I also have all the terrain sorted, steadfast some roads and tracks. Looking to run this with Operation Warboard next year.

Other honourable mentions include: Wings of Glory (I attended a number of shows helping to run participation games and we won the “best participation game” award at the Thornbury IPMS show again (my 4^th win in the 4 years that the show has been running with a wargame content), Medieval naval (a clutch of old models that were lost became found and finished off), 1/1200 ancient galleys (again a box of old models found and repainted) and last but not least my 1/1200 Renaissance galley project launched in December, something I’m really enjoying working on.

Other fun stuff this year included the Naval Wargames Weekend in Gosport, the Jutland centenary games at HMS Flying Fox and the National Museum of the Royal Navy. The Vis anniversary trip and a lovely Cod War game with my friends in Frome (which I’ve just remembered got me knocking up additional markers aircraft and a few ships for my own collection here).

Peter Colbeck's Marlburian campaign weekend - getting into character

1/1200 model of HMS MErmaid, the last major outstanding unit for my RN Cod War collection

Wings of Glory at Beachhead in February

More ACW loveliness completed during the year

Scenic bits for "Stingray"

Louis the foal, born in May (and a real surprise when he appeared!)

Jutland at HMS Flying Fox.....

... and at the NMRN

Wargaming in education - "Tactics Night" at University College London

"Thunder Boats" at the Naval Wargames Weekend

A collection of naval forts from Brigade, one of my painting "splurges" in the Summer 

Trawling markers for "Cod War"

and some aviation assets for both sides (thinks - what happened to the Wasps?)

Snoopy and the biohazard Sopwith Snipe at Warfare in November

So all in all, not a bad wargaming year and plenty of distractions from various elements of “real world” nastiness that intruded at regular intervals. Now to plan for 2017……

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

Warfare 2016

I spent yesterday at the Warfare show in Reading, one of my favourite shows of the year. This time I felt some of the "fizz" of he event was missing (along with some of the traders that I'd expected to see there), and there was little on the trade stands that excited me (with one exception, but that'll have to remain a secret for a few weeks yet). The B&B was good though and i picked up a set of Waddington's "Formula 1" game which for me is a trip down memory lane - it was one of our regular family Sunday afternoon games and, whilst this one was a reprint and not the original, it still feaures the lovely car dashboards and plastic racing cars; I'll probably merge this set wit our very battered original copy at some point.

Where Warfare did a grand job was in the games. As usual I was fronting up with the Wings of Glory aerodrome where we got in several games and had a great deal of interest from the public - just a shame that no-one at the show was selling the game. Anyway we played through three games (or was it 4?) and I managed to shoot down 4 enemies of the Queen whilst only being shot down once myself.

 Of the other games on display there were many lovely examples. the high spots for me were the lovely 28mm "Chain of Command" game set in the winter of 1944, the "Minions" racing agme and the Tring wargamers "Schweinfurt" bomber game.

A selection of photos from those games and others below:

Get To Da Choppa!!!!!

No. I haven't been watching "Predator" again, nor playing out its more entertaining bits on the wargames table. Instead the title refers to my recently arriving birthday present from my mother in law. MiL is great because she just asks me to buy myself something I'd like so satisfaction guaranteed :)

Anyway, my present was a "Chopper II" modelling tool from Northwest Short Line, sold by EMA Model Supplies in the UK. Basically it is a razor blade in a chopping handle mounted on an aluminium base that has an inlaid rubber cutting board. Also included are  30, 45, and 60 degree removable cutting guides that are secured in place using clamps. This means you can set it up to cut items consistently to the same length and/or angle very, very quickly and consistently. I decided to test this on its first run out today, cutting bases for 51 1/1200 renaissance galleys and 21 bergantines. This would normally be a job for an hour or two and getting consistent corner cuts  on them all would have been quite annoying (not to mention prone to error). Once I'd cut the 30mm wide strips from which the bases were to be formed it took about 20 minutes using the Chopper, and every cut pretty much perfect (apart from a few where I realised I'd not screwed the clamps down tightly enough, but that just meant the strips were a bit too long and thus easily cut down).

So, an excellent piece of kit, guaranteed to improve productivity. The only downside I can see is that the measurements are all imperial, so I will need to produce a metric overlay. Oh and the blade is quite sharp so don't accidentally get your finger in the way ("ain't got time to bleed")

Oh, by the way, did I mention the galleys? More on these later.....

Fighting Sail

The last couple of months have been really busy, not that you'd know it from my lack of posts here. Hopefully I'll be able to free up some spare time to write about the latest batch of models and games, but for now here's some thoughts on Osprey's "Fighting Sail" rules by Ryan Millar

I preordered a copy from Amazon when it was first announced and had my copy arrive on the day of release, but I've only just recently had a chance to play it. Alas I wasn't all that impressed.

Lets start with the good points. FS is well presented, mostly well written and illustrated with pictures from various Osprey titles and a selection of GHQ models which aren't so brilliantly made that they demoralise the reader. Plenty of diagrams, counters and play aids to copy and cut out (and these can be downloaded from the Osprey site so no need to get worried about bending the pages back too much). A good selection of fleet lists (Britain, France, Spain, the USA, Russia, Portugal and the Netherlands as well as privateers and pirates). And the rules are very simple and play quickly. 

The problem I found is that they don't feel like a set of age of sail rules. The movement rules use dice to determine how far a ship can move which is fine (FLoB) uses dice as well, albeit in a different manner). But under these rules it is quite permissible to turn directly into the wind, move a considerable distance directly upwind and then make a turn to put the ship back on a point of sailing with the wind over the port or starboard side. For example, I had great fun driving a US privateer rolling seven movement dice with a "navigator" trait (this allows some reroll of failed dice) moving in ways that no sailing ship should ever be seen to be doing. A simple house rule removes the problem - turn into the wind and lose all remaining movement points unless they are used to perform a tack -  but I can't help thinking that rule should have been there from the start. 

As far as manoeuvrability is concerned, all ships are equal. So a nimble schooner rigged privateer turns as quickly as a lumbering 1st rate. Which, combined with the movement and initiative system gives some interesting and atypical possibilities as ships of the line deftly manoeuvre around frigates into the perfect raking position - in one game recently a British 64 did just that, sailing around the Constitution to perform a rake which killed the US ship in a single turn of gunnery). Suggestions? - increase the minimum move between turns for ships with lower manoeuvrability, or place a limit on the total number of turns that can be conducted in a single game turn.

Also on the movement front, any damage causes a ship to take an "anchor" token which slows movement. Further damage affects fighting ability, which is a simple halving of effectiveness - no graceful degradation here but since this is a fleet action set of rules (in theory) thats OK. It is possible to remove damage if a discipline test is passed, but damage tokens come off before the anchor token (the author states "damage control takes precedence over getting moving"). To me this feels completely wrong, going against the evidence one sees in reports from actions. I would prefer to see anchors removed first, at least as an option that the player controlling the damaged ship can take. Ships just seemed to slow down far too easily in this game. Also, as befits a set of fleet action rules, there is no choice of shooting at hull or rigging (much to the annoyance of some friends playing the French - another house rule perhaps that allows players to select rigging over hull, automatically makes the first damage token suffered an anchor and allows a ship to hold 2 tokens).

The initiative system and its interaction with the movement system (initiative winner moves a ship first, then the other player moves one of theirs, players continue to alternate) mean that the initiative is practically always with the larger fleet. Which is critical when also combined with the degree to which ships can manoeuvre. 

Ships die very quickly in this game, especially at short range. Awfully fast, in fact many ships in a stand up slugging match were dead in the water after a turn of gunnery and sunk or struck after 2. Which makes for a quick game, but again doesn't really feel right.

To me thats quite a lot of negatives and, whilst the production and supporting material in terms of presentation, fleet lists and scenarios is good the whole package was, for me at least, disappointing. I expect these rules to be similar in their appeal to Warhammer Trafalgar - popular because of who is publishing them and appealing to casual gamers but ultimately disappointing for those with a deeper knowledge of the subject. Which is a pity since I think that, with a bit more effort, they could have been so much better.