Its DBA Jim...but not as we know it!

No it's Phil Barker's 'Damn Battleships Again' a pre-dreadnought naval ruleset using some DBA mechanisms.  I was rooting around following links from wargaming websites and I came across a set of AARs for a Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) naval campaign using these rules and my interest was triggered.  The rules were drafted around 2003 but never made it to a final publication and it seems almost everyone who used them had house rules.   Now naval wargaming is an area I have dabbled in once or twice over the years but without ever finding a set of rules which really grabbed me.  Typically this time around I have found a set that seem like they may actually be interesting enough to make me play a naval game but they are twenty plus years old and not fully finalised!  What was worse was that at first I couldn't find a copy anywhere.  Then I found a post with a link to the Internet Archive's Way Back Machine where I was able to see a copy of the rules and another link to the Wargames Society of Hong Kong with their house rules and amendments.  Of course I immediately started thinking about what changes I might want to make!

Damn Battleships Again (lets call it DBSA for short) is a deliberate attempt to create a simple set of pre-dreadnought naval rules.  To do that they assume that all ships of the same type are identical.  Which to be fair is not too wide of the mark.  Warships are split into battleships, three classes of cruiser, submarines, torpedo boats and torpedo boat destroyers.  There are also armed merchant cruisers and raiders which are classed as cruisers plus some merchant ships.  Each warship has four arcs of fire forward, aft and port and starboard broadsides.  They have a single combat factor which reduces with range and for larger ships can split fire between two arcs but at reduced effect.  Combat is resolved in the usual DBA way by comparing attacker and defender dice rolls.  Unlike DBA there are step reductions showing levels of damage but no recoils or flee outcomes.

The Hong Kong society additional rules assign individual factors to ships rather than have all battleships and cruisers given the same stats.  They also add torpedo gun boats (the precursor to torpedo boat destroyers) and allow capital ships to fire torpedoes.  There are combat deductions for three or more ships firing at the same target to simulate difficulties working out fall of shot for individual firing ships, changes to torpedo attack rules and the interestingly named 'Windy Corner' rule.  Windy corner is the point where a group of ships in line astern turn in sequence on reaching the point where the lead ship turned.  shooting at ships passing through that point is not subject to the multiple shooter deduction as fall of shot isn't as important when targeting an area rather than a single ship.

So I have a set of rules that look interesting but no ships; what to do?  You know the way I think.  I have cardboard, plastic broom bristles, clear plastic sheet and glue, lots and lots of glue, result teeny tiny ships!

Trial run.  It's more of a marker than a model

I'm aiming for 1/4800th scale or there abouts.  The models will be a very rough approximation of the ships they represent but the prototype is good enough for me purposes.

With a ruler to show the size I'm working at

That model is the IJN battleship Mikasa.  Armed with a pair of twin 12" guns in turrets fore and aft and 14 x 6" guns in barbettes and deck mounts.  On top of which (like all capital ships of the period) she mounts multiple smaller calibre quick firing guns as defence against torpedo boat attack.

The tactics of the pre-dreadnought period are interesting.  Other than a straight stand up fight with other major warships attack by a swarm of torpedo boats was the biggest risk to battleships and cruisers.  The initial defence was to have a lot of smaller guns to lay down a hail of fire before the torpedo boat reached firing range.  as torpedoes improved that firing range increased from a few hundred yards to over a thousand yards.  The solution moved to having small fast boats tasked with destroying torpedo boats further out first torpedo gun boats and then the torpedo boat destroyers.  The torpedo boat destroyer also replaced the torpedo boat in the attack role and hey presto the destroyer was born.  Torpedo boats became an obsolete concept until the advent of fast patrol craft like MTBs, MGBs, PT boats and of course the E-boat in the Second World War when the wheel once again turned full circle.  Modelling those little beasts is going to be a bit of a challenge!

Megalomania strikes again!

When I first started to collect 6mm BCW troops the plan was to play Marston Moor using the Forlorn Hope rules.  I don't think I really had a grasp on how large the armies would need to be to do that!  The plan stalled for various reasons, but as a result I had a decent number of Scots Covenantors both painted and lurking in the lead pile awaiting attention.  I also had a number of Highlander and Irish figures which are now just screaming Montrose at me!  That would have the advantage of needing rather less units for the actions from the 1644-45 campaign in Scotland than Marston Moor would require and gives a use for all those Hodden Gray hordes!  With that in mind I painted up some of the lead mountain refugees as O'Cahan's and Laghtnans Irish regiments, using some IM Irish pike and shot castings I found in the depths of the lead pile.  Yes it's a new rabbit hole to go down folks!

Two of the three Irish Brigade regiments plus some Highlanders

Of course that hasn't stopped me drooling over Marston Moor!  I need to organise my troops so I may as well use the Orbat for Marston Moor for that, don't you think?  I'm not overreaching honest!

Byron's Royalist Cavalry Brigade  (poor iPhone image soz)

I'm working on a rough (very rough if I'm entirely honest) 200 men per full base or 100 for a shot half base (as seen in the Irish Brigade).  I'm making no attempt to show proper pike:shot ratios as those differed across the period of the war.  Instead I will have a note of the actual number of pike and shot for each unit for use in combat calculations.

The rebasing project has also set me on a path looking for a set of BCW rules that is flexible on unit sizes versus the actual number of men in the original unit.  I suppose I could adapt my own set or use 'In Deo Veritas' but my curiosity has been peeked by the 'For King and Parliament' rules and you can never have enough rules; right?  Reviews online seem positive but what does the assembled brains trust think of these rules, anyone played them?

Irregular Miniatures 2mm and 6mm ranges update

Some good news to share.  Things have moved on at Irregular, Ron has retired at the grand old age of 98 after a mere 44 years of building up the business, Lawrence and Tara are moving on and Ian and Anne have decided to concentrate on the 10 mm to 54mm ranges.  The 2mm and 6mm ranges have been taken in hand by Nas Bat an ex-Irregular employee who will take on casting and handling orders for those ranges.  He currently has the 2mm moulds and some of the 6mm ranges.

More information at IRREG-2mm 

Painting Irregular Miniatures Covenantor shot

So far so good with regard to 2025 and painting, my mojo remains intact and shows no signs of wandering off on vacation again.  Painting Scottish Covenantors is fairly quick compared to the ancients I have been doing where there is a lack of uniformity.  Mostly its a case of give them a coat of Hodden Grey and pick out a few details and done.  The problem is I'm running out of Scot's infantry until Irregular reopen sales of 6mm figures or Ian Kay takes pity on me.  Still I have lots of other BCW 6mm to paint so all is well.

Hodden Grey...it's grey but what shade exactly?

So what shade of grey was Hodden Grey.  The answer is that isn't the right question!  Hodden Grey was a type of cloth rather than an exact shade.  It was made by mixing the wool of one dark fleece with wool from about a dozen white ones.  Now as white and dark cover a multitude of sins when it comes to sheep the resulting colour would vary from a neutral mid grey through to grey with a brown tinge!  which is nice when mixing paint shades as it is very forgiving.

For these I primed white and gave a thin wash of black ink to bring out the detail and a bit of pre-shading.  Bases got a coat of Vallejo Khaki as it is a good match for my basing sand and then it was time to slap on a coat (and britches) of grey.  This was literally a slap on job as at this stage accuracy doesn't really matter.  Dotting in the faces and hands and a dark brown for the muskets, a pale blue for the bonnets and a mix of red brown for hair and the job is almost done.  Last pick out some straps and scabbards in a light brown and a few lower legs in a contrasting colour to high light the hose (hoes?  long socks).  Once that's dry (a matter of a couple of minutes with acrylics) a coat of satin varnish for protection and a wash of Agrax Eathshade.  I leave them upside down on the painting sticks balanced between two paint pots to get the ink to pool where shadows would naturally be and then lastly a touch of silver where gun barrels can be seen and a bit of the light blue to ensure the bonnets 'pop'.  All done in under an hour if you ignore drying times.

The Irregular figures paint up well and have the advantage of being available in individual strips (or will be as and when they come back on the market).

These will be joining Crawford Lindsey's regiment

The castings have improved a lot over the years from the original dolly peg style figures and are not far behind Baccus now in terms of quality.  I emailed Ian Kay about filling the gaps in my project and he has said he hopes to be more organised in about a month's time and to ask again then, which sounds promising.  So for now it's on to some Scottish Lancers as the next units.

Catching up on old projects (a slight reprise)

I have actually achieved a target for 2025 before January is out!  My Irregular Miniatures 6mm British Civil War troops are rebased and a limited amount of repairing and repainting has been carried out as well.  The standard of painting is OK but some of the details needed updating as I know a bit more than I did when first painting them!  For example I had given  a handful of Scottish infantry royal standards (the red lion rampant on a yellow ground) when only the King or his appointee were allowed to carry it.  Most foot regiments had a white colonel's colour with perhaps the colonels coat of arms so a number of flags were updated.  The cast on bases had to be redone so they blended into the basing sand I use as well.

So here we are all the painted 6mm ECW are rebased

Scots at the front two lines and English behind them.

For the unpainted figures I managed to undercoat all of them as I had a day with low humidity, reasonable temperatures and no wind so out came the rattle cans of primer.  Some of these are on the painting table awaiting  my attention.  I'm considering giving for King and Parliament rules a try they sound interesting and are a reasonable price.

I like this view apart from the poor exposure on my iPhone camera washing out the green cloth's depth of colour

In other news there is a new Facebook group for fans of Irregular Miniatures called Highly Irregular.  It covers 2mm and 6mm as well as their larger scale lines.

Lord of the Rings Risk

You may recall a few posts back I mentioned that the family had played a game of Lord of the Rings (LOTR here after) Risk.  This got me thinking about the possibilities LOTR Risk offers.  Of course the game itself is great fun as written but the board is just screaming out to be used for a campaign of some sort.  If this sparks an interest in obtaining a copy of the game, I don't think it is available new any longer and a quick trawl through the net showed a number of different versions of the game for sale second hand, some at really rather silly prices.

The box (apologies for the poor image )

Lets start with a look at the game as written.  Opening the box finds a good quality hard backed game board, the traditional five dice two black (Defence) and three red (attack).  The playing pieces are cast in a hard (but potentially brittle) plastic.  These are in denominations of one, three and five 'battalions'.  The rules are printed in a full colour booklet and are easy to understand.  The only unclear point is with regard to sea lane attacks, but more on that later.

The game map

The map covers all of those areas of Middle Earth that feature in the books plus a couple that are simply hinted at or just shown on maps.  Apparently some early versions did not include all of the areas from the book (I think it didn't have the southern part of the map).  Thankfully I have the later edition, there was an expansion made to to extend the map for owners of the early version  but whether that is available any longer I don't know.  Like traditional Risk it is divided into regions which if a player controls the entirety of  provide bonus re-enforcements each turn.  Unlike the real world map used in normal Risk there are no easy to defend 'continents'.  The regions bordering the board corners are the nearest to safe area but there are sea lanes that allow attacks on them.  Some borders between regions are uncrossable (mountains and major rivers) although bridges do allow crossings of rivers you need a special event card to pass through a mountain range.  There are also strong holds such as Mordor and places of power such as Weathertop in a few regions.

The playing pieces the top set are 'Evil' bottom are 'Good'

There are four armies, two good and two evil so this limits the game to a maximum of four players.  There are also two leader pieces for each army who provide bonuses to combat dice rolls and can also obtain event cards if they meet certain requirements such as being present when places of power are captured. There are two packs of cards rather than the traditional one.  The first are the event cards these give special bonuses to movement or combat when played, the second are more like the traditional risk cards marked with a region, and a troop type.  They also have good or evil status noted for the region which comes into play in the deployment stage.  Other than that these cards are collected and traded in for re-enforcements just as in standard Risk. 

Deployment has a nice twist built in.  Each player gets a starting allocation of troops (45 'battalions' in the four player game).  The deployment cards are then sorted so those showing a good or evil affiliation are withdrawn from the pack .  The two good players get half of the 'good' regions drawn at random and the evil players the same from the evil side of the deck.  They then place one 'battalion in each region they have been dealt.  This creates a deployment that puts good forces in good area and vice versa for bad.  Next those cards are retuned to the deck which is shuffled and set aside, the pack plays no further part in deployment.  Instead each player in turn places one 'battalion' in an unoccupied region until all areas are claimed.  After that they continue going round the players re-enforcing regions already held by their army until all the allocated troops are deployed.  I rather liked this mechanism.

The game is now played pretty much in the normal way.  The only differences being that leaders grouped with an army give a bonus on attack or defence dice rolls and event cards can be played on the holding players turn to effect re-enforcements, combat or movement.  Traditional Risk might have similar options for all I know, my copy is from the 1960's and doesn't have there bells and whistles!  Sea lanes are more threatening than in original risk as they allow rear areas to be attacked.  The rules are unclear as to whether only one step along a sea lane is allowed or as my son insisted they allow movement past multiple ports.  Personally I prefer a single port to the next port hop and no further. 

There is one final twist the game has a limited but variable number of turns.  This is controlled by the progress of the One Ring along a path from the Shire to Mount Doom.  In most cases the ring moves forward one region along the path at the end of each player turn, but some zones are hard to leave and require a dice roll of better than three on a D6 to move on.  On average I calculate that each player would get four or five turns before the ring is cast into the fires of Mount Doom.  At that point victory is calculated by looking at the number of regions, strongholds and places of power held and completion of any quests thrown up by the event cards.  All in all a nice little game.

As I said at the start of the post the map would be really good for running a campaign on.  The obvious one being a LOTR fantasy game.  I would probably do that by playing the game as written for map movement and fighting any resulting battles as a table top game.  Still I suppose I should finish the Dark Age campaign first, after all I have only been messing about with that since the 1970's!

Catching up with old projects

For reasons that will not be immediately apparent I spent a couple of hours earlier trawling over some of my past blog posts.  It became very clear to me as I swiped through the pages that I do not have a great record of following projects through!  For example Altar of Freedom has only seen two games played, Western shoot outs haven’t been followed up for eighteen months or so and it’s been several years since the last look at the Dark Ages campaign or a World War One dog fight being played.  Clearly I need to get more games in.

So with that in mind the plan is to finish the AI general project by filling in the deployment matrix and then to stop work on that.  Actually once that is done it will be pretty much ready for use and I can start playing some games to test it.  However, while that is happening I'm going to try to pick up the Dark Ages campaign again.  This may or may not involve using ADLG for a few trial games or I may just set up some test games to play under DBA and repeat with ADLG.

Meanwhile an order from Warbases has arrived which has allowed my 6mm BCW rebasing to get underway.  I may achieve one of the objectives for 2025 before the end of January if I'm lucky!

I ordered a couple more of the Antonine Miniatures Strength and Honour units while I was at it more about those once I have them painted.