No not the game of the same name, which I have never played, but my musings on how to represent that fine body of men (and sometimes women) in my draft set of WW2 rules. In keeping with Charles Grant's set 'Battle' which were my inspiration I wanted a one to one figure scale but with infantry based as the small manoeuvre groups that went together to form platoons. So for the British that would be the two component parts of an infantry section the rifle group and the gun group as separate bases. I'm not sure how I will base them yet, squares or oblongs seem to be the obvious choices.
I have the basic infantry combat mechanism sorted out. These are based on weight of fire creating pinned or suppressed results with suppression also having the potential to destroy a target group. Units can choose to use rapid fire which creates a higher weight of fire but that is balanced by a higher risk of ammunition depletion which dramatically reduces firepower until resupply occurs. A pinned result represents that target unit being unable to safely move while suppressed means unable to move or fire. I have some basic concepts for lifting pinned or suppressed status and also for the effect of a lower weight of fire on continuing to keep a unit pinned or suppressed. Weight of fire is calculated by adding together the value of all weapons firing at the target and it is randomised by a pair of opposed D6 dice rolls which gives a range between plus and minus five but trends towards zero. I'm not such a masochist as to want to count all the rifles and machine guns so each base will have a pre - calculated factor for rapid fire and sustained fire
Close assault will also use the same weight of fire data although automatic weapons and grenades will have a bonus to represent a mad minute. The results will be decisive with units more likely to be destroyed in close assault. Again I have a basic set of concepts but need to test them.
Fog of war comes from the use of blinds and a spotting system. I want to keep spotting rules as simple as possible so once units are spotted they stay spotted by all enemy units unless line of sight is totally lost. Firing units will have to have LoS to the target though, apart from tripod mounted HMGs where pre set defences will be able to use a limited type of indirect fire on pre plotted choke points if a spotter has a communication link to the HMG section.
Some of this stuff will work some won't survive solo playtesting. Time will show which concepts will need to be dropped or improved. I'm in a rush to get these done as I have a pile of 1940 British and German kit looking to get onto the table! I'm not trying for commercial levels of consistency just something to let me get the toys on the table and roll some dice!
Saturday 25 January 2020
Thursday 23 January 2020
Hooked to the silver screen?
Last weekend was a busy one in real life. On Friday I finished work and then Mrs E and I hot footed it down to Nottingham to see Kaiser Chiefs and Razorlight at the Motorpoint arena. It was a good night and Razorlight were particularly good. What confused me were the number of people who couldn't simply watch the gig. A huge number of people seemed to be treating the event as if it were on TV rather than live. Sitting there with smart phone in hand having facebook conversations taking selfies and in one particularly weird case buying tickets to see The 1975 while the Kaiser Chiefs were on stage!
Now before you think I was spending my evening staring over other people's shoulders to read their screens, I wasn't, it was so obvious I couldn't ignore it. One group of three 20 somethings rolled in after KC were on stage and left before they finished and can't have spent more than 10 minutes of the set not glued to their phones. It felt like 'I'm here, I have told the world I'm here, Kaiser Chiefs seen, check, OK lets go'. Given that the tickets were over £60 a pop this seems really rather odd. I suppose I must be getting old!
Saturday morning was taken up by various appointments and Saturday evening we went into Hull for another gig. This was Holy Holy a rather unusual tribute act, but unusual in a good way. You see Holy Holy are a David Bowie tribute act made up of well known faces from the music industry including Tony Visconti (Bowie's producer in the early 70's and a member opf his backing band on the pre spiders from mars albums), Woody Woodmansey (one of the original spiders from Mars), Glen Gregory (front man of Heaven 17) and James Stevenson (of The Alarm). So not really your average band.
Probably because the average age was higher there seemed to be less selfies and face booking going on. It's probably a nostalgia thing but I enjoyed the Saturday night far more than the Friday night. Although the fact that I wasn't driving and could have a beer probably helped.
Now before you think I was spending my evening staring over other people's shoulders to read their screens, I wasn't, it was so obvious I couldn't ignore it. One group of three 20 somethings rolled in after KC were on stage and left before they finished and can't have spent more than 10 minutes of the set not glued to their phones. It felt like 'I'm here, I have told the world I'm here, Kaiser Chiefs seen, check, OK lets go'. Given that the tickets were over £60 a pop this seems really rather odd. I suppose I must be getting old!
Saturday morning was taken up by various appointments and Saturday evening we went into Hull for another gig. This was Holy Holy a rather unusual tribute act, but unusual in a good way. You see Holy Holy are a David Bowie tribute act made up of well known faces from the music industry including Tony Visconti (Bowie's producer in the early 70's and a member opf his backing band on the pre spiders from mars albums), Woody Woodmansey (one of the original spiders from Mars), Glen Gregory (front man of Heaven 17) and James Stevenson (of The Alarm). So not really your average band.
Probably because the average age was higher there seemed to be less selfies and face booking going on. It's probably a nostalgia thing but I enjoyed the Saturday night far more than the Friday night. Although the fact that I wasn't driving and could have a beer probably helped.
Saturday 11 January 2020
Battle - where it all started
Way, way back in the middle years of the last century a young Elenderil's Father used to read the Meccano Magazine. In that august tome were a series of articles by one Charles Grant. They were on a new and potentially interesting topic that would allow him to play with his Airfix soldiers and tanks in a more structured way than rolling marbles at them to see who fell over. Those articles were later gathered together and formed the book 'Battle! Practical Wargaming' a set of wargames rules for World War two games first published in 1970. It was practical because it didn't just give a rule and say do it like that, instead it explained how each rule was formulated and the connections between the rules that went to make a coherent whole. Back in 1968 that was a revelation.
Those rules were not perfect by any means, for a start they only provided statistics for a handful of vehicles and only for 1944-45. The defence values for AFV's were basic and while they worked it was difficult to see how the quoted values were calculated. Equally well the attack value for anti-tank weapons was equally difficult to unravel, but (and it's a big but) they worked because the relationships between the vehicle armour and the AT guns killing power were about right. There are obvious omissions but by and large Grant acknowledged those omissions and left it to the individual to add as much or as little extra as they wanted. Probably the key one is the lack of any spotting rules. A second issue is that fire fights don't pin or suppress targets, Infantrymen are OK or they are not, I suppose the idea was that players themselves would become dubious of advancing into a hail of fire and would create a kind of player driven pinning.
After Battle, I found John Tunstall's Discovering Wargaming which allowed me to put the rest of my Airfix collection to use. That was another primer that explained how the rules worked and it led on to bigger games with larger forces set in earlier periods of history. The rules were a single set that covered everything up to the ACW......one set to rule them all! Despite a growing interest in pre-gunpowder gaming I would still return to Grant's rules from time to time. Over the years I don't think I ever found a set of World War 2 rules that provided as much fun, or were as easy to understand, although to be fair as a 14 year old my standards were probably easily met.
A couple or three years ago I had an urge to scratch the old World War Two itch again but couldn't find a set of rules I liked. I tried the Battlegroup Kursk system which has some interesting ideas but just didn't do it for me. I looked at some free to play stuff, but nothing had the ease of use I was after and eventually I went back to Battle. There is a framework there for a fast play easy to follow game it just lacked breadth of application as it focussed on Europe in the last year of the war . So I decided to update them. Great idea....didn't work! The problem was that the factors given for tanks and AT guns were too limiting to easily allow for expanding the range of vehicles, especially back into the early war years. However I did quite like the roll to hit and roll to see if you kill it system all it needed was a bit more chrome.
After a bit of research I came across two things that really helped, the data charts from 'Firefly Outgunned' and armour data and armour penetration data for most of the AFVs and AT weapons used between 1939 and 1945. With a bit of work I was able to come up with a set of armour penetration charts for a set of ranges from 0-250 meters out to over 2,000 meters. These are based upon the 50% chance of penetration data used in US and UK weapon testing during the war and just afterwards. Adding a pair of opposed D6 rolls gives the potential for plus or minus 0 - 5 so that can add up to 50% greater and 50% lower penetration depth. I added some simple to spot and to hit tables based upon the data on relative target sizes from the Firefly data and with that the tank rules were about done. I tried a very brief play test and I'm happy with the penetration rules but the spotting and to hit factors need to be smoother as currently they slow things down too much.
Infantry rules updates will come next which will be by squads/sections rather than individual figures. I have the basics in my head but need to play test them and write them up. It is going to use factors for each type of weapon to create a fire density for a given range so that a German squad with Mg34s will lay down more fire than say a British squad with only a bren as support. Weight of fire will generate a chance to pin (can't move and fires with a restricted weight of fire), suppressed (can't move or fire) and neutralised (which is a polite way of saying KIA and WIA). The rest will probably be lifted from Grant although Olicanalad over on Olicanalad on artillery has some interesting thoughts on the actual application of indirect artillery fire I may need tosteal I mean borrow.
Watch this space for updates and playtests.
| You wouldn't get away with a cover like that nowadays - far too violent! |
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| Oh the simplicity of the early rule sets These covered Ancients to ACW! |
After Battle, I found John Tunstall's Discovering Wargaming which allowed me to put the rest of my Airfix collection to use. That was another primer that explained how the rules worked and it led on to bigger games with larger forces set in earlier periods of history. The rules were a single set that covered everything up to the ACW......one set to rule them all! Despite a growing interest in pre-gunpowder gaming I would still return to Grant's rules from time to time. Over the years I don't think I ever found a set of World War 2 rules that provided as much fun, or were as easy to understand, although to be fair as a 14 year old my standards were probably easily met.
A couple or three years ago I had an urge to scratch the old World War Two itch again but couldn't find a set of rules I liked. I tried the Battlegroup Kursk system which has some interesting ideas but just didn't do it for me. I looked at some free to play stuff, but nothing had the ease of use I was after and eventually I went back to Battle. There is a framework there for a fast play easy to follow game it just lacked breadth of application as it focussed on Europe in the last year of the war . So I decided to update them. Great idea....didn't work! The problem was that the factors given for tanks and AT guns were too limiting to easily allow for expanding the range of vehicles, especially back into the early war years. However I did quite like the roll to hit and roll to see if you kill it system all it needed was a bit more chrome.
After a bit of research I came across two things that really helped, the data charts from 'Firefly Outgunned' and armour data and armour penetration data for most of the AFVs and AT weapons used between 1939 and 1945. With a bit of work I was able to come up with a set of armour penetration charts for a set of ranges from 0-250 meters out to over 2,000 meters. These are based upon the 50% chance of penetration data used in US and UK weapon testing during the war and just afterwards. Adding a pair of opposed D6 rolls gives the potential for plus or minus 0 - 5 so that can add up to 50% greater and 50% lower penetration depth. I added some simple to spot and to hit tables based upon the data on relative target sizes from the Firefly data and with that the tank rules were about done. I tried a very brief play test and I'm happy with the penetration rules but the spotting and to hit factors need to be smoother as currently they slow things down too much.
Infantry rules updates will come next which will be by squads/sections rather than individual figures. I have the basics in my head but need to play test them and write them up. It is going to use factors for each type of weapon to create a fire density for a given range so that a German squad with Mg34s will lay down more fire than say a British squad with only a bren as support. Weight of fire will generate a chance to pin (can't move and fires with a restricted weight of fire), suppressed (can't move or fire) and neutralised (which is a polite way of saying KIA and WIA). The rest will probably be lifted from Grant although Olicanalad over on Olicanalad on artillery has some interesting thoughts on the actual application of indirect artillery fire I may need to
Watch this space for updates and playtests.
Thursday 9 January 2020
The Pledge
Over on TMP folks are discussing if they have met their pledge in 2019 , or not. Personally I never really understood the concept behind The Pledge or exactly what was being pledged for that matter. Some people take it to mean not buying any more figures until the ones they have are all painted others that you simply have to paint more than you buy so by the year's end the lead/plastic mountain is slightly smaller.
Neither of those really describe my approach, if I had applied the first definition I wouldn't have bought any figures since about 1980! If it’s the second then although I actually have more painted and based figures than I started 2019 with and slightly less unpainted figures I haven't necessarily cleared out the oldest unpainted castings.
The oldest unpainted figures are probably the ones shown below. These are from the old Citadel Range C100 'Spacefarers' I used them for the Traveller RPG. Although most of them are painted there are a handful who never made it to the painting table. These are from one of the Perry twins and are lovely figures for the time and cost the princely sum of 40p each according to a catalogue I found online. I also still have some of their gangsters range from the same period which are still bare metal!
Looking back over the old Citadel Catalogues online I was surprised to find that I still have a fair few of their figures in the collection. The Elenderil figure I posted about last year is one of their early fantasy figures and I have samples of a number of their dark age figures I must have bought either for for use in RPGs or to try out alongside my Hinchcliffe 25mm Late Imperial Romans. For some reason I never actually bought a full army of them though, probably due to a new and expensive hobby that entered my life around that time called parenthood!
Some projects just stalled and I lost enthusiasm for them and never picked it up again or other enthusiasms took over and pushed that project down the priorities list, though the reality is that I'm not so well organised to actually have a list! Others are things I will probably never return to partly because I don't have local players interested enough to want to play the period, the rules or the scale and some I just couldn't get to grips with. Western Gunfight games are one of the ones that I really used to enjoy playing but a lack of anyone else wanting to play the genre pretty much killed the project. Same goes for spaceship to spaceship combat games, although that at least is easier to play solo should the urge take me.
Last year my plan was:
"paint the rest of the Sassanid Persians, finish the Dark Age Britain project and the WW1 dogfight project (rules and models). Then get the Great Civil War in Lancashire campaign into gear. Plus whatever else takes my attention (WoTR in 6mm anyone?)."
I managed to resist the temptation to dive into 6mm WOTR but then again I managed to resist the temptation to actually fully complete any of my ambitions for 2019. I actually did paint up most of the Dark Ages in Britain figures I had to hand apart from a few Welsh and some cavalry who I haven't yet decided on nationalities for, so I'm counting that as a win. The WW1 dogfight rules are about there too and just need me to be disciplined enough to actually sit down and write them up. The rest, well yeah not quite so positive. I abandoned the civil war in Lancashire project for lack of a mechanism for map movement that could reflect the differences in times for moving between locations (AKA too lazy to think about it).
For the coming year I still have some (for some read quite a few) 6mm figures to finish. The painting queue has Early Sassanids as the main item needing finishing followed by early World War 2 British and Germans (who have been sat awaiting attention for about 4 or 5 years now). Also on my to do list for new projects I have an ambition to try Blucher with 3mm figures and need the 6mm figures to complete my Dacians, Picts and Scots Irish. I also want to replace my Irregular Miniatures Late Imperial Roman and Maurikian Byzantines with Baccus figures. The latter will need proxies from other ranges though, Baccus doesn’t do a Byzantine range of any period but I think there are some strong contenders in the Sassanid and late Roman ranges. Ideally I would like to get my 2mm ECW rules finalised and make a start on some fast play WW2 rules for company level. I have never really found any rules that I like for WW2 or at least any that I have enjoyed as much as the old Charles grant set 'Battle'.
I suppose that at some time I shall have to accept that I will struggle to paint all the stuff I have before I get past it and stop buying new figures! But this is not that day.
So that’s my colours nailed to the mast for 2020. Overall it looks like my Pledge for this year involves a buying spree at Vapnartak next month.
Neither of those really describe my approach, if I had applied the first definition I wouldn't have bought any figures since about 1980! If it’s the second then although I actually have more painted and based figures than I started 2019 with and slightly less unpainted figures I haven't necessarily cleared out the oldest unpainted castings.
The oldest unpainted figures are probably the ones shown below. These are from the old Citadel Range C100 'Spacefarers' I used them for the Traveller RPG. Although most of them are painted there are a handful who never made it to the painting table. These are from one of the Perry twins and are lovely figures for the time and cost the princely sum of 40p each according to a catalogue I found online. I also still have some of their gangsters range from the same period which are still bare metal!
 |
| 1980's Citadel spacefarers - I will paint them, eventually! |
Some projects just stalled and I lost enthusiasm for them and never picked it up again or other enthusiasms took over and pushed that project down the priorities list, though the reality is that I'm not so well organised to actually have a list! Others are things I will probably never return to partly because I don't have local players interested enough to want to play the period, the rules or the scale and some I just couldn't get to grips with. Western Gunfight games are one of the ones that I really used to enjoy playing but a lack of anyone else wanting to play the genre pretty much killed the project. Same goes for spaceship to spaceship combat games, although that at least is easier to play solo should the urge take me.
Last year my plan was:
"paint the rest of the Sassanid Persians, finish the Dark Age Britain project and the WW1 dogfight project (rules and models). Then get the Great Civil War in Lancashire campaign into gear. Plus whatever else takes my attention (WoTR in 6mm anyone?)."
I managed to resist the temptation to dive into 6mm WOTR but then again I managed to resist the temptation to actually fully complete any of my ambitions for 2019. I actually did paint up most of the Dark Ages in Britain figures I had to hand apart from a few Welsh and some cavalry who I haven't yet decided on nationalities for, so I'm counting that as a win. The WW1 dogfight rules are about there too and just need me to be disciplined enough to actually sit down and write them up. The rest, well yeah not quite so positive. I abandoned the civil war in Lancashire project for lack of a mechanism for map movement that could reflect the differences in times for moving between locations (AKA too lazy to think about it).
For the coming year I still have some (for some read quite a few) 6mm figures to finish. The painting queue has Early Sassanids as the main item needing finishing followed by early World War 2 British and Germans (who have been sat awaiting attention for about 4 or 5 years now). Also on my to do list for new projects I have an ambition to try Blucher with 3mm figures and need the 6mm figures to complete my Dacians, Picts and Scots Irish. I also want to replace my Irregular Miniatures Late Imperial Roman and Maurikian Byzantines with Baccus figures. The latter will need proxies from other ranges though, Baccus doesn’t do a Byzantine range of any period but I think there are some strong contenders in the Sassanid and late Roman ranges. Ideally I would like to get my 2mm ECW rules finalised and make a start on some fast play WW2 rules for company level. I have never really found any rules that I like for WW2 or at least any that I have enjoyed as much as the old Charles grant set 'Battle'.
I suppose that at some time I shall have to accept that I will struggle to paint all the stuff I have before I get past it and stop buying new figures! But this is not that day.
So that’s my colours nailed to the mast for 2020. Overall it looks like my Pledge for this year involves a buying spree at Vapnartak next month.
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