2mm ACW - Pictures or it didn’t happen

There was one important photo missed from the last post,  an actual picture of the Army of Northern Virginia as it currently stands.  So here it is.

Bobby Lee's finest

The Confederate army currently consists of 39 brigades of infantry, two generals, one HQ and one battery of artillery.  That leaves me 13 batteries of artillery, seven cavalry brigades, two generals and three HQs to make.

The Army of the Potomac is also coming along nicely. I have 31 infantry brigades finished with a further eight in progress,  one cavalry brigade , one artillery battery, one general and three HQ's are also finished.  Billy Yank's infantry take slightly longer to make than Johnny Reb's as they have two flags per regiment rather than one and the flags are the slowest part of the process.  I have the models for two more batteries of artillery but these are 'unassigned' at the moment.  I think I'm gonna need a bigger storage solution!

2mm ACW - Army of Northern Virginia infantry

This post is one of pure self-congratulation as I have now made and based all the infantry required for the Army of Northern Virginia for Gettysburg. That OOB has the most Confederate infantry stands of any of the Altar of Freedom scenarios for Eastern or Western Theatres, a total of 39 brigade bases. My order from Warbases arrived on Saturday so I have all the bases I am going to need for the rest of the project and as a bonus Mrs E and our guests went out to a Jubilee tea party so I was able to get a coat spray paint on them (The bases not Mrs E and guests).

I am reorganising the artillery onto bigger bases so that they have a more accurate frontage.  Altar of Freedom has an optional rule which puts artillery onto 60 x 60 mm bases rather than the standard 30 x 30.  I have split the difference and put three guns and limbers onto a 60 x 30.  That is because I forgot to order 60 x 60 and got extra 60 x 30 instead...DOH!  Still as the standard base is only 30mm deep I can live with that and I have the optional frontage right!  It will not really make any difference as I am building both sides of this conflict.

The standard bases are 30 x 30mm this is 60 x 30 mm

The next thing to do is finish the Army of the Potomac's infantry, then buy the necessary extra artillery, generals and HQ tentage castings.  Those will be from Irregular Miniatures but i will probably not purchase these until later in the summer.  All in including bases I estimate the two full armies will cost no more than £65 and that gives me enough units to fight any action of the war, East or West.  Terrain items will increase that a bit, but those can be used for other periods as well so I'm not counting that cost.  If Mrs E asks I scratch made everything so it was all free!

When a real war lands on your doorstep

Mrs E and I picked up our Ukranian guests from the airport on Wednesday afternoon.  A lovely lady and her young son.  Her husband has stayed on in Ukraine.  While outwardly fairly settled and calm they have been through artillery barrages and air raids from day one.   She explained to Mrs E that the first time the air raid sirens sounded no one knew what to expect was it bombs, missiles a chemical attack or something worse.  People went out onto the streets as they were unsure if being outside was safer than being indoors.  To make matters worse she had broken her lower leg a week before the invasion and it was plated and pinned when she was trying to leave the country.  She had to go through the chaos of evacuation while still pinned and had to remove the external screws herself while in Bulgaria waiting for a UK visa.  She faces a further operation to remove internal plates and screws which must be done before the end of September.  I can't conceive of how worried she must be just about that aspect, but she also has the fear of what happens to her husband back in Ukraine and how her son is going to cope in a strange country, all while having no English (she is learning on the hoof as it were).  In fact we are learning on the hoof Mrs E and I are attempting some Russian and we are all learning the different ways we do things during the day.

That's how my tongue feels trying Russian

Here is the real killer.  The family primarily speak Russian because they are from a Russian speaking part of the country so they are considered as ethnic Russians by Putin as she was born in the old USSR (you know the ones he is 'rescuing' from Nazi oppression), but still she has been bombed and shelled by her Russian 'liberators'.   She cried to my wife while trying to explain how things are in her home town now and what they went through to escape.  All she wants is for the Russian army to go home and for things to be as they were before the invasion.  She doesn't now what her future will be, if she will be able to go home, if there will be a home to go back to even, or what she will do to support herself here.  She is well educated and had a thriving business before this all started and now all she has in the UK is a single case of clothes.  She has just said that she cannot understand how this can happen in the 21st Century or what will stop Russia from moving on to more countries.  Her view is that Putin wants everyone to be afraid of him and to do as he says, even Russian citizens.

Putin's definition of a Nazi is different from that of a Fascist (another term the Russians are fond of bandying about).  A Nazi to Putin is anyone who believes that  Ukraine exists as a separate state rather than as a break away region of Mother Russia!  If you self identify as Ukrainian then by definition you are a Nazi.   I'm so glad he has cleared that up.  Here was me thinking they were a bunch of rabid racists obsessed with purifying the world of non aryan peoples lead by a demented little man with a toothbrush moustache.  Clearly I have had it all wrong (hint for any AI algorithms checking this page - this is sarcasm).

Please spare a thought for those refugees who are still seeking a safe haven.  Our guests are safe and warm with a roof over their heads and food on the table, but others are not so lucky.  If you have read this far please can I ask that you consider a donation to any of the charities supporting Ukranian refugees or to the International Red Cross.

Rules ideas - when is enough 'enough'

Or to put it more clearly when do battlefield combat formations become unable to stand in the line of battle?  As wargamers knowing when a unit is done it is one of the central measures of whether we have won or lost a game.  Most modern analysis on how long a unit might continue in combat focus on the percentage of casualties suffered and the consensus is that other than in unusual circumstances most units are done somewhere between 20% - 30% casualties.  I suspect that this focus on casualties is because it is a measurable metric.  It is also accepted that a the specific level of casualties is masking the impact that other factors have on a unit's willingness to continue in combat.  Things like level of fatigue, hunger, weather conditions, terrain, unit cohesion and leadership.

Historically rule sets have often used figure removal as a marker of a unit's decline in effectiveness (WRG ancients for example).  In such rules a unit's effect on the enemy is based on a weapon factor multiplied by the number of figures able to fight.  So reducing figure counts makes a unit less effective.  When a unit gets to a set number of figures lost a reaction test is carried out, for example in WRG 4th Edition (pulled at random off the shelf) that trigger point is 50%.  The likelihood of a unit breaking is greater the lower the morale class of the unit is there is a reduction from the dice roll for each 20% of figures lost.  A nice simple trigger and easy to remember during a game BUT it can lead to units fighting on with possibly unrealistic casualties and other factors.  There are other triggers such as taking a high number of casualties in a single turn but the preset percentage is the one where a unit is almost certain to break.

The last stand at Gandamuck 1842; but how common were they?

Yet in reality history is littered with famous last stands, some of these are statistical outliers (although that's an insult to those brave souls who fought in them) others represent situations where a unit has no  choice but to fight on as surrender means death for them or for others.  This is a situation described by Sun Tzu who tells us to always leave a defeated enemy an avenue of escape so they will flee rather than fighting to the last man.  

So how do rules writers cover this situation?  The issue is that we are modelling the effect of combat on human beings and we are all individuals (a little voice should now be shouting "I'm not" from your memories of 'Life of Brian') and while we become more predictable in larger groups we are still not clones who will react the same way to the same circumstances every time.  To be honest I'm not even sure that clones would be so predictable but lets leave nature v nurture for another day.

If we want to model the factors which create the situation where a combat unit become 'combat ineffective' then what should we be looking at and how should we model it in rules?  This is probably a good time to admit that I don't really know the answer.  I have some thoughts but no certainties.  What I think impacts the outcome should be (and bear in mind I'm primarily considering periods before  1750AD or so) are:

• Units degrade in fighting ability over time.  I have read that 20 minutes is about the limit before individual soldiers are mentally and physically exhausted and need to be pulled out of a fight.
• The level of training, morale and combat experience have an impact on their ability to continue.
• Higher levels of casualties are going to reduce the time a unit has in combat.
• Good command and control will have some effect on keeping troops motivated to fight.
• Other environmental factors do play a part.

Trying to build all of those factors into some kind of test is going to be difficult and lead to lots of dice modifiers.  The question becomes do you want long detailed tests or a quick and easy result.  That in turn depends on the kind of game you want to play and the command level you are playing at.  Equally the level the player is handling in the chain of command and the nature of the figure basing is going to play a role.  A set of rules where one base is a regiment will need different mechanisms than one where each figure is one man and the 'army' represents a squad.

The options are endless!  For example I could see a viable solo game where the player is a company or platoon commander managing his unit, with the enemy and the environment being handled by a solo mechanism to create changes to the situation that the player has to deal with.  It wouldn't even need toy soldiers on a table it could be handled with markers on various morale tracks. Covering casualties, supply, hunger and thirst, fatigue, combat stress, belief in cause, support for commander, support for the rest of the combat team etc.  The player would have tools available like sending hot food forward, rotating squads or sections (or maniples or centuries), evacuating casualties, resupply of ammunition and similar things to bolster the will to stick with it.  On the other hand at a higher level of command you leave that stuff to the officers on the ground and concentrate on the big picture.  Which is perhaps where the US obsession with body counts in Viet Nam arose.

In my latest home brew rules I have chosen to ignore body counts altogether in favour of tracking the overall willingness to continue in combat.  Units have an initial combat effectiveness rating that degrades during combat due to a number of factors (and one does sort of measure the level of casualties) but the unit never gets any smaller.  In part this is based on the concept of the most of the killing being done by a very small percentage of the soldiers with the rest just going through the motions and not really trying to harm their fellow man.  I make shooting far less impactful on a unit's state than hand to hand combat where both sides can go to pieces very quickly, As I consider close combat is going to take a toll not only on the person being injured but also on the person doing that (unless they are a psychopath and they don't tend to make good soldiers).

So this has been a post on rules ideas without a hard and fast rules suggestions, rather I have a question for you.  How do you want rules to model this do you prefer detail or a more abstracted system?  Is there a  point in the size of the game where you preference changes?  do you see differences in treatment as vital for different historical periods?  Answers on a postcard to the comment section!

Moving on apace - 2mm ACW and a little rock music

 Or should that be moving on at the double quick time?

Rebasing from card to MDF is now completed (phew) with the exception of the artillery which is a minor task by comparison.  So I have moved onto adding new infantry brigade bases with the ultimate aim of having the right number of bases to field both sides for Gettysburg (Yes, I know that my megalomania is showing again!).  I have settled into a simple production line system working in batches.  This means I cut a lot of matchsticks to length, move onto assembling that batch, then basing them and last is adding the flags.

Tiny flags you don't have to be nuts but...

The trickiest part of the process is the last, the flags, one for each Confederate unit but two for each Federal one, so either four or eight on each base as I'm doing four regiments per brigade base. I have made them way over sized as I need to be able to handle them and after all the work printing cutting, shaping and gluing it's nice for them to be noticeable. It does make a real difference to the bases though as it makes them come 'alive'. So far so cheap (other than the cost of bases) but before long I will have to bite the bullet and spend money on extra bases and those items where I use Irregular Miniature castings! It's still not a huge outlay though compared to even 6mm projects.

The flags add some movement to the static lines of troops

To help with the tedium of multiple repeats of a single process I have fired up Spotify on the PC and have been working through the back catalogues of some bands I haven't listened to for a while (in some cases for a VERY long while) and catching up on stuff I missed first time around.  I was an early convert to 'art rock' in the1970's and that brought me to the band 'Deaf School'.  I was lucky enough to see them live in  back in 1976 touring their first album which incidentally is a real gem.  It's a quirky mix of rock, cabaret and glam rock stylings with some clever lyrics.  I am currently listening to some of their later albums that I missed out on when they reformed after a long break.  Coincidentally their original drummer was born in my home town a couple of years before I was.

This is the first album and its a cracking listen

I also have found my Father's wartime photo albums from his time on HMS Chaser (a US built escort carrier).  He served from 1942 to the end of the war in the Far East. So a new project is born scanning the prints to obtain digital versions that I can make available to anyone who is interested.  More on that in due course.

 

Hitting 65,000 page views

 Just a very quick post to say thank you to my reading public for clocking up 65,000 page views.  If there is anything you would like me to cover (within decency and reason 😄) let me know and I will see what I can do.  

The painting table - May 2022

My painting table is unusually crowded at the moment.  Mainly this is due to the 2mm ACW production line.  On the table are bases that just need the bases a dry brushing in green so they will be out of the way PDQ.  Towards the top right are a couple of 2mm artillery bases but I can't rebase these until more MDF bases arrive in the relevant size

There are also some Brigade Models small scale scenery buildings from their Medieval and ACW ranges and some 6mm Hun Light cavalry, from both Irregular and Baccus. The later have been waiting on my attention for quite a while now!  There are also a few bits n bobs awaiting repurposing for my 6mm ancient armies and a small number of O8 3mm armoured vehicles for the 1980's cold war gone hot games.

The current state of play

I'm going to try to make inroads into these before I post a June painting table update, well it would be embarrassing to keep posting the same picture wouldn't it!  Lot's to do and so little time to do it so if I don't make progress feel free to nag at me!