Triumph!

 

 

 

Above  - glorious Atlantic & Airfix plastic figures, source of many ancient starter armies in the 70's

 

Went to the RAF Wargames Association annual day to play 2 days of Big Triumph, the Triumph ancients rules expanded for larger armies. This was played in 20mm which meant I could get out my old skool Atlantic plastic army, consisting of their Greek, Roman and Trojan sets plus Airfix & Revell Gauls - all modelled as that great "anything goes in it" of Ancient armies, the Carthaginians,.

The scenario was "Africa v Rome" - what would have happened if the African nations united against the Roman boot. This pitted Carthaginian, Numidian and Ptolemaic Egyptian Triumph armies against Roman legions, who also recruited a bunch of Galatian mercenaries for that phalanx cracking task.

Anyway, in an enjoyable series of 3 big games it was Rome 1, Africa 1, Inconclusive draw 1. For the Galatian v Phalanx action, it was 1 - 1. Whoever got the advantage early on won the fight, and getting the advantage early on was also a function of messing up the other sides' advance to contact. 

So, for the Carthaginian general the fiery furnace was avoided for this campaign, and Roman strategy shifted to seducing the Queen of Egypt, which would turn out to be a winner one day. 

The rules are fast play and on the surface very simple, but once the armies are large like the ones  we used, the "simple" game becomes more about anticipation, moving reserves and - as always - throwing better dice when it counts ;)  Net net, a good set of rules for playing the big games we like, we have found time and again that simple fast play rules are the best way of playing large games, the devil moves from the details to the deployment and decisions on the day. 

 

 

Valour & Fortitude Napoleonic Rules

 

 

Action somewhere on the endless Russian steppes!

We've been trying out the Perry Valour & Fortitude rules for our big battle obession, and they work pretty well. They are a 6 page free ruleset and each army also has a 2 page ruleset (see page here). 

This is the entire Austrian Corps in Russia, 1812 fighting equal points of Russians, c 600 points.The armies are built up from battalions / cavalry regiments / gun  batteries, which are then organised into brigades, each brigade has a commander and these brigades are the main operating elements of the game.

We used ground scale at 2/3 the Perry rules scale, it worked well even on the 10 x 6 table we were using.

Because shooting happens before you move, and often you can't move after you shoot, we used cotton wool to represent unts that had shot, which gives the table a realistic-ish look (see pic above). You also need also need battalion casualties, shaken and wavering markers.

Shooting and combat are handled very elegantly, but the game really runs off the morale rules ("Valour" is the degradation of a battalion in action as it moves from fresh to shaken, and "Fortitude" is what the Brigade commander needs as more  of his battalions become shaken. Bad things happen when already shaken battalions are hit again, and wavering brigades have to deal with these new shocks. Units then disappear quite fast, and ditto brigades break and run quickly too. 

The main role of artillery and skirmishers is to degrade units, if you can put a first casualty on a unit it is no longer fresh which impacts its ability to take more shooting, and its melee capability. Small skirmish foot detachments and cavalry vedettes using carbines are also quite useful for this reason, and they are hard to hit but need to be dealt with, wasting time and resource. 

This is great as a big battle ruleset, as individual unit actions are quick to resolve and disappear quite quickly, so it plays well to armies with lots of units on the table. You have to start thinking about reinforcements, about retiring units etc - the battle starts to resemble the books that talk about how senior commanders saw the battles.

Also, little touch - you have to have gun limbers to represent moving/stationary and direction of travel. Just makes the battlefield look more complete.

The game at present only has one general, and he has an influence range of 4' (at 2/3 ground scale) so on a 10 x 6' table we used a simple CiC + Sub Generals structure, each sub General counting as a V&F General, so we could command brigades over the whole table, and we played you just handed over reseve brigades from one general to another as they moved (mainly the cavalry brgades). It worked well, we may make something a bit more structured (maybe handovers need a messenger test) but this level of simplicity sort of fits the high level view of the rules.  

 

Interbellum Wars - Borduria

 слава бордурія ! (Glory to Borduria)

 

Bordurian Interbellum equipment - armour and heavy weapons (still thinking about other camouflage)

The previous post introduced Byzantium in the 1920's and 30's. I realised I needed some imaginary opponents, and the first state that came to mind was Borduria, from the Tintin books.

To those unfamiliar with The Adventures of Tintin, the Balkan state of  Borduria is mentioned in the 1939 book  King Ottokar's Sceptre, ruled by the Fascistic dictator Musstler (I'm sure you can see where that came from). In the The Calculus Affair (1956), Borduria is depicted as a stereotypical Stalinist regime, ruled by Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch - and the symbol of the Kûrvi-Tasch regime is a large moustache. Here is the Bordurian flag of the Tasch Regime:

I wanted my Bordurian imaginary nation to be the Kûrvi-Tasch regime and not the Musstler one as (i) the moustache symbol is a must-have and (ii) because 1930's Russian gear looks far cooler than German. So, obviously at some time in the late 1930's the Musstler regime was overthrown via a Soviet sponsored takeover, and Kûrvi-Tasch was set up in its place. One last thing - Tintin's Borduria seems to wrote in Latin lettering but I want Cyrillic - clearly one of  Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch's crash programs was to go Cyrillic like his masters! So, with that:

To bring Borduria into being in the Balkans required a bit of rejigging of history. Since Byzantium's existence depended on it being formed as a class C mandate in 1919 at the partiale xpense of Yugoslavia, it seemed that one may as well throw the whole Balkan settlement up in the air and delete Yugoslavia before it occurred, and allow Borduria and other imaginary Balkan nations to emerge instead. 

As mentioned in the preceding Byzantium post, one of the issues in the later 1930's was the smaller states getting equipment from major nations, they tended to produce for themselves and their client states. The Soviet Union was no different, but as a Stalinist client state Borduria has no problems getting (fairly) up to date equipment.

Incidentally, for no other reason than one of the other players has a 15mm WW1 Austro Hungarian army to use in this project, it was clear that Austria and Hungary must still be kept together. But Czechoslovakia had to be hived off in order to keep all their arms exports flowing through to Byzantium and other Balkan imagi-nations, ditto all Austria-Hungary's other Balkan possessions had to be confiscated so various other imaginary Balkan nations could emerge. (More on this later, readers of this blog may recall the 1848 independence  struggles of Trans Syldavia......)  

At any rate, for the purposes of Interbellum gaming, Borduria is equipped with all the Russian 1930's stuff I have collected, with the German equipment inherited from the earlier Musstler era (mainly aircraft, infantry weapons and artillery). So in short, Borduria fields:

- Scout / Light Armoured car - Sd Kfz 221

- Heavy armoured car - BA-6 (later 10)

- Light/Cavalry tank - BT-5 (later 7)

- Medium / Infantry tank - T-28

- They also use the German 37mm Pak 30, and the Russian 45mm infantry field gun.

1930's Interbellum Byzantia

 

Above - the emergence of an Imagi-Nation - see text for forces used and why

Some years ago I sketched out Byzantium re-emerging, as a Mandate state after WW1 (see here for the back story). I started building a force for project this in 28mm using Greek Evzone models from Eureka miniatures (and Disney Atlantic tanks of course) but it never really went that far. (Interestingly these Evzones, used as Real Greeks, turned into one of my most played armies because the Evzones look much the same in Balkan Wars, WW1, Russian Civil War and WW2 - and so I have gamed with them across all these periods.)

But now....post Lockdown.one of my clubmates and his son have built 1930's Imagi-Nations in 15mm, so it is time to restart my own project, albeit in 15mm scale. The benefit I am finding is that its cheaper, armies are bigger, and less detail = less work = faster gaming.

In the 1920's there was little appetite for war and most armies had huge stocks of WW1 equipment to work through before there was any justification for bringing in new weaponry. But by the early 1930's the delayed technical advances were coming quickly, and drove a lot of debate and change (and also rate of change meant systems that were a few years old were almost obsolescent and constantly forced new thinking).

However despite the changes there were some standard trends, vehicle types etc that emerged in this period, and general principles in how they are to be used:

The Armoured Fighting Vehicles

Amoured cars - there were "Light" and "Heavy" cars, usually grouped together in Reconnaisance Units

- Light were mainly for scouting and typically caried a machine gun or (later)  a heavy machine gun or anti-tank rifle level main gun. One sub-type of light armoured car is the Scout car, which can also carry a few troops.

- Heavy tended to be better armoured ans carried heavier weapons

Tanks - in this era theer were quite a few tank types. As well as Light, Medium and Heavy tanaks there were also Infantry and Cavalry tanks.

- Light were "scouting" tanks and were typically lightly armed and armoured

- "Cavalry" or cruiser tanks - were fast light tanks, used to outmanouvre eemies and and pursue after the breakthrough, so they should have longer range and carry more fuel and so were bigger than most light tanks 

- Medium were the "battle" tank, they were to destroy any enemy formations. Oddly in the early days they often have general purpose medium calibre howitzers guns but over time they inceasingly have anti ank main guns.

- Heavy tanks are attached to the infantry and help with breaking through enemy formations. They start with carrying large (typically 75mm) howitzers. In WW2 they also start to sport larger anti tanks guns (often repurposed anti aircraft guns)

- "Infantry" tanks' role is to support infanry. Speed is not an issue, so these are typically slow. They are mobile pillboxes. As infantry anti tank capability increases the need for better armour becomes clear. 

One interestng feature of the 1930's is the multi turret tank. There is an idea that tanks (especially infanty tanks) are "landships" and must carry weapons in different turrets. The French Char 2c, British Independet Tank and Russian T-28 and T-35 are the most over the top examples 

Two other AFV systems emerged in this period - tankettes and tank destroyers.

- Tankettes were very popular in the early part of this period, they were seen as either tracked scouting vehicles or infantry supporting mobile MG nests (or both) - is smaller, faster (and cheaper) lower versions of an Infantry tank. They died out as they were typically too lightly armoured when infantry anti tank improved, but the Britsh "Bren carrier" became very succesful in WW2 as it also had a transport capability.(Many tankettes were re-used as trailer or artillery tows)

- Tank Destroyers were lightly armoured tanks, armoured cars and even trucks with larger anti tank guns.

Also, from WW1 days Anti Aircraft trucks were built, and in the 1930's anti aircraft AFVs emerge. built  These were mainly based on existing armoured car or tank hulls. The armoured ones could be used in combat.

 Transport

Trucks are increasingly being used to transport troops and supplies over this period, and some unts have dedicated truck transport. Various fully tracked vehicles are used as artillery tows. 

The Kegresse and "Halftrack" emerge in this period, and are quite popular for a while. The aim is to get tracked vehicle cross country performamce and wheeled vehicle ease/speed of travel. It turns out they also had the maintenance problems of tanks. Some halftracks are also used as armoured cars.

Horses are still fairly common in rear echelon transport and artillery tows.

The Infantry

WW1 saw a number of weapons appear (machine guns, mortars, rifle grenades, light machine guns, submacine guns) that had to be worked into infantry formations. Over time the increasing use of tanks forced the emergence of anti tank infantry weapons (initially large calibre rifles) and anti tank (higher muzzle velocity) guns. 

Structure wise, there was also debate about the traditional "Square" unit (4 platoons, companies etc) vs the triangular (3 platoons, companies etc). Cavalry was still a thing in this period, they had proven very useful in the Russian Civil War, and a horse was still a very effcetive way of moving men or materiel fast in this era. A major problem was how to structure units to integrate tanks (of all sorts), with infantry, cavalry, motor and horse transport. Many counries at this time had structures where the tank units were only integrated with infantry units at a high (typically divisional) level. Some countries just dumped them all in the same Division.

Those that fought in the Spanish Civil War start to understand that integration needs to happen at a lower level, and the Germans had the radical concept of infantry in hafltracks working with the tanks - but this was still not common in 1939

Special forces didn't really exist yet, Mountain Infantry, Marines and the new fangled Parachute troops are the main major specialist formations with their own (typically lighter) equipment. 

Bicycles are used to move infantry and don't require huge logistics effort (fuel/repair), reserve infantry battalions in foot formations were often bicycle troops so they could move fast to where they were needed. Downside is troops are tired after cycling long distances.

Cavalry arguably fight more like mounted infantry so is in effect a type of mobile infantry.

Recconnaisance troops were a specialism, they were usually kept at brigade and divisional level. Non armoured cars, lightly armoured Scout cars and motorcycles are often used by these troops and they are often combined with armoured cars and/or light tanks/tankettes.

Building a Force

We are using O Group battalion level rules for this project, so for my Battalion structure I went for the compromise "3+1" battalion - 3 Infantry Companies and a Heavy Weapons Company with mortar, machine gun and anti tank gun platoons. The rules also are designed for "Reinforced battalions" with a few vehicles etc. 

(Note also these levels of forces can easily step up a level to the Brigade level action using Fistful of ToWs rules for example)

There are 3 cases where a Reinforced Battalion occurs as far as I can see:

(i) "Recce in strength - Infantry company plus some of the Divisional Recce units

(ii) Armour and Infantry working together (oddly enough, in a lot of the 1930's TO&E structures armour and infantry were separated, the German integrated approach was relatively radical.)

(iii) "Reinforced" means having divisional infantry heavy weapons (artillery, anti-tank, machine guns etc added) 

So all that remains is to choose the equipment that you fancy modelling. Rule 1 is they have to have been available pre 1939. Rule 2 is the nation making them had to want to sell them. Rule 3 is they had to be weird /cool looking/weird/interesting:

Update - I have changed the equipment allocation from when I started the project, as I have bought more tanls :D The Russian gear initially cited is now used by Byzantium's hostile Balkan neighbour Borduria (see this post) - this is the New History;

Byzantium is assumed to have mainly bought what was available on the export market. By the late 1930's the major powers are using everything new they build for themselves. 

So I scoured the equipment of other similar smaller nations, and this list below is what Byzantium could arguably have obtained (apart from WW1 and 1920's kit) - whether bought, built (I assume they have some level of technical ability like say Hungary or Rumania) or otherwise attained:

Light Scout car -  The Citroen Kegresse halftrack line was around cince c 1934 and the US White M2A1 scout car came out in 1935 and either could arguably have been copied by a country that wanted something like it. The Czech OA vz. 30 6-wheel light armoured car found its way to a few countries.

Armoured car - The French tried to export the Citroen P-16 halftrack armoured car, and the Swedes exported the Landswerk L-180. A Byzantine own design - based on designs by the Hungarian designer Nicholas Straussner for Hungary (39m Csaba), or maybe designing something like South Africa's Marmon Herrington would be very possible. 

Tankettes ; Everyone bought or modified the British Carden Lloyd, and the Czech AH-1V and Italian L3/33 were exported.

Light tank - Swedish Landsverk L-60 tank (also modified into a Tank Destroyer), Czech LT 35 and Lt 38  (both used by Germans as Pz 35t and Pz 38t respectively) and Soviet T-26 were exported. The UK 6-ton tank was exported widely, Mk VI is a maybe (exported but only to Commonwealth).

Medium Tank - The"light medium" Hotchkiss H-35 or a "true medium" from Czech designs (e.g. Hungarian Turan )

Infantry Tank - Some countries obtained Renault R-35s. I assume Byzantium like many countries could buy WW1 Renault FT tanks that it could upgrade, these were still used as mobile infantry support into WW2.

Heavy Tank- No really heavy infantry tank was exported in this era. Arguably Byzantium could have modified WW1 tanks like the State of Hatay did, or maybe The Old Gang would have been amenable....

A few countries used tankettes or developed them (eg Renault UE Chenillette tractor-tankette) to pull battalion heavy weapons (AT guns etc).

Also some poweful anti tank guns were available to uparmour tanks or use as towed guns (or in tank destroyers) for example the French 25mm, Czech 37mm and 47mm guns were all exported.

Baroque!

The last few months have been enjoyably spent learning Baroque! It's the Renaissance / Pike & Shotte versio of Impetus but is a bit simpler (so faster to play)  and makes for a very enjoyable large game. I was introduced to it by a fellow SLW club member who - as a lockdown project - had built 6mm 1600s era Ottomans and Poles (see pics below), and that set the ball rolling.

Turks v Poles 6mm big battle

Close up - Impetus & Baroque rules use large stands so its easy to construct a complete 6mm battalion on a 15mm scale stand

 

 

Now, as any fule knoes, a 1500's era Renaissance army is just a late Medieval army with some extra (even more gaudily) dressed pikemen and arquebusiers, plus some Reiters with boar-spears and Millers (fully armoured cavalry replacing lances with pistols). I had already converted my Medieval Venetian army to the high Renaissance using this evil trick (plus in 15mm you can't see whether the old school Stradiotti, Elmeti, Leggiera et al are packing pistols between their thighs, so they transform from Medieval to Renaissance without a hitch).

I also have a Medieval Ottoman army,  so for an opponent to Venice I painted up some Janissaries and Balkan bandits with arquebusses. Painting loads more later cavalry also was not necessary - I read that (i) Turkish cavalry were reluctant to let go of their lances till well into the 1600s, and (ii) all those pictures of Spahis in Turbans are largely artists' pictures - when the going got tough, the Spahis put on their helmets. Instantly all my medieval muslim heavy cavalry became Renaissance cavalry (its rude to look between a Turk's thighs to see if those bulges are pistols or not...). 

Below - The Renaissance Turk module being built to attach to my Medieval Muslim Menagerie - Janissaries and Balkan bandits, plus I painted a unit of turban wearing troopers to be easily identified as the Sultan's own Qapukulu guard. Baroque also likes generals to be easily identifiable so the subgenerrls have impressively large flags and the magnificent Sultan has a magnificent flag, base and kettle drummer

 

These "Very Late Medieval" armies are timed to be around mid 1500's AD (i.e. when crossbows are still around, the knights are still in all their plate and finery etc, and billmen still had a job) as we all wanted to field all our Medieval toys. The Baroque rules start at c 1550 AD, and Impetus stops at c 1520 AD, so it was a question of which rules to use for c 1550 Renaissance games. The only solution was to field the same armies in Impetus and Baroque to see which we liked most. First up were my Venetians vs my johnny-built- lately Ottomans.

The Serene Republic and the Sublime Porte scrapping over some Greek island. Turks on the left. Big cavalry battle (bottom of pic, close), Venetian pike moving against the Janissaries cowering in the woods (centre) and out of pic (top) the Stradiots and Akinjis fought with dash and elan to outflank each other.

 

 

Comparing the two rulesets for this "between the wargames rules" period: Impetus handles the earlier weapons much better - if you want to use all the bows, crossbows, infantry pole-arms etc and want all teh detailed differences then use Impetus, as Baroque largely downgrades and abstracts these older weapons. But if you want a faster, less detailed game and use those arquebusses (usually unloved) like a boss, use Baroque.   

A note about bases - Impetus and Baroque use big bases whereas many other rulesets use smaller stands. In 15mm scale the Impetus base is 8 cm frontage, but the Baroque one is 12 cm. That 12 cm is (I think) so players who had existing Pike and Shot armes (typically based in 4cm frontage stands) could easily play Baroque without rebasing. Stands of shot each side of their pike stands is teh standard way of and fielding a pike and shot battalion. 

But in 1550 AD the Pike units still mainly have shot directly in front of the pike, so you can field shot at 8 cm frontage and then pile the pike ranks behind to get that deeep depth. Besides, the bulk of all our 1500's Renaissance armies' troops are drawn from our later Medieval ones, built for 8cm Impetus frontage - and no one was going to to rebase them all!

For what its worth, in both test games the Turks came out the winners, in pretty hard fought encounters - mainly because the Italian plated and plumed knights and "light" cavalry (aka more knights in full plate and plumery, just on unarmoured horses) - the best mercenaries money could buy - performed appallingly badly. The Serene Republic was somewhat fretted!

The best moment, across both games was (I think it was the Baroque game version) when the Turkish Zamburak unit (light guns on camels - who needs a fantasy army!), which had been hopeless in all the games so far, was charged by fierce, rapacious, moustachioed Venetian Stradiots wielding lances, sabres and pistols (you get the picture - dashing film star heroes vs nerdy popgun peddlars) . Clearly the gunners' route to paradise happening in real time. But the gunners finally found their mettle and discharged canisters full of dice pips, blowing the Stradiots off the table - they were probably more surprised than anyone!

But you could see how Turkey loses its "edge" in the Baroque era, as (cheap) infantry with shot starts to fear non-shock bow armed cavalry far less. Also, pike + shot fromations, even this early era version with arquebus, is a step up from the medieval equivalent (you can see why the Turks started to use a lot of battlefield obstructions and artillery in their centres) 

Close up - the real business end of a Renaissance Venetian army - mercenary Pike and Shot in ludicrous clothes and codpieces. Plated & plumed knights are still noble but more marginal. The times they are a changing....

Next up, another of our club members had readied his Hungarians for some Baroque action. Post Mohacs, Hungary had sort of stagnated in this era so doesn't have the amount of firepower of other countries (aka less new stuff to paint to get their Renaissance army going) but they still have a lot of good cavalry.  They and the Ottomans squared up.....

Below: Ottomans to the left,(Janissaries on the hill, left centre). Those Hungarians may be old fashoned but they have a lot of big, nasty blades in the centre - and their shooting also proved to be annoyingly good - and did I mention a lot of good cavalry. This time, the Hungarian noble knights (a cut above the Venetian mercenary ones ) turned the game by crashing through the Turkish Spahis (see top left corner of pic - those are Hungarian knights in hot pursuit of fleeing Turks).

 

In conclusion, Baroque is a great fun as a ruleset, good for doing quite big games, but it's more aimed at the post bow-and-bill Renaissance armies

Other players are readying their French and Spanish armies for more 1500's Renaissance battles. My next project is to build a few bitz to push my Ottomans to c 1650 (hanging onto those lances and helmets...) to take on my French....

 

Modern Chinese Marines

Another Lockdown project, but yet to see the table....Modern Chinese Naval Infantry / Marines. When I saw the blue camouflage the Chinese were using I decided I didn't care if it was for show, I neeeeded an army painted like that as all my other Cold War/Modern armies are somewhere on the dirty green / muddy brown (or both) spectrum. 

When I saw Heroics & Ros did their amphibious landing craft/troop carrier the deal was sealed. All I had to do was work out how to render it. I wound up using medium and thin nib paint-pens (from China, natch) and it worked out quite nicely. (Based for FFOT, still deciding on whether to base for beach or more inland, I think the beach sand colour sets them off very well though.)

Another bonus - the colours and model size/shape in 6mm works for 40K Epic, I'm working on the Dreadnoughts, attack bikes and Terminators next...

The Cthall of Cthulhu

During the various Lockdowns, like most gamers I did quite a lot of projects I otherwise wouldn't have had time to do, and this past summer some of these outfits were fielded in real games with actual opponents! 

One I built from Cthulhu Wars figures, its a boardgame using models. I loved the models when I saw them and Lockdown was the opportunity to build an outfit with them. They were built to play Kings of War ( KoW), a Fantasy wargame ruleset that's more "beers and pretzel" than Warhammer (but being simpler and faster to play means larger armies!) as well as other games that could do with Bad Monsters. 

Anyway, there is no "Cthulhu" army list in KoW but the "Forces of the Abyss" list is a relatively easy convert. My Abyss is just a lot wetter....instead of fiery Balrogs think fishy Behemoths and lots of tentacles

Here is Ole Cthulhu himself getting painted. The models are single colour plastic, I mainly used inks/washes on the base colour though I had to paint the bases (eg Cthulhu's rock here) and some other parts. I hope I have done a reasonable job with them.

And there are many various minor monsters in the Cthulhu Mythos, and a big battle game like KoW lets you go to town - here are Mi-Go (red, holding human brains in their pincers), a Hunting Horror (purple), and some dark grey Shoggoths. 

 

 And here are some Cthool Ctholourful Cthultists in production.....

 

There are Star-spawn, floating in the sky, they'd like to come and meet you, they want to eat your mind..... 

And finally, First Game against my friend's Wood Elves (likewise a Lockdown project). I added Mantic Fishmen and Games Workshop Skinks as Deep Ones (aka low grade warriors/fish dinners in the Cthulhuverse). Still thinking about how best to base the figures when they have to play as mass units but you also want individual models for other games.

....and I mentioned Big Games - Here is Cthulhu + Ogres vs. Undead  + Wood Elves - played outside. Al Fresco Gaming is so Covid.

Its good to be gaming vs real people again...