Stalingrad Redux

A while ago we decided to do a Chain of Command Stalingrad Campaign. It went really quite well but broke down when our platoons were "non combat effective" (as Holly said, They're dead Dave). In some ways this was a very successful campaign with a historically accurate result. Battles in urban areas were ridiculously bloody, (They're all dead Dave) and we burned through the reserves and reinforcements in a couple of games. The result was that after a while our units became more and more static - we could reasonably expect to hold our positions but had no chance of expanding them. Those that were still breathing that is. It was an interesting lesson.

We had decided to do it again - but this time with some changes to learn the lessons from our previous experience - and then the lock down began (!)

Anyway I thought I would share our cunning plan, just in case anyone else feels the need. We will be using the campaign rules from "The Sharp End" campaign system from Two Fat Lardies . This is really, really the best buy you can get for a tenner, even if you don't play Chain of Command. Seriously, if you play any WW2 set of rules, Bolt Action, Disposable Heroes whatever, just pick them up here from Two Fat Lardies store. They're full of great ideas that will easily transfer to your favourite system. Do yourself a favour - buy them.

Ours will be a ladder campaign, based on a vaguely historical series of locations \ events rearranged in a more Hollywood sequence, with the results of each battle dictating when and where the next game will happen. If the attackers win they will push through to the next "rung" on the ladder, and if they lose they can be pushed back. The campaign will end with either the Germans capturing the banks of the Volga or being thrown back past the city outskirts. Or everyone dying. My money is on the latter tbh.....

Anyway - Stalingrad 5 step ladder campaign – thoughts & suggestions

Campaign Zones as follows – each would be a different scenario\play style

1. Outskirts (Soviet Campaign Objective- campaign start)
2. Train yards and factory
3. Fallen Heroes Square inc railway station
4. Workers Housing \ Pavlov's House
5. Oil tanks and the Volga bank (German Campaign Objective)

Suggested Terrain. We've raided our terrain boxes and also the local club and we are planning the following:

1. Outskirts – Mostly wooden buildings \ burned out small houses with fences etc. Looking at photos these are arranged in fenced off blocks so table should have 4 – 6 blocks each of a couple of houses plus sheds etc. Paul has printed some burned down shacks with only the chimney remaining. We have about a dozen, plus a sawmill and similar, so we can cover a table with suitable bits.

2. Train Yards and Factory area. Large industrial buildings separated by large open areas with lots of blocking terrain.

3. Fallen Heroes Square. A public square surrounded by ruined buildings with a central open area. The square can contain wrecks, fountains, statues etc for cover. I have a 1:48 He111 that I built and chopped up - details here: crashed He 111 . Paul has also printed the railway station building - it's a burned out shell, but fits our requirements perfectly. This will be our neutral table - the mid point of the campaign.

4. Workers Housing – Larger ruins of workers housing with wide streets between them. Paul has a rather ambitious plan to print Pavlov's House, which will fill the centre of a 6x4 quite easily. Looking at the photos and the maps (Island of Fire by Jason D Mark has some amazing maps) there is an awful lot of space around the individual blocks so this could be a bit "interesting" with lots of trenches around the table edges.

5. The Volga Banks. Oil tanks, pump houses and pipes, plus some smaller industrial \ warehouse style buildings. Of the Germans can take this area they will have reached the Volga and cut off the Soviets in the city. The oil tanks are now going to be my Covid terrain project. I've been watching The World at War episode on Stalingrad and in addition to some film of an Ampulomet in action, there's also some pics of troops moving around the collapsed oil tanks - I think I can build them using some plastic paint buckets and chop them down. These have several terrain opportunities as they cover a fair chunk of the table at minimal cost. Possibly. Watch this space.

All areas should have plenty of appropriate scatter terrain – whatever we can grab as available but lots of shell holes, barricades etc.

Forces. To avoid the premature end of the campaign (They're all dead Dave) we're going to give each player 2 platoons, and allow them to swap them around on a scenario by scenario basis. Progression up and down the ladder will be based on aggregate results. To give the Germans an advantage initially, to get them into the city, the Soviets will have to keep the same platoon in the front line 'til the third game. Soviets will only get reinforcements once the game gets past the middle of the campaign, Germans will only get them up to that point.

I'll go into the lists we're using next time........

The Rotterdam Project Part 4 - Concrete

A major part of my cunning plan to stop Army Group B will be some fixed defenses and fortifications - or Kazemats in Dutch.

These will consist of a weapon bunker and a squad bunker (both concrete), a road block, and a couple of minefields and wire entanglements which I'll hopefully get finished soon.

The weapon bunker is an easy one - my mate Paul (with the 3d printer) has found a .stl of a Dutch B Type HMG \ ATG bunker and kindly printed it off. The print went a bit off with the roof but I judged it recoverable = beggars cant be choosers and all that. Here it is after a coat of paint.

The second emplacement is larger as it needs to hold either 2 teams \ weapons or a squad. This one is "home made" from pink foam based on a S Type bunker in the Peel-Raam line I found some plans for.

Both are a bit tall - a result of the real things being buried at least partly underground, but we cant really do that on our tables and reducing the height to represent that makes the rear doors look daft so I'm just going to have to live with tall bunkers.

Roadblock, mines and wire to follow........

Is 20mm the unloved ginger child of WW2 Wargaming?

This is for Mark really, but I think it may be interesting to see what others think.

I started wargaming in 20mm. I think that is true for most of us who grew up in the 70s and early 80s in the UK. It is almost impossible to explain just how limited your options were as a wargamer in those days. Initially it was just one word. Airfix

I know there were other manufacturers out there making metal models, but if you were like me a young lad the chance of ever discovering them was slim, and even if you were aware you still needed to write and send a self addressed envelope (and possibly a postal order) to get a typed and un-illustrated catalogue. Luckily we had Airfix, and it was available in just about every newsagent and toy shop in the country.

Airfix were the main supporter of my wargaming from the start. That meant for most "periods" their soft plastic 20mm (1:76) figures or polystyrene kits, supported by their rule books initially loaned from the library and illicitly photocopied.

WW2 was the big interest for me. After all the war ended only 30 years before and we all had family members who had taken part. It was possible to play other periods of course, and the idea of fighting Agincourt using just the figures available in the two "Robin Hood" boxes must have occurred,  but the main arena was WW2. Choice was, well, limited. Airfix had a vast breadth of range, but it did lack depth. Germans could happily fill their order of battle with Panzer IVs, Panthers and Tigers, and the ubiquitous German Recce set provided a Kubel and 222, but that was about it. Similarly the Brits could get their hands on a Churchill, Sherman, Crusader and Matilda. This made for exciting times if you were so inclined, trying to convert a passable Cromwell out of plasticard and the wheels from a Crusader etc. Later, Matchbox joined the fray, adding such much needed kits as a Panzer II and III, and a Sherman Firefly. All of this was in what we now call 20mm, and as a WW2 wargamer there was nothing to compete.

But today 20mm is rapidly shrinking into the shadows. Initially 15mm, then more recently 28mm have dominated WW2 gaming. 20mm still survives, but it is no longer the first choice for me and many others, so why is that?

Firstly I should say in many ways it IS the logical scale of choice for some games. Availability of cheap plastic kits in an amazing variety, some, such as those by Dragon are available painted to a standard most of us could only dream of. Figures have also come a long way, and figures by companies such as AB are frankly streets ahead of most of their 28mm rivals in terms of detail and animation. Range is also very comprehensive. In 28mm I only know of one manufacturer makes Belgian infantry, not so in 20mm. Try finding a Sdkfz 132 Marder II in 28mm, no problem in 20mm. Price is also VERY alluring - 20mm kits being equivalently priced to 15mm ones, and usually a fraction of a 28mm one.

The problem is the tyranny of the masses. 15mm has blossomed with popular rules like Flames of War rapidly dominating the market at the "Company" level of gaming. 28mm has followed suit at "Platoon" level even if Bolt Action has a very suspect concept of what a Platoon actually was. What that means is that if you want to play a WW2 game, those scales are where you will have the best chance of finding an opponent. And that, sadly, is a fairly huge factor. OK if your club or group want to either stick with 20mm or start afresh, but once you are in, you are committing to a very fixed group, and if, as often happens, you fall out or move on, then you may end up trying to play solo.

I would also add I like 28mm as a scale to paint. As I grow older I can no longer conceive of painting some of the smaller scales to a standard I would be happy with. That may not include 20mm yet, but it is getting there. And then there is the spectacle. a Tiger in 28mm is quite a lump of eye candy in a way 20mm cant quite manage.

And of course, once you commit to 28mm, it makes little sense to play other scales for similar projects. I'm excited at the soon to be released Chain of Command Fall of France expansion. If I were starting from scratch I may conciser 20mm, (edit - I originally typed 28mm instead of 20mm) but I'm not. I already have quite a bit of 28mm kit that will port over, and a group who prefer to play in 28mm (and another local group who would look puzzled at the thought of playing in 20mm).

So that is why, with some sadness, I wont be starting 20mm again. Sorry Mark, it just does not make sense to me, but I understand why you make the suggestion.

Comments please - let's try and discuss

Stalingrad Campaign - Day 2, into the Kill House and thoughts on Chain of Command

It was my turn this week to try to push the Russian patrols out of Fallen Heroes Square using Chain of Command (CoC).

I won't go into a blow by blow after action report for a couple of reasons. The main one is that we at the Old Codgers Gaming Club (OCGC) have four members and three of us have Blogs, so it seems a good idea to take it in turns to run the battle reports when the others are playing. This division of labour should mean we are free to play and enjoy the game without the constant urge to take photos and make notes. In theory at least. Day 2 s patrol action is covered on Andy's Blog which can be found here

https://rangoruk.blogspot.com/

Mark will also be covering this too - but he is a bit partisan so take what he says with a pinch of salt!

http://exiledfog.blogspot.com/

I can give a quick run down on "the cunning plan" which was to push forward with only 3 patrol markers right up the centre of the table to try and gain some advanced Jump Off Points (JOPS) then just kick the Soviets out by brute force in close assaults with our "HandGranaten!" tactics before their numerical advantage kicked in. It sort of worked. My Pioneers are rated Elite so they can deploy further forward than Regulars, and they're better in close assaults and slightly less likely to be hit by small arms fire. We managed to grab one building but the fighting in and around it was fierce and casualties were very heavy on both sides. The Soviets withdrew, handing a somewhat Pyrrhic victory to the Germans. It was an interesting game but it showed up our "ring rustiness" with the CoC rules - we made several slips, but they probably evened out so no real damage done.

What it also did was make me think of why I like Chain so much (see - I nearly typed something else there). I think it comes down to something I had not really thought about before - pressure to be competent. Unlike any other set of WW2 rules I have played CoC rewards competence and punishes incompetence with usually equal measure. Because the games are brutal and unforgiving if you screw up you only have yourself to blame. In a campaign setting that is even more apparent. I'm really enjoying our campaign, but the pressure really is on.

Obergefreiter Michael Baumbach will not be returning to Ausburg

Day 3 will be a German attempt to probe the Soviet lines in preparation for the main assault.

Stalingrad Campaign Phase 1 Day 1 Part 1 - Ok not THE Fallen Heroes Square - A Fallen Heroes Square

We finally kicked off our Chain of Command Stalingrad Campaign last week. It has been about 8 months in the preparation, building forces and terrain - and we are probably 4 months behind schedule and still not ready - which is not bad going considering the OCGCs (Old Codgers Gaming Club) previous efforts.

First crack went to Paul D commanding a German Panzer Pioneer Platoon, opposed by Andy P with his Soviet infantry.

We were playing the initial Patrol \ Encounter scenario, which will determine for now who has the campaign initiative.

The table was set us as a 4x4 at Asgard Wargames, which is convenient for us all and has plenty of space.

So here is the table after the Patrol Phase. As you can see, the front line has skewed slightly, running roughly across the diagonal of the table.

Before we go further I should explain a couple of points.

Firstly the pics are in monochrome. This is because my photography skills are challenged and I was using my phone rather than my proper camera. This helps disguise my pathetic lack of understanding of such things as lighting and exposure. I also like the effect, which looks "cool". Lastly it helps hide the fact we still have not finished all the terrain......

Secondly we are using the Haus \ Dom system to identify buildings. This is pretty authentic. Both sides in the battle adopted a quick code to identify buildings on maps of Stalingrad. On the Soviet side few of the defenders had local knowledge, so saying "the enemy is massing near 15 Lenin Prospect" was not going to help, and the Germans were resorting to trying to identify landmarks by interrogating prisoners in a foreign language, which lead to all sorts of confusion. Both sides therefore settled on a system of numbering buildings sequentially - the Germans using "Haus", the Soviets "Dom" (both meaning house) followed by a number. There is a great diagram of this in Jason D Mark's epic history of the battle in the Barrikady "Island of Fire" if you can get a copy - brilliant book, highly recommended!

This resulted in the Sovs placing their Jump Off Points (JOPs) in the trenches between Dom 3 & 4 and the corner house Dom 1.

The Germans had pushed forward with their JOPs in Haus 2 & 4 and the trenches next to the downed HE111 between Haus 4 and Dom 1.

  Deployment and first turns next

What a Tanker! Lardies on target (again)

So I mentioned in my last post the arrival of Blood Red Skies, which I am really loving. However almost at the same time The Two Fat Lardies unveiled a set of rules that have challenged BRS for my attention - What a Tanker!.

As I understand it WAT is one of Lardy Nick's creations. It is a deceptively simple but elegant game about the trials and tribulations of commanding a tank in WW2. At its most basic each turn the player rolls a "hand" of dice (d6) and can then use the results to fight his tank. Any 1s are "Drive" dice, allowing movement and manouvre, 2s are "Acquire"- it finding a target, 3s Aim, 4s shoot, 5 load and 6s are wildcards that can be used as any other dice. You can play the dice in any order, but you must obviously acquire a target before you aim, and then you must be loaded before you shoot. Dead simple. And so easy to screw up! And that's it in a nutshell. Actually it is a bit more complicated than that, and quite a bit more nuanced, but on the back of a postcard that sums it up.

So now to the nuances. The Drive result can be used to move forward 2D6 (inches), or reverse 1 D6, or pivot on the spot and move 1D6. Crossing an obstacle such as a wall costs a whole Drive dice. Damage reduces the result of each drive dice rolled etc etc. The other results are similarly variable depending on circumstances and vehicle.

What could possibly go wrong? Well it seems quite a lot :-) In addition to the total F**kwit moments all players have naturally when you make a stupid decision, in the heat of combat your gunner may fail to see that size of a house Tiger (no 3s or 6s) or you loader may fumble the loading of his shell at the wrong moment (no 5s). That means you have to think fast and improvise. You can set up a good shot and take care, but you can never guarantee the result. It makes for a superb, fun, tense game.

There are also some equipment options - Fast tanks can automatically turn 1 dice into Drive Dice, Tank Destroyers have advantages acquiring targets etc. There are also some clear omissions - no penalties for 2 man turrets for instance. I was speaking to Richard Clark about this and he said they had a whole raft of "historical" modifications built in to an earlier version, but they decided to remove them as they didnt add that much and the added complication reduced the fun. It's a valid point, though rivet counters like me are probably going to tinker.

I mentioned fun. Oh yes. This game is perfect for a group of players to grab a tank each and get stuck in. There are career modes, where if you survive and take out enough enemy vehicles you can progress to a better tank, or you can stay in your (t)rusty old steel beast and be an Ace tanker, gaining bonuses to your skills. There is also a points system to allow you to build scenarios or balance sides.

Spring is here! April excitement, Salute, plans and plots

April in the UK is great. Spring is here, beautiful crisp sunny mornings (between about 9.02 and 9:30 am), flowers appear, lots of daffodils, and for the wargaming community, we all come out of hibernation to sniff the fresh air, soak up the sunshine, and for Salute, this year held on April 14th at the ExCel.

Salute remains wargamings big UK event. VERY big. I've a love\hate relationship with Salute. In the past I've had a mixed day at Salute - sometimes it can be overwhelming and for me it is a long haul - 260 miles each way and no change out of 4 and a half hours drive, plus another hour in the queue. I've been a couple of times by train and last year the luxury of a car share where I got to be the passenger all the way both ways. This year I'm "designated driver" but we've wangled some accommodation so the cunning plan is to cruise down Friday then Tube \ DLR to the ExCel. It can be a pain getting in but once you get in however, well, you get to feel the love :-).

This year I'm helping demo Dropfleet Commander at the TT Combat DZC pitch, alongside Emily K who is demoing Dropzone Commander. I'm looking forward to this as it will be the first chance to meet the new TT Combat DZC\DFC team and chat about "the future" after they took over Hawk Wargames. Additionally there will be the "show specials" available, plus hopefully the new Dropfleet Destroyers on sale for the first time. That could be expensive :-(

But there's more! Rather a lot of companies use Salute as a showcase and launch games to coincide. This year there are two games I am really looking forward to playing -  "What a Tanker" from Two Fat Lardies, and (no surprise) Blood Red Skies from Warlord Games. WAT has a release date of 9th April but Rich (the Lard Meister) is running a "rolling" demo game where you can just turn up, drive a tank around to get a feel for the game mechanics, have fun, then probably blow up!

Blood Red Skies isn't due for release until mid May but customers who pre ordered (err me !) will get theirs a month before or can arrange to pick up at Salute - there's a link here if you want to do that - and if you have not pre ordered if you are quick you may still get one. Warlord are planning to have a limited supply available at Salute, and they're running a stunning demo with a 1:200 scale attack on the USS Hornet which should be spectacular.

And then there's the other stuff that you just run across when you are wandering (assuming I can escape the stand for a while).

So it is looking like a rather busy April, and I'm really looking forward to these new games landing.

On the subject of Sporing and Spring Cleaning I've done a bit of tidying up here on the Blog, a couple of layout changes, and importantly a nice, shiny new "follow" button which for some reason (probably my incomprehension) should have been there all along but wasn't. It's over here somewhere near the top ================================>>>>>>>>>
Please click it - not only will you get notifications on any updates here but you will also (probably) get a nice warm feeling from knowing you are making a curmudgeonly old gamer a bit happier. Thanks :-)

Spirit and Energy Part 1 An unorthodox campaign for Sharp Practice 2

I've been trying for a while now to get my teeth into a longer term project, and hopefully I may have found it.

I bought Sharp Practice 2 (SP2) last year and was quite happy with it - it looks very interesting to read, but when we tried it out I found it a steep learning curve. Actually that's not the fault of the Lardies, who have used variations on the "Big Man" rules mechanic for years now, but more of a case of trying to run before we could walk by throwing ourselves in to a full sized game without getting enough practice with smaller forces. For whatever reason we have stayed away from it after an initial flush of enthusiasm. I suppose its a bit like watching Kurasawa's Seven Samurai - you know its great but sometimes you just cant be arsed to put the hours in.

I'm also a fan of Bernard Cornwell, who tells a good story. OK its the same story - eponymous hero overcomes prejudice and initial disadvantage to succeed in the end, transposed onto a back drop of historical events, but he does tend to tell it well. Which is why I found his stand alone book "The Fort" rather interesting. Unlike Sharpe and the other series this is an embroidered telling of a historical event, but this time with "real" characters. It is the story of the Penobscot Expedition, an attempt by the Americans to prevent the British building a base of operations in what is now Maine during the American War of Independence. It is clear Cornwell is fascinated by the story, and particularly how the American Command system seemed to work against themselves. I was interested too, and that sent me searching for other sources. The more I looked into it, the more I thought this could work as a campaign.

The campaign is split into two totally different elements. The first is a Committee game with three players each representing the three main American Commanders . They are each provided with overall briefings and also personal objectives, some of which may conflict, plus maps etc, and they sit down and decide what plan of action they will take. That plan is then translated to an on table scenario that will be played by a totally different set of players using SP2 and the result fed back to the Committee for further action. This has the advantage for me as freeing me up to act as Umpire, but also generating smaller scenarios that will allow me and the players to get up to speed with SP2 without the "sink or swim" problem.

That's all for now -  part 2 will deal with the logistics and some more details on both sides of the campaign.    

Sharp Practice 2 - a very small amount of progress and some competition

Not a great deal to report on the SP front - partly because I had run out of primer, and partly because work keeps intervening.

I have however managed to resupply with white primer and so this afternoon the first group of the Trunptonshires have been undercoated.

Meanwhile news has reached HQ that the opposition are pulling ahead in the race to get the toys on table first. That Dastardly Frog Paul has sent his test shots of his first group

Clearly these are before tidying up and matting down but already the damned French are winning the race.

And to make matters worse Steve Irvin has decided to throw his hat in the ring with some Westphalians to support the Corsican Ogre  - again first test but the sign of things to come

Sharp Practice 2 - new project

Stupid I know on so many different levels. Firstly I still have the AWI to finish, secondly my last attempt at putting Victrix Napoleonics together nearly caused a nervous breakdown, thirdly I hate painting red.

The thing is I have been re-reading Sharpe just for nostalgia, I'm enjoying playing SP2, and Paul has took the plunge and bought French Napoleonics. So it is his fault.

Why Victrix? Well apart from the fact they are totally and frustratingly complex they do have one advantage over the other plastics out there - I can get all 32 Light Infantry I need out of one box for less than twenty quid. The rather nice Perry box set only allows you to make a dozen or so lights, and as the list I am using is based around a light infantry unit that was a non starter. I will still need a dozen Rifles but I'm sure that will not be too disastrously expensive.

So watch this space

Yankee Doodle - gearing up for Sharpe Practice 2 Part 1

I'm a bit of a fan of the Two Fat Lardies at the moment. I got hooked on Chain of Command, loved Dux Brit and am now gleefully reading through the newly released Sharp Practice 2.

In the usual way we say down and discussed which period we would play, as SP2 covers just about everything in the black powder era, and we chose American War of Independence (AWI). Actually when I say we, what really happened is we let John pick as he has always valiantly gone along with our other choices so it seemed fair to let him choose.

I was pretty happy with AWI anyway as I figured I already had a fair chunk of toys painted for the French Indian Wars in 28mm that could do double duty. Thus emboldened I took the unusual step of choosing \ volunteering to do the Yankee side. I don't do Americans usually - nothing personal but their style never really appealed to me, but in this case I can always use the excuse that this is just the second English Civil War anyway :-)

Sharp Practice  takes a "literary" view of action, being based on the type of battles represented in popular fiction, so I charged into my research by "box-setting" my way through "Turn - Washington's Spies" on Amazon, which has the advantage of being quite entertaining, good for scenario ideas but also full of nicely uniformed Rebels, Loyalists, Continentals and Redcoats - plus the added bonus of Billy Elliot playing the main character and a Welshman playing Benedict Arnold.

I bolstered this with a reading of Bernard Cornwell's "The Fort" - which I have to admit I liked a lot too - he writes a good historical yarn does old Bernie :-)  

This emboldened I bought a box of Continental Infantry from Warlord Games and so it begins.....