Zona Alfa - Frostgrave with guns and Vodka?

I've just received my copy of the new Osprey rules Zona Alfa. Still to play but here are my first thoughts.

I pre-ordered these on a bit of a whim. Regular readers may have noticed I have a fairly cynical view of the gaming world, particularly the constant spawning of "Boutique" games. You know small tables, small forces, eye-watering price tags on the figures that you buy then by the time you paint them the new flavour of the month is here. I also don't particularly "rate" many Osprey rules - they do seem to throw them out there on the assumption that if you throw enough some will stick. And if I see another bloody re-skin of Lion Rampant I may scream. My glass is pretty much always half empty. Then again there have been some stand out successes - Gaslands and Frostgrave have been excellent, as is Black Ops, and for a fun multi player Colonial game The Men Who Would Be Kings ticks a lot of boxes, so maybe it is just me.

Zona Alfa is the latest in the series. It is the usual Osprey format - soft cover, 64 pages, lots of nice pics and illustrations. The setting is interesting - an exclusion zone somewhere in Eastern Europe, straight out of computer games like STALKER and Metro. Actually as far as I can see on first reading this is a bit too vague and not really well explained as to exactly what it is or what caused it - I suspect the author assumes we are already clued up on the games that inspired the setting and I am not sure that is really the case. The premise is simple - small groups scavenging this zone fighting each other and the dangerous denizens for loot and wealth which you can then use to improve your team and rinse and repeat - not new really. Where the author does go out of his way is to really fix the game in that pseudo Soviet setting, with some really nice touches and sections that are very good - possibly a bit too Hollywood, but really helps set the atmosphere. The game mechanics seem solid enough on first glance with nothing out too unusual. Forces consist of a leader and his crew -  usually between 3 and 9 others depending on quality. You also choose one of several factions to represent - Military, Scientists, Bandits etc etc.   There are a couple of nice touches - these rules are the first I have seen to give a bonus to troops in camouflage clothing for example. The setting is fleshed out well too. The campaign rules and progression also seem to be simple but viable - nothing that new but still perfectly playable - loot to gain cash and experience that you can use to upgrade your crew and skills. One thing that is new to this sort of game is a built in allies \ enemies system where groups from different factions can cooperate or not based on their faction allegiances, which is a nice touch.

Another big bonus is the total absence of associated figures - you can use whatever you have - in the same way as Frostgrave, although there are mentions of the excellent Copplestone and Lead Adventure miniatures that are pretty much spot on. I will be using my reasonably "modern" Russian and Chechen figures but anything really would work. 

One miss is a playsheet. This is something Osprey have "form" on. They really need to add a playsheet , either in the rules or as a pdf download - the logical place, the inside back cover, is taken up with adverts for more Osprey rules.

I would not go so far as recommending these rules yet until I have played them, but all the signs are these could be a good solid game. How many players will pick them up I cant say, but as they don't require much in the way of expenditure this could be a winner as a fun back up game.

So Frostgrave with guns and Vodka - Da! What is not to like?

A Quality all of it's own?............Blood Red Skies Tournament torment

As Josef apparently said

I'm going to a Blood Red Skies Tournament on February 2nd in York. I'm only down as the sub in case we have odd numbers, so probably wont get a game, which is fine. But I still need to take a squadron "just in case", and the choices are driving me mad.

Originally I was planning to take a fairly standard 5 plane list of La5FNs. They're a solid choice at 31 points each and for a 500 point list I could get an Ace and a couple of reasonably skilled pilots, with the odd Rookie to make up the numbers. I also love La5s as I said before here "The WW2 plane I love best is....  Then doubt and "meta" happened. Building a list for any sort of game brings out the worse in me, and many others. I try to work out what the optimum choice will be. Is it better to take fewer planes and get better pilots, or more planes and poor pilots? At the moment there is no maximum number of planes allowed - but that is going to change with Air Strike to cap Squadron size to eight - and having a lot of planes brings advantages in resilience. Last year at a similar event I met a swarm of Rookie Hurricanes and they scared the bejesus out of me! On the other hand can a well handled small squadron hold its own against a "swarm" of less skilled opponents?

The other problem is the tyranny of the internet. Everyone has their own opinion of what constitutes a good list - and they're happy to tell the world. The problem is some people don't just offer this as an opinion or suggestion, they insist it is the one true word and everyone else is deluded. What I suspect is these prophecies are self fulfilling - if you use "x" like this then you will win. So people try it and some do, and they too become prophets of "x" when of course there is always "y" that will beat "x" - and then "y" is the next thing and so it goes. Luckily BRS isn't there yet, and I suspect with so many variables it will never really get there. Hopefully 

So I decided to do something a bit more "fun" and run Squadron of MiG3s. MiG3s are a bit rubbish to be honest. Actually they're quite a lot rubbish because they have the "Sluggish" Trait. I rambled on about it a while ago here One Trick Pony . On the other hand, they are simple to play, because you don't have so many choices, and MiGs are very cheap at only 14 points each, so I can afford to take a full six and still have plenty of points to get good pilots, which counts for a lot in BRS. So I decided to give it a go. I'm taking Pokryshkin as an Ace, and I can take the rest as pilot skill 4 (Vets) and 3 (Experienced). Pokryshkin is one of the Aces who rather than being that good himself, he can assist other pilots within 6" when they attack, and he is also one of the few Aces that can negate the "Sluggish" Trait - so he can out manoeuvre opponents. To cap it off (pun intended) I will be using the Low Altitude Performance Doctrine, which hopefully will allow my MiGs to get themselves back in the fight quickly, and Bad Weather, so I can get plenty of clouds to hide in (!), plus it inflicts one "Boom" chit on both sides before the game starts, so with what I am hoping is a numerical advantage it will have a greater impact on my opponents rather than me. Lastly I am taking the "Drop tanks" equipment card. I'm not 100% comfortable with this as I cant find any reference to MiGs using them, bit some other Soviet fighters did have something similar, so ...... it's a competition not a history lesson. Drop tanks allow squadrons to negate some starting disadvantages, at a cost of performance on turn 1.

So that's it. List building can be agony for me - and the urge to squeeze the maximum out of the 500 points is a curse. But in truth, the exercise in itself is interesting. I also enjoy the games - playing against different people with different ideas is always interesting, even if I sometimes get my arse handed to me.

I will report back on what happens after the event - assuming I have a shred of confidence left, but on the off chance you are anywhere near York on February 2nd why not drop by Vapnartak, (link) take in the show, which is excellent, and maybe drop by the BRS Tournament and say Hi!

Cheers

 

One Trick Pony update

A couple of months ago I mentioned I was working on a MiG3 Squadron for BRS shameless self promoting link and I just realised that I didn't show you the finished unit.

As I mentioned, it is white. The models are from Warlord and are in the new resin. This was interesting to work with. The models were very clean, with limited mould lines to worry about, but they did require cutting rather than scraping or filing - the resin frays rather than files. This isn't a problem once you work it out, in fact I found it quite easy. As they're pretty much weightless they don't need widgets or base extensions and work well with the standard Advantage bases

As they were going to be white I undercoated white (doh) then went for a sky blue underside. Decals  with the trade mark red arrows from Misc Minis. These were always going to be a PITA to apply - no reflection on Kevin, they're bloody awkward shapes and when you realise he never had a copy of the Warlord model to work with, it's a bloody miracle they fit at all - but with a little work they do. Kevin did these as a request including the individual patriotic slogans, which is a very nice touch, and theyre available now on his website here

These were also the first models I tried Tamiya Panel line solution on. It worked, but I suspect the resin models may not suit this approach doe to the shallower depth of detail.

Anyway, here we are . 122nd IAP standing ready to defend the Motherland. As long as were only expected to engage unescorted bombers at high altitude we'll be fine.................

Dutch Marines for 1940 Chain of Command - The Rotterdam Project Part 1

In an attempt to provide myself with both encouragement and impetus I'm going to try and blog my progress on these. They were a Christmas present to myself and I'm hoping to get them done by the New Year - that will be 2020 before some wit asks :-)

The platoon consists of three squads of 12 men each, plus an officer. There are 2 spare officers that will be painted at the same time. I also have some Regular Army support weapons, but they will be in different uniforms to the Marines so I will do them later along with the other support options. In total I have 39 figures to paint in 5 days.

So this morning just after sparrowfart I got started with the preliminaries - cleaning the models up. In truth there is not a lot to do here. The models are by May 1940 Miniatures - the only supplier of 28mm Dutch Marines as far as I am aware. I'll probably go into the "why" I decided on Dutch Marines at some point later. The models are clean and almost flash free. There are some minor mould lines and some flash, mainly in the gaps on the figures that are firing rifles from the shoulder between the crook of the arm and the rifle, but it cleans up quickly. The models themselves are very nicely detailed and proportioned and the metal is good quality - I had one rifle lose it's foresight during clean up , other than that they are very nice models indeed.

In fact I probably spent more time on the pennies I intend to use as bases. The cunning plan is to store and transport the Dutch on magnetic sheet so the pennies which are ferrous will hold them in place. Actually not all 1p coins are ferrous so I checked the selected ones first just to be sure.  In the past I have had some problems with paint lifting from the edges of coins I have used to base figures on. A little while ago I asked for advice on Facebook and was told (by non other than Derek "Del" Hodge) that it helped if you roughened the edges with a file. This I did. I also washed the coins in soapy water - I never really thought of this before but when you think about it most of them will be filthy and covered in God knows what (yuk).

Lastly I glued the figures to the pennies using pva - with the likeness of HM The Queen face down. This isn't because I don't want to be arrested and charged with some sort of treason, or because I am a rabid Republican (which I am, but personally I don't have anything against her as an individual, but think the idea of the Monarchy is stupidly outdated). No the reason I stuck them to the reverse is because the patters on the reverse seem to give the glue something to work on better than old Liz.  One pose - a kneeling one, did not fit a penny so ended up on 2p pieces, and there is also a Lewis gun team that will have to be based as a pair on an mdf base and then some magnetic strip added later.

So that took just over three hours, with regular breaks for tea and a breakfast stop for a bacon butty. Once they're dry the next step will be to add sand to the bases, then spray the undercoat.

Merry Christmas! - War is back!

Just a thought based on some discussions at our local wargames club. There seems to be an over saturation of what I have called "Boutique" games - you know the type, small figure count, 3 foot table etc etc. Every month we see the next "Big Thing", which gets replaced in a month or so. I'm sensing a growing appetite for a return to "traditional" games with higher figure count, games where you can sweep your arm across a table full of models. Should I jump on board?

The problem of course is commitment. Playing a Grand Manner style game of say Napoleonics requires a metric sh!t ton* of figures - a dozen 36 man battalions is 436 figures - and even if you take the quick way (which I would) and have everyone in Greatcoat that's a major commitment of painting time. Then again, we have done it before, and relative cost of individual plastic figures for units is still cheap, the total cost is considerable.  Perry's are £20 a box of 40 ish figures - damned good value, but still an outlay of £200+ just on the infantry. As I said, commitment.

And I don't think I'm quite there yet. Hopefully 2020 will see the return of Impetus 2 to my gaming nights, and some more Chain of Command - both fairly "hefty" sized games. I'm also still deeply enamoured with Blood Red Skies (no surprise there).

Over the holidays I'm going to try and get my new WW2 Dutch Marines painted before I go back to work in the New Year - not much chance, but it wont get done unless I start, so tomorrow is going to be first steps - cleaning them up, and getting them stuck to their bases which will be 1p pieces - a sad reflection on the value of our currency when it is cheaper to use coins than plastic bases :-)

Cheers, and Merry Christmas 

* We are still using the metric system in the UK, however once Brexit is out the way I suspect we will shift back, so you will need an Imperial sh!t ton at that point. 

Ancient Macedonian attrition - a thesis

Every other morning or so I have come down stairs to find a 28mm Macedonian phanangite pikeman on the floor. Sometimes by "find" I mean "stand on".

The Macedonians in question are part of an army in progress - I was bought a Warlord Games Successor Army pack for Christmas a year or two ago and having failed to paint it passed it to a friend (Fred) who did a reasonable job with the brush at a very reasonable rate. The models are now languishing in the loft in open boxes waiting to be based.

However some have started to appear in strange places, mostly on the stairs. After thorough investigation I have discovered the culprit - it is my four year old cat Poppy. Poppy is usually very gentle and we have had her since she was a kitten at the local kitten rescue centre. It appears every night she sneaks up to the loft, selects a pikeman from the open box, and carries him downstairs in her mouth to be left as a gift for me in the morning. I've had this sort of behaviour from other cats, but it usually involved small mice or voles taken from the fields rather than my Successor Infantry.

To be honest at the moment this isn't an issue. I do have several spare pikemen and most of the casualties will be repairable, but I couldn't work out why she was doing this. Then, this morning as I was tidying the latest casualty up, it came to me. Poppy must have some Persian heritage!

Problem solved! now all I need is a lid to go on the box to stop her whittling down the numbers of the hated Greeks :-)

However, I may have a bigger problem. This is Lili. Lili is now two years old and was adopted from a Polish lady after her cat had a litter and could not look after them all, which technically may mean she is Polish  - this may not bode well for my plans for a Blitzkrieg German Army for Chain of Command :0) 

 

Back to the Bridges - Blood Red Skies Mig Alley

We (Paul my usual oppo) and me had sort of wandered into doing some F9F Panthers for Blood Red Skies \ Mig Alley to support our usual Migs and Sabres. He has a 3d printer which makes getting hold of less mainstream models easier. Once we had the models we went looking for scenarios and if you have F9F Panthers, well you can't avoid "The Bridges of Toko Ri". If you haven't seen the 1954 film, search for it on whatever streaming service you use. The film is based loosely around the US Carrier strike operations trying to cut North Korean communications by hitting bridges. There's the usual Hollywood romance plot but the film has several good points, including some excellent real life footage of Panthers both in the air and being readied and spotted on deck - well worth a look and almost contemporary with the "real" thing.

Anyway a couple of weeks ago Paul had a go at hitting a bridge with a squadron of six F80s escorting a strike of F9F Panthers - this was a 750 point game. I had four Mig 15s, and we milled about, had fun and achieved not a lot as far as the bridge demolition went. Paul was not a happy bunny as his first gen Jets were struggling against the 2nd gen Migs, but his numerical advantage told in the end and he managed to drive the Migs away but failed to damage the bridge.

So tonight we decided that MacArthur insisted the Navy had another go, and stepped up to 1200 points to make it really interesting. We are lucky to have access to the beta versions of the scenarios from the soon to be released Air Strike supplement, so we decided to use the "Priority Target" mission from that. Paul had obviously been thinking about how his F80s struggled last time, so this time he brought the "A-Team" - a full six plane squadron of F86 Sabres and a pair of F80s to make the numbers up. As he had more than three fighter elements he got two six plane squadrons of F9Fs as the Strike part of the mission - so the US had a total of 20 jets (gulp). Meanwhile the Commies (me) had a section of 4 MiGs with ahem Soviet pilots, and 4 much less experienced Chinese pilots, all deploying in two plane elements. There was also quite a bit of Flak - four points of both heavy and light at the bridge. The scenario allows the defender (me) to exchange some flak for some barrage balloons - this is not as daft as it seems as historically there are examples of the North Koreans stringing cables across valleys to bring down enemy planes, so I thought we would give it a try. The other new idea we were using from Airstrike was terrain. Airstrike can allow players to set terrain by area or usually quarters of the table for simplicity designating the area as flat, undulating, urban etc etc each of which has different effects on the scenario. As the area is very hilly and has some steep valleys, so we classed the terrain as "Elevated", which gives some cover from light flak but also reduced the number of dodge dice a disadvantaged plane has due to the abundance of hills that can interfere with his manoeuvres. Oh Boy was this going to get interesting later.

The game starts with the attacker having one or two of his escort elements on table and the rest in High Cover, plus his strike aircraft, all start Advantaged. The defender has one element near the target and the rest in High Cover.  In our game this was a pair of Rookie Chinese Migs. They took one look at the wall of US Jets heading their way and started to scream for help.

The heavy flak put up a barrage. In Air Strike a barrage effects anything that flies through at Neutral or better by forcing a Pilot Test - if you pass you held your nerve, if you fail, you must immediately turn 45 degrees and drop an advantage level, and pick up a Boom Chit. It's only really dangerous if you actually end touching a flak barrage - that can be bad (!). Mostly what this does is makes small planes avoid flak barrages and big ones just grit their teeth and take the chances. The lead element of Panthers decided to risk it and blow through the flak - and both failed their tests. This was a bit of a problem as the squadron starts the mission on one chit anyway, so was now on 3, with six planes in the air. Not a disaster but not great.

The pair of Rookie MiGs climbed for altitude and pulled their "man pants" up higher as all four Sabres forming the escort headed their way, backed up by a blue wall of US Navy strike aircraft. High Cover on both sides declined to appear.

Next turn the lonely Migs did their best, but got engaged by the escorts and could do nothing to stop the wave of Panthers lining up for their strike.

On the other side of the table however four silver arrows appeared to drop from the skies as the Soviet North Korean High Cover arrived. One pair went for the leading element of Panthers, the others headed for the rest.

Bounced from above and behind and still loaded with rockets the lead pair of Panthers had little chance and both were shot down by the Soviets (cough) North Koreans.

That caused one squadron of Panthers to abort due to excess Boom Chits. Both Chinese Rookies tried to get away from the swarm of attackers, but first one then the other went down under US guns, one to a P80 who was clearly punching above his weight.

Their more experienced flight leader and his wingman in High Cover disengaged due to their squadron having 4 Boom Chits and only 2 planes, which was somewhat irking to the Soviets North Koreans who were now seriously outnumbered.

The remaining Panthers swung in to attack. The lead pair were armed with rockets and their job was to suppress the flak around the target. The first dropped low, but before he could shoot he was hit by flak and unable to dodge due to all the hills, he crashed.

The second plane unleashed what should have been a devastating strike, with FP 2, Pilot 3, +1 (Heavy Hitter), +2 Strafing Ordnance - and missed with all 8 dice. The main strike of four then followed the lead pair in, but no-one managed a solid hit. (note - this isn't a surprise. The Panthers had 4 attack dice using their bombs - they had the "Bomb Shackles" card that allows them to use the bombing pilot action rather than strafing - something you need to actually bring the bridge down, but the Bridge is a "Hardened" target so ignores the first two successes of any attack - basically you need 3 hits on 4 dice. That's hard bit not impossible - in fact a one F80 did score 3 hits with 4 dice later in the game on a Mig, so it can be done).

Back with the Migs and Sabres, one of the Migs burned advantage and dropped in behind a Sabre. The Mig has the "Rough Ride" trait, so needed to pass a test to shoot, but this steely eyed Comrade didn't blink, and a Sabre went down in flames.

The odd were still stacked against the Migs, particularly now the US High Cover had arrived, and seeing the Panthers were disengaging and heading for the coast and their Carrier, the Migs also broke off.

All in all a really good game. What really surprised me was how fast turns ran, even with 20+ Jets on table at any one time. The terrain also made a big difference, making getting tailed and driven down low VERY dangerous. Flak was well balanced, being mostly an annoyance but on occasion being rather deadly. We played the scenario with a total of 28 jets (not everyone was on at the same time) and got our result in just over an hour or so, which is amazing if you compare it to other air to air games where you can spend half an hour trying to plot the exact move of each plane.

The game ended in a win to the defenders - just. Points were even but as the Bridge was not damaged the Commies were the happier of the two sides, and also claimed 3 air to air (2 F9Fs and a Sabre) plus one F9F to flak for the loss of two Migs.

I rather suspect we will be going back to those bridges again :-)

If you fancy trying out a bit of BRS MigAlley you need the rules and counters from the starter set and the Mig Alley supplement. If you don't have access to a 3d printer then Armaments in Miniature have a very nice selection of Korean War jets available. The rather beautiful game mat we were using was from Deepcut Studios, and the acrylic markers etc in the pics are from Just Lasered. All highly recommended.