Luccacia, Italy, 1944

Nick G and I have already tried a couple of WW2 Spearhead games using 20mm figures and vehicles. I have been only too well aware however of the issue of the ground scale versus the size of the vehicles - the vehicles occupy a disproportionate amount of table space, and alter force densities significantly. So we decided to try a game with the recommended 50% increase in ground scale, amending all distances and ranges accordingly, and played on a larger 9'x5' table. You can find the first of Nick's blog pieces on the game here.

Nick had set the scene using his available forces, with smaller German force of two battalions of infantry and a detachment of Stug IIIs defending against an attacking force of two infantry battalions, supported by a regiment of M4 Shermans: his Kiwis were going head to head with their German foe in Italy. The first photo shows the table form the German right flank, with the Germans defending close to but not on the river line on their right, with tow large hill features and one smaller feature across their frontage. As the defender I'd decided to support one defending battalion with the Stugs using the large feature on my right, hoping that the river would divert Nick's Kiwis across from my left. I planned  a flank march in the hope that his attacking force would have passed my entry pint, so that I could catch him in the flank or rear.

The Stugs with the one battalion positioned in defence.

Nick did as I expected, avoided crossing the river (just as well, because I'd chosen to take the chance of not defending the river line.. whew!!). He advanced at me with the two infantry battalions, and sent the armoured regiment on a wide right flanking attack, unfortunately for Nick he sent his armour unsupported by infantry, a fact that impacted significantly on his plans).

This was the entire left flank defence of my position - one company supported by an HMG platoon, hidden in a small copse.

Nick's centre battalion advanced across some ploughed fields.

His armoured regiment just as the flank attack came in ... at this point in time I was wishing I'd had some armour to support the infantry.

Nick initially chose to ignore my flank attack and move his armour to the end of their command arrow. I moved my battalion hurriedly into the tow sector town on the top of the hill, and beyond it. This enabled me to bring fire down on the battalion of Kiwis who were positioned to the front of this German battalion.

I brought the carrier platoon of his left wing battalion under mortar fire.. suppressed. I thought Nick's suppression markers were cool, a  nice use of otherwise pretty useless 'wounded' figures in one of the packs he had bought.

As my own flank marching battalion rushed into the town sectors, Nick managed an order change for his armour, and turned the regiment around. I chose to sacrifice a platoon (the one that was never going to make it into either of the town sectors) and make an attack against one of the Sherman tank troops.

The lone platoon had a good go with Panzerfausts etc, but.. when you throw a '2', nothing much is going to happen, apart from your own demise!!

At this stage I ordered a counterattack with my defending battalion, supported by the Stugs. Nick also began to advance, against spotted enemy.. me!! His Carrier platoon came forward, and was promptly dispatched by mortar fire, followed by a series of direct hits from one of the StuG troops.

So how did I think this went? Nick managed a 'track to track' concentration of armour, one of the things that most of us feel is not a realistic simulation of most armoured warfare. However as we 'dissected' the action, Nick realised that he had deployed the armour poorly, and the 'track to track' armoured phalanx approach had not in fact worked. A better approach would have been to cross attach armour with one of the infantry battalions, giving him two much more useful battalion battle groups.

Once my flanking infantry battalion had gone into the town sectors, and beyond, Nick found his unsupported armour to be almost useless. They had no spotted enemy, so an order change was not possible, and they would have been at a serious disadvantage assaulting the infantry in the town sectors (as we would expect).

At the outset I was most interested in the impact of the extended ground scale on game play. The game played well, and the 'track to track' deployment of Nick's armour was more of an issue of player experience than anything else. Nick acknowledged that in future he would be trying to use space more effectively, and cross attaching units to ensure that infantry and armour were mutually supporting.
A good outcome, and a damned enjoyable way to spend an evening too. Thanks Nick!!

Dwarven cavalry for Kings of War??

A Dwarf army in most rules sets is probably relatively immobile. However in the Kings of war rules, players have access to a unit of Berserker Brock Riders, Berserkers riding Brocks. Now, in the absence of any figure releases from Mantic, I really have no idea what a 'Brock' actually is, but I did have some Berserkers (courtesy of GW). I painted them with a non GW Blue theme, picturing Celts using wode to colour themselves. So, what to do about these cavalry?

Some time ago I acquired some GW Goblin Spider Riders (originally intended for the HotT Spider army) but they were, as I feared, just a fraction too large. So .. why not a 'paint conversion' I thought. Paint the Goblins in more human tones, and use blues to tie them together visually with the existing Berserkers. In the 'Kings of War' rules, these troops are 'Vicious' and I thought that the Goblin figures look suitably vicious to take the role.


Here is the result (with apologies to all WFB players, and all fantasy purists who might blanch at Goblin like figures playing alongside Dwarves). The first two photos show the new Dwarf 'cavalry' alongside the original Berserkers.

Here are the boys themselves, rear and front views.

Ludenkopf 1982 - a Modern Spearhead action.

Finally... after a LOOONG time (well before the February 22nd 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, at least) Keith and I managed a Modern Spearhead game. The game was developed using Keith's Scenario Generation System, was set in our preferred cold war period 1982, and most unusually saw my BAOR British on the attack against a defending Soviet force. Keith has written an excellent after action report about this fictional battle around the Northern German town of Ludenkopf. Here are a few additional photos for flavour.

The battlefield at the start, with the defending Soviets on the left (that's Andrew's arm settling some of the defenders into position).

One of the attacking British mechanised infantry battalions advancing.

Soviet 120mm mortars in position in cover and bringing down fire. These were silenced with some effective counter battery fire from a supporting battalion of Abbots.

One of the attacking mechanised infantry battalions quickly took effective flank fire and turned to position itself in cover to protect the flank of the main armoured thrust.

Troops from a Soviet Motorised Infantry battalion in position along a river line, threatening the British left flank.

The main British armoured thrust pushed past a small town, its reconnaissance Scimitars uncovering a Soviet 10mm AT gun platoon ensconced in the outskirts. The AT guns didn't last too long though.

The British left flank is looking decidedly dodgy, with the Soviets having committed their reserve T64 battalion to a counter attack. This may hurt!!!

As the ground action grew in intensity, the British heavy artillery (M107s) had been waging a campaign of counter battery fire, suppressing and neutralizing the Soviet towed artillery, and then the majority of the Soviet air umbrella (off-table Sam 6, and on-table ZSU23/4 with the armoured reserve, although there was still some man pack SAM to disrupt any British air attacks).

The defending battalion is able to call in an airstrike from a flight of Harrier jets. It destroys the equivalent of a company of T64s, but this was not enough.

Make sure you read Keith's AAR to get all the action.

Scout Titans emerge from the builder's yard!!

Work and writing commitments have meant little time for painting lately, but I have managed to finish the two Epic scale scout titans that I bought from Forgeworld several years ago. I tried to pose them, but as you can see, one was more successful than the other, and even then I'm not sure I'd counbt the exercise as all that successful.

In fact, this has been a project I've simply struggled with, to the point where I managed to assemble the torso of one walker the wrong way around.. sigh!!! And even the paint finish is nowhere near what I'd have liked.  No matter .. here are the results.

Here are assembled titan forces to support the Space Marines. Why two scout titans? Because there were two in the packet. Will I see all three on the table? Probably not.. well not in a 3000 point game I suspect, but I haven't played enough to know.

Dwarf reputation partially restored!!!

Workload and flat camera battery (the one that powers the clock) have both meant not much 'gaming and not much photography these past few weeks. But... we are back, with a Kings of war game, Humans vs Dwarfs. And brought along his Humans ad they faced off against my dwarfs, both armies sitting astride a river.

This photo of the battle field shows  a little of the initial deployments, the Dwarves on the right, and the Humans on the left. I secured my left flank with a Warrior regiment and a steel behemoth, and m y right with a Horde of warriors. Andy held his centre with a thick line of bow bolstered by a couple of units of foot guard. His flanks were taken by his three units of knights.

The Dwarf centre advanced to a position where it's left flank was guarded by one of the two villages on the battlefield.

Andy decided to try a flank switch and move one of his units of knights from his left to is right. Arguably it cost him a victory because this unit was out of the game until the last move.
The gap in the human line marks the position of a unit of Foot Guard that was shot away by concentrated dwarf fire. Two of the supporting archer units had also disappeared under the weight of dwarf fire.

He advanced his right wing knights unsupported, and for the first time ever my steel behemoth was able to get its flame cannon into action.. YES!!!

Andy attacked the steel behemoth, but failed to break it. The behemoth and a unit of warriors then attacked the knights and destroyed the unit. This allowed both units to swing further around onto the human flank.

However a late reinforcement (the wandering unit of knights) finally arrived, attacked the behemoth and finally destroyed it.

The main battle lines never met, and after six turns, the game was  a draw.

The Dwarf king was slightly annoyed that his troops hadn't given him the victory he'd wanted .. next time!! Grumble grumble!!!

Eastern Front 1914 project again

With a solid start made on the 1914 Russian forces for early eastern front battles, I've been looking somewhat longingly on a box of HaT Austro Hungarians that some kind soul had given me several years ago. So, without further ado I've made a start. The box will give me a Great War Spearhead regiment, as long as I buy a box of HaT AH heavy weapons to go with them. They should complement the 1914 Germans quite nicely.

My usual painting style didn't quite work with the AH Hechtgrau I thought (I mixed it manually, by the way), so I decided to chance an arm and try block painting with ink washes and dry brushes. Here is the result on the first 6 stands. The jury is still out to some degree.. maybe with practice I can get a better result.

Origins of our fantasy games.

Even though I wargame the fantasy genre using the HotT (Hordes of the Things) wargames rules (and more recently the 'Kings of war' rules from Mantic), I haven’t traditionally been a reader of fantasy literature. As a university student I was a voracious reader of the sci-fi genre, but that was quite some years ago. My reading of the fantasy genre has really only included Tolkein, a little of John Norman’s “Gor” series (only a couple of books actually), and I guess that Frank Herbert’s Dune series came close as well.

Recently I discovered the writing of Helen Lowe. Helen describes herself on her blog as “a novelist, poet, interviewer and lover of story”. She lives in Christchurch, and has previously written books for a younger audience including ‘Thornspell’. In 2010  her first fantasy novel for an adult audience (‘The Heir of Night” Orbit Books, ISBN 978-0-356-50008-9) was published. Having followed Helen’s Blog (and taken some of her advice for aspirant writers) for some time I decided that I should read some of her work. It took a little while to track down a copy of ‘The Heir of Night’ (bookstores in post quake Christchurch are scarce, to say the least), but I finally found the book stocked in a great bookstore in Wellington.

I found myself transfixed by ‘The Heir of Night’. Helen has created a fantasy world vaguely resembling (as many of them do) something slightly medieval, but a world that is wholly absorbing. Helen’s skill at creating such a world, her skill at story telling in fact, deserves to be compared not only with writers like Frank Herbert, but could in my opinion equally hold its own with writers of the stature of Tolkien. Her writing is lyrical where it should be, fast paced where it should be, and demanding of the reader’s concentration where it should be. In short, it is a damned good read. I could hardly put the book down. It is little wonder that the book has been nominated for two Gemmell Awards in London this year.

Even if you only vaguely thought that you might just possibly consider maybe reading something sort of akin to fantasy, READ THIS!!

The second part of the story ‘The Gathering of the Lost’ is due out in early April 2012. I’ll be looking out for it.