My Dervish Army Takes Shape

The hot weather has driven me from my painting area in the attic bedrooms and so production has been slow; however, I managed to finish off another group of Dervish infantry, which brings me close to completion of a Dervish army, based upon the Portable Colonial Wargames book's suggested organisation. The new batch consists of 12 figures, which equates to three, four figure units, armed with spears and swords:

When placed alongside the other figures that are already completed this is what the emerging Dervish army looks like:

I think I will need to acquire some cavalry and a leader figure, but progress has been made.

On the painting table I have a british gatling gun almost completed and a couple more highlnders to complete that regiment.  I am also close to finishing off some red coated British to act as a foe for my recent;y pinted Spencer Smith Zulus. With the weather cooling down I should be able to complete that lot during the coming week.

The Portable Wargame - First Try

I have accumulated several of the Portable Wargame books by Bob Cordrey and whilst I have borrowed some of the ideas and mechanisms, I have not actually played a full WW2 game using the rules.  I liked the idea of a WW2 scenario, but I did not want to spend an age setting it up, basing figures etc etc. I also did not want to be bothered with keeping tabs on casualties and I wanted a solo game.

The solo game is well catered for in the books, using playing cards to determine initiative.  To cope with casualties I decided that one stand would equal one Strength Point (SP) and I was keen to make my units look like units, rather than single models on a base. I used the mechanisms laid down in 'Developing the Portable Wargame', particulalrly liking the pinning rule.  I took from Hexblitz the idea of having three states of activity, that is, moving, static or in defence. This is good for keeping track of which units are un/limbering up, or in defended positions, without the need for model defences.

For a board, I used a piece of 4 x 3 hardboard, painted green, with some roads and rivers painted on and a three inch grid drawn onto it.  Hills were 3 x 3 inch blocks of balsa.  For buildings I used Monopoly playing pieces. For troops I went to the nice Ian Kay at Irregular Miniatures and bought some 2mm armies. These are very cheap and arrived in about 48 hours.  I soon had the tiny tanks stuck onto 30mm MDF discs, with one disc representing one SP:

Within a couple of days, I had a board, two armies, one German and one Russian and it was time to try the rules. For my first battle I was going to have a small depleted German force defending a ridge line, to protect two river crossings. The Germans had two infantry battalions, a depleted assault gun battalion (Stug IIIs), two 88mm battalions, an SP howitzer regiment and in reserve a depleted tank battalion (Pz IVs).  The German end of the board was laid out thus:

The Stug battalion deployed forward into the village:

I am not going to give a blow by blow account, suffice it to say that the Russian, armour heavy steam roller rumbled forwards, initially taking a hit from the Stugs in the village, losing some heavy tanks and becoming pinned:

The Russians had a good run of card draws for initiative and soon the supporting Russian T-34 regiment, ousted the Stug Battlion in a flank attack, and a Russian Rifle regiment moved up through the woods to assault the main ridge:

The infantry attack was initially thwarted and the german reserve depleted Panzer IV battalion pushed the Russians out of the village:

With the Germans back in control of the village, the Russian commander decided to push his armour round to his right flank and attacked the German left. At first the 88s gave the Russian tanks a hammering, but were eventually overwhelmed and driven off the ridge:

The Russian attack built up, taking out the remaining Stug company, destroying the 88s and then pinning and subsequently forcing the German infantry (131 Regiment) off the ridge:

By now the Germans were close to their exhaustion point as the action shifted to the opposite flank. Here a second Russian rifle regiment swept around the defending 77 Regiment, with heavy artillery support.

With some rotten dice throws the Germans became pinned, and then were force to retreat off the ridge, taking more casualties. The Germans were finished, being pushed up against the river and reaching their exhaustion point. This was the board at the close of the game:

Overall I enjoyed this simple and fast game. I made a few mistakes along the way as I learned the rules. One thing I will do is write the rules out on a crib sheet as referring to the books each time was a pain.

2mm figures worked very well on the three inch grid and combat resolution was simple, allowing the game to move along at a pace.  I need to go back and study the rules. At one point it states that infantry cannot attck armoured vehicles, but I allowed mine to take on tanks when they were in an adjacent square - maybe I got that wrong.  I will give it another go soon.

No Moon Tonight! - A Solo Air Wargame

I haven't played a game for ages, and for some time I have been thinking about an air wargame, inspired by the neat rules in Bob Cordery's 'Developing the Portable Wargame' book.  These simple rules allow for a fun fast moving game.  At first I tried it out using a couple of 1/144 scale ME 109s and a couple of Hurricanes. It was OK, but I found that, for me, it did not work too well being played as a solo game.

What I needed was a fixed enemy.  Now I have some 1/600 scale Lancaster bombers and I thought I could create an enemy consisting of targets, fixed air defence units all on a hex based table.

I used the industrial and AA markers from the Axis and Allies board game.  The idea being that each Lancaster has a strength of 3 points (SP) and a hit from an AA gun costs one SP. The Lancasters have to fly through the air defence network to reach the target, which has an SP of 4.  The aim being to fly the bombers in without being shot down and to destroy the targets, in my game there were two, with eight bombers in two waves of four.

I added a rule that if an aircraft can be engaged by two or more AA units at once, the defender could dice (D5,6) for a searchlight cone, which in turn increased the hit probability. This is what ir looked like:

The first wave of Lancasters head for target one:

A Lancaster over the target, that has already lost one SP:

A Lancaster is 'coned' by searchlights:

The raid completed the Lancasters head for home, still being shot at by the flak units, damage to the aircraft is denoted by the white spots on the wings.

In this game the primary target is hit and loses three SPs, The secondary target (at the top of the above picture) is untouched. One lancaster is shot down, two are damaged, one losing one SP, the other two. They will not be able to take part in the next raid. This means that there are only five Lancasters available for tomorrow's raid, the damaged Lancasters being out of the game for one round and two rounds respectively.

Overall this all worked well. The AA units need a D6 to hit an aircraft, but this is decreased to D4,5,6 if the aircraft are in a searchlight cone. The destroyed Lancaster suffered this fate. I enjoyed playing this as I only had to concentrate on the Lancasters, the enemy being completely static.

I will see how raid two goes.