Blimey, that's really small!

Well, blog posting has been limited this last few weeks due to ongoing WiFi problems which I aim to resolve tomorrow, fingers crossed. In the meantime I have finished a couple of Zvezda kits which have been on the go for a long time. 

First up the Hind (Yellow 5) suitably finished in completely non-descript cammo. This means it can be friendly or otherwise and is intended for my Ground Zero rules somewhere very dusty. It comes in at a respectable 13cms.

Second is the I-16 (White 9). I really enjoyed the challenge of painting this, even though I'm not a good painter. You can measure this one anyway you like but it doesn't much get past 4cms. I was chuffed I could paint the goggles on the pilot! This one will be air support for my Plan B rules Soviets.

I have done some more modelly-painty stuff over Easter and will report results when I have finished (sometime in 2020 at my usual rate).

One new purchase has been the latest Squad Hammer rule set from Nordic Weasel. 

Plenty of stuff in here (in 45 pages) including ski troops, commissars, FT17s and snipers. Available for less than your favourite monthly wargames magazine!

Oil Cheaper than Water....

and other news!

Somewhere in 1973

I have been very interested in recent battle reports by Steve and Duc using the rules being developed by Alex from the Up the Blue blog. So interested that I made enquiries and Alex very kindly sent me copies of both his draft WW2 and modern rules. I have now had a chance to give them a good read and report on what makes them very interesting.The two sets of rules (Oil Cheaper than Water for modern actions and Up the Blue for WW2) are variants of Neil Thomas’ OHW rules. So, although the guys have been playing games much larger than OHW, the rules work just as well with the OHW scenarios as in Alex's latest run through.

Key things of interest for me are:

• Units are platoons with a frontage of 4" (around 350-400 yards) so a great fit with my hex grid.
• Non-tank units can dig in giving protection but also allowing friendlies to shoot over them.
• Units are destroyed on the seventh hit. Hits can be rallied off but....the great thing here is the introduction of permanent hits. Getting three hits in one combat creates a permanent hit which not only can't be rallied off but which creates a negative combat modifier. 
• First player is determined by die roll but there is a negative modifier for lost units, good to represent force attrition.
• Units activate individually, if carrying four or more hits the unit must roll to activate, failure results in the unit rallying.
• Unit actions are move, fire, dig-in, rally and ready, a version of overwatch.
• I'm still working through the combat rules which also look good, more complex because of ATGWs etc. There are fire priority and proximity rules which remind me a bit of Spearhead. Nice!

All in all, a deep game in only five pages of rules. Oil Cheaper than Water is aimed at the Cold War era and will provide a really way to expand OHW into the modern world. 

In other news...

• Tigers at Minsk, west front expansion. Norm has started work to expand his TaM small hex grid rules for the war in the west 1944 as Tigers at Caen. I've been looking forward to these for a good long while so it is nice to know that Norm has them under development. Catch Norm's update here and the original TaM here.
• There is a really nice demo of Trench Hammer on Jozi's blog. Its shows what a neat little system it is. WW2 versions are on the way, Winter Hammer (Winter War 1940) is up first. I'm looking forward to having a go at October Hammer when I get a moment.
• Also, on Bob's blog the welcome return of the Sands of New Stanhall game, a very interesting divisional level grid game featuring companies represented by one figure and with a simple combat system. A Russian front version features in the next edition of The Nugget.

Getting a grip....

on 2018!

OK, so its nearly March and what have I been up to? Well, I have a couple of irons in the fire for this year but don't yet have a timescale so I have been a bit reluctant to get stuck into anything big until I know what the plans are. It is quite exciting and I want to be in a position to crack on with it once I get the green light.

In the meantime, work continues on GZ. I have a long term phobia about aircraft canopies. I get glue on them, muck up painting the frames and generally am not happy with them. Having procured a nice 1/100 Zvezda Hind I decided to follow the style set by Tim Gow over on Megablitz and More. As evidenced by his Sea Hawk model, Tim paints canopies with aplomb so......

Not yet wholly finished but I'm very happy with it. By the way, I have crawled around inside a Hind at Coventry Air Museum on cockpit day. I'm only average in size but I could hardly fit in the pilot's seat, let alone the gunner's position. Even the rear troop compartment was far too small for me. WW3 in Europe would have been a walkover for NATO as they would only be fighting very small Russians!

The key thing is that now I have a helicopter I can finally finish the air rules for GZ.

There are a couple of other things on my radar at the moment:

Up the Blue: I have been following developments on Alex's blog over recent months and his development of WW2 and modern tank rules for OHW style games. His latest battle report is here. Duc de Gobin has been busy play testing the rules (here). Duc has put me in touch with Alex and I'm looking forward to having a go myself in the near future!

October Hammer: Another masterpiece from Nordic Weasel. For a mere $5.99 (that is less than five pre-Brexit pounds) you get 40+ pages of rules including a campaign system and 15 pre-canned armies. Very nice. This will be the subject of a more detailed post shortly.

I haven't blogged for a while, mainly due to work but, having done this post I'm feeling back on track!

Scum......

of the earth!

The Duke of Wellington having a ponder

I too have been pondering but not in a picturesque setting. I have been reading the beta version of Scum of the Earth by Nordic Weasel. I don't think this game is a derivative of their earlier Starport Scum skirmish games and it looks like a new system to me, although familiarly weaseley (and don't ask me about the stoat joke again!).

The French system of conscription brings together a fair sample of all classes; ours is composed of the scum of the earth — the mere scum of the earth. It is only wonderful that we should be able to make so much out of them afterwards. 

Duke of Wellington speaking about soldiers in the British Army, 4 November 1813

I'm assuming the title comes from the Duke's famous saying and the game is, of course, about black powder warfare (broadly Napoleonic Wars to the Crimea).

I have to say that I really like this system. The key things are that it is simple, has clever mechanics, low rules overheads and is very, very small. One important thing is that, like the Rampant/Lament system, it allows you to play battles which are not just skirmishes with a couple of bods. But, as it says in the rules, this will look just like Sharpe on the telly.

Broad outline of the game:

• Played on a 24" by 24" board (DBA sized!).
• 3-5 units a side, 6 infantry figures or 3 cavalrymen per unit or one gun per artillery unit.
• Unit can have traits (including scum so watch for looting!) and characters (musicians) which impact on movement or combat.
• There are leaders (on white horses) who inspire courage tests and combat results.
• There are simple basic formations, but no facing (yet).
• IgoUgo with rolling for initiative each turn.
• Units attempt to roll for movement (d6 plus a modifier e.g. 3 for cavalry) and the total is the move in inches.
• Crossing bad going or obstacles requires a minimum score on the movement die.
• Scoring 0 on the d6 (modified or natural) allows the enemy a reaction move by one unit.
• After movement there is artillery fire, infantry fire and close combat.
• The attacker fires a volley (d6 plus modifiers) and the defender rolls a d6 (plus modifiers) to see if it withstands the fire or is shaken and retreats with losses.
• Melee is a similar d6 plus modifiers comparison.

The beta version contains only the basics so far and is not yet complete. It does look very promising though. The reason for this being that it will fit on a six by six hex grid and therefore can be used with the OHW scenarios! I feel a hex grid conversion coming on!!!!

An interesting list......

new stuff!

Things have been really busy recently so progress on most fronts has been pretty slow. However, I've been going through one of those periods where there is a lot of interesting stuff arriving on my desk. 

Books first....

• The Men Who Would Be Kings (TMWWBK): The latest Dan Mersey rules from Osprey. From what I have read these are very simple and very entertaining. If I was starting Desert Eagle again, I'd start from here. Very interesting.
• Table Top Wargames: By Risk Priestley and John Lambshead (Pen and Sword). The jury is out. I don't think they are giving any secrets away in this one. Some of the key design issues (movement distance vs. firing distance for example) were covered off nicely by Phil Barker in a short article in The Nugget (if I remember correctly) some years ago. 

• Sandbox Infantry Patrols: This is brilliant (and only $2.99 from Wargames Vault). Basically a solo campaign for small scale patrols in Iraq or Afghanistan. Very, very nice. As some of you may have guessed, I don't do rules as written (RAW) but this one really tempts me to just do it as per the book.

  
Golan '73: This arrived very unexpectedly by post a couple of days ago. I had been watching the GMT P500 news on this for a while and had gone so far as to read the e-rules. My chum Pete, who well remembers our battles on the Golan using October War (SPI) in the 1970s, sent it to me as an early birthday present. A very welcome addition as well as being a great reminder of some happy times. I'll definitely win this time round!

In other news:

• CnC Medieval: Check this out. I'm not sure 6/7th century Byzantium counts as medieval but very interesting nevertheless.
• Heroes of Normandie Card Game: I love the boardgame, will this be even better?

• Firestorm Bastogne: I'm a big fan of Firestorm as a concept, this looks great too. 

I'm sure there is lots of other stuff occurring but this is enough for me to be getting on with for the moment!

OPFOR.....

here come the bad guys!

An ISIS fighter with a competency issue

Having survived the back to school period, things return somewhat to normal. My priority is to finish up the Desert Eagle draft and get in some full game tests. I've been doing a lot of thinking about ISIS and have just completed the first draft of the background to an ISIS army list. This is now on the Desert Eagle page. The detailed ratings will follow shortly.

I have also been tempted by a few different things.....

The Men Who Would Be Kings: Yes, I've now got this and its great. It will not cause me to change my direction on DE but I can see other possibilities with it. It is cleaner and more simple than Dragon Rampant so it doesn't hurt my brain. Also, I've got loads of Hat colonials, so who knows what's next!

Tabletop Wargames: A Designers' and Writers' Guide: By Rick Priestley and John Lambshead. On the one hand its seems to be designer's notes for Bolt Action (and you know what happened when I read those rules!) and, on the other, a combination of Fowler's Modern English Usage and Usage and Abusage by Eric Partridge. The only thing I have found useful about this book so far is that it recommends that original historical research should be left to others since you can waste loads of time on it. Sorry, its a first impression, I'm sure a second reading will improve it. I may have missed a semicolon here!

Sandbox: I love the idea of this, especially for $2.99. Something for the weekend I think.

Loads of rules.....

Very sore head!

I spent last weekend with the in-laws in Scotland. I enjoyed a little piece and quiet for a change and was able to do some thinking. The subject of this difficult enterprise was the idea that Bolt Action could be turned into hex based game. This is an idea I have had before but have never thoroughly tested out.

First off I actually had to read the rules. Easy enough I thought, many better people before me have done this and survived. My first issue is that the rule book is 216 pages long, that's a big read even if it does have lots of pictures. 

The second issue is that the infantry game is quite straightforward. Using hexes significantly simplifies a lot of the mechanisms including unit cohesion, line of sight, who can shoot etc. However, when you get to the vehicle bit it looks like a bolt on (sorry). Superficially similar rules actually follow a different path, for example, "down" and "pinned" for infantry are interpreted differently for tanks. Not a surprise in itself but, for me at least, a sign that the underlying mechanics are not holistic. They have been bolted together (sorry again) to make a game. 

The third issue is the army lists. Loads of really boring points led stuff. Tedious in the extreme, great for selling miniatures though.     

The fact that people buy Bolt Action, get the miniatures and have a nice time is great and I don't begrudge that at all. The rules just don't fit the inside of my head.

I then had another look at the Neil Thomas WWII rules from his Wargaming: An Introduction. Firstly, very short. 30 pages including introduction, rules, army lists and scenarios. The army lists are very simple which is also great and give lots of nice options when combined with some nice simple scenarios. 

So far so good. When I started to look at a hex conversion I was struck by the similarities with Bolt Action. Things like unit cohesion and firing ranges etc are simplified by using hexes. I didn't enjoy working out firing dice by range band. I had to do a similar thing for Bolt Action. The numbers just didn't look right in either game and I concluded that range attenuation isn't really handled very well.

I then looked at the tank thing. Again, the NT rules have a separate approach to the tank rules. Tanks don't take morale tests for example. OK fine, in real life tanks are different. But I also know that tanks and infantry in real life are inseparable. They can't do without each other and must have a way of interacting effectively. 

My only other comment about the NT rules is that the 30 pages probably leave out some important stuff, although I think NT trusts us to work this out for ourselves. 

This all sounds a bit depressing. However, both sets of rules show their connections with the origins of the hobby. Neither are revolutionary and both can be linked back to stuff written in the 1960s. Again, nothing wrong with that either. However, I ended up turning to boardgaming back then because I was not satisfied with these sort of miniatures rules.

I still have two further sets of rules to explore: FiveCore and Blitzkrieg Commander (BKC). I'll be pursuing these further. BKC is very interesting because it bridges the infantry/tank game divide by having a conscious combined arms approach. FiveCore is a bit more traditional but has some other very unique features. Wherever this goes, I do keep coming back to the simple army list ideas in the NT rules and will want to keep these in future.

News

Interesting Weasel developments:

• From Shako to Coal-Scuttle: The beta version has been updated following feedback and can be obtained from Wargames Vault.
• Company Command: An updated version of this has been announced for a few weeks time incorporating some of the Five Men at Kursk features. I'll wait for these before doing more work on the hex thing.

And finally....

I have mentioned a potential hex version of Lion Rampant before. An article on a conversion of Lion Rampant to the Napoleonic wars has appeared in the latest edition of WI. This is great and quite exciting, especially if I can fit it to hexes. However, it is called Eagle Rampant whereas I would automatically have called it Dragoon Rampant. Never mind.

Five Men at Kursk...

Looking very good indeed!

I have commented here before about my interest in the FiveCore family of games from Nordic Weasel, otherwise known as Ivan Sorensen. The latest game in development is Five Men at Kursk. This is, effectively, a second edition of their very first game which was Five Men in Normandy, the precursor of FiveCore Skirmish. Ivan has very kindly let me have a copy of the emerging draft of this game. I have to say that I am quite excited by this so I thought it would be nice to do a brief overview of the rules and include some pictures of the rules in action from Just Jack's very excellent blogs (BlackhawkHet and Cuba Libre!).

Just Jack's latest FiveCore game from his blog Cuba Libre!

Although I didn't get the original Five Men in Normandy, I have invested quite widely in the system:

FiveCore Skirmish Gaming Evolved: A good 20th century skirmish game for 5-10 soldiers a side on a small table (2 foot square). I'm mainly interested in this for modern skirmish games, I have my eye on the Oddzial Osmy 15mm Russian Green Men. I suppose the other rule set that comes close to this is Black Ops, which I have also got. There is an expanded second edition which is also worth getting as it includes vehicle rules etc. It comes with campaign rules and rules for character skills.

FiveCore Company Command: The next one up from the skirmish game with section/squad bases and vehicles covering 1939 and onwards. 5-12 units a side on a 2 to 3 foot square table. I'm looking at using these adapted for hexes for my modern Africa gaming.

FiveCore Brigade Commander: The big one. While the skirmish and company level games can be played easily with 15 or 20mm troops, this one needs 10mm or less. Same foot print (2 or 3 foot square table) and around 10-12 units a side. Not quite a brigade but certainly a battalion a side. I'm as excited about the prospects for using this rule set as I am about Lion Rampant, and that's saying something!

There is a whole lot of other stuff available (and pretty cheap too) and you can easily find out about it from the Nordic Weasel page on Wargames Vault.

FiveCore is based on some core principles (five of them actually!):

• The true mark of a superior force is command and control.
• Soldiers will react to things in their field of vision without being instructed to do so.
• A commander is never able to do everything they want.
• Conversely, the commander can always do something.
• If in doubt, roll a D6 and look for a 1 or a 6.

These all ring true to me. The rules are also almost interchangeable between game levels, skirmish, company, brigade. You can add or subtract as you feel necessary. The various optional and add on rules make this a really modular gaming enterprise.

The other thing is that the games all have a common engine. One d6 is rolled at the start of a players turn:

• 1. Scurry turn: Al your troops can move
• 2-5. Standard turn: A limited number of units/troops can move or fire
• 3. Firefight turn: All your units/troops can fire.

In combat, units/troops roll kill dice which cause casualties and/or shock dice which cause a morale impact. The number and mix depend on unit type and target. These two very simple approaches (which remind me of the Ganesha "Songs of...." rules) are very effective. 

Another photo from Cuba Libre!

The common game engine makes it hang together really well and allows you to scale up or down using the same troops. Play a squad game one day and then zoom out to cover a platoon or company game.

In some recent optional FiveCore rules, Ivan indicated that he was looking to change and further develop the core mechanisms. This is in response to feedback about the all or nothing nature of the basic engine, as well as the general lack of differentiation of troop types (a soldier is a soldier as Ivan says).

In Five Men at Kursk Ivan is implementing a major change. A number of dice are thrown at the start of a turn based on the side's cohesion (command and control). In a similar way to the previous engine, 1s mean scurry, 6s mean fire and 2-5s mean engage (fire/move). The player allocates dice to individual figures which then act accordingly. In addition, we have some clear differentiation of leaders and grunts and also characteristics (skills) for individual soldiers. 

There will also be campaign rules, nation specific rules, solo rules and a whole lot more. The downside is that the rule book is 37 pages at this stage and is likely to end up being very chunky. This is not one of my top features in a set of rules. Having said that, you don't have to use it all. I think this is going very much in the right direction and I will certainly be investing in the final version.   

Another Just Jack visualisation!

You can see from the pictures from the Just Jack blogs above how one man has interpreted and implemented the FiveCore system. His games are very rich and move from continent to continent and skirmish to brigade within a cohesive story. If Carlsberg made a gaming system (and I could interpret it like Jack can) then it would be FiveCore. Nuff said.