Song of...

Updated!

Following helpful comments from Norm (thanks Norm!), I have made some revisions to the AT gun rules in v3 of the Songs of...Bullets and Bombs that you can find here.

Highly evocative photo of the Welsh Guards moving up in Normandy

Essentially, the changes introduce rules for limbering and unlimbering. This means you can't use them as assault guns (as if you would!).

Although this sounds like a pretty standard sort of approach, I have given this some real thought (honest). A while ago I read a case from Normandy of a static German tank being spotted by an enterprising 6 pdr crew who then limbered up their gun to their carrier and stalked the tank. They ultimately managed to get in a successful shot. If I recall correctly, this is from 49th Division's action at Rauray. I think the rules as they now stand would allow you to replicate this, but over two turns. I'll have to give it a try!

Song of...

with extra theme!

My one page rule adaptation "Song of...Bullets and Bombs" has got slightly out of hand. It started off as three bullet points on a post-it and now its nine pages long.

6pdr in Normandy

The Bullets and Bombs page now has v2 of the adaptation. I have spent some time trying to theme the units to be used in the game, this has been really interesting. What I wanted to do was to make it easier to use the scenarios to describe a narrative. That is, after all, what we seek to create in a game, a great story to tell afterwards! Although this sounds bit FoW or Bolt Action, I think it also makes things more “realistic”.

I’m using these rules to play some British/German scenarios in Normandy in the period June/July 1944. So let’s look at what a German 6 unit force from One-Hour Wargames might look like if we model it on a real life prototype like a static division such as the 716th. Please excuse the artistic licence!

First you roll on the OHW table to get your unit types. I'm substituting HMG units for Mortars (for various reasons) in this particular adaptation. Once you know how many you have of each, you roll for each unit to see what it is and what characteristics it has. 

Cool. There are six German themed units and five British/Canadian. I think these deserve a good play testing so I have dusted off some PSC German Grenadiers and will get some painting done this week among the usual chores. It is quite exciting!

Song of...

Bullets and Bombs!

Have Firefly...will travel!

I'm a real fan of simple systems. The "Song of..." series of rules from Ganesha Games was very attractive, especially the Song of Drums and Shakos, featuring as they do specific rules for Wurttemburgers!

Ganesha brought out Flying Lead, a version for modern warfare, with a really interesting adaptation for Afghanistan called "Hearts and Minds". As far as I know, they have not produced a WW2 source book. This was one of my projects before I got caught up with the FiveCore view of the world. As a minor diversion over the bank holiday I have finally written up my notes on using "Song of..." for WW2. And here it is in all of its unfinished glory.

This uses hexes (no surprise there then!) and the Neil Thomas One-Hour Wargames scenarios (another nil surprise!). 

What I found really interesting is that the system is very very amenable to tweaking. Also, I have had a great idea for theming the Neil Thomas army lists which I'm still working on. Perhaps tomorrow!

And if that wasn't enough, Bob Cordery has come up with a great hex grid Napoleonic game. Check it out on his blog here.

More Firestorm

Normandy part two

I'm pleased to see that the Wurttemberg post is generating lots of feedback. I hadn't realised Wurttemberg was such an interesting subject!

Also nice to see is part two of Jokull Gislason's Normandy Firestorm game, this one covering Cherbourg and St Lo.

I really like this game system so will be interested to see if I can play both parts together as a single campaign.

Thoughts at D+1

When do events become history?

I find it hard to believe that it is 70 years since D-Day. When I was a child in the early sixties, playing with my Airfix men, D-Day was less than 20 years old. Memories of the war amongst family and neighbours were vivid and often painful. When I started work in the 1970s, my colleagues included many ex-servicemen who had fought in Normandy and across the globe. They were then younger then than I am now. Suddenly, time has passed to the extent that there are few remaining veterans. Perhaps this is the point that D-Day now becomes history, a poignant thought.

Firestorm Overlord from FoW

Still, I'm pleased that the wargaming community has plenty going on to commemorate the event. 

Flames of War have contributed a new Firestorm module, Overlord, which is free and available from their website. At first sight, this looks great. There is also news that the second half of Firestorm Caen from earlier this year will be released at some stage covering Cherbourg and St Lo.

The M44 world has been particularly busy. I've already posted about Days of Wonder's massive D-Day landing expansion. As of yesterday we now have:

• Brummbar's Battle Commander module for M44 which provides a way to play linked but variable scenarios from Juno Beach to Falaise.
  
  
  
  
  

• Derek Whaley's 108 page M44 scenario compilation for the western front, including all the Normandy scenarios (except those subject to ongoing copyright). Phew!

On an Android note, I have been playing D-Day by Invertbit on the train. It is very similar to an old hex and counter game, reasonably historical and quite enjoyable.

My Father's day present arrived earlier today. Not to be touched until next weekend of course. It is Heroes of Normandie. I'm really looking forward to this to say the least. I opened the packed to check that it was OK (that's my excuse) and found these extra counters in the parcel. Nice!

 

Also, check out The Atlantic which has some great then and now style photos from Normandy. Well worth a look.

Extra "Phwoar!"

Its that sort of day...

Yes, I have managed to celebrate Mother's Day a week early and spend most of the weekend working or doing homework. A difficult couple of days so this picture really cheered me up....

This was posted on the M44 forum and shows a close up of the D-Day map for Sword beach. The larger picture of all six maps that I posted doesn't show much detail and I was concerned about what we would actually get. This map reassures me big time that we have a real live workable scenario. My first questions is "does this look like my mental map of the battlefield?" and this does. The second question is "looking at the set up, do I have lots of historical options/problems to deal with?", the answer is again yes. I can see plenty of tension here between the drive on Caen and the reinforcement of the Orne bridgehead.

I'm really looking forward to this release. I have no hope of playing the full six maps, if I'm lucky I might get to play two or three maps, but will need to buy additional soldiers rather than additional base games. Maybe I also need some friends to play with!

Things that make you go "Phwoar!"

Invading Normandy again (but bigger) 

We have not had new M44 kit for some time, the Equipment Pack being the last big ticket item in 2012. We now have a very special release to commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day itself and the 10th anniversary of M44.

We had the warning from DoW a couple of weeks ago with the familiar message that was originally broadcast on Radio Londres:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne

Blessent mon cœur

D’une langueur

Monotone.

This could only mean a D-Day release but what more could they actually do? The hints seemed to show maps covering the whole of the Normandy front with extra pictures of crowds of fat bald old people crammed into a games store playing a huge M44 game. Needless to say the forums were divided.....what did it mean? Was it to be more maps? More miniatures?

Well the answer came yesterday with the formal DoW announcement. Its six really big maps!

The base map for M44 is 13 hexes wide by 9 deep. You can play these in Overlord style with two maps side by side (26 by 9). A larger breakthrough map was was released giving 13 by 17 to enable battles in depth. Now what we have is a ginormous map set giving 78 wide by a generous 23 deep when set up together.

Forum intelligence estimates the size of the whole map at anywhere between 14 foot and three miles wide. Certainly, this qualifies for a Phwoar in anyone's money!

The great thing about this is that you can play single, double or triple etc etc map games. in M44 speak this map configuration must be at least a triple overthrough breaklord!

The scale looks good too as it appears to be regiment/brigade level. There's a whole fist full of gaming here for only what appears to be 30 of our English pounds. Great, can't wait til the release in June.

Normandy numbers (1)

Pass the ammunition

One of the subjects I continually return to is Normandy. Not just D-Day but the campaign through to the liberation of Paris. It seems to me that the battle for the history of the campaign is as bitter as the actual fighting. If we leave aside the French and Germans (which we really shouldn't), we have an on going three way battle between the Americans, British and Canadians about who did what, how good they were (or not) and how bad Monty was.

My motto is "when the going gets tough the tough get the numbers and do the hard yards". There is a lot of good data about Normandy and our understanding of the campaign will be enhanced (even if the arguments are not resolved) by its full and sensible use.

I have recently been re-reading Max Hastings' book "Overlord" (Pan 1984). Appendix 5 contains "Some British Administrative Statistics" which I assume are from 21 Army Group. The data is familiar to me but I can't pin down the precise source. Probably not the best place to start a crusade for fact based history but certainly it is a first step. If anyone knows where this data originally came from, please let me know.

The data is for the period 12 June 1944 onwards. It gives rounds per month by gun type and rounds per gun per day. I have analysed this data and drawn up some graphs.

This first graph shows the rounds used per month. June numbers are smaller because the data is from 12th only. However, what started my interest is the large amount of mortar ammunition used in June. I assume because the artillery build-up, over the beaches, took time.

To take a closer look at the numbers I analysed the percentage contributions from each gun type. Mortar rounds are nearly 30% of total ammo use in June. 

I then developed some "effective fire" values using some very helpful data I found at:

http://nigelef.tripod.com/wt_of_fire.htm.

 

The effective fire values are based on the square root of the weight (in kgs) of the HE content of the shells. This shows, for a given weapon type, the relative effectiveness of its fire. Example values are 0.7 for a 3" mortar, 0.9 for a 25-pdr, 2.3 for a 5.5" gun and 3.6 for a 7.2" gun.

 

What I find really interesting about this data is the weight of fire contributed throughout the campaign by a fairly small number of medium and heavy guns (~450 guns out of some 2,500 total including mortars) but also the contribution made by divisional 3" and 4.2" mortars.

Time to find some data on American ammunition usage.....