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.