Yeoman Soldier, Prussian Farmer

Something a bit different in terms of World War Two memoirs.

Richard Harvey served in the 1st East Riding Yeomandry, a Yorkshire regiment based in Hull. The regiment was part of the British Expeditionary Force that went to France in 1940. They were equipped with Vickers Mark VI light tanks and armoured scout carriers. Harvey was a Bren gunner and wireless operator in the troop commander's carrier.

His unit was part of the fighting withdrawal to Dunkirk, but he was wounded and captured. He ended up in Prussia near the old Teutonic Knights castle at Marienburg.

They were billeted in a farm workers bothy and worked on a German farm. Getting out of the Bothy wasn't that difficult and they did it many times, but without an escape committee they had no access to the necessary paperwork and other resources needed to escape across Germany. He spent three years at the farm and was then sent to Stalag XXB, before ending up in a sugar factory. As the Russian's advanced they were evacuated with the civilians and nearly got killed by allied ground attack aircraft. Eventually they were liberated by the advancing American units, and sent back to Hull.

A short, but interesting read that inspired me to finish another short paint job. This time a couple of German 105mm howitzers for my early war German FoW army.

 

Blucher

Be warned, Sam Mustafa's new Napoleonic game 'Blucher' is very good and difficult to resist.

I was itching to get 'Blucher' on the tabletop once the package arrived in the post. The rule book is beautifully produced and seems very robust with the all important quality stiching. There is very little gratuitous eye candy, the graphics are there to explain the mechanisms. There are helpful summaries and examples of play in every section. The Hundred Days cards, an optional extra, are also very nice.

As recommended, I played the first game with cards rather than miniatures. Nine units a side, with the British defending the classic ridge and the French attacking. You start with the cards face down.

There is scope for strategic movement, called reserve moves, but otherwise you activate Corps, individual units or finally the CinC activation. Each activation costs Momentum Dice which unusually are rolled by your opponent and kept secret from you until they run out. The incentive is to do the essentials first.

Movement is by base widths, so the rules will work with any consistent basing, and are reduced to two speeds simple and difficult. A simple move is a pivot and then straight ahead, reminded me a bit of Spearhead. Difficult can be due to terrain or a pivot at the end of a move. The size of the cards and the engagement restrictions make it difficult to do any fancy manoeuvring when close to the enemy.

Fire and combat phases use a simple mechanism. It depends on the strength of the unit and a few bonuses and special rules. This is very much a game of attrition and reserves are important. Here you can see the French advancing and first cavalry clash on the British right. I used casualty markers rather than mark the cards.

Units retreat a couple of base widths if they lose a combat, but can come back if you want. You don't get long melees over several turns.

Anyway, the French pinned the British right with skirmishing and put their main effort on the left. The game ended with the French making a breakthrough.

There are most of the army lists you will need in the book, together with a campaign system and advanced rules. There are also some useful additional resources on the web site, including blank cards.

It's important to emphasise that this is a grand tactical level game. Small unit tactics are abstracted out. So it's not a replacement for say Black Powder. This is a big battle set of rules. Each card or base of miniatures represents 4 to 6 battalions or 2 to 4 batteries.

My initial reaction is very favourable. I play a lot of different games, so I favour simple mechanisms that allow you to focus on the game rather than the fine points of the rules. I anticipate dusting down my 15mm armies that haven't seen much action since I regularly played Principles of War.

Vorwarts!

 

Sheriffmuir 1715

This year is the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Sheriffmuir in 1715. To coincide with the anniversary Stuart Reid has published a military history of the Jacobite rising that effectively ended with this battle.

It's not a glorious story, more a grand muddle. The rising was poorly organised and coordinated without the necessary troops and equipment from France. In fact without even King James to lead it. He turned up with only two men after the battle.

Reid also documents the simultanous English uprising, with Scottish support, that ended in the Battle of Preston. This was an even more chaotic affair.

This is a proper military history with a detailed discussion of the troops on both sides. Hard evidence is limited, but he has pieced together what is known about each regiment that fought in the campaign. The loyalists were a mix of regular and militia troops, while the Jacobites had lowland troops and highlanders. The battle included a good example of the feared highland charge.

This is a good book for wargamers with most of what you need to game the campaign. I am pulling together a smallish skirmish force in 28mm for either side using the Donnybrook rules. Figures so far come from Reiver Castings, League of Augsburg and Front Rank.

On a side note. Today’s Scotsman newspaper carries a story that the world’s biggest ever auction of artifacts relating to the Jacobite rebellions is to be staged in Scotland this year to mark the anniversary of the 1715 uprising. Several hundred rarely seen items, many of which have direct links with Bonnie Prince Charlie, will be going under the hammer at Lyon & Turnbull in Edinburgh.

Vapartnak - York Wargames Show

I made the long trip to York today for the first big wargames show of the year. And it was well worth the effort.

The show is held at the York racecourse - indoors of course in the main stand. Sounds a strange venue, but it works well with stands on four levels. I am old enough to remember when the show was held in a medieval hall in the town centre, my head bumping off the beams! The only downside of the new venue is parking in muddy fields, bring your wellies!

Most of the usual traders were there and a few I hadn't seen before. A few figure manufacturers were missing that I could have done with, but I picked up a few packs to pad out my projects for the year. Then spray paints, including the elusive Testors varnish, and some rather nice casualty markers for Hail Caesar and Bolt Action.

The standard of display game was very high indeed, definitely the high point. Here are a few that caught my eye.

Pick of the bunch was this John Paul Jones raid on Leith (the port for Edinburgh). Apparently this was planned, but called off due to the weather. Had he arrived the locals would probably have greeted him with 'you'll have had your tea then'!

Then this assault across the Suez Canal in WW1

 

This participation game based on the 3rd Aghan War, captured the terrain well.

Zulu! Rorkes Drift in 28mm.

Zombies. Not my thing but it looked good.

 

And finally, this very good Age of Arthur game.

 

 

More WW2 Japanese

My painting schedule has dropped off to almost next to nothing. Work mostly, but the truth is I need to be the mood and I haven't been.

So I thought I would try some bite size filler projects, using the pile of lead awaiting the paint brush.

I have just completed the first of these, some reinforcements for my 15mm WW2 Japanese. This is a rifle squad with an attached light mortar and a couple of trucks. All from the FoW range. I particularly like their trucks, no assembly required!

I have also struggled through some related reading. 'Bloody Shambles' by Christopher Shores, tells the story of the Allied air campaign across Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Ceylon and the Philippines during World War II. It documents the Allied underestimation of Japanese ability, which led to the destruction of 50% of the British bomber force in two days.K

I say I struggled, more accurately I dipped in and out. I find air warfare books hard going at the best of times and this is no exception. The format is a diary of the campaigns and while I appreciate the detailed research, I'm afraid it is very easy to put down between chapters.

I have been gaming though, with a great GDWS double header and Open Day last weekend. I played in the big Bolt Action game, roughly 4,000pts a side with seven players.

This weekend I am off to York for the Vapartnak wargames show on Sunday. Looking forward to it and the Blackburn v Fulham game on the Saturday. Although a bit more trepidation about the latter!

 

 

The Last Crusaders

My latest reading is the ‘The Last Crusaders’ by Barnaby Rogerson. It tells the story of 15^th and 16^th Century conflicts between the Christian states of Europe, mostly led by the Habsburg’s, and the Ottoman Empire and fellow Islamic states in North Africa.

While the Ottoman invasions of the Balkans have been well covered, this book also covers the crusades of Portugal and Spain in North Africa. Both countries had a foothold on the coast and fought a series of wars against the local rulers and later against the corsairs. These are wars I was much less familiar with.

His choice of final conflict is the Battle of the Three Kings1578.  The young King Sebastian of Portugal invaded Morocco. Facing him was the dying Sultan Abdul Malik who had to be strapped into his saddle his horsemen attacked the Christian square. In a renaissance version of Custer’s Last Stand, the flower of Portugal’s nobility was wiped out with 26,000 men dead or captured.

The author writes a narrative history of the period in the best tradition of the historical storyteller. A very good read.

Dacia: The Roman Wars

This is one of those books that you say ‘wow’ on opening, before you even read a chapter.

‘Dacia - The Roman Wars’ by Radu Oltean is truly a superb piece of work. The author sets out the latest archeological evidence in a straightforward way for the general reader, offering alternative scenarios when the evidence is contestable. However, what gives this book the ‘wow’ factor is the illustrations. They come in several forms. Photographs of the sites today; exhibits from museums; clear colour maps; and best of all, colour plates that reconstruct the forts and battles of the campaign.

For those not familiar with historical Dacia, it covered much of modern day Romania, but was centred on Transylvania. The key fortresses that the Romans wanted to capture were in the Carpathian Mountain chain and the rugged terrain and valleys that make up that region.

My Dacian army and their Roman counterparts are covered here.

Highly recommended.

Open Combat and skirmish games

I find myself playing many more skirmish games than I used to. With work and other commitments eating into my limited time - shorter games and less painting is a big plus. Certainly compared to the big projects I have done in recent years.

Bolt Action isn't really a skirmish game, but it only needs 30 or so figures compared with 100 plus for Hail Caesar or Black Powder. However, Saga has been the real driver, again with less than 30 figures.

The current supplements only cover the Dark Ages and the Crusades, but there are a growing number of unofficial battle boards. I have recently played with Romans and Gauls, thanks to battle boards developed by Doug Colbeck, available through the Saga forum that is a great resource. They play really well and with a tweak or two, I plan using them for my Dacians.

Listening to the Meeples and Miniatures podcast drew my attention to a new set of skirmish rules called Open Combat from Second Thunder Games. These are real skirmish level games, arguably pretty close to role playing, with the introductory 150pt games involving six or eight figures a side.

The beauty of these rules is that they work for any army in a pre-gunpowder setting, including fantasy. You can produce your own warband list using the simple point system. Each ability level; speed, attack, defence etc and special rules all cost a point each. So you can create different ability levels within the same warband.

I used the Romans and Gauls again to test the rules. My Roman band had Macro and Cato from the Simon Scarrow novels with higher attack, defence and fortitude levels than the rest of the legionaries in the warband. The Gauls were of course led by a super stat Asterix. Sadly, his stats didn't save him from Cato's pilum, even after our cat had made one of his increasingly regular interventions on the wargames table. Razzy has a high 12 attack factor!

The rules themselves play very well and games can be finished in a hour or so. I quickly switched to the QRF with only occasional references back to the full rule set on my iPad. They are available as a PDF download for only £10 and the production quality is excellent.

I can see some great possibilities for this system, with super heroes battling their way through hordes of low quality troops, using the flexibility that you just don't get with other systems. It also means that you can get troops onto the table quickly. Good for the early stages of bigger projects as well as some niche games using figures that don't have a bespoke rules system.

Highly recommended and at £10 you really can't go wrong.

 

 

 

To the Strongest

'To the Strongest' is a new set of wargame rules for the ancient and medieval periods by Simon Miller.

I was attracted to them following a couple of reviews including the latest edition of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy. The mechanisms are very different from anything I have played before, offering up the prospect of a quick game.

So what's different?

Firstly, there is no time wasted on measurements because it uses a grid. You don't need ugly squares on your tabletop, I just put felt pen black dots on the reverse side of my normal cloth. Units generally move one square for foot, two for mounted. Diagonal and sideways moves are possible, but require higher activation card scores. This really does speed up play and obviates the need for any debate over movement distances, match ups etc that can get in the way of a game like FoG. You can use different size squares depending on the scale of figures you want to use.

Secondly, there are no dice. Instead you use two packs of playing cards. You separate the court cards out to be used for strategems. The number cards are used for everything else. Activation requires anything other an Ace to start with and you can keep going so long as you draw a higher card. If you fail that ends the turn for that command. Activation can be used to move, shoot or charge into melee. Again the cards are used with a minimum score to hit, plus or minus a few modifiers. Then the defender saves and then hits back. There are different hit scores and saves for units in the generic or specific army lists.

I have only played one game, but it works very well. I used 100 Years War French and English and it resulted in a quick game that looked and felt right for the period. Melees did drag on a little longer than I would have expected, but they may just have been the luck of the cards.

 

The rules come as a very reasonably priced (£9.99) PDF download and are nicely laid out with hyperlinks between the relevant sections. The QRF could have done with a few more of the basics, but once you have played a few times, I suspect the numbers will be remembered easily enough. There are a few army lists available as a free download and the generic points system is easily adaptable for others.

Playing cards are perhaps not visually great, but you can substitute poker chips or something else. The MDF markers are ammo chips. Each shooting unit has a limited number at the start of the game, another rarely used mechanism in ancient wargaming.

These rules are a bit different and well worth look at this price.

 

Some wargaming inspiration - 2015 anniversaries

As we approach the New Year, I will do my usual look forward to military anniversaries. 2015 will see some pretty significant commemorations that I suspect we will see represented on wargame tables across the globe.

There are a few in the Balkans.

The Gallipoli campaign started in April 2015 and in May Italy joined the war on the side of the Entente. In October, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and invaded Serbia, which together with the renewed German/Austrian offensive, spelt the end for Serbian resistance and led to the long and terrible retreat over the Albanian mountains.

Talking of Albania, they will undoubtedly celebrate the birth of Norman Wisdom, a somewhat bizarre cultural icon on Albania. His films were one of the few western productions allowed in that country during the Hoxha regime.

In April 1815, the Second Serbian uprising against the Ottomans started and this led to the recognition of Serbia as a semi-independent state. The Ottomans had more success a hundred years earlier in July 1715 when the fall of Nauplion in the Peloponnese, effectively ends Venetian resistance to Ottomans in the Morea.

Five hundred years ago, 615 is the date usually ascribed to the Slav invasion of the Balkans that led to the modern day Serbian and Croat states. Actually, the Slavs slipped into the Balkans gradually over many years, but 615 saw significant events such as the siege of Thessalonica.

Interesting though these anniversaries are to me, I suspect one or two others might get more prominence. The 200th anniversary of Waterloo is of course the big one, alongside the 600^th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt 1415. I see the Perry’s are ahead of the game with their new plastics for the period.

In Scotland, we have the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion and the Battle of Sheriffmuir. While in England the 1215 signing of Magna Carta will no doubt be remembered, with probably less attention given to the subsequent First Barons War.

The Swiss will want to make a noise about the November 1315 Battle of Morgarten, when they defeated Leopold’s Austrians and went on to found the Swiss Confederation. For gamers of a certain age, the William Tell TVseries will be a reminder of the period. Even if it was filmed in Snowdonia.

And finally, not to miss out our American cousins who may wish to mark the 50^th anniversary of the introduction of the first combat troops (US Marines) in Vietnam 1965. More significantly, it is also the 150^th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War.

More than a few events here to keep us busy painting and gaming in 2015.