Wings of Lucky Escape

Last night at the club I took to the air again, this time in a Sopwith Snipe accompanied by Mark B who had control of another Snipe and an Airco DH.4 on a mission deep inside enemy territory.  We flew straight into a flock of Fokkers: two yellow ones flown Stephen N, a zebra flown by Greg and the Red Baron himself flown by Matthew on his first flight.

I'm bottom right hand corner, very close to the edge.

Into the storm,  This turned out to be a game of chicken that resulted in various levels of damage  inflicted due to collisions.

Greg in the zebra stripped Fokker and I have flipped over executing Immelmann turns to get into a tailing position.  May guns jammed.

More games of chicken.  Around this time I realised I needed to fly further into German territory to complete the mission.

The DH.4 observer gets in a shot.

Mark B sets the poor Red Baron on fire.

Again I have set myself up well only to have my guns jam.

And I'm getting a lot of attention.

The DH.4 gets a kill.  However both it and Mark B's Snipe have taken a lot of damage and head for home.

Leaving me, on fire, deep in enemy territory to battle my way out alone.

And I did it!

I was extremely lucky.  Stephen was able to catch me in the end, but suffered a gun jam on his closing burst.  Phew!

The unofficial leaderboard, noting that flying two planes counts as two sorties and doubles your chances of deaths and kills.

Another Napoleon's Battles Practice Session

Last night I took Stephen N and Mark B through another game of Napoleon's Battles.  We used the OOB for Marengo (getting as much reuse out of the labels as possible).  It was a straight up fight (one which I would have loved to have set up using the new Blucher Scharnhorst system, but that will have to wait).  We were also joined by Oliver who took on Ott, the Austrian commander of their left wing.

This is Ott's command, three divisions with plenty of artillery.   Note revised movement trays and what I call, Large Print labels.  The movement trays are necessary to align Stephen's Empire based Austrians with the required Napoleon's Battles basing - something that I am testing out for the extra figures I will need for Waterloo.  Large Print, well, we ain't getting any younger.

That's just about the all the Austrians in view.  The terrain boards looked good and the terrain features (which just represented rough ground) went well.  I was also pleased that the basing on my French matched in.  The Austrian wagons are just for show.

The Austrian right rested on some rough ground.

Victor's Corps on the French left.  While the Austrians might have the artillery, the French had the commanders.  Note the old style labels.  Light blue was not a good choice.

The French centre with Lannes and Dessaix on the right with Murat and the cavalry in reserve.

The big picture.

An attempt at an arty photo - the morning sun raising above the battlefield.  The table was six feet wide by five deep.  The armies deployed within 2,400 yards of each other (1" represents 100 yards).  While this would mean it takes a few moves to get into action, it did allow for some on table maneuvering.

Ott made his way round the left of the rough ground.  The Austrian infantry do not march very fast.  The Austrian centre was fairly stationary due to Melas concentrating on his right where the French advanced in some force.

The French attack in the centre is repulsed.  Ott is slowly coming round. However...

The Austrian right has been destroyed.

In a desperate and totally unsporting move, the Austrian commander pushes the Grenz through the muddy fields to try and capture the up and coming French star, Napoleon himself.  But fail.

The Austrian players had some amazing bad luck.

I umpired as simply as I could, which meant no free rolls and no withdraw.  I am now having second thoughts about excluding those rules.  Free rolls add to the fun and can even out some bad luck (or enemy good luck) and withdraw (provided casualties are capped to no more than the rout number for the close combat phase in total) might better represent the different armies capabilities.

Everyone had fun (as far as I could tell) and I was certainly happy with the visual appeal (particularly compared with the game we had the previous month).

Next up, Marengo - Prelude to Waterloo.

Spanish Reina Dragoon Regiment

This post was inspired by this post from Carlo.

Seeing his post reminded me that I had painted up a Spanish Dragoon regiment to "use up" some Old Glory SYW 15mm figures I had somehow acquired (I'm guessing they were a pass off or part of a bigger deal or something).  These would have been painted some ten or twenty years ago.  They are the only Spanish I have (so far).  They have seen action substituting as Prussian HC.

As they say, too pretty not to show.

Looking at them now, I can see I had a problem with the yellow.  It has gone on too thick and obscured the detail of the fabric folds.

Contact Patrol

Stephen N, whose collection all these planes are from, set up a reconnaissance mission for two Bristol Fighters to fly across the battlefield and return.  Waiting for them were three Fokkers.

With my new found knowledge I will embellish this a contact patrol.  Such patrols were conducted during offensives.  The planes would fly over the front and sound klaxon horns and the advanced infantry would set off flares allowing the planes to mark their position and then report back to high command.

Mark B and myself took a Bristol each (I'm the half painted one).  Stephen N is the yellow Fokker, Stephen B the zebra and, welcoming a new player to Wings of Glory in his first game, Oliver in the red Fokker.

Contact!  Poor bloody infantry down in the mud.

A pair of Bristol Fighters.

Incoming Fokkers.

Not the kind of contact expected, but the collision knocks out one Fokker and gives me a kill.

Very next go my companion gets a good burst in on the yellow Fokker and boom!

A more aesthetically pleasing explosion. 

Prior to this pass by the red Fokker, the two Bristols had collided.  I almost got my second kill, but it would have been a home goal.  Mark B collected 10 points of damage from the contact.

We head for home.

I had collected four damage cards, but they were all zero.  The red Fokker had taken some damage (I forget exactly, might have been nine plus a pilot wound).

And as my good fortune (which is a bit of an understatement) continues, here is the updated, but totally unofficial, leader board for 2015.

Fire in the Sky by Michael Molkentin

A few weeks ago I saw this book mentioned in this post by Kaptain Kobold.

Thanks to the local library service I was able to quickly get a copy and true to the quote on the cover of the 2nd Edition I found it "hard to put down ... accessible, and unfailingly interesting."  As the Kaptain says it is an excellent account of the Australian Flying Corps contribution in WW1.

It will give me new inspiration for my Wings of Glory game tonight and for games to come (even though I have trouble matching performance of the Wings of Glory system to air combat as described in the book).

You can find out more about Fire in the Sky at Google books here.

Wagons from Airfix Waterloo Assault Set

This post from Life In The Past Lane inspired me to dig out the two useful wagons that came with the Airfix Waterloo Assault Set.

Not sure I've ever used them on the table top, but I plan to one day.

They were assembled and painted a long time ago.

There was other stuff that came with the wagons.  I've got the wood pile somewhere and the log barricade.  Some sacks and barrels are around and in use as well.  There was a funny wheelbarrow thing as well, mines half painted or rather half the paint might have peeled off.

Along the Danube - First Play of Blucher

Last night, with just one read of a redacted set of the rules I attempted to umpire my first game of Blucher. Mark B took my French against Stephen N's Austrians in the introductory scenario for the new Blucher rules - Along the Danube.

I had made up some movement trays and labels to use with our miniatures that are based for Napoleon's Battles (mine) and Empire (Stephen).  The plan is to invest in some metal 3x2 inch bases which my troops at least will adhere to due to the wonders of magnetism and can also double as movement trays for Napoleon's Battles.

But this post is about Blucher.

Apart from the determination to play with miniatures I also researched names for each brigade and created my own labels/roster.  The resultant document can be found here and one of its two pages can be seen in the following picture.

The Austrians have deployed in a very linear fashion and are not yet revealed.  The French have deployed very compact.  There are more Austrians to the right and left of their line.  There are also more French to their rear.  The shining round things are coins denoting objectives.

The French advanced in the centre and came under fire from the Austrians who held their position.  One mistake we initially made was in not applying the penalty for infantry skirmish/long range fire.

The Austrians attacked with their Reserve Corps on the French right.  I used cotton wool balls to mark fire combats and close combats - for visual appeal and as an aide memoir.

On the third turn the French start to return fire in the centre and on their right.  They had repulsed one of the Austrian Grenadier brigades, but the other one was proving more resilient.  I have to double check, but don't recall any restriction on firing into a melee.

The centre fire fight continues, while the Austrians try again on the French right.  The Austrian's own right flank is advancing through the wood.  

The French start to break into the Austrian centre and have repulsed the Austrian attack on their right.

We played ten turns all up before calling it a night (approximately four hours casual play including set up and packing away).  We were close to a result.  The Austrians had four broken units while the French had two (and had retired two more).  However the French Reserve Corps was getting ready to exploit the break in the Austrian centre.

The movement system using momentum (MO) rolls worked well and was fun.  Most of the time each side got to move three corps, although the French lucked out badly on one occasion (although they were in a position to fire so it turned out to their advantage anyway). 

We didn't use reserve movement - something we are yet to learn.  I think it would have aided the Austrian right wing advance, provided they skirted the wood.

Also we might not have done the correct thing when units were engaged (I need to read that part again).

We did have a few units fatigued, but I couldn't find out what the penalty for that was (only reference I have found so far is on page 12, but it might be something in the advanced game that I am yet to study).

I need to do some more thinking on the aesthetics.  I find the labels detract from the visual appeal, but there are a lot of options and ideas to consider for alternatives (and two good ones are mentioned in the rules - put them underneath or use a roster).

I like the big bases and in fact, the basic mechanics of the game.  It is the kind of thing I would like to think I would have come up with if I had Mr Mustafa's talent for writing wargame rules.  Definitely simpler than what I am used to, but still with lots of command challenges and tension to make for an engaging game.

The rules are well written and laid out.  I was working from a PDF copy that hadn't printed well in black and white (most of the coloured headings and diagrams were just black rectangles), so it is a tribute to the rules that they survived that challenge.  (Aside: my hard copy rules and 100 Days Campaign arrived today - thanks Nic Robson of Eureka for such prompt service and Australia Post too).