Wings of Boom

Last night at the NWS we had a four player game of Wings of War with Mark B's new Mustangs taking on my new FW190 and Stephen N's FW190.  Simon piloted the other Mustang.

A bit hard to see top down as the planes fly over France, eh, the lovely Ares game mats somewhere on a table in the North Perth Bowling and Recreation Club.

There's my plane.  I hadn't noticed the cross on the tail (I'd only just - very carefully - extracted the model from its box minutes before the game).  I'll have to detail that so everyone knows its the bad guy.

Lots of action, but little shooting as the planes are either just out of range or arc.  One of the limitations in the Wings of War system is that it depends on where you end your move as to whether or not you get a shot.  No fly-bys

Boom!

Well, that was it.  Bad enough that the card sharp Simon had let me position myself right in front of his plane inflicting three hits, I went and picked the explosion (the other two chits being a 0 and a 1).

I stopped taking pictures, however the game must go on and here are some of Mark B's photos to continue the story.

The plane piloted by Mark B which is modelled on the one flown by Spurgeon Ellington (who I can't do justice to in this post, but who certainly warrants following up when I have time).  Notice the broken antenna, these planes are perhaps not as robust as they need to be.

The Mustangs collide.  Simon C's plane takes damage.

With all that space it is hard to imagine how the planes manage to collide, but ...

Whammy!  One Mustang rear ends the other and both crash into the now flaming remaining Focke Wulf.

Only the red tailed Mustang flown by Mark B survives.

And I thought Sails of Glory was bad for collisions. 

Maiden Voyage of the Imperial

A week ago my latest purchases from Military Simulations arrived and,... oh dear...

Broken mast.  Well, maybe this is the opportunity I have been waiting for.

Drilled out the base.  Inserted brass tube.  Whittled down base of the mast.   Fixed.  What's more, I can now show battle damage (although that is rather a negative mindset for such a fine ship).

Today Mark W and I had a game of Sails of Glory in which I took the Imperial (which since its repair I had weathered the sails and painted the masts and yards, although not yet redone the ensign or rebased it) out on its maiden voyage while Mark took command of the HMS Defence and the HMS Meleager.

The frigate looks on as the two big ships go man to man or should that be woman to woman, given that they are ships?  This gave me a chance to try out the new collision rules: test for entanglement (nothing) and both ships have "struck sails"

While they didn't entangle the Imperial did grapple the smaller HMS Defence and also pushed it aside to continue its movement after the collision before coming to a standstill.  Not sure we did that right, but it seemed to work - when two ships collide bow to bow, the bigger will push the other back on the subsequent turn.  

The musketry was lively and telling until the Imperial finished off the Defence with a whiff of grape.  The Meleagher tried its best to get some shots in, but they were ineffective.  After the Defence struck, the Imperial slowly made its way around while the Meleagher zipped across the sea to unintended safety (her Captain had failed to properly enunciate larboard was the guess).

Waterloo Dutch 27th Jagers

Lots of labels to go with this post, but the main one is probably nostalgia.  After seeing the Waterloo movie back in 1970 I started collecting Airfix Napoleonic figures.  One of my reference books was Philip Haythornthwaite's Uniforms of Waterloo.  I can remember looking at the pictures and thinking about how I could convert the then available figures to represent the units at Waterloo.

Many years pass and I move on to 15mm metals and never really look back, but the desire must be deep-seated and when I found out about the new plastic Napoleonic figures available I was tempted.  I tired hard to resist, but the games with the ANF and the coming of the Waterloo bicentenary provided too much.  Also inspiring was this post: http://quatrebraswargame.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/dutch-27th-jager-completed.html

Having now completed my own unit of 27th Jagers I am feeling pretty good and have a plan to do some more 1/72nd scale plastic Napoleonics for the Waterloo period.  Each unit will be created aroud a regiment, but will serve for both Napoleon's Battles and Shako as well as being suitable for some potential skirmish action with Songs of Drums and Shakos.  Time will tell.  I've mapped out what I need and have bought a couple more boxes of 1/72nd scale figures.

Pre-varnish, but on magnetic bases.  The green is probably too bright, but it helps the miniatures stand out on the table top.

16DbJG in line for Napoleon's Battles.

The 18 figure strong 27th Jager for Shako.

The Napoleon's Battles brigade sized unit in column.

The Shako regiment/battalion in column. 

Shako square.

Napoleon's Battles fancy square.

Twelve men skirmishing.

More skirmishing.

All that remains is to make them a flag/label and the officer figure's base has been set up to support such an addition.  The other thing is to create some metallic movement trays for when the big day comes and they get to participate in a Napoleon's Battles or Shako game.  I wonder which one will come first?

More Zombies - will they never die?

Last night at the NWS, soon to be renamed ZWS, five teams of survivors tried to clear a town over run by zombies.  Will those zombies never die?  I guess not, that's why they are zombies.

Building and figures (except one) from everyone else's collections.

The fire power of my team: three survivors armed with assault rifles.  Carefully just out of focus is the poor survivor who got caught in a state of undress when the zombies attacked. 

The close combat part of my team, all armed with pistols, plus the leader with the chainsaw.

The final member, sniper man.

Careful, there might be zombies.

No zombies, just a professional zombie hunter who joins the team.

Here come the zombies, twenty five of them.

Soon there were only five.

But they kept on coming so we kept on shooting.

A scene staged for the camera.

On the look out for more zombies.

Fear of zombies causes camera shake or is that jiggle?

Sniper man well positioned, pity he shoots so slow and so badly.  He was trying to pick off some zombies who were attacking another team.  His moment came when he picked off the last survivor of that team who had just been infected by the zombie virus.

Lady with the chainsaw looks for zombies.

He's about to answer a call of nature when he sees...

Zombies!

To the right there are more zombies who have just finished eating one of the other survivor teams.

We've got zombies coming at us from two directions!

The ones to the front fell quickly and we then stepped out to meet the next lot.  Thankfully they were moving a bit slower having just had lunch.

A rare photo taken from the zombie side.

The first wave keeps on coming...

But meets a grizzly end.

We had about a dozen turns.  I picked up four tokens.  Two of the five teams were wiped out, but the others did okay I think (they were on the far side of the town).  My lass with the chainsaw did well.  I'm tempted to get some more figures to make up a full team.  I also should give them names.

Not really shown in my photos, but we had some fantastically modeled ruined buildings.  Only thing we need is a more appropriate terrain board.

Thanks Simon C for organizing the game and running the zombies.

HMS Royal George

Last night at the NWS Stephen launched the HMS Royal George, a 100 gun first rate ship of the line.  I decided to take it on with the 32 gun Unite and the 74 gun Generaux.

The HMS Royal George comes into view across the briny vinyl sea.

The Generaux gets off the first broadside with a bow rake that caused the HMS Royal George to take on water.  The Captain commanding the George despairs that his ship is made of balsa.

Generaux keeps up the pounding and Unite gets in a few long range shots.  The George keeps taking water as her crew work to repair the leaks.  However it was not all one way and with double shot the George was able to inflict some damage on the Generaux.

Close up of the "weathered" Generaux.

Disaster!  In circling around Generaux is taken aback and the Unite crashes into her stern.  Lots of damage is caused to both ships and Unite catches fire and the Generaux loses a mast.

Disaster strikes twice.  A second collision (and a few shots from the George) puts paid to Unite.  Generaux suffers further damage from the collision, but presses on and collides with the George becoming entangled.  Under the Sails of Glory rules there is no damage when colliding with enemy ships...

The Generaux and George fight it out with a boarding action as well as a lot of musketry.  A blast of grape from the George clears the Generaux and the battle is over.  Victory to the new ship.

Observations from this game

Despite its larger number of guns, the George did not have a bigger broadside than the Generaux.

It certainly was capable of taking more damage.

The collision rules are flawed.  I will have to scour the Anchorage forum to see what other players have to say about collisions.

My first introduction to the NWS

When I was living in Canberra, my partner very much wanted to move to Perth (her home city).  I was reluctant.  One of the reasons I put forward might have been associated with wargaming.  As if on cue this article turned up.  It would be ten years ago, maybe longer.  We would need to know Carlo’s current age to accurately date it. 

Anyway, this article gave me strength in the knowledge that there was wargaming on the other side of Australia, Napoleonic wargaming as well, although the picture accompanying the article didn’t look like any Napoleonic game I’d ever seen.