Warmaster Playtest

I have been looking for a ruleset to play mass battles in the Sengoku period for some time. I would like to play this in a small scale and after a lot of research, I have decided on 10mm. To prevent an over extravagant purchase and a lot of unnecessary work I have decided to go with the Wargames Atlantic hard plastic set. Followers on my blog will know that all my previous forays into small scales have failed spectacularly. I have bought or painted armies in 6 mm scale for Napoleonics (Blucher) and WWII (O Group and Rommel), they have ended up being sold or given away. I am hoping this will not be the case here.

Next up was the decision on what ruleset to try for these games. The ruleset Heiho that comes with the Wargames Atlantic has not had the best reviews. After a lot of research I felt I should check out Warmaster  Ancient Battles with their Medieval Armies source book. Unfortunately, neither rulebook is available as Games Workshop has completely abandoned all of their historical games. The plus for me here is that several members in the Historical Miniature Wargaming Club in Montreal seem to be well acquainted with this ruleset for fantasy battles. 

One of our members, Helge, set up a game for me last week in the fantasy genre with me playing High Elves against his Orcs. Although fantasy gaming does not really interest me, this was an excellent introduction to the actual ruleset. I actually quite enjoyed the game, it has very simple mechanics but a fairly complex command decision process. 

I am really appreciative of Helge setting this up for me and with his help as well as another club member, Antoine, I was able to get the historical lists for Japan and Korea in this period. It seems that the Warmaster Revolution ruleset which is supported by the fan base will work well with these 2 lists with minimal additions. 

I am also looking forward to the upcoming ruleset Daimyo from Osprey games which is being released at the end of July. But I think I will go ahead and by the Sengoku Army and start painting.

Battle Group

 

Last week I had my second game using the Battlegroup rules. I have been wanting to play purely tank actions and I have found that the 2 rulesets I have previously tried out just not that interesting. I find What a Tanker a bit foolish and the Achtung Panzer way too granular. I discussed this with Jean-Philippe who has been playing Battlegroup for quite some time and he kindly agreed to demonstrate the game to me.

I have a pretty good selection of 20mm Soviet and German tanks and of course the great tank battles in WWII took place in the Ukraine. We decided to set our game there. I put together a table.

German Start in upper left, Soviet start in lower right

I took the Soviets and Jean-Philippe took the Germans. We decided to play the Recce Screen scenario from the book. The OB was as follows:

Germans

PzIV Command 

PzIV x 3

StuGIII G

Sd.Kfz 250/9

Soviets

T34 Command

T34 x 6

T70

It was a very close game, with me eking out a very marginal victory. The game was a lot of fun and I would definitely play again and I see BattleGroup as my primary WWII Tank game. Many thanks to Jean-Philippe.

Three CoC Games!

 

The week before last I got in 3 Chain of Command games.

US Paratroopers vs German Volksgrenadiers

Attack an Defend scenario from v2 set in the Hurtgenwald

British Rifle Platoon vs German Grenadiers

Hasty Defence scenario from the 1940 Handbook set in Belgium

British Airborne vs German Panzergrenadiers

Attack and Defend scenario from v2 from the Von Luck campaign

Three victories....that is a rare event.

Saga: Battle of Stamford Bridge

 

Last Thursday Korrigan put on a Saga Extraganza for our monthly tThursday Saga Night. We had 3 simultaneous games, two of which featured the final 2 battles of King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.

I played in the Battle of Stanford Bridge and commanded the king's Anglo-Saxon forces, I was assisted by William who commanded the Earl of Mercia's Anglo-Saxon forces and Michel who commanded the Earl of Northhumberland's Anglo-Danes. We faced off against Luis who commanded Harald Hardrada's Viking force assisted by Eric and François commanding Tostig's and Eystein Orre's Vikings. 

We played the Saga Epic rules at 16 points aside. The main Warlord had 6 point warbands and the ancilliary Commanders had 4 point warbands. The game was 8 turns, and at the same time while we were playing the Battle of Hastings took place with 6 other players. 

Harold Godwinson in the foreground with the Earl of Mercia on his left and the Earl of Northumberland on his right. Harald Haradada in the centre with Tostig on his left and Orre on his right.

I was quite confident that Luis would send in his Viking Hearthguard first. Mercia waited for Hardrada to attack and caused some damage with his Saxon levies...never underestimate the Saxon shieldwall. Harold's warriors were sent in and drove the Viking Hearthguard back.

The Viking made another attack but without much success, by turn 6 Tostig's force was demoralised and the Anglo-Saxon defence of the bridge remained solid.

The Earl of Northumberland's Anglo-Danes had a lot of back and forth at the ford of the River Derwent but was able to keep the Vikings on the far side of the river, news of Hardrada's defeat reached them and at turn 7 the Vikings withdrew.....an Anglo-Saxon victory.

This was a quite a lot of fun, It was actually the best game of Saga I have had for some time. I find Saga pretty gamey at times but this seemed like a true historical event. I should note that Harold Godwinson was able to defeat the Normans at Hastings so remained the King of England.......history was defied.

Battle of Hastings

Americans in Winter Uniforms

This will be it, I hope for 28mm WWII figures. These are again resin printed from the RKX kickstarter. I believe these came out of the soup a little sharper than the Volksgrenadiers. I needed a support unit for my upcoming Hürtgenwald scenario, while at the same time supplementing the figures of our Historical Wargaming Club's collection. 

1945 US Infantry squad with SMG armed leader with 2 team each with one BAR gunner.

A Volkgrenadier sniper and MMG team

Observation Posts to be used as objectives.

It has been interesting to paint 28mm figures for WWII, quite a different task from painting 20mm. I found these a bit more of a challenge but I believe this may be due to the nature of the resin prints that I produced. I just started painting some 28mm WWI Brits from Wargames Atlantic and these are much easier to paint and I suspect I will get a much better result. This is due to the much sharper detail on the hard plastic figures. I might get one of my friends to print some of the RKX figures, who is much more skilled than I with resin printing.

 

Printemps du Lard Registration Now Open

 

Click to Register https://forms.gle/xvUCnW72xsep5S7QA

German Volksgrenadiers

 

Our club is having a a Chain of Command Gamesday on April 26th. Three of us have committed to putting on games and I thought it would be a good idea to play games in 3 scales just to show to gamers that CoC is not scale dependent. One of us has 15mm platoons and 2 of us have 20mm platoons. We did however as an early club project, paint up the Band of Brothers boxset from Warlord Games which contained German Grenadiers and American Airborne. I felt that with some additional figures, I could put on a 28mm game using these figures. I am limited by the fact that I have very little 28 WWII terrain but after some thought I decided to put on a Hurtgenwald game which in most cases just requires forests of which I have plenty.

CoC2 has platoon composition for a Volksgrenadier Platoon so I decided to go with this but after Graham checked the club figure count, I could see that I was short 8 STG-44 armed figures. I really did not want to spend any money on Warlord Games figures as I am not interested in collecting a 28mm WWII army and these figures would end up being a club donation. But I did have STLs for the Hurtgenwald campaign from the RKX kickstarter. There were 3 different STG-44 armed figures so I printed off 8 of these on my Elegoo 4k resin printer. 

The figures themselves are appropriately sculpted but I found that they printed with somewhat weak details. I am not sure if this was due to my printer resolution. I did find them somewhat difficult to paint because of this, but I soldiered on and ended up with this. They will do for the gamesday!

We are planning to do 2 games each on the same terrain but with different scenarios. I have decided to go with the Probe and the Attack and Defend scenarios. The first scenario requires minimal support but the 2nd scenario does have a significant requirement so I suspect I will be painting up a few more figures.  

Printemps du Lard

Graham, William and myself will be hosting a CoC gamesday on April 26. We hope to put on 6 different scenarios on 3 different tables in multiple different figure scales. Games will be aimed at all levels of experience from beginner to regular player. Registration will be posted on April 1. Graham, William et moi-même organisons une journée du jeu de Chain of Command le 26 avril. Nous prévoyons proposer 6 scénarios différents sur 3 tables, avec des figurines à différentes échelles. Les parties s'adressent à des joueurs de tous niveaux, du débutant au joueur confirmé. Les inscriptions seront ouvertes le 1er avril.

 

Belaya Smert

I finally have finished the layout and editing on my Chain of Command campaign for the Winter War between the Soviets and the Finns in late 1939 to early 1940. 

I have placed it on Wargames Vault for free, this allows me to update it easily. I am already finding some minor typographical errors and I would like to add more period photos gong forward. Here is the link to download the campaign. 

Comments and game reports are always appreciated.

 

Storming the Citadel-Game 2

A couple of days ago, myself and Graham got in a second game in our Storming the Citadel campaign. I had already played this scenario with William as documented in the previous blog post. I had won but it was a close run thing.

This time we played on Graham's table as you can see below.

Forces

Germans (FM 9, Supports 3)

1942 Panzergrenadier Platoon (less 7 men)

Adjutant

Pregame Barrage

2 Engineer Teams

Soviets (FM 9, Supports 2) (less 6 men)

1942 Soviet Rifle Platoon

8 minefields

2 entrenchments

Game

Patrol Markers and JOPs

The only photo I took of the game, as you see Graham placed the 8 minefields Straight across the table, but more importantly they were at least a foot from my closest JOPs. I placed a PG squad in cover next to the forward JOPs. I was hoping my PGB would allow me to get forward quickly to the minefields. It did not work out that way. Graham entrenched one section on his right flank. Although this was a long range he was able to weaken both my squads. I placed a 3rd squad on the left with the SL and advanced my squad on the right.. In response, he placed his entrenched 2nd section in the clump of foliage close to the minefields. A battle of attrition ensued. This went back and forth and I was able to drop his FM to 6 but by now I was suffering attrition as well. I still had not placed my engineer teams. I checked the loses on both sides and I could see I had lost fewer men than the Soviets, so decided to withdraw. Like Scenario 1 in this campaign, this table is only played once. Best to reserve my troops for the next 2 battles, where I have to actually win the table to advance. 

Summing Up

Well that will be it for a while as Graham is going away at the end of March for a couple of weeks and this sojourn in Montreal has come to an end.