Vietnam-Viet Cong

I have been wanting for some time to do some 28mm modern warriors. I am quite happy with 20mm in WWII but I do look at some of the fantastic WWII figures that are out there. Having been a teenager during the Vietnam War, it is the fist war I remember watching on TV and have always enjoyed watching post-hoc documentaries on the conflict. Certainly one thing it cemented in my world view that you are never going to win a nationalistic war fought 1000's of miles from your country. 

I am still having a lot of difficulty making a decision on what ruleset I would like to use to game the Vietnam War. I have limited myself because I have decided to go with 28mm figures and a 6x4' table with no higher than platoon based and maybe squad sized actions. I recently bought the BOHICA ruleset, looks interesting but certainly a different mechanic to which I am accustomed. There is a CoC variant for platoon sized games called DMZ and I have been also looking at the Ambush Alley Vietnam variation. So there is some choice.

There appears to be 4-5 manufacturers of 28mm metal Vietnam figures, with Gringo 40's and Empress Miniatures being the leading contenders. I am not that super excited by hard plastic figures but Rubicon recently came out with 2 boxes of figures which are certainly much cheaper than the metals and since this was a trial project I felt this would be a more appropriate starting point for me so I bought their VC and USMC boxes.

Once I opened the boxes I was really quite impressed, over 30 figures in each box with multiple variations with pose and weapons as well excellent instructions. They were pretty easy to put together, maybe a little less then 2 hours for the 10 figures below. I had no problem using Tamiya plastic cement despite be supposed to be using Tamiya ABS cement. The figures were sprayed white and then painted using Citadel Contrast paints with acrylic highlights. They were a pleasure to paint and below you can find my first VC squad. They are equipped with rifles, assault rifles and 2 different types of SMG's. There is also a squad leader with a pistol and I can also make a radio operator figure as well as RPG equipped possibility. As you can see there are both male and female fighters.

Next up will be the USMC.

Baptism of Fire-KmH

HMS Indefatigable

This past Thursday, myself and P-Y had another Kiss Me, Hardy game over discord. This time I hosted the game. We decided to play another scenario from the TFL magazine, this one written by Rich Clark. In "Baptism of Fire", we have a scenario with single ships. The scenario was taken from CS Forester's first Horatio Hornblower book, where two 5th rates decide to engage. We see the HMS Indefatigable spot a French frigate in the Bay of Biscay. Victory conditions are to capture the other ship, sinking it would be a less than satisfactory achievement.

HMS Indefatigable

32 guns (4d6 broad sides, 1d6 bow and stern chasers)

Crew-Elite Jolly Jack Tars (fervently determined, boarding party)

Speed 14cm (foul bottomed)

32 DP

Le Frigate

40 guns  (5d6 broad sides, 1d6 bow and stern chasers)

Crew-Average Sans Culottes

Speed 15cm

40 DP

Our combatants, I have a large Spanish fleet already rigged as well as some Scandinavian  ships, so I had to quickly paint up 2 frigates from my Black Seas spares. I am sure you will note the lag of rigging as well as the missing staysails. I have to say I found it quite a struggle to even string up the colours. My apologies, as I sure this will disturb some, but I enjoy gaming over modelling!

Starting positions for the 2 ships and the wind direction.

I added 3 random islands to the terrain to make the sailing a little more complex, we can see our 2 ships heading south but where are they heading?

Well, it looks like the Brits are planning to swing around the island in order to bring their starboard guns into action. Their sailing ability is much better than the French so they should easily be able to tack back into the wind. The French have decided to keep the wind to their backs and are sailing north of the island on a westerly direction.

Despite the ability of the Brits to tack, the chits come up allowing the French to fire their cannon first. Both players focussed fire on the rigging as the goal was to capture the opposing ship rather than destroy it. A slow ship is certainly a little easier to board.

The French were able to get behind the Brits, sustained fire from both sides. By now, the French were slowed to 7cm and had lost their main mast while the Brits were still sailing at 11 cm. Both ships were at less than 50% of their original DP. The Strike Test chit came up, the Brits passed, the French failed. Le Frigate was captured, Midshipman Hornblower sees his first victory!

So it was a fun game again, we got somethings wrong at the start so we restarted the game, despite this we got a clear victory within 2 hours of gaming. we have a few questions which I will post on the FB group. The game is a lot of fun and I believe I enjoy it more than Black Seas. We may house rule a few things to ease the game along specially when being played over the internet.  

Normandy Campaign-Lion-sur-Mer

About a month ago, I discovered on the CoC FB page that a CoC player in the Netherlands was planning a massive campaign involving the Normandy Landings in June of 1944. I got in contact through Discord, where the campaign lies, with Jur who is organising the campaign. I am still not sure of the total scope of the project but I know it will be played out over 3 beaches with multiple planned games. All the Allied positions had been taken but I was able to secure one the German company commanders. If I have it right, I have 3 platoons of IR716. They are presently defending Lion-Sur-Mer (/3), Douvres-la-Délivrande (/1) and Saint-Aubain-sur-Mer (/2). 

Yesterday I had my first battle in the campaign at Lion-our-Mer with IR716/3 defending against a platoon from the British 3rd Infantry Division. We played the game on my Discord and although this was Jur's first virtual tabletop Wargame, it went quite well.

Here are some photos of the table set up, we played the 3rd scenario from the CoC main book "Attack and Defend". 

The British are attacking from the left.

We played the patrol phase on P-Y's ap, this worked very well.

Forces

British 3rd Infantry Division (platoon #1)

FM 9

Supports 3

Standard British Rifle Platoon

German 10.Kp.IR.736

FM 9

Supports 1

Standard German Grenadier Platoon

The Game

Jur brings on his green section

They hop the hedge and the Brits take a bit of a pounding from blue squad behind the stone wall. The British yellow squad has also advanced but I place my green squad in one of the buildings, they have good  LOS and take out the British JL.

Unfortunately the blue German squad behind the fence takes on a lot of fire and as you can see they are down to 5 men.

I pull them back behind the building to their right and bring on my yellow squad to replace them.

The British blue section advances on the British left flank.

I decide to exit my green squad from the building.

Jur has placed his 2" mortar behind the hedge and they accurately throw smoke to block the Germans LOS and protect their advance.

It is going to be a long campaign and after some thought I decide to protect my platoon. I have already lost 6 men and while the British have lost 4 and a JL, they are more than 2/3 up the terrain......

.....so I decide to withdraw.

I enjoyed the game and look forward to the next game. Jur played quite well and will be a worthy opponent.

Butcher's Bill

British Platoon #1 (3rd ID)

2 dead, 2 missing

CO +2

MO 0

German Platoon 10.Kp.IR.736

3 dead, 2 missing

CO -1

MO -1

Tactical Decisions

withdraw German IR716/3 to Hermanville-sur-Mer

Kiss me, Hardy

We had our first game of Kiss me, Hardy; the Age of Sail ruleset from TFL. We have played quite a bit of Black Seas from Warlord Games but we are always ready to try something else and since we play quite a few TFL rules, we said why not?

This is one of the early rulesets from TFL and was written by Nick Skinner, we have played quite a bit of Bag the Hun, also from the same rules writer. On the face of it, the rules looked a little complicated but once we started to play they were actually quite simple. We played for about 3 hours and finished the game with a clear victory. This is really quite good for a first outing with a ruleset being played over the internet on Discord.

We played a scenario from the 2019 Lard Special called Bahama Broadsides. This is scenario was written by Chris Stoesen, a frequent contributor and scenario writer for TFL. The scenario is written for smaller ships and requires the To Covert Glory supplement for playing games with small ships. These are mostly modifications for firing power and movement. I should note that like a lot of early TFL rulesets the game is card driven.

The scenario is set in the waters off the Bahamas and involves the HMS Rose, a 6th rate frigate on patrol. It encounters a Spanish convoy of 4 ships on their way to St Augustine with papers outlining the plans for the invasion of Georgia. The convoy are all small ships with the San Juan Batista, a snow with 10 guns and 10 swivels, it is accompanied by 3 other schooners and sloops, all similarly armed. The captain of the HMS Rose decided to pursue despite being outnumbered. The victory conditions in the game are that the Rose will earn a draw, if they survive the battle and will win if they can also take one Spanish ship. The Spanish win if they can exit 3 ships off the far edge of the table.

Pierre-Yves ran the scenario from Montreal while I was in Salem. I believe all the small ships in the game were 3D printed. I will post some of his excellent photos. 

The Spanish Convoy

HMS Rose

Off in pursuit

First Fire

The Spanish convoy circles back in a wolf pack type manoeuvre. The HMS Rose was able to take out one of the Spanish ships fairly quickly but had quite a battle with the 3 remaining ships. The battle went back and forth with both sides taking a fair amount of damage and the HMS Rose being slowed to almost a standstill because of the amount of damage it took. The Jolly Jack Tars however were able to manoeuvre their ship into one of the Spanish vessels and board it. Their superior manpower allowed them to capture the ship and the game ended.

Some glamour shots

This game went very well and it was a lot of fun, it is quite different to Black Seas in mechanism and activation. The card system really makes it quite a bit more interesting than Black Seas. It was so much fun that we are going to have another game this Wednesday with me hosting the game. This will be a one on one action for which I am now painting up two 5th rates.

Gung Ho-The Finale

 

The Forces

USMC (FM 11)

2nd Marine Raider Battalion (missing 13 men)

Platoon #2

2 SL's

2 Raider Squads with Superior JL's and 9 men (-3 men)

Supports (11)

Raider squad

extra BARs for 1 squad

Native Assistance

M1919 LMG Team

Japanese (FM 10)

62nd Garrison Force (missing 19 men)

1 SL

1 Inferior SL

2 LMG Buntai's with JL's

Knee Mortar Buntai with JL and 3x50mm Mortars (-6 men)

Supports (6)

MMG team

Marksman

Adjutant 

Patrol Phase

We started off using P-Y's patrol ap, smaller dots represent the JOP's. This was the "Attack on an Objective" scenario for the main rulebook. The Raiders have to blow the Fuel Tanks. This was a completely different game then the last in that the Raiders were able to capture the southwest part of the terrain so their approach to the objective would be from the south.

The Action

The game took place over 2 days, as we got started a little late the first session. We finished up this past Tuesday. All the core players showed up for both sessions. I thought I had taken more photos but it appears I had not. There was a bit of tentative movement in the first session but the game certainly sped up in the second session.

The table

JOP's

The Japanese deployed their marksmen in the watchtower as well as their Knee Mortar squad almost immediately. The Knee Mortars were placed behind one of the oil tanks with the Marksmen giving them indirect LOS to the approaching raiders.

The marines got off to a quick start deploying their 2 core squads and then their support squad as well as their LMG team just south of the wharf.

The green raider squad with the Platoon leader took some loses and shock from the Knee Mortars.

Pink and blue marines squads advance to the jungle edge

Eero leads the pink squad to safety behind a hut in the initial raider assault on the objective.

They are covered by the blue squad.

The green marine squad supported by the LMG also advanced north staying behind another hut to block LOS for the marksman.

Jarrko has deployed the IJA blue squad with himself in the concrete building,

the IJA green squad is finally deployed just out of LOS being screened by the jungle. He orders the knee mortars commanded by Petri to advance from behind the oil tanks to support the IJA green squad.

Mikko pulls the trigger and orders Eero to advance with the pink raider squad with his own green squad to assault the IJA green squad ( all though not in the rules we see no reason not to allow multiple squad assaults).

Jarrko although has a CoC die and adroitly plays it bringing the IJA blue squad out of the house  making what seemed to be a sure marine win in doubt. 

If I have it right the raiders had 46d6 and the the IJA 43d6. In CoC though sometimes numbers  can win, the raiders had all their men killed in the first assault while their 2 Leaders were wounded. The IJA had 4 men survive with 2 Leaders wounded. As there was no clear victor, a second assault took place. In this assault the IJA drove back the raiders, killing one of the JL's and knocking down the SL and the pink squad JL. The Marine FM was 1 while the IJA was over 3. The IJA still had over 25% of their men alive after we applied the ATSE rules. The Victory in the game and campaign was given to the IJA.

I really enjoyed putting on this campaign, it is the first time I got a chance to get my jungle set up and troops on the table. My Finnish friends are all great CoC players and it was anyone's campaign to the very end. Also thanks to William Thorpe for putting this, a very well written campaign, together.