Free Market Forces

Hey,

So the last of my 2011 Mountain of Lead was finally painted up yesterday.



These are Thompson Security Products's finest. Thompson Security Products is a private military contractor (PMC) providing high-quality protection for facilities and personnel in parts of the world where the local security situation may be sub-optimal. They can also arrange for kinetic extractions when necessary. They're a pricey outfit but every Security Associate is an ex-Special Forces member (SEALs, SAS, GSC 9, etc.) so it's well worth the money.

Anyway, I really liked painting up these guys. The figures are from Rebel Minis and they include a hostage and two businessmen so we've got someone to rescue/protect.

So yeah, the 2011 mountain is gone. Now the 2012 mountain is rolling in. I've got that Soviet army pack and 25mm fantasy figures I picked up at HAVOC and I've got more insurgent stuff coming in. Going over the scenario books I have, I need another batch of insurgent foot troops and a few heavy weapon teams (mortars, snipers, etc.). The Americans are getting some Hummers and sniper teams. Once this portion of the mountain is finished I've got about 30 scenarios I can just pull guys and go play. The US/Insurgent forces will be complete for all practical purposes and then I can focus on painting up stuff for WWIII scenarios.

later
Tom

Raising a little HAVOC

Hey,

So this weekend I went to HAVOC, a wargaming convention put on by Boston Battlegroup every year in late March/early April. It's a fun time and a chance to try a bunch of new stuff, do a little shopping and I've been going pretty steadily for the past few years. Also, this year a number of games were being run by the guys at Boston Trained Bands who I usually game with on Saturday monrings. I didn't run any games or help the guys with theirs, although I did help them playtest stuff they were doing.

So what did I do?

On Friday night, I played in Hill 112 -- a WWII game centering on the tank fight in Normandy for the titular hill. I took on the Germans with another player and we faced off against a team of three guys commanding the Brits. I picked this game because of the ruleset it was using called Panzer by James M. Day. It's gone through several iterations as a boardgame, a miniatures game and GMT will be republishing it in boardgame form soon. I'm on the pre-order list for the GMT version and the rules seemed a little...complex. As you might guess from the name, the game focuses on tank battles in WWII where each tank model is one tank and each stand of infantry is a squad of guys. The focus on individual tanks means that every kind of tank is modeled with different armor in different places and there are a fair number of charts and modifiers and stuff. So I figured I'd try the game to see if it was actually worth picking up.

The short version is -- I think so. Once you work out the modifiers for a given shot, it probably won't change a great deal unless both you and your opponent radically change you positions relative to each other. So you look up on the chart what percentile you need to roll under to hit. If you hit, there are a number of follow-on d10s to roll to determine where and what you hit and if there's any extra "oomph" to your shot. So what you do is roll a handful of d10s of different colors each time you fire. It's soon very easy to tell if your percentile dice obviously hit or obviously miss and only in a few situations will you have to actually fiddle with the chart to determine the precise to-hit number. If you have hit, the follow-on dice have already been rolled and you're good to go.

So the system is good, how was the game? We had four Panzer IVs and three Tigers. Some PaK 40 artillery pieces and a few infantry squads. We also had a bunch of dummy tanks and troops to keep the Brits guessing and two lines of dense smoke laid down by off-board artillery to make shooting us tougher (although it worked against us as well). Facing us were about 12-16 Sherman tanks and trucks/halftracks loaded down with infantry. We were wildly outnumbered. I was also saddled with a co-commander who was more interested in his iPhone than the game and constantly suggested rushing out of our prepared defensive positions and down the hill into the teeth of the enemy.

Despite this, he could roll low when it counted and we soon turned the plains of Normandy into a Sherman tank junkyard. The Shermans were basically built to help out infantry and not duel other tanks. They certainly weren't ready to take on late-war German panzers and tigers. Every time we got a hit, a vehicle died. Their shots kept going wild and even when they hit, our heavy armor, prepared positions and uphill location meant the shots never did anything. They did get one lucky shot with an up-gunned Sherman firefly that knocked out a Tiger and their artillery managed to take out a Panzer IV, but those were our only real losses. We destroyed or severely damaged about 10 of their tanks and the assault ground to a halt. The game got called on account of time, but it was clear we had the upper hand.

In "real life" of course, the Brits would just retreat and show up the next day with another 20 Shermans to make a run at us. The Germans wouldn't be replacing their losses and eventually Hill 112 would fall to the Allies.

The next morning, I was in a homebrew game by the Two Ed's involving Lithuanian partisans fighting the hated Soviet occupiers in the late 1940's. Apparently Lithuania was a lot like Chechnya -- guerrilla actions against the Soviets trying to free their (formerly) independent state. Their rebellion eventually came to a close in the mid-50's when they were out of guns and an amnesty was announced.

This game used an interesting command and control mechanism. There were a number of pawns on the board. During any phase of the game, if you had a guy within 4" of a pawn who hadn't already acted that turn, you could take the action on that phase (supressive fire, movement, grenades, etc.) and then mark him as having acted. Some units were leaders capable of activating themselves and 1-3 other guys (even guys who had already acted that turn). So you could chain leaders together to get large groups moving and firing. At the end of a turn, you could move the pawns up to 12". So you would string together a line of pawns because if you ran a bunch of your guys forward where none of your pawns were, then the rest of the guys were stuck and unable to do anything. Of course, the total number of pawns was limited and there were three guys to a side so you need to be careful about where you put the pawns and how you moved them so that everyone would be able to do stuff. Fun system. Took a little getting used to and some guys were still thrown by it.

So, I was on the Lithuanian side. We had lots of objectives. We were raiding a bio-mass electrical plant that supplied Lithuania with what little electricity they had. The plant was being visited by a party official (kill or capture), guarded by a Lithuanian police garrison (traitors! kill them!), grab any cool Soviet weapons we come across, raise the official Lithuanian flag over the police HQ. We had a lot of stuff. The more we accomplished, the better we were doing.

"That's a bio-mass reactor?" I asked.
"Yeah," said Ed, "they create methane gas and store it in that huge tank there. Then they burn it for electricity."
"OK," I said. "Anything else?"
"Yeah, you guys have a panzerfaust to use on any armored cars the Soviets have."

So. I've got a shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket that pierces armor and blows up.

There's a huge tank of methane gas that generates the electricity.

I'm supposed to take out the electric power station.

Dear Reader, what would you have done?

So yeah, concentrate on the side closest to the power plant and dash in. Our group on the right flank got pinned down by Soviet troops in the center and we had a bit of a tussle from a machine gun as we got into the plant, but we got into position, I pulled out the panzerfaust and pulled the trigger.

Apparently, neither of the Eds had considered the possibility that someone might be crazy enough to try this. A quick conference and I rolled 3d10. It came up 9-9-9 -- so a 28" blast radius that set off the smaller benzene tank, destroyed the power plant and injured just about everyone inside. The only fatality, however, was the Lithuanian hero who fired the panzerfaust and blew up the plant. Luckily the Lithuanian medic survived and was able to quickly get just about everyone back into the fight within a turn or two.

It was all over but the shouting. The troops in the center barricade we couldn't quite root out although we were slowly whittling them away. The local Soviet official, we did manage to kill off and we terrified a Soviet film crew who sadly lost all footage of our glorious assault in the fire that burned down the guard tower they were in. We also managed to eliminate the NKVD officer who was limping away from the flaming destruction. While we hadn't really hammered the police barracks or raised our national flag, we had pretty convincingly achieved most of our victory conditions and in spectacular style.

At the end of the game I got "player of the game" so I got a free bonus button/bade from HAVOC. It was fun.

Finally, in the afternoon I played "The Bear went over the Mountain" a Force on Force game set during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since I was on a roll, I figured I'd keep playing the insurgent force even though I knew it was going to be an uphill slog.

The thing I like about Force on Force is that when you're done, both sides feel like they've been through the wringer. From our standpoint, the insurgents aren't as well trained as the Soviets and our guys just died and died and died. "Victory" consists solely of how many Soviets we can take out before they kill us all. The Soviet player just has to deal with wave after wave of insurgents and he's always outnumbered and always taking fire and every time one of his guys dies, it really hurts his performance.

So in the event, we died and died and died and traded 6-8 of our guys for every one of theirs. They had a Hind attack helicopter strafe us a couple of times, but then a random event card caused that same helicopter to accidentally hit their own guys killing a couple more and grounding the chopper. My troops were pretty well protected and we caused a couple of casualties, but my crowning achievement was popping up and hitting the Soviet's BMP with my RPG and wrecking it. Shortly after that it was just my guys left on the board and we slipped away into the night.

Final tally, we lost 20-25 guys, the Soviets lost 6-7 and one BMP. So we totally won. It was a good time. Force on Force is a fun ruleset and I'm looking forward to doing more games at Hobby Bunker.

I also replenished my mountain of lead. I picked up an army pack of 100 modern Soviet troops that I can use for Afghanistan and WWIII games. It was a good deal and while I don't have total control over what I got, I definitely have enough to form the core of a Russian army and it should be easy to round it out with other stuff to get a good fighting force up quickly. I also picked up some old RAFM boxed sets. These are "adventuring party" sets from the early- to mid-80's and they've got a lot of that Old-School D&D flavor to them. They should be fun to paint up. They also appear to be "true" 25mm so they probably won't be much larger than the gnomish barbarian I have. It'll be interesting to work in such a "large scale" when I get to it.

Anyway. That was HAVOC and it was fun.

later
Tom

Now that we've taken over, we're the professional soldiers

Hey,

More mini painting...

Here we have a batch of African Army regulars by Rebel Minis. It's 27 guys in uniform, beret and AK47:



The real problem here is that I don't have any guys with RPGs or light machine guns. It's possible that they're better trained than the militia I recently painted up but they may not have the firepower to beat them.

I'm pleased to announce that my "Mountain of Lead" has become something of a molehill. I've got one last batch of infantry to paint up -- some Private Military Contractors, plus a couple of civilian/hostage figures. And that's all my infantry. I'll still have one or two tanks but basically I'll have worked through the pile. I need to start thinking about what's next for me. I know I need to flesh out the motor pool for both the US and Insurgent forces (Hummers and Technicals). Beyond that, I'm not quite sure what will be needed. I also want to get started on the Cold War Russian troops so I can play my what-if WWIII games. And then there's the sci-fi stuff to consider.

Anyway, I've just about cleared my decks and I've actually played a game with the forces I painted up so I'm pretty happy.

later
Tom

How about I actually run a game?

Hey,

So you know how I've been painting up a bunch of little dudes? The whole point is to run some games with them. And this weekend, that's what I did.

I hang out with a group called Boston Trained Bands and they run regular Saturday morning games out of the Hobby Bunker in Malden MA. So since I had the rules and the troopers and they had some terrain to loan me, I ran a game for them.

This particular game used the Force on Force ruleset form Ambush Games (published by Osprey) and this particular scenario came from their Road to Baghdad sourcebook. From the scenario description:

Umm Qasr, Iraq March 22, 2003

Elements of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable) entered the port city of Umm Qasr to secure the port facilities. On March 22, at an administration building near the harbor, a patrol got into a small firefight that quickly became an intense gun battle as Marines sought to surround and eliminate the enemy threat.

In this particular game, the American players have to clear out the Iraqi players from the various buildings around the port. They gain points for each group of Iraqis eliminated and for being in complete control of the board by turn 8. On the other side, the Iraqis get points for each American trooper they wound/kill, managing to remain on the board for 8 turns, and points if the Americans accidentally destroy port infrastructure.

So here's the set-up



The Americans enter from the bottom of the photo. The Iraqis are scattered throughout the various buildings and are considered hidden until the Americans spot them or the Iraqi shoots at the Americans. That large building near the top with the elaborate front is the Admin building.

Things got hairy very quickly:



The Americans sent a squad to the northernmost building to clear it out and form a flanking fire base. The thing is, Force on Force isn't just "i go, you go", when your opponent is moving, you have to opportunity to declare that you'll take a shot at him while he's in the open (or shoot before he shoots you or run away before he can shoot you, etc.). The American player had an advantage in the .50 machine gun team he'd set up on Overwatch. Overwatch lets you interrupt an opponent's interrupt. It sounds a little complicated but it actually worked out pretty smoothly.

In any event, the machine gun team didn't react in time and the Iraqis managed to inflict a couple of casualties. Then the machine gun team ripped into them. However, the Iraqis are pretty highly motivated and held fast.

The other thing to note is that while the Americans suffered two casualties, when their status was checked at the start of the next turn, it was discovered that one was perfectly fine and the other had only a minor wound that didn't impair his ability to fight. The Americans have body armor and their superior training lets them roll d8's vs. the d6's that the Iraqis roll. What this all means is that it's very hard for the Iraqis to hurt the Americans which is why they get so many points for individual American troopers while the Americans have to wipe out whole squads of Iraqis before they score.

Meanwhile, on the southern half of the board, a line of Americans advanced on a building, anxious to determine if there was someone hidden in the building directly in front of them. Sadly, it was just a decoy, but they didn't learn that before a nearby high-rise lit up:



This particular high-rise contained the Iraqi's heavy machine gun team and they let rip into the Americans. The result was several seriously wounded soldiers that had to be evacuated back to the starting line for CASEVAC. The group in the high-rise also managed to shut down the American's .50 cal weapon team and was becoming a right nuisance.

One of the American fireteams decided to throw caution to the wind and rush the building in front of them to get more cover:



Now they had a protected spot to shoot at the Iraqis in the high-rise. You can also see that the Iraqi teams in the Admin building have finally been wiped out by steady fire from the Americans and now they're advancing on it to close the pincer. You can also see the Iraqi team on the lower right that had also been giving the Americans problems but compared to the heavy machine gun, they were the lesser of two evils.



At the start of Turn Four, an M1A1 Abrams showed up to help. It arrived sporting some battle damage (I dropped the turret when I put the model on the table -- eeek!). However, it didn't really do too much. They fired a round into the high-rise in an attempt to drop the building, but it plowed into the basement and didn't really affect it. Meanwhile, the Americans had closed in and a round of volleys from all the fireteams quickly cleared the high-rise. After that, there was only a little mopping up to do and the Iraqis were driven from the board.

By the end of Turn 4 the game was over. All that was left was to tally up the scores. The Americans achieved all their objectives. However, they'd suffered quite a few casualties (two dead and five seriously wounded). Beyond that, the Americans had been a little careless with their fire and had destroyed some of the Port's facilities (strangely, it was the MP40 grenades and not the tank rounds that did most of the damage). That all added up and the Iraqis won a Pyrrhic victory 19 to 15.

It was a tough fight all around I continue to be pleased with the Force on Force ruleset. There were a few rule goofs here and there. The important ones for me to remember for next time are:

• You can't combine units to form larger fireteams. This isn't as attractive when you remember that...
  
• ...you can't have more than 10 dice in your attacking firepower pool. The large Iraqi cells could generate a pool of 14 dice easy, but that just means you can keep your firepower high despite the inevitable casualties you're going to take.
  
• Insurgents check for casualties just like regular army guys do. I was just eliminating them. Some of them could've stayed in the fight a bit longer.

There were probably some other things I screwed up, but those were the most notable. Anyway, everyone seemed to have a good time and were interested in trying it again, so we'll see what we can do. Maybe something later in May or June.

So that was fun
Tom