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

The Rabble Roused

Hey,

I finished up more little dudes.

So first up, I needed to flesh out the heavy firepower for my Arab Insurgent forces. Peter Pig to the rescue:





So here we've got 8 guys armed with RPGs, another 8 with machine guns and up front there's three heavy machine guns and their crew.

I gotta say, Peter Pig continues to be some of the nicest 15mm miniatures I've worked with. Nice chunky detail, a variety of poses and little or no flash to clean off. My only big mistake is that I glued the HMG and the crew into place and then painted them all on one base. I should've painted them separately and assembled them when I was done. Ah well. I think they turned out well enough and now I've got plenty of guys for the Force on Force scenario early next month.

So with the minis painted up for my game, it was time to attack the mountain of lead and prep for some other projects. African conflicts have also been really interesting to me and I've got a bunch of African forces by Rebel Minis. This is the first batch, some African Militia:





So Rebel Minis are pretty hit or miss. Most of the Insurgents and US Army guys turned out ok and the price offset the fact that the Peter Pig stuff is clearly better. This group? Kinda terrible. The legs/feet are kinda blobby and melt into the base. The detail just isn't very good and the models are all based off of three stock types and aren't very differentiated.

But it's good practice and large mobs can cover a lot of sins. But I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be sticking with Peter Pig figures for troops from here on out. Well...after I finish painting my remaining stocks of Rebel Minis that I picked up on sale.

I just wish someone made good Warsaw Pact figures in 15mm.

I also need to pick up a pin vice to get some vehicles assembled and some terrain pieces should be rolling off the line in the next couple of days.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. I hope this game in March goes over well.

later
Tom

Take me to your leaders

Hey,

So at the tail end of 2011, I finished up some more little dudes, so here are the photos:

All of these are 15mm modern-era dudes I'm painting up for a game of Force on Force that I'll be running in early March.

First up, I finished off the Command Platoon for the US Army guys:





There's a command squad with the platoon leader and sergeant, a radio guy, a medic, and two riflemen. There's a standard fireteam and a pair of Javelin-equipped tank hunter teams. Up front, you can see the platoon's heavy firepower in the form of five heavy machine gun teams.

This combined with the vehicles should take care of most of my needs for US forces.

Vehicles? Yeah:





That's a pair of M1 Abrams tanks for those pesky fortifications and a brace of Bradley APCs to help transport all my soldiers to the fight.

These were the first vehicles I've ever painted up and they went really quickly. Which is good because the US motor pool still needs some filling out. I need a batch of Hummers (with various armament load outs), a Stryker or two, a couple of Amtrac AAV's, some LAV-25's, and some M113s (for Vietnam/80's Cold War scenarios). Expect to see a few more projects along these lines in 2012

That's a lot of stuff for the American's. How about beefing up the insurgent forces? Not a problem:





So these are 15mm minis from Peter Pig's line of Arab/PLO fighters. I picked them to provide a little variety to the forces and because the range includes some specialists types that the Rebel minis didn't have. In particular, they have dedicated commander figures and heavy weapon teams. This batch of 24 is mostly grunts armed with AK47's and a small group of leaders and a couple of radiomen.

Although I really like the bandit-masked gunmen from the Rebel Minis set, there was a lot more variety and interest in the Peter Pig figures and they look a little less rag-tag which means they could substitute as Iraqi regular forces.

Anyway, I've got one more batch of Irregulars on the way (heavy weapon teams with RPGs and MGs of various sorts). Then I've got enough guys to run the scenario I've got in mind for March. I could stand to have another batch of the Rebel Minis put together (in Force on Force games the insurgents usually show up in droves and die just as fast). They could also stand to have a few vehicles -- very likely pickup trucks with guns mounted on them, which are good for African conflicts as well. They could also stand to have a couple sniper teams, maybe a mortar or two, and some civilian mobs.

However, after this next batch of Insurgents, I've got a small mountain of lead to plow through. There's a group of "security contractors" and a batch of African militia/military troopers. I've also got a few more vehicles to put together and then we can turn to new stuff. Finally, there's a nice line of science-fiction troopers being put out by Khurasan minis that I might commission someone more talented than me to paint up. We'll see.

The summary by the way:

• 113 25mm Plastic Saxons (Dark-Ages)
  
• 23 25mm WWII Partisans
  
• 1 25mm Gnomish Barbarian
  
• 44 15mm Insurgents
  
• 63 15mm US Infantry
  
• 2 M1 Tanks
  
• 5 Bradley APCs
  

Which is pretty much the most painting I've ever done in a year.

later
Tom

The Oldest Tale in the English Langage

Disaster and Calamity!

You remember the Saxon Army I painted up over the summer? Here they all are in their great plastic mead hall:





The Saxon king built his mead hall on the great cliffs of Shelf. There were rumblings among some that the mead hall was far too perilously high, but the king scoffed claiming that the view from atop the Shelf was much better. Besides, were not all within the mead hall protected by the magical floor that held fast the warrior's metal boots? Surely nothing unfortunate could happen.

But perhaps the aelfe heard the king's confident speech and worked their mischief. For while the warriors were firmly rooted the floor of the mead hall, the hall itself was not immune to their charms.

With a crash, the mead hall tumbled from Shelf. The violent drop disrupted the magic floor and all were thrown into confusion. Those rushing to the warrior's aid threw open the door to find everyone in a tangled heap and at first glance, a fearful carnage was expected.

But it takes more than a fall from the Shelf to break a Saxon! Man after man was extracted from the pile miraculously unharmed. Even so, the great army of the Saxons was decimated. Ten and three warriors suffered limb-rending wounds, one or two unfortunates losing both arms in the great fall. Fortunately, almost all of the wounded were Ceorls or Gebburs -- lowly warriors of no great importance.

In fact, the only casualty of note, was the king himself -- his left arm sheared clean off. The price of his hubris.

But then, a cunning wizard (who, it must be admitted, first suggested the idea of putting the mead hall on the Shelf) arrived with his magical salves Zap-A-Gap and Zip-Kicker. With some patient work, all of the injured were soon made whole, the mead hall was put back into good order and, very carefully, placed in a less visually exciting, but much safer location.

Heed well the lessons of the unfortunate Saxons! For you may not have a friendly wizard to hand!
Tom

p.s. *sigh* The most action these guys have seen in a month.

More Green Army Guys

Hey,

Finished up the second platoon of US Army soldiers in 15mm for my modern-day games.





So the only thing left is the command squad (with company leaders, medic, radio guy and heavy machine guns). That should give me enough US forces to play the various Force on Force scenarios I have. I might round it out with a couple of specialists (sniper teams, bomb disposal, K9, etc.), but there's no pressing need for any at the moment.

I also need to kit out the Americans with a motor pool and I've already started work on that, but I'm gonna need a lot more. The US Army definitely represents Americans' love of cars.

later
Tom

Green Army Guys

Hey,

So more work with 15mm soldiers. I painted up a batch of insurgents a couple weeks ago and they'll need someone to go up against, so last week, I did up a bunch of American army guys:





Yeah, they're not painted in Middle East cammo, but I'm also hoping to do some "what if" WWIII scenarios so they're European green. It's a pretty nice set up -- four squads with leader, M40 grenade lancher, SAW and rifleman. The platoon leader has a couple of riflemen and two Javelin anti-tank guys to work with.

I've got a second platoon identical to this and then a command staff to paint up and that should be more than enough US forces for most games I have in mind. I will, however, need to pick up another big stash of insurgent forces to provide a meaningful opposition.

later
Tom

Little Dudes and Littler Dudes

Hey,

I painted some more minis this month and finally had a chance to photograph them for you.

So first up, last Spring I painted up a batch of WWII resistance fighters. I've always been fascinated with them and there was a good set out by Artizan. One of the guys I game with down at Hobby Bunker was also painting up a set and he had a few spare that he gave to me. So here they are:





There's a Femme Fatale, a grizzled vet, and an eager young man all out to stick it to Jerry. It's not super obvious in this photo but all three of them are carrying Molotov cocktails. So this brings my total resistance count to 27. They were a fun, fast paint.

Next up, a figure I've been dying to do for awhile. Gisbert, the Gnomish Barbarian. Reaper miniatures put out a Gnome Barbarian figure and it's a character I've been dying to play for a long time now. Recently, I got into a Pathfinder game so Gnomish Barbarian it was:





I am extremely pleased with the way Gisbert turned out. Again, the photo doesn't really do a good job of detail, but for my level of painting skill, he's one of the better ones I've done. With this iteration of miniatures, I've started painting the dip onto the mini vs. dipping the mini in the dip and shaking off the excess. This gives a little more control over where the shading dip goes and, more importantly, spares your arms and shoulders from the shaking process. Anyway, here it does an excellent job of defining Gisbert's mighty muscles.

Finally, I really want to do some modern-era gaming. Vietnam, African conflicts, American operations in the Middle East and some "what-if" WWIII gaming in Europe. For this, I want to use the Force on Force rule set by Osprey Publishing. It's a fun set of skirmish level rules. But that means I'm going to need some figures. Since there are source books for Iraq and Afghanistan, and since Rebel Minis was having a sale, I picked up a bunch of figures and I just finished the batch of Insurgent figures:





If they seem a little small, that's because they are. I'm trying to go with 15mm figures instead of 28mm whenever I can. These "littler dudes" should be a bit faster to paint up although they are very small and getting even rudimentary detail on them can be a pain. Of course, I know guys who can paint these things down to the whites of the eyes, but I'm more interested in the miniatures as gaming pieces vs. models. Sure, I'd like to have a bunch of museum-quality paint jobs but I'd rather play more than paint.

To give you some idea of how small these guys are, here's a photo of a resistance fighter, Gisbert and an Insurgent fighter:





Yeah.

But, I'm hoping I can crank out a lot of forces more quickly and storing them will be more efficient. Also, Gisbert, despite being a Gnome (and thus, hard-pressed to clear 4' in height) is bigger than the human fighter. Some of this is that fantasy figures are always a big "bigger than life" and some of it is that Gisbert would be singularly unimpressive (he'd only be a bit bigger than the 15mm figure if truly built to scale). Eh, I'll go with it. He was a great figure to paint.

So that's October. Next up, a batch of US troopers for our Insurgent friends to fight and then probably some more Insurgents (they usually arrive in pretty large groups and the 20 figures I have now, aren't enough).

later
Tom

[Saxon Muster] Field Exercises

Hi,

So you may remember I spent most of July/August painting up a bunch of Saxons for a campaign game being run by the Boston Trained Bands. Last weekend we had a test game so my guys got into action for the first time.

Right, so the rule set of choice for this game is Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB). An interesting choice because the gamers in the group are extremely uninterested in most Warhammer products. Although, to be fair, WAB is barely kept in print by GW and you have to order it special from them and give the password and special wink. I’ve never played with it before and it’s been ages since I’ve done any straight-up Warhammer stuff so it was going to be a learning experience.

We broke up into two sides for a big battle. I took center stage with my Saxons. On my left I had a small but powerful Romano-British group and on my left and another batch on my right. Across the table we had (from left to right as I saw it): an unruly band of Scots, a small block of frenzied Vikings and…I believe some more Scots/Picts (the majority of which were represented by my figures…so I guess I win no matter what).

Here let me show you:





I’ve got a pair of warbands flanked by a couple of small groups of archers. The group on the right has my leader. The guy with the red stick is trying to work out how quickly he can run me over with his Vikings.





It’s not like I’ve got bolters, so we all start rumbling towards one another. That little block on the left coming towards me is a warband of Scots. But you’ll probably notice the group of horsemen bearing down towards me. Keep an eye on that.

Here are a couple of wider shots of the battlefield. On the center-right side:





You can see my valiant allies taking their sweet time getting around the village. My only saving grace is that the Picts who oppose him haven’t really gotten off their starting positions yet.

And now we pan to the left:





I’m not sure why the Scot split up his forces like this, but he decided to send his skirmishers after the guy with the cavalry and heavy infantry. It goes about as well as you’d expect.





Back to my guys. Yeah, that cavalry charge goes in on my hapless archers. Well…maybe. The archers took a snap shot as the horses rolled in. It was totally ineffectual so they took to their heels. They actually managed to outrun the cavalry’s charge and then managed to make their Leadership test so they spun around to take another shot at them.





And take a shot they did. Put down two of the pesky Picts.

Meanwhile, the Scots had advanced just close enough so I decided to rush ‘em:





I get lots of bonuses for charging in like that. However, this is my group without a leader and I’m facing off against the leader of the Scots. Also, I apparently can’t roll for crap. In one brutal exchange, I chip one guy out of his group, he peels away four of mine, and then proceeds to rout me and run me down.





Yeah. It was like that.

My archers didn’t survive a second round with the cavalry and the other group of archers, as you might be able to see above, were running for the hills and never rallied.

Well, when in doubt, attack. So I lined up on the Viking horde and rushed them with all I had left:





So, in a 500-point army, that block of 20 Vikings, with leader, musician and priest probably gobbles up 400 of them. By contrast, my group is about 200 points (and 75 of that is the leader). The Vikings are frenzied (so each guy who can fight gets to attack twice) and the priest makes them immune to all psychological effects (like the auto-rout warbands like mine cause). We had a pitched exchange, but I gave a little better than I got (surprisingly) and we stayed locked in combat. My hope is that my allies there would hit the flank and give us enough weight to grind them down.

Sadly, we started late and it was well past lunchtime so we called the game here. I was probably toast on a stick.

On the right side:





I don’t know what was going on here. Neither side came to grips. The enemy tried a bunch of piddling shots that never did anything. I have no idea where that cavalry is going. Perhaps he was going to send it after the Pictish cavalry that ran down my archers or maybe he wanted to swing them around to hit the Vikings, but it’s a bit of a mess on that side.

On the left, however:





Man, the Scots kept hanging in there, but they were just meat to the grinder. The Romano-British would’ve finished them up but who knows what they’d face as they cut across into the flanks of the enemy.

Oh hey, my other group of archers. Bye, guys!

So what did we learn? First, the Vikings are going to be a real hassle to take on so find some allies (preferably some guys with cavalry). Second, the archers need to be massed into a bigger block to be effective. They could probably also stand to have a champion or other leader figure who can boost their morale. The same could be true for the warbands though. The Thegns are a bit fragile without a leader type.

Also, I need to power up a dice charger because my rolls were just terrible this time around.

But hey, it was fun and my investment of time and effort has started to pay off.

Later
Tom

[Saxon Muster] He Led Soldiers

Hey,

So I finished up the last few guys. I got a small group of Viking mercenaries and 3 leader-types (well, two leader types and a spear-wielding Thegn who needed some superglue surgery).

Here's them:





So yeah, I started this around June 25th. In a little over a month-and-a-half, I've painted up 108 Saxons. Still, I never really considered how much work I'd gotten done until I put all the dudes in their storage case:





That's what 108 man strong, 1000 point Saxon army looks like. I glued down a magnetic sheet to the bottom of the plastic case and the washers the dudes sit on stick to the mat. So it'll be easy to tote these guys around. Anyway, I was a little gobsmacked to see all those guys lined up and ready to go.

Now I'm going to take a break from painting for a bit. I've got an idea for the next project and I've even got some figures together for it, but this time, I'll be painting in 15mm so...not little dudes so much as tiny dudes. Better give my eyes a rest.

Here's hoping these guys weren't painted in vain.

later
Tom

[Saxon Muster] Monkey Ceorl, Monkey Do

Hey,

So yesterday I finished up my second, 20-man unit of Ceorls. These are the cheap, not-quite-as-good soldiers I'm using to add mass to my units of Thegns.

I've pretty much got it down pat now so these guys came together rather quickly (I also had a couple double-days where I did one painting step in the morning and the second one in the evening so I think I had these completely finished in about 4 days total.

Anyway, here they are:





So, technically, I'm finished. I've got 1000 points worth of dudes and I'm ready to go to war. But I happen to have 8 more dudes left. Five of them are Viking mercenaries, the other three are leader types. So I'm going to do those guys up as well (and I'm hoping to be done early next week with those dudes as well). But for the record, I've painted up 100 Saxons in a little over one month. I'm kinda astonished at my productivity.

All I can say is, we'd better play this damn campaign and I'd better win a few games. :)

later
Tom