Battle for Husiatyn - WWI Eastern Front

 Lisa, Arthur and I played scenario 6 from the historical campaign she's preparing based on the service of the Royal Navy's Armoured Car Expeditionary Force on the Eastern Front in 1917.  Today's game is based on action at Husiatyn in Galicia.  The Russians and their British allies want to stop the Germans from crossing the bridge and capturing the town.

We used Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles for this game, same as with the others in this series.

Russians and Brits start on the road across the top of the photo, and the Germans on the lower side of the photo.  Germans want to cross the river, which can be done at the bridge at regular speed or they can wade the river, treating it as difficult terrain. The airplane represents an observation balloon, which the Germans can use to call off-board artillery strikes.  The observer called in shots turn after turn until late in the game, when the Pierce-Arrow armoured car finally knocked it out of the sky.

The day was a foggy one, so every turn a die is rolled to see if the fog settles in, restricting vision to half range.  If it is already foggy, then a test is made to see if the fog lifts.  The fog came in early in the game, which allowed the forces to advance unhindered by their opponent's actions.

Here the German MG has crossed the bridge, but had to deploy quickly, without taking cover, to respond to the Lanchester AC that appeared through the mist.

Other German forces attempted to wade through the river. The two-man sniper team was eliminated by Russian and British fire before it was able to get into position.

In a rare occurrence, the German flamethrower team was able to fire its weapon, at its extreme range.  They only had minimal effect, adding a single point of shock onto the Lanchester. The car immediately returned fire and wiped out the flamethrower.

A firefight developed, between the MG, infantry and two British cars.

My photography was a bit off here - the Russian cavalry charged and eliminated a German infantry unit, and were then driven off by rifle fire from another unit. 

As the Russian cavalry regroups, an infantry unit moves to keep the pressure on the Germans.

After the Germans wading across the river were defeated, the focus turned to the remaining forces at the end of the bridge.  The smoke puff represent shock.

Russian infantry quite sensibly use the Rolls Royce as cover,

Only to be dismayed as the car is taken out by an off-board artillery strike!

Meanwhile the Russian cavalry regrouped, then charged and wiped out an infantry unit and the MG that was adjacent to it.

Glamour shot of the Russian infantry.

Victorious Russian cavalry!

RNAS Pierce-Arrow Armoured Lorry.  This was quite a beast, porting around a 3" QF field gun.

Thanks, Lisa, for writing a great scenario pack.  Looking forward to playtesting the final scenario soon!

WWI Russian Reinforcements

 As my WWI Russian cavalry had a slightly off-putting 9 cavalrymen, I placed an order to North Star Miniatures to top up the unit to a nice, round number of 10.  But of course I can never order just one thing!  So I added a couple extra packs, and here they are.

First up, here are a pair of generals from Crusader Miniatures Boxer Rebellion line.  I had an idea that Boxer Rebellion would be close enough to WWI, especially for officers.  The officer in the great coat fits in well for WWI, but the chap in the tunic and cap didn't match my other WWI Russians.  On the other hand I thought he was a good fit for my 1880-ish Russian general!  So I gave him a white coat and red trousers to match the Russian forces for Central Asia.

Copplestone identifies these as 'Cossack Standard Bearers', but in my mind the flag poles can just as easily be lances, so two of these are lancers.  The miniatures in the pack are in a mix of uniforms so I painted one to match the WWI cavalry, and the other two to match the Circassian cossacks for Central Asia.

The great thing about the unchanging nature of the uniforms worn by these Circassians is that I can justify using them any time from the mid-nineteenth century right up to WWII.  The black-yellow-white tricolour flag, however, is a bit more specific.  It was phased out in the 1890s in favour of the white-blue-red tricolour of Peter the Great.  So the standard is great for the army conquering Central Asia, but not so much for WWI.

I painted the other Copplestone cavalryman to match the uniform worn by the horsemen I got from Siberia Miniatures.  The Copplestone horse and rider are a bit bigger than the Siberians, but with the same paint scheme they fit together pretty well.

Mixed into the unit, he and his mount are visibly larger, but for my purposes he fits in well enough.

To round out the order, I picked up a Copplestone Castings field gun.  

The base is a funny, wedge-shaped bit of wood that I had in my bits box.  I suppose I could have trimmed off the pointed end, but it does no harm as it is.

Here is the Copplestone field gun next to the Siberia miniatures field gun with navy crew.

Maximilian 1934 Playtest

 Last night at the Trumpeter's monthly meeting at Bonsor Community Centre, Corey led us through a first go at Maximilian 1934 (aka Mad Max 1934), a game which is basically Car Wars using 1920s-era racing cars.  

Our motive for trying these rules came from our WWI games, and the question of |"What else can we do with our WWI armoured cars?"  So right from the start our approach stretches the concept of the game, as we brought heavily armoured, big and clunky vehicles compared to the sleeker racing cars that the game designers built the game around.

The basic idea we had was that we would only use vehicles we already had in our collections.  This was supposed to be limited to WWI-era armoured cars, but I stretched that a bit by bringing my Afghans on motorbikes.  

In game terms, we rated the  Pierce-Arrow Armoured Lorry and the two Armoured Autocars as 'Junkers' - the largest class of vehicle in the game.  The Ford Model T Armoured Car was rated as a 'Jalopy', which is the base car style in the original ruleset.  The bikes were, naturally, rated as 'Bikes', although I did rate the RPG as a 'rocket', and we allowed it to fire at the same time that the bike was moving at full speed :)  We didn't count any points, just assigned values to the cars based on what it looked like they were carrying.

For the scenario, we did a slight variation on Scenario 2, the Death Race.  In our game, the racers started between the pair of palm trees at the top of the photo, and they were instructed to drive past the near palm tree and return to the top to complete the lap.  No weapons were allowed until cars had passed the first quarter of the lap.

To start the race, the smallest vehicles went first, starting with the two bikes, followed by the Ford.  The Ford driver (Corey) tried to 'fang it' and immediately accelerate to speed 2.  Unfortunately he failed his test and burnt out his motor.  This allowed the Arthur's Autocar (who successfully fanged it) to ram him from the rear.

Despite being bashed earlier in the game, the Ford used the push to speed up to take an early lead.

My Autocar managed to catch one of the bikes and bumped it.  The damage from this was one crew member, so the passenger with the LMG fell off!

So we swapped out the model for a bike with driver only.

Pierce-Arrow catches up to the Ford, and side-swipes it!  The turn doo-hickey combined with the Fate/Fortune rolls resulted in lots of fun results, with cars skidding into other cars, bashing each others' armour and paint.

The biker pushed ahead and opened up his lead!

Arthur tried a shortcut through the rough terrain.

Race around the halfway mark!

Pierce-Arrow skids around the turn.  Lisa avoided the Ford, but still slammed into the big rock.

Legion's biker opens the throttle, accelerating to Speed 4, which we celebrated with a cloud of dust for those behind him to choke on!

Having cleared the rough ground, Arthur's Autocar slides into Lisa's Pierce-Arrow!

Legion's biker, having dropped his passenger much earlier, speeds across the finish line!

The other bike gets ready to jump, Dukes of Hazzard-style, across the toe of the hill slope.

The Ford wins second place!

The second bike (with the RPG) takes third, then the Pierce-Arrow is fourth.

The game was fun.  I don't know if it will be a regular part of our gaming rotation, but if we try again, I may push to rate most vehicles as Jalopies rather than Junkers, and we will pay more attention to things like extra armour, and balancing points (vehicle costs) to make things a bit more fair. And now that we have an idea of game mechanics, I can put more thought into scenario design, although even with the improvised scenario in last night's game, we had some fun narratives emerge.

More Action in Afghanistan

Another Tuesday, and another Fistful of Lead dustup in Afghanistan!  In this game, we had a three-way battle for control of the town between ANP, ANBP and the insurgents.  Arthur assembled the terrain, with the ANP arriving on the left, ANBP coming in on the right and the insurgents from the far end of the table.

ANBP moved up to the shanty building, and start taking fire (smoke puffs represent shock).

Firefight breaks out, with the fighters using the available terrain for cover, including the ambulance.

Insurgent with the RPG sees a cluster of ANBP, and lines up a shot!

Two ANBP wounded and a third suppressed by the RPG gunner.

ANP moves toward the sound of the guns.

Insurgent takes a shot at the approaching ANP, but ends up out of ammo!

Insurgent and ANP RPG gunners get into their own, high-powered showdown!

Ultimately, both RPG men are taken out.  Firefight continues, as the ANP sergeant rushes into melee with the insurgent leader and subdues him.

Both the ANP sergeant and the insurgent leader are out of action, but the remaining fighters carry on fighting!

In the end, the two remaining insurgent warriors are the only ones left standing!