Bolt Action - WWI Eastern Front

 We picked up the new (3rd) edition of Bolt Action for Christmas and this weekend we finally managed a game.  I say "we" but this game was all due to Arthur's planning.  Arthur made a couple of 500-point lists, and built the scenario using info from the main rulebook.  Arthur's main change was to use early WWI armies rather than WWII.  The Russian army had three groups of 12 regular infantry, a squad of 5 cavalry, a Maxim MMG, a nurse and an officer, while the Germans had three groups of 10 infantry, 10 Uhlans, a field gun and a command group.  Here's a snap of the German force, and of course I didn't get one of the Russians!

We invited Sam and Doug to join us.  Sam is our Bolt Action expert, and took on the referee role to make sure we got up to speed with rules changes for the new edition.  This was Doug's first BA game, and he took the Germans to learn the rules on the fly.  Arthur took the Russians and I managed the refreshments.

Arthur rolled for terrain and ended up with this.

As Arthur won the dice roll for choice of deployment, he chose to deploy in the village in the upper right, leaving the Germans to deploy in the open ground in the lower left.  It's not quite as bad as it looks for the Germans as there are a few hills that created a few areas of dead ground that they could exploit, but the openness certainly gave the Germans motivation to get moving.

The first Russian infantry squad set up in the village, in cover behind the stone wall.  I didn't have any markers for 'hidden' so we used 'overwatch' markers instead.  In the background you can see my DIY BA order dice!  The Maxim gun is just barely visible at the right end of the stone wall.

Germans deploy, ready to advance quickly on the Russian positions.

The German field gun deploys on a hill in the table corner where it can blast just about any target on the table.

The scenario starts with a bombardment, which means that most units on the table begin the game with shock markers.  This meant that each unit needed to pass a command roll before it could act, with the unfortunate result that the Uhlans were stuck for a couple of turns before they passed an order check!

To win the scenario, each player wins points for both destroying their opponents' units as well as occupying table quarters.  Here a Russian squad advances into one of the neutral table quarters, but note also the small forest of shock markers it's earned from German fire.  The nurse in the background was able to help save casualties from time to time but not the shock markers.

The Russians took a turn to rally, and were able to shake off the shock markers.  The German field gun kept bashing them, though, and managed to destroy this squad.

Elsewhere the German advance in the centre failed.

Action instead moved to the lower right table quarter with a standoff between Russian and German cavalry.

Alas, the grand cavalry battle never happened.  The German Uhans took too many shock markers, and then rolled poorly on a morale check and fled the table.  We did see the Russian cavalry successfully charge the German infantry.

Much bloodshed happened, the Russians depleted the Germans but were wiped out in the charge.

Bolt Action scenarios mostly have a limit of 6 turns.  The result was after six turns, each side had eliminated 3 of the opposing sides forces (out of an original 6 for the Germans and 7 for the Russians).  However, the Germans had active units in their own original quarter plus the two neutral quarters, while the Russians were only in their own quarter.  This result gave the Germans the win with 5 points to 3.  Doug appreciated his Pyrrhic victory.  Despite losing, Arthur still appreciated the game.  Thanks Sam for keeping the game on track and evaluating the rules for us!

Playing with WWI forces still gave a good game even though the rules are written for WWII.  After all, these forces are pretty similar, they just have fewer troop types to select from.

A boarding action, plus update on spaceship interior.

 Last night was the monthly Trumpeter meeting at Bonsor, so I took my WIP spaceship interior for a test game.

The scenario was a boarding action using Wiley Games' Galactic Heroes (aka Fistful of Lead in Spaaaace!).  I set up four teams.  The spaceship crew were divided into the engineering team and the bridge crew, and against them were a team of greenskinned aliens and a team of human attackers.  Each team had four figures, which seemed to be a good number.  I kept traits to a minimum, just one per leader.  The aliens ended up a bit overpowered, so that will need to be fixed in the next go 'round.  And this game will appear again, as I am planning to put it on at the Trumpeters' Salute gaming convention in April.

Here is the game table.  Engineering is on the left, bridge is on the right, and everyone starts in the cargo hold in the centre.

In terms of pinning the walls to the floor, I found that longer quilting pins work much better than the shorter finishing nails.  Generally, the walls were stable enough that they stayed in place as the game went on.  In this photo, the finishing nail is circled in blue, and the quilting pins are shown in red.  So the big head of the pin is more visible than the head of the nail, but it doesn't interfere with gaming, so no biggie as far as I'm concerned.  The pins are more useful.

I came up with a few house rules for the boarding action scenario.  First, I had fun with the doors.  Each door must be activated to open it.  A figure must pass a 3+ roll to open a door, which will remain open until the end of the turn, when it automatically closes.  The boarding parties managed to get the door codes, and the ship crew doesn't have time to reprogram them in the timeframe of the scenario.  We adjusted that rule during the game to allow the ship crew to lock all the doors three turns after getting control of the bridge and/or engineering department.  There was lots of fun with the number of times the door test was failed.  In my mind, this represented someone under huge pressure trying to type in the passcode, screwing up and then retyping.  As each figure gets two actions per turn, it meant they had two tries to open the door. Failing the first attempt meant that they wasted time trying again instead of actually going through the door.  This will need some refinement for the next game.  I suppose that the doors can be moved perpendicular to the walls to show they are open.  Maybe opening and closing doors can be competitive with boarders and defenders both doing skill tests to open and close the doors, with different challenge levels when right at the door versus remotely operating them from the bridge or from engineering.

Here is a big door. There is an identical door on the other side of the wall facing the cargo hold.

This photo shows the engineering team holding off the boarders in the corridor between the cargo hold and engineering.  As a bit of fun, the yellow slippery floor sign was intended to be a mini-trap. Anyone moving quickly would need to pass a test or else fall down (take one shock and require an action to stand up again).  Regrettably, I wasn't able to spring this on anyone.  Next time it will be in the cargo hold so that I'll be likelier to trip someone up!

There was a ferocious battle between the bridge crew and the aliens in the corridor leading to the bridge.

My smoke and wound markers filled up the corridor quickly, but the attackers were held off long enough to allow the pilot in the red dress to get the ship airborne.

Meanwhile the engineers are chilling by their control panel, wondering what the fuss is at the other end of the ship :)

Despite getting the ship into the air, the aliens still gained the bridge.

We finished the first play through early enough to try a second time.  Players swapped teams, and we increased the challenge for the attackers by starting them outside the ship, and put more barricades inside to provide cover for both attackers and defenders.

Despite the need to refine the scenario, all the players enjoyed the game.  I'll adjust things before Salute, including allowing for 6 players, contested tests to open and close doors, better define the victory conditions for attackers and defenders.  The aliens were a bit nerfed, so they will either be toned down or simply replaced with human spacers.

Almost all the spacers wear space suits (vacc suits to us Traveller grognards!), which I rated as light armour.  That choice is good, but some of the weapon choices are a bit fussy.  I like the idea that blasters are powerful but inaccurate - very Star Warsy!  In practice though, if everyone has a blaster it's a bit silly to be applying modifiers to the shoot and wound rolls.  So I probably will use the weapons rules straight, assuming everyone has a blaster.  The aliens had AP1 lasers, though, which i'll reclassify for the next playthrough.

I'll write up the revised scenario before the next playtest, including the profiles for each of the teams, objectives, house rules and anything else I can think of.    

Spaceship Interior WIP part 2

 Work is slowly progressing on the spaceship interior scenery.  

Getting a smooth cut on the walls continues to be a challenge.  I picked up a couple more packs of floor mats, and will cut some new ones, this time with a brand new, sharp blade, so that the cuts are not all ragged.

Meanwhile, I've painted a few new bits of scatter terrain.  These next few pieces I picked up at the Imperial Hobbies Boxing Day sale.  This thingy is supposed to be some sort of micro-scale spaceship from a monster battle game, but for me it will be part of the engine room for the spaceship.  Beside it is a Terrain Crate motor.

These computery pieces will be used on the ship's bridge.

Two piles of materials will be cargo in the ship, and can of course be used in 20th century wargames, too!

I finished up the Terrain Crate doors.

As well as some other Terrain Crate scatter pieces.

I have some more wall cutting to do.  Walls will be pinned in place with these little finishing nails.  This will hold them in place for a game and prevent accidental relocation when they are inevitably bumped, but will be easy to lift and move around to make a new layout.

One of the tricks to getting a clean cut (just like with foamcore) is to use a new, sharp blade. I redid the walls and this lot are smoother.  I tried using my hot wire foam cutter - it can cut the foam but it's nearly impossible to get a straight cut, and as these foam mats are much denser than insulation foam, cutting is a lot slower.  So a new cutting blade makes a big difference.

Next, I am going to come up with a few possible spaceship interior floor plans, and then cut wall pieces to match.

Green skinned aliens

 I wasn't quite certain what to do with these Exogenesis Saucer Men, since I haven't yet figured out what role non-humans will have in my own spacer campaign.  I almost did some head swaps to turn them into humans, but then decided that they will be simple green-skinned aliens.

I also finished up a couple more of the humans.

Spaceship Interior WIP

 For my new Pulp Figures Spacers, I will need some terrain for them to interact with.  I could use my existing terrain, but eventually there will be some questions of why the spacers are always visiting a planet that looks remarkably like BC or California.  Most obviously, I need something to use for a spaceship interior as that matches best with the spacers mostly wearing spacesuits.

The terrain isn't finished yet, hence this is a Work In Progress (WIP) post.  The purpose of this post is to show the process to build the boards.  I considered just buying something suitable, but balked at $270 (CAD) for the GW 40k boarding terrain kit, although it does look very nice.  So, working on the cheap is best approach, I bought a set of 4 interlocking foam mats from Walmart.  Each mat is about 2' x 2'.  I chose this version as it comes with two shades of grey.  My intent is that the lighter shade will be the walls and the darker shade will be the spaceship floor.  The mats are smooth on one side, intended to be the down side, which I will use as walls, and the textured, up side will be the floor.

I sliced a light grey mat in half, and glued them back to back with Gorilla Glue.

It's important to lay down paper to protect the surface below and to wear gloves to protect your hands, as Gorilla Glue is quite unpleasant to clean up!  Also be aware that the glue expands as it sets, so you won't want to get it on your floor or table.

Once the glue set (I left it for 24 hours), I cut the double width foam into 2" strips.  These strips are tall enough to be reasonable walls and wide enough to stand up.  I will probably get some drawing pins or blue tack to hold the walls in place during a game to prevent accidental movement.

A trip to my FLGS got me some spaceship doors from Terrain Crate.  I like them, and ended up getting another box of scatter terrain and will likely be picking up some more.  The spaceship doors box contains 20 free-standing doors, including 8 double doors, each about 2" wide and 2.5" tall, and 12 single doors, each 1" wide and 1.75" tall.  While they each have a nice base and can be freestanding, I painted them in pairs so I can put one on each side of a wall.

There will be a followup post later as the terrain progresses.  I need to learn how best to cut the strips of foam to avoid it being too ragged.  I'm going to head back to Walmart to get another set of foam mats, and will head back to Imperial Hobbies for more sci-fi scatter terrain.

More Pulp Figures Sci-Fi Spacers

 Progress continues on the new Pulp Figures spacers.  As I described previously, my idea for these spacers is that they want to be as visible as possible, because if they become disconnected from their ship in the darkness of space, anything that makes them easier to see will increase the chance that their mates will be able to rescue them.  

So here they are, in no particular order.  Lots of fun figure out fluorescent paints.  It's quite thin, so it's necessary to paint a flat version of the fluorescent colour (yellow or orange, for example) and then paint the fluorescent colour on top.

I'm trying to get some diversity into the mix.  My historical figures tend to be much more monocultural.

Chap on the right here is Bob's Movember figure for 2024.  Figure in the middle is probably carrying a welding tool rather than a weapon but the other two are clearly armed with space rifles.

These two are distinctly NOT wearing space suits.  I was inspired by Star Trek's Lt Uhura for the lady.  Obviously not an exact match, but she suits the look quite well.  The colour scheme for the chap on the right is very loosely inspired by RCMP uniforms, mostly as a way to carry on using bright colours .  

Coming up next, the start of my DIY spaceship interior terrain!

Holiday games

 We managed to play a few games over the past week.

First off, instead of our usual D&D session, Arthur set up a Fistful of Lead game, set somewhere between Russian and British controlled territory in Afghanistan.   Arthur set it up as a three-way battle, with his intent being that the Russians and British would fight each other for the village, while the Afghans would snipe at both sides.  As it turned out, things happened a bit different from Arthur's original plan!

Here is the village that the troops will battle for.

Each of the imperial forces had an officer (veteran, d12) and 4 riflemen (d10).  The Afghans had no veterans, but they did each get a couple groups of 3 grunts (d8) each.

British force carefully advances into the village.

Meanwhile, the Russians enter the village from the other side.

The first British soldier enters the orchard, and is immediately ambushed and cut down by a group of Afghan warriors.

Remaining British are more cautious and shoot at the Afghans rather than risk hand to hand combat.

Russians were carefully checking each location, but found no Afghans.  Arthur eventually figured out that Oliver had set up all of his Afghans to attack his father's British soldiers.

British soldiers carry on fighting the Afghans.  Smoke clouds represent shock on the affected models.

Russians continue their careful advance.

The skirmish between the British and Afghans continues.

Meanwhile the Russians move in behind the skirmishing warriors.

After the Afghans and British battled to a standstill, the Russians came in and cleaned up.

Today, Arthur and I played a couple of scenarios for our Mad Dogs With Guns campaign.  

In the first game, my Dockworkers gang conducted a raid against the Rum Room, a speakeasy on the South Side of Chicago.  As we don't actually have any big city terrain, Chicago's South Side ended up looking a bit less urban.

Lucius and his gangsters move to the front door.

Meanwhile at the rear of the building, Crazy Ivan and Modest Mike climb up the back stairs.

A defender of the speakeasy looks out the window at Crazy Ivan and his friend move up.

My tommygunner Chun Lee opens up into the main room of the speakeasy but ends up jamming his submachinegun for the rest of the game.

Upstairs, Crazy Ivan and Mike beat up the Southsiders.

On the ground floor, Lucius and Sam were too slow to intervene, and the blonde southsider managed to call for support.

Not shown in the photos, a car with 6 low-level gangsters showed up (summoned by the blonde's phone call) and slowed the Dockworkers efforts to take over the Rum Room.

Meanwhile, two jokers were drawn from the deck, signalling outrage and a police response!

All the gangsters dashed for the exits.  Most of the Dockworkers escaped, but Modest Mike was cornered by the police and was arrested.

Final result for the Dockworkers.  The raid failed, Crazy Ivan suffered a gruesome death, and Sam the Shovel was knocked out and arrested.

We next played out an ambush as Arthur's corrupt Mounties tried to hijack an NPC truck.  Here is the truck coming along the road, with a driver, hoodlum co-driver and an enforcer with a tommygun in the back of the truck.

The truck comes around the corner, spots the roadblock and slams on the breaks.  As the driver puts the truck into reverse, Arthur recognises that he didn't consider that the truck might not stay still and allow it to be taken!

The Mounties open fire on the truck, as their mooks rush forward to seize the truck.  The BAR gunner in particular is quite indifferent about risk, and fired while his friend Inigo Montoya was nearby.  Inigo had to dive for cover to escape his own friend's fire!

The BAR gunner knocks out the tires, and the brakes, and damages the motor.  The truck crashes and is immobilised for the rest of the game.

The truckers return fire, killing and wounding some of their attackers.

But it's too little, too late.  The Mounties' BAR gunner keeps shooting, until a bullet hits the fuel tank and starts a fire.  The vehicle explodes, killing the truckers as well as one of the Mounties.

Final result, the truckers were all killed, the truck exploded, and for the Mounties, they lost two of their gang killed and two wounded.