Expanding Italian Village

 As I prepare to host a 02h00 game at the upcoming Trumpeter Salute wargaming convention next month, I realised that my Italian village was a bit too small.  Accordingly, I placed an order with Sarissa Precision for a few more buildings to fill up the space. Sarissa was great and I had the MDF models in my hands in 10 days.  I got a two-floor house, a slightly larger two-floor plus terrace and balcony house, a corner tavern and a set of low walls.  

First up is the two-floor house, with a Nanarchist for scale.

The roof and upper floor lift off to allow access to the interior.  The reference model is now a Pulp Figures housewife!

As a bonus, the upper floor can be excluded to make a single-floor house that matches the Brigade Games houses already in my collection.

Now here is the larger house.  

This house can also be disassembled to allow interior access.

And again a shorter building can be assembled.

Finally, here's the corner tavern, currently visited by a couple of partisans.

View of the ground floor interior.

As with the others, this one can also be a single-floor building.

All three buildings have plain side walls.

This allows them to be assembled as a terraced street.

For fun, I quickly set up my village to see how the Sarissa MDF buildings compare to the Brigade Games resin buildings and the Um Bum card buildings.

Everyone loves a parade!

Hannie (and Herr Flick)

 Hannie Schaft was a member of the Dutch resistance during WWII.  As she was known as 'the girl with the red hair', I did my best to paint her accordingly.  She was a friend and colleague of Truus Oversteegen and her sister, Freddie (coming soon!). 

From Grey for Now Games, here is Herr Flick (I've named him for the comic character from 'Allo, Allo rather than for Herr Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark).  

It is a bit tricky to paint him dressed all in black and still show some sort of distinction between his layers.  It doesn't show clearly in these photos, but his leather overcoat and hat are a bit glossy, and his suit underneath is matte and a little bit grey.  Regardless, he is ready to lead the investigation to find resistance members like Hannie!

The Return of Ace of Aces!

Many moons ago (i.e., the 1980s) I was a fan of Ace of Aces, a World War I air combat game.  It eventually went out of print, I moved on to other games, and forgot about it for a few decades.  When I found out the Mr B Games launched a kickstarter to reissue the game, I jumped on board, and I have just received my copy of the new version of the game!

This game has a very neat concept.  Two players (German and Entente) each get a specific game book full of pages showing the view from the cockpit.  The books are paired so that a given page in the German book corresponds to the reciprocal view from the Entente cockpit.

At the bottom of each page, there's a series of arrows representing a variety of maneuvers that the pilot can select.  Each player chooses an arrow, and then gives the number under it to the other player.  Both players turn to that page number, cross reference their selected arrow, and go to the page number.  If no mistakes are made, both players should magically end up on the same page.  The game designers put a great deal of effort into making sure that it works.  It's all very clever and makes for a fun and fast paced game.

Back to the new edition - the original game had some nice black and white line drawings showing the view from the cockpit.  The new version has full colour, photorealistic images, immediately more immersive.  The game comes in a nice slipcover, which also has a drawer for a number of game aids.  Here you can see the slipcase, the two main books (the black books with silver print, one for each player), as well as the rulebook and a book of charts.

There's also a little drawer to hold a whole schwack of counters.  These include damage counters, ammunition counters, special counters to track when one of the pilots is tailing the other (gaining a tactical advantage) and some others that I am still to learn about as I progress to the advanced game.  There's even a pair of dice with national rondels in place of the '6'.  To be honest, I have never been a fan of this practice, I'd rather the 6 be a 6, so there's no question of what it represents.

This version of the game is called 'Powerhouse Series', and represents the German Fokker D.VII and the French SPAD XIII, with the idea that it could also represent similar aircraft including Albatros DIII or DVA, Pfalz DXII, SE5A, SPAD VII or more.  Mr B Games is working on followup series including the Rotary Series that will include the Sopwith Camel and the Fokker Dr.1 Triplane.

I'm looking forward to getting back to playing Ace of Aces again.

02h00 - Capture!

It turns out that Lisa will also be hosting a game of 02 Hundred Hours at Salute, so we got together on Friday to play through a scenario.  I chose the Capture scenario, where the partisans have been tasked with capturing a German officer.

Here is the table.  The German officer is in one of the buildings around the central square. 

I took the German defenders.  Numbered flag markers were set at each of three buildings within 8" of the centre of the board.  The target location is identified by flag number 3. Here is the German sergeant next to the church location, accompanied by one of the patrolling sentries.

Here is the dog handler sentry next to the marker by the other church.  The dog was already too noisy, as shown by the eyeball marker next to the pair.

And finally the remaining pair of sentries.

The partisan leader advances past the cemetery.

German sergeant is suspicious and advances across the square.

Meanwhile the partisans have played one of their plan cards:  they've set a package of sausages to distract the dog!  The dog and handler move to the '!' marker, until they find it's only a ruse.

The German sergeant moves back to the church to check on the pair of sentries.  Actually, the random movement of the sergeant's patrol checks took him directly away from the approaching partisans.

German sentry in the arcade of the main admin building overlooking the plaza.

Partisan fighters sneak up on the sentry,

and try to take him out quietly.  Unfortunately for them, the sentry was made of stern stuff, and survived the attack.  The sentry immediately raised the alarm!

The dog handler moves to support his Kamerad.

As the Germans were distracted by the action across the plaza, the partisan leader was able to break into the German officer's office, and force him to accompany her off into captivity.

The German reinforcements arrive, led by their officer.  He orders the searchlights switched on, revealing a pair of partisan fighters.

But they manage to sneak back into cover and evade the Germans!

German reinforcements rush onto the table, but the partisans are already scattering.

Partisan fighter slips away!

Even Noor Inayat Khan slips away unnoticed.

It was a great game, and a great runthrough of the rules.  A victory for the partisans as they achieved their main objective of capturing the officer, and also their secondary objective of losing fewer than half their fighters.

Hans and Sophie

A big hello to German pacifists and leaders of the non-violent White Rose resistance group, Hans and Sophie Scholl.  Hans and Sophie were siblings, who were arrested and executed by the Nazis for distributing anti-war and anti-regime pamphlets.  Rather than focus on their tragic end, Annie instead has had the pair involved in some playful hijinks.  

I assume that Sophie is holding copies of one of the pamphlets for which the group was famous.

Focus on Sophie's face.

And here is Hans' face.

As I painted this pair, I listened to university students reading English translations of the pamphlets out loud.  You can skip ahead around the 20 minute mark to the start of the first pamphlet.

The pamphlets are very moving, and as a fan of the Star Wars series, Andor, the inspiration for Nemik's manifesto is clear.