Donkey wallopers

After mustering up a huge amount of willpower I’ve finally completed a troop of cavalry that’ll work in an anti Martian and an anti Prussian framework. 

Setting both campaigns in 1885 means that these lancers are a little betwixt and between - uniform wise. Gone are the odd mortar board helmets and the fancy uniforms, (which’ll still appear on my Uhlans) but they have not yet reached the point at which the service adopts khaki.

In my alternate timeline this troop belong to the 23rd Lancers, formed from the remnants of the 9th, 12th and 17th Lancers, (destroyed en masse during the gallant but futile charge against tripods near Brentford). They wear white “overseas” pattern helmets in honour of the 12th who were rushed into action only days after disembarking from service in South Africa. 

Equipment shown includes the Martini Henry carbine, the ’83 pattern Baker Monroe breath preserver, cavalry sabre, lances and the lance affixed MKII “sticky bomb” (a highly adhesive shaped charge device intended to be thrust on to the legs of tripods). You’ll note that the mounts shown here have been fitted with the ’83a (equine) BM breath preserver that is only expected to be deployed should the troop encounter Martian black smoke. 

Given the skirmish nature of the games I shall be playing with this lot it made sense (to me at least) to have some Victorian civilians, who I can use as refugees, captives, or dinner for Martians. 

To my horror I’ve ended up naming some of them! I never thought that being a war gamer would see me painting a little girl holding a doll, but they’ve served as a nice distraction from the ongoing dark age rebasing.

Hope you like them.

TTFN.

Secret weapons of the Kaiser - Part 2

Bismarck’s plan for a successful invasion of Britain had one major stumbling block: the Royal Navy. 

The Chancellor had no doubt that the German army would prevail on land but the likelihood of the Kriegsmarine overmatching its opponent, even in a localised way, were slim at best. 

Spies had reported that the British were close to unlocking the secrets of the captured Martian machines, secrets which if applied militarily would see the Fatherland forever denied its rightful place in the world. Subjugation of the British and the seizure of their Martian relics was a clear priority…and yet the problem of Britain’s naval shield remained.

In the winter of ’83 a demonstration of troop carrying balloons by a young Uhlan officer named Frederick Von Zeppelin went tragically wrong and the Chancellor, who had been pinning all his hopes on the project, began to wonder if the task might not be feasible. 

As it transpired the answer to his prayers came unexpectedly, on a visit to a Silesian coal field which was employing a new invention that had increased their lignite production ten fold. When the invention was revealed to be an enormous tracked drilling machine, Bismarck removed his monocle and stared, open mouthed. He had his solution! If he could not go over the Royal Navy in balloons, he would go under them instead!

Within the hour troops were summoned and the site closed down. The machines inventor was sought and escorted to Berlin to oversee the production of more of them and Project Mole as it became known was officially stamped “STRENG GEHEIM”.

Within a year 12 further Maulwurfe were completed and shipped to a remote location on the Belgian coast that was owned by a German front company. By the summer of 1885 seven had tunnelled beneath the channel without detection and were considered to be broadly in position. 

With the Summer fading into Autumn Germany began a series of lengthy military manoeuvres on the Belgian border and while the world wondered what was going on, in seven locations deep beneath Kent the moles awaited the order to ascend.

Der Maulwerf

Mole 2 breaks the surface

Mole 2 from the other side.

Each individual Mole is 60ft long and powered by a large above ground steam engine driving the machines massive drill bit by means of an ever extending flexible belt. The belt design powers the mole and also drags the huge volume of spoil from its tunnel, the earth being loaded into barges at night and dumped out at sea. A single onboard pilot is tasked with keeping the machine on course and despite the machines size the cockpit area where he must reside for seven days before relief is cramped and uncomfortable. Supplied with basic rations and breathable air via an India rubber umbilicus each mole pilot is a convicted military prisoner promised a full pardon and release on completion of their mission.*

TTFN

*Yeah, like that’s going to happen?!

 

I blame Norm

Norm’s recent informative article on the Sword & Spear ruleset made me wonder if my current lukewarm feelings towards it could be because I’m basically a jerk who never gave the set a proper chance? 

They’d arrived here at Broom Towers in amongst a whole lot of other hobby stuff and apart from a quick whisk through, (which left me a bit doubtful about some of the mechanisms) they’d been put on the shelf of doom…to gather dust…forever.

Anywhoo it nagged at me a bit so on the strength of Norm’s endorsement I decided to dig them out for another look, but it was while I was passing the army storage cupboard - on the way to get them, that I heard a definite low level muttering in old English. 

I quickly gathered that the Anglo Saxons were unhappy about their lack of recent activity and this was not being helped by the taunts of the Vikings in an adjacent box. The poor buggers were of course the last units to be used in battle on my old blog and they, like the old blog, have hardly been thought of since. 

They were mostly painted and based during a very lean financial patch in France and it shows. The cost of getting materials sent from the UK was almost as much as the cost of the product itself back then, so when I ran out of flock I resorted to an innovative sort of paint and grit porridge by way of a replacement. 

Yeah it was nasty. 

They’ve needed rebasing ever since, but given that re basing occupies a position lower even than painting horses in my world view it wasn’t going to be a priority. 

Vikings on the razzle. 

Anyway, I digress. I couldn’t find the ruddy Sword & Spear rules of course, (I suspect the Broom Towers poltergeist may have had a hand in this), so I went on the Sword & Spear forum website to check out a few play throughs…and there I found… “Warband” an earlier work by the self same author. It covers dark age warfare on hexed terrain and is card driven, making it very solo friendly. 

I’d previously tried to convert Dux Bellorum to hexes but the conversion and various fudges to resolve turn sequence disadvantages saw it abandoned as just too much trouble. 

I’ll do another post on Warband when I get a game in, but for now I’d describe it as the illegitimate love child of C&C and SAGA (without the silly bits).

The down sides to it are the 60 activation cards required per player (now done) and the need for figures to be separately based (very old skool) - which I’m doing in between other projects. 

Note - Given my skin allergy to some brands of flock I wanted to originally title this post “flocking hell” but I suspect the more dignified members of my readership may have found this a tad  too vulgar for their refined tastes.

15mm Peter Pig chaps now individually rebased and “pointed” on the underside.

I’m pretty sure the effort involved in all this Warband kerfuffle will be worth it, but I’ve definitely committed myself to yet another project when I’ve already got a plateful to be getting on with. Of course none of this increased work load would have occurred if I hadn’t dropped in at Battlefields and Warriors - so I’m definitely blaming Norm for all that followed.

You see it wasn’t the only time I went off piste that day, and prompted by Norms article and my discovery of Warband I visited the Old Glory UK site to look for some more 15mm dark age figures…and bought this…

The 20cm long resin Hull of the Santa Anna 

Yeah it’s a ship.

Definitely not dark age in any way.

I’d wanted to do naval gaming in a pre Napoleonic setting for a while and had previously purchased all manner of early Tudor vessels with a view to doing the 1512 conflict with France and Scotland. Sadly the only ships I could find on the interweb in this period were all way too small for my liking and eventually the project stalled. 

As you can see the Old Glory ones don’t suffer from this issue and might be best described as ruddy massive, but the bonus is they come with pre moulded metal ratlines that will finish the model off nicely. The picture shows the Santa Anna, a Spanish Carrack, next to a Peter Pig 1:450 ship (of comparable volume in real life). To save you getting your scale rulers out, the big ones 20 something centimetres long!

So, do you see what you’ve done Norm…do ya?! If I hadn’t read your article I wouldn’t have visited the Sword & Spears forum, wouldn’t have discovered Warband, wouldn’t have spent hours covered in flock and wouldn’t have ended up buying a ruddy big expensive ship…talk about the blooming butterfly effect. 

Okay jokes over. We all know Norm should actually be knighted for services to gaming and that it’s my own weak will that’s really the culprit here. I hope his lawyers will accept my postal order (its in the post) for any damages accruing from such a cheap attempt at an eye catching blog post title. Lol. 

As a bye the bye here’s a few project progress photos to document everything else I’ve been labouring over in the last two weeks.

On the VSF front we have these jolly Jack tars manning a Gatling.

Ahoy there mateys. Fighting 15’s Gatling and crew. 

Followed by these chaps from the Royal Artillery with a 12lb breach loading cannon - which I reckon will rattle the huns dentures a bit.

Royal artillery wallahs getting ready to rumble.

Then we have a young artillery officer demonstrating the (totally scratch built) heliograph he’ll be using to call down fire from the big guns off board. Not sure how well he can see what he’s doing through his breath preserver, but better safe than sorry eh! Peter Pig do a heliograph…but it’s 15mm and looks really small next to these 18mm boys. It should be manned by a crew of three, but the other two lads are off getting a brew going.

Dot dot dash…erm…oh bugger.

Next up is Captain Bailey-Paget giving a Martian the coup de grace with his Webley. Stirring stuff eh! That’ll show those Martian Johnies!

Take that you swine! Click…click…Oh damn it’s jammed.

Unfortunately some of the buggers have developed the ability to fight back.

“Gak, gak, gak” as I believe the Martians say.

I’ve only 40 Victorian civilians and eight British lancers left to paint now before I can can get on with a bit of gaming, so it’s nose to the grind stone again.

Oh yeah there’s these boys too…

The 18mm Sergeant on the left most base gives an idea of the tripods size.

TTFN

The battle of Lansdowne - fought alfresco

My follow on (alternate history) ECW campaign has been abandoned for the moment, partly because of a steep rise in the number of other gaming projects I’ve involved myself in, and partly the difficulty experienced in coordinating the timely receipt of orders from the three real life protagonists. 

With the commitment to that project removed I can indulge in a greater variety of gaming subjects but shall continue to stage the odd ECW game from time to time …like this one. 

Unusually for me I’ve abandoned my “go to” made up scenario concept and have instead opted to try to model an actual battle. On this occasion I thought I’d have a pop at Lansdowne Hill in 1643. 

I’m pretty sure most of my readership will be familiar with this battles context and its main protagonists so I’ll spare everyone the history lesson and get down to brass tacks.

It was a lovely day outside so that’s where I decided to go and play. Using an approximation of the forces involved I set up Waller’s Parliamentarian force on the crest of Lansdowne hill and Hopton’s chaps down at its base. 

The rules were to be Msr Foy’s excellent C&C ECW (as usual) with a couple of house rule adjustments that have accrued over time.

Moving away from the standard C&C card driven activation Msr Foy developed a separate system called Ramekin which amongst other things takes away the zonal nature of the order cards. I’ve used it several times and found it works well, however on this occasion I wanted to use the forthcoming battle as a test for an activation mechanism I’ve shamelessly nicked from Bob C’s portable Colonial Wargame rules.

For anyone that’s interested these are the home brew alterations to C&C ECW that I regularly use:

1. Rally. When a unit is activated it may attempt to rally back any nearby lost and wounded men. The attempt does not require the presence of a senior leader. A unit may never rally back to full strength and may only rally back one hit loss at a time. The rallying unit may not do anything else during its activation.

2. Disorder. Units passing through or over “difficult terrain” receive a disorder marker. For mass, formation reliant units, it is imperative that any disorganisation within the ranks is quickly addressed or their combat effectiveness becomes compromised. Upon activation a unit with a disorder marker must spend its turn getting itself reorganised, whereupon the disorder marker is removed. The unit may not move or fire during its activation. Units forced to retreat due to flags rolled in combat and even horse choosing to retire from infantry melee also gain a disorder marker. A disorder marker reduces the defensive “battle back” die roll of an affected unit by 1 die. A unit may not incur multiple disorder markers. No senior officer presence is required to enable a unit to regain its formation formation / cohesion - it being largely a self policing organic response from the unit members.

3. Blown horse. Horse units are limited to two charges per game. After the second charge, whatever the outcome they are marked as “blown”. Blown units may continue to move and fight defensively but may not make a further charge to contact for the rest of the game.

For the purposes of today’s activation experiment each sides overal commander is rated either poor, average or excellent. This rating has a numeric value of 1, 2 or 3 which is added to a 1D6 die roll. The total arrived at in this die roll is the number of units that can be activated in a turn. For the record, and despite having a Royalist bias, I rated Hopton as average and Waller as excellent - cos he just was.*

Using a map from the internet I set about creating an approximation of the forces involved and a rough layout of the hill in hexon. For the foote I was working on circa 600 men per regiment and for the horse about 350. The Royalists did have cannon present but they get nary a mention in dispatches, so I omitted them from the game.

Looking uphill from the Royalist right flank.

View down hill from the Parliamentary centre.

At start deployments as per the internet.

Hoping to keep this as close as I could to the recorded events I didn’t bother with happenstance cards but I did try to capture some of the known occurrences, which again I’ll list below:

1: Hopton seems to have barely been in control of his Cornish lads and after a mornings worth of back and forth his pikemen decided unilaterally(?) that they were going to “fetch down them guns” - referencing Wallers cannon positioned along the crest of the hill. Contemporary documents refer to the pike climbing the hill to engage but I rather fancy they were just really very much to the fore with bodies of the each regiments musketeers following in their wake. <<Discuss>> To that end each regiment ascending the hill is deployed pike first and no firing is allowed by the follow on musketeers.

2. Both sides had large bodies of horse present, and by the time we join the battle they’ve been skirmishing back and forth for most of the morning. To reflect this all horse will be allowed only one charge to contact rather than two, before becoming blown.

3. The Parliamentarians had constructed a line of rough field defences along the ridge which I’ve represented here with broken ground hexes. They are far from impregnable and as in C&C ECW they serve only to negate the need to retire from combat from the first flag result rolled.

4. Continuing the theme of Hopton’s initial lack of control over his men, my initial “most likely to succeed” activations must be pitched at the foot regiments heading up the hill. (I wanted to move my dragoons into the central woods first - but hey!)

For reference, Bob C’s activation rules follow this procedure:

Each side places a concealed numbered counter next to each of their units. The lower the number the more likely the unit is to be activated, so some thought is required on placement. While I carefully chose mine as the Royalists, for solo play my absent opponent had his counters placed both secretly and randomly.

Both sides roll 1D6 and add the generals overall capability rating to it. The resultant number is the number of activations available to each side this turn.

All numbered activation counters are revealed and any showing a number in excess of their sides newly determined activation total are removed. These units may not be ordered to do anything this turn, but they may fight back if attacked in melee.

Both sides roll 1D6 and the highest roller gains the initiative. The player with the initiative activates his lowest numbered  unit (unsurprisingly it’ll be a 1). Once it has done whatever the owner decides, play passes to the opponent who activates his unit number 1. This back and forth continues through ascending order until a player has used up all of his activations. It is most unusual for players to have the same number of activations and one side usually has to sit and take it as their opponent uses up their activation advantage.

For a solo player like me the randomised allocation of numbers to the opponent prevents prior knowledge of intent and capability…which I like. Though you may not know before hand how many of your units will be activated you can at least try to ensure (by low number placement) that the really important ones get their time to shine.

Enough with the mechanics already!

The victory conditions were set as 1 victory point for each field work hill crest captured by the Royalists and 1 victory point for each unit destroyed by the Parliament. The game would end automatically if the Parliamentarians were driven behind the large stone wall to their rear - as happened in the actual battle.

All figures are 18mm Wofun.

View from the Parliamentary left as the grinding match begins. 

In another change to usual custom and practise I’ll keep the description of the actual battle relatively brief since its not actually a situation for tactical finesse. In truth I would not have fought this action at all by choice but putting myself in Hopton’s shoes I, like he, did not have that luxury - for his foot units had decided it was going to happen anyway!

The battlefield quickly turned into a fight of two halves with most of the Royalist progress being made on the right flank. Though the left was relatively unmoving, cannon fire and a charge by Hesilrigge’s lobsters did cause two Royalist foot units to rout off the board.

On the right the Royalist foot surged up the hill until they came nose to nose with cannon loaded with the 17th century equivalent of canister. One regiment was destroyed outright and the others took turns in reaching the top before falling back with losses under fire.

Above: Foot in a sort of column heading up hill to the thinly stretched defenders. Note the activation number counters.

The Parliamentary guns on their left caused a lot of damage before “the lobsters” did their work.

Above: Royalist horse (centre) were the first to break into the enemy lines but they were quickly thrown back with loss. Waller and staff are on the left of picture.

Eventually numerical superiority including a number of Royalist horse (who did not run away as in real life) allowed a few mauled Royalist foot units, to crest the rise and push the majority of the defenders back behind the big stone wall to their rear. 

Above: Waller and most of his defenders are pushed back behind the wall.

Though this progress only really happened on my right flank the withdrawal of Wallers men on his right would have been inevitable since they were eventually flanked by my dragoon’s in the central wood.

The scores when the game was called were 3VP’s for Waller (Royalist units destroyed or routed off the board) and 4 VP’s to me for actual hill crest field works I held. For all my efforts I’d only managed to destroy two battery’s of his cannon!

Above: Royalist positions at the top of the hill at game end. The field fortifications there were removed to help me remember which ones had been captured.

Though this translated into a tactical victory for the Royalists (huzzah), as in real life it achieved little and strategically Waller was undoubtedly the real winner.

As to my experimentation I have to say that I liked Bob C’s activation mechanism and I think I’ll give it another run out in the future.

The butchers bill.

Working on my previous assumption that the foot were in approximately 600 man regiments, the horse 350 and the artillery 30 man battery’s, I calculated that the units counted as destroyed would most likely have disintegrated into maybe 10% killed outright, 30% seriously wounded, and 60% merely running for their lives. (Not sure where I got this from so I doubt it has any actual validity). Those left with casualty markers on them at game end underwent the same assessment and produced the following overall stats.

Royalist killed - 280 (200 - 300 estimated in the real battle).

Royalist wounded - 840

Parliament - 66 killed (estimated at less than 100 in the real battle).

Parliament wounded - 180

So overall my “victory” wasn’t too far from that achieved by Hopton, however If you ever wanted a monument to the futility of war, here it is. 

All those lives lost for a ruddy hill.

*So good that he even gets a mention in the musical Grease.

For those who doubt me, listen to the track “Summer Nights” in which a group of leather clad hoodlums sing… “Waller, Waller, Waller…huh! Tell me more, tell me more…” and so on.