Be careful what you wish for…

This post was originally going to be called «The Day Of The Rat» a humorous tale of thwarted ambition and animal cruelty - but events have sadly overtaken me. 

You may recall a previous mention of my nipping over to France in September to have a look at Brittany, Cotes d’Armor and Lower Normandy - with a view to moving back there one day. No rush. Let the idea settle in. Do a bit of prep work…you get the picture.

Having taken our time to consider things in the round and presumably become comfortable with the concept I thought we might eventually put our house on the market and have a punt at it.

Again…no rush.

I had of course forgotten that the Current Mrs Broom is a force of nature - a woman who brooks no delay in anything. A week or so back she suggested that we got a valuation of our current gaff, so that we’d have an idea of what we’d be able to buy when we went over there. Seemed quite reasonable. Couldn’t argue with that. A valuation was duly booked. It turned out to be a good one. Very good in fact. Good enough that I couldn’t think of a valid reason not to put the house on the market straight away. 

Obviously it’d do no harm. I mean; finding a buyer takes months doesn’t it?

Apparently not. 

Within a week we had an offer of the full asking price and my carefully curated risk averse dip of a toe in the French property market had come apart at the seams. As proof, (if proof were needed) that we will soon be leaving, we were finally accepted onto the local Welsh NHS dentist list last week, (it’s only taken them 2 1/2 years to get around to it). 

All of that means that there’s been no gaming or even painting possible over the past ten days since everything has had to be squared away. The viewings have now stopped but thoughts are turning to packing stuff up for a move - or more likely putting stuff into short term storage. 

Without any gaming to report on blogging activity will naturally be sporadic for a bit and probably comprise of little more than place holding updates - so please accept my apologies in advance.

Suffice it to say that the lovely Elizabethan Pendraken 10mm army I’ve ordered will probably get little more than a cursory glance when it eventually arrives and the AVBCW project along with little a pre dreadnought flirtation I’d been working on will have to be shelved for the moment too. 

The removals men unloading my crap on Gold Beach

The whole thing’s pretty exciting - but more than a little bit scary too. Hopefully we made all our mistakes last time we lived on the other side of the Channel…gulp.

Toodleooh, or more accurately perhaps in future, «à bientôt mes amis!».

The Bagley Field heist - Part 2

I ran the game today and was very pleased with the way TaM worked, though it’s definitely designed for more units on the board …and a different era of warfare!

The background fluff for this game was laid out in the previous post, so if you want to go back and look at that I’ll wait.

Up to speed now?

Okay then, the whole shebang took 7 turns and about an hour to play but there were enough potential alternative outcomes that I’ll probably run it again (off blog) at some point. 

Here’s a few piccies of the action.

Turn 1. The workers « assault » busses rattle their way up the track to the Nissen huts on the aérodrome, one of which is chock full of guns and ammo. Major Clanger (left of picture) had his lucky hat on, but he still rolled a 1 which meant that his chaps couldn’t arrive in his allotted portion of the turn. I had previously established it would take thirty minutes for the local coppers to respond to the alarm being raised by the caretaker. Worryingly for both parties the game clock advanced nine minutes on this, the very first turn. Ooh err. Better get my skates on!

T2. My workers leap out of the busses, pause to light a fag, then remember they’re meant to be searching for the weapons cache. One section heads to my ordered target the other lot wander up the lane towards the northernmost Nissen hut. In the background Major Clanger is grinding his teeth. In his portion of the turn he rolled high enough to bring his lorries onto the board, but the hex they occupy failed an activation die roll so they just had to sit there and watch as the blue collar types finished their snouts. As a bye the bye I rolled for which one of the Nissen huts the good Major was going to send his men to search and found that it wasn’t the one nearest to me, which was a relief. The end turn admin phase die roll saw another 8 minutes of the available raiding time disappear so my lads were clearly enjoying their fag break. That’s 17 minutes out of the 30 before the rozzers are destined to turn up by the way.

T3. The workers on the left of the picture burst into the Nissen hut and the busses move around a bit to prevent them becoming a lucrative single hex target. All of the hexes containing my units activated as required. In a normal TaM game at least one and sometimes two hexes (depending on troop type and command capabilities) will always be assured of an activation. I restricted it in this game because none of the men involved are professional soldiers and command and control would be almost nonexistent. Of course on the workers side the whole « command » thing is a bit of a sticky subject in itself…! Seems they’ve become a bit averse to having a boss telling them what to do. Clanger’s trucks inch forward down the track, perhaps spooked by the unexpected presence of an opposing force. Worried about the safety of his transports the pink one orders his men to get out and make for the nearest hut. No one knows at this point which hut contains the goodies of course but in the later admin phase a die roll determines that they are actually in mine. Woo hoo! Sadly I can’t type what Clanger said at this point. Alarmingly the game clock is advanced by another 9 minutes leaving only four minutes before the peelers of K division show up.

By the way if you get really close to the picture and listen carefully you might just pick up the feint jangling bells of speeding police cars.

Tell me you didn’t just do that.

T4. The driver of the bus and his mate begin frantically stowing wooden crates containing rifles and ammo. The workers leave them to it (due to job delineation concerns) and head out to confront the approaching middle class mob.  I didn’t tell Clanger that I’d found the weapons cache - so his men continued on towards his target hut. At the end of turn 4 the game clock only advanced by two minutes when a double 1 was rolled. Phew. For anyone still counting there are only two minutes left before the rozzers arrive.

T5. The good news was that Eric the bus driver managed to get the last crate on board, the engine started, and a hex worth of progress down the track to the south. The bad news was that none of the other hexes containing my chaps managed to activate. (I’m assuming they’d stopped short in order to shout ribald comments at the oncoming capitalist lackeys. We’ll probably never know). Meanwhile Colonel Bagshaw (retd) - one of the leading lights of the aforementioned capitalist lackeys, had brought along his shotgun, a cartridge for it, and a face puce with rage. The Colonel wasted no time leading his shopkeeper and clerk cohort into a round of fisticuffs with the communist oiks. Harsh words were traded and manly uppercuts attempted. At some point the shotgun went off with a bang, scaring everyone witless. The OMS pulled back… shaken. Clanger had entered into close combat rather than fire with little hope of success from an adjacent hex - but it had all gone wrong. (It really wasn’t his day) Taking a hit in the melee his section had been forced to pull back and become pinned. In the end admin phase there was more bad news. The game clock had advanced past 30 minutes and the fuzz had now shown up. Originally I’d intended that this would end the game but I’d got a truck full of goodies and a clear road to get off the board. Maybe I should continue (I thought) and see which road hex the coppers would turn up on; north or south? I rolled a dice.

T6. Bugger it. A bloody great idea that turned out to be!  “Allo allo allo, what’s goin’ on ‘ere then?” The skull crackers of K division had spread out across the south road, blocking the busses exit. Dammit. There was only one hex that activated for my side but thankfully it was the bus hex. Eric gunned the engine and released the handbrake. 

T7. At a blistering 10mph Eric smashed through the police cordon and set course for freedom. There were unsurprisingly no TaM rules for this eventuality but I reasoned that even at that crazy speed some of the coppers might just have managed to jump out of the way in time.

T7. Contd. “You’ll never take me alive copper” shouted Eric, but unfortunately he was wrong for Inspector Knacker had taken the precaution of arming his bobbies with rifles. Despite the speed of the passing vehicle the guardians of law and order had time to discharge their magazines, reload and then have another couple of goes. Some of them got so excited they kept on firing even after the busses tyres blew out and the engine caught fire. Braving the flames inspector Knacker did a bit of unnecessary trunchening on poor old Eric’s noggin before shouting the traditional K division victory cry of “Your nicked sunshine.”

The outcome: Well it was a draw I suppose, since nobody got what they came for. On the wife’s insistence I diced for the possibility of the busses cargo exploding (she was passing by at the time) but it didn’t… and she also asked why none of the protagonists had used the dinky little machine guns on the back of the parked up plane. 

Bloody women. 

After arresting Eric and securing the munitions the police swept the site. Inspector Knacker was surprised to see the number of « workmen » apparently digging holes and a party of the better sort seemingly practising their golf swings behind the hangers. 

Conclusions:

The TaM rules worked really well, though with more units it will really come into its own. Playing with a game clock is a first for me (for some reason) but it added a definite frisson of tension to proceedings and will be included where possible in other games I play. 

It was a practise game of little consequence but I thoroughly enjoyed it and as usual found I could construct enough of a narrative to keep myself amused. 

Hope you liked it…there’ll be more of it coming soon enough.

Toodleooh.

The Bagley Field heist - Part 1

Dateline: 8th May 1926

The General Strike is in its fourth day and the situation has begun to spiral out of control. Reluctant to involve the Army, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin has so far relied on the “concerned citizens” of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supply to keep essential services running; with the Police, somewhere in the middle, attempting to keep order. Fights between the OMS and those on strike have caused numerous injuries, two deaths and (worst of all to the Daily Mail readers) some damage to property. 

Without any centralised orders to do so, small groups of the protagonists have begun to arm themselves with whatever they can find.

Word reaches the ears of the Stoke OMS leadership that guns and ammunition have been secretly moved by the Government into storage at nearby Bagley Field aérodrome. * Apart from a single caretaker the cache will be unguarded. Plans are laid to seize the stash so they can finally overawe the local strikers. At a late night Lodge meeting, two Army trucks are proffered to carry away the haul.  

Unfortunately for the OMS, a spy gets word of their plans to the Stoke Workers Defence Committee and the comrades resolve to seize the haul for themselves instead. Overnight a couple of busses are stolen from the local corporation depot and prepared for a dawn raid.

The mission:

I’ll be taking on the (none hierarchical) command of a small Workers Defence Committee strike force, tasked with seizing the cache of weapons from the airfield. At the end of the landing strip are two Nissen huts, one of which contains our prize. Overnight sabotage of the OMS transport means they have been slightly delayed in setting off. The key to success will be getting there the fastest with the mostest, however the busses I’ll  be using to carry away the goodies have no cross country capability and will become immobilised if they leave a road hex (they have a grey base as a reminder).

Notes: 

All miniatures are Pendraken 10mm and the game will be played against my old nemesis, (Major Clanger) using Norm’s Tigers at Minsk rules (in a period they were never intended for, so soz Norm).

My chaps will enter on the southern board edge road on turn 1 and the OMS will enter from the north board edge when a 1D6 die roll of 3,4,5 or 6 allows.

The first Nissen hut to be entered will be tested to see if it contains the weapon cache with the same die roll as above. The weapons cache will always be in one of them. 

A vehicle must be within an adjacent hex to the hut for the driver and his mate to load it on board. It takes a full single turn to load and the vehicle may perform no other action.

Any single transport is capable of carrying two infantry sections.

A single transport vehicle is required to move the haul to safety - loss of either sides available transport is an automatic mission fail. 

TaM amendments for the period and scenario:

Due to the amateur nature of both sides there is no nomination of a hex that is automatically « in command » all potential hexes in which activity is required in a turn have to be diced for.

Game clock. The attack takes place at 6 o’clock in the morning but after thirty minutes the local police will arrive in strength.

Both sides have a moral rating of two. Lorries don’t usually count towards the force / morale total in TaM, but they are essential to complete the mission and the men involved would be more easily spooked by the loss of them than regulars in a bigger conflict.

Both factions are employing men armed with a mixture of short range civilian firearms. They have a range of 1 hex and a close combat die roll of 1D6. (Very limited in TaM terms).

Neither faction has the ability to make smoke and neither has any anti armour fire capability.

This game is an attempt to work through the basic TaM rules and sequence of play with just a few units per side. Although it will count as the first campaign mission none of the losses incurred will count against the faction force pools on this occasion.

Bagley field aérodrome. Dawn, 8th May 1926. Workers assault transports entering from the south. 

Force pool:

The Workers: 2 x sections of angry workers. 2 x corporation busses.

The O.M.S. 2 x sections of concerned citizens. 2 x « cough » civilian lorries.

My plan: 

I’m going to load all my workers into the leading bus and stop at the first Nissan hut. Keeping the vulnerable transports out of shotgun range I’ll search the first hut for the weapons with one section and send the other to either search the second or disrupt any arriving OMS. My primary target will be the OMS transports.

Major Clangers plan: 

No idea! I’ll dice for the hut he’s heading for when his forces arrive on the board.

This has to be the smallest game (with the fewest units) that I’ve ever attempted. 

And finally:

…a cry for help. If anyone knows where I might get some info on Elizabethan infantry or cavalry flags please drop me a line. I’m after the 1588 plus period but I can’t find anything on the inter web to speak of.

*totally made up place - naturally

Strike

I’ve decided not to follow a formal campaign structure for my forthcoming strike project but will instead run games taken from scenarios in Neil Thomas’ One Hour Wargames book. The first faction (Government or Strikers) to win 3 consecutive games will be deemed to have won the whole campaign. 

The factions will start with the initial force pools listed below from which six units must be selected to become their at start order of battle. New units may be drawn from the force pools to replace losses between games, but the winner of a game will also be able to draw down any one unit from the independent / unaligned forces to add to their own. 

Strikers Forces

Armoured carrier & 6pdr gun

FT17 tank

Austin armoured car

Lanchester armoured car

2 x civilian busses

1 x command group

1 x mortar

1 x Vickers HMG

2 x Factory defence militia

3 x Workers Defence Force infantry

1 x 4.5 inch howitzer

Indépendant Forces

Whippet tank

Civilian lorry

Traction engine

Seabrook armoured lorry

Thornycroft AA truck

Model T flat bed

Motorbike & sidecar

1 x Cavalry

2 x Police (K division)

2 x Naval shore party

2 x Scottish infantry

HM Gov Forces

Tank MKV

Tank MK II

Birch gun

Fascist Earnhardt armoured car - “Carlotta”

Rolls Royce armoured car

2 x Military trucks

Staff car

1 x command group

1 x mortar

1 x Vickers HMG

1 x Fascist infantry 

2 x OMS militia

3 x Regular Army infantry

1 x 4.5 inch howitzer

The units pictured below are included in the lists above and are the last ones required for this project. I’ve a few cardboard buildings to make up and some resin bits and bobs to paint but I expect the next post to be a battle report.

Model T flatbed for the workers defence force command group and a staff car for the officers of the regular army.

A Rolls Royce armoured car of Major General George Lindsay’s experimental mobile force.

A Lanchester armoured car, less glamorous than the Rolls but equally capable. This one was being refurbished at a Birmingham company for onward sale to China when it was seized by the Factory’s  Defence Militia.

Part of a shipment to Russia this Austin armoured car was liberated by a Liverpool dockers collective and quickly pressed into service.

A traction engined road roller…because…erm…it’s cute? I suppose it’d make a decent road block or artillery tractor.

Give ´em a taste of the birch!

No, not an instruction to thrash difficult teenagers, or even an endorsement of an S&M lifestyle. The post title actually refers to the fella immediately below. 

The Birch Gun was the first practical British self propelled gun, built at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich in 1925.

Despite proving itself a practical proposition the Birch Gun was never highly regarded by the British High Command, apparently not for any particular defect or lack of capability but an entrenched belief that such an innovation was unprecedented and so at best unwelcome and at worst an expensive and unnecessary indulgence.

Named after General Sir Noel Birch who was Master General of Ordnance at the time, the Birch gun comprised a Vickers Medium MKII tank chassis originally fitted with a QF 18pdr (83.8 mm) gun. This remained the armament in all the models, although the latest version, usually called the Mk III, had limited elevation. Birch Guns were used in the Experimental Mechanized Force manoeuvres of 1928 but by 1931 they had been removed from service and political pressure was applied to prevent any plans to complete the third version of this weapon.

It would be a decade before the British Army returned to the concept of tracked artillery, in the middle years of a war for national survival where speed and mobility on the battlefield were not optional and eleven years before it would once again be equipped with a similarly effective weapon.

And here are a few more weird and wonderful 1920´s war machines that’ll be appearing in my upcoming games. All models are Pendraken 10mm.

MKV Hermaphrodite. Still the classic WW1 tank shape but longer lower and wider. Armed with MG’s on one side and a 6pdr on the other (in case it encountered other tanks). The British governments constant penny pinching meant this beast soldiered on until the late 20´s. Cramped, uncomfortable, and due to inadequate ventilation more likely to incapacitate the crew through carbon monoxide poisoning than enemy action.

Gun Carrier Mark I. The gun carrier was designed to transport a 6 inch howitzer or a 60 pounder gun forward soon after an attack to support infantry in advanced positions. The carriers moved guns and equipment but were used for the rest of the war mainly for carrying equipment and supplies through areas under fire, where porters in the open would have suffered many casualties. The 6-inch howitzer could be fired while mounted, making the Gun Carrier Mark I the first modern self propelled gun, a weapon capable of independent action and having tactical mobility on the battlefield.

Generic late 20´s lorry. Transport for non government forces. The nasty mould lines didn’t really become apparent until after painting so I tried to cover them with the signage. Hopefully they’ll not be too obvious at gaming distance.

Vickers Médium MKII. Designed to replace the MKV (back up the page) it was first produced in 1925. Production stopped in 1934 but it wasn’t fully phased out of service until 1939. The Mark II was equipped with a 47mm 3 pdr gun and four machine guns. Top speed was 13mph and the armour (when it wasn’t forming perfect shot traps) was so thin you’d have been better off going to war in a baked bean tin.

 Thorneycroft 4 ton trucks. Transport for the Government forces.

Told you there’d be another one along in a minute. Couldn’t resist adding a bit of colour to the collection.  These vehicles have been requisitioned by the workers militia.

Another Thorneycroft truck but this time with a 13pdr AA gun mounted on the back. I suspect this would make a pretty potent anti tank gun despite its lack of armour.

I still have a couple of armoured cars a steam powered road roller and some nice buildings to make before I can get gaming with this lot…but I’m nearly there.

Toodleooh.

Room on top

Things have been pretty busy here chez moi, what with the cheese shifting and the giddy social whirl my wife insists on including me in. Nonetheless further progress has been made on my 1926 General Strike project so I thought I’d share a few more piccies of the things that have recently passed across the painting desk. All items shown are Pendraken 10mm - apart from the plane which is Wings of Glory 1:144th scale.

First up is this little fella:

A London bus pressed into service as an improvised troop transport. The advertising signs (which I think help tremendously) come from the Sankey Scenics N gauge railway range.

The same bus from the other side. Old Calabar is a dog food product in case you were wondering. Oh, you weren’t wondering. Okay. The Scottish infantry section seem very annoyed they’ve just missed their bus. Never mind lads there’ll be another along in a minute!

A British Whippet tank of WW1 vintage which remains in service up until the mid 20´s due to defence spending review cutbacks. Britain had declared it would not be involved in any war for at least 10 years and consequently declined to do much in the way of research and development. It boasts several machine guns but only one of them could be fired at any one time.

An Airco DH4 bomber. Introduced in 1917 and Intended to be replaced by the up engined DH9 the DH4 continued to serve as an Army cooperation aircraft until 1930 in some theatres! This one sports a red fuselage band and the designation B1 indicating it is the 1st aircraft in the Birmingham Corporation Air Defence Force.

A Seabrook armoured lorry. Originally used by Royal Navy land units this armoured heavyweight had a very poor cross country performance but fielded a useful 47mm (3pdr) gun. I suspect this one will be supporting my mutinous matelots.

You can stick yer ruddy King Tigers where the sun don’t shine mate! Seriously, who the hell doesn’t love a little Renault FT17. A contemporary of the Whippet (see above) it was exported all around the world and featured a number of different turret styles and armaments. In 1926 Chinese warlord Zhang Zoulin ordered 15 war surplus FT17’s for his Manchurian army. In my counterfactual history one of the ships carrying 3 tanks and 2,000 Lebel rifles is forced to divert into Liverpool due to mechanical failure. Striking dockworkers quickly seized the ship and its cargo and soon added them to the Workers Defence Force arsenal. Later named Faith, Hope and Charity, Faith is shown here after the application of its WDF red ID turret band.

An Earnhardt armoured car. Produced and used by Germany this one was captured by the Italians during WW1. When pressed, Benito Mussolini sent this one as a token of his support for the British Fascists in 1926. Named Carlotta (she’s a whole lotta car!) she’s shown here painted with the OMS / Fascist white turret band.

A motorbike / sidecar combination plus mounted troopers. I intend to use these for recon work and improving a forces overall command and control. I’ve kept them deliberately non faction specific.

And finally. Who’d have thought that these Ohio based rockers would have been so into WW1 British light tanks that they’d name a song after one?!

Take it away boys.

Blue on blue

Just a quick painting progress update this week.

A combination of catching Covid 19 and reduced blogging effort has seen a bit more progress than I’d expected on my interwar General Strike project, so I thought I’d share a few piccies. All minis are 10mm Pendraken.

A squad of British Fascists or “blue shirts” as the Daily Mail would refer to them (in my alternate timeline). Forces on the left soon began to call them “bennys” in mocking reference to their apeing of Benito Mussolini’s black shirts. Secretly armed and uniformed they eventually emerged as the militant wing of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supply.

Note: The Irish and Spanish fascists of this period had blue shirts. Like all “good” fascists my chaps wear identifying  armbands. White for the OMS overlaid with a black central stripe and an embroidered branch name. (Smethwick in this case). The ice cream salesman hats have a black felt square on the front with a silver empire roaring lion badge. Anti Semitism had yet to rear its ugly head - these early fascists being all about the Empire and the establishment of a corporatist state. Think Scouts with a Lewis gun.

Two 4.5 inch howitzers without obvious factional affiliation (so I can get more use out of them). A very popular weapon that according to Wikipedia even saw early WW2 service.

Two command stands (one per side). They can be either command or they can double up as forward observers at a pinch. Sorry about the Dandelion seed blowing past (left).

Same boys from the back in order to show off the radio’s. These are from Pendrakens WW2 range but radios were actually being used in the mid 20’s army despite being clumsy and unreliable.

Vickers HMG and a mortar team. One per side at the moment, though playing on a 3x3 board I can’t think I’ll need any more than that.

Another squad of matelots - two in total now, for a bit of variety. This bunch have an officer or senior rating amongst them. 

Angry pro government middle class members of the OMS with their white armbands and assorted shotguns. Pretty good at writing letters to the editor of the Times, not so good as it turns out at blue collar work. If only the proles could just do as they’re told. 

I’m currently finishing off two cavalrymen and a motorcycle with sidecar combination for recon work. Next on the blocks will be 12 jock infantry though I’ll need to do a bit of experimentation with painting kilts. Wish someone made a tartan paint, lol. 

I should be onto vehicles within a week or so, and boy have I got some weird and wonderful looking things to assemble and paint up. I think you’ll like them.

Lastly for this post, an unexpected advantage to 10mm figures is their comparability with railway N gauge scenery. Nissan huts in cardboard are just part of a massive range of interesting (and cheap) buildings I’ve got on order. 

Nissan hut. I’ve always thought of them as a WW2 thing but they were first produced in 1916, so entirely applicable to 1926.

Toodleooh for now.