HMGS / Pacific Southwest

Members of the Anaheim-based Saturday Night Irregulars have begun a new campaign set in the Alsace in October ‘44. For details on its progress, see the ODGW Blog.

Here is an excellent idea for making terrain, that I had to test myself first. It works — pastels do wash out, and the results look very good, especially with smaller scales.

Last night, the Bengal Club held two very entertaining games using “The Natives Are Restless“, a simple yet sophisticated set of rules previously only used for Boxer Rebellion games (See below for information about the convention games played in the fall). Zulus versus Brits, and although the Zulus lost twice, it was still an exciting game — both of which were played in the span of three hours.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any pictures of the games, but we’re starting to think that these rules may be a handy replacement for The Sword and the Flame, a game system not currently in favor at the club.

If you have your own gaming blog, or your club has a blog or website about miniature gaming, feel free to let us know so we can add it to the links section of the board. We just got notice of the ODGW Blog, and added the link this morning.

Happy blogging!

– Matt

There will be a Mein Panzer game presented by the Miracle Mile Gamers on Sunday, 14 February at 10a. It is a refight of the Canadian attempt to take Torre Muchia along the Adriatic in Italy against prepared German resistance by elite Fallschirmjäegers.

Happy New Year to all!

I thought I would write up a short report with a few pictures of the first battle I played in 2010! Don King, Kevin Rounsaville, Mike Kennedy, Kevan Thomas, and Tim? (Sorry you didn’t sign the sheet and my memory stinks for names!) had met through the Asianwar yahoo group and I found that they were playing BAW (battles in the age of War) Samurai rules. The group invited me down for a January 2 battle and I loaded my troops up and headed off. It is always good to play games with groups outside your own as you find out many things about rules sets that you had been doing wrong, never knew, or found that the other group had a completely different take on it, you also find that other groups struggle in much the same way in interpating the rules as you do…LOL! Such was this game; I learned a lot and even think I brought a little knowledge to them as well.

Kevan was quick to point out important points through out the game!

With 6 players we decided that one big game with a 1000 points a side we be best as we could all work on the rules together. The most knowledgeable players were split up and we had at it. Don, Kevin R, and I being on the attacking side and Mike, Kevan T, and Tim, defending or so we thought! BAW has a typical “Peter Pig” / RFCM pregame setup where players spend “Koku” or money in the form of dice rolled to gain points that are then spent to influence the coming battle. This influence for a samurai battle is in the very historical form of Treachery, Family, Weather, Ninjas, Battle preparation, sieges, and more. This has a very nice effect of creating a battle other than a straight up head bang. With our game it put Tim’s side on the defense with a lot of his troops being late to the battle due to bribery I think it was. Tim compensated with a bold plan of taking the initiative and attacking us! That sort of threw us off balance for the whole game and allowed his follow on troops some time to arrive.

On my flank I was lucky to have some good early generalship rolls and my troops surged forward to occupy the vacant hills were Tim’s “missing” troops should have been.

My Samurai and Ashigaru "Teppo" infantry grab the hill without a fight.

I should have kept going! (hindsight) and tore into his on ashigaru teppo (gun) unit but since the other side of the battle was not going as planned I thought I would hold the hills (my orders) for a bit and see what happened. I figured I could shoot up the opposing troops but again Tim beat me to the punch hit my gunners first causing disorder that several bad rolls on my part could not remedy! At this point the center and far wings under Kevin and Don were a see saw battle with no clear winner.

The battle rages on the left flank. Samurai battles are about as colorful as you can get!

I thought about switching sides with typical Daimyo logic but as Tim’s troops were arriving and he looked like the kind of general that upon swearing loyalty to might ask me to prove it by committing Seppuku! I sent in my smaller Samurai unit to engage his Ashigaru gunners. A fierce struggle insued with neither of us winning at first. At this point I just cared about running out the clock on the battle; it did with the victory going to Tim, Mike, and Kevan T’s side getting “A good Win”

Troops from the enemy defend the hills in the center.

Don our fearless leader (Diamyo) surveys the carnage from his well stocked "Maku" area!

Some of Tim's troops on my side.

Several of us are trying to organize a group to play Samurai Battles a various spot in the Southland and if you have an army or would like to start playing please contact me so we can ad you to the player list!

Thanks to all and we’ll be back!

Bill Witthans

Here is an older AAR from the Miracle Mile Gamers.

Tonight, the Bengal Club will be attempting a retry of Plastic Ships & Iron Men — wherein we use the old Wooden Ships & Iron Men rules, a hex mat, and WizKid’s Pirates of the Spanish Main (etc) ships.

Some of us have actual scale model ships, a la “Ship of the Line”, but there’s nothing easier and more convenient than just punching out some ships of the wide variety available in the “Pirates” line and whipping up a battle.

For those who don’t have a copy of the old WS&IM rules, Hasbro has made them available at their website here.

Note that this PDF is missing page 7, so you can find that here. The log sheets here, the counters here, and the advanced tables here.

Here is the latest game report from the Miracle Mile Gamers (MMG) of Los Angeles.

From Tunisia '43

We meet about every five to six weeks for WWII gaming. Our latest campaigns have been in Crete and France ‘40, though we occasionally venture off for single scenarios of interest.

Cheers,
Blue Leader

Bill witthans and Doug Kendrick develop their clever plans!

I have always had a love for things Japanese, the “structure” of life there with its “codes” and rules of conduct fascinated me. This has carried naturally over into Wargaming. Years ago I bought a “Twin Dragons” boxed 15mm Samurai army after playing in a Killer Katanas battle at one of the Southern California conventions. I never sat down and “did” the army at one time but added units over the years as the painting Samurai bug hit me. I also never really played with them as opponents where hard to find. Samurai battles was a real “niche” game and then the 3 or so basing schemes for the different rules sets made it even tougher. I would still get a KK2 game in every couple of years and then paint for awhile afterwards. I became involved several years ago with the Bengal Club and met Doug Kendrick who also had a love for the Japanese warring States period. We soon got together for several battles using KK2 rules but were not that happy with them. Any rule set you try to play without having the help of players already well versed in the game or having a support page to ask questions or get rules clarifications is more than likely going to be tough. Most KK2 games left many questions unanswered.

Doug then played in a Demo game of BAW (Battles in the Age of War) at Brookhurst Hobbies and was quite enthused about the rules. I had 2 Killer Katanas 15mm armies based already and was hardly looking forward to rebasing for a new rule set. We decided to play a game using “counters” of the appropriate size to represent our forces and try it out. BAW does not use figure count, rather each stand represents a number of “real” soldiers and whole stands are removed for losses. This is also nice since you can build your armies “bases” and add the painted figures later while playing and learning the rules immediately. There is a big “before game” section with a chance to do the things so common in “feudal state” period Japanese battles, like Treachery, Battle preparation, weather, family ties, ninja, and more. You get 60 “Koku” dice and “spend” these dice trying to influence the outcome in these different categories. You and you opponent then go down the category list and using the number of dice each has allotted for that category roll against each other, 4,5,6 indicating success, the player with the most successful rolls wins that category and depending on how much he won by consults a chart for the result. These results are very entertaining and help to simulate the maneuvering and fate that effects real battles but is mostly missing in “wargames”. For instance Doug beat me at “treachery” by 3 dice resulting in;

“We must not trust Lord Ishonawa! His troops are not yet mustered”. Doug then gets to pick one of my flanks and force me to roll to see if some of my clan generals troops have not come to the battle as a result of the enemy making a deal with one of my vassals to be “late” to the battle!

I beat Doug in the “Weather” category, for a result of;

“The weather has been good to us my lord. The roads are good. Lady Shinoba has sent many bales of rice!” That resulted in good supplies for one of my clans and the good roads made the journey to the battlefield easy, so each of my units on that flank got +2 activation points on turn 1.

The game has a lot of these types of events that go beyond the scope of most wargames that end up being a straight up “dice roll offs” and make for a very interesting and unpredictable game that lends itself well to repeat playing. The rules for fighting themselves are fairly well organized and complete with no questions left unanswered if you are willing to look! The end of the game also has a point system that when added up gives you a margin of victory result, something else sadly missing in many games.

So the end result is that I spent 10 hours completely rebaseing TWO 15mm armies, about 150 bases! I think it will be well worth it,

Battle report:

News that the fool Dougashika and Mattosan’s armies had invaded my province had reached the castle only days before, I quickly sent messenger out to “Mikkeo” my trusted vassal to rush to the pass of “harmony” to defeat the enemy. Treachery however was used by the enemy and many of our “trusted” men were “late” to the battle! We had hoped to attack the enemy at dawn but were delayed having to wait for most of our troops. We were forced into a defensive roll and picked the “Hoen, Million Doors” formation that gives an army a balanced structure, sort of a wait and see style.

“Dougashika” and “Mattosan” lost no time in moving into meet our troops in the center since both flanks were weak or “missing” and hoped to defeat us by using all their forces to crush my center. We held back awaiting those missing troops. The enemies dice gave them only average movement and that coupled with a “mistake” in setting up the deployment (an extra foot of battlefield was included! This made Doug and Matt take longer to get to us) prevented them from being able to fully close with us before the end of the game (each turn the defender rolls a D6, when the total adds up to 20 its game over!). This coupled with good rolls to bring our missing troops on and a disastrous charge by “Dougashika’s” samurai cavalry against my foot Samurai led to a draw do to a blinding early snowstorm ending the battle. We will meet again!

Do you have a 15mm samurai army gathering dust on your shelf! Give us a shout! Let’s play!

Yours in Gaming!

Bill Witthans
President HMGS/PSW

PS: I know some of you are playing games over this Thanksgiving holiday, lets see those Battle reports here!

Mike's late arriving Samurai and Ashigaru cross a stream threatening Matti's flank attack!

Matt adds his troops to the center attack

Doug's Samurai cavalry close with my samurai!