HMGS / Pacific Southwest

Archive for April, 2010

Mini-Wars was a huge success with lot of new members added to the rolls and many great games hosted over the 3 day convention. We offered meals prepared on site and had no fewer than 4 vendors taking care of the logistical needs of our little armies. We handed out some awards to some outstanding games, and hope to keep doing this well into the future. The award winning games for Spring 2010 were a heroic scale “Good v Evil” game by Mark Parker in Third Place, “Viking Raid” in 25mm by Chris Snell in second and our Achievment Award winners were Chick Lewis and Jerry Kegley for a very Victorian “Adventure on the Venture”. Other games of note were the constant stream of bombers and fighters at Steve Reid’s “Check your 6!” table, a series of games he ran all day on Saturay and Sunday. Rob Boyens did a great Americian War of Independence that stretched across 6 table tops. I would like to thank our Convention Organiser, Alex Webster, for another job well done. The kitchen help was Jesse Boyens and Mark Deliduka, who gave up a large share of their weekend to make sure everyone else got fed. We made $300 on the meals and our members were able to get in am extra hour or so of playing time because they didn’t have to leave to get a burger.

Knock knock--the Boxers are here!

Yeah, okay, so that’s a rip-off of a movie title but it seems apropos to describe the miniature Boxer Rebellion siege game I ran again at the Spring Mini Wars. Without Kaiser Bill and his beautiful terrain, this time we used the “regular-size” game with a single legation compound attempting to hold out against waves of Boxers.

The nice thing about the regular game is that it plays fast–we had three games on Saturday Night and two on Sunday morning with each lasting around an hour. As is typical with this game, the western powers have the upper hand and won 4 out of 5 games. The final game on Sunday morning, however, was a glorious Chinese victory and an absolute bloodbath for the legation.

It was rather spectacular with the lone Japanese officer, Lieutenant Kuroda making his final stand on the steps of the legation, Katana in hand facing a horde of beautifully painted Tigermen. And the relief column had already been spotted (indicated by the Japanese mounted standard bearer), but alas it was too late. You couldn’t hope for a more picturesque scene—very Gordon at Khartoum…

This game always makes for a great convention event. It’s extremely easy to put together and run, the rules can be explained in five minutes, and the players have a grasp of what to do after another ten minutes. If you’re going to be at the HMGS/PSW Fall Campaign 2010 convention, be sure to stop in, say hello and play a game!

Click this link right here to view a small gallery of photos from the final Sunday morning game (the only one I remembered to actually take pictures of!)

Heroic death of Lt. Kuroda

Oh, and by the way–this year’s Spring Convention was GREAT! I’ve not seen that many people at one of our cons in a while–there were even 20 people there Friday night (and I don’t know if that’s ever happened before). I’m delighted to see the hard work of our current Chapter leadership and the many GMs and volunteers is paying off. Be sure to come out and support us again in the Fall when it will undoubtedly be even better!

Steve leads his troops wearing his helmet from his first command!

My main Wargaming buddy Steve Gausche and I after a long absence finally got out our 20mm WWII stuff to have a battle! For many years we have used rules that were written by myself and others based off of Steve Lorenz’s Panzer War. They were/are quite good, fun, and give good historically believable results. They are fairly detailed and large games can lead to 5+ hour games….. Something we are not as comfortable with now as when we were younger and had more time to spare. Also not playing WWII as frequently as we used to leads to us having to spend a lot of time looking stuff up (yes writing the rules does not mean you know them by heart) and that was not much fun. So this coupled with the fact that I had for a long time wanted to find a simpler rule set that would allow me to game WWII at conventions and at our local club (the Bengal Club) like I used to, faster with less fuss. Convention games NEED to be simple and fast to be fun for participants!

My M-36 moves into position

I have many sets of WWII rules sitting on my shelf, some read, some played, and others just there! One of the rule sets is Crossfire a small (by WWII rules standards) set of rules that I had played over 10 years ago at a convention and hated! Of course I did not understand the concept, and the guy running it did not help much outside of letting me know I was being wiped out. So the rules sat on the shelf…. Most rules have about a 2 year life where they are “the in thing” and then replaced unless they are really good and then 5 years or so. Well it had been over 10 years and I was still hearing about them and in searching the web I found lots of really devoted players and the same basic rules were still in effect! This made me decide to give them a try on my own table.

Steve and I set up a small battle, a company of German regulars with support from a mortar, 2 HMG’s and a PZ IV-H defending a small French town of 6 buildings, some larger light industrial builds among them. We laid down plenty of terrain per the rules and Steve set up his defense. My forces consisted of a reinforced platoon of American regulars, 4 squads, HMG, mortar, and M-36 tank destroyer. Not a lot in my opinion for the attack.
I deployed out of sight of Steve’s forces and having the initiative moved out using cover. I pushed two squads forward and one of them came into his troops line of sight (LOS) and he used reactive fire to suppress them losing me the initiative. The initiative passing to Steve he proceeded to use group firing to nearly wipe out my platoon in the woods. Quite a wake up for me but when you think about it, it worked. I was silly enough to move the entire unit up into the area where he could bring several units to bear on me and he rolled well, my troops were pinned, suppressed, could not return effective fire and then killed. Now killed is a subjective term, many would argue that the results of two whole squads killed that quick (how quick??? There is no time scale so the fire fight might have been 2 minutes or 22 minutes) but “killed” in the game as I see it means really reduced in combat effectiveness to a point they no longer play a part in the action due to wounds, morale, exhaustion, and actual KIA’s. Works for me and it was fast in game time!

Steve's Germans take up a position on my flank

Steve then used the rest of his initiative to move a squad into a flank position to my left and then passed initiative to me. I pulled my troops back and swung my M-36 around the edge of the field where it could engage some of his firing troops that had just caused so much damage. My tank suppressed his one squad allowing my two other platoons to move up into position with out taking reactive fire. So far these rules were allowing the same type of maneuver and producing believable results like our own rules but with much less work and much faster! Steve then advanced his Mark IV onto the road hoping to engage my platoon now starting to engage his most forward squads, and my M-36 called reactive fire, scratch one German tank.

Germans suffer the first setback, loss of their Armor support!

I used two of my mortar 3 fire missions to lay smoke into a gap in my cover thus allowing my right flank platoons and M-36 to move around his flank and form up behind some woods. My M-36 then poked his head out around the factory building to support my 2 squads move into the factory. Bad move! A Panzer Faust from one of the nearby buildings stopped the M-36 dead, a heap of flaming wreckage.

Panzerfaust the bane of allied tankers in Europe takes out the M-36

Steve then pulled back his platoon that had taken up the blocking position on my left flank in order to counter the threat I was massing on his other flank. This was somewhat of a mistake as it allowed me to move into his position and engage another squad at near even odds. The dice went in my favor there and I moved up again so that now I had 3 platoons attacking his last bunker building containing his CC, 1st Platoon and HMG. While my one Platoon on the left with my CC, and my HMG, held and threatened his center I launched my attack with the other two platoons in the Factory complex. Slightly better die roles on my part and the fact that I could switch my firing from one platoon to the other undamaged platoon was telling on Steve’s defenders. His Heavy Machine gun was positioned to cover his front where my 2nd platoon, CC, and HMG were waiting behind a building for the right moment and could not move with out provoking relative fire from me. Several good shots from me suppressed 2 out of his three squads and after rallying off my “pinned” squads moved my 1st squad into close combat! assaulting the building. This was too much for Steve’s Suppressed squads although his Company Commander went down fighting causing a “kill” on of my assaulting squads. This ended the battle as his last platoon pulled back out of his position in the woods and the town belonged to the GI’s.

Two American platoons regroup behind the factory complex

We played this battle in about four plus hours, but that was using rules and concepts that were in the beginning totally alien to us! Since the game requires 1 1/4 inch bases some time was also spent cutting test bases from roofers tin (really steel) and dropping our indavidualy based 20mm figures onto them in the correct numbers. I don’t really want to rebase and I think that these metal bases could be flocked in such a way as to leave openings to drop any nationalities troops based like ours onto them, saving the need to have bases for all my already based troops. The basic rules were learned in just a short time and we spent the rest of the bulk of the time digging around through the rest of the vehicle, building, close combat, indirect rules, and other stuff. We have a good handle on the rules after just one game and I think another replay of the same scenario could be done in 2 hours. We both liked the rules, simple, elegant, and get you to the same conclusions without all the work. This leaves a lot more time to concentrate on maneuver and fighting the battle! I can’t wait to try these again!
Bill W.