Blenneville or Bust

TwoFatLardies just released the latest Robert Avery masterwork, a fictitious campaign for Normandy in 1944. Get it here  in PDF for £9.50

It's going onto my ereader tonight!
In honour of this (and because I'm still waiting on my steel paper!) the next few posts will be some more Heroics & Ros WW2 stuff that I haven't detailed yet.

A Distraction Enters

Well, my house guests are now on their way to Melbourne, and I've just been down setting up my desk again.
As any of you that know me would have predicted, the Falklands project is a little stalled at the moment, mainly due to the interference of work and family life.

As a result, I have fallen prey to that virulent disease that plagues many wargamers - "ooh shiny!".
TooFatLardies are releasing their new Dark Age "Arthurian" rules at the end of this month.

Dux Britanniarum

I had been quite happy that I didn't need these rules over the last few years as reports about progress on the project known as "Beerwulf" have floated in on the TooFatLardies Yahoo Group.  I had even managed to look at all of the pretty blog posts from the final rounds of playtesting on the TooFatLardies blog, and thought to myself, "That's nice...might have a look in a few years."  I was also a little frustrated that this project seemed to have supplanted work on "Chain of Command" and the Boer War rules.

But a week or two ago Richard from TFL announced that pre-orders were open and I dutifully went and sent him about AU$50!  It's a sickness!

Having said that, from the battle reports, it looks like a good game with a good campaign system built in, and given it's TFL pedigree, I'm sure it will be worthwhile.  Note also that that investment includes the printed rules, cards in a hard plastic case, electronic copy of the rules, and (if you got in early enough) a limited edition 28mm figure of Arthur.

However it wasn't until I finally got around to listening to this chat between Neil from Meeples and Miniatures and Richard from TFL on the M&M podcast yesterday, that I realised how good the systems that TFL have put into "Dux Brit" are.  Give episode 91 of Meeples and Miniatures a listen, and if it doesn't have you heading off to order the game, you're a stronger man than I!

I had considered doing this in 15mm with figures from Splintered Light that are purpose built for the period, but instead I've decided to stick with my commitment and try it in 6mm.  I've had a natty idea for basing (more on that when the time comes) and I think it's a perfect opportunity for a first time purchase from Baccus Miniatures to see if some of their late roman and early medieval period ranges can be pressed into service in this period.

Pre-orders ship on the 31st, so it will be mid-late August by the time I get my hard copy and cards, but apparently I'll have the electronic copy in email on the day, so stand by for some early thoughts later this week.

Despite the lack of updates on the blog over the last couple of months, I have been thinking and doing hobby stuff and have purchased a few things, so there will also be some catch-up posts coming, in particular some better pictures of the Scotia minis I received recently.

Christmas Loot

For Christmas I received some money from relatives, and that has been spent on some more 6mm - more bulletins once the figures arrive.  I've already mentioned my paints Vallejo paints as well.

 

I also had some money from my wife, so I immediately set about giving it to TooFatLardies.

 

I picked up:

• Bag the Hun - WW2 Aerial Combat (expanded to Post War in various Specials)
• Sharp Practice - Napoleonic Skirmish (large number of scenarios and expansions available)
• Kiss Me Hardy - Napoleonic Naval Rules (hopefully get my Wizkids Pirates back out)

Plus I picked up a number of Specials, which amongst a whole heap of other stuff contained:

• Summer 2004 : Up your Cara al Sol - Spanish Civil War and A Bunch of Limey Gangsters - Commandos for IABSM
• Christmas 2005 : To Die for a Tie - Korean War for IABSM
• Summer 2006 : What's for Afters - Pegasus Bridge scenarios, and Grabbing Mussolini's Baubles - InterWar conflicts for IABSM

The Dreaded Lurgy

I've been completely out of action for the last week (complete with overnight hospital stay) with a vomitting bug of some sort.

Hopefully back on my feet and back to work tomorrow...

Just before the bug struck, TFL released their Charlie Don't Surf rules, so I had to pick those up along with the Surf's Up scenario and campaign pack.

Lots of content in these rules, and a foreshadowing of what's coming in the revised 3rd Edition of I Ain't Been Shot Mum later this year. Of course, being me, I just spent money buying scenario packs for the 2nd edition didn't I? Hopefully the differences will be easy enough to convert across...

Lard Sale!!!

I had a bit of a binge on TooFatLardies stuff again this weekend.
At the moment, they are having a sale with £1.5 off everything in store.
I had already planned to pick up a few bits and pieces over the rest of the year, but now I've been able to grab them in bulk.
First up was Footsteps of the Legions, which is army lists for North Africa and the Meditteranean.  This rounds out my current WWII interests with the earlier purchase of Gotterdamerung and Shadow of the Rising Sun.  To accompany this, I also picked up the recently published Operation Compass scenario pack.  There's loots of good stuff in there.  It is also an interesting deviation from most IABSM games in that much of the campaign was armour and artillery rather than direct infantry actions.  There are a number of more traditional infantry actions based on the Australians at Bardia though, which is one of the primary reasons I purchased it.

Still on the subject of World War II, I also picked up another Robert Avery scenario pack: Fall of the Lion's Gate.  I'm very interested in gaming the Pacific Theatre, hence the purchase of this, as well as the Shadow of the Rising Sun.  I also used a voucher my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday to purchase Paul Ham's book on Kokoda on the weekend.  I was very impressed with Ham's work on Vietnam, so I'm looking forward to reading this as well.

 

I also picked up the Rock the Casbah expansion, which focuses on the Lebanese Civil War.  As it turns out, this expansion is actually for Troops, Weapons and Tactics (TW&T - TFL's skirmish rules).  However there are a number of parallels between TW&T and IABSM - B'Maso! give variations to both for the post-colonial african conflicts.  I'm hoping that the conversion here will be reasonably straight forward (if not directly documented).  Finally I also picked up the 2004 Christmas Special.  Looking at this one, you can see that the Specials have come a long way, in terms of production values, in the last 5-6 years!  I've wanted this one for quite some time as it contains details on how to convert IABSM for the Falklands - a variation known as "We'll Have to Bloody Walk!".  I've always found the Falklands a fascinating conflict, and I'm keen to get it on the table.

A Little Light Reading

As part of the deal for getting the hallway finished, I took advantage of the ongoing strength of the AU$ vs the pound and picked up some of the fine Too Fat Lardies publications.
Here's what I have waiting for me AFTER the hallway is finished:

Gotterdamerung - Army lists for Late World War 2 in Europe for IABSM
Shadow of the Rising Sun - Army lists for World War 2 in the Pacific for IABSM
Through the Mud and the Blood - Large scale skirmish for World War 1
Triumphant Standards - the InterWar period with Mud and Blood (free with Mud and Blood and covers the fictional 1938 English Civil War amongst other things)



I also picked up the 2009 Christmas and Summer Specials. Included is the picture is my copy of Ambush Valley that I finally got around to binding at the same time.



Through the week I'll be binding some other PDFs that I have. Unfortunately my copy of Force-on-Force will have to wait as it's sealed up in the bedroom with the renovations.

What did I achieve over Easter?

Not a lot really.....
On the modelling/gaming front at least.  On the gyprocking and plastering side, there was good progress.  But this is Tiny Metal Men, not Renovating for Nutcases!

I have started on a bamboo shack that I hope to get some work in progress of pics tonight.  My order from Maelstrom has shipped, so I'm looking forward to that arriving so that I can forge ahead on my Flashpoint Vietnam figures. 

I did get in a few minutes of reading and finished off Target Basra about the Royal Marine Commandos in the invasion of Iraq.  Some interesting scenarios there that could work for Force-on-Force. 

On the train in to work today I've started on 3 Commando Brigade about the Royal Marines in Afghanistan.
After that is Ground Truth which is the follow up to 3 Para (which I thought was a good read).  I picked up all three of these (Basra, 3 Commando and Ground Truth) for $25 from my local QBD.

On the gaming news side of things, TooFatLardies released their Operation Compass scenario pack providing:

An extensive history of the Italian invasion of Egypt and the British response: Operation Compass, the Five-Day Raid that turned into a campaign. Set between June 1940 and early February 1941, the booklet contains twenty-three unique scenarios for “I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum!” including attacks, counter-attacks, encounter battles, desperate defences, and the types of action typical of desert warfare: tank vs tank and tank vs gun battles.


From the 11th Hussars’ initial reconnaissance and harassment missions; through to the assaults on the network of Italian camps in the Western Desert; the Australian assaults on Bardia, Tobruk and Derna; and on to the thrilling climax at Beda Fomm, you’ll encounter British, Australians and Italians of all shapes and sizes.

I'm hoping to pick this up to accompany my current collection of 15mm Battlefront Australians.

I Ain’t Been Shot Mum! – a preplay review

As always; many forces are conspiring to prevent me from gaming or blogging.  However a friend of mine asked me what I thought of IABSM, as he has a copy of Sharp Practice.  I sat down and put together some thoughts on what I think from reading the rules.  Obviously these opinions may change when I get it to the table…….

 

Preliminary Notes

The first conclusion I've come to is that I think these rules are going to be more for my own solo gaming enjoyment. I cannot imagine them getting used in the competitive environment of club or tournament gaming. They require the players to come to a gentlemanly agreement on a number of points, and my personal experience is that many gamers can be anything but "gentlemanly". I can see play in a club scenario with a referee, but you'll need to have a thick hide to deal with the whinging when things don't go people's way.

Those with a fixed-move, IGOUGO background may struggle to come to grips with how to manoeuvre. The thing is that with more play, people will adapt themselves to more realistic manoeuvres on the table, and end up with less requirement for a referee, but it remains to be seen whether your average IGOUGO gamer would stick with it through the learning curve. My personal belief is that IABSM appears to provide a good representation of the friction of battle and the decisions of a company commander.

How does it work?

Units start the game represented as oval card blinds on the table. These can move or spot. Players may also have a number of additional blinds that represent small recce parties. Once spotted these disappear, but until then they can be used to spot enemy units. Players get to move their blinds when their "blinds move" card (one per player) comes up. Spotted units are put down on the table in place of the blind.
The turn ends when the Tea Break card arrives.

Once on the table, the platoon cards are inserted into the deck, and the platoon can move and shoot when its card comes up. Each section of the platoon is given a number of initiative dice based on the quality of the unit (SS and Paras have more dice than Volksturm). These dice are used to move, spot or shoot. Dice can be reserved when the platoon's card comes up to be used before the Tea Break arrives as an interruption. As a result, ambushes are very well catered for (unlike a certain popular WW2 ruleset....).

Combat involves shooting dice being rolled and totalled and compared against a table. The result on the table gives a number of casualties in the target unit and also whether there is any pinned or suppressed. Casualties are separately diced for to determine whether they are dead, wounded, or a near miss.
Close combat involves what (at first glance) appears to be a complex set of modifiers. This is one area where I am not sure how exactly it will work on the table.

As well as the platoon cards, there are also Big Men on the table. These officers and NCOs (not every officer or NCO is a Big Man) have their own cards in the deck and can be used to activate nearby units or take actions when their card comes up.

 

Final Thoughts

Experienced IABSM players will probably throw their hands up in the air at the above descriptions, but all I’m trying to capture is what I’ve gotten out of my couple of flicks through the rules.

 

Friction appears to work really well via the use of blinds for movement of units until they are spotted. The card-driven mechanic and dice roll movement further enhances the uncertainty that the commander has to deal with. When pushing your troops forward, you will need to set realistic objectives. As the M&M podcast suggests, this game is no race for the bridge where the player that goes first will always win.

 

It should be noted that at the end of the rules, a guide is given to three rough scenarios to play through to learn the rules, introducing the infantry first, and then slowly moving to include artillery and armour.  The rules also cover sections on Aircraft and Anti-Aircraft, and a section on refereeing and solo gaming.

What am I doing with them?

I'm going to be using these rules for 6mm gaming at the moment because that's my chosen scale for anything greater than a platoon or two. In addition, with B'Maso! I think they have a really role to taking in replacing AK47 (for my 6mm) which I haven't been happy with.

For a couple of platoons or less, I'm going to be using 15mm and Ambush Alley Game's Force-on-Force or Ambush Alley (depending on the scenario and the force composition. These are a great looking set of rules that they've deliberately targeted at World War 2 and Moderns from the start.  More on them soon….

Other Gaming Directions
Napoleonics have never appealed to me previously. I think large blocks of men manoeuvring has been dead boring. Also I don't think I understand the period and its challenges well enough. However, the concept of Sharpe Practice being more of a skirmished sized game does sound interesting, particularly with the chance to recreate characters like Flashman and Sharpe. It's definitely on my list now, but I need to complete what I'm trying to do with WW2 and Moderns before I push on to anything else.

I'm also trying to resist getting into colonials (which have always held a great attraction for me).  I've always intended to use either the Sword and the Flame (which I would need to purchase) or the Space:1889 Soldier’s Companion (which I have already) for this. The benefit of Soldiers Companion is that it's a quite good set of colonial rules that also has sections to cater for Victorian sci-fi elements like martians, steam tanks and airships.  Plus the only outlay is on figures!

TooFatLardies

Well...still haven't gotten around to playing any of the TooFatLardies stuff that I received a little while back.

I have been reading and re-reading when time allows and I'm very keen to replay some of my AK-47 Republic games using I Ain't Been Shot Mum with the B'Maso! expansion.

In the interim, go and check out this article by Big Rich on the TooFatLardie Blog.
The Lardies' rules set out to do a lot of things that I want to see in a game.
The concept of friction and the uncertain nature of battle are what I want to see reflected on my table.

This is something that is also reflected in another of my favourite games; Ambush Alley. Whilst AA uses a more traditional approach to movement, the mechanism for "turns" is switched up to an interruption mechanism, and the Fog of War mechanism also injects friction and uncertainty into the game.

Gamers do a lot of reading to research what they are playing.
I'd just rather be looking at historical accounts to help guide my decisions on the table, rather than on spending hours researching the current thoughts on the "Ultimate Unbeatable Army List".

As always, your mileage may vary.......