Flashpoint Miniatures US Platoon Blister–First Impression

Time for another update about the Vietnam project. The initial batch of minis has arrived from Australia at the beginning of this week – in other words, a bit over a week for a delivery to Europe. Quite impressive in its own right.

The figures… well, to be honest, I am less than impressed. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spending whatever time I could find for painting on excellent Xyston Spartan hoplites, but those Flashpoint minis seem awfully small. Also, not the most detailed 15mm minis I ever held in my hands.

As picture below illustrates, there are 35 minis in a US platoon blisters. Standard grunts are presented by 16 miniatures with M16, 3 with M79 Thumper and two with what I assume is a LAW launcher (although if that’s the case, then the tube is awfully short). Heavy firepower is added by two M60 gunners and one ammo carrier (a bit strange distribution). Then there is a total of eight minis for your lieutenant, non-coms, a medic and the poor guy who, judging from his state, has earned his Purple Heart the hard way.  I am totally clueless about three minis to the right in second lower row – they seem to be holding some sort of short tube, but your guess is as good as mine about what it’s supposed to represent.

I am rather pleased with the variation among the figures in the blister. The choice of sculpts should allow a bit of the ‘dynamics’ to the bases. At the same time, I am a tad disappointed that there aren’t any machine gunners in deployed (lying down) position and the fact that only a single MG assistant is somewhat baffling. Guess I’ll have to make a supplementary purchase from Peter Pig or Quick Reaction Force.

But overall it’s a pretty decent blister. Now, time for some painting.

 

Review of “Tank Tactics–From Normandy To Lorraine”

Well, since it looks like May will be another barren month in respect of gaming and I haven’t done one of these in a while, here’s another filler… eh, I mean book review.

I picked up this book based solely on its title and who published it. Based on that, I expected a volume dedicated to “real” tank tactics, perhaps in a form of some sort of comparative analysis of low level tactics, equipment, training and real world experience of opposing sides. As it turns out, this book is a completely different animal and author of this book could not have chosen a more misleading title for this book if he tried to. Precious few pages (in my opinion, maybe five or six) deal with the actual tactics of armoured warfare on western front during 1944.

The real topic of this book is the implementation of armour on battlefields of World War Two at operational level, or more precisely during Normandy breakout attempts and subsequent allied race across France. Books dealing with this aspect of art of war are few and far between - it is a vast topic, encompassing a multitude of aspects, some of them quite mundane, other rather diffuse and difficult to define in clear and definite manner. Uniqueness of this book's topic makes it a valuable contribution to a library of any WWII buff all on its own.

Author deals with the subject matter by splitting it into three logical parts. In first section, Jarymowicz analyses the post-World War I development of armoured forces in armies of what would be major 'players' during the conflict. Theories of the time and how they translated in practical implementation in England, France, Germany, Soviet Union, United States and (oddly enough) Canada are dissected in detail. The author attempts here to compare and contrast different ideas and resulting doctrines. While a bit heavy on internal politics, this part of the book is something of an eye-opener, which answers a lot of questions reader may have about choice of the equipment used in World War II as well as about the rather varied quality of the leadership of armed forces during the conflict.

Next, the author, proceeds with an account of the actual events that took place during the period specified by the title of this book. It needs to be repeated - the narrative deals with the events on operational level, so those looking for exciting tank vs. tank combat descriptions are bound to be disappointed. Goodwood, Spring, Cobra and Totalize are picked apart and analysed in a search of explanation of failures and successes. I won't go into the details of Jarymowycz' analysis, but limit myself to observing that I don't believe I have ever had the pleasure of reading another book where Montgomery is so soundly and consistently trashed and belittled. If you're a fan of Monthy, you better stay away from this book. Of course other allied leaders are dealt with in similar harsh manner – Jarymowycz doesn’t have much good to say about the allied commanders, with the possible exception of Patton and some his lieutenants. To be honest though, it is hard to argue against author's ruthless and at times devastating critique.

In last part of his book Jarymowicz gives us his final analysis of deployment of armoured forces by Western allies during second part of 1944. In this section, besides the 'traditional' examination and comparison, the author does something rather unique and compares the doctrine and usage of armour by Western nations with that of Soviet Union. For me personally (after reading Glantz and Ericson) his conclusions weren't much of a surprise. I do however suspect that many, if not most readers from Western Europe and United States will find this part of the book as rather controversial, maybe even 'heretical'.

Personally, I find the topic of this book absolutely fascinating and was very pleasantly surprised when I realised what “Tank Tactics” was really about. It is therefore a great shame that I have now to say that this volume suffers from a couple of rather severe problems, all of them related to the writing style of Jarymowycz. To put it bluntly, the author doesn't strike me as a very talented writer. I found his style choppy, almost bullet-point-like. The flow of information felt disjointed, with abrupt, unannounced jumps between often unrelated topics every couple of paragraphs. This choppy impression was deepened by author's rather annoying tendency of using 'naked' personal quotes to emphasize the point he's trying to impress on the reader. I was a bit surprised over how disrupting this approach to quotations was for me - if I wanted to find out who said those words, I had to look up the reference at the end of the chapter, thus breaking the flow of often rather complex reasoning. Not a technique I would recommend for frequent usage in a book with this level of complexity.

Finally – how useable is this book from wargamer’s perspective? Well… if one disregards its obvious value as a source of information about otherwise often ignored aspect of modern warfare, its usability is probably limited to being an inspiration for ruleset and army list designers wishing to incorporate operational facets into their creations.

'Tank Tactics: From Normandy to Lorraine' is a solid, in some respects maybe even ground-breaking contribution to literature about World War II. Its main merit consists of the fact that it is solely dedicated to a topic that is almost totally overlooked by “popular” authors writing about that conflict. The effort is however somewhat spoiled by a writing style that fails to engage and makes it difficult to absorb the information contained in this volume. Thus, not the easiest read, but nevertheless worth the effort if you're interested in something else than battle depictions and personal recollections.

Jungle terrain–test piece

If there is one thing I’ve learned from my work with GHQ’s terrain hexagons (or rather from the mistakes I’ve made while working with them), then it is this – if you’re about to make a large number of similar terrain pieces, make a test piece first. There is nothing worse than finishing 20-30 elements and realising that they don’t look so good.

All right, that was the sermon of the month, let’s now move on and get some new terrain on the table.

Preparation

Things I needed before getting started:

a) Base plates – I cheated here and ordered a bunch of laser-cut 3mm MDF bases from Warbases, a British company I’m buying all my bases from. Since they didn’t have bases with irregular shapes I was needing, I drew rough sketches of six different shapes in a graphics program and sent the pictures (with dimensions) with a request for a quota. A prompt response informed me that five bases of each type, including p&p, would cost me about 400SEK. Maybe a bit pricey, but considering how much time, sweat and quite possibly blood I would have to spend if I was to cut thirty such bases on my own, it was actually a bargain.

b) Trees and palms – one word here – Ebay! Gone are the good old days when you could find sweet bargains from fellow wargamers, but those Chinese shops using Ebay as outlet for all possible kind of crap are sometimes godsend. In this particular case, I’ve got some 100 trees and 40 palms for another 400SEK. Sure, they’re not as nice as those from Faller or Heki, but on the other hand I didn’t have to mortgage my flat to afford them.

c) Sand, cat litter and herbs – pet shops, DIY shops, or even your own backyard are all great sources.

d) Flock, turf, scatter materials – every wargamer should have a bunch of this stuff, but if you don’t, pleaaase find a well-sorted miniature railroad shop and get what you need from them. A single bag from Noch, Faller or Woodland Scenics will last you a lifetime and costs about the same as those laboratory petri dishes GF9 is trying to push.

e) Paint – all DIY shops usually sell acrylic wall paint, which is perfect for ground work. An added bonus lies in the fact that the colors usually come in at least five or six different tones – perfect for shade, midtone and highlight. Finally, a 0.5 litre sample can usually costs the same as two GW paint jars.

f) Plastic plants – see previous post.

h) Hot glue pistol – new experience for me, more about it below.

Think before doing

Now, let’s stop for a second and think one last time one last time about what I’m trying to achieve with this project. “Douugh… jungle terrain!” – you say? Sure, that’s the most obvious part. Couple more things need however to be considered, before cutting and gluing ensues. First of all, the scale. The terrain is intended for 15mm, so the plants can’t be too high. Second, is the terrain piece to be impassable or would I like to be able to put the miniatures on it? If I wanted the second option, then sticking all the plants onto the base perhaps isn’t the best option. For this test piece, I wanted to see how many plants would be needed for dense coverage, so I decided to stick everything permanently into place.

Making the piece

Once again, let’s clarify couple of things before we proceed. I am not a professional terrain maker, just a guy who needs a bunch of terrain for a new project. The faster I’m done with it, the better. I use basic techniques familiar to anyone who’s been working with terrain before. If the finished piece looks adequate for the task and doesn’t fall apart, then my task is done. If it looks good, then it’s great news. If it looks great, then it was pure damn luck and I’m probably more surprised over the final result than you are.

 

1. Texturing the base – the usual procedure – paint the base, cover it with sand, remove the excess sand. Once the paint is dry, paint a second layer of paint to seal the sand. Since I wanted an extra rough texture, I put some cat litter and dried basilica onto the second paint layer. Once the second paint layer was dry, I sealed everything in with a final paint coat.

As a final step, I drybrushed the base in two steps – first a heavy pass with a lighter shade of same brown colour and finally a lighter one with cream-coloured paint.

 

2. Cut the plants – when cutting the plants, I tried to think about the scale the piece was intended for. It became rather obvious that the plant with long, wide leafs would perhaps not be as suitable for this project as I first though.

 

3. Gluing – well, I won’t bore you with the details. Using hot glue gun was a bit of a new experience for me, but there really isn’t much to it – heat the glue up, put a blob of glue onto the base, stick the plant in, wait until the glue cools down. Hot glue tends to leave thin strings of glue all over the base, but those can easily be removed  with pliers once the plants are in place.

As can be seen in the picture, I didn’t use any trees. The reason is simple – larger plastic plants were the same height as the trees and things just didn’t look right. I have some thinking to do – do I make the plants a good bit shorter or do I leave the trees out of this project altogether?

 

4. Final steps – I was a bit surprised over how unseemly and protruding hot glue looked once it dried. It was positively ugly and I had to do something about it. At first I tried to cover those blobs up with some sponge flock (from Heki, I believe) stuck into… more hot glue. This method worked pretty good and actually added some variety to the vegetation. However, some of the glue blobs “inside” the base were hard to get to with the hot glue gun. Those were hidden with good old-fashioned combination of white glue and flock.

Musings “after the battle”

Well, here is the final result. Purely by the gut feeling, it looks to me more like something you’d find in Africa or on an alien world than in Vietnam. Some further experimentation will be needed – shorter plants, maybe a bit of clump foliage and stones. Still, considering that it’s the first effort, I’m quite happy with it.

When in doubt, start a new project

To say that my wargaming has for a while now been placed in low priority department would be something of an understatement. Between rather hectic tempo at work, my re-kindled interest in proper model kit making and plain lack of enthusiasm, so far during 2013 I’ve barley managed to pick up a brush, much less to participate in a game.

I’m pretty sure that we all have those ‘low intensity’ spells. The question is what to do to get out of them. In this particular case, I’ve decided to give “new project”-method a go. After all, whatever I have on my plate at the moment (surprisingly short list, now that I think about it – some 6mm Napoleonics, couple of 1/600 airplanes for my flagging Check Your Six Battle of Britain project and couple of terrain hexagons for a Shiloh scenario setup that was supposed to be ready last year) obviously fails to attract my attention. And that’s why I’ve decided to take the plunge into Vietnam era.

Vietnam has always been a war that was very interesting to me and ever since Too Fat Lardies released ‘Charlie Don’t Surf’, the call of the sirens was almost irresistible. There was however one huge speedbump that until now always managed managed to stave my enthusiasm – jungle terrain. I’m a decent figure painter, but when it comes to terrain I’m not only quite inexperienced, I also don’t enjoy that part of the hobby all that much. Thus, jungle terrain always seemed beyond my skill as well as my attention span.

Nonetheless, over last couple of weeks I did a bit of research and convinced myself that I should give it a try. Getting the ruleset was the fist step. Next, I’ve ordered a bunch of palms and trees from some Chinese outfit on Ebay. They arrived at my doorstep couple of days ago and considering the price, they’re excellent. Today it was time to take the next step and find some additional vegetation – in other words a trip to IKEA was in order. Yepp, you read correctly, whenever you need something for your wargaming table, IKEA is the place to visit. After a bit of recon I found three types of fake plants that fit the bill. An added bonus consisted of the fact that just a stone throw from my local IKEA there is a huge shop with all sorts of garden plants, including fake ones. A quick visit there resulted in a great find - two rather odd looking balls of grass which look rather useful for my purpose. In total, five different types of shrubs and plants for less than 200SEK.

Now all I need to do is to figure out how to turn them into Ia Drang valley.

 

Today’s loot. Completely confused Spartan hoplites
are present for the sake of scale perception.

Tinkering with General de Brigade

Sorry guys, unfortunately this is not another after-action report, but a rather lengthy rant about the ruleset itself and why, in my humble opinion, it is not The Holy Grail of Napoleonic period rulesets.

The good…

In many respects, General de Brigade is an excellent ruleset, especially if you like a strong whiff of traditional approach to game mechanics. There really isn’t anything surprising or revolutionary in it, as the turn sequence clearly indicates – initiative roll decides who is the ‘phasing’ player (i.e. has precedence in certain phases of the turn), followed by compulsory movement (routes, pursuits and such), attempts to change brigade orders, charge declarations/moves, normal movement, firing, melee and finally morale checks where necessary. Once done, rewind and repeat until a conclusion is reached.

Traditional thinking expresses itself in other ways. Both firing and melees are accomplished with 2D6 dice rolls subsequently being adjusted by a bunch of modifiers. Final outcomes are looked up on tables providing the casualty numbers alternatively results of the melee. While there is nothing innovative in this approach, I do like it (well, to a degree, see below) mainly because it allows for an approximate estimation of casualty rates. This in turn allows the player to actually plan his assault and defence and allocate forces necessary for accomplishment of a specific task.

Charges are a bit fiddly, but on the other hand I am yet to encounter a ruleset that handles this aspect of the battle in a smooth way. On the positive side, anyone familiar with Napoleonic period will understand why charge procedure works the way it does in GdeB.

GdeB’s handling of skirmishers needs to get an honorary mention. Rules governing this troop class are very simple and yet, they manage to reflect perfectly role of skirmishers during that period. What’s perhaps even more important, those simple rules also manage to reflect differences in skirmish doctrine of different nationalities in a way that actually has real impact on the ‘battlefield’.

the bad…

In my opinion, most rulesets can be described as either ‘historical’ or ‘gamey’. I’m sure other wargamers have different definitions for those words. For me, a ‘historical’ ruleset can be recognized by its more or less uncompromised adherence to history, even if it influences the game experience in negative way. ‘Harpoon’ is a perfect example of such a ruleset. A ‘gamey’ ruleset focuses on the other hand foremost on the game experience. History component in such rulesets is used to provide the flavour, but isn’t much of a speed-bump when creator’s ‘artistic freedom’ needs to flex its muscles (dare I use ‘Flames of War’ as an example for that type of ruleset?).

General de Brigade is a strange mix of those two styles. In some respects (order system, command&control, restrictions of brigade system, charge mechanism) it is obvious that author tried very hard to transfer the reality of Napoleonic period battlefield onto the tabletop. But at the same time, other aspects of the ruleset are surprisingly ‘gamey’.

The most evident example of ‘gamey’ approach is without a doubt the ‘Dispersal Point’. In it's entirety, this game mechanism is a fair bit more complex, but it essentially means that units that have suffered 50%+ casualties are to be automatically removed from the battlefield. Let’s disregard the historical implications of that rule, although it is quite amusing to wonder over how Napoleon would react if one of his marshals told him ‘Sir, this or that battalion has now lost half its strength, so it will be leaving the battle line now, if you don’t mind.’. My main objection to this approach to unit breaking due to excessive casualties is directed against its deterministic character and how it influences the players during the ‘battle’. If I know that a unit will literally disappear when it reaches a predetermined ratio of casualties, I will play in a way that will achieve that goal. That’s where ‘gamey’ factor enters the picture in my opinion. Real commanders didn’t think in such way, simply because there is no nicely predetermined “breakage point” on a real battlefield.

Same gamey approach can also be found in rules for melee, where number of casualties is predetermined by number and unit type of participants. A player can therefore calculate in advance exactly how big his casualties will be in any melee. Considering the chaotic nature of melee, that is a very generous approach to this aspect of the game.

My problem with both of those mechanisms is, as already indicated, caused by the blanket of certainty they provide to the players. I will therefore try to ‘muddle the water’ a bit in coming games with couple of house rules. In regard of melee casualty rates, I’m toying with the idea of opposing die rolls that will modify those neatly predetermined numbers. For example, the ruleset says that in a basic infantry melee the winning side inflicts 1 casualty per 6 figures, while losers inflict 1 casualty per 12 figures. An opposed die roll with D4 could then be applied to casualty rates of both sides, thus providing a spread of -3 to 3 random modifier to the butcher’s bill. Elite troops could roll with D6 dice, giving them additional punch in shock combat.

Dealing with ‘dispersion point’ is a bit more difficult and I still haven’t come up with a house rule that I like. To be fair, it has to be said that individual battalions are quite resilient in GdeB and automatic removal of units with 50%+ casualties certainly does speed up the game. But as I mentioned before, the deterministic character of this rule really bothers me and I will have to do something about it.

and the ‘meeh’

If there is a single section of the ruleset that I really don’t like, then it’s the rules that govern the risk to general officers. Basically, they are toothless. Possibility of something bad happening to a commanding officer is triggered by a result of double sixes in any dice roll used for resolution of fire or melee. Thus, statistically, a chance for a bad thing happening is 1 in 36, a very low probability indeed. Another roll with two D6 is then required to determine nature of the event. What I don’t understand is why, considering the already low probability of ‘bad things’ happening to officers, about 30% of results on effect table has no effect whatsoever!

Another issue that I have with this mechanism is in its inability to deal with high risk decision of placing commanding officers in front of the troops. Leading from the front has always been regarded as noble and brave… and for a very good and rather obvious reason! Not so in ‘General de Brigade’ though. Letting brigade commanders to lead troops charging into a melee is in my opinion a no-brainer, simply because additional bonus in charge morale checks heavily outweighs possibility of them ‘buying the farm’ due to a random double six. Just to illustrate the inadequacy of this method, I’d like to remind the reader of a situation in my game where a French battalion suffered 10 out of 26 figures in casualties during a single melee. That’s  more than one soldier in three. Needless to say, the brigade commander who led them from the front didn’t even get a scratch during that engagement.

Final thoughts

Let me be clear on one point - don’t let my critique give you the impression that General de Brigade is a bad ruleset. My opinion is in fact quite opposite – it is apparent that a lot of thought was dedicated to it being able to realistically recreate a Napoleonic battle at battalion/brigade level. However, there are in my opinion certain aspects in this ruleset that are  ‘compromised’ for the sake of the gameplay. Some may live with it, others will feel the need to ‘correct’ this or that aspect of the game. After all, that’s the beauty and the curse of our hobby – no ruleset survives the first contact with a gamer.

And yet again, moving on to something completely different…

My return to modelling hobby is bearing fruits again, so it’s time for a bit of bragging yet again. Ok, this time the bragging part is a bit subdued – I had a bit of a mishap with weathering powders while making this little Me-109, so it looks like it has suffered a major engine fire just prior to landing. Still, another simple, but very attractive offering from Airfix and a great fun to build.

Grab that Cow

Undiscouraged by the rather bland aftertaste of his initial raid on the British lands, last Sunday H. decided to have another go at Dux Britanniarum. This time around it would be a simple wealth redistribution barbarian style – grab some cows, get them on the boats, have a feast once safely home. Any locals having objections were more than welcome to discuss the issue with the tip of a Saxon spear.

Scenario setup

The scenario begins with Saxons already having acquired meat for their planned barbecue. They are now trying to get to their boat at the opposite end of a table stuffed with more or less randomly placed terrain features. Natives, obviously rather miffed at the Saxons, make their  entry through a section of one of the long sides of the table decided by a roll of a six-sided dice.

The game

In our case, Saxons had a nice ahead start of three rounds before my Brits appeared on the table. Luckily for me, the cows did their patriotic bit, not only insisting on moving at “oh look, a patch of grass, let’s graze for a while”-speed, but also veering off in any direction but straight forward almost every time they had a chance to do that. Perhaps Saxon way of herding the cattle with sharp side of the axe had something to do with it…

Situation at the start of the game

In any case, when the time for my vanguard to make their appearance finally arrived, the dice decided that it would be at the flank of the Saxon convoy. It looked like it would be a rerun of previous scenario, but this time around H., having deployed a proper flank protection, was ready for any eventuality. Initial clash of shields ensued almost immediately. With the advantage of superior numbers and shieldwall formation, I managed to push Saxons back without much effort, but this was just a foreplay before the main event.

In reaction of the initial setback, H. quickly turned his hearthguard around to support his rather hard-pressed warriors. Over next couple of rounds, we both gathered and formed up our forces. The end result was something of a standoff, with two massive lines of warriors facing each other, while the cows sloooowly made their way to the Saxon feast tables.

Gathering forces

Not willing to take on H.’s massed force in front of me, I decided to send my peasants of a furious run around the the Saxon flank, hoping to catch the cows before they reached the edge of the table. My advantage was in the fact that my movement rate was 3 D6 dices per turn, while the cows moved only with 2 D6 dices. There was also a chance of those cows veering of if they rolled same result on both dices. All said and done, there was a good chance my peasants would be able to swamp the Saxons and reclaim those cows before they were spirited away to the Danish shores. In the meantime, my “proper” warriors would keep the attention of Saxon host without actually attacking them.

H. would have none of that, of course. Once he had his troops in order (a relative term when used regarding Saxons), he swiftly jumped on my host with obvious intention of gutting every single one of my followers. A gruesome and protracted clash of shields between two rather evenly matched forces ensued. Casualties were quite even on both sides, but Lady Luck smiled at me also on this occasion and the Saxons finally run away, cracking under the weight of shock.

Clash of shields

In the meantime, the race between the cattle herd and my peasants was slowly decided in the favour of two-legged creatures. My mob caught up with their target just as they were about to exit the board and I actually did have a chance to try to stop the Saxons. However, I faced two problems. My bunch of peasants were unformed and would certainly suffer serious losses even against the few Saxon warriors who were controlling the cattle. Furthermore, the remains of the main Saxon host were by that time just a stone throw away and H.’s hearthguard would make mincemeat out of my levies. So in the end, I just didn’t dare to attack and let the Saxons get away with their loot.

The getaway

Musings after the battle

Aside from the fact that we had a much nicer time than in our first game, there are two things that are worth discussing. The first is the combat mechanism used in Dux Brittaniarum. At first glance it is rather simplistic ‘buckets of dice’ system, but this impression is rather deceiving. Maybe we were just lucky, but in our huge clash of shields, the system provided a truly gruelling and nail-biting experience with proper historical feel to it. Add the faith deck cards to the mix and the result is a close combat system that is fun, “realistic” and somewhat unpredictable.

The second issue that requires further attention is the campaign setting in which scenarios are played. I’m not sure if I’m alone here, but the fact that there are consequences beyond the last dice roll of the game do significantly change the way I play. In this particular game, I consciously held back on two occasions - first, when two evenly matched forces faced each other and then in the final phase of the game, when I decided that the casualties I’d probably suffer weren’t worth the potential gain. If this were a stand-alone game, I wouldn’t even think twice before attacking in either of those situations.

Finally, a quick apology for varying quality of the few pictures I was able to salvage from this game. My regular camera has decided to quit on me and the compact that I used for this game is simply not up to the task.