Tomorrow's War: Maisoncelles II

Last saturday night we played our latest game for Tomorrow's War. We used an historical WW2 scenario (originally written for FOW if I am not mistaken) and adapted this to TW. 

Below you see the table. Left center is the village of Maisoncelles, for TW purposes situated in the Republic of Arden on the planet Glory but originally placed in France in 1944. From the lower left corner DPRG troops and armour (originally British with Sherman tanks) advances on and past the village. They will encounter entrenched elements of the United States Marine Corps (originally SS Panzer Grenadiers with two Panthers and an 88mm FLAK gun) that  have taken position in the woods and fields top left and center and are reinforced with a heavy AT gun (right top center) on the hill on the right and two Perkins Grav Tanks. The USMC armour is somewhat surprised by the DPRG advance since they are performing maintenance and neither tank is ready for action. They will be operational on a roll of 5-6 on a D6. 

Below you see US Marines taking cover in the woods in the center of the table. Two squads formed up the vanguard, one defended the AT gun and one was held in reserve on the right flank. 

Here the AT gun is placed behind cover and defended by Marines. Placed on a hill it occupied the ideal defensive firebase and used this to devastating effect. 

The DPRG opted to advance their infantry on the right flank and center and intended to follow up with a punch throught the woods in the center, taking cover from the woods up until the last possible moment before engaging the AT gun.

Here DPRG tanks cross the road into the last remaining woods that separate them from the AT gun. In the meantime one of my Perkins tanks managed to start and advanced at top speed to outflank the DPRG armour. In the foreground one of my front squads just before they gave way and retreated before the DPRG tanks.

Here DPRG troops advance beyond the woods and village. They took heavy casualties from my front squads and HE rounds from the AT gun. One of my front squads dallied too long and got wiped out by the advancing DPRG armour. Lacking AT weapons, they should have stayed out of harm's way anyhow, but taking potshots at the DPRG infantry proved too tempting...

Here the DPRG tanks met their Nemesis. The AT gun started firing as soon as they cleared the woods, resulting in heavily damaged and knocked-out tanks. I don't think the gun lost a single Reaction test or missed a single shot.

 
Burning DPRG tanks at the edge of the fields. DPRG infantry had been stopped dead in their tracks by now.

I didn't get it all my way however. My one functional tank got hit by a lucky shot from a DPRG tanker without getting off a single shot (mainly due to me completely forgetting to make reaction tests for it as soon as the DPRG tanks cleared the woods....)

The final stage. Burning DPRG tanks in the center, an invincible USMC AT gun still firing away and DPRG troops decimated and retreating. I lost one squad and one tank. The second tank sat out the battle still having its gearbox re-assembled or something.

The translation from a 1944 scenario to a Sci-fi one worked flawlessly. Having the USMC at quality 10 was perhaps a bit too much, but the rest worked as it should. We used Tech Level 2 tanks for the Shermans and TL 3 tanks for the Panthers that originally fought at Maisoncelles. The 88mm gun was just a Heavy AT gun with HE rounds for anti-personnel fire.  7 DPRG squads against 4 USMC squads made for the right superiority in manpower that was orginally the British advantage.

In 1944, the British Guards eventually took the village with heavy losses. Here however, things turned out differently.

Night at The Slaughtered Lamb at Ducosim March 2nd

On March 2nd I will host a Witchfinder General game at Ducosim at Amersfoort. Two to four players per game will be able to play a thrilling crossover between RPG and skirmish wargaming.

Setting: an remote inn surrounded by brooding dark forests, and night setting in....

Cast: a witchfinder and his men, having tracked an evil witch to this inn, the innkeeper and his guests, one of whom must be the witch. But who?

The challenge: the witch's dark minions will gather after darkness trying to free her. The witchfinder must prevent this, but he must identify the witch first. Meanwhile, the witch must either try to escape the inn or let her minions in to help her, but armed men guard every door....

What is that, sneaking through the dark....?

Review and first game of Maurice

Last sunday we played our first game of Maurice. Maurice is an 18th century tabletop wargames ruleset produced by Sam Mustafa. I had never encountered any of his rulesets before so I was prepared for something new. I was not disappointed. 

Let's start with what was not surprising. Maurice has a standard IGO/UGO sequence. It uses d6es for every diceroll. It has relatively mundane mechanisms for shooting (4+ is a hit, then roll for result). It uses multi-figure bases. No surprises there. 

The first (so far untried) surprise is that Maurice has an integrated campaign system. I expect to dwell more on this topic in future posts. Maurice has no scale but measures distances for moving and shooting in base-widths. It could therefore be played in 10mm or 54mm without any adaptation as long as you use a consistent basing. My basing for Black Powder proved perfect, as I already based my regiments in 4 bases of 6 foot or 2 Horse. But any basing will do as long as the width is consistent. 

Then I must mention that Maurice is not so much card-driven as well card-governed. The game comes complete with a custom card deck including Action Cards, National Advantages, Notables as well as Battlefield cards and some more features. 

All units may volley fire (fire at musket or short artillery range) for free but to do anything else requires Actions. The Action Cards have the most direct influence on the game and have a double function. First, every card has a numerical value. Playing and adding these cards gives you command range counted from your C-in-C.. Every turn you may issue one command to a "Force" that is an integrated number of units within this command range. Only one you ask? Yes, only one. Usually, that is. Depending on the sort of command you may then draw no, 1, 2 or 3 new cards. If you ever run out of cards, you will have to pass and draw new cards. 

The second function is that every card offers some special ability or influence. My hapless cuirassiers below for example were drawn into a premature charge by my opponent playing a card that could disrupt my plans. Thus they charged a superior force and were wiped out. When timed right, such cards can have quite an influence on the game as it turned out. 

 My cuirassiers revving up..

 And here they charge for death or Glory! Death, as it turned out....

When building an army you can buy National Advantages. These are special abilities. I bought Lethal Volleys for example that enabled me to enhance the effect of my short range musket and canister volleys. This commits you somewhat to a certain strategy and tactics. Obviously, musketry would be a primary asset for me and my strategy should depend on that to a certain extent.  

You can also buy Notables, on-table characters that attach to a unit and give that unit certain advantages and abilities. We skipped that for our first game, but one can imagine Prince Rupprecht of Twitterling-Hupsenback and his spaniels charging into the ranks with a +2 combat result.....

Here my opponent's Guards approach my thin red line...

And here they are gone, wiped away by Lethal Volleys and First Fire....

When fired upon units collect "wounds" called Disrupts. A certain number of Disrupts will break the unit, influence their combat abilities and may be Rallied away with a Rally command. Disrupts therefore function as a kind of dynamic Morale value.

Because Actions usually occur only once per turn, the game encourages you to manage your army in a cohesive way (as was the practice then, as it is now). Moving individual units costs lots of actions and the same number of turns, so you must move entire Forces to accomplish anything. Therefore battles tend to get decided at a certain, central point as can be read in the history books but is rarely seen on the wargames table. When you are used to the fact that your entire army is in action all over the battlefield and all at once, you will not see that in Maurice.

This resulted in our small 75-points game in a battle with an early fierce and short cavalry action, a initial artillery bombardment at long range followed by steady advances of the attacker's infantry. By using my Lethal Volleys combined with a First Fire card (which enabled me to "steal" his first volley in his turn) I wiped out his center infantry Force. Units that we placed far out on the flanks did little or nothing, since neither of us was willing to pay the cards for ordeering these units to do anything. Quite like the real thing, actually.

It was a very pleasant first encounter. I expect many will follow and I will certainly come back to you on the Campaign system.

Man Cave: storage space for gaming stuff:

After years and years I finally have my den, my Man Cave! Modest, I admit, but still I managed to store my entire wargames collection and library there. It is complete with comfy chair for the cat (and I can sit there as well when she's away), music an copious amounts of books and stuff! 

When hauling my stuff into the room, which came from all over the house and the shed, I encountered several things that must have been left by strangers, since I have no idea how I acquired them, and at least one unit of troops apparently painted and based by myself of which I had no memory at all when and why I did this or when I even bought them. It's a mystery....

Yesterday's Tomorrow's War game

Pictures of a TW game at my home. We played a scenario that I wrote for Stargrunt II years ago based on the Blackhawk Down events. A shuttle carrying the President and his bodyguard crashes in a jungle deep in enemy territory. Com equipment is down and they dare not leave the wreck. Marines will need to reach them and escort them to one of three LZs nearbyto be picked up by a transport VTOL. In the meantime enemy troops close in on the shuttle wreck. The Marines have a VTOL gunship for air support and two transports.

The table setup. Lots of trees! The crash site is In the middle of the table.

One of the transports made from an old HappyMeal toy.

An enemy Combat Walker (Rebel Minis). 

The gunship hovering over the crash site while Marines approach the wreck.

RH Miniatures Marines on the ground. Faced with the Rebels coming in all around them in ever-increasing numbers and with no reinforcements their losses amounted to over 50% during the game.

The President (on the phone, trying to reach help) and his bodyguard in the wreck.

Enemy jungle fighters moving through the jungle

The gunship strafing the jungle with devastating effect. I over-armoured the gunship somewhat, making it practically invulnerable for the Rebel's RPG's.

Here the president is running toward the transport. No Rebel units where nearby so he made a safe run off te table.

Sneak peek for Ducosim Spring demo!

Here are just a few peeks of the stuff I am building in preparation for the demo game I have planned for Ducosim next Spring.

Pulp movie enthusiasts will have no problem guessing the theme, but be prepared for some (actually quite some) liberties with the original! The game will need to accomodate at least four players so several new factions will be added to the original "plot".

Look here for further news!

Here be giants! A 54mm RIfleman.

 A while ago I visited a friend who got me interested in 54mm skirmish gaming. SInce I never painted anything in such a large scale I risked buying a box of the Italeri British Rifles. These turned out to be one-piece figures with excellent detail. So I tried my hand at one just to "test the water".

I am quite pleased with this first attempt, would certainly approach some things differently next time (shading and blending the skin colour and such) but it's not bad.

These close-ups really show the flaws yet present in my technique, but do serve to illustrate the tremendous amount of detail these figures offer:

10mm scale farm/village

Those following my blog will know my fondness of papercraft buildings. Roaming around the web one finds a lot of interesting and free PDFs. Amongst these is a heritage German village called Pretschendorf that is in fact a package featuring a multitude of buildings in small ( I think OO but might be even smaller) scale. See the Pretschendorf site for the PDFs.

I selected one of these for a Thirty Year's War small village (or large farmstead) and intend to use it with my 10mm TYW games.

 

I was dissatisfied with the roofs as provided and made the thatch roofs from a cheap towel bought a a discount store. It even came in a grey-brown colour almost perfect for thatch. 

The fir trees were a christmas leftover bought at a discount in all sizes. These are the smaller types and are perfect for 10mm.

Armour for Tomorrow's War (and some grunts)

At and around Crisis 2012 I bought some new armour for my TW games. They got painted in the past weeks and I'd like to show them (off ;o)

 

First the heavy Mercenary tank by Critical Mass. Painted in a green/brown "NATO" scheme to make it fit in with the other tracked tanks I use for TW (mostly Leopard IIs and Fuchs) to represent the lower tech levels. These bulky 15mm models fit in perfectly with the 20mm figures I use.

 

Next two Grav APCs, also from the Mercenary faction. These are painted in my version of desert camo to make them fit in in the higher tech level grav contingents. A bit small for 20mm but it just works for a small APC, I think.

Next the Arc Fleet hevay grav tank, painted in the same desert camo. Note the 20mm tanker looking out of the hatch.

Finally a grav scout vehicle. I think of it as a SF Jeep :)

Here's the magnificent Khurasan APC. So large for 15mm that it is a perfect fit for 20mm and of course a dead ringer for the APC from "Aliens"!

For everyone who asks himself: where the hell do I find 20mm SF troops: try RH Models!
I might wish Rolf had a better site and a more admissable web shop, but his miniatures leave nothing to be desired! Here are the Colonial battletroops skulking through heavy terrain.