Advent Game

This year I have been fortunate enough to have been given a Lego* Star Wars* Advent Calendar. Behind each door is a little model to build; some are figures and some are little space ships. (* Lego and Star Wars are Trade Marks - other plastic building bricks and Science Fiction Film franchises are available)

I have always enjoyed playing with Lego (when I was a child of course it was simply red and white bricks and blue roof tiles - oh dear poor old grand-dad) and building the little models is a great distraction from the dreary Breakfast News; however, it naturally occurred to me that more fun could be had from the little toys. Now that I have opened 9 of them I have 4 spaceships so what better than a space battle?
For some time I've wanted to try the Portable Wargame Air Combat Rules but I don't have any suitable planes, so instead I give to you the Portable Space Combat... Fun for all the Family.
 
1. Make some Spaceships from Lego bricks
2. Place them at each side of the gridded board - I have written these rules for square grids but they could easily be changed to hexes - I have only tried on a 10 x 8 grid so far; more grids would of course allow for more manoeuvring.
3. Determine the Strength Points (SP), Move rate and weapon range of your spaceships - so far I have tried giving ships about 5 or 6 SP and (due to the small board) limited speed to a move rate of 6 and weapon range of 4
4. As I currently only have 4 spaceships I have not bothered with Exhaustion Point
5. Roll for initiative
6. Movement - Movement is mandatory (minimum move of 1 grid space); Each 90^o change of direction ‘costs’ the loss of 1 grid area of movement. No Spaceship may occupy the same grid space as another. Being adjacent to an enemy is allowed (there is no melee or boarding!)

Example of movement and turning

7. Firing - All ranges are measured through the edges of the grids not the corners. Spaceships may only fire once per Turn. Arc of Fire is 45 degrees (see below for illustration). Movement may be accompanied by firing (without penalty) at any single point during a manoeuvre.

Example of movement including firing - move limit is 8 for this vessel

Spaceships throw either 2d6 for forward or 1d6 for rear fire at enemies within arc of fire / range.

Blue's forward Arc of Fire - arrows show direction of travel

As above

Blue's Rear Arc of Fire

 The Front (bow?) of a Spaceship requires a 6 to hit; the sides and rear require 5 or 6 (they have less shielding). Each hit reduces the enemy's SP by 1 (so forward fire can possibly cause 2 SP damage).

Advanced (!!!) Rules

Bonuses can be applied to Ace Pilots, eg +1 to hit dice

Random Asteroids or Space Junk can appear on the throw of 6 at the start of each Turn (dice or draw cards for its starting row) - the object will float across the board in a straight line 1 square at a time until it leaves the field of play - the object moves before the players and will cause 1 SP damage to a spaceship it hits (being itself destroyed on contact). The object can be destroyed by fire on the roll of 5 or 6.

For (Han) Solo games make starting positions random.

Make adjustable stands from Lego to add a third (z) dimension to x and y movement or to allow for attacking surface objects during battles inside a Planets' atmosphere (I haven't tried this yet).

Hidden movement (Cloaking Devise) rules could be created - Spaceships only become visible once they fire...

Make space weapon noises and hum the theme to your favourite Science Fiction film during play for extra enjoyment.

A few pictures of the experimental games

Starting Positions

Two Spaceships engage

Double hit

An Asteroid floats into the game

 

A Star Cruiser of the Evil Space Empire is destroyed

Colonial Skirmish

Some 70 years before the Action at Twin Farms, the Colonial Army of Albiona is fighting an insurrection. Captain Carruthers leads a force of infantry to investigate a farm that is rumoured to be the meeting place of local rebels...

A Farmer contemplates building a second farmhouse...



"I remember this when it was all just open MDF.."

Martini Henry rifles open the skirmish

The Left flank

Casualties mount as the enemy advance

The enemy scale the wall and begin to cut down the infantry

Things are not going well on the left flank either



Disaster! The Captain is slain

The last man standing on the Albionan side..

The Second Action at Twin Farms

Introduction

As in the original Action at Twin Farms (Battle Part XVI, Meccano Magazine August 1969 by Charles Grant), the attacking force had failed to capture their objective (see previous post).
Having reinforced, the Commander of the Northern force (I've decided to call them the Uqbal Liberation Army), returned a few days later for another attempt.

In this second game I equipped the ULA with a tank but took away their machine gun (hey, they've got a tank!). The ULA (Army Tan) therefore have 5 Infantry units, a Commander and a Tank.
Assuming the tank was going to be a hard nut to crack I replaced one of the PDF's Infantry units with another Recoilless Rifle, so the PDF (Army Green) have 4 Infantry Units, a Commander and 2 Recoilless Rifle units.
The situation remains the same apart from the PDF have utilized the wrecked vehicle as additional cover.

 

Game

Opening gambit

The ULA Commander, full of confidence due to the presence of his armoured support, threw most of his infantry in a mad rush at South Farm while his tank would remove the opposition from North Farm.

Defenders of North Farm

South Farm defence

Here we go!

Unfortunately, despite having Turn 1 initiative, the tank missed its first shot...
Things then got much worse as both Recoilless Rifles hit their target

A Double Whammy (according to the tabloid press)

Why did I give them 2 of those things? Oh, yes the ULA have a tank...

South Farm turn 3

On the left flank things seemed to be going better and hand-to-hand combat was initiated as the ULA attempted to storm the farmyard.
The right flank however can only be described as pear-shaped.

ULA tank - about as effective as cotton wool smoke

Turn 6 South Farm

Heavy fighting on the left saw one of the PDF Infantry units wiped out but a reserve unit moved up from behind the farm and engaged the ULA before they could take advantage of their success.

Turn 6 North Farm

Over on the right, the PDF broke from cover and moved to attack the ULA

Turn 8

Somehow by the end of Turn 8 the attackers had become the defenders!
It could have still worked out, the Strength Points were still in the balance, a few lucky dice rolls... then this happened

The ULA Commander falls!

Oh the humanity! With the loss of the Commander's 6 SPs the ULA went straight into Strength Point Debt (EP Exhaustion Point is set at 33% hits remember) and could only defend their current position, once again failing to take Twin Farms.
To be fair they defended gallantly reducing the PDF to EP by Turn 11 and thus ending the game.

End of Turn 11

I rather enjoyed that! It seems like a few more "Modern" games might be required. Thanks for dropping by.

PWG Action at Twin Farms

Introduction

Some fantastic recent posts by the Archduke Piccolo and Ross Mac inspired me to have a go at a Portable Wargame in the "Modern" period. I have some pdfs of Charles Grants' articles in Meccano Magazine (1969-70) and chose the Action at Twin Farms as a scenario as it only involved infantry so should be easy for me to get a grip of the rules with (I haven't played a Modern game for many years).

I have one of these half-tracks somewhere...

Charles Grant had a beautiful style of writing; here is his dry description of one side in his conflict


In other words, Airfix WW2 Germans

Whilst I'm rambling on about inspiration, Mark the Man of Tin is doing great things with ultra cheap plastic figures on his blog so I thought I'd pay tribute to this by using some of my son's old toys. I have set this game in the Colony of my 19th Century Imagi-Nation that is referenced here - It is the early 1950s and The Kingdom of Albiona has granted independence to its former colony (Albionan Uqbal). The democratically elected government is headed by the DPFU (Democratic Party of Free Uqbal). Almost immediately fighting breaks out between ethnic factions from the North and South of the country. The Albionan Army still controls the Capital but fighting breaks out across the rest of the former colony...

Game Mechanics

For this game I have used the rules in Bob Cordery's first Portable Wargame book (ie without Pinning and unpinning) to keep things simple - I still managed to forget the 3 dice rule for machine guns, so have since written myself a crib sheet in Large Friendly Letters for the hard of thinking.

Game

I'm going to start this with a quote from Charlie Wesencraft; "I had learnt my first lesson in warfare: men under cover are more difficult to hit than men in the open" (Practical Wargaming 1974).
A small force from the People's Democratic Front (PDF) from the South of the country have crossed into the North's territory and occupy a position at Twin Farms to use as a base for reconnaissance. A patrol from the Northern army arrives and is ambushed.

Twin Farms setting - RH Farm is already burnt out

PDF troops in position - Commander embedded with recoilless rifle unit

First vehicle to arrive is knocked out and its occupants take a hit

I treated the recoilless rifle like artillery and decided that a hit on a soft vehicle was going to be enough to disable it - unluckily for the Northerners, the first shot of the game brought their motorised advance to a halt. Not knowing what they were facing the entire force disembarked and advanced on foot...

Turn 2

Machine gun behind cover but out of range

Turn 3

Turn 3 - Advancing through the open to get in range

Turn 5 - all the attacking troops are forced into the open to get in range

Fierce fighting continues

The machine gun (hampered by my forgetfulness) finally starts to do some damage

Turn 10 The Attackers have reached Exhaustion Point 

I used a roster to record SPs lost so you can't really tell from the pictures how many casualties each unit had taken; suffice it to say, by Turn 10 the Northern troops had suffered too many losses, reached Exhaustion Point (set at 33% hits) and withdrew to go and look for a tank.
I will have to play more games with the first set of rules before I start introducing pinning etc.

The PDF Commander celebrates

Firing Line in the open

 

Fish Stew - An All Hallows Special (not for the faint hearted)

Game Design

This game featured the rules written and used by Sprinks over at the Wronghammer blog (that's a link I hope, though my HTML is not what it was...). I tinkered slightly with the rules, "Blood, Guts and Severed Heads" to allow for one-on-one skirmish fighting, so it's now BGSH Lite. In the spirit of the Sprinks System, figures were left unpainted.

Storyline

Old Sir Bernard had retired from the Baronning business, moved to the coast and bought himself a nice little Manor he named Dun Slaughterin. He'd hung up his sword, thrown his armour in the shed and was looking forward to spending some quality time with Lady Bernard, sitting by the fire with his feet up on a serf, or some such. Then the messenger arrived.
"The King demands that all knights, old or young, must march North to The Death Lands with as many fighting men as possible, and join him in a mighty final battle against The Evil Personage and his monstrous army of... monsters. Oh, and as you live by the Sea he also demands that you bring a large cauldron of that fabulous fish stew they do around here. Farewell!"
Sir Bernard sighed and went to look for his horse...

 Objective

Sir Bernard and the Good Men must get the Fish Stew across the board. The Ambushing Goblins and the Troll must stop them. The Troll is hungry (of course) and wants the stew. The Goblins just want to kill as many men as possible. All normal Fantasy fare.

The Game

Overview of the board - What no grid?

Sir Bernard sends archers out to cover their advance through the Bad Lands. A measuring devise is used!
 

The precious cargo

The Ambush is sprung - Circle the Wagon!

First blood - A well aimed shot takes down a Goblin

Charge!



Blood, guts and severed heads indeed



The body count rises
 

The troll slinks away and it's defeat for the baddies

Sir Bernard has lost most of his men but saved the Royal Gumbo - hurrah!

Conclusion

A fun game with plenty of carnage and no serious consulting 200 page rulebooks or very expensive expansions, so therefore a success. Once again my troll was completely ineffective - another game like that and they'll be playing for the reserves.