Take That You Beast Part Two! River Plate Project Progress

 Back in September I said that I was going to experiment with WW2 naval gaming, using the Battle of the River Plate as a test project.  Working relatively quickly, I've been able to get my initial order of 1/2400 ships from GHQ painted.  Here is "the Beast", the Graf Spee, sailing serenely on a Geek Villain mat.

Leander-class light cruiser:

HMS Exeter:

Commodore Harwood's squadron in search of the Graf Spee:

"I say, sir, I do believe we've found her!"  Litko splash markers.

I had a very positive experience with the Naval Thunder: Battleship Row rules by Harry Pratt, which I found for purchase as a download from Wargames Vault.  I'm grateful to Keith who runs the excellent Across the Table blog for putting me on to these rules.    Since NTBR uses a written orders and simultaneous movement system (seems to be a hallmark of naval rules!), it is not ideal for solo play, but I suspect with some more thought I could write some general battle plans for both sides with some die rolls for the commander's likely reaction as the situation evolves.  An even better solution would be an opponent!

I was only using the basic NTBR rules and found them easy enough to learn.  The d10 system provides for some unpredictability, and shooting is not easy at the larger ranges.  When a shell does hit, there is a step to assess penetration vs armour (each ship has a data card which can be printed before the game and which provides this information readily).  Penetrating hits cause damage (different shells have different damage ratings, and each hit reduces a ship's hit points) but also cause critical hits, which can be quite dramatic.   There are advanced rules for crew quality, torpedoes, aircraft, etc, but I kept the first game simple.

The RN player has to put his head down and run at the Spee to get within effective range, and this means the Spee has several turns to inflict damage, as happened in the actual fight with the crippling of Exeter.   In my game, Achilles in the lead followed by Ajax attacked on one side, while Exeter tried to get on the other side of Spee.  This gave the Germans time to hammer Achilles with 11" shells, crippling her gunnery and causing a fire.   Here we see Achilles turning away from the fight and on fire, making smoke to hide her escape.   Her brave New Zealand crew never did get the fire under control and she soon sank (more Litko markers).

However, Ajax was relatively unharmed and struck a blow, causing a fire amidships.   Spee's crew could not extinguish the fire, and it spread, detonating a secondary magazine and causing significant damage.  Captain Langsdorf was now seeking to withdraw and fight another day.  By this time, Exeter was adding her fire, though reduced because her aft turret had been knocked out.  Her first salvo missed, but a second landed two fatal hits.  The first caused flooding damage, but the second hit the main magazine (two "O"s on 2d10) and the mighty pocket battleship blew up with few survivors.

At least in this encounter, German propaganda can say that she died fighting, rather than being ignominiously scuttled!

I'm  now debating whether to mount my ships on bases, which would minimize wear and tear on the models from handling, vs leaving them as they are.  The Geek Villain seascape map is quite nice and I like the look of the models sans bases.   This requires a good ponder.   In the meantime, another order from GHQ will soon allow me to fight the Battle of the Denmark Strait, although that order is currently in limbo due to a Canada Post strike.

Thanks for reading.  Cheers, and blessings to your die rolls!

Perry Brothers ACW Union Cavalry Muster Into Service

"Around her neck, she wore a yellow ribbon ...and if you asked her, why it was she wore it, she said it was for her lover who was in the cavalry."

I might have been whistling that tune as I finished flocking these troopers the other day.   They represent the contents of a Perry Brothers box of plastic 28mm American Civil War cavalry, assembled and painted as Union cavalry.  I could have assembled the figures with carbines or pistols in hand, but the look of the sabres is iconic, even though probably not very common in the later war period.  At any rate, I'm very happy to muster this new unit into service.

Not a huge complaint, but after painting the three mounted Roman gents I showed here recently, these Perry figures felt like a slight step down in quality.   To be fair, the Perry brothers were fairly early adopters of injection plastics, a decade or so ago now, whereas Victrix is probably benefiting from newer design and production technologies.  the Victrix human faces are sharper, and the horses have much more texture in muscles, manes and tails.     However, when you paint a dozen of the Perry figures, the overall impression is still impressive.

This batch was mostly painted using Foundry paints.  The tri-tone system gives good results for the horses, and the Union blue for the tunics and kepis looks especially good.  I free-handed the yellow piping, and some came out better than others, especially the tunic collars.  The flag is by Adolfo Ramos.

These gallant lads, together with what's already in my collection, gives me two brigades of Union cavalry, or three groups of eight, depending on the rules and game scale.   There are many mounted actions that would make great games, such as the cavalry encounters before Gettysburg or actions in the Valley, so we may some rebel riders in the painting queue at some point.

Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

A Second Look at Mark Herman's Rebel Yell: Chancellorsville

Back in July, I posted here on my first thoughts about Mark Herman's much discussed ACW game, Rebel Fury, published earlier this year by GMT.  It's a fairly simple, divisional level game that covers six battles:  Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, The Wilderness and Spotsylvania.  The mechanics are very similar to Dan Fournie's ancients game, Baetis Campaign, published in C3i magazine earlier this year and reviewed here.

Chancellorsville (henceforth referred to as Cville) uses the same map as the solo introductory game, Fredericksburg, which frankly was not a lot of fun.   Cville promises more sport for the Union as half the federal forces begin on the south side of the map, at Fredericksburg,  under Sedgewick, while the other half enter from the north map edge under Hooker.   The Union has the initiative for two turns, as per the game's Turning Movement rules, but after that the Confederates inevitably get to move first because of their superior generals, Lee and Jackson. 

Playing solo, I found it posed an interesting challenge for the rebs:  how many divisions should I pull out of the entrenchments across the Rappahannock from Fredericksburg to send north to try and stop Hooker?   In my solo game, the answer was just enough to slow the Union forces on either end of the map.   As you can see below, the Union came close to their victory conditions, establishing a road route from south to north that is entirely more than two hexes removed form any Confederate unit, while likewise clearing the rail line south from Fredericksburg from Confederate influence.    I got close, but not close enough.

However, if you look at the little red cross "Casualty" markers in the photo below, that is history repeating itself with a vengeance, as both Jackson and Lee became casualties, or at least enough of their HQ staffs to render them hors de combat.  Herman has a clever rule whereby one can use a commander's combat rating, called "battle stars", to influence a fight, but there is a good chance that the commander will become a casualty.   As the Confederate player, one has to resist the temptation to use the commanders in combat roles.   For the Union player, at least in this scenario, Sedgewick and Hooker have less ability to influence a combat outcome, so it's best leaving them in maneuver mode so they can enable their units to cover more ground, and for the Union, maneuver, as I learned, is the key to success.  

Judging by this podcast, not everyone is sold on this system, but I like what I've played of it so far, and I would be interested to retry this scenario to see if I could manage a Union victory.  

Rebel Fury offers beautiful maps, well produced components, and an intriguing variant on the IGO / UGO movement mechanic.  Definitely worth a look for ACW boardgame fans.

Blessings to your die rolls,

MP+

Three Victrix Imperial Roman Generals

I continue to be pleased with the quality of Victrix figures and by how well they take paint.  Here are three 28mm Early Imperial big cheeses to lead my numerically tiny Roman forces.  I like the fellow on the left because he's old and cranky and it probably hurts to climb on his horse in the morning.    I feel a certain kinship with him.

Mostly I used Foundry tri-tone paints, especially on the horses, which I think turned out quite well.

The iconic red cloaks that you see in all the films.  For these I used Foundry British Redcoat, which looked fine to me.

Thanks for looking.  Ave, vale, salve!

MP+