Weekender XLBS: Which Battle Would You Re-Create On The Tabletop?
February 3, 2019 by lloyd
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need a Backstage Pass.
Or if you already have a Backstage Pass Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with Beasts of War unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's a Backstage Pass?
Once you have made a free account on Beasts of War you can upgrade it by adding a Backstage Pass. It allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Backstage Pass Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Weekender XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the Backstage Greenroom Forum.
- Access the Backstage Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
- Lots of enhanced functionality on the way.
Emu war – totally legit i’m afraid…
lol I told him 😉
Happy Sunday
@warzan ,It did ring a bell, didnt realise casualties were so high, must admit though your delivery was enough to leave Justin totally confused.
Funnily enough I do have a home brew set of rules that would cover it,
originally written to do the movie ‘Them’the old 50’s b movie on Giant Ants.
No re-written for all big bugs , would not be difficult to work out Stats for Emus, Army and civilian human already written. Thunking about it would need to an adaption for Rabbits as in the film ‘Night of the Lepars’
once saw it after a night in the pub and fell off the chair when the Sheriff told the customers at a drive in movie ‘Dont panic we are about to be attacked by Giant Man Eating Rabbits!’.
I don;t have the original file for the rules, but do have umpty copies somewhere I’ll send you one in post.
As for a battle for re-fight try the ‘Battle of Mirbat’19 July 1972[2] during the Dhofar Rebellion in Oman,not huge forces and can be transferred accross to multiple genres, we have done a Vietnam version and a Hammers Slammer in Sci Fi, be a good one for 40k
A guy at club to be in, if he won the Pools now Lottery wanted to refight the ‘Siege of Breda’ with action men.
Happy sunday from the land downunder.
Happy Sunday mate!
and I would like to join my countrymen in wishing a happy Sunday to you all .
…but the Emu Wars … big faux pas there mate … we don’t mention the Emu Wars, it is considered impolite … most of the time we pretend it didn’t happen … la la la la
… seriously though +1 to Gerry Legend suggestion, I would love to see the seige of Dros Delnoch )with each wall with it’s own special rules and conditions … damn it would be awesome. Well played Mr Gerry … well played
Sorry mate it wasn’t my intention to dig up painful national memories 😉
The more I think about it, the more I feel using counters would work better, if you’re a fan of the book you’ll know how much of a heroic fantasy novel is given over to the dull world of logistics and supply, down to doctors and bakers. Having your forces and choosing the method for running the Dros as you play would be a whole other level…
At the same time I do love the idea of six walls across 3 boards… I may have to go and reread the book Laddie 😉
I re-read the thing about every 18 months or so , It is not his best written book but there is something compelling about the whole story, that I find strangely comforting.
Happy Sunday!!
Good morning all, and Happy Sunday.
Hmm … which battle would I recreate? Um …
For five years on this site, and through 138 articles totaling over 300,000 words, from Hoth to Hubbardton, I’ve done little else.
Perhaps my favorite was the 2015 World Wide D-Day Challenge, where we organized 30 players in nine countries to play a series of June 6 2015 wargames recreating the whole opening 24 hours of Operation Overlord.
At the moment, I’m posting battle reports of the 1956 Israeli assault on Kuessiema, part of the the IDF’s initial assault on the Um Katef / Abu Agheila positions of Egyptian 6th Brigade / 3rd Infantry Division (30 Oct, 1956).
Anyway, I’m listening to the Emu War saga while posting this bat rep. With a degree of morbid curiosity 🙂 🙂 🙂 (just kidding) I’m interested to see where the rest of this episode goes.
Jim you beat me to this one, Keep up the great work with the Historical series.
Higgy
Thanks, @higgy . I’ll certainly do my best regarding “The Ops Center.” It’s had great support so far here and YouTube. Not so much on Twitch, but again we’re just getting started there, so we’ll see how it goes.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/372725109
The Battle of 1812 in north america, or the “Fenian” Raiders
Any ideas on how you might do them?
It would be small battle/skirmish game as were talk about Irish Militia vs the British Army at the time.
I would have to look more into the tactics of the time that the Fenians were using but would be a black powder game where attempt to seize territory is more the game
I would probably use 28mm due to the size of the forces being use and it would be asymmetrical as the Canadian forces out number the Fenian even if they were getting support form the American Army
the Fenian Raiders always interested me from the time I first read about them in a Wargames Illustrated many moons ago.
The idea that the Irish, albeit via the US military, invaded Canada just tickles my fancy. One of the absurdities of war I suspect
The American government were still a tad bitter from having to climb down after the Trent Affair a couple of years earlier. Turning a blind eye to the Fenians let them take a swipe at the British without much risk of it escalating – besides, would you really want these people settling into civilian life in Chicago? Disgruntled, revolutionary tendencies, lots of guns… Far better sending them north to get a bloody nose before settling down somewhere.
I remember that series of Articles Gerry if I remember rightly he used Airfix figures, Civil War confederates for the Fenians and converted WW1 Germans for the Canadians.
Funnily enough up to a few years back I’d still got the copy of it.
If you had a subscription to the mag you probably could find the back issue.
it similar to the war of 1812 in north America as people in North America don’t think about the Napoleon as much as the war here
The interesting thing about the Fenian raids is how they are connected distantly with what was happening in Ireland at the time
15:55 – “Now when it comes to historical gamers, fun doesn’t come into it … ** ha ha ha ** It’s all about accuracy, man. ** ha ha ha ** …”
Okay, I mean, I know you’re kidding around here … but …
No… accuracy is the thing 😉
@warzan you play Thermopolye as a competitive game of Spartans vs Spartans where you compete to kill the most Persians before you die. The Persians would just be an AI force and you are just trying to kill as many as possible before you slowly get hacked to death by the minor wounds the Persians keep doing to you.
You could also make it a team competition or semi-cooperative where you can assist another player with kills but you share kill points.
@warzan, I was typing my ideas for the Raid on St Nazaire when you started taking about it. Personally I’d use Cruel Seas to fight it out.
A fictional battle, or series of battles, would be the Great Crusade of 30k, the wars of expansion prior to the Horus Heresy. Not sure what sort of rules, but there was a lot of xenos that were fought that aren’t full on developed races in 30k/40k.
Interesting take on Thermopylae basically setting it up as a meat grinder.
My gaming tastes must be changing though because perhaps 10ish years ago I’d have been all over that, but I sit here now wondering if it might be quite a dull experience?
I wonder if there is off table actions to bring more strategy to the game? 🙂
Could run it as a tower defense game. Maybe make it cooperative.
Thermopylae, The Alamo and Dien Bien Phu are all amazing stories with one inevitable end. As conventional wargames those battles become a “Can you do better?” proposition.
Maybe for Thermopylae the focus for the Spartans would be to honor the gods by achieving certain goals with the goals varying by god or goddess.
the Great Crusade would be interesting, it doesn’t really matter on the ruleset used as you can map your own aliens using Imperial Guard as your baseline for an average. But if you used something like Rogue Trader there are more comprehensive rules in there where you can stat up everything from Gods to Robots.
Because of the rules the games would be smaller though, although the bonus of that is you’re not having to building huge armies for everything.
Possibly drop down to 6mm run it in Epic for a grand scale feel and even use Gothic for the movement and planetary defenses.
Cruel seas to fight out the engagement in the estuary and then Bolt Action to re-create the commando teams attacking the docks?
I suggested that, it was the arrival of Cruel Seas in the office with the St Nazaire parts in the book that reminded us of this shelved concept.
yep @avernos was talking about that, but I really want it to be a coop game rather than a head to head game 🙂
@warzan Think ‘I ain’t been shot Mum’ from your old mate Richard Clarke from Two Fat Lardies would be a better fit for the land side of St Naziare, works on company level, as there were around 265 commandos and 346 naval personnel, if you semi ignore the latter your talking appox 3 companies of Brits, for the Germans possibly about 4 but with them being re-cycled the way Gerry does them in Rorkes Drift.
Just what i was thinking.
Hmm, you know, the Battle of Scariff from Rogue 1 has a very Raid on St Naizire feel to it.
I like the idea of ‘Battle of Scariff’ and think we could be close this year to making it happen if they give us Shore TRooper to go with the rebel and Imperial boxes from Rogue One.
That’s a big one!
Battle of Scariff for anyone wondering is basically the end of rogue one where they steal the death star plans (if I’m not mistaken)
correct
I would give good money to see the orignal cut of the Scariff mission, given they re-shot a lot of it and the original material (from what we saw in the trailers) indicates that Jyn & Caassian re-join the squad to make a run with the data….
Its not like you dont already have a lot of the stuff,including the island terrain.
Battle of Scariff from Rogue 1 has a St. Nazaire feel to it.
A Star Wars version of St. Nazaire might go something like this …
Just before the beginning of Episode V: ESB . . .
Kuat Drive Yards are building a massive new orbital facility at the “Nazaar” system, deep in the galaxy’s Outer Rim. This starship docking and repair facility will be the only one in the Outer Rim large enough to facilitate the Executor, super star destroyer flagship of Vader’s “Death Squadron” – tasked with hunting down the Rebel Alliance in the wake of the Battle of Yavin. If the Empire can get this base operational, the Imperial Navy’s largest warship will be able to deploy with unlimited range across the Outer Rim, all but sealing the doom for Alliance bases and operations in the region.
While the Rebel Alliance can’t attack the Executor head-on, they hatch a desperate plan to destroy the docking facility that enables it to operate this deep in the Outer Rim. They get an old Dreadnought-class cruiser from before the Clone Wars, or maybe one of those old Venator class destroyers, and plan to smash it into the new Kuat Drive Yards facility at Nazaar.
Meanwhile, a collection of smaller ships, freighters and Corellian corvettes, perhaps a Nebulon-B class frigate,will also carry in a special strike force of Rebel troops, technicians, and engineers. They will land on the elsewhere on the orbital dockyard (not where the “fireship” will crash into it, obviously) and plant additional charges to ensure this whole Nazaar facility is completely knocked out, steal valuable files, perhaps even make off with weapons or warships found on the station.
Then, of course, the hard part. Escaping the explosion and destruction of the Nazaar platform, and getting home again . . . before Vader and his fleet returns to wreak vengeance.
Ok, Thermopylae, here goes…
Gaming system – reasonably irrelevant. You could shoehorn it into pretty much any game system you wanted but Lion Rampant or something similarly streamlined might be an easy enough starting point.
Set the game up with a limited frontage where the opposing forces can fight (obviously…) with the choke points and Greek forces deployed closer to one edge so that the Persian forces have control of most of the board, maybe about a 1/3 vs 2/3 split.
For the Greeks, as @avernos suggested fatigue will be key, so Greek forces will need to track fatigue and damage. Fatigue would increase when a unit is engaged in combat (maybe 1 point a round on the fatigue tracker) and extra fatigue is gained when a Greek commander pushes a unit to engage in heroic feats of arms (i.e. using a command to permit a reroll or something similar). Fatigue could be reduced by rotating troops out of the front lines and allowing them time to recover at the back of the Greek lines (Maybe recovering a point of fatigue each round on a 4+ or a 5+ depending on what modifiers you wish to use). Troops could only rotate out of combat and retire to the back ranks when not engaged. Cumulative fatigue will impose combat penalties at various tiers (these will vary depending on your games system of choice).
For the Persians, track both wounds and morale for each unit (The Greeks don’t need to track morale as we can assume that the Spartans are resigned to their fate and the remainder will withdraw once the Spartans are defeated. Similarly, the Persian troops have sufficient numbers that fatigue is not an issue – fresh forces can cycle in as required). Additionally, track cumulative morale points overall on a separate army tracker. This is effectively the Greek ‘win’ condition. If the Persians Accumulate enough morale points and can be so psychologically scarred at being stopped by a few hundred Greeks then they will be less motivated to try and engage all the city-states of Greece in open war later on.
Persian forces will recycle. Objective of the Persian player is to manoeuvre reinforcing units in such a way that they can move in to plug gaps as their attack becomes dulled and prevent Greek units form retiring and resting, with the obvious intent being to keep them in place and grind them down or even break through the lines. Persian units we can assume will be likely to break when they accumulate enough morale points, with fleeing units potentially disrupting the advance of fresh troops. Overall win condition will be based on the destruction of the Greek forces before the army morale tracker gets too high.
Greek forces will need to manage fatigue, placement of reserve units and have strategic use of fatigue causing rerolls or special unit activations. For added fun, have a few healers or similar characters about who can remove a fatigue point from a nearby unit each round.
To spice things up, you could have Persian archers trading fire with Greek slingers or javelin throwers over the front lines. Alternatively, if you want to go full movie 300 (blood splatter and slow motion camera effects optional..) you could introduce some of the more exotic Persian units who could have in-game effects like adding fatigue to a unit instead of, or in addition to, standard damage. Or perhaps imposing combat penalties on a unit for a number of rounds.
If a timer is deemed necessary you could have a day last a set number of turns. Once darkness falls the Persians fall back and regroup and the Greek force recovers a set number of fatigue points overnight (not all of them – we can assume they are continually harassed by Persian scouts). The game could end perhaps partway through day 3 when the Greeks become surrounded if they have not been defeated earlier? (I’d count this result as a Greek victory).
I’m sure there are much more elaborate card based mechanics that could be employed to represent the intervention of force commanders or access to elite status units for the Persians, but the above is how I’d go about approaching it from a more simplistic dice and miniature background.
I love this idea matey. The only other way I could think of running it as a more regular style of game would be to make it part of a campaign. Add the Athenian fleet and some ship battles and do the invasion whole cloth.
But I’m really interested in fleshing your version out and giving it a try…. too many things and not enough time
@Gerry know the feeling!
Excellent post mate love it! 🙂
For the Waterloo map it would be cheaper going to a company that prints vinyl advertising banners to get the map done
Trying to take a boardgame and bring it a little more towards the wargame feel with terrain and topology etc
But yup a vinyl print would definately be cheaper 🙂
But the Kallistra hexes are so lovely 🙂
I did some checking and at a ground scale of 1mm to 1 yard for 28mm we only need 23 feet x 12 feet of tiles…
lol
We gonna need a bigger boat!
you can use 6 mm up to 10 mm you can get 4 20 mm x 40 mm bases into a hex of 10 mm roughly 32 figures infantry 12 to 16 cavalry 2 bases of 1 canon each on a 30 x 40 base you can then take half stands away for damaged units on 6 mm you can use the baccus figures and bases where you can have 60 x 30 our 60 x 60 you can put the stats on the back of these bases i would also get some 7mm dice frames and put a dice in for wounded status you can get the dice frames with the dice included from Pendraken range
https://pendraken.co.uk/dice-frames/7mm/
Dane
@gerry Brought 3 boxes of Kallistra plain hexes that I desert flocked myself, best buy ever, still using thme regularly 14 years later, thought they would need re-flocking but so far ok.
We actualy right home grown rules using hex movement rather than measurments, saves a lot of phaffing.If I’d go space I’d buy the same in blue.
The more I see Ben in the basement, the more unsettling it is. I keep thinking he’s got a woman in a well behind him. “It puts the lotion on the miniature or it gets the hose.”
lmao
“Would you paint me? I’d paint me”
*Ben Dances*
lol
Well played, @brennon – with the 1066 Fulford research and battle game ideas!
@Lloyd – the questions you ask at 35:00 regarding armies facing each other across a river, why attack across the river, why not march off and choose another battlefield … These are excellent questions, and choice of the battlefield is always the first winning (or losing) decision generals make. From Gettysburg to Waterloo, battlefield choice is always critical. The problem is, as @brennon points out, there are often other considerations “off table” that constrain the general’s options. He might have to defend a road or open a bridge or assault a key castle, as part of the larger off-board “chess game” at play. This often compels a general to fight under conditions far less than ideal. This is Operational Level Warfare – the battle “between the battles.”
44:10 – La Quelle Affaire actually isn’t an operational-level wargame, it’s a command-tactical level wargame. So “Level One” are tactical wargames, wysiwyg-model games where each piece represents an individual man, rider, vehicle, gun, etc.
“Level Two” (command-tactical) games like La Quelle Affaire are still one battle, one day, one field, and so are still a tactical game. The difference here is on the game is unit based, like some of the games @avernos plays. Unit-based tactical wargames are “Level 2” because as unit games, they are based much more on averages and aggregate probabilities – rather than “did my ONE guy hit that ONE target and did that ONE target survive?”
Level Three is an Operational Wargame, where the map is a whole campaign area, and full battles are resolved with every roll of the dice. So 20-50 battles might take place in one game, 75% of the game takes place “between” battles, and 50% of the game is logistics, supply, resource management, etc. Level 4 is strategic, but that’s another whole kettle of fish.
And HMS Campbelltown was a destroyer, not a battleship. Battleships weight about 30 times as much as destroyers (50,000-60,000 tons, HMS Campbelltown was something like 1,500 tons if memory serves, I’m not going to look it up now).
Very glad to see you guys finally coming around to hexes, scaled wargames, and unit-based wargames. Just wish it had happened 1-2 years ago. Genuine best wishes for all your projects going forward! 😀 😀 😀
like British Rail, we may be slow but we get there in the end 😉
I imagine Commodore Rob will choke on his cornflakes when he hears the wrong ship type being used 😀
To the layman they are all battleships 🙂
Same way tanks are all tanks to the layman 🙂
I dont think @commodorerob will worry too much about it lol
I’ll make sure and get a game of battle ships with him and just to wind him up a bit I’ll actually remove the couple of ships that actually are battle ships lol 😉
@gerry don’t like cornflakes…😂
@warzan totally agree to the uninitiated all warships are battleships. I have not played battleships since I was a about 8years old…😁
Technically they are ships and they fight Battles, so…….
Apologies, @avernos and @warzan – I wasn’t trying to be pedantic. It just really is a colossal difference. Like a x30 difference. A good generic term is warship. That covers everything from a trireme to a Ford-class supercarrier.
And please don’t mention the boardgame “Battleship.” I’m still trying to recover from seeing a copy of “Stratego” in @brennon‘s basement. 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
Ju-u-u-u-ust kidding, as always. 😀
@oriskany is also right here, as in the one you might get one on an 1/300th game table, the other would be the table in a lot of case.
Thanks, @bobcockayne – Yeah I have a fleet of WW2 ships in 1:1800, and even at that scale they are several inches long.
People often lose all sight of scaling or spatial interrelationships when it comes to naval warfare. I think this is a big reason Cruel Seas has made the correct the decision to stock with PT boats and the like.
In the long-ago Desert War series, we talked about the light cruiser … light cruiser USS Savannah … this is a SMALL naval warship … only four times the size of Campbelltown … shelling the Vichy French in support of an American ground battle during Torch. Anyway, we were doing the battle in 15mm. Someone asked if we could have put Savannah on the table.
… eh ….
An American light cruiser at this time would be almost five feet long at 15mm / 1:100, and her x12 6-inch naval rifles (each gun equivalent to about a 15.0 cm or 155mm heavy howitzer … would be firing from a comfortable 320 feet away … at 15mm.
When it comes to a naval wargame, or even a ground assault wargame with naval elements, some things have to be looked at very very carefully.
@oriskany a friend is doing HMS Exeter in 1/350th , which he got as part of multi model deal workth less than above on its own, be interesting to see how big it is his Z class is nearly 15″ long.
@bobcockayne – Exeter? River Plate Exeter? That’s a heavy cruiser, so yeah, even at 1:350 that’s gonna be a big model. 20″ or so.
Yup thats the one, he’s dreading trying to waterline it.
@bobcockayne – I just did that on a 1:72 / 20mm Spec Ops assault boat (about 9 inches long). definitely waited until I was at my Dad’s shop and did it using his larger tools. Waterlining a ship model is indeed NOT easy and you can only try it once … Best of luck to your friend!
The good news is you can use wake effects in the water to hide any small goofs in your cut. God knows I had to. 😀
@orikany that was a pretty good guess on Cambletown , displacement quoted as 1.260 long tons but not sure if thats empy, loaded your probably spot on.
Epic, @bobcockayne . Thanks! 😀 I do my best.
hummmm…….oh the possibilities that could be played out if one wanted to go for it.
The battle of ‘Little Big Horn’
I have studied George Armstrong Custer’s career, (having grown up in Kansas and great plains area of America), and spent several vacations traveling around to the sites of the different forts from that era. I’ve walked the locations of troop camps and battlefields and have studied Custer’s career enough to look at him and the circumstances a bit differently then the general population of the world has been lead to believe about his abilities. It is a fact that those that he commanded on the fateful day of the battle of ‘Little Big Horn’ were not inclined to follow the ‘Commander’s Intent’. Also, Gattlin Guns were available to Custer but his ego got in the way.
I think it would be interesting to play out that battle with his full force following orders correctly and executing orders in a timely manner and bringing along the Gattlin Guns and using them effectively. Then we could see if proper execution of tactics and superior weapons could turn the battle or if the sheer numbers of Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors could still win the day.
Done correctly and with a bit of luck, it might turn out to be America’s ‘Rorke’s Drift’.
I’ve often thought of doing something in this period myself, but it’s probably due to my unending love of They Died With Their Boots On.
In many respects the set up is closer to the British at Isandlwana, with the US forces, if I remember correctly, split into three columns unable to support each other and one of them running into the main body of the opposition and being wiped out. If my memory is close to correct that is almost identical to the British invasion of Zululand with the same result to one of the columns.
@Gerry never thought of comparison but, well acutually there isnt a but.
Custers Last Stand would be fascinating. I’m sure there are a ton of ‘odd’ aspects to that battle that are not well known that could make interesting twists in a game of it!
If you use the Twilight Zone series as a factual base there was a Sherman tank crew at Custer’s last stand
@Torros You dont have a link for that one by any chance
This is the best I can do https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0734627/ it might be on you tube
Blimey a very young Warren Oates is int it.
Custer actually had a reasonable chance of winning based on prior engagements. What turned it was the ferocity of the defenders. Normally the Native Americans didn’t attempt pitched battles, the more typical fight was a quick raid and a withdrawal. Unfortunately for Custer, he attacked a huge settlement filled with families so the tribal warriors had little choice but to fight to the end.
There’s been an awful lot of research done on the battlefield but it wasn’t until some new scientific tests came along that that we learned a fair amount of what we knew was wrong. For instance ahuge proportion of the soldiers in Custers column actually committed suicide. There was a huge fear of being captured by the Native Americans that “Save the last bullet for yourself” became almost standard procedure.
One study did a forensic exam of the shell casings found on the battlefield field and they were accurate enough to be able to follow individual soldiers and warriors across the battlefield and could tell where they’d been. The soldiers were buried where they died so the site is not one huge cemetery but hundreds of small tombstones scattered throughout the site. Combing the information of the wounds received with the grave marker placement and the plotting of the individual shell casings you get a sense that the battle went fairly well for Custer at first, then a slow but orderly withdrawal but then slowly degraded until there was a final sudden collapse followed by a pursuit of individual stragglers.
@warzan can you do the bloke who might have escaped, from the documentary I remember , he was wounded, his horse got hit, and legged it with him half conscious on the back, it went down one of the little valleys that brake up the terrain and nobody spotted him or they thought hew was dead. Was found by a bunch of Gold Miners and took him months to recover, Cut off from the world he had no idea of the massacre and when he got back to civilisation thought he would be done for cowardice/desertion so kept his gob shut.
For St Nazaire would it not be better to take it as read that the Campbelltown had already rammed the lock gates and start the game from there because if the ship doesn’t make it the mission would most likely been called off. I think maybe 10mm might be a better scale given how few troops the Allies would have
The scale is more dictated by the larger area of operation, And if I do the 280 odd commandoes and say 500 of the axis thafs still a hell of a lot of minis. 🙂
In my mind the first phase of the game is not about if the campbelltown makes it, but rather it sets up variations of the starting points that the raid begins from. (differing levels of pressure for the men coming on shore, even different numbers if we have MLs being destroyed on the way in.
To me atleast it gives lots of nice variation options to keep things iteresting 🙂
if the Campbelltown is train tracked it’s always going to arrive it would just determine how soon the alarm is sounded. Either way works but I do like the idea of trying to stave off the inevitable alarm for as long as possible.
I won’t give away too much of what was actually done back in 2017 when we originally started this project. But preliminary gameboard graphics were produced that offered HMS Campbelltown a series of tracks, allowing the British player a range of choices balancing speed of approach vs. safety and stealth.
What started the break the game down a little (at least for me as a designer) was the idea that the game seemed to “start off” with a decision of whether or not the Campbelltown hit the doors of the Normandie dock. If yes = German defeat is basically assured. If no = British defeat is basically assured. This seemed to make the scenario angle of the design largely luck-driven.
So I would support some variation of @torros ‘ solution where the Campbelltown has actually already struck the dock and the game starts from there.
Miniatures in general were a tough sell because the of the size of the battlefield. Even at 10mm the general size of the St. Nazaire battle area would be 45 feet across (now that’s a big table). Again, I only mention this because this research and consideration was put into the project back in 2017.
I still say Valor & Victory would be a solution. With a dedicated effort this game could literally played next weekend. Boom, done.
@oriskany wondered on the size of the table on this one, even at 6mm(or is it 5) for 1/300th itr owuld be 27ft.
Yeah, @bobcockayne – again … I tried to design the game with the team back in 2017 but I think we had different ideas about how it could be best presented. I still say Valor & Victory would be the best way to do it. It’s a free system everyone has access to, you can scale it any way you want, custom counters would be easy to build, it would be a BIG game even in Valor & Victory (about 100 counters just in squads and fireteams, + ships, heavy weapons, leaders, call it 150 for safety) … but MAN it would be fun.
And you could be chucking dice within ONE WEEK.
Some additional rules would have to drafted for the MTBs.
And again, I totally understand, and actually agree with, @warzan‘s idea for a co-op game. Scenarios like this, where one side is “being surprised” and has to have its units “activated” depending on die rolls and enemy action, really do well as “one sided” games like solitaire or co-op.
So we’ve have to work in few house rules for co-op Valor & Victory. But this is a kickass, flexible system, community-modded on BGG a hundred different ways, everything from my WW1 and Vietnam mods … to (not kidding here) … Mars Attacks. St. Nazaire would be no problem.
Happy Sunday!
Still thinking about which encounter – apart from another vote for Thermopylae using some kind of “storm the castle”/”waves of zombie hordes” defence rules… or whatever Gerry’s using for Rorkes Drift 😉
The Men Who Would be Kings, by Dan Mersey 😉
I really love @evilstu‘s idea above.
Like the Zulus, you wouldn’t need to paint20,000 emus as they’d arrive in waves. Anyhow I reckon that apart from numbers I reckon you could dip anf flock about 1,000 termagants in a couple of hours…
I’d worry about cheapening the historical importance of the battle to use somthing like a termagaunt in place of a mighty and terrifying emu.
We need a sculptor!
http://wargameterrain.blogspot.com/2014/02/forlorn-hope-games-new-28mm-cavalcade.html
They’re already out there matey
@dignity right… over to you mate 😉
Go for Giant ants rather than emu and you pick up bags of about 30 for halloween costumes for a couple of quid.
The battle I’ve always wanted to recreate is the battle for Arrakis from Dune. I was even seriously thinking of doing it until it was announced that Gale Force 9 and Modiohius picked up the licence. Rules wise it would be based on 40k. The rules would work well but mainly the reason is that 40k is clearly heavily influenced by Dune so I think there’s a wonderful symmetry in using 40k rules for a Dune game. I’d even thought through what psychic powers could be written to represent the Bene Gesserit powers and your command points would be “Sapho Juice” which could be consumed by your mentat to give acces to your strategems. The thing that slowed me down was the minis. Hence putting it on the back burner when news of potential miniatures was revealed. So if they come with a good ruleset then I might just play that, but if not I’ll resurrect my 40k plan.
In terms of Thermopylae I would run it as a ‘beat your score’ solo game. The Persians would essentially be infinite, recycling in wave after wave. Your job is to hold the pass for as long as possible. The longer you hold, the more Greeks escape. You’d also want a proper win condition (or conditions) which lead to a proper victory. Would need some play testing to work out what a sensible hold out duration would be or what combination of factors are enough to drive the Persians off. I think a solo game would remove the problem of one player having a boring deal, which I agree is a challenge in a game that is so asymmetrical.
@avernos . No matter the scale you played the legend siege at Druss would always be a 28mm figure
You mean like this?
https://www.hfminis.co.uk/shop?product=ferrus~hfh057&category=fantasy-%26steampunk~fantasy-humans
I have him 😊
Happy Sunday!
+1 for Gerry’s Legend suggestion. Legend has got to be my favourite book, I cannot count how many times I have read it since I picked up my first copy in a motorway service station on the way to the Lake District back in 1984 (yeah it’s the first edition paperback that Gemmell himself hated the cover for!) Although that copy is still readable I have worn out 3 other copies!
What other battles would I like to do? The list is huge, most of the First Age Battles from The Silmarillion. I started the Army of Gondolin many years ago in 25mm (Ral Partha Elves) but never finished even 10% of it! Then there are so many others from a variety of Fantasy Novel series. Each new book I read brings inspiration, I really need to stop reading!
Historically I would love to do the whole battle of Kursk and the whole of Operation Market Garden in 6mm. The Siege of Malta, Siege of Vienna, Waterloo, Borodino etc! As usual for all of us normal wargamers, I have many ideas but not enough resources to do them!
was that the black cover with the man on it in leather kilt, full helm and holding the sword two handed in a Qui-Gon Ginn like pose?
If so that was the first one I picked up and read and the cover was the reason of doing so.
Ah resources and as we know from Jasaray the most precious resource is time, for it is irreplaceable
I think the cover on mine was reddish brown. It’s years since I read it but isn’t there a part of it where the 30 start to burn themselves out with using their power too much?.
ah no I found 1st ed cover, I can see why he hated it. Mine was 2nd
There was one of the Thirty, Serbitar who pushed too far and bounced off into the mists and almost killed himself,
Hasslefree will always have my eternal appreciation for producing a quite superb mini of Druss himself. not offical of course bu c’mon, who else could this be? Look at that axe!
https://www.hfminis.co.uk/shop?product=ferrus~hfh057&category=fantasy-%26steampunk~fantasy-humans
The blades of no return
@warzan St Nazaire is a fascinating operation, and one that really doesn’t get enough attention. I (vaguely) remember seeing a black & white film dramatising the raid, and old motor-mouth himself, Jeremy Clarkson, fronted a surprisingly thoughtful rumination on the mission as part of his Clarkson’s War Stories series (I say series, it only had 2 eps). A lot of Clarkies worst tendencies are restrained but his passion for the subject really comes through. It does make you wonder how the hells this mission ever succeeded (I think that might be the documentary that Gerry mentions interviewing the surviving commandos)….
Good shout out from @Gerry for the late, great, David Gemmell there. Legend is a book that I ache to see adapted to film but know it never will. His other works are also worth exploring for inspiration, as he covered a huge period from his own fantasy settings through mystically-infused historical (go read the Rigante…) to surprisingly post-apocalyptic. And on the strength of his Trojan War books he passed just as he was approaching the true peak of his abilities 🙁
Yeah I keep rewatching Clarkson’s doc on the raid.
It is probably without doubt my favourite WW2 ‘thing’.
Just an incredible (as I’m almost unbelieveable) story that has so many aspects to it.
Yeah, there are so many points where that mission SHOULD have failed but just didn’t.
yes mate, it was indeed that documentary, he has two others one on the VC and the arctic convoy and like you say his worst tendencies never surface making them fantastic veiwing.
I’m a big fan of David’s entire work, always a great read.
That VC one is really interesting, and I didn’t know there was one in the series on the arctic convoys. Might have to track that one down….
(I still can’t bring myself to read Gemmell’s last book, ditto Pratchett’s. I may be having issues letting go…)
It’s online I watched it recently if you Google for it you’ll find it.
Weirdly I’ve done the same with gemmell.
Terry’s last book I did read on release as I didn’t want to run into a spoiler. I will say I did cry at the end, I couldn’t think of a more fitting book to be the final chapter of the disc
I think a new start is a good place for a story to end.
exactly
Clone Wars…
So if your not a fan of the prequels you may need to forget about the film’s for this one but specifically for the crew there and the amazing lighting setup that you guys have I think I themed day of clone wars would be amazing! Throughout the day you have the amazing score of John Williams in the background whilst the light make it more intense again.
You can break down table by table different mini games that effect each other just as Ben described Helms Deep (great shout btw @brennon). As it’s an IP that most of us are in love with it would be great fun to add your own fluff to the battle and the characters involved
As more of a hobbyist than a gamer I would also love to see mixed up the armies and awesome lighting each Jedi character have its own light up lightsaber like this one https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/271057-luke-and-vader-saber-mod/ to make the stand out
Legion rules already exist so it would just be a case of applying it large-scale
With Legion doing Clone Wars this year that might not be as crazy as it sounds.
Avalon Hill did a solo boardgame of the raid many moons ago which I remember being good
Oooh I would love to get that, do you know what it was called @torros?
Just Raid on St Nazaire https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1425/raid-st-nazaire. I think it was released a few years back as an ASL module
Holy crap it is expensive!!
It’s over 30 years old now
Update; I have found it on Tabletop Simulator on Steam if anyone is interested:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1161482296&searchtext=raid+on+st+nazaire
Tabletop Simulator is only £15 and there appear to be several AH games there including Squad Leader and the ASL starter kits 😉
Would do the rescue of Mussolini from the fortress in Italy in 28 mm using the reich buster troop generation for the allies and have German Heroes buffing troops on the rescue side much like the idea tha @warzan had for Saint Marie
Would need a fair few house rules for stat/ troop composition and would have to lean heavily on games like flames of war and bolt action some Osprey book as well…..those guys do so much background investigation!
The only problem with that is the same problem a lot of Colonial Games have. No one died.
The rescue of Mussolini was an utter success and not a shot was fired which would make for a pretty boring game or Reichbusters. It would be impossible to replicate and the best you could do is an “Inspired By” type of game which is fine, taking inspiration from history and making my own scenario’s is 90% of what I do.
Or things like Blood River where Boers fought the Zulu (1836) and lost only 3 men wounded compared to hundreds dead, things like that are almost impossible to wargame without just turning them into boardgames, of course there’s nothing wrong with that.
My first introduction to war games was via Avalon Hill and their sublime Squad Leader so for me I would love to do the scenarios from the game with miniatures rather than cardboard chits. I would think that this would be relatively easy with Flames of War.