Weekender XLBS: Which Battle Would You Re-Create On The Tabletop?
February 3, 2019 by lloyd
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The Battle of Coruscant from the old X-Wing series of novels from the pre-Disney Eu – Wedge Antilles and Rogue Squadron attempting to liberate the capital planet of The Empire, still one of the most heavily fortified planets in the GFFA, even a number of years after the death of Palpatine. Specifically the mission to shut down the layers of planetary defense shields where one team is tasked with capturing a giant urban construction droid (literally the size of a building that eats old structures and spits out a new one behind it) to re-direct into the main shield control hub, whilst another in Z-95 Headhunters take to the skies to take out key relays, all whilst defending against swarms of TIE Fighters and coping with the artificial thunderstorm created both as cover and to further disrupt the planetary shields.
I could see X-wing (obviously) being used for the aerial engagement, and then Imperial Assault for the assault on the construction droid, with some extra rules to represent the individual Rogues and the environmental effects of the storm…
I’m listing two games that would be pull me away from Star Wars Legion, 40k, Armada, and so forth. One I don’t have any mini’s (the Historical), and one needing a set of rules with some ‘campy’ movie moments.
Historical – modern:
Battle of Mogadishu. Delta Force, 75th Army Rangers, and waves of Somali militiamen. You have starting objectives and the need to get them out of the city vs. your opponent trying to make your entire force combat ineffective.
Or
Fantasy and somewhat ‘campy’.
Army or Darkness siege scene. Skeleton Deadites, demons, witches, peasants, knights, a combat car, a chainsaw, and one boom stick.
ohh God I totally forgot about the Army of Darkness that would be flipping amazeballs!!!! lol
Great choice regarding Mogadishu, @daegren – and there are people who have come out with wargame and supplements for this.
Strategy & Tactics: Modern War ran an article on this a while ago with fantastic, accurate maps (some of the first accurate maps of the battle area published) and associated wargame.
Daniel McGrath and Kings’s College did “Day of the Rangers” on Boardgame Geek.
And for miniatures: We have “Maalintii Rangers” for Skirmish Sanguin.
https://www.skirmishsangin.com/shop/maalintii-rangers/
We’ve covered this topic in the Sitrep Podcast, but I haven’t tried any of the wargames personally.
Force on Force has a “Day of the Rangers” supplement book which is amazing. I’ve played almost all the scenario’s (using a friends miniatures) as both sides and we never had a bad game. It feels very different to Iraq/Afghanistan games with giant mobs appearing out of nowhere high on Khat and being thrown away because if you don’t suicide charge them you run out of minis to use as new reinforcements.
You know I totally forgot about that one, @elessar2590 , even though I love Force on Force and even mentioned Day of the Rangers in our FoF series back in 2016. Good call!
@warzan If you want to consider 2mm for Waterloo then have a look at https://forwardmarchstudios.com. You buy the the STL files from him
He’s starting to do some buildings and seems pretty open to suggestions. On his webpage while he is still tinkering with the buildings is that you buy one of his from shapeways and because their expensive just make a latex mould from it and cast your own
excellent stuff @Torres!
For me I’d love to do the Mirkwood spider battle in 28mm on a 3ft square table and the dwarves and Bilbo have to get off the far / opposite edge to the one they started started on, or again a 28mm recreation of Naseby from the ECW (I live in Northamptonshire so it’s also local history), and I have written my own ruleset for this period.
Lastly, one for Ben, I’d love to do Redwall using Burrows and Badgers rules.
Mirkwood would make an amazing experience!
Any idea on rules/mechanics for a Mirkwood game?
( Apologies for butting in ),but off the top of my head,how would Bolt Actions ” dice / token in a bag ” feel ? Or maybe Mantics The Walking Dead ? TWD would need a little tweak though i reckon …
I would run it using Warmaster or something like Lords and Lands
the walking dead one for movement makes sense. You could even add the luck dice to see if they make noise .
For Mirkwood, just use the rules and profiles from the Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game and combine it with kantor72’s suggestion for the Walking Dead movement.
You would start it off with all the dwarfs captured and Bilbo having to sneak around and free them. Once freed, you would either have a race to escape, or see if you can stay alive against a tide of spiders until the elves turn up. So one part careful stealth, one part frantic race for survival.
You would need to add some random elements in to make Bilbo’s Ring a little less OP. Maybe a random chance every so often that it will slip from his finger, attracting the spiders to him until he can find it again. Bilbo would also be able to make distractions to lure spiders away, which I would call the “Attercopp” mechanic.
Rod Hull had to carry Emu because the poor bird had his knees shot out in the war. Thats why he was so aggressive because he was having flashbacks of his experiences.
lol
@warzan for the siege of the embassy you’re looking at Spectre Operations as the rules set covers breach & clear as well as unalert and alert game mechanics, a new edition of the rules coming soon. Black Site Studios has just announced a 4ft long multi-level ship which you could emulate the opening mission for COD:MW
COD:MW Mission – https://youtu.be/uGVNJCKyJ-M
Black Site Studios: https://www.facebook.com/blacksitestudiosterrain
Awesome stuff @grimwolfuk 🙂
I’m really interested in how initial insertion is handled.
As many of these types of operation live or die on the element of surprise. 🙂
For the initial deployment for a ship insertion, you could have a number of different ways inc. a helicopter, submarine then scuba to the ship or fast zodiac boats you could even do a HALO Jump and part of the dice rolls could be to see if that land on the ship or in the water. If you are using the spectre rules they include rules for weather and night time.
For a building insertion, it depends on the time fo play you want, you could have what is called a dynamic entry very loud and fast or stealth entry. The most obverse dynamic entry on camera is the embassy insertion by the SAS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKi5AvTbYBM
Justin, Warren, Az & Leo – you’re gits!!! I hate the lot of you!!! All in Gung-Ho late pledge for Reichbusters!! I tried to resist, I trrriiiiiiiied so HARD!! Failed!! Gits the bloody lot of you!!!!! Stupid damned play throughs, stupid awesome new addon stuffs, stupid damn FANTASTIC looking game!! Thanks to you lot I will be living off dollar Ramen at Adepticon!!
Blinding weekend for the Weekenders – really great shows lads – thanks a million and a very happy sunday to yez all……… you gits!!! 😉
One of us,one of us,one of us…..
Didn’t hasbro make the family game of contacting the dead called “ ouija “ ?
yup. The mystic spirit game for all the family 😀
Battle of Rethem and Overloon.
I’d also be up for the seige of dros delnoch. Or you could use from legend of deathwalker the defence of the shrine of oshikai. It’s set in the middle of a desert. The attacking force needs to sack the shrine. The only water source available to the attacking force is in a rocky area. So the defence has to choose how much to split his forces. The longer he defends the water source the weaker the attacking force becomes or at some point has to give up entirely. But the weaker he defends at the shrine the more likely he’s to be overrun.
For the battle of Thermopylae I’d like to pull it back a level and also have the naval battle impacting the game. If the Persian ships had decisively won at that point it would have given them other options to outflank the pass.
The Emu War was a real thing @dignity ,it’s just some of the facts @warzan presented were from the ” Warren School of History “……
Completely accurate he got it off the Internet 😊
Of course @Gerry ,but with a @warzan twist added in…
lol
How about the attack on the Death Star from ” A New Hope ” using X-Wing or the attack on the second Death Star from ” Return of the Jedi ” using X-Wing and Armada.
Their is a ruleset developed by the community that you can find on Board game geek that allows you to recreate the trench run. It had several revision to balance the battle and there is a timer where either the rebels destroy the death star or the empire destroys the planet. All the rules are available. They even give you info on how to build a mini death star trench.
Cheers @turbocooler ,i didn’t know about that.Time to get a message to a friend of mine who has a very substantial X-Wing collection.
Here is the link to the rules. It is still being actively updated as you can see from the comments. https://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/120061/death-star-trench-run-2nd-edition
Even if you are no longer playing X-Wing from a competitive point of view, this is excellent scenario to play.
Want more, try out Heroes of the Aturi Cluster – Co-operative Rebel Campaign — http://dockingbay416.com/campaign/
I believe these are both great X-Wing campaigns. There is a Scarif set of rules but I do not have a link and there is someone who linking X-Wing and Legion games together but that is still a work in progress.
You mentioned the Emu War….. You Just Made an Enemy For Life My Friends 🙂 🙂 🙂
Australia didn’t have Cavalry we had Light Horse which aren’t Cavalry they’re Mounted Infantry (No Swords and they dismounted to fight) but they did wear the iconic Emu Feather after the more expert riders chased down emu’s and plucked their feathers while on horseback. The rest is spot on. Although to be fair the Australian Light Horse did Cavalry better than any other Cavalry Regiment from any army in either World War. They’re the one’s who charged Beersheba made famous in the movie “The Light Horsemen”.
Emu’s can absolutely kill you but if you think they’re bad look up “Cassowary”.
“In my mind it would be amazing to play the 300 at Thermopylae”
There’s your Problem. How fun would it be to play a single German Squad trying to hold out against the entire D-Day Landings? How fun would it be to play as One T-34 against a German Division?
The other 15000-ish Greeks took part in that Battle and if I may tap you in here @oriskany I think Thermopylae would work better as a Hex and Counter Game in which the entire Greek peninsular is represented and the Battle at the Pass is just a part of a bigger war. There were no Elephants at Thermopylae. Elephants were introduced by Alexander after he came across them in India which was after the Battle of Thermopylae.
@lloyd many armies did just look at one another across the river. An opposed landing is absolutely a last resort and is only ever done in the most desperate of circumstances. It’s the same as storming a castle, it was only done when absolutely necessary.
Quelle Affair is a Divisional Level Game so it could be taken down a few pegs. If you broke those tokens into their composite Brigades and then further into their composite Battalions. So for example the British First Division gets made from One Counter to Eight Counters of Foot and Three of Artillery.
I would go a step further and break the Battle into the Hex Map and La Haye Sainte as a proper Tabletop Wargame. I would recommend using Osprey’s Chosen Men which is extremely similar to @avernos Zulu Game. The German’s in La Haye Sainte give you just as many “Heroes” to lead your units as the British at Rorke’s Drift and the short book (less than three hours as an audiobook) will give you everything you need to set it up. I would be willing to ship over some minis for both sides if you want to go down that route. You could have two players outside playing the game and sending written letters to the people playing the hex and counter game asking for reinforcements/keeping them up to date with what’s going on. The turns could be synchronised or not depending on how long a game takes.
If you’re interested in Saint Nazier I highly recommend the Book “Churchill’s Secret Warriors/ The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” it’s a fantastic book about the Secret Parts of the war and covers Saint Nazier in pretty good detail as well as a dozen other scenario’s for your “Reich Busters” style of game play. Norwegian Commando’s dropped into Norway and forced to survive in the dead of winter while avoiding detection, British Commando’s blowing up Mountain Railways in Greece and Jedburgh Teams leading French Resistance Fighters slowing down German Divisions on D-Day to name a few.
Force on Force would also be a good option for Saint Nazier, it’s basically built for Special Forces raids.
Personally I’d love to recreate all of Flashman’s Battles. Storming Pirate Stronghold’s in Borneo alongside the White Raja, Escaping the Indian Mutiny, Escaping from Slave catches with a slave girl he stole then sold then attempted to escape with, running from the Cossacks in Russia after Balaclava, fighting the Taiping in China, Fighting at Little Bighorn and all the rest. That would be a brilliant set of games.
I still have to try out the scenarios that TooFatLardies did for Sharpe before I start looking for ways to represent Sir Harry’s misadventures.
Apologies for the Wall of Text.
Well officially my Battle would be
“La Haye Saint” and I’d use a modified/stolen version of Gerry’s Zulu War game to do it.
I’ll second ‘Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’, so many scenario possibilities that would suit the ‘Reichbusters’ mechanic in one book;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Churchills-Ministry-Ungentlemanly-Warfare-Mavericks/dp/1444798987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549199641&sr=8-1&keywords=churchills+ministry+of+ungentlemanly+warfare
I’ve read all of Giles Milton’s books and has to be in my too 3 favourite authors
Thanks @elessar2590 . Agree about the elephants, and the additional Greeks at Thermopylae. The number I’ve seen is 4000 total (The “300” Spartans were only a tiny percentage of the troops actually engaged here). A quick check and I’m finding some people put this number as high as 7000.
An operational-level campaign wargame based on the Second Persian Invasion would be interesting to see. Let’s see what the community comes up with. And I don’t mean post games from the web, I mean actually designs or plays. 😀
@warzan There are two battles I would like to recreate on the tabletop, both are set in China but in two totally different time periods.Both have films made about them as well.
The first is the Battle of Red Cliffs, a very famous battle just before the Three Kingdom period. Fought in the winter of 208/9 AD between the aloud forces of Liu Bei and Sun Quan against the numerically superior forces of Cao Cao. The battle is regarded as one of the largest naval battles in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd0bqLQrtdE
The second is set in WW2 in the later stages of the battle of Shanghai. It’s known as the the Defense of Sihang Warehouse. 423 Chinese Nationalists hold out for approximately 6 days against the Japanese 3rd Division. At the end the Chinese suffered 10KIA 37 wounded, the Japanese suffered 200+ KIA wounded has been estimated to be close to 1000, also several Japanese armoured cars were destroyed and damaged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG9vvXztge4
I’d play Red Cliff using a mass battle system, and Sihang Warehouse using Bolt Action rules. I’ve written an article about Sihang for the next issue of Irregular magazine.
Two stunning choices right there!
I’m looking at doing a skirmish level game of Sihang warehouse later this year. I need to build some terrain and build up my Chinese forces, looking at getting some Chinese from Copplestone, as I’ve been converting Warlord Japanese with German infantry and it’s taking longer than expected.
Any wargame that brings in the Far East is always great, in World War II, in ancients, any period really. It’s literally “half the world” that doesn’t get enough attention when it comes to historical writing, media, wargames, anything.
Well done! 😀 😀
It helps having one half of my family being Chinese, so a lot of famous historical events and people get mentioned and this prompts me to do some resesrch.
Thanks for the show guys, feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment with the hobby but the weekenders keep me going.
Recently I have been watching the Sharpe Series again which I have not seen since I was a kid so as that is fresh in my mind I would love to play some skirmish level waterloo battles and paint up and play with some 95th Rifles (I am sure this already exist)
I would love to play out the Sharpes Mission (season 4 episode 3) where they take out the French Gun Powder store, breaking it into the sneaking in, taking over the fort and then with a small force holding off the French while the rest can escape and fuse (timer) runs down and blows the store. I think that could be fun.
I really have to get a chance to watch the Sharpes episodes! (just went by me at the time)
Stick in there hobbywise mate, what is appealing to you at the moment?
@warzan I am sure it can be found for cheap on dvd but I have been picking up the seasons for a couple of quid on Amazon Video.
Hobbywise I think I it comes down to missing the adult interaction, I play mostly with my kids and I love it but being kids getting a game on is not always their top priority and I want them to want to play rather than because it is Dad always asking.
Pretty much my own fault I am not great in new situations so I could join a club but always feel that is a selfish thing to do as that is a night not at home and my job can already be quite demanding. But on the other hand when I remember back to things like the boot camps they have been the best times in the hobby I have had.
Realise now I have mostly typed a bunch of drivel above so will stop, but anyway in an odd place that I am sure will pass.
Thanks for responding.
So before i give my “Battle i’d love to see”, i just want to pull Justin up on a small point that made me wince, especially considering he’s reading the 40K books. The bridge of an Imperial Starship is not called the bridge, its called the “Strategium!”. My autistic itch has now been scratched!
As for my Battle i’d like to see, i’d like to see the “Battle for Seattle” from the sci-fi film of the same name. I thought the film was fantastic and really under-appreciated at the time.
You could play it in one of two ways, you could either choose a particular scene from the film to play through, for example the initial invasion when there is confusion on the part of marine forces as to what they are up against or the final scene in the film where the marine forces are making a push to take out the alien command and control module.
The other way you could play it would be to stretch it out over a multi part campaign incorporating the full narrative of the film from the initial invasion through to the final command module assault.
The biggest difficulty i can see in this scenario is that i’m not sure what minis you’d use to represent the alien forces from the film, maybe Tau from 40K or even droids from the star wars series. It could even be a good opportunity for an enterprising person/company to make a kick-starter to create a new range of minis from the film (assuming license could be acquired).
Great episode guys and great topic to chew over. Look forward to seeing what develops from this thought exercise and more importantly what lets plays we get to see in the future.
intresting weekender guys. Well I was going to say the fort battle out of Starship Troopers but you mentioned it and ya I suppose it would be just guard vs tyranids, but couldn’t you mix it up by adding in genestealer as well(sorry dont know a lot about 4ok only just getting into? but the Starship figure games waste bad.
If not above may the Battle of Ostagar out of the Dragon Age video games where the king meants his end? set in woods, open areas and ruins
For a historical game, I’d like to try The Battle of Castle Itter in 1945; Americans, French ex POWs and German Wehrmacht troops defend an Austrian castle from the SS;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_for_Castle_Itter
For a fantasy battle, how about the battles for Armengar or Sethanon in the 3rd Rift War Saga book Darkness at Sethanon? In the Battle of Sethanon there is a regular siege type game but within the depths of the city a hero prince has to fight the necromancer commander of the enemy forces who is using the battle as cover to unleash an ancient hidden enemy. At the same time the greatest warrior and his dragon, along with two powerful wizards, have travelled to an alternative realm to battle the hidden evil the necromancer is trying to release to prevent it breaking free into the mortal realm and destroying the city and then the world. So a tabletop siege with two overlapping ‘Boss Fights’ that can change the outcome of the game.
And a big up to the Legend ideas, still one of my favourite fantasy stories.
Great choice, @damon ! Hope you got some sleep!
I had wondered if anyone would mention Castle Itter, it’s a fascinating action.
The problem with Armengar is the impossible standard that Black Guy set for the defense. Seems cruel on the players to have to live up to that 🙂
Yeah, true, but as an asymmetric game it might work, Murmandamus, as a necromancer wants more deaths to build his power for the real objective.
Black Guy knows he can save some of the citizens, but how long does he wait before ordering the evacuation to delay the invasion of the Kingdom?
It’s Andy here from Flatpack Forces and the suggestion of Waterloo at 1:1 is one that I have been looking into for FpF so you have hit the bullseye as far as I am concerned.
Including Blucher there were about 250,000 troops involved and I had already done the sums for production and that is doable although the smaller the scale the easier of course.
Ground scale is however a different thing. At approx 3 miles square gives 4,828 metres.
So… 28mm is 1:56 being 86 metres square, not really practical
15mm is about half of that but still very big
and going down to 2mm on the basis that this is ten times smaller than 20mm which is 1:72 still means just over 6m square – this could be done but it is still pretty big and kind of along the lines of the Brigade and Battle Group Trainer that I remember from the eighties
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-british-army-of-the-rhine-brigade-and-battle-group-trainer-installation-73397107.html
I did think however that by doing it at say 15mm and splitting the battlefield up into more manageable chunks you could have multiple participants and at the end of the day each participant would get a set of figures from the event.
This is of course a very big undertaking and I was thinking of doing a trial run with a smaller battle but with a lot of colour. Something like the Battle of Hattin
@warcaste
Hi Andy . I think your figures are excellent I know Peter Denis was talking to you on Facebook or at least sending a PM to one another. I think Peters drawings on your MDF figures would look amazing especially as Peters work already have them on strips for easy multibasing
Thanks @torros
Yes I did have a conversation with Peter and I agree with you. In fact his figures were one of the inspirations for getting going.
Whilst not with Peter I am doing some trials for multi rank based ancients, ECW and Napoleonics so more on this soon I hope.
I’ll look forward to seeing those
I’ve been reading about hattin while I work on my 10 mm crusaders. That could be a lot of fun. Plenty going on with objectives and an exhausted force of crusaders
One of the best 6mm Helms Deep table and battle is here –> https://youtu.be/t854cjuBi8k
It was developed with the help of Leven Miniatures
Pretty much the battles from LotR are the ones I would like to create. They are Epic on film and I believe would be fun in miniature form as well.
I just want to point out, that now that you have an FDM and SLA printer, you can make all the hexes you want and there are plenty of free or ready to print purchasable STL file that will give you all the terrain you want.
My brother and I have put the Tabletop Hex Terrain Toolkit (a previous KS) into good use. It is a way to do a lot of Hex bases quickly but it is a messy job and weeks after you are done you are still cleaning up foam bits. I much rather print out my hexes. Something we have done recently as we have broken foam hexes.
It would be interesting do Helms deep but using Tolkien’s original sketches which make it look almost like a Motte
http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/a/a9/J.R.R._Tolkien_-_Helm%27s_Deep_and_the_Hornburg.jpg
Here you go @warzan. if emu’s are justins thing then these might tickle his fancy (I highly doubt it)
The Lobster War from 1961 to 1963 between Brazil and France
Oyster Wars from 1865 until about 1959 between Oyster pirates and Legal watermen
Great Sparrow Campaign from 1958 to 1960 between communist china and “animals of capitalism” (sparrows)
Look up the book named Salt: A World History. The wars around your run of the mill table salt are amazing.
I would love to re-create some of the dragon battles from the Dragonlance books. They always captured my imagination. I have no clue what system would work though.
Would like to play out the movie “The Rock” with Reichbusters type rules or even James Bond led special forces in you “Only Live Twice”. The movie “Outpost” mixes Weird WW2 with modern day mercs. I have a project on the shelf to campaign Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord trilogy (King Arthur) using LOTR Battle Strategy rules and possibly Lion Rampant. One day one day.
Happy Sunday everyone.
Really glad Gerry threw in Legend as I was torn between a few battles and that was one of them.
I think it has huge potential to be an interesting game design with lots of layers.
So that’s leaves me open to do two that have been rattling in my brain for a while.
The first is a house attack in Menzoberranzean from the Dark Elf Trilogy by R A Salvatore. In this matriarchy if you attack another house and kill all it’s family named bloodline members nothing is said and you move up in standing. Each house has various traps and defenses as well as creatures, warriors and wizards. If you fail to kill all the bloodline members your own house is forfeit as the ruling council gather all their forces and crush yours killing all members of your own bloodline.
The second I would like to put forward is the Babylon 5 movie In the Beginning. I would like to start this from the point where Humanity engaged the Minbari to when they reach earth using models and battles. This is a war impossible to win so you are just delaying, trying to buy time. As an additional layer I would like to run a political/diplomatic undercurrent card game as the humans try to sue for peace through the other races.
Great thought provoking subject today. Have a good weekend everyone.
Next the Hen night war’s ?