Scratch One Flat-top!

 Mark was hoping to run Worthington games solo effort 'Scratch One Flat top", a game covering Pacific carrier battles, at this years Virtual Conference of Wargamers (VCOW) back in February. Obviously it is a single player game but we've played loads of these as teams and he wanted to try it out beforehand. The Tuesday/Wednesday regulars all pitched up and we gave it a shot.

The playing area and ship reference cards. This is very similar to the Hunt the Bismarck game with large sea areas subdivided into four, ships have flotation points and the option to burn fuel for extra speed. The main difference with the Bismarck game is that the US player commands two carrier Task Forces, Lexington and Yorktown, each with fighter and bomber groups and an assumed surface escort.

Fairly obviously this the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese are trying to invade Port Moresby with their invasion fleet following the track of white dots from Rabaul down to Moresby and the US have to stop them. Somewhere out there are Japanese carriers, whose actions are run by the game system as it is a solo game.

Normally we'd do this sort of thing on Powerpoint, but Mark had run out of time so for Tuesday we prototyped it with a jpg image of the board and updated it using MS Paint.

The CRT. Carrier groups can allocate fighters to CAP and to bomber escort. Bombers just attack things, there are separate CRTs for both and give an idea of the optimum force levels to allocate. The P results are planes lost, and S results are hits on ships. The ship cards show how many fighters and bombers each carrier has remaining. Like the Bismarck game, combat is very abstracted and the fixed rather than proportional nature of the CRT means you are much better off doing big strikes than little ones.

A downside of using MS Paint as a collaboration tool is that it ends up tiny on the shared screen in Zoom. I projected a copy of the map onto my big second screen to keep track of things. We were all US players, I was allocated the role of Admiral and each TF had a Captain and an air group commander.

We set off westwards with the two TFs in adjacent large squares. each carrier can search one adjacent large square, rather oddly this has to be orthogonal.

You can see the TF tracks on the image above after a few turns. Lexington is blue and Yorktown is gold. The Japanese fleet is tracking along its course marked by red blobs, and the big red blob next to Yorktown is a Japanese carrier group! Shokaku and a light carrier (Shohu?).

A carrier battle duly followed which was quite good fun, but annoyingly Lexington couldn't join in as although it was adjacent, it wasn't orthogonally adjacent. That seemed a bit silly to me. Anyway, we came out top, Shokaku was badly damaged and Shohu went down although poor old Yorktown took quite a hammering. Lexington manouvered to try and catch Shokaku, but it slipped away westwards.

We decided to call it a night at that point to have a washup session. In the AAR it turned out that another Japanese fleet carrier had sailed right past us! We had a good discussion about how to better run the game as a remote team game, and the following evening planned to try it with Discord and parallel presentations using Powerpoint and ConceptBoard to handle the unit display. Sadly I wasn't able to make it but I gather it went well.

tbh although I like the concept of the game, I wont be rushing out to buy it as it just seems too abstract to be a decent simulation of carrier warfare (and this from someone who likes Dominion of...) but it is a good way to pass an evening. I like team based decision games, but I could do with slightly fewer unruly Captains!

CALF 2026 28.03

 Back to Tapton Hall, this time to CALF 2026.Why CALF? Well, it is a one day version of the Conference of Wargamers (COW) and a calf is a small cow, so.... 

As a one day event it doesn't have quite the size of the usual COW schedule, and we ended up with around 20 attendees, two plenary games in the morning and half a dozen games over six sessions in the afternoon. There were sign up sheets for the afternoon games. 

Tim briefs the assembled multitudes.

The opening plenary was SWAG (or Silly Weapons Acronym Game). Each team gets four sets of four scrabble letters drawn at random and has to come up with a company name,  a vehicle, an aircraft and  a ship. We were FAGO (Fabrique Armaments Groupe d'Ordennance) and perhaps handicapped ourselves by picking a French Canadian company. 

While our schoolboy French was OK it was not brilliant, though we did christen two of our creations "Quebec" and "Kleber" which used up a couple of awkward letters. 

As with all these sorts of games, it was a good group bonding experience although most of us knew each other anyway. 

Next up was one of John Bs sprawling military political games, big enough for everyone. This one was more military perhaps, covering the attempt to kill or capture Tito in May 1944. Titos mountain fortress is above. 

The German assault force consisted of Brandenburgers and 500 SS Fallschirmjagsr Bn. The whole operation came under the direction of 2nd Panzer Army (General Rendulic played by Ian). 

And motoring up from the south, a mechanised relief column, negotiating Partisan infested country.

7th SS Prinz Eugen Division, a wierd mix of SS auxiliaries (John A) , Croatians (Rob) and some Heer armour. The whole lot was under Heer command (Lloyd). 

I was cast as Admiral Canaris, Head of the Abwehr, and my main job was to promote the role of the Abwehr, support the Army and do down the SS and Luftwaffe. Goring (Chris K) and Himmer (Jim) naturally had different views. I also had to locate sympathisers for the plot against Hitler.... 

The German High Command! Ian rendered us into wicked Germans with Grok AI. Himmler, Rendulic, Goring and Canaris. Goerings yellow socks are hilarious, but at least we all have the right number of fingers.

Goerings airforce. Gliders, Ju 52s and various ground attack planes. Naturally there wasn't enough lift capacity for everyone so we went for four companies delivered by glider on the first turn, then everyone else by parachute once the Junkers had refuelled. 

Two companies of Brandenburgers at one entrance, two companies of SS at the other. Resistance was heavy! 

Meanwhile the ground force slogged forwards. The armour left the infantry behind racing to relieve the Paras. I'd also managed to approach no less than two extra co-conspirators ready ready to save Germany. I was sure our OPSEC was perfect. 

Things got a bit desperate in the mountains as Partisan armour turned up. In a shock development, the Brandenburgers captured no less than Randolph Churchill (Churchills grandson), as he was a partizan liaison office at the time. We also captured a ton of intelligence documents, but wily Tito (Russell) escaped down a secret tunnel.

Aided by masses of airpower, the relief column finally broke through 

And just in time as the Paras were on their last legs. In the confusion, Churchill escaped but was shot by the SS. Everyone claimed credit for the successes, while blaming everyone else for the failures. Sadly the two patriot/traitorous Generals were arrested and shot by the SS as they had left their personal briefings lying around to be read by the prying eyes of the Gestapo. 

And what of Operation Valkyrie? Well, it was a sadly depleted group who mounted a coup in July, however magnificent dice rolling saw Hitler killed! Unfortunately for the conspirators, Himmler out manouvered Goering and was made Fuhrer. 

That was loads of fun, and apologies to all the other player roles I skipped over. You can only interact with so many people at these things.

After all the fun in the morning, I ran Operation Battleaxe in the afternoon. I'll do that as a separate report. 

Ian again enlivened proceedings by turning the Allied command into action figures! 

There were three games in the later session. 

Ian ran "Der Tag" covering Jutland. 

Russell ran Labyrinth, the elaborate and ambitious board game on The War on Terror. 

While I took part in James 'Soviet Wargame'. As part of his PhD research , James has uncovered a set of rules used for training by the Soviet Army, and this game was to give them a try. 

In some ways it was a fairly typical CPX and the training intent was to reinforce doctrine and the use of operational norms. The command team was  divided into four 'cells', Intelligence (Alex and Chris), Frontal Aviation (Pete), Artillery (John and Jerry) and Operations (me, Rob and Tim). 

We were handed a Class I Motor Rifle division (all nine battalions in BMPs!) and told to plan the first phase of an attack on a NATO position in the Fulda Gap. The cloth is a print of the actual terrain. 

There are seven NATO locations, five in the front line and two in the rear (an HQ and a 'choke point'). We had to allocate forces, fire missions and strike packages to each, coordinate the different arms and designate reserves for exploitation. The Intelligence Cell gave us some indication of the enemy forces. 

This was a straightforward 'fight over the coloured pencils' planing session as the different cells tried to allocate their assets in accordance with an overall plan. We each had to complete a planning sheet with force allocations within 45 minutes, which is a lot harder than it sounds. 

We went with a very conventional attack with two Motor Rifle Regiments up, concentrating two battalions each in sectors 2 and 3, sector 3 also got divisional engineer support as it contained a road. One battalion each in sectors 1 and 4 with a screening company in 5. In reserve we kept the Tank Regiment and most of the third MRR. Each assault battalion was supported by a tank company from the regimental tank battalion. 

Having all read out our plans, duly noted by Intelligence, it was time for resolution at which point we all became 'umpires'. The various combat elements have a numerical rating built up bottom up fashion from assigned weapon values in a very similar fashion to Dupuy. The basic currency is the "T55" worth 1, an AK armed rifleman is worth 0.04 and a Chieftan 1.72, for comparison. 

Fortunately we had pre calculated tables for the various formations (iirc a BMP battalion was around 38), these were compared to the CVs of the defenders modified by posture and terrain and a final combat odds ratio resulted. The desired ratio for a successful ground attack was between 3:1 and 5:1, but we weren't told that beforehand. There were no random factors, but obviously from a player pov we didn't know in detail what the enemy had, so it was a case of throw in what looked sensible and hope for the best.

The air went in first, but it was too penny packeted to have much effect, particularly against entrenched defenders. Petes brave pilots suffered 50% losses attacking the HQ are as it was stacked with AA. The artillery barrage did cause some suppression, which was helpful. 

Finally we resolved the ground assaults. Fortunately our supporting attacks on sectors 1 and 4 had enough strength to overcome the defenders (Bundeswehr and an M113 Company respectively) but suffered 20% losses with the defenders losing 30%. As we were putting whole battalions up against companies, our actual losses were far higher than the defenders, one reason not to overcommit.

In sector 3 we achieved 5.1:1 against an armoured cavalry squadron with Sheridans and got told off for over committing - we could have held back a couple of companies and avoided the resultant losses. But in sector 2 we only just scraped a 3:1 against a well entrenched mech infantry company supported by M60s. The Intel boys had told us they were dug in, but we weren't paying enough attention.

The screening company (unsurprisingly) stalled in its attack on an Air Cav company supported by Cobras, but while it suffered 40% losses, it still inflicted 20% on the US. 

Having done all that, we had to decide whether the division would commit its reserve or keep going. Given that four out of five sectors had succeeded, it was time to keep going. Units are fought out at 40% losses, so the first echelon still had some fight in it. 

And that was it for that phase - the game runs on decision points, the next set of decisions would be when the Division hit the next US defence line.

We made an umpires assessment of where the next US defence line would be - unsurprisingly on the reverse slope of the ridge, and then moved up the Soviet units. The big red counters are Motor Rifle Battalions, the purple counters are Tank battalions and the orange ones are attached companies.

Assaulting the ridge will be the next set of decision points, and played out at COW in the summer. Finally each cell was asked to give feedback on the performance of another cell, we were asked to comment on the artillery and as far as possible everyone offered constructive criticism.

That was absolutely fascinating, and hugely enjoyable. As regular readers will know, I'm a big fan of military training games and have played quite a few. The main thing which struck me was how like Dupuy (Numbers, Predictions and War) it was in terms of the combat resolution, even the terrain and posture modifiers were similar and I imagine the unit rating algorithm was similar even if the numbers were different. The training aim was to teach doctrine and norms, and if we'd known what the norms were beforehand, we would have done a much better job. I subsequently had a look at FM-100-1 and realised we'd both messed up the artillery and air fire plan, and misallocated the MRRs - we should have had all three in line, designated as main or secondary attack. But that is the point of the game, great stuff and I'm looking forward to the published version. It will be very interesting to compare it to the similar British and US ones.

That wrapped up a very enjoyable day out, so many thanks to the organisers, game presenters and other players. To cap it off, I sold a lot more on the Bring and Buy than I came away with. Result!

VCOW 2026

The Virtual Conference of Wargamers (VCOW) started during lockdown in 2020 and was so successful it has persisted as an annual event in winter as a supplement to the main summer conference. Here is the general session list. Some are open to all attendees to just turn up, some need to be booked but all are run via Zoom and Discord.

The VCOW 2026 session list is above, but that image is a bit hard to read, so here is a summary.

Friday

• Virtual Battlefield Tour – Defence of the Realm 2026
• Welcome & Introduction
• Battle of Britain II 2026
• The Peninsular War
• Solitaire to Multi Player
• The Eagle’s Den

Saturday

• Tactical Wargame ‘Accuracy’
• When Governments Play
• The Iron Curtain Descends
• 1066
• The Coral Sea
• The Omega Men
• Nuclear Wargames of Cold War 1
• Of AIs and Metaverses
• Eagle’s Flight
• Beneath the Med

Sunday

• Practical Game Implementation
• If We Dare…
• US Army Wargaming
• Firearms in Popular British Music

Conference Closes

Some of those game titles may sound a bit familiar, as we've played them already on our regualr Tuesday night sessions! I gave those a miss so other people could enjoy them. I'd also picked up a bug on my African travels and was feeling quite rough, so didn't want to commit to any booked sessions. 

Despite not being very well, I attended several sessions though, first up was Micheal D'Alessandros excellent Virtual Battlefield Tour of the UKs air defences. A mixture of virtual trips around radar sites, control centres and gun sites from WW1 and WW2 and an overview of the current critical national infrastructure, air defences and likely enemy attack options.

It also included a consideration of situation when the UK was last under sustained cruise and ballistic missile attack - 1944/45, comparisons with readiness and resilience then and now.

I thought it was a fabulous session, very interesting and thought provoking and with links to tons of (public domain) material on the current situation. I'm frankly amazed that the RAF has as many fighters as it does. 

On Saturday I attended Nick Riggs session on Tactical Wargame Accuracy. Nick had posted two different surveys around various wargames groups and forums and this session was a summary of the results. Some of my research gular readers may even have participated in these. 

There was brief summary of the research aims of the surveys. I'll skip over a lot of the slides, and just pick out one or two.

And (many) charts showing the results. This was one of the headline ones.

And its converse about what they get wrong, with some write in stuff too.

Areas prioritised for improvement.

And some not very surprising conclusions. I thought the whole thing was very interesting, although obviously different people will have different ideas what a 'tactical' wargame is about. As I've often said on the blog, personally I think it is one of the hardest level of warfare to game due to both the intense fog of war and confusion, as well as very variable psychological impacts. Once you get to battalions and above it is much more about number crunching and eg the DSTL force ratio/posture/success tables are aimed at battalion/brigade sized engagements.

In the afternoon it was time for a cheery session, 'The Omega Men', a discussion panel around post apocalyptic games which become increasingly popular from the 1970s. 

This sort of thing = Twilight 2000, Aftermath, Car Wars etc. We had a series of short presentations followed by breakout group discussions and feeback sessions around particular topics eg what was the appeal?

I like the mix of presentation and interaction in these sorts of sessions, but I have to confess I've actually played very few of these games at all - maybe Car Wars and Zombies. I prefer to get my post apoc fix from books, TV, films and playing computer games, particularly the outstanding Fallout series. It was interesting to reflect on the enduring popularity of these games though, presumably the result of most of being fed a never ending diet of disaster films/TV shows and growing up the shadow of the Bomb and climate breakdown.

Omega Men was followed by an even more cheery session on nuclear wargaming! This covered both hobby and professional games over several decades. Dr Curry had actually given this talk in the US as a prelude to a session on modern (as in current) nuclear wargaming, in a world which is rapidly moving away from MAD etc.  

This was one of the hobby games I didn't have, although have (and still have) quite a few nuclear wargames including the classic 'Ballistic Missile'. The professional games were perhaps more interesting, although I've played a few of the declassified ones and it was nice to get namechecked for my contribution to the re-published '1956 British Army Tactical Wargame' - which isn't tactics but operations, and includes tactical nuclear weapons.

A lot of the professional games were committee/decision type games although some were technical ones around strike planning. During the session we were presented with some of the decision points in the games to work on as groups eg in 1961, the DDR shoots down a NATO cargo plane in the Berlin air corridor. What is your response? An interesting problem as 1961 is pre Berlin Wall, there is no Kremlin hotline and NATO powers didn't recognise the DDR government.

I particularly enjoyed the missile allocation sub-game with missile availability and reliability rates, how many (nuclear) missiles do you allocate to each of 20 targets to ensure their destruction. You can try that at home, missile availability 75% and reliability 75% (which is wildly optimistic based on test firings of Polaris).

It was a really good session, and the very short group activities which interspersed it helped to break it up and made it very engaging.

A bit of lighter relief was Nick Riggs 'Practical Wargame Implementation', which was essentially a demo of how to set up a game from scratch on Table Top Simulator. it was something I vaguely looked at during lockdown as a means to run remote games, and tbh, setting up something from scratch looks horrendous. Fortunately, there are zillions of pre-done games which other peopl have made, which saves a lot of hard work, and the user interface for actually manipulating the pieces is very nice indeed.

I think for around 15 quid, that is well worth a pop.

I also attended James Langhams session on US Army Wargaming, 1948 to 2019. I'm already familiar with the some of the older games which were essentially TEWTS or staff rides (often across ACW battlefields!), but the umpires guide is very handy as it includes umpire notes for resolving combat etc.

The core of the discussion was around the pros and cons of the 1970s era Dunn Kempf rules, largely based on the modern WRG set, as well as touching on 'Firefight' and the Canadian Army's 'Contact'. I do have a copy of an operational set of US Cold War rules too, whose title escapes me right now.

The core of James argument was that the rules were overly focussed on technology, with little account taken of quality and command issues. Given DK are based on WRG, that is entirely reasonable. Their big strength was that it gave individual units the ability to fight out hypothetical engagements in their actual area of operations using tables modelled on their assigned areas in Germany, which they hadn't really had before.

There was a really good discussion around this one, although it is possible we may have got a bit side tracked as to when NATO noticed the T62 had been superceded by the T64 and T72. Interestingly the 1978 British Army Tactical Wargame was still putting Chieftans up against T62s, so it wasn't just the Americans....

That was followed by a more light hearted examination of firearms references in popular music from the 1940s to the twenty first century. My humble contribution being 'Armalite Rifle' by the Gang of Four, and I was cursing as I belatedly remember the Clash referencing both Thompson SMGs ('Tommy Gun') and Stens, as in the line 'Sten guns in Knighstbridge' from '1977'.

That was a great (virtual) conference and I'm really glad I could attend, particularly after missing COW 2025.

633 Squadron - a work in progress

 We've started work on next years WD Display Team (North) participation game.

Readers of a certain age will recall seeing this film at the cinema in the 1960s, and then endlessly repeated on TV in the 1970s. The film was based on the book of the same name, although it was moved to 1944 in the film from 1943. I saw it at the cinema when it came out with my parents, and my father (ex RAF) was very excited to see so many real Mosquitos in the air. 

It features a plucky squadron of Mosquitos being tasked to attack a secret Nazi weapons factory in occupied Norway at the end of a steep and heavily defended fjord. The final attack run scenes down the fjord of course inspired the attack run sequence on the Death Star in Star Wars.

Anyway, from the fertile minds on Mark F and John B comes our offering for the forthcoming show season, a game of 633 Squadron! We'd set up a playtesting and development session to work on it. 

While we waited for the assembled multitudes to...assemble, John entertained us with various recently repainted (but very, very old) 1/300th scale helicopters as well as his natty RAF cap.

The  game was played on this sketch layout. Nine areas down a winding fjord, and nine Mosquitos in the squadron. John had converted this to Powerpoint so we could try it out. It is a solo game with the player commanding the squadron as they commence their run down the fjord.

Anything involving the RAF is an excuse to field a ridiculous array of headgear, Jim won with his proper leather flying helmet. I'm afraid I just had my Luftwaffe side cap on backwards! Wing Commander Luddite got to go first.

The squadron moves as a group down the fjord, using the tried and tested 'play your cards right' mechanism to successfully advance to each area. This is a combination of skill and luck as you have to guess if the next card in the deck is higher (or lower) than the current one. I hit on the bright idea of it being literally 'higher' (as in pull back on the stick) or 'lower' (as in dive).

Get it wrong and one of your planes is blasted out of the sky by Flak. 

On this particular run the heroic pilots have made it all the way to area seven and only lost one plane! Typically you always lose a few.

Once you make it to the target, the surviving planes drop 'earthquake bombs' to try and dislodge the cliff face over the secret rocket base. The chance of success increases with each subsequent hit, but you generally need around four hits to drop the cliff.

After that the surviving planes attempt to escape, running the risk of being hit by Flak, intercepted by fighters or simply crashing into the vertiginous walls of the fjord. This bit was pretty lethal and I made a couple of suggestions on how to tone it down a bit without adding an extra mechanisms. In the film all the planes crash or are shot down but some of the crew survive. "You can't kill a squadron".

After we'd run it half a dozen times we had a chat about odds of various things happening and a few tweaks and how to go about modelling it. I suspect we won't be doing it with Airfix 1/24th scale Mosquitos, but between us we have a fair few Mosquitos already so I'm sure we can sort something suitable.

Just need to work on the props now and hopefully it will be ready for Partisan next year. Last weeks mountain building was part of my contribution. 

The Other Partisan 2025

 The WD Display Team (north) recently attended The Other Partisan at the Showground near Newark. We took my 'Alexander the Brief' game along for another outing, and I had also had a short shopping list. 

Even though I was there before 9am, a lot of the other games and trade stands were already set up. Given the thick fog blanketing the area, that was quite impressive, it wasn't a nice drive and the fog hung around until late afternoon.

The WD stand didn't take long to set up. This time I actually remembered to bring the old copies of the WD Journal 'Nugget' as prizes, and the battle board, which I'd forgotten for the SOA conference. We were using John As very posh dice rolling trays too (repurposed wood picture frames, pre lined with felt). We had our usual slot near the Northamptonshire Battlefields Society.

I had a quick run around but I was busy running the game most of the day. I'm sure other people will do detailed photo reports. I liked the look of this large Eastern Front game by Derby Wargames Society.

And this fabulous Vietnam game from North Riding Wargames. The napalm strike had little flashing lights in it and a lovely model of a Skyraider (which irl is an enormous aircraft).

Near to us Chris K had set up his Front Scale 'Invasion of Crete' game using brigade sized bases. He ran various phases of the German assault during the day. It was somewhat less lavish than the Corps Scale version I'd played all day at Patriot Games a few days before. (I will report on that separately).

Meanwhile back on our stand we had some takers for Alex the Brief. Although there were four of us on the stand, I ran all the games. It just seemed easier and the acoustics in the hall were awful. This is the setup for Granicus.

In this iteration of Granicus, all that is left of the Persians are their mercenary hoplites, about to be surrounded as Alexander storms across the river. We ended up running the game about half a dozen times.

Darius' flanks collapse at Gaugamela. In these iterations, Alexander never lost a battle, unlike the outings at Partisan and SOA conference, and Macedonian campaign losses never approached the massive ten achieved by John B. The best performance was three battles won and three units lost, which was pretty good.

Darius got to run away a lot. Here is he is fleeing to Bactria after Gaugamela.

The show attendance was pretty good, it was absolutely packed, and the numbers held up well into the early afternoon, but dropped off sharply after 2.30. We packed up at 1545 after one last session. A permanent feature now seems to be the new 'tabletop sale' in the tented area by the entrance. This is run as a series of slots, so there were new things for sale all day. Some of my colleagues came away with amazing bargains (three complete 6mm armoured trains for £3!).

Back at Crete. The Germans manage to capture Heraklion airfield, but at heavy cost.

My own purchases were quite modest. I was disappointed Brigade Games weren't there as I wanted one of their Vauban forts, however I did score not one but two second hand Matildas and a Stuart, as well as some useful Coat D'Arms colours including a good match for RAF Duck Egg green. I prefer paints in pots to dropper bottles. 

The Matilda, Stuart and Duck Egg green were on my shopping list. The Matildas are Zvezda, and I think the Stuart is a Skytrex M5. Hopefully a bit closer in size to my QRF M3s than the PSC M5 whoppers.

Surprise score of the day was this perfect condition boxed set of Striker. Result! I sold my original set in the late 90s, and paid roughly the same for this one as I sold the original for 25 years ago.... I'm unlikely to ever play it, but I'd much rather have the actual booklets than the PDFs I got from DriveThruRPG.

Many thanks to John A for spotting this on the Bring and Buy.

Even better, the funds raised from Striker (and loads of other stuff on the same stall) go to the SeaWatch foundation. Saving the planet while blasting aliens, what isn't to like.

That was a fun show and and I'm glad the numbers seem to be holding up. I did see some people I knew wandering about as well but didn't have much chance to chat. I didn't get to do as much shopping and browsing as usual either, but what I did manage was fine and the people who played Alexander the Brief appeared to enjoy it. My Macedonians and Persians have been living in their 'show box' for several months now, so I'll be glad to put them back in their proper storage boxes.