Brigade Models 2mm buildings

 Regular readers may recall that I picked up a couple of 2mm buildings from Brigade Models at Hammerhead earlier this year. I finally got around to painting them.

A Roman Temple and 'Fort St Antonio', which I assume is a real place but Google cant find it anywhere. 

The fort is rather more substantial than my 2mm Irregular 'Eighteenth Century Fort' with four well defined bastions, courtyard and buildings. Interestingly it only has gun embrasures on three sides, so I assume it was part of a larger fortified system.

On the rear side are just ramparts and the entrance. The Brigade buildings are printed with quite a rough texture, which is great for repeated layers of drybrushing. I did this in various sandy shades with the walkway and courtyard in khaki and brick tiled roofs. The whole thing was finished off with a very light drybrush of pale sand.

The Roman temple is different to my Langton Greek Temple as it has an enclosed area at one end (shown by the low depth of the recesses between the pillars).

I did this in desert ochre with various extra layers of drybrushing. The recesses between the pillars I just emphasised with black paint. Like the fort this was also cast with a fairly rough surface finish so the texture got picked out nicely.

You can see the contrast with my Langton greek temple, which is hilariously small in comparison (and is done in white marble, which the Greeks favoured).

So while it is still quite small, I can probably get away with using this as a side terrain piece with my 20mm Ancients, something I certainly cant with the Greek one.

The fort will work fine with both my 2mm and 6mm stuff, although normally I'd have it tucked away in a table corner for Almeida or something like that. Here it is with some 6mm H&R frenchmen.

I'm pleased with both of those and impressed with the quality of the Brigade stuff. They make some lovely buildings and I can see I'm going to be buying more of them.

Room at the Inn

 Time for another trip to our on/off early 1980s WW3 series. This time we are joining the plucky socialist heroes of the Czech 15th Motor Rifle Division on their trip through Austria, previously seen here from our last game a couple of years ago: https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2024/04/phaffing-around.html

I really must dig out my central front stuff again, I've not put on a game for almost ten years now, but Tim was running this one with his 6mm toys and NATO Brigade Commander. And yes, he does have all right Czech kit, including wheeled artillery, wheeled 57mm AA guns etc. 

The field of battle, north is left. The River Inn runs down the centre of the screen and the outskirts of Brunau (sp? ) are visible at the top. The entire city is large, so the Czechs are going around it. The Inn also marks the border between Germany and Austria.

We had a pretty good turnout for this one. Pete did the overall plan for the Czechs, I was the division commisar to ensure everyone followed the plan in the correct spirit (and I also ran the divisional assets). Russell commanded a regiment of fearless Czech paratroops, Jim the 68th Motor Rifle Regiment and Terry the (Divisional) 20th Tank Regiment.

The Capitalist Running Dogs were Ian running the Bundeswehr, Micheal the Austrians and John A in overall command.

Our general scheme was to drop the paras at the far end of the bridge, and race to the rescue with the MR Regiment and Tank Regiment, clearing out any annoying pockets of resistance on the way.

As a couple of units I was assigned included traffic control units, I broke out my ancient copy of 'Armies of the Warsaw Pact'. Cheery Soviet traffic regulation troops can be seen on the left, while traffic regulation diagrams and unit march orders are on the right.

As we had no intel on the defences at all, and as we had been thoughtfully supplied with a bridging train, I thought it best to prepare a plan B just in case the paradrop wasn't fully successful....

Diagrams for assault river crossings, there were a couple of suitable sites west of the autobahn bridge with decent deployment areas for the bridging train. The manual did mention preparation of the opposing bank with tactical nuclear weapon fires. I'm sure that will be just fine and dandy.

Tim ran the game with his usual roving eye camera view, which certainly introduces an element of fog of war. Dimly visible in the distance is the head of  Jims MRR while in the foreground, the paras have had quite a decent drop without too much scatter and only discovered one company of German jaegers in the town beside the autobahn.

The explosions are from the Czech preparatory barrage, which was noisy and spectacular but ineffective.

Slightly alarming was what looked like an entire Austrian mechanised battalion in the outskirts of Brunau. An armoured combat team was on a rise overlooking the bridge and an infantry heavy combat team was in the city itself. You can just see Austrian M60s on the ridge above the bridge, accompanied by an AA platoon of Dusters.

Also noisy and spectacular was the unwelcome arrival of an Austrian Saab Draken. Fortunately it got distarcted chasing away the paras Antonovs.

The Czech barrage lands beside the bridge! (luckily not on it), and the Jaegers shoot up one of the para companies. It is hard to see but I've put a PT76 recce company into the village just above the bridge and a company of OT65s onto the river bank at the far end to scout out crossing sites.

More Germans rock up, another Jaeger company and a company of Jagdpanzer Kanone. The M60s and Duster shoot up the paras from across the river.

To everyone amazement, the para AT missile platoon manages to hit and knock out some of the M60s. Two more companies of paras assault the Jaegers in the town and destroy them, only to run into their own artillery barrage. The para commander clearly didn't read the fire plan. The paras took losses and hit the dirt.

The lead battalion of the MRR reached the southern end of the bridge as Austrian refugees fled in terror. The Regimental T55 battalion peeled off to engage the M60s, covered by an airstrike from venerable Mig 21s. Eagle eyed readers will spot the PT76s lurking around the pump control station on the dam. They have spotters for the divisional artillery attached and I want to get them in position to spot the Austrians. The dam is passable by foot troops, so another potential crossing site.

The leading APCs crunch across the bridge and link up with the paras, who have now taken losses from the German jaegers and are looking distinctly shaky. A Frogfoot strike misses the M60s, but they are finished off by the para AT missile platoon while the T55s knock out the Dusters.

Back at the river, the Czech OT65s start swimming across the river! Very carefully...

Back the bridgehead, the shattered paras fall back to regroup under German artillery fire and the Motor Rifle troops take up the fight. Czech Frogfoots target the Germans and inflict some losses.

A bit of a problem further back down the column! The Austrian mechanised infantry venture forth from the city and attack the MRRs (towed) artillery battalion. This of course blocks the autobahn and stops the bridging column moving on. Terrys Tank Regiment is marching on in column to cross the river, but someone is going to have to deal with the Austrian infantry.

Well, we will leave that conundrum until tomorrow night as we broke for the evening at that point.

The action resumed the following day. Given the 'flying camera' viewpoint, expect a certain degree of chaos as to what gets photographed for here on in, as things were happening all over the place.

Back down on the Autobahn, the Czech artillerymen tried to break off from the vicious Austrian infantry assault. They retreated in a disorganised fashion under the guns of the Tank Regiment. Unfortunately the Austrians were made of stern stuff and pursued them! 

Some Hinds turned up and set themselves up in range of the rampaging Austrians. The MRR HQ pulled off the road to allow the leading units of 20th Tank Regiment to approach the bridge, but unfortunately the trailing two tank battalions had become embroiled in the battle down on the Autobahn.

The Austrians meanwhile covered themselves with glory. They dispersed the Czech gunners, then routed one of the T72 battalions which tried to overrun them! Sadly they had taken heavy losses from close range tank guns by this point.

Hearing alarming radio chatter about incoming artillery strikes, they engaged the T55s more closely.

I had meanwhile called down the entire Divisional artillery (152mm guns and MLRS) on the impudent Austrians, and despite the proximity to the our own troops, just let fly. More Hinds appeared and both wings poured rockets into the melee too. 

A certain degree of friendly fire took place, but more importantly, the last of the Austrians had enough and disappeared, so we had (finally) cleared the southern bank of the river.

North of the river, the MRR finally managed to deploy two battalions and the Regimental mortar and AT companies while the paras dug in. With more force to bear, they soon saw off the Jaegers and consolidated the bridgehead as the Tank Regiment thundered past.

And what of the swimming OT65s? Well, they finally made it across the Inn despite some strong currents, and scouted out a bridge site. A German panzergrenadier battalion briefy made an appearance, took one look at the massed Soviet armour across the river and thought better of it and went away again. So, several hours later, a pontoon bridge went across the river upstream from the dam as an alternate crossing point. Bravo!

That was excellent fun and purely by chance we managed a strategic victory by seizing the Autobahn bridge intact. The paras had very fortunately managed to forestall the demolition team, and some of us had misunderstood the victory conditions and completely ignored the Austrians in Brunau, not realising we were supposed to clear them out until we'd already bypassed them. Ahem. It worked out OK in the end, even if it did cost us an artillery and tank battalion to do it

The game rattled along very well as ever, and reminded me that I really, really must dust off the central front again..

More ACW experimentation - Bakers Creek 1863

After my rather unsatisfactory experiment with various changes at Stones Creek, I toned the modifications to my ACW rules down a bit and reverted to units facing a hexside, not a hex vertex. What works really well for Napoleonics just seemed to break everything in the ACW, possibly because units are more mobile? Who knows, but I know a bad game when I see one. I kept the additional activation modifiers, tidied up the turn sequence and retained the more generous road movement and rallying near the  enemy distances as they work better with a hex grid. I also upped the Army break point to 66% of infantry bases as the rules are so bloody armies were breaking tooo quickly.

It turned out one of my regular blogging acquaintances was having an ACW month over at https://angrydackel.com/ and he made the brilliant suggestion to adopt the same fire/move sequence as I use in the Napoleonic set. So, with the latest set of revisions in place, off we go for another play test. Grant vs Pemberton.

This time we are at Bakers Creek in 1863 where US Grant faced off against JC Pemberton. There is a proper scenario for this in the V&B ACW scenario book, but I wanted a quick and decisive engagement, so instead modelled the scenario on OHW Scenario 7 'Flank Attack'. Grant had managed to outflank Pemberton, although in the real battle, it was more like a 50:50 split between the pinning force and the flanking force.

To win the Union needs exclusive control of the hill while the Confederates just need one unit left on it to win, but have the huge disadvantage of being surprised from their right flank.

I used Neil Thomas's ACW army generator for this. The CSA have seven infantry units and two guns, two of the infantry are Green and two are Veteran. I used Zouaves for the Veteran units and put the Green ones in a three base wide line with one base in support (you can see them both on the front edge of the ridge with the guns). The seasoned and veteran units I just put in double ranked supported line, the best formation in Fire and Fury.

The CSA units all have to set up on the hill and all facing south. Limits of real estate force them to set up in at least two lines. I stacked their left flank in expectation of the Union attack. Fortunately they make a very unattractive melee target, being uphill, despite being flanked. 

Grants pinning force is two green infantry units, deployed the same as the CSA green units, plus a gun. The US guns are rifled, so more effective at range than the CSA. The two ridges are at long cannon shot but out of rifle range.

The flanking force has four seasoned and one veteran unit plus another gun, so the CSA have the edge in quality and position and equal numbers too. Grants strike force has superiority at the decisive point however. Both sides have a leader (Grant and Pemberton), needed for activation and can help with rallying.

There is little point charging the CSA units as being uphill the attackers can only hit them on 5+, so I'm going to move into close range and get a free point blank shot while the enemy pivot to face. Five units against three should give the US significant fire superiority.

The Union guns roar out and completely miss, the rest of the Union troops move forward. I've reverted to the old move system, so infantry can move two hexes straight ahead, but if they pivot they can only move one, but can pivot multiple times.

The green units shuffle slowly forward, keeping out of rifle range. On the right, the unit in the woods fires at long range while the other four close up - one of the benefits of the fire then move sequence. Both the guns and the supporting unit are now masked as they have a friendly unit halfway to the hill. Hills are assumed to be twice as high as units or woods for LOF purposes. Grant has accompanied one of the assaulting units, and Pemberton is the middle of the units defending the east side of the ridge.

The CSA mostly pass their activation checks (all within LOS of the CinC so anything but a 1) and variously pivot to face the threats. Annoyingly one of the reserve veteran units fails to activate so can only pivot in place, but  turns to set up a two hex move next turn.

The CSA guns concentrate on the green US units and chip off a couple of hits (lucky!).

Both sides have identical breakpoints, 19 bases lost. No bases lost yet though.

Things hot up. Despite being out of LOS of Grant the two green units move up the ridge from the south, while almost everyone else opens up at point blank range. Ouch! I've removed the restriction that fire has to spread evenly. It may be more realisiic but it makes the game dull. The US inflict enough losses to remove some bases and two CSA units are forced to retreat.

They are now horribly stacked up and if unable to retreat any more lose extra bases instead. I do allow units to interpenetrate if they start the turn facing in the same direction, so some of them still have a retreat route, but others don't. 

The CSA suddenly realise that the units which just retreated are out of sight on the reverse slope! They rally in place and each recover a base. The US are now in a tricky position as if they advance onto the ridge it is they who will be on the wrong end of a 2:1 firepower ratio. Umm, perhaps the CSA should have defended one hex back to start with....

The Union shoot away at the CSA units they can still see. That CSA unit in the top right is a veteran and quite resilient.

The CSA have committed all their reserves now as a US unit braves the ridge. The CSA Zouaves in the top right are apparently bullet proof and hang on! Surprisingly the US green units are doing quite well and force one of their opposite numbers to retreat. The CSA leave the gun behind as it still requires a morale check to assault frontally.

Hard pounding gentlemen! Both sides bang away and now it is a union green unit which retreats. The retired CSA green unit is busy trying to rally (it lost two bases to concentrated fire) but it is hard to rally green units (5+). The CSA gun withdrew to join another unit as it was a bit exposed on its own.

A bad hour for the Confederacy. Not one but two units go down demoralised by close range fire and then unable to retreat due to friends blocking the way. The other CSA battery is now exposed on its own, and the breakpoint (BP) count is well in the Union favour.

Now the Union starts to crack and the division on the ridge falls back, as do the Zouaves in the northeast. The CSA still control the ridge but are now compressed into an arc facing southeast. Grant can dimly be seen in the northeast. 

The union now has a choice to make. Spend a couple of turns rallying or push on? Grant opts to be aggressive and three US units crest the ridge from the southeast.

Both green US units would have joined them but they are both dithering (the green counters) as is the unit in the wood. Grant has moved to the very southeast now to better control the army from a central position as his other wing was out of sight before. 

The Union managed to drive one CSA unit back and the unit in the woods manages to rally. Everyone else blazes away.

The CSA also blaze away and one Union unit breaks and runs with two bases lost.

The Union keeps plugging away however and pushes the CSA back into the northwest corner. While trying to steady his troops, Pemberton is hit and carried from the field.  

Despite one last big effort by the CSA which pushes back another union unit, US fire tips the Confederates over their break point. 

The CSA only hope is to do the same to the US. Most of their units dither (losing the CinC makes failing their activation far more likely) but although they chip some hits off the US, at the end of the turn the US are still in the field while the Confederates are pulling back exhausted. A US victory.

That went much better than Stones River, and while there were periods of intense slugging, (as in so many ACW battles), the revised mechanisms all worked fine. I'm particularly pleased with the fire/move sequence which worked really well, and the new Army breakpoints prevent the game becoming endless as units rally, which was always a problem with the older system. The players will have to get used to managing the pace of combat though, as if they just chuck everything in, they are going to get burned out very quickly. I've got a couple of scenarios (Chickamauge and Chancellorsville) which I've only ever soloed, so I'd like to try them real players. They will be appearing in due course.

Stones River 1862 - ACW rules revisited

 I was having a vague hankering to do something with my ACW stuff as I've spent an awful lot of time on Ancients, WW2 and Napeolonics in the last couple of years. I had toyed with doing a complete rewrite of my Neil Thomas based ACW rules based on my latest Napoleonic set, but after a few abortive attempts I thought I'd just tweak the original set, primarily with switching to units pointing at hex vertices and simplifying the movement system to be more in line with the Napoleonic set.

 I also fiddled around with unit activation to make dithering more likely in some circumstances after playing Chancellorsville and finding the Union Army 'telepathic' command a bit much. I also introduced fixed Portable Wargame style army breakpoints as the old system based on unit destruction just wasn't working - it is almost impossible to completely destroy infantry units in the NT rules due to the generosity of the rallying system and the likelihood of retreats. 

I set up my old Stones River scenario, which we'd played online a couple of years ago. It is based on the Volley and Bayonet one. Briefly, following the Battle of Shiloh, Rosencrans Union Army of the Cumberland had driven Braggs CSA forces out of Kentucky (Nash vile is to the to the northwest) but became very strung out in the pursuit due to poor weather. Bragg stood and fought west of Murfreesboro in Tennessee, hoping to beat the Union in detail.

So, the Union are lined up to the northwest and the CSA to the southeast.

Braggs experienced cavalry outscouted the Union and he weighted his left for a surprise flank attack. Braggs left is here massed across the river. Pointing units at the hex vertices instead of the sides actually works well for the oblique deployment in the battle, but of course it opens up much wider flanks (four hexes instead of three) and restricts forward arcs of fire.

The CSA right is very lightly held by two large CSA divisions including Breckenridges veterans (who I've done as Zouaves so I can identify them) .  Braggs army is pretty much just lined up for a frontal attack.

Straggling up from the rear are few more units of Rosencrans army, two infantry divisions and a (green) cavalry division. The cavalry arrive at 12 pm but the infantry don't turn up until 4pm.

Braggs army has breakpoint of 11 and Rosencrans 14, both 50% of their starting infantry strength. The Union are outnumbered at first but their reinforcements boost their overall resilience.

These BP are reduced for each infantry base lost, even if they subsequently rally (I figure each base lost involves some actual casualties). To win, each side needs to exhaust the other before nightfall, so the CSA need to make the most of their local superiority. Each side also has a rout point at 66% losses.

At dawn the CSA move into close contact on the left while the units on the right engage in long range shelling and skirmishing. The first issue with the new more liberal movement system is that the CSA left cavalry just ride around the Union flank and dismount in their left rear (in that little wood  at the end of the river n the baseline). Mmmm.

Union fire scatters some hits around, but no bases lost yet.

At 7am the Union right is forced back having lost two bases to massed CSA fire. That also leaves the next unit along rather hanging in the air. Rosencrans rides over to help it rally next turn and moves his reserve division up to counter the threat to the Union right - it only gets as far as the track crossing the river. Over in the far right the CSA cavalry push along the table edge, threatening the Nashville turnpike. 

Rosencrans drives back the CSA cavalry in the south with a brief charge, but reorients this entire half of his army to face the threat from the south. He is forced to strip away one of his centre divisions to deal with the cavalry in the north. This isn't going well for the Union. I'm not massively convinced by all these units running around, but the more open flanks due to the facing changes make it tactically necessary. 

Up in the north the desultory firefight continues but the bigger CSA units are definitely gaining the upper hand. The CSA cavalry is over the river, so the Union infantry reinforcement has arrived in the nick of time.

I've skipped ahead a bit. Both sides are standing and firing now, and attrition is catching up with whole bases lost (the little white crosses). These force morale checks which even for seasoned troops as most of these are, need a 5+ to pass, so various units fall back and need to decide whether to attempt to rally or re-engage. I prefer to leave the bases on the units and mark them rather than  take them off. It makes it easier to sort the troops out at the end and looks neater. NT asserts that most of these 'losses' are stragglers anyway, which is why it is so easy to rally.

Eagle eyed readers will notice that in the north the CSA are attacking!

Everyone is looking a bit ragged now. It is a bit  hard to make out but the 'pinning' CSA force has just conducted a charge and driven right into the middle of the northern Union troops. Each base lost takes one off the army breakpoint and thus chips are going down fast now.

Back in the south the Rebs come in for another go as they are inflicting disproportionate losses. They move to close range as it is so much more decisive.

In the north the Union have been forced back beyond the Nashville Turnpike and the road is blocked by the CSA cavalry. Attrition is mounting on the CSA forces here though and they are both forced back by losses. All the forces in the north have been hampered by the absence of their Generals, and various units have dithered instead of moving.

The CSA are suddenly running out of men. Only three chips left!

The fighting in the south continues unabated. The Union are down to four morale chips now, but are in a worse tactical position. Both sides are now concentrating on inflicting as much damage as possible through careful target selection. You can see a CSA unit with no less than  three bases lost, Bragg is trying to rally it. 

I've loosened up the target priority rules, and coupled with more liberal rallying (I'm letting units rally as long as they aren't adjacent to the enemy, they dont need to be out of range any more), the game is rather more ferocious. 

The Union infantry desperately try and clear the road north so the reinforcements can enter. The CSA cavalry are very tenacious though. It doesn't matter now that they keep failing to activate for movement as they are in a good position.

The CSA make one more big push and finally put the Union over their breakpoint (the red marker). I had originally thought about splitting breaks into an exhaustion level and a break level, but it doesn't really add anything except more maths.

The CSA are by now also one point off their exhaustion level, so I decide to adjudicate exhaustion at the end of the turn. The Union however fail to kill another base so Bragg has exhausted Rosencrans and the CSA win the day before the Union reinforcements can arrive.

That was a very useful process as although some of the changes worked well, many others didn't. I'll keep the changes to activation, fire priority and rallying, but the new facing mechanism didn't work well and coupled with the more liberal movement led to some silly situations. I'll revert to the old facing and movement system which worked OK. 

The main thing I didn't get right was the army breakpoint, the Union broke far too quickly, with the CSA not far behind. NT said in his designers notes for the game that it was deliberately very bloody to represent straggling, but it just meant the morale chips evaporated too fast. I'll set the breakpoint at 66%, which will prolong the game to a more sensible duration, but avoid some of the previous tedious slugfests as units endlessly lose bases but then rally them back again. I'm very glad I tested those changes before inflicting them on my long suffering players. Of course now I'll have to test the changes to the changes....