Wargames Weekend: The Lost Temple

Our penultimate game was a chance to try out the Triumph and Tragedy rules and for Lenin to get some of his Pulp figures back to the table.

An female American archeologist has discovered an ancient temple in the jungle; a temple which is reputed to contain a valuable treasure.  This expedition has angered the local Chinese warlord who considers the temple to be part of his domain and obviously wants to claim the treasure for himself.  His men have occupied the temple and taken the archeologist hostage.  This, in turn, has upset the Americans who have sent a gunboat to rescue her.

I took the part of the Warlord and his, mostly raw, troops; whilst Lenin played the American sailors from the gunboat.

I placed my only trained men along with another raw unit in the temple guarding it and the archeologist.  Meanwhile my remaining unit and maxim gun team remained in my stronghold.  Hearing that the gunboat had landed some troops I ordered the units at my stronghold to march to reinforce the men at the temple.

We spotted the Americans advancing through the jungle and deployed to engage them.  Things were going well until they deployed their BAR (which whilst a rather poor LMG was enough to automatically pin raw troops).  This meant that my maxim was deployed but didn't get to fire.  My riflemen opened fire, causing some casualties but soon also came under fire from the BAR.

Meanwhile the other American unit was advancing on the temple.  A firefight rapidly ensued with both sides taking casualties but I had a slight edge as my men were defending the temple.

With my reserves falling back the first American unit swung round and advanced towards the front of the temple.  Another firefight began.  With units being gradually whittled down on both sides Lenin decided to assault my position.  His men rushed forward but after a bloody melee were thrown back.  Whereupon my hero leapt up and engaged them with his SMG.  This was the last straw for the Americans and they withdrew.

Whilst the game was fun I'm not sure about the rules.  I have a feeling it's something to do with my expectations relating to the "scale" of a game.  Where you have a very small skirmish I can easily accept these operating in a more hollywood or pulp style.  It can even work when units are added but are merely extras to provide a backdrop for the heroes; however Triumph and Tragedy feels like a unit based game with the heroes acting as units.  My first impression is that this feels a little uncomfortable.  I expected the game to be more "realistic" as it was unit based.  I suspect it will need another go to see if they gel for me.

More Inter War Armour from Copplestone

Copplestone Castings have just released the latest model in their 28mm Inter War range of armoured vehicles. This time it's a Lanchester 6x4 MkII armoured car:

More Copplestone Tanks...

Apparently the next addition to Copplestone's interwar tanks will be a Vickers Independent:


Who can say no to FIVE turrets?!

Copplestone Medium Mark III

Copplestone Castings have just added an interwar Medium Mark III tank to their site:


Only three were actually built but in our alternative 1938 world who knows?

It is a little on the expensive side but given the size and unusual nature of it possibly not surprisingly so.

Gaming Weekend - Day One

Last weekend Lenin visited for one of our regular weekends of gaming. We managed to get seven different games in over the three days along with a couple of board and card games.

I decided this time to provide a run down of the games in instalments. Here are the two we played on Saturday:

Arrow through Andalusia, 3 August 1936

Keen to get my Anglian 28mm Spanish Civil War figures onto the table, the first game was a scenario from the Iron Ivan book Atacar es Vencer!. Whilst the scenario was originally written for Disposable Heroes & Coffin for Seven Brothers I suitably adapted it to fit our favoured Two Hour Wargames' rules Nuts! and the figures I had available.

The Nationalist Column Asensio is on its way towards Madrid racing along the main highways until they encounter resistance, as they did here. They then dismounted elements of the 4th Bandera of the Spanish Foreign Legion, the 2nd Tabor of the Regulares of Tetuan and some local Guardia Civil and began an assault.

The Militia had built some barricades and were attempting to mount a stiff resistance despite their lack of almost any automatic weapons.

Initially the Nationalist advance was slow, with an attempted flanking manoeuvre by the Legion being blocked but eventually the lower Rep of the Militia began to show with more Hunker Down results and, with the volume of fire reduced the Nationalists were able to advance across the open ground to the barricades.

The attacks on the flanks were the first to go in followed by the centre and despite some valiant resistance by the Militia the Nationalists took the village.

The Patrol

Our next game was an opportunity to both trial the new Colonial Adventures rules, once again from Two Hour Wargames, and also to get some of Lenin's extensive Foundry/Copplestone Darkest Africa figures to the table.

The scenario was a simple two unit patrol by the Belgians across the table which triggered various random encounters with tribesmen as the patrol's advance proceeded.

The troops and terrain were rolled for randomly as outlined in the rules and we then proceeded with the trial game. We initially started with three possible enemy forces (PEFs) on separate areas of the board but as the game progressed one of these split a few times and we ended up with six PEFs. This combined with the other forces which can be triggered as you move across the table gave an interesting game. In the end the PEF at the far end of the table turned out to be the main enemy force which turned out to be a little more than we could handle resulting in a desperate last stand by Lenin's officer after both my entire force and his own troops had been killed to a man.

It later transpired that we hadn't been playing the final enemy mob quite correctly but in any event the rules gave us a fun game and will be making another appearance.

Gaming Weekend - March 08

Lenin paid a visit this weekend and we managed to get plenty of gaming in. It might not have gone quite as planned (no change there!) but it was excellent fun none the less!

Before "discovering" the benefits of the .45 Adventure system we had tried one or two of the scenarios from the Dragon Bones supplement using Savage Worlds (another of our favourite rule sets). We decided to try them using the rules they were made for and the two games went very well. Strangely enough the results were the same as when we played using Savage Worlds!

We also gave my eBay copy of Quebec 1759 a go. It was the first of the Columbia Games block games and certainly has a pretty simple set of rules; however, the game gives you plenty of things to think about. I took command of the French and was utterly trounced by Lenin playing the British - obviously my usual dice luck had some effect but it was more down to some poor deployment on my part and a well co-ordinated two fronted attack on his! Now that I have some idea what I'm doing I'd certainly like to give it another go.

Next we improvised a Back of Beyond game using Lenin's superbly painted Copplestone figures (along with a couple of Pulp Figures) using Savage Worlds as the rules. More than anything it was a test to see if Savage Worlds could be used for a game of this type and size. Lenin has a very sizeable collection of figures for this period and we have tried a few other sets of rules but haven't been happy with them. The result was a Russian victory - having repulsed the Chinese attack on the Russian dig site - and a decision to use Savage Worlds for future games of this type.

Having majored on 28mm we swapped down to 20mm for the next game, a WW2 scenario using Nuts! A simple take the bridge and hold until reinforced for a small Para jeep mounted unit facing a unit of German engineers (who had been ordered to destroy the bridge) - with a few pesky refugees to get in the way! It was an object example of taking and holding the initiative taking the day with the Paras having it pretty much their own way (it also demonstrated the power of automatic weapons to keep people's heads down under Nuts! - the "outgunned" rules).

Our final tabletop game was another improved Savage Worlds game - this time using 28mm Gripping Beast Normans/Crusaders/El Cid figures. Having seen that Savage Worlds could handle a large 20th Century game, we really wanted to see if Savage Worlds could cope with a melee heavy scenario. We probably didn't have enough variety in the troop qualities and so melee did tend to bog down a little (but this wasn't entirely unexpected or a-historical) but overall SW proved that it could manage to cope. With properly prepared unit cards and a little more unit variety I think we're on to a winner again.

We finished the weekend off with a couple of board games - the Crimissos River (341BC) scenario for Commands and Colors: Ancients and the first two player scenario for Friedrich (The War in the West - France vs Hanover with a little help from Prussia). The C&C:A game was a pretty close run thing but finally going to Syracruse (though not by anything like the margin they enjoyed historically). Friedrich turned out to be a lot of fun with plenty of challenging decisions for both sides. The French were doing well but the Hanoverians managed to cut their supply lines; however the French recovered and went on to capture their objectives just in time. An excellent game that I can't wait to play 3 or 4 player.

I've posted a few photos from the weekend below:

Gaming Weekend - Mar 08

Gaming The Red Star

If you read WebWitter, my other blog, you may have noticed that I was lucky enough to get a copy of the collected edition of The Red Star. With such powerful imagery and a compelling storyline any wargamer's thoughts turn to gaming it. Given that Lenin originally introduced me to the series we have already done a little investigation into possible sources for figures and the like. I thought I'd pass on some ideas in case you too are interested.

For figures the obvious starting point has to be Copplestone Castings with his excellent 28mm lines including four packs of Neo-Sovs from his Future Wars range along with some Partizans who might be useful for the Nokgorka rebels from Run Makita Run.


Lenin also suggested adapting one or two of the Bolshevik Heroines as Warkasters.

For those less keen on painting the Red Blok forces from Rackham's AT-43 line are also a possibility. This line also includes some walkers which, whilst I can't recall similar ones appearing in the story could easily be fitted in.


As to vehicles, I doubt that any sane person would look to try to put a skyfurnace on the table (always you had a table big enough) but some of the armour could easily be represented by the Old Crow Sabre heavy tank with a suitable paint job.

I haven't found anything which I would be happy with for Al'istaan as yet but we're still looking...