Sharp Practice night fighting rules

My Puebla 1863 scenario involves night fighting in a built-up area. As there aren't any rules for fighting at night in the Sharp Practice rulebook, I'm forced to come up with my own.

In the first playtest, a couple of weekends ago, I wanted to keep things simple and concentrate on the character motivation parts of the scenario. Accordingly I just had two rules:

1. All units count as one cover level better when fired at, and
2. Any unit firing removes one in every three dice.

Subsequent discussions (Mark was particularly helpful, thanks mate) led to the conviction that uncertainty as to whether a unit was going to be visible would make for a more dynamic game. With this in mind, the second playtest will use the following rules:

1. All units count as one cover level better when fired at, and
2. When activated a unit make an alertness check rolling one die as follows:

Regulars or Light Infantry                        3+

Conscripts/Volunteers or Skirmishers       4+

Militia or Irregular Skirmishers                5+

If successful, the unit receives a marker:

3D printed telescopes as spotting markers

Enemy units are spotted at the following ranges:

Line Units in the open                24" / 12"

Skirmish Troops in the open       18" / 9"

Units in cover                              12" / 6"

Units firing                                  48" / 24"

The distance before the slash is used if the spotting roll was successful. Otherwise the distance after the slash is used. I may create some additional markers to remind us which units have fired from their current location.

If you can see the unit, you can fire at it (remembering that it counts one cover level better thanks to the darkness).

First Puebla playtest pics

This weekend Andy, Ron, Mark and Dex came over and we had a first run-through of the Puebla game. 

I don't want to reveal too many details here because chunks of the scenario need to be kept confidential but it was a very valuable experience.

A siege is very much in danger of producing a static firefight. It was my intention to design the scenario such that this doesn't happen. Unfortunately on this occasion by best-laid plans went awry. Mark's in ability to roll more than three on 2D6 delayed. matters considerably and led to a long period of ineffective firing between the two sides.

Mexican defenders of the penitentiary

The Renowned Hero of France Capt Lacharde's
men threaten a front-line Mexican position

The Turcos defend a front-line trench

A Mexican conservative gun crew. Their
commander has been lightly wounded by a 
French marksman

Mobility was brought to the battle by the Mexicans, with Captain Victor Vectra leading his men towards a ruined house on the French siege-lines. Unfortunately, just before they got there, Sergeant Ben-Hammim arrived (unaccountably late) with his group of Turco skirmishers.

Ben-Hammim's men let out a deafening blast of musketry that.... had no effect whatsoever! 

The Mexicans (of the Puebla State Militia) charged into the Turco position and fierce hand-to-hand combat ensued. The Mexicans were marginally beaten but being classed as 'Stubborn' they fought on but and were soundly defeated not least because we forgot to add on 3D6 for a second supporting group.

At this point the historical narrative becomes unclear. That is to say I will reveal no more other than to say that a fortunately timed chapter end brought us to a convenient place to stop the action with the French having made some progress in clearing the Mexicans from the first row of buildings within the city.

I've since, in discussions with Mark in particular, decided on some tweaks to the scenario and the special rules bringing it. In particular I'm planning on some night fighting rules derived from Arc of Fire.

I'd like to get in another test game before Steel lard but it'll depend on finding volunteers and finding a weekend when the kitchen isn't full of family-related junk!

Puebla ready(-ish)

I've reached the point where I'm happy to run a first playtest of the Puebla scenario for Steel Lard. Hopefully I'll get a game in this coming weekend.

The terrain looks like this at the start of the game:

In the foreground are the French siege-lines. To the right is the penitentiary. The rest of the built-up area is divided in blocks or manzana in Mexican Spanish.

I want to add some rubble to the board before it sees action at Steel Lard but it'll do for now.

Puebla siege works part two

So, after best part of a week with Kingspan, coffee stirrers, Polyfilla, paints, and static grass, I'm at the point where the French siege works for Puebla 1863 are in a usable state. If I needed to run the game next week I'd be happy with them as they are but doubtless I'll be inspired to add some additional improvements as we go on. 

Some bits to make the place look lived-in would help. A bucket and rope by the well for example.  I'd also like to do more to disguise the joins between the modules. I have some ideas of how to do that. I'll let you know how they go on.

With this work finished and a large portion of the scenario design done, I'm really looking forward to presenting this game. 

As an experienced designer of wargames scenarios I can tell you straight up that this one shouldn't work. A frontal assault on a defended enemy position could be a bloodbath. However, this is Sharp Practice; it's a game that emphasises the narrative and the interactions of the significant leaders on each side. This going to be a game where victory may look very different to what you expect!

Puebla siege works

With the summer moving onwards I am conscious that I need to get on with the terrain for my planned Siege of Puebla 1863 game that I hope will see the light of day at Steel Lard in November.

I'd done a bit of planning with paper templates and drawn up a rough layout for the French siege trenches on three sheets of hardboard. This week I've started building (or is it digging?).

The parapets of the trenches are sculpted from an off-cut of 25mm Kingspan insulation. I created a card template that I can use to make sure the ends of the parapets are the same shape so the three sections will go together in any order (although there is a specific order for my scenario and the bases are marked "L", "C", and "R" underneath to help with quick setting up).

I wanted to include a ruined building somewhere in the line of entrenchments and "Derelict Adobe House", an MDF model from Sarissa does the job nicely. I've mounted it on a sheet of foam core with a hole cut out to give the impression of a cellar beneath the ruined floorboards.

Each of the three sections will have a deeper emplacement. Two of these are likely to be artillery positions with the third used to keep engineers' stores.

The corners of the emplacements are reinforced using 3d printed gabions from Thingiverse. A few of the prints failed due to print-bed adhesion issues but this must gave me shorter gabions that I could fill with filler and cat litter!

The next step was to begin lining the trenches with duckboards and revetted sides made from wooden coffee stirrers.

The coffee stirrers mostly in place I've started smoothing out the revetments by adding a coating of quick-drying Polyfilla. I've also used thin card to create a paved path leading to the door of the ruined house. I want to find something else in the way of ruins (possibly a small shrine?) to add to the near right corner of this base. Any suggestions gratefully received!

 

The impetus to make a start on the entrenchments had actually come over the preceding weekend when I decided to grab some offcuts of foam core and Wills pantile sheet to make a destroyed version of my venerable "Spanish barn" (previously seen in the streets of Matamoros for the Cortina scenario as well as serving in the Peninsula). It's yet to be painted but I'm pleased with how it's gone and I'm considering adding it to the Puebla set-up.

That's all for now but look out for updates as the sappers continue to do their siege work.

Some Puebla buildings

The Siege of Puebla, 1863 game is going to need a large number of buildings. 

The city is organised on a grid system and this played a significant tactical role in the battle with the French having to assault one defended block or manzana at a time while the streets could be dominated by dug in artillery pieces. 

One block is going to consist of my large, blue-stuccoed, courtyard house. As this is on a 10" square base, I'm adopting that size as the standard manzana. These low relief buildings will form an edge to our area of action whilst indicating that the city continues off-table. Each is 10" wide and an inch or so deep.

They are build on PVC board bases from left over foam core, thin card, and some scraps of Wills pantile sheet. The laser-cut MDF balcony was from a pack of three I bought years ago from Sarissa. They are a little clean at present but they'll get a general dry-brushing and dirtying up when I have the whole table prepared.

Also completed recently was this small shop.

It's by Income Gaming from their Streets of Venice range. 

I've improved it slightly by glazing the front doors and adding roof tiles again from Wills pantile sheet. The model is intended for the Carnivale skirmish game which has large (35mm or so) figures. Originally it came with doors in the end walls. As well as being unrealistically close to the front door, these looked stupid next to my 28mm chaps so I blanked them off and used quick-drying Polyfilla render to hide the signs of their presence.

This model comes apart to allow the placing of figures both upstairs and down. It will form part of a half-depth line of blocks on the Mexican baseline.

Vapnartak and storage

This last weekend was Vapnartak in York.As usual there were some nice games on display but mainly the York show for me is about catching up with fellow wargamers and doing a bit of shopping.

As usual the show that roughly coincides with my birthday saw me making some fairly significant purchases. This year it's a big birthday and a couple of friends and son Jamie had offered to pay for some toys. With the plan to do a four-player Siege of Puebla game I need a few more Maximilian Adventure units so a visit to the Foundry stand seemed like a good way to pick up some stuff that friends could contribute to.

Two units of "Foreign Legion or Filibusters" plus a personality pack will, added to a few similar models I already own, give me the basis of a French line infantry unit in campaign dress. They will fight alongside my existing Turcos in the streets of Puebla.

I also got a pack of Mexican infantry and a Mexican personalities pack. These will serve alongside my existing red-jacketed state militia as an opposing player force. The personalities pack contains a nice general officer figure who will play a perhaps-important role in the game.

The other purchases were:

A Venetian house kit that was only a tenner at the table-top sale. Being designed for big 32mm Carnivale-style miniatures the doors are huge but with a little converting I reckon I can adapt it for Puebla.

Irregular Miniatures supplied some more Franco-Prussian War models so I can play Bloody Big Battles in 6mm. When I've painted them, Froeschwiller should be within my grasp.

And finally I invested in some self-adhesive magnetic sheet from Magnetic Displays. These have already been added to my 6mm unit storage facility. For years I've been keeping my expanding 1/300th scale WWII and Moderns collection in two Ikea filing cabinets mounted on the workshop wall:

The shallower drawers for the armies:

And the deeper ones for terrain:

The nice thing is that the drawers come out and can be used to transport stuff to games. However, I'm running out of space so with the aid of Lego bricks as spacers and PVC board or MDF off-cuts I've made some of my drawers double decker!

A couple of loops of insulating tape let me lift the top layer out and the newly acquired magnetic sheets stop the models sliding off. My 1/300th units are based on artist's mounting board and many are backed with self-adhesive ferro sheet, also from Magnetic Displays.

As you can see below, the extra space is badly needed!

New top layer - assorted Germans

In need of a new layer -
assorted 1940 French

I also picked up some more ferro sheet so I'll be spending some time increasing the proportion of the forces that stick to the magnets!

All in all I really enjoyed Vapnartak. It was great to catch up with so many wargaming friends and acquaintances. The only downside was that I didn't manage to off-load the old SOTCW banner. I really must get it to a current committee member somehow!

Workbench update

Looking back through recent blog posts I've noticed a few things that appeared here as work-in-progress but never got the final beauty shot.

First up there's the half-destroyed adobe building. 

Which now looks like this:

This building has already seen action in the Christmas Pavis game but the obvious destination for it is Puebla 1863.

Then there was the 3D printed medieval tower and its destroyed version.

Finished and added to 60mm square urban bases we end up with a couple of nice additions to the Prague 1948 city options.

And finally the Gauls:

These guys, intended for Infamy Infamy, now look like this:

These are Victrix apart from the guys at either end of the rear rank who are from Warlord. 

This leader is distinguished by his round base.

Finally, Gaullish cavalry in Infamy Infamy come with a free base of stewards; servants holding spare horses who can act as a rallying point for the horsemen if they need it.

The chap with the oval shield is an old white metal 25mm model, manufacturer unknown. The horse-holder is cobbled together model with legs from Warlord, Green Stuff torso and other parts from the spares box. The horse is, I think, Gripping Beast with a Green Stuff saddle.

Caravansarai or Penitentiary?

A few years ago I received an extremely kind birthday present from Richard Phillips. It was this MDF model; the Large Caravanserai from Empires at War. 

It's a real beast! It played the part of the Wali of Smut's palace in our big Woebetides game and the side modules recently saw action as part of the walls of New Pavis in a recent Christmas game.

It occurred to me, though, that it could also be of some use if I go ahead and do a Sharp Practice game based on the Siege of Puebla, 1863.

One of the large buildings in Puebla that the French are forced to assault is described as "the Penitentiary". I haven't yet researched it properly but a large structure of this type would make a great centre-piece for an urban game.

One of the factors I need to take into account is that the buildings of Puebla were heavily shelled during the siege and street-to-street fighting. There's also some indication of mines being dug by the French. It seemed like a good idea, then, to have the option of partly demolishing my Penitentiary.

Given the modular design of the model, I could build a destroyed replacement section out of foam-core and cardboard.

I needed to build a destroyed corner section too.  

Sadly, at the first attempt I built the corner section the wrong way round - with the parapet wall on the inside! I had to do a quick bit of surgery to fix it - something I couldn't do when I made a similar mistake in my O-Level Woodwork practical in 1980!

The colour matching isn't perfect and I haven't attempted to do the jointed stonework on the interior walls. We'll have to see whether I decide to repaint the whole thing as Puebla planning proceeds.

The next plan is to produce a 270-degree rubble-and-crater base to go outside the collapsed bit of wall and maybe a 90-degree bit to go inside too.