Battle of Hudson's Bay - 1697

Every year I spend one month in Winnipeg and I always look forward to it because it gives me a chance to play a few games with the Conscripts. Last Thursday, KevinH, DaveV and ByronM were kind enough to come to my suite downtown to push some sail ships miniatures.

I offered a choice of two scenarii: Battle of Cape Ortegal -1805, or Battle of Hudson’s Bay - 1697.  The guests chose the latter, which was fitting given that it’s Canada’s 150th birthday. The battle happened on September 5. A British squadron’s primary mission was to replenish Fort Nelson and to get out of the Bay as it was already late in the season. The Hampshire was a military vessel and her mission was to escort the merchantmen. The Dering and the Hudson’s Bay were merchant vessels property of the Hudson’s Bay Company. It could be assumed that it was difficult to repair a ship in the Hudson Bay and, in September, there is not much time left to get out of the bay before the sea freezes. The British merchant ships probably wanted to avoid any damage to make sure they could get out of the Bay before being caught in the icepack. On the French side, the Pélican was under the command or Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville, a warrior who led a very adventurous life. I encourage you to read his bio on wikipedia. A recreation of the battle was done by Radio-Canada (in French) back in 1967-68. I remember watching this show as a wee little kid and it might have sparked my interest for sail ships.

There is also a diorama displaying the four ships involved in the battle at the Royal Canadian Artillery Museum in Shilo. Unfortuntely, these cool ships can not be played with.

We had time to play the scenario twice and d’Iberville’s ship was sunk in both cases, proving that he was either an outstanding sailor or a lucky bastard. I would argue for the former.

The Pélican, coming strong on the British squadron. "Men, we'll bag those Brits before our second coffee of the morning." Alas, it was not to be. All models are from GHQ.

Here is a shot at sea level. Everything seems calm and quiet, but not for long...

The Pélican, in the upper right corner, shot by all the British ships in the same turn. Aouch!

Blub! Blub! Blub! D'Iberville probably would not survive having to swim to the shore in freezing water, while avoiding polar bears. All in all, it was fun to watch.

In any case, it was great to visit with the Conscripts again and I'm grateful to them for taking an evening to share my passion for sail ships.

6mm Team Yankee - Russians

With all of the Team Yankee fighting going on at the club, I decided I wanted to jump in as well.  However, being my normal difficult / contrary self, I had to do something a little different.

I really like the Team Yankee rules, as they are essentially FoW but with smaller forces (which is where the rules work better!), but have some visual issues with them.  While the 15mm models are amazing and highly detailed (I own some), I have serious issues with the scale.

Let me run you through some numbers that lead to my issues with the rules:

- An M1 Abrams is roughly 32 feet long in real life (back of hull to front of barrel)
- M1 Abrams had effective kills at ranges above 8000 feet in desert storm
- That provides a vehicle length to kill length ratio of 1:250
- An M1 15mm kit is roughly 4" long and has a range of 40"
- That provides a vehicle length to kill length ratio of 1:10

SEE THE ISSUE I HAVE???  Most of you probably do, while Conscript Greg probably threw his hands in the air and is ranting about math and games not belonging in the same universe together!

Therefore, I went to 6mm, where an M1 is roughly 1" and if we keep the same 40" range, we get a ratio of 1:40 which, while still far below real life, at least looks and feels far better on the table (at least in my mind).

 So, onto the show and tell, and despite using the US main battle tank in my example above, I am going to show off my Russian force today.

All the figure are either CinC or GHQ figures.  They are painted to be used with Team Yankee as desert war or as USA vs Iraq war.  Early on I decided that since Greg was doing European theater cold war gone hot stuff, I would do something different and focus on desert colours.  This lets us do either Team Yankee cold war gone hot battles, or Desert Storm battles.
 

I know some pure historical games are cringing at that last statement, but tough....  I know that Dessert Storm had some different vehicles and that this is somewhat inaccurate, but many of the same vehicles were used, so for a game we can stretch it a bit. While I like historical battles, I am not caught up on exact recreation. I have no real need to worry about which version of which gun was at which battle, I really don't care.  If the figs are well painted, and reasonable resemble something, then all I care about is the game itself.  Is it fun and plays well, Awesome!  I took that view for this so that we could do fun games based in the Team Yankee "world" and use their rules, but stretch it to other areas a bit.

The Russian force I have started here has 20 T-72's, 10 BMP-1's, 5 BMP-2's, and a pile of infantry.  I followed the Team Yankee force creation rules so that it is valid for the game.
I based all of the vehicles and infantry to force some separation between them.  Having learned from Greg, it really bugs me when I see tanks parked side by side on a table.  with the bases being about twice the width of the vehicles here, even if you put the bases next to each other it would still look OK and represent at least 10-15' in real life between them (which is still too close, but better than some nimrods that park 15mm FoW tanks touching each other).

All of the bases were 3d printed to have lips around an area at the back to drop labels into for easy identification (in theory).  6mm is sometimes hard to tell apart at a distance, so having seen many people online use labels similar to these I decided to copy the idea.  Each label has three sections: Unit type (Tank, Infantry, Transport, etc), Description (T-72, M1, etc), and a unit number/colour (so if there are 5 T-72's in a unit but I have 2 units, there is a blue shaded 1-5 and a green shaded 1-5 to tell them apart).

I loved painting these up as they are so insanely fast and easy to do.  Even though I was pretty fast and sloppy with painting them, at table top they look really good!  I am really starting to see the appeal of 6mm!

Still to do with the Russians is some aircraft, helicopters, and some artillery and anti-air firepower.  Coming soon!

Battle Report - Crisis In Kaliningrad - Modern Spearhead

BMP-3s and motor rifle troops take up a position to defend Russian sovereignty - and Gazprom pricing

Last week Dallas hosted the Conscripts for a game of Modern Spearhead.   The scenario was an imaginary ultra-modern confrontation between Poland, NATO and the Russian Federation along the border of the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.  The battle was a "limited engagement" taking place in the context of escalating tensions around a Russian cut-off of gas supplies to Poland.

It was a great turnout on Thursday, and we were particularly happy to host veteran conscript Sean M, returning to Winnipeg for a visit from parts east in Canada.  Was great to see you again Sean!

Polish Leopard IIA4s advance

The scenario pitted a mixed brigade of Polish and NATO troops against a brigade of top-notch (for the most part) Russian Federation troops.  The Polish/NATO goal was to surround the small border town of Bagrationovsk (political symbolism for Poland).  The Russian goal was to break the Polish units only - Russian leaders, while making all sorts of noise in the media - were privately concerned that any excessive casualties on NATO countries would inflame public opinion in the West to encourage further conflict.

Another view of the BMP-3s on the hill

The Russians had two battalions of top-end T-90s, a battalion of BMP-3 motor rifle troops, and for "flavour", a battalion of naval reserve T-55MVs.  The Polish had a battalion of Leopard IIA4s, a battalion of PT-91 Twardy tanks (upgraded T-72s - we used T-80BVs to represent these on the tabletop because they have the reactive armour bricks), and a battalion of motor infantry in BWP-1s (domestic Polish BMP-1 IFVs).  The Dutch had a mechanized infantry battalion in YPR-765s, with a couple of YPR-765 TOWs for support.

PT-91 MBTs (represented by GHQ T-80BVs) advance against the BMP-3s...it will end in tears...

Both sides had off-table artillery and air.  The Russians also had some Hind F helos.  But I substituted the normal "check for support" table with one of my own for the scenario to represent the general queasiness of the higher level Russian/NATO command to send in all sorts of assets that might lead to a general escalation of the conflict.

T-90s under fire as they try and hold the Leopards back...

Kevin H, Sean and Dallas took command of the Russians.  Mike F and Brian H rolled with the Polish/NATO combo.  Brian surprised all of us by volunteering to run the Dutch - but he was later disappointed to learn their battalion had zero MBTs (after all, the Dutch sold off their Leopards).

Sean's T-55s hang out in reserve, waiting to score a moral victory...

The game would last 10 turns - or until one brigade or the other broke.  The game itself proceeded quickly - fast enough that we were able to take a number of breaks to catch up with Sean's hilarious stories, and watch the Winnipeg Blue Bombers somehow win a game.  

A Tunguska provides AAA/SAM cover to the BMP-3 motor rifle troops

Kevin's T-90s took a real pounding - from air strikes and from the Leopard IIs of the poles - but they managed to stick in to the bitter end.  Mike pushed the Leopards and the Polish mechanized infantry around the west of the town, while sending the PT-91s around the east side.  Dallas had the BMP-3s dug in on a hill to block that move, and the BMP-3 were absolutely amazing, and with Dallas' hot rolling, they massacred the PT-91s with AT missiles and 100mm guns.

Dallas' troops got hit hard by an air strike, but otherwise the NATO troops didn't get to them. BMP-3s are awesome

Sean had the T-55s hanging back on the north of the town.  He tried to move up and support Kevin, but rolled the "scottish number" on his order change check for three straight turns, leaving the T-55s in place while poor Kevin was hammered.  Sean did rack up a moral victory when one of his T-55MVs managed to engage and knock out a Leopard IIA4 using tube-fired ATGMs.  I think he will be talking about that for months...

The Dutch move out.  Dallas's company commanders, however, are pretty sure they "look" Polish...

Down a battalion, the NATO troops brought the Dutch in to try and take the Russian motor rifles out.  Dallas was aware of the command direction to NOT inflict excessive casualties on the Dutch, but in the heat of the battle, the various platoon commanders could not be certain the new troops were not Polish, and so let them have it with a combination of 100mm HE and 30mm cannons.  The Dutch got blasted to pieces...

Kevin's T-90s paid a high price against the Leopards, so he evened the odd with a call for air support.

The outcome was a military victory for the Russians - the Polish/NATO brigade broke on the seventh turn.  On the other hand, with CNN footage of the helpless Dutch mechanized troops getting ventilated by the BMP-3s, public opinion in the west will harden dramatically against the Russians.  Poland lost the battle, but took a step forward in the war....until next time....

A big thanks to Dallas for hosting, and to everyone who came out to play some Modern Spearhead!

Some GHQ WW2 Stuff

The Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge has been a good prod to focus on some historical stuff and get it painted, namely  some GHQ figures I received for my birthday this year.

I based all of these for Spearhead - 1.25 inch square bases, with 30mm round bases representing command elements.  Each vehicle/base in Spearhead represents a platoon.  I have a large collection of Spearhead-based 6mm stuff, and a lot of it (especially the WW2 stuff) is starting to look a bit tired, so this is a good chance to spruce up the ranks a bit.

Up first was a group of German Panzer IV-Gs, and a pair of SPATs - Pak 40s mounted on an RSO chassis. The 10 tanks are sufficient to represent a battalion in Spearhead. The two RSOs will represent batteries of AT guns used by desperate German troops late in the war as hordes of T-34s roll over them.

Note that the crew figures on the RSOs are from Adler - their 6mm infantry is far, far superior to the infantry offered by GHQ.

You know your scraping the bottom when you are mounting Pak 40s on anything with treads...

Up next was a batch of 10 Hetzers, late war German tank destroyers.

And finally a group of 10 German Panzer IV-Hs. As with the other 10-vehicle groups, it includes one on a round command base, and for Spearhead purposes is sufficient to represent a battalion of vehicles in the game (each model representing an actual platoon of 3-5 tanks).

It did not add a whole lot of points for the Challenge, but it has been good to spruce up my German WW2 collection for Spearhead a bit more. Spearhead is one of my favourite games, and I had the opportunity to play a game with Curt C during a visit to Regina last weekend.   I'm just getting some photos organized, and will post the pictures and a battle report to the blog very soon.