Back to sniffing glue

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop building plastic models.

After having gone lead 40+ years ago, I was sure I'd never go back to cutting model parts off sprues, trimming little nubs with very, very sharp XActo blades, and breathing in the mind-altering vapors of plastic cement as I assembled all the bits and pieces. People who know me know that I am an adamant foe of plastic minis. Don't worry, I haven't gone over to that. I have, however, built my first plastic models since I was in high school. It took a bit of convincing.

The catalyst for this change was picking up a box of the Cruel Seas 1/300th scale German S-boats. I initially thought of giving Cruel Seas a miss. I already have a sizable collection of WW2 coastal ships in 1/1250th scale; I was pretty sure that I didn't want to go into another scale for the same period. But then I saw some of the models that came as free samples in an issue of Wargames Illustrated. It was like that line from the song, "then I saw her face, now I'm a believer." The models are really nice.

Free samples in magazines. Well played, Warlord Games, well played.

So I bought a boxed set of the S-boats. I brought them home and beheld the bewildering array of bits on a sprue. I earlier bought some sprue cutters and a tube of Testor's cement for plastic models. That impulse came after buying a kit of a Soviet SU-100 for the 15mm scale Tanks game. The plan is to use that for What a Tanker! I wanted to get the standard resin and metal kit from Flames of War, but they didn't offer that model. It was only available as a plastic kit. I let the SU-100 kit sit for months. I hate fiddly and plastic model kits are fiddly.

But I finally bit the plastic kit bullet with a couple of the S-boats. It was easier than I thought. I had 'em built and primered (white) in an evening. Two days later, I bought a box set of the Vospers.

I now have four of the S-boats and two of the Vospers built and primed.

I've looked around at painting ideas. So far, I've given them a base coat of Vallejo Light Sea Gray (973). Darker gray decks and some camouflage, then touching up details. They should paint quickly, though it means jumping the queue ahead of all the other projects I have in the works.

I'll get to completing them this week (maybe). I have another week of vacation for Christmas—Epiphany is the 6th, so my time off works out perfectly for the complete holiday.

I don't have a copy of the rules yet. At this point, Warlord is sold out of starter sets. Now that I have six S-boats and six Vospers, I'm pretty loath to get a box set with more of the same. So, I'll get the rules separately. I suspect I can get some other bits I want separately as well.

I'm not the only one in my circle who's been sucked into the Cruel Seas vortex. Dave Schueler has bought in and written a review on his blog Naval Gazing. Bill Stewart, Mike Lombardy, and Dean Clark are also building flotillas. I hope we'll get a game in sometime in January or February.

Postscript: I've built the SU-100. It's not painted yet, but I've overcome by plastic kit aversion. I don't predict that I'll ever go for plastic minis. That's a sprue too far for me.

Two-dimensional Banzai

I got around a bit on Saturday. I meant to start earlier and be even more adventurous, but this Saturday I needed a little more easing into the day than usual. I'd arranged with Dave Schueler to play Guadalcanal at Meeples Games in West Seattle, starting at 10:00, just when they open. Plan A was to go to 8:00 Mass at Blessed Sacrament in Seattle, then a bagel and coffee at Eltana Bagels. However, I was too lazy to get moving this morning, so I went with Plan B, which involved rushing out the door with barely enough time to get from Lynnwood to West Seattle.

Col. Ichiki was not entirely successful

The Guadalcanal scenario we played was the Battle of Alligator Creek. This was the first Japanese counterattack on land in the battle. Japanese destroyers landed an advanced detachment of about 900 men 21 miles east of the Marine perimeter. The intent was to pierce the Marine defenses and overrun Henderson Field, the Marine airfield (completed on what had been an unfinished Japanese airfield) that was the central point of the fighting on Guadalcanal. It had to have been conceived as a suicide mission. There was the whole 1st Marine division ("The Old Breed") landed on Guadalcanal. Even though its 11,000 men were spread out in a perimeter, there were 3000 Marines of the 1st Regiment on point at the Tenaru River. (The Marines names it "Alligator creek" even though it wasn't a creek and there were no alligators in it.)

The 900 men landed by the Japanese navy were supposed to be followed up by another 1200, but the commander of the Japanese troops, Col. Kiyonao Ichiki, was impatient to sweep away the Marines, whose numbers he greatly underestimated. Ichiki was a bit of a fire-eater. As a company commander in Manchuria Manchukuo, he was involved in the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident," which started the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45.

The Japanese attack started at about 2:00 AM with a rush of about 100 men over the sandbar at the mouth of the river. The Marines were dug in on the west side of the river with a 37mm anti-tank gun, well-supplied with cannister rounds for anti-personnel shooting, and a platoon of machine guns. This attack was wiped out by intense Marine fire. A second wave of about 200 men met the same fate.

Attack across the sandbar

At this point the Japanese stayed on the east side of the river and engaged in a firefight with the Marines until daybreak, when the Marine 1st battalion counterattacked in an envelopment that brought them south and east of the Japanese positions. Five M3 Stuart tanks trundled across the sandbar to join the fray and the Japanese troops were pretty much annihilated. In all the Japanese lost more than 700 men to the Marines' loss of 43 men. Col. Ichiki died in the battle, but it's not clear if he died in action or committed suicide because of his failure.

The Tenaru today. No sandbar and the runway of  the Honiara International Airport
 (formerly Henderson Field) extends right up to where the Marines were deployed on August 21.

The attack at the Tenaru was the ground offensive for Operation Ka, which was the Japanese riposte to American seizure of Guadalcanal. It was a complete failure. In his report to higher command, Col. Ichiki's superior admitted only that the attack was "not entirely successful."

The refight

Dave opted to play the Japanese, so I played the Marines. Initial set-up locations were determined by the scenario. The Japanese first wave was massed just east of the sandbar; my Marines were spread out covering the length of the river.

The scenario was 6 rounds with the first three rounds being night. Initial visibility for round 1 was 2 hexes. For rounds 2 and 3, we rolled a D6 with the result being the visibility for that round. I rolled a "1" on both turns. I was frustrated that my visibility was hampered, but the low visibility probably hurt Dave more than me. He had no recourse but to move up close, which gave me an advantage in close-range shooting.

The course of the game pretty much followed the historical fight, except Dave managed to overrun the 37mm gun position that covered the sandbar. I managed to take the position back in the next round, so it was a short-lived triumph. That was with the first wave. The subsequent waves that came on board rounds 3 and 4, did not make massed close assaults. My round 4 reinforcements came on the south edge of the board and by round 5, I had two Stuarts rampaging across the sandbar into Japanese territory.

It was touch and go for a while. Dave made good use of his little grenade launcher units. They don't have much pop, but they negate covering terrain. Combined with other units in a group fire, they can be very effective against units you thought were safely hunkered down in deep jungle. But Marine firepower won in the end. I lost 5 counters (both my 37mm guns plus three rifle squads), while Dave lost all but two of his units. I was lucky in my die rolls; Dave was lucky, initially, in pulling "no hit" counters for hit results, but his die rolls were pure poo.

It turns out, too, that we counted points wrong. The scenario gives 2 points to the Japanese for each Marine unit eliminated and 3 points for possession of each of the control hexes. That meant only five fewer points for me, which wouldn't have changed the outcome

Dave hadn't played the Conflict of Heroes system before. I hadn't played in a few years. Even then, there were some new rules for this expansion that took getting used to. Unlike previous games, the hit counters for the Japanese and Marines are different. The Japanese can have up to five "no hit" counters that do no damage (there were four in this scenario). The Marines have none.

Bushidō points didn't factor too much in the game. Positive points were gained for getting units across the Tenaru river and negative were incurred whenever a Japanese infantry unit started its activation not as part of a group action. Dave gained a few in the initial rounds, but then lost them again after his losses chopped up cohesion. He never fell below his initial CAP allowance because the Japanese don't lose CAP for unit losses, only the Marines do. (Too bad they don't have gung-ho points for the Marines...)

Closing thoughts

I like the nuances to the system for Guadalcanal. It's not a paradigm shift, but there's some adjustment to make if you've been playing previous Conflict of Heroes games.

The scenarios do a good job at making the Japanese behave historically. Had Dave been able to just sit back and engage in a firefight, he might have out-gunned me. But his need to get units across the Tenaru, perform group actions, and take (and/or hold) the control points forces him to move en masse and get in close. The limited visibility of three night rounds also inhibits his ability to sit back and shoot until he's lost enough units to give the Marine's a big advantage after their reinforcements come in. (Also, if he sits in place too long, the Marine artillery barrages can hurt.)

I didn't use my artillery well in the game. The first rounds I either forgot to plot a barrage or the barrage I plotted missed because the Japanese didn't wind up being where I'd plotted the barrage to land. The single success came on round 6 when Dave's remaining units were clustered around the control point in the palm grove on is side of the river.

The 37mm guns were pretty crappy. The game has a cannister card that gives the guns a little bit more effectiveness (but not much). However, the scenario doesn't give them. So the 37mm gun, which is the only unit holding the key bunker/control point has its wee +2 pop. In the hitorical accounts of the fighting, the 37mm guns shooting cannister did a huge amount of damage to the waves of attacking Japanese.

Bolt Action Again (or is it Column, Line, and Square?)

After a long hiatus and rescheduling due to illness, convalescence, and assorted other evils, we finally  got together this afternoon for a Bolt Action game set in North Africa. Phil Bardsley had an idea for a scenario he wanted to try, so we carted in our toys and set up a game.

Dick Larsen and I were the British, Phil and Bill Stewart were the Axis. The figures used in the game were Phil's DAK infantry and tanks and his Italian M13/40; Bill's DAK infantry, sandbags, and craters; and my British infantry, tanks, and French Foreign Legion infantry (Les Kepis Blancs). Dick supplied the "gerbils" or "dust bunnies," "tribbles," etc. that represent the dust clouds raised by moving vehicles in the desert.

The Axis mustered the following:

• 4 x DAK infantry squad
• 1 x Italian infantry squad (dug in)
• 1 x DAK MMG
• 1 x DAK mortar
• 1 x DAK command squad
• 2 x Pz III (long 50mm gun)
• 1 x Pz IV (long 75mm gun)
• 1 x Pz IV (short 75mm gun)
• 1 x self-propelled sIG 33 (Pz II chassis)
• 1 x M13/40

The British Mustered the following:

• 3 x British infantry squad
• 1 x Foreign Legion squad
• 1 x British command squad
• 1 x British MMG
• 1 x British mortar
• 1 x 2 pdr AT gun (w/Bren carrier transport)
• 1 x M3 Grant (75mm/37mm)
• 1 x Crusader tank (2 pdr)
• 1 x Valentine tank (2 pdr)
• 1 x "Honey" tank (37mm)

The scenario is set in the aftermath of a sandstorm that's scattered everyone. An Italian group is laagered in on a small rise (with a bit of support from their German friends). The remaining troops from both sides are converging on the Italian position with the objective being possession of the Italian position at game end. The converging troops enter the board on turn one using random placement.

The Italians all snug in their laager

There was no shooting on turn one, but with turn two everything started happening quickly. I got the first activation and shot my 2 pdr. right into the side of Phil's self-propelled sIG 33 and propelled it into a ball o' flame.

First kill

And there was much lamentation on the Axis side, especially from Phil who had just finished painting it only to see it knocked out in the first shot of the game.

Phil moved his panzers (which came in across the board from him) against the British armor, which all came in on the far end of the table.

"Panzers vor!"

His first shots knocked out our Grant tank, the only good tank we had. Bill started his tanks in against our tanks from the other side of the table from Phil's.

Dragging a "gerbil" through the desert

My infantry got in with Bill's DAK squads and started getting the worst of it. However, I managed to chew up his two squads a bit in the exchange. Dick's shots against Phil's tanks were disappointing.

In the next turn, my 2 pdr, fresh from knocking out the sIG 33, managed a long-range shot against the rear of Phil's M13/40 and knocked it out.

Getting warmer in the laager

Dick moved our tanks up to try to close the range against Phil's tanks. Having only light tank guns now, we had to get close to avoid being outranged by the German medium tank guns.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward

Our "Honey" was quickly knocked out, but after that point, Phil and Dick's tanks swapped shots to no effect.

Tank battle

Bill's far tank had been heading toward the tank battle, but got way-laid en route by Dick's Kepis Blancs who charged in to attempt taking out a Pz III with bayonets and pluck.

Men against tanks

The attack failed by a hairsbreadth. In the contest of science vs. pluck, science generally wins.

Phil turned his infantry against my infantry, joining in with Bill. Bill moved his other tank forward with the intention of joining in the fight against our tanks.

Bill advances past the burning wreckage

However, the temptation to machine-gun infantry took over and Bill turned his tank in and moved against one of my infantry squads, getting into close range. I took some damage, but being within 12" of Bill's tank—and inspired by the example of Les Kepis Blancs—I felt compelled to make my own charge against a tank. Besides, the only other thing to do would be to sit and get mowed down by spandaus.

I didn't succeed; nor did I expect to (though I hoped). Dick tried another attack on Bill's other tank, which by now had turned around to machine-gun him, but failed the check to go in. Bill soon gave me another burst from his tanks MGs and I was left with two intrepid survivors for my squad.

Fewer men against tanks

With no targets in range, I needed to change ground with my heroic 2 pdr. Like an old-time horse battery, I limbered up and charged to the sound of the guns.

Changing ground

But by this time, the possibility of British success was beyond likely. My three infantry squads were badly shot up. One had two-figures left, another had four, the biggest had about six. Phil's two squads were nearly intact, and Bill's two were shot up, but not as badly as mine.

Our tanks were outclassed and outnumbered to start with, but more so now. Phil managed to knock out the Crusader on the last turn, leaving only the Valentine standing alone.

Endkampf im Wusten

The Italians were untouched, apart from their tank, and still held the position. Dick's Kepis Blancs looked menacing, but were unlikely to ever take out Bill's tank that was still machine-gunning them with no place for them to hide.

Postscript

It had been so long since we played that we had to recall, dimly, what all the Bolt Action rules were. We've all been playing war-games for so long that we have rattling through the empty corridors of our brains a lot of rules that are like (or we think are like) the rules we're using. Whenever a question arose, there was much quotation about this rule and that, which could have been from Bolt Action, but more likely from On to Richmond! or Column, Line, and Square.

We tried a new method of activation for this game. Instead of activating one unit at a time, we activated groups of unit. For example, my three infantry squads were one activation. Each could receive orders on it's own independently and took hits, morale, order tests, etc. separately, but activated on a single cube.

My appreciation of this method is mixed, though I remain pretty much a skeptic. On the one hand, it seems to move the game along because you have fewer activations, but you still have as many orders. In effect, the method just elongates a single activation. We only played three full turns, I think, and it took us more than two hours. If we really want faster-moving games, we should use fewer units.

I also think that basically it skews the sense of how the rules are intended to work. Activations by pulling order cubes out of a bag is to randomize the order of units doing things. If you make larger groups of units, you get less randomization and can overwhelm a single unit by shooting at it with several units at once before it has a chance to do anything. That may happen anyway in a game if all your units get an activation cube before the other unit does. But, the probability of having three activations before the opponent gets one is low, but it's an even chance with this method.

Post-Postscript

In the post-game retail moment, I picked up some more Beyond the Gates of Antares figures. I've already completed 2 regular Algoryn AI squads, 1 AI assault squad, 1 MAG support gun, and 1 command team. I have a third regular AI squad in the works.

The figures I picked up were an AI infiltration squad, an X-launcher, and a pod of targeting drones. I've been making good progress on the figures I've done so far, so I expect to get these done in time for a first game (maybe) later this month.

KGC Blitz: Adapting PanzerBlitz situations to miniatures

I played my first game of Avalon Hill's PanzerBlitz when I was a lad of 10. My friend Richard's older brother went off to the army in 1970 leaving behind his brand-new copy of the just-released game. For Richard and me, being the kind of boys who liked tanks 'n' stuff, PanzerBlitz was nirvana. The counters had silhouettes representing specific tanks: T-34s, SU-100s, Panzer IVs, Tigers. For boys who liked tanks 'n' stuff, Tiger tanks were the apogee of our enthusiasm. A game of tactical armored combat on the Eastern Front 1941-45, could it get better than this? Even the box art was cool.

I played PanzerBlitz with Richard for the next year until he moved away, taking his copy of PanzerBlitz with him (but he left me his dog, Sparky, who was with us for the next 14 years). I got my own copy of the game, the revised 1971 edition, and continued to play it with other friends for years after that. Of the many games from my youth, few remain. Pride of place for those is my much-worn copy of PanzerBlitz. I even bought two more copies on eBay. One of which is the 1970 first printing with the glossy colored reverse sides of the counters: black for Germans and red for Russians.

All these years later—despite some glaring design flaws, such as "PanzerBush"—PanzerBlitz remains one of my favorite games even though it's been more than 30 years since I last played it with someone. (Also, you can easily adopt the opportunity fire and spotting rules from Avalon Hill's later games Panzer Leader and The Arab-Israeli Wars to fix the design flaws.)

Fast forward to now. I game with a group of people at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA. One of the games we've play a lot is Kampfgruppe Commander II (KGC) using 15mm models and figures. KGC is a later development of the evolutionary strain of tactical WW2 rules that started with the "standard unit" concept in Wargamer's Digest magazine in the 1970s. WD had some rules in mind that never got published, but the standard unit concept was best exemplified in Frank Chadwick's Command Decision (CD) from 1986. Unlike most earlier WW2 rules, CD doesn't represent the tanks, guns, and troops at 1:1. In CD, each gun and tank model represents a platoon-sized unit (the standard unit). Infantry, mounted three to a base, also represent platoons. This is pretty much the same representation used for PanzerBlitz, except that in PanzerBlitz Russians units are company sized.

KGC uses the same representation as CD with the exception that Russian units are represented one level up to account for the smaller size of Russian platoons and the lower degree of tactical flexibility of Russian forces. For example, in CD the basic maneuver element for Russians is a company represented by two tank models or two stands of infantry. In KGC, the basic Russian maneuver element is a battalion of four tank models or four stands of infantry. In addition, mortar batteries and machine-gun companies attached to Russian infantry battalions are not represented as separate units, but just factored into the infantry fire value (at just +1 for all range bands). This difference matters for the conversion, as I'll address below.

Because the representational scale of KGC and PanzerBlitz are so similar, it naturally occurred to me that adapting PanzerBlitz to KGC would make for some good game scenarios. PanzerBlitz has 12 "situations" that represent distinct actions involving forces that could equal several battalions in size. My thinking has been that the situations in PanzerBlitz can be mined to create interesting scenarios for KGC.

In miniature gaming, being free-form in structure, scenarios are the key to enjoyment. Most of our KGC games have involved large forces in set-piece battles, such as the attack/defense of a position. We've played several games set in Normandy with scenarios drawn from Operation Epsom. Monty had pretty much all the tactical finesse of Douglas Haig and the Normandy battles in June-July 1944 were about as close to the Battle of the Somme as any other WW2 battles ever came (except maybe Kursk): a terrible expenditure of blood for gains measured in yards. The gist being that even though our games are played on a 60 sq. ft. table, the focus mostly comes down to an area about 12 sq. ft. where one side is advancing against an objective and moves forward no more than about 24" during an afternoon of gaming. What I want to do is get to games that involve smaller forces that allow greater flow. My whole PanzerBlitz adaptation idea, which has been kicking around in my brain for some years, is now a catalyst for this goal.

Conversion issues
Adapting the PanzerBlitz scenarios is not without its snags, however. There are several conversion issues that need to be addressed and some trial-and-error to go through in order to get things right.

Mapboard

One of the first conversion issues to address is the how the game boards in PanzerBlitz can be recreated on the tabletop. We use the extended scale in KGC, which comes to one inch = 66 yards (or 1.5" = 100 yards). In PanzerBlitz, one hex represents 250 meters (flat to flat). The conversion is that every hex is 4" on the tabletop. The three boards in PanzerBlitz are geomorphic. One board comes out to a table space of 3.4' x 10.8'. Most configurations in the PanzerBlitz situations require 10.2' x 10.8' of table space, which is about 40 sq. ft. larger than the space we typically use. In some situations, the board configuration is end on end, which means that we need a table that is 3.4' wide by 32.6' long. We don't have that kind of room.

Instead, we use tables that are 5' x 10' or 6' x 8'. (6' is the maximum width practically possible. The 3' stretch to get to the middle of the table is a strain as it is, given the middle-aged bellies we all sport.) To design the table space, you have to look at the configuration for a given situation and then mark out the salient features to use. This requires an elastic interpretation of the mapboard features. Some things have to be thrown out or morphed with other features. In short, the mapboard configuration should be an inspiration for the tabletop layout rather than a template to be followed exactly.

If you don't want to be inspired on a situation-by-situation basis, you can design modular tabletop sections based on the three boards and then configure them for the scenarios.

Unit sizes

German units translate very well at 1 counter from PanzerBlitz equals one tank model, gun model, or stand of infantry. Russian tank and infantry counters in PanzerBlitz represent companies for the same reasons mentioned above, although gun counters still represent a single battery, just like the Germans. The problem for converting Russian counters to KGC units, if you use the KGC organization for Russians, is that you wind up with four tank models or infantry stands for every three PanzerBlitz counters, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of a Russian force. In addition, because Russian battalions abstract battalion mortars, you need to leave off the Russian mortars when you convert. This significantly reduces the firepower of the Russian side.

It also poses a problem for Russian formations. A PanzerBlitz situation that calls for nine counters of Russian rifles, which is typical, equates to a Soviet rifle regiment. In KGC organization, that's a single formation of three four-stand infantry units plus regimental assets like a 45mm AT gun, 76mm infantry gun, and the regimental 120mm mortar battery. This organization puts too many eggs in one basket.

In KGC, a unit is 1 to 4 stands. A formation is 1 to 4 units. All the units of a formation need to stay within the command radius of the formation commander (8" to 15"). When a unit is attacked, a failed morale result can effectively put that unit out of action for a few turns, meaning that multiple stands are affected. The command/control structure in KGC is in stark contrast to PanzerBlitz where any counter can act independently and is usually attacked separately.

Adopting the CD organization for the Russians, addresses some of this issue. With the CD organization, the rifle regiment (represented by nine counters in PanzerBlitz) is now three formations. Each formation is three units of two rifle stands, plus MG assets, and an 82-mm mortar unit. Also, the regimental assets can be made available. The result is more tactical flexibility, more resilience, and more firepower.

Scenarios

The scenarios in PanzerBlitz are the main reason I got interested in the project. However, most scenarios provide a challenge when it comes to converting them to KGC. The forces for each side often come down to a collection of unit counters that don't conform to historical TO&Es. This is especially true for the Germans.

In most PanzerBlitz situations, the Russian forces conform pretty well to historical TO&Es and usually fit nicely into KGC formations. For example, in Situation 6, the Russians have the following:

Using the CD organization for the Russians, this works out pretty easily to,

• Four battalions of T-34cs (three two-stand units in each)
• Two SMG battalions (three two-stand units in each, plus an MG asset per battalion)
• A two-company recon infantry battalion (or split up into four recon infantry assets)
• Two batteries of 45mm AT guns (or two assets assigned to the SMG battalions)
• A tank destroyer regiment of SU-85s (two two-stand units)
• An assault gun regiment of SU-152s (two two-stand units)
• Two batteries on 76.2mm "crash-boom" guns (or used as off-board artillery)

For the same situation, the Germans have the following:

This is a hodge-podge and nothing translates easily to KGC formations. However, it was typical for the Germans to use kampfgruppe in many situations rather than the regulation TO&Es. To make sense of the situation's forces, you have to create ersatz formations with the mix you have. For example, you could give the Germans the following:

• A panzer kampfgruppe with a two-stand PzIV company and a one-stand Panther company
• An infantry kampfgruppe with one three-stand infantry company and a 120mm mortar (you could also add an MG asset)
• An antitank kampfgruppe with two 75mm Pak 40 batteries and a single Jagdpanzer IV stand
• A Flak panzergruppe with an 88mm battery and a quad 20mm battery
• Wespe and Hummel as off-board artillery batteries

Of course, the question is whether this provides adequate play balance.

Historical inaccuracies
The situations in PanzerBlitz are genericized scenarios based on historical actions adapted to a somewhat fixed mapboard using a limited counter set. There are bound to be inaccuracies. The game is said to represent the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1945, but the situations mostly fall into the range of mid-1943 to mid-1944. As you research the situations—being an adult boy who likes tanks 'n' stuff with access to a lot more data—you realize that the game designers fudged a lot.

For example, Situation 10 is Prokhorovka, the climactic armor clash of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the southern salient at Kursk in July 1943. The Germans have a lot of Panzer IVHs and Panthers. In fact, the SS panzer troops had no Panthers at Kursk and the mainstay of their tank strength was the Panzer IIIN. In the same situation, the Soviets have SU-85s, which weren't available until later in 1943. In other situations, the Soviets have T-34/85s and the Germans have Jagdpanzer IV/L70s in 1943 scenarios, when neither of these AFVs were available at the time.

For any situation, you have to clean up the innacuracies, which may mean replacing some units with others that match the time frame or historical organization better.

Rules systems and play balance
Of course the rules systems also play a part in balancing the games. Between PanzerBlitz and KGC, the play balance of units is different. PanzerBlitz uses basic factors for attack and defense strengths, which are modified according to the rules' Weapons Effectiveness Chart. KGC uses to-hit and armor penetration values at various ranges and an AFV's defense against antitank fire is based on its armor value. In some cases, this means that some tanks are nearly invulnerable to some AT guns and some tank vs. tank encounters can be wildly lopsided despite a great numerical disparity.

For example, the Panther was probably the best AFV of WW2 (it says so in the designers notes for PanzerBlitz). The 75/L70 gun could slice through the best Soviet armor and the Panther's armor could bounce most shots from Soviet 76.2mm and 85mm AT guns except at close range.

In PanzerBlitz, the Panther has an attack value of 16 and a defense value of 12. The T-34c has an attack value of 12 and a defense of 9. This means that at a six-hex range, three T-34c counters firing together at a Panther counter have a 3:1 attack, which has a good chance of disrupting or destroying the Panther.

In KGC, it's not that easy. At the same range band (6 hexes = 24"), the 76/L42 gun of the T-34c has a 20% chance to even hit. The KGC equivalent of the three counters would be four stands, using KGC organization, or six stands, using CD organization. This means either four D10s or six D10s needing "2s" to hit. One hit may be possible, two lucky, three luckier, and four or more highly unlikely. But the number of hits is just a start. The penetration value of the 76/L42 at 24" range is a 6. The Panther's frontal armor value is 14. This is no penetration; however, KGC still gives any attacker a long-shot chance by making the maximum defense roll a "9." So, any unmodified defense roll of "10" counts as a hit. (I've grumbled about that a few times.)

By comparison, in KGC, the 75/L70 gun of the Panther has a 50% chance to hit and a 13 penetration value at the 24" range band. Against the T-34c's frontal armor of 9, this is an automatic penetration (no defense roll). In fact, even at the Panther's maximum range of 36", any hit is an automatic penetration against a T-34c.

All this means that in KGC, a single Panther has a good chance of standing off an entire battalion of T-34s, but not so much in PanzerBlitz. In some PanzerBlitz situations, there are up to 12 Panthers. In KGC, a force like that is nearly invincible.

As you convert the forces in any PanzerBlitz scenario, you may think there will be a huge disparity in numbers against one side or the other (though usually in favor of the Russians). You can address this disparity with the formation ratings, something that KGC advertises as one of it's strengths.

Postscript
This is one of the many draft blog posts I've had languishing for a long while in cyber-limbo. I had to post this because I spent so much time on it and I'd hate to see it never see the light of the Interwebs. It still has relevance to WW2 gaming on an operational scale; however, I must disclose that I sold off all my painted 15mm WW2 minis at Enfilade! 2014. I can't say that I regret having done it, but it makes completing and posting this article a bit poignant.

I still have a lot of unpainted figures (as in a lot) and models in boxes. If I don't sell them, there's a chance I'll revisit KGC or some other operational-level rules set, like Battlegoup Panzergrenadier from Partizan Press. I've had a copy for many years, though I've only played them once. There is also a second edition out. BGPG may make some of the scenario translation issues easier. I could also just bathtub the scenarios and do a 1:1 translation of units for stands for something like BGPG or Crossfire.

Khalkin Gol: Sabres on the Steppe

Way back in the August of '14, Phil Bardsley got the clever idea to play a Bolt Action game based on the Battle of Khalkin Gol between the Russians and the Japanese in 1939. He'd just picked up three of the newly-released Warlord Games BT-7 models and wanted to use them in a game. Bill Stewart, Dick Larsen, Jerry "Banzai!" Tyer, and I already had a lot of Japanese infantry, tanks, and heavy weapons. In addition, Bill had buckets of Russians, including a lot of Cossack cavalry from the Coppelstone Back of Beyond range. So we though, why not?

It took a while to get going and we had to cancel once, but we finally got to rumble on the Mongolian steppe one Saturday. The game was at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA.

Jerry, Dick, and I were the Japanese. Bill, Phil, and Bob "Mad Ivan" Mackler, pony-killer of the steppe, were the Russians.

I laid out the terrain: hills, a mostly dry riverbed (using my excellent Wizard Kraft river bits), and scrub. Bill and Phil gave me much grief over the scrub. However, we needed something to break up the bleakness of the table and to provide the micro-contours that troops in a skirmish game need for cover to distinguish between totally completely open terrain and some bits of concealment and protection in what appears otherwise to be a vast open space. I need point out, too, that both Phil and Bill deployed in and stayed in the scrub the entire game. I feel vindicated.

The key terrain piece was a ramshackle wooden bridge across the dry riverbed that both the Russian and Japanese high commands had deemed "must hold." The Japanese deployed first no closer than 12" to the bridge. The Russians followed deploying no closer than 18" to an enemy unit or 12" to the bridge.

I was on the left with a reinforced Japanese platoon of three 12-man squads, two MMGs, a sniper team, a flamethrower team, and a light AT gun. Jerry was on the right with a similar command, but with no flamethrower and a wee 70mm mountain gun in place of the AT gun. Dick, the Japanese Patton, was in the center with five tanks: two Type 97 Chi-Ha and three Type 95 Ha-Go.

Facing me (on the Russian right), Phil had his three BT-7s and a reinforced platoon of three 9-man squads, one MMG, and a medium mortar. Bob was in the center with three squads of Cossack cavalry and a Putilov horse-gun, Bill had the Russian left opposite Jerry with three squads, an MMG, and a mortar.

The Russians deployed, tanks 'n' horses

Our games tend to have lots of units and the command dice bag is bulging on turn one and grows less bulging with each passing turn. I chose the never-fail brown command dice. For some reason, in every game we play, the brown dice are the first several dice pulled. Turn 1 was no exception.

I started out by putting a 37mm AT round into of one of Phil's tanks. I managed to penetrate and start a fire, but the uncharacteristically phlegmatic Russians just put it out and went on fighting. I laid down some fire on Phil's MMG and managed to knock out two of its three crew and suppress it.

My advance across the dry river

Before the game, Jerry recalled how in his last Bolt Action game running a Japanese force against an SS platoon with all the trimmings (assault rifles, chain saws, etc.), he simply used the Banzai rule to get into contact and won big. Units in Bolt Action need to roll an order test (morale, basically) when they're given a command while pinned. Each pin marker counts as -1 on the dice roll, so once a unit gets a few pins racked up against it, it becomes increasingly harder to get them to do anything. The Banzai rule for the Japanese lets them ignore any pins if the order given to the unit is Run and they move towards a visible enemy. Stormed at by shot and shell, the Japanese keep on coming, until they win or until they're all gone.

I've always considered the Banzai rule to be a mixed bag. If a Japanese unit is pinned down to a point of near-immobility, the rule lets a Japanese player make the most of a bad situation by just charging in. Moving at 12" per turn on a Run order, they're likely to make contact within a couple turns and, assuming they have enough figures remaining to make an effect, they can cause a lot of damage. The Banzai rule also requires fighting to the death, i.e., they don't go away after losing a round of close combat; like the tough fighters rule, they keep fighting until they're all gone or until their opponents lose. In my experience, as both Japanese and opposing player, it's dicey. They'll take a lot of fire going in and may be too shot up to pull it off. I have failed spectacularly to make a Banzai attack work and have foiled a few with sheer gunfire.

I'm also a bit uncertain about some of the fine points of the rule. As long as the Japanese player gives a Run command to the unit, it can move without taking a command check even if it has one or more pins on it. But how does that work if the unit is going through rough terrain. You can't give a Run order to a unit in or moving through rough terrain, but an exception allows it if the unit will make contact. So, is it OK to give a run order to a unit to move through rough terrain against an opponent that is more than 6" away?

In any case, Jerry went into the game expecting to be able to Banzai! to victory. It turned out to be glorious, but fell somewhat short of victory.

He launched his platoons towards Bill's positions and kept a steady advance all the while racking up pins (and losses) from Bill's fire. Jerry's right-hand platoon managed to get into contact with just a few figures remaining. Bill was able to wipe them out easily losing only a couple figures himself.

Two against too many

Jerry's middle platoon, attempted to attack Bill's "Festung Schrubben" position, but got sidetracked. He managed to shoot off an attack by Bob's Cossacks, but eventually succumbed to fire.

Jerry's left-hand platoon got war-Macklered. Jerry gave it a Run order that put it within 18" of  of one of "Mad Ivan" Mackler's squadrons. He had no option to fire defensively and "Mad Ivan" came in rolling three dice per Cossack (i.e., 24 dice!). Jerry's Banzai Buddies got Ginsu-ed by the Cossack sabres.

When banzai isn't fun any more

Meanwhile, in the center, Dick's tanks sparred with Phil's BT-7s and with the Cossacks. The Japanese tanks all had two MMGs per vehicle, so they could throw a lot of fire against soft targets. The tank battles were mostly desultory. One of Phil's tanks was immobilized early on and later destroyed. However, many of the shots were misses, bounced off, or did only superficial damage. Bob's horse-gun popped away at Dick's tanks as well, but to no success.

One of Dick's tanks got a bit close to the Cossacks, apparently thinking it was immune to men on horses. "Mad Ivan" answered the challenge and came galloping up. It was a long-shot from the start. Already shackled with a few pins from machine-gun fire, "Mad Ivan" passed his morale check to charge tanks and came on across the bridge with sabres flailing. He rolled for his penetration modifier and score a bunch of pluses. However, because troops without AT grenades can't do more than superficial damage, he couldn't knock it out outright, but he did set it on fire (we assumed that every Cossack had a bottle or two of Vodka to make ersatz molotov cocktails). Dick failed his morale and the tankers bailed out, presumably to the tender mercies of the surrounding Cossacks.

Sabres on steel

The Cossacks' glory was short-lived. Dick's remaining tanks opened fire with their MMGs and the Cossacks went reeling back. By the end of the game, Bob had exactly three horsemen left, one of whom was his company commander.

Back on my end of the table, I chipped away at Phil's infantry and plinked useless shots at his tanks with my single AT gun. Phil kept up a lively fire on the AT gun with his mortar, but failed to hit after several attempts. I managed to Banzai! away one Russian squad, though it left my attacking squad much reduced and in the open where it hung on in tatters, having been badly shot up.

My other two squads, one mostly intact and one untouched, worked away on Phil's remaining foot troops uphill and burrowed in the scrub. By game's end, I was encircling his MMG, a much-reduced squad, and mortar. These and two of his three tanks were all that were left. I was moving my flamethrower team up to attack the tanks, but we called the game before then.

Bardsley's last stand

Dick managed to take and hold the bridge with his remaining Chi-Ha. He'd taken out one of Phil's tanks and kept the other two occupied. He'd also pretty much laid waste the Cossacks. Despite "Mad Ivan" Mackler's unexpected success against one tank, cavalry versus tanks is generally not a good idea.

Larson-san takes the bridge

We only completed four turns, but it was enough to call a decision. Bob had covered himself with glory, but got all his ponies killed. Phil was holding precariously to the scrub, Bill was in better shape, but may have seen things turn for the worse in another two turns.

Bill holds to the end—good thing he had scrub for cover!

Dick had lost one tank and held the bridge, I had lost the equivalent of one infantry squad, but was in good position to un-scrub Phil.  Jerry was almost non-existent. He'd banzai-ed! forward and got the worst of it. His wee 70mm pop-gun and company commander was all he had left. With mandatory seppuko after his losses, we'll have to take that down to just the wee pop-gun.

Lonely on the steppe - Jerry's last remaining unit

Postscript

This is one of those posts that I mentioned earlier were in perma-draft state. I started this just after we played the game. Now, months later, I've finished and posted it (my New Year resolutions in action!), although I've forgotten now much of how the real game actually went.

Naughty and nice (or My Christmas vacation)

I had two weeks off over the Christmas-New Year's holidays this year. Going into it, I giddily imagined all kinds of productive activity. The aftermath is a more sober reflection on the best intentions going awry. Nothing bad happened, but much of what I intended came to nought. It was, however, a welcome time off. I think that staycations are the most relaxing time a person can have away from work. I can't say that I came back to work on Monday eagerly, but I did feel content that I had been away long enough to feel prepared for going into the lion's den of work backlog and email pile-up.

What follows is my list of the naughty and nice I did on my Christmas staycation.

Nice
On the nice list:

Resumption of painting - I'm back upstairs in the wee painting nook tucked into the closet in my den. I forgot how much nicer it is to paint on my painting table.

It was a serendipitous find at Fred Meyer about a dozen years ago. It's supposed to be a kitchen utility table and has a stainless steel top. It fits perfectly in the closet, so I can close it up and have it all out of site when I'm not painting. (However, the general clutter of my den makes closing the closet doors impossible. See the naughty list below.) When I sit at the table, the surface is about the level of my sternum, which makes it very comfortable to paint. I can support myself on the table to get better brush control without having to lean in too far. The past year of painting on the dining table was tiring. I couldn't do it for long before neck and back strain drove me to the couch to be buried under cats and thus immobilized for further painting efforts.

The lighting is also much, much better. I can actually see what I'm painting.

With a bit of music playing in the background, I've been able to sit and paint for extended periods without tiring. It nicely addresses my cat problems, too. When I painted on the dining table, Rhiannon would come up on the chair next to me and start head-butting my brush arm. (Look close at some of my figures and you'll see some wild brush strokes...) Maebh regarded the dining table as her personal playground and my work was often interrupted by a fluffy little Manx jumping up and landing in the midst of my work with her characteristic "brrrrt!" which I interpret as "Brace yourself, biped! Maebh the Merciless is here!" When I paint upstairs, the munchkins just lounge about on the settee. Perhaps the music lulls them.

D.A.N.G - Dave Schueler hosted another Dave's Annual Naval Game. This event is a highlight of the holidays and I may have missed it once in the dozen or so years Dave and his wife have been hosting it.This year's mini-campaign was Operation Landcrab, the US campaign to re-take the Aleutians in May 1943.

I was on the Japanese side. We had one glorious small action that looked to be a total loss for Dai Nippon. We lost a heavy cruiser and light cruiser from American gunfire, but the US players got too eager and pursued us right into several spreads of 24" torpedoes and two of their three heavy cruisers went down hard. The Long Lance struck! (Actually, they were type 90 torpedoes, but that's close enough to the type 93.)

The second action was much bigger and looked to be less favorable to the Japanese forces. The battlewagons came out, but the superannuated Japanese dreadnoughts were getting shellacked by the less superannuated American dreadnoughts. The socializing, campaign dallying, etc. took its toll on our time and we were unable to finish the last battle. We had a lot of long lances in the water (actual type 93s this time), but the American tactic was to keep away and rely on radar-guided gunfire to shoot us to bits. Dave rolled an ersatz resolution on our torpedo attacks that decided a bit of damage on the American BBs. However, we also figured on the Japanese losing or having badly damaged the BBs we had in action.

In the end, we figured that the Japanese gave the US a bit more trouble than they did historically, but that driving the Japanese off of Attu and Kiska was a foregone conclusion in any case.

Battlegroup Overlord - I had a chance to play in a Battlegroup Overlord game run by Chris Craft. BGO is Chris' latest WW2 skirmish crush. He pitted his American paratroopers against the Hun in a game featuring a lot of very close terrain.

Hedgerows abounded and it was pretty difficult to get fields of fire. Despite it being a very bad day for American tanks, the Germans lost. I was a Hun commanding a platoon of landsers. We took out a tank and shot up a squad of paras, but we took a lot of fire in return. I think I had a bit more than a large squad by game's end.

I couldn't help comparing it to Bolt Action, which is what I play a lot of. In the end, it was a toss-up for me. Each has its own way of accounting for the randomness of command and control. The effect of shooting is pretty much the same. However, BGO's rules about pinning create more command friction for unpinning. Also, the battle rating system in BGO makes for a more logical end point for a game. Essentially, each unit has a battle rating, the aggregate of these ratings is the battegroup's battle rating (BR). As events occur, like losing a unit or attempting to unpinning a unit, one side has to blindly pull a battle counter numbered 1 to 5 and set it aside. As soon as the the number of pulled battle counters equals or exceeds your battle rating, you lose—regardless of other circumstances on the game table. For example, we shot up the American armor and had two Tiger Is and two StuG IIIs remaining (having lost only one StugG III), yet lost because our infantry was shot up.

I have the earlier set of rules in the series, Battlegroup Kursk, which I intend to use with my vast number of Eastern Front minis in 15mm.

Monolith Designs/Graven Images 40mm Prehistoric Europe - I broke down and finally ordered figures from this range after salivating over them for a few years.

The term "prehistoric" has to be understood in context. These aren't cave-men. They're actually modeled after the European Late Bronze Age (ca. 1300-700 BC). When I was in Copenhagen in 2000, I had a chance to spend several hours in the National Museum and look at artifacts from this era, including some Bronze Age helmets and weapons.

The range was designed and sculpted by the late Jim Bowen, who passed away unexpectedly earlier in 2013. Steve Mussared, who runs Monolith Designs, produces the range and still has more of Jim's masters to put into production this year, so I expect to be be buying more soon. They're not cheap. A pack of four figures runs 10.99 GBP, but they're BIG.

At this point, I'm still waiting for them to arrive. They shipped from Monolith in the UK on Dec 20 and are caught in the devil's trifecta of the Royal Mail, the US Postal Service, and the Polar Vortex of Doom, which shut down airports and embarrassed Al Gore (just kidding, nothing embarrasses Algore). I am hoping each day now to see a little something in the mail...

I'll use them for skirmish gaming (of which more anon). I've recently discovered the Song of Blades and Heroes rules from Ganesha Games in Italy, which look like the front-runner for rules of choice.

Naughty
So much for niceness. The naughty is as follows:

The garage from hell - It haunts me. It taunts me. It calls me names and questions my legitimacy. Still, I can't bring myself to clean it. With two whole weeks off (apart from family commitments and game days), I resolved to spend a little time each day cleaning the garage and before long, voilà, a clean garage where I can once again park my nice car rather than leave it outside to suffer from the elements. Alas. It didn't happen. As I write this from the den in my townhouse, two floors above the garage, I can hear it titter and scoff. I will have the last laugh, though. Maybe this year...

Reading - I always expect to read more than I do. I have a number of books that I've partially read. I tend to read sporadically from this book and that as the mood strikes. It's probably hell for retention, but I always seem to have more that I want to read than I have time for.

I got very little read, but did manage to get through Bronze Age Warfare by Richard Osgood et al. This book was a chance find at Half Price Books a while back. Now that I'm getting psyched for the 40mm prehistorical europeanoids project, the book is a welcome resource, even though much of the evidence available comes from the Aegean, which saw a higher level of civilization that Northern Europe. Thank goodness for the bogs, which have given up several treasures (and near-intact corpses) from this period in European prehistory.

Still being slowly ploughed through are several books on the Wars of the Roses and Alexander Rose's fascinating Kings in the North about the Percy family in British history.

Eating - OK. I was a pig. With time on my hands, I cooked. Having cooked, I ate. I was also cruelly tempted by a host of Christmas goodies. Surprisingly, I gained less weight than I feared, but at 219 lbs., I am a few pounds above my best weight of last year.

Painting - Although I got back to painting in my den, it took me until after New Year's to do it. I can rationalize that until then I was busy with holiday activities, blah, blah, blah. Really, though, I was too busy eating and lazing (i.e., not painting, not reading, not cleaning the garage). As I posted earlier, I have resolved to do better this year—and so far have done.

No Tannenbaum, no Tannenbaum - I haven't put up a Christmas tree for a few years now. It's not from lack of desire. I used to get a tree delivered each year from the nursery down the street, but they went out of business and I haven't had a tree since. It's pretty much impossible to schlep a tree with my 350z. That leaves me with the option of borrowing a car or finding somewhere else that delivers, which I haven't.

Maybe next year when I can claim more nice than naughty.