Enfilade 2014 Recap Part 2 – My Games

This year I ran two games for Enfilade, one on Friday evening and the other on Saturday afternoon. The Friday game was Slow Boat from China modern missile boats game using the Bulldogs Away rules. The Saturday game was Sandy One to the Rescue a Vietnam War air game using the AirWar C21 rules.

Slow Boat from China 

This was a five player game representing a Chinese Navy attempt to escort a resupply ship to one of their island bases in the Spratly Islands. The Chinese Navy (PLAN) started out with a corvette (Weihei) escorting the cargo ship and three Type 022 missile boats. The Littoral Alliance side was made up of force from the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan. The Littoral Alliance started out with two Philippine gunboats (one an old South Korean Sea Dolphin and the other an ex-US Cyclone class patrol boat, with some Hellfire missiles) and the other two players selected a Vietnamese force with a Tarantul I and Osa II, and a Taiwanese force with two Kuang Hua VI missile boats. The game started out with the two Philippine boats sitting on either side of the PLAN cargo ship, while the Weihei and three missile boats trailed behind.

Philippine patrol boats on both sides of the cargo ship, while the Chinese corvette watches their every move

Vietnamese ships move slowly toward the cargo ship

Both sides were told to avoid shooting at the other side, although the PLAN players were told that there probably wouldn’t be any repercussions for firing if they felt in danger. However, both sides were also told they were free to use non-lethal methods to slow down the other side. In the beginning both sides tried to use fire hoses to slow down or force the other guys too turn away. This caused there to be a lot of wet sailors, but also slowed down the cargo ship by shooting water into the engine air intakes.

The cargo ship slows down to clear out some water, while the PLAN missile boats move up

Not long after, the Philippine player got the word he could open fire as needed to stop the cargo ship. He turned the ex-Cyclone away from the cargo ship to open range for his missiles. Suspecting something was up due to the radio chatter, the PLAN players fired missiles and guns at both Philippine ships.

Missiles fired at the Philippine ship

The Philippine Sea Dolphin was taken out right away by close range 76mm gun shots, but the ex-Cyclone was able to get off a Hellfire shot before the PLAN missiles hit. Due to the distances (and rules), the Hellfire hit and started a fire on the cargo ship before the PLAN missiles caught the ex-Cyclone. The ex-Cyclone did take heavy damage from the missile hits, but was able to stay afloat and continue to fire off its remaining Hellfire missiles.

Cargo ship on fire as missiles head for the Philippine ship

The rest of the Littoral Alliance ships had not gotten the weapons free order, but that didn’t matter to the PLAN and they started shooting at the Vietnamese.

Missile fired at the Vietnamese

Vietnamese Osa under attack

At this point the Vietnamese and Taiwanese decided that there was no reason to hold back and began shooting at the PLAN, causing a big missile scrum in the middle of the board.

Missiles flying everywhere

The three PLAN Type 022 missile boats and the cargo ship did not survive the exchange. But Weihei tried to salvage the situation by attacking the Taiwanese, who promptly return fire.

PLAN and Taiwanese Navy exchange shots while other ships burn in the background

A couple more missiles finish off the corvette

In the end, all of the PLAN ships were sunk and each of the Littoral Alliance players got away with at least one ship (although most were damaged). The scenario seemed to work out okay and the players seemed to have a good time. If I do this again, I will probably make some minor changes to the rules of engagement to try and lengthen the amount of time before the missiles start flying.

Sandy One to the Rescue
This was a seven player game covering the rescue attempt of a downed pilot after a bomb raid over North Vietnam. There we four US Air Force players flying two each flying a pair of F-4 Phantoms (with limited fuel), while the other two flew four A-1 Skyraiders (the Sandys of the scenario name) and a CH-53 helicopter. The North Vietnamese brought in four MiG-17s and a pair of MiG-19s. They also had some 57mm AAA sites and trucks on the ground. The trucks did have a chance to move, but not very fast (they were actually moving at about 50 MPH, I wanted to give them a chance to try to get close to the downed pilot).
After setting up the Phantoms, we waited for the MiGs to appear.

F-4 Phantoms passing over some trucks and flak

The MiGs held off coming in, trying to get the Phantoms to waste some fuel, but finally moved in as the Sandy moved on to the board.

MiGs enter the game

The first bit of bad luck for the US players was that an AAA site found the range on a Phantom and knocked it out of the sky, while the other Phantom of that pair found himself being followed by a bunch of MiGs.

A MiG-19 chasing a Phantom

The first of many missile misses as an F-4 goes down from a flak hit

The Phantoms tried to keep the MiGs away from the Sandys, but they were not having much luck with their missiles.

Another missile miss

And another (but at least the A-1 did some damage)

Although, to be fair, they were forcing the MiGs to make evasive maneuvers keeping them from taking a direct path to the slow moving A-1s. The A-1s had a chance to do a little damage of their own by taking out a couple AAA sites and some of the trucks.

Sandy takes down a AAA site

A-1s destroy some trucks and another Flak site as the downed pilot puts up some smoke

The rescue helicopter slowly made its way to the downed pilot, but was constantly harassed by MiGs.

The CH-53 survives a head-on attack

And dodges a few more MiGs

In the end the MiGs couldn’t do enough damage to down the chopper and with ammo running low (or completely gone) they decided to break off the action.

The US made it out with a heavily damaged helicopter, the downed pilot, three F-4s (although one ran out of gas on the way home) and the four A-1s. The North Vietnamese had some damaged planes, but only lost one MiG-17 to an A-1.

Overall, it seemed like things went pretty well and the players seemed to have fun. I think the speed differences between the A-1s/helicopter and all the other planes might have made it not as fun for the A-1 players, so I’ll have to watch that in the future.

Enfilade 2014 Plans

With Enfilade a little over a week away, I thought I'd post a little information about the games I'm running.

On Friday night I'm running Slow Boat from China, a Bulldogs Away game featuring my recently completed PLA Navy forces escorting a container ship.

Chinese forces

Facing off against a mixed group of ships from Vietnam, Philippines, and Taiwan (the players will have some choices to make about their forces).

A group of recently completed Taiwanese Kuang Hua VI missile boats

The PLA forces need to escort the container ship off the board, while the other side is trying to stop them. The situation is complicated because no one has orders to open fire (at least not at the start of the game), but each side does have some non-lethal options.

My second game, being run on Saturday afternoon, is Sandy One to the Rescue, an AirWar C21 game taking place during the Vietnam War with the US Air Force players trying to cover the rescue of the downed crew. The US players will have some fighters to cover the rescue (although they have limited fuel).

F-4D Phantoms

Along with the search and rescue group with A-1 Skyraiders and the rescue helicopter.

A-1s and a CH-53

The North Vietnamese will have MiGs (although they won't get all of them)

MiG-17s

MiG-21s and MiG-19s

Along with some ground forces.

Some NVA AAA and trucks

The US players need to rescue the downed pilot, while the North Vietnamese are trying to stop them or inflict a bunch of casualties.

Enfilade is always a fun time and I'm looking forward to it.

As in previous years, I'll try to post a list of the Enfilade naval games. But on a side note, I have pretty much failed with my plan to update the blog more often. 

PLAN Corvette Completed and Enfilade Plans

Well my Type 056 corvette is finally done, actually it has been done for over a week, but I just haven’t updated my blog.

Here is a quick recap of my actions for those of you that might have forgotten (since it has taken me so long to finish this). I received the 1/700 scale Chinese Navy Type 056 corvette from the Shapeways ‘Object May Appear…” store in February. I spent most of February making modifications to the ship and March getting it painted.

Here are some photos of the completed ship.

This gives a good view of the changes I made on the forward end of the ship (gun, mast, bulwarks)

In this shot you can really see the ‘steps’ on the bow of the ship. This might be a problem for some people, but they only really appear under certain lighting conditions.

A nice shot of the back end.

This was my attempt to mimic one of the photos I’ve been posting in my previous entries, which I’ll put up again here so you can compare the real thing to the model.

Overall I’m happy with how the Type 056 corvette turned out, but it did require a little work. So I would give it a thumbs up recommendation, with the caveat that it is not quite a complete model. It would be a lot better if it came with the 76mm gun.

With that, my little ship is ready to form a PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy) task group with the Type 022 missile boats.

In addition to finishing up the corvette, I submitted two games for this year’s Enfilade. One game involves the PLAN task group escorting a container ship to resupply a base in the Spratly Islands. The opposing forces will be Vietnamese missile boats and some patrol boats from the Philippines. I’ll be using David Manley’s Bulldogs Away rules for this game. The other game will be an opposed helicopter rescue during the Vietnam War using the Air War C21 rules (another set of Manley rules). On the American side I’ll have some A-1 Skyraiders and a CH-53 helicopter moving in to recover a downed pilot, with F-4 Phantoms flying top cover. For the North Vietnamese, there are MiG-17s, MiG-19s, and MiG-21s (although they won’t get all of these planes) along with some AAA guns and troops in trucks trying to beat the Americans to the downed pilot. I’m hoping both will be interesting games.

I’m still hoping to spend more time making blog entries. I haven’t been very good about it this year, as you can tell by the fact that it is April and this is only my fifth entry for the year.

My Shapeway Order Arrives

As I mention in my previous post, I ordered a few items from Shapeways and now that they are here, I thought I give a short review of the figures.

First up is the Chinese Navy Type 056 (NATO name: Jiangdao) class corvette. This is the 1/700 scale version from the Objects May Appear … shop.

I was actually quite pleased with how the ship turned out. I was worried about the graininess of the basic white strong & flexible material, so I selected a white polished strong & flexible material for the ship and was happy with how smooth it turned out (Chris had posted on a comment on the previous post saying that he thought I would like the polished material and he was right). The model is very similar to a standard injection molded plastic model with a hollowed out bottom (I didn’t take a photo of that part, but I think everyone will understand what I’m talking about). The forward deck does have some stair-stepping from the printing process. It is hard to see in the photos and might not be very visible once paint is applied. But I think I will try to sand it down a little (although I have read that this material doesn’t really sand very well). That said, I think it will really match up well with my other 1/700 scale plastic and resin ships.

So, how does the model compare to the real thing? It is pretty close in size – most websites say the Type 056 is around 90m long (although none of them clarify if that is maximum length or waterline length), which would work out to 12.85 cm in 1/700 scale and the model comes in around 12cm.

The starboard side of a PLAN Type 056 in port

Shapeways Type 056

There are some minor details missing from the model (no forward bulwark, no gun, the mast is missing details, etc.), but the general shape is good. As you look at the profile view, moving forward to aft, you can see that deck for the fire control radar (just aft of the bridge) is too short, the mast is straight instead of bent, the exhaust cover is too far forward, the aft superstructure does not meet the exhaust cover, and while there are holes under the helicopter deck on the sides, there aren’t any in the rear of the ship. I actually think that the part of the problem with the layout is that the helicopter deck is too short and that you could move the whole aft superstructure forward to meet the funnel, lengthening the helicopter deck, and it would be about right.

From the overhead, you can see a couple other problems. The area around the mast goes all the way to the sides, instead of tapering in and leaving room for the 30mm guns. From the top you can also really see how the connection between the aft superstructure and exhaust cover is missing.

A better overhead view of a Type 056 corvette

With all this in mind, I think it is still a good model and it is one that no one else is making. I will be adding some details (the 76mm gun and mast details) and I might extend the aft superstructure. The amount of work I do will depend on how easy it is to glue stuff to the polished material.

The other items I ordered were 1/144th scale 1930s air racers from the Arctic Skunk shop. My friend Kevin has a bunch of these and you’ve seen photos of his planes from our air racing game. I ordered these with the basic white strong & flexible material and they do have a somewhat grainy texture. I also understand that this material really soaks up the paint, so you need to prime the planes really well.

The three planes I got are the Howard DGA-4 “Ike”, the Hall Bulldog (a favorite of mine, even though it was a poor racer), and the Laird Super Solution. I really like these planes and I’m looking forward to painting them up. Although, I think I will work on the ship first.

Looking down the line

With the new year already well underway, I thought I would take a little time to make some notes about some upcoming plans and projects for 2014. My right arm is still recovering from the shoulder surgery in December, but I’m hoping that won’t prevent me from doing some hobby work.

I plan to work on some modern ships this year. I recently ordered a 1/700 scale Chinese Navy Type 56 corvette from the Objects May Appear… store on Shapeways (in addition to some 1/144th scale air racers). One thing I’ve noticed about the Shapeways figures I’ve seen is that the basic strong & flexible printing turns out with a grainy look and feel. Since this ship will have fit in with my resin and plastic ships, I chose to get the ship in the polished strong & flexible material (the mid-level price option). I’m hoping that will make the whole figure smoother, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I do expect there will still need to be some detailing work done on the ship, but since no one else makes this model I should have something unique. I will post my impressions of the ship and material once it arrives.

The Type 56 image from Shapeways website

I also want to get back to a couple of projects that I set aside. One is the 15mm Age of Sail stuff. This project has been languishing for years and I really need to do some work on it. I’ve got enough ships and figures to do some small battles and figure out the real direction I want to go. I want to do some U.S. Navy vs. Barbary pirate actions and maybe follow that up with some War of 1812 actions, but my slow painting has been holding up the whole project.

Barbary Pirates (still) in progress

The other project I want to get back to is the Vietnam War air rescue scenario that I started a couple years ago. I was going to run a game for Enfilade, but the project stalled and I went in a different direction. I want to use the AirWar C21 rules for the game, since the rules cover both air-to-air and air-to-ground stuff, but I’m having trouble figuring out the best way to do a turning template that fits with my stands and the game. I’m probably being too anal retentive about this, but I’d really like to have some good tools for players to make movement and turning easy. 

Planes waiting for completion

In addition to gaming projects, I want to make that I do more blog posting this year. My postings fell off a little last year and I want to change that. My goal is to get out a minimum of 30 posts in 2014. That isn't really much compared to most bloggers, but my posts tend to be long so I think that is a good compromise.  

Enfilade 2012 Recap: Part 2 - My Games

I ran two games at Enfilade 2012, one on Friday night and the other on Saturday morning. Friday night, Kevin and I ran the "Tripwire" Strait of Hormuz game using David Manley's "Bulldogs Away!" rules. Saturday morning I ran "Action on Lake Ontario" using a slightly modified Sail & Steam Navies rules.

The Friday night game was full with six players, 2 US/Allies and 4 Iranian. The basic premise of the scenario was that western sanctions against Iran has caused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy (IRGN) to declare that they are closing the Strait of Hormuz and only ships they escort are allowed through. Additionally, the IRGN had secretly mined the strait and a British merchant hit a mine, which caused a stoppage in traffic through the strait. The US Navy has decided to clear the mines and capture the ships that are laying the mines.

The IRGN was tasked with maintaining Iranian sovereignty in the strait and escorting ships that request an escort through the strait. The IRGN players selected two small boat groups (each with four Boghammer patrol boats armed with machine guns, RPGs, and recoilles rifles and a Zafar rocket boat with a salvo rocket launcher) to escort ships through the strait, one torpedo boat group (with four Tir class stealth torpedo boats), and one missile boat group (with three C-14 "China Cat" missile boats). Additionally, the IRGN players had to decide which mine markers on the board were real and which were dummies. The center of the board had mine markers placed about every 12 inches that stretched across the board. The IRGN could basically set up anywhere on the board, but there were some restrictions for the escort groups. The small boat groups were assigned to escort two ships through the strait; a fishing vessel that had requested escort and a merchant that was really an IRGN auxiliary that had been laying mines.

One Boghammer group escorting the fishing vessel

The other Boghammer group escorting the merchant auxiliary

IRGN C-14 "China Cat" missile boats set up near the minefields

The US Navy/Allied side was tasked with clearing a path through the mines and/or capturing one of the ships laying mines. They didn't have to take both missions, but decided to try it. The US Navy/Allied players selected an anti-mine group (an LCS-1 class ship with an anti-mine mission package a Sea Cobra and anti-mine MH-53 helicopter) to clear the mines and a boarding group (with two US Cyclone class patrol boats, two Mk V SEAL boats, and two United Arab Emirates missile boats). The anti-mine group entered from the eastern board edge, while the boarding group was allowed circumvent the mines and enter on the southwest board edge. (An interesting side note, the US Navy/Allied players really wanted to avoid the LCS-2 class ships, even though we had two of them available. I was really hoping to get one of them into the game).

When the LCS-1 moved into radar range, the IRGN players sent several Boghammers to investigate (and harass) the ship.

LCS-1 with the MH-53 anti-mine helicopter and approaching Boghammers in the background

Over on the other side of the board, the boarding group split up with the Cyclone and Mk V boats moving to intercept the merchant, while the UAE missile boats moved north to intercept the fishing vessel (the US players did not know if either of the ships was involved in the mining, but they were supposed to board them to find out). Additionally, there was a small boat, with a big CNN flag, that was filming the whole thing.

US Cyclone and Mk V boats with the CNN news boat nearby

As the IRGN boats closed with the US and UAE ships, they started hearing messages over their radios about maintaining a safe distance from the US/UAE ships. The IRGN players basically pretended they couldn't understand or didn't hear the messages. the US/UAE ships decided a stronger warning was needed and began firing shots across the bows of the IRGN boats. This caused some of the boats to turn away and almost caused an inadvertent collision between an UAE missile boat and IRGN C-14 missile boat.

Near collision in the strait

With CNN on hand, it seemed like both sides were a little reluctant to be the first side to open fire. But this changed as one of the Cyclone boats wandered into the mine zone and found a mine.

Oops! A Cyclone class boat runs into a mine

At this point the commander of the boarding group declared that he was under attack and opened fire on the nearest IRGN boats. This allowed everyone to start shooting. An IRGN Zafar class rocket boat fired off its rockets to finish off the Cyclone that had hit the mine and the C-14 missile boats fired missiles at the other Cyclone class and UAE missile boats. The remaining Cyclone and Mk V boats returned fire with the Hellfire missiles, while the UAE missile boats fired their Exocets. On the other side of the board, the LCS-1 class didn't have any missile and had to rely on her guns and the missiles on the Sea Cobra to attack the IRGN boats. Additionally, the IRGN Tir class torpedo boats made a torpedo run against the UAE ships and began moving toward the LCS-1.

Missiles Away!

When the smoke cleared, both US Cyclones were sinking and one of the Mk V boats was damaged. The IRGN had lost their missile boats and most of their Boghammers. As the game ended, we decided the US/UAE players had lost the propaganda war for firing first (the CNN footage couldn't confirm American claims that they were attacked first), but they controlled the battlefield and still had the capability to sweep the minefields.

Everybody seemed to have a good time and I distributed prize packs from Fight's On to the players (thanks to Rob at Fight's On for sending me the prizes).

The Saturday morning Action on Lake Ontario game didn't provide any order of battle options for the players, but the players did have several options in how the set up (which I hope made up for the lack of OOB options). There were 2 British and 4 American players for this game. In this scenario, the American Lake Ontario squadron has been pursuing the largest British ship on the lake, Royal George, for the past two days and is finally catching up with the ship as it is approaching the British harbor at Kingston.

The British players had 3 ships (Royal George - 20 guns, Prince Regent - 12 guns, and Earl of Moria - 14 guns) and 2 small shore batteries. The American squadron had 7 ships: Oneida - 18 guns, Hamilton - 11 guns, Gov Tompkins - 6 guns, Julia - 3 guns, Pert - 3 guns, Growler - 1 gun, and Conquest - 1 gun.

The British had the advantage of bigger ships, while the Americans had more ships and more long guns. Additionally, with only two players, the British had a little easier command and control challenge than the Americans. The American movement was a bit haphazard and there were a couple times I thought they were going to collide with each other.

Royal George watches the American squadron approach

The Americans took some long range shots, but no major damage was done. The British reinforcements (Prince Regent and Earl of Moria) moved out of Kingston harbor and interposed themselves between Royal George and the Americans.

The American squadron faces the British reinforcements

By this time both sides were starting to take damage and several smaller American ships were forced out of line. 

As the British reinforcements passed by (and before they could turn), the Americans made one last drive to catch Royal George. However, at a key moment the Americans lost movement initiative, which caused a minor collision between Oneida and Royal George. No damage was done in the collision, but the ships did foul each other. Initially, both sides were trying to clear the fouled lines, but then the British decided that this was a good opportunity to take out the largest American ship by grappling and boarding it.

Oneida and Royal George grappled together

Before the boarding action, both sides had one last chance to fire their close range carronades into the enemy, adding damage and crew suppression to both ships. During the boarding action, the Americans failed their morale check (the American captain had been wounded by earlier cannon fire) and surrendered.

With their largest ship captured, another sinking, and a third withdrawing due to a failed morale check, the Americans decided to break off the action giving the British control of the lake.

It seemed like everyone had a good time with the rules and we didn't run into any major issues. While the Sail & Steam Navies rules are really for later ships, I think the modifications made them work well for the smaller Age of Sail actions. I had to add rules for carronades, chain shot, make changes to the critical hits, and a few other items, but the movement rules were straight from the rulebook. You wouldn't want to play Trafalgar with these rules (in fact you probably wouldn't want to play games with ships that have more than 30-40 guns), but seem to work pretty well for the smaller action on the Great Lakes and Chesapeake during the War of 1812.

Overall, I had a good time with the Enfilade games and I hope that all the players enjoyed them too.