English Civil War 6mm - New Rules - War is Our Homeland

Last night we played our first English Civil War battle using a new set of rules, "War Is Our Homeland" by Joshua Rowe

The rules concentrate on the command control aspect of the battle experience using decks of standard playing cards to apply different "postures" to units. The postures being:

• Offensive - allowing charging 3" into combat. This is an extra move on top of the very basic move of 6" (or 9" for cavalry).
• Defensive - allowing an advantage when receiving a charge
• Firing - increasing the number of dice when shooting. Units can always shoot, this just increases the chance of doing damage. Range is just 3"
• Mobile - allowing extra movement. Units can do very simple 6" forward movement even when not in Mobile posture, but not through difficult terrain.

Shooting and Melee is resolved with handfuls of d6 against a target number of 4+ and combat resolution is very simple. There is just two states for units other than fresh; Fatigued and Shaken. A unit can be either, neither or both.

Play is fast and simple, but very tactical. Choice of when and how to use the postures and cards is probably the most important factor. 

The scenarios in the book and expansions are all historical and we decided to play Cheriton in 1644 from the "A Clash of Three Kingdoms" scenario book as it was the smallest scenario. We used my usual minis and didn't bother rebasing or rescaling. My basing is different from the basing described in the rules, but not significantly and we decided it would be fine. We still think it was. Of the other scenarios most had far more units than I have available, so I'm either going to have to paint some extra models (a lot in some cases) or scale those battles down.

The game flowed well. I played the Parliamentary forces and had to break the Royalists to win. Any other result would be a Royalist victory so they decided to stay where they were and defend. Seeing I only had 5 turns to break the Royalists I used a lot of my command cards to move forward quickly. The Royalists were instead able to hold on to their cards to use in the ensuing combat and when we did contact I was soundly beaten. I think on reflection I should have not rushed so much and just used my commander's free postures to advance along with the basic move. I also had moved my Dragoons into the wood on my right flank and this meant they were pretty much unable to go further without me having to concentrate my postures on them. This was a mistake and they should have been out in the open.

Initial deployment from the Parliament side of the battlefield.

Parliament forces rush forward towards the waiting Royalists

Combat is joined. The Parliament forces take are pushed back and only a single unit of Royalist Dragoons is in danger.

Royalist forces fight back inflicting Fatigue and Shaken results.

In the end the game was a victory for the Royalists: Royalists routed 3 Parliament units to Parliament routing just a single Royalist unit. 

We did have a few rules questions for the designer and I'm going to list them here. Hopefully with answers in time... I've also listed what we arbitrarily decided to do so we could continue to play.

1. Can you pre-measure movement, charges, shooting etc? (We allowed premeasuring as we prefer that.)
2. There don't appear to be any rules for deployment. Who deploys which units in which order?. (We deployed as shown on the Cheriton page of the British Battles website)
3. Its unclear if a unit's whole move is halved, or if a unit halves their movement only for that part made in difficult terrain. (We decided to just halve the proportion of the move in the difficult terrain.)
4. Is the bonus Firing posture die for dragoons doubled or is it applied after the normal dice are doubled? (We assumed not doubled)
5. Do units shoot independently or combine dice when considering Fatigue or Shaken results? (We assumed not combined.)
6. If a charge is incomplete (ie the 3" move does not result in contact or a support position) can the unit still make the move or does it remain stationary? (We assumed that it stayed stationary.)
7. If multiple units are in contact or a unit is within range to provide support at what point in the turn and in what order is this decided? (We had a phase before combats were resolved where the owner of each unit decided for each combat.)
8. When a unit breaks off 3" from contact is it them inside or outside of shooting and charge range from that unit (this matters in difficult terrain). (This didn't happen for us, but we realised that it is not covered in the rules.)
9. Are leaders displaced if a their own unit overlaps them. (We manage to move units to avoid them, but it was not clear what would happen if the unit could not..)
10. We read it as clear that shooting dice are unaffected by shaken or fatigue statues but this did not 'feel' right, especially for dragoons which shot at full effect despite both. (We carried on with what we thought the rules said, but Dragoons on firing posture getting 7 dice even with Fatigue and Shaken seemed off.)

Despite the above questions we thoroughly enjoyed the game and will be looking to try these rules again. First off a reverse of the Cheriton battle. I'll get to play the Royalists.

1914 BEF in 6mm

Back, last Christmas, when I first got hold of a resin (SLA) 3d printer I decided that I was going to attempt to do a WWI 1914 in 6mm for the Joy Of Six show. I decided to use the excellent range by Henry Turner which had everything I would need. 

Unfortunately other things distracted me from this project and it didn't get too far. It didn't help that I'd decided to use water-washable resin for the minis and this was very brittle and the models broke very easily. 

Roll on to August, and I could get back to the project. I started again with some Sunlu High Toughness Resin, which is really flexible and takes paint well without a primer. This has worked really well and my 1914 BEF force is now ready.

I initially looked at Great War Spearhead II as the rules to use, but these seem overcomplicated for what I need so I've been looking at other systems. Peter Pig's Square Bashing was suggested to me and that looks to be good for fun pick-up games at the club, but really I want to run a scenario game based on the whole or some part of the retreat from Mons. The "Bloody Big Battles" rules set looks promising with the modifications available as a free download and there is a complete retreat from Mons scenario.

So I've tried to be relative rules agnostic and have based my units on 30mm squares (3d printed) with enough to make a Square Bashing army or the army for the BBB Mons scenario.

I'm now on to my Germans... there's loads to do!

 

Scramble for Britain - First game

This afternoon we played two games of "Scramble for Britain", the "Wings at War" Battle of Britain game using my new setup.

It worked great. The flight stands worked well with the German forces using the water sea and the British the land ones. We both loved the formation rules, which speeded up play nicely. 

Both games had great swirling dog-fights, bombing runs, exciting failed manoeuvres, etc... Though Ed won both, once as the Germans and once as the Brits!

We'll be coming back for more for sure!

 

Battle of Britain - Ready for play

So, I've managed to do a lot more with my WW2 planes in the last week or so. There's now more of them, they have plenty of stands, counters and a little bit of English coastline to attack. I've also just finished off the convoy ships.

So it was time to get all of it out for a quick photo shoot...

More bits for my Kings of War Salamanders

I just completed the Phoenix for my Kings of War Salamanders ready for trying it out at COGS. I realised that I had not posted photos of my other recent units, so here they are.

First up is of course the Phoenix. This is one hell of a model to paint. All those flames and then the feathers. It's so huge that it really is important to get it right for the army. I didn't want this one to ruin the look of the rest of the army.

I looked around the net and decided to go for red feathers with black highlights like they are burned at the edges. The flames are my usual recipe, but with extra white highlights where they meet the bird itself to make it seem even hotter. The teddy bear filling highlighted again with black, covers up what I think is the weakest part of the model, where it meets the ground and makes it look a bit more like its flying.

The Mage Priest is a wonderful sculpt and a good model in the army. A spell caster with Inspiring built-in is not the usual in Kings of War. It has a good selection of spells and I'd consider more than one of these, but Mantic only do one model! With such a dynamic model I just could not run with two the same! Come on Mantic!

The Lekelidon is another superb model. I loved painting this one... A nice bit of cheap chaff he's going to have to fight with my froggies for a place in the army most of the time though.

I'd always intended to do a horde of Ceremonial Guard, but in the end I only really have space for a regiment. I stuck with my original plan though of having them lined up as if on parade... I selected only the parts that would allow this and left the more dynamic bits for other units.

"Wings at War" - "Scramble for Britain"

 A few years (decades?) ago I had a go at doing a wargame of airplane combat over Burma during WW2. The idea was to represent some of the airborne operations of the 2nd Chindit Expedition. I bought a few 1/600 planes from Tumbling Dice and had a satellite image of the appropriate area of Burma printed out to play on. The rules I chose were "Scramble!" and after one game of that incredibly detailed, but clunky and slow game I shelved the project.

Anyway. a few weeks ago my friend Ed introduced me to the "Wings at War" range of games, designed to use the same 1/600 planes that I had bought those many years ago. We played a few games from the "Mig*Alley" rules for North Korea and downloaded the "Desert Spitfires" set to have a closer look. I loved them! They're quick and fun; with proper scenarios; simple, but realistic rules including proper aerobatics; and allowing many, many planes to be flown without too much niggly detail and no paperwork at all!

I immediately looked for a Burma book, but of course there isn't one. "Perhaps I should write my own?" Well, maybe I will, but first I would need to try something more WW2 than MIGs over North Korea... 

So I bought a copy of "Scramble for Britain" the Battle of Britain set. This is a bargain for £10 and comes with a set of lovely Tumbling Dice planes to start you off... I immediately set to work painting the German planes up... Here they are:

Playing with Ed we used dice on the bases to keep track of the 2 stats for each plane, "Energy" and "Height", but with my planes I will be using the 3D printed bases I've designed with Energy on the dials built into the base,.and height designated by extending the heights of planes. They are each attached to a small wire rod that can be stuck into any base as needed and I'll have some extension pieces as can be seen in the following photo.

These are the Spitfires I painted for my Burma game, so they are in the wrong colours for the Battle of Britain. I'll be painting some extras up for a bit of authenticity... I'm not sure I'll repaint these though.

I did start with the brown 3d printed extension pieces, but I found some brass tube and will probably switch to that.

Of course I also needed some ground targets and so went a bit mad scaling down 1/300 buildings from Voxelhouse to 1/1200 on the resin 3D printer...

The tiny spitfires show the correct colour scheme for the Battle of Britian, but I'm amazed I managed to print out the radar stations in so much detail. A couple have a bit of damage, but one is perfect.

And finally some photos of the rest of the Burma planes I painted those many, many years ago... 

I've still got loads to do... There's a load more planes that just arrived today, convoy ships, sea bases, and the Kent coastline

Kings of War - Salamanders - The Whispering Scales

My new Salamander army continues to grow. The latest part bringing me up to 1950 points of new models for the COGS of War tournament this weekend is the formation for the army, "The Whispering Scales".

For this I have two regiments of Salamander Primes, one with 2-handed weapons and a special Battle Captain. 

For the Battle Captain I designed my own model using Hero Forge and then printed it on my resin printer.

Kings of War - Bullywugs... er... Ghekkotah Warriors

I decided that I needed some chaff for my new Salamander army and at 60 points for a troop the Ghekkotah warriors look ideal. However, Mantic don't (at the time of writing) make any Ghekkotah troops. There's a few heroes, but nothing else. 

I started looking around for 3D printable alternatives, but found nothing that really grabbed me. That is until I found the Warp Miniatures Bullywug Warriors. I loved these happy smiling frogs the moment I saw them and knew I had to use them.

Now you might say, those are frogs, not geckos... and you'd be right. But if Mantic can confuse salamanders as being reptiles, then I can confuse geckos as being amphibians. To be fair to Mantic, it's not their fault, but the fault of the medieval scholars who couldn't work out what a salamander actually was.

Anyway, having decided that I was going to use the Bullywugs, (which could also be Riverguard... hmmm...) I decided they needed appropriate bases. Loads of messing with 3D prints; plaster cast rocks; transparent resin, both two-part and UV; and some of the rather excellent Gamer's Grass lazer-cut plants has produced a couple of little troops I'm very proud to put at the front of my army ready to be killed first... 

... and not an LED on them!

Star Wars Armada

Years ago, before Covid, I used play a bit of Star Wars Armada. Not much, just a bit. 

Anyway, recently we've started playing it at COGS. I've been supplying most of the stuff for it as most of the players are new to it and the game is now harder to find and often expensive.

A little while ago I bought the Corellian campaign pack as it was cheap and realised that if we were to play it then I'd need more ships. This lead me to investigate into 3D printing ships for the game. There's quite a few designs for free online and with both resin and filament printers I printed a few out. 

It soon became obvious that really I needed some original ships as well to copy the base cards from and other components and so I started looking at what was available to buy cheap. This lead to some bargains, which lead to more bargains. 

Then the terrain had to be 3D printed and finally I thought I better get all those squadrons painted.

Anyway, now I have enough I think... though I do have a couple more ships in the post yet... one of those is very. very large.

All the squadrons in the photo are proper ones. The ships on the black bases are the ones I've 3D printed.

Oh and I should have mentioned this before... but we won best overall participation game at Hammerhead again...