Ten Years Ago - September 2016

Ten years ago I did a trip Out West to go to the Priscilla Festival in Broken Hill. It was a lot of fun and as well as the festival itself we did some tourism. As part of this I collected some photos about the infamous 1915 attack on the Broken Hill Picnic Train, which is often regarded as the first terrorist attack on modern Australia. 

So for this look back in time you get a little bit of history and a few nice frocks. 

The Picnic Train And Priscilla

Memoir '44

We had a very quiet club night last night, with only three of us turning up. We played Memoir '44. Caesar has played in the past, but Daniel was new to the game, so I just took the basic set with me reasoning that the scenarios in it are pretty simple to pick up.

Daniel spectated to pick up the game whilst Caesar and I played the first game. We did the St Mere Eglise scenario, with Caesar taking the Americans whilst I took the Germans. This is is a fun one because the Americans get to drop figures on the board to simulate a paradrop. Caesar ended up with four units in my right-flank sector, some in cover.

Fortunately I had plenty of cards for that sector, despite only having a four-card hand, and I was able to mount a strong attack. That's where I picked up most of the kills for my 4-2 win. 

Daniel then stepped up to the plate and we reran the scenario. He took the Americans as well. His paradrop was in front of my left-flank reinforcements and initially he had me trapped in a corner. But I rallied and used a Their Finest Hour card to open up the flank and get my armour into play. This then hunted down paratroopers in the centre. Daniel cam back using a Behind Enemy Lines to take out a single-figure unit I had on my baseline, to put him one medal from victory, but I used a Counter-Attack to return the favour and knock out one of his weak units for the win. 

Daniel and Caesar then played each other. They chose the Operation Luttich scenario because it had tanks on both sides as well as some artillery. Caesar took the Americans, who are in a decent defensive position. Daniel's Germans have lots of armour, including heavy tanks, but armour's not brilliant against units in towns and bocage. 

Here's the setup.

Daniel attacked on his left, away from the US artillery, and his armour was able to overwhelm the first US position, then burst into the rear of their lines. Two more units fell as the Panzer Grenadiers came up in support, and a quick move onto the objective in that part of the board saw a lightning German victory. 

Great fun as always, and Daniel wants to play again next week!

Mission De Bombardment

I have ordered the newish collection of WW1 French planes from Tumbling Dice, along with more bases to put them on, so sometime in the next ten years I will have a substantial French force to go with my British and German planes. It will also give the bases on which to mount my new Farman Shorthorns.

However I do have a few French planes, so whilst I was in the mood I gave them an outing yesterday. I ran a bombing mission set around September 1915. The French had two Farman F20s and providing cover for them was a Morane L fitted with a machine-gun and some Garros wedges. The Farmans had bombs and a front-mounted machine-gun. Each had one load of bombs. There were two targets and they could hit either of both of them. 

Originally I was going to have teh Germans appear randomly according to teh threat generation system I've used elsewhere, but in the end I simply randomly placed them so that they came on in the centre of the three edges that weren't the French baseline. The Germans had one Fokker monoplane, and an Albatros C with a rear machine-gun. 

The bombers failed to spot any Germans for a good while, but the Morane and Fokker saw each other and angled in on each other. 

The Fokker got the jump on the Morane and scored some damage. 

The Morane actually maneuvers OK, but is slow. Whilst it turned around - slowly - the Fokker got in on the tail of the Farmans. They had actually spotted the Germans by now, but were doggedly aiming for the target. The rear bomber took some hits, and its pilot was wounded. 

As the first bomber lined up on the target the Albatros entered the fight, ranging up alongside a Farman and firing an ineffective burst from its gun. 

The Fokker suffered a gun jam!

The observer of teh lead Farman had time for one burst before having to line up his bomb run. It was a good one. The Albatros's engine started spouting thick black smoke, and down it went. 

The first Farman got its bombs on target. The second Farman was now in trouble again, as teh Fokker cleared its gun jam and came in for the kill. Trying to bomb the target would be fatal at this stage, so the Farman started to turn hoping that the Morane would come up in support. There was always the other target, after all. 

The Morane finally came back into the fight as the damaged Farman had to turn away from the second target, unable to approach it due to the Fokker's unwelcome attentions. The other Farman was doing a wide turn beyond the targets and trying to bring its gun to bear on the Fokker.

Once again the Fokker dodged the Morane. The damaged Farman started for home.

The Fokker sped off in pursuit. It's faster than the Morane and a lot faster than the Farmans. 

The Farman dodged as best it could. And, in doing so, it forced the Fokker to slow, giving the other French planes a chance to catch up. At least the other Farman. Once again the Morane was making a meal of the simple process of turning around. 

However it couldn't dodge forever.

It fell apart in the air.

But the Fokker's victory was short-lived. The second Farman was in range, and a quick burst from its gun destroyed the German monoplane. 

So it was a bloody fight, with three out of five planes destroyed. The crew of the surviving Farman had two kills to their credit, including an Eindecker, whilst the pilot of the Morane had contributed little to the action. The French had got one load of bombs on target as well, so on the whole could claim a win here. 

I tried out a few rules changes, which I will do some more with going forward.

The first is a mechanism change. I'm still not sure criticals come up enough (deadly though they generally are). So instead of just rolls of 6 counting towards the critical number, any hit on the red dice will count when testing for criticals. Only rolls of 6 will count on the white dice.

The second change was to try and represent the limitations of the Garros wedges. Not in terms of teh propensity for shooting off your propellor; that would just be an extra test I didn't want to deal with. But it wasn't as efficient in terms of gunnery as synchronisation or interrupter gear. Whilst there's not a lot of granularity in my firing mechanism, I thought something might be possible. So whilst it still counts as a fixed gun for firing, it can only count one roll of 5 as a it. Other dice must hit on a 6. This makes it slightly better than a pivot fun, but not as effective as proper fixed guns. This system could be applied to early improvised gun mounts and also to planes with a top-win Lewis as their main weapon, such as teh Nieuport 11. 

The third change was to bombing, which I wanted to make more random. When a plane is over the target it can declare that it is dropping bombs. If you have a dedicated observer doing this and they are doing nothing else then you get 1 dice. If you have an observer and they are busy then no bombing run can be made. You get one additional dice for each of being at speed 3 or less and flying in a straight line (no turns or sideslips). Roll the dice and take the highest score. If it's a 5 then the bombs score a partial hit. If the highest roll is a 6 then it's a direct hit. Direct hits score more points if you're counting such things. Note that a plane bombing without an observer, such as a Camel with bombs, gets the one or two dice for speed and being straight and level. 

And finally, I need to look at planes, such as the Farman F20, that have a top-speed of 3. There is a maneuver modifier of -1 if a plane chooses a speed of 3 or less. Since these aircraft already have a low maneuver value, it seems odd to give them and additional penalty as well. So my thought is that they only get the -1 modifier if they move less than 3. Other planes, with a speed of 4 or more, are still penalised for going at 3 or less. I just need to work out some clear wording for it. 

I tried this scenario again later in the day, but didn't take any pictures. This time the French failed to get any bombs on target, but the Morane did better, shooting down the Albatros, whilst the Fokker fell to a Farman again. The French had planes damaged, but all got home. 

Farman Shorthorn

Somehow I convinced myself that what I really needed to add to my 1/600th WW1 air collection was a Farman MF11 Shorthorn. I have no idea why, since I already have three Farman F20s, which are similar, but there it is. So I spent far more of my weekend than was healthy designing and building a couple. 

The booms were really fiddly to do, since they are both angled, one set from the top-wing down and another from the bottom wing up. I had to glue them to the wings and then carefully bend them to meet where the tailplane would be. The first one took me over an our of frustrating trial and error.

I spent some of yesterday painting them. 

They're not on flight stands because I'm currently out of the clear acrylic bases I use. I have more on order, as well as the entire 1/600th French WW1 collection from Tumbling Dice. So expect some French-themed action at some time in the future. 

More Dancing In The Dark

I played out the Grey Christmas Plus scenario I'd run at the club a couple of weeks ago on Friday. This sees two British steam gunboats against a couple of German S-boats, with each side getting a minesweeper and a smaller vessel turning up as reinforcements and all of the action taking place on a moonless night. It was a lot of fun to play the other weeks and I wanted to see if a rerun would be as good. 

It was.

The reinforcements turned up a little more evenly this time. In the game the other weeks the Germans got their Vorpostenboot and minesweeper on almost immediately, whilst the British couldn't bring on a reinforcement to save their lives. This time the British minesweeper, HMS Parthenope, came on almost immediately, and a S-boat sped off to try and torpedo it. 

Here you can see the two British gunboats (HMS Grey Owl and HMS Grey Wolf) revealed top right. Bottom left is a blind concealing the second British reinforcement, the trawler HMT Sir Mordred. Right at the top is another blind, concealing the first German reinforcement, the flak-ship Thor. 

The Thor looms out of the darkness and opens fire on HMS Grey Owl.

Meanwhile HMS Parthenope was avoiding being torpedoed by keeping S61 too close to fire them. This also meant that its big guns were no good, but the two vessels exchanged fire with smaller weapons. 

Sir Mordred joined in, and the S-Boat was now looking for an escape. 

HMS Grey Owl tried to torpedo the Thor, but missed. 

Meanwhile S61 had put some distance between it and the two larger British vessels, but came under fire from their big guns. Sir Mordred scored a damaging hit on the S-Boat. 

S61 tried to torpedo the trawler, but missed. 

A broad view of the action. At the top HMS Grey Owl engages the Thor, whilst HMS Grey Wolf slips into the mist having taken a bridge hit from the German flak-ship. At the bottom S61 is deciding whether to reload torpedoes or cut its losses and run for home. And centre left the German minesweeper has entered the fight. 

S47 cuts across the bow of M328 as she is revealed by HMS Parthenope. The British minesweeper fired star-shells to light up the German vessel, allowing HMT Sir Mordred to get a damaging shot on target. 

Badly damaged, mostly from shots from Sir Mordred, S61 turns for home. 

S47 had turned round and launched torpedoes at HMS Parthenope. It was a bad night for torpedoes though - they missed. 

HMS Grey Wolf headed home next. 

Sir Mordred continued to engage the German minesweeper, and continued to damage it. 

Meanwhile the Thor and HMS Grey Owl exchanged fire. The British gunboat was taking hits though. 

Things wound down from this point. Sir Mordred pulled out, having taken a few hits, but with the satisfaction of having engaged both S-Boats and the minesweeper, and damaging two of them. 

Thor and HMS Grey Owl continued to exchange fire. Grey Owl put on a burst of speed as S47 came into view, frantically reloading its torpedoes. 

HMS Grey Owl failed to inflict any really damage on Thor, and decided to head into the darkness and go home. Top left HMS Parthenope started firing at S47. 

The German minesweeper was now badly damaged and left the action. At this stage I called the action, assuming all vessels would break off. 

No vessels were sunk. Both British gunboats had taken moderate damage to weapons and, on Grey Wolf, the bridge. Sir Mordred was lightly damaged and HMS Parthenope undamaged. On the German side S61 and the minesweeper were battered, with the minesweeper also having taken engine and weapons hits. S47 was lightly damaged and the Thor undamaged. So a draw but maybe with a slight edge in favour of the British whose ships require less repair. 

Good chaotic fun.