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.

Alpha Strike

Last night was an Alpha Strike night at our club and, lacking anything else to play, I joined in. 

We played an attack/defence scenario, with each of teh five players controlling 150pts of mechs. Colin and I defended against three attacking lances. There were three objective counters up for grabs. 

Here's my group deployed, using buildings for cover. 

Advancing attackers. I focused on Caesar's group, whilst Colin faced both Craig and Ed. We didn't coordinate our defence very well. 

Colin's mechs. The attackers are advancing in the distance. In fact Colin got off to a great start when one of his first shots scored a critical on big enemy mech and blew it up. 

Caesar attacked piecemeal and I was able to concentrate fire on one of his smaller lead mechs. 

That too blew up. 

More worrisome was this big mech (and Atlas) that advanced straight down the centre. I managed to score a few long-range hits on it but realised I was going to have to concentrate fire on it at some stage. 

Caesar watching as a lucky critical blew up his Archer. This was providing long-range fire support.

In all we scored three Instant Kill criticals during the game. 

I had two Jenners. They weren't tough but were fairly shooty. One was on its last legs so I jumped it int teh rear of the Atlas, overheated it as much as I could to boost weapon power and scored a decent amount of damage on the behemoth. I then got destroyed, but that was going to happen no matter where I was. 

Small enemy mechs kept leaping into my area and shooting the rear of my mechs, but we kept fighting. I starting overloading weapons to score maximum damage on the advancing Atlas, hoping to prevent it from holding the objective

On the other side of the table Colin was getting overrun. I mean he was outnumbered two to one. 

We went into the last turn with Caesar's Atlas and my Awesome fighting it out on an objective. The Atlas had lost all of its armour and wasn't looking happy, but the Awesome was fairly beaten up as well.  However we'd lost the other two objectives, so the attackers won. But we made them pay.

To be honest I'm not sure a straight stand-up attack/defence worked here, as the defenders don't really get any defensive advantage. There was plenty of cover for the attackers so neitehr side had any kind of terrain advantage. The only edge either side had was that the attackers had 50% more mechs. 

But we'll work on this concept some more. Ed has some interesting toys that might make for a fascinating future game. 

Remember The Maine

Once again I find myself apologising for the lack of posts here. With one thing and another I've not been gaming as much, nor pondering projects. However yesterday I did dig out this old boardgame that I bought more than 30 years ago. In fact I bought it, and hadn't looked at it since. 

'Remember The Maine' covers the Spanish-American War in the Caribbean and Atlantic, with a campaign game allowing squadrons and individual ships to cruise around and seek each other out, whilst trying to resupply with coal where possible. The Americans are looking to blockade Cuban ports and land an invasion force, whilst the Spaniards are looking to break the blockade by running merchant ships to Cuba. Both side also get points for bombarding or raiding the opposing coat. Victory points seem to be set up to allow the Spanish (who are massively outclassed) to still 'win' by making an American victory costly. 

Attached to the main campaign game are two sub-games. Each main Cuban port, and the whole island of Puerto Rico, has a little hex map, and once troops are landed there's a whole set of land combat rules for playing out the individual invasion campaigns. Included in them are a couple of self-contained scenarios. I set up one covering the final attack on Santiago, including the attack on San Juan Hill. 

The US have six turns in which to take Santiago. In each turn each side gets two action phases. In the first action phase US troops took San Juan Hill, and forced the Spanish defenders into the entrenchments around the city. In their phase the Spanish started moving up reinforcements.

In the second action phase of the first turn the US took the city and the Spanish surrendered. 

So not a very exciting game as a standalone exercise. The US forces are overwhelmingly large, and I can't see how the game wouldn't always play out the same. But in a campaign the system would work well. There's a nice mechanism for yellow fever, which is more dangerous to teh US forces than the Spanish are. 

The second sub-game is for the naval actions. It's a simple system involving putting both opposing fleets int lines and shooting at each other until ships sink, closing up the lines. Manuever is covered by each side being allowed to set the range - Short, Long or Sight (no combat). A force at Sight can try to disengage. 

Again there's a small scenario to try out, so I played it. It covers the Spanish breakout from Santiago. Here's teh two fleets in their opposing lines. The Spanish have to escape with at least one cruiser, but cannot escape until they have spent at least one turn at close range.

They immediately moved to close range. There was firing.

Amazingly the Spanish scored hits and, generally, the US didn't. For US battleships got pasted whilst only two Spanish cruisers suffered any hits. 

I misunderstood teh range rules at this point, thinking you could only change by one band (you can, in fact, go to any range from any other range). So instead of going to Sight, the Spanish went to Long first. Their squadron is faster than the US one (their slowest ship is faster than the US squadron's slowest ship), so they Spanish have an edge in changing range. They went to Long and teh US couldn't close. 

There was more firing, although mostly from the US as the Spanish ships can mostly only fire at Close. Again the US navy failed to inflict much damage on the Spanish. 

The Spanish then disengaged and won a convincing victory.

It's a pretty simplistic system, but obviously it's designed for quick actions in the context of the main game.

I then tried setting up the campaign game, but it's basically impossible to play solo. It's also long. It took me an hour to set it up, and whilst the play time is given as 4 hours that assumes around ten minutes per turn, which is highly unlikely. It's a game to play over several days. And it has a lot of bookkeeping too. It was published in 1986 and is very much of its time.

So, a great subject, but after 30 years I've found out that it's a game I'm unlikely to play.

In other news I have been board-gaming. My wife and I have continued the 2026 Tour De France Femmes, and have now played six of the nine stages. I have a small lead, but it's gradually being eroded. In addition I have been reading a book about Stnewall Jackson's 1862 Valley Campaign. There are a couple of scenarios for battles from it in 'Battle Cry', so as I read each one I set it up and played it through a few times. It's a surprisingly interesting way to cement what happened, despite the game being semi-abstract. 

So that's what I've been up to for the past week or so. 

1915 And All That

Inspired by his recent visit to the Hendon collection, Daniel asked if I could run a game of Spandau & Lewis last night. Originally I was going to run some balloon busting, since that suits two people rather well. But with two other people signing up I needed a larger game. Since Daniel had been rather taken with the Vickers FB5 at Hendon I decided to rerun my 1915 scenario.

This is a fairly standard game with both sides having two scouts and two reconnaissance aircraft looking to observe objectives on the enemy side of the table. The fun comes in the choice of aircraft. In 1915 both sides were looking at how to arm their aircraft, so the game mixes up a number of solutions.

In terms of  'scouts' the British had a Vickers FB5 'Gunbus' (famously the first aircraft to be built specifically to shoot down other aircraft). This is a two-seater pusher with a flexible Lewis gun firing to the front. Their other combat plane was a Bristol Scout armed with a front-firing Lewis gun on an improvised mount that would attract a firing penalty. Their observing aircraft were a pair of BE2c two-seaters. One was unarmed aside from a rifle, whilst the other had a Lewis gun firing to the rear. 

The German scouts were an Albatros C two-seater equipped with a machine-gun covering the rear arcs, plus the height of 1915 technology, a Fokker EII equipped with a synchronised front-firing machine-gun. Both of their observation aircraft were Albatros B types, unarmed aside from a rifle for the observer.

Daniel and Geoff took the British whilst Stewart and I took the Germans. We took one 'fighting aircraft' and one two-seater each. 

I went down one side, running the Albatros C. I was initially up against Geoff with the Bristol Scout and the machine-gun armed BE2. We spotted each other fairly quickly. I sent the Albatros B towards one of the objectives as fast as possible and sent the Albatros C to intercept the Bristol. 

(The Albatros C was played by a Roland CII, to keep it distinct from the Albatros B's)

Stewart also sent his B type towards the objective. Both of his planes spotted the approaching British, but were not spotted in return. This gave the Fokker a chance to pounce on the British. 

This he did. He bounced the Gunbus, and inflicted a hit on it. He then turned and shot at Daniel's BE2, inflicting another hit. The Gunbus turned to engage the EII and managed a hit. 

Meanwhile I managed to get my Albatros C into a position to shoot at the Bristol Scout - a tricky job when you only have a rear-firing gun. I didn't score any damage. 

Our side of the table broke up a little. Geoff sent his BE2 towards an objective, trusting that I wouldn't be able to make an effective pursuit with my two-seater. The Scout sped off towards the British side of the lines to engage the German two-seaters who were currently unopposed. 

A broad view after the initial encounters. To the bottom-left The Fokker EII is chasing Daniel's BE2. Despite tailing hm for a few turns Stewart rolled terribly when firing and inflicted virtually no damage. In the centre the Gunbus and the Scout are hunting Germans, but haven't closed up on anything. My Albatros C is to the right, also looking for a target. And at the top of the picture the Albatros B's are both doing their job - observing objectives. 

The luckiest BE2 in the world. 

To add insult to Stewart's injury, the observer on the BE2 managed to get a rifle shot on target and score some real damage to the EII! Both planes were now half-damaged, but really that BE2 should have been wrecked on the ground. 

On the plus side the fight did make it hard for Daniel to turn onto and observe the target.

I's observed one target and was moving up on the second. Stewart had had some issues lining up a good run, but was also now in place. However the Bristol Scout was closing in. My observer popped away at it with his rifle, a couple of shots coming close. The Scout failed to do much in return.

Another set of observations for the Germans. My Albatros B crew had nerves of steel and did their observations with the Scout right on their tail. But again the dice gods failed Geoff and he was unable to convert his advantage to damage. 

With the game over halfway through both sides were looking at whether to turn for home, or hang around for more observations or possible kills. The Fokker EII was briefly out of the fight, but returning. Daniel had abandoned his mission, but Geoff's BE2 had managed to observe both targets. Geoff decided to return home with the Scout. The Gunbus hung around briefly trying to intercept Albatros Bs as they headed home. In fact Stewart sent his Albatros B after the second objective. 

The Fokker returned and briefly chased Daniel's BE2 again, but the British plane ducked into some cloud and escaped. 

With that everyone headed for home. However Stewart's Albatros B had lingered fractionally too long over the targets, and failed to make it off the board by a single inch when the 20 turn limit was reached. So whilst not counting as lost he counted as having failed to return the observations to base. 

VPs were 3VP for each returned observation, 3VP for shooting down an enemy aircraft, 1VP for each half-damaged enemy and 1VP for each enemy still over the board when the time-limit was reached. Both the British and Germans got two observations home, for 6VP. The British had two planes badly damaged (both of Daniel's) so that was another 2VP for the Germans. But the Fokker EII was also badly damaged (thanks to that lucky rifle-shot) and Stewart's Albatros B hadn't got home in time, thus conceding another VP. So that was 2VP for the British as well.

So both sides ended up with 8VP - a draw. And despite our best efforts, and a great expenditure of ammunition, no plane was shot down. 

It should be noted that the last time we played this the Germans won a decisive victory, with the Fokker shooting down both BE2s and the Albatros Bs getting three observations home. So I think both sides were just very unlucky in this game not to score some fatal damage.