Another Convoy Attack

I set up another test game of Torpedoes & Tides today. I'd promised myself I'd have a go at the False Nose Job scenario (covert operations), but I'd also got a yearning to run the S-Boats in an attack so I ran the convoy scenario again

Here's the vessels involved in a promo shot. The British have an east Coast convoy consisting of three small freighters escorted by two Fairmile B motor launches and an Isle Class armed trawler, HMS Sodor.  The Germans are attacking with three S30 type boats.

As you can see, I've actually painted the ships now!

Here's the convoy on their blinds, heading north with the moon behind them.

The Germans hugged the coastline, planning to attack from the front so as to gain the benefit of the moon. Two boats would run along the coast to take advantage of the cover of the shoreline, whilst one would go directly in from the front to draw away the escorts.

The Germans quickly spotted one of the Fairmiles.

Even better, they found a freighter just beyond it.

The Fairmile moved to cut off the German run along the coast. An exchange of fire saw both vessels damaged.

A second S-boat was spotted, as was HMS Sodor. There was more shooting.

A splash of water off the bow of S-61 indicated that HMS Sodor was ranging in its  3.2" gun. One of the things I wanted to try in this game was the Large Calibre trait for bigger weapons. They get a penalty when shooting at small targets, but score more damage if they hit them.

S-61 launched a torpedo at the lead freighter, but missed. The marker is entirely for photographic purposes; it has no effect on gameplay.

S-47 had been damaged in the early exchange of gunfire with one of the Fairmiles. Spooked by the shooting from HMS Sodor its captain lost his nerve and headed for home.

All of the German vessels were revealed now, as were the escorts.

HMS Sodor scored a hit on S-58, rattling the crew and forcing them to abort their torpedo run on the second freighter (which I hadn't put on the board yet despite it having been spotted).

S-61 launched a second torpedo at the lead freighter ...

... and it hit! The freighter began to sink.

But S-61 hadn't left enough room to turn out of the way, and collided with it. Fortunately the damage was insignificant.

HMS Sodor closed in, its big gun throwing up water but scoring no damage.

The position about halfway through. The Germans have sunk one freighter and S-58 is lining up on one of the others. S-61 is rather too close to HMS Sodor for comfort. S-47 is sauntering along the coat to the right, away from the action. The British escorts now need to turn to keep the Germans under fire.

S-58 fired a spread of torpedoes at the third freighter, but was frustrated to see them both miss. Both of the remaining S-boats would need to reload torpedoes, or rely on gunnery now.

And what of the Fairmile that first engaged the Germans? Its captain ran it aground on the English coast, and we won't be hearing of him again.

Using their superior speed and agility, both S-boats moved away from the escorts and turned their attention to the third freighter. Each reloaded a torpedo as well.

The British had other problems, as HMS Sodor almost ran down the remaining Fairmile.

Would this torpedo hit? The answer was No. 

There were a few minutes of relative inaction, but in that time HMS Sodor had come about and started firing on the S-boats again.

S-61 evaded the trawler and came alongside the second freighter. With no time to load its last torpedo it would have to rely on its guns and a lot of luck.

HMS Sodor scored another hit on S-58, who was now silhouetted by the moon.

The captain of S-58 opted for a bold counter-attack, and ran in fast, launching a torpedo at HMS Sodor. Once again the Germans saw a torpedo miss its target.

The 3.2" gun on the trawler missed as well.

Guns blazing S-58 collided with the trawler, taking damage, but not damaging the enemy vessel.

HMS Sodor's gunners couldn't resist a stricken point-blank range target and quickly sank the German vessel.

HMS Sodor finished the action picking up German survivors.

S-61 kept up a steady fire on the British freighter, but couldn't get a proper hit on it. And now the Fairmile was coming up astern.

The British gunners scored a solid hit on theGerman S-boat

The Germans fired one more burst at the freighter, inflicted no significant damage, and then headed for home.

I called he game there. The second British freighter would be able to leave the table  and the surviving S-boat wasn't going to last long against two escorts whilst trying to head back for the final freighter.

Not a great outing for the Germans, who did manage to sink a freighter (and see a Fairmile go aground), but had one boat flee the fight and another sunk in return.

It's really hard to hit something with torpedoes in this game (or my dice-rolling has been exceptionally unlucky). 

I was really pleased with how the game looked though.

War Rig!

We've been playing Gaslands for a few years now, but we'd never done a game featuring a war rig before. Caesar thought that it might be fun to try the mini-campaign in the rules though, and that features the adventures of a war rig in the wastelands.

To that end he built a lovely war rig.

The first scenario simply involves driving the rig from one side of the table to the other. The Rigger team gets enough points to buy a rig and a couple of support vehicles. That was me. It was also supposed to be Daniel as well, but his bathroom ceiling had an rain-induced apocalypse of its own (we've had a lot of rain) and he had to leave before we'd even rolled any dice.

The other four players are the Gangers. They have the same number of points as the Riggers, start on the opposite edge and simply have to stop the rig from crossing the table. They get to place two barricades anywhere on the table; you can see them positioned sensibly in the rig's path.

The campaign has a list of special perks the rig can have; it selects one. In this case I went for one that allows me to destroy obstacles I collide with once per turn. So that dealt with the barricade that was in my way.

A quick jink to the right and a run through that patch of vegetation and I would be home! But the Gangers were closing in.

My second support vehicle was off to the left, where it could zip in on the flank of the attackers.

The Gangers attack and the rig starts to take damage.

Two more Gangers close in top right.

The van had a tank gun, which made it unstable but also meant that I started to take some serious damage.

Meanwhile my second support car was shooting up the flanking Gangers.

The yellow mini was equipped with an Electric Arc Projector. This bounces its attack from one vehicle to another. It hit the rig, and the attack then bounced to my support car and then to the Ganger's tank-gun armed van. It took off the rig's last hull hits but almost destroyed the van as well!

Declan wanted to be part of things and revved up a car ...

... to ram the rig! Given I had no hit points left, this was fairly pointless, but it was fun.

So in the scenario the rig isn't wrecked when it loses its last hull points; you have to remove any special perks it has as well. Each perk has a condition which causes it to be lost. In the case of my special terrain-destroying ram it was being involved in a head-on collision with an enemy vehicle. So the Gangers lined up such a collision ...

And that was the end of the rig!

The Gangers had won this round of the campaign.

This was fun to play; the rig is an interesting and tough opponent, and the scenario made a change from our regular Gaslands games. Many thanks to Caesar for putting everything together, especially the lovely war rig.

Making Coastal Forces

Thomas suggested in a post that I do a tutorial on how I put my ships together. To be honest it isn't that easy as I put them together in odd moments during the day, so am not always in a position to take useful pictures of each stage in the process. But here's a few pictures and some basic notes on how I go about making stuff.

Remember, I'm not trying to make realistic scale models here. I just want something that's a step up from using cardboard counters.

First off, the bases of the vessels are the ubiquitous lolly-sticks or coffee-stirrers. You can get these from craft shops. The lolly-sticks are about a centimetre wide and the coffee-stirrers half that. Note that I've found that actual coffee-stirrers, grabbed by the handful from cafes, can be slightly thinner than the craft ones.

The coffee-stirrers are good for the gunboats and torpedo boats. The lolly-sticks work for anything else.

Find the length of the vessel and do the necessary maths to work out how long a piece of stick that equates to. I suppose at this stage I should say that I'm working in 1/1200th scale. It's a good one to work with, since 100 feet on the real thing equates to a nice useful 1" when modelling. Saying that I actually make mine in multiples of 5mm, just because it's easier to measure. Anyway, cut the stick to length. Use the rounded end of the stick as the bow. 

I then shape them with an emery board (the kind you do your nails with). Make the gunboats and torpedo boats look sleek and keep the freighters and so forth looking wide and slab-sided. You'll get a feel for what works.

And here's some cut up and ready to go. I put pencil abbreviations on them to remind me what each one will be: 'SV' for Small Verpostenboot, 'SF' for Small Freighter, 'MF' for Medium Freighter and 'ML' for Motor Launch.

On one I have sketched out what needs to be added in terms of superstructure. That one will be an Isle-class Trawler. In addition I have cut two smaller pieces off the end of a stick to be the raised bow of two of the vessels. The bits were to hand, so I did them before I took the picture.

Loads of steps skipped here, but here's three Fairmile B motor launches and the Isle-class Trawler. The superstructure is small sections of lolly-stick, or bits of matchstick. I used thin card from a cereal packet to build up some of it as well. The masts are pieces of florists wire - drill a small hole and pop it in with some glue. The gun turrets/platforms are made with the two things you see at the top of the picture; the shaft of a cotton-bud* and a Hama bead. I cut sections from them with a sharp blade.

Anyway, I have a look at pictures of actual vessels and then work out what the key features and shapes are and replicate them using whatever's to hand. All stuck together with PVA glue, aside from the masts which are superglued in.

I mount each on a base, and then paint it grey. The base is painted in blue. This is temporary; it means I can use them relatively guilt-free because they are kind of painted. But at some stage I will start painting them properly.

The big blank bases are blinds for the hidden movement component of the game. They are made from what I guess are tongue depressors. They're big fat lolly-sticks, anyway. I picked up a ton of them from, of all places, a barbers shop that was shut down by the police for being a money-laundering operation. They were easier to get home than the pool table.

Anyway, I hope you found that useful. As you can see, the whole process is pretty obvious when you break it down. The end results won't win any prizes, but they give the right vibe, and that's what I was after.

Update: I've cut small pieces of wire and started adding guns. Really improves the models.

*Plastic-shafted cotton-buds may be harder to find as there's a move back to the old paper shafts now. I bought a lifetime's supply a few years ago, though.

Rescue!

I had another game of 'Torpedoes & Tides' today, trying out one of the generic scenarios in the rules. This is a rescue mission, with one side trying to find some downed airmen, and the other side trying to prevent it.

The British had three Fairmile B motor-launches looking for the airmen, which could be at one of three locations on the board. The German interception force consisted of a medium Vorpostenboot and two Kriegsfischkutter (KFK), which are basically small armed fishing trawlers. So the British boats were faster than anything the Germans had, but some of them would be forced to remain static whilst they did the rescue.

It was a moonless night, so visibility was low. Everyone started out as blinds, naturally. The first location the British (left) checked wasn't the airmen.

The second location was, however. In order to start the rescue a boat has to no longer be on a blind. 

The German ships move faster as blinds (one of the quirks of the rules, but explained in the text) so one of the British launches set about spotting them as quickly as possible in order to slow them down. They found one of the KFK.

All of the Germans were quickly revealed as they came into range of the lone launch, which opened fire on the Vorpostenboot.

At the top of the picture one of the boats has started the rescue, which takes a (randomly determined) number of actions to complete. The other two launches moved to hold off the Germans.

(I added little markers to show the firing and also in case Thomas reinstates the muzzle-flash rule in a later edition.)

The rescue was going well, but the Vorpostenboot damaged the launch doing it. Meanwhile ML 60 was shooting at the big German vessel.

More firing all round. The rescue launch managed to inflict a hit on the Vorpostenboot, which would prove to be important later.

However ML 64 was forced to turn away from the remaining stricken airmen, and with the Vorpostenboot still laying down heavy fire on it, its captain decided to head for home then and there.

(The turn was a result of the All At Sea table, but the decision to head home was mine. One of the other launches could complete the rescue.)

ML 60 turned to continue the rescue, under fire from one of the little KFKs

ML 64 struggled with activations trying to escape, and V-17 followed until it too decided to turn from home; that single point of damage on it proved too much!

The rescue continued, despite the attention of the German armed trawlers. ML 59 laid down covering fire.

The German attack was vigorous but surprisingly ineffective.

Although it was heading for home, the Verpostenboot contributed to the attack as well. However a second All at Sea failure then saw it run aground off the small island. Even there it fired the odd shot at anything visible to it (although I reasoned that even though it couldn't move it still had to commit actions to 'flee' as part of its morale failure.)

The All At Sea table struck again for the Germans, as one of the KFK opened up on its fellow, confusing it for a British launch in the darkness. By this time the British had completed the rescue and were heading for home.

The three British launches are too the left of the picture, whilst the Germans flounder about on the right.

MLs 60 and 64 got away, with their cargo of rescued aircrew. But ML 59 was struggling in the darkness, and at that point the Germans got their act together with both KFKs heading into the attack.

They closed in on the British launch and shot it to pieces.

But that seemed to spur its crew into action, and they finally got the activations needed to whizz off into the darkness and run for home.

So the British completed their mission with no boats lost. Two were lightly damaged, and ML 59 was close to sinking. The Germans took very little damage - one hit on each vessel in fact - but they rolled badly on the All At Sea table, and now had one ship aground. No doubt the trawlers would be able to tow it to safety, but it was an embarrassing loss for them.

I only had a couple of minor queries regarding the rules, so that was good. And it was an enjoyable game even if all of the vessels were less glamourous than the fast MGB/MTB/S-Boats I was using yesterday.