Monthly Archives: November 2016

Campaign Game – Battlefield at Katlego Faragh

East African Renaissance Campaign, Miniatures, Renaissance, Solitaire

The wadi option for the battlefield was too difficult to put together, so I just elevated things and instead of the river/wadi, set up an east to west gap between impassable sand ridges.  “Faragh” is the English translation of the Arabic word for gap (or so I’m told by the internet, and I have no clue as to how to pronounce it).

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Not exactly stunning eye candy, but it will serve.

The die roll  for the defender’s programmed deployment resulted in the Zanj force being evenly split on each side of the ridges.  Once that takes place, I’ll roll for the Portuguese order of march.

CAMPAIGN GAME – SETTING THE STAGE FOR THE PORTUGUESE ADVANCE ON BEHEFE

East African Renaissance Campaign, Miniatures, Renaissance, Solitaire

With Lord Renaldo moving north, it was time to set up a battle scenario.

The first step was to establish the traits of the garrison commander at Behefe and his army.  The commander is Bey Imen Mahir.  He is inexperienced (-1 unit for command range) and battle shy (-1 when his unit melees).  His army is not pious (so cannot have a pious unit), but is attended by a skilled physician (reduces impact of disease die rolls).

Step two was to determine the composition of Bey Mahir’s army.  I arbitrarily selected one unit of Persian Mercenaries (for fun), then rolled a D6 for six Tribe and six Civic Guard companies.  The resolve of each Civic Guard and Mercenary company  will be determined at time of first enemy contact (shooting or melee) by rolling a D4.  The Tribe resolve is per RAW at three.

Up next was determining the effects of Renaldo’s victory on his little army.  Rolling a D10, the morale of four units  increased one step. These increases were allocated to the shot and crossbow units, which now have a resolve of four.  He was unable to recruit new units.

The next step was the scenario itself.  I relied on Charles Grant’s “Programmed Wargame Scenarios”.  It’s a great book, as you can read here at the interesting Lone Warrior website.

The book has eighteen scenarios.  I rolled two D10 (re-roll 00 or 19).  The result was Scenario No. 7, “Two Sides of a River”.  I modified this to “Two Sides of a Wadi”, and followed the programmed instructions for setting the defense and offense.

Will get this set-up in the next day or so.

Raid On St Nazaire – Again Pt II

Boardgames

Finished up the game yesterday.  A semi-tradition to spend a lot of time wargaming the day after Thanksgiving.

The British wound up with 60 VIPs, better than the historical outcome of 53, but less than the 70 needed to “win”.

If the British were to win, this would have been the game.  The German harbor defense and activation rolls were terrible.  Literally all the commandos were able to land, and faced only moderate opposition when ashore.

Still, over the 13 turns, the British assault fleet was reduced to kindling, with only four ship escaping, two of which were on fire.  The ML Falconar was able to return 6 survivors and Chant’s demolition team to the UK.  Nobody else made it home.

For once I should taken a picture of the end-game.  The surviving commandos were huddled around their point of debarkation, watching the remaining three MLs, and their hopes of making back, being blown out of the water.   As you can see from the Game Log, several of the commando units were still in good shape.

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The “star” of the operation was Swayne’s unit, which destroyed not only their primary target, but two others, accounting for 12 VIPs. Both Smalley and Chant’s demolition teams accounted for both their primary and additional targeted facilities.  The game score would have been higher but for a D6 roll of “6”, which damaged  the scuttled Campbeltown, but did not destroy it.  That would have brought the score to 66, or one target away from “victory”.

The only real bit of bad luck for the Brits was that the ships that were sunk on the run-in contained demolition teams.  That reduced their ability to gain VIPs.  Oh, yes, and my stupid decision to move one demolition team in a position where it could be engaged by not one, but three, flak emplacements.  Blammo!

Enjoyed playing this game.  Its well known virtues were evident throughout my two play-thrus.  I’ll certainly take it off the shelf again.

Campaign Game – Renaldo’s Decision and Other Events

East African Renaissance Campaign, Miniatures, Renaissance, Sessions

Well, Lord Renaldo’s wheels took a little longer to grind than promised.

The Zanj defeat raised several questions requiring resolution before the campaign continued.  These were 1) how much of the Zanj force was destroyed in the battle; 2) could the Zanj civic leaders be persuaded to provided the Sultan the additional resources to recruit more troops, and, if yes, 3) how many; 4) could the Sultan convince the Inland Natives to abandon their policy of hostile neutrality and provide assistance, as well as 5) convincing local Chinese merchants to seek Ming aide.

Answers to these questions were generated using the Campaign Table (which this process revealed to be flawed and in need of work), D6, and Yes/No/Maybe dice.

While the Zanj  fled the battlefield at Ejiro in great disarray, only two units had been shattered (D6/2).

The army conducted an orderly retreat to the south.  The Sultan hurried to Mwenye to implore local merchants and leaders to provide more support for his army, promising much (hopefully for him, he can keep those promises).  His entreaties were successful (re-roll on government support chart), and he was able to gain four units (D6) in reinforcements.

He also met with  local Chinese merchants, convincing them the Portuguese threat was real.  These merchants agreed to send a representative to the Ming leader in Aden. (Yes die rolls for the two questions).

The energetic Sultan Efe then contacted the leaders of the Inland Natives, requesting they reevaluate their position of hostile neutrality.  Again, making extravagant promises, he persuaded these leaders to at least be neutral, and to re-evaluate their position at an upcoming meeting of clan elders (re-roll on neutrality chart).

Hearing rumors of these activities, Lord Renaldo decided to turn north, and attack the port city of  Behefe.  The rationale is still to gain a victory over the weak defenders, gain a port, and let those results drive events both with his own government, and the local leadership.

His scouts are already determining the extent of the resistance…….

Into The Abyss?

Boardgames

A long, long time ago I played Squad Leader (SL).  Really into it.  Sorted all the counters into plastic containers, so typical for an SL Dweeb.  Then, for some reason, I gave it all away to a younger war gamer on a budget. Dunno……

About seven years ago, started buying up not only SL games on EBay, but also the all-consuming monster that is Advanced Squad Leader (ASL).  Scrounged through AH Generals for scenarios, copied them, and then placed them in a binder.  But, every time I looked at the monster rule book I just cringed, and satisfied myself with looking at the scenarios, and browsing through Mark Pitcavage’s wonderful Desperation Morale website.

For reasons that cannot be explained, I bought the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit (ASLSK) #1 a year ago.  And now, I’ve decided to start playing again in little, teenie, tiny baby steps.

What made this decision easy was the discovery of this.   Jay Richardson did a fantastic job putting together this guide.  It reminds me of how helpful the old AH replays were when you were learning one of their games.

Now, I’m going to hold off on the second and third modules for awhile.  It’s a progressive system, with successive rule books adding mortars/artillery and then vehicles.  What I really need is to find the third module’s rule book.  I’ve got plenty of ASL modules with counters and a gazillion scenarios, so there’s no real need for the counters/maps – I think(?).

Will start this up on T-Giving, after I finish up the latest iteration of Raid on St. Nazaire.

Fire In The Lake – AAR – Tim’s Take

Boardgames, Sessions,

Finally back from road trip.  Now I can post Tim’s observations about the game.  We have another session scheduled for Mid-December.

Here are my thoughts about Fire in the Lake-

  • We made a big mistake on the tunneled base rules.  They are much more difficult to remove than the regular bases.  I’m not sure it would have made a big difference in our game, but definitely something to note for future games.  BTW, I didn’t like the term ‘tunneled’.  I wish they’d used something different like ‘fortified’ or ‘entrenched’.
  • I wish I’d spotted the rules about South Vietnamese Rangers being able to raid across national borders.  It was really frustrating to watch the NVA building up in Laos and Cambodia.
  • The charts were very good.
  • I’m still laughing about the mistake of tracking ‘available’ units…We made that much harder than it had to be…:)
  • Very few of my units could both move and attack at the same time.  It felt like I was playing Paths of Glory!
  • Bombardment missions can really pay off for the NVA in the long run.  They provide a relatively cheap way of attritioning the COIN player.  I’m not sure if we removed to adjust ARVN aid to reflect US casualties (I think its something like -3 per unit killed– that adds up).
  • The VC need to adopt a ‘fleet-in-being’ strategy.  Admittedly the mistake about tunneled bases didn’t help, but they were rapidly wiped out in our game.  At one point you were using rally phases to make activate guerillas inactive.  It is really frustrating for the COIN player to see guerillas that have been activated by sweep operations go inactive during rally phases…A nice modeling of the frustrations of COIN operations.
  • On the rare turns when both of my factions started eligible it was a real dilemma whether or not to have them both run operations or have one pass so I would get a chance to respond to your moves during the next turn.
  • That game would play very differently with four players.  I don’t think the VC would let themselves get wiped out to the last man or the ARVN would let the Americans transfer large amounts of patronage to resources….
  • I kept forgetting to move the police out into the provinces, which hindered my pacification efforts.
  • Neither one of us did much fighting for the LOCS– I wonder if mass attacks on the LOCs would yield better results for the insurgent player.

Raid on St. Nazaire – Again

Boardgames, Sessions

Started up another session.  Once again, discovered rules mistakes made during the last session.

The British can be attacked when in The Approaches, before movement.   And….the Germans have one searchlight operational for their first fire phase (a -1 on the to-hit die r0ll), and another searchlight becomes available for their second fire phase.

Fortunately for the British, the German die rolls were bad for their first fire phase.   However, the British Covering Fire was (again) useless, and the Germans could bring 6 firing factors to bear in the “A” zone during their second fire phase, which gave them twelve (!) attempts to damage British ships.  The result:  Bloodbath!

Still, the doughty Brits pressed on and are ready to land several intact teams of commandos.  Unfortunately, while the German Activation die rolls have been bad, the troops have been placed (by some strange hand of cardboard fate) right in or adjacent to their landing areas.

Should be interesting.

Fire In The Lake – AAR

Boardgames, Sessions,

Had a fun session with Tim this past weekend.  Full of fumbling and stumbling.

As discussed in an earlier post, this is a highly regarded game, with beautiful components.  And, as also discussed, for two old hex-and-counter Grognards, it promised to be a new experience, and not the type of card-driven game (Paths of Glory, Pursuit of Glory, Wilderness War, Wellington) we were used to playing.

This will be more an overview of the process, rather than a turn by turn narrative of the game we played.  I was so involved in figuring the damn thing out, that coherent recall much less thoughtful strategy was well beyond my capabilities.

First off, we really needed a picture of what the map board should look like when set up.  We messed up on where to put available cubes, what cubes to use as markers, and what counters go where.  It’s a new take on “idiot rules”, we need rules crafted for idiots.

The first difference we noticed between this and our previous card driven experiences was that each faction (USA, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, North Vietnam) cannot do something with each card.  Only two factions can play a card, and only one can play the card as an event.  Also, not only is the card in play turned up from the play deck, but also the next card to be played.  This forces players to anticipate how to react with two cards, not just one.

The deck itself is constructed differently.  In many games deck events and options are predicated on period of the conflict, or the play of a major event triggers the inclusion of more cards.  In FITL, the very large deck is initially split into six decks of twelve cards each.  A coup card is then shuffled into each deck.  Play commences with one deck, and after a Coup card is turned up and played, that Coup card is removed and the next deck placed under the remaining cards from the previously played deck.  There are a large number of cards that are not included in the six decks.  This must enhance replay.

Most card driven games involve reacting to an opponent’s play and  sequencing a group of cards held in hand.  This leads to a rapid sequence of play, with a card played quickly followed by another.  In FITL, the pace was less frantic, and steadier.  Maybe this was due to our inexperience.

The options for the first eligible faction (sequence of eligibility shown at the top of each card) are to pass (perhaps because of the next event) play the event, or play an operation (in multiple spaces), with or without a special activity. The second eligible player can pass, execute the event (if not done so by first player), or execute a limited operation.  Limited operations can take place in one space, only.  Only if the first two pass, can the third eligible faction act on a card.

We learned that Operations have complementary Special Operations, and successful play involved the ability to mix and match these operation types.  Also, the first eligible faction can really frustrate a stronger opponent by executing an Operation, only, after which the second eligible player can only execute a Limited Operation, not the Event.

All sides must be careful not to take too direct of an approach.  For the VC, taxing to raise resource levels or terrorizing the populace will alienate the local population, reducing support.  US airstrikes, while devastating militarily, are just as damaging to popular support.

While control of areas and provinces is the key to victory, each side has other activities,(not just destruction of enemy forces and many times in conflict with those of their “ally”) that contribute to victory.  For the VC and NVA, base building and maintaining the Ho Chi Minh trail must be a priority.  For the US, it’s ability to win is directly tied to reducing the number of troops being used.  ARVN forces gain victory points by siphoning off US aid into their coffers.

All of this maneuvering comes to a grinding halt when a Coup card is turned up.  The card in play is then considered to be a Monsoon card, which limits operational play options, and the Coup card is then the last card played.  After play for that card is finished,  victory points are calculated.  If a faction wins, it wins.  If not,  new aid and resources are distributed, and victory points are again calculated.  If one faction has attained victory, the other factions know it and the last deck is played.  An interesting way of changing play strategy and perspective.

Tim will be posting up his observations.

We’re playing this one again in December.