A Week of Unaccomplishment

After the self-recrimination in last post, I've decided to track what I get up to in a week of dancing around the fringes of gaming.

Friday:

• Read most of The Price of Admiralty, by John Keegan.
• Bought the Paperboys Buccaneers set (thinking of building pirates as a library craft, perhaps oversized, for skirmish games and take-home).
• Watched a Duncan Rhodes 40K painting videos (23 minutes)
• Read one White Dwarf (497). Had an interesting "hobby bingo" bit as well as a writeup of the latest version of Tale of Four Gamers, which might be a useful way to organize and plan a project.
• Browsed Wofun Games site and deliberated over ordering Seven Years War 10mms or Maratha 18mms.
  

Saturday:

• Listened to three more Duncan Rhodes videos whilst trying to get to sleep at 3am on a work day.
• Printed a dozen sheets of the Buccaneers set.
• Started cutting them out - just cutting away the wide white margins for now.
• Printed one sheet at 200% (giving me six figures) and experimented for summer craft project purposes. An interested parent built most of them for me!

Sunday:

• Watched another Duncan Rhodes video, and a Warhammer TV short painting video. I like ones that are basic (just a handful of colors) - they seem more achievable - but Duncan has a soothing voice, like Bob Ross for wargaming.
• Finished The Price of Admiralty. Like anything by Keegan, it's good. Resembles his The Face of Battle, in that it focuses on several battles separated by time to look for commonalities and differences.
• Started Marine Sniper. It feels more superficial than I expected, perhaps because it's written as a narrative rather than history or biography - more adventure story. The style is like fiction for younger readers, though clipped and straightforward. Hathcock calls the VC "hot dogs" and "hamburgers," slang terms I've never encountered. Excerpts from an official proposal are included, and have suggested further reading (from WWI).
  
• Finished trimming the Buccaneer sheets. Also assembled one leftover 18mm-scale crosstree. The bright yellow Maritime Regiment sheet reminds me of Every Bullet Has Its Billet; might reread that soon to work out what I can do with these figures. As the figures are individual, I thought about using Charge! for them - I was working at one point on a Pocketmod one-page version of the rules which I need to get back to. Whilst snipping, I watched part two of Oriskany Jim's Anzio Breakout report, and the movie Aliens on Youtube. Have never seen it before (and still haven't, given the bad pan-and-scan), though I'm familiar with the basic plot and memes. It in turn reminded me of my Space Hulk box, which I assembled but have never painted or played.

See how this works?

• Listened to one episode of Juggz, a Youtube podcast by a couple of my favorite ex-GW presenters. They talked a bit about how they choose titles, thumbnails, etc for Youtube videos (because Youtube has this annoying algorithm that relies entirely on clicks). Apparently it's even possible to buy views?! My own titles are rarely that interesting. Space Marines suck all the air out of the room when it comes to 40K topics, so in a way, historical gaming is a breath of fresh air (heh). While I still dabble in GW stuff, I'm happy I made it back to the historical stuff that initially attracted me to this hobby.

Monday:

• Finished Marine Sniper. Started on one of the books mentioned in it, A Rifleman Went to War.
• Watched a WarhammerTV video about painting the newest starter set for Age of Sigmar. Makes me want to go back to my 1st-edition pocket-size starter set, which I started on the gold and then left off when it looked a mess. Perhaps spray them gold and go from there?
• Listened to another two Juggz podcasts. In the first, they discussed Silver Bayonet, and for the first time actually interested me in it. (They had me at solo mechanics.) I could probably do it with Paperboys - will have to go ahead and read it. They also point out that other periods can fit - ECW, Victorian, etc. In the second, they discussed Blood Bowl, which I have unpainted sets of as well as the videogame (never got past the demo bits...)
• Made one (1) six-man Paperboys base for what I think is the Duke of York's Maritime Regiment. I really like this unit, and since it is all musketeers, once Wofun makes it I think I'll buy a set for my Imaginations - and a second with single bases to go with Limeys and Slimeys games at the club.

• Got out the Sisters of Battle I bought at Recon last year. I have a vague idea of playing 40K solo with the Charles Grant rules (though, given the smaller scale, this might need refinement). The Sisters are beautifully painted and based, but a mixed bag from at least three different orders, and I find it difficult to tell some of them apart. Might have to repaint the base rims at some point to differentiate units. Many have storm bolters, which didn't appear until the Hereticus Codex with faith-point mechanics I never really understood; I'd prefer to use the initial 3rd Edition "Black Book".

This squad is distinguished by its transfers - the Order of the
Valorous Heart. It's unfinished, as it should have white cloak linings.

• Watched several short guides on quickly-painting 40K Termagants, of which I've got over twenty. I experimented some time ago with Slap-Chop, but wasn't pleased with it and at some point (but when?) will use more conventional techniques on these figures.

Tuesday:

• At work, experimented with blowing up ACW Colored Infantry troops the same way as the pirates. Not nearly as good, probably due to older art and having been digitized by Helion rather than the way Peter's own website does it. I want something for the upcoming Juneteenth, but might have to stick to regular sizes. I've done that before, by stapling the figure sheet to an instruction sheet and providing it as a handout. 
• A short painting-and-discussion video by Louise Sugden, with some interesting commentary on how the right paint-job can redeem a middling miniature.
• Read two chapters of A Rifleman Went to War.

Wednesday:

• Read six and a half chapters of A Rifleman Went to War.
• Spent an hour talking with my brother about 18th-century miniatures. He's gotten into Blood and Plunder, so was looking for help with uniforms. So I introduced him to Kronoskaf and some of the basics - facings, reversed colors for musicians, grenadier caps, etc. He was especially impressed by a Bob Marrion painting of a very fancy French trumpeter.

Thursday:

• Was offered a place in one of Jon Freitag's remote games next week. Had to double-check my schedule, but I should be able to make it. Really looking forward to it, as the last one I did was remarkably fun.
• Read more of A Rifleman Went to War (over halfway thru now). It is not much about sniping, contrary to the impression given in Marine Sniper; it's a memoir by an American machine-gunner in the Canadian Army, though he also used a rifle when he could, seems to have been a crack shot, and knew some famous gunfighters. The classic .45 M1911 pistol also comes in for praise. There is some sardonic humor ("Heinie tried to rush our lines in one of his many charitable attempts to chase us out of our muddy muskrat holes and back on to the high and dry ground in our rear and we, with characteristic soldier perversity, declined to go,"). Quite good, in its way.
• Printed a sheet of Paperboys Armada ships. Summer reading is about to start and I have been hunting for decorations matching the "adventure" theme, as well as crafts like the pirate figures. I think a small squadron of "pirate" ships on the wall ought to help.
• Watched a new Duncan Rhodes video about desert-camo tanks, but another interesting bit he pointed out were rubber bits on the treads. I don't know how common that is on real tanks (this was a 40K vehicle). Watching the method of making shiny glass (steadily brightening one side, then adding a specular spot on the opposite corner), I'm reminded of the windows in the card houses from the Charles Grant books. Makes me want to try it on an a paper window too. Finally, he emphasizes recess-shading (with a fine brush - I've seen pens used too - rather than just a wash and highlight) on such a large model. I'll keep that in mind for any future tanks.

So! That's the sort of thing I get up to in a week. No serious progress towards any of my projects, but plenty of food for thought.

Three Years a Blogger

Huh.

I don't feel like I've accomplished as much this last year - gaming as well as blogging.

Year 1: 61 posts.

Year 2: 71 posts.

Year 3: 48 posts.

While the club has become more active, especially this year, I still haven't gotten there as often as I like. They are doing more weekday games now, which provides more opportunities, which I haven't always taken advantage of. I also hoped to go to Recon again, but an aging and picky cat has prevented me from being away from home for more than 24 hours. One member is planning a The Longest Day extravaganza - watch the movie, then play an epic game. Whether I'm willing to spend all afternoon on it, I dunno yet. I'm somewhere between depression and laziness at present, or maybe Executive Dysfunction, which is why I've been reading and picking away at my projects rather than anything more productive.

I did get to a local con last week, but not, strictly speaking, for gaming. I was helping man the library presence. In addition to a booth on the "floor", we were given an activity room to do as we liked, which meant crafts and board games. I hoped to demonstrate some one-page RPGs and Paperboys figure-building, but failed to prepare properly (under the assumption that a: it would be easy to find dice at a geek convention and b: that my coworkers would bring plenty of scissors). Will do better next time - another local con comes up in July, then Hurricon in September. (I won't be able to get away in August.)

The chess club at work is going well; since chess doesn't really appeal to me, I've been experimenting with variants and a few other games. My Scottish Museum version of Tafl -

- has actually seen some play, and I've been reading Discworld and thus tempted by Thud. I learned Peter Dennis of Paperboys has even does some work on Discworld products.

Speaking of Peter, a lot of new stuff has come out recently, but it's inspired more reading than playing. A "pirate" series, some late 17th-century figures, and new large ships are tempting, especially the ships which could be used in the club's regular Limeys and Slimeys games. But they will be intimidating to build! Another thing I was looking forward to was the 10mm Seven Years War series in Wofun plastic, which have just come out this week but at 500USD for the full pack. Again, tempting, but is it really a good idea? I held off on the paper ones because I wanted to try the plastic 10s, but I may put them off for a bit. The 17th-century types are designed for the Monmouth rebellion, so I read up on it. Interviewing a glider veteran of Operation Varsity - and finally getting hold of Featherstone's Tackle Model Soldiers This Way - got me building some US troops, but that too has paused.

I intended to try the Mike Lambo solo ECW rules with my Memoir '44 tiles. Haven't.

I've been wanting to paint up my two-past-editions Warhammer and 40K starter sets. Haven't.

Wanted to play some more Charles Grant solo scenarios. Nope.

Wanted to play more Charge! ...

I have managed to amass quite a bit of VCBW stuff and even terrain to go with it. But no serious play. Misplaced a couple of the (hard-to-obtain) books, too - will probably find them minutes after I've bought new ones, heh.

Also built up and organized quite a collection of 18th Century 18mm Wofuns. One big solo game.

I've built a lot of Paperboys, but aside from that one big game, without direction.

It's an odd combination of Asperger's and what I suspect is executive dysfunction. Together, they are a project-killer, when it comes down to it. I edge towards building/painting something, but would rather procrastinate (read, watch, design) than do it.

That's not to say I'm not enjoying myself, sometimes immensely. I'm proud of what little I have achieved this year, in particular having finished a gaming painting project (two units) for the first time in, oh, around a decade.

What next? Given past events, more reading and more watching painting videos, inching towards doing some work.

I don't mean to feel sorry for myself here. It sounds like it, I know, and I'm having a hard time convincing myself otherwise. But there is more to gaming than play, or emptying the Closet of Shame. Just gotta remember that. The play's [not] the [only] thing, and one thing I've been trying to get across with this blog, besides just tracking my projects and encouraging myself, is to demonstrate that it's just part of the whole "hobby." As Featherstone pointed out more than once. I've just done more of the research and planning side of things, or at least it feels that way.

Friendship is a thing too, which is why I've forced myself to go to the club a little more often than usual.

Whatever happens in the next year, I'll still enjoy it. And I hope you will too. Thanks for your support.

Reading and Other Stuff

An excellent narrative by the man
who seems to have basically built
the British sniper/scout/observation
concept from the ground up.

What caught my eye:

"A good shot not only strengthens his unit, it raises the morale of the whole unit to know that it contains several first-class shots."

"What was wanted ... was the hunter spirit." (In the sense of having learned to outwit difficult targets)

Observation also useful and important - this explains why snipers are often in the scout or recon platoon, and it's the observer who does much of the work with his telescope (which is claimed to be preferable to the German field-glasses).

This was very painstaking work, and there is an entertaining but eye-opening commentary on the Royal Blankshires and Loamshires (great names for Imagi-nations units!) and how the one's careful design and use of sniping positions is ruined by the other's carelessness when they exchange places in the line. The author uses characterful short-fiction prose to illustrate procedure as well.

The Germans initially had the advantage in sniping (and in light artillery, as they could mortar suspected positions, to the chagrin of everyone else in the British unit). The author mentions doing the same thing, by observing hidden German strongpoints by the sniper positions, then having them bombarded.

Lots of technical tricks and tips, like a dummy head positioned so that after it was shot, a telescope could be placed to look exactly along the opposite line to spot the sniper. There are even puzzle-pictures - "find the sniper."

Makes me want to look up the Vietnam sniper Carlos Hathcock; I had access to a book about him as a kid but never got around to reading it. So far, I can only find audio versions for free, may buy the ebook.

I've got fewer specifics about this book, as I wasn't taking notes, but it's quite good too:

It's not a military history per se; it's more a cultural history. This being the lenses through which people saw how they fought. The title is apropos, because there are many examples of soldiers following the ghosts of the past.

What does this mean? That the Greeks saw the way they waged war as following that fought in The Iliad, and Roman tactics in turn were influenced by the Greeks in whose cultural footsteps they followed. Particularly in late Roman times, "education" was a matter of having read the classics.

The catch is that war in The Iliad was the epitome of "Heroic"; ie, individual heroes challenging each other, to the point that it's actually kind of difficult to tell how the armies of the Trojan War were actually organized or manuevered. There are endless lists of which individual heroes killed who. And this filtered into the way the armies centuries later fought; individual heroism was subsumed into units, and all of a sudden individuals couldn't be famed for their heroism anymore. Except in the sense of, not who or how they killed, but whether they stood their ground in the phalanx. You would think this was the nature of "defending the man next to you," but the author claims it wasn't. The man who stood his ground - which often meant he was killed - was lionized in defeat, while the man who survived (even if he'd been ordered to retreat, saved the colours, etc) was not. This is, of course, where the Spartan meme of "return with your shield or on it" came from, and examples are cited of the families of the dead gaining influence, and being happy and proud of those they had lost, even as they were losing wars, while the families of those who survived were ashamed.

Alexander is said to have fought in the front line not because it encouraged his men or helped him command at the point of greatest importance, but because his education told him that that was what heroes did. And commanders really did go after opposing commanders in those day, just as the fantastic games of Warhammer and 40K tell us they should.

The Romans seem often to have done the same thing; Titus personally seized bits of Jerusalem during the 70CE siege. This despite us thinking of Romans as the soldier end of the soldier vs. warrior dichotomy. The Roman invasion of Persia in the early 300s is also shown as an example, as well as several examples in the late Western Empire of emperors being killed in battle.

I attended OtakuFest (one of our local comic conventions) with the library yesterday, and built a few Paperboys while idling behind the table. Sadly, there weren't enough scissors to get a group of people together and teach them to make their own; I'll bring more next time.

Have been building a lot of paper trees lately - I've been defaulting to it when I can't decide what to work on next, because forests are always useful on a table no matter the period.

Oh, and Oriskany Jim has posted the first half of his video battle report for last post's Anzio game. Enjoy:

Coming up on three years of blogging...!

Breakout

Yesterday's game was a snapshot of the Anzio breakout, May 1944, as run by Oriskany Jim under Battlegroup rules. Like Mark Ritchie's Tactical Combat, these are one-to-one rules, but a little more abstracted. Like Seven Days to the River Rhine, there is an emphasis on pinning rather than killing.

My opponent was Devon as the Germans, while Mark and Jim helped me out with the Americans (Mark arrived late and left early). Having placed most of the infantry and artillery to my left and tanks to my right, I took the former and my partners the latter.

The field had very rolling terrain, primarily obscuring but I was able to block Devon's biggest AT guns from seeing my own tanks.

As usual with Jim's tables, very crowded and tons of detail.

US:

A platoon each of Sherman tanks and armored infantry in M3 halftracks
One mortar and two machine gun teams.
A forward air controller with access to a P-38 Lightning.
An artillery observer which I misplaced almost at once among the terrain.
Three artillery pieces - one M3 with 75mm, and two M7 Priests with 105s.
An M10 tank destroyer.

Some American units:

Germans:

Artillery observer team
Four Mk IV panzers
Two StuGs
Panzer Grenadier platoon with MGs and 37mms on their halftracks
37mm flak gun on truck
88mm on cruciform base
Two off-table guns

Some German units:

Each vehicle had seven to ten shells available and we had to choose between high-explosive and armor-piercing.

Loss is based on drawing token when a unit is destroyed;
after a given amount, the side bottles out.
However, it's also possible to draw tokens for mines and airstrikes.

Tracking ammo. Order choices are at the bottom.

Sides must roll for the number of units they can activate - this is based on a roll of dice plus the number of available officers. Shooting requires an observation roll before the attempt to shoot. Players must choose to fire to pin or for effect - and pinning is likelier. Artillery fire always scatters, but given an observer this can be minimized.

Some of the setup - I didn't take many battle photos:

Turn 1: I moved up the board and fired smoke with my artillery - it mostly missed. I scored a direct hit on the 88, with minimum scatter, but you also have to roll for kill or pin, then the opponent gets to save. He saved easily against the pin check. Not much use!

In his turn, the smoke helped a bit as it increased difficulty both to observe and hit - Devon's light AT gun missed a loaded M3 halftrack, but his 88 took out one of my M7 Priests.

Turn 2: With so many rolls to make a single shot "stick," it was hard to do much damage. I kept advancing towards the rail line (and turned over the armor to Mark who arrived at this point). Our M10 tank destroyer killed an STuG, but otherwise little result, while the Germans pinned a few of our units and otherwise selected overwatch for next turn.

My infantry starts to debus.

Turn 3: My dismounts started exchanging fire with his, and dropped artillery on their heads, but much like in our River Rhine games, we mostly pinned each other a lot. Each American squad had a bazooka, so we also got hits on enemy armor, particularly in ...

Turn 4, when the P-38 finally turned up - and then was shot down by multiple rolls of 6 from a truck-mounted flak gun!

Note the mess of exploded tanks - part victims of 5" rockets,
part tank fire, part bazooka from that squad on the left.

In Turn 5, the Germans resurged on my side of the table and ultimately destroyed two squads with a combination of tank fire and infantry close assault. Our tank destroyer narrowly escaped a mine when Devon needed a four on 2d6 - and rolled a three.

All the tanks rolled poorly to fire into
the church - but then I rolled poorly on
my saves!

My infantry behind the hill at top, his infantry and a Pzkw
with 37mm about to take me out. The ACW-style fences,
btw, are cunningly made of toothpicks!

By Turn 6, we'd taken out the 88 and a couple adjacent units, and US armor was pincering the Germans. We were both nearing our "break-points" as determined by token draws, and Devon hit his this turn. While on the tabletop it was certainly an American victory - Germans down to a handful of pinned units and the nearly unhurt American tanks swarming over their left flank - late dice rolls could easily have gone either way. When destroyed, a unit with an officer draws two tokens (numbered 1-5, with break point at 32), and given the mix in the box the Americans would likely have bottled out earlier. As it was, all five American lieutenants survived the game, which also provided a significant bonus to the rolls for how many units we could activate. We never had to make a decision about which units to leave out of a turn, although Devon eventually had so few units that he didn't either.

The Americans also made the mistake of firing about twice as many artillery shells as the rules said we had in stock; a combination of me forgetting to track in later turns and Jim thinking we were using reloading rules (with a couple supply trucks off the table) really should have made the US assault more difficult towards the end.

That and both sides rolled badly a lot. There were times early on when we both should have taken critical losses that would have made a difference - if we had had average rolls. But c'est la guerre, I guess...

A good view of the very nice 88 team.

These rubber wildlife are doubtless traumatized.

Still, an interesting set of rules, a lovely table and miniatures led to a fun game. Sometimes the end result is not the point. At least that's my perspective, but it should be remembered that my side maybe shouldn't have won!

Jim had trouble with his recording; hopefully there will be enough for a video in around three weeks. I  also kept rolling dice when he didn't have the camera on ... sorry.

I am hoping to get in one of Jon Freitag's remote games next. Schedules will have to be juggled... see you next time.

Roads, Buildings and Mud

Another rambling post about what I've done over the past week or so. I do have a WWII battle coming up today at the club, so that'll be next.

I've been drooling over a newish sort of RPG terrain, Tenfold Dungeons. They are designed as dungeon maps, with a selection of doors, stairs and connectors, but the handy thing is that their outsides are also nicely patterned. So long as you don't mind your buildings with flat roofs, and you use them more as obstacles than strongpoints, they might make an okay village. So I picked on the Town set, which has boxes representing a large inn, a church and a town hall.

My cat in the nice new box.

Everything is compact...

...And nesting.

To go with them, I broke out some roads I got last year, and a box of period vehicles from the club:

I particularly like this one!

A few closeups:

Gotta use your imagination a bit, but that's what these games
are all about, right?

A simple layout.

With two roads side-by side, I can even have a runway!

So this will help with terrain for VBCW. The plane (a 1937 Lockheed Electra) even suggests an airlanding scenario...

Last of all, I experimented with a Games Workshop technical paint, here Stirland Mud:

... and turned up a few 3d-print vehicles that came with the road pieces:

A little mobile artillery.

The VBCW collection is booming at this point, I must get around to actual play. Perhaps in summer. First comes an Anzio game, which will be the subject of my next post. See you next time.