Rommel: Pacific

Bruce and I have played a couple of games of Rommel over the past few months, including a WW3 variant (Russians versus the British Army on the Rhine which basically just added a helos rule) and a fan-made WW2 Pacific theatre scenario. For scale, each base is a company.

The Americans were strung out in a thin line across the middle of the table, defending five victory markers, including two on the Guadalcanal airfield mid-board. The Japanese came in from the north and east edges. This was an infantry heavy game with a a new terrain type (jungle). Troops that were not jungle-trained (the Americans) fought at half-strength in the trees.

Most of the fighting happened on the eastern part of the board as the Japanese sought to evict the Americans from the airfield. The Americans got lucky in the first two turns, dropping a huge barrage on the hex containing the Japanese combat engineers (using an event) and then rolled high during the followup attack and wiped them out. This took away much of the Japanese punch against the American entrenchments. Probably this moment decided the game.

What followed was a long grind in the middle of the board, as wave after wave of infantry hit the Americans and then fell back. We used the offensive and defensive tactics in this game more than in other scenarios because there were so few tank units. The tactics offered the best chance for local victories. 

By the end of the game, the Japanese were exhausted and conceded, withdrawing before the time limit. In retrospect, attacking along a broader front might have been a better approach because it would have strung out the Americans more and reduced their ability to mount spoiling attacks.

Overall, Rommel did a good job handling the infantry-dense Pacific theatre with only one special rule. I can count the number of Pacific theatre ground games I've played over the years on one hand and this was definitely the best, with hard choices and lots of tension.

More 20mm partisans

To flesh out the ranks of the metal partisans I painted last month, I added a few sprues of 1/72-scale Caesar partisans that I happened to see on fleabay. The original set had two different sprues but the seller only had remainders of one sprue so I ordered three copies. 

There were 12 poses on the sprue. Disappointingly, only one was of a woman. The rest were sensible enough poses, include a surrendering prisoner (which is useful).

There were a good mix of weapons (some German and some allied).

Helpfully, there was also a two-man demolition crew and a fellow using what looks like the single-shot pistol sent to the French to be used to upgrade to a better German weapon.

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The plastics mix well enough with the metals, being only slightly thinner in build. Overall, I now have resistance fighters to mount a game using Surviving Nam. I've been thinking this might be an interesting was to play out Operations Sealion (having played out more conventional takes on this campaign three times in the past).

Up next: Hopefully, some more gaming.

15mm FIW gaming

Over the summer, we played a couple of FIW games using both Muskets and Tomahawks and Rebels and Patriots. Bruce then took the activation system of M&T (which involves card play) and grafted it onto the movement, combat, and morale mechanics of R&P.

The game saw a mixed group of Brits (on the right) having to get some wagons off the left side of the board. Opposing them were some French troops plus some locals.

The British regulars and grenadiers entered the open field, hoping to put a pasting on the French regulars, On the flanks, the British provincials and irregulars worked to keep the French local allies occupied.

Eventually, the French regulars began to be driven back by casualties and we called it for the British. The card play from M&T to determine activation was much better than the activation rolls from R&P because there was more back and further and some hard choices to make about what to activate and in what order.

By contrast, the combat, movement and morale mechanics from R&P were much simpler and played much faster (almost no modifiers) than the more traditional tabletop mechanics from M&T. Overall, we thought it gave a pretty nice game with lots of hard decisions at the command level and a fairly straight-forward game on the tabke top.

Up next: Some more 20mm partisans.

20mm WW2 Partisans

Finding 1/72-partisans was hard. Caesar and Strelets both produced plastic sets about 10 years ago but they are hard to find at a reasonable price and also in a non-US location. There are some 3-D printed sets around but they are a mint. Fortunately, I found that Mirliton had a nice set of metals.

There are two distinct sets of figures. Somehow, I ended up ordering three packs (one duplicate) but no matter. Overall, they had pretty decent character and come with a nice mix of weapons (British, German, and a few I couldn't really identify) and clothing.

I was particularly excited to see all of the women represented in the packs.

There were also some heavy weapons, both machine guns and a bren gun. A few fogure shave what looks like demolition charges. Weirdly, I don't see at with Molotovs.

These seem to fit in pretty well with my mixed collection of WW2 plastics. In the photo below the plastics are Revell, Esci, and Matchbox, I think. The metals are a bit thicker, but nothing you'd notice, really.

Up next: Probably some more partisans.

1/72-scale 3-D printed WW2 trucks

So, in thinking about applying the game Surviving Nam to WW2, I've been looking through my 20mm WW2 collection and mulling a couple of possibilities. Maybe Germans versus the French resistance. Maybe a fictional clash between the British and German Werewolves after the end of the war. Maybe something else. In any event, I figured I'd likely need some trucks as targets.

After looking around at what was available and the price of 1/72-scale models, I decided to take a chance on 3-D printed trucks. I got these off Fleabay from a Canadian company for $8 each and I'm pretty pleased. As an aside, I would say that traditional plastics model kit manufacturers are in for tough times.

They are (left to right) a US Chevy, a French truck with adaptors to allow it to drive down rail lines, and an Italian command car. I gave them each a quickie paint job and then left them without markings. I think they fit in well, scale-wise, with the various 1/72 figures I have (I grabbed some Germans).

Up next: Some 20mm metal partisans.

Surviving Nam, Sherwood Forest style

Welcome back to another season of gaming blogs. Although I did paint and game over the summer, I spent a lot of time in the outdoors. One of the summer games we tried was Surviving Nam, which is a cooperative miniatures game wherein the players play the Yankees and a card deck drives the actions of the VC. We thought it was a good game for Vietnam and then Bruce adapted it for Robin Hood.

The basic scenario was the four players (running the side of evil King John) had to enter on the south edge (bottom right of photo), search the village for weapons caches, and then exit off the north edge, not leaving any fallen comrades behind.

The first few moves went quickly as the Merry Men were no where to be seen.

Eventually, they appeared and (purely by chance), all arrived on the north edge, blocking our exit path. In the meantime, there was a message from King John that we also needed to search the bodies of five merry men before we left the board.

One of Bruce's troopers enters a building and started searching for the weapon cache there.

In the meantime, Robin Hood appears in our rear and starts making life horribly difficult, pulling out troops back towards the starting edge to deal with him and to collected those he has felled.

More baddies appear in the building and have to be dealt with.

At this point, the Merry Men began advancing (thanks to failures on our activation dice) and they began to whittle down our forces, including knocking out the evil sheriff. We were able to successfully find the weapons caches. We also killed Robin and Little John and searched enough bodies but things were starting to get difficult, with King's men down and pinned and generally in disarray.

By the end, we felt like we had things in hand and called the game as a win for the King's forces.

While Surviving Nam doesn't have the swashbuckling vibes you can get with other rules, it does offer a fun solo or coop game pitting a higher tech opponent against insurgents. I've ordered form WW2 resistance fighters to see how this plays in that era.

25mm Mayfair Games Teen Titans

A few weeks back, I posted up some 25mm superheroes from the mid-1980s. I got another box in the mail, this time the Teen Titans. The box came with six heroes and four villains and I managed to get the heroes painted up.

First up are Wonder Girl, Nightwing and Jericho. There are lots of variant costumes available to choose from but I took the earliest ones (which is what the minis were based on).

Overall, the sculpts are nice, if a bit thin and static. The second set included Cyborg, Starfire, and Changeling. I can see why the sculptor would have chosen the flying pose for Starfire but her shooting a bolt of whatever out of her fist would have been a more useful pose. Changling shifting into a lion is a nice effort.

Overall, these are decent enough figures. The omission of Raven and Kid Flash are notable, although at least the Titan box contained a few women. They more or less scale alright with the Justice League figures. Maybe the Titans are a bit thinner but I guess we could write that off as they're not quite fully grown. 

The scale difference between the 25mm Mayfair figures and more modern 28/32mm sculpts (these being heroclix) is quite marked. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to get another post up before I take a summer break. If not, happy summering and I'll see you in September!