Surviving Sealion, Scenario 1

I've very much enjoyed playing Surviving Nam and I wondered about using the mechanics for WW2 (using French partisans or German werewolves in lieu of the Viet Cong). As I looked through my old 1/72-scale collection, I decided that this might be an interesting way to game Operation Sealion (cue flurry of painting). 

I've gamed Sealion before (board game, map game with miniatures, programmed miniature campaign at the company level) but the possibility of a programmed skirmish campaign that I could do solo was attractive. I played the game as written and just thematically adjusted in my head (so an RPGer popping up becomes Gran with a petrol bomb). I may create thematically appropriate cards later on. I did add in six blank cards to slow the resistance down slightly (I'd reduce that to four next time).

The premise (whatever you want to make of it, historically) was the Germans have landed in September of 1940 and pushed out of Kent. I made up three squads (so basically a platoon) that has been pulled out of combat to refit and engage in anti-partisan activities. Each game is one week apart and there could be four to 12 games). Game 1 sees the platoon enter the board (from left to right above) organized as squads good, bad and ugly. Their mission was to cross the table and secure the church.

They got three moves down the road when the resistance materialized out of the fog (which almost immediately became rain). 

There were a few regulars with some dad's army types carrying ammo.

 

The rest were from Local .303 of the Welcome Wagon. As the dice played out, most appeared either immediately behind the visitors or around the church that was the objective.

The better squad dropped into a rear-guard position to try and thin out the most threatening group of English guerillas. The other two squads moved down the road to try and seize the church before things got too hot.

Initially, the greener squad did well, cleaning out a couple of riflemen holed up in the belltower.

An indecisive firefight continued with the MG keeping the largest group of saboteurs pinned but then a British bunker revealed itself just as the middling squad crossed the small stream so the commander began a fighting retreat with the MG to go help them out. Other Brits began to pop up in annoying places but a fortunate mortar barrage wiped out the dad's army types before they could bring their MG into play.

The advance outside the church stalled as members of the first two squads started to get caught in a crossfire and go down. The bunker was, however, eliminated.

Eventually, the MG caught up and started to thin out the opposition, although petrol bombers and snipers continued to make it hard for the Germans to seize the objective and get their wounded comrades out of the line of fire.

Eventually, the Germans occupied the church and also neutralized the remaining Brits, just as the rain stopped. 

The squads, especially the worst squad, over on the right)  took a lot of casualties. There was one outright KIA, a couple of game-missing wounded, and a few guys got to go home with a million dollar wound. Replacements weakened the good squad (the MG went from veteran to green) and turned the worst squad into a nightmare of FNGs.

I'm not sure what the next game might be. Maybe a patrol through a town to capture some informants for the Colonel?

Comment moderation on; thanks AI

Due to a sudden influx of AI bots leaving comments leading to ads, I’ve turned on comment moderation for the foreseeable future. AI ruins everything. Sorry!

Clearing the village

Bruce kindly set a beautiful table for another game of Surviving 'Nam. The goal of the scenario was to search the village (the statue, the two hooches closest to the river, and the two sampans) and then exit opposite our entry side. We each took a squad and I think the only rules modification was Bruce added some blank cards into the VC deck so not every activation failure trigger the VC.

We managed to get almost to the edge of the village in the pre-combat movement before the VC started popping up.

 

Bruce's squad moved to loop around the village and secure our flank and almost immediately got bogged down in some jungle by the men in the black pyjamas popping up.

To make matters worse, then an enemy bunker revealed itself and just drove him to ground. He spent most of the game trying to extract his guys from this mess while I pursued our objectives in the village. The bunkers he bought looked fantastic and were a complete pain in the ass to deal with!

Here I am moving through the village, taking out VC as they pop up, and trying to compete the search objectives. Bruce has taken out the bunker but continues to take random fire from the ever-increasing horde of VC in the jungle.

My corporal (below) has charged into the last hooch, killed a VC in hand-to-hand and is now starting to pivot his squad to take the last sampan and secure the exit across the bridge (orders from the Col changed our exit edge but that wasn't awful news).

Bruce continues to try to make an orderly withdrawal. Most of his guys who dropped after taking fire turned out to be only lightly wounded.

Some late VC popping up near our exit kept me busy while Bruce has to escort one guy who is pretty beat up towards the evac point.

Finally, he managed to break contact and exit the jungle he's been in the whole game (!!) and we called it.

In the post game, two of his three wounded will miss the next game. Overall, very slick and I can't wait to try this with my 1/72 WW2 figures.

28mm fantasy hodge-podge

This week is five random 28mm fantasy figures that I have been slowly chipping away on.

These are the remains of a box I got from Chen two or more years ago and are either players of NPCs.

So we've got some kind of sword-armed folk musician (a lonely child, alone and wild, a half-elven magi's son...). I see I did a sloppy job of his pants. Arrgh. Good help is so hard to find.

Then alcoholic Pavarotti, who was a fun figure to paint.

Then some kind of magic user or lady priest with a cool crook.

Buddy here was also a magic user who I gave a darker paint job too, thinking he could stand in for a vampire or other villain. I've no idea what happened to his face. I kind of think that is a trick of the lighting I was using cause he looks fine in person.

Finally, there is this dragon-borne dude (or lady?). I tried using some water colours on this figure (specifically the skin) but clearly I have some things to learn about how water-activated pigments play with subsequent acrylic paints! What a hassle! Another handful to go and I'm done this project.

 Up next: Some 28m Nam!

28mm BSG Viper

For my birthday in September, I bought myself a 3-D printed Battle Star Galactica viper on fleabay. There were lots of US options but, in light of the current hostilities, this one came from China.

The printing was very clean and the kit came with 70-odd pieces. Unhelpfully, there were no instructions (even an exploding diagram would have helped). Despite 50 years of model-making experience, it took me quite a lot of dry fitting and looking at pictures to get everything in the right place. I managed to only break one tiny piece (invisible now).

I primed and painted the pieces separately before glueing them in place. Then I washed and sealed the kit. 

It came out a little darker than planned but I figured rag-tag would also mean dirty and covered in felgercarb. 

It fits in pretty well with my 28mm BSG figures.

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.