Miniature War Gaming

Battlegroup: 1940 France

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Tom Gall

For our 3rd game of Battlegroup on this past Thursday night at D6, I setup a historic action set in 1940 France that I pulled out of the Blitzkrieg book.

In this scenario the French were counter attacking the Germans who had taken a pause in their advance, having had the time to dig in.

It was just Chuck and I for this platoon sized game so it’d be a good test of just how much we could get accomplished now that we’re gotten familiar with the rules.

The nature of the game would be lots of French pushing forward attacking across the fields of France. That sure worked well in WWI…. but this time they have R35 tanks in support.

Here on the left flank a platoon gets ready to move forward. As the R35s start to get a view of the German lines, in the tree line and on the opposite of that field are a couple of PaK36s approx a platoon of infantry as well as an MG42.

The PaK36s were a bit of a concern as while they are smaller AT guns, the armor on the R35 isn’t exactly great.

On the right flank, another platoon of infantry pushing forward and some more R35s in support.

Behind the initial line of Germans, there was a second line of defense that once the German battle rating had degraded by 1/2 they would have to fall back to that line. More PaK36s and more infantry…

At the top of the game as the attacker rolling 2D6+5 for orders I managed for the first few turns to roll really really low so my advance would have to be very piecemeal. I figured I’d push up into cover as much as I could and us the tanks to go after the AT guns first and then the HMG which should then allow the infantry to successfully move forward.

As the scenario calls for the Germans get a Stuka strike on turn 1. Since I couldn’t get many orders off there were lots of ripe places to drop some bombs. We hit a first snag with the rules as with the Stuka it has MGs, it has large and small bombs. Question is, how much can you drop or attack with in one turn? We went ahead and just ruled that Chuck could drop all his small and large bombs.

The results were pretty nasty. My company command died. My truck and SA-25 AT gun blew up, I lost a squad of infantry, and lots of stuff pinned down.

This then resulted in the first of a series of chit draws that were 3 aircraft chits in a row! And since my number orders for the first few turns were so depressingly low I was presented with some very hard choices of how to press my attack. (While having those 3 air chits were nice, I only make one air roll, a 5+ as I recall so while the opportunity was there, for multiple attacks, it wasn’t to be)

A few turns in with a little better, more average order roll I started to press my attack, trying to get infantry into place, with a couple of my HMGs, my observer for some off board 81mm mortars.

I used the tanks to continue to try and attack the PaKs trying either to our right destroy them or at least pin them. I generally was using the main gun on the R36s to try and HE the PaKs and use their machine guns to pin. As the R35 has a very light gun, lobbing shells at the PaKs really wasn’t accomplishing too much. Besides at the 20-30″ range band that wasn’t helping either, so the reality was I needed to get closer which wasn’t a great prospect given the open space and Chuck was in general making good use of opportunity fire.

Turning around to the German turn, Chuck brought down his 105s which pinned my mortar team. He also managed to brew up an R35 with a PaK.

Chuck started to adjust his second line of defense to the rail line. It was a raised line so reasonable cover but not exactly a trench either. There were more Germans in the houses on the left as well. Would that second defense line be needed?

You’ll note all the German guns and infantry going on overwatch. Draw those french in and then fire!

On the right flank, things were going very poorly. I tried to bring up the infantry, hop the fence and try to make a push for the German trenches. With 2 tanks in support and the small arms fire I tried to pin the Germans down while moving up under cover. I ended up taking fire all over the place and it took several turns to finally get the German HMG pinned and take out the PaK36 on this flank. The cost tho was such that effectively there would be no advancing on this side and enough chits draw that I was getting concerned about my battle rating.

Fate at least started to smile in that I was able to then get lots of orders, pin the germans on the left flank with artillery and other fire as well as taking out the PaK 36 on the left flank. If I could only keep the or take out the German HMG while keeping the German squads pinned we might just make it across the field. … might.

Over the top boys!

And the last picture in the series. The German HMG was taking out by the tanks but as I mentioned the assault forward on this the right flank was done. The withering fire by the integrated MGs and general rifle fire was a plenty adding in MG34 HMG fire where even crossing over the obscuring terrain wasn’t enough and the assault was pushed back. In some cases losses were so bad that going under 50%, and failing morale resulted in units evaporating.

Due to the losses I was within a couple of points of my battle rating. The early air raid and it’s effects to knock out several units entirely made a huge difference as well as not having the orders to get an effective advance going.

For the last turn I started my move forward on the left flank but it was obvious that the French would fall back and the game done. Chuck was only so far as being close to being forced to fall back to his second line of defense. By scenario rule once his BR fell to a certain point he’d have to fall back. If that had happened that perhaps would have resulted in some ability to exploit the chaos but it was not to be.

Should I have perhaps ignore one side to assault another side in force? That’s a good question.

The tanks while not having the greatest HE did at least make a reasonable showing. Closing range and concentrating shots for pinning fire I think was one of the major lessons to take away from the game.

The one question about how much the Stuka could drop was taken the fora and the answer seems to be you can either strafe, or drop one set of bombs but not both. Makes sense and would have blunted the early air attack a bit.

All in all, still very happy with the rules, we played approx 10 or so turns and get to a conclusive result. The rules just feel ‘right’, it does seem to have the back and forth dynamics of Flames of War but with overwatch and other flavor that Flames is definitely missing.

From the post game table talk we’re probably be going into some Battle of the Bulge scenarios once December rolls around. I’m a little light on American hardware so that’ll depend on help from the gang.

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Battlegroup : Second Playtest June 1944 Canadians vs Germans

Posted on November 6, 2017 by Tom Gall

We gathered at D6 on Sat for a somewhat impromptu game of Battlegroup. This is the second I’ve run so I think I’ll still call this a playtest for the time being, tho it’s starting to feel more like a regular set of rules I’ll be using.

With Bill coming over from LaCrosse, and Chuck, Sam, a little bit of Ian and we had a nice little group assembled. Chuck and Ian started on the German side and Bill and I took the allied side.

This was a platoon sized action which in Battlegroup terms means generally you’re rolling 2D6 for the number of orders you have. The Germans had roughly 3 platoons vs 3 and some attachments on the allied side.

Shortly after D-day on June 9th, near the Norrey-en-Bessin train station. The Germans were ordered to press their attack against some Canadian infantry forces to push them back. The Canadians are dug in having a 3 Rifle sections, a 50mm mortar, access to some off board 105s and a couple of 6 lbers. In addition a couple of troops of Shermans have moved into the area.

For the Germans and their force, they have 6 panthers and a couple of squads in 251/1s but nothing else. Worse as the day has started the Germans are finding they are under fire by some 17lber from very long range but they can’t quite seem to understand where the shells are coming from. Because of the confusion they only get 1D6+2 (because of 2 officers) orders per turn.

The Germans setup ready to roll forward. They didn’t have great orders rolls for the first couple of turns so going on overwatch they didn’t roll too far forward.

On the Canadian side they setup a battle line behind the stone fence as well as a squad on the train station.

One set of 2 Shermans and 1 Firefly are on table while the others are all over table in reserve.

Here come those Jerries. They’re a little under armed to take on those Panthers.

So the Canadian firefly pops out and takes out a Panther. Dropping artillery on the Panthers doesn’t have a lot of effect. The Germans are holding their infantry back while the Canadians are generally holding their fire as well. The Panthers make quick work of the Firefly. The off board 17lber isn’t accomplishing much.

The loss of a unit (the firefly) meant that the Canadians have to take a chit which is the mechanism for eating away at one side’s morale. The chits have both numbers and in some cases specials that might use. The first chit drawn, air attack!

We tried to have the plane come down and do a straffing run on the 251s. It didn’t quite work out, shots fired but not enough.

The infantry that was on the station made a quick move down the tracks to see if the Germans might ignore them. They didn’t. They lost a man and used the fall back rule. Basically if you take fire as infantry in the open, you can elect to take just one casualty (invalidate the rest) but then your opponent gets to move you up to 10″ away towards or into cover.

The Germans in turn move up with their half tracks. One takes a direct hit causing 3 casualties. The remainder jump out pinned. The other half track rolls up drops off it’s infantry as they jump into the house.

Then the Canadian reinforcements show up, 2 more Shermans and another firefly. The firefly takes out another Panther and the two Shermans try spray the house.

The Germans keep their cool however take a few casualties. Then with the Shermans in very short range, they pop out their Panzerfaust and take out the firefly and one of the Shermans with two very good shots. The reminder of their fire with their MG42 and small arms they blaze away at the Canadian infantry. Unfortunately while that stone wall gives some cover, they suffer a number of causalities, drop under 50%, fail their morale and run.

Over on the Canadian right flank, the Panthers started to move into machine gun range and close the distance on the 6 lbers. Given the range the poor 6 lbers didn’t have much of a change on the front of a Panther.

With Battlegroup, they have approx ever 10″ bands that drop off the effectiveness of AP rounds over distance. The Canadian players were looking at about 10 on 2D6 to even dent the Panthers with their 6lbers. Lots to be said for creating a set of rules which effectively recreates just how difficult dealing with the good German hardware actually was.

None the less, the Panthers ended up taking out both of the 6lbers. Just one of the guns managed to have an opportunity against the side of one of the Panthers. Alas those shots didn’t do anything.

Next the Panthers started to pick on the Shermans over in the woods and managed to take out the track on one of them. Like the 6lbers the 75 on a Sherman can’t do much against a Panther. At range they were looking for ~11s on 2D and closer that dropped to 10 on 2D6 to penetrate on a shot that hits.

So last turn of the game. We picked it up as the Canadians were pretty much down to a undefendable position. The 4 Panthers were closing in, the two fireflies lost and the Canadian infantry pretty chewed up. The off board 17lber didn’t do anything the entire game save for one hit. The Canadian artillery did manage to hit and pin some of the Germans at times.

It was a very close match however. In Battlegroup, both sides have a Battle Rating and are drawing chits for squad loss or tank loss or to unpin units. Go past that value and your force decides it has had enough to do for the day.

For both the Canadians and Germans they were both on that edge. One more chit and it’d spell doom.

It was interesting to watch the players not try and attempt to pin down the opponents using area fire. I think that’s a tactic that hopefully will be explored more in future games.

We played about 9-10 turns over the course of about 4 hours. For having to fumble through the books and charts and start things off explaining the basics, I think that’s a pretty good pace. With more people experienced in the rules I think the next game will go faster.

For me the dynamics of the game work pretty well. There are shooting, spotting etc modifiers I’d kinda like to see, OTOH the limitation of a D6 for observation as well as to hit I think keeps the modifiers back. More modifiers also means more time figuring them out so it slow things down. Would the results have been any different? I don’t think so and in which case I’m thinking I’m ok with the choices the designer of the game has made.

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Runewars Worlds Team Tournament

Posted on November 3, 2017 by Tom Gall

Thursday Nov 2nd, at worlds we have the team tournament for Runewars. Originally the idea was that a ‘team’ would be 2 people and we’d play one round, with 200 pts of valid army per person.

As of Wednesday the exact rules for what would be allowed as far as mixing forces and the potential for the mixture of allies when it came to abilities was unclear. So walking into things on Thursday morning, I just brought stuff knowing it’d get figured out.

Curt and I had originally planned to play together but instead the organized play staff had something special instead planned for us. What we did was play a 3 on 3 mega epic battle, 600 pts a side, mix factions as you like.

Crazy! And totally fun.

Andrew, Dustin and I played a Daqan, Latari and Waiqar army vs a double Waiqar and Daqan force.

We did Bounty mission, so 24 tokens up for grabs! Per side we had 14 and 17 activations. Now I know what you’re thinking, things look wheelhub to wheel hub, there can’t be any room to maneuver.

Well keep reading, because it was through maneuvering and successful use of good tactics that decided the day.

Early on we decided on this side of the board we’d just put a holding force in place and otherwise not try and push. Instead we’d attempt to hit hard on the right and therefore pick up a majority of tokens between what we had in front of us as well as what we’d grab from their own side.

First turn was a lot of inspiration tokens and not much movement still the action for the flanks immediately was important.

Dustin’s archers and Ardus were charged with holding the right flank. Using arrows and fire runes as able he started to land some hits into the Waiqar archers across the table who were basically thinking the same thing. Those worms tho…

So this picture captures one of the downside of throwing cav close in with a tray based system. Andrew’s riders are next to my spearstar and they basically can’t wheel over to engage and basically pound the stuffing out of that 2×1 Cav. Consider that cinematic eye melding with game mechanics. That shouldn’t be impossible to do.

Because we couldn’t do it, it basically meant that the worms just off the right of the frame were able to change into the riders flank.

Things more or less static on the left flank. The Waiqar were holding back, just inching forward.

None the less to the left of the spearstar, all those archers and their fire runes started to rain down on the reanimates nearly directly across. (The unpainted ones) So while we were losing our right flank, the hope of some holes opening up ahead of us where more victory tokens lie just out of reach.

Rolling the clock forward a bit, the cav wheeled around charing into the side of the riders. The worms moved up both the group in front of us as well as the ones that were able to get on our right flank. Then their spearstar came forward getting ready to bash our archers. With my spearman I got into the formation directly across from me and resulted in lots of hits such that they wouldn’t last long at all.

Meanwhile almost out of frame on the left side two of our units of cav charged forward, essentially sacrificing themselves to plug and hole to hold the side effectively trying to buy us time on the right side.

Perhaps a better view of the situation on the left hand side. Their Ardus and lots of Waiqar essentially having their way.

Losses starting to really mount now. Our Ardus fighting for his life against two carrion crawlers. The riders down to their last figure. My spearstar having completely a charging turn onto the flank of the carrion crawler.

Mid-table a number of the archers had been hit. Hawthorn was coming back as was Aliana in hopes that both could get in a flank or rear attack on their mega block of spearmen.

Otherwise the heroic cav that had charged in on the far left were nearly gone. A ”lucky” moral effect had turned one of the remaining trays around. They would flee, clutching onto 2 victory tokens.

Very nearly the last turn. Our Ardus fell. The enemy cav tried to charge my spearmen and ended up just short. Nearly all of our archers were gone. Aliana and Hawthorn were booking back. Aliana landed her charge whittling the enemy spearmen down even more.

On the left flank a dismal picture, just one tray of Cav left alive and fleeing. They’d done their duty.

And with that the final picture. What might we have accomplished with just one more turn? Who knows. With the 7 turns we played in 3 hours there was plenty of destruction, lots of fun and importantly a pretty obvious conclusion.

In summary our side lost. The token count was pretty huge in their favor. Dustin lost his entire force. I’d lost about 1/2 of mine. Andrew was down to just Aliana. The Waiqar forces on the left flank were largely untouched and starting to swoop in.

This huge epic game I think really was a great test of the rules. There was no additional rules added for cross allies or across armies. Everything as written worked. (*) The back and forth activation did mean that you did have some standing around going on but at 3 on 3 it wasn’t bad or excessive.

With all that stuff on the table, it didn’t just look awesome (and we had quite a bit of traffic walking by having a look) it sure was an epic massive battle that the game is supposed to be all about.

If your local meta can support it, I’d sure strongly recommend having a day where you all bring a 200 point army and have a massive battle. Dedicate 3 hours. You’ll be glad you did!

(*) – Prior to the game we did have an interesting discussion about nubs and shifting. Does a tray that gets caught on another tray, specifically the ‘nub’ count? Consider if you’re shifting and trying to get away, or even shifting as an elf. Clearly that would be broken if getting caught on the nub counted. However on a charge with a razor thin margin, the nub sure counts. Who knows if we’ll see a future FAQ update on that but none the less was an interesting discussion.

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Runewars – Worlds 2017

Posted on November 3, 2017 by Tom Gall

The very first Runewars The Miniatures Game worlds event was held at Fantasy Flight Nov 1st (4 rounds of swiss) and Nov 2 (top 4). I’ll have another post about the painting competition and the team side event.

For this one we had 14 actually show up but one of the entrants dropped as he apparently presumed that Death Knights were going to be legal so he dropped out. For the 4 rounds of swiss we were a stones throw away from Fantasy Flight over at the Radisson were there was both Runewars and L5R going on.

Across the fora and the lands of Facebook there’s been some kibitzing going on about the turnout and really I think it’s important to keep things in perspective. First the game has only been out for 7 months. While there are 3 factions (of the soon to be 4) available one of those factions just basically came out and isn’t even available in parts of the world. Third, the event was on Wednesday in November in Minnesota. Fourth, the vast majority of those that came to the event were just there for Runewars. Unless you’re a local that’s potentially a very long distance to travel for a midweek game. To me I think the turnout was good especially for a game that has lots of growth already announced.

Round 1 getting under way. I ended up drawing the bye. That resulted in some thumb twiddling on my part but that means you get to look at more pictures of all the various games, least for round 1!

Brooks the TO did offer to get his army out tho indicating he’d especially for the first round like to keep an eye on things. I agreed that was a better use of his time but certainly a nice offer on his part.

The round 1 pairings.

Here’s my boys ready to go. I ended up going with the dreaded spearstar with a citadel weapons master, shield wall and of course everyone’s favorite, Mr Golem. Lord Hawthorn to direct the trays including both Shield of Margoth and Might of Daqan. Next two clumps of Cav, that played as one 2×2 and one 4×1. The 4×1 with Rank discipline and Raven tabards. The 2×2 with just Raven tabards for a total of 199.

Of the 13 playing there were 3 Latari elves, 3 Daqan and 7 Waiqar. Most of the lead …er plastic was painted but a few fearless naked armies were out there. A number of the armies were still works in progress. Even for my Daqan that I had first started to obtain at AdeptiCon, I had *JUST* flocked them last week.

Dusty and Oisin getting going. Oisin was one of the two fellow from Ireland. Great guys! Dusty and Andrew had come all the way from Montana.

Off at the far table is Kyle and JD. Brooks is just walking up to answer a q.

I think this is Nathan vs Ben.

First round was Bounty and Careful approach. This brings up the subject of the tournament rules which as it turned out has indication a change in approaches / missions. As it turned out for worlds instead of going with what would be the current set, we went with the past set. This was a slightly annoying since you can guess what I’d put the most time and preparation into. Still it’s not like I hadn’t put games into these missions etc but still.

Tony and Curt going at it. Spearstar on the prowl!

I think this is Kyle vs JD.

Nathan and his swarms of Cav vs Ben.

Round 2 and into the action finally! Unfortunately that means I couldn’t get much more for action shots from the other tables as I needed to concentrate on my own game.

I ended up being in the 5×5 going up against Kyle’s elves. This was my second game against the elves ever. If there was a blind spot in my ‘preparation’ if it could be called that for worlds it was against the elves. I have very little appreciation on their combos much less how to best approach them.

I settled for the Conan the Barbarian approach to the problem. Let’s just get after them and cut them down.

So without much for terrain in my way my Cav were more or less ready to get out there and have some fun. I figured I’d try and match up my spearmen against what I thought might be the better approach. I was to find out through the school of hard knocks that least for my main units I really should have deployed differently.

Approx mid-game. The left flank was under control, but the right and middle wasn’t going well. Between the shootie-shootie and fire rune combos I was learning that the main block of Kyles force really was Maegen and her archers that really want to sit back and rain down arrows. The riders are more distraction. When my 4×1 hit them the ones of the left evaporated. I probably should have gone with 2 4x1s for this game since it really takes away from the Elves easy access to your cav flanks. Well ok… makes it a little more harder :-).

Getting to be late game. Was trying to get Hawthorn and my remaining last bit of Spearmen to where they could pick up victory tokens as well as get on the flank of the archers. My 2×2 cav had just evaporated so that presented Kyle with the choice of either letting his one unit take some hits or coming back to help while giving up tokens.

It ended up a 9-2 result in Kyle’s favor and me much wiser for taking on the tree huggers in the future.

With round 3, took on Kyle’s Waiqar with the very impressive worm-star. I’m not sure at the deployment or mission on this one, I think it was bounty.

I had both of my cav on my right flank with the idea I’d zoom the 2×2 into the rear to go after those archers and then continue on into the flank / rear of his force. My 4×1 cav ended up facing the worm-star, I didn’t expect them to last long but I hopped to at least do a bit of damage and keep the worms busy.

Unfortunately this is the only picture of the game that I took. It ended up a 5-6 loss where my charge on the archers missing by a millimeter combined with their having a wind runes really ended up throwing the game Kyle’s way. Ardus died. My 4×1 Cav died and my other cav was really beaten up.

Otherwise lots of dancing on the battlefield.

After 3 rounds. Wasn’t looking good for me. I figured a good goal for the day was just getting into top 8. I knew by this time I wasn’t going to be in contention for top 4. Still after 3 rounds all the elves being in the top was a slight surprise. From the discussion between players as we had about a 90 minute break for supper was since the majority of us hadn’t actually played against the elves that it was the unfamiliarity with them that really gave them the advantage. We just didn’t have the tactics down.

Last round I played Oisin who’d come all the way from Ireland. He was running Waiqar.

I deployed and inspirationed up. Kept my cav placed such that they could protect my flanks and then have Hawthorn placed in such a way that he could continue to hand out inspiration tokens to counter the invariable blight rain that would likely occur.

My spearmen managed to take out his reanimates without taking much damage. I threw the remaining cav after his archers with Hawthorn helping.

Wind rune to the rescue again as he disengaged from what would have been a complete slaughter.

Didn’t matter tho as I ended up winning 6-5. Another lesson for me. I’d only seen wind runes maybe used once before. The local meta just doesn’t use them so seeing them in action especially with archers to either evade in incoming charge or get out of contact was kind of crazy.

Final results. Met my goal of getting to top 8 and thus in the ‘money’ for the acrylic movement tools. Looking back on the day even had a done a little better here or there against the elves or had a charge actually go through don’t think it would have changed things much. Importantly was a fun time and that’s what counts.

Over all the game still feels new. We’re all fumbling a bit here and there. Tactics, good deployment go a long way to seeing a successful win. I doubt there was one error free game across all the players all weekend long. That’s a new game for you.

Congrats to the top 4 Dustin, Ben, Kyle and Andrew, all great competitors and well deserved in their victories.

Last let’s talk about swag!!

Whoever came up with a worlds stocking cap, you totally were awesome. So whomever that nameless person is, well done!

The mat was also part of the swag just for singing up. Completely useless for Runewars players but then we were the only miniatures game actually AT this worlds so given the card games being played, makes sense they would create this.

For playing we each received I think it was 10 prize tickets. If you won a round of swiss, 20 tickets.

Here is what we had to choose from that was Runewars related to spend our tickets on. Certainly we could spend on other games. I don’t play those so this is where my tickets went. The Cav alt art card is plastic so that naturally got my attention!

Last here’s my winnings. Dice, acrylics and cards. The Maegan card was another participation card.

For those that didn’t attend, this is what you missed out on. Definitely some treasures 🙂

Posted in Con, Runewars : The Miniatures Games | 3 Comments

AAR: Battle on the Mississippi 2017.4

Posted on October 30, 2017 by Tom Gall

Saturday Oct 28th, we had 18 players show up for the Screaming Eagle Battle on the Mississippi series. This was our second event at D6 games. Growing from 12 to 18 players was quite a step up. Adding to the excitement we had 4 new to the game players attending their first tournament.

In the Battle on the Mississippi series, this was the 10th Flames of War tournament that we’ve run and our very first using the v4 rules.

First off, we must thank D6 games for their great location in Rochester Mn as well as being the sponsor for the prizes. Thanks to Chuck Hiner for the awesome trophies, and thanks for the donation in paints, it was a great prize table.

Thanks to Keith and Chris for bringing terrain for extra tables. Setting 9 tables is not a small task! Thanks much to the crew for both setup and take down.

For this tournament we had 3 rounds, version 4, 80 pts, Midwar. Of the 18 players, 10 were Allied and 8 were German. We played using the battle plans and that seemed to go mostly ok. Informally polling the players it seemed like the vast majority of results were due to force morale being broken as compared to objectives being taken.

Given the state of mid-war, we tried to set mostly Italian and Africa themed tables. Some cases where things were fairly open other tables, not to much with dunes and olive groves and an oasis to break up sight lines.