Updates and holidays

 The last few weeks or so have proved very erratic for blogging.  I've been steadily (and slowly) working away on my recently acquired Laserburn figures from Alternative Armies and really should do a post about them.

There have been a couple of excellent games at Eric the Shed's ( Link), Rorke's Drift (where the Zulus nearly made it!)...

...and a huge Napoleonic battle where the French nearly won (can you see a theme here!)...

There's no gaming this week though as we're off in Norfolk for out 1st holiday in 3 years (Glasgow doesn't count!).  We're staying in North Walsham and as usual I've been digging around to see if there was a military connection.  Turns out it was the site of the Battle of North Walsham in June 1381 which was the last encounter in the Peasants Revolt.  Details are pretty sketchy but essentially Henry le Despenser (the Fighting Bishop!) defeated and slaughtered the rebels... I get the feeling it was a pretty one sided affair.

Commemorative cross

Apparently Norfolk only hosted4 or  5 battles (and 2 of those were WW1 raids on Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth) so I guess this counts as a major engagement and it has the claim to fame of a re-enactment of the battle featuring in an Alan Partridge episode!

Quebec 1759

 

A boardgame evening this week, playing a vintage copy of the boardgame Quebec 1759, originally produced in 1972.

This is a nice, simple game with only 3 pages of rules... definitely my kind of game!!  It uses blocks to represent regiments and, as you can guess from the title, is all about Wolfe's attack on Quebec.  As its such a  short game we played it twice in the evening, swapping sides.

Movement is limited and players can only move one group to an adjacent zone each turn which makes for some tricky decisions and a lot of the skill lies in trying to outguess where your opponent will manoeuvre, with some dummy blocks adding to the Fog of War 

I played the French in the 1st game and quickly found myself on the back foot.  The British have to make amphibious landings across the river and should take a hammering in doing so but they made it relatively unscathed.  I dithered a lot and found myself under pressure on 2 sides.  As zones are captured the French have to lose a militia unit (to represent locals drifting away back to their farms) and once the supply area of Cap Rouge is taken by the British the French lose another unit every turn as well.  My army began to melt away without much of a fight and Qubec eventually fell with a whimper rather than a bang.

In our 2nd game I'd had a chance to work out what was going on... I'm a bit like that with boardgames, it always takes me at least a couple of games to get my head round the mechanics and tactics.  I concentrated most of my forces on seizing Cap Rouge and wearing the French down.  Andrew wasn't going to let me away with that though and concentrated most of his troops into one powerful army and attacked, leading to an apocalyptic and lengthy fight at Cap Rouge.  Thanks to some very unlucky dice, the French wore themselves out but at a huge cost to the British... I was only 2 points away from a British defeat when the French ran out of steam.

It's a nice, simple game with some lovely components... the map is really pretty and I do like games with blocks.  It is very similar in style to Wilderness Empires which I've played a few times (here  and here )  It does feel quite weighted towards the British but, as Andrew nearly proved, its not all one sided.

Games and stuff in April

 Blog posts have been a bit thin on the ground over the last month or so.  

A combination of work stuff, family crises, a trip away to Glasgow and being knackered after trying to get the garden looking less like a jungle and more like a messy semi-wild garden have meant I've had little time or energy to do any painting.  

Work has become very busy as people become more confident in coming back out into the world (I work in charity-sector community development so being out there is quite important).  On a plus side we did manage an actual, real-life team meeting for the 1st time since 2019.  Much gin was consumed and it was great to see everyone in-person rather than in a little box on a screen.

This doesn't mean there hasn't been any actual gaming though...

The fortnightly role-playing game that we started online back in 2020 is still going strong.  We're playtesting a world-setting and rules which will eventually be published and having great fun in the process.

There have also been a couple of games courtesy of Eric the Shed.  We finally played out the last of our Wars of the Roses games with a refight of Stoke Field.  There is a great write-up here on Eric's blog  This was one of the best games in the series and definitely the closest.  At one point both armies had run out of morale tokens and a single loss could have swung it either way...

All photos shamelessly nicked from the Shed Wars blog!

We also played a great game of Muskets and Tomahawks.  I managed to throw away my 2 British regular units who were caught in the open and were quickly whittled down by fire from the French and their Native American allies.  

My plucky band of locals who should have proved ineffectual actually fought much better, holding off a French column until the Rangers arrived.  Sadly the other relieving force was badly mauled so victory went to the French. A great set of rules that I ought to play more often.

Headley Heath

 An occasional series of blog posts finding tenuous wargaming connections to my local walks...

As it is the May Day Bank Holiday weekend here we decided to avoid our local park as it was busy with a weekend Fair and headed off with the dogs to Headley Heath.  This is only a few miles from home in the Surrey countryside but I haven't been here for years.

It's a huge expanse of woods and chalk heathland stretching for miles and the kind of place that never seems too busy.  Needless to say the dogs loved it and we managed to avoid meeting the cattle that graze the heathland... I'm not sure how that encounter would have gone!

Cisco inspecting evidence of cows!

So, is there a tenuous wargames connection?  As it turns out, quite a lot... and most of it I'd been unaware of.

During WW2 the Heath was used by the Canadian army for training... most of the main paths are ones that they constructed and there are noticeable lumps and bumps in the terrain as evidence of their engineering practice.  A lot of this stretch of Surrey was used to billet the Canadians and their Divisional HQ was close to Headley.

Bellasis House

Also on the Heath was Bellasis House.  This was a training site for the SOE and trained numerous agents, most notably Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in Operation Anthropoid.

The site also trained a group I'd never heard of... the BONZOS.  These were anti-Nazi prisoners of war who were screened and trained at Headley before being sent back into Germany and Austria.  Notably some were dropped into Austria to secure works of art

In 1941 2 Allied bombers crashed at Headley on the same night... both were limping back from raids but had sustained damage.  The first, a Wellington from 159 sqdn managed to land safe, wrecking the plane but with all crew surviving.  The 2nd plane, a Hampden from 44 (Rhodesia) Sqdn wasn't so lucky.  The crew had to bail out but the pilot was unable to get clear and was killed in the crash.

Finally the site had been an air observation site since 1937 and was designated a 'Granite' site... equipped with flares it would warn incoming planes of nearby high ground.  The Heath is close to Box Hill and the line of Surrey Hills that run east-west.  Post war, it was re-sited and became an Orlit observation post and then an underground nuclear observation post until 1968 when the number of posts was reduced.

Laserburn armies have landed

So there's been a lack of activity in the gaming front over the last couple of weeks.  We're off to see family up in Glasgow over Easter and so I've been laying low and avoiding group games to try and stay Covid-free before going to stay with my elderly mother.

A little while ago I'd mentioned painting up some long-lost Laserburn figures... well I succumbed to temptation and bought 2 of the starter packs from Alternative Armies!  Each of these contains 25+ 15mm figures and are excellent value.  So I now have starter forces for Imperial Troopers and Redemptionist Rebels plus a couple of vehicles.  AA also threw in a freebie figure from their Celtic Mythology range just to tempt me!

I've made a start on them and hope to get them done after Easter when I've recovered from a chocolate-induced coma!

Painting and planning: a Q1 review

At the beginning of the year I boldly set out some plans for the year.  I tend not to do this as it's always too depressing when I've failed to achieve anything I'd planned or been sidetracked into something off-plan.

But, since it's the end of Q1 it must be time for a retro (can you tell I've been doing too much project planning at work!!?)

On my list were 3 main projects... Arthurian armies, Ironclads and sorting out my WW2 ships.  Bafflingly I've somehow actually achieved 2 out of 3 with figures painted and games played for the Arthurians and the Ironclads.  Of course there's more to do with each if these so they aren't completely done (is a wargames project ever really done??) but I'm amazed that I've actually managed to get figures painted and onto the table for a game.

My painting tally tends to be incredibly slow but so far this year I have painted:

40 Late Roman Infantry

12 ACW Ironclad ships

6 1980s Laserburn miniatures.

The Laserburn figures were an unexpected find and have set me off on a new project (yeah... I was never going to stick religiously to the plan!) and a package has just arrived from Alternative Armies.  More on this in a separate post...

Action on the Mississippi...Hammerin' Iron

Its always great when you get to see a project through the painting stage and actually onto the table so this week my ACW ironclads that I've been working on (see previous post) got an outing in a game of Hammerin' Iron.

These rules from Peter Pig are fairly light but it means you don't get bogged down in the minutiae of armour thickness and gun calibre.  As usual in PP games, there is a pre-game sequence which determines who is attacking and defending, and how many ships turn up and when.  The defenders (me in this game, playing the Confederates) only start with 1 ship versus 3...the argument being that the attackers wouldn't launch an attack unless they have an advantage. Reinforcements do eventually arrive but more quickly for the attackers. The defenders do get the benefit of a Fort however although it played no part in our game.

The attackers get points for sinking ships but the real objective is to destroy the enemy supply depot and ships.

Actions are determined by a hand of 5 cards per ship but you have to commit to cards from either a deck focusing more on movement or firing for a few turns at a time which forces some tactical choices.

The lone Confederate ship CSS Arkansas faces off against the advancing Union ships

The Fort guards the supply depot

Fleets are selected to a points value... both sides have to pay for a Fort in advance but only the defender gets to actually use it

The 2 starting fleets

My initial sole ship quickly found itself the target of lots of fire from the Northern ships

Arkansas turns and tries to escape from the advancing Union ships...

...but, too late...a lucky shot from USS Miami causes a fire in the magazine and the ship explodes!

The Union ship Switzerland raced ahead to try and sink the supply ships but also came under fire.. there's a lesson there for both sides to not get too far ahead of the rest of the fleet.

USS Switzerland steams towards the supply ships but is repeatedly set on fire by the Southern ships.

As my ships began to slowly arrive I realised I was still outgunned and tried to sink the USS Miami by ramming it with Albemarle but csme under such heavy fire as the ship steamed in that the ram attempt wasn't very decisive.  In fact Albemarle was so beat up by the closing fire that she sank shortly afterwards!

Miami is rammed by CSS Albemarle

It only causes minor damage (but does start a fire) but Albemarle is sunk by gunfire in the process.

Because of the combined damage from the ram and further gunfire and fires, the crew of Miami decided enough is enough and abandoned the ship, heading for the safety of the shore.

The game has a variable time limit and as the clock ticked down the North had lost 2 ships and the Confederates 3 but more crucially, Andrew had managed to sink 3 of the 4 supply ships giving the North a major victory.

It's been several years since I've played these but we picked them up pretty quickly.  They're not overly technical and the hex system can lead to some oddities with firing arcs, but I think this is a good trade off for a game that is fast moving and gets a result in an evening.