Tuesday 19 February 2019

Ruined city

 This is more what i had in mind when thinking of city fighting


 The large factory and the red destroyed building base would be classed as woods with the BUA modifier for vehicles added.

All other sectors whether joined or separate are village sectors with a max stand limit equal to the longest block edge.
That would mean the line of buildings in the top left are 5No joined village sectors which are allowed to fire out of every edge, even the one edge in base contact with another.
 -1 for cover.

 The board will need to be grey/black / grey brown which are classed as open areas.
I don't think you should be stopped from moving from block to block across open ground 
though the enemy will be allowed to use disappearing fire.

 Artillery to be as per rules for city blocks ?


Looks ;like i'm going to need a lot more buildings to cover both boards,
although a park with shell holes and stripped trees will fit in.

Saturday 16 February 2019

Thursday knight

A war of the roses clash using the Days of Knight rules

 Henry Tudor (near side) faces off against Richard the 3rd 
The battles clash with more casualties on the Tudor side.
That was the theme for the evening as King Richard crushed the upstart Henry.
The game played well with a brutal medieval feel
I will be putting on another game next week
There should have been more photos, but they were blurred 
( i was too excited looking for a horse, a horse, his kingdom for a horse!)

Tuesday 12 February 2019

Off the work table

 The condom factory

 These look very re but are not really


 Don't know if this is my eyes or a bad camera shot

 Men at arms for medieval

Still to do 
Modern British with a mobile bofors for my WW2 stuff

Sunday 10 February 2019

Age Of Eagles - French Painting Progress



Just over a Month on from when by Baccus order arrived I have made steady progress on the Age Of Eagles French Army. I have been painting as much as I can find the spare time, the weekends have been the most productive as I it's the best time to prep more figures and get them primed.


Here are some photos of my finished and based up brigades.





FRENCH INFANTRY OF THE LINE 1809






The infantry are much quicker to paint than the bloody cavalry!






FRENCH CUIRASSIER'S



It's taken me a full week to paint his brigade up. I took a lot longer than I anticipated but I really wanted to put everything into getting a nice paint job.


I am pleased by how nice these have turned out. I was careful not to accentuate the blue uniform too much as I was trying to make the figures look bright but retain the depth of the uniform. I do tend to make my figures look deliberately brighter as I feel that 6mm needs to stand out.



CHASSEUR'S A CHEVAL




FULL ARMY SO FAR.

The Limbers and 6 and 12 Pounder artillery units were more fun to paint than I imagined. Normally I truly hate painting Limbers but these were done fairly quickly.



My next push is to paint up my divisional and corps commander stands, then complete another 23 stands of line infantry this will give me 40 stands of infantry which should be more than enough to get some brigades on table on a Thursday night and thump Jon's Austrians.

Out of £130 worth of figures I will still have around 16 bases of Grenadiers and another brigade of Cuirassier and Dragoons plus some limbers.

If everyone enjoys the rules and I get more inspiration from playing I will possibly order more stuff to build on the army for bigger games.

Jon - please send the the orders of battle so I can focus on specific builds. Thanks


Saturday 9 February 2019

FW200 Condor


I've had some trouble with my google drive so I took a quick picture of my newly painted Condor to check it works - it does!

I've had the model primed for quite a while but had no reason to finish it.  However, I am waiting for some Iraqi and Iranian reinforcements from H&R so I thought I would make the most of a gap in projects and get this plane completed.  Alongside the Arado in the background I hope to use these in a future operational game in the Mediterranean. It'll be useful for long range reconnaissance and dropping mines in otherwise safe harbours and beach landing grounds.

Sunday 3 February 2019

Aircraft rules for Operational Games

Following our discussion last Thursday about tightening up the aircraft rules for operational games I trawled through the blog and remembered the one's below from our WW1 game back in September 2017.  It was the game in which Mark took charge of the German airforce and relied on "The Force" to get him across the entire battlefield to attack the French back table - it failed!


Aircraft Rules for WW1 Operational Games

Aircraft attacks commence on the hour every hour.

Aircraft must be given a flight plan to their target including the tables they will cross.

Aircraft must have orders; escort, recon, attack.

Unescorted bombers are automatically destroyed by fighters.

Fighters automatically drive off other fighters or in a 2:1 dogfight drive off one and are destroyed by the second.

Fighters shoot down balloons on an unmodified 4,5,6 (minus 1 if under AA fire).


In addition, all Machine Gun units could conduct AA fire and as Mark's aircraft crossed the French held tables they were shot at by every French MG.

So, I propose the following;


  • Aircraft attacks commence as usual every hour, or half hour by the player holding the airfield table.
  • The CinC will write a flight plan indicating the route to and from the target.
  • All ground attacks will be from the direction of the table edge the aircraft enters from and parallel with the left and right side of the table edges.
  • Any table crossed that has AA of 37mm or greater calibre can attack the passing aircraft.
  • Any calibre of AA on the table that is within range of the final air attack can fire.
  • Bombers attack up to six consecutive units of any type in a 12" x 2" beaten zone and fighter bombers/light attack aircraft attack up to 3 units (but only the first can be armoured) in a 6" x 1" beaten zone.
  • The CinC must also give a mission to each aircraft; Bomb, Escort, CAP or Recon.
  • Aircraft that encounter enemy CAP or Escort fighters will conduct arial combat - fighters cancel out other fighters or fighter bombers, 2x fighters will shoot down one fighter or fighter bomber, one fighter will shoot down bombers and spotter aircraft.
Instead of players automatically selecting the best targets aircraft should have a priority list of targets based on what they can see;

  1. Vehicles moving in the open
  2. Infantry moving in the open
  3. Artillery firing in the open
  4. Vehicles stationary in the open
Target priority is in the order above and then nearest unit. If there are no other targets then the aircraft return to base without attacking anything - unless there is a Forward Aircraft Controller and then it can guide the attack onto any enemy it can spot, just like an Artillery FOO.  Again, the attack will still be in the direction of entry from the table edge and parallel with the other table edges.

Hopefully this should address Russ' concern that the aircraft attacks are too flexible and my concern that aircraft should be a potentially devastating weapon in a WW2 operational game.  It should also give the CinC a more prominent role in operational management.  With this in mind, I would also like to add the following rule;

  • Each side can attack the other sides off table airfields.  As this is simultaneous it doesn't matter if the defending aircraft is present or on a mission as this represents its base facilities and logistics.  Off table attacks can be against single or multiple targets but each target gets a 40mm AA defence.
Please let me know what you think and whether there is something I've forgotten or if you have a great idea.