"Danger Close"

Pretty much all of us have heard of the phrase, "Danger Close".  But what does it mean and how does it effect wargaming?

IABSM3 play test

Over the weekend of March 3-4, I got to enjoy another game play test of IABSM3.  Steve was trying out a scenario for playability and wanted to see if the scenario was too unbalanced.  Steve ran the game, Curtis was playing the Germans, and I was running the Russians.  The scenario was set in 1941 with a Russian armor force attacking a German armor force.  I don’t want to give too much detail, as there some scenario specific events/conditions that in the game and I don’t want to ruin anything for the actual players when this game is run officially.  Later, when the game is actually played as an event, I will give a proper AAR.

The system went rather smoothly, even with the amount of armor on the table.  The Russians have a major disadvantage of be poorly lead and trained, but have numbers and decent guns for anti-tank abilities.  The Germans are better lead and trained, but lack numbers.  I played a rather brash leader and failed to do over watches, as I was hoping that a continuous rolling push would get me to the objective and then I would sit it out for a gun battle with the Germans.  I could have worked, but cards came up right for the Germans and they successful destroyed the armor unit that came close to seizing the objective.  The battle shift heavily towards the Germans then, but by then I had stopped my advance with the remaining forces and battled it out with the Germans.  In that aspect, the trade off was more even with the loss in vehicles.  But I could not make up for the loss of my lead force, so it was a hands down German victory.  But I could take some pleasure in knowing that the German tank ace was killed by the Russian Big Man, who was still alive at the time the game was called.  But he ended in a dangerous spot, so it was very possible that I could have lost him in another couple of turns of combat as well.

Anyway, Steve was fairly happy with the scenario, but plans to tweak a couple of things before we run the game officially at a specific upcoming event.  Once the officially game is run, I will hopefully get a bunch of pictures and will write up a better AAR on it. 

Steve reviewing the charts

An End to an Ace

Well painted Panzers

 Next week, if all goes well, I plan to visit the Missouri Historical Museum in St. Louis and see the “Civil War in Missouri” exhibit.  I am getting my shutter finger ready to be a picture taking fool there!   I still have to sit down and edit, as well as identify/name, my thousands (I am not kidding here) pictures from my sightseeing tours from the last few years.  I need to start posting these up on my travel web sites for those who can’t get to some of these out of way places.

Other than that, I know that I stopped with my book reviews as I just ran out of time to type up reviews for the blog and I didn’t want to go back after a long period of time to do one for each book, as I have finished off probably close to a dozen since my last review. But currently I am reading “Blackhorse Riders: A Desperate Last Stand, an Extraordinary Rescue Mission, and the Vietnam Battle America Forgot” by Philip Keith. I am not very far into it yet (maybe 20% of the way in), but it is not a bad book. In a nutshell, the book is about a battle that the paper work was missed filed by the Army and eventually was recovered almost 40 years later. The battle was so significant, once it came to light, that President Obama issued one of the two cavalry troops that made the daring rescue with the Presidential Unit Citation in 2009. Alpha Troop, 1/11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and Alpha Troop, 2/8th Cavalry drove deep into the jungle near the Cambodian border to rescue Charlie Troop, 2/8th Cavalry for being eliminated by a North Vietnamese force that outnumbered number them somewhere between 4:1 and 6:1. Had they not broke through and rescued Charlie Troop, it would have been the largest US defeat in Vietnam with the loss of an entire company of men in a battle. It is well worth picking up if you are interested in Vietnam. Depending on how things go, this might be my Fall Recruits scenario in a cut down version of the rescue mission with probably two platoons of each for the Armored Cavalry and ‘leg’ Cavalry as I already have one armored cavalry platoon and two infantry platoons. I need to read some more about what engagements they hit on the way to the rescue before making up my mind. But as of right now, I am planning to do another Operation Cedar Falls game (or two) at the Fall Recruits. I might even do a Falklands scenario if I get the hills finish for Recruits.

Be seeing you

Cheers

IABSM3 Play test – Falklands

Well, this Sunday we did another play test of IABSM3 to introduce more of the rules like indirect fire, snipers, and night fighting.  We did this play test at Wargamer’s Cave (link) again, but this time using my 20mm Falklands figures.  The scenario was a fictional engagement of two platoons of UK Para’s with some support (a SFGPMG team, a Carl Gustav team, and a half battery of 105mm on call) vs. a weak platoon of Argentine Army Commandos with some support (a SFGPMG team, a section of 81mm mortars with a FOO, and a sniper).  Steve H. was running the Para’s and Curtis T. was running the Commandos.  Each Para figure was equal to two men and the Commando figures were 1 figure to 1 man.  I didn’t get my Falkland’s Blinds done, so I was using Viet Cong blinds for the Commandos and the Para’s did not start under blinds.  I also did not get my Art Cow cards yet either.

The background of the scenario is that the Commandos were camped out at a farm, but expecting a push by the British, was able to deploy his platoon and support in about the center of the board.  The Para’s were on a time schedule, so had to advance in a fairly straight line until an engagement broke out. 

I failed to take photographs until about half way through the game.  So, what happen earlier in play test was the Commandos were very observant and spotted the Para’s right off at the get go, but the Para’s were have some problems spotting until their Big Men started using their flares.  Thanks to the flares and the poor dice rolling by Curtis, the Commandos were losing men, but doing no damage to the Para’s.

One of the Para platoons laid a base of fire as the other started to flank the Commandos.  The Para’s never got their FOO in to a position to call in the 105’s, but the Commandos were able to eventually get their 81’s to fire for effect on one of the Para sections.  The flanking Para platoon crested the hill next to the Commandos.  With that, the Argentine commander orders the one section of Commandos still around to charge up the hill against two Para sections.  It did not go well for the Commandos.

At the end of the game, fourteen Argentine Commandos were killed, mostly from the charge up the hill.  Three Para’s were killed, with two from the Commando charge and one from the mortar attack.   I think everyone enjoyed the game, but we still need to get more familiar with the new Big Man rules.

Argentine Commandos in defensive positions

The Para Platoon making a flanking attack

Preparing to cease the hill crest

Moments before the Commando's charge

The Commando's charge

The result from the Commando's six dice, two Para's killed

The results of the Para's 20 dice, 12 Commandos killed

Falklands, IABSM3, Litko, and Art Cow

I have been a busy guy this last two weekends and during the week on working on a side project that started 9 months ago.  I finally got it done today…YEA! 

As you know, I am really pushing to get into gaming the land combat of the Falklands conflict this year.  Part of this includes choosing a rules set and getting what is needed to run a game.  My 20mm figures are mostly done that must have, but I am still missing a few figures mainly more Milan ATGM teams and Argentine .50cal HMG teams and got them on order from Liberation (Link).  I still have other odds and ends that I need to pick up like an Argentine shoulder launcher SAM, a Panhard 90mm Armored car, penguins, buildings, and terrain.  Luckily, the Panhard is available from S&S Models (Link), the penguins are back again from MJ Figures (Link), some buildings are available from Card Models by Tony (Link), so I need to do is convert a UK Blowpipe figure to look like an Argentine commando from Liberation (plan to use the figure with the beret so I should only have to modify the webbing) and get terrain done.

So, now for the rules, I plan to use Too Fat Lardies’ “I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum!” 3^rd edition for the company size battles.  In the 2004 Xmas Special from TFL is a supplement for IABSM2, but I also have the information on how to convert the IABSM2 to IASBM3 for Big Men, so no problem there.  

Since I will only have about a platoon “+” size force for both sides on a 1:1 scale, I will use 4-5 figures on a base to represent a section for the games.  I plan to leave my figures mounted on individual stands for skirmish games, so I am going to pick up some bases that have the round holes in them that I can place my figures in, like these from Litko (Link) or these (Link).

Also, I am picking up some more different type of tokens from Litko for the IABSM3 system.  I already have the following Litko's IABSM set (Link) so I am going to keep the tokens along those lines in design.  But for keeping track of “Kills” and “Shock” on individual sections and teams, I will be using a device from S&S that hold three 7mm six-sided dice and looks like a trench.  I plan to paint and flock it up so they will blend in on the board.  I will be using red dice to keep track of “Kills” and white dice for “Shock.”

Now, this is where Art Cow comes into play.  Too Fat Lardies games are a card driven game for sequence of play during a turn.  While I got my IABSM3 card deck with the IABSM3 bundle, I wanted a special Falklands card deck with pictures from the conflict.  Art Cow allows people to create various art projects with photographs and one of those projects is a 54 card playing deck.  So using that program, I designed two playing decks, one for the Argentine forces and the other for the British.  Both decks combined will have everything I need to play the Falklands scenarios from the TFL’s Seasonal Specials, 2004 Xmas and 2008 Xmas issues.  Since there were too many cards for one deck, but not enough to complete two decks, I added some extra cards.  Some of these cards, ‘Critical Wound’, ‘Medic’, and ‘Medical Evacuation’ are from the “Charlie Don’t Surf” Vietnam rules, but I think plays into the Falklands as well from what I have read.  I also added some sections and team cards which could be used for independent patrols.   

http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/tfl-iabsm-falklands-cards-argentine-o46iru6o0378

http://www.artscow.com/gallery/playing-cards/tfl-iabsm-falklands-uk-cards-xwursu7uzvee

I can’t wait to get everything together and start gaming the Falklands soon, hopefully.

Cheers,

Joe

Too Fat Lardies I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum! III – Review & AAR

This AAR blog entry is different than my previous ones in that this was not a ‘proper’ game, but a play test of Too Fat Lardies’ new third edition of “I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum!” with Steve H. (Combat Colours) , Curtis T., and myself.  Both Steve and I have played the previous editions of IABSM, but both of us have not played IABSM for a few years due to various reasons, mainly the lack of my free time and trying Blitzkrieg Commander/Cold War Commander and Force on Force systems instead.  Needless to say, it was like coming back home to a long lost love by using these rules!  I enjoy them greatly!
 

First, both Steve and I bought the IABSM3 bundle, a hard copy and a PDF version of the rules, a pack of cards for game sequence, a pack of tokens, and finally a limited edition 28mm figure of one of Too Fat Lardies’ Big Men characters, Hugh Jarce.  See the Official Too Fat Lardies blog, ‘Lard Island News’ (Link) to see what the cards and markers look like.

The Book / PDF

I really like the quality of the printed book and find it easy to read.  Too Fat Lardies have come a long way since their first printed materials, and I know that they will only improve in the future.   I have become a big fan of PDF’s for the last few of years.  I really like the lack of physical space needed for storage of tomes of books or other printed material.  With PDF’s , I am more willing to make impulse buys on different rules, books, etc. of systems I am not familiar with or periods that I would not be normally be interested in since they take up space on my bookshelves.   The only problem that I have with PDF’s is not been able to use them at games, except if I printed them off before a game. (Note:  Up to now I didn’t have an iPad or E-reader, but I got a Kindle Fire for Xmas so this issue is now moot.)

Cards / Tokens

The cards are huge!  That is not a bad thing, but will take a bit of getting use to shuffling cards that are bigger than traditional playing card size.  Quality is good with a heavy stock and simple, but easy to read writing on them.  The tokens are the only thing that I am not super please with (Sorry, Richard!)  I think that some of them are too small, thin, and fiddly for fat fingers, especially the “wrenches.”  I have not measured them, but they seem smaller then the Litko tokens which I am use to using.  It probably is just me.  Of course, I am planning to use 7mm dice to keep track of shock and kills on my infantry squads…so just ignore my comments on the tokens being too small.

Hugh Jarce

I like the figure!  Great sculpt and casting, but it is in 28mm.  I don’t game WWII in 28mm.  But that has not stopped me from buying 28mm before.   I plan to paint it up and I might use it somehow with the game – maybe a counter to keep track of how many Tea Breaks have occurred. 

The Game Mechanics

As the gaming system is a proprietary item, I will not go into detail of it, but I will explain the rudimentary system of it.  First, this is a game built heavily on the idea of “Friction” in the battlefield as explained in Carl von Clausewitz’s book, On War.  A great article on the theory of friction in war was done by Richard Clarke on his blog. (Link)  Secondly, the system is also built around the idea of “Big Men” or leaders influencing their men to go beyond what would be expected of them in battle.  Finally, the other core element is the cards which randomize the sequence of play.  See the following blog entry by Richard Clarke on the cards. (Link) Just look up some of the other blog entries at “Lard Island News” to see them give AAR’s of their past games to get a better idea of the system as well.  One final note about the system, it encourages gamers to know about the period, tactics, and to have an understanding how to properly Kriegsspiel certain events or conditions that might occur in a game.

Our Play Test

As this was our first IABSM game in a few years, it did move rather slow at spots as we double checked certain things in the book, but once we got a few rounds in, it was all clicking back.  We stuck with the core rules and did not use artillery, engineering, or Aces.

The game was using Steve’s 10mm late war WWII Germans and Soviets from various manufacturers.  He did not have any German infantry, so my 10mm WWII US infantry stands stood in for the Germans.   This specific game was armor heavy, by pretty much all standards and especially IABSM standards.  Steve was Game Mastering it, Curtis T. was running the Soviets, and I was running the Germans.

The Location / Store

We meet at the Wargamer’s Cave in Granite City, Illinois to do the play test.  Great place to deal with.  See the following link for their website (Link)

The Forces

The overall objective of the game was to have the Soviets advance across the board and capture the supply dump on the opposite site of the board and the Germans trying to stop them

They Soviets had two JS-2 tanks, five T-35/76 tanks, six M4 (76) tanks; three platoons of infantry, three platoon ‘Big Men’, one company ‘Big Man’, and four blinds + two dummy blinds.

The Germans had three Tiger I tanks, three Pz IVH tanks, two Marder III SPAT’s, two platoons of infantry, two platoon ‘Big Men’, one company ‘Big Man’, and three blinds + two hidden groups on the board.

Instead of using the blinds as described in the rules, we used the unit’s cards to represent their blinds on the table until proper blinds are made.

The Action

Ok, I did not take notes as this was a play test or a lot of pictures as I did not have a camera and my cell phone does not do good quality pictures.  Plus, I really did not get to debrief Curtis about his actions after the game as I had to leave pretty fast at the end of the play test.  So this AAR is very German player (me) focus and just comments on the pictures instead of the game as a whole as I would normally do.

This is a picture of the part of the store, with Curtis and Steve in it as well.  Most of the board can be seen in the picture.  The Soviets were advancing from the table edge near the lime green tape measure.  One hidden German infantry platoon is entrenched along the road in the wheat fields near the village.  In the village is the second German infantry platoon on a blind.  This picture was taken after some action already had happen.  The two burning markers almost center of the picture at the bottom near the farm complex are my two Marders.  I had them set up in a blind that was partly hidden by the forest.  They both got a couple of shots on the lead JS-2 and did hit it for some minor damage, but they were quickly destroyed before they got another action.  The JS-2s and some tank riders are in the wheat field near the burning Marders. 

Curtis is pointing to the farm complex as his attempt to spot any hidden units.  It was vacant.  This also is a better picture of the burning Marders and JS-2’s.  If you look at the JS-2 unit, you will see a red chit out in front of one of the JS-2’s.  This is a marker to help keep track of what unit that is for players to remember that group is “Armour One” (A1 on the chit) for when cards are drawn.  Behind the other JS-2 is a dark color token that is a “Loss of Action” token that comes with the IABSM3 bundle.   That was being used to represent the one level of shock that I did to that tank from my Marders.  The three “I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum” cards around the group are being used for three Soviet blinds.

This is a better view of the table as a whole.  The German blind of the infantry in the village can be seen in the crossroads and on the far bottom left is the blind for the platoon of PZ IVH.  On the only hill is my remaining German unit hidden, the Tiger I platoon.  I was holding off on firing them until I had the JS-2’s within close range. 

Curtis drove his Shermans down the road without any recon.  Prior to that, the German Blind card came up, so I had all of my blinds / hidden units on over watch, so when Curtis’ tanks drove past me, I started letting loose with Panzerfausts and machine gun fire, from both the hidden infantry in the wheat fields, the infantry in the village that was set up to provide supporting fire with range for their Panzerfausts, and my Pz IVH that where set up on the other side of the board for side shots on armor.  As you can see, it was pretty deadly with taking out three and crippling a fourth of the six tanks and almost eliminating one Soviet squad to the man, but it could have been worst for Curtis.  I decided not to use my Tigers as I was still waiting for the JS-2’s to get closer.

I took these after the game was called, so some of the tokens were already picked up by then.  In the last turn, Curtis could not sort my entrenched infantry out as I keep shooting and hunkering down.  The T-34’s drove around and hit my Pz IVH’s in the flank and killed one and damaged a second.  The JS-2’s never did move, so I elected to open up with my Tigers on the JS-2’s.  I killed one outright with my first shot (hint, it is nice to be shooting down from hill!).  The other JS-2 took the brunt of the remaining Tigers, but I was never able to really damage it.  It had in returned destroyed one of the Tigers.

Overall

The Germans blocked the Soviet advance temporary, but the Soviet would have eventually put enough pressure on both of my flanks that I would have to pull out.  The Soviets lost five tanks and two squads of infantry by the end of the game, which was about a third of his total force.  I lost two tanks and two SPATs, which was half of my armor, but only about a third of my total force.

The game went really good and we all had fun with the system again.  Even though this was a lot of tanks on the table for an IABSM game, it ran very smoothly and we can easily run this much again.  It was really nice to be able to sit down again and to have good discussions on proper tactics, the period in general, and general comradeship as a whole.

I know Steve is going back to his roots of IABSM by painting up 15mm WWII figures again for the 1941 Russia.  Hopefully he will get that running soon again.  I am planning to redo my 10mm Vietnam figures  and start running Too Fat Lardies’ “Charlie Don’t Surf” soon, as well as push for some 20mm Falklands games in 2011 using either IABSM3 for company actions or Too Fat Lardies’, “Troops, Weapons, & Tactics” for platoon actions.