Pratting around with plastic pikemen - Part 2

 Regular readers may recall my efforts to re-angle the pikes on some of my HaT 20mm Macedonian Pikemen. 

At the time I bemoaned these guys (I've actually got four elements of them). They are assembled as HaT intended, but the horizontal pikes are a complete pain to both store and to actually use on the tabletop.

When I did the other elements I had a look at these, but the pikes seemed pretty well stuck on and I was worried about causing irreparable damage. On reflection I realised that as I never used them anyway, it didn't actually matter if I damaged them or not.

So I set to work with a craft knife and a pair of pliers! I did these two elements first as their pikes didn't seem to be quite so well attached, and to my surprise with a bit of trimming and a good yank, they came off quite well. Much better than the first batch in fact. iirc I had real problems getting the pikes to stick to these figures originally , and it looks like the various layers of glue and varnish have just sheared off.

That also gave a quite a good surface to stick them back onto.

I trimmed off some of the excess bits of old glue from the pikes, and then slathered them in UHU. They were just stuck at around 50 degrees to whatever bit of body part was useful, and to the edge of the shields. Even close up, the paint damage isn't too obvious, and while the figures hands are grasping thin air, it doesn't seem to matter.

I had to hold some of the pikes in  place while they set, and they still ended up a bit ragged but good enough for gaming. I also dribbled superglue over the joints while they were setting, and eventually they set solid.

The second batch were, as predicted, harder to get apart (the pikes had been glued right across their midriffs), but they also did come apart eventually. You can see some damage on the shafts of the pikes where I had to work at them.

Like the others, the pikes got cleaned up a bit and then slathered in UHU. I stuck them at and angle across the lower body half and on to the edge of the shields. Even without touching up they look surprisingly OK.

And from the shielded side they look quite good I think.

There are all the modified elements stacked up together, and that looks quite imposing. I just needed to touch up the paintwork on the last four elements I did and they are good to go.

Once the paint and varnish had dried I lined them up with their other phalangite mates.

The phalanx looks pretty good I think. Not that I'll ever use it as a single formation like this, but nice to know I can.

Battle for Moscow by Albert Seaton and some winter warfare inspiration

With a mini "heatwave" upon us in Britain (I am sure my overseas readers will rollaround laughing at our idea of hot) , naturally I was casting around for some winter warfare inspiration to use with my snowy Hexon boards.  I thought about re-visiting the Battle for Moscow and  I could have sworn I had a few books about it, but the best I could turn up was this one: 

The Battle for Moscow by Albert Seaton, first published in 1971! Hardly cutting edge, but I thought it was worth a re-read. It is very much of its time, however Seaton was one of the first people to dig through the German archives rather than rely on the rather unreliable interviews and memoirs of the various German Generals published through the 1950s and 60s. Prior to Seatons books the best we could hope for were Mellenthins 'Panzer Battles', Guderians 'Panzer Leader' and Mansteins 'Lost Victories' etc.

It is still a very German pov, but hopefully more balanced than the memoirs. This isn't actually a bad book, it is well written, probably more readable than John Erickson or even David Glantz and covers the major events well although it is maddeningly vague about actual Russian strengths. It does give formation counts (brigades, divisions) by Army which is good enough for what I need.

Like so many military history books, the maps are sparse and not hugely helpful being very high level. They are also all hand drawn, a symptom of its age, but they give a reasonable idea of where the major formations were and when. I've got a copy of 'Panzergruppe Guderian' so I can always look at that for more detailed maps if needs be.

I was pleasantly surprised and came away with a few ideas  for representative actions in the snow which will no doubt appear here in due course. 

The first of Seatons books I bought was this one, 'The Russo-German War 1941-45', oddly also published in 1971. Given its age this is one of the best single volume histories of the Eastern Front I've ever read, and it includes neglected subjects like the naval war. It is certainly better than Glantz's 'When Titans Clashed' even if the latter has more up to date research on both the Soviet and German sides.

Given the publication dates, I suspect Battle for Moscow is a sub volume of The Russo German War, they certainly cover a lot of the same ground about the background to Operation Barbarossa etc.

Anyway, Glantz's 'Barbarossa' also has a decent section on the Battle for Moscow, which gives a more Soviet centric view and more importantly, lists some of the formations which made up the various Soviet armies in more detail. Coupled with some snippets from John Ericksons 'Road to Stalingrad' I've got enough to work up a few scenarios with the historical units. I am determined to get my scratch built Soviet 85mm AA guns into action around Tula!

Alexander the Brief - human playtesting

 My long suffering pals on the Tuesday/Wednesday night Zoom call seemed quite keen on trying out 'Alexander the Brief', so I set it up as a sort of players-eye view of the proposed participation game. It also got me thinking about props and transportation.

Here is the first go at my  planned setup. I'm (once again) using my old batttle board which I first made for 'WW1 in Three Turns' many years ago and has done sterling service ever since. It helps to delineate the playing area neatly and I also have a load of map pins stuck in it which can help record battles won/lost and units lost.

I fiddled around a bit with various iterations of figures, but this lot will all fit in one A4 box file, along with the dice tray and dice just visible to the right of the picture.

Alexanders army is familiar from before. One element each of Companions, Thessalians and peltasts plus two element units of pikes and hoplites with an extra pike unit to swap for the hoplites at Gaugamela. All led by my shiny new Alexander figure.

Here is Alex leading the companions.

The Persians have the same mishmash of units required for the three battles. Here they are set up for Granicus, with more stuff in the box for Issus and Gaugamela. In this case they have a front line of two cavalry and one horse archer in the front line and reserves of two archers, some generic Persian infantry and the Greek mercenary hoplites. I've also added a third rank of a 'Persian horde' who are there to add the impression of mass.

To play the game I had Tim, John, Mark, Jim, Jerry and Simon. Alexander and his 'greek chorus' of Parmenio, Ptolemy etc. We decided that for each battle we'd let one of the team take the lead, while the others provided helpful advice.

Tim took on the role of Alexander at Granicus and went for a conventional deployment with the Peltasts taking on the horse archers, the pikes the centre and the Companions the Persian cavalry. We had a bit of a debate about what best to to with Alexander, and his 're-roll' capability. At first I was in favour of moving his figure around, but we agreed in the end that he would always ride with the Companions, but his influence could apply anywhere once per turn. Favour of the gods and all that.

After a couple of rounds of fighting both the Macedonian Peltasts and Thessalians had been routed(!), but the Companions had crushed everything before them, using up all the Persian reserves. With one last effort the Companions rode down the Persian archers and broke the Persian army,  leaving the poor old Greek mercenaries to be surrounded, captured and executed by Alexander.

Jim took over as Alexander for Issus. In this battle the Persians went with an infantry/archer heavy front line and Darious himself turned up to watch. Jim went for a very aggressive approach, pikes up against the Kardakes in the centre and all the Macedonian cavalry against the serried ranks of Persian archers on each flank.

The 'mini' Agincourt went about as well s expected and both the Thessalians and Companions went down in a hail of arrows, despite Alexanders re-rolls. The Persians were considerably thinned by the Macedonian infantry but the Persian cavalry managed to turn the Macedonian left flank, just as in real life. 

Things were looking a bit sticky for the Macedonians now, reduced to two units and with an open flank. The Persians were on three units. 

Alexander personally led the hoplites against the greek mercenaries but the combat was inconclusive despite a re-roll. Parmenio saved the day however and broke the Persian centre, at which point Darius legged it, taking the rest of his army with him. That was rather exciting! A costly Macedonian victory.

Jerry took over as Alexander for Gaugamela. The Scythed Chariots turned out to be rubbish, as usual, and the Persians were forced to commit their Immortals in the centre. The Companions managed to rout the horse archers opposing them.

Things got a bit sticky when both the Thessalians and Peltasts were routed, but continued slogging by the Macedonians broke the Persian left and once again Darius ran for it, only to meet his sad fate in Bactria.

So at game end we had three Macedonian victories and six units lost in the process. Timing wise, it took around 40 minutes remotely, but we'd had a lot of chit chat so my estimate of 25-30 minutes seemed OK. There were some suggestions about rules clarifications, possibly adding some terrain representation and more generally about how to streamline it to keep within a 30 minute time limit. The team play seemed to work well and we've done that with other notionally solo participation games, so we'll keep that.

OK, time to try it again on Wednesday night with a few mods and a different cast of players.

So here is the new setup, this time featuring the Granicus river. It doesn't do anything to the game, but it looks nice...

We only had myself, John and Tim for Wednesday, so John took Alexander for Granicus. He led with the Macedonian cavalry with the Peltasts to take on the Persian horse archers. For this variant, to reduce umpire decision making and specifically to avoid the umpire actively playing against the player, I've further restricted the Persian reserves. They can ONLY deploy forward in their initial sector. 

And this has the nice result that the Macedonians can now do flanking attacks too if they muller one flank (the Persian breakpoint of two largely precluded this before). So Alex storms across the Granicus, scattering all before him and gets to wallop those Mercenary Hoplites in the flank. 

The hoplites duly collapse, and game over. A thumping Macedonian win. That is more like it.

Tim took over for Issus and boldly put the Thessalians up against the Persian archers on the right flank, while the Peltasts took on the other archers and the Macedonian hoplites the Kardakes in the centre.

The Thessalians were put to flight, but committing the Pikes on the right overcame the archers and on both flanks the Persians were forced to commit their cavalry. The hoplite struggle in the centre dragged on inconclusively.

The Pikes and Persian cavalry managed to mutually annihilate each other on the right, and Alexander led the Companions once more onto the Persian flank. I really like the way the fixed Persian reserves are working here.

And once again, the flank attack by the Companions proved decisive and Darius turned and ran away. Another Macedonian victory, albeit more costly with two units lost (despite careful use of Alexanders re-rolls).

Finally John was back it the saddle for Gaugamela. We kept Alexanders pike upgrade for the infantry, and John put in Peltatsts, Pikes and Companions against the Persian horse archers and scythed chariots.

The Pikes and Thessalians saw off their opposite numbers, but the Peltasts and Horse Archers remained locked in inconclusive combat. The Persians committed the Immortals and reserve cavalry.

The Pikes tore the Immortals apart and Alexander routed the opposing cavalry, once more opening up the Persian left, but he was saved the bother of charging further as the Peltasts finally drove off the the Persian horsemen and Darius legged it for Bactria.

That went very well, with the overall combat resolution well under 15 minutes, although game chat would add more time, so we listed it to the show organisers as a 30 minute game. After that we had a chat about some extra props and various bits of admin, but essentially we are good to go. Alexander the Brief was at Partisan in May, and will probably be at COW in July. If I'm around we will perhaps do it at the Other Partisan as well and the Society of Ancients conference in September..

A lorry too far?

 A wise wargames saying is that "you can never have too many lorries", but I must say that after my latest painting session, I am becoming a bit less convinced.

I scored this lot at Hammerhead a while ago, five assembled, but unpainted, Zvezda Opel Blitz trucks. They had just been pushed together, not even glued, but at a tenner for the lot, they were a bargain (they seem to be 6.50 each these days). After gluing the bits together which were absolutely necessary I set about painting.

What is there to say about these? I've got loads of them already, but they are such lovely models. My only criticism would be that the front windscreen could be recessed a bit deeper to make it easier to paint and not get splashes all over the surrounding bodywork.

Lovely crisp detail on the truck bodies, and the canvas tilts actually look like canvas.

I've currently got more grey Opels than sandy ones, so I did four of them in Dunkelgelb and one in grey to even the numbers. I wanted the sandy ones to be dual purpose for Europe and North Africa, so although I did them in dunkelgelb and not desert sand, I kept the camo very light, with just a few 'sprayed' lines of camo, predominantly red/brown. I did the camo with my stippling brush. The grey one was just plain grey albeit with a couple of white night strips on the mudguards.

The both got tan tilts and a light overall drybrush of Iraqi Sand, and I did the windows mid blue with white highlights. I also did hand painted numberplates - painted white strip and the letters/numbers done with a 0.1mm micron pen.

Unlike before, this time I didn't stick the tilts down! They push fit quite firmly anyway, and I have the option to put troops or cargo in the back, or just cover them up.

I now have fifteen Opels alone in 15mm, let alone all the other German soft transport, which strikes me as quite a few.

To add the madness, the ever generous 'Tims Second Hand Vehicle Emporium', produced a couple more lorries at the Tapton CALF recently. Here they are with the Opels on the dining table. These need a bit of work and will feature in a future post. 

What fresh madness is this... Traveller

 Well, I firmly blame Alex at https://upthebluefow.blogspot.com/ for this. His fascinating efforts to make Striker into a playable tabletop wargame, have finally forced me to scratch a long standing itch and (re) buy a lot of my old Traveller collection.

I originally sold all this stuff back in the late 90s, but it is one of those things I regret, as you do from time to time. I had a happy old time with Traveller back in the 1980s, mainly with my pals from the University of London Wargames Club. 

Amazing how much of this stuff is still floating around, as it is well over 40 years old. Various trawls through eBay produced this lot, although a lot of it came from collectibles shops with eBay store fronts. I'm not interested in the modern versions, which have no doubt been mucked around with.

First lot were these two. I was used to the original box set, and as it is impossible to tell on the internet how big things are, I was bit surprised to find that these were much larger than expected. All you need to play Traveller apparently.

Clearly the first set was missing Book 2, so I bought this. Except it turned out it wasn't, as the large format edition had rolled the original Books 1,2 and 3 into two volumes. Doh. The text seemed largely identical. I might sell this as surplus, but I actually prefer the layout in this one.

Between them, I'd forgotten how rich the basic set of rules are. I'm sure when we used to play we just ignored a lot of the stuff in here, we certainly never did any trading, but the whole thing is so well thought through and comprehensive. It very, very much reminds me of En Garde, but better developed.

To go with the basic set, you obviously need some background. The Spinward Marches are just a set of space regions to explore and have adventures in. I've got the GDW boardgames Imperium and Dark Nebula which also cover a lot of the Traveller Universe region of space, but the Spinward Marches is designed with RPGs in mind, not strategic space warfare.

This looks like a mint copy, but in fact many of the maps have been carefully hand annotated, adding in some of the useful stuff (Imperial star bases, refuelling points etc) which could so easily have been printed on the map, but instead is buried in the wierd hexadecimal gobbledygook system description codes.

The second supplement I bought back in the day was Mercenary, which adds military careers, some more interesting weapons systems, and a whole subset of mercenary adventures and the means to resolve them, including a combat system up to brigade level. The latter is sheer genius, straight out of Dupuys 'Numbers, Predictions and War', and the combat results most definitely do not reward the big battalions, but the better quality ones. I spent ages number crunching this one calculating force ratios and outcome probabilities when I should have been revising for my second year exams at University. Ahem.

The third supplement we got was High Guard, which has a much more advanced ship design and combat resolution system. I had a lot of fun doing starship designs with this, and we used to use them as an alternative to Starfire for space combat games. This also includes naval careers for characters.

The basic books, Merc, High Guard and Spinward Marches was all we ever really used for Traveller, as it had everything we were interested in, and even then, most of it came out of our heads.

High Guard can also lead off into a whole rabbit hole of its own via the Trillion Credit Squadron supplement and infamous 'Lenat Squadron' in the 1981 and 82 competitions which used computer assistance, a primitive form of AI, to minmax the rules and produce literally unbeatable fleets.

My good pal Mark is very interested in this stuff, see Geordies Big Battles: http://exiledfog.blogspot.com/2025/03/note-to-self-trillion-credit-squadron.html

In a class of its own however was..... 

Striker! Future tactical combat in the Traveller universe, by one Frank Chadwick.

Honestly, this one was just fabulous and we used to fight company level actions using these. I also invested/wasted a lot of time on vehicle designs when I should have been revising for my finals!  They included a functional Ogre and a lot of WW2 vehicles. sadly these designs were all lost when I sold my stuff.

I couldn't find a physical copy of these at a price I was willing to pay, so I just got the PDFs (four of them) from DrivethruRPG. Enough to look at anyway, and marvel that I actually used to understand these enough to play them, as they are pretty complicated by modern standards. They were worth the effort as they were very realistic indeed in terms of small unit C3 etc. Alex has done a great job of streamlining them and making into more of a wargame and less of an RPG engine.

I'm glad I own these again, they have been a painful hole in my library for decades now, but although they are fun to read, I doubt they will ever get played as written. They might provide some good background for some online RPG sessions though. And rest assured, I did pass my exams at the LSE quite respectably, despite wasting so much time wargaming. I had a bigger, faster brain then, and rather more energy.

Sandinista!

No, not the slightly dubious Clash triple album I hated at the time but has since grown on me to become one of my favourites, but a trip back in time to those jolly days of US intervention in South America. I'm sure that will never happen again. 

Nice to see the boys wearing fedora, although I miss their spiky hair. 

 

John B once more took us to a scene of Cold War revolution and conflict, this time 1980s Nicaragua. It was another polmil strategy committee game, and this time even less structured than usual, being more a free Kriegspiel, albeit still structured into turns and using dice to determine the outcome of actions.

The game started in 1981 as Ronald Reagan came to power, and ran in yearly turns until the late 1980s.

There was the odd map, but the 'action' was essentially resolved over four major areas of Nicaragua, North, South, West/Pacific coast (Mangua) and East (Mosquito Coast) with Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south.

The general cast list was as follows:
Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua: Me
Eden Pastora, aka "Commandante Zero", former Sandinista and leader of the moderate ARDE Contra faction: Mark
Adolf Calero, leader of the hard-line FDN Contra faction: John A
President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, moderate leader of a key front line state: Terry

William Casey, US Director of Central Intelligence and fervent anti-Communist: Tim
Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the First Chief Directorate (overseas ops) of the KGB and hard core Cold Warrior: Jerry
LtCol Oliver North, USMC: Pete

Senator Gary Hart (D, CO): Micheal

I'd been a supporter of the Nicaraguan struggle for independence from US interference back in the 1980s, and even received a letter of thanks from the Nicaraguan Foreign Minister for my efforts. So naturally I was cast as Daniel Ortega, leader of the FSLN.

My main aims were to keep the Sandinistas in power, resist US/Contra (FDN) aggression, build up my forces and to avoid being a Soviet stooge. Sadly we inherited a catastrophic economic situation from the Somoza regime, and were seemingly beset on all sides by interfering super powers. 

Much of the time it was the usual rogues gallery on view.

I won't bore you with a blow by blow account, but essentially the FDN were very successfully equipped by the CIA. Despite the international outcry at the atrocities perpetrated by the the Contras, Congress was somewhat late in banning Federal funding for the FDN. Although the Sandinistas successfully built a coalition of defence with the ARDE and foreign volunteers, it wasn't enough to stop the FDN armoured column with air support(!) fighting through to Mangua. 

Fighting continued around Managua for two years by the Contras weren't powerful enough to suppress the rest of the country, but neither could the Sandinistas retake the capital as illegal US support continued to be flown in thanks to Ollie North.

By 1987 both the FSLN and FDN had had enough of being big power playthings and agreed to a ceasefire and free, supervised, elections. As a show of goodwill, the FSLN released various captured US airmen to Senator Gary Hart, greatly aiding his 1988 presidential campaign. At least not one Cuban had set foot in Nicaragua. 

Against resources like these, what hope did we have?

That was a great game, and tbh only increased my respect for all the leaders of small countries who have been buffeted by the winds of foreign imperialism in the last century and the current one. As Ortega, there was just so much stuff to fix, and no way to do it as an endless round of new problems were thrown our way. Yankees and Commies go home!

A really good way to bring back to life those conflicts which were such a big deal in the 1980s, but seem to have been forgotten about now. In the new age of imperialism and power politics, we are doomed to forget the lessons of history.

We have now started using the AI transcript and summary feature in Zoom to record these things, and while the transcript is gibberish (being a speech to text translation of each participant window), the summary isn't bad, here is an example excerpt. All hail our new robot overlords:

Nicaragua's Political Turmoil and International Involvement

In the meeting, Adolf Calero discussed the overthrow of the Sandinista Government by three well-equipped and well-trained brigades, backed by the United States. John then presented a speech by President Arias condemning military actions and inviting representatives from the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. to the Pan Central American Conference for regional peace. William Casey, Director of Central Intelligence, announced the U.S.A.'s support for President Arias's call and their provision of

covert intelligence to assist the FDN in their campaign to overthrow the Sandinista dictatorship. Daniel Ortega, representing the Sandinistas, opposed the FDN's attempt to impose their proxy regime by force and condemned the CIA's mining of the port. Kryuchkov from Moscow supported President Arias's call for non-intervention and continued to discredit the CIA's involvement. Eden, representing the 

ARDE and the Mesquites, offered support in the defense of Nicaragua.

Pratting around with plastic pikemen - Part 1

 One of the great gifts to wargamers are the various HaT figure sets, designed with the 20mm gamer in mind. Particularly good is this one:

It essentially gives you everything you need for a Macedonian DBA army in one box, by plundering sprues from the various other boxes. As I've been working on Alexander the Brief, I've also been having a look at at my old Macedonian figures. 

One of things you get in the HaT box are a decent number of pikemen (many more than shown here). They are moulded in a variety of poses and clearly intended to form a sort of 'pike hedgehog' with various ranks of pikes at various angles. Here are some of them based up in 4 figure DBA elements.

The spears are all made out of brush bristles (as none are supplied) and they were an absolute pig to get to stick the the slippy plastic these figures were cast in. A layer of PVA, superglue, more PVA to accelerate the superglue and  another layer of floor varnish finally held these things together. 

That is all well and good, however some of the poses might look OK, but are completely impractical for both storage and for tessellating with other bases. I have a few elements of these horizontal pikes, and it was quite challenging to position the figures so the elements can butt up. They also take up and extra rank (or three) of space in the storage box and a disproportionate amount of room. 

What I SHOULD have done was take a leaf out of Graham Evans book, and just stick the pikes on at 45 degrees, never mind the location of the hands. But I did these 20 years ago, and I just made them up as the box indicated.

The other thing you don't get is enough figures in the same pose to make up elements of identical spear angles, if you use all the figures. I was determined to correct this, having got a new interest in Ancients thanks to Dominion of the Spear.

Originally this element had two figures with vertical pikes (the guys  in red) and two with angled pikes (the guys in white). By levering off the vertical spears I managed to glue them back at a reasonable angle although they are still a bit wonky. I should have taken a 'before' picture, sorry. Those aren't too bad but a lot of the original paintwork came off with the spears, all those layers of PVA and varnish. Agh!

These guys came out better, in this case the figures on the end had angled spears and the ones in the middle were horizontal. I managed to get the spears off with less damage, and reattach them with a mixture of UHU and superglue, with a final layer of PVA. They just needed a bit of touching up around the shields and hands/arms.

These guys defeated me though. The spears are resting on the figures hands and glued across their bodies, and the multiple layers of glue and varnish were really well stuck on. I might come back to these, but I think they would have to be so badly butchered they would need completely repainting. It is a shame as these are some of the nicest figures, being front rankers with beautifully detailed armour etc.

I shall think on. I've got a dim recollection I might have a spare box of pikemen in the loft, it might be easier to just paint some more and file these away out of sight.

In the end it was quite easy to re-touch the paintwork on the figures I'd managed to dismantle and reassemble, and they look fine stacked together. If you look closely you can see their hands are in the wrong place, but on the table they just sort of blend into a mass.

Good, that is a couple more usable bases of pike men anyway.