A photo round up of a couple of recent(ish) Society meetings- August 27th and September 10th
Here’s the second of our catch up posts for a couple of our recent meetings.
24th September
A good turn-out for this meeting with 5 games in progress.
We start with Pete’s 10mm Vietnam “Charlie Don’t Surf” game.
A quiet hamlet in VietnamUS InfantryNVA troops advanceM113 ACAVs
Then on to some 3D printed and scratch-built Galleys & Galleons, part of the Mediterranean Galley Campaign being run by John.
Galleys advanceFleets engageThe battle continues
Then on to a 6mm Napoleonic game, Poles and Saxons vs Austrians 1809 using Mark’s Home rules. (Forgive any errors in troop attribution).
Russian Cavalry advanceRussian Infantry and ArtilleryPolish InfantryPolish Lancers
Andy and Steve had another SAGA Crusades bash:
Andy’s CrusadersStephen’s Mounted SaracensStephen’s AssassinsSAGA Warriors, foot and mounted
And finally for this meeting, Alan ran a 28mm WW1 Blood & Valor game:
French InfantryGerman InfantryGerman A7V tankFrench infantry storm a ruined houseFrench Infantry
8th October
More games but fewer periods for this meeting.
We start with a BattleTech game, a bit of an introduction for thee rules at the Society, only a couple of photos of these I’m afraid.
Six members contested the Trevor Pearless Memorial DBA Tournament, we managed to run five rounds of three games. There’s be a write up of this in due course, but for now here’s a few photos.
Trojans vs Anglo DanesTrojans vs Anglo DanesTrojans, complete with Horse, vs Anglo NormanAnglo Normans vs Caledones
And finally, some 6mm Filed of Glory action
Light cavalry surrounding the heaviesLight Infantry clashElephants!
We’ve been remiss and not posted a photo round up of several of our meetings held over the last three months. Here’s the first of these covering the first two of the missing meetings.
August 27th
Three games ran at the meeting, first up a 6mm Ancients game using Field of Glory rules.
Alan ran an Eastern Front WWI game in 15mm using “Battles with Brusilov” rules.
And finally for this meeting, Stephen ran a very wet Stargrave game, Waterworld. We should have a more detailed write up of this game soon, but you can find an article about the boat building endeavours of our members here.
Andy’s crew approach a tower blockTony’s crew encounter a KrakenThe view from orbit
September 10th
We had another three games at this meeting, firstly a 2mm Strength & Honour game.
Stephen and Jeremey ran another game in their refight of the War of the Roses, using Sword & Spear rules. There’s a full account of this battle (written by the victor, of course) here.
Lancastrian defensive positionYorkist right flankYorkists advance
And finally, Eric ran a series of Gaslands races.
We’ll round off the other two missing meetings, September 24th & October 8th in the not-too-distant future.
Two short WW1 naval scenarios that we played out last year….
These were refights of two clashes that took place in August 1915 off the Middelkerke Bank, just out to sea from the French/Belgian border. Home grown computerised rules were used and each action took less than an hour to play out.
These were first surface actions between the newly formed German Torpedobootsflottille Flandern, based at Bruges, and the torpedo boats of the French Défense Mobile, charged with guarding the French side of the Dover Straits approaches from Dunkerque.
In the first action, which took place on 9 August 1915, two German TB’s, A.4 and A.16, spotted suspicious vessels steaming towards them from the direction of Dunkerque. They had been spotted by the small French TB’s 341 and 342, which were on outpost patrol and had steamed at full speed to investigate suspicious smoke.
The German boats were bigger and more heavily armed, but with very small targets and no fire control for their small calibre guns, they had to get very close to have a reasonable chance of getting hits and carefully time their fire for best effect.
A twisting turning action resulted with the boats jockeying for position, whilst having to avoid the shallow sand banks in the area.
The 341 got position first and fired a torpedo, which hit and sank A.4.
341 and 342 cashed in their luck and beat a hasty retreat as a third German boat, A.12, came up from the direction of Ostende to join the fight.
In the real world of 1915, the action had been short and indecisive. The Germans had broken off the action shortly after opening fire when an unidentified shore battery opened up on the scene.
However this was just a warm up for the German commanders, who were new to the rules. They chalked the result up to experience.
This set the scene for Scenario two, which took place in the same area.
Back in the real world of 1915, the French had beefed up their patrols as a result of the first incident. On the night of the 22nd, two Torpilleurs d’Escadre (small destroyers), Oriflamme and Branlebas, went out on an ambush patrol to the Middelkerke Bank Buoy. At 11pm they spotted the silhouette of a German boat in the darkness. This was A.15, inbound to Ostende.
In this refight A.15 was very badly outgunned by the French destroyers and too slow to escape them, so her only hope was to land a lucky torpedo hit. Learning from the first encounter, the players who were now in command of the French destroyers closed, holding their fire until they were close enough for their shots to tell, with a good stockpile of ready ammunition to hand. As they manoeuvred A.15 managed to get off a snapshot with one of her two torpedoes, but this missed Branlebas. The response was swift and decisive as first Oriflamme and then Branlebas opened a devastating fire, which quickly knocked out A.15’s only gun and her other intact torpedo tube. The lack of return fire told and a nasty list to port tipped them off to the amount of damage they had done. The French destroyers pressed in close to for the kill. A.15 finally sank beneath the waves.
The result was almost identical to the real life result, which saw Oriflamme and Branlebas press their attack and sink A.15 back in 1915, Oriflamme obtaining a hit with a torpedo. This was the third boat the German force had lost in action since being formed and highlighted the poor design of the A.1 class TBs. They were too weak to fight and too slow to run. It had been the first real opportunity for the Défense Mobile to engage enemy vessels since the war began and they had certainly seized it and driven their attack home. The German force in Bruges would need better boats if it was going to be able to successfully take on the British and French surface forces in the Channel.
Small scenarios like this often make for interesting games than large fleet actions that can get bogged down in big long range gun duels. The action/reaction nature of a night action is created by making each boat dice for initiative. Those with higher initiative get to choose whether to move before or after those with lower initiative. If one side is more alert than the other a modifier can be applied. The boats used were 1/3000 scratchbuilds made from plastic card sheet and rod, except for Branlebas and Oriflamme, which were conversions from Navwar models of the earlier Arquebuse Class. The scale allows the game to be played out comfortably on a small table.
Jeremey takes us through some home made blast markers.
Having recently started repainting my old 6mm Sci-Fi forces my thoughts turned to the different types of blast markers used in various wargames, you know the ones, they are often made of hard translucent plastic in the shape of a flame. Wargamers use them for marking the spot they are calling artillery down on or even to show destroyed and burnt out vehicles.
The first thing I thought of was could I make my own? Having made many things out of EVA foam for my gaming I turned to that first as a very simple material to work with. I knew you could get the foam in thin sheets and in bright colours. As luck would have it I popped into a local Poundland store to pick up some things for a bit of DIY I had to do, and discovered in the crafts section a packet of foam rocket shapes.
The packet had 5 foam rockets shapes for each colour
So I bought a packet at the predictable price, thinking I could make blast markers out of the red and yellow rockets.
Blast marker templates cut from a piece of cardboard
I made myself two flame shaped templates out of cardboard. One smaller than the other and made sure the smaller one fitted inside the silhouette of the larger one.
It was then just a matter of drawing round the templates, trying to fit in as many of the markers as I could. To make 3 blaster markers I would need 3 of the bigger flames in red and 6 of the smaller yellow flames to go on either side.
The first cut out flames, bit short on the yellow bits though
of course at first I completely forgot I’d need twice as many of the smaller yellow flames as the red, which is why there are only 3 of each in the picture!
A smaller blast created during assembly
Rather than waste the foam I experimented with a smaller blast marker cutting out from the red foam using the smaller of the two templates I’d made. I used standard PVA glue to stick the yellow smaller flame to the red foam and then repeated the process for the other side of the marker.
Incoming!
The final (sort of) stage involved me supergluing the marker to a thin wooden base that I had, which I then just painted to blend in a bit better. There we have it, very cheap, simple and quick blast markers for games.
However as you can see from the picture I took it a stage further. I added or rather smudged on some black miniature paint in that way explosions are often depicted. Nice simple effect that stops the blast marker looking too cartoonish. I also turned to the blue foam from the packet and wondered if I could make a splash marker. I don’t often play naval wargames but fellow club members do. I cut out a more splash like shape and as with the black on the blast marker I dabbed white paint on the edges of both the main shape and the smaller splash shapes, and of course I painted the base blue.
Now all I need to do is think up a way of using the green foam from the packet. Hmmm alien weapon blast effect …
Our Treasurer recently decided to expand his WW1 naval campaign into the Baltic – a theatre that saw a lot of interesting naval actions and a major amphibious assault.
That meant acquiring the Russian Baltic Fleet. Fortunately Russian naval enthusiasts have unearthed a lot of good material from their naval archives in the last few years and made it available on-line. After brushing up on the Russian alphabet and with liberal use of Google translate, this information is just a click or two away as long as you use Cyrillic text for your searches! I’ll give the correct 1914 Cyrillic names of the units, commanders and ships below with their western script equivalents.
1/3000 is the scale of my German Fleet, so off went my order to get started to Navwar – who still have an unrivaled range and reasonably priced models for this period.
First up on the painting table are 6 cruisers from the 1st and 2nd Бригада Крейсеровъ (Cruiser Brigades).
The flagships were the big old armoured cruisers Громобой (Gromoboy, meaning Thunderer), and Россия (Rossiya, meaning Russia) respectively. These are oldish Navwar sculpts and needed some work, but also needed quite a bit of conversion work to bring them up to 1914. Both had been considerably upgunned from the 1904 era Navwar model with prominent new casemates on the top decks – Gromoboy had also had a complete new set of boilers, but you can’t see them! Bring on the modelling knife, plasticard sheet and rod, bits of old national trust membership cards and superglue and voila:
Original models of Gromoboy (top) and Rossiya (bottom)Gromoboy (top) and Rossiya (bottom) after conversion – casemates and guns moved/added, boats re-positioned, funnels and bridges tidied up/added and for Gromoboy stern shape and ship length corrected with a new stern casemate and conning towers also added
Next were two other much newer, smaller armoured cruisers of 1st Brigade, the sisters Адмиралъ Макаровъ (Admiral Makarov, a celebrated admiral lost in the war against Japan) and Баянъ (Bayan, a celebrated 11th century bard). These needed very little work – not much more than just filing away the 11pdr gun in the bow and moving a couple of boats.
Last in this first batch were two 2nd class cruisers of 2nd Brigade, the sisters Богаты́ръ (Bogatýr, a Russian medieval warrior/knight) and Олегъ (Oleg – the name of several celebrated historical figures). These veterans of the Japanese war also needed some tidy ups and removal of some of the small guns from Oleg:
Oleg (top) and Bogatýr (bottom) with funnels tidied, turret shape/size corrected, aft superstructure enhanced/corrected, boats added and 4x11pdr guns removed from Oleg
Finally painting and basing. The Baltic Fleet introduced a two tone paint scheme for all large warships in an order of March 7th 1912, with light grey upperworks and a darker grey hull side. All of these warships had unpainted wooden decks. Finally the Baltic Fleet continued to use 1m wide funnel bands throughout the war (painted out in most other navies). 1st Brigade used red and 2nd Brigade blue in 1914. First ship had a band at top of 2nd funnel, 2nd ship a band half way down 2nd funnel, 3rd ship a band at the top of 2nd and 3rd funnels and fourth ship a band half way down 2nd and 3rd funnels:
These ships underwent a bewildering number of changes in their armament during their lives, but contemporary records, photos and plans confirm their armament in 1914 as:
The British force breaks off at the end of the action
The society is refighting all of the naval actions of WW1 as a long running campaign, initially focussing on British Home Waters in 1914-1915.
Scenario 10 covered a night action off the Danish Coast on 17th August 1915.
Ships used are 1/3000 Navwar, with the Princess Margaret and the Light Vessel scratch built, all from Mark’s collection. Rules are Mark’s computer moderated rules written in Visual Basic 6.
British forces were heading in to the Heligoland Bight to lay a large minefield aimed at catching German vessels coming in and out of their ports. The large Minelayer, Princess Margaret, was escorted by seven modern ‘M’ class destroyers of the 10th Flotilla. The sun had recently set and the British force was using the light from the Danish Horns Reef Light Vessel to get a position fix before heading in to lay the mines. These were commanded by Mark as umpire.
Co-incidentally five large German destroyers of the 2nd Torpedoboots-Flottille had been on a search mission to the north that day and were heading back to port, also using the light vessel to get a fix before their final run in. This force was commanded by Jon.
Horns Reef Light Vessel
The British force was silhouetted against the afterglow of the sun and so at 8.13pm the German force was able to sight and close on the British unseen. At 8.22 the British spotted the shapes of ships in the murk and after some hesitation about their identity, the closest Division of British destroyers opened fire. A short fight at about 5000 yards ensued with the British getting off a couple of torpedoes. Apart from a near miss on the British destroyer Miranda, no hits were made and whilst the British torpedoes crossed the German line they both missed.
The British had turned away and with the remaining light having gone, the two sides lost sight of each other. The players now plotted their next actions on a map.
The British decided to attempt to resume their course for minelaying and at 20.40 the two sides blundered back into contact. As there was no moon and the Princess Margaret reacted slowly to the new contact, the two sides found themselves very quickly at close range. The British 1st Division raced forward to shield the Princess Margaret, with both sides opening fire as they closed to just 600 yards and the German commander ordered a flotilla torpedo attack.
The close range clash – torpedo markers show the salvos fired and Minos has a marker showing she cannot turn to starboard due to a heavy port list
In a few minutes of mayhem the British destroyer Minos and then the German B 109 sank as a result of shell hits. The British were extremely lucky to avoid 16 well-directed German torpedoes which crossed the tracks of 6 ships including the Princess Margaret.
Moorsom and Miranda shield the Princess Margaret
The Mentor and Moorsom were also badly damaged and reduced in speed and the German G 103 stopped by a shell in her engine rooms. She was able to repair her damaged steam line and get back underway at reduced speed after the action to limp home.
B 98 leads the German Flotilla
The British again broke off and this time headed west for their covering force. The German boats gobbled up the lagging Mentor and sank her with gunfire, then also stumbled across the crippled Moorsom as they steered south for home, again finishing her with a couple of salvos.
The British destroyers had succeeded in saving the heavily loaded minelayer they were there to screen, but had paid a high price, with 3 of their destroyers sunk, for only 1 German boat lost.
In the real action the Germans used the light advantage to close, then fired 3 torpedoes, before the British saw them. One of these hit and blew the bow off the destroyer Mentor. The Germans and British then immediately broke off, leaving the Mentor alone. Once shored up, she managed an epic journey to limp all the way home.
In all campaign games German losses count double, to reflect the fact that they were less able to absorb losses and to reflect their more cautious use of their ships.
Nevertheless this game was a German tactical victory as the tonnage of British ships lost was more than double that of German ships lost – 2805 tons to 1352 tons, a net score of 101 points for Jon as German commander and a loss of the same for Mark as British/Umpire. This leaves the league table as follows:
Here is a gallery of pictures from Salute 2018 of our Zeebrugge 1918 game. Lots of detail added to the Vindictive, including; a new coat of paint and weathering, the 11″ Howitzer, two 7.5″ Howitzers, the foremast together with its fighting top and pompom gun, and crew figures for Vindictive and her guns. We had lots of players take part on the day leading their squads to attack targets on the mole. The game won the Robert Bothwell Best Historical Game Memorial Award. The games creator, Phil, can be seen pointing at his creation below.
The marines and sailors advance
The trophy!
Two of the objectives for the squads – flat railway cars and covered wagons
The aft 11-inch Howitzer and crew
The game builder Phil (left), with club member Jeremey
View across the Mole to the Vindictive
German Naval Infantry take position
The forward 7.5-inch Howitzer
An aerial view from above the mole to the Vindictive
The harbour battery – another squad objective
German Naval Infantry using some crates as cover
Vindictive alongside the Mole
More Defending Naval Infantry
Vindictive alongside the Mole
Assembly complete before the show opened
The midships 7.5-inch Howitzer
Aerial view from behind the Vindictive
Aerial view of Vindictive from Aft – 11-inch and 7.5-inch howitzers in shot
The finishing touches are going in to the model of HMS Vindictive prior to two big outings for the game at Salute (London Excel on 14th April) and the Zeebrugge Centenary events at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth (Museum Galleries at The Historic Dockyard on 22nd April).
These are the almost finished 11-inch and two 7.5-inch howitzers that were fitted to provide covering fire for the attack in place of some of the Vindictive’s 6-inch guns. These guns had been designed as anti-submarine weapons firing a special “depth charge” type shell. The 11-inch was the first gun completed.
Also below, continuing the Italian food theme is some spaghetti that will be used as part of the final model. Any guesses what it is for?
Our 2018 Showgame of the Zeebrugge Raid won Best Participation Game at the Cavalier Show in Tonbridge today. Congratulations to the builder – Phil (with a little help from his offspring). Finishing touches to the HMS Vindictive model will follow in time for Salute in April. Gallery below:
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