Battle of Tanga Day One

Last night Jon made the drive up to my house to give "Things Are A Bit 'Ard" a try. It's a set of variant rules from the Too Fat Lardies Summer '07 Special to be used with "If the Lord Spares Us" WW1 Battalion Level rules.

Since we're not terribly familiar with either the rules or their variations we opted to play the Tanga Day One Scenario which is much smaller in scope than the huge action of the Day Two Scenario.

An overview of the battle area. The town of Tanga is to the West.

The 13th Rajputs move down the "Askari Road" from Ras Kanone towards Tanga.
What a beautiful column formation.

And run right into the 17th Feldkompanie. Blistering fire from the MG causes them to pull back and it takes 3 turns to recover the shock and move into line formation before proceeding. Note that I pulled the wrong troops from my box. The 17th FK is supposed to be composed of Askari, not Europeans.

The 61st King George's Pioneers make the same mistake on the other road contacting the Germans while in column.

They end up fleeing in complete disarray.

The second assault by the 13th Rajputs is repulsed, but with more casualties than I'd like.

Lulled into a false sense of security I don't pull back to the more secure railway line just behind the ditch before the British reinforcements arrive in the form of the 2nd Battalion of the Loyal North Lancashire Regt.. They flank me and hammer the 17th FK into a retreat which is at least a turn too late.

 

The British have numbers and quality and they are right on top of the 17th FK. My reinforcements arrive but are in a bad position, unable to bring their MG's to bear quickly. They lose three stands (platoons) in an exchange of fire that they can not afford to bear. The remainder of the 17th FK is eliminated in a bayonet charge.

 

The battle ends with the 6th Shutzenkompanie pulling back deep into the town to lick their wounds. The 6th FK (under blind next to Von Lettow-Vorbeck is in a good position to block. The British have done quite well and are in a great position to take the town on Day Two, but don't really have the resources to pull it off without another fit battalion. They have however significantly improved on the historical outcome of the disasterous day one at Tanga.

I have plans to keep improving on the terrain. I'd like to replace the trench with a more historically drainage ditch, and swap the gray felt for a railway line. We'll definately be playing Day Two soon.

German WW1 East Africa Army Complete

Well that took forever! Between buying the figures from multiple manufacturers, modding them and struggling with the painting this project took quite some time. Now that this is done I should have enough German forces to cover the entire campaign. I'm free to get back to my "Ghost in the Shell" and other projects guilt free.

Minus the 3 stands of cavalry, 2 Pom Pom guns and the 2 artillery pieces, this is what I needed for the Battle of Tanga (Day 2). Using "If the Lord Spares Us" from Too Fat Lardies, each figure represents 20 men, so each stand is roughly a platoon. For the Germans, most Companies have 5 stands. The big advantage the Germans have at Tanga is a plethora of Maxim machineguns (9 stands).

I haven't found any specific actions that includes the German Cavalry, they seemed to be used early in the war for screening and scouting before they fell victim to the Tsetse fly. But I had them so they've been painted up as well.

A close up.

The Schutztruppen have quite a few Sudwester slouch hats and some settlers in floppy hats. In actual fact they wore a lot of German pith helmets. Later in the war they mostly wore captured British style pith helmets. If I was to do this over I'd include more British figures (in long pants). I have a Battalion of South Africans that are based and primed. I used the Minifigs British in shorts. The South Africans would learn that shorts aren't the best idea in the Tanzanian bush. Lots of thorns, chiggers, fleas, etc. The shorts might be cooler, but the South Africans were soon hoping for long pants.

Gen. Von Lettow Vorbeck is on horseback here, as in the romantic pictures you'll find of him.

Here's a picture from the rear. Here you can see the ridiculous effort that went into putting back flaps on fezs.

Major Motoko Kusanagi in 15mm

I'm going to get in a huge amount of trouble with Jon because I'm painting SciFi instead of WW1 Africa. My German East Africa army is only a few hours away from being done, but I couldn't resist finishing up the Motoko mini I started the other day while building (some would say sculpting) my Batou figure.

So here's a pic of "The Major"

 Obviously I'd love a figure of a woman with a nice futuristic assault rifle. But that's not going to happen. Hard enough to find female figures in this scale. So I went with this...

Eyes are a little weird in this super closeup. But they look fine at a normal viewing distance.

Sure a bullpup would be nice instead of dual Mac-10's. But you can't have everything.

An improved Batou in a group shot with the Major. "Motoko!!!"

Batou from Ghost in the Shell in 15mm

I've done quite a few 15mm conversions over the last few years, but none this extensive. This project came very close to sculpting. I recently purchased a number of character figures from "The Scene" and I have a good number of unused figures from Rebel Minis and Khurasan.

As a fan of "Ghost in the Shell" and other works by Masamune Shirow, I've wanted to do a project like this for several years. Using my new and old purchases I went through my minis and picked out a few figures that would work as Section 9. Batou is a bit difficult, but without him and Motoko you might as well not even try. I have a figure that should pass as Motoko and I have Saito and Bormu and good candidates for the rest except for Aramaki.

I originally wanted to convert a Jesse Ventura Predator figure with a minigun into Batou, but it seemed it would have limited playability. But at the same time I didn't just want a figure with a pistol.

Batou with a Minigun

In the end I settled on this figure...

I started with this figure from Rebel Minis 15mm Post Apoc Gangers

My first plan was just to used the figure as is, but the face didn't do it for me, so I lopped off the head and pony tail from his back. I shaved off the shin guards and shoulder pads as well. All with a a dull #11 xacto and some files that should be replaced.

I thought of using a female with a ponytail head, but the face was too feminine and narrow to be Batou. So I replaced the head with Arnold Schwarzenegger's head from a figure from The Scene. I liked it, Batou has a flat top in the orginial movie, but I still wanted the pony tailed version. That's when I decided to do a "hair swap". With a bit of flush cutting and filing on both heads I attached the hair from the female figure onto the back of Arnold's head.

This process created several casualties. A female zomie hunter from "The Scene"

After some touch up on the hair I turned my attention to the gun. I wanted a bullpup look and not a shotgun, so I cut off the stock, tapered the barrel and added a scope.

Mr. Batou and a friend

I think I'll lighten up the green on the scope a bit so it's more visible. I'm not so sure about his hair color, I've seen it blonder in the series. I used Vallejo sky grey and I'm not sure if it's accurate. The color palette in the series is very washed out so replicating it is a bit tricky on a small figure.


Edit: I changed the hair color and reposted the pictures since posting this.

Cold Wars 2012

I arrived at Cold Wars on Friday just before lunch. I didn't pre-register for any games and yet it worked out great. After meeting Jon in the dealer hall and buying two Blue Moon science fiction buildings I met up with Jerry and Damo. Somehow I missed the Fallout game in the program and I managed to score the last ticket, mostly because the convention staff overbooked the game. The scenario was an ambush by some raiders on a convoy. One of the raider players took out the first convoy vehicle at long range on the first turn. This created a log jam as the convoy player had deployed to both sides of the convoy, not to the front. In order to clear a path for the second vehicle to go around they had to move quite a few figures out of the way.

By then Jerry has closed in.

My forces close in up the middle.

 But soon after this picture, the 4th raider player again uses his LMG on the 2nd convoy vehicle and disables it. Their vehicles never made it a third of the way across the board.

The three of us managed to get into another game together, a demolition derby game using simple rules and hex grid with matchbox cars. A very clever ruleset, and a fun game almost ruined by the two drunks in the game. It's a one page ruleset designed to be kid friendly and one of the inebriates shouted out "I've been telling you I don't understand these rules!" in the middle of the game.

After that I went to kibitz with my friend Derek as he played a quite excellent zombie game. The attention to detail was impressive.



Here the Scooby Doo gang gets into the action. At this point Fred and the gang had killed over 20 zombies.

Before heading to the hotel for the night I traded stories with Frank Chadwick. Frank educated me on Thomas Cochrane, and I shared a bit of knowledge on Sir Ernest Shackleton. We also talked about Abe Lincoln, Victorian Science Fiction, racism, and the Belgian Congo.

After breakfast the next morning with some of the Lancaster and York county boys I headed over and Jon and I set up our game. Two inter-connected scenarios with the Israeli Engineers and some reservists crossing the green line into Beirut in July of 1982.

Looking north you see a roadblock on the west side of a 4 lane road. The Merkava has been held up by a PLO T-34 just off camera to the south. The IDF Reservists in the beige building to the southeast have a bit of bad luck and very little support. This squad will end the game with 7 out of 8 men in the squad dead.

Here the Nagma Sh'ot with the Engineer squad has nearly made it to the roadblock. The D9 Dozer is still under blind and is hiding behind some smoke. I'd say one mistake the Israeli players made was ignoring the PLO squad in the center of the park too long.

The PLO manage to take out the dozer with an RPG round. The engineers blow the roadblock with satchel charges. A car bomb goes off but manages not to damage the two vehicles in range (the Nagma Sh'ot and M113 carrying a hesitant commander with new orders). Then the M163 is lost to more RPG fire. The scenario ends with the IDF pulling back after acheiving their objective and before they can be given a new one by the hesitant commander. The PLO are awarded a minor victory due to the large number of casualties inflicted on the IDF. 

While I went to get supper, Jon received a visit from the local press who took a bunch of photos of the table and asked a few questions. Jon gave a few sarcastic answers.

In the second scenario the Israelis are tasked with breaking through with a platoon of three Merkava tanks. They also have to clear a weapons cache from a local Police Station and a mortar pit on the SW corner of the park. They received reinforcements to bring the number of squads back up to 3 and they received an additional Nagma Sh'ot. The PLO had 7 squads, a WWII Russian 76mm anti tank gun and a Charioteer tank.

With a new set of players, a bad day goes to worse for the Israelis. A B11 Recoiless blasts a track off the Nagma. It sits blocking traffic for the rest of the game. Worse still, we have our first Merkava kill from an RPG in all our time playing this period with IABSM. Incidentally we were playing IABSMv3 with the Charlie Don't Surf weapons charts.

The other Nagma headed all the way to the south and ran smack dab into the Charioteer blind. On the turn end the Charioteer KO's the Nagma and the survivors of the squad bail out. The following turn the Charioteer goes first and sprays the squad with machinegun fire.

To the north the engineer squad from the other Nagma that was disabled on turn one heads into the PLO populated shantytown unsupported and pays a heavy price as well.

Merkava #2 has its main gun disabled. The end of the table near the exit is now a deadly canyon.

Merkava #2 makes a run for it along with Merkava #3. The command M113, the one with the hesitant commander from the first scenario bumps into the 76mm Anti tank gun and also tries to make a hasty retreat. I give the Israelis an M109 as reinforcements but while it destabilizes a building and forces one of the PLO teams to retreat it doesn't help all that much. The two Merkavas escape, but the remaining infantry team in the center comes under fire from the Charioteer and takes several casualties. The M113 takes several mobility hits and limps towards the board edge only to be immobilized inches from safety. The crew is taken prisoner. A major victory for the PLO.

Now these are games that are meant to be fun, so they are tilted towards force parity more than they would be in reality, but these were both larger victories for the PLO than we've ever had.

The Israeli players in both scenarios seemed to both be fooled by their firepower advantage into thinking they didn't need to be careful and use good doctrine. They also need to move fast. To be fair it's a tough balace and the players in the second game were not accustomed to modern warfare. As one PLO player (Charles) pointed out Modern combat is a game of sudden death hide and go seek. The Israelis need to use combined arms, they can't have teams running around unsupported. Once a PLO blind has been spotted and revealed the Israelis need to concentrate their firepower on it and neutralize it immediately.

In the first game a PLO team was allowed to sit unmolested in the park firing RPG's on the Israelis for 5 turns. This is the team that eventually took out both the Dozer and M163. In reality they should be limited to 3 or 4 shots, but it's never come up before. The Israelis were also spread very thin.

In the second game many of these same mistakes were taken to an extreme. The Nagma that bumped into the Charioteer had no reason to be where it was on the extreme southern edge of the playing area. To the north, a squad ran into the shanty town alone with no way for any of the armored vehicles to assist it.

That said, everyone told me they had a good time. I would love to see all of the players back for another go of modern combat in the future.

GZG XV

So another Ground Zero Games Convention is over. This year was number 15. My Fallout game went fairly well, but I ran it on Saturday night and there was two other large ground games going on. I only had two players in my game. It's was really designed for a minimum of 3 players, so it required some last minute changes in the scenario, but it all worked out.

I'm not going to go into a long blow by blow After Action Report since I don't have a whole lot of time. I'm leaving for Cold Wars in 2 days to run 8 hours of Lebanon '82 urban madness. The two games start at 12pm and 5pm on Saturday and run for 4 hours each.

My friend Mark 'Indy' Kochte put together a time lapse of our weekend in Owego, NY. I'm the tall guy in glasses wearing jeans and a long sleeve light green shirt. For the Sunday morning game I'm wearing khakis and a burgundy shirt. As the video comes to a close, there's a still of one of the players in my game (Aaron) and I laughing and pointing up at the ceiling.

GZG East Coast Convention XV - The Movie from Mark 'Indy' Kochte on Vimeo.

The photos I took are here. There are a bunch of photos from a Dune game I was in. I played Paul Atriedes. As you can see, my friend Martin and I managed to blow up the Harkonen spice harvester.

Some AAR's and additional photos are here at the convention website. Oh, I'm on the page there because I won 2nd place in the 15mm painting competition. Not a big deal since there are only 4 or so competitors in each category. Still, it's a fun thing and there are some neat little prizes from the sponsors. If you can, I urge you to go next year. The convention has been expanded to allow the use of non-GZG rulesets and we had quite a few. (Tomorrow's War, Starmada, Strike Legion, Chain Reaction (my game), Earth Force Source Book, D8 System for Arses High!, Force on Force, and Aeronef)

15mm Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel

In the Fallout video game the basic Brotherhood of steel Power Armor looks like this.

While it looks cool in game, in 15mm scale on a gaming table, frankly it was going to look a bit dull. My 7 year old son told me I should paint them *exactly* the same color as the grey buildings. While I applaud his tactical thinking, figures need to stand out a little more than that.

There's another version of the Power Armor that looks like this, and that is what I used as my inspiration.

I've noticed other people using the Eureka SciFi Germans as Enclave, and when I purchased them that was my plan. But, when I became convinced that the Khurasan Control Battalion Riflethings were awesome Post Apocalyptic baddies I decided to use the Eureka figures as the "good guys".

The Eureka figures are clearly inspired by the Anime movie "Jin-Roh" which has some good scenes but really isn't a favorite of mine. Masamune Shirow's "Ghost in the Shell" and his other works are much more my speed. At any rate, the weapons on these troopers fit the bill (Assault Rifles, Sniper Rifle, SAW, and Flame Thrower) When I finished painting them they were still lacking something, so I decided to give them red eyes like in "Jin-Roh". Since I plan to use these in skirmish size scenario I bought one of each pose. It's a fun little force.

One possibility with these is to swap the heads with the GZG Post-Apoc heads. There's a few gas mask heads in the mix. If I were to do it again I might do it with the leader figure. I'm not really a fan of his hat.

Support Fireteam

Assualt Fireteam

Sniper and Leader Fireteam. Not really a fan of the cap the Leader has on, but nothing is perfect.