Fallout 3 - The art of doing it wrong

As may have been gathered, AWB has a little bit of time for the Fallout universe and has recently been playing a bit of Fallout 3.
Now as we know, Fallout 3 does have a storyline. A deep and involved quest to, well, go and do boring stuff in search of your character's dad and save the world. Or something. And yes we all know just how much we want to do that constantly when there are other things we can do in the game.
First up, we need to remind you that the Fallout universe is a dangerous place. Take for example some of the animals you can find...

Take for example this friendly looking creature. On the plus side your character is currently safely hidden, which is probably a good thing as, based on the size of the rifle you are holding, that puppy is HUGE. Let's just hope all he really wants is to chase the stick.
Not to fear, the Wasteland isn't all scary animals. There are actually some nice friendly people and a touch of romance. Take this young lady...

This is Angela and she is clearly very happy as she is currently getting married. Yes, that man in the sharp knitted vest is a priest and the guy in the right foreground her hubby to be.
Just ignore the honking great big knife in her right hand, okay. There is probably a perfectly rational reason with nothing at all to do with her landing her hubby by using ant queen pheromones for a bit of casual date rape.
Nope, this is Fallout 3 after all. Fallout 3 is a nice universe. After all what other game version would take such a strong view on harming children?
Cannibalism on the other hand...

Well thank you Old Man Harris, we are glad you cleared that up.
Still, Fallout 3, unlike earlier games, prevents you from actually harming any character under the age of 16, which is probably the only reason this charming little fella isn't currently a red smear across the pavement...

Remind us again why we are helping you, you ungrateful little brat?
Still, the one advantage with Bryan, for that is his name, is that near the start of the quest involving giant fire breathing ants that he begs you to help him with, he chooses to hide inside a shelter for safety.
One of these in fact...

Cosy looking aren't they?
And the big advantage of him decided to go hide in one, is that unless you decided to formally speak to him again and close the quest, the lovable little scamp gets to remain in there.
Not that it really effects the game, but walking past him from time to time to hear his slightly distressed cries does have a strange satisfaction.
As does other actions within the game. Fallout is a universe that contains teddy bears, and let's face it, what game universe would be complete without them. In fact there are large numerous amounts of teddy bears located within the game, and if you are careful enough with your searching, you can have a small picnic with a few them...

Don't worry. You can still fit on the bed. It is all completely safe.
Also completely safe in Fallout is starting a small fire from time to time...

Here is one we started earlier. Nothing to worry about. All perfectly under control. What could possibly go wrong...

Quite.

Combat Commander

Played Combat Commander at Club Dave last night.
Now for those not in the know, Combat Commander is a popular board game series from GMT Games using card decks to control company sized tactical battles. Everything is driven from the cards. 'Dice' are tested by turning cards, random events come from cards and even the length of the game are driven by the decks.
As was said, a very popular series with regular expansion releases, over a hundred scenarios, infinite ability to mix and match to invent your own games off the cuff and, due to the randomness of the system, lots of replayability.
Having said that, AWB really doesn't like it that much.
So, having taken off in the face of public opinion and streaked naked in front of the partisan fan, why does AWB take this stand?
Randomness and gaming the system.
Each deck is 72 cards. Depending on the situation a player will have a hand of between four and six cards. To do ANYTHING you need to play a card, but what if that card is the 'wrong' one?
Well, too bad.
Each card has an 'Order' type listed on it. Move, Fire, Advance, Recover et al. There is by extension a limited amount of each in each deck. Now because the game engine also means you are turning cards to cover dice rolls and random events, it is possible that the cards you want may not come out into your hand until the next reshuffle, and even then, may not the next time either.
The fans and supporters of the system argue that this represents the eb and flow and confusion of battle. Yes, fair enough, no real world situation has radio controlled troops and for various reason troops often fail to act in manners which would be perfectly obvious to outside observers.
On the counter side, the game encourages you to hog some of the really useful cards. Ambush, a card that allows an instant flip on an enemy unit in melee combat is a prime example. What this means is that rather then being able to have a broad plan and see if come off, you are effectively setting your troops up the best you can and then playing for the moment. Those Ambush cards you have in your hand? Best hang onto them as it looks like my opponent is setting up for something... and since they are now 50% of my hand, guess I wont be doing too much else until one of us actually attempts to go to melee. The player can at times become nothing more then an observer, victim to whatever fate the card deck turns over, playing cards not part of a cunning master plan, but as the appear.
There are other points. Game length is controlled by how many times a card deck is passed through. This means if you are ahead on VP it is in your best interest to burn through the decks as fast as possible and can result in taking actions not because they will do something useful on the game board, but because they burn through a lot of cards. An example? In last night's game, AWB was playing the defender. The attacking side had gained from random events offboard artillery support. In the decks are cards that 'break' offboard support, forcing the owning player to waste cards 'fixing' the support before it can be used. As the defender, AWB decided it was better to not play a card to break the attacking artillery for the reason that while being shelled was clearly a risk, to bring down an attack the owning player was going to be required to play or turn over a minimum of 10 cards.
Card burn kids. The quicker the decks are worked through the quicker the game ends and the quicker the defender gets his shot at winning. Ever so slightly gamey...
Still, the game IS very popular. Inspect the GMT upcoming releases and dare yourself not to find another expansion set on the list. And by what metric are we to judge games anyway? People, flaws or no flaws, enjoy buying, owning and playing Combat Commander, so even if AWB would prefer to game something else, it does show a lot of people are having good fun.
Which, when you think about it, is all really matters.

Super Mutant Masacre - Fallout in 15mm

After having the grand idea to play some Fallout as a miniature game, AWB FINALLY managed to live the dream last Friday by putting on a small game in 15mm for the Butchers of the Bell Curve gaming group.

System was Tomorrow's War, which was the reason AWB purchased these rules in the first place, and figures from GZG. The game had a raiding party of nine Super Mutants vs a Science type team from one of the Vaults numbering in at eleven. Inspiration was mainly from Fallout:3 for, as fans of the game probably know, West and East Coast Super Mutants are slightly different.

For those playing along at home, the Super Mutants were classed as D8 quality and morale with one Super Mutant Brute as leader which was morale D10. The Brute was classed as 'Hard to Kill' as per the Tomorrow's War rules and the rank and file were given 'Tricky to Kill', a variation to this rule where a D4 is rolled as the saving dice instead of the normal D6. There was a two mutant weapons team with a minigun (+1D support weapon) that was also classed as Intimidating, all others had stand weapons and none had armour.

The humans had a two man 'Science Team' armed with pistols, a 'Security' team of four figures in armour (1D), a 'hero' (D10 quality/morale and armour, Designated Marksman skill) and a four figure squad of 'Hangers On' armed with SMG/Shotguns. All except the 'hero' were D8 quality/morale and the side's Confidence was rated as Poor based on the rational ground that their mission was rather risky for little 'real' reward.

The humans were tasked with retrieving as much 'science' (read VP) as they could from a small shack they had found in the middle of the wasteland without getting killed and the Super Mutants had the more straight forward task of wiping out the PUNY HUMANS!!!! Hence the humans got no VP for killing Super Mutants, while our favourite big yellow skinned idiots had no interest in the 'science'. Both sides therefore could obtain victory here...

Although (spoilers), the Super Mutants ended up getting butchered.

The humans were gone for all money at one stage. The 'Security' team was being forced back, the 'hero' had been last seen collapsing under a hail of minigun fire and what's more, a Molerat had just popped up randomly to be annoying.

Then, having also randomly found enough loot to increase the 'Security' teams supply level for the rest of the game (which under the rules gives that team a very useful +1 dice to roll when firing), the luck swung back, the Super Mutants were falling like Bloatflies and by turn seven the humans were casually finishing off the wounded.

All good fun really and completely justified all the time the last two years spent, on and off, painting figures for this project. Neither of the two players were experienced with the source game and probably missed some of the deliberate references (as well as referring to the Super Mutants as 'Ninja Turtles' for most of the game) which was a mild pity. There was also a few of the 'house rules' that probably need a little more Beta testing. The vault dwellers all had PIPBoys for example, which as players of Fallout:3 and Fallout New Vegas will know, allow use of the VATS system. Sliding VATS into Tomorrow's War without making it a game breaker is still a work in progress. Current version/theory has PIPBoy equipped teams being able to reroll failed reaction tests with the chance to take a VATS shot coming up via the set of home made Fog of War cards. These random event cards also include such 'Fallout' type events as the Mysterious Stranger and the appearance of various non friendly animals.

So, still a bit of tweaking to do with the house rules for this project (as well as a LOT of painting still to finish) but overall a very entertaining Friday night using a reasonable straight forward game engine that provided an amusing dialogue to the night's events.

Good fun, with the only real failure of the night being the complete failure to remember to take any photos.

Civ V - New World Order

There has been a reason while new posts in AWB have been rather thin of late, and some of the better ones involve the latest expansion for Civ V, New World Order.
AWB purchased this add on from Steam a couple of weeks ago and has spent many happy gaming hours exploring new ins and outs of this game franchise.
So what are you getting with this expansion? Lots of toys actually, most of which link into each other in subtle ways and hence are slightly difficult to explain in isolation. In brief, you get new nations with their own unique units and bonus, some new units for all to play with, changes to the culture system, archaeology, trade routes, some different ways to win, social policies/ideologies, two new scenarios and a whole bunch of new Steam Achievements to to unlock.
The new Civs are always fun but we have all seen new Civs before so AWB is not going to dwell too long on them, apart from the Venetians who's quirk is they cannot build settler units. Instead they get a type of 'super merchant' unit that allows them to take over City States. AWB has yet to play this Civ so cannot comment too much further on how this works from the inside point of view, although when playing against the Venetians, having the City State you had been carefully grooming suddenly get taken over under your nose can be just a tad annoying.
Most of the unique units for these new Civs are nothing too exciting. As in Common or Garden Civ V and Gods and Kings these are basically just existing units from the tech tree with a +1 in one of the stats and only the host nation can build them. The interesting new unit in the game is the high tech XCOM infantry. Since Firaxis have the rights to both the Civ and XCOM franchises, this new unit is EXACTLY what it sounds like, right down to the Skyranger animation when the unit deploys. While very tongue in cheek in shamelessly referencing the other game, it is also a high end infantry for late late game at a time when the game normally maxes out combat units way before players finish the tech tree. The only thing Firaxis may have dropped the ball over is not going the full way and having late game barbarian units replaced by alien terror raids as an option.
The two new scenarios are an American Civil War and a 1880s Scramble for Africa. Pretty much what they say on the box and something different for those needing a break from the normal full campaign.
Now, the big changes to the game. Culture, tourism, trade and the world congress.
Culture, if AWB remembers correctly, first came into the Civ universe with Civ III. Back then gaining a culture victory was effectively racking up enough Culture 'VP' until the magic number was passed and the game was won.
Common or Garden Civ V had the system where you gained enough culture to unlock enough of the Policy Track until you were allowed to build the 'Victory McGuffin'. Yes it took time and effort, but exactly what this Victory McGuffin actually was or did was casually handwaved.
In New World Order you still unlock the Policy Track, but now wage a constant background cultural war with the other nations by building Tourism. Have a more impressive Tourism rating compared to a nations base culture and that nation slowly starts wearing your jeans and listening to your pop music. When you have all the active nations under your spell, victory shall be yours.
This makes a more challenging game now as successful tourism must be built up by either creating a nice collection of Great Works from your Great Artist, Writer and Musician units that slowly appear through the game, but also by building enough buildings, both normal and Wonders, to house them all in. Mid game unlocks archaeology which also gives you cultural artifacts to add to your museums, provided you manage to actually build the units and successfully send them out across the globe to steal them.
Some of the Wonders in the game have now been linked into the Policy Track as well, meaning they now need to be unlocked on both the Tech Tree and the Policy Track. So if a player is craving their favourite Wonder for their empire, they now need to plan ahead just a little bit more
There is also a bit of 'suits' with the Great Works/Artifacts, and some buildings have slots to hold more then one idea. Mixing the 'suits' correctly gives bonuses to your Tourism and gives you another thing to consider as you max/min your empire.
Tourism transfer is also effected by just how friendly you are with another nation. At war and no one really wants to open a new McFrancise with you, but declare friendship, open boarders and have a few trade links and the cultural influence flows freely.
This brings us to the new trade units.
The traditional method of trading resources via the diplomacy options still exist. These are new units that world alongside resource trading and for the most part, make you lots of gold. Players may build caravans for land and cargo ships for sea up to a limit based on the Tech Tree. These units start in one of your cities, you are given a menu of foreign cities in range and what sort of profit both sides can expect to gain (yes kids, trade works both ways) and you send them off, where they move automatically across the map for several turns until the trade deal is up for renewal and you get to do it all again.
Gold is the main trade, but also religion and, if there is a difference in tech between the nations, science. Trade with a less advanced nation and they receive a rather useful science bonus as they gain hints of your latest advance from the sailors and caravan drivers. Trading with City States tends to make them love you more, allowing you to collect a nice series of allied states without much hassle, although the World Congress might have something to say about that if you are not careful.
While trading on the surface is a good way to gain more 'good things' out of the game system, the flip side is these ships and caravans move automatically across the map once you let them go, and, just like in the real world, it's a dangerous map out there. Players now have to go to respectable efforts building and maintaining a navy or boarder patrols to keep their trade routes safe. Barbarians will loot them as soon as look at them and computer players once war is declared have no issues hunting them down either. So now, just like in the real world, if you want to be a strong maritime trading nation, you had better be prepared to have a strong navy as well.
Now, to jump back a bit into the Policy Track, once a player has either built their third factory or reached the modern era, they now get to select an Ideology: Freedom, Order or Autocracy. Like the Policy Track, these give you new bonuses that you can unlock via culture points. Unlike the Policy Track, other nations now take an active view on who you are. Computer nations will join a like Ideology in friendship or gradually come to distrust a rival. What becomes more important is that cultural influence via tourism also plays a part. If a rival nation holds a lot of cultural influence over a nation with a rival Ideology, large amounts of unhappiness points are slowly gained. If these become too great there is a danger that the people will rise up and 'tear down this wall', forcing you to change Ideologies. Which would be bad.
The Ideologies are also matched slightly with the different victory conditions. Freedom for example has bonuses for the Science/Spaceship victory while the more anti social Autocracy is better for winning via conquest. Matching your preferred end game to the correct Ideology is hence reasonably important.
Speaking of end games, the Diplomatic Victory has also been changed. Gone in the UN Wonder. In it's place is the World Congress that begins once a nation has discovered all the other players and means that every 'X' turns of the game, the nations get together and vote to annoy each other. Each nation gets a number of votes based on the stage of the game, wonders, City State allies and, with later tech, diplomats. Each congress votes on two issues and they are enforced until such time as you manage to overturn them at the next congress. This is where outcomes such has having trade with City States completely banned can come in, or the complete outlawing of citrus fruit. Since there are always two motions at each Congress and your total votes must be split between the two of them, a bit of juggling is required to ensure you always have a motion you are willing to lose should one be tabled that, if passed, could really screw you over.
Then, just to really make it tricky, if you vote against something one of the other nations had put forward, they end up getting grumpy at you, suddenly deciding that no, open boarders wont be renewed for another 45 turns when you can least afford it.
Survive all this and build enough City State allies, and by the late game there comes the chance to vote for World Leader. Pull this off and Victory is Yours. Get distracted however and it becomes another way to lose.
There is more, of course, but that does rather cover the main features. How complex a game you enjoy is a matter of personal taste, but AWB feels these changes to the Civ V system both tie together very nicely and expand the basic game.
60.8 hours of play time in the last two weeks can't be wrong.

If in doubt, write it down somewhere safe where you can find it later...

Yes, we are talking about forgotten passwords...

Cough...

X-COM - 8 bit pants wetting terror

Real life has been getting in the way of AWB of late, and for 'real life' you may feel free to substitute the term 'Steam Sale' if it will help you relate easier.
AWB lashed out recently can purchased a copy of X-COM UFO Defence (also released as X-COM Enemy Unknown in other parts of the world) recently from Steam. It was $US2.49, took about 39 seconds to download and install and comes pre shipped with a DOS Box for the great ease of all those who are vaguely aware that MS DOS used to exist in the same way most of us are vaguely aware there used to be a time before electricity.
Now, when we say X-COM, we are talking about the original Mircoprose version and not that glossy reboot did the rounds late last year for all the little console kiddies. This is state of the art 1994 and is still sodding hard, additively compelling and bloody scary, all in 8 bit.
For those not family with the back story, the game is set in the near future of 1999 and while the rest of us are out stressing about the Y2K virus and trying to work out where the hottest chicks were going to be come December 31st, the nations of the world were suffering under a serious of mysterious alien attacks. Having decided that us humans were just not going to take this sort of probing laying face down with pants around our ankles, they formed the Extraterrestrial Combat force - X-COM. ET? Your going home in the back of an ambulance.
So this is your role as the player. You have a budget from the good people of the world. You have a starting secret base - probably under a fake volcano for traditions sake - and a crack team of state of the art Interceptors and rapid response ground troops. You are also going to die horribly. The game runs in pausable real time in global mode where you can watch for UFO contacts in between managing your base for research and production, but once you catch your UFO, it is time to send in the troops to shoot everything that moves and loot the wreckage.
This bit is sodding hard. Combat is turn based tactical. You start in the back of your Skyranger transport with your first task of deploying your squad down the ramp. On a good day that is relatively simple. On a bad day you can lose three troopers before you even get to the top of the ramp. The aliens are better then you. Their guns are better, the AI is cunning, and without a careful and systematic approach you will find plasma bolts from unseen enemy carving into your squaddies and killing them with one shot.
That is just on the first mission.
Gradually you research new techs, both home grown and stolen from the aliens and start to feel your new shiney lazer rifles can take these idiots on... right up to the time you suddenly encounter a new alien type and HOLY SHIT! This one FLYS!
For 8-bits it is surprisingly atmospheric. As you annoy the aliens they start throwing terror raids against you where they blatantly land in a built up area and go full body horror on the locals. There, with the hidden movement of the fog of war, screams of terror are heard as somewhere, unseen in the rest of the city, someone is dying horribly. The terrain, unlike newer releases with their fancy pants movie quality graphics, is fully destructible. Every single thing on the map can be blown up if you encourage it with enough violence. Since your performance (and hence your monthly budget) is not effected by how much material damage you do during combat, the game allows the perfectly rational and rewarding tactic of sweeping areas for aliens by blowing up each and every building they might be hiding inside.
X-COM, nearly 20 years old. It's hard. It's dummy spit frustrating. It's playing one more mission at 2am when you have work tomorrow.
Good fun.

Rogue Trooper

Recently added to the AWB library has been 'Rogue Trooper - Welcome to Nu-Earth', a novel sized reprint of some of the great 2000AD stories. Words by Gerry Finley-Day, art by originally Dave Gibbons and later also Cam Kennedy and Colin Wilson. About 30 years old most of it and, despite the limitations of the standard 2000AD five page format (which basically means a lot of the stories are variations of 'new Nort war machine, Rogue arrives, Rogue kicks arse, Rogue walks off into the chem clouds'), these stories still stack up very well.
There are some interesting bits to pick up. In later years it was well established that the Rogue Trooper, the last of the Genetic Infantrymen breed to survive on the chemical warzone that is Nu-Earth, is blue skinned. However reading these earlier stories, which of course were published in black and white, there is no mention of his skin tone. Indeed you get plenty of mention of people saying 'Look! A man without a chemsuit!' and none of 'Hey, a blue dude! WTF?'.
G.I.s also, as well as possibly being blue, have their memories backed up on bio-chips. That way, when they die in combat, their experiences can be storied till the time when they can be re-genned into a new body, all shiny, possibly blue and ready to fight again. To store these chips all G.I. equipment has holding slots where the chips can be slotted. Hence Rogue roamed the warzones of Nu-Earth with the electronic souls of his dead buddies mounted in his helmet, backpack and rifle.
Conveniently, and reflecting the 'boys comic' nature of 2000AD at the time, Rogues three buddies are named Helm, Gunner and Bagman and no points for guessing which one goes where. Indeed artist P. J. Holden and writer Gordon Rennie took this idea to it's logical conclusion with their definitely non cannon story about Buttplug, the other Biochip.
Yes, that joke is going EXACTLY where you think it is.
Moral of the story being if you must become a genetically engineered clone killing machine, consider changing your name by deedpoll before your first combat.
However that does make you wonder about just how clever the Milli-Com engineers actually were. When said biochips get fitted to said G.I. equipment, the equipment is enhanced as the biochips gain limited control. Helm can monitor sensors in the helmet, Gunner can auto fire and enhances aiming, Bagman and auto dispense useful (read explosive) items from the backpack.
Yet none of these items can do any of these very combat useful things until a biochip is inserted. Until then they are just another rifle, helmet and backpack that any state of the art future war warrior could be carrying.
That's right, a G.I. is effectively designed for failure.
No wonder most of them got massacred.

Twilight in the East - more moves, more rubbish photos

Mildly long time between posts, all of which are to be blamed on 'real life' getting in the way of gaming and blogging.
AWB returned to Club Dave last Wednesday for another night of Twilight in the East. Again no Second Army player (curse you 'real life') and, due to distractions by the completely farcical circus of the current Australian government, only one turn was completed in the game.
So where are we again?
AWB, as the Germans, is still not completely convinced he isn't about to get his Blog handed to him on a gaming platter. Historically the Germans had disengaged from the Russian 1st Army and were mauling the 2nd Army by this stage. In the game, while it is felt that 1st Army has been more or less stopped and, in a perfect world, would be ripe for a counter offensive, the 2nd Army is gradually getting to a stage where the scattered German units available can't contain it. The Russians are also up a respectable amount of the VP count and the reinforcements from France are still several turns away. True the Germans are, unit for unit, rather better then the Russians and normally come out in front from most combats, but AWB is still not entirely convinced everything isn't about to go completely pear shaped.
So to the photos, again taken very cheap and nastily with the Samsung.

First up First Army. While the front hasn't moved all that much there is movement at the station. Behind the lines 17th Corps is about to be railed south to counter the right shoulder of Russian 2nd Army. This is the Corps that was mauled a few turns ago after being over extended and spent the best part of turn 5 recovering.
Also of note is the Russians trying to force the north and south flanks. While the German centre still contains the largely full strength and rather strong German 1st Corps, being outflanked is NOT a good thing. Expect a German reaction in the very near future.

Meanwhile, in the south some rather critical combats have been taking place. German 20th Corps, in their attempt to backhand the Russians the turn before, managed to rather foolishly pin the 41st Division with it's back to a lake. The Russians moved up the best part of 5 divisions and were unlucky not to force the Germans to have to retreat. What was more lucky for the Germans was being able to force march a brigade around the flank of the Russian 15th Corps to cut communication. Even then, the Russians nearly got away with it, surviving the combat a lot better then expected only to have their nerve break.
While visually we have only a single hex retreat, what we are not seeing is the three CE drops both divisions suffered which is much more significant. Combat Effectiveness (think of it as morale if you like), doesn't so much effect the ability to attack, but more the desire to stay in the line. If this rating drops too low then the division starts to break up.
So why has these combats been critical? Pretty much because had luck been favouring the Russians it may have been 20th Corps that had been smashed wide open. Instead, largely by bad luck, the Russian 15th Corps is very close to breaking.
German phase of turn 6 is next.

Twilight in the East - the slow advance continues

A few real world problems for our game of Twilight in the East these last few weeks. Second Army commander, while claiming repeatedly that he is NOT off scouting forest locations, has been otherwise out of the gaming shed at Club Dave, resulting in one night of non gaming and another of First Army commander bravely agreeing to control the entire Russian side for another.
Again with soddy pictures, let us recap where the game has progressed to at the mid point (Germans to move) of turn five.

First, the First Army front. Main thing to note is that the front has moved westward a respectable amount. As predicted, the Russians ganged up on the over extended German 17th Corps and in a mutually bloody combat, the 17th Corps was forced to withdraw. This made the question the rest of the German forces had been musing over, namely 'fall back or try and delay another turn?' a lot easier to answer and promptly moved off to the west. The Russians, bloodied themselves, have been cautiously following up and, after the massive multiple division combat in turn 4 mentioned earlier, this front has been bloodless for a while.

Experimenting with font colours for the best contrast, we move to the slightly more dynamic Second Army front. In the top right corner we can see the rail line the Russians are gradually trying to get into service to open a second line of supply. With this in mind the entire Russian 6th Corps has been attempting to work over the minor German units defending the land bridges between the lakes and finally got that entire sledge into walnut effect going.
To the left of the picture, on the other rail line of advance, 1st Corps has managed to advance to just off the image after the defending Germans decided to pull back. Also off view is the three German brigades facing off over a river line. Numbers favour the Russians but supply the Germans.
In the middle we see the heroes of earlier turns, German 20th, come down a peg or two. After swatting Russian 1st Division earlier and causing that to retire and regroup, the Germans decided to attempt the same thing against the Russian 2nd. While not a complete farce, sharp eyed readers may notice the white step loss marker with the German stack that wasn't there earlier.
Controlling the Germans in this game, AWB must confess to being slightly dissatisfied. The fallback was always on the cards across the front, so trading the ground has not been an issue. However the few combats made this last turn and a half have been disappointing. TitE, despite being a monster game, has a few bit of almost tactical feel. Putting in a good attack and coming out ahead in the step loss exchange 'feels' important to the overall result. AWB confesses this may not actually be the correct mind set and that maybe instead should be trying to butcher everyone, but the 'feel' is that the Germans did not do well this gaming night.
Germans to move in their part of turn five.
Real life may get in way of gaming again this coming Wednesday and next game night may not be for another week.

Projects - More Fallout game planning

In an attempt to push forward the dream of playing Fallout in 15mm, or maybe just as an excuse to avoid painting, AWB has been making some more cards to use within this project.
This current batch (no photos this time as once you have seen one homemade card printed onto 90gsm you have seen them all), are 'Stuff Cards'. This is an AWB idea that is not from the Tomorrow's War rules and an attempt to add a bit more Fallout type flavour. There are 18 cards (as that is what fits nicely onto a single A4 sheet more then anything else) and the theory is that each player will draw between 1 and 3 at the start of the game based on their sides Supply Level.
Most are things such as Chems that can be used as desired to give temporary bonuses to units while 1 in 6 are dud cards such as Teddy Bear and Mystery Meat (don't eat it, please) that serve no in game purpose. These cards will hopefully reflect on the sort of amounts of semi useful junk the average Fallout universe type character might be found carrying about.

Projects - Fallout as Miniatures - Fog of War cards

As hinted at in an earlier post, AWB has been attempting for months to get around to playing some tabletop 15mm wargaming in the Fallout universe, most probably using the Tomorrow's War game system.
Just to prove that AWB doesn't spend their entire day updating blog posts, here is a cheap and nasty photo to tease and excite you...

... which strangely also refuses to rotate the correct way. Oh well.
So what you can see is some work in progress Vault Dweller types converted with a dab of green stuff for the PipBoy from GZG figures and some home made Fog of War cards.
Tomorrow's War using these cards for random events during their games to add more colour and confusion to the game. Unfortunately the supplied cards are aimed at more your traditional future war experience (ie fire support, nano tech, communications nets) and don't really fit into the Fallout flavour.
Hence, with a little help from CorelDraw and some 45x65mm card sleeves, AWB has created some new ones. Only 18 so far and probably could do with being printed on some thicker paper but a reasonably pleasing effort so far. All that needs to be done now is to actually finish painting and ask the Overseer nicely if we can open the Vault...

Pz.100 vs 82nd Airborne - Now with Pictures!

As mentioned earlier, the Butchers of the Bell Curve group decided to put on a bit of D-Day gaming and on Friday night June 7 of this year gamed the German attacks are Le Fiere against the 82nd Airborne. Hopefully everyone can read the background from the earlier posts and we can get straight onto the actual game report.

First we have the actual game area with a 6x4 table grid shown overlaid...

... and what the table looked like once we had remembered just how quickly a 6x4 table can eat up every terrain piece in the gaming room. Causeway and flooded area to the far end of the table. Pz.100 is shown in their game starting position in the foreground about to enter Le Moley (bravely defended by three stands of chickens). Out of shot to the left is Amfreville which was defended for this game by a small German force. These Germans played no real part in the game and existed just to remind the US player the village was still hostile.
Mid left down the table is a group of trees representing the orchard in which Col Timmes and his force were located and eventually were forced back into. German infantry from 91st Division (1057th Grenadier Regiment?) are on the bottom right of the photo.
Game system is Battlefront (Fire and Fury)
. Ground scale is 1inch = 40 yards, each tank model is 2-3 vehicles and a stand is approx a squad. All US units in this game were classed as VETERAN, Pz.100 as TRAINED, 91st Division units as EXPERIENCED and the rather useless chickens as GREEN.

The battle progressed. Our brave trainee tank crews muscle their way down the road towards Conquigny which is currently defended by a very small force of paras that were historically 12 officers and men and is shown in the game as 2 stands. The trailing R-35 platoon (Old Glory models from memory) are about to be harassed with mortar fire from Col Timmes, probably as a direct result of someone (who shall remain nameless) playing Panzerlied MP3s via their tablet at about the same time. German infantry seen in this photo are the infantry platoons of Pz.100 consisting of more tank crew trainees. The platoon shown in a neat row against the hedgerow bravely spent the rest of the game in that position while the second platoon still on the road managed to advance further up the road for later glory.

Meanwhile, B company 508th decide to cross over to the west side of the river. Historical this company did not seem to be aware the Germans were currently attacking and arrived in some confusion in Conquigny before being forced south of the causeway and eventually back across the flooded area. In game this was represented by rolling an attack, modified down just enough to ensure no one would actually die, and applying the Disordered and Suppressed results. These, together with a bad activation roll for this company next turn resulted in a rather unhappy bunch of paratroopers.
The causeway is actually tree lined on both sides, making the troops a lot less exposed as they appear in the photo. Casualty markers by Peter Pig.

B/508th starts to become engaged with Pz.100. The lead R-35 (Flames of War model) has already blown away the defending group of US officers using the awesome destructive power of the SA.18 37mm gun and about to start working it's way down the column of B company. This vehicle had a great game, eventually finishing with four kills and Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Diamonds. Some nights the dice just love you...
The Peter Pig cavalry stand is representing the commander of the Pz.100 force, not because there is any evidence they owned any horses, but basically because AWB was pleased with the paint job and wanted an excuse to have it on the table.

Nearly at the end of gaming time. The Pz.III (Old Glory) has just been forced to retire down the road after an angry bunch of paras got into the wooded area next to it and threw grenades. Not seen is the increasing pile of dead in front of the lead R-35 who calmly blew away the troops attempting to close with it during the same turn. 91st Division can be seen approaching from the right. In retrospect from a scenario design point of view these troops may have started too far from the action as crossing the numerous hedgerows took most of the game.
To the left the forces of Col Timmes are attempting to work into a position where they can engage the pair of R-35s. The para in the woods just to the left of the road is dead man walking. Next turn it will be made disordered by the deadly fire of the Super R-35 (it had a REALLY good game) before being overrun by some of the trainee crew infantry. A solid barrage of long range bazooka fire would then disorder this vehicle (red marker - troops can rally from this condition under these rules) but by then we had run out of gaming time.
In all a very enjoyable time was had by the three players. It had been easily over a year since Battlefront had been played and there was some rust to shake off and remembering the effective range of some weapons took a while, probably resulting in some overly cautious moves at the start of the game. Positioning of the 91st units, as mentioned, was probably a bit too far away as they managed to do little in the game. As the expectation was that the low quality Pz.100 would be quickly broken and removed from play, AWB (as the scenario designer) took what was assumed to be the weakest unit in order to allow the other players the majority of the game play. Best laid plans of mice and bloggers...
Recreating historical events is also always a tricky balance, especially in a situation such as this where the staggered and unco-ordinated arrival of US units had a major influence on how the battle historically unfolded. Random dice were being used to attempt to have the arrival of US FOO and 57mm AT guns as well as A Company 505th. The support units were simply rolling for each stand hoping to get a suitably high result, where A Company was using a running total where the US player would add 1D10 to his tally each turn until the magic number of 20 was reached. In the game none of these events occurred although the mechanic seemed sound and brought no complaints.
Butchers of the Bell Curve are listing this game as a success and intending to game more WW2 in 15mm in the future.

Normandy Wargaming - Le Fiere - brief post game summary

As mentioned in a previous post, the Butchers of the Bell Curve group met tonight to play some D-Day themed miniature gaming involving the battle around the bridge over the Merderet at Le Fiere.
A more detailed report with pictures will come later but at this stage can be summarised by saying 'Never underestimate the awesome destructive power of the SA-18 37mm gun'.
Some days the dice just love you...

Games in Planning - Le Fiere Bridge - 6 June 1944

The Butchers of the Bell Curve group were originally planning to do an actual 6th June game, but since this worked out to be a Thursday, this gaming night was pushed back to the 7th.

AWB have not been slack and in the answer to 'what do you want to do?' it was decided to attempt to do something semi historical and the attack by everyone's Cotentin Peninsula armoured unit, Panzer Ersatz und Ausbildungs Abteilung 100 on the 82nd Airborne at Le Fiere.

Couple of main sources for this battle, first the web page that got AWB interested in this battle about five years ago, HERE which is a VERY detailed investigation into EXACTLY what vehicles were used in the battle and also has some very inspiring location photos, and second, from The Airborne Assault chapter of 'Utah Beach to Cherbourg' HERE which gives the US side of the battle with some very nice maps.

For those not able to follow the links, the US paras dropped both sides of the Merderet River and by and large formed up on the prominent rail embankment during the dawn. They then moved forward to cross the Merderet at La Fiere and secure the bridgehead as part of their overall objectives.

This stage went well, the 82nd drove off the scattered German defenders, said 'That was easy' and, following their pre-drop orders, most of the forces involved promptly marched off towards their other objectives safe in the knowledge that SOMEONE must have assigned a unit to stay behind and defend.

Well... yes... we can see where this story is going can't we?

About an hour later, a major German counter attack supported by Pz.100 came in and retook the west bank, isolating many US units west of the river and causing about 4 days of headaches before they were able to drive the Germans out again.

The intended game AWB is planning to put on will pick up from the start of the German counter attack. System of choice will be Battlefront which will be most likely played pretty straight with no special rule changes.

Forces are a bit of a guess. On the US side all three parachute regiments were pretty intermixed and while our source (see 2nd link above) does give us a fair bit to go on, the units involved at this stage are still a little TBA (read - AWB hasn't finished taking detailed notes yet...).

Germans are a much bigger guess. We know that Pz.100 was involved in the attack and (thanks to the first link) we know how many tanks they left behind. How many actually attacked is a bit of another guess. The bulk of the forces we can assume are 91st Infantry but breaking it down to a greater level of identification has proved a bit trickier so far.

The other condition is that regardless of how many forces were actually involved, in order to keep the game actually playable and finishable in the one night, forces will be restricted to 2-3 companies plus support each. This is probably not that far from the historical reality and also should make the game very manageable under the rules selected.

Photos and more details in a few days...

Twilight in the East - Now with pictures

After a week delay due to 'real life' getting in the way, Club Dave was able to continue playing 1914:Twilight in the East with the Tannenberg scenario. This time our brave AWB reporter managed to bring along the awesome might of the Pentax... and promptly screw up all the photos which will have to go down as, quote, 'Not my best work.'
Anyway, to recap, gaming had finished half way through turn 2 with the Germans to move. Let's have a brief look at the front before we begin.

Here on the Second Army front things are developing slowly. The Second Army has only just activated under the scenario rules and not really advanced to any great extent as yet. Of note is the large railway less areas on the Russian side of the boarder and rubbish looking terrain they are being forced to advance and trace supply through. On the German side the 20th Corps looks both powerful and lonely.
North of the army boundary we see the German 3rd Reserve division starting to get monstered. There is no way this unit can stand up to a Russian corps and is soon to withdraw, first to the NW and then onto the fortress under the dark brown objective marker in the lakes area.

A lot more fighting in this area as the Russian 1st Army engages the bulk of the German 8th. Mostly minor results so far with the exception of the Russian 27th division has just been roughly handled by the German 1st Corps and forced to retire.
The game is one of limited intel and stacks are not allowed to be examined. What this means is the white edges of the loss markers can't clearly be read in these picture nor can the 'players eyes only' off map tracks that show the divisions Combat Effectiveness ratings (morale if you like). If we could see the CE track we would note that Russian 27th was forced to drop two CE levels (drop four and you are really in big trouble) which is probably a much more significant lose then the steps or hex retreats.
The Russians at this stage were forced to advance before many of their divisions were fully mobilised, so many of the divisions have already started with a significant amount of hits. Also under scenario rules, the sub standard commander of the Russian Cav Corps has movement restrictions in play, meaning the massive mounted advantage is a lot harder to bring into play then would first appear.

Here we come to the end of the night, which means the Germans have had two full moves plus one reaction (half move) and the Russians one with two reactions as well as six rounds of combat being fought.
(Game turn is A moves, B react moves, A attacks if allowed, B attacks if allowed, swap sides. Attacking is voluntary but can result in what side A hoped was a local attack rapidly escalating.)
Russian 6th Corps has been making heavy weather of forcing the gap between the lakes in the top right of the picture. The Germans have managed to reinforce the original small blocking force but the Russians managed to, at 9:1 odds, to find the extremes of the bell curve during the first assault and are hence rather annoyed not to have cleared that rather useful rail line as yet.
Meanwhile in the middle the Russian 1st Division has just been roughly handled. It had mildly over extended it's advance during the Russian movement phase and the nearby German 20th Corps moved forward to engage it. The first German attack was relatively minor but the second prepared (as part of a players movement (not reaction) they may spend MPs to place 'prepared attack' markers which give column shifts and prevent the enemy from retiring during reaction movement) worked them over, caused significant step losses plus CE drops and a retreat. The Germans, slightly smugly, have taken no loses.
The problems for the Germans here is there are rather a lot of Russians. The Russians are next to move and the only real restriction is the rubbish rail/supply network. Reinforcements dragged from the France are not due for a long time so what the German player (AWB in this game) sees is what he has to play with.

Meanwhile, with the 1st Army we have red font to both hopefully provide better contrast and also reflect the massive mutual thumping that has been going on.
The southern German flank was found a bit hanging and is starting to fold back. Also of note is the formation of level 1 trenches in the German line. The game has four levels of trenches and at this stage of the war, armies are restricted to levels one and two. They are a mixed blessing as the games artillery factors allow for heavy and high angle weapons. Attack with both of them (which most first line divisions come with as standard) and you get to cancel out the column shifts the trenches normally offer. They do however offer some useful DRM for CE checks as well as a minor chance on the CRT to cancel a forced retreat.
There has been some mauling happening on this front. The Russian 20th Corps that at one stage was on the northern flank has come off worse and forced back with some painful combat loses to go with their non mobilised units. They are currently under that largish Russian stack.
The German 1st Corps (red corps marker, top division under the northern most trench with other division directly south) have been handling the combat reasonably well. The 17th Corps however has mildly over extended. Combat pushed back the Russian flank and, in order to put pressure on the Russian 25th division, advanced.
There the combined strength of three Russian divisions struck a counter and the advance now seems a 'bad idea.' Remember the next move is Russian so another assault against the exposed Germans is probably expected.
In the south the 3rd Res has fallen back onto the fortress and feels reasonably safe about being able to block the Russian corps facing it.
As the Germans it is difficult to decide if it time to smile or not. Strengths are 7 divisions to 9 with the German divisions typically being slightly stronger. The Russians have probably had 4 divisions here bloodied to the German 1 and if the Germans remain here then 1st Army are going to find it hard to continue to advance.
However, as mentioned before, until the reinforcements from France arrive, this is it for the Germans and Russian Second Army isn't just going to sit still and smile.
This is a rather good game and one that AWB is mildly annoyed has taken so long to play face to face. Combat and the positioning becomes surprisingly tactical. Withdrawing is worthwhile. Feinting forward is worthwhile. Pressuring a flank is worthwhile, and all are also risky. The combat system has a massive bell curve. A good looking attack can produce no satisfaction while a risky one can suddenly force enemy to retire with loses.
Most enjoyable.

Plan 1919 and J.F.C. Fuller

Considering AWB's mildly unhealthy obsession with armoured vehicles it comes as a mild surprise to discover AWB has never actually had a detailed look at the famous 'Plan 1919' for massed armoured offensives.
For those also not up on their background reading, a nice link can be found HERE
As can be seen, no level of epic epicness has been held back by Mr Fuller in this plan and, contrary to what AWB used to think, this is not a suggestion for new tactics, but a grand war winning masterstroke of a plan all in one go. For those not able to read the link here is a brief summary:
- Find about 5000 tanks
- Select a 90 mile section of front and 'by the inducement of visible preparations' invite four or five German armies to set up in this area.
- Without warning, unleash fleets of a tank type yet to be invented that will drive top speed some 20miles into the rear areas to disrupt the various German HQs whilst bombing anything that moves with the airforce.
- Then, once confusion has set in, have the rest of the Allied armies, with massive tank support, attack over a 50 mile front.
- Advance 20miles a day for seven days.
- Crush enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women
- Win war
- Receive Knighthood
Pretty straightforward really, why didn't people think of that in September 1914?
Ignoring for a fact just how a barbarian like Conan actually managed to get a word like lamentation into his casual day to day vocabulary, why have very few people ever sat back and considered that Fuller was ever so slightly barking mad?
Let's have a quick look at some of the more important points here shall we?
First up, this plan calls for some 5000 tanks. As these are just the numbers envisioned for combat, you can probably assume the staff doing the more detailed planning would probably request a tad more to allow for training as well as replacements to maintain the tempo of a seven day advance. Let us say an extra 10% for want of a number to give us 5500.
Now to give us a bit of an idea, British tank production during the entire war was roughly 150 MkIs, 50 MkIIs, 50 MkIIIs, 1220 MkIVs, 400 MkVs, 1 MkVII and 200 Medium A 'Whippets', or about 2100 or so. Now while Plan 1919 was considered to be an Allied offensive and some of the production was to be shared by the French and Americans, that is still a mildly large amount of tanks to be built in the 12 months between when Fuller wrote his first proposal to the time when one assumes the attacks were going to go in.
Okay, a production problem. No doubt the wheels of industry can provide so let us move on.
Next, a 90 mile section of front. To give a sense of scale the BEF sector of the front in 1918 before the August offensives was about 50 miles, so when one talks about a 90 mile section of the Western Front, they are effectively saying 'most of it'.
Not in itself that stupid a sense of scale, but needs to be taken in context with the claims that Fuller is the father of 'Blitzkrieg'. Now in Fuller's defence, 'Blitzkrieg' is such a vaguely defined concept that some historians dispute it even existed as a stand alone tactic, but in general (vague) terms it is accepted to involve punching deep into the enemies rear areas with mechanised forces on a narrow front using speed and firepower... not advancing with your entire army in a 90 mile wide mass.
Anyway, Fuller is aiming big as you don't get to hear lamentations by aiming small. What is interesting is the casual assumption that the Germans will politely agree to form up on their side of the field, an, one assumes, then do nothing while these 5000 medium and heavy tanks set up.
Now before we get too far ahead, we need to have a basic look at just what was a 'trench line' at this stage of the war.
This is a slightly tricky subject as each major nation had a different style of digging in that of course evolved as the war went on. In general terms in about 1916 the German lines were relatively shallow but densely held. The down side to this is this placed large amounts of troops on the front where they ran the realistic risk of being grown down and destroyed by massed artillery. German defensive tactics (again generalising) evolved to having less troops in the front and having more available to counter attack. As a result the positions started becoming very deep. As in 9 or so miles deep.
They weren't constant wall to wall pill boxes and endless barbed wire and during the 100 Days Allied troops discovered that once you were in the defensive belt, there was actually a reasonable amount of room to tactically move around and British cavalry, despite expectations, managed to use their mobility to get out of the way of anything that had too much firepower and were surprisingly successful.
Which brings us nicely to another point. If equipped with a fast reliable tank like the planned Medium D (the new design that was going to do the surprise breakthroughs) then an armoured force could possibly be rather effective rampaging round inside this defensive belt, IF such a tank existed.
Hard truth was it didn't in 1918. It didn't in 1919 despite the best hopes of designers and truth be told, probably didn't really exist in 1939 either. Fuller's plan envisioned these Mediums driving flat out for about 2 hours to cover the 20 miles or so to trash the German HQs and mechanically, even before we allow for the fact people might be shooting at them as well, tanks could not do that in this period.
Remember these Mediums in the HQ hunting parties were to do so without warning, which we assume involves no pre bombardment and only the airforces for support. One assumes that Fuller was working on the idea that their speed would just allow them to run straight over the front line and be deep into the rear before anyone noticed.
Maybe just SLIGHTLY optimistic.
Remember this is a plan put forward in 1918 for next years offensive. Also remember there would be fighting, probably with tanks, in the remainder of the year and both sides were going to learn from this. Also remember stage 2 of the master plan involves encouraging the Germans to commit to this area of the front.
Is it not logical to assume the Germans may start constructing anti tank defenses as part of their overall defensive belt? Fuller allows no infantry in these HQ Hunter groups so if the Germans started to evolve their tactics into creating mini 'tank proof' fortresses in the towns and villages (and fighting in November 1917 implies that is exactly what they would do) then Fuller's Mediums might be in trouble.
Another interesting logic point is that Fuller, in describing the destruction his HQ Hunters and air support are going to be doing, specifically requests communications are to be spared. Once the chaos starts he wants the reports to be transmitted freely up and down the front for morale reasons. However since his plan is to remove the HQs, one does mildly wonder just who is going to be actually passing on all these messages of panic.
Once this has happened and the brains of the German armies have been removed (Fuller allows 5 Mediums for each German Divisional HQ and 20 for Corps and Army level HQs), the rest of the Allied armies were to attack across the 90 mile front in four separate thrusts each about 10 to 12 mile wide with the aim of cutting out the 10 mile or so chucks of German front between these four thrusts that is now completely out of command, unable to react and ready to collapse. Fuller mentions pinning them if required with artillery, which is never a completely foolish tactic, assuming you have enough artillery to go around after making all these new tanks of course which is a point we will get back to in closing.
Arms other then tanks are not we regarded by Fuller. 'Infantry on their feet will be next to useless,' and will need their own mechanical transport, which although it is not mentioned, may mean armoured personal carriers. Just add them to the 5500 tanks we need then shall we? Their role is basically to make sure the rear and new captured areas stay rear and captured while the Mediums advance off into the east watching their enemies driven before them.
Cavalry is described as useful, but only for the first few days as after that all their mounts will be dead. Spoken like a true tank man really as the results during the 100 Days proved this wrong and in many cases the horses were delayed by being attached to the slower moving armour. However since having a friendly unit perform much better then expected is always a good thing we will skip over the further horse based discussion and go straight to aircraft.
Aircraft in Fuller's brave new battlefield are cast in the role of replacement cavalry. They, as well as maintaining air superiority one assumes although it is not mentioned, will zip between the armoured units, transferring messages and commanders, scouting around providing close tactical fire support for the armour and bring supplies. While supplying from the air was used during WW1, the scale of supplying entire armoured thrusts, as opposed to dropping fresh machine gun ammo to advanced infantry units, does start to excite the imagination. Given the relatively small useful payload of your average period biplane, it is probably safe to say that to provide useful fuel, ammo and water (those radiators aren't going to top up themselves) for a single tank would require 4 to 5 aircraft. Now since the total HQ Hunters group, which would be the units most likely needing air resupply, includes some 790 tanks, even allowing for flying multiple sorties a day you are going to be needing about 2000 aircraft JUST to supply these tanks. If we are expected to supply the other 880 heavy tanks in the first assault wave then does that mean another 2000 supply aircraft? Plus another 2000 to supply the 880 heavy tanks in the second assault wave? Fuller asks for 90 battalions of tanks but wants aircraft to run messages between the unit commanders. Even at one aircraft per battalion that is another 90 planes and that is before the pure fighters and tactical bombers and the ones that are doing the deep recon, the contact patrols and spotting for the guns. True, the RAF apparently according to Wikipedia had some 20,000 aircraft when is was formed from the RFC and the RNAS. However, as the RFC is listed as 150 squadrons and the RNAS 17 (21?) and each of these squadrons was not 100 aircraft strong, it is probably safe to say that 'aircraft owned' compared to 'aircraft in operational service' were two completely different things and the 170 or so squadron RAF was unlikely to have been big enough to support this 1919 in the way intended without a significant upgrade.
Which sort of brings us nicely to the main argument that Fuller was just a tad loopy in his grand dream. Just exactly HOW much resources are we needing here?
That is some 5000 plus tanks, enough artillery to achieve sufficient density over a 90 mile front and maybe 7500 aircraft. That is a lot of stuff. So either your plan is completely unrealistic as the Allied industries would never be able to support that sort of rapid growth, or, if they could, then effectively any remotely conservative attack plan with that sort of massive material support is going to be successful anyway. Even if one was to lose half the assaulting tank force each day from combat and breakdowns (a not unrealistic assumption given the vehicles of the day), on day 4 you are still attacking with more armour then Cambrai.
Fuller, in short, was a dreamer and a dreamer with broad generalisations. He assumed his 1919 tanks would be magnificent new machines of impressive performance. He claimed motorised supply could operate without roads or rail. He wrote off the other service arms and assumed defensive tactics and weapons would not develop to counter his babies. Unfortunately for him very little of that ended up being true.
History has been kind to him over his 1919 plans. Actually considering how chummy he was with the British Union of Fascists between the wars it might be said that history has been kind to him over a few other things as well. He is claimed to be a visionary who lead the stuffy horse and musket era oldies into the 20th century, yet the concept of raiding deep into the enemies rear areas and forcing them to retreat or otherwise react without actually bringing them to battle is nothing new. He compares his ideas for HQ Hunting (which, just to clarify, is a AWB's term, not his) are heavily compared to shooting a man in the head instead of slowly giving him cuts. An interesting visual if one ignores they fact that unlike a man, an army can continue to thrash around violently after a bullet between the eyes as well as, if given time, having the ability of growing a new head. Considering Fuller intended full RAF support for his Mediums it may have been a better metaphor to have the bombers throw sand in the eyes and kept the Mediums for the more useful task of throwing their arms around the man's legs and pulling him to the ground.
Fuller was also one of the prime supporters for the all tank army. Visionary yes and looking ahead from the available tech into what could be happening in the future.
Pity then he was actually wrong and pure anything formations end up being significantly weaker then a combined arms group.
He was wrong as well on how the other arms could continue to advance on the then current battlefield. Tanks were used during the August offensives that gave the 'Black Day' of the German Army, but those numbers soon plunged as mechanical support was unable to keep up with damage and breakdown. It was the older service arms that did the bulk of the advancing in the 100 Days and it was the 100 Days that ended up convincing the Germans there was no coming back. Plan 1919 was never tested because the largely non tank armies Fuller believed were unable to advance had forced victory in 1918. Had the Germans held on through the winter it is extremely unlikely production of the Allies could have filled Fuller's Christmas wish list and while the renewed spring offensives in 1919 would have involved tanks, the simply logistical realities involved would have probably meant the grand plan owed more to the lessons of Amiens then the dreams of Fuller.

TV - Defiance = Fallout Lite?

AWB has been watching a bit of Defiance lately.
For those not in the know, Defiance is a SciFi tv show as shown on the cable channel Syfy and developed by Rockne S. O'Bannon, a man who lists the wonderful FarScape on his CV.
The premise is simple.
Alien arc fleet arrives and is embarrassed to discover Earth actually has a population.
Oops.
Tensions rise.
War breaks out.
Terraforming engines run out of control.
Peace stumbles along.
Cats and Dogs living together.
As you do.
The other gimmick is that the TV show is apparently linked in with the MMORPG of the same name where apparently actions in the game can effect story lines in the TV show. Ooooo!
AWB must confess to a LARGE amount of cynicism about this claim and seriously doubts a multi million dollar TV show will ever let itself be dictated in any way shape or form by a bunch of suicide gankers running around teabagging Noobs.
(Although, as a post modern piece of metafiction, a TV show deliberately set inside a MMORPG world may be amusing, especially if they make a few of the characters Korean based Gold Miners who are just in it for real world cash...)
So, AWB has watched a few episodes and to be honest, isn't really all that impressed. The feel here is that the show wants to be Fallout. Both have societies rebuilding between bouts of tribal factional fighting with mixtures of homemade, pre war and bleeding edge advantaged tech. The Bioman the show's lead hero fights in the pilot was so similar visually to a Super Mutant Nightkin, right down to the self mutilation scarring/serial number across it's chest that AWB was actually majorly disappointed when it didn't start arguing with itself and fire up a Stealth Boy.
Unfortunately that is about as far as it goes and there are not blue/yellow numbered jumpsuits or two headed battle cattle. There are also no aliens.
Okay there 'technically' are aliens, but they are either dialog less background dressing or latex headed humans with different hair. The major one are effectively what you would get if you ever decided to dip a goth in a hell of a lot of really strong bleach, and the others are rangas with latex nose bridges and funky contact lenses. There is also a semi cyborg race doctor character who you half expect to suddenly come out and rant "Dammit Jim, I'm an Alien, not a Caricature!" which frankly would make the character a lot more original and interesting.
Visuals aside, they are all humans, even down to the sweet little romantic sub plot between the son of the lead NegaGoth and daughter of the human mine boss.
Let's step back for a moment and muse on just how 'strange' that is. If, in the non sci fi 'real world', one was to hook up say with a sheep... well... we think we all know where that joke is going. However, at least it could be said that both humans and sheep are at least both mammals from the SAME planet. Love may conquer all, but most Xenobiologists agree that it does very little to ensure you and your new life partner from another planet have interconnecting dangly bits or even that you blood isn't mutually toxic.
On the plus side to this issue, at least the show is Syfy and not HBO or not only would we be seeing a lot of alien love, but a screenful of Alien Space Boobies each week as well.
In summary this show has clearly aimed high, and credit for trying that as the investment to set up a complete alien based SciFi show cannot be cheap. It is also a show that wants to be taken seriously. This is perhaps the biggest disappointment as to AWB at least the show has failed to make orbit. It is filled with humans with funny hair and voices instead of real aliens and mildly predicable plots (so far at least) that could be lifted and transferred in and out of just about any other TV show. Strangely, or maybe most disappointingly, O'Bannon's previous show, FarScape, a show that almost listed batshitcrazy as it's mission statement (as well as a ship, a living ship...) managed to provide us with aliens that we believed were aliens. FarScape gave us a plant as a main character FFS!
Defiance, however, just really comes across as a bit bland.

TV - The Boffin, The Builder and The 3pdr Muzzle Loading Smoothbore

With Dr Who FINALLY redeeming itself for the year after a string of frankly pretty bland offerings, AWB sits down again on a Sunday night to watch more liberties being taken with history in the name of light entertainment.
This ep of The Boffin The Builder and The Bombardier, which is apparently ep6 for those trying to follow the semi random screening order they seem to be shown in, has proved a slightly tricky one for AWB to review. On the plus side, the show finally shows some wargame figures, thereby completely vindicating AWB's decision to follow this little show for the last 8 weeks. A table full of 25s are used about mid point through the screening to give the new viewers a bit of an idea of what was actually happening in the battle they were describing, although points must be deducted as AWB is a firm believer that wargaming figures look silly with a gloss varnish.
More points are lost because the ep basically revolves around an obscure little period of European history at the start of the 19th Century that frankly is poorly documented, not very popular and of little interest to anyone. Napoleon? Never heard of him.
Okay, AWB concedes that some people MAY have heard of Napoleon, but would rather study tanks. That is the AWB mission statement and AWB will be sticking to it.
So, frantically googling to brush up on the background details, we push on with the review.
Basically our gang have got themselves a 3pdr of some sort to play with and are going to use the 1807 Battle of Friedland as an excuse to shoot it. Friedland, to paraphrase, was a battle between Russia and France that the French won and forced the Treaties of Tilsit and ended the War of the Fourth Coalition. The premise for the show was that Senarmont, then a corps artillery commander, established the principles of modern artillery by concentrating fire on a single target.
Now, as confessed before, AWB is not a shining depository of Napoleonic knowledge but some of the assumptions made here do seem very generalised and mildly misleading. A better informed description of what Senarmont did during this battle can probably be found HERE and since anything AWB is about to say was discovered from that website anyway, let us just give credit where due and direct people to the link.
What does seem to have been skipped over is the stage of the battle at which Senarmont did his party trick. The battle involved the Russians crossing over the river in order to try and smash an isolated French force and ending up being dragged into a major battle as the rest of the French army arrived. Towards evening the Russians were forced back into a constricted space with their backs to the river and it was then when Senarmont advanced his batteries and fired into the massed targets. Of minor detail not mentioned on TBCubed was the fact that Senarmont didn't do this alone, but had a battalion of infantry and four regiments of dragoons to cover him and from the accounts read by AWB, the Russians were unable or unwilling to actively counter the move forward. This sort of implies to AWB that the true conclusion to be made is not that massed firepower is a great idea (which AWB doesn't necessarily disagree with) but that aggressive use of artillery was possible or perhaps more importantly, aggressive use of a combined arms battle group was a very good and effective idea.
TBCubed rounded off the ep by showing in simple terms what happens if you break and attempt to run in the face of cavalry by having Will (the buttmonkey character) be chased across the paddock by a suitably dressed horsewoman with a big sword. (Spoiler - if you run, you die...). What did grate a bit for AWB was the casual way mounted troops were described as 'opportunists' of the battlefield and thereby reducing the reputation of an entire arm into some sort of casuals who rather then being able to dictate decisions on the battlefield, merely reacted to them.
Also rising a brief eyebrow was the attempt to explain the concept of Fog of War, a situation not actually done badly at all by our Boffin presenter, but by the war the phrase actually seems to have come full circle. Credited by most (or at least by AWB) to be a term invented by von Clausewitz to describe the literal fog produced on the battlefield by massed blackpowder weapons that reduced visibility and increased confusion, the term is so well understood by the current generation of computer/console gamers to mean limited intelligence that our Boffin had to explain that the fog of war was in this period literal in a strange case of the origin of the word coming full circle. Well, AWB was amused by it at least...
So, how much do we enjoy this episode?
Big points for showing how a muzzle loaded smooth bore cannon was operated and what a canister blast was like, points for showing the dangers of trying to run in the face of mounted troops and double plus points for the wargaming figures, but again, minus points for the massive generalisations that keep getting made that seem, to AWB at least, like they could have easily been tightened up without losing the attention of the intended audience.
Oh and massive points loss for the ABC for still not having a remotely useful supporting website.

Art vs Art

Being out for a while but only just starting to come to the attention of the English speaking world, but in April a group of flash mobbers did a live reenactment of Rembrandt's 'The Company of captain Frans Banning Cocq and lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch preparing to march out', or as most people know it, 'Night Watch'.
In a vain attempt to link this to wargaming, AWB would like to point out that as it was painted in 1642, Night Watch gives us a good reference to FoG-R army from Book 1, 'Later Eighty Years War Dutch.'
Anyway, the video can be viewed on YouTube HERE
This entire performance was funded by the firm IMG to promote the reopening of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam where the painting is displayed, which can give us an idea not only what the Dutch regard as art, but also what the private sector consider good value for artistic money.
As a comparison, if you wish to see what the Australian public sector regard as good value for $330,000 of taxpayer's money, you can have a look HERE
In a vain attempt to link SkyWhale, to well, anything, this Eldritch Horror will cost you 1d10/1d100 sanity when first seen, and, in a bonus attack vs Australians that cannot be saved or blocked, it will inflict a growing sense of despair concerning the national capital.

Tannenberg - Finally playing Twilight in the East

After some false starts, the Wednesday night group down at Club Dave have finally managed to get some serious counter pushing and actually start the Battle of Tannenberg scen in the GMT Games monster, '1914: Twilight in the East'.
As hard core blog fans may recall, some weeks ago an attempt was made to play this game using the training type scenario to blood the newer players. Unfortunately, real life got in the way somewhat, and Scen 1 was canned, cleared and Tannenberg was setup and started. This scen, as the name suggests, is the Russian First and Second Armies advancing into Germany at the start of the war only to be seriously mauled by the German Eight. It is a one map scenario, uses about a third of the counters and runs for about a third of the total game turns. In short, it is probably about a ninth of the total experience of the Grand Campaign(tm).
To recap briefly, the Twilight in the East system uses a turn sequence of A Moves, B React Moves, A Attacks, B Attacks, Swap sides. Reaction moves are at half movement points and the other big advantage is that during the 'A Moves' phase that player can spend MPs for units in position to declare a 'Prepared Attack'.
These 'black attacks' (as the markers placed are black compared to the white 'normal' attack markers) have the three advantages of a column shift in combat, VP to the attack (as at this time in the war everyone loved a brave attacker and engaging the enemy was the standing order of the month) and perhaps more importantly, it locks the target units into the combat.
This last bit is more important then it sounds. Remember the sequence is A Moves, B Reacts, so if B isn't ready to fight they may shuffle back. Alternatively if they are ready to fight they may bring up their friends as after A declares and resolves all attacks, B gets to do the same thing with anything still adjacent.
What this means in the game is a surprisingly interesting shuffling and feinting as the opposing armies approach each other. Unit scale for the most part is the division and for both sides the Army was typically eight or so infantry divisions plus some cavalry divisions. The Russians were not fully ready to advance at this stage and so are faced with the trade off between getting their supply train in order and getting stuck into the Germans while they are still somewhat spread out.
The other interesting thing that may differ for most boardgamers is the style of the combat system. The units are divisions and under the time scale, did not normally get smashed within the period of a game turn. Hence each unit has several steps, with most divisions having about 10. They also each have an off map tracking chart for their 'Combat Effectiveness' (think 'morale'). What this means is most divisions can go head to head for several turns until the unlucky one collapses, and when they do finally collapse, it isn't pretty for the owner. Judging just when to pull back to recover before this collapse happens is clearly designed to be part of the game and show all indication as to being tricky to master.
The group managed to get one and a half turns completely during the gaming night which included a full set up and minor counter sorting, a 'are we ready yet? Right, what happens now?' last minute rule re-check and a partial reset and remove after it was suddenly realised the Russians could and should have moved their army level supply depots during their first move.
Based on this play speed AWB predicts about 4 weeks of solid gaming to finish this scenario.

Other People's Publications - Medieval Wafare magazine

In a previous post, AWB happily poked fun and implied errors in a bit of free to air TV and in doing so managed to write a review that takes longer to read then the show takes to watch.
However in all honesty, and you readers do not really know how hard it is for AWB to actually confess this, the knowledge of the Medieval Period for AWB has to be at best 'passing.'
This in no way detracts from the interest in the period and AWB would like to name drop a few publications that may be of interest.
First is Medieval Warfare, a bi-monthly magazine published by Karwansaray Publishers in the Netherlands.
They have a website, http://www.karwansaraypublishers.com, also publish an 'Ancient Warfare' and a 'Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy' magazine and AWB picked his copy up over the counter for $A14 from his trusty local gaming shop.
The tone is more that of the scholarly historian and hence may be a heavy going for the casual fan but their production standards are very high and they include some very impressive painted art work of medieval types beating the snot out of each other.
Not attempting to be seen as shamelessly promoting what is after all a commercial venture, but AWB believes these magazines are not as well known as they could be and probably well worth a look for any serious historical gamers.
Second, and getting back to the previous post about Trebuchets, we have 'A History of the Early Medieval Siege c.450-1200' by Gareth Williams. Now AWB does not own this book and interest only comes from the review published in the magazine mentioned above. Indeed having re-read the review post publishing the most recent TV review, AWB may be forced to confess that some of the generalisations made in that post were, ummm, wrong, but hopefully those errors will soon be buried, forgotten and denied.
Again, sight unseen by this blog, but given the recent siege themes, a book that may be of interest.
Of completely unrelated interest, it should be known that the spell checking function of 'blogger.com', a software system designed so Mister and Misses Public can create and publish their own blogs easily, does not actually recognise the word 'blog'. Go figure.

TV - Boffins under Siege - The Trebuchet

Another Sunday and another night of light entertainment on TV as AWB current favourite free to air programming came and went. All good fun, unlike that rubbish Neil Gaiman wrote via twitter just before.
Curiously the ABC lists this ep as number 7 and last weeks (the Spencer Rifle) is listed as 8. No real idea what happened to number 6. Minor problems I am sure but if you are trying to follow at home good luck to you.
This week (or last weeks depending on numbering system) our three heroes from The Boffin The Builder and The Bombardier go all medieval on us and discuss the premier pre gunpowder siege weapon, the Trebuchet. The good news here is that like last week (or next week if you prefer) the trio don't try too hard by making bold statements they can't actually prove. The framework of the programme was that the Trebuchet evolved during the so called 'Dark Ages' and the so called much more clever Romans never used them. So, ignoring the slip that the 'Dark Ages' were actually before the 'Medieval' period where the Trebuchet was actually used, the question was raised as to was this actually an effective and well designed weapon or just a hack job a mere shadow of what the Romans could have built.
Having clearly blown their budget on all those 303 rifles, the team fail to build us a full scale behemoth and instead drag out what seems to be a commercial of the shelf working model about one metre high. Jokes aside that is fair enough, they clearly do have a budget to work within but one does have to wonder why they have 'The Builder' on the programme when he often doesn't actually seem to build anything. More on the 'characters' later.
They then fling some oranges and a toy cow at a small cardboard castle before blowing it up. As you do.
Conclusions, it was a very effective weapon that could do exactly what was said on the box.
Problems really are with the casual history. No weapon exists in a vacuum, and one of the reasons why there was an evolutionary break in the development of siege weapons from Roman to Medieval times was that for a great hunk of history people stopped building decent fortifications. It is often forgotten that it was the Normans that brought castles to the British Isles and those were the much smaller Motte and Bailey style and even then, most of the first ones were made of wood. Catapults in the Roman sense were largely forgotten because most defencive works could be more easily taken using a bunch of big hairy men with some homemade ladders. The other point of interest with the historical period was that there was no real 'Engineering Class' of skilled siege specialists passing down their skills from master to apprentice. Siege, while common, was more often a case of camping outside and hoping they surrendered before your own troops got bored and attempting to knock down the walls was actually relatively uncommon. The skills to make siege equipment it seems were no so much magically unlocked like a computer game tech tree, as rediscovered and forgotten time and time again over hundreds of years and it is most likely that the people knocking down the walls with siege engines were the same skilled master craftsman who had used their knowledge of levers, pulleys and woodwork to build the great walls in the first place.
Still, a lot of history to compress into 10 minutes so let us start to muse on the shows format instead.
This ep re-introduced the character of 'Big Mama', a woman 'in her prime' who has been used before to explain to these three overgrown boys the hard physics of their problems. One guesses that this character was introduced to play up on the 'men and sheds' social stereotype where no matter how many tools a man has, he is still just a big boy trying to impress his mates and only a woman really knows how to talk sense.
Which might actually be fine if this character actually got to talk some sense.
We are given a brief 'physics' lesson on how the Big T actually works by said Big Mama, and unfortunately most of what she says is crock. A Trebuchet is effectively a long arm rotating around a pivot. Now rotational velocity is the same at both ends and, if AWB remembers correctly from Uni days, is measured in radians per second. However, the further you move away from the centre of rotation, the faster the tangential velocity and in practical terms for us in this situation, the faster our big rock is flung. Of course the Trebuchet is also a balance lever. To get one end to go down, allowing for the mechanical advantage of the lever arm, it must be heavier then the other. So Trebuchet design is in reality a compromise between size of the counter balance, length of the arms, how far they are actually hoping to throw and how big they are prepared to build the thing in the first place. Having some mother figure sprout out some dross about ratios doesn't make it otherwise and is a small step away from technobabble.
This brings us back to actual dynamic of our trio within the show. Unlike say 'Mythbusters' where the hosts are effectively being themselves and just goofing it up, TBCubed are playing classic cliched roles. Why they have chosen to do this is open to ponder. A careful pausing of the credits has finally confirmed to AWB that the head writer is also the man playing 'The Boffin' and hence is must be assumed that he (John Concannon) does actually know a respectable amount of his history. However, instead of playing himself in a sort of Adam and Jamie Mythbusters dynamic, he instead takes the role of the bully. Tony, 'The Bombardier' is the thug enforcer character and Will 'The Builder' (who as we have pointed out earlier, often doesn't build anything) gets the role of the butt monkey the crueler pair keep around as their play thing. If 'Big Mama' is seen as the school teacher bringing the schoolboys back in line then the entire show develops a disturbing parallel to the worse of most people's schooling years.
Hmmm... Still an entertaining 10 minutes of TV that AWB has been enjoying the viewing of, and all attempts at making TV of military history must really be supported, but it does have the fault of being just a tad silly.