A Quick Update

While I've been telling myself that I should be putting up more blog posts, so far 2015 has not produced much. While I didn’t post updates in February, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing any hobby related stuff. Here is a quick update on what I’ve been doing since my last post.

First up, I’ve been working on the terrain for the “Raid on St Nazaire”game that Kevin and I are going to run at Enfilade. Kevin has been working on the British ships and some terrain, while I’ve been working on terrain and Germans ships.

Here are a couple photos of the buildings and warehouses I’ve been painting up. The buildings will form the majority of the old town of St Nazaire and the warehouses will be placed near the old harbor entrance and the Normandie drydock.

Buildings for St Nazaire Old Town

Warehouses

All of the buildings are from Skywave 1/600 kits. We will probably need to scratchbuild a few more buildings and the bridges, but overall the terrain is coming together nicely.

I’ve also been thinking more about the modern submarine game. Based my previous success with Shapeways models, I decided to order a 1/700 scale Chinese Type 092 Xia class ballistic missile submarine from the Kokoda Trail Models shop. Unlike the previous order, this was the common White Strong & Flexible material and the final model feels a little grainy. Overall, I think it will paint up well and look good.

The starboard 3/4 view of the Type 092 Xia SSBN

Port side view

And it should fit in nicely with the Chinese Type 091 Han and the Kilo subs I already have.

Type 091 Han SSN (top) and a Kilo class SS (bottom)

The Kokoda Trail Models shop has several other 1/700 scale submarines that I’m thinking about too. Addtionally, it has several 1/700 scale after-market parts for warships, including sails for American Guppy submarines. One of my on-and-off side projects has been to make 1/700 scale models of American submarines, but no one makes any Guppy subs in that scale. So I ordered one of the sails and I’m going to try to add it to a modified Hobby Boss Balao class sub. The sails only come in Frosted Ultra Detail material, so the cost of one sail was almost as much as the whole Xia SSBN. But the smoother material should fit right in with the plastic kit. If it looks good once it is painted up, I will probably look into getting the other two sails so that I can show all the basic Guppy looks.

Sail for USS Cubera

I also took a little time to play a couple boardgames. On President’s Day (in February) Dave C. and I had a chance to play the Nightfigher boardgame. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the game, it is a tactical level game about nightfighters during World War II. It is a little different in that it is semi-blind game where one player acts as an umpire and controls the bombers, while the other is the nightfighter and only “sees” what the umpire places on his map. The game plays really quick (only about 30 – 45 minutes per scenario) and we played several games in a few hours. We liked it enough that we are planning on starting a campaign (rules included in the game) and will play by email using VASSAL.

Cover of the Nightfighter game

I also had a chance to play September’s Eagles with Kevin and Casey. I talked about this game in my last post and I’ve been looking forward to trying out. While the game could use a summary sheet to remind us of some of the rules, once we got into the flow of the race it moved along nicely. Casey was the winner for the game we played and we all agreed we want to try it again.

The Gee Bee Z, Wedell Williams, and Laird Super Solution lead the pack around the first pylon.

With the update out of the way, it is back to working on the St Nazaire project.

Hail 2015 and Farewell 2014

I’m a little late (okay more than a little) in doing a 2014 review and 2015 preview, which seems to be normal for me, but here is a quick look back and forward.

At the beginning of 2014 I was still in rehabilitation mode from my shoulder surgery, but in my initial 2014 post I laid out four projects for the year.

1) Work on some moderns 1/700 scale ships. I’m going to call this one a success, since I completed the Chinese Navy Type 056 corvette from Shapeways and several Taiwanese Kuang Hua VI missile boats from PT Dockyard. I used all the ships in one of my Enfilade games.

One successful project

2) I wanted to get back to my 15mm Age of Sail stuff. This was a failure as I didn’t do any work on these items.

3) Complete the planes for a Vietnam Air Rescue scenario. This was a definite success. I finished all the planes and a helicopter and ran the scenario at Enfilade using the AirWar C21 rules. I was pretty happy with the game,

MiGs and Phantoms mixing up at Enfilade

4) My fourth item wasn’t a gaming project goal. I wanted to get 30 posts up on this blog for 2014. My posts are typically pretty lengthy and I thought I could do a better job of breaking them up into shorter (and more) topics. Looking at the archive tally, it appears I only did 19 posts, which is not 30 and means a failure on this goal. Although, I think I sort of forgot about this goal sometime during the year.

So, it looks like a 50% pass rate for 2014. Not great, but not terrible. While recapping 2014, I’ll mention some games that I picked up at the end of the year as late Christmas presents for myself.

First up is Legion of Honor from Clash of Arms games. In the game you start out as a sergeant or sous-lieutenant at the start of the French Revolution and you try gain fame and fortune through 1815. The game has a lot of history and some role-playing elements. It can handle up to 6 players, but also has rules for a solitaire game.

Next is September’s Eagles from High Flying Dice Games (HFD). HFD Games is mostly a desktop publishing game company, but September’s Eagles one of their professional line games. This game covers Thompson Trophy air racing in the 1930s. The game is for up to four players (no real solitaire option) and I’m looking forward to trying it out, but will have to wait until I can get some people together. I also picked up a couple other HFD games – Gauntlet (which covers Operation Pedestal) and A Bold Fight (which covers the Battle of Mobile Bay). 

Looking forward, here are my plans for 2015.
1) Run the St Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot) game at Enfilade 2015. Kevin and I have been talking about this for several years and finally decided that we just need to do it. Kevin has completed the British ships for this project, I’ve got an order into PT Dockyard for some German ships, and we’ve been getting together the terrain. It will be a big project, but I think we can get it done. Stay tuned for more on this.

2) Paint up some Japanese opponents for my 28mm Bolt Action Aussies. I completed my Australian figures in the last half of 2013, but never did up the Japanese opposition. This year I want to remedy that.

3) Work on rules and miniatures for modern submarine game. I’ve been kicking around some ideas in my head ever since several plastic model companies put out some 1/700 scale modern submarine kits. The question has always been how to do the hidden elements of submarine warfare while putting miniatures on the table. I’d like to have a working prototype to test out during one of the early sessions at Enfilade 2015.

A couple submarine models I've collected that would be good in a game.

4) Get back to my 15mm Age of Sail project. This has been sitting around for far too long. Bases on the previous items on the list, I probably won’t get to this until the later part of the year (certainly after Enfilade).

I’m also sure there will be other odds and ends that will draw my attention throughout the year. Including putting together some armies for the Lion Rampant rules. I had a chance to play these rules last year and really liked them. So this could be a fallback project for later in the year.

So, there is the plan. Will it really work out? Probably not, but at least there is a plan. 

DANG 2014 - Cogs of War

The DANG (Dave’s Annual Naval Game) 2014 game was Cogs of War: The Hundred Years War at Sea. While sounds big, the mini-campaign really only covered actions in the English Channel in the summer of 1340. Historically, the French had spent the last two years conducting raids on English cities and disrupting trade. At the end of the previous fighting season the English had repelled the French raids and stabilized the situation. This set the stage for a new set of battles in 1340 and would lead to the decisive Battle of Sluys. Our game would see if the English could recreate a historical win.

Image of the Battle of Sluys from britishbattles.com

Everyone began arriving at my place around 9:00 AM and we spent the next hour catching up on things, talking about the projects we are all working on and planning, and munching on some breakfast snacks.

After a short review of all the rules (we used David Manley's unpublished Medieval naval rules, which include fleet level rules, tactical rules, and the campaign rules), we split up sides for the game, with Scott, Dale, Mark and George playing the French and David S., Kevin, Arthur, and Dave C. playing the English. Each side then took some time to review the positions of their fleets and plan out their strategy. The campaign could be a maximum of 30 turns, with each turn representing approximately 3 days, and we would start rolling at turn 25 to see if the game ended early. With everything ready to go, I set up the campaign map and scoreboard.

Here is a better view of the map

Both sides started off by sending raiding forces across the channel. The English also caught a French force at Le Crotoy, but the French we able to win the initiative and avoid battle.

French ships from the first non-battle

Raiding continued for the next couple of turns, with the English scoring more points than the French, and almost catching the small French force (once again the English could not win the initiative to force a battle).

English ships unable to catch the French

On turn four the French moved a large force to combine with the smaller one that had been avoiding the English and charged to attack. Once again, the English failed to win the initiative and were forced into battle against the larger French force.

English setting up their ships

We set up the battle, but before starting the tactical battle we took a break for some food.

Potato boats

As you can see, we had some appropriately themed potato boat snacks. To paraphrase a famous naval quote: "We have met the enemy and they were delicious." There was some talk about using the potato boats for gaming, but we decided to eat them instead. Although that would bring a new meaning to the term “Food Fight.”

After the break it was on to the battle. The English had one crippled stand (from a semi-successful raid) and were hoping to do a little damage to the French and then break-off the battle. The French were just hoping the English wouldn’t just run away. The French set up to try to catch the English right, with a force of galleys leading the charge.

French forces on the move

French galleys closing in

The English sent a couple medium cogs were sent to take on the galleys and were able to cripple one with missile fire.

Cogs sent to take on the galleys

But the galleys were still able to close with the cogs and sink one. Note the missing cog below.

Galleys take out one cog

Over on the other side of the battle, the English decided to abandon their crippled cog to fate, hoping it would slow down the oncoming French.

Crippled cog being left behind

But there wasn’t really much it could do by itself and it was quickly dispatched.

The crippled cog being run down

Back on the right, a French squadron of small cogs was closing on the main English squadron and King Edward ordered a couple medium cogs to take them on. One of the French galleys moved to help out the small cogs, while the other two galleys attacked another cog.

Maneuvers on the right

A real scrum was developing on the right, which threatened to hold up the English line and allow them to be caught by the main French squadron.

Scrum on the right

A slightly different view

Luckily for the English, they were able to dispatch the galleys to clear the way, while the two medium cogs fought a rear-guard action against the French small cogs. The French were able to sink both medium cogs while the rest of the English fleet escaped. At the end of the battle, the English had lost four medium cogs and one small cogs (the cripple from the start of the battle), while the French losses were three galleys. At the end of the battle the scoreboard looked like this.

Score is pretty close

At this point both sides seemed to take a new look at their strategy for the game. The English thought their best strategy would be to expand their raiding (since that’s where most of the points were). The French were also thinking about more raiding, but still felt they needed to do something to drive off the English. Both sides were moving into better raiding positions when disaster struck the French.

On turn seven a Storm random event hit the French fleet that was raiding the English coast causing the sinking of a large cog and the crippling of five medium and one small cogs. This was a major blow to the fleet. This was followed up on the next turn by a Widespread Storms random event that hit all the fleets in the game. Once again the French suffered a number of crippled and sunk ships, while the English only had a couple crippled ships. The storms also disrupted movement, preventing the French from getting to good raiding areas, while the English were already in good places to raid.

On turn ten a Becalmed random event disrupted movement, again hurting French efforts to launch raids.

By this time the English had been very successfully raiding the French coast and were running away in victory points, so the French players decided it was time to concede the game. The final score was 52 to 19, for a big win for the English and the storms of 1340.

Final Score (not so close)

Overall I thought it was a fun and interesting campaign. I think everyone enjoyed the game, although the French players certainly had a ‘what is going to happen to us next’ look about them at the end.

I need to look at rules on the battle setups again to see if I did something wrong there and there were a few suggestions about the raiding rules, but overall we liked how the games played out. The game could have gone either way until the weather intervened and disrupted the French plans.

DANG 2014 participants (L to R) me, Scott, Dave C, Kevin, Arthur, Dave S (seated), Mark, Dale and George

DANG 2014 Preparations

I've been (slowly) getting everything together for the DANG (Dave's Annual Naval Game) Cogs of War game.


Because I'm borrowing the my friend Kevin's scratch-built ships for the game, there really wasn't much to do for figure preparation. However, I always like to do a little something and Kevin was a little short of galleys for the game, so I decided to scratch-build some galleys for the game.

I wanted to have them blend in with Kevin's ships, so I got a couple photos of Kevin's ships for measurements. I built mine in a similar technique to Kevin, using basswood as the main construction material. However, but I built them with a lanteen rig instead of the sqyare rig Kevin used. I didn't take any 'in-progress' photos (I thought about it, but I didn't really use any special building methods, so I didn't think construction photos would be very interesting), but here are a couple photos of the completed ships.

Finished Galleys

At all angles

The other change I made was to use cardstock for the rear canopy and for the oar banks. I wanted to give the impression of lots of oars, but I didn't want to cut individual wires for them. I thought I would try a different method by cutting the cardstock with a sort of fringe pattern. After cutting and gluing to the hulls, it looked okay. But I wasn't sure how the oar banks would turn out one I applied some paint (this was really a big experiment). As you can see from the photos (click on them to enlarge them), everything looks okay. Although the photos make the oar banks look a little more red than real life (probably something to do with the lighting I used when taking the photos). The galleys and oar banks are nothing spectacular, but it does give the impression of a lot of oars (similar to how a lot of cast models look). So I'm going to count it as a success.

Now I've just got to finish the paperwork for the game (maps and order of battle information). Then the final shopping for victuals and set up the house for the game. The campaign is set to run on December 27 and it should be an interesting game. I don't think too many of the attendees know a lot about fighting with cogs (well that sort of goes for me too), but, as always, I'm still expecting a fun and interesting game. 

2014 NHMGS Game Day at the Musuem of Flight Recap

NHMGS held our annual game day at the Museum of Flight on November 2. This year’s game day sort of snuck up on me. I’m usually more involved with organizing the event, but other commitments kept me from doing much besides showing up.

This year the game day was back in the museum’s main gallery, but the event day was moved from Saturday to Sunday. We set up our information table and four gaming tables around the Blackbird. I spent the most of the day at the information table, but took time to grab some photos of the games.

The overhead view of this year's setup. you can see three of the gaming tables and the information table from here.

This view has the fourth table

The morning session had a Wings of Glory WWI game, a Check Your 6 Jets early Vietnam War game and a multi-player Lion Rampant game, and an All Quiet on the Martian Front game.

The Wings of Glory game had a German observation balloon as the central focus

And lots of players interested in attacking or defending it

The All Quiet on the Martian Front game had some nice Martian tripods

Some interesting Earth vehicles

And everyone seemed to like it.

MiGs jump a flight of F-105s in the Check Your 6 Jets game

There was a good turnout for the Lion Rampant game

Although some troops had to fight bad dice all day.

In the afternoon there was a Star Wars X-Wing Fighter game, a second Lion Rampant game, and a late-1800s France vs. Austro-Hungary naval game using the Fire When Ready rules.

The X-Wing Fighter game had lots of ships in a small area

The French and Austro-Hungarians ready for battle

Fleets closing for action

The afternoon Lion Rampant game

Being a Sunday, there were fewer people at the museum, but those that did stop by had lots of questions. Most that had questions wanted to know where they could get rules and figures. We even talked a few into trying out some games (Wings of Glory was very popular). I need to remember to come up with some better hand-outs for where people can get more information and maybe some free, easy-play rules to hand out.

The game day is always a good opportunity to show off the hobby to the general public and the museum is a really great forum for it.

This year we also shared the area with the radio-control airplane hobbyist. They had some really nice stuff and I took a couple minutes to look through their display and snap a few photos.

A nice radio-controlled 'Ike' racer

And an equally nice F-86 Sabre

Book Review – British and Commonwealth Warship Camouflage of WWII: Destroyers, Frigates, Sloops, Escorts, Minesweepers, Submarines, Coastal Forces and Auxiliaries

 [Full Disclosure: I was involved in proof-reading this book, so my opinions might be a little biased.]

This is the first volume covering British and Commonwealth warship camouflage during World War 2 (the second volume is expected to cover battleships and carriers, with cruisers filling up the third volume). This book covers all the different classes of destroyers, frigates, sloops, corvettes, and other escorts, along with submarines, auxiliaries and coastal force craft. There are over 700 color illustrations in the book showing the different camouflage patterns (official and unofficial) used in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Pacific. You can tell that a lot of research went into the book, since many of the camouflage schemes are hard to find in other sources. Additionally, the ship descriptions provide information about weapons and electronics on ships, including changes during the war.

Overall, I think that British and Commonwealth Warship Camouflage of WWII is a great reference book. It provides great information in one volume, so if you want to know what colors to use while painting small ships from the Royal Navy and other Commonwealth navies, then this is the book for you. The descriptions of weapons and radars will also be helpful for modelers, making it a valuable resource.

For gamers, this book is all about how to paint your ships. This might sound limiting, but it really isn't. There is a lot of information in this one book and, if you are a World War 2 naval gamer, it will really help you decide the best way to paint up your fleets.

While it is really interesting to read the descriptions and look at the paint schemes, this book does make me realize that I’m going to have to repaint some of my coastal forces ships. Apparently they used a lot more green and blue colors and less grey than I originally thought. It will mean some extra work for me, but that will make for some more colorful games.