Pacific Theatre of Operations WW II 1/72 Japanese

Dave wants to play some WW II PTO games with the USMC vs Japs in 1/72 scale (same as his North Africa games) so I volunteered to supply some Japanese forces as I still have from the 1970's three boxes of Airfix Japanese infantry and a Chi Ha tank!

So I tested my painting with a few infantry and please note I don't like these old flexible Airfix figures as paint never stays on them!

We'll also need some Jap ATG's, HMG's and Artillery but I don't have any of this stuff and I'm on a budget so I figure I could build some diorama bases to represent them!

Anyway here is a sample of a Japanese ATG without actually having one or a crew supported by some infantry in thick jungle...

....of course in game terms if we want to represent an ATG in a non-emplaced situation we'll just have to note it!

The mini diorama is made on a low budget with twigs, styrene sheet, a coat hanger and some basing bits!

The basic wooden bunker built with twigs...

the coat hanger gun barrel added...

...and the barrel even swivels!

The completed  thing...

Now I need to build a second one of these, 2 HMG emplacements and a dug in artillery gun!

If we need anymore Jap tanks I hope someone else will front up as my budget is now focused on 6mm Napoleonics, 10mm ACW and 28mm WW II!

Chain of Command - Second Trial Game

Well take two of Chain of Command! This time we tried the Patrol Scenario with 1940 Brits and Germans. We put a one and a half hour time limit on the test so we'd have time for a coffee and discussion on the rules.

Lt Bruce urging the Mortar Team boys on!

The British (Jock Column Copley) OOB included the Early Platoon with a base morale of 9 and were supported with an extra Section, a Sniper Team and a Mk VI tank. The Germans (Gruppe Neudegg) OOB featured a First Wave Platoon with a base morale of 8 and it had an ATR Team support.

Both sides used 4 markers in the Patrol Phase and the Jump Off Points looked to be slightly in favour of the Brits in the end.

With their higher morale the Brits kicked of and deployed a Senior Leader, a couple of Sections and their Mortar Team quickly, they tried to secure the central building ruins occupying two out of the three but they were only a stones throw from the last one when play turned over to the the Germans. The British scored a double 6 on their very first Command Dice roll which helped their advance, this was the only double 6 we got for the night!

Sergeant Smith's Section secure the ruins closest to the German's JOP hampering their deployment they can be seen cowering behind a nearby fence!

Corporal George's section fall just short of the crucial third set of ruins, this was telling giving the Germans the chance to occupy it!

The Germans initial roll was good allowing them to deploy two Sections and their Mortar Team, they we able to cover their left flank and occupy part of the ruined hamlet.

The Jerries turn the last unoccupied ruin into a veritable fortress with a full strength Section, Corporal George's riflemen look distinctly 'out on a limb' behind a couple of shrubs!

At this point Corporal Spencer's Section deployed and tried to turn the German's left. However the crafty German commander deployed his last section in this area and a poor movement/fire roll by Spencer's Bren Team left their Rifle Team in the lurch. Three out of four riflemen in that Team were mown down by the Germans and the last private fled with multiple shock!

Disaster for Spencer's Section the riflemen did their bit and reached the hedge behind the Germans but the Bren crew, requiring anything but 1 on their movement die roll of course got a 1 so were not able reach the hedge to give the rest of their Section any covering fire for a turn!

The Germans fan out and hose the isolated British riflemen

With their right hook stymied and the Mortar Team working furiously trying to cover the forward infantry with smoke to cover them from withering Spandau fire the British played their trump card the MK VI tank!

The mighty Mk VI trundles into action...

Combined fire from the Mk VI and Smith's Section killed the German flank Section's Junior Leader and forced them to retire out of the British LOS. Actually Sergeant Smith's men did the job, the Mk VI with eight dice hitting on 5 and 6's failed to get a single hit!!!

The leaderless German left Section fall back into cover, their JOP is now beyond the German front line!

The Germans used their CoC Dice at this point and their ATR Team 'ambushed' the Mk VI, they hit it forcing it to retire with shock they then scurried back into cover (this is the sort of thing you expect from dastardly Germans!).

At this point we called the game so we had time to review how we went. As it stood either side could have eventually won.

The tabletop when we stopped play, the Germans are to the left and the Brits to the right...

It was an entertaining evening, the CoC rules give players many command challenges and the only issue we encountered was working out some of the spotting rules (welcome Mr Google!). These rules reward coordinating Sections and Teams so gave us a real feel of fire and movement tactics. We also determined Close Combat should not be employed unless against a weak and highly shocked opponent! The only place we 'blew it' with the rules on the night was regarding leader casualties, we just killed two Junior Leaders when hit instead of going to the casualty table (as it was one a side it balanced out haha!). We will go for a full game next time we use CoC as we are confident with it now and hopefully that will be soon as my 1940 French Platoon and support are coming together nicely!

X-Wing - A Daring Escape

Daggs Starlifter watched nervously as the senator’s shuttle lumbered away from the battle. The Corellian vessel was as tough as they get, but slow as a three-legged nerf and couldn’t defend itself against a tad-moth. A single snub fighter to protect Her Ladyship was never going to be enough, but Daggs was all that was left after the Empire ambushed the senator’s corvette. Slipping unnoticed away from the battlefield's wreckage seems like a slim hope, but it was better than none at all.

A warning light started blinking on the long range scanner and the astromech decoded it as two Tie fighters approaching dead on. Powering up the X-Wing’s S-Foils, Daggs accelerated to attack speed and radioed the pilot of the shuttle to stay as close as possible and undertake evasive manoeuvres. This was going to be a tough fight.

Monday night’s game saw a single X-Wing defend a heavily shielded shuttle carrying Senator Camilla against two Tie fighters. For the Rebels to win, the shuttle had to exit the opposite side of the table. The Empire must not let the senator escape alive.

We played two games and swapped the role of the Rebels for the second game. Game one saw Al playing the rebels and Dave and Pete each took a Tie fighter. Charging at full speed towards their quarry, the Ties quickly closed to within range, deciding to try and take out the X-Wing first. Jinking to the left, the X-Wing took a burst of fire to its starboard side but the shields held and no damage was done. The shuttle powered on steadily into the midst of the approaching fighters, relying on its shields to buy it enough breathing space to escape.

It wasn’t long before the Tie pilots realised that the X-Wing was a tough beast and wasn’t going to go down quickly so they turned their attention to the shuttle. Shot after shot hit the ship, gradually whittling down its shields. But the X-Wing was hammering at the attackers as well to try to keep them at bay. With limited mobility and a lumbering gait the shuttle inched close to safety until just before it reached its objective – with all of its shields gone and its hull almost breached, the X-Wing scored a direct hit on one of the Ties and the shuttle was home free.

A narrow victory for the Rebels.

Game two saw much the same result with Dave as the Rebel pilot, but this time the Empire decided to focus all of their attacks on the shuttle and ignore the X-Wing. This meant that the X-Wing could manoeuvre without any real regard to drawing fire from the Ties, but the close quarters of the combat meant that ships were bumping into each other.

A second victory for the Rebels, with less damage done to the shuttle, but both Ties intact at the end of the game.

Fun for all, with lots of cheesy sound effects and some truly dreadful puns.

Modified Trafalgar Rules

TRAFALGAR MODIFIED RULES

MOVING ·         Move Inertia 2cm straight Forward (unless in irons) ·         Must move full allowance determined by sail setting (or altered by luffing or tacking) ·         May not move into the wind unless tacking or "luffing" ·         Luffing reduces movement as desired. ·         Turns as allowed on roster sheet and turn templates ·         Reaching add 1/3 move distance ·         Beating lose 1/3 move distance

TACKING ·         Must be beating close hauled at start of turn ·         move inertia ·         turn into wind by pivoting around centre point next turn ·         Place on opposite tack or original tack ·         end movement Command check required only if under fire or masts have been damaged. If you fail a command check to tack, ship is left luffing or in irons at discretion of opponent. Not permitted to tack on successive turns Command Check: 2D6+Command>10 to pass

MOVING OUT OF IRONS/LUFFING Pointing directly into the wind Command Check Required unless tacking Nominate tack to come to and turn ship on the spot to that tack If Command Check Failed, luff or in irons at opponents discretion Luffing is pointing anywhere into the wind except being in irons

COLLISIONS ·         moving ship may choose to collide, must pass a command check ·         target ship may choose to avoid by passing a command check, but only if sail worthy, move logically to avoid collision. ·         Collision is hull against base edge ·         Collision needed for boarding to take place ·         Collision with own ship if unavoidable

FIRING (4+ to HIT) ·         You may fire one broadside to both sides each player turn ·         Firing arc is straight out, perpendicular to ship's side ·          width = ships gun deck ·         "Fire as she bears" You may elect to fire the broadside at any time in your turn ·         There is no penalty for "Firing as She Bears" ·         6 is a critical hit, roll on Critical table ·         Randomise high hits to relevant masts		MODIFIERS (4+ to HIT) ·         +1 < 10cm short range ·         -1 > 20cm long range, no criticals ·         -1 firing high SAVES (4+) ·         -1 bow raked ·         -2 stern raked, +1 critical roll ·         carronades -1, +1 critical roll ·         +1 4th Rate and higher Vs Light ·         note modifiers on data cards RANGES ·         Carronade 10cm ·         Heavy and Light 30cm
Roll d6	LOW Criticals		HIGH Criticals
1	Normal damage		Normal damage and -1 crew
2	Normal damage, -1 crew		D3 relevant mast damage and -1 crew
3	Rudder hit, no turns until repaired on 4+		D3 damage to relevant mast  -1 crew
4	D3 damage, -1 crew		D3 damage to relevant mast, -1 crew
5	D3 damage, -D3 crew, below waterline save		D3 damage to relevant mast, -D3 crew
6	D6 damage, -D3 crew, below waterline hit		D6 damage to relevant mast, -D3 crew

BOARDING (need a collision) ·         Boarder rolls 2d6 + 1 (for the boarding crew and crew get crossed off) ·         Ship being boarded rolls 2d6 + half crew remaining (as the repellers) ·         loser crosses off 1 crew as killed

·         Boarding continues next turn, boarder can elect to keep sending men (1) across if able until defender strikes. ·         If the vessel being boarded wins, they are able to counter board next turn (or not) ·         Cannon fire from both ships is halved during boardings

Design Notes:

We liked lots about GW Trafalgar. Those roster sheets with convenient firepower stats, damage tables, the simplistic mechanic of hit and save, lots of dice being rolled, raking effects and so on. But there was a lot not to like. We wanted more than some comic simulation, we wanted a bit more reality. This is what we came up with. 

Time and Distance Scale

We figure that Trafalgar is based on a turn time of about 90-120 seconds. This is the reload time for the cannon, which can fire every turn. It also corresponds to the movement distance, 14cm to scale for a first rate being 183 yards in real life, which, in 90 seconds, represents a speed of 3.66 knots at 1:1200 scale. Not too bad an approximation. The IgoUGo  turn sequence complicates this a bit and makes ships pack more firepower than they really had, since the turns are presumed to overlap.

Sailing Template

The sailing template is modified so that ships cannot now outperform 12m yachts. Or, in fact, any sailing craft ever designed. A significant bone of contention. Even sailing 60 degrees into the wind is very optimistic.

0 to 60 degrees either side of the wind is “luffing” or “in irons”, ships can only point into this zone if they wish to luff, change tack or involuntarily be caught “in irons”. Luffing is executed to reduce speed, and means walking the line between beating and being too close to the wind. It is a voluntary maneouvre.

60 to 90 degrees either side of the wind is beating. You must be beating to windward in order to initiate a tack.

90 to 150 degrees either side of the wind is reaching.

150 to 180 degrees is running.

You might like to modify these arcs slightly for different rates of ships, making it worse for higher rated ships (80 degrees is the closest a first rate could sail to the wind, if that, from my research).

We used old CD protector blanks to make templates, from the days when CDs and DVDs could be bought in packs and had one on the top of the stack.

Tacking

Tacking was a well practised and common maneouvre. It didn't result in damage to masts and rigging 10/36 of the time (a command check for a 6^th rate or higher captain, worse odds if you were in a more nimble ship). You only take a command check if under fire or with damaged rigging.

The Trafalgar tacking maneouvre was woeful. You move “normally” into the wind after taking a command check and executing a sharp turn. It could, therefore, execute its full remaining distance allocation almost directly into the wind and simply tack out of this position the next turn. Huge advantage to be able to move upwind in this fashion. Add to that the beating angle was around 15 degrees, wth ? The whole essence of this game is to treasure the weather gauge. Not to turn 74s into speedboats.

So, replace that with the simple maneouvre shown in the above rules, essentially this represents losing all way off the ship, turning through the wind in a whole turn and end up facing on the opposite tack with way on. This takes two turns, which, according to the time scale, is 3-4 minutes, which is somewhat under that reckoned for a frigate (5 minutes) but at least in the ball park.

Firing

This is a problem for any IGOUGO play sequence. It is ludicrous to imagine two ships, on parallel courses, travelling at the same speed, where ships alternately overtake each other and fire with a penalty as they pass.

To resolve this we adopted the fire as you bear rule without penalty.You may fire at any point in the movement phase without penalty as she bears. Essentially, you do not wait until the end of the turn to initiate firing unless you want to. This method permits ships alongside each other, firing at the start of a players turn as one ship moves away and then at the end of the next players turn where they move alongside each other again. 

The firing arc is changed as well. With the fire as you bear rule modification, it is simpler to use a straight out arc of fire. You will get shots off without having to position your ship at the end of the turn. Thank Sam Mustafa for that simplification, taken from Lasalle.

If you are really keen, you might like to adopt a superiority gunfire rate. Brit ships fire every turn they are able, everyone else fires two out of three turns.  Or worse.

 Hits Table

Modified as above. Removing the comic effect ship on fire or explosion results.

The roster cards have been rewritten to account for progressive damage. As each shaded box is crossed off, remove one of the specified crew, guns or rigging.

Weather Rolls

The Trafalgar rules writers have obviously never been to sea or contemplated that the weather does not change significantly in the space of a minute or two. Sure the rules only give a 1/6 chance of this happening, but that could result in significant sailing condition changes. Considering a game turn is about 90 seconds long, these odds mean the wind changes, possibly significantly, on average every 9 minutes. More if you are good at rolling ones. You could, also, on a roll of 1-6-1/2 and a subsequent roll of 1-6-5/6 go from becalmed to a gale. Unlikely odds wise, improbable in real life. Trafalgar Authors, go home, you are drunk.

We simply don't use wind or weather changes for our short games. If you must, I suggest a mechanism for a possible change after 6 turns, varying the wind strength and direction by a Beaufort scale or a point. Up to you. 

Tacking in light winds is also a problem, anything less than 10knots and tacking is probably not possible for the square rigged ships we are dealing with.

Collisions

We gave the option to a ship to avoid a collision by sailing away. This might not be possible, so apply some logic. If you allow half movement for the ship to avoid a collision it represents the half turn overlap. The ship might then have half movement available next turn. A ship upwind would find it difficult to collide with a ship with the same sailing characteristics which is downwind that has time to react.

Boarding

After a collision. We tried to simulate a boarding ship sending crew across, a total of 1 crew box while the ship being boarded puts half of her crew up to defend. Example, boarding ship rolls 2d6 +1, defending ship rolls 2d6 +4 (for a fully crewed first rate). The loser crosses off the crew box. The ship being boarded continues to fight if she loses, possibly fighting with worse odds next turn as the boarder sends across more crew. If the attacker loses, they have the option of boarding again or might have to fend off a counter attack. Boarding is not easy.

 The Future

We came to the conclusion that most Age of Sail games run into most difficulty with the IgoUGo sequence. A possible workaround is to use the mechanic from Wings of War or X-Wing: have maneouvre templates for each ship depending on their orientation to the wind. Chose one, which represents 30 seconds of movement, and play it simultaneously with all other players. Repeat a total of three times (90 seconds) and allow firing once in a sequence of three movements. Lots of cards, lots of ships. Lots of counters or smoke markers to see who is eligible to fire. I think this would capture the essence of swinging the large ships around. 

The other deficiency I see in the modified rules are the speed changes. You are obliged to move full movement allowance. In reality ships could spill wind and slow down. This would be a progressive thing, so optional to allow players to move any distance up to their movement rate, with possible speed indicators to allow +/- 3cm from the previous speed.