Bad Spelling Mission 4 - The road to Paderborn

23/11/1983 Sov 3rd army forces BAOR fighting retreat into Ruhr cities. Bad Spelling is isolated behind the front line

The team has just returned with a sealed container from the supply dump where Major Lawrence expected it to be, which they suspect to be a battlefield-level nuclear device.  The major refers to it as the "beastie".  On return to base, the team meets two more stragglers to join them, one of whom immediately manages to injure himself and is sent straight to sickbay.

Also waiting to meet them is the mayor of Bad Spelling.  He has a request for the army, which is to find out whether the road is clear and safe for him to travel to Paderborn.  Major Lawrence decides to leave at once, taking advantage of darkness, pausing only to grab something to eat and to lock the "beastie" in a store cupboard.  His plan is to travel until we find an enemy checkpoint, then snatch one of the enemy on duty and bring him home for interrogation.

The Brits leave the Land Rover and proceed on foot

Stealth rules will apply, modified for OHSW.  The team will drive as far as they dare, but then leave the Land Rover and arrive on foot.

The enemy has a defensive position set up in the outskirts of Paderborn.  There is a PK MG (emplaced, on a tripod), with 2 additional crew (carrying AK-74s, but one acting as crewman/loader to the PK) and a sniper. The second squaddie (patrolling) and the sniper will be up to 12" from the MG position.

The soviet checkpoint

Stealth: until the attacking player is detected, only the patrol figures may move (1d6-2" in a random direction) and no shooting is permitted.

Any attacker within 6" and in LoS is detected automatically unless moving into contact and defeating the defender in HTH (assumed silently).

For attackers within 4" but not in LoS, or in LoS but >6" away, check for detection: defender draws 1 card, attacker 2.  If defender has the highest card, check the colour of defender's card: black=alert (move defender 2" closer and check again), red=detected (alarm is raised, no more stealth).

The edge of town

As mentioned last time, this is (I hope) the lowest point for scenery in this series, with cardboard boxes standing in for buildings.

Most of the table didn't get used, so you can ignore the medical centre at bottom left, the chapel and the park.  The action is concentrated around the checkpoint (top right corner of the square).

To the right of the checkpoint, the Brits are moving around a large, brown building (council offices), with Newton to the left.  Beyond them, a minibus of some kind is parked outside an office building at the back (the "back office" mentioned later).  At top centre, behind the MG position, another building faces the "back office", with the soviet transport parked between the two.

At this moment, the Soviet sniper is just behind the MG emplacement, while the patrolling soldier is at the left of the square, having walked across to check on the park.

The Brits begin to approach. The Russian patrol walks back to check on the sniper behind the truck (guarding the rear), then up to the MG position. The Brits take up positions behind the council office, waiting to see what the patrol will do next

The patrol walks around in the square.  Newton contemplates a dash straight across the MG's fire-lane to cover behind the white-roofed building.  The patrol's back is turned and the MG crew won't step forward on an alert.  He decides to go for it and ... turns up a joker.  A noise in the distance makes everyone turn, including Newton, who quickly ducks back into cover.  The turn ends.

The patrol turns and starts back toward the MG position.  The Brits hold their breath.  Passing the MG, the patrol checks on the truck.  Fraser gets in position to dash past the side of the MG

The patrol checks on the sniper.  Fraser backs off, so he won't be seen if the patrol turns back.

Fraser takes cover at the corner

The patrol turns!

Fraser slips back into position.  The patrol moves to check on the truck & Fraser takes his chance.  He rushes across the street and down the side of the back office.

The back office, Fraser and the patrol

The patrol walks around the corner behind the back office, up to 5" from Fraser, but immediately turns back to rejoin the sniper.  So close!

The patrol turns around and takes another look behind the back office.  Fraser rushes him! The patrol wins the fight - Fraser is down!

Although the Brits have 8 more action points, initiative switches immediately to the Russians.

Ten seconds of violence

The patrol and sniper move forward to engage the Brits - the MG team holds position.  The patrol shoots at the Major, but misses.

The Major throws a grenade.  The sniper is down, but the patrol is saved by the wall

Dangerous runs forward behind a car and starts firing on the patrol. The patrol fires back.

The Major steps out of cover and throws the other grenade into the MG position.  Both the crew go down.  Davies shoots the patrol and puts him down.

Newton moves toward the rest of the team.  Lawrence & Davies secure all 4 Russians. Game over.  The team secure all 4 men from the checkpoint and hurry away, stealing the truck as well as taking their own Land Rover (because you can't fit 4 prisoners in a Landie).

Scenario design: this was stealthy and stressful.  Fraser's bungled grab at the patrolling sentry felt like the objective was lost, but the use of both grenades saved the day.

After the fight: 

• The Brits have achieved their objective.
• Fraser is lightly wounded and will be out of action for 6 days
• 4 prisoners taken.

Reinforcements: One figure with L1A1 SLR, one with pistol - Pvt Oliver & Capt Preson have found their way to the base at Bad Spelling.

Specialist gear: medical kit (Re-draw one card to recover from a knock-down)

Skill gain: Newton gains Charisma

Group morale: 5 - rolled 7 good and 1 bad dice, scoring 2 increase

Campaign events: 

• Pvt Oliver reveals that he is actually on his way to take leave, and will be gone for 9 days.  Like Paddy O'Loughlin in sickbay, he has no sooner joined us than leaving us again. Maybe we'll see him on the 2nd of December, unless he joins some other unit.
• No break - no time passes in the campaign before the next mission is assigned.  Hopefully there will be time for breakfast, but that may depend on what action comes next.

Player action: add another man to the group - Pvt Richards

The team is now strangely top-heavy, Major Lawrence & Captain Preston leading privates Davies, Newton & Richards.

Meanwhile Edwards, Fraser, Harris, Mitchell & O'Loughlin are recovering from injuries and Oliver is on leave.

People the team knows:

• Lotte Meierling, a refugee from Hannover
• Dieter Pletternberg, mayor of Bad Spelling

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

Fighting Talk #2 - Skirmish games vs proper battles

Another source of friction in the hobby is the preference for skirmish games or large battles.

A skirmish, Amazons against Egyptians

Skirmish games are nothing new.  In the sense that one model represents one man, some of the oldest rules like Little Wars are skirmish games.  The men move on individual bases and single models are removed as casualties.  Featherstone's War Games describes 20 models as a regiment, but in all other ways those rules provide a skirmish game.  This style of game is suited to the close actions that probably don't make it into the history books: raids on supplies, a clash between patrols etc..  In terms of numbers, it becomes cumbersome to handle more than about fifty individual models per player, although Featherstone seemed happy with 150 or so.  The Too Fat Lardies describe some of their rulesets as "large skirmish" to distinguish this size of man-to-man fighting from small skirmishes between a dozen men in total.  At the upper end Charlie Don't Surf expects a full company on the table, so around 150 men and vehicles.

One corner of a battle, regiments contesting a road junction

The battle game also has a long history, going back to the 19th Century Kriegspiel.  Here the focus is on the behaviour of "units" at whatever level they would act independently on the battlefield, for example Napoleonic battalions.  The ground scale is key, with a battlefield maybe 3 miles wide on a six foot table (that's 880 yards of the field in 12 inches of the table), so that a battalion frontage of 100 yards would be around an inch and a quarter on the table.  Movement distance and range for shooting are all dependent on the ground scale and the length of a turn; how many turns should a battle take to play out, assuming it lasted maybe 8 or 12 hours of a day?  Classic kriegspiel used wooden blocks for the units, but a base with figures on top does the same job, although there won't be as many models as the men in a battalion.  This is the basis of Charles Grant's The War Game or John Tunstill's rules.

There are pros and cons to any approach.  The small skirmish needs few models and can cope with more complexity and detail in the rules and procedures, but will never reflect a conflict of historical significance.  It also tends to create mixed forces at an unrealistically low level: if the 23rd Foot sends the light company to take an objective, that would be dozens of infantrymen dressed and equipped identically; they would not send four light bobs mixed with one cavalryman and two highlanders.  Kelly's Heroes and Sharpe are works of fiction.

A large skirmish, American rebels forming up for a fight

The large skirmish needs bigger forces and risks a game that runs out of time before achieving a result.  To represent a significant battle using individual men would quickly become unmanageable.  Using one model to represent 20 or more men in the field is no longer a true (man-for-man) skirmish, and is better considered as a type of battle game.

The groundscale approach can only fit a relatively small number of models onto a unit's base, leading to taunts of "twelve men taking a flag for a walk".  More confusing is the model of a farm building, which is 4 inches wide and so represents 300 yards on the table and a small village.

Of course there is an option that allows a large action to be represented in a more realistic way, and I have played a few games in a sports hall or similar space which were great experiences, but the effort to prepare them was huge and the game has to finish within a day so the badminton players can use the hall.

Some rules sit in a middle ground, leading to a more confused experience.  Sharpe Practice, for example, allows 24 men to form square.  If that means that the 24 models each represents 40 men, then that's a battalion, which makes sense in square formation, but then how can a single sniper hit 40 men with one bullet?  Is that senior officer accompanied by 39 orderlies and gallopers?

In my own case, I play lots of skirmish games (many described on this blog) and also proper battles mostly as boardgames.  I'm currently collecting forces for battle games with models in a couple of periods.

The discussion boards show some highly polarised opinions on these three approaches. What kind of game do you play, or do you prefer a mixture?

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.

What happened there?

Suddenly it's a month since my last post.  What happened there?

Nothing much, just the typical mix of computer trouble (all fixed now, I hope), health problems around the family, and being distracted by other things.  Mostly trivial stuff like having some posts written but not being able to find the right images to go with them.

My usual opponent has been away on holiday, the D&D campaign has missed a few weeks because people were busy doing other things, all that stuff.

I bought a dozen Falklands-era troops to add to my Bad Spelling crew.  I didn't recognise the models, but they were already painted and a good price.  Sadly the seller just slipped them into a snappy bag and popped that in a box with some bubble wrap.  They turn out to be metal figures, probably TQD from Checkpoint Models, and they rattled around in the bag and lost quite a bit of paint.  Also a few gun barrels needed to be straightened.  So I spent a while retouching the shiny bare metal patches.

New recruits for June/July

Then I decided to get a game on the table, but just needed to move a couple of boxes of models to get at the ones I wanted.  Crash they went down onto the floor.  Tick off another day for repairs.

At least I've got in some cycling and a couple of games of Squad Leader.

Until next time, health & happiness to you all.