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Welcome to the Blog of a Skirmish wargamer! I hope you enjoy reading it!



All my rule sets are freely downloadable from our club website's Downloads page





If you need to contact me my E-Mail address is richardbradley5@gmail.com







Saturday 22 October 2011

Channel bash

The trouble with solo systems is that they can do extreme things that players would never do - actually, that is probably a good thing!- but today it made a very tough opponent!!!!
As usual, the ships of the convoy were represented by inverted markers. We had mixed the counters representing ships with an equal number of dummy counters, then removed a third so we would not know which, and how many, ships were in the convoy. As this represented a North-South convoy in the North sea in early 1943, 2 lines of merchantmen were flanked by a line of escorts...

The escorts (left) between the Germans and the merchantmen. 
 The E-Boats (8) were spread on the side opposite the escorts, in pairs. 
Creeping along silently on electric motors, they spotted several escorts. 
Unusually, the convoy was protected by several Flower class corvettes, Isles class trawlers and motor launches! 
 The larger vessels presented problems for the players....
 Phil...wondering what a 4" gun might do to his boats!
 Ian..showing Joe how good a Flower class is!
 Just before a Hunt type 2 escort destroyer appeared as well at the rear!
 Several merchantmen were sheltering behind this line of steel!
The escorts and freighters were alerted, and began evading when an E-Boat was spotted! 
 Coming under ineffective long range fire, some of the E-Boats shot torpedoes.
 ..before beating a hasty retreat!
 Ians boats withdrew without shooting, under a smokescreen.
 The fearsome Hunt class managed a long range salvo..
 ..which straddled an E-Boat.  
 The convoy spotted the approaching torpedoes and turned to 'comb' their tracks.
A second group of torpedoes appeared amongst the rear of the convoy. 
Back at the front of the convoy, a Flower class survived 2 near torpedo passes, the other 2 went on to try and sink England......!  
 At the rear the torpedoes missed, though a collier was VERY lucky to evade one!  
 One torpedo, luckily, ran through to a collier in the second row which had not been seen, but the torpedo exploded close to the target, damaging the ships stern seriously.
 With the convoy alerted, the Schnellboots withdrew into the dark, grateful to escape undamaged!....though with nothing to show for their efforts!

In reality, convoys of this sort normally only had a few trawlers, backed up by 1 or more larger escorts.
We could only assume a group of escort vessels were relocating from Scotland to Southern England and were tagging along!!!!

Not the best game of this we have ever had, but interesting nonetheless!

Sunday 16 October 2011

Norman's menagerie!

Once again, I was working at the hospital on a Saturday...(sigh!) --rather than having well deserved fun with the lads at the Wargames club!

As usual, I was able to pop in on my lunchbreak to see what was happening...

Phil (AKA Norman D Landings on TMP) was using my Colonial rules - with a few modifications-- to do a Hunt in Africa!
To this end he had painted up some interesting animals for the players to shoot:

 Some Elephants, a Rhino, some Thompson's Gazelles...
3 confused looking Crocks... 
..and a petit pride of Lions! (Gotta love those Goofy teeth!)

So what about the game? - Phil was scribbling away on a pad and Lawrence was Happy-Snapping with his camera.
The After Hunt Report - I am assured, will be on Lawrences Blog: Eclectic Expanding Empires --sometime after Wednesday!

I managed to see a small part of the action...
 The terrain was based around a long winding river - to give the Crocodiles and Rhino somewhere to hang out, I suppose!......
 The players (Ian, Joe and Phil - Lawrence was GameMastering) had a Hunter with a couple of Locals with rifles backing them up - Ian had in addition...
A supply convoy, escorted by a few, apparently nervous, locals. 
 First kill was a harmless Thompson's gazelle (bye-bye Bambi!)
 Second kill was by an irate local....!
 ..who was himself sunk by a hail of lead! - while the caravan headed for cover! 
 After securing their trophies, the Hunters moved onwards.
The caravan following on.....

That was all I saw! - I had to head back to the Salt Mines at that point. Ah well, I look forward to seeing what happened afterwards when Lawrence gets his Blog post together!
(ED: This is now up on Lawrences blog at: Hunting memoirs! - Well worth a read!)

Next week -- with luck--Coastal forces! - and I am not working!!! - :-D

Saturday 8 October 2011

On Afghan's plain...

Today (Saturday) there was only Lawrence and me skirmishing, all the rest were doing Spearhead with 1941 Italians and British!

We tried a new sort of Colonial skirmish - in the Second Afghan war.
I painted a company of Wargames Factory British soon after they came out, and they have stayed in a box since then. It was nice to get a few out after all this time!

The scenario was that a british camp has been shot at sporadically by an Afghan gun, so the British send a platoon size force into the hills to try to silence it.
(The Afghans were randomly placed and run by the rules' solo system)

The force contains 20 Sikh guides, and 20 British regulars..

 Our column, led by the Sikhs, pushed on down the valley edge..
A pair of Sikh scouts  probed ahead carefully.
 The British stood back in reserve, guarding the rear.
They spotted a fierce group of Ghazi in ambush! 
The first group of Sikhs fired a ragged volley.. 
..The enraged Ghazi charged in! 
 The Sikhs outflanked the Ghazis, and with difficulty..
 ..killed them all!
The Sikhs continued their advance, leaving 2 dead, and with several wounded. 

Soon, they (and the British) saw and engaged Afghans in a ruined house.  
 The Sikh scouts were both hit by return fire.
 ..but soon the Afghans, outshot, retreated to a second building. 
 The British moved on, leaving half the force to watch the buildings.
 The first Sikh group took cover...
..as the flank force spotted and killed the Afghan chief in the second house! 
 The force that had fallen back from the first house then retreated again.
 Followed by the Chief's bodyguards.
 Half of the British followed up aggressively.
And half the force pushed on round the house
 
..while continuing to shoot at the retreating Afghans.
 
Ouch! 
 The advance force was now involved against a new force..
 ..with devastating results!
 They then came under fire from another hidden unit.
 
The British were able to reply with massive fire.. 
..and wiped them out in seconds.
 The British followed up - and on the next hill saw the gun they were after..
 Unspotted by the gun crew, the British shredded the gun crew with accurate fire.
As the last 2 crew attempted to drag the gun away, the gun was captured at beyonet point!
 Further back, the Sikhs attacked another hill.
 Neither side caused many shooting casualties despite the range. 
 ..So the Afghans charged in! 
The Sikhs lost their Subedar in the melee... 
..but were victorious! 

The objective of the mission achieved, the Empire force retired to base dragging the Ancient cannon with them!

This was a fun game! - very close at times. The losses of Empire troops were minimal (4 dead and 8 wounded) - mainly thanks to unlucky Afghan shooting dice!

Players:

Lawrence : The Sikhs
Me             : The British


The rules can be freely downloaded from Colonial Skirmish rules