TMOCB USMC v VC

Another solo game of TMOCB inspired by having added a couple of new paddy fields and some nice VC command figures and civilians from Elheim Miniatures.

Lt Donovan, Sgt Rambo (1st Squad) and Sgt Elias (2nd Squad) begin to sweep the area:

The VC start to recruit, the leader must be inspirational as numerous villagers sign up:

Recruiting also goes well for the second VC leader:

Sgt Elias moves into a village and searches it. He finds a food cache and destroys it but fails his next activation so the Americans won't make much more progress this turn:

Lt Donovan moves towards another village:

Sgt Rambo also moves into a village:

A VC squad assaults Sgt Elias' squad! Two bases go down on each side:

The second VC squad attacks Sgt Rambo, Rambo and his men drive them back easily though taking out four bases:

Lt Donovan brings down an air strike on more VC gathering in a village behind Sgt Rambo's squad. The strike is very effective with four bases of VC down and no villagers injured:

Sgt Elias and his men further reduce the numbers of VC facing them:

The remaining VC facing Rambo decide discretion is the order of the day and sneak off back into the jungle:

Elias assaults the remaining VC in front of him and wipes the squad out:

Lt Donovan interrogates a peasant but unfortunately kills him in the process. He does manage to find an arms cache though. So far so good for the Americans:

Sgt Barnes arrives with the 3rd squad:

The VC just don't seem to be able to get their act together today. Needing a single 4 to move into the village the squad fails. As they were the first squad to activate this turn the rest of the VC will do little for the turn:

 Lt Donovan and his men wipe out another VC squad:

More VC appear. The American squads are still strong so the best they can do is defend the village and stop the Americans searching it:

Another VC squad recruits:

Lt Donovan searches another village but is ambushed! One American base is down!:

Sgt Rambo is also ambushed while searching, again one American base is down:

Rambo exchanges fire with the VC. Lt Donovan successfully calls in a Medivac for Rambo's casualties:

Lt Donovan calls down another air strike, this time it misses the target though:

Sgt Elias and his remaining men capture an important VC hiding in the village:

Rambo exchanges fire with the VC:

Lt Donovan finds another arms cache. Both his accompanying bases are down but he has Medivac'ed them:

 Sgt Barnes has had a quiet day, just searching the two villages and finding some cached food:

At this point the VC fell back. Lt Donovan seemed to have done well in his first combat patrol, looking at the outcome:

The VC scored 25 VP for turning up, 4VP for two village squares not searched, 3VP for one US casualty not evacuated and 2VP for 2 peasants killed giving them a total of 34VP. They evacuated three of their own casualties.

The Americans scored 15VP for 15 VC casualties, 8VP for wiping out two VC units, 1VP for finding more than 4 caches, 27VP for 4 low value caches, 35VP for two high value caches and 19 for one VC VIP captured totalling 105VP! They evacuated 6 of their own casualties.

So a decisive victory for Lt Donovan and his men with his report to base being "Large communist body count, say 20 dead. No remaining enemy at our position. Have high value caches and four prisoners. Over"

I think I'm getting the hang of playing the Americans finally though this time the luck definitely went against the VC. Choosing the extra bases for the platoon leader seems a much better choice than the M113's allowing the Lieutenant to act more aggressively and be able to take some losses.

I've really enjoyed my TMOCB solo games, they have a bit of a narrative and there are a number of ways to play each side. The rules also include a scenario for an attack on a Firebase which looks interesting but would involve buying or (shock horror) making a fair bit of defences to make up the base. They also have rules for using Mountain Tribes and rescuing downed pilots both of which I might look into. I'd also like to get a Medivac chopper as well for a little more colour.

So quite a bit to keep me occupied  while lockdown continues!

ADLG Hundred Years War English recruits

Having finished the HYW English army I bought years ago inevitably I added a few more bases from Donnington to give the army a few more options. As with the rest of the army these are all from the 'New Era' range.

Two bases of Hobilars to add much-needed speed of movement to the army:

Irish Light Horse and Kerns:

Welsh Spearmen:

The Hobilars and Irish should be useful giving the army a minimal ability plug any gaps in the line and to contest terrain, the Welsh perhaps less so as Medium Spearmen are not a popular troop type in ADLG.

I wasn't that impressed with the Welsh figures, they have separate spears but the hands were very hard to drill out and the mixture of poses supplied does not really go well  together. They came out better than I thought they would though and probably will not get used much anyway!

Black Sea's Royal Navy Part Two

I've now finished the second part of the Royal Navy fleet for Black Sea's, this time the ships of the line.

A First Rate, yet to be named:

The Third Rate 'Ajax':

The Third Rate 'Colossus':

The Third Rate 'Mars':

The completed fleet:

So the fleet box is now finished apart from two brigs that I might paint up as Spanish or even French. All I have to do now is play a game with them!

Chain of Command Normandy 1944

Having tried a smaller scale Blucher solo game I thought I'd see how Chain of Command worked on a 4 x 4 table as a solo game. 

As I'd just finished some new buildings from Empires at War (a house, a factory and a row of garages) I decided to base the game in Normandy 1944 on a terrain heavy table using my Americans and Germans in a probe scenario. The patrol phase saw the Americans make significant progress across the table:

Two American squads deploy, one in the factory, the other at the road junction:

A German squad deploys in the woods and engages in a firefight with the Americans in the factory:

An M8 armoured car deploys:

Taking advantage of a double phase the M8 races down the road and will make it off table unless the Germans can stop it. A panzerfaust team pops up from the ruined building and successfully ambushes the M8:

At this point I stopped playing as the game wasn't working out for a number of reasons. The table was really too small resulting in both sides being deployed in a simple firefight with no room for movement, probably not helped by the large amount of terrain either. It also just wasn't the same without an actual opponent, I think one of the best parts of CoC is trying to out-think your opponent which obviously just does not happen in a solo game! The PSC really add to the interest of the games as well so a solo version of one of those might be more interesting but would require the use of a larger table.

So I think CoC will have to wait until I can play at the club again, must admit I am looking forward to that and restarting my Abbeville campaign with Gary especially!

ADLG Hundred Year's War English

When I went through my unpainted lead pile a while ago one of the boxes contained an entire HYW English army I'd bought at Salute several years ago. 

The figures and flag sheets were from the Donnington 'New Era' range and were nice enough. If I remember rightly I bought them towards the tail end of DBM and start of ADLG with my relative lack of enthusiasm for ADLG and the fact that I could already field the army anyway from assorted other Medieval figures I had leading to me never making a start on them.

However, with the lock-down continuing and for something different to do I dug the box out and undercoated some long bowmen and billmen intending to paint a few and see how they looked. A week later and remarkably the whole army is now painted to a basic standard and usable at last!

King Edward III:

The Black Prince:

Mounted Knights:

Battle 1:

Battle 2:

Battle 3:

A spare base of dismounted knights:

Considering how quickly I painted them I'm quite pleased with them and may actually use them. I did a limited range of colours and didn't bother adding detail such as red crosses to the archers and billmen or attempting to paint the surcoats of the knights. The heraldry for the mounted knights came out better than I thought it would and the tricky to paint generals give a good impression of the complicated design on such small figures.

Inevitably having painted them I promptly ordered a few more figures to 'finish the army off' so hopefully some Hobilars, Welsh Spearmen, Irish Kerns and a dismounted general will be added soon

Black Sea's Royal Navy Part One

As I anticipated I would when I finished the Spanish ships I had for Black Sea's I bought a box of the 'Royal Navy Fleet' British Starter Set. The set contains a generic 1st Rate, three named 3rd Rates (Ajax, Mars and Colossus), three named Frigates (Indefatigable, Euralys and Naiad) and six Brigs.

I had assumed the 1st Rate would be HMS Victory but that was not the case, apart from that slight disappointment at £65 post free from Firestorm Games for 13 ships I think the set is fairly good value.

A single afternoon of cutting out the parts and gluing resulted in all thirteen ships being built and undercoated ready for painting. I thought I'd start with the lighter ships and completed the Frigates.

Firstly the Indefatigable:

Next the Euralys:

Finally the Naiad:

I also finished four of the six Brigs. I've not named them yet but will do so, probably from those built at Rotherhithe or Deptford as they are local to me:

Unlike the Spanish fleet I painted these in a standard colour scheme for all the ships as I think befits the Royal Navy. My rationale for this (probably totally a-historical) is that while the British captain could outfit his crew and maybe decorate his ship a little the Navy supplied the ships and maintained them. The Spanish captains though perhaps treated  their ships as their personal property much like being the proprietor of an army unit so have greater discretion with regard to paint jobs etc. It also makes it easier to tell the ships apart!

I now have enough done to fight small ship British v Spanish actions either solo or providing both fleets and will move on to the larger ships soon. 

The full fleet to date: