Firestorm : Battle Book

An idea I had for smaller scale Firestorm campaigns with two to six players is to theme the campaign around one of the FOW Battle Books. Below is my initial list of changes to playtest.

• Use a Battle book to theme the campaign and restrict list choices
• Create a map that is roughly 3×4 to 5×7 zones in area
  • Designate at least two major (20 point) and two minor (10 point) objectives
  • Designate start line
  • Decide initiative bonuses (e.g. first turn initiative to attacker, or bonuses)
• Campaign runs for three turns
• Number of battles each turn: two plus third on 4+
• One exploitation move per side
• Firestorm troops
  • Should range in number from 3 to 6 for each side
  • Once lost do not come back (except air support)
  • Firestorm troops are rare and cannot otherwise be in forces
  • Select Firestorm troops from subset of support platoons plus air in book
• Firestorm is otherwise unchanged

Above are two sample maps. The first map is for a “meeting engagement” campaign. The second map is an “attacking” campaign.

Historicon 07

Last July I went to Historicon 2007 and ran a predreadnought game.

This game was more to find a set of rules I liked and practice with them so the scenario was more of a hypothetical scenario of Russian and Japanese ships just fighting it out. The rules I adopted are called “Fire when Ready” by David Manley. The visual aspect of modeling the broadsides adds a lot to the game. A horizontal marker means hit last turn. The smoke away from the ship means first turn of firing and a smoke marker pointing into the ship is a miss from last turn.

For Historicon 2008 I plan to run the battle of Uslan with the Russian forces cut off and trying to make it back to port.

City Fights

Recently I have been working on my European buildings. I have collected a fair number of Eastern village type buildings and have some great paper kits from Scott Washburn but I also want a more built up town with multiple floor buildings.

Above is a photo I took with a little Powerpoint work to illustrate my idea of a city fight without the humongous Stalingrad style buildings.  I treat blocks as multiple rooms so each block is a building with rooms and floors.

For my latest battle I put down an eastern front village. The idea was to also try out my new long forest strips and keep the village pretty compact. The long forest strips helped to break up lins of site without producing large forested areas.

Tanks assault panzergrenadiers at edge of village (actually post-battle recreation). The panzergrenadiers defended outside the village and were overrun by T-34s and IS-2s equipped with tankodesantnikis. The new V2 rules in FOW really make them a must have but they are vulnerable to massed small arms fire. They essentially acted as ablative armor in close assaults and if they survived long enough to bolster the assaults of the tanks.

Soviets triumphed in four turns as with the panzergrenadier platoon overrun and late reserves the Germans could not hold that side of the village. The Tiger had also been destroyed so the Soviet tanks were roaming freely. The IS-2s had one dice needing a 6 which they proceeded to roll and destroyed the Tiger.

Nebelwerfers behind village. The rockets caused great damage to the Soviet infantry and slowed them down.

In this game the Soviet infantry were slow and hammered by Nebelwerfers so barely made it to the village by the time the game ended.

Update on Beach assault terrain

I added a seawall by using binders. Then laid out the typical fortifications. I put down an AT obstacle, AT bunker, HMG bunker, wire, and trenches.

I used three binders across the table which left a gap so I could create an exit. The AT obstacles prevents tanks from exiting the beach.

One bunker is for a HMG and the other is an AT gun. This view shows the exit from the attacker perspective.

Beach Assault

The Beach Assault mission in D-day is another fortification mission but with a few twists so I decided to paint up a beach that I could use on a standard 6×4 table for the mission. In the picture above is my first attempt at a beach. It is missing some detail work and most importantly a seawall to provide an obstacle to vehicles.  The beach assault occurs on one short end so you need to provide a 4′ stretch of beach. On my dining room table the objective zone is just on the far edge and I have placed an objective on the picture below to illustrate.

Here is the same beach with the standard 40 pts of fortifications and half of the defenders deployed on table (Infantry Guns in rear so not on table). You can also see some of the paper landing craft by Scott Washburn. The fortifications consist of two HMG bunkers, about 80″ of wire, and 32″ of trenches.

Only infantry assaults can take the bunkers and they provide defensive fire to each other so either the bunkers must be pinned or smoked, or the attacker must come from behind through the defending grenadier platoon.

My plan is to have a Beach Assault in a Box which has the beach, landing craft, and fortifications to use in demo or even pick up games.

Seize & Hold

Before the D-Day game we did a Seize & Hold game to set up the location of where the airborne troops landed and modified the D-Day scenario based on the success of the airborne troops.

I ended up facing US airborne with my panzergrenadiers. I was able to fend off the initial airborne troops and then once my reserves arrived I mopped up the remaining airborne troops.

I enjoyed the Seize & Hold mission as much more representative of Allied airborne operations than the only other airborne mission from BF, Death From Above. The random nature of the reserves makes for an interesting give and take to this mission.

D-Day

On Sat, June 9, We ran a large D-Day game at Dragon’s Den, my local gaming store. We had 12 players total and played through 5 turns in a little under 5 hours.

The allies stormed ashore with little opposition and quickly took out the beach defenses.

I brought a Commando force and a Ranger force. The Commandos were supported by DD Shermans and AVREs. The Rangers were supported by a Priest battery offshore and a Sherman platoon.

The Rangers used their speed to take and storm the bunker which was their main obstacle.

Afterwards the Commandos and Rangers moved inland.

The store setup a great table and we were able to just setup and play. A new player, Ben, helped me with the Rangers until he had to leave.

Burning Soviet tanks

Despite the number of burning Soviet tanks this was a successful battle for my Soviet Tankovaya battalion using the FOW rules. This was the initial battle in a mid war Russian campaign we did. Eventually my tanks broke through the German defenses to help win the campaign.

Hello gaming world!

I am maintaining this blog as a resource for my historical miniatures hobby.