The End

I decided to end this blog. Going forward, I will post my gaming thoughts on War Without Minis.

Air Raid

I completed some of my airplane counters last weekend. I decided to take them for a test fly.

Making the Counters

I previously mentioned creating WW I and WW II style planes. I printed up both sets.

I ran into a slight issue - the print outs were smaller than the bases I planned to use. I have a load of 1 inch square wood bases that I planned to use. I must have made some calculation error somewhere because the counters ended up being about 3/4 inch square! 

Initially, I thought of two options to rectify the situation:

1. Redo the print out so the counters fit the 1 inch square, or
2. Order some custom 3/4 inch bases.

Neither option appealed to me, so I tried Plan C. Use the 1 inch bases but trim the wood down to fit the size of the printed counter.

I went with this plan. I did not turn out half bad. I I like the size better than 1 inch!

For this first batch, I only made up a handful of WW I planes.

Setting up the dogfight

I just threw done some planes on the board. I decided to run an air raid scenario, with the red side defending.

I assumed that Red 1 was a veteran pilot. All other planes had ordinary trained pilots.

The Rules

For this fight, I am using the latest iteration of my micro dogfight rules. All movement is relative. Planes make a maneuver roll. Higher scoring planes take an advantageous position and can attack the enemy. This allows me to set up the game in a small space. Furthermore, turns "fly by" quickly.

The Dogfight

Air raid sirens awaken Leutnants Weiner and Schnitzel of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Flying Corps.

They hop into their Brandenburgs and take off after the perfidious Italian raiders.

I was inspired by The Two-Headed Eagle. Besides, I unconsciously made more green fighters than red, so red needed to defend. And I associate red with the Central Powers.

The enemies approach and the dice of fate are cast. The defenders face three fighters and two bombers (gray).

I kept the dice in the picture to show the initial maneuver rolls. Our Austrian heroes take the initiative.

Also note that there is only one die for the Italians. Due to a shortage of dice, I decided to test making 1 roll for the enemy squadron. It worked OK, but probably gave too much of an advantage to the heroes. In the future, I may roll one die per pair of enemies.

Weiner and Schnitzel get on the tails of two planes. Weiner (Red 1) manages to down his target.

I realized I did not have any markers handy for downed aircraft. There happened to be a paper moustache lying nearby so I turned it into flames.

While the remaining Italian fighters try to get into position, the heroic defenders of the Empire manage to get on the tails of the bombers. Schnitzel damages one bomber.

I made the counters two-sided. The flip side shows a damaged craft. This will minimize the number of markers I'll need.

One of the fighters gets a side shot at Schnitzel, but misses. A bomber's defensive fire rattles Weiner and throws off his aim.

Schnitzel finally downs his target.

At this point, they near the bomber's target and anti-artillery fire breaks out. The defenders break off from the fight.

I rolled randomly to determine the number of turns. This was a short, 4-turn mission.

The bomber fails to score any hits on the target. Victory for the Empire!

Final Thoughts

All of the items for play fit into a 5.5 inch by 8 inch jewelry box I recently obtained. My quick play air combat set is coming along nicely.

I mentioned it before and I'll say it again. I thought rolling for maneuvering would be boring compared to choosing maneuvers. But for solo play, it works well. It creates a fast-paced, exciting narrative!

Battle of Actium

I took a brief digression from my aviation kick, thanks to Little Wars TV.

I decided to do my own MicroBattle version.

Set Up

In their version, LWTV put multiple ships on a base and called it a squadron. Multiple squadrons formed a division. They ended up with 16 and 24 squadrons for the 2 fleets.

I don't have that many bases so I scaled down. Each base represented approximately 4 squadrons.

I classified the squadrons thusly:

• Octavian's Caesarian fleet - 2 light galleys, 4 medium galleys
• Marc Antony and Cleopatra's fleet - 1 heavy galley, 3 medium galleys, 1 merchant

I represent the different types of galleys this way.

• Light galleys - 6 ships per base
• Medium galleys - 4 ships per base
• Heavy galleys - 3 ships per base.

I was short a base of medium galleys for the Caesarians so I used a heavy galley base. However, I treated it as medium galleys.

The Battle

Marc Antony (with yellow marker) and a fleet of quinqueremes (medium galleys) sally forth from the harbor, shielding Cleopatra (with dark green marker) and her treasure ships (off board). The Caesarian fleet approaches.

Note: Due to the restricted size of the board, I started the treasure ships and half the Caesarian fleet off the board.

The Eastern fleet takes up blocking positions while Antony and Cleopatra make a break for the open sea. The Caesarian biremes (light galleys) pursue Cleopatra.

And overhaul her. But Cleopatra's big galleys wreak havoc among the lighter biremes.. On the left, the Caesarians drive off the defenders and make a beeline for Antony.

The Caesarians block Antony while pushing back on the right.

Antony and Cleopatra under heavy attack.

Then disaster. The Caesarians wipe out 3 of their opponent's divisions, capturing Antony and Cleopatra!

A decisive victory for Octavian!

Game Notes

• Little Wars TV used a variant of Hail Caesar for their rules. This inspired me to use a variant of MicroBattle big battle rules.
• I used the big battle retreat rules. A lot of push backs occurred in the game. I wonder if that would be appropriate for galley battles. 
• The offset squares were a hassle. The counters did not fit inside them when facing diagonally. For fleet battles, I think a regular square grid will work better.
• I also wonder if I should use smaller counters. Maybe 20mm instead of 25mm?
• I need more medium sized ships!

More Plane Counters

I've been making progress on my plane counters (see my previous post for an introduction to this project).

Word War II-ish

As I mentioned, I patterned my original counters on WW I aircraft. They just did not look generic enough to pass for WW II planes. I created one based on the Russian I-16 but did not like it as a generic plane. So back to the drawing board.

Eventually, I came up with these.

I based the counters on real planes.

• The fighter (top 2 rows) - P-40, one of my favorite planes when I was younger. 
• The bomber (bottom left) - Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Betty
• The light bomber (bottom right) - is just the P-40 repeated. At a glance, I thought it could pass as a Stuka, so why recreate the wheel?

I changed the color on the red force, making it more brown. I felt that it would be more appropriate for WW II that way.

Once again, the bombers are gray and will serve for either side.

Next Step

I need targets.

I really like the high level view you see in some game mats, like this. Perfect for high level bombing.

I don't need a full game mat. I would like to get target tiles, maybe 1 or 2 inches square, with the target printed on it.

Some ideas for targets.

• A city with factories
• Airfield
• Dockyard with naval vessels
• Artillery
• A column of armor and infantry

I've been looking online but haven't found any tiles for sale. I may need to make my own.

Coming Up

This Saturday, I take a break from the skies and sail the seas instead. Stay tuned for a battle report.

Plane Counters

In my last post, I mentioned that I was searching for counters to use for my air combat box. Well, I made some progress.

A Lot of Options

I found quite a few options.

• Board Game Geek has photos of the Dawn Patrol counters.
• Junior General has quite a few top down aircraft in their WW2 section.
• I previously purchased this jet age counter set from Wargames Vault. As you can see, the counters are quite nice.

But
I was not sold on these options. I found that I could not decide on an era or even a theater of a war. I wanted everything! To do this, I need to print a bunch of counters. 

But I want to keep numbers down. This means using generic aircraft. Because all the counters I found are specific, I need to make my own.

Initial experiments

I started with some WW I counters, modeling them after specific planes. These are for the red forces and are patterned after an Albatross and a Fokker Triplane.

I also tried my hand at a WW2 plane. This is a Russian I-16, which is the miniature I've used for my bad guy planes.

I also made some jet age planes. The fighter is pure fantasy while I modeled the attack plane and bomber on the A-6 and B-52.

At this point, I returned to WW I. While I liked the counters, they were just not generic enough. So I went a different route. I ended up creating a generic fighter and bomber, modeled after real planes but with a few tweaks so they are not instantly recognizable. Here is the final product.

As you can see, I use the same plane for both sides. I distinguish them by color. The bombers are in generic gray. That way, I can use them for either side.

I originally planned to make different plane counters to represent different aircraft quality. But that can lead to far too many counters. Instead, I will probably use a token of some kind to mark the difference.

What about different eras?

While the above counters work for WW I, they would certainly look odd for mid-century or jet age. So I may make some generic counters for each era. Stay tuned.

Chocks Away

A variety of factors have set me off on an air combat kick.

I'm toying with the idea of dogfight microgame that will fit in a small box, take up minimal room, and play in a short period of time.

Inspirations

How did I get on this kick?

I played a little Ace of Aces with a friend a couple of weeks previously.

I'm re-reading The Two-Headed Eagle, a novel about an Austrian U-boat commander turned observer in a reconnaissance plane. 

SOPWWID (Simple One Page WWI Dogfight rules)

I have a set of rules that will work perfectly for such a microgame, which I featured in a mini-campaign called Protecting Pearl. Yet I am never satisfied. I've been pondering a way to play Ace of Aces solo. I decided to do some research to see if someone has done something similar.

I came across SOPWWID, which is free on Board Game Geek.

It's a very simple set of rules where your Sopwith Camel takes on a Fokker and a Pfalz. The AI is clever, however. There is a matrix of possible maneuvers depending where you are in relation to the enemy plane. A single D10 roll 

I played a couple of games and found the AI worked fairly well. Occasionally, the enemy plane did an odd maneuver. But hey, I just chalked it out to the confusion of battle. Unfortunately, I found it a little tough to get into firing position. As a result, the games dragged a tad. Furthermore, all the planes maneuver the same.

Solo Aces of Aces

I dug a little deeper in Board Game Geek and found that someone created a simple AI for solo Ace of Aces. I haven't tried it yet but plan to do so. I'll post a report when I do.

Aircraft Counters

One question comes up - what should I do for playing pieces for my aerial mini-game? I am still using minis for air battles, but I'd like to switch to counters. I've been looking around for some planes but have not quite found ones I like. Still searching.

Gaming Status Report

I didn't manage a game last week, but I made some progress on other fronts.

Shipbuilding

A few weeks ago, I mentioned working on some ship counters. Well, here they are.

I happened to find some 1 x 1/2 inch blue bases so I made some single ship counters. I decided to create some very generic ships rather than period-specific. 

Here you see (from left to right), medium, large, and small warships.

For modern era, these would serve as a cruiser, battleship, and destroyer. But I could also use them as different sized galleys, or as various sailing ships.

I also found some 1 inch square blue bases, so I decided to make some multi-ship bases. I used the same images, shrunk them down, and but multiple on a single base.

Battleships (top), destroyers and cruisers (middle left and right), and merchant ships (bottom).

Yes, I know that the formations are not correct. But they're just tokens designed to represent a squadron of ships. This way, I can play some larger fleet actions.

Also note the background in the above pictures. I created a 5 x 7 inch board with offset squares. I plan to use it for quick-play naval battles.

The Micro Battle Box Set
I took a 6 x 8 inch jewelry box and put together a game box.

You can see the box with game accessories - terrain, markers, dice, and some battle boards on the bottom.

I stored a grassland, desert, and ocean battle boards in the box.

I have the armies in a separate box. There are just too many armies to fit into the game box.

Buildings

I also previously mentioned creating some semi-flat buildings for my Micro Battle set. Recently, I was inspired by this town from Grid Based Gaming - But Not Always.

I drew out some walls and other buildings and printed them onto sticky paper. I just don't have a proper backing for them yet.

In the interim, I packed some of my 2mm terrain into my game box. 

I modified some pieces for use with a 1 inch grid. I originally built them for a 2 inch grid so I had to cut them down. For example, the farm buildings (left) were previously combined onto a single 2 inch base. removed the buildings from the base. Then I cut the walls into 1 inch sections.

X-Wing

I also picked up a copy of the X-Wing miniature game.

In lieu of LARPing during the miserably hot summer, I've been tabletop gaming with my LARP buddies. I introduced one of them to Ace of Aces recently. It seemed that he would prefer something more third person. He is also a big Star Wars fan. These two factors made me think of X-Wing so I ordered a copy.

I noticed they have a second edition but I chose to get 1st edition. Second edition seems to focus on the sequels and I would much rather get ships from the original trilogy. I ended up getting a good deal on the A Force Awakens core set so I went that route. If we like the game, I plan to pick up some original ships.

Ambush!

A Viking in the Sun scenario

I mentioned my interest in gaming the mini-campaigns in the Lion Rampant scenario book, A Viking in the Sun. I finally got around to playing one.

Naturally, I used my own rules rather than LR. Likewise, I modified the scenario a bit, so it's more like an "inspired by" version.

Set Up

Harald Hardrada is an officer of the Varangian Guard in Byzantine service. His superiors have tasked him with escorting a Byzantine envoy to Jerusalem

Harald's forces (red) include:

• a unit of Varangian Guard (with yellow marker)
• a unit of Byzantine spearmen
• a unit of archers
• a unit of Fatimid light cavalry, escorting the envoy

On the way, Harald's force gets ambushed by a bunch of bandits. They include:

• 2 units of light cavalry
• a unit of archers
• a unit of spearmen

Harald must get the envoy off the right-hand edge of the map.

The Skirmish

The bandit horse swarm the archers. One unit gets driven back, leaving some of their dead behind.

The horse try again and overwhelm the archers. Harald's Varangians turn to secure the flank. Meanwhile, the escort makes a break for the little village to the east (right).

The bandits pursue the escort.

Harald and his infantry march down the road to assist the escort, which got tangled up with the bandit spearmen.

The spears fall.

The escort reaches the village but the bandit archers begin shooting. The bandit horse units take on Harald's infantry.

The horse units lose.

The remaining bandits break and flee.

Aftermath

Harald successfully completes his escort mission. Next, he will seek the bandit leader, Hassan, and make him pay for such a brazen assault.

Stay tuned for scenario 2!

Notes

The scenario includes rules for capturing the envoy. I generally ignored those rules and decided that the envoy was attached to the Fatimid unit. If it broke, then the envoy would be captured. As it turns out, that did not happen.

I started the bandit spears in the village,  but moved them out to get them in the action. I probably should have left them in.

Naval Test Run

I decided to do a test run using my sci-fi rules for a naval action.

Set Up

Here is how I set up the game.

• I found a piece of blue cloth. I cut it down to 9 x 12 inch.
• The board is not gridded so I used a ruler I made for a craft stick.
• I used wood ovals for the ships. I used a marker to draw a flag on the stern and dots on the bow to use for identification.
• I decided to throw a hill on the board to serve as an island.
• I'm playing the game on a footstool, using a laptop tray in lieu of a table.

I'm not using different ship types in this experiment. I treated all ships as cruisers.

The Battle

Some near misses on Blue 2.

Blue 2 takes critical damage (2 hits out of 3). Red 1 and 3 take minor damage.

Blue 2 blows up! Red 3 takes more damage and decides to flee.

Blue 1 takes heavy damage.

Blue 3 comes around to protect Blue 1. Blue 3's salvo damages Red 2.

Red 2 and Blue 1 flee. Red 1 decides its at a disadvantage and also withdraws.

RIP Cooper

RIP

I am grieved to report that one of my cats, Cooper, passed away yesterday. 

Cooper - 2022 (L) and May of this year (R)

He went into surgery for a possible ruptured bowel but the vet found multiple masses, likely cancerous. We chose to put him down rather than prolong his suffering.

Cooper's Story

Our life with Cooper began when we discovered him as an injured stray. We took him to the vet and got him patched up.

Our first picture of Cooper. 2009

He recuperated well, and lived life to the fullest, even though he had arthritis from the leg injury.

He even appeared multiple times on this blog.

This is his first appearance, way back in 2013.

Helping me play Down in Flames.

Here's another good one from 2013. This time he crashed our Game of Thrones dinner.

2016. Cooper photobombs my attempt to take picture of my 3mm troops.

Later in 2016, we played Four Against Darkness, with our cats as characters. I posted this picture of our warrior.

And again from 2016, he helps us with Fortune & Glory.

My last gamer picture of Cooper, from 2021.

After that, with his arthritis really flaring up, Cooper had difficulty jumping up on tables. As a result, I stopped getting candid gamer shots of him. Yet he still gave us a few more years of joy.

We'll miss you, Cooper.

More Maritime Musings

On occasion I find myself drawn to naval gaming. Once again, I find myself pondering some action at sea.

The Inspiration

This post from The Wargames Website peaked my interest in wargaming some dreadnought action, especially when the original poster mentioned Austrians vs. Italians.

The Main Problem

My biggest issue is space. Lately, my games have been using a 5-inch square board. That does not give a lot of room for naval maneuvers. I've been thinking of standardizing my boards as 5 x 7 inches - still small for naval.

A Solution

Rummaging around I found an unused GMT game box. I decided to turn it into my naval gaming box. It's 9 x 12 inches, which allows me to fit a larger board.

I did a test game to see if the board works. it does, and it fits snugly in the box. I just need to add a grid.

Rules

Once again I find myself perusing rules, as I did in January. Back then I mentioned a set of homebrew fleets in space rules. I decided to give them a test run. Expect a battle report soon.

Counters

For my test, I whipped up some ships using wood ovals. These are just a temporary expedient; I will replace them with counters.

Back in January, I made some pre-dreadnought counters - a battleship, a cruiser, and a destroyer. I'm not entirely satisfied with them and will redo them. But this has led to some questions:

• Do I want one ship or multiple ships on a counter? I am toying with the idea of multiple ships for big fleet battles.
• Do I want genre-specific ships or can I make generic counters. Considering how they get scaled down, I think generic counters would work.

Anyway, I have some work and testing to do.