MicroBattle at Sea

Now that my MicroBattle rules for land and sky are shaping up, my mind has turned to the sea. My initial thought was to gin up some rules of Age of Sail battles. This seems a bit tricky for a MicroBattle sized board (8 x 10 squares). In my experience of AoS rules, the ships tend to travel in the wind direction, often running off the board.

What kind of naval battle would work on a small board. My thoughts next turned to galleys!

Tumbling Dice ancient galleys
photo from their website

But I'm not so keen on ancient galleys; I am more interested in the Mediterranean battles of the 16th Century. I decided to emulate these, with some sailing ships thrown in. The upshot is that I just ordered some galleases, galleys, caravels, and galleons from Tumbling Dice's 1/2400 naval line.

MicroBattle Across the Ages

So far this month I have experimented with MicroBattles in the ancient and horse and musket periods. Can I expand the concept to later eras?

Modern

First up is a "modern" battle using some 2mm sci-fi miniatures.

There are some differences between this and the ancients / horse & musket version:

• Larger battlefield - I was able to figure out how to fold an 8 x 10 mat so that it fits into a pencil box
• Forces are more mobile - armies get more activations per turn and each unit can move further
• Longer ranges - units can pack a wallop at longer distances

These changes gave the game a more-free-wheeling feel, which seemed appropriate for the era.

Air Combat
I then played around with an air combat game.

I used a modified version of the Tiny Air Combat rules that I played with in December/January. Like my modern battle I used an 8 x 10 grid. I used half-size forces and cut movement down.

In this experiment I used a mixed squadron of bombers - one light, one medium, and one heavy.

 Because the board is so short I had the bombers traverse a second board before getting to the target.

The bombers had to face a new wave of interceptors. Unfortunately, the escort was lost in the first engagement. However, I applied losses from the first wave to the second, which made it a bit easier.

 All three bombers made it to the target. Amidst exploding flak, the squadron dropped their bombs on target, doing heavy damage (13 points out of 30)

How did it work out?

• I actually like the shorter board and smaller forces. It was easier to set up and quicker to play.
• As I mentioned, I tweaked the rules because of the shorter board.
• Medium and heavy bombers only moved 1 square a turn while the light bomber could move 2 on a roll of 4-6.
• Fighters would get D6 movement points. I upped the cost of movement - to move straight cost 2 points per square, a diagonal move cost 3, and a 90 degree turn cost 4 (essentially costing 1 more than in the original rules). This cut down the speeds, keeping the battle on the board, but it made it much harder for a fighter to turn. I may have to tweak the movement points a bit.
• Nevertheless, I felt that the game was a success and will merit more experiments.

MicroBattle: FIRE

I experimented some more with my micro battle rules.

They are designed to be usable for ancient through horse & musket eras. I am calling them MicroBattle: Fire & Sword.

This was a test of the Fire (i.e. horse & musket) part of the rules. The scenario is from One Hour Wargames; it is # 27 - Disordered Defense. The Blue army is defending the crossroads. Initially it is outnumbered by the Red invaders, but reinforcements are on the way.

Red marches towards the crossroads.

The sides get stuck in. Blue cavalry overruns one unit of Red infantry.

  And then another.

Soon the artillery falls. The defenders didn't even need reinforcements!

Well, I did not expect such a pushover. I suspected that it was primarily due to some really shabby dice-rolling for the Red army. I decided to try again.

This time, Red led with the artillery, which provided an initial bombardment. Then the infantry went in and drove off the Blue infantry. Then the Blue reinforcements arrive.

In the center, the Blue cavalry is lost charging the Red guns. However, the Blue infantry runs off its red counterpart.

But the artillery and light infantry drive off the formerly victorious Blue infantry. Another Blue unit routs on the right flank.

The battle is Red's!

OK, that was a bit more even. I think Thomas designed the scenario for the initial Blue defense to get beaten but the reinforcements to allow Blue to recoup the situation. This could have happened in the second attempt. When the reinforcement arrived both armies had 4 units, but Red had 2 units with casualties. If rolls went Blue's way, the result could have changed.

This was also an experiment to see if I could play a full-size OHW scenario on a 6 x 8 grid. It seemed to work fine.

I am now thinking of a modern/sci-fi variant. Thinking of calling it MicroBattle: Fireteam.

Alligator Ambush

Another battle in my fictitious East Florida American Revolution Campaign

After his initial defeat, Col. James Endicott retired his Patriot force to the north side of Alligator Creek. The British commander, Major Heyward sent his forces in pursuit.

A company of British Dragoons forge ahead over Alligator Creek, only to run into a line of Georgia militia.

After suffering losses due to musket fire, the Dragoons retire and allow the regulars to advance.

First Company charges forward and overwhelms a militia company but is likewise cut down.

Game Note: The above was an interesting exchange. The Brits charged the Patriots; both sides already had a hit and 2 hits resulted in a rout. In the ensuing melee, both units got hit and routed. This bothered me and had me debating ways to prevent a simultaneous kill. My initial thought is to have attackers roll first and then allow the defenders to roll only if they survive. I am wavering on this rule and currently am of the thought not to make changes and allow simo-kills.

Similarly, the Rangers advance only to get chewed up by Patriot musketry.

Meanwhile, the Overmountain Men in the woods harass the Dragoons until they break. This leaves only one British company.

It beats a hasty retreat.

Game Notes:

• I played this scenario with the latest version of my microbattle rules, this time updated for horse & musket encounters.
• I think the scenario s based on a One Hour Wargames scenario but I cannot remember for certain.
• I have turned last year's Independence Day battle into a campaign. Right now, Endicott has evened the score, with the campaign tied at 1-1.
• The campaign score could have been 2-0 in favor of the Brits. When I first played the second battle on July 3, the British won. However, I lost the photos in cyberspace. And when it comes to blogging, if there are no photos it did not happen. Fortuitously for the Americans the replay went in their favor!

More Micro

Another micro-battle experiment, this time using a 6 x 8 grid. Romans (red) vs. Carthaginians this time.

Cavalry clash (top)

The Roman cavalry wins! And then it smashes into the Carthaginian spears.

Hannibal would rally his remaining troops, however. The Gauls (green) routed their opponent and descended on the Roman right flank. Ultimately, however, the Romans prevailed.

Thoughts
I am proceeding forward with my micro-battle scheme. I picked up some cheap pencil boxes for storage.

Each box is about 5.5" x 8.5". If I fold the board in half, I can fit a 7 x 10 grid in the boxes, more than large enough! I'll also have room for rules, minis, dice, and some dry erase pens!

Here is a box for ancient to horse & musket land battles.

I also plan to make boxes for air battles, and sea battles.

I also picked up some more bases from Litko, this time in colored plastic. I plan to use these as units, replacing my wood tokens.

I will represent cavalry with a diagonal line. The tokens are two sided; one side will represent heavy infantry or cavalry while the other (designated by an L) will be lights.

Micro Battles

As mentioned previously, I started messing around with a micro-battle game on a 5 x 7 square grid with 4 or so units per side. I've been experimenting with the concept.

Experiment 1
I had already created simple army lists for a selection of ancient or medieval armies. My initial experiment featured Greeks (blue) vs. Persians (red/brown).

The Greek army consisted of 4 units of hoplites while the Persians had 2 units of Cavalry (brown), a unit of archers (red with blue standard) and auxiliaries (red with white).

The micro-battlefield showing the initial Persian advance

The Persian horse and archers drove away the Greek left. The White Phalanx held out long enough for the Red Phalanx to come to support. However, the combined Persian assaults finally broke the Whites. Finding themselves alone, the Reds retired.

Analysis
I used an opposed die roll, a la DBA. However, losers did not automatically retreat. Instead, they took a hit. A unit could roll a save to slough off the hit. Doubling the opponent forced a retreat and provided the possibility of 2 hits, which would destroy a unit.

The rules worked OK. There was none of the back-and-forth pushing that I find rather annoying in DBA. Instead, units got locked into ongoing melee until one side broke. That's what I wanted to achieve.

However, I found the mechanism to be annoying (reminding me why I no longer care for DBA). It's not opposed die rolls so much as it is having to determine if a unit scored double its opponent. There were numerous times where it was obvious who won a round but not so obvious if the roll doubled the opponent. I would then have to tote up the modifiers for both sides and then divide. I have engineering and business degrees so I am capable of doing the math. It's just that doing the division slows down the game. I prefer to be able to tell at a glance what happened without stopping for calculations. So this system seems to have a tragic flaw.

Experiment 2
This time I pitted Alexander's Macedonians (red) vs. Darius's Persians (blue).

I based this battle on Neil Thomas's replay of Issus in Ancient & Medieval Wargaming.

Alexander's Companions (left) routed the opposing light horse and then lent a hand to the phalanx crushing the Kardakes.

Soon, a lone Persian unit was fending off the entire Macedonian army. It did not last long.

Analysis
For this experiment I changed the combat rules. They are now more akin to Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame in that a unit in combat rolls 1D6 needed a 5 or more (modified by unit type) to hit. I used a different procedure for resolving hits, however. When a unit is hit, it rolls to save with the target roll depending on unit type (e.g. heavy infantry saves easier than light). A roll of 1 on a save also necessitates a retreat.

While 2 hits would destroy a unit, I also included an option to rally, thus removing a hit. This proved crucial in the scenario I played as the Companions took a hit in their initial combat but were able to slough it off.

Overall, the rules worked much smoother than my first experiment. I had much less math to contend with and I could generally tell upon rolling if a hit was scored. Units tended to get locked into battle until it was resolved one way or the other, which I liked. I did not roll up any retreats; I may need to rethink how those work (this calls for more experiments!). Overall, the feel seemed right.

The game was short, only 17 minutes. This is not a bad thing as I can play more battles in a single sitting.

Finally, I created a compact game set, using an old miniatures box I had lying around. The box measures about 5.5" x 8.5" and easily fits all needed components.

Best Laid Plans . . .

Once again go awry.

I'm on holiday for the 4th. A belated happy Independence Day!

Anyway, my holiday began on Wednesday when I decided to take a day off. I finally had time to play a game so I decided to do another scenario of my (now) ongoing fictional Florida in the Revolution campaign. I finished the game and tried to download the pictures. Long story short they are stuck in cyberspace. The pictures and game report will have to wait.

Yesterday morning I decided to play another game. But then Onyx decided to sleep on my board. Game over.

I did spend much of the day pondering wargame rules. Later I ran an experiment in a micro-game using a 5 x 7 square board. I used an opposed die roll mechanic, which seemed appropriate given the scale of the game.

I'll post about it after I experiment a bit more.