Edinburgh Wargames

                         The Edinburgh Wargames Journal             

               Issue 29  - December 2008  

Periods featured  in this Issue: Pirates, Napoleonic and the Great War in East Africa  (all in 28mm), Spanish Civil War (20mm), and Pre-Dreadnought Naval (1/1200)

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Pre-Dreadnought Naval Clash, 1908 (Perfidious Albion) 1/200 scale

Whenever we want to play a game which doesn't involve much effort, we tend to opt for something nautical. As the period between Christmas and New Year is a time of laziness (unless you're a self-employed author with deadlines), I reached for a box of ships. Similarly, whenever we play a naval game, we always put too many toys on the table. This time we opted for just three a side, so we could concentrate on drinking heavily and talking geeky nonsense at the same time. The marvellous scratch built ships are from my collection, the work of the late Mike Earll.

You won't find this battle in the history books. It was a non-historical scrap, pitching an Austro-Hungarian pre-dreadnought and cruiser and a French battleship against three German pre-dreadnoughts. Okay, the "Allies" were a little out-gunned, but worse things happen at sea...

The rules we use are Perfidious Albion, available as a download from A&A Games. The very simple rules work a little like a glorified game of "battleships"; you have a percentage chance of hitting with each gun, and when you do, you roll to see where it hits. That's the fun bit, as for the most part you roll a D10 and a D6, which corresponds to a square on your Ship Card. If your shell penetrates the armour there, you knock out the square. Some squares don't contain anything important, but others have steering gear, propulsion systems, gun turrets, or magazines in them. There are a few nice subtleties to the game, but not enough to get in the way of a jolly good "old school" game.

In our little scrap, the two sides slogged it out, and to make things interesting Dougie (commanding the "Allies") sent his cruiser in a suicide mission to ram the largest German battleship. He hit it, but went down in the attempt, when a shell hit his magazine! The Austrians and French certainly had the worst of the engagement, and in the final turn the Charles Martel was hit in one of her ammunition hoists. The owning player has the option to flood his magazine, which puts the turret out of action, or roll a "Crew Test", to see if the Damage Control Parties save the day. The Allied commander gambled and lost, so .... BOOM!

At that point we decided to draw a veil over the proceedings, and let the remaining Austrian ship run itself onto the beach to prevent it going down. Actually, this was something of a pyrrhic victory for me, as on the penultimate turn an Austrian shell penetrated the Conning Tower of my flagship, the Deutschland, killing everybody inside. As a result my 1/1200 scale alter ego never lived to enjoy the fruits of victory!

Pre-Dreadnought Naval Page         The Mike Earll Collection

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The Pangani Crissing, German East Africa, 1914 (Heart of East Africa) 28mm

A few years ago we decided to augment our "Darkest Africa" figures by bolting on small armies from the Great War. I opted for the Germans in East Africa, mainly because all my Great War armies are from the wrong side, but also so they could be historically matched against my African tribe of choice - the He He. For most of the war, the Germans fought a series of rearguard actions agaisnt superior numbers of British Imperial troops, always managing to extricate themselves from danger before the lumbering attackers could trap them. This game represented one of these situations - a defending force astride a river, while light flanking columns were approaching them from flank and rear. This all sounds very "Staff College" - in truth we were in for a first-rate bloodbath!

Two units of Schutztruppen were cut off on the wrong side of the river when the British Empire troops appeared. They soon found themselves pinned in a firefight with the King's African Rifles and the Nigerian West African Regiment. While they managed to see off their opponents, casualties were heavy. Then, the surprise appearance of a British armoured car solved the problem of how to extricate the remnants back over the river.

The armoured car was knocked out by fire from a German pom-pom (called a schnellfeurgeschutzen - you've got to love those German names!), and when the dust settled the Germans found that the attack had come to a halt. Actually, there were no Btitish Empire troops left to shoot at. that left the two flank attacks. First off, Colin Jack's Belgians appeared on the German right flank, and were sent running after a bitterly fought close range firefight, which saw the Germans lose their unit of sailors from the SMS Konigsberg. Finally, the South Africans appeared on the German left, but after seeing of a thin screen of "Ruga Ruga" allies, they were mown down by the Schutztruppen reserves, deployed in a long gully. Victiry was duly awarded to my Germans.

Of course, this was a particularly silly game. For a start, casualties were absurd - the British losing almost 100% of their force, and the Germans about 50%. We were packing it away about an hour before some of the other games played in the club that evening, which just shows how bloodthirsty our game was! the trouble is, we use a variant of Chris Peers' Heart of Africa rules called Heart of East Africa. The rules are a lot like Contemptible Little Armies, but even more murderous - making it far too easy to hit people. After all, they're designed for small bands of well-armed troops fighting hordes of natives. Instead we were pitching two whole armies of well-armed troops against each other. The result was carnage! Next time we might tinker with the factors, or even resort to Contemptible Little Armies, which - though bloodthirsty - isn't as markedly so as this set! However, the game looked good, and it was good to give the Schutztruppe an airing again.

In the Heart of East Africa Playsheet         The Great War in Africa Section

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Alto de Leon Pass, Guadarrama, July 1936 (Guerra Civil Actions!) 20mm

A few weeks ago we had a windfall - someone was selling their unpainted 28mm Spanish Civil War lead at a bargain price. Several of us bought lead, and ever since we've been wondering what to do with it. People in the club already game the Spanish Civil War using 20mm figures, but we want to explore other rules systems. Someone suggested The Perfect Captain's Red Actions system for the Russian Civil War. An unofficial variant was posted on the Captain's Yahoo site called Guerra Civil Actions, so we decided to give it a go, using Bill Gilchrist's 20mm figures. 

The scenario (devised by Bill) was set in the opening months of the war, with a Republican government force attempting to clear the rebel Nationalists from the approaches to a pass through the Guadarrama Mountains. Against my better judgement I took the Nationalists (the bad guys), whose force consisted of a mixture of Peninsular army regulars and Falangist militia. the Republicans also had army regulars, supported by anarchist and socialist militia, and the Guardia Civil. To win the Republicans had to force their way through the thinly-held Nationalist line.

To be honest, it wasn't much of a game. Every time the attackers came within close range of the Nationalist line they were thrown back, and despite playing for about 2 1/2 hours, they never really came close to achieving a breakthrough. Towards the end they were throwing everything they had up the central road - FT-17 tanks, armoured trucks and yet more infantry, but the Nationalist line still held. Certainly the Falangists were looking a little shaky on the flanks, but so too were the mob-like militias who were attacking them.

Well, this was more of a playtest than a full-on game, so we kept on having to  look things up. We'd already used a variant of the rules (Very Civile Actions) in our English Civil War games, so we knew the basics, but found that there were quite a few important differences. My biggest bugbear was that units were forced to retire all the time, which meant that nobody could achieve very much, and the game was therefore quite slow. I suppose this reflected the real conflict, but it didn't make for a very interesting game!. Still, we've come up with some good house rules to get round the problems we encountered, and we'll certainly give the rules another go. Next time it'll probably be with our own 28mm figures. After all, I made snazzy playsheets, leader counters and troop cards for this game (see below), so we need to get some more use out of all that!

Sample Unit Cards (the real things look prettier than these low-res scans):

Guerra Civil Actions!  Playsheet  (Word File - Work in Progress!)

The Perfect Captain's Red Actions Rules

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Peninsular War game, c.1812 (Republic to Empire) 28mm

There are actually pictures of a game I didn't play - a playstesting session of Republic to Brigade, organised by Barry Hilton. For my part, work got in the way, so only my British figures made it onto the table, without their doughty commander. However, when I  popped round to deliver the lead, I also snapped a few photos.

In fact, the British and their Portuguese allies looked like they needed all the help they could get, as the good guys looked hopelessly outnumbered. The French at the top are plastic Perry figures, painted by Dave Imrie, which explains why they look so darned good. Jack Glanville's Poles were also on show, along with Barry's French, and yet more figures from the collection of Pete McCarroll. I just hope some more British arrived after I left!

One of the most imposing units was Barry Hilton's French Grand Battery - a Napoleonic "Death Star" if ever I saw one!

The Napoleonic War  page

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Treasure Island, 1718 (Legends of the High Seas) 28mm

This week we played out a piratical Tabletop Teaser, something we'd promised Henry Hyde, of the excellent Battlegames magazine. As we’d all recently used Warhammer’s Wild West system, we opted for their very similar pirate set called Legends of the High Seas. The original Tabletop Teaser appeared two years ago in Battlegames Issue 5, but an earlier version can also be found in Charles S. Grant's Scenarios for Wargames (1981). We modified the shape of the island a bit, to fit our own island terrain (lovingly crafted by Hugh Wilson), but the idea was the same. Two pirate crews land on different ends of an island, and follow a trail of clues in the search for buried treasure. To make things interesting the island is also defended by locals - in our case Cimaroons (runaway slaves) - who amused themselves by taking pot shots at both groups of interlopers.

In our game, Barnacle Bill’s crew landed on one side of the island, and Black Jack’s men appeared on the other. Each crew consisted of 20 pirates, split into two groups, one led by the Pirate Captain, and the other by his Quartermaster. While Master Mynd’s group attacked the village, Black Jack searched for treasure. His first clue led to a second one, which he misinterpreted. The clue  Look for two dead wooden sentinels was meant to guide him to search beneath two dead trees in the centre of the island. Instead he headed straight for a wrecked ship, whose two masts were still standing! Meanwhile Barnacle Bill's crew crossed and re-crossed the lagoon in search of clues, and battled the Cimaroons. Caught between the two pirate crews, the surviving locals fled into the jungle, leaving the island to the pirates.

 Now, before the game started, both Quartermasters had been told that an old shipmate of theirs had been marooned on the island, and if they found him, he’d help them find the buried treasure. Master Mynd eventually stumbled across the castaway - Black Angus, and his trusty sidekick Roger the Cabin Boy. As Master Mynd now knew where the treasure was, he decided to stab his Captain - Black Jack - in the back! You can never trust a pirate!

Of course, by this stage Black Jack was already at the wrecked ship, where he stumbled across the hiding place of the treasure, without needing to follow the clues or find a castaway. He barely had time to dig up the chest when Master Mynd's party arrived, and a hum-dinger of a scrap began between the two halves of the same pirate crew. barnacle bill marched to the sound of the guns, and joined in the melee, hoping to win the treasure for himself.

 Of course, that's when the second great act of treachery happened. While all this had been going on, Master Bates and his men had been rowing around the headland, and appeared off the beach where the wrecked ship lay. The treasure chest was guarded by Captain Black Jack and a couple of his men, while the rest were fighting it out on the shore.

Bates and Black Jack promptly struck a deal, and as the sun set over Treasure Island, the two new-found allies were seen rowing towards Black Jack's ship, the Wenchy Lass. All Barnacle Bill, Master Mynd, Black Angus and the rest of Black Jack's crew could do was howl with rage as the treasure was snatched from under their noses!

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable game, and while I'm not really a great fan of Warhammer (too much unnecessary die rolling for my tastes), I must admit that the rules worked very well indeed. More importantly, everyone had a great time! 

Pirates! page

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