The Solomons Campaign - Turn 2 AAR

Turn 2, September 1942

Weather forecast: mostly clear (ie: no modifications to the weather roll).

First off I’d like to apologize for not having any combat pictures. I really dislike AAR’s that are just text and don’t have any eye candy so I substituted historical pictures I managed to google. My wife went to a baby shower the same day as this campaign turn and took our only good camera, and apparently someone’s new baby took precedence over the epic struggle over Guadalcanal.

Game and scale: We are using General Quarters 3 to play the tactical battles, and The Solomons Campaign from the same publisher (ODGW) for the campaign. All ships are 1/6000 Figurehead.

What’s happened so far: Turn 1 (link: http://micromegasatwar.blogspot.com/2012/01/solomons-campaign-turn-1.html) was a tacit affair, both sides mobilized their carriers but were unable to locate the enemy carrier group. The IJN successfully bombed and suppressed Henderson airfield and received reinforcements of more light carriers. The USN supplied their Marines holding the Cactus Airfield but was unsuccessful in its patrolling efforts to stop the IJN.

Turn 2: Unlike Turn 1, this turn saw lots of devastation in the air and sea. The allies managed to successfully bomb the IJA forces gathering on Guadalcanal, and the Marines made a successful Recon of the island’s perimeter further disrupting the Japanese army. Meanwhile Admiral Nimitz made a tour of the area boosting the morale of the troops.

Carrier Engagement: Both the IJN and the USN sortied their carrier groups to seek out and destroy the opposing side’s carriers. This time the USN sortie struck first causing some serious damage to the Zuikaku and temporarily disabling it. The IJN’s second carrier Shuikaku launched its sortie in response and managed to cripple and disable the Wasp. The third round of sorties was inconclusive as both sides withdrew. All in all the IJN got the better of the exchange by crippling the Wasp, but the Zuikaku being out of action for at least two months will limit their carrier capability in the near future.

US Torpedo Bombers formation

US Dive Bombers attaking the Zuikaku

US Wasp is left a burning heap from Japanese Torpedo and Dive Bombers

IJN Supply Mission vs USN Patrol: The USN managed to decode some of the Japanese transmissions and successfully intercepted one of the two IJN supply missions this turn. A bloody and confusing night battle ensued as the US Patrol of two heavy and four light cruisers attempted to disrupt the supply mission. They were met by a powerful force of IJN of one heavy cruiser, six light cruisers and seven destroyers escorting the Tokyo Express. The USN used their radar to detect the lead cruisers of the IJN and opened the first salvo, the IJN quickly threw up a smoke screen around their transports and returned fire with the remaining ships. The battle got mess very quickly as the US ships made an aggressive move toward the docked transports and the IJN screens threw themselves in between. Lots of torpedoes were launched at almost point blank range with both sided taking serious damage. US firepower was overwhelming as the Japanese ships got themselves tangled up with their own and the US ships. In the final hours of the battle two Japanese destroyers collided with US light cruisers. Both the Japanese and US admirals decided to cut their losses and withdraw. The US Patrol in the end did not disrupt the supply ships from unloading but they did cause terrible damage on the Japanese escort squadron, almost wiping it out completely with the exception of one 1 light cruiser and 1 destroyer. In the end the US lost 1 heavy cruiser and 2 light cruisers, while the Japanese list 6 destroyers, 1 heavy cruiser and 4 light cruisers. The cost was very high for the Japanese forces but their supply mission was successful. Later in the turn the IJN managed to later slip a supply past the US patrols with no incident.

The US Heavy Cruiser New Orleans is the Capital Ship of the Patrol Force

US and Japanese ships exchange fire in the night

Japanese ships are a burning wreck, though their supply mission is hidden from the US Patrol

As the IJN player, I was successful in my two supply missions but it was a Pyrrhic victory because I paid a heavy price for the first mission. The two sides now have parity in carrier strength and neither one seems hesitant to use it. On the bright side my successful supply missions positioned me well to assault the Marines on Henderson Airfield.

If there is an Assault we have to decide whether we want to just roll for the land battles as per the campaign rules or whether we want to adapt the roll into some land battle mechanism with FoW. The problem is that FoW doesn’t have lists for the Pacific theatre and I don’t actually have Marines and IJA forces so I’d have to port Brits and Germans.

Lastly, I may not be a very good tactical naval commander, I lost more ships than I should have in the last battle and I am not very effective with the placement of my torpedoes, maybe I was made to be a landlubber. Regardless, I am thoroughly enjoying this campaign and the intense surface actions it created this turn.

First Game of Infinity

It's been a pretty busy January in terms of gaming, I've played four separate miniature games, two of which I hadn't played before. I played a game of Cold War Commander last week but unfortunately forgot my camera and I always disliked AAR's without pictures, so I didn't post about the game. This week I tried my first game of Infinity. It's a game that our club all jumped into a year ago but never really played.

In this game there was a combined Haqqislam and Yu Jing force attacking a fortified stronghold held by the Combined Army. To keep a long story short we were caught out in the open and were devastated by the sniper fire from the tower and hidden positions in the bunkers. In hindsite we should've had an advantage in points when assaulting a strongly defended position, but this was our first game so we didn't really bother about the scenario game and wanted to focus on getting the mechanics right.

As far as my impressions of the game, I think it has a lot of cool factor to it. There lots of different toys and tricks to play with and you have to be very judicious in the use of your forces. While I like the premise of the game and how quickly it flows, and I absolutely love the miniatures and the fluff, I think the rules could be a little more streamlined in terms the number of weapons and abilities available. I can see that this game will take a little while to get the hang of, as opposed to Lasalle which I pretty much got on the first try. Having said that, I think skirmish games work well in the sci-fi setting because you can have all kinds of neat weapons and toys that give it a lot of flavour.

Picture showing the heavily protected position of the Combined Army



Hassassin and Yu Jing forces take cover ready to assault



Snipers in the towers rain down some damage on the attackers

The Yu Jing remote is taken out early due to sniper fire

The Hassassin Ragik tries to land on the tower but misses and lands in open ground under fire.

On the other flank 'Hassan' the Haqqislam infantry support hears some rumbling on the buses behind him

Too late for Hassan, as he is hacked to pieces

To add insult to injury the infiltrator impersonates Hassan

Meanwhile the Yu Jing Lieutenant makes a bold and aggressive move on the bunker, and is shot down

Hassan's brother, Ali, sees fire from another bunker and puts his Panzerfaust to work

And blows it up! He has yet to learn of the fate of his brother

There was quite some more action that I didn't capture, the Haqqislam/YuJing forces. The YuJing infiltrator got past the main line and caused some havoc behind enemy lines but was cut down.  Despite their progress in knocking out the some of the defendors the cost was too high and the sniper fire prevented effective movement. The Combined Armies held out on this occasion and we called it a night. All in all it was a fun game, the game tends to produce some really cinematic sequences that are fun, the brutal death of Hassan being one of the examples.

The Solomons Campaign – Turn 1

This past weekend, me and a friend of mine started The Solomons Campaign from ODGW, using GQ3 to resolve tactical combat. I have been on a WW2 naval bend for a little while and decided on 1/6000 scale ships for the sake of space, convenience and cost. I’ve also been craving a campaign of some sort for a while. I tried a foray into board games last year but they just don’t capture my imagination the same way table top wargaming does. I really like the way TSC is set up and plays out, it took us some time to work out the sequence and to fix a few errors but now that we have it figured it I’m looking forward to the rest of the campaign.

We started the campaign with the assumption that the Savo Island occurred and used the historical results.

Date: August, 1942

Weather Forecast : Moderate

The Japanese forces in Rabaul are forced support operations in New Guinea and therefore have fewer naval assets at their disposal to support the Guadalcanal effort. The Americans have no choice but to run a supply mission to support their Marines holding Henderson airfield. 

Both the Americans and Japanese sortie a carrier group but neither side has any luck in finding the other and the carrier exchange is inconclusive.

The Japanese send a powerful bombardment force to suppress Henderson Airfield, the Americans respond in kind with their own bombardment force. The American force is unable to locate the enemy and the Japanese effectively suppress the Cactus airforce. The Americans do, however, successfully get their supply lines to the island to provide some relief to the poor shell shocked Marines.

Due to the diversion of the Rabaul assets the Japanese did not get a chance to supply their troop build-up on Guadalcanal, but they did get the Junyo, Hiryo and Ryujo.

The first turn didn’t see any surface or air action as both sides shored up their positions or were unsuccessful in their attempt to intercept the other side.

A couple of my own comments on the campaign: we were pretty unlucky in our rolls for the carrier on carrier action and for the bombardment intercepts. We both had a thirst for combat and it’s good to see that both of us were fairly aggressive but I think the campaign should provide a higher probability of engagements occurring (but maybe they’re more accurate this way). Because there were no surface engagements we had time to play through half of the Turn II, where another carrier engagement occurred and the first die roll would have ended the battle but in the interest of blowing things up we decided to ignore it and re-roll. The second turn also set up a surface combat that will be interesting to play out.

Since there were no surface actions to speak of here are some pics of my fleets:

IJN Fleet

USN Fleet

US Destroyers

US Heavy Cruisers

Yamato

First Game of Lasalle - Russian vs French

I have been slowly buying up a painted Russian Grenadier Division from my friend at the local club, and I finally have enough for a brigade plus support, with the exception of the artillery. This was my first crack at Sam Mustafa’s Lasalle rules.

The battle was a French division attacking a village held by the Russians. The Russian plan was to anchor their defense around the town and whittle down the rest of the French with my overwhelming artillery advantage. In the end the French were able to maneuvre through around the town through a patch of woods that covered their advance and overwhelm the Russian defences. The French Dragoons dueled the Russian Cuirassiers on the far Russian right and with the French breaking through on all sides we decided to call the game for the French. I think the deciding factor was my complete misuse of my artillery and never really got a good shot off with them.

As for my impressions of Lasalle, I find the rules streamlined and straightforward while producing good and realistic results. The turn sequence takes some getting used to but I like it because it forces you to do some planning. The other players at our club found the victory conditions lacking and produced their own victory point system that can be found here: http://www.torontohmg.org/

While I like Lasalle, I would like to play a Napoleonic game on a slightly larger scale, perhaps corps or even army level, and I would like to see some more advanced C&C and battlefield friction elements. But I understand that those aren't in Lasalle's scope so I think the game does what it aims to do perfectly well. So while I like the game and will continue to play it I don’t think it’s THE Napoleonic that I want. I really like Sam’s ideas that he put into Maurice and were originally planned for Blucher so I think I will continue to play and build my forces and playing Lasalle while I wait for the next installment of the Honour series. Other Napoleonic games that I may want to try are Black Powder and Le Feu Sacre, the only problem is that I don’t like reading rules.

Enough of my rambling here’s the eye candy, the miniatures are mix of AB and minifigs in 15mm. All of the miniatures on the table were painted by my friend and his blog can be found at http://toronto15.blogspot.com/.

Huge Battle of Ligny

I dropped by the home of my long-time friend over the holidays. He had a Ligny game set up with 1/72 scale miniatures. The pictures don't do the set up justice, it is truly stunning to see in person, the table is about 20' long and there are probably 2000+ miniatures on it (though I didn't actually count). This is the way I grew up playing wargames:

Greek Persian Wars - Part 2 – Battle of Marathon

Continued from the last post...

The Greeks won a critical initiative roll in turn 3 and were able to get spears into the Persian sparabara before the Persians could fire their bows. Then it became a race against time - could the hoplites break the Persian infantry before the Persian cavalry came to rescue them.

The Persian Sparabara and Javelinmen waiver and fall back under the Greek assault.

The Persian cavalry arrive on turn 4!

The Persians put up a final stiff resistance but despite the arrival of the cavalry their Sparabara collapse and the Persian camp is sacked by the Greek general himself, causing a route of the Persian army. It was too little too late for the cavalry to be able to save the day.

Final Comments:  As the Persian commander I enjoyed the battle though I made some mistakes with my initial cavalry unit and the placement of my skirmishers. The Greeks also rolled impeccably well on their discipline tests and got across the table pretty quickly, kudos the Greek player for being aggressive.

In terms of scenario design, I’m not sure if I should’ve had the cavalry arrive sooner, if it was poor tactics on my part or good rolling for the Greeks that caused the one-sided route. It’s probably a combination of all three. If I ran it again I would allow the Persians to roll for their cavalry too arrive one turn earlier and would probably add a few units to the Persian side to make it even on points prior to the cavalry arrival.

At least the battle was a pretty good representation of the actual battle. Next up Thermopylae.

Greek Persian Wars - Part 1 – Battle of Marathon

This is my first post in my new blog. Since this year is the 2500 year anniversary of the Battle of Marathon I’ve been wanting to play out the battle for a while. I would like to eventually play out a scenario for each of the major battles in the Greek-Persian wars, this is the first installment.

I made a few changes to the actual historical OOB’s, I added one unit of cavalry per side and gave the Greeks some skirmishers, I also allowed for the possibility of the Persian cavalry returning in time to save the day. This scenario was played out with Impetus using 25/28mm miniatures. The Persians have the beach to their left flank, the Greeks to their right. The Athenians are the attackers, the Persians are the Defenders, the Persians deploy first and the Greeks automatically have the first move. Since each side only has one command I decided to modify the Impetus deployment rules and have side take turns deploying half their units.

To add a little twist to the game I decided to allow for the possibility of the Perisan cavalry coming back in time to save the day. Starting from Turn 4 roll a dice to determine if the Persian Cavalry arrive, on a roll of 5 or 6 they successfully arrive on the Persian right flank at least 30U from the centre line. Use 2 dice on Turn 5, 3 on Turn 6 and so on.

Marathon Map

Map of Marathon



Greek OOB




Persian OOB





Greeks and Persians Line up for Battle

 Greek Hoplites advance under a hail of Persian arrows. On the Greek left, there was a duel between skirmishers and cavalry. The Greeks got lucky and managed to destroy the one Persian cavalry unit on the table, but the Greek cavalry was crippled in the process. On the Greek right, anchored by the sea, the hoplites were able to use double moves to run across the table in 2 turns.

The Greeks won a critical initiative roll in turn 3 and were able to get spears into the Persian sparabara before the Persians could fire their bows. Then it became a race against time - could the hoplites break the Persian infantry before the Persian cavalry came to rescue them.