Musing: Early 20thC wars in South and Central America

I'm not actually planning anything new just at the moment, but this is an area of on-going interest. My historical education at school was very Anglo-centric with some extension into Continental Europe and North America, and last century wargaming followed a similar pattern. Being able to branch out into the history of the other Americas is refreshing, as is the prospect of modelling their armies and gaming their wars.

Anyway, on to the specifics.

Firstly, I bought another book on the Chaco War - The Chaco War 1932-1935 - by Antonio Luis Sapienza and José Luis Martínez Peláez published by Helion. Helion have a prodigious output. They also overwhelm you with marketing emails which I was about to cancel when I saw this title. The book is nicely illustrated with contemporary photos and some coloured illustrations, and is a worthwhile addition to my collection.

I've taken an interest in the Chaco since Khurasan launched their 15mm range. There are also plenty of vehicles available in that scale. I own that prior to that I'd never heard of it. I like the Chaco War because it's offbeat and obscure, and I'm particularly attracted by the 'quirky' interwar tankettes, but these were used in such small numbers that I could really only justify their use in a skirmish-level game. 

Here I think the most promising option might be Chain of Command as this would allow for tanks and all sorts of other assets - HMGs, mortars, field guns, trucks etc - all fielded in penny packets. Using CoC for the Chaco was discussed here.

For those seriously interested, a great collection of links to Chaco War resources can be found here.

Secondly, I note Peter Pig has launched a range of 15mm figures for the Mexican Revolution. This is another area in which I've had a long-term interest. Here I would be inclined to adapt Red Actions or something on that scale, i.e. companies of say 4 bases with multiple figures on each. This would be a higher level game and require more figures.

For 'mass armies' I remain more inclined to 10mm, but there's no sign of that happening and 15mm is at least a step in the right direction. I'll stop there. I'm not hitting any 'Buy Now' buttons. Well, not yet, anyway.

Great War Crossfire

The empty field (lower left-hand corner) had contained a
German platoon. Despite eliminating this, the British
platoon (lower centre) was beginning to lose the firefight
with the German platoon in the copse on the left edge.

Many of you will know Robert Dunlop from his contribution to the Great War Spearhead rules and scenario books and his extremely well-informed forum postings on WW1 topics. It was thus a pleasure and privilege to welcome him to my local wargames club and to play a WW1 Crossfire game which he organised.

Robert has recently been quoting chapter and verse on the Yahoo Crossfire group about low level training and actions during WW1 - the level that Crossfire represents - so I was keen to see how a WW1 game would work with these WW2 rules.

The game was a meeting battle, a common occurrence in northern France in the early days of WW1 during the Race to the Sea. Robert posted an eloquent account of the game in the Crossfire Yahoo Group placing it in historical context.

The absence of smoke and the relative scarcity of HMGs made this a significantly different style of game to the WW2  ones I've played but the rules worked equally well.

Plenty of reserves but nowhere to send them except into
the German meat-grinder. Miniatures are 15mm Peter
Pig and Minifigs.

The game has rekindled my interest in doing some 1914 armies, but I once again find myself spoilt for choice. For Crossfire armies, which are small and predominantly infantry, I would normally go for 15mm figures, but for early WW1 I am very attracted to the superb 12mm Kallistra ranges. But the armies might also be used for Square Bashing, Bloody Big Battles! and/or Great War Spearhead which all require relatively large numbers of bases, so 6mm Baccus figures might be a better option.

Hammerin' Iron

Monitor vs Merrimac

Enthusiasms come and go, and plans and projects leapfrog one another before they can be finished or even started. But interests can also do an orbit and come back into view. Such is the case for me with American Civil War ironclads in general and Peter Pig's Hammerin' Iron game in particular.

The fascination began as a child when, inspired by one of Don Featherstone's books, I scratchbuilt from plasticard models of the Merrimac and Monitor. They certainly weren't accurate scale models but I think they captured the look and feel. An indecisive game between two ships, however, was rather unrewarding.

Galleys & Galleons: Name that ship

People get very involved when, in multi-player games, they have a ship each, and I thought it would be a good idea to boost this personal identification by following other gamers in giving each ship a specific name.

So here are the names I've selected. Many of the ships are interchangeable in their affiliation. The Frigate and the Indiaman is actually the same model. Some of the names are historical or modern, i.e. stolen. Others are made-up.

Galleys & Galleons: Wreckage markers

I needed some wreckage markers for Galleys & Galleons. Wreckage and survivors are included with the Peter Pig manned rowing boats. PP also do some empty rowing boats. These would be a liability in combat and would have been towed behind rather than stored on deck. I didn't have any use for them so I threw them into the wreckage to add to the sense of chaos.

The PP bits were stuck onto 40mm MDF squares. Filler was used to level the surface around the markers. You can now get perfectly adequate filler in big tubs from a 'pound' shop.

Red Actions

I have a bucket list of rules I'd like to try out and Red Actions by The Perfect Captain is one of them. At one time I'd have felt compelled to buy and paint a couple of armies first, but why go to such self-defeating trouble when I could just label up some ceramic blocks? The Perfect Captain even offers ready-made top-downs which are ideal, so I printed them onto label stock at 90% reduction and began attaching them...

I have a strong interest in 'offbeat' early 20thC armies: the Anglo-Irish War (which I've done in 28mm), the Spanish Civil War (which I've done in 15mm for Crossfire), the Chaco War, and a whole host of wars that I've planned to do for Square Bashing including the First Balkan War, the Mexican Revolution, early WW1, the Russo-Polish War and the Chinese Warlord era. If I ever get round to doing any of the latter, it will almost certainly be in 10mm but I am put off by the number of bases I would need to paint up. That's one reason why I've been working on some Interwar rules of my own, but I will come back to that another time.

Galleys & Galleons: Gun boats

It's handy to have a few smaller, cheaper ships for making up points, so I decided to create some gun boats by cannibalising Peter Pig rowing boats. I didn't have any contemporary illustrations to work from but I've seen pictures of later gunboats and used those for inspiration.

The starting point: light gun and rowing boats from the Peter Pig Pieces of Eight range.

Galleys & Galleons: Chinese pirate junks

A flotilla of Chinese pirate junks from Grumpy's Miniatures has now joined my collection of ships for Galleys & Galleons. They are 1/300 but easily converted to 1/450  by replacing the crew and guns with Peter Pig  ones.

In the heading picture the original crew have been chopped off with GW Cutters and a chisel-shaped X-acto scalpel. I also once again replaced the masts with pins. It seems to be more difficult to superglue the sails to pins than to the original masts, but they should be more robust in the longer term. I'd rather restick a sail than be confronted with a bent or broken mast.

Galleys & Galleons: Waterlining the Pirateology xebecs

'Waterlining' the three Pirateology xebecs was an unavoidable challenge but not one I was looking forward to.

Owing to the relatively delicate and finished nature of the model, I could hardly put it in a vice, but had to handhold it. Luckily it was possible to rest the model on its stern and this provided a reasonably stable anchor point.

I made a nick in the bow with a pair of GW clippers and then attacked the model with a fretsaw. The hull is partially hollow, but there's a lot of thick plastic to get through.

Galleys & Galleons: My totally unoriginal shore forts

Making forts from take-away coffee-cup tops is a brilliant idea but it wasn't mine. I stole it from the well-known naval wargamer and fellow Galleys & Galleons playtester, David Manley. Taking my cue from David's Fort Barrista,  I'm calling them Fort Costa and Fort Nero, though the tops actually came from neither.

Here are some pictures of my own production process.

Galleys & Galleons: The Pirateology xebec

I recently bought three Pirateology xebecs as the basis of a Barbary Pirate fleet for Galleys & Galleons. Sold as a 'Barbary Galley', the ship is nicely modelled and although no scale is stated, it seems perfectly compatible with the Peter Pig 1/450 Pirate ship range. I thought it might be helpful to take some close-ups with a Peter Pig ship for comparison.

Galleys & Galleons: first games

Nic Wright's forthcoming Galleys & Galleons rules are certainly raising a lot of interest and just before Christmas my friend Ian and I finally got round to a couple of playtest games ourselves.

I can only apologise for the photos. The ships are wearing just their undercoats and look like ghost ships, and the photos were taken very inexpertly in the heat of battle. But, hey, it's a playtest. (Ghost ships are actually covered in the rules in a fantasy supplement at the end.)

The seascape in our first game was a little overcrowded with islands and shallows. They were cunningly placed by my piratical opponent, forcing me into a very awkward starting position. Eager to teach the pirates a lesson they would not forget, my ships sped ahead leaving the boats behind. All measurements are made using the coffee stirrers.

Galleys & Galleons: the fleets assemble

My first batch of ships for Galleys & Galleons is now based and primed. The ships are to some extent interchangeable but these photos represent my first thoughts.

The Merchants. From back to front: Peter Pig Large Merchantman, Fluyt, and Small Merchantman. The Dhow (foreground) is a 1/300 Grumpy model with the original crew removed, and Peter Pig crew and guns substituted. I also replaced the supplied but rather vulnerable mast with a stout dressmaking pin. This made it harder to superglue the sail on, but I'd rather cope with a detached sail than a wonky or broken mast.

Galleys & Galleons: making sea bases

I decided to try a new method for basing my 1/450 Peter Pig pirate ships for Galleys & Galleons - aluminium 'turkey' foil. It's said this should be used shiny side up. I'm not sure why but I followed suit. Rather than just crumpling it, I rubbed it over the side of a ribbed tin can. I then varied the angle a little and re-rubbed parts to create a more irregular wave effect.

Galleys & Galleons

Nic Wright's Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World's End reinforced my interest in games which require only small armies and a compact playing area, and can be finished in 1-2 hours. I was thinking about other, similarly compact, land war options, when Nic's new pirate naval game - Galleys & Galleons - impinged on my consciousness. This is currently at the play-testing stage and I have enrolled as a volunteer.

The game involves very modest forces, can be played in a quite restricted area, and promises to be fast and furious. It satisfies all the criteria for a modest, compact and fast game, but what initially attracted me to it were the photos on Nic's blog of his superbly painted 1/450 pirate ships made by Peter Pig .

Spanish Civil War - Reinforcements

Here are some pictures of reinforcements for my Spanish Civil War armies. They were completed some time ago but have not been featured here before. The figures are all 15mm Peter Pig and based for use with Crossfire, though I'm also planning to use my SCW armies for something more grand-tactical at some point.

Legionaries

The Spanish Foreign Legion and Regulares (see below) spearheaded Franco's revolt against the Spanish Republic and provided him with hardened professionals. The Spanish Legion was formed in 1920 in imitation of the French Foreign Legion but actually recruited mostly native Spaniards.

Elizabethan Small Wars: Part 4: Irregular Wars - Mere Irish

I've been collecting 15mm figures for my Irregular Wars 'Mere Irish' Battle. 'Mere' is today a slighting term but originally meant 'pure', i.e. it designated the native Gaelic Irish. Galloglass and Kerns are compulsory in the army list before 1600 and Pike and Shot after 1600, but all types are usable across the divide. In 'set piece' battles there are 5 additional options which take the form of x1, xD2 or xD3 etc companies. So for any option you have to allow for more units than you might actually get to field on the table.

I'm currently planning the following units. Each unit is a company/base. Most of the figures are Khurasan Renaissance Irish, but others will be conscripted where required. I decided in the end to go with the standard 30mm square bases as I felt that larger bases would crowd the battlefield too much and alter the game. I could increase the playing area to compensate for larger bases but I want to keep the game compact and not too demanding on painting time.

2 Pike

2 Shot

3 Galloglass

4 Kerns

4 Horse

3 Bonnachts

3 Kern marksmen

2 Redshanks

1 Priest

I was also going to add some Spanish Targeteers but I think I'll postpone that and do a whole 'Spanish Expeditionary Force' Battle once Khurasan have released their Spanish range. For each extra Battle, you add a foot in width. Given that my club like multiplayer games, it will be good to be able to deploy a couple of Battles per side.

Pike. All Khurasan. The end figure is an ensign from the command pack.

WW1 fortifications in 10mm

These fortifications were made to represent (1) 'trench and wire', and (2) 'concrete and wire' fortifications as defined in the first edition of the Peter Pig Square Bashing rules. They're somewhat redundant now but I'm posting this item for its modelling interest. Both fortification types are symbolic representations rather than accurate scale models, but they are inspired by real-life photos and diagrams.

Square Bashing 2012 - Second Game

I played a second 'Quick Game' of the new Square Bashing 2012 rules, this time against a different opponent. It was another attempt to learn the rules and try things out, rather than to play competitively. At least that's my excuse. I played the British attackers against a German defence. This time the defending army was more balanced (more infantry, less artillery).

My opponent was quick to pick up the rules and to play them to maximum advantage! By placing the transverse road (and thus the crossroads objective) in Row 4, the defender was able to incorporate the other objectives into his Row 3 defensive line. My opponent was also struck, as I was in my first game,  by the amount of scenery. I find this a good aspect, adding to the realism, the game play and the aesthetics.

Square Bashing 2012

I played my first game of Peter Pig's new Square Bashing 2012 rules using the Quick Game option and my Pendraken 10mm 1918 British and German armies. The new version is very clearly and attractively presented and the game went smoothly despite this being a first attempt.

Following placement of the objectives and other scenery, my opponent deployed the German attackers fairly evenly with cavalry and a tank unit in the centre. My fewer British defenders formed a thin front line backed up with a central reserve. This thin khaki line seemed  considerably thinner after the depletions phase.