2022 Roundup

One of many additions to my
library of books I have no
time to read...

2022 has been almost exclusively a year of playing To the Strongest! and I happily achieved more than I expected. I reorganised and supplemented my old 15mm Ancients and Medievals and played quite a few games with my friend, Ian, in 6mm, 15mm and 28mm, but we weren't able to lure in any other club members. (It's a small club, DBA 2.0 is well established and people like playing Lion Rampant, as do I.)

I also dug out my old 25mm Sassanids for future TtS! consideration and accumulated some 10mm Normans which were supplemented and rebased. That project was spread over a couple of weeks and constituted my sole annual painting/modelling effort. I had planned to go to the Warfare show so I could see other people playing TtS! outside of our self-taught bubble, but that expedition fell through.

Towards the end of the year I was kindly introduced to Blucher and received my copy of Xenos Rampant. With TtS! these are areas I will be exploring next year. More details in my first post of 2023.

It's been another year in which I haven't had much time to do any reading, but my ability to buy books has never diminished. Sadly they seem to come with ever thinner and more shoddy covers.

Like the rest of my wargaming activities, my blogging is not doing much more than ticking over and this has not had a good effect on readership or interactivity.

May I wish my remaining readers a happy New Year!

Xenos Rampant unit profiles for Near Future Sci-Fi forces

Some Brigade Models reinforcements with
Heavy Weapons for the Elite Infantry.

I've been working on Xenos Rampant unit profiles for my 15mm Near Future Sci-Fi Detachments. These are mostly collected and even undercoated but I am waiting on a few new additions.

One of these forces has a neo-Soviet flavour and was originally inspired by the early Russian insurgency in Ukraine. The other was conceived as a sort of US/NATO force. The current frightfulness has made me uncomfortable with that so I am rebranding them as the forces of Eurasia and Oceana.

The profiles basically follow what seems credible for the look of the models. The Oceana force is a little more hi-tech. I'm aware that the points costs are high which might mean some dumbing down and almost certainly having Detachments of more than the standard 24 points. We found the same thing with Dragon Rampant as opposed to Lion Rampant.

Eurasia

Spider Drone Swarm
Elite Infantry 6
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Mechanoid 0
9

Infantry Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Brutal Leader 1
5

HMG Squad
Support Infantry 5
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2
8

AT Squad (RPGs)
Support Infantry 5
Anti-Tank 2
7

Tank
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Armour-Piercing 1
7

IFV
Transport Vehicle 4
SMU
4

Walker
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Armour-Piercing 1,Walker 2
9

Aerial Gunship
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Area Effect 2, Armour-Piercing 1, Light Armoured Vehicle -2, Flying 2
9

Oceana

Powered-Armour Squad
Elite Infantry 6
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Mobile 1
10

Bike Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Mobile 1, Skimmer 1
4

Jetpack Infantry Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Mobile 1 Skimmer 1
6

Infantry Squad
Light Infantry 1
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2
4

Aerial Drones
Recon Infantry 2
Flying 2, Mechanoid 0
4

HMG Squad
Support Infantry 5
Armour-Piercing 1, Heavy Weapons 2, Indirect Fire 1
9

AT Squad (Mini-Missiles)
Support Infantry 5
Anti-tank 2
7

Mortar Squad
Support Infantry 5
Engulfing 1, Indirect Fire 1
7

Tank
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU Armour-Piercing 1, Skimmer 1
8

IFV
Transport Vehicle 4
SMU Skimmer 1
5

MRLS
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU Area Effect 2, Artillery 2, Indirect Fire 1, Light Armoured Vehicle -2
9

High Mobility Wheeled Vehicle
Soft-skin Vehicle 2
SMU, Transport (5) 1
3

Aerial Gunship
Fighting Vehicle 6
SMU, Armour-Piercing 1, Light Armoured Vehicle -2, Flying 2
7

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20th Century Rampant?

Irish War of Independence

I wrote here about adapting the Rampant Colonial Rules, The Men Who Would Be Kings, for the early Twentieth Century, particularly for the Russian Civil War, Irish War of Independence and Mexican Revolution.

I had quite a few original (and stolen) ideas about how to do this but never got round to trying them out. The publication of the Sci-Fi Xenos Rampant set, replete with vehicle rules, now seems to provide not only a more suitable starting point but may suffice without adaption.

Have Daniel Mersey and Richard Cowan developed the killer app of skirmish wargame rules? I see indications that XR is absorbing games that were previously played with other rules...Games Workshop beware!

Anyway, here are some examples of my very provisional take on some relevant unit definitions. Some are straight from the suggested army lists.

IWI Auxiliaries
Heavy Infantry
Increased Squad Size
Heavy Weapons (Lewes Gun) 

IWI Regular British Infantry
Light Infanty
Increased Squad Size
Heavy Weapons (Lewes Gun)

IWI RIC/Volunteers
Light Infantry
Increased Squad Size
Undisciplined

IWI Shotgun squad
Light Infantry
Close Quarters Doctrine
Undisciplined

HMG
Support Infantry

IWI Lancia armoured truck
Transport Vehicle
SMU
Transport (10)

IWI Crossley Tender
Soft-skin Vehicle
SMU
Civilian
Transport (10)

RCW Cavalry
Berserk Infantry
Increased Squad Size
Mobile

RCW Heavy Tank
Fighting Vehicle
SMU
Anti-Personnel Specialism (Female)/Armour-Piercing (Male)
Slow
Unstable

RCW Light Tank
Fighting Vehicle
SMU
Anti-Personnel Specialism

Armoured Car
Fighting Vehicle
SMU
Anti-Personnel Specialism
Light Armoured Vehicle

RCW Tschanka
Soft-skin Vehicle
SMU
Civilian
Technical

Xenos Rampant

I collected some 15mm Sci-Fi/Near Future forces to play Gruntz 15mm but never got round to completing the project. The publication of Xenos Rampant by Daniel Mersey and Richard Cowan has renewed my interest in the genre. My friend Ian implied that my armies are “not true Sci-Fi” but I’m old school and find a grimey near future or post-Apocalyptic concept more credible than, say, the more exotic Fantasy-tinged Sci-Fi world of Games Workshop. Each to their own.

Happily XR is a remarkably rich and flexible set of rules which will seemingly accommodate any flavour of Sci-Fi. It’s clever, imaginative and colourful and also betrays an appealingly dry sense of humour. Although Gruntz 15mm also looked very good, I‘m swayed by the ease of adopting another Rampant system game which is also likely to go down well in the local club.

On the downside my SF collection includes a lot of vehicles which is not a good match for XR's infantry bias, and I spent a few days looking at 28mm figures as an alternative. I particularly liked the CP Models and Pig Iron figures and may get some next year, but I also decided to keep the 15s as the model ranges are more extensive and the on-table weapons ranges more convincing.

My existing figures are Ground Zero Games (UNSC faction), Armies Army Russian insurgents (now available from The Scene), and some figures in power armour from Brigade Models. Even though I am not short of vehicles, I've ordered a couple of new ones in the light of current military developments as well as some additional infantry support models.

Blucher - Making a late start

Blucher campaign extensions and army packs.

Seven years after buying the rules I finally got round to an introductory game of Blucher, Sam Mustafa's grand-tactical Napoleonic game.

Many thanks to fellow club member, Simon, who organised and umpired the game. My opponent, Dave, commanded a Spanish force in defensive positions while I attacked with the French. I eventually managed to take a village in the centre of the Spanish position, but did not achieve the breakthrough I was hoping for. Simon pointed out that I should have made more use of my troops' superior skirmishing ability before rushing in.

Napoleonics are a foundational wargaming period. I've flirted with them over many years, but I'm no expert. While the tactics of column, line and square are for many the very essence of period flavour, I'm more pulled by grand-tactical games that allow one to fight whole historical battles, at least potentially.

Blucher is widely played and reviewed so it's rather late to go into detail about the rules. What I do want to write about is the use of the pre-printed unit cards and some thoughts on modelling terrain.

While the game we played employed conventional 6mm scale scenery, the armies consisted of the commercially available preprinted unit cards and I have to say that I was so engrossed in the game that I never missed or even thought about the absence of lead (or plastic) figures.

I now have all the extension sets and army packs, and these give me far more wargaming flexibility than a collection of model figures rooted in one time and place. Although I have 6mm Napoleonic armies that I was going to use, I'll now stick with the cards.

Two of the great advantages of card, tablet or block armies are their modest storage requirements and the ease with which they can be transported, and I'm thinking about scenery which meets the same criteria.

While I could create purely 2D scenery using felt, I'm currently considering slightly more realistic scenery which is nevertheless in ultra-low relief. Done properly I think it could look quite good and rather like an aerial perspective.

I already have a good collection of game mats, relatively shallow hills and roads and rivers, so that leaves urban and forest areas. For villages I'm thinking of using a template with low grey rectangles to represent houses, although I do have some Monopoly houses and hotels that could be put to use. I also have some 2mm lead buildings, but part of the aim here is to reduce weight and maintain a symbolic style. The houses would be of uniform height (no church steeples) so that unit cards could sit level on the top when villages are garrisoned. Forests would be templates covered in clump foliage, again of uniform height.