20mm Russians - A new Army (re) Starts

 

Russian Jaegers

Having completed the French for Waterloo60 it is time to move on to a new Army. I started a Russian Army in plastics probably 7-8 years ago, but parked it when the Waterloo60 project got underway, so now its time to return to it. Figures are Newline and first up are a Jaeger Bn, 2 Musketeer Bn and a Grenadier Bn. Looking forward to a sea of green instead of blue!

Russian Muskeeters

Russian Musketeers

Russian Grenadiers

ACP164: Dead Rabbits (and other critters)

Playing the ACP164 Lockdown campaign earlier in the year I half joking suggested to the group that we needed some dead rabbit figures (I hate the look of tipped figures in skirmish games). Chris saw the opportunity and so now we have a range of dead critters to buy! I bought 6 ILR and 6 EDF, and had great fun with pliers bending arms, snapping legs and then with a drill making bullet holes!

Rumours are that the campaign may restart which would be great, and a chance to use the figures - and there's the boarding action Kickstarter imminent.

Moongrunts: Dark Side of the Moon and StarGrunt

 

With the table laid out for 15mm Moon combat I decided to try a couple more rule sets. First up was the Dark Side of the Moon set used at Salute in 2019 (I think) and later published in MW&BG (#440).

I had to invent a few things as the QRS gave no idea of distances or ranges, and the colour code/icon style whilst great if someone has briefed you on it took a bit of decoding - but I think I got the game right in the end. The only real recognition of being somewhere else was the "dust" marker with movement. Activation is by unit, each side "bidding" with a playing card for their hand for first move of the pair. Works OK. Combat is a Risk! style dice matching, with extra dice as DMs. Simple but not my favourite model. Game is too long ago to go into details but it gave a reasonable participation/fun game but lacked the detail I'd want for a regular set (not its aim) but also gave no real sense of being in space.

Next up was Star Grunts - a classic of the SF genre. In contrast to Dark Side these were way more complex (or at least look it) than I'd like, and I think the rules layout doesn't help. Activation was alternate unit and there's an involved system of unit confidence and leadership which provides friction. Movement was determined at the walk, but random at the run which is nice. Combat though was dice roll after dice roll, I think I counted 12+ as there is an opposed roll to hit, DIVIDING one score by a range factor, then another opposed roll for damage. Just way too much for me - particularly throwing a divide into the middle of it! Again nothing really to suggest that this is in space, but I guess Stargrunt assumes that everyone is in powered battle armour and so slips, trips and rips aren't an issue.

Nice to get these sets on the table, but not ones I'll revisit.

Bolt Action: Moongrunts

 

First game to christen the new war room was a spot of 15mm Moongrunt. I bought the models from GZG at Salute 2019 and painted them soon after, but taken ages to get them to the table. A nice 3' x 3' gridded cloth from Deepcut Studio, craters made from upturned lids and rocks from the drive!

I decided to modify Bolt Action as its become my go-to Platoon sized rules. I doubled ranges (treating the weapons as modern chemical ones, no fancy lasers), and also increased lethality - as any suit damage is going to be an issue. I thought about increasing movement - but watching the Apollo videos whilst the bunny hop was fast it as a) hard to stop and b) made you a cracking target. So its reasonable to expect that "patrol" speed would be little different, and a hop is just a run.

To give it a bit more of a "space" feel I decided though to add a "fumble" roll to anything that might risk suit damage - as that seems to be the big difference - particularly as we're not talking battle armour here. So any Run or Down action needs an extra Orders test - fail it and you take 1 Pin, double 6 and you lose a soldier (assumed out of game whilst doing suit repair).

I did a straight attack/defence game. Even forces so defenders won easily, but the mechanics all seemed to work. Might as ever do a few tweaks, but I think the fumble gave it just enough extra to remind you that this wasn't just WW2 in a grey desert. Tempted the write the whole thing up for MW&BG.

Seeing as I have the table set up I'll run few a few other SF rules to see how they fare.

The War(Games) Room

 

The reason for the paucity of posts here for the last few months hasn't been so much COVID as that I've been involved in a stint of 1:1 painting. My daughter finally officially moved out at the end of June and so the big attic room that has been her bedroom for over a decade has now become my wargames room and office. Teenage murals, dark walls, cracks and quotations needed painting over, and then a big move of wargames stuff from the dining room and a swop of books with the old study, and then a move of the office from the spare bedroom and finally I'm all settled in.

I bought four 6ft trestle tables (foldable type), the aim being to have 3 up for wargaming - letting me do one 4'x6' game and then have space for an SPI type game or some game prototyping - or use all together for one 8'x6' weekend game (small gap between tables covered by the 60cm terrain boards). For really big games I can add the fourth table which will usually be the workshop table (which will be the last bit of wargaming stuff to leave the rest of the house!) giving me 10'x6', or even 12'x6' at a push. Just need COViD to abate (particularly in Brum) so I can have people round.

I've even found space to sneak in a space for my keyboards and a nascent home music studio set-up!

Virtual Conference of Wargamers

On the weekend of 10-12 July I had a great time virtually attending Wargame Development Group's Virtual Conference of Wargamers usually held at Knuston Hall, but due to COVID held on-line. I've never managed to get to the physical event, so whilst attending virtually wasn't ideal at least I got there!

Since I'd been writing an article for the Nugget (the WDG magasine) on Remote Wargaming I thought I'd also put it up for a VCOW talk - so I got to present as well.

Anywhere here are the highlights of the weekend - I've done offside reports for each for the Nugget, and once they run my Remote Wargaming article in Nugget I'll post a copy up here.

Events were held on a mix of Zoom and Skype.

• The conference kicked off with a virtual battlefield tour of Landsdowne, led by John Curry (of History of Wargaming Project fame), with deft use of Google Earth and Google Streetview, and Zoom breakout rooms for syndicates to discuss options
• Several interesting talks on professional wargaming and the history of COW/WDG
• An SF skirmish game called Hadleys Hope where our team had to try and fix a transmitter and find out what happened to the previous team. Tom Mouat had the tabel set up in his house and gave us a ground-level Zoom view to work from - all very blurry and hard to spot attackers in amongst the terrain. Our characters were primary coloured meeples (see top) so easy to spot. Worked very well.
• A virtual ECW TWET (Tactical Exercise Without Troops) for a disguised Battle of Cropredy Bridge - again Google Earth/Streetview, plus on-site photos and sketchmaps and breakout rooms. Again worked very well (and helped I'd wargamed it in January)
• An Age of Sail Naval Wargame (see below) run by John Armaty’s - I was on the Spanish side trying to sink a convoy or capture and avoid the Royal Navy. As with Hadley Hope John had a hex grid table and 1/3000th models, but this time we had a fixed overhead cam view. The grid made movement and firing nice and easy. Great game, narrow Spanish win I think - I certainly captured a merchantman.  
• Interesting lecture contrasting professional and recreational wargaming
• Unfortunate Differences - a cut down professional strategic game of a dispute in the China Sea over some islands between the Chinese, Japanese and Americans. I was the Chinese Navy commander under strict instructions to keep my carrier safe whilst our subs did the dirty work. In fact they didn't need to as the Japanese ran a sub aground on the islands which trying to land Special Forces - right in front of our crack team of social media student influencers!
• A nice discussion about what we'd all been up to in lockdown, and which different parts of the hobby we were taking the time to explore
• A great presentation by John Curry on storming a medieval castle - drawing on an exercise done by a group of re-enactors. 

All-in-all a great introduction to COW, and I really must get there in person next year.

As an aside, what is interesting is that of all the "virtual" events I've been to in lockdown in terms of professional work this was actually probably the best - with everyone fully engaged, no real passive participants, and great use of a variety of technologies. No surprise really given how great Connections (another professional wargame conference) last year - with both having an emphasis on playing games more than just talking about things.

 

SN5 Makes First 150m Hop

After at least 3 false starts and two 1 AM bedtimes SpaceX's Starship SN5 prototype finally made its first 150m hop. It really was quite awesome (just see Everyday Astronaut's cam for how he was reacting - I wasn't far off), and just like last year's Starhopper the SN5 flew "in exactly the same way that bricks don't". As the dust cleared we weer all hoping to see it upright - there'd been no bangs - and sure enough, there it stood as proud as punch on the landing site.

I watched Lapadre's Sapphire cam - probably had the best view - legs coming out clearly visible.

Official SpaceX video is here:

I know that Elon was giving it the "new era of spaceflight" speech when they welcomed home "Bob & Doug" from Crew Dragon Demo 2 - but the SN5 fight is far more the beginning of a new era as the complete Starship system promises to open up the inner solar system to us once he cracks in-orbit (or on-planet) refuelling.

It's been a long just-under-a-year since the Starhopper flight and we've seen Mk1 and SN1/2/3/4 all fall by the wayside, but hopefully SN5 and probably SN6 can prove the 150m hop solid (I expect Elon will test to destruction rather than retire SN5), and then it looks like SN8 is being prepped with cone and flaps for the 20km tests some time in the autumn.

It's also still less than 11 months since the Mk1 rollout and its worth revisiting what I thought there in terms of future timeline.

• Nov 19 - first flight (10s of km) of Mk1  - 3Q20 with SN8
• This year - 200km flight of Mk1 - 1H21 - SN12ish?
• Mk2 then probably takes over testing, still suborbital, no heat shield
• Mk3 makes first orbital flight ~ 2Q20 - Early 2022? SN15ish?
• Mk4 joins testing programme
• Work starts on the first Super Heavy booster - Looking like 2H20 with HighBay going up
• Work starts on a "production" generation of Starships - 2022?
• Lunar orbital flight ~ 2021 - Late 2022/Early 2023?
• Lunar landing ~ 2023 (prob before NASA) - ~2024 (prob as part of NASA Artemis plan)
• Unmanned flights to and landing on Mars (and return?) before human landing

[Update: Two other peoples similar predictions - https://mainenginecutoff.com/blog/2020/08/starship-sn5-flew-prediction-check-in]

Of course sending a rocket straight up and down is something Elon's being doing reliably with Falcon for ages now, and Blue Origin has done the same, but the mass of Starship will be on a totally different scale, and with his rocket factory behind him he may well get to the Moon and Mars before NASA  does (or with NASA hitching a ride). And I'm still taking bets that the Perseverance sample containers will be plucked off the Martian surface by the gloved hand of a SpaceX astronaut!