When I got home from Enfilade I did a bad thing.  I ordered some figures without consulting my wife.  I sneaked. I snuck.  I was bad.  We have a solid understanding about figure purchases.  I have an allowance I can use to fuel my record/miniature figures/drinking with the boys habit.  If I must go over my budget, I just have to consult with the boss. She’s usually pretty good about say okay, but with our eye on my retirement in a year, we’re both trying to be careful.

So it was a great deal of guilt that I put an order to 1898 Miniaturas on my credit card without consulting the missus.  I eventually told her before the little men arrived, and though she slightly admonished me, she fessed up to her own wayward purchase.

1898 Miniaturas, in case you haven’t followed their announcements on the Miniatures Page, produces an extensive range of figures for the Spanish American War, the Philippine War (no longer known as the Philippine Insurrection,) and rebellions Spain faced in Cuba and the Philippines leading up to the conflict with America.  The range continues to expand.  It includes Tagalog insurgents and artillery, and my fervent hope is that it will continue to grow.

I rarely am sucked in by the next shiny new thing. But I’ve fallen hard for these figures.  I was originally going to do the whole ball of wax-Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, but I’ve decided to scale back to just the Philippines with my impending exit from the work force. I won’t be poor, but I will be scaling back my income. Lorri has encouraged me to use my summer earnings to buy what I need, so I will.

1898 Miniaturas is a Spanish company.  Their website reflects the deep passion of the owners, artists and creators who run their company.  The website houses the company’s online shop, but also includes a wealth of historical information and painting suggestions depending on what you’re doing. Most importantly it offers suggestions for painting the ridiculous Spanish Rayadillo uniforms, which are a base blue-gray striped uniform.  I don’t quite want to say I can’t wait to try this, but I can’t wait to try this.  I bought all the recommended Vallejo colors today. (If only I could buy the improved eyesight and patience too.)

I’ll be painting Philippines regulars and militia types to fight against the Americans on Luzon from 1898-1901. There is lots more that happens on other islands, and maybe I’ll go there too, but I’ll just have to see. The Luzon battles offers an interesting mix of Filipino troops.  The Americans will have regulars and state volunteers. Washington state has a unit of volunteers that serves for a year in this campaign. The website offers suggestions for troops for The Men Who Would Be King rules, and I’ll be playing with these.

I really hemmed and hawed about ordering these figures.  Should I order directly from Spain?  Should I order from Empress Miniatures that stock these in Great Britain, or the U.S. stockist, Age of Glory, in the U.S.?  After fiddling with numbers and compiling phantom orders, I decided to take my chances on the Spanish store.

It was perfect.  I ordered the Tagalog Premium package.  Including shipping, it was about $71 for 36 figures.  All of them was be usable and will provide me with two 12-man units, plus a few leftovers. That’s less than two dollars per figure, and all things considered, that’s less than Perry metal figures. The company was super easy to work with.  They did a super job of notifying me electronically.  I had them withing ten days of order.

Here are some pics of the raw figures.

Just to be clear, these are Filipino infantry.  They aren’t Spanish regulars, though after the fall of Manila to the Americans, the Filiipino Republicans looted many Spanish stores, including guns and and uniforms.  So some of them will appear in the rayadillo and jipijapa straw sun hat.

I’m not ready to immediately plunge into these figures, but I hope to begin working on them some time in June.  Until that time, I have some planes to paint for Malta, and promised myself I would paint the last of of my longbowmen for the Hundred Years War.

I’ve already written about the playtests for this game. But the convention was the place where the rubber hit the road.  Just a quick recap for those new to the topic.  The game is based on the Italo-German air campaign to sink the British carrier group raising hell in the Mediterranean in early 1941.  Presented as a problem to solve for the Italian and Germans, the five players had to decide on their force composition and where they would enter the board. The British defenders, three players each with two Fairey Fulmars had to choose where they would defend and manage their nasty assortment of flak.

Dave Schueler and I ran the Illustrious game on Saturday night, our fourth game of the convention.  We were hoping for a relatively trouble-free game, because we were kind of all in after the Falklands.

Relative positions of Illustrious and Zulu on the board. The ships don’t move during the game. The heavy flak markers could be placed up to 24″ from the destroyer (one marker) and the aircraft carrier (two markers.)

Doug H., Gil F., Andrew M., Shawn M., and Tom B., formed the Axis air commanders.  They decided on a force of nine SM 79 torpedo bombers, three Ju. 87 dive bombers and two MC 200 fighters as escorts. Each also had the opportunity to improve their pilots or take two re-rolls in the game.  It was an interesting mix.

Chuck H., Michael K, and Charlie B., took the Fulmars.  After the Axis declared their intentions and placed their planes, the British placed their Fulmars in a position to immediately challenge the bombers.  The Axis bombers had a lot of ground to cover to get to the carrier and the field was wide open for the British players to make their lives miserable.

But things got tough for the British players early.  Though one of the Macchi fighters went down to flak early, the anti-aircraft fire from the Illustrious and the HMS Zulu escort was pretty ineffective. Chuck H’s Fulmars ran into a hail of defensive fire from Doug H’s group of bombers.  One was shot down and the other lost its forward fire control, rendering it useless. Charlie’s Fulmars flew through the German bombers, and by the time he could get things turned around was pretty much out of the fight.

The British players deployed in triangle to intercept the bombers and protect their “6”

Only Michael’s Fulmars became a constant menace as he harried Gil’s SM 79’s.  Gil was the far arm of the anvil attack planned by the Italian pilots.  Michael was able to trail him most of the route to the target, shooting off all the ammunition in his under-armed planes, inflicting damage, but not quite enough to injure them fatally or force them to abort their mission.

Michael’s Fulmars trailed Gil’s bombers most of the way across the board, shooting with some effect, but unable to inflict catastrophic damage. Michael was, in turn, trailed by Shawn M’s MC 200.

Eventually Tom and Doug were able to combine their torpedo bombers with Andrew’s Stukas to make an attack from the north while Gil, with Michael’s Fulmars trailing dutifully behind approached from the south.

Gil struck first, but not before flak and Michael’s Fulmars did enough damage to force two of his Sparvieros to jettison their torpedoes.  However the final plane was able to launch and do 17 points of damage to the Illustrous.  It was a moment to celebrate.  Only eight more points were needed to win the game.

With nine planes still approaching from the north against virtually no opposition, it seemed like a done deal.  Unfortunately it was not to be. Tom peeled off one of his bombers to attack the Zulu.  Torpedo away-a miss. As the bombers neared the carrier and the light flak kicked in, it seemed as if it couldn’t miss.  Tom’s remaining bombers were shredded by two pounders.  Flak took down one of Doug’s SM 79’s and one of Andrew’s Stukas flopped into the sea.

The remaining four planes all delivered their ordinance.  Doug’s two torpedoes hit on a nine or ten.  Both missed, despite a couple of re-rolls.  Andrew hit with one of his Stukas, but it wasn’t a clean hit.  A roll of four on the damage table brought total damage points inflicted to 20.  A 25 was needed for the win.

But it felt like everyone had a good time.  Both sides had a chance to win, and the Brits pulled it out at the last minute.  But if the Axis had just a little more luck.

The planes are all 1/300 from a variety of manufactures, mostly Raiden with some Heroics and Ross and Scotia thrown into the mix.  The ships were all 1/700, built by Dave.  Rules by David Manley, his unpublished Airwar 1940 rules.  Everybody enjoyed  this rule set, felt that it had sufficient period feel to go with ease and speed of play.  The game was over within two and a half hours.  We’d like to, again, thank David for letting us playtest his rules. Thanks too, to the players who seemed to have a good time.

This is more a personal post and you won’t see it anywhere but here.

This was a great convention.  About 415 attendees, which is twice as many as we had in 2002 when the convention moved to Olympia.  Unfortunately that success has bred some challenges too.  We’ve pretty much maxed out our space, and insuring there are enough games for all attendees including those who are late walk-ins is tough.  With new management bravely abandoning the game registration line and allowing more on-line registration, finding ways to plug everyone into a game is a challenge with no easy answers.  More, shorter game periods?  Staggered game periods?  Dunno, but they will have lots to talk about.

I saw lots of great games.  I usually go to the convention just to host.  Honestly, I think that’s a personal failing.  I’ve always felt a responsibility to host games.  But I also think I’m more comfortable as a host.  More control.  Less need to cooperate with others.  I’ve made an agreement with myself I’ll only run four games next year, and play in at least one. Al Rivers agreed to run a Thunderboats! game for me.  I’m already planning stuff with Doug Hamm and David Sullivan. Dave Schueler and I will do something. Like baseball, for me, Enfilade is a year ’round sport.

I managed to dodge the Bring and Buy.  I was in there a lot and it was fun, but I didn’t buy anything. I was on the lookout for 1/300 scale planes and there was a nice box of Raiden Bettys, but I have enough Bettys and not much else interested me. When David Sullivan bought some of Bob Murch’s Flint and Feather figures I was very intrigued and went back and forth all weekend about whether I should buy them or not.  It would be a handful of figures on a very small scale, What’s to lose?  Of course I hemmed and hawed too long and when I finally made up my mind they were gone.

No it was a weekend of crossover buying.  I made a trip to Rainy Day Records in downtown Olympia on Saturday morning and bought five albums.  A French import of Them with Van Morrison, The Roches first album, Out of Our Heads by The Rolling Stones, Shine on Brightly by Procul Harum, and Fever Tree’s eponymous second album.  Great stuff, but kind of on a different track from a convention weekend.

When I got home, however, I shared my lack of purchases with my supportive and long-suffering wife.  She sent me to the computer to order some of the Flint and Feather figs, so I’m looking forward to seeing them and I’ll get started shortly after they arrive.

I also decided the time had come to see what the 1898 Miniaturas Philippine figures look like.  I placed an order for a Tagalog Premium Collection which seemed to be the cheapest way to go.  There will be reports.

As much fun as the gaming and shopping is, the best part of Enfilade is spending time with friends.  My Canadian friends, my Portland friends, people I care about and see once a year, it was great to spend some time with them.  Doug Hamm and I are planning our Philippine Insurrection project.  Bruce Harborne shared some great information about 3D printing files for aircraft. Steve Knight and Chuck Hamack confirmed the wonders of retirement.  Rand Miles shared what he was working on, and some old tales of games gone by.

I spent lots of the weekend with Dave Schueler and David Sullivan, knowing we didn’t have to run off anywhere else.  Lunches, evening beers, long talks about games and gaming.  It was simply the best, our once a year getaway.

Finally, of the five game periods I hosted, four were games using David Manley’s rules.  The Mad Wet Max rules are derived from Thunderboats, Air War C.21 is published and available at Wargame vault, but Airwar 1940 is not.  David simply has a feel for what is fun and doable, and I thank him for keeping in touch with us, and allowing us to use his work.  It’s very much a long distance association as David is in the U.K. But it is much appreciated.

Dave Schueler and I plotted for a Falklands scenario for some time.  We ran a game using David Manley’s Air War C.21 game at the Museum of Flight in November. The basis for our Enfilade game was laid there, though the results were not auspicious.

The British player has two ships in San Carlos Bay, the assault ship Fearless and the Type 21 class frigate, Antelope. The Argentines chose their aircraft mix–Navy or Air Force A-4 Skyhawks, Canberras, Mirage Daggers, or the turbo-prop Pucaras.  Then they had to decide how to enter the board.  Each entry point offered some challenges. In the November game, the Argies had nothing but bad luck as some planes were intercepted off-board, missed refueling rendezvous and were shot down by SAM’s.  They were also sucked in by the victory points offered by the Fearless.  They mostly died at the hands of the Harrier CAP, hitting the Fearless only with a dud. Sigh.

We never had a chance to re-run our playtest, so we were trusting to luck when our Saturday afternoon game time appeared and we set up.  One thing operating in our favor was the many friends signed up for the game. Gil F, Al R., Denny H, and Scott A. enthusiastically took on the Argentines.  Chris S., Chris F, and Andrew M were the Brits.

In all our scenarios there are player choices to make.  The Argentines had to plan their strike package and their arrival zones.  The British had plan their patrolling areas.

In the first turn, phase one Al R arrived on the table with two Air Force A-4L’s.  One of his planes missed his refueling rendezvous.  His approach from the west caught the Harrier CAP somewhat out of position.  With the Skyhawks streaking toward the HMS Antelope, Chris S. tried to pull his Harriers around to intercept them, but too late.  The Air Force Skyhawks, penalized for their poor bombing abilities and high percentage of duds, scored a direct hit on the frigate, inflicting heavy damage.  The burning vessel was left in their wake as the Skyhawks survived the defensive fire and flew on.

In phase two of the game, farther to the south, Gil F. entered the game board with his Mirage Daggers.  Though it would take a while to reach the HMS Fearless, it was a bigger prize, and the loss of the assault ship could endanger the entire landing campaign. But attention was still focused on the west board edge as Scott A. followed Al with his three Navy A-4Q’s.  The British were a little better prepared as Scott delivered his payload.  Another bomb struck Antelope, but not with nearly as much impact.  But one Skyhawk was brought down with defensive fire, and second fell to Harrier cannon fire.

The action shifted to the other end of the board as Gil’s Daggers began their approach to the Fearless, and Denny’s plodding Canberras made their way toward the assault ship.  Chris S would continue to play tag with the Skyhawks, while Andrew M and Chris F turned to face the new Argentine threat with their Harriers.

Gil pressed his attack with the Daggers, lined up a shot, dodging AAA,  Seacats and British planes, struck the ship with one bomb load. Alas it was a dud.  But he did draw the attention of the defense away from the creeping Canberras, each loaded with eight 500 lb. bombs.

While Gil took his surviving Daggers off to strafe a hapless LCM caught out in San Carlos Bay, Denny approached with his Canberras.  As he lined up the Fearless for his final bombing run, Chris F’s Harriers fired their last Sidewinders and Seacats streaked up from the big assault vessel.  Both bombers were brought down just short of their targets.

The Antelope was ruled to be in a sinking condition.  Though the Argentines sank a British warship, no mean accomplishment, they missed out on the Fearless a much bigger prize.  They were given a minor victory, not enough of a win to alter the strategic scope. They also lost five of eleven attacking planes, so there was a severe cost to the raid.

Most importantly, everybody had a great time. They were a very fun group to run.  Thanks to each of them,  Dave Schuler did most of the game running stuff while became official photographer.

For more than 10 years I have dutifully hosted at least one game of Thunderboats! at Enfilade.  It has a regular following and usually sucks in a few new players too. It’s fun and a very easy game to run.  Each year I send copies of the game off to others who think it would be fun to run at home.

This year I ran Thunderboats! Friday afternoon.  The Red Lion ballroom was rockin’, and there was no shortage of games or players. By the time the game began at 2:00, I’d lost two players and picked up one more.  We started with seven racers,  three with experience.

Often Thunderboats! games can be a snooze for the game master.  Lots of inexperienced players start very conservatively, playing very slowly, taking few chances.  Not this group. Playing on a five foot wide table, made for a narrow race course, with lots of congestion.  These players weren’t afraid to push engines, push corners, fly through rooster tails and chance collision checks.

We lost a few boats, but the racing was great.  Al Rivers in Miss Exide, led a lot of the way, but almost everybody took a nitrous bottle in their builds, which meant there were some opportunities to make up ground. He was pursued closely by Denny Hartung in Miss Smirnoff.  But both suffered the old water in the carburetor card in the final turn.  Just as it seemed Al might crawl across the finish line to win, Michael Hiemstra, a new player, in Miss Hawaii Kai crossed the finish line in a tie requiring a quick run-off.  Al won as Michael took enough damage to break down. It was a super race.

Mad Wet Max is related to Thunderboats! in a chaotic, angry way.  While Thunderboats can be wild and exciting, it’s still a race around an oval course with everybody trying to finish three laps first, MWM has all the players running their own race, following their own path and god help you if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I ran two helpings of MWM this weekend. It was my featured Friday night game, and then again on Sunday morning when I was nearly ready to fall over. Both games were pretty fun, but distinctly different.

We had a full house for the Friday night game. It included lots of veteran Thunderboats! racers, including Dale Mickel, Shawn McEvoy and Chris Rivers.  Chris had his heart set on the Stag Beetle, but when he rolled for boat choice, he was last and got stuck with Red Scorpion and its rear firing cannon.

This group did a great job of trying to run a race.  However it was kind of a chaos race, with boats running hither and yon trying to grab up the buoy tokens, while sewing mines in the channels between islands and on buoys.  Even so, as things began to wind toward a conclusion, it was clear Chris and the Red Scorpion was in a position to win it all.  With a shot to exit with one big die roll, Chris tiptoed past two mines, survived a collision check and passed the checkered flag. Winner.

The Spectators made their first appearance in a Mad Wet Max game.  The Peshmerga showed up with RPG’s just to keep things interesting. They missed. Sigh

The Sunday game was wild and woolly compared to the Friday night game.  Unfortunately, I decided to pack my camera for a quick Sunday getaway, so there is no means of documenting the carnage.  Lots of friends in the Sunday game as David Sullivan, Brian Shein, daughter Nicole and her husband Raul, Scott Murphy, Doug Hamm and Neil Marker all took part.

It was wild from the beginning as everyone was lining up to take their best shot. Neil was the first to go, but others dropped out quickly as Raul was polished off by his spouse, and then took Doug’s boat when he had to leave, and was sunk by David Sullivan.

However, unobserved by others, Grace, whose last name escapes me, was racking up tokens in the Stag Beetle, shooting when necessary.

The course was set up with the islands in the middle of the board, so it was possible to circumnavigate the course fairly easily.  Players were willing to dodge around the mines and take chances in adjacent hexes, mostly succeeding in avoiding explosions.  Not always, but usually.  Spectators appeared-first the Peshmerga with their RPG’s, then their Stinger missile crew for knocking down parascenders. Eventually the Armed Rural Americans would make their appearance with decisive results.

Brian Shein was mined, and eventually Scott Murphy lost his zillion hull points. It came down to Grace and David.  As Grace snagged her last token and sped toward the finish line, David passed the Armed Rural Americans toward his final token.  A shotgun blast killed his gunner, and he coudn’t prevent Grace from getting off the table.  Winner.

Both games were fun, and everybody enjoyed them. They went fast, but because of the initiative system, more folks had to wait a bit longer as we rolled off ties and the like.  It might be that eight players are too many and we should consider six.  I’ve also thought about including a mine sweeper option during the builds that would cost some points, and wouldn’t be 100% effective.

Sometimes big conventions have really big games, sometimes they don’t.  Enfilade has had its share, from Ramillies and Blenheim, to Waterloo and Gettybsburg, to Little Big Horn.

This year, new convention director Alyssa Faden decided to host Teutoberger Wald.  Not a little representative massacre in German forests, but sixteen feet worth of slaughter.

I wish I could offer some spell binding narrative to tell you the outcome of the game that was offered in three different game periods.  But just know that over twelve hours of convention time a passel of gamers happily took the roles of Germans hell bent on slaughtering Romans or Roman leaders intent on escaping.  All I spoke to had a great time.

What follows are photos, lots of photos of the game.  It was big.  There were bunches of figures, super terrain.  It was wargaming spectacle.

Running a game of this size poses all kinds of problems.  Balancing the excitement of the games size are logistical issues of transport, set-up and take down time, organization and expectations.  Often games like Teutoberger are a disappointment because the sheer size of the game overwhelms the ability of the gamemaster to control things and keep the game moving along.  Alyssa and her army of volunteers had no such problem.  it was a terrific triumph.

With a game like Teutoberger in her back pocket I can’t help but wonder what Alyssa is planning for next year.

Made it home from Enfilade last night.  This will be the first of several posts about the weekend.  There are lots of pics here and many more to follow.  It was a super convention.  Congratulations to Alyssa Faden and Vic Cina for doing a great job as the convention again hit record highs in attendance and games hosted and raised real concerns about the future of the convention’s location as it continues to grow.  They went out on a limb and required online event registration, and it was a success.  Kudos to them.

There were a lot of super events. I cleverly scheduled myself into running games in five of the six event periods, and hence had little chance to play in or view an awful lot of them.  I did the best I could to take photos and will share them below, but know that there are many deserving games I simply never got close to.

Below are some one-off photos of some of the games. I’ve tried to provide a few words in the mosaic caption below.

From top left: “Incoming missiles!” Andy Doty’s intriguing Harpoon Commander game. Chris Ewick runs a table of DBA games. Scott Williams intriguing game based on his real life job as a marine archaeologist on the Oregon coast. A really big German bomber for Wings of War. Denny Hartung’s Check Your 6 game from the Spanish Civil War “Revolting Skies.”  A 15mm game of Pike and Shotte featuring Scots and English.

Ronald Oldham is new to the Puget Sound area, moving recently from North Carolina.  He’s a reformed game store owner, and he hosted two War of 1812 games using The British Are Coming Rules. Ron, if you read this, I think I still owe you a beer.

From bottom left: Ron hosted Chrysler’s Farm on Friday night.  The terrain boards were really nice and captured the ravined nature of the terrain.  The bottom three to the right were Ron’s boards for New Orleans.  The British got to the ditch, but not further.  Everything looked great.

Two hosts consistently put on magnificent looking games each convention.  Bruce Smith and Neil Marker are great guys and have a real talent for cluttering a game board with fantastic bits of interesting ephemera and hosting a fabulous games.  I’m committed to getting into one or both of their games in 2019.  Bruce won the prize for best theme game for the Friday evening period.

From top left: Bruce’s apocalyptic cityscape for “Hot Wheels, HMG’s and Human Gangs” offers the right mix of menace and destruction.  Loved it.  Gotta play it some time. Neil Marker’s “Who Runs Barter Beach” is A) beautiful and B) has the most interesting collection of cool stuff of any game of the weekend.  But Neil’s games always do

Ix Nichols ran a gorgeous hypothetical air game “Breakout from Mers El Kebir featuring some beautiful 1/200 planes.  Rules were Check Your 6!

From top left: Fulmar fighters provide cover for Swordfish torpedo bombers. We don’t usually think of the Hawk 75’s as a much of match for any WWII fighters, but against Fulmars and Stringbags, maybe so-Vichy fighters swarm to the attack. Players are trying to figure it all out.  A couple photos of the excellent Swordfish miniatures.  And Swordfish plunging into the Mediterranean.

A really big Battle of Mobile Bay in a really small space.  1/600 ships by Thoroughbred Figures.  Rules by Sail and Steam Navies.

From top left: Confederate gunboats and the Tennessee defend the line of pilings across the bay.  Union ships mass as they prepare to run the guns of Fort Morgan.  A great Fort Morgan miniature that alleviates a lot of scale problems for this challenging game.

David Sullivan brought out his 40mm bronze age miniatures by Monolith/Graven Images.  Everybody seemed to having a good time.  Rules were “Song of Blades and Heroes.”

From Left: The religious party in the circle of standing stones was the objective for the six players in this game.  Each entered the game separately and were tasked with befuddling their rivals as they tried to carry off their prize

Colin Wilson’s Team Yankee game was cool to see.  However I didn’t have a chance to catch the game in progress.

From top left: M-60’s boil out of the town to engage the Soviets.  Cobra gunships lead M-60’s to the attack.  American forces are supported by A-10 Warthogs.

And last, but certainly not least, is Bill Vanderpool’s Isandlwana game game, using 15mm figures and Lyn Bodin’s “Imperialism” rules.  Anybody who wants to know what it’s like to run a game at this convention just needs to check in with Bill.  He’s been doing it every period for every Enfilade for twenty year.  Just an old pro.

Every convention has some fun.  It’s always interesting to see what’s in the bring and buy, and determine who made the weirdest purchase.  While Bruce Harborne probably didn’t buy the strangest items, buddy Steve Knight is wisely ignoring him.

This post will be followed by several more over the next couple of days that share my games as well as the featured event at Enfilade.

I make my life needlessly complicated.  That’s my own problem, and I’m not bitching about it.  Not much.

I keep three important calendars.  The first of these is the school calendar, which extends across two actual calendar years, and contains all my newspaper and yearbook deadlines, grading deadlines, professional development days, school holidays and a host of other this and that. Then there’s the real world calendar, the one that normal people go by.  You know, January 1-December 31 that has my wife’s birthday and our anniversary on it.  22 more shopping days until Valentines Day.  Our vacation is scheduled for July 5th.  That calendar.

But my gaming calendar is built around Enfilade, that awesome miniature gaming convention held Memorial Day weekend in beautiful Olympia WA. I love Enfilade.  I also love planning for the games I’ll host at Enfilade. As we approach the convention, I tend to take stock of the year’s accomplishments and begin thinking about Enfilade ’19.

I think I’ve shared a lot of what I’ve done, and made myself little promises in the form of blog posts since last June. Most of them didn’t happen, but I honestly think those little promises help energize me and keep me painting all year ’round, even if it wasn’t quite what I said I’d do.

One of the tasks I took on was working with my Louisiana Project and transformed it into America Rampant.  That meant remounting some 450 28mm figures, which is always a challenge, at least for me.  I’ve known fellows who truly enjoyed the remounting process–for me, it’s a bit like enjoying mononucleosis.  Nevertheless all figures mounted.  I also cobbled together a set of rules based on the Men Who Would Be King by the Daniel Mersey School of Wargame Rules.

The last of the Americans requiring remount. So far I’ve remounted 25 units totaling some 264 figure.

I ran a few games, enjoyed them, but things kind of came to halt when word came out that Mersey and his pals would be releasing their own TMWWBK variant for conflicts in America from the French and Indian War through the American Civil War.  I think we’ll all be on the same page, and I’ll pick things up again when the rules are released in 2019. Look for me to include some of my American Revolution figures and a lot of my unpainted ACW figures as David Sullivan and others commit to the rules.

David Manley publicly released his Thunderboats! variant, “Mad Wet Max” in the fall of 2018 and Dave Schueler and I were immediately intrigued.  Intrigued enough to get in on all the fun, and I’ve done that. I’ve bought some Matchbox boats, and have written about cobbling together eight combatants for the rules. We’ve run the game a couple of times and learned from each play-through.  I’ve recently added armed spectators which was also a whole lot of fun.  This project, while relatively small, is finished unless I feel compelled to add more boats.  We’ll see.  This game is featured at Enfilade Friday night and Sunday morning.

Last spring, as I was working on “13 Days Goes Hot,” the game Dave and I ran on the Cuban Missile Crisis for Enfilade ’17, I began picking away on planes for the Falklands.  It was the big project I worked on for the summer into our house remodel. By the end of the summer, however, the project was more or less done.  About 50 planes, with the majority of them Argentine.  It was fun to learn a little something about this modern air war and I never cease to wonder at how much the Argentines accomplished with an air contingent that was largely obsolete.  We ran our game at the Museum of Flight, and learned from that. We’ve got a full house for the Battle of San Carlos Sound mid-day Saturday at Enfilade.

Sometimes an idea for a game takes root and grows into something much more. At last year’s convention, Dave suggested the attack on the Illustrious, which was a series of air attacks on the task force built around the aircraft carrier that covered convoys bound for Malta and the eastern Mediterraneanin late 1940-early ’41. The more I learned about the campaign, the more I saw potential for something much larger, a Malta campaign.  Another set of David Manley rules, Airwar 1940, sadly unpublished, sealed the deal for me. My last blog post specified the planes involved and I’ve completed about half of them.

The bombers stream. Photo taken behind the Cant Z 1007’s. One Scotia bomber and a couple whose maker I can’t quite determine. These follow the three groups of SM-79’s

The bombers let go of their bomb loads, roll astonishingly badly and come up empty.

Dave Schueler’s amazing Illustrious. Dave’s model ships get better with each scenario.

We’ve played through the Illustrious scenario a couple of times, and it will be shared with the convention crowd on Saturday night at Enfilade. We really like it. But more than that, we think the Malta campaign can draw in some semi-miniature playing friends and involve a wide variety of scenarios and aircraft.  It has my immediate attention and that of all my brushes and paints. Plan for lots more pixels on this one. Dave and I hope to host our first campaign game in July.

Another project I undertook for this year was to hopefully join the support for the wildly popular Dragon Rampant rules.  I ordered the needed figures from Eureka USA and I’ve been painting away.  I kind of thought they’d be done by now, but Malta has usurped their time.  Still a little left to do, painting these guys have also drawn my attention back to two more unpainted armies for these rules–Orcs and The Riders of Rohan. Something for next year. Look for a June post about the completed Hawkmoon project.

This hasn’t been a year of big figure purchases, except one.  I bought Dave Smith’s collection of 1/300 planes in August.  It’s a huge bunch of planes, well over 700 across a wide variety of periods and nationalities.  Dave’s planes found their way into my Falklands game and my Malta project.  Some I just suited up and pinned, others I’ve stripped and repainted to match my needs.  I’ve sent a few planes off to Dave Schueler.  Some I just look at and think about the someday that will get them done. Yes, I continue to buy planes, but Dave’s Bounty, as I’ve taken to calling it, has fueled many of my plane buying and painting decisions.  It was a great purchase, and I appreciate his willingness to part with them.

For the remaining couple of weeks, I’ll give some painting time to more planes.  I’m currently working on some Me 109F’s in North African colors.  When they are done I hope to work on some Me 110D’s which played a prominent role in the air war over Malta in 1941.

But more important than either of these is making flight stands.  This may seem like small potatoes, but no flight stands, no game. We had stands for Mustangs back in the old days, but Airwar 1940 has different requirements.  Mustangs required each plane to have stands for each altitude level 0-6.  Airwar 1940 requires only a low level and a “normal” altitude.  One of the reasons we can squeak more planes into a game is fewer altitude levels and stands. Anyway, I have to make 42 stands-21 at each level. So far I have 16.  The good news is they go pretty fast.

Usually when one thinks of the siege of Malta, it’s the 1565 defense of the little island by the Knights Hospitaller against the overwhelming forces of the Ottoman Empire. Cool stuff to be sure, but the siege that grabbed me is the aerial defense of Malta by the RAF and Fleet Air Arm against the air forces of Italy and Germany.

What makes it super interesting to me is the length of the siege, nearly two years, from April 1940-November 1942. From beginning to end the cast of characters stay the same, but the technology improves and the planes change, from Gloster Gladiators and Fiat Cr. 42’s to Hurricanes and Me 109E’s to Spitfire Mk. V’s and MC 202’s.  And lots of various interesting planes in between.

The air siege, launched from airfields on Sicily, was intended to deprive the British of naval support from the Valetta harbor, particularly a submarine base that took a toll of Axis shipping. Targets were broadened to include the airfields and aircraft that protected the harbor as well as the Grand Harbor’s formidable anti-aircraft defenses.

Dave Schueler and I see Malta an interesting campaign opportunity, and using the Airwar 1940 rules, the ease of play and numbers of planes even a novice can fairly safely run, I’m thinking big.

These are planes I’m building in 1/300

British–These take the British from 1940-1942, except for the early Gladiators.  I’ll leave those to Daveshoe. Surprisingly, the Spitfires don’t make their appearance until the last six months of the campaign. (60 planes total)

12 X Hurricane 1’s (all completed)

6 X Fairey Fulmars  (all completed)

12 X Hurricane IIc’s (4 completed)

6 X Kittyhawk II’s (0 completed)

6 X Beaufighters  (0 completed)

6 X Blenheim Mk. IV  (0 completed)

6 X Wellington II’s (0 completed)

6 X Spitfire Mk. V (0 completed)

Italians–The campaign begins with Italians in a more or less desultory bombing campaign.  They are replaced by the Germans in 1941 as they assume a larger role in the Mediterranean during the campaign in Greece, but depart to support the Barbarossa campaign.  The Italians again resume the half-hearted attacks on Malta until the Germans get serious about protecting their Afrika Korps supply lines. (72 total planes)

6 X Fiat Cr. 42s  (0 completed)

12 X Fiat G. 50’s (all completed)

12 X Macchi MC-200) (6 completed)

9 X SM 79  (all completed)

3 X Cant Z 1007bis  (all completed)

6 X Ju 87  (0 completed)

6 X Fiat Br. 20 Cigogna  (0 completed)

6 X Re. 2000  (0 completed)

12 x Macchi MC 202  (0 completed)

Germans–The Luftwaffe plane types remain pretty consistent during this time period with upgrades to the Me-109 in 1941. (54 planes)

12 X Ju. 87 Stukas  (10 completed)

12 X Ju. 88A’s (0 completed)

6 X Me110c’s (0 completed)

12 x Me 109E-7’s (0 completed)

12 X Me 109F’s  (0 completed)

Yes that’s a lot of planes.  I already own a lot of them, but they need to be pinned, and in some cases painted or re-painted.  Not a chore.  Painting planes gives me a lot of pleasure and they go pretty fast.  The worst part is sticking decals on them.

If you’d like more information on Malta I have a few handy suggestions:

Doug Hamm shared an excellent articled from Osprey Military Journal Vol. 2 Issue 4 titled Malta: The Fighter Pilot’s Paradise by Anthony Rogers. It covers the introduction of new fighters to the siege and defense of Malta from beginning to end with useful anecdotal attachments.

Dave Schueler sent me a copy of Malta Air Campaign by Chris Riches from Wargames Illustrated.  Unfortunately I don’t have any additional information about year, volume or number. Even so, it’s a super two page article that neatly divides the siege into seven periods and establishes the likely appearance of each significant plane type for each period, establishing a basis for random encounters.  If interested, I can send you a copy.

Last but not least, Osprey has begun offering a new series of air campaigns.  Among the first of these is Malta 1940-42.  It’s a great mini-history of the campaign and includes tons of useful information about the opposing forces and the anti-aircraft defenses of the island.  Reasonably priced, and highly recommended.

On the painting table

In addition to the Ju.88’s and Me 109’s I’m working on, I have a scattering of Hawkmoon figures to complete.  At the present time I have four units for the Hawkmoon project completed.  I’m currently working on two of the excellent Eureka personality figures–Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains and Count Brass. I’m also working on the cute little steampunk mortar that will serves as the projector of magical missiles. When I finish this little collection, I’ll have one unit of mounted Kamarg warriors (six figures) left to paint.  I still need to acquire twelve figures to represent the magical Legion of the Dawn.  Almost finished with this project.

One of the things I still have to complete in the four or so weeks remaining before Enfilade is a new range of flight bases for Airwar 1940.  It’s much simpler than what we used to use for Mustangs with the its six different levels.  For the newer game I just need stands at “normal” level and low level.  But I need a lot, like fifty.  I jettisoned Paul Hannah’s old system that required a lot of bending of brass wire mounted on a base with brass tubing cut to size.  Instead I’m using 2″ square Litko bases with brass wire drilled and glued into the base, add a little epoxy just for extra support and then brass tubing, 2″  for low level, 4″ for normal.  I’m sticking a steel base on the bottom for extra weight. At this point the steel bases are on order, so I’m waiting to get ’em

New Stuff

It’s been a pretty quiet month for new orders.  I sent in a Litko order. Their new site is quite nice, but I did manage to order the wrong item. My mistake.  Kudos to Litko.  They’ve gotten really fast and my postage seemed a bit lighter, but that could be because of my mistake.

I also placed an order to MSD games.  Tried some different decals.  I really like the quality of those I get from I-94, but the mix of markings, particularly for the British isn’t a very economical activity.  So I tried some Dom’s Decals and some in-house British roundels.  I’ll let you know how they work out. Because it’s MSD I also ordered some planes-what else. I ordered some Me-110’s, which will fill out my six for Malta.  I also ordered some F-105’s.  A Vietnam Downtown campaign is very much on our want list, and you can’t do one without some decent Thunderchiefs.  I’ll have to run them by George Kettler, our official judge of what works to see what he thinks. I picked up a pair of F-105D’s and a F-105F Wild Weasel just as samples. Kinda spendy at six bucks a throw.

Dave Schueler and I have a list of air games we’d like to try.  For the past five or more years we’ve run games at Enfilade, and we’re always looking for the right convention game.

One issue we’ve struggled with is a good set of WWII air rules for a convention setting.  I know Check Your 6 is popular, I’ve played the game and I don’t hate it.  But I have two issues with it.  First it’s tied to a hex grid.  My chief goal in life is to free all miniatures games from hex grids or they are simply board games played with nice metal and resin pieces. Secondly, and probably most important, is I’m completely unwilling to make the investments I’d need to do to convert my hundreds of painted miniatures over to the system.  Sorry, no, not happening.

Which brings us to the Illustrious scenario. I’m on Facebook.  Please don’t think ill of me.  One of the advantages is being able to connect with folks who have common interests.  There is actually an Aerial Wargames group.  I lamented there wasn’t a game similar to David Manley’s excellent Air War C.21 game.  David Manley happens to be a member of the Aerial Wargames group, and let me/us know that he has a WWII air combat set of rules that is similar to Air War C21.  Daveshoe has a real relationship with David and when I told him about the game, sent Manley an e-mail.  He agreed to let us beta test his rules. We were happy campers.

Dave Schueler’s amazing Illustrious. Dave’s model ships get better with each scenario.

Yesterday Dave broke out his freshly built and painted HMS Illustrious plus Tribal class destroyer, and put some Italian and German bombers on them. Just a word, Dave is the model-builder in our partnership, and his work is really good.  The ships looked super and properly camouflaged for the January 1941 incident.

The game is based on the German/Italian effort to neutralize Illustrious and its task force which terrorized the Western Mediterranean and re-supplied Malta during 1940.  The Germans and Italians combined their forces to launch an attack on the carrier group, and our game tries to take their efforts into consideration.

The four Axis players divided six torpedo armed SM. 79 trimotors and six Ju. 87 Stukas.  The Italians came in at low level, lugging their fish.  The Stukas game in at high level at turn later.  Scott Abbott and I each ran a pair of Fairey Fulmars–sort of an eight gun fighter version of a Fairey Battle.  We’re sort of talking an under-powered bus with guns. It was our job to combine the ships’ flak with our air prowess to save our floating home.

Scott’s efforts to pull an advanced maneuver, an Immelman Turn, in his underpowered Fulmars, fail on a die roll and leave him near stall speed. The SM. 79’s escape and race toward the Illustrious.

We showed our air prowess immediately when Scott tried an advanced maneuver-an Immelman?- failed and lost enough power to go into a dangerous stall.  The three Italian bombers facing him, immediately raced past the Fulmars and were off to the races.

My Fulmars tangle with David Sullivan’s SM. 79’s went better, but only because a quirk in the scenario rules.

I had more luck engaging the Italians facing me.  Though my maneuvers were hardly elegant, I inflicted minor damage on two of the bombers.  According to the scenario rules, if the Italians suffered any damage they would have to check morale.  A roll of three or less on a D10, minus one for each point of damage would cause the pilot to jettison their payload and head home. David Sullivan rolled a one and a two for each of his morale rolls  I finally lined up a good shot on his remaining plane and damaged the torpedo release, so all three of his planes were out of action.

Al Rivers’ Stukas (left) get ready for their dive bombing attack on Illustrious.  Dale Mickel’s Stuka is about to be blasted to atoms as my last attack detonates his bomb.  Not a good day for the Stukas.

The Stukas had little luck.  Flying at normal altitude, they came under fire from heavy flak. Scott’s planes finally got into action, were quickly damaged, in fact, they were so slowed that a Stuka shot down one of his lumbering two seaters.  But the survivor managed to shoot down one of Dale Mickel’s Germans.  I engaged another of Dale’s planes and got a critical hit, exploding his bomb. His third plane ran into flak and folded into a fireball.

Dave Demick’s SM. 79’s broke loose from Scott’s fighters and flew unhindered by Fulmars or flak and made their torpedo run at the carrier, scoring a hit.

Dave Demick’s Italians, unhindered by Scott’s fighters, pressed their attack on the carrier and loosed their their torpedoes. One hit the carrier and did significant damage.  As the three SM. 79’s crossed over the carrier, one plane was perforated by a two-pounder and plunged into the sea.  The carrier, shaken by the hit lost some of it’s flak.

I managed to line up a shot at Al Rivers’  Stuka, only to be shot out of the sky by flak.  The remaining German dive bombers pressed on and made their runs on the Illustrious.  One, damaged by earlier fire was unable to release its bomb.  The others missed. Game over.

The game’s victory conditions called for 50% damage to Illustrious for an Axis win.  The carrier had 50 hit points.  The torpedo did ten points of damage, based on a die roll of 2 D 10.  That was the only hit in the game.  Allied victory. The Italians lost one bomber. The Germans lost three Stukas.  One Fulmar was lost to enemy action.  One was destroyed by friendly flak. The other two suffered damage, but survived.

The debrief was challenging because I was a player in the game.  Everything was difficult for the Fulmars.  They’re slow, turn poorly and their armament may seem formidable, but light machine guns don’t cut it in this game. So when the Axis players said they had no chance it was hard to credit them. But morale rolls did cost them a quarter of their attacking force and the flak did seem nasty, so Dave and I are revisiting some of this for a future playtest.