Tag Archives: NHMGS

Force Z travels to Chehalis

A setting up picture of Repulse. It would not stay quiet for long.

Today was one of those days. I woke up at 3:15, and could not get back to sleep. At 5:00 I began drinking coffee and reading Chernow’s Washington. It didn’t put me to sleep either. I loaded the car last night. I started the car, and headed out at 6:30, stopped for a breakfast sandwich and Americano at Starbucks, and hit the road for Chehalis. Traffic was fairly light. and I pulled into the Vet’s Museum at 7:50. I laid claim to a table and immediately began setting up. By 8:45, I had four excellent choices to run the game and we got started.

The Force Z game is played in five waves. In each of the waves there is either one squadron or two squadrons, 7-9 planes or 15-18 planes. Their goal is to deliver their ordnance while surviving as much damage as possible from the shipboard AA fire. The Japanese win by sinking the British ships. Anything less is a loss.

The first wave of level bombers achieved their purpose with a hit and fire in the hangar area of Repulse.

It didn’t take long to find four volunteers for the game. Vic, Dale, Joe and Jessica all were the Japanese mad bombers. Wave one was eight Nell bombers with 250kg bombs ready to drop them on the Repulse. They dutifully flew over the ship in column, and each plane dropped two bombs inflicting one hit that caused minor damage. The players could all learn what it was like to move, turn and take AA fire. The Repulse, in the middle of a violent made half its inadequate AA fire unavailable for the first wave, and inflicted some minor damage to the attacker

Joe and Victor plan their attack for Wave 2 on the smoking Repulse.

The second wave was a bit more challenging. The players get two squadrons of planes to run. They’re Nell torpedo bombers. The torpedo attack rules are more limiting. The bombers must be at low level. The attacks must be made at speed 7 or less until they drop their torpedoes. Torpedo ranges are critical and pre-measuring isn’t allowed. Bombers can’t launch in a turn in which their planes are turning. But torpedoes are the money in this game. Bombers flying two miles high just don’t hit much, so it’s the torpedo luggers that have to do the hitting.

Wave 2 attacks the Repulse from the Southeast corner of the table. Lots of great discussion between the players about which chances to take. They decided a straight in strike would be best and with four torpedo hits, who’s to argue.

The players had some decisions to make. The board entry put them closest to Repulse. Would they attack there? Would they maneuver planes to both sides and attempt an “anvil” attack (raises the chances of a hit. Would they try to shift the entry location and tempt the fates that all planes would get there on time.

For the time being their decision could wait. At the beginning of the game they rolled on the Getting Started table which had three possible outcomes, all kinda bad for the Japanese. They rolled the Interception option. The British had 11 Brewster Buffaloes waiting 90 minutes or so away to come to the aid of the Force Z if called upon. In the Getting Started table, a die roll would direct the Buffaloes to intercept Wave 2 off table, with a die roll against each squadron. Jessica’s die roll directed both attacks on Lt. Take’s squadron and he paid the price. Two planes were shot down, and two were so badly damaged they couldn’t continue. Lt. Takei would be bringing 3 planes to the table instead of 7. The Japanese could have rolled differently and broke up their attacks or created unfavorable sea conditions making it harder to hit, but got the interception instead.

Lt. Takei’s survivors and Lt. Ishihara’s nine planes stuck with a plan to attack Repulse directly. Though they had planes damaged in the attack, none were shot down before their torpedoes were launched, and one was shot down as it was exiting the board. The Repulse was not so lucky and suffered four torpedo hits. But it wasn’t just the hits. It was the die rolls on the damage table that were 7,7,8,8 on the D10’s the game uses. Anything 7-10 does critical damage, such as flooding, rudder jams, loss of AA or internal explosions. The Repulse was left in pretty bad shape, in a sinking condition and loss of most of her AA. Eeep.

There was an actual lull of almost an hour between waves two and three. I meant to have a British damage repair roll. I wasn’t prepared (as in, I forgot,) but that will be something for a future game.

12 of the Bettys in Wave 3 targeted Prince of Wales. The Prince actually shot down two of them, but as you can see, five torpedo hits left her paddling for her life.

Wave three was two full squadrons of Betty torpedo bombers. Bettys actually lugged heavier torpedoes but I just didn’t think a distinction was worthwhile. They approached from the west, or mainland side of the Gulf of Siam. Five targeted the listing, sinking Repulse, while the remainder attacked Prince of Wales. By the time they departed the Repulse had taken five more hits, and the Prince of Wales engineering was wrecked, she was listing and the game was pretty much done.

Vic’s five remaining planes targeted the listing, rudder jammed hulk of Repulse. You can see what happened. Five hits. Secondary explosions. Ick.

Overall, I was incredibly pleased with the game. It looked great. It played easily enough. The mechanics of movement, anti aircraft fire, bombing and torpedo attacks worked well. The torpedo damage was really bloody, but the die rolling for the Japanese was really hot and I can’t do anything about that.

But one of my goals was to get the Japanese through all five attack waves and we only made it through three. So here are a few things I’ll do for the next play test.

  1. Move the Prince of Wales a little closer to Repulse. That way the Japanese can still gang up on one of the ships, but it’s more likely they’ll be able to support each other with AA fire.
  2. Put two British destroyers on the table. There were three destroyers as part of the task force, though they seem to have played little part in the Dec. 10th attacks except for rescuing survivors. I have rules for the destroyers. They are mostly a distraction and contribute little to the AA attacks, but they’re something.
  3. Probably the big change is making the torpedo attacks harder to hit. Don’t have a problem with the damage, but it seemed like they were hitting at a rate of about 40% which is about twice the rate historically. It’s easier to judge the short range distance on the table from the long range, so hitting on the table has to be more difficult. At the current time hitting is possible on a 7-10 unless there are subtractions for angle or damage. I’m torn between hits on 8’s or 9’s.

Another playtest on the 28th at Wizard Kings. I’ll need to organize. Looks like the PoW’s mast needs a repair. But looking forward to it.

Just one last word in praise of the Chehalis Veteran’s Museum. First, for our group, it’s a terrific venue for a game space. It isn’t huge, but it could easily house our three or four games we ran each period. It’s comfortable, not too warm, lots of room to spread out. We had 32ish folks there at one time. It wasn’t loud, which is what often happens with a bunch of old guys who don’t hear well. I didn’t spend time in the museum itself, but I have and it was great. Lots of great stuff to see including exhibits on women in the service during WWII. Some might call that woke; I just call it history. It’s equidistant between Portland and Seattle and we had a nice turnout from both areas. We’ll be back in August, and I hope to be there too.

Enfilade 2015: the hits just keep coming.

I attended Enfilade over the Memorial Day weekend.  It was my 24th Enfilade.  I haven’t missed one yet, and I’ve had organizing responsibilities in almost all of them.  Last year I announced my retirement from the Enfilade committee and all other leadership responsibilities for NHMGS.  It was a carefully considered decision, and the right one for me. There was no animosity or rancor in my decision, and I’ve moved on.

It was a very good convention and I think the organizers did quite well.  It seemed to me there were few glitches and almost all of them were beyond their control.  If I have one suggestion it would be to try to problem solve the event sign-up dilemma. I know and understand all the problems associated with pre-registering for events, but the long 45-minute lines must be addressed. They’ve done a great job of promoting pre-registration electronically for the convention, and now it’s time to put equal or greater promotion into pre-registering for events.  It’s complicated and I get that, but this seems to me a must-do, especially as attendance hovers around the 350 mark and the lines snake through the convention hall.

Each convention is different, and this one certainly was for me.  I had to work on Friday.  That’s unusual for the day of the convention and it presented a number of problems I clearly foresaw.  It meant leaving at school about 2:30 and driving to Olympia and arriving in time to host my 7:00 event.  if you are a stranger to Washington geography, that’s about a 60-70 minute drive under normal circumstances.  Unfortunately Memorial Day weekend is far from normal.  It is the beginning of the camping season, and as the weather moderates any long weekend is a good excuse for camping.  The roads were a mess and instead of arriving at the hotel 3:30-4:00ish, it took an extra hour.  I had piles of stuff to haul in for my game, so by the time I checked in, set up my game, and caught my breath, it was game time. Something to consider for the future.

Friday night I ran my raid on Agen scenario.  It was a Lion Rampant game with seven players who had not played the rules before.  All had purchased copies of the rules and were genuinely interested in learning them to see if they liked them, which meant they were motivated to work through them.  That made life a lot easier for me. After a somewhat slow start, they were doing things pretty much on their own.  The story of the scenario is something like this: three English retinues arrive outside the village of Agen, defended by a dilapidated castle.  This is a chevauchee, meaning the English are there to loot and burn the village and carry off their goodies.  The French arrived with a three retinue relieving force-something frequently unusual for a chevauchee-and their job is to prevent the English from achieving their goals.  The last retinue was a smattering of serfs, whose job it is to offer token resistance, but most of all survive.  The French were able to inflict some damage to the English, but the invaders were pretty efficient, looting and burning many of the various buildings on the table.  But, the big winners were the serfs, who by staying away from trouble, managed to score 105 points edging out the English who amassed 104.  Most importantly, the players seemed to enjoy themselves,and especially the rules.  They were running the game themselves by the end of things.

Saturday morning I made time to actually play a game.  I have long been interested in Galactic Knights, the space epic using ships originally made by Superior Models. I own some of the ships and the rules, but only walked through a kind of quickie scenario with Dave Schueler.  The Saturday game was hosted by Scott Williams and Joe Grassman and was loosely based on the WWII Battle of Midway. I commanded the Terran star bombers, which are the rough equivalent of the Ameriacn TBD torpedo bombers slaughtered by the Japanese.  In GK they have the virtue of being faster than the Devastator death traps.  I loved the scenario and learned a lot about the rules.  I was able to be sneaky and sly, took advantage of the rules and administered the coup de gras to two thirds of the Avarian capital ships–following the advice of my colleagues.  The game inspired me to work on my collection of GK stuff-in fact I’m writing this during a break from them.

The Saturday mid-day period was all about judging games for the period’s “Best of Show” award.  Often that falls to one person, but the convention organizers did a super job of mobilizing three judges for each period.  That’s way better than I was able to do.  I actually hope to continue aiding in this because it is great fun.  The best part of serving in that role is the ability to circulate and see all the games during the period.  I actually got around to see each game three times and there were some wonderful ones.  While the 28mm Waterloo game raged on in the corner, John McEwan hosted an amazing undersea submarine game.  Max Vekich and Ed Texeira ran a very interesting hypothetical 28mm WWII Japanese invasion of Washington game I was very intrigued with. Special guest Howard Whitehouse had a very interesting Vinlander/skraeling semi RPG with miniatures game that was very cool.  But the winner was FireForce Rhodesia ’76.  This was a great looking and playing game in which the miniatures and terrain all seemed to work well.  Damond Crump, Bruce Smith and Lawrence Bateman were the big winners in that period.

Saturday evening was my big game, Smoked Bolougne.  It was another Lion Rampant game with space for eight players.  It was a mixed group of LR veterans and noobs.  The game featured an attack on Bolougne’s port at either end by a picked English force.  The goal of the English is to destroy key buildings in the town and destroy the French ships at anchor.  The English got off to a roaring start, using their flaming arrows to set fire to their targets.  The waterfront was quite ablaze, but the invaders were soon bogged down by French reinforcements and poor activation rolls. In the end they were able to achieve what the English did historically–destruction of their targets, but their forces were also destroyed.

During Sunday’s final period Dave Schueler and I hosted the Raid on St. Nazaire.  I got some credit for helping, but honestly this was Dave at his finest. Based on the raid on the French port city on the Loire River that also contained the Normandie dry dock, this was going to be a tricky show. We’d walked and talked through the way the scenario would be played, but hadn’t had a real playtest. We’d done that on other scenarios, but this was complex in the sense that the six British players had to move their 13 motor launches plus five escorts through German gunfire, land their load of commandos, and destroy important features in the the port area before re-embarking for home. Overall the game went well.  The Brits suffered two losses and several vessels damaged while engaging the port defenses. They did get some commandos ashore, damaging the one of the winding houses and the pump house for the dry dock.  But it was concluded that, like Bolougne, it was a pretty historical result.  Serious damage to the dry dock meant the Tripitz would have to find a new address, but the British attackers were pretty much trapped and would likely be killed or captured.

Picture of St. Nazaire set up courtesy of Rod Fleck. I'm the goof in the green Jaguars wind shirt.

Picture of St. Nazaire set up courtesy of Rod Fleck. I’m the goof in the green Jaguars wind shirt.

The good news is that the powers that be thought enough of our game to consider ti the best of show for the Sunday game period.  It also won the best game for the year’s theme, raids.  It was the perfect finish for the weekend.

A special Enfilade

I know it’s been a long time since my last post, and I know this mostly because my friends keep reminding me. So much has happened since March 14th.

We are about ten days until Enfilade.  This convention is special for a several reasons, but I see this as a turning point in my life.

One reason it’s important is because I’m cutting my ties to NHMGS leadership. I’ve been pretty involved with conventions and events or the presidency and decision-making for more than twenty years.  While I’ve enjoyed my time in these roles, I’m just willing to let it go.  I hate to leave my colleagues in the lurch, but I’ve given plenty of notice, and I just feel the need to simplify my life. Of course, I wish everybody well, but this is an episode in my life I need to close.

One very good reason for making this change is I recently learned I have prostate cancer.  It’s a little more aggressive and wandering than the disease most men get at some point, content to be inert and grow fat and happy. No, mine has to come out and on June 16th I’ll have surgery.   The mortality from prostate cancer is low.  The cure rate is 80-85%.  That doesn’t mean it’s without risk, and the collateral damage is real, though hopefully temporary.   Clearly,  I need to make some changes in my life.  I want to get more exercise.  In a perfect world I’d like to take on walking, working to jogging and running.  A bunch of my colleagues at school just ran the Tacoma half marathon, and I would love to see me be among them next year.  I’ve also got to do a better job on diet, and lose weight. I just want to live a more healthy lifestyle.

What does this change in my gaming life?  I’d say little.  I’d like to play more games than I do now, not less. But there are some changes I will make:

  1. No new projects, period the end.  I have so many periods in so many different scales that I don’t play it’s silly.  That means lots of painting of things I may or may not ever play with and enjoy on the game table.  If anything I need to cut back what I have and let go of the things I’ve been hanging on to for no clear reason.  I see a big lot of stuff heading out to the Bring and Buy at Enfilade 2015.
  2. No crash painting campaigns.  Each year I try to plan well ahead for what I’m doing at the convention.  Never again.  I’m going to paint what I want, when I want, and when convention planning comes around I’ll build scenarios with what I have.
  3. Have fun.  Play more games. Truth be told, it’s more difficult for me to get together during the school year on a week night.  But occasionally I’d like to do that. There’s no excuse for not playing on NHMGS days, third Saturday of the month, none, zilch, zero.

Throughout the six week trial that has accompanied my biopsy, diagnosis and preparation for surgery I’ve painted most days.  I hope to have pictures this weekend of some of my completed work.  All the items I’ve completed go with my Louisiana project.  24 figures of Spanish infantry, 10 figures of American Dragoons, 22 figures of Comanche cavalry, 10 figures of Spanish Cuera militia cavalry.  Lots of horses.  I’m down to having only five figures left to paint for the convention–all leader figures, all mounted.  I should have pictures of painted miniatures ready to post this weekend.

I also  made a decision not to run Bladensburg at the convention this year.  The Burr game requires more preparation, and honestly is more interesting to me, so that’s where my focus is. Had a great meeting with Dave Schueler this weekend, going over rules and options, so I’m ready to sit down and start banging everything out.

In closing, I’d simply like to say thanks to all the folks I’ve worked with along the way.  There are too many to name without the risk of creating a list that runs the risk of leaving folks out.  But from Portland to British Columbia, from Aberdeen to Washington, D.C., I’ve had a tremendous opportunity to meet lots of great folks who do this hobby, mostly for fun, and a few for a living.  I can truly say I’ve enjoyed 99.9% of my interactions, learned a lot from most, taught a little bit to others.  I have few regrets.  See you all soon.