Spearhead 15mm Pushing Forward February 17, 2023

This was a 15mmSpearhead game run by my friend William at the Ottawa Miniatures Games Club on Friday night February 17, 2023.  The terrain and figures were contributed by multiple players, including myself resulting in a bit of an unmatched look  The Scenario is called Pushing Forward set in the Summer of 1944 and was a test Game for Cangames 2023 and can be found here.

 https://ww2spearhead.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pushing_forward_1944.pdf

 

Overview

 

Fantastic Battles

 In my 2022 New Year's message I had mentioned I was very interested in and had started playing the Fantastic Battles (FB) rules system by Nicholas Wright, for mass battles for both historical and  Fantasy genre for a range of scales (2mm-28mm). The rules allow you to customize and build armies based on a tool kit approach of different traits added to company types including: Elite, Formed Irregular, Fantastic Beast, Vehicle and Giant.  There is a separate system for characters that makes them significant but not exaggerated in power. FB is also well supported by the author and members on the Fantastic Battles Face Book Page.

Cover

Since early  December 2021 I have played at least 7 games of  FB, but sadly I have not had time to provide detailed reports for each game.  I still don't have time now to provide detailed reports but  read on to find information on basing, table size and a list of games played with selected photos.

Happy New Year 2022 and Fantastic Battles Project

 Happy New Year 2022

A project I was working on to create Resolution tracker counters for Fantastic Battles (FB).   These are 20mm MDF bases spray painted green with self adhesive 5/8" Roman numerals designed for clocks.  Sadly not a lot else to do on New Years Eve thanks to Covid-19, so watched TV movies and made counters.

 New Roman number counters

D-Day Canada House Juno Beach 15mm and 6mm

Trying to find it in 15mm and 6mm

It seems appropriate to post this today on June 6, 2019, the 75th anniversary of D-Day.  I plan to run a 6mm and later a 15mm D-Day game this year.   Towards that effort I want to find a reasonable facsimile of "Canada House" the first building liberated by Canadian Troops on Juno Beach.

Canada House Juno Beach June 1944

Canada House Today

D-Day June 1944 in 15mm

Some pictures from two 15mm D-Day games I have helped run, many have my beach mat shown below.

 

Spearhead in 15mm: France 1940 and Eastern front

Another game report from some years back in late November 2012 when I experimented with using my favorite 6mm Second World War rules for 15mm scale.  The advantages of Spearhead are it plays fast and produces reasonably accurate historical results.  There are some abstractions (city fighting) and modification needed for games with less than 3 formations (battalions for 6mm, companies for 15mm). The rules have a ground scale of 1" = 100 yards and a figure scale of one base = a platoon for 6mm.  The ground scale definitely needs to be altered for 15mm (1" - 50 yards) and an option for 1:1 play is a good idea.  I have started to write up 15mm rules.   Here are some pictures of a game set in France in the spring of 1940  pitting French and German armour against each other.

German Pz IVd and 38t tanks versus French S-35 tanks

A list of games to play in 2020

New Years is a time for lists so here is my wish list of 16 games to play in 2020 plus a long term plans for a siege game (#17). Some of the games are hold-overs from last year.  As usual I suspect I will be lucky to get half of them done, but at least I have something to strive for.  There is also  the possibility of a new game being added to the list (like SAGA Age of Magic) got added to my 2019 list) or an older game making a comeback like Sharpe Practice, War of 1812 or a Superhero game (#18).

1. SAGA Age of Magic and SAGA Historical 28mm

Part of an Undead Legion Warband

SAGA Trojan versus Greek game

Test game: Battlegroup rules by PSC

Test Battle: Battlegroup (Kursk supplement)

Ted and I gave the Battlegroup rules a test today (Sunday 27 January, 2019).  These W.W.II rules are designed for 15mm to 28m scale and to represent combat anywhere from the Squad  to the Company level on a scale of 1 to 1.  A good review and more details about the rules can be found here:
 https://www.beastsofwar.com/featured/part-one-introduction-overview/

Our game was a meeting engagement set on the Eastern front in late 1942 near Stalingrad. We played on a 5' x 6' table, and each side had 500 points worth of equipment and troops.  Ted played the Soviets.

overview

A List of Great War Spearhead First World War games I have played.

Great War Spearhead (GWSH) games by Shawn Taylor including an April 2017 Battle of Vimy Ridge 1/300 scale reproduction of the battlefield, by the author at the Canadian War Museum (CWM) and earlier games I ran.

GWSH in 6mm: Battle of Vimy Ridge
by Shawn Taylor at the CWM 2017

Second World War in 15mm a Recap of previus games since 2007

  Second World War in 15mm which supplanted 6mm and 20mm in my geographic area as the most popular scale for this time period.  I have used  various rules including: Micro Armor the Game (MATG), Flames of War (FoW I, II or III), Battlefront (2017) or Battlegroup in 20mm (November 2018). I am planning to play in a 15mm Stalingrad campaign in early 2019.

Eastern Front game mid-war  Soviets  FoW 2007

The 2019-20 Games To Play List and Highlights of past games 2004-2018

 A List of Games to be played from 2019 to 2029

New Years is a time for reflection of things past and future as well as a time for  lists.  So I started to write a list of many of the games I would like to run or play in 2019-20, it is very ambitious and I will be lucky to get through half of them!  I think it might better be described as a list of what I hope to play in the next decade (so I changed the title)!   Other than the first three they are not in any order of priority.  I have included pictures of work in progress or previous games for each listing.  The inclusion of the previous games have turned this list into a history of the games I have played since 2004, when I first bought a digital camera.  As a result it has become very lengthy with lots of pictures and it spawned a few separate blogs for some of the games.   I have added the approximate date in brackets when I last played the rule system or genre.  Those with no dates have yet to be played.

1.    Doctor Who Miniatures Games (DWMG) by Graeme Dawson in 28mm: a Christmas game planned for January 2019. Read on for pictures of  "Terror at Devil’s Bay" planned for May 2019 (Test game May 2018), plus pictures from some of my early DWMG game dating back to 2006 including the games I have run at Cangames.

Santa with AK47 by WSD  in 28mm, for a Holiday themed game in 2019

Battlefront Game Eastern Front 1944

Introduction

This was a test game of the Fire and Furry Battlefront rules in 15mm scale on a 6'x 4' hill with fields, two forests, one hill and a village in the centre.  It was a encounter engagement set on the Eastern Front in the Spring of 1944, played over two days (March 30 and April 2, 2018).  The Germans had a two companies of Panzer Grenadiers on one company of Panzer IVH versus the Soviets with a rifle company, SMG company and a tank company.

overview

Flames of War Pacific

This was a 15mm Flames of War ( FoW) game set in Malay in late 1941,  Japanese versus Allies (Commonwealth).  It was hosted by me on Sunday 13 November 13, 2016 and I also played on the British side.


This game had 4 players and some spectators, including The Ronin North of the River  Each player had 1,000 FoW points worth of troops and the game lasted 4 turns.   The Japanese proved to be very effective, especially attacking at night in the jungle,  see the special FoW rules for them here:
http://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=3955

Overview of the battle field - Japanese deploy forward near the British artillery at night.