Lard on the Volga - Birthday Bash 2017

It seems strange how something always seems to crop up on the evening my local wargames club meets. School plays, my daughter’s swimming training, my son's football games, a phone call with work – whatever the excuse, it’s going happen on a Tuesday evening when my local club meets.

For a long time we’ve talked about meeting on a weekend, and putting on a club game. 

I turned 50 a little earlier this summer, and this seemed like a good excuse to hire the club venue and stage a large game of “Chain of Command” last Saturday. My chums Richard Clarke and Nick Skinner have already posted a ton of photos from the game on their fine Lard Island News blog. So what follows is my recollection of our visit to Korbinskaya on the Don River.

For anyone thinking about staging a “birthday game”, I can honestly simply say – do it! It’s a great way to arrive at “that” milestone, as well as spending the time with a great selection of friends who just also happen to be wargamers.

Setting the Scene

One of the fun things about any wargame is setting the scene. Rich sent a few emails to me in the week before the game, detailing the setting on the river Don at the small town of Korbinskaya and it’s nearby Collective Pig Farm No. 452. A force organisation table later and I was in business, sewing minefields, working out defensive positions and finding old photos on the internet of what a collective farm would look like. A little goes a very long way when it comes to inspiration!

The table

We ended up with a large wargame. Indeed, 22 feet of wargame, from the Don to Collective Pig Farm No. 452. As you’ll see from the photographs, Rich and Al’s terrain was a joy to behold.

The fine Russian buildings from Warbases, Sarissa and Charlie Foxtrot looked splendid. My favourite was a wonderful Russian Church, complete with boarded up windows and Bolshevik and Soviet posters demonizing the Russian Orthodox Church.

Logistics

Never let a wargamer go hungry or thirsty. It’s an old saying (I’m sure), but nevertheless it’s an accurate one. I had arranged for lunch to be shipped in from our local bakery including a selection of decadent, bourgeoisie confectionary. Inevitably this was enjoyed by the Soviet players just as much as by the evil Nazi players.

I was honoured by my Lard chums increasing our collective daily sugar intake by creating two cakes, which were unveiled at the end of the day’s gaming. Despite initial misgivings, the indoor (Health and Safety Approved) sparkler worked far better than the Soviet pioneers’ satchel charges on the tabletop.

The game

As all games seem to do, it raced by. The Germans thrashed forward to the small, Tasrist-era bridge over the Lenmakluski stream, while I attempted to corral a slightly-recalcitrant defence using fiendish Commissar methods. The Soviet sailors from the Black Sea fleet arrived in the nick of time, just as most of the crews from the T-34s were bailing out under steady German fire.

As you can see from the photos, the troops provided by Rich, Al and Ade were of a wonderful standard. Thanks chaps!

The After-game entertainment

The best part of wargaming is the friends you share the hobby with. As might have already been mentioned by Rich, one can only hope that the band enjoyed themselves as much as we did.

Getting back up to speed

Yes, it’s been a while, hasn’t it! What is it about twenty-first century life that means that you try and save up some time for your hobby, only to find that ….. well, things just crop up to stop you. It’s been a frustrating year for me in hobby terms, with a few false starts, a couple of blind alleys and a cliff-edge or three. I’m sure you know the sort of thing.

But, thank you all for sticking with this blog. And, as my wargaming chum Mike Whitaker once memorably recommended in his blog, I’ve stayed “on the bus”.

So here’s what I’ve been up to recently.

I’ve placed the Tirailleurs Sénégalais on the back burner for the time being. They’ll be back, possibly this autumn. A brief hiatus, but nothing more. Coming back to a “large” (also known as “over-bloated”) project can be daunting and intimidating. One of the things I found coming back to the hobby was that a large half-finished project doesn't encourage you to get started again. The very size of what’s remaining is a disincentive. It’s like being constantly reminded of your failure to complete something.

So, I’ve opted for something much smaller. I’ve managed to paint and finish a small group of German trench sentries and some tempting targets for British trench raiders to try and capture. Nothing remarkable, but the Brigade Games and 1st Corps sculpts were fun to paint and, above all, they were something achievable.

I found having just a handful of figures to paint was reassuring. I could feel I was “getting somewhere”, even speeding up a couple of times to get the first figure done.

I’ve vague plans for the next set of figures to paint. And, probably on the same basis, a handful of Great War Miniatures highlanders look manageable.

As well as painting, we’ve been play-testing TooFatLardies’ new supplement for “Chain of Command”, entitled “Fighting Season” at the St. Albans wargames club. This supplement recreates fighting in modern-day Afghanistan. It’s early days, but Richard Clarke has posted some very thoughtful material on his blog, “Lard Island News”, addressing some of the ethical issues with wargaming this conflict. He’s been joined by some excellent blogging by both Benito and Mike on their own blogs, Gaming with TooFatLardies and Mad Padre Wargames.

Here are some photos of the play-test games.

The next edition of Wargames Bloggers Quarterly is also out – available here. WBQ4 like its previous three issues is a great combination of fine writing and wonderful photographs. Huge congratulations to everyone who worked on it. WBQ4 is an excellent addition to the stable of hobby magazines, all the more so as a free and entirely volunteer driven publication.

And, finally, I did make the trip to Salute this year. I also took the time to hook up with other Bloggers at the meet-up. I’ve been remiss in posting photos of the day, but I hope the photos below make up for that (including Michael's spectacular "Stockholm 1392" game). It was great seeing you all there!

Campaigning with Chain of Command - Rules and Mechanics

For those of you still reading the Blog posts I've produced in respect of our "Chain of Command" games at the St Albans Wargames Club (thank you - here's some more of the tablets!), you may be interested in today's post on Lard Island News.

Richard has posted a brief description of the backgrounds of the various Leaders we're using in the campaign. As Richard wrote the "Chain of Command" rules and is writing the campaign supplement, you can rest assured that his descriptions of the campaign mechanics will be far more reliable than mine!

With that in mind, please let me direct you to Lard Island News HERE.

As for Richard's description of my Blog posts as the "deranged wanderings of the fevered mind that is La Roundwood", I think that's actually not far from the truth!

Our next campaign game is this evening, so hope you can join Richard and myself for the after action report (wherever it may appear!).

  

Chain of Command Campaign: Game 3 - Attack and Defend

Sometimes the battlefield seemed empty to Second Lieutenant Sandy St Clair. If not silent, or still, then waiting. Like a cold, dark river on an early autumn morning in Perthshire, a lifetime ago. Before. The. War. A different life, a different world.

Unlike the heather clad glen and nearby pine woods of his Uncle's estate in Scotland, the hill before him stank. A crop of bloated dead cattle filled the fields, a harvest of splintered iron shells having scythed them down before his platoon arrived.

The smell of their carcasses made him retch. It was all he could do to train his field glasses on the stone walls which led to the Enemy's main defence line. Not silent, not still, but waiting.

He was holding his nerve. People were pleased with him. His platoon had been fighting well. The scrappy, yellow paper scrawled with his Colonel's commendation was fast turning a smudged, mottled black as he fingered it repeatedly in his pocket. Words on a paper letter. Not much to cling to, but better than a vague, random hope he'd pull through.

Stop it. STOP THINKING LIKE THAT.

He could feel the sweat leeching slowly around his thick woollen collar. He checked his watch. He'd been in the farmhouse with a section for five minutes now. Nothing to see in the fields. He'd tried. His eyes ached. He couldn't even see the swarms of flies glutting themselves on the slaughtered cattle. He could tell the Bren gunners were edgy as well, one of them rubbing the edge of the spare magazine like a child's toy. 

 
He felt the rumble of the Cromwell before he saw or heard it. He'd waved it along the side road as he'd approached the house, hoping that it would have a decent field of fire to the north of the farm.

Sergeant McKie's section was moving up to the south. Pin, Pivot, Punch. Concentrate. Try and remember, just try and remember. They're all counting on you. He searched his watch's face, suddenly nervous.  He thought it had stopped and then watched the hands slowly moving.  Playing tricks again.  He always knew that some seconds lasted longer than others. Another ten seconds nearer The End.

Then it started. Automatic weapons, machine guns, mortars, the rasp of chemical smoke in the back of his throat, the brick splinters spraying from the walls under fire, the screams and the shouting, the thud of artillery support strolling closer, killing almost casually. Obliteration at less than 2 feet away. 

The Bren gunner almost growled as he was shot. The upstairs window had given a perfect field of fire, and offered a perfect target. Before he could grab the gun, a second man was shot, the stock now slick scarlet with their conjoined blood. He was waving for McKie's section to leave the field, find cover. The enemy fire was ferocious. Somehow he still managed to shout orders, his feet unable to move, his hand slashed by a brick splinter from the window. He knew he was shouting as much out of anger as fear. 

 
The rumble got louder. At first he thought that Evans had ploughed the tank into the farm. Everything shook. A picture fell from the wall and he realised for a half-second someone had lived here. A bedroom overlooking a field, by an orchard. Someone had slept, been happy here. Now it was a morgue.

He heard the crash as the Cromwell ploughed a furrow through the stone wall to the south of the farm, the sound of wrenched, scraped, metal screeched insistently in his head and refused to stop. The tank had bogged. The Enemy had gone. It was suddenly over. The ghosts of their feldgrau and camouflaged smocks vanishing in the smoke, leaving him with the dead, the blood and the finally silent room.

******************************************************************

The third game in out Chain of Command campaign saw the British assault on Hill 113 bog down as miserably as Sergeant Evans' attempt to cross the Normandy stone wall into "Les Trois Vaches" farm.  

Although the British has a full platoon and a Cromwell tank in support, making progress against a German platoon and a fine defensive position can still be hard work.  The luck favoured both sides fairly easily, but the British assault was broken eventually by the inability of the Cromwell to effectively fire on the German defenders on account of the smoke liberally peppering the battlefield from the British 2" mortars!  A salutary lesson for any would-be Royal Engineers on a wargames table!

The game was a lot of fun, and as we're playing through Richard's campaign supplement we're finding quite a few things developing.  First, both sides are more cautious in approaching defensive positions, mainly out of respect for the effect of bi-pod mounted machine guns in strong positions.  Second, both sides are probing first and hitting once the enemy are discovered - we're trying to follow the tactics laid down in the military manuals of the time (thoughtfully supplied by Richard to the players).  Third, some of the characters formerly thought of as utter duds are coming good.  To my amazement, Second Lieutenant St Clair is finding his feet in the campaign - which is a great pleasure considering he was first rolled up to test the effect of a "shell-shock rule"!

The campaign supplement is developing well.  The initial focus on trying to create a combat stress, or "shell-shock" effect is evolving into a much more interesting character development track.  more of that on Lard Island News HERE.

At the same time, there are, of course, inevitable twists of fate.  Panda's dice rolling continues top be a thing of wonderment, as you can see here.  

Even the best laid schemes can "gang aft agley", no doubt as Second Lieutenant's Uncle would have told him in that cold, dark salmon-empty Perthshire river in that lifetime before the War.