OML3 - The Pre 20thC Games

Last Saturday saw the latest OML event OML3 - The Lardest Day take place here in deepest Tractorshire. 36 TFL enthusiasts from Devon to Northants and South Wales to Buckinghamshire assembled for the usual recipe of a day's gaming followed by a social curry and lashings of alcohol.

 

Early morning during set up. Taken from the stage where Rich Clarke was running his Fighting Season game. There's two more WW2 games out of shot to the right. More on all three in  the next post.

 In all there were 10 games on offer for the day, hosting between two and four players each. Between them they covered a large part of the Lardy rules repertoire and from the fifth century to the last ten years! Here they are in chronological order.

Chris Churchill ran a game of Dux Brittanniarum involving getting a wagon train to the safety of a local village before it could be ambushed.

Jumping 1000 years to the Wars of the Roses, Paul Baldwin ran two sessions of the Sharpe Practice variant from the Summer Special 2013 entitled "Of All Base Passions" written by Pat Smith.

 Next up was without doubt the prettiest game on show. This time Sharpe in it's true setting of the Napoleonic Wars. Jim Ibbotson's wonderful brushmanship really put the topping on a cracker of a scenario where the French have to dawn raid a British held supply dump which is destined to aid the local Spanish guerrillas. I'm lucky enough to play on this set up whenever Jim's able.

 

 

Jim used a remodelled Citadel Realm of Battle game board & the excellent Spanish buildings are from Grand Manner.

"En Avant!" A mounted commander urges his men on to catch the British still asleep in their tents.

 

Having been rudely awaken by the dustman, err I mean sentry, the Brits line the walls of the churchyard to repel the attacking French.

Last up for this post is Phyllion's adaptation of Sharpe Practice (they're remarkably versatile y'know) for the Sudan. Unsure what the scenario was for this one, but it went over well with all who gamed it.

"They don't like it up 'em". British forces defend a lookout tower against the Mahdi's forces.

More Beja tribesmen bear down on the outnumbered colonial force.

That's all for the first installment. Apologies to those I've stolen photos from. I never had chance to take any all day.

Part 2 tomorrow......

Jonny & the Diggers (part 2)

With just under six weeks to go until OML3 "The Lardest Day" I took the opportunity at last night's club to have a dress rehearsal for this year's Sari Bair-A Ridge Too Far Gallipoli game. I'm lucky enough to have been lent a great deal of the scenery and figures needed, but this would be the first time I would actually get to see both Mike Hobbs' and Alan Sheward's kit mixed together. The object of the evening was not so much sort out the final layout, but to see if there were any glaringly obvious omissions which would need to be sorted before the event.

View from the Anzac approach. There's about a 20"(50cm) rise from the near edge to the top of the slope.

I already had a plan in mind of how I wanted the table to look. 6' x 6'. A long sloping rise, based on two foot square tiles with a cloth overlay. Gallipoli is surprisingly much more verdant than would first be assumed with plenty of vegetation (cotton bushes, long grasses & even pine trees!) as well as the pale rocky soil. I found some more useful items while packing away at the end of the evening which I'll probably find use for on the day.

Another view from the bottom of the slope. I've hatched a plan to try to make it a little steeper (hopefully still allowing the figures to stand!)

Mike's trenches would form the Turkish line at the top. The trenches were often short, not too deep and not necessarily joined. so I'd opted for two 24" lengths on either flank with communication lines running to the rear on both sides.

Turks pour fire down on the approaching Anzacs from their trenches.

I'll be trying to make the dry stream bed at the foot of the slope more obvious and the lighter hills will maybe end up beneath the cloth too. There are more grass tufts to use on the day also. Again, the conundrum will be to provide more scenery without necessarily increasing the cover too much. I'm hoping that the folds in the ground will be the biggest source of concealment.

View along the Turkish lines.

Although I'm acutely aware that the Chain of Command mechanics for this stage of WW1 may provide a tad "vanilla" gaming experience, I'm hoping that the challenge of the terrain, objective and scenario may encourage the use of some of the less obvious options of approach to each phase. It differs hugely from the WW2 CoC game format. Most of the troops being armed with only rifles. No LMG's, little in the way of grenade usage and no fire teams! At this stage in warfare battles were still being conducted on a company level at least. So this will form only part of the picture as a couple of Anzac platoons are on table with the smallest manoeuvre element being 8-9 man sections. The HUGE Turkish platoons (83 men strong!) will only be represented in part also.

Anzac sections begin the long, unenviable slog up hill under heavy fire.

I'll be giving a lot of consideration to support choices too. A defensive machine gun or pre-assault bombardment can totally skew a game for either side. so it'll be a fine line to tread I fear.

This will need some thought. Maybe some "jamming" rules will be introduced? :^)

Lots more reading up should hopefully help in shaping the finer points of the game. overall I'm fairly happy with the way it's moving. It's all about making it playable from here.

Finally, the view from the top.

As always, please excuse the quality of the photos.



Jonny & the Diggers (part 1)

 No, not some long forgotten 50's rock & roll act but the forces facing off on the Gallipoli peninsular in 1915. So, with the Sari Bair game looming large on the horizon for OML3 the time was right to re-visit my old Battle Honours WW1 Turks who'd been languishing in a box in the garage for 10 years! I decided that the forthcoming game was the motivation I needed to lavish some long overdue attention on the little fellas.

After a quick inspection I decided I'd got far more than I needed (surprise, surprise!) and I'd paint a half-platoon of five 9 man sections, a senior leader and a junior leader with two maxim MMG's - although not all would actually see service this time around. I'd also need to make 4 jump-off points and some shock trackers. There were quite a lot of duplicates among them  so I decided to use some of the excellent Woodbine Designs range of separate heads to mix things up a little.


1st section with a couple of head  swaps on the bottom left figures.

2nd section with a well-fed junior leader and  head swaps on the two behind him.

3rd section - again a couple of fez head swaps.

Section 4 - straight out of the mix

Section 5 - again just the fez swapped

Two Maxim MMG's with dice frames in the bases for tracking crew losses and shock.

Shock trackers (casualties by Woodbine)

Jump-off Points using baggage from Grand Manner's WW1/Colonial range.

Senior Leader and Junior leader for the machine guns

Next up are the Anzac jump-off points and shock trackers which are based and ready to paint later this week.





I Have Mostly Been Painting.....

Things have stepped up a gear as is customary now the warmer weather has finally arrived, the nights are getting lighter and OML3 draws ever closer.

With the upcoming 6th game in mine & Bob's fight through of Kampfgruppe von Luck requiring a church as it's main feature I had decided to source some much overdue gravestones and to revamp the church I owned.


A fairly cluttered table held 3 projects running concurrently (I get bored easily).

 The church I already had was the one from my old Landmark range (now owned and being heavily discounted to clear by Timecast). As fantastic a model as it is, I always thought that some of the buildings in the range had a touch too much green in them for a Normandy look, the church being the most obvious case. So I took the opportunity while painting the gravestones to give it a total repaint. I decided that I would mount the graves on some spare FoW small & medium bases so they could be removed for troop placement during play. Along with the church project, the embarrassment of not having enough walling to do the whole layout in the "Corridor of Death" scenario had prompted the completion of another 11 & 1/2 feet of new walling. This would take my total of free standing wall to a whopping 23 & 1/2 feet. If that wasn't enough now it never would be!


View from the front of the newly painted church with it's completed graveyard

I was really pleased with the outcome. I also decided to repaint the surrounding wall (also too "green") and grass around the base to match in with my other buildings.

I'm looking forward to getting this on the table for the Flank at Ranville scenario

As you'll also be able to make out in the top photo, more work has taken place on the Sari Bair Gallipoli game for this year's OML3 event. My order from Warbases had arrived!

Undercoated casualty figures to use as shock markers were mounted on 40mm discs and terrain added. Again the dice & frames to track shock were from Minibits.

 

I'd sourced some fantastic "clutter" items from Grand Manner's WW1/Colonial range to eventually mount on 30mm discs to create Jump Off Points. All of my senior and junior leaders were going to be mounted on 25mm a/f hex bases to ease recognition on the battlefield.

To bring the infantry into line with modern times, I'm rebasing them onto 25mm discs too. This would be my first widespread use of MDF bases for normal troops, having always previously made best use of coins of the realm....ahem. In the background you'll also notice the new patrol markers. Some internet clip art, laminated and mounted on 50mm discs are just the job.

Hopefully in the next few days I'll have an update showing completed versions of all the above. Mike Hobbs also visited yesterday to deliver all of the trenches, wire, craters and Anzacs for the project so there will no doubt also be some "mock up" shots as I tinker about. 

2015 Sooo Many Anniversaries!

With this year's OML3 event fast approaching my thoughts had turned to which game I planned to put on this time. Being on June 6th the obvious choice would be a D-Day battle - I'd definitely have most of the kit I needed (and could easily add bits from the garage full of stock if needed). As I've been having enormous fun fighting through "Kampfgruppe von Luck" the latest Pint-Sized offering for CoC (more of that later) I'd been reading up a lot on the battles in the Ranville, Breville area and decided that I'd finally paint the Horsa glider I'd had in the garage for 3 years and do something involving a landing zone.



Pleased with how it turned out, I hatched a plan to add two more.
 

The model is a 15mm  Lil' Flying Fokker available from http://www.oldgloryuk.com/wwii-allies/44/157/412/420 with decals from I-94 which I picked up from here http://www.minibits.net/BR-122-p672/ but have since found out are also available at Old Glory.

However........ (I'll try to keep this short)

I had, for a good while been weakening over these http://empressminiatures.com/userimages/procart84.htm and had decided that to commit to that as a project I MUST sell off something first. I decided that my hurriedly (horridly) painted WW1 Battle Honours Turks done for a tournament I held when I had my old shop would be sacrificed to Ebay.

Then I read the TFL Christmas Special on CoCing up WW1 in which Rich Clarke comments that the early war, with predominantly rifles, would play a little vanilla. The idea went a bit cold. But by that time I'd already found the Turks out of the garage. I decided on a whim that if I tarted them up a bit they'd be OK. I may keep them (you know how that is...right?)

After a few highlights & some tufts I thought they were "keepers"

The it went really weird. I tweeted the above photo, Mike Hobbs offered to lend me all his substantial collection of Woodbine Designs Turks & Anzacs to try out WW1CoC and before you knew it this year's OML3 game was decided as "A Ridge Too Far" Sari Bair Ridge - Gallipoli 1915.

Which brings me on to the subject of anniversaries.

In 2015 we have (among others):
Evesham (Barons War 1265) 750 years AND local to me!
Agincourt (Hundred Years War 1415) 600 years
Waterloo (Napoleonic War 1815) 200 years
Gallipoli (WW1 1915) 100 years
Battle of Britain (WW2 1940) 75 years
Gulf War 25 years

There's a lot to choose from all playable with TooFatLardies rules!


OML3 The Lardest Day Under Way

And they're Off!

For those who don't know, each year I organise the Operation Market Larden (or Great Tractor Rally as Rich Clarke likes to call it) event here in the heart of rural Borsetshire.

This year's will be the third and it's already is shaping up to be another cracker. Having sold out the 34 spaces in record time (just over a week) to folks from Devon to Lincolnshire and it seems everywhere between, work is well under way with the planning of games, players for those games & the now customary TFL cakes. Mmmmm cake. Not long now until June 6th!

These have literally gone down very well in previous years!

There will be 10 games this time. Rich Clarke will be showcasing his soon-to-be-released "Fighting Season" rules set for the modern setting (think Afghanistan, Gulf War, ISIS), there'll be Sharpe Practice variants from the War of the Roses, Sudan and Napoleonic Peninsular. Nick Overland is bringing his as yet un-published IABNM variant, Mike Whitaker's Normandy IABSM, Mud & Blood from the Russo-Japanese War, Dux Brit and finally two games of the hugely popular Chin of Command, both of which are not quite the norm. The Custard Guzzlers are putting on a Big CoC variant set in France 1940 and I'll be trying out a WW1 variant.

The format usually follows a morning and afternoon game at the home of Wyvern Wargamers, then off for an evening of curry sandwiched between pub visits. I'm sure there will be plenty to report on after the event.

"Ding!" And I'm back in the room!

Forgive me Blogosphere for it has been an almighty SEVEN weeks(!) since my last submission.

As it was my first Christmas since entering the world of blogging, I must admit to having been caught completely unprepared for the disruption bought about by the festivities. All in a good way. I've spent so much time having fun with family and friends that I'd just lost track and haver struggled to muster up the required effort while gorged on mince pies, nuts and cold turkey with pickles. Even this far into the New Year I've been hammering the gaming hard enough that I've not really conjured up any blog time.

So, this catch up will just be a few photographs of the a selection of the fun that's been had, with next post being my (first draught) plans for the year ahead. With a few curve balls thrown in for sure!

Here a just a few shots from the games where I remembered to take any (doh!)

First up was a very fun CoC "training mission" against my 16 year old lad Connor. I played a British Infantry platoon supported by a Sherman, attacking his hastily defending German Grenadiers with a PaK 40. Suffice to say no plan survives contact with the enemy and I was duly handed a good beating! Well done son, we'll make a "proper" wargamer of you yet.

Somewhere in that raging inferno is the remains of my big cat. More Coc this time against Bob. My gallant Grenadier defenders with all their support lumped into that Tiger 1. Again hastily defending this time trying to thwart Para's with lots of support choices including a FLAMETHROWER(!). All I can say is NASTY! Having had Bob languishing on 3-4 force morale for what seemed like ages, while mine remained a healthy 7, the sudden ambush grilling the Tiger bought about my rapid demise.

A trip into the loft to put away the decorations turned up a VERY old favourite game from my teenage years. With both sons and even the wife keen to play, the good times came rolling back. There were some truly hilarious moments culminating in Liam being instated as the "New Arnold Rimmer" of the modern age. Somehow though, Googling "How to win at Risk" just has a nasty ring to it. I bet that doesn't make his Risk Campaign Book!

Next up Garry came up for an eagerly awaited taster of the Fantasy adaptation of Sword & Spear. Having rather a lot of fantasy figures (with my old shop stock, two 16 year old lads and a looong mis-spent history of dabbling myself) it seemed rather a shame to have them languishing in the ignominy of the garage for the want of a decent set of rules. We had resolved last year to embarking on the "Grail Quest" for a replacement for Warhammer with these and lately, an adapted Lion Rampant coming into focus. Garry rocked up with his usual. 300 points of some or other flavour of "Poncey Elves", while I elected for all things green in the same amount. A very surprising game unravelled. The command & control were simple but elegant, there were all-manner of little subtleties and no shortage of strategy and prioritisation to boot. In the end I smashed seven bells out of him, so we'll definitely be exploring that again!*

And finally (for now at least) more CoC at Bob's. This time a cracking little France '40 game. Me as the French (all my supports lumped into a Char B) while Bob attacked with German Infantry supported by a mortar barrage and Stug 111D. Suffice to say me wounding his FOO helped immeasurably and my Tremblon VB grenade launchers performed a sterling role. In the end Bob's attack on the crossroads was truly blunted......at least for now.

So there you have it. A brief catch up on where I've been. There have of course been a great many more games (too many to mention) over what has undoubtedly been my busiest Christmas for many years. Here's to an active wargaming year ahead & a belated Happy New Year to you one and all.

Next up, another Muskets & Tomahawks after my last (un-photographed) unmitigated disaster where my Indians and Coureur de Bois received rough handling at the hands of Bob's British.

*It actually inspired the first painting of the year! With some gretchy Night Goblins getting some well overdue love in preparation for another run-out - shots to follow.