WWII Naval: Mediterranean Fleets 1/3000 NavWar

Hello there, been a looooong time since I posted something, been very busy.  OK, enough chit chat.

I had started looking at the Mediterranean Sea during WWII a few years ago after making a impulse purchase of a very inexpensive set of painted NavWar miniatures for the Battle of Matapan.  I have purchase Navwar in the past for Cold War Soviets and modern PLAN, and have always enjoyed the miniature line.  For WWII, though, my interest has always been with the Pacific War, motivated by boyhood readings of books on Pearl harbor and Midway, and of course, the corresponding films Tora Tora Tora and Midway.

Anyway, I realized this theater had a lot to offer as it was extremely active, and generally hotly contested.  Though the Italians and their German "friend" tended to come out on the losing side in most large surface engagements, it was far from one sided.  The Royal Navy took some heavy losses, and despite their superiority in tactics, training, and confidence, were unable to entirely shake the threat of the Regia Marina... the Italian ability, despite being so hampered by fuel shortages and heavy losses, to keep a dangerous presence in this theater locked a large portion of British naval strength here, and away from other critical global regions.

Well, lets look at some pictures.... I don't have pictures to post of the Matapan fleets, but I have all the ships involved in this in addition to the following.  I also have quite a bit of British stuff to still paint, and some more cargo ships.

The Regia Marina additions to the Matapan force (and actually, I have duplicate Trento and Trieste cruisers now).... the Roma and Vittorio Venetto (the Matapan Littorio is flagged as the Littorio), Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio, Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare, and the Aquila.  They are supported by the Trento and Trieste... the Guissano, Bande Nere, Barbiano, Colleoni.... the Luigi Cadorna and Armando Diaz.... the Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta and Eugenio di Savoia... and the Montecuccoli and Montecuccoli.  They are in turn screened here by 3x Folgore DD, 4x Maestrale DD, 6x Navigatori DD, 3x Freccia DD, 3x Spica TB, 4x Marcello SS, and also 3x German TyVIIc SS. 

Unfortunately, I never seem to have good photos, so these tend to be off-shade and blurry, unfortunately :)

I did try to work in the barber pole markings, and also some of the camouflage patterns put in use by the Italians.  Doing this on 1/3000 destroyers is "difficult" so I mostly tried it with larger vessels. 

I think overall the Italians turned out pretty well.  I regret choosing too thin a stock for the bases, as the the British and cargo vessels look better on a heavier stock.

Now, for the Royal Navy (and a few Commonwealth), so far (unflagged at the moment) I have managed to add a fair bit of strength to the Matapan forces.  The following are Ark Royal and Eagle,  Ramillies and Royal Oak. Now, because of some ordering error I made, I have a duplicate Warspite that I have painted as the Malaya, and two Renown's... one of which I painted with the block pattern for Repulse.  Don't hate me too much.  There are also the Dido and Phoebe, as well as 4x Tribal DDs.

I did make a go of several camo patterns for these.... I know it may put the specific model in the wrong year for games, but that is going to happen no matter what, unless you buy duplicates of everything.  It does have the advantage of making certain vessels recognizable immediately... in particular for the British as they had so many different patterns to use.

Finally, here is my first group of various cargo ships and tankers.  I kind of bought a spread of stuff, and fully intend to use these anywhere I need to create a convoy.  Currently, these are 1x Clan Macaulay, 2x Amarapoora, 2x Scottish Tankers, and 3x Rafaela tankers.

I have plenty of ships to paint... and a bunch of 1/600 aircraft (an important component of war in the Med)... but I have about half convinced myself to buy enough Germans to fight the well know operations (Denmark Straits, Operation Juno, River Platte), and am thinking about the French Mediterranean fleet also.

Thanks for viewing!

D&D: Lair of the Necromancer

Howdie.  My oldest daughter has been interested in playing Dungeons and Dragons.  Because it was what I gamed as a kid, and somehow I still remembered most of it, I chose to use the 1981 Basic Boxed Set to start her out with...

She probably will graduate onto a later version, but for now this will work just fine.  As no one else is readily available to game, I told her to make up two characters, I would run two characters also, giving her a party of 4 adventurers to rely on.  I would take no part in decisions, but would run "my" two characters intelligently.

She created a Hafling named Demetrius, and a Fighter named Romulus.  I created a Dwarf named Odae and a Magic-User named Bara.

The adventurers traveled through the village of Strossburg (note:  I am not quite sure, but its possible I might run this as a Warhammer themed environment with D&D rules, more or less).  While resting at the end, they can't help but overhear the worried villagers complaining of mysterious noises in the night, missing animals, and now even missing people.  Eager for adventure, the party decided to pursue the rumors.  They narrowed their search to the Strossburg cemetery, learning that there was once Old Strossburg (long since destroyed in a past war and empty) and New Strossburg, which survived and became simply Strossburg.  The cemetery appears to be in the midst of Old and New.  They choose to wait until the next day to investigate the cemetery, seeing no reason to do so in the dark.

 The party begins their investigation, which takes them further away from Strossburg and towards he ruins of Old Strossburg.  They are suddenly beset upon by a trio of emaciated wolves that strangely attack a well armed party in midday.  There are a couple of hasty bow shots before the beasts are upon the party.

Despite a minor wound, the party quickly dispatch two wolves, and the third flees.

About this time, the party notices what appears to be a semi traveled path.  This leads to a shrub covered mound, that turns out to be a long forgotten catacombs system.  They light torches and enter.

Romulus sustains a minor injury as rotten floorstones give way in the long entrance hall.  They enter a corridor connection filled with piles of bones.  Some of these bones rise as animated skeletons that attack.

The fight here is quickly over, but not before the party takes several wounds.  Without a Cleric with healing (a first level Cleric would have had no healing anyway), the party is forced to bind their wounds for minor healing (1-2 points... this is a bit of a DM cheat, but not a terrible idea for beginners with 1st level characters).  The party locates a silver dagger amid the rubbish.

The party chooses to enter a dusty cobwebbed corridor.  They notice whitish mounds of rubble... which reveal themselves to actually be the webbed remains of rats and other small animals..... this is no ordinary bunch of cobwebs, but the hiding place for a large spider.

 The spider itself was about the size of a small dog, with a milder venom than its larger kin. It pounces on Demetrius and delivers a swift bite.  The Halfing's roll against poison saves him from being incapacitated for a day.  He and Odae slice into the arachnid, ending its rule in this off-chamber.

They find a few coins and some pieces of crystal jewelry.

Going back the unopened door, the party continues forward.  They find a short "tee" with three more doors.  They hear loud gnashing and rending noises mingled with growling.  Leaving that one for later, thy go to the right and open a quieter door.  They have found the lair of a foul necromancer (level 3 Cleric) attended to by a pair of armored skeletons (skeletons with an improved armor class. 

The battle is fierce. Demtrius and Odae take wounds, Bara chooses to unleash her only spell,  Magic Missile, at the necromancer, then enters melee combat (she had previously voided melee in the other encounters due to her lack of armor and low hit points.  The party emerges victorious, but by now are starting to show signs of accumulated damage.  They search the quarters, finding two Cure Light Wounds potions and a cache of gold.  Strangely, no one drinks from the potions.

Deciding to save the noisy door for last, they open the other door, finding an unused and dusty catacomb chamber filled with bones which... thankfully... do not rise to attack.

Steeling themselves for whatever lies beyond, they barge through the final door, ready to face whatever horror has been greedily devouring flesh....

Ghouls!  They have interrupted the feast of a trio of Ghouls!  If the necromancer is to blame for the mysterious noises in the night, the Ghouls quite likely explain the disappearances, an quite obviously were in league with the now dispatched necromancer.

This battle proves to be very tough.  One Ghouls is quickly eliminated by a critical hit from Demetrius, and another hacked down by a combined effort... but.... first Romulus, then Odae are felled by the paralysis causing strikes of the third Ghoul.  Alone, it realizes it must keep fighting before feeding.  Bara moves into melee again to support Demetrius...

and she too is struck down with paralysis (and barely escapes being killed outright from the hit).  Demetrius is left alone to face the final Ghoul.  Too bad there were no Elves in the party....

Now, as a DM note, despite cheating with the binding to cure a couple of points of damage, I was fully prepared to allow the party to be killed by the monsters, letting my daughter re-roll new characters for another adventure if she liked.  So in this case, she would have to run Demetrius, her Halfling, to the bitter end if need be.  Also as a DM note, I thought the Cleric and armored skeletons would be the "tough" encounter (well, they were tough).... I had not counted on 3 of 4 party members being paralyzed by the Ghouls!  And they almost killed one character from their hits.

Demetrius is hit... and.... makes his save.  He strikes back on the previously wounded Ghoul... and slays it! 

Unable to carry his three friends to safety, and unwilling to leave them behind, he spikes the door shut, attends to their wounds as best he can, and stands guard until they begin to recover.

They find a mixed variety of coins, and a finely crafted dagger that is a magical weapon +1.  They return to Strossburg with their tale.  The burgomeister sends a party of villagers to the location to burn it out and seal it forever, lest it become the lair for some new horror.  The party must remain in the village for a week or two to fully recover from their wounds.

So, there it is.  A simple, short, and logically designed first time D&D adventure.  There will be more to come....

Thanks,
Chalfant

Battletech: The Novels, Oh So Many Novels!

Howdie.

So, over the past few months, I have been re-reading (or in the case for a handful, reading for the first time) the series of Battletech novels.  I have owned all of the pre-Dark Age novels, sometimes several times over.... so currently I am missing a few (like The Sword and the Dagger, which I did own, and read twice in the past).  However, I have most of them...

I read them in publication order, which is not exactly in chronological order.  I did read other things in between, as nearly 60 BT novels is hard to digest all at one time.  Lots of non-fiction, lots of historical, after every few BT books. 

Why did I do this?  I am not really sure.  A little immersion, a little bit of trying to create a firm picture of the Battletech-verse as depicted in the novels.  Maybe.  It is somewhat hard to do as there are inconsistencies related to the wide array of authors contributing to the series, and not always even contributions from the major authors.  And its a made up sci-fantasy setting with its own laws of how societies work.

Anyway.....

I tried to pick what I thought were the five worst novels in the series.  This is what I went with, your mileage may vary, and there were plenty of other stinkers lurking in the mix I could have grabbed too...

Ghost of Winter... don't buy it.  Its not just a bad BT novel, its just plain bad.  Star Lord... don't buy it, its pretty bad.  Freebirth... I should have liked, I enjoyed all of the other Thurston novels, this one is just kind of a silly (silly in an already silly genre) plot, and I could not really like it.  By Blood Betrayed, ok, not horrible, but representative of a number of other mid-series BT novels that kind of meander.  I found that several authors, even ones that did impressive earlier (and sometimes impressive later) work in the BT series, such as Stackpole, Charrete, Thursont, even Coleman, seem to have written mediocre novels in the middle.  This may in fact represent some editorial pressures, or factors related to the game side of the business that is not entirely the fault of the authors... I don't know.  Anyway, filling out the list is Far Country, which is not terrible for cheap sci-fantasy fiction, just that it is not really a BT novel in many ways.  The biggest is that it introduces a sentient alien race.  It used to be my #1 worst novel, but looks like a best seller compared to Ghost of Winter.

So what are my favorites?  This was much harder as many of them are representatives of linked books, min-series within the BT novels.

This list could change very easily, and I am going to cheat.  Decision at Thunder Rift, the first BT novel I read many many many years ago, and I still like it.  Nostalgia, or just setting up the typical BT overly complicated political betrayals for virtually every plot of every BT novel to follow... but I still like it.  Prince of Havoc... I like the Twilight of the Clans mini-series (yes, Freebirth is in that mini-series), I think this one caps it quite well.  Lethal Heritage, bringing us the Blood of Kerensky trilogy, and changing the BT universe a bit.  Falcon Guard, the cap of the Jade Phoenix trilogy... at one time I did not like this trilogy all that much, but found it to be more compelling this time around.  Threads of Ambition of the Capellan Solution binary.... probably Loren Coleman is my favorite author for BT novels (despite a couple that are so-so... again, those mid range books).  I could easily have included one of the Warrior trilogy, very good books for the BT universe.

Typical plot.... you show up, either the locals or more likely your boss betrays you, you lose someone close to you, fight against adversity, and overcome.  Main character is incredibly talented and able to outperform mere mortal peers. That is like 75% of the novels.  Still, fun to read if you like the background.

The Dying Time.... so basically Gressman is hired to write a book and kill off the entire Grey Death Legion.

Test of Vengeance... not a big hit with me, but interesting to have an Elemental focused novel.

Price of Glory... the most pivotal novel in the series as it impacts the BT-verse.  Loosing all of that lostech on the Inner Sphere.

Blood of Kerensky (yes, I liked this trilogy very much)... so in a very short period of time, a couple of centuries, you create a completely, I mean a completely, different society.  Hunh.

Anyway, taking a major pause before entering the Dark Age series.  Not sure about all of this, curious how the Jihad plays out.  I am sure to enjoy reading some of those, and sure to not enjoy some others.  We will see.

In the meanwhile, I will plan on reading a trio of non-fiction, nature-oriented books... A Walk in the Woods, The Wild (which I have read before), and River Monsters (book for Jeremy Wade's series).  More sunburn and mosquito bites, less man made lightning and betrayals.

Chalfant

Battletech: Infantry, Armor, Plastech

Howdie.  I used some spare time to put together a combined arms package... in the course of this I encountered some problems related to infantry in Battletech, which I will discuss towards the end of this blog post.  First, I need to display the group I painted....

Its a fairly large group, representing a decade of collection (all of the vehicles were purchased at least ten years ago).

First are some tracked tanks, 2x Alacorn (nobody ignores triple mount gauss rifles) and 2x Patton/Rommel.... these are always interesting as they can be more than one thing... and, they have the distinction of being Battletech vehicles that actually look like tanks!

Then there are the hovertanks.... 2x Condor, 2x Drillson, and 2x J Edgar.  Now, for the Condor, because of the great lapse in time since I had opened the blisters, I lost one of the turrets.  I took a spare piece laying around and just glued that on top, hoping to 1) finish the miniature and 2) maybe make it look like the Davion version with 2x AC5s.  (shrugs shoulders)

Overall, I like how the vehicles turned out, I like some of my camo color choices, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I also painted a lance of Plastech miniatures in my mountain camo scheme.... Atlas, Trebuchet, Panther, and Hunchback.  Now, the old Plastech were a bargain in the day.... and some of the sculpts (in my opinion, the Locust and Atlas in particular) are good, where as some (in particular the HUGE Catapult) are not.  These do not paint up the same as metal figures, though as hard plastic are really better than the soft plastic sets that came out at different times.  Anyway, I have a bunch of these laying around from the late 90's, figures I could knock out these 4 quickly, and I was right.

Finally, the infantry.  This is a complete old pack of Kurita infantry.  The stands include a variety of weapons, I really did not know how to split them up.  AFTER I finished painting a few bases I realized I could have organized them better, but what the hell, these will work.  Basing... well, more on basing below.  I created 7 bases of 9 figures, and 3 bases of 7 figures.  Overall, I think they painted up quickly, turned out pretty decent.  Ironically, painting huge numbers of 6mm ancients helped make painting these a breeze.

OK, so now comes the infantry rules ponderings.... as I was organizing these, I realized it was not easy to determine how to base them.  Previously, I had no trouble basing 5 Elementals on a single base, because that works out great.  Infantry, however, in Battletech are organized into 28 man platoons (or 21 for jump infantry), and a platoon is treated as a single entity. 

I came across some pertinent musings on the Paint it Pink blog... I won't link to those, I am not sure of the etiquette of doing so, but essentially there were some very similar ideas being kicked around.  Paint it Pink went with small bases of 3 figures or so, creating going with a 1:1 representation.  I think I will also go with 1:1 representation, but (obviously) I decided on squad basings of 9 (or 7) figures.

On my Battlescape terrain, it is just possible to clump 3 bases together into a hex, though it could get a bit out of hand pretty quickly as they all drift across the hex lines... this method allows the rules to work as is, but also allows a proper 1:1 figure representation, and looks cool.... Paint it Pink pointed out that infantry are the only thing in Battletech not represented properly.

Now, this will not work on the hex maps, if you do not use Battlescape.  If you game miniatures without hexes at all, it would work perfectly as well, but on the maps..... you end up with a squad base in three adjoining hexes.  In this image you can see that, and also the way the game represents platoons, a single base/counter for the entire platoon in a single hex.  It just does not look right.

What I decided to go with, as reflected in how I based the miniatures, is an abstraction where one base is designated (and will have to be marked clearly somehow) as the platoon center.  This means all firing to and from the platoon, and movement, is based solely on this base, the other bases will be in adjacent hexes for visuals only.

In the above image, the forward central base is the "active" base.  This method has the ability to work with hex maps also.  And to continue the abstraction, you can remove a base when the platoon reaches 18 men, and another base when it reaches 9 men.

But why stop there?  It occurred to me that one way to give infantry a little extra oomph in games, and it is a very little extra, is that they fight as full bases regardless of casualties.  For example, the platoon would count as a full 28 men until it was reduced to 18 men... and a full 18 men until reduced to 9 men... and a full 9 men until completely eliminated. Its an idea I have not tried out yet.

Then again, at that point, why not let squads separate and fight independently?  A platoon becomes 3 separate bases of 9 man squads....

As much as I love the Battletech-verse, I admit there are glaring problems.  Number one for me has always been the ranges... I don't care about the excuses, it makes no sense to me, ha ha.  But the arrangement of movement and range makes the game work, so not much you can do about it, and you can squint your eyes and say its abstracted instead of literal (as in, this weapon only has a 450m range... what?!?@!?).

A different glaring problem is that question of infantry.  The armies are a few thousand men, and in game terms the infantry are potentially dangerous to mechs.... so why are the army numbers not more realistic?  I get the idea that most inhabited planets have low populations, so the armies would be small.  But there are worlds that are densely populated, meaning there should be millions of soldiers, not just a few thousand.  A world unable to field mechs would raise a million men armed (on the squad level) with readily producable anti-mech weapons.  Light, certainly, but effective en masse.

Well, I am starting to board the train to Loco City, so I better stop now.  I think I have decided on how to represent infantry in my games.... now all I have to do is convince my fellow gamers to let me try these ideas out.  SO I either have 2 regular platoons, 1 jump platoon, and 1 company command squad (per my ideas)... OR... I have 7 regular platoons and 3 jump platoons (per standard Battletech rules).

Either way, I can't wait to try them out.... and looking forward to seeing how well they do against some Clan Elementals (!!!!!!!!!).

Thanks for reading.

Chalfant

Battletech: More Jade Falcons... Fast Paint!

Howdie.

I ha today off, so spent a couple of hours hastily painting some previously assembled, based, and primed mechs.

I had a group of 7 Clan mechs and they have now been painted to match my previous Jade Falcon force... included are a Night Gyr, Marauder IIC, Puma/Adder, Glass Spider,  Vulture/Mad Dog, Behemoth/Stone Rhino, and Warhammer IIC...

The Marauder IIC and Warhammer IIC were previously poorly painted in a metallic green by someone else (seen here  ), one small piece of the Maruader is missing.  I don't normally do a lot of repainting, since, I have so much unpainted  to worry about... but, in this case, I wanted a larger, consistent, group of mechs for my "Episilon" force.

Now, overall, these 7 mechs are a tad on heavy side, with only the Puma not being heavy or assault.  So, I think I need to work in a couple more light mechs to help offset the average weight.

Here is the entire expanded group, 18 mechs and 5 stands of Elementals...

So, not sure if I want to bring the force above 20 mechs or not.  I may add a Dasher and a Jenner IIC, both of which I have had for some time, but have not gotten around to painting.  Still not sure if these two should be assigned to my Smoke Jaguars, I would like to bring them up to at last 15 mechs. maybe 20.  We shall see.



Actually, we shall see when my sudden Battletech painting spree comes crashing down.... I guess I will have to ride it out until it does.  Thanks for reading.

Chalfant

Battletech: The Black Widow Company

Howdie.  Natasha Kerensky rides again.... as part of a project I painted the 12 mechs indicated in the old FASA scenario book, all of them 3020's designs pulled from the original set of 14.

Now, not wanting a grey hilight I chose to use a very dark but translucent blue to drybrush these miniatures.  What is interesting is that to the naked eye the blue is not there... but.... when under the flash of the camera, it shows up.  A curious effect, but the black looks pretty good overall.  I tried my hand at painting on representations for Wolf's Dragoons and the Black Widow Company, with less than spectacular results.  I just don't like using transfers.

This early shot shows that blue under the flash....

All of the mechs are original metal.  Most (I think 9 of them) came from a gaming friend's collection, and the plan is to use them in upcoming games against McKinnon's Raiders as per the scenario book.

Here is the entire company....

The command lance consisting of a Warhammer, Marauder, Crusader, and Griffin....

Here is the fire lance consisting of 2 Archers, a Wasp, and a Stinger....

And finally, here is the recon lance consisting of a Rifleman, a Phoenix Hawk, and 2 Stingers...

Overall, I think they turned out well.  When you paint all black mechs, it does seem to explain why its such a popular color... in some ways, its very easy, very forgiving.  But flat black never looks good as you can not note details very well, so getting some kind of hilight is key to the overall effect.   I remember a number of gamers with mechs painted for the Black Widow Company, I find it a bit funny that after all of these years its finally my turn to field Natasha in her trusty Warhammer.

Thanks for reading,
Chalfant