Craters for the Great War

One of the defining features of Great War battlefields is a great number of craters. Making them for a model battlefield is simple - especially if you make use of the GW 40K plastic craters set. Here's how they were made.

Apply some PVA glue around the edges and add the odd splodge around the rim of the crater. Then build up the texture in layers starting with chunkier grit / gravel.

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Then add some sand.


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Painting is straightforward too; start with a good layer of Vallejo Flat Earth (983). It may need two coats to properly cover the grey plastic. Next, paint the crater itself with a darker brown, e.g. Vallejo Leather Brown (871), make sure you drybrush out towards the edges as this blends the two colours nicely. Then drybrush with the following colours, all Vallejo, Gold Brown (877), Tan Yellow (912) and Dark Sand (847). The crater should be drybrushed but more lightly. Finish off with a small amount of static grass around the edges.

Here's the finished article.

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A closer shot. I may add some 'water effects' mixed with a small amount of Leather Brown to give it a properly muddy appearance. The main Great War rulebook has another example with duckboards, barbed wire, etc.

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Oh, and we managed another smallish game. Here's a photo of the start of the game. Apologies if it looks a little odd, I tried to join two pictures with only limited success! ;o)

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It was another splendid game too. The scenario was Secure and Hold with four sets of boxes & crates being the objectives. After eight turns both sides had only a handful of shattered units left but the BEF had one battleworthy platoon that was holding the crates in front of the farmhouse and so managed to scrape a victory. I should also mention that the Highlanders - left foreground - managed to advance through a hail of fire from the Beutepanzer (captured tank) and then despatch it in spectacular style with a grenade attack.

Hold The Line!

Even with all the War & Conquest excitement I couldn't resist playing a game of WHW's "The Great War". When Rob last visited he kindly brought along another batch of Great War Miniatures Late War Germans, which gives me almost 500pts of the fellows. Of course they're not painted yet which is why you'll only see a few of them in the following pictures.

Hurriedly unpacking new figures, blu-tacking them to bases and getting on with a game really brought back memories of when I first got in to Warhammer Fantasy Battle many, many years ago. Anyway, before I go all misty eyed and start rambling even more, here's some notes and pics from our game.

The basic scenario for the game is that the German Spring Offensive of 1918 has run out of steam and the Allies are vigourously counter-attacking, in this case somewhere near Amiens. A small force of German Stellungsbataillon have been pushed from their original lines on one of the quieter sectors and have hastily dug in on the outskirts of a small village. There's about 750pts of BEF and 420pts of Germans.

My wife kindly took command of the BEF - as they're painted - and I led the shiny new Germans.

The forces were approx as follows

BEF
Battalion Command - Colonel and 4 soldiers
Red Company, Command Group + 2 platoons of 10 figures incl Lewis Guns
Yellow Company, Command Group + 2 platoons of 10 figures incl Lewis Guns
2 x Vickers HMG section
1 x Light Mortar section
1 x Platoon of Highlanders incl Lewis Gun

Germans
Battalion Command - Colonel and 3 soldiers
Grey Company, Command Group + 3 platoons of 10 figures incl MG08/15
1 x MG08 HMG section
1 x Light Mortar section
1 x Grenade Launcher
Flamethrower detachment (not strictly allowed for a Stellungsbataillon but shhh! ;o))

Here's a shot through the trees from above the German lines.

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The fine fellows of the BEF prepare to advance!

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And get off to rather slow start?

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Now they're after them ... and the German mortar is doing it's best to slow them down. Captain Carruthers and one platoon from Red Company are pinned by the blast.

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On the other flank the Flamethrower detachment got bogged down in the woods so the Highlanders fixed bayonets and rushed forward. Now, I must confess that I got the combat rules slightly wrong here and the Highlanders wiped out the German detachment in one turn, whereas some should have survived - but the I'd have needed to pass a morale test with a whopping -5 modifier, so the end result was about the same.


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Not to be outdone, the British mortar team land a shot amongst the German battalion command. Amazingly only the Colonel is killed and the others hold the their nerve.


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After another turn or two the superior British numbers really began to tell as the Germans were whittled down to just a handful of troops stoically clinging to their positions. By turn 6 it was clear that the British had driven the Germans back and could claim a clear victory. Had the German HMG not been taken out early in the game then it might have been a much closer run affair.

Considering that I've only played a handful of games of TGW, and this was my wife's first game, things went very smoothly indeed. Only a few rules had to looked up in the book. It was also a very enjoyable game with plenty of laughs.

Now I just need to finish off my BEF and then paint 40-50 Germans! Plus I could really do with a bit more Great War specific scenery.

+STOP PRESS+ Just received a copy of "Over The Top". Huzzah!

More War & Conquest

With a few days off what could be better than a day spent play-testing some more of the forthcoming War & Conquest from Scarab miniatures!

Rob brought perfect wargmaing with him again - it was chucking it down with rain. Re-painting the window frames will have to wait for another day :o)

Whilst the rules are still in development they are very much at the fine tuning stage. As such I won't go too much in to the mechanics during this post.

There's a bunch of clickable photos shown below, but first I'd like to say that I had a superb day of playing wargames, nattering about wargames, eating good food and marvelling at Rob's seemingly endless knowledge of Rock music. He used the phrase "anorak" - not me!

Both games were straightforward pitched battle affairs, though we did move the scenery around a little for the second game. The game plays very well with a good balance between detail and abstraction. It actually felt like I was in command of a large force of barbarians trying to overcome the might of Rome. The system the strategy points whereby you can influence command and/or morale tests really makes you think about what's most important on the battlefield - there just isn't enough points to do everything which nicely represents that even the most able command cannot be everywhere on the battlefield at any one time. It makes the game less predictable without bringing in lots of annoying randomness. It also makes you think ahead at least one turn.

I was also lucky enough to see a few pages of the proposed layout and "By George!" it's going to look VERY good indeed!!!

Anyway, enough preamble ... here's a few pics of what happened. (Captions follow each picture)


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The battlefield featured a small gallic farmstead and here's Mr Celtic-Farmer welcoming his new overlords and "offering" them a wagon load of supplies in return for not being chopped in half.

Game 1


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Deployment. Note the wide formations. We agreed that the farm area would simply all be considered as rough ground which would slow our troops and make their move less predictable but not hinder the game too much. I decided to hold of the warbands in reserve in case the Roman cavalry tried any crafty outflanking manoeuvres.


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The action starts to heat up with the warbands closing in on the Roman line. By this point there had been some satisfying fights between the opposing units of skirmishers, with the more numerous Celts getting the upper hand and moving closing to the Legionaries so as to pick a few off with stones and javelins. I directed the noble cavalry on the left ratehr badly leaving them close to the Roman auxiliary archers and war machines.

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The opposing lines clash and begin what would become a mighty struggle as each side tried to grind the other to dust. Like the noble cavalry, the reserve warband was not effectively used and could have played a vital role. But warbands are not particularly manoeuvrable in WAC - which seems right to me.




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The noble cavalry were very lucky at one point - the archers and the scorpion opened up on them requiring four armour saves. Just a few more casualties and they would no longer be an effective unit ... in an unusual display of dice rolling skill I managed to save all four!


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A little later and we see that one of the warbands has been shattered but the others continue the fight. Barbarian numbers fighting hard against Roman tenacity! At last the cavalry have got their act together and are ready to descend on the Roman rear.

Even with the intervention of the deplted noble cavalry the Celts could not get the breakthrough they needed. But the Romans too were tiring and their numbers were dwindling. The continued until each side had fought the other to a standstill with no clear winner. The battle lines had held for both sides and we agreed that it was clearly a draw.

This was a fantastic game that could have gone either way at several exciting points during the game. Perhaps if the noble cavalry had got in to the game earlier ... perhaps if the reserve warband had also got in to the fight.


Game 2

We swapped sides with Rob taking charge of hairy horde whilst I donned the purple and led forth the legions... This game proved to be a much more decisive affair!



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The Celts had massed their cavalry on the their right flank and their skirmishers on the left, which is exactly what the Romans had done too.


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The lines begin to close. Note that whilst I kept the legions in the wider formation of 9x2, I decided to use the Auxilia in a 6x3 formation, on the basis that the extra depth would make up for their slightly lower effectiveness in combat (in comparison to the legions that is). The wisdom of that decision would soon become apparent.


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On both flanks some amazing concentrated missile fire from the clouds of skirmishers saw off both the Romand Celt light cavalry. Note the Celt warband immediately to the right (as we look at the photo) of the noble cavalry ... these were the fellows who had made little impact in the first game. This time they meant business.


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A couple of turns later and what a difference. The warband mentioned earlier have chewed through one of the units of Auxilia and have pursued into the one behind. The Roman skirmishers have fled the farm as the noble cavalry approach. In the centre another warband are having the best of it against the regular legionaries. The verteran legion have routed a warband, whilst the other cohort of regular legion are squaring off against two further warbands.


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The second unit of Auxilia were quickly despatched as were the nearby legionaries. The routing warband rallied very well and would return to the fight almost immediately. The other regular legionaries fared poorly against the smaller warband but held their ground and hoped for the Auxillary archers to help out on the flank.

By now it was getting quite late, we played another turn and it was clear that the Celts were going to win a decisive victory so we called it a day.

One ruleset, two games and two very different results all depending upon how things are played out. Jolly good fun indeed!