Battle of Santa Clara

Another battle in the ongoing war between the People's Democratic Republic of La Cucaracha led by El Supremo Jefe Patronis and the Confederate Union of Buena Vista ruled by President for Life Elvis Narcisso.  This took place at Pacificon and used OPFOR from Hoplite Research.

La Cucaracha fielded two brigades.  One with three T90 tank battalions, a BMP2 battalion, and a 122mm artillery battalion plus brigade assets.  The other with one T90 battalion, a BMP2 battalion, two BTR82 battalions, and a 122mm artillery along with brigade assets.

The Buena Vistans had two battle groups of one Leopard2A6 battalion, one Puma battalion, a 155mm artillery battalion, and attachments.  The Buena Vistans cross-attached companies.  One group had two battalions of two tank companies and two mechanized companies, while the other had battalions of three and one companies.

The ground scale was 1cm = 100 meters, but movement rates were kept at the full distance in the rules.   The battlefield was 24km wide by 18kmn deep.

During the opening stages of the battle the Buena Vistans quickly advanced to hold the city of Santa Clara and two other town to the north of Santa Clara.  The Buena Vista battle group on their right wing was able to rout the La Cucaracha infantry brigade, but their other battle group was driven from the city by the La Cucaracha armored brigade.  With the La Cucaracha army in control of the city and surviving Buena Vista battle group not being strong enough to retake the city victory went to La Cucaracha.

NATO equipment tends to have an advantage over WARPAC equipment due to the additional plus factors that their tanks have.   A Leopard 2A6 gets a basic +3 to its attack die and another +1 for superior weapon.  Additional plus factors for attachments can alos be gained making it very possible to double or even triple the defense die roll of Russian tanks.

view of the battlefield

 view form the other end 

 Buena Vista, on the left advances to take control of the towns and city of Santa Clara

 fighting for control of Santa Clara. La Cucaracha tank brigade below and to left of city

 La Cucaracha motorized brigade's morale collapses

 Motorized  Brigade retreats

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pharsalus at Pacificon

This time the game departed from the historical account immediately.   Instead of advancing quickly to engage Pompey's army Caesar's army held its position and shifted third line to the right.  Pompey's army then spent the next three turns advancing to engage their opponents.

The extra infantry on Caesar's right helped his cavalry hold off Pompey's cavalry and light infantry.  As the infantry lines clashed Caesar joined the tenth legion to inspire them by leading them from the front.  Caesar's army was slowly winning the infantry fight.   At one point it looked like Pompey's army might collapse when a couple of cohorts were broken in the center of his line, but the other cohorts nearby held and continued the fight.

As cohorts became shaken both sides shifted them to the rear and replaced them with fresh units.  Pompey's infantry were becoming shaken at a greater rate than Caesar's when disaster struck Caesar's army.   Caesar had been leading from the front of the tenth legion for a couple of hours in game turns when he was slain.  This brought about a morale check for his entire army.  The first morale checks saw the right wing of Caesar's legions break.   At this point the game was called with Pompey the victor.

Previous games  round two
round one

 Before the start.  The river is off table at the top of the photo. 

 Pompey's army advances

 The armies meet

 Part of Pompey's infantry breaks

 The battle on the cavalry wing.  Caesar is in the middle of the picture leading the 10th Legion.  Caesar would perish a couple of turns later.

The Armies:

Normally each unit would represent about 500 men.   However, Pompey deployed his infantry in 10 ranks instead of 8 and Caesar's legions were understrength and are deployed six ranks deep.    This is not actually represented on the stands.   Pompey's legion units represented about 640 men while Caesar's represented about 384.   Caesar's army was all high quality veterans while Pompey's was a mix of newly raised and a couple of veteran legions.   Pompey's men were all rated as average to reflect this.   Pompey's side also had the option of having 14 units of cavalry with half being poor and the rest average or 11 average units in a deeper than normal formation.   Once again the later version was chosen.  Extra points were paid for Caesar to give him a higher than normal morale and combat effects and to win tie die rolls for initiative each turn.   Caesar's army also had the initiative for the first turn.  His army was all rated as veteran troops with a higher morale rating.   The 10th Legion was rated as elite.



CAESAR
UNIT	ATTACK	DEFENSE	MISSILE	MOVE	MORALE	POINTS	UNITS	POINTS
CAESAR	ADD 2	X	X	14	+/-2,1, OR 0	15	1	15
GENERALS	ADD 1	X	X	14	+/- 1 OR 0	free	6	0
LEGION	3+2	6	X	6	11	10	55	550
UPGRADE 10TH	4+2	6	X	6	11	+1	(8)	(8)
CAVALRY	3	6	(2")	12 OR 14	11	11	4	44
								617
POMPEY
UNIT	ATTACK	DEFENSE	MISSILE	MOVE	MORALE	POINTS	UNITS	POINTS
POMPEY	ADD 1	X	X	14	+/- 1 OR 0	FREE	1	0
GENERALS	ADD 1	X	X	14	+/- 1 OR 0	free	6	0
LEGION	3+2	6	X	6	10	9	57	513
CAVALRY	3	6	(2")	12 or14	10	10	11	110
LIGHT INFANTRY	2	4	6"	6 OR 8	10	6	4	48
								661

Pacificon 2016

Pacificon took place on Labor "Day weekend.   As usual there were a large variety of miniatures, board games, and role playing games.   The following photos are from the miniature gaming room showing most of the games on Saturday.   One that I missed a photo of was the Sword and the Flame game.  Where possible I have identified the game and rules.  The games I ran will be in separate posts.

 

 Maximillian War in Mexico

 Battle Cry Napoleonics

 Battle of Pharsalus using Scutarii

 fireball Forward WW2

 

 Sharp Practice

 

 The Alamo

 Star Wars

 Command and Colors Ancients

 WW2 Aircraft

WW2 skirmish level 

 Battle of Pensacola Colonial Period.

 Modern Armor using OPFOR

 Starguard

 Aspern Essling

 Fantasy

 Pirates, Monkeys, and Monsters

 Somewhere in Baghdad

 Battle Cry ACW

 Fantasy Naval

 Infinity Electronic Miniatures Game

 Wooden Wars

 Regimental Fire and Fury

 Sci Fi

 Wooden Wars 54mm Wood Soldiers

American Civil War - From Manassas to Appomattox

OPFOR The Battle of Carmichael

I ran a game of OPFOR at the Sacramento Miniature Wargaming Society meeting on Sunday.  OPFOR is the modern addendum to PanzerKorps.  The forces involved were the 1st Brigade of the La Cucaracha army and the German Brigade of the Buena Vista army.  This was a playtest of the scenario that I would be running at Pacificon on the first weekend of September.

The La Cucaracha 1st brigade had two T-90 battalions, one BMP battalion, three BTR battalions, and one SP 122mm artillery battalion.   The Buena Vistans had two Leopard 2A6 battalions, one Puma IFV battalion, and one SP 155mm artillery battalion.  The Buena Vistans cross attached one infantry company with one tank company from each of the Leopard battalions leaving the Leopard battalions with three tank companies and one infantry company.   The Puma battalion ended up with two infantry companies and two tank companies.  Both sides used a Red decision die and had career commanders.   La Cucaracha troops were reservists, while the Buena Vistans were regulars.

Both sides had some attachments that they parceled out between the battalions.   The La Cucarachans had an AA battery, a recon company, an engineer company, an ATGM company, and a 120mm mortar battery.   The Buena Vistans had a recon company, an engineer company, an ATGM company, and a 120 mortar battery.



Ground Scale was 1cm = 100 meters.  The six foot by six foot table gave a battlefield of 18km by 18km.   Except for the movement distances everything else was at the 1cm = 100 meters scale.   Movement rates were kept as per the rules.  The scenario was a meeting engagement with both sides entering from their table edge.  Aaron and Gary commanded the La Cucaracha army and Chris commanded the Buena Vista army.  



Aaron on the left, Gary on the right

Chris



Chris chose to enter all three of his brigades in deployed formations on the left half of his table edge, while Gary and Aaron split the six La Cucaracha battalions between them for each half of their table edge.   Gary entered his battalions in a deployed state while Aaron came on in road column.  The battle started at 6AM with the first day segment having three turns.   The next three day segments had one turn and the last one had two.



Chris advanced and engaged Aaron's battalions, while Gary moved his battalions forward as quickly as he could to engage Chris from the flank.   Chris had initially advanced with the Puma battalion in the center of his formation.   After he started engaging Aaron's command he shifted the Leopard battalion on the right all the way over to his left.  Aaron had pulled his two BTR battalions back into a couple of woods where he dismounted the infantry.  His tank battalion was in the center of his command.



Chris's artillery was fairly accurate and hit one of the BTR battalions and the tank battalion.   The La Cucaracha artillery targeted the Leopard battalion that had started on Chris's left flank.   Aaron later attempted to retarget the artillery on the Puma battalion, but it went long and fell on the far side of the town.   We used a scatter die from Games workshop to determine deviation direction.   This is a die with arrows on all faces (there is a hit marker on one of the faces with a small arrow).  The next attempt to hit the Puma battalion fell short.



Gary's battalions finally arrived on the right flank of Chris's Puma Battalion, but they had arrived too late as Aaron's BTR battalions panicked taking the tank battalion with them.  At this point Gary and Aaron conceded the game to Chris.   Both Aaron and Gary tended to have poor die rolls throughout the game, while Chris tended to have better than average die rolls.



After assessing the game the La Cucarach forces will upgrade with brigades that have BTR's.   The BTR's were armed with a heavy machine gun and had to dismount the infantry in order to be able to engage their opponents with any hope of damaging them.  I will be replacing them with the improved version that has the 30mm Auto-cannon and also mounts an ATGM from GHQ, but they will not arrive before the convention.  The game started at 11 and finished by 1:30

The Akamar Herald Year Six The Campaign Ends

It was now Ron's turn and he drew several event cards, including the one that ended the campaign.  At this point it was time to determine the victor(s).   There were two things that counted towards the determination of the winner.   The most important was the number of countries controlled.   There were three who controlled three countries.  Gary, Mike, and Hal and John.   Ray and Ron had two countries, while Ken controlled one.  The next item was the amount of money in the treasury.  Mike had amassed a huge fortune of 152 talents putting him in first place followed by Gary in second with 70, then Hal and John in third with 49.  Ron took fourth over Ray in fifth by having 10 more talents than Ray.   Ken ended up in sixth after grabbing seven countries at the start of the campaign. 

The campaign had started in June of 2005 and ended in May of 2006.  Mike had provided several stories based on events that happened to his countries along with an improved version of the campaign map. 

There was fortified city that was never brought into play.   This was Al Nair.   It could only be played by someone controlling Horologium, Piscis, or Aquila and had to be melded with one of those countries.   As it turned out Ron had held it in his hand throughout the campaign.  He couldn't play it as he never controlled any of the three countries and if he had discarded it, then one of the following players would have quickly grabbed it.

Other than Ron none of the players who controlled the Misty Isles ever made use of the campaign magic available to whomever had the Wizard, the Sorcerer Silidon, or the Sorcerer's Apprentice controlling the isles.

THE AKAMAR HERALD

BOAT OF MOLTAR ARRIVES

THE LATEST MERCHANT FLEET HAS PASSED ALONG THE SOUTH COAST.  STOPPING AT PERSEUS AND SAD AL BARI.  

SURPRISE DONATION

THE GRAND CONFEDERATION HAS RECEIVED A DONATION OF 10 TALENTS FROM A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER.

SWORDS BEATEN INTO PLOWSHARES

A STRANGE SPELL HAS BEEN CAST UPON THE CONTINENT OF VELA.  ALL MILITARY FORCES HAVE BEEN DISBANDED,   LEADERS OF ALL THE COUNTRIES ARE SWEARING ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP WITH EACH OTHER AND AN AURA OF PEACE AND TRANQUILTY CAN BE FELT THROUGHOUT THE LAND.

PLAYER		KEN		RON
TREASURY		49 talents		56 talents
MELD		hydros 4		SAIPH 1,FNEBish ARMADA, KARL DOENUTZ
		SAD AL BARI		SYRMA 1,3,4
				WU
HAND		7 cards		11 cards
	MIKE				RAY
	152 talents				46 talents
	AQUILA1,2,,4,6, sniss				CHI
	KETOS 1,3,5,6,7				argos 4,10,dragon/GREAT SWORD,gen. Max.
	KAELUM 1,8, SALVATION ARMY				misty isles  2,3,10,admiral.haz,
	6 cards				9 cards
	GARY		HAL and JOHN			DISCARD
	70 talents		49 talents			monokeros 7
	PISCIS 3,4,7,10		CHU			ASSASSIN
	ERIDANUS. 1,8		MONOKEROS 1,4,5,6,			KAELUM 5
	MUSCA 1,2,4,6		PERSEUS 2,3,4 CONDOTTIERI VISCONTI/ns			PERSEUS 1
			horologium 1,2,3,5,7,fnebish army			VANDMEER FLEET
	13 cards		11 cards			CARRACK