St. Nazaire Raid terrain completed

A very brief post as I have a few jobs to do today, but yesterday I painted the docks and made a few pillboxes to complete the terrain for my St. Nazaire Raid game. I now need to add some ships and a few Airfix commandos to my British WW2 forces.

My first game could be in a few weeks once a few units and ships are added

Here are some pictures of the tabletop laid out...

The tabletop for St. Nazaire Raid

The Old Mole and re-embarkment point

The target dock

The winding house and pump house, targets for demolition. If you look closely you can see a few lines drawn on to show the build up areas.

Three bridges completed for St. Nazaire project

During the week I was able to paint up the three bridges I will be using when I setup my St. Nazaire tabletop.

Finished bridges

They were all simply made with MDF board and wood. To complete them I use a combination of paint and pastels. Before finally sealing them with PVA glue. For a very brief moment I did consider cutting out the structure on the bridge sides, but then decided painting was the easier way to go.

Wood and MDF board create the simple forms for these bridges

All painted a grey base coat.

The sides are painted black then the structure painted. I missed a photo of the step where the road is painted on.

A few details are painted on before pastels are applied to give the impression of texture and breakup the block colours. 

All being well I can get the docks for my St. Nazaire project painted and the same approach of block colours and pastels will be used.

Docks to be painted this weekend

St. Nazaire Raid project - more terrain progress

Over the last week a lot of my free time has been spent completing warehouses, cranes, searchlights, and gun emplacements required for the St. Nazaire game. Today I was cutting up some old wardrobe doors to make the docks. All being well they will get painted this coming weekend.

Map of planned St. Nazaire tabletop

To help with repurposing of the wardrobe doors I drafted up a map of the intended tabletop, which is heavily based upon the diagram in chapter 17 from "Battle Notes for Wargamers" by Donald Featherstone. Not having an 8x5 tabletop I have had to focus in a bit more on the three landing areas:

• The dock where most of the targets for demolition are situated
• Old entrance and East Lock gates
• Old Mole the place of re-embarkation

Here are some photos of the last batch of warehouses and other items.

Warehouse and oil tank

Cranes and warehouse 

Warehouse and winding houses for the dock.

Searchlights and gun emplacements.

I am currently painting up three bridges. The remaining items I have to complete are some pillboxes, motor launches and HMS Campbeltown. As you can see from the photos the bridges are very basic and all detail will be painted on.

Simple bridges being constructed

Bridges undercoated and ready for details to be painted on.

Having recently completed ECW game (post to come soon) the tabletop was free and I thought I had better layout all the terrain to make sure it fitted as planned.  It has taken quite a while to get to this point in the preparation and I do remember the words of advice from the book for construction of terrain - "It is not one that can be knocked up in an odd hour before the game starts, because it requires buildings, docks, etc." I do hope the game itself turns out to be worth all this effort.

ACW Campaign Game Report - Afternoon of the 24th Part 2

This is the second game report from the ACW mini-campaign (turn 3) which took place in the afternoon of 24th June 1863 at Redmonds River. This game has Tanner's Confederate division attacking Cope's Union division which has been weakened by combat earlier in the day. Urgent messages were sent by Major General Cope to Union Headquarters and he was relieved to have infantry support from Brown's division (position to the south of him).

Campaign Map of the battle area. The action is being fought at coordinate E3.

Terrain cards were used to determine the 4x4 foot tabletop layout. As the campaign map showed the area to be wooded, two wood cards were set aside from my pack of terrain cards. The remaining cards were shuffled and two more selected off the top. Finally, the two wooded and two selected cards were shuffled (including rotating of individual cards) then laid out.

Terrain cards decided the tabletop terrain.

Tabletop with both forces deployed.

Order of battle:

Cope's Union Division

• 1 x Infantry
• 1 x Cavalry
• 2 x Artillery
• 1 x Infantry re-enforcements due turn 6.

Tanner's Confederate Division

• 3 x Infantry
• 1 x Cavalry
• 1 x Artillery

The plans for both sides were quite straight forward. Union forces wanted to occupy the hill and woods as defensive positions. Then hang on until promised re-enforcements infantry arrived. The Confederate plan was to launch a frontal assault and use their slight edge in numbers (particularly infantry) to decide the action before any Union re-enforcements arrived.

On to the action... 

The initial phase of the action had both sides quickly engaged in combat with Confederate forces trying to dislodge the Union's artillery batteries position on the hill. The artillery were proving very effective with firing rounds or canister into the advancing units.

Union artillery batteries secure the hill in the centre as the Confederate assault begins.

Taking the hill is going to be costly to the Confederates.

Neither side was getting the upper hand on the flanks, although the Union cavalry appeared to be teetering on the edge of routing on then a couple of occasions.  While in the centre it looked like the Confederate assault would be successful at some cost. The promised re-enforcements arrived, but would they be enough to turn the tide of battle in the centre?

The Union centre is in trouble as Confederate infantry get a foothold on the hill.

Union re-enforcements arrive.

In the final phase of this action re-enforcements proved to be sufficient to stabilise the centre. However, both Union flanks gave way and the centre Union position became untenable and their forces withdrew.

The Union's right flank is open after Confederate cavalry finally overcome their opposition.

While the centre is stabilised the woods are lost to Confederate infantry and Union  forces make a withdrawal.

Confederate forces suffered greatly in achieving this marginal victory.

Campaign map after the action.

As early evening arrives on the first day of this battle. The Union attempt to gain a crossing has not gone to plan and they have a real threat on the left flank with Lyon's fresh Confederate division. Both sides have some key decisions to make for the evening campaign turn. Do they:

1. Have their divisions avoid any action and reorganise those units that routed earlier in the day (achieved by 3+ score in a D6)?
2. Launch an evening attack and miss the opportunity to reorganise and regain some of their routed unit for the next day's action (this would apply to the defending force as well)?

A few decisions to make.

St. Nazaire game preparation continues

Over the last week I have completed a few more warehouses for a planned St. Nazaire game. The game will require quite a large portion of the tabletop be covered with buildings. So I decided it was time to get an idea of how much area the ones built so far will cover.

My collection of warehouse buildings is slowly growing.

When on the tabletop the buildings will be placed on a board (painted grey) representing the built up area. They need to be reasonably spread out so my 3x3 and 3x4 inch WW2 unit bases will fit nicely in-between them. This also means fewer buildings to build.

Tomorrow I plan to construct another five buildings from cut up wood as before. This should be sufficient with few simple dock cranes to give the feel of a dockyard.

I have also found a few Airfix Commandos which will be painted up to represent the demolition teams.

ACW Campaign Game Report - Afternoon of the 24th Part 1

A week ago I was able to play a couple of actions in the ACW mini-campaign which took place in the afternoon of 24th June 1863 at Redmonds River. Here is the action report of the first of those two games.

Confederate forces defending a hill as Union troops advance.

A quick reminder of the campaign map moves which resulted in two actions being fought. The first action has Smith's Union division getting the jump on Greg's Confederate division by successfully crossing the bridge. The second action has Tanner's division launch an attack against a weakened Cope's division.

Campaign map the afternoon 24th June 1863

The action described in this post will be Smith's assault. The first step as usual was to decide the 4x4 foot tabletop by drawing the terrain cards.

Terrain cards

As neither Smith's or Greg's divisions have yet been engaged in the battle it is necessary to dice for their unit composition. The orders of battle are:

Smith's Union Division:

• 5 x Infantry Brigades
• 1 x Artillery Battery

Greg's Confederate Division:

• 3 x Infantry Brigades
• 2 x Artillery Batteries
• 1 x Cavalry 

Tabletop deployment

The union plan was launch an assault on the Confederate left flank and gain control of the hill. The Confederate plan was one to hold and counter attack if the opportunity presents itself.

The Union attack begins on the hill

The Union attack began on the hill. The assault made slow going with one of the brigades delayed in advancing. While their opponents on the hill were proving to be very good shots, causing large numbers of casualties. Upon seeing the Union assault was struggling the Confederates launched their counter attack in the centre and on right wing.

Confederate launch their counterattack in the centre while their cavalry move up to block any threat on the right.

The first Union assault failed to dislodge the defenders on the hill. Any thoughts of a second assault were dashed as other units were redirected to fend off the Confederate counter attack.

The Union fail to dislodge the Confederate defenders on the hill.

As the afternoon passed both sides ceased their attacks and returned to their starting positions. Of the two sides the Union were the worse for wear and the Confederate artillery forced their remaining Union units to retire.

Both sides pull back.

Union forces retire

A marginal Confederate victory secured by stout defence and well timed counterattack. We will have to see in the next campaign turn whether they are able to follow up this victory with an evening attack on Smith's division.

Wooden Terrain and Paper Soldiers

This weekend I have been focussing on getting my terrain ready for a Jacobite '45 game (more on that at the end of the post). My last post covered the making of wooden block houses. For the most part I was happy with them, I was just unsure about the stonework on the walls being as effective as I wanted.

Terrain used in a game

The next batch of wooden terrain was a couple of stone bridges and walls for the Scottish Big House. This time for the walls I used the oil-based pastels to help vary the background colour and used dabs of paint in different shades to give the effect of stonework. Then reworked my houses using the same technique.

A template was created for the bridge sides to help get consistency. With the woodwork I use a mitre-saw contraption and coping saw.

Mitre Saw Contraption - most useful for straight lines and correct angle cuts

Coping saw - for those tricky bits!

All the bits were cut out.

Glued with PVA wood glue

Painted and pastels used to provide colour variation (much darker in photo than actually is)  

Varying stone colours are dabbed on

Pastels used extensively to get variation and a feeling of texture for the bridge span, then a coat of PVA glue is applied to seal the model.

In use on the tabletop.

For those readers who are wondering what on earth has happened to the ACW and ECW campaigns. They will be completed over the next few weeks and there are two ACW action reports waiting to be written up.

The reason for this Jacobite distraction was to try out a solo mechanism used in the ACW campaign and to see if it translates to the tabletop. In the campaign I use orders and write two sets of orders for the opposing force along with orders for my own force. Once all are written, I then dice to see which set of orders to apply to the opposition force moves. As I am using a One Hour Wargaming approach I am hoping it will not be too onerous to write orders for 6 units per side. More on this if it works out.