Convoy Chaos! A Torpedoes and Tides Battle Report

I've now played a full solitaire game of Torpedoes and Tides, using the Campaign Rules.   I used all my Fairmille models to give me a flotilla of three MTBs and two MGBs.   The lead character was Lt. "Dusty" Rhodes but he didn't do so well so another boat commander ended up being my main character.  

I gave all the dogboats Q3, so the flotilla isn't green, but it's fairly new to the war, so just barely Competent  I rolled a Convoy Attack mission. We pick up the action in front of the Senior Naval Officer.

***

Lt John Miller, RCNVR, "Dusty" to his friends, stood uneasily in front of the desk of Commander Jennings, referred to soto voce in the flotilla as "The Dragon".    Jennings had been a year from retirement when the war began, and although he had been a dashing torpedo boat skipper in the last war, his approach was by the book and he did not like undisciplined Canadians.

Jennings put down the after action report and pointed his pipe stem at Miller.  "Well, you did well, at least, but it was a damned poor show all around."

Miller, still short of sleep, struggled to recall the events of last night.   The convoy had been there on its reported route, and had first been spotted by Lt Harry "The Hammer" Fields in his MGB.  "It's hammering time!" Fields had shouted over the radio as his guns unleashed on a small German escort, an R-boat at close range.   

The Canadian flotilla approaches in darkness under blinds.  The white cotton depicts a fog bank.  Harry's MGB is close enough to the Raum-botte and a freighter behind it that they come off blinds.   Harry fires, but to no effect.

"I don't know what Rhodes was thinking, having you all charging in pell-mell like that.   What was he thinking?" 

"We were all eager, sir, it was our first show."  Miller recalled their flotilla skipper, Peter "Rocky" Rhodes, ordering them to "get stuck in, full throttle" and Miller suddenly finding himself within spitting distance of the small escort, it's tracers flying overhead and chewing up his Fairmille's woodwork.

Miller's boat takes a point of damage and is now operating on one red dice.   Because the German now has initiative, and the R-boat must move at least a short move forward before turning, it bashes into the MTF of Lt Rouleau.   Both the British and German boats take damage.

The German R-boat skipper is undergunned but gamely hangs in, happy to play bumper boats and spoil the British attack.  Meanwhile, the other MGB in the flotilla, under Bruce "Fairway" McGregor, lights up the German freighter but doesn't do any real damage.  The red chits are for the optional muzzle flash rules, meaning that a boat that fires is easier to hit.

"There's a difference between eager and stupid," Jennings growled.  "I'd say getting your boat cut in half is just plain stupid."

Rhodes is too close to the oncoming German minesweeper, the large escort.   It was a hard way to learn the collision rules, especially as the British lost the initiative at this point and the Large German ship cuts through the MTB like a knife through butter.

"Yes, sir.  I hope my report made it clear that Lt. McGregor was able to rescue Rhodes and his crew while under fire."

Miller recalled glancing at the minesweeper, her secondary armament lashing the water as McGregor's men cooly plucked their mates from the sea.

"That was a good show, McGregor showed guts.  Good sort of man to have in a gunboat."

Jennings allowed himself a flinty smile.  "And you managed to redeem this dog's breakfast of a show."

"It was hard to miss at that range, sir.   Got the last freighter amidships and she broke in two.   We were able to get out in the confusion."

Miller fires two fish at close range, if he was any closer there wouldn't have been enough time for the torpedoes to arm.  He's rewarded with one hit, which does catastrophic damage to the freighter.

Jennings sat back in his seat and relit his pipe before looking up at Miller from under his bushy eyebrows.  "The MO is looking over Rhodes and his lot.  I can't produce dog boats from thin air, so you're down a boat and I'm giving you the flotilla.  Do better than Rhodes and you might keep it.  Go get some rest, you'll need it.  Dismissed."

***

At the dockyard, the base chief engineer says he's busy and shorthanded.  I roll a 5 on 2d6, and since I have one boat with two damage (Rouleau's MTB) and two boats with 1 damage (McGregor's MGB and Miller's MTB), I decide to fix one point on Rouleau's boat and one on Miller's.   The MTB's take precedence.  

All the crews in the flotilla get an experience point for being in a battle.  McGregor's crew gets an experience point for rescuing Rhodes and his crew.   Miller's crew gets three points for sinking an enemy freighter.

Rhode's reputation is not enhanced by losing his boat and two of his MTBs not firing any fish.   Rhodes' reputation goes down by 1 and is now -1.   

I now check for an event and Miller is awakened the next day to the unwelcome news that the base is getting a surprise visit from an Admiral.   There's enough time to make and mend and clear away last night's empty gin bottles.  The flotilla makes a good showing and the Admiral is pleased with his fighting Canadians.

I now need a personality for Lt Miller so I roll up the following stats for him:

Stamina: 3; Charisma: 3; Tactics: 4

We'll see if Dusty Miller has what it takes to keep the flotilla and do better than poor Rhodes.   

A note about the ship models:

The R-boat is a 3D print of a file from Thingverse (do a search there under Cruel Seas and you'll find all manner of helpful files).  The minesweeper and the three merchant ships are from Skytrex, and may get properly painted before their next outing.

Cheers and blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

Painting and Assembling the Warbases Prussian Merchant's House

Hi friends:

This series of photos is mostly intended as a visual diary of a recent build of a Warbases MDF house, but might be of interest to some readers looking to make their models a little more interesting than the plain MDF.

This building is from the Warbases Napoleonic Prussia range of 28mm MDF kits, I've built several and they are nice buildings, a little large for big battles but they work well for skirmish games.  This one is the Prussian Merchant's house.  It's a two story building with a stone first floor, a timberframe second floor, and a peaked roof with gabled windows.

My first step was to paint the stones on the first floor.  I know they aren't really bricks, but I thought uniform brick red colour with offwhite mortar would work well enough, and while I've painted stone different colours of gray in their other kits, I couldn't really be bothered this time.  I guess the brick effect works well enough, even if they are oddly shaped bricks.

 The kit comes with a base that is scribed to represent paving stones, so I painted them two different shades of gray.  The outer walls are glued on and went together fairly well, with some rubber bands until the glue (I use white carpenter's glue) dries.

Inner walls in place and while it's unlikely they'll ever be seen on the table, doing them properly was quite satisfying, rather like painting the inside of the cockpit of a plastic model aircraft.   I at least know it's done.  :)   

The wooden ground floor door came out well, I used an AK wood tones paint set with some FolkArt Wrought Iron craft paint for the bars and handle.

The next step is to make the second story walls look interesting.  I wanted a stucco or plaster effect so I watered down some Wood Putty and used an old brush to layer it into the sections that are conveniently outlined on the MDF as being between the lines where the timberframe part will go.    I was careful not to get too much on the latter parts so the timberframe bits will fit neatly.   Once the wood putty was dry I painted it with a craft paint Buff colour and then a bit of a sepia wash.

Once that work is done and the doors and window frames are painted, the timberframes are glued on and clamped until dry.   While drying, the second story floor is painted using AK wood paints.  Again, I'm happy with the result, even though it won't be seen much.

The kit includes a nice little staircase up to the second floor.   The individual stairs fit into recesses in the wall and attach on the other side to the single piece staircase frame.   The railings were simple and I gave the landing some attention with the AK wood paint.   The roof was a challenge, it was just four pieces of plain MDF with the tiles etched into it.  I wanted a more three dimensional effect so found some plastic model railroad sheets in my stash, cut them to fit the roof sections, glued them on and them attached the roof.

The two dormer windows were a bit of challenge, I don't have any WIP photos of them.   Once the roof was on, there were some gaps between the sections that I filled with bits of MDF sprues.  The whole thing was then painted with craft Burnt Sienna, washed with an umber wash, and drybrushed with red paint.

The finished piece scales well with 28mm figures but does make them look almost small.   It's not a wee building!   In a large battle with many units on the table, you wouldn't want many of these structures on the table, but as I said above, they look great for skirmish actions.

I hope this post gave you some ideas on assembling and painting MDF buildings, or at least sold you on the Warbases product.  One minor complaint is that the buildings don't ship with instructions. but you can find them readily enough on the website.  

Even though working on a building like this takes time away from painting troops, the end result is worth it and it enhances the overall look of the table.  I'm happy with the final result and would certainly recommend the Warbases kits.    I might look at an STL file for another building but the painting work would be about the same.

Blessings to your brushes and craft knives.

MP+

A Hardworking Little Ship: Skytrex Bangor Class Minesweeper

Still in the grip of my coastal forces (perhaps costly forces would be a better term) enthusiasm and I've just finished a scruffy little ship to act as an escort to some merchants and maybe give the E-boats pause for thought.   

 

This 1/300 scale kit from the Skytrex/Warlord Cruel Seas kit comes as a resin hull with about half a dozen metal bits.

I might have overdone it with the rust effects.  I used AK rust paint, simply painting on a small dot or blob and then smearing it with an old brush or finger.   The effect makes her look like a proper tramp, though I would think if I was an admiral, I'd want my sweepers out doing the work and not lying around chipping paint.

The penant number, J260, is from a Bangor class minesweeper operated by the Royal Canadian Navy, the HMCS Goderich.  She spent her career mostly based out of Halifax, NS, as part of the Western Escort Force, so unlikely that she would have come close to an S Boat, but Goderich is a pleasant Ontario town and why not use the name.   I could have painted her in the grey and blue Western Approaches pattern used in the Atlantic, but liked a scruffy grey.

As far as I could see, there are no stats for the Bangor class ships in Torpedoes and Tides, but shouldn't be too hard to invent something.

Next in the dockyards is another Skytrex kit, a German minelayer, so wouldn't it be something if these two were to run into one another some dark night?

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

First Time At Sea With Torpedoes and Tides

 It took me a while but I finally put some boats on the table and took these rules by Thomas Brandsetter for a spin, and they were a lot of fun!

I started modestly, two British Fairmile MGBs (aka "Dog Boats" going up against two Kriegsmarine E-boats or S (for Schnell) Boats in the English Channel.  It was night, but rolling for the environment gave me two fog banks, a full moon on the south edge of the table, and one section of coastline.    Here the Germans, still on blinds, spot the first of the two Dog Boats, outside of gun range (torpedoes against such small craft would be pointless so it's all gun combat).

I was using earlier war stats for the S Boats, when they aren't equipped with bow guns, so the Germans turned broadside on as the British approached.   There was much inconclusive shooting.  The gunfire mechanics basically mean both boats roll a die, with apporpriate modifiers, and the side with the higher value either inflicts suppression or damage, or successfully defends.   I had forgotten to add the Combat Value of the ships (3 in both cases) to the results of the die rolls.   In T&T all ships have Traits or characteristics, and the S Boats have the Hard to Hit Trait, which means that sixes become ones.   This trait proved handy as the Germans, who were undergunned compared to the Fairmiles, evaded damage and both sides came away unscathed.

My 3D printed Fairmilles and the Skytrex German S-boats blaze away in the darkness.  The playing mat is by Geek Villain.

Having learned the basics of the spotting, moving, and combat rules, I ran out of time.  The undergunned Kriegsmarine ships raced off into the darkness.  

Most of what I've read of these coastal forces encounters was that they were quick and often bloody, but in this case everyone gets back to base with inflated stories of glory.

 

Next time I'll add some more boats and use the later war S Boat stats to make it a fairer fight vs the Fairmiles.   I have some larger ships in the dockyards so hopefully I'll put some fish in the water.

A fun and positive introduction to an interesting set of rules.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

The Great Shelf Disaster

In my last post I made a cryptic reference to "The Great Shelf Disaster" and since that got some interest, I thought I'd tell the story and then solicit your wargames disaster stories.   Maybe it will prove thereapeutic for all of us.

So when we moved in November, Joy and I had downsized and gotten rid of a lot of our CDs.   I had a nice wooden CD tower left over and thought of a great way to repurpose it as a shelf for my command stands, which, because of the flags, are a little fragile to go into boxes.   The idea was that I could just take the command stands off the little shelves and plop them on the games table.   

Unfortunately, or better, foolishly, the shelf wasn't anchored to the wall, it was just balanced, and for some reason one evening it decided to fall over.  The stands on the top shelves shelves suffered the most, the ones lower down took less damage, and all the little shelves came out and fell onto everything, making matters worse.  Gentle reader, I almost cried when I opened the door and saw the carnage.

Since February I've been going through these figures, gluing figures back onto bases, fixing flags, finding matches from my sprue collection for missing arms and hands and heads.   It was a right old mess.  Some of these figures are decades old, and quite fragile, so it hurt to see them so abused.

  

Besides repairing all these stands, I also took the time for a rough but effective bit of DIY to ensure that this never happens again.

February was also a rough month because I grabbed the wrong rattle can when I was spraying dullcote on these figures.

The good news is that this series of unfortunate events taught me to be patient and to be grateful for what I have.  I have a dedicated gaming room, thirty years worth of figures, and a hobby that I love, so I reminded myself of those blessings regularly as I filed, glued, and repainted.

What wargaming disasters have you experienced, and what have they taught you?

Blessings, MP+

Perry Brothers British Intervention Force Royal Artillery

Some more recently completed work.

Found these half-finished figures while unpacking from November's change of house and put them in the painting queue.  28mm Perry Bros figures from their British Intervention Force range.  One day I'll get back to the ACW Trent Crisis Goes Hot project, at which time these fellows, who look suspiciously like hotel bellhops, will play a vital role in defending Upper Canada from US invasion. Before then I still have work to do repairing my ACW command stands from a terrible shelf disaster.

 

Cheers and blessings to your brushes!  MP+

Steppe Scalawags Sortie! - More Cossacks for Seven Years War

 Continuing my painting streak by slowly turning out more Foundry 28mm Cossacks for my kleine krieg Seven Years War project.  

On the right, the Cossack commander rides beside his blonde son, who is headstrong and hoping to prove himself in Dad's eyes.

Most of the paints used here are from the Foundry triad system.   I'm especially glad that I invested in their horse paints set.

One-Eyed Yuri, despite his eyepatch, can hit a rabbit or a Prussian jaeger from the saddle at the gallop.

New vicar arriving in the parish.  Father Berserki is feared by everyone except the Ladies' Garden Guild.

Dismounted cossacks ready to pillage and annoy.

I'm now about half way through the Cossack project.  Painting irregularly dressed figures slows me down, I think a lot about the colour palettes and try not to be too repetitious but OTOH painting them is more enjoyable than working on 24 musketeers in the exact same uniforms!

Hopefully we'll see these scurvy fellows on the tabletop soon.

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,  MP+