Problems with Windows 10

OK  I tried Windows 10 (from Windows 7) and thought I would let you know how I got on.

I liked the look of Win 10 and all my old software worked on it. So far so good. But the problem was that Win 10 would not allow me to associate my old software with file types. So (for example) to open a picture to edit it it, I needed to open the software, find and open the file and then edit it. All far more effort than just clicking on a picture and then editing it. So sorry but Win 10 had to go.

So I rolled it back to Win 7, then my problems really started. First my printer was destroyed. OK it was an old printer (HP Officejet 8000) and I knew the printer drivers would not work with Win 10. But once it was returned to Win 7 everything went wrong, it would no longer print double-sided and after each print (which was very poor quality) a test page was also printed. So new printer bought.

But also on the return to Win 7, my email client Windows Live Mail was corrupted. Now I know thats a known problem with a return from Win 10. Luckily I had backed up my emails. So that all was required was to delete Windows Live Mail, find and delete its storage folder on my computer and reload Windows Live Mail. I am now loading the saved emails and restoring them to their rightful folders, thats taken about 3 days of work so far.

So the motto of my story, if your software is not designed to operate (fully) under Win 10, just don’t do the upgrade. Rolling it back is not as problem-free as Microsoft claims.

Action All Fronts is printed and ready

 

 

The rules are now available on Amazon and Wargames Vault. With Wargames Vault having the option of a pdf download. Both sites have a preview feature. The printed product of the two sites is slightly different. The Wargames Vault version is darker and to my mind the picture on the front is slightly fuzzy. But the interior pictures are sharper.

Figures in Comfort have produced a clear acrylic artillery template (as pictured on the right), with the area of effect in both inches and centimetres.

The Yahoo Group for Action All Fronts continues to grow and includes a variety of files for the rules, free to download.

Action All Fronts, wargames rules for world war 2 land battles. With a figure representing one man. Company level battles with a player comfortably able to control 100 men and 10 tanks.

The rules feature:

1) Alternate unit activation, with a unit able to perform a number of different actions in a turn.
2) Covering all of WW2 in all the different theatres of conflict.
3) Visibility important with the requirement to spot a target before being able to shoot at it.
4) Artillery support from on-table and off-table artillery.
5) 5 scenarios, army lists for British, American, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian troops.
6) Rules for over-watch, weather, buildings, fortifications and heroes.

WW2 Russians vs Panzers early war Action all Fronts

After the last pay-test we decided to make the game a bit more like history and a bit more like a real game. So this time with equal point army lists and instead of PzIV against the T34s, make it more challenging with PzIIIF’s.

So 1,200 points a side, look like this

Russians
4x squads of infantry total 304 pts
2x Plt, HQ 72 pts
1x Co HQ 72 pts
unit 2x T34/76 400 pts
2x tank rider squads 160 pts
2x HMG 120 pts
1x 82mm mortar 65 pts
Total 1193 points

Germans
3x squads Pz Grenadiers 588 pts
1x Plt HQ in SdKfz 251 122 pts
2x PzIIIF 464
Total 1174 points

Pic during game

Russian squads organised into larger units on my advice (as author of the rules). Putting two squads and the platoon leader into one unit makes them less flexible but gives them a lot of punch and staying power.

Advantage to the Russians in terms of numbers and better tanks (the T34 has a frontal armour of 8 and a strength 6 gun with a range of 30, the PZIIIF has frontal armour of 3 and a strength 8 gun with a range of 20). The Germans had the advantage of superior fighting ability and morale, their infantry also being carried in APC.

Now after one of the previous play-tests a rule for automatic spotting at distance of 5 was introduced. That means that both sides units are spotted, if either sides unit is moved to within that distance of an enemy unit. As you will see, that became important in this game.

In summary, Action all Fronts is a WW2 one model = one man game, with IGoUGo and alternate unit activations. During an activation a unit (squad or tank usually) can make multiple actions the most important being to move, shoot or spot enemy targets. Nothing can be shot at until it is spotted. And the other thing is that the enemy can attempt an over-watch fire action with one of their units, if one of your spotted units moves or fires.

The Russians boldly advance their two T34s into the centre, covered by infantry on the hill to their right and with their own tank riders on the back of the T34s.

The Germans respond by bringing up a section of Panzer Grenadiers and dismounting in the wood to the left of the T34s.

But the Panzer Grenadiers are so close to the Russians that they are automatically spotted (see previously) and the Russian supporting mortars open up on overwatch fire and wipe the dismounted Germans out. The Germans now having spotted the T34’s bring out their own PzIII tanks to engage the T34s. A lucky shot with an HE round from one of the PzIII disables both T34s (as they are very close together and causes major losses on their tank riders. Meanwhile more Russian infantry are brought up to support the attack and the Germans occupy the woods in front of the Russians.

The German player then attempts to get behind one of the T34s and finish it off with a shot on the rear armour but fails and instead becomes vulnerable to the Russian infantry, who first advance and then charge the isolated PzIII.

As they advance the PzIII uses overwatch fire to shoot at the Russian infantry, both with HE from its 50mm gun and with its machine guns. The Russians take casualties but continue the attack.

The Russian infantry swarm over the Panzer and destroy it.

The game ended at this point, the German player saying that he had caused the Russians losses, he had been unable to stop them and now down to only one Panzer and two squads of Pz Grenadiers, he would be overrun. So rather than allow that to happen, he would withdraw and live to fight another day.

This was the first play-test game using artillery (mortars) and now all the players want mortars in their army. Certainly this was the first time that the Russians got their act together, choosing the right army order and keeping the attack going. Probably sending the T34’s out into the middle of the table early on in the game was a big mistake.

Warhammer Visions, what can you say but go search the net instead.

 

So this is Games Workshops new monthly magazine. 220 pages of pictures of GW models. News folks there are tons more pictures of GW models out on the internet and they are free. No reason to shell out £7.50 to see them and I suspect for that reason GW have decided to cover the mag(?) in a plastic wrap, so you cannot actually see inside before you buy.

One to avoid.

Ogre Designers Edition Kickstarter

Last year I supported Steve Jacksons Kickstarter to do a large version of his 1970’s game Ogre (one great battle tank vs well everything). I had read a lot about it but never played a game, well now was my chance to get a good-sized version.

With a target of $20,000 it in fact went to almost a million dollars and thousands of copies have been produced.

Its massive as you can see below

In fact the only place that I can think of with space enough to play this is Portcullis in Bolton, it might just overwhelm the tables of the coffee shop in Leyland.

I have just finished punching and assembling all the counters. I now have 34 various types of 3D Ogres plus loads of 3D buildings and loads of ordinary gaming counters.

But just to add to my (as yet unused) Ogre collection I have bought the Nightfall campaign from Fire Mountain Games.

Veni Vidi Vici website down

Don’t worry, its just moving to a new server. Emails are down as well.

OK situation is now getting better, website has been moved to a new sever and is being tidied up/checked for problems.

Emails are working again.

The VVV shop is now working again. Most of the functionality has been restored to the shop, most importantly the ability to shop on one page and then move to another page, whilst the cart remembers what you had just bought.

One thing is that the currency is not remembered and goes back to its default (pounds) on the change to another page. So just before you pay, make sure that the currency is set to the one that you want to use.

Quick Battle Report Late Romans vs Avars

A 1500 point battle using the Late Romans against one of the new lists, Avars. Using 6mm figures and played a Portcullis Wargames Emporium, Bolton.

The initial set-up, with the Romans on the far side of the table and the Avars nearest to us. At this point the Roman player said, are you sure that you got the points for those right? there being about three times as many Avars as Romans. We went through the lists and despite being upgraded (to Average morale class, from Raw) the Avars were precisely right, there are just rather a lot of them. So this was going to be a real test of the Die is Cast rules, can armies with such a huge imbalance in numbers fight a ‘fair and even’ game. The first point to note is that the Romans have clustered their army around a hill (top right of picture) stuffed the hill with archers and 4 pieces of artillery.

After movement on the first turn. A group of 4 units of Avar light cavalry and 2 units of heavy cavalry move to attack the hill.

After end of shooting on turn three. The Romans have moved out from the hill and have started shooting at the units of Avar light cavalry. The Avar have suffered one unit destroyed and another damaged.

After end of movement on turn 5. The Avars have lost the front two units of light cavalry to Roman shooting from the hill. In turn they have caused some casualties on the Roman archers and legionaries (between the edge of the table and the hill). the main force of Roman foot (two units of auxiliaries and two units of legionaries) supported by cataphracts and extra cavalry move to block the gap between two patches of scrub. Meanwhile the Avars are moving two units of Extra cavalry (the Avar nobles) through that gap. The Roman legions form shieldwall and get their javelins ready. Javelins instead of pila to give them a bit of distance firepower.

Same point in the game but this is the view of the whole armies. The Avar are trying to bring up the rest of their army, forming the infantry into columns of march to get there quicker (right side of picture). The Romans are using 4 units of light cavalry to delay the Avar advance but equally the Avar are using their light cavalry to try and push the Romans back. Both  sides are getting to bow range on the right.

On the sixth turn the Avar extra cavalry charges into the Roman legionaries and auxlia in the centre. The Romans attempted to charge as well but a cavalry charge negates an infantry charge so the Romans just stand and fire. The Avars will also shoot with their bows as they charge and then switch to lances for the combat. Behind the Avar cavalry are axemen (top of picture) and skirmishers (right of picture). Behind Romans (bottom right) are their cataphract cavalry.

In centre on the sixth turn, after shooting and combat. The Romans have held. The Avar shooting was incredible destroying an entire unit of auxila and severely damaging another. But the Romans held fast and took the cavalry charge, unfortunately the Roman javelins bounced ineffectively off the heavily armoured Avar cavalry.

But the combat was a draw! Although both sides were rolling 8 dice apiece (the Romans needing 3 or less, the Avars needing 6 or less) the result was 4 hits caused on each side. That completely destroyed another unit of Roman auxlia and inflicted 2 damage points on each of the Avar cavalry units (the black dice). So neither side had to test morale for losing the combat and the Romans had to test for seeing two of their units wiped out. But with good die rolls they held.

The Avar attack on the hill failed. Two of the units of light cavalry were destroyed by shooting, two broke and ran. One of the units of heavy cavalry was heavily damaged and the other unit tried to charge but failed its morale test and retreated instead. So that was the end of that attack.

Sorry no pictures of the end of the game but the Roman cataphracts charged one of the units of Avar extra cavalry and in the huge mixed melee that followed (2 units of Roman legionaries, a unit of cataphracts vs 2 units of Avar extra heavy cavalry) the Avar were heavily defeated (5:1) and both units of Avar cavalry fled. At that point we ended the game and all went to the pub.

Now there was still a lot of the Avar army left on the table. All that infantry which was steadily marching toward the Romans but I think that without the support of their own cavalry they would have been dead, outmanoeuvred and out-fought by the Roman. The big mistake (acknowledged by the Avar general) ) was not attacking all together. In effect the Avar infantry was not there on the table as it spent all its time marching to get to the Romans.

So yes its is possible in TDIC for a larger army to be defeated by a smaller one. Next time we will see if it works if the Avars play better.