E-skype to the (Spanish) Countryside

 After a few weeks of Richard hosting games he had to take a break to have his wargame room re-decorated. That meant it was time to step up to the plate and get Shedquarters on line. So I went out and bought (well, ordered on-line) an HD camera on a long-ish cable - my PC camera is located at the bottom of the screen - and went about setting up a game.

As it was a bit of an experiment for me I went with something simple and set up a Neil Thomas One Hour Wargames scenario, and pulled out my SCW toys. There were several advantages to using OHW for this trial. The rules are very simple and easily grasped (to put it mildly), and the playing area is small and well defined. This was a great help as the camera is manually focussed, so getting the whole battlefield clearly in shot was made much easier.

As I don't have a lap top I had to move the whole PC into Shedquarters, and move my mesh wifi extenders in the house to get better connection. I pressed my old SLR camera tripod into service to mount the camera. I used playing cards to label the units - clubs for Nationalists and  diamonds for Republicans. The entry points for reinforcements were marked with alphabetic cards form a "Kan-U-Go" pack of cards.

This is scenario 5 from the OHW book, "Bridgehead". The Nationalists are on the left of the picture ("South"), with one unit across the bridge. They have to be on the north bank at the end of turn 15, having driven off the Republicans, who are arriving from the opposite end. 

Here's our merry band of Skypers. Republicans on top, Nationalists on the bottom. In terms of forces, both sides got six units. The Nationalists had 1 x Infantry +HMGs, 4 x Infantry and 1 x Artillery. The Republicans got 1 x Infantry +HMGs, 3 x Infantry and 2 x Tanks.

Turn 1 and the Republicans bring on a tank, down the main road, and a regular infantry unit from point C. The Nationalists have one regular infantry battalion across the river as a starter. In its turn it fires and inflicts a single hit on the tank. At this point I started to think that tanks are a little bit too tough in this module of the rules.

The Republicans halt and open fire, inflicting some hits on the Nationalists. Luckily they roll low, but tanks fire at +2, so still causing some pain.

Couple of turns further on, and the Republicans have both their tanks on, and their HMG infantry. The Nationalists likewise have their HMG infantry, heading for the woods, and their artillery. The artillery's main advantage is its long range, but in this position the Republicans are so far down the table it isn't helping. The tanks are now pouring in fire, and not taking much damage.

Photograph from behind the Republicans. The Nationalist infantry north of the bridge is destroyed, but more are coming up. The Republicans are now fully deployed.

Alas for the Nationalist artillery they are within small arms range, and take a hammering from the HMGs.

The last Nationalist reinforcements arrive, and everyone is blazing away like mad. The Nationalists are definitely getting the worst of it.

When the dust from that round settles the Nationalists have lost another infantry unit and their artillery. They're inflicting some damage, but the armour is really tough. Republican infantry unit four will be lost at the end of this turn.

The Republicans seize the bridge with one of their tanks, advancing in the face of massed firing.

Finally some Nationalist success, as the bridge-hogging tank is destroyed. Alas, another one is closing in, and their glee is also muted by the loss of the infantry in the wood.

Nine turns in to a 15 turn game. Will it go the distance?

It's two Nationalist units against four Republicans now. Can they hang on long enough to dispute the objective?

The Republicans occupy the wood. Despite me giving the troops defending the bridge the benefit of cover, the end is nigh for the Nationalists. Their last hurrah is the destruction of Republican unit three.

So this is it. The last Nationalist unit is buried under a wall of fire, and succumbs.

How did it go? Well the technical arrangements worked really well. Once the players worked out how to do gallery view on their end of the call, focusing on the game as the main image they could see what was happening. The unit references and so on worked okay, and the game flowed well. The set up seems to be robust, so I can scale up for next week, I should think.

As to the scenario and the rules, well...there's nothing wrong with the scenario. The rules are very simple, and get the job done in about an hour as promised. The tactical finesse is minimal. There are no modifiers for enfilading or anything like that. Shooting only, with no hand to hand, so the aim of the game is to get in range with more units than your opponent and then blast him away. 

The tank rule for what NT calls "Machine Age Warfare" is optional, and my initial view that they were too tough was confirmed. They have no disadvantages. They move faster than infantry, fire just as far, inflict more damage and half any hits they receive, even against artillery. If I was to persist with them, I would remove the combat modifier - in fact instead of +2 I'd go for -1 - and possibly reduce their firing range. I might let them move and shoot with a further modifier, and I might ignore the armour modifier for artillery hits. They really unbalanced this scenario, which I might retry solo with different force mixes. It looks to me, almost, as if the rules for armour were never played in anger by the designer.

In practice, I am unlikely to carry on with them much, as my next Wargaming for Grown Ups publication will be a proper work up of  my SCW rules, "Send Not To Know". I just need to work out how to do playtesting on a set of rules that use a single card deck between all the players. I have some ideas, which  I think will improve the original game, so that's positive.

Next week, ancients, with a shed load of hoplites!