Cry 'HAVOC' and who let the dogs out? No, that's not right. Anyway, Havoc 28 was fun

One of the three American brigades sets up

I had to overcome a few obstacles to make it this year, but I did get to drop in for a few hours at the premier wargame convention in New England, Havoc XXVIII. Sponsored by Battlegroup Boston, the con was held, as it is every year, at Maironis Park in Shrewsbury, just across the river from Worcester, Mass.

This year I ran two games, took part in none. The morning session was a naval game that I'll detail in a future post, but the afternoon session was an American Revolution scenario called No school Like Old School which was a straight up slugfest among six similarly sized brigades -- three to a side, with Random setups.

Each brigade was similar in size, with a battalion of regular line infantry, a section of guns and in 5 of the 6 cases, a troop of dragoons. The sixth brigade (the Hessian) substituted a small battalion of grenadiers for the horse for the very good reason that I don't have any Hessian horse troops.

Each of the six players was given the option to draft one additional unit from among those available. For the British side the additional units amounted to a British grenadier battalion, a light infantry battalion and some Indians. For the Colonials the additional units were a battalion of light infantry, a battalion of roundball riflemen and a regiment of militia.

These 4-unit brigades seemed to work very well with players not otherwise familiar with the rules. They had enough to do, and had a chance to handle all arms (line, horse, artillery and special troops) and the game went briskly.

The American side edged out a win, holding 3 of the five buildings set as victory conditions -- with victory conceded on Turn 8. Losses were reasonably even, although the small cavalry troops took very heavy losses. By game end there were just two shot-up, broken troops remaining from the five starters. One gun section was overrun. Among the six line units, the Hessains were routed form the field and one of the two British was shaken, while two American line units were broken/shaken as well. On the other hand, all the special units were still active and in good order at game end, including the militia. Despite all being in the thick of things, only one of the six brigadiers had a horse shot out from under him.

I think I'll plan on sticking with the smaller brigades in future convention games. As tempting as it is to give the brigadiers a hefty army to play with (a standard brigade under the rules tends to have 5-6 units and an artillery battery) the smaller brigades seem to work better in practice with players unfamiliar with the rules.

As usual, there was a lot of good stuff going on at Havoc, with a lot of great scenario and awesome scenery. And it wasn't all wargames, either, as this photo of a car race game shows.

Talk at the con was that attendance seemed a bit off this year, but nearly all the games were well-stocked with players and overall there seemed to be an adequate crowd on Saturday. I can't speak to the Friday and Sunday events, however.

Half a Havoc report

Too much to do in not enough time, so I had to skip the bookends of Havoc on Friday evening and Sunday anyway, and as it turns out I couldn't even make the morning session on Saturday!

The good news is that the two session I did get to play were great fun, a pair of the most enjoyable games I've played in years. Both GMs did a fine job, there were minimal rules problems, the games flowed at an enjoyable pace, all the players were gentlemen, the overall quality of play was good even though each table had newbies and both games were fought to a clear conclusion in the allotted time.

The first game I took part in was a game of Axis & Allies War at Sea naval miniatures using the new long-distance battle rules. The scenario was billed as a refight of the 1942 Battle of Coral Sea, but the GM made a few adjustments to the order of battle such as including a fair number of Commonwealth and Fletcher-class destroyers and the USS Baltimore! Both sides had 400-point navies, so the OB fiddling didn't matter much. The GM also incorporated some house rules to aid the submarines a little, although as it turns out they didn't have a big impact on the game. The only other notable house rule was that Subs and DDs were NOT crippled by taking a hit. Again, s this affected sides equally I don't think it had a big impact -- especially because most of the time the DDs were sunk in the same combat phase as their first hit and therefore would not have been crippled under the regular rules anyway.

Being one of the more experienced players, I took the lead for the Japanese fleet and primarily concentrated on managing the air battles. As is often the case between evenly matched air forces it took a while to finally eke out an advantage in the air battles, but by game's end the Japanese still have two carriers afloat with usable air groups while the US was down to one with just fighters.

Still, the battle game down to a huge brawl over the objectives between the rival cruiser and destroyer fleets. In ship losses the two sides were nearly even, with 207 VPs for the US compared to 214 VPs for the Japanese, but the Japanese were the only ones to capture an objective so the final score was 414 to 207. (The game was called for time, but it appeared the Japanese would have a good chance to claim one of the other objectives on the next move with a destroyer and no Allied ships in range to contest it and just one US air unit that could attack while the Japanese would be able to place two fighters with Expert Dogfight overhead as CAP.

The second game was an interesting fight using the Check Your 6! rules for World War II air combat. The scenario was March Mayhem from the Aces Over Hungary expansion. This was a battle on March 20, 1945, which the GM admitted was part of his reason for selecting this scenario was it's near anniversary.

The battle involved a dozen Soviet fighters (6 ea Yak-9 and La-7) escorting a dozen Soviet bombers (6 ea Il-2 Shturmoviks and Lend-Lease A-20G Boston). Intercepting them were just seven Hungarian-flown Bf-109G Messerschmidts.

The design philosophy in Check Your 6! is that it's the "man" and not the "crate" that really counts so the battle was less one-sided than it might appear. First of all, the 12 bombers were on a bomb run and would do no more than fly straight ahead (under GM control). The dozen Soviet fighter planes boasted a grand total of one "veteran" (+2) pilot, three "skilled"(+1) pilots and no fewer than eight "green" (0) fliers. The seven Hungarians includes two "aces" (+3), two veterans, two skilled and just one green pilot. In other words, the seven Hungarians had a dozen points of skill between them while the dozen Russians had just 5.

The two players playing the Hungarians split the force 3/4 between them, with each player taking one each of the ace, veteran and skilled pilots and the more experienced player taking the green guy as well. The GM controlled the 12 bombers so the four Soviet players each got three fighters. The most experienced player took the Veteran pilot in an La-7 along with a pair of green. Each of the rest of us had an element that comprised a skilled pilot and 2 greens. My section was the other three La-7.

The battle, as so many wargame battles do, broke out into a couple of separate battles based primarily on where the players sat. Against the IL-2s the 3 Hungarians of the smaller flight did poorly, misjudging the approach angle and only getting one plane (the ace) into a decent firing position before game end. While he was able to hit one IL-2 a couple of times, he wasn't able inflict any damage on them and this was significant because the Soviets received 10 points for each undamaged element of bombers that exited the map, so this gave the Soviets a boost of 20 VPs. Five of the La-7s tangled with the Bf-109s and while the Ace was able to evade them and get into a firing position, the skilled Hungarian was ganged up on and shot down (for 4 more VPs) and the Veteran Bf-109 was deterred from closing and eventually flew off. This Soviet group took no losses.

Things went much more poorly on the other flank as the four Bf-109s controlled by the more experienced player timed their attack on the A-20s perfectly and looped in behind them. One A-20 was aborted by a lucky hit and three more were shot down for a total of 25 VPs for the Hungarians. The Yak-9s misjudged their intercept of the Hungarians and most of them didn't get into the fight and those that did suffered badly, with one shot down and one badly damaged, for a total of 5 more VPs for the Axis players.

Things would have been grim for our heroes if it hadn't been for the unlikely succor provided by one green La-7 pilot (played by yours truly). That pilot may have been green, but he sensed that if he pulled a Split-S reversal and left his element there was a good chance he could slip in behind the Hungarian flight that was going after the Bostons and he might distract them from their prey. The Hungarians, for their part, decided to ignore the green La-7 pilot and go after the bombers. After all, how dangerous could he be?

As it turned out, dangerous enough. The green La-7 was able to line up a long range shot from the rear and roll good dice, getting a hit on one of the veteran Hungarian pilots. One nice feature of the La-7 is that it's armed with a pair of cannon, so if it hits a fighter there's a very good chance it will down that fighter and that's exactly what happened to the Bf-109. This gave the Soviets 6 Vps (4 for the fighter and 2 for the veteran pilot).

The remaining five Hungarians were all being pursued by Soviet fighters (10 functional) without sufficient time left in the 12-turn scenario to turn around and fight so they opted to continue off board and back to base.

The final tally in aircraft was losses was 2 Bf-109s downed for the loss of three A-20 ad a Yak-9 while another Yak and an A-20 were damaged.

Interestingly enough the VPs were exactly even at 30 apiece, so the battle ended up a draw!

Napoleon's Battles session report

I accepted the post of overall commander for the Russian side in Pater Landry's Battle of Eylau scenario for Napoleon's Battles at this weekend's Havoc convention.
Only two of us on the Russian side had played before. The other experienced player took command of the Advanced Guard under Bagration. The pre-game intent was that I would be in overall command and take direct control of the Prussian detachment under Lestocq when it arrived.
The three inexperienced players shared control of the seven independent divisions in the Russian center and right. (The Russians were not using a corps level of command yet in 1807, which meant some command control problems).
My instructions for Bagration were simple, if difficult to achieve. He was to conduct a delaying action, trading space for time while preserving his force. I expected the French main effort to be on the right flank under Davout and Murat.
The center divisions were to hold in place until the French committed themselves, then look for an opportunity to advance.
I did give them one tactical instruction which proved to be very important. Normally in black powder era warfare (and NB is no exception) it's not cost-effective to engage in counterbattery fire. I do, however, think there's times when this rule should be broken. One of those is when one side has a big advantage in firepower and can concentrate the fire of two or three batteries on one. In this battle the French have only four batteries of 12-pounders, spread all along their front. The Russians have TWELVE 12-pounder batteries. So I told my commanders to try to neutralize the French guns if they could.
This worked out better than expected, because the commanders in the French center took a passive approach and sat under the artillery fire for most of the game without trying to get close. Worse, the French also tried to deploy a grand battery of Imperial Guard horse artillery (five batteries) in front of the Russian line, which promptly got shot up before they could accomplish anything.
The Advance Guard commander did an excellent job and when the first session ended he had managed to delay the French advance while losing almost nothing.
The lack of action on the rest of the battlefield was starting to work against the French because the burden of attack was on them and they were not making sufficient progress.
With the change of session we had to reshuffle commands a bit, with Pete taking over the Prussians while I replaced the advance guard commander. The French also got a new commander, who was far more aggressive than the morning guy.
The afternoon session saw much more aggressive attacks all across the front from the French, which made some progress, but the lack of artillery was a big hindrance.
When the game ended there appeared little prospect of the French taking enough of the geographical objectives to win.
They held Althoff, Eylau, Serpallen and Klein Sausgarten for a total of 160 victory points. The Rusisan were in very firm control of Schmoditten and Schloditten for 352 points. The only question was the fate of Kutschitten. It was held by a brigade of Russian grenadiers and had already repulsed a major corps-sized attack, but the French commander was certain he could take the village. Even with those 115 VPs, however, the French would fall short.
The post-mortem comments seemed to agree that both sides were too passive in the center and Russian right/French left, although I think that tended to help the Russians, given that the burden of attack was on the French. Likewise, most of the other game participants seemed dubious about the counterbattery tactic,. although I think it paid dividends in this case. Part of the reason why everyone agreed that Schoditten and Schmoditten were unlikely to fall was that the French had very few infantry available to assault the towns and NO heavy guns for support. The French did have a lot of cavalry on that flank, but they were of no use for taking any towns.
Peter Landry said he has run The Battle of Eylau several times, with each game being very different. It's a good convention game, with both sides evenly matched.
Napoleon's Battles, as always, provided a good game with a nice balance of historical authenticity and playability.

Havoc convention report

Saturday I went up to Shrewbury for the Havoc game convention.
Over the years I've made a goodly number of these cons. It's always well-run and they seem to have settled into a comfortable venue at Maironis Park, a hall in Shrewbury.
The Con starts Friday night and runs through Sunday morning, but I generally just go for Saturday which allows three game sessions.
This year I spent the first two sessions taking part in Peter Landry's Battle of Eylau using Napoleon's Battles rules and I capped the night off playing Axis & Allies: War at Sea. I called the night early because I was starting to feel ill, but overall it was a good day.
It's always good to see gamers I've met over the years. We're all spreading in the middle, getting greyer and/or balder and acquiring more wrinkles, too.
As usual, there were a lot of interesting games in the hall. Among the most notable in presentation was an Old West setup in the basement and a really snazzy sci fi setup upstairs.
There weren't as many venders as usual, with some folks I'm used to seeing not there, so I wonder if some stayed away because of higher gas or lower sales.
Attendence at the con, itself, seemed comparable to previous years and all the games seemed to have adequate numbers.

The Battle of Nations

The Battle of Nations (SPI, 1975) is an old-fashioned straightforward hex-and-counter wargame using the Napoleon at War game system. It was well-received at the time, receiving a 6.9 overall rating from Strategy & Tactics readers making it the 15th-ranked Pre-World War II game in January 1977.
It's gotten a second lease on life as one of the more popular titles offered by the online game-playing service Hexwar.com.
The situation is dramatic enough. Napoleon was brought to bay by the combined armies of the anti-French coalition at the city of Leipzig in October 1813. This resulted in the largest battle of the Napoleonic wars, with more than 500,000 troops on the field.
The system is standard SPI-style with combat-movement factors on the units, a Combat Results Table and locking zones of control (a unit must stop and a cannot leave a hex next to an enemy unit except through a combat result.)
Uniquely among the NAW-system games there are no separate artillery units, which changes tactics significantly.
The battlefield is strewn with a large number of towns that double defense as well as some hills and streams. The most important feature of the battlefield are several rivers running through the middle of it that can only be crossed at some bridges. This has the effect of dividing the battle into several smaller battles. The French have the central position and can use their interior lines to switch between fronts. The French have an initial advantage in numbers but get few reinforcements while more than half the Allied army arrives during the game.
The game is somewhat unusual for one that depicts a historical battle in that the most popular scenario really amounts to a big "what-if." The Grand Campaign game covers the entire four-day battle from 16-19 Oct. 1813, but historically there was no serious fighting on the second day. This will not happen in The Battle of Nations. As a matter of fact, the campaign game will often be decided on the second day.
While historically Napoleon did not attack on Oct. 17 he probably should have, because time was against him as the Allied army became stronger as time passed.
Victory in the game is based on losses. Losing a set number of combat factors results in an army's demoralization. In this game demoralization explicitly equals defeat, although the reality is that it's very hard to win any NAW game once demoralized.
BON is a little out of the ordinary because the Allied demoralization level increases as more troops arrive. The French have an opportunity for a quick win, but as more Allied troops arrive that chance slips away and eventually its the French who have the lower demoralization level
The Grand Campaign is, by far, the most popular way to play on Hexwar, and it's a fairly balanced contest. Hexwar statistics as of Jan. 20, 2007 show 3,172 French victories, 2,717 Allies wins and 77 draws.
The First and Third Day scenarios are decidedly less popular, albeit for different reasons.
The problem for the First Day scenario is that it's very drawish. It's hard for either army to inflict enough losses to achieve victory in the five turns. Hexwar stats show 76 French wins, 79 Allies wins and 110 draws. It's a more even fight than the full campaign and takes much less time, but most players prefer their games to end with a clear winner.
The Third Day scenario, which covers the actual day of major fighting, is grossly imbalanced. Hexar stats show just 18 French wins and 200 Allied victories! There are just 14 draws, which ought to be considered moral victories in this scenario.
The main action in the game happens on two fronts, with some minor action in two secondary areas.
The first secondary front is the region southwest of the Elster River, which starts with a couple of Austrian units astride the French line of communications. The French usually dispatch a handful of units to chase the Austrians away. Once the Austrian units are eliminated or retreat its fairly easy for the French to seal it off because there are just a few bridges providing access.
Just east of this zone is the area between the Ester and Pleisse rivers. While sometimes important fighting develops in this area, it's also easily sealed off and often turns into a strategic cul de sac.
The most important fronts are in the North, where the French are faced with delaying the Russo-Prussian Army of Silesia (later reinforced by the Army of the North), and the southeast, where Napoleon typically attacks the Army of Bohemia seeking the quick win. Time is of the essence, however, because help is on the way from the Reserve Army and Bennigsen's Russian/Polish Army.
This combination of attacking and defending roles for both players creates an interesting and entertaining wargame situation.
Admittedly the game's realism suffers a bit because there's no reason for the second-day lull in game terms. This was a common problem with many SPI games, where factors such as fatigue, command confusion and logistics that created historical delays don't play a roll. Other games with this problem include Borodino and Cemetery Hill.
On the other hand from a game player's point of view the situation is interesting and challenging, and in my view this outweighs the unrealistic pacing.

Havoc - Napoleon's Battles

One of the best things about going to Havoc is the chance to see old wargaming buddies. And boy, are we all getting rather old. I remember so many of these guys from when we were all skinny, had a lot of hair on top of our heads and that hair was full of color. Now most of the players weigh a lot more and their hair has migrated south, while getting grey as well.
One of my old wargame friends is Peter Landry -- who hasn't gotten any fatter in the last 30+ years (dammit!) nor has his hair turned gray (dammit dammit!). He's still a great player, too, although today I was lucky enough to be on his side!
We played a straight-up slug fest Napoleon's Battles scenario. Three Austrian corps against three French. I had the center Austrian corps, while Pete was on my right flank. Another gentleman was on my left. I haven't played NB in more than 10 years, but that still made me the third most experienced player behind Pete and John, the French overall CO and gamemaster. The other two French players and they other Austrian were newcomers to the game.
Napoleon's Battles is a medium-complexity grand tactical miniatures wargame. The maneuver units are brigades. Each corps had five infantry brigades,one cavalry brigade and two batteries of guns.
On my left (the French right) the two new players settled into a draw-ish duel atop a partially forested hill. Neither player wanted to risk a general advance and nothing much happened on that flank during the game. I think no more than one Austrian brigade ended up being dispersed.
I faced John in the center. Pete and I briefly discussed a strategy. He'd played against John quite a bit and counseled that John could be counted on to attack as aggressively as possible. Given that, we decided that I would try to hold my ground and tie up John's corps while Pete tried to defeat the French corps opposite him, which was led by an inexperienced commander.
Things went according to plan. I was able to advance close enough to begin shelling John, as well as fighting against part of the French flank corps. John tried to restrain himself, but after taking a few turns of "galling" fire (which included counter-battery fire that wiped out all his guns), he attacked, taking along part of the French flank corps as well. While he succeeded in gutting my corps (Destroyed: One battery, two infantry brigades; Routed one infantry and one cavalry brigade) he also had half his command routed, including his large cavalry brigade, which never managed to rally.
Meanwhile Pete did his thing, routing the whole French left wing and starting to roll up the flank. When we called the game two French corps were ineffective (fatigued) compared to one Austrian (mine) and seven of the nine geographic objectives were in Austrian hands.
Sitting next to Pete also gave us a chance to catch up on things and renew acquaintances.
All-in-all a well-run and enjoyable game with congeniality all around.

Havoc - Moby Dick

I had the chance to go to Havoc for a day, so I took it!

Actually, it wasn't even an entire day, because I was too tired from working the night before to make it a full day, but I showed up for the first two blocks on Saturday.

The first game was a bit of a "fluke" as it were. Entitled "Moby Dick," the simple game comprised four (later five) players using eight (later nine) whaleboats to chase the legendary monstrous white whale. The whaleboat miniatures and their crews (harpooner, four oarsmen and a coxswain) were well done, and the white whale was suitably massive and deadly. Oh, yeah. And there were sharks.

The whale's movement and dives were purely random. Boats that got close enough and had the right position could toss harpoons. If your harpoon stuck, you went on a "Nantucket sleigh ride," which was worth more points of damage.

The boats chased the whale for 22 turns before he finally expired. I lost count of how many whale men went to Davy Jones' locker, but I think it was about three boats' worth, as at least two players started new boats after their existing ones were mostly de-crewed.

Most of us controlled two boats. I decided to try two different strategies. One boat, the "Peg Leg," was played very aggressively, charging the whale and closing at every opportunity. This boat succeeded in striking twice for about 100 points of damage, but ended up losing four crewmen before I replaced it with a new Peg Leg II. That boat also managed to get another hit for another 40 or so points.

The other boat, the "One Eye" tried a strategy of circling around the middle of the playing area trying to wit for Moby to move into position. This worked less well, with the boat only managing one harpooning during the whole game, which didn't even stick. It did 87 points of damage on the very last turn. On the other hand, that boat didn't lose a single hand.

Of the five players I ended up doing the second least damage, so I can't say that my guy's shares of the voyage would have been very high. It was fun, rather different from the usual wargame fare.