Breaking News ... fresh from the printing press...

... even if its from the 3D printing press. Shapeways marvelous WW1 Sopwith Camel and Nieuport 16 synchronised arrived and I could not resist to paint them. In "Guns of August", just the allies, the French and the British have 1 respective air unit. The Germans apart from one "Bloody April" and some weeks around the start of the Verdun offensive, didn‘t have much aerial weight to justify one unit in the game as well ... the air units will appear in 1918 to deliver combat boni...

Continuing against all odds ...

All OK - no distress signal from me - I was quite busy the lately ... also a birthday last week I had to take care of ... so this is just to showcase what I've been up to and what comes next out of the mental metal meneken manufacture ... the 10mm rest of my Franco-Prussian War project AND (almost) the rest of my 6mm WW1 Guns of August project ...

all of it ... not much!!  - I need to order navals and 6mm US army!!!

10mm FPW the Voltigeurs of the guard are coming together quite nicely 

- in the background just 3!! stripes left

The 6mm complete Serbian army (yes I forgot the Monenegrians ... will come ) 

The complete Turkish (European) contingent

The Romanian Army

The Italian Army (finished some in the foreground)

The complete Russian army (apart from the already finished artillery and engineers)

In the foreground fort markers and in the back entrenchment markers

1916 The Big Guns again!

It was time again for some splashes, so we decided to test my new WW1 naval rules (The Big Guns) against a bigger group of ships ... 4 Battle cruiser, 4 Battleships, 4 Pre-dreadnoughts and one tiny submarine - what could go wrong. I also designed a new matrix for a 6sided dice rolling only (only more, you start with a bucket of dice and hope in the end one will hit ...)

Bart and Peter took the Kaiser‘s side while me and Alidair took the Royal Navy for a ride. Bart took command of the U-boat and the 15 minute ships while Peter tried to concentrate all the good big guns in one line. Me and Alisdair had no other cunning plan than to attack as fast as possible and divided our forces as best as we could and gave coal so to speak. Bart tired just as myself a sneaky submarine attack, but under the revised rules, the wolf pack attack was a little underwhelming to say the least (a howling of ineptitude on both sides). Which is a good thing, as I just wanted this to be a gimmick and not to dominate.

Alisdair got heavily pummeled by Bart, but his saving throws were on part, so he did loose not a single boat. While Peter tried to attack my dreadnoughts (I just left my pre-dreads behind, who cares!), he didn‘t managed to sink a single one of them, haha! But I also lacked a bit of fire power and did not sink a pot of the Kaisers.

What saved our honour was that Barts one of his Not-so-15-minute-ships was sinking - it lasted a lot longer, but hey! Alisdair seems to be the Admiral to go to next time!
I am pleased that the rules work as fast even for bigger numbers and all participants enjoyed the game. Until next time, when you can see us rejoice in sinking some more metal, maybe even to the sound track of pantera or prong ...

The Big Guns somewhere in the Northsea around 1916

Aaaand another naval game (The Big Guns - working title), because we can. This time 1916, WW1 testing the rules of another homebrew naval game for my 1/6000 scale ships. I just drafted Bart (for the British Royal Navy) and Campbell (for the German Hochseeflotte) and left them exposed to the basic elements of the game, water, steel, minis that really deserve their name and a shit load of dice!

Both started out with the same set up on a 6x4 table in the opposed corners. Two Battle cruisers, a dreadnaught class ship and two older (shittier) battle ship and as an eccentric extra, a submarine for both. Aim was to have a quick and easy WW1 naval game, with a functional game engine that can also accommodate bigger battles (i.e. with 10 or more ships per player). For starters, I just had these  four types of ships, maybe I introduce destroyer more decidedly later. In the grand scheme I'm not interested if the Dörflinger has lost its back lights or the Invincible is getting to loose some of its side small guns ... heck I wouldn't even give them names, in this game they just had dots!

So Campbell advanced in line (very British!) until he painfully realised in the 50cm medium range Barts concentrated fire can be deadly. Both admirals submerged their tiny subs and after 2-3 turns the emerged and ... Bart‘s hit the jackpot (with a double six) and caused an explosion on a German battle cruiser, while one turn later Campbells U-boot just emerged too near and missed and got shot back home (his torpedo canal was hit and he limped unarmed homeward).

Then the Germans executed a "Gefechtskehrtwendung" successfully and tried to escape to Hamburg. That was the most successful moment for them, as Campbell could just sink one British battle cruiser while, Bart cleaned up the the Hochseeflotte quite quickly, just two "older" ships escaped.

See, once you get a couple of hits the ability to turn, absorb further damage or even roll control tests (morale, fire extinguishing etc.) is deteriorating. Explosions (which we had 4 of them) escalate the damage and the fires and before you can say Hipper the ship is under water.

So a British victory after half nine ... a very quick game ... promising for really bigger naval battles ... what was the name ... ach I forgot.

The British set up/stats

The German set up/stats

The complete rules (vers. 1.0)

All tables

In the German corner Mr Campbell!

In the British corner Mr Bart 

The whole battlefield

Initially the RN split

while the Kaisers just trodd on

there the first blood on the Dörflinger

hit by a torpedo

the Incontinence followed by the Inconceivable

Another hit on the ... lets call them all Dörflinger

until only the Dörflinger of the two Dörflingers were left

The HSF (Dörflingers) under fire

while the RN has thinned a bit ...

The Germans try the same submarine stunt, but ....

the Dörflinger

the British submarine hunting Germans

the rest of the Hochseeflotte is retreating

with the battle ship in flames

Bart send his sub to finnish it off.

- Eilmeldung - 1916 the battle at Horns Rev - Eilmeldung -

Berliner Morgenpost, 21st June of 1916 - Eilmeldung -

Und wieder einmal haben unsere tapferen Jungs von der Kaiserlichen Hochseeflotte einen Sieg nach hause fahren können und eine Invasion des Feindes abwehren können. In den grauen Morgenstunden des nebelig kalten Juni Tages vor der norwegischen Küste, 1916 trafen acht unserer Schiffe, der sogenannten "Nassauer Klasse" aus die Feindlichen "Dreadnaughts der Englischen Marine.

Nach einem heftigen Schlagabtausch und unter heftigem Kannonen Donner gelang es uns die acht feindlichen Schiffe zum Rückzug zu zwingen. Leider war Eines Ihrer Majestät's Schiffer die "Koenig" zu sehr angeschlagen um die Rueckfahrt aufnehmen zu können und musste somit versenkt werden, um nicht in die Hände des Feindes zu gelangen. Der rest der Flotte des hoch angesehenen Herrn von Behncke und seiner Männer trafen heute in Hamburg wohlversehrt ein und haben sich redlich eine Stipvisite auf der Reeperbahn ehrlich verdient.

Ihr Kriegsberichterstatter Ihro Kaiserlichen Majestät 22. Juni 1916

For the enemies point of view/propaganda, please read:
Angus' blog:
http://www.edinburghwargames.com/the-clash-off-horns-reef-1916/

And for a more balanced view please read:
Bart‘s blog:
http://asienieboje.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-great-blog-update-wielki-update.html