AWI Naval Wargaming

One of the things that I want to model on the tabletop is a convoy raid. The Royal Navy was constantly escorting convoys between England and the United States throughout the American Revolution. Between the US Navy, American, Spanish, French Privateers and later the French and Spanish Navies, there were countless vessels on the ocean looking to raid these convoys. These convoys could contain hundreds of civilian vessels, most of which are unarmed. The escorts were few in number and had to protect the entire fleet. As such, hit and run raids could pull away ships from the convoy before the escorts could react.

The complexity here is that most gamers have large numbers of warships in their collections but fewer numbers of merchantmen. The scale I choose for small ships restricts this further. Henry Turner has three different East Indiamen among his 1/700 to 1/1200 offerings. I might switch scales for this scenario.

I am struggling to figure out how the scenario should work out.

Revisiting The Cold War

I broke out the figures that I had and did a little cleaning up. I still have a tiny bit of work to do to round out this force. The one item that i want the most is Israeli M203 gunners. I think I can make it work with a 3dBreed Vietname M203 gunner. I would like 4 of them and 3dBreed sells them in a 4 pack. Amazingly, I found a business card with the notes on how I painted them. I have some additional Galil armed infantry with a few extras that are painted as well.

The next thing I need is some .30 cal MGs to add to the last M113. they just have to be glued and painted. I also wish to 3d Print a Merkava II and another Magach 6. I also have the Peter Pig model of Nagma Shot. It is only undercoated and needs to be painted. Lastly, I have three jeeps. I have one mounted with a machine gun but it needs to be painted. I would like to buy the Peter Pig recoiless rifle pack as it mentions that it can be vehicle mounted. This should give me plenty of support troops and enough to get in a game of What a Tanker with them as well.

My Syrians are not as far along as I thought. I have a full Motor Rifle platoon minus the designated marksmen with a Dragunov. I am not finding any miniatures for them at the moment. Definitely a nice to have rather that a must have. I have a QRF Sagger team that is undercoated. It is lacking a crew member but I will just add a kneeling infantryman with it. The bases are not yet painted but that should be simple enough. I do need to paint up an additional RPG-7 gunner.

My European troops are looking a fair bit better. I have plenty of Soviets to fill out a BMP mounted platoon. I have a box of BMPs from Team Yankee that need to be assembled. Not sure I even remember buying these. But the thought is to assemble three as BMP-2s and two as BMP-1s (to give to the Syrians). I have three painted and ready BMP-1s that are metal. Not really sure of the make at this point. Old Glory maybe? I also have a painted T-72 and a painted T-64 for my Soviet force. I also have a box of T-72s from Team Yankee. This is where my painted T-72 came from. The plan is to paint at least two of these for the Syrians above and the rest for the Soviets. I have an additional 3 unpainted T64s in metal as well. Possibly QRF or Old Glory, just not sure. For supports, I have a painted automatic grenade launcher and a heavy machinegun team. If I want to go with a later era force, I have six painted Soviets with under barrel grenade launchers.

Lastly, my Amerian force is doing pretty good. I have four M113s. Three are complete with MERDEC camo. The fourth has the base coat for the MERDEC that I never finished. I have a complete platoon of mechanized infantry ready to go. I do need to paint some additional riflemen but the force is largely complete. I also have a single painted M1 Abrams. It is not in MERDEC. I regret not painting it in the camo as the M113s came out really well. I do have the remainder of the Team Yankee box to assemble and paint as well.

I do know that I have a Cold War British platoon. I just couldn't find it. Somewhere in my games room are the miniatures that I got for Christmas several years ago. But I plan on getting some STL files for their FV432s and printing some up. I am not sure if I will get any British tanks to go with that force or not. Probably will get something that I will 3D print.

The only other force that I have is a contingent of 8 PLO militia men. With my current interest being actions of the IDF against the Syrians, I am not sure that any additional troops will be added here. Since the PLO wore a wide variety of uniform, adding in a few PLO militia into a Syrian platoon wouldn't really be totally out of place if I wanted to game some of the actions in Beirut.

All in all, these troops are in pretty good shape. I am happy with where they are and it was nice to work on miniatures again. It has been a while.

Just a reminder, since it is October, I am running my Annual Birthday sale. PLease stop by https://payhip.com/ChrisStoesen and use coupon code Birthday2023 to get 50% off anything in the store.

A Great Weekend

I managed to catch up with Mark at Gigabytes and get in a few minutes of an excellent game of Sharp Practice. We just began to maneuver some troops around when I had to leave. It was still good to get caught up with him. He presented me with a box of books. These belonged to Jim who is having some health problems. There are some fantastic sources for the 1982 Operation Peace for Galilee. I have been meaning to dust off these figures for a while and this may lead to me doing just that.

I really want to do some more scenarios for the Rock the Casbah supplement. I am not sure why this is buried in the IABSM section of the Lardies web site instead of in Troops, Weapons and Tactics. I would like to see if I can tune them more towards Chain of Command and What a Tanker. I don't have many tanks for the period but I do have a number of BMPs and M113s. I plan on printing some 3d models for the Magach 6, Merkava II and the T-72 for the period. I do have a Magach 6 that I made from a M60 QRF model that I made my own ERA armor for. It looks OK, but the 3d print should be better. For Syrian tanks I have two. Both are T-55s and one is the Peter Pig destroyed model that I received as a Christmas present several years ago from Francis. It is better painted than the non-destroyed one.

I have completed a couple more scenarios for To Covet Glory. I am working my way through a great article about a British Privateer during the American Revolution. While there are several good sources for Rebel privateers, this is the first I have found in detail on British privateers. i would love to find something on Spanish and French privateers during the same period. The To Covet Glory supplement is currently around 32 pages of scenarios. I hope to have a beta release of it by the end of the month. The problem is finding interesting scenarios not involving unarmed merchant men. I have some ideas about convoy raids that could be interesting but will have to see.

Lastly, since it is October, I am running my Annual Birthday sale. PLease stop by https://payhip.com/ChrisStoesen and use coupon code Birthday2023 to get 50% off anything in the store.