Flags of Jakalistan

I'm tinkering in taking part in a small Flames of War campaign with some wargaming friends using version 3 of the rules fielding a mix of platoons from the Arab-Israeli and Vietnam Wars source books. The slow-burn project stalled in the second half of last year (each of us painting a little bit between other projects), but one of the guys thought the Infantry Aces campaign might be an easy way for us to start actually gaming with these miniatures.

The rules for the campaign can be found on Battlefront's website here:
https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2666

Instead of being set during World War Two, the Arab-Israeli or Vietnam wars, we wanted something in an imagi-nation that would allow a greater element of fun. Something in a Central Asian former Soviet Socialist Republic would give us a good mix of terrain, forces and equipment. I came up with suitably-sounding "Jakalistan" (using the first two letters of each of our names).

Jakalistan lies somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the Pamir Mountains. It's a micronation that has a semi-arid desert plain in the west, where the Jara River meanders into the Caspian Sea. There's snow-capped mountains in the centre of the country and jungles in the south east. This pretty much copies the campaign map in the link above.

If you have a country you should really have a flag. So the first thing I did was look at Soviet Republic flags (along with googling some other Soviet and communist flags people had designed online):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Soviet_Republics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-Soviet_states

The Jakal Soviet Socialist Republic was created sometime in the 1950s - no one is exactly sure why this was, some say it was to give greater control to Moscow of the genetically modified pink quinoa crops that had been designed by Soviet scientists.

Flag of the Jakal Soviet Socialist Republic (~1952 - 1991)



The flag was the winning design after a competition was held, as it was in all the other Soviet Socialist Republics at this time. The blue in this design represents the Jara River, while the white represents Jakalistan's snow-capped mountains.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the First Secretary of the Presidium adopted a new flag to represent the peasants and workers of the country, who are said to be as tough as its mountains. The red was retained, representing the fields of quinoa.

Flag of the Republic of Jakalistan (1991 - present)



Things have unfortunately gone downhill in recent times. For a number of reasons the workers and peasants have split into two broad factions that are in open conflict with each other: the first supported by the democratic west, the other by eastern communist countries like China and Vietnam.

Workers faction flag/symbol



Peasant faction flag/symbol



Probably a bit simplistic, but I wanted to keep them useable as general symbols used during the current civil war.

Sources of inspiration of what I imagine life to be like in Jakalistan include Mitchell and Webb's 'Ambassadors':
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambassadors_(TV_series)

Pretty funny in my opinion, but an aquired taste.

Wargaming wise I have already glued together some unused prepainted Il-2 that will proxy as Skyraiders from 'Brown Water Navy'. I'll probably repaint them with the worker's faction symbol.

Edit: and here's a campaign map using the Infantry Aces one from Battlefront:
https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=2666

Place names inspired by locations in Melbourne, Australia.

Last Game I Played - DBA

Got in a game with my repainted Central Asian miniatures, using them as Mongol Conquest (IV/35) against Lyle's Ilkhanid (IV/46). I lost the game, but I have now learnt power of LH being able to rear support other LH.

Last Game I Played - Bolt Action

A game where I managed not to kill a single thing!

Cancon Day 2 and 3 - DBA and Pike & Shotte

Day 2 saw me field my newly painted* Malays (list IV/37a) for the DBA tournament with 23 other players.

The format was a fixed army open competition - each player selecting their 12 element army with even dismounting elements fixed as either foot or mounted at the start of the tournament, playing six rounds based on a modified Swiss Chess format. For this, the second day of DBA, all armies were from the Dark Ages and Medieval Period (Books III and IV). The tournment on the Friday had been for armies from Books I and II.

My army consisted of 1 x El (Gen), 1 x El, 6 x 4Wb, 2 x 3Bw, 1 x Ps, 1 x LH.

The Canberra standard scoring system was followed:

• A win scored a flat 8 points
• A loss scored 1 point for ending the game plus the number of elements killed (capped at 3) with an extra point for killing a general or taking a camp
• A draw was scored as a loss but without the point for ending the game

In the first game I faced Emil's Ming (IV/73). Like a monkey I decided that if someone’s going to have to face the artillery it might as well be my elephants that rush it. My non-general elephant duly exploded across the battlefield, however the rest of my army won the game for me. I lost 3 elements to Emil’s 4, 8-4 win.

Game two didn't go so well, I lost 8-1 to a wall of knights in Josh's Medieval Scandinavian (IV/54b) army.

Game three made me learn some of the changed rules in version 3.0. Lost your general? Who cares! You can now continue to grind your opponent and pull a win out of what would've been a defeat in version 2.2. I had lost my general, but through the ability of my quick killing warband against my opponent's fast Samurai blade and hard flanking his cavalry with my bow I pulled out a 8-5 win.

The rest of the day pitted me against Asian (another Post Mongol Samurai (IV/59a) army was to follow) or medieval European armies.

At the end of the day I had won three, but also lost three games for an overall score of 29. Great to be able get that many games in, even if the weather was hot and humid.

The next day was spent wondering around looking at all the great games on display, doing a little shopping and talking to people.

I took part in a large Thirty Years' War game hosted by Adam, Lon and Mark for about 30 minutes.

Afterwards I did a little shopping. Final haul included a bunch of Knight Models’ Marvel blisters for $5-10 each (including the Avengers, The Thing, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, Brotherhood of Evil and Deadpool) , a couple of the Perry medieval plastic box sets, some MDF bases from Battlefield Accessories and a mix of Eureka stuff.

The drive back on the Sunday afternoon was long, but I'm glad I went. I miss everything that happens over three days of gaming.

* They'd only been in the lead pile for 10 or so years.

Cancon Day 1 - Tribal Maori

Last Thursday I drove up to Canberra for Cancon for the first time in six years. Cancon is the largest wargaming convention in Australia, and is held every Australia Day weekend:
https://cgs.asn.au/cancon/

On the way up Ara, Bruce, Lon and I (in two cars) stopped to have our packed lunch in Holbrook, NSW in the park next to HMAS Otway (S 59), an Oberon-class submarine of the Royal Australian Navy between 1968-94.

More on HMAS Otway can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAS_Otway_(S_59)

First day of Cancon, on the Friday, I played in a Tribal tournament with Ara. It was small, only six of us, but was good to play against new players. I had spent the early part of January painting my Maori and some New Zealand themed miniatures.

Warbands were limited to 8-12 Honour points for units, skills and upgrades. The total Honour for each warband was 20 Honour. My warband list consisted of:

Tanehokahoka's Trust - 11 Honour Point Warband

Manaaki Te Heuheu - Chief (1 Honour)
x1 Long Weapon
'Skilled' skill

Tāmati - Shaman (0 Honour)
x1 Short Weapon
'The Shaman' skill

Ari - Hero (1 Honour)
x1 Short Weapon

Kai - Hero (1 Honour)
x1 Short Weapon

Footrot - Hero (3 Honour)
x1 Long Weapon
'Seasoned' skill

The Tui - Warriors (1 Honour)
x1 Long Weapon

The Pipiwharauroa - Warriors (1 Honour)
x1 Long Weapon

The Pukeko - Warriors (1 Honour)
x1 Short Weapon

Black Cap Berzerkers - Warriors (1 Honour)
x1 Long Weapon

Hairy Maclary and friends - Hunting Pack (1 Honour)

Here are some photos of the four games:

In Tribal, if two Jokers are played in the same Exchange during combat, this heralds
a bad omen - perhaps an earthquake shakes the ground or the sun is suddenly dimmed by a passing thunderhead. Aside from the normal outcome of the Exchange, all units on both sides of the battle take 1 wound immediately as morale falters and men flee.

This happened a number of times for me during the day...

 Below my hero Footrot with the Kiwi Laser flag:

A group photo of Schnitzel von Krumm (with a very low tum), Bitzer Maloney (all skinny and bony), Bottomley Potts (covered in spots), Hercules Morse (as big as a horse) and Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy. The miniatures are from Eureka Miniatures, expect for Hercules who's from Brigade Models' Celtos range (CLT-303a Hunting Hounds).

If you don't know who they are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hairy_Maclary

A little chaotic, but it was good to get a fair number of games in and see some of the tactics employed in a larger game. I also came second which was nice.

Cancon 2018 Practice

Played a few games of DBA with my Malays (list IV/37a) in preparation for Cancon next week.

3D Design - Metalhead 2

I went back and polished the design. In particular I thickened the legs to 2mm wide (from 1mm), cleaned the head/back connection and cut it up for ease of printing. Not sure when I'll be able to organise a test print, etc. but I'm pretty happy with the result.

3D Design - Metalhead 1

Another New Year's resolution is to do some 3D design work and have it printed to use in a game. After procrastinating I finally settled on tinkering with Autodesk's TinkerCAD:

https://www.tinkercad.com/

So far it's been pretty good as an online 3D solid modelling tool with a basic, easy to use interface.

I thought I'd start with something small, but reasonably complex. The aim is just to get comfortable in designing something. After watching season 4 of Black Mirror, I settled on the Metalheads, robotic "dogs" that are influenced by Boston Dynamics' own robotic dogs.

After an evening of tinkering I have designed the legs and the head:

Next step will be the body (a left and right half) and then I'll see what I need to do to get it printed. It's desinged to be a 28mm scale model that's about 2cm long. I have no idea if the design will be too small, so I might have to make some changes after some guidance.

Edit:
Finishing the body only took just under two hours to complete and not worth another post. I could spend some more time to polish it, but now I just want to see if it's able to be printed.

Part 2 is here. 

Last Game I Played - Hammerin' Iron NYE

In the backyard of a wargamer who's birthday is NYE. He usually hosts a BBQ and wargaming. The last several years have been Aeronef, this year only two of us played a game of Peter Pig's Hammerin' Iron. Frustating to say the least (I lost in a landslide).

Fallschirmjäger in Crete

Like many wargamers around this time of the year I make plans for projects I want to undertake in the year ahead. One of these is painting some Foundry Fallschirmjäger I bought, in September 2006! Many at the two clubs I game at are getting into Bolt Action, so I'll organise them for that system.

The army is designed to be flexible, by being both a generic Reinforced Platoon and also themed to be a Fallschirmjäger platoon as per the '1941 – Operation Mercury' theatre selector. Hence why some of the squad selctions aren't the best (terrible AT and no armoured vehicles). It also uses everything I have in my lead mountain (I bought Artizan DAK for the Gibirgsjägers and a Bolt Action PaK 36 over Christmas). I initially had bodyguards for the second lieutenant and medic, but decided to drop them and the AT grenades in one of the Fallschirmjäger squads to squeeze in a motorcycle with an MMG sidecar as I also had an unspent 10 points.

Operation Mercury Reinforced Platoon - 999pts
Second Lieutenant (Veteran) - 65pts
1 Second Lieutenant with Pistol

Fallschirmjäger squad (early war) (Veteran) - 149pts
1 NCO with Submachine gun
1 Infantry with Light Machine gun (requires loader)
7 Infantry with Rifle
Entire squad is Stubborn

Fallschirmjäger squad (early war) (Veteran) - 149pts
1 NCO with Submachine gun
1 Infantry with Light Machine gun (requires loader)
7 Infantry with Rifle
Entire squad is Stubborn

Captain (Veteran) - 138pts
1 Captain with Submachine gun
1 Infantry with Submachine gun

Medic (Veteran) - 30pts
1 Medic with Pistol

Gebirgsjäger squad (early war) (Veteran) - 153pts
1 NCO with Submachine gun
1 Infantry with Light Machine gun (requires loader)
8 Infantry with Rifle

Medium Machine Gun team (Veteran) - 65pts
1 Medium Machine gun team

Light Mortar team (Veteran) - 46pts
1 Light Mortar team

Sniper team (Veteran) - 65pts
1 Sniper team (rifle)

Anti-tank rifle team (Veteran) - 39pts
1 Anti-tank rifle team

37mm Pak 36 (Veteran) - 60pts
1 37mm PaK 36 gun

Motorcycle with Machine-gun sidecar (Regular) - 40pts
1 Motorcycle with Machine-gun sidecar

I'll need to purchase the motorcycle with the sidecar... or I could convert something. After searching for images of Fallschirmjäger and Gebirgsjägerin Crete, there was a few of pack mules that gave me an idea.

This picture was enough for me to mock up this planned conversion of the last Gibirgsjäger miniature I have with a Eureka Miniatures donkey. Most people shoudl be able to figure out what it's a proxy for.

The plan is to post updates on painting as the year progresses. We'll see if I stick to that plan or if I get distracted by something else.

Last Game I Played - Tanks!

On Monday one of the wargaming clubs I game with held their annual Christmas breakup party. There's usually a simple beer and pretzels game that's played as a tournament (Star Wars Miniatures, Heroclix, single X-Wing spaceship per player, etc). This year it was Battlefront's / Gale Force 9's Tanks with everybody getting a random 20 point tank with upgrades (provided by the TO). After last year's chaos IS-2 and Tiger tanks weren't included (if you play the game you'll understand).

Most of the games were works of art, the way tanks danced around each other like that scene in 'Fury':

Not having the IS-2s and Tigers didn't stop the chaos though. At the end of the day the game really can't be taken seriously - it's beer and pretzels and doesn't try to be anything else.

Hope you all have a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2018.

Battle of Beersheba (1917)

The centenary of the Battle of Beersheba occured in October, but for various reasons Mark wasn't able to run the game until the League meeting today. Andrew, Django, Ian and James took control of the ANZACs with Peter and I defended with the Turks.

Mark was interested in recreating the battle as this was the last real major charge by a British mounted force (and a legendary Australian success - refer to the 1987 film 'The Lighthorsemen' with Sigrid Thornton) and one truly deserving of being remembered and honoured.

We used Warhammer Historical's Great War with 28mm miniatures (from a range of manufacturers form Mark's extensive collection) with modifications to the rules to simulate the charge. The real battle was a race against time to secure the wells before Turks and Germans could blow them up.

The ANZACs had 3 units of light horse, 1 unit of (British) Yeomanry, 2 units of dismounted ANZACs and some artillery. The Turks had 6 units of infantry, 2 HMGs, artillery and a small unit of German engineers guarding the wells.

Here are some photos from the game, starting with an overall view of the table:

The view of the Turkish artillery towards the east:

Turkish peasants relaxed in their trenches:

Looking slightly less relaxed (I was reminded of that charging scene in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'):

The final charge after the Light Horse were able to break through to get to the German engineers and cut them down (bastards):

Typical of the British, they let others do the hard work and then came in at the end and tried to snatch some glory:

All in all another great game and a good end to gaming in 2017.