6mm Moderns begins in earnest

The new Force on Force and Road to Baghdad have pulled me away from my Vietnam project.
It's now on hold until later this year.
I picked up some mid east buildings form ebay before easter.

I'm inspired.......

Monday, 18 April 2011

Quick "Road to Baghdad" Review

I'm going to cheat and post a quick review I knocked up for Book Depository.  After I've had a chance to read through RtB more thorough over the Easter break I'll post more detailed thoughts:

The Road to Baghdad is a return to roots for Ambush Alley Games (AAG). Their original game "Ambush Alley" was firmly rooted in the events of the 2003 invasion of Iraq - Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As the first offering from their new partnership with Osprey, AAG have served up a wargamer's treasure for this conflict. The book is 104 pages, soft cover, and full of colour art and photos as you would expect from an Osprey publication.

After a brief introduction, 11 pages are devoted to the an overview of the war, with the timescale stepped out.

After this comes the real "meat in the sandwich"; 19 scenarios for the conflict spanning 83 full colour pages with maps, force lists, suggestions for alternate and augmented forces, and the all important historical outcome. These scenarios are design for use with the Force on Force ruleset, but could equally be used with any ruleset focusing on about a platoon per side.

Finally there is an overall listing for US, British and Iraqi forces to enable further scenario creation, as well as a bibliography of further reading.

If I have one immediate criticism of Road to Baghdad, it is that there is so much information crammed into the 104 pages. Skimming the book it can be difficult to pick individual scenarios immediately, as there is very little whitespace (camouflage space??) free in this book to delimit the individual scenarios and they often run on into each other. The Table of Contents obviously helps here, but this is a lot of content in a compact form.

Quick Review : FoF Enduring Freedom

A while back I received my copy of the Enduring Freedom sourcebook for Force on Force by Ambush Alley.  This is Force-on-Force's book on Afghanistan from the commencement of hostilities in 2001 to the current day.  It is a lovely looking book, paperback with full colour pages.  Some comment has abounded regarding the cover art.  Earlier placeholder art was in my view better, but Osprey / Ambush Alley have obviously decided to go with this one in the final release.  It wouldn't have been my choice.

From my perspective this book is "more of the same" when compared with the earlier Iraq book (Road to Baghdad).  There are 20 scenarios in this book, most of them seem to trend towards the larger size of game (Full platoons with support on both sides), rather than the earlier small forces we saw in the initial Ambush Alley product.

The format of the book roughly follows the same approach taken in "Road to Baghdad".  An overview of the conflict is followed by explanations of the specific rule elements for Force-on-Force that apply to the current conflict in Afghanistan.

After that we have the 20 scenarios, followed by details of organisation and vehicles for the various ISAF and Afghan forces.  A quite nice part of this book is a guide to uniforms, painting and model selection for the conflict.  It desn't suit my predeliction for 6mm all that well, but it's nice to see in what is essentially a hooby book.

If you've been a follower of Ambush Alley Games and modern wargaming for a while, there may not be a whole heap for you in this book, apart from the scenarios.  I had a vague feeling of "samey-ness" leafing through the book, but to be honest I have not found the time to invest in a cover-to-cover in-depth read.

If you're interested in Afghanistan, it's obviously a must have.  If not, then I'd leave it.
Maybe it's because it's Australian focused, but I think the older Operation Uruzghan book that AA Games issued before the Osprey partnership was a better book, with scenarios more suited to what I'd like to game in the Afghan conflict.

British Army in Ulster Vol 3

Found the following book at a local market and picked it up.

It looks like quite an interesting read.
Essentially its a bit like a diary of events in Northern Ireland from late 1975 to early 1978.
It details units deployed over that period and significant events in more detail.
It's going to have to go on the pile for after the Falklands material, but it looks like a good reference for Northern Ireland during this period, or if you are looking to game an alternate timeline ala Winter of 79.
On the subject of the Falklands reading list, I've started "The Battle for the Falklands" by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins.  I'm finding the early chapters very interesting, but it is a little heavy going on my current sleep levels.  Good detail on what happened that lead to the conflict over the islands.  Still to get to the actual conflict itself at this point.

The Battle for the Falklands - a Quick Review

Last night on the train home I finished reading "The Battle for the Falklands" by Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins.  I thought I'd put down a few quick words on my thoughts on the book.  I hope to do this with all of the books in my Falklands Reading List this year.

First an admission is necessary; this is the first book on my Falklands Reading List, so I really have nothing to compare it with.  This claimed by many to be the standard reference work, so I thought I'd start with it.  Future reviews of other books will obviously contain comparisons where appropriate.

I read a 1983 paperback version of the book, 448 pages (although only about 380 of these are the meat of the book), with 16 pages of black and white photos and 8 pages of maps.  In addition to the the text, maps and photos, the book contains a chronology of political and military events, a glossary of terms, a list of british decorations (both civil and military) and an interesting section outlining the ships, men and aircraft of the taskforce.  Excerpts from the "Franks Report" which was the official government report into the Falklands conflict are also presented at the end of the book, to enable the reader to compare and contrast the official findings with those presented by the authors.  A full index is also included.
Max Hastings was a journalist who accompanied the task force to the South Atlantic and appears to have a fair bit of experience reporting military matters.  Simon Jenkins was the political editor of the Economist, and so had access to many sources in Whitehall.  In the text, Jenkins covers what was happening in the UK, Argentina and the US, whilst Hastings covers the progress of the task force and the conflict "on the ground" in the Falklands.
The first point I feel I need to make here is that this is a history book rather than military war story.  The authors have done an excellent job tracing the cause of the 1982 war from the original discovery of the islands, through the various claims and occupations of the islands through to the failures of diplomacy that lead to the war. In fact, the actual Argentine invasion does not occur until more than 90 pages into the book!
There is a lot of material on the actions of the Foreign Office in negotiating with Argentina over the future of the islands, and also decisions by Defence that lead to some of the materiel issues faced by the task force.
I found some of this early material difficult to read, paricularly keeping straight in my head the revolving door of ministers and secretaries working on the negotiations.  This did however contribute to the point that the text was trying to make that continuity of office was a big contributor to the issues with the dicsussions over the islands.
The narrative of the naval battles and then the land campaign is quite good.  There is some detail on Goose Green and also the battles for Stanley as 3 Commando Brigade and 5 Brigade advanced over the mountains, although obviously a book of this size and scope cannot provide infinitesmal detail on these military actions.  Some good overview maps are provided for Goose Green and the approach to Stanley, which helped to cement things in my mind.
The book is (of necessity I think) anglo-centric, although the authors appear to have attempted where possible to use Argentinian sources.  Quotes from Argentine politicians and soldiers appear throughout, but deep analysis of Argentine actions is not possible from these.  This appears to be a more general problem with Falklands texts (at least those in English) as access to Argentine sources appears to be difficult.
Overall the book provides a very good overview of the actual conflict and has enabled me to lay out in my mind what happened where and when. This has given me a great start in working out what to read next and I also now have some good ideas for actions to bring to the table top.


I would recommend this book.  It doesn't have a lot of nitty-gritty detail on the military actions, but there is enough to give you a good overview and steer you in the direction of more detailed accounts.  It is, however, an excellent analysis of the conditions that lead to the two nations facing off over a tiny spec of land in the South Atlantic and a record of how that played out.

More Grist for the Falklands Mill

Two more books for the Falklands/Malvinas reading list arrived today:

 Hopefully Bicheno's book will provide more Argentine insight.

Falklands/Malvinas Update 2

I've been off sick for the past week or so.  We believe that number one daughter brought the offending bug home from childcare.
I've been too out of it to get much reading done, but I have almost finished Bicheno's book and hope to post some first thoughts on that this weekend.
Back at work again today, and my copy of the "The Fight for the Malvinas" by Martin Middlebrook, and also my initial sampler of figures from Heroics and Ros were waiting for me on my desk!

I think I'll be going through this book next, after the Bicheno, as it looks (after the first flick through) like another good overview book.

On the figures front, I picked up a range of the codes to get a sample of the figures and vehicles that will make up the respective forces.  I'll be posting some pics and reviews over the coming weeks.

Now for some bad news.  My original intent with this project was to actually get some games in during the April/May/June timeframe of the actual conflict.  Unfortunately I've overspent my budget on the "Falklands Reading Pile", so it's probably going to be the second half of the year before I can field the full company-plus forces I need for many of the key battles such as Goose Green and the various mountains west of Stanley.  Disappointing, but the current reality.

I'm not planning on stopping though.  I should have enough with this initial purchase to game some of the smaller special forces actions, and probably the combat on South Georgia.  I may also have enough (certainly on the British side) to put together some scenarios for the initial Argentine landings in and around Stanley.

Stay tuned for more bulletins as events warrant....

Razor's Edge - Initial Thoughts

I've just finished reading "Razor's Edge" By Hugh Bicheno.

I'm just going to offer some initial thoughts at the moment, as there is a lot of criticism surrounding this book and its accuracy.  I need to read more to fully understand those arguments, so I will refrain from a full review at this time.

I found the book an easy read, but I think part of this is because I already had much of the political background from slogging through Hastings & Jenkins "The Battle for the Falklands".

Bicheno is quite outspoken in his views on the British Public Service and also on the Argentine regime.  In addition, he is highly critical of 5 Brigade command and of "H" Jones.

The book contains a wealth of maps and details of the battles, which appears to make it an invaluable reference for those planning table-top scenarios, but it is this very information which is called into question by some commentators, so until my research is more complete, I won't offer a full recommendation either way at this time.

My next target is Martin Middlebrook's "The Fight for the Malvinas", to try to cement more Argentine information before I focus on more accounts from the British side.