HMS Tartar 4th Commission 1971 21

We left Gan and the bats behind and arrived in Diego Suarez, Madagascar on Sunday 17th January, we were there for two days. Another mechanical breakdown meant the crew had to take turns peeling spuds for the 285 hungry mouths onboard until the peeler was fixed.

French Navy on a run ashore.

  1971 is the year of the Pig, our Chinese laundry crew along with leader Freddy, although that is probably a nom de convenience, celebrated by having their one day off. These guys work every day and make a little extra money by selling underwear, very much what we would now call 'boxer shorts' out of odd pieces of material. They would go ashore if a casino was available, otherwise they lived all their time on the ship.

Madagascar being French we had a trainload of local dignitaries turn up for cocktails, the messdecks of course had a much ruder name for such gatherings, which were all pomp and ceremony while we had to slink off ashore unseen on the aft gangway "Don't look Fiona". I got one run ashore and it was a wild one, I can remember being in a very large bar looking down on the ground floor where there was standing room only while Jack Tars and French Foreign Legionaries danced, laughed and drank with each other. We got friendly with some of them and they invited us back to their barracks to continue the party, however we were turned back at the gate by some stern faced sentries. We refuelled and were off again on the 19th.

Don't look for me, feet up in the Radio Room, or lying out in the mess.

  Another tour on the useless Beira Patrol, two of us this time, HMS Lynx is also in the area and during her six weeks only stopped one tanker, which she had to let go. We of course had competitions to keep the 'Biera Bucket' along with quiz's using the radios with Lynx and our fleet auxiliaries Resource and Tidereach, most of us simply topped up our tans for our return to Blighty.

Beira will take us into February, our 'reward' is a few days in Port Elizabeth South Africa, after that it is plain sailing for home.

God(s) Almighty

I have taken a break from painting phalangites, the core of my Seleucids will be three phalanxes and I have three now, so I thought it was time for some fun. I knew I wanted to use the large statue heads I had seen somewhere online so I tracked them down, Scibor Miniatures, you get quite a few in the pack, far more than I needed, now I just required something else to go on the base. I looked around and settled on the Greek Gods selection from Wargames Foundry, I needed two sets, some for the base and six for Strategy Intervention markers, they turned up and they were perfect.

Rally Point, Bacchus, Hades and Zeus.

Aphrodite, Hephestus, Hermes, Apollo, Poseidon and Ares.

 At the same time as I ordered up the Gods I decided to get the next bunch of troops for the army, I needed some javelin men to double as normal skirmishers and elephant escorts, I looked at several manufacturers but settled on Wargames Foundry due to the varied range. I have relegated Foundry to the back of the queue up until now but I was wrong, these figures are lovely, I was also impressed by the fact I ordered them Friday lunchtime and they arrived Saturday lunchtime, it was the same with the Gods, just great. After some deliberation I went with A&A Miniatures for my Galatian warband, I was not going to bother with these mercenaries but thought better of it as it won't hurt to have the choice of a bunch of hard hitting barbarians in the army. Next up were Theurophori, Aventine used to do these unarmoured but the new ones have linothorax armour, I wanted unarmoured so this time chose Crusader Miniatures, I am looking forward to painting these. Last but not least I will pick up two scythed chariots from Michael and Simon of 1st Corps at York in a week or so.

Elephant escorts on the tray (although the real tray has been retired).

This leaves Generals and the cavalry still to get along with a second elephant, these will all be Aventine once the new cavalry are released, Companions and cataphracts. I am also tempted to get some characters from Foundry, you can never have enough officers. I received some army lists covering Successor armies from the death of Alexander right up until the arrival of the Romans, so with the addition of several more very colourful units I can field some very interesting combinations, but that will have to wait.

I got the book by Bar-Kochva on the Seleucid army, the library had to get it for me as it is almost impossible to get otherwise and to be honest I am wondering what all the fuss is about, he mainly concentrates on the top end of the army and I at least have not garnered a lot of useful information for a wargamer out of it, I still have many questions which are going unanswered.

Anyway, I can field 2,500 points for now, so you may see the Seleucids on the table very shortly.

It was the French Hans.

Bolt Action at the club last night and as usual I sat down and sorted a list out an hour before I left the house, I was up against Simon's Russians and he always turns up with a sniper, flamethrower and a tank, usually a nicely painted up KV1. I decided therefore I would try something different and went for an all infantry force carrying their own anti-tank weapons and several in each squad with the new assault rifles, I wanted to put some hurt on the large Russian squads. I thought we had parted last week agreeing 800 points but Simon had brought 500, oops, a rethink was required, well not really but I had to lose some of my troops. I threw away the assault rifles, the panzerschreck (damn) and a halftrack. I therefore came to the field of battle with four squads of grenadiers with panzerfausts, end of. I faced three Russian squads and the KV1.

The terrain was more like Normandy than the Russian steppe, we are going to have to look at this in future, so I was quite happy to take advantage of all the cover to get close to the tank and use my numerical advantage to kill squads, that was the plan. We had the usual three objectives, one each and one in the middle. I moved one squad towards the crossroads and the other three advanced on my right.

I got my chance to shoot at the tank, I pushed forward the crossroads squad and loosed off two panzerfausts, dink, bang, but as the smoke cleared it was obvious the tank had not been penetrated, my squad was now in  trouble. On the right I moved up and sure enough as I hoped I caught one Russian squad and wiped it out in a couple of turns. Once again I got a shot at the tank, dink, now all these were good shots, all on the flank of the beast but only one panzerfaust had gone off so far.

As turn six neared Simon had moved a squad up to the crossroads where it took a lot of pins but held its ground or rather hugged the ground, the tank rumbled closer to my right flank and I got another opportunity to fire two more panzerfausts at point blank range, dink, dink again. The game ended there with the crossroads contested, we were left with a pile of 'what ifs' but time was up.

I was very pleased with the way my infantry had performed and with maybe another couple of turns I could have finished off a second Soviet squad, but I only had one panzerfaust left to nobble the tank, I would then have had to assault it, a dodgy proposition. Once again in this game the -2 for Down slowed the action and made hitting a target very difficult, the tank machine guns for instance proved almost useless if I got the opportunity to hit the dirt, so the beast was really no threat at all. I think if you play against a regular opponent and both agree to tweeks in the rules you would get an even better game out of Bolt Action. Anyway, I hope to get a  game soon against Julian's Italians with my British, Julian has also just invested in 'Gangs of Rome' so I will get a chance to play that as well in the coming weeks.

Next week it will be X-Wing and I hope at last to get a home game against Kevin at War and Conquest, real life has conspired against us this month.

Oh, and why are the French getting the blame, well no doubt some had sabotaged my particular consignment of panzerfausts on the factory floor.

Too Much To Chew

Bitterly cold night last night to go to the club, sleet on the car and a biting wind. We had organised a four man game of Dead Man's Hand which had to be modified due to the arrival of a couple of guys with nothing to do. We amended the scenario for six gangs, three Law and three Baddies, the Law had to get two prisoners from Julian's magnificent railway station to the jail at the other end of town, we, the baddies, had to stop this and free the prisoners.

I had the Mexicans again, I never learn, and was between one of the posse's and the jail, I set up to hopefully stop them in their tracks, however a rifle shot from the jail forced me to move further into the alley (Colorado and Stumpy were in the jail according to Rob, Rio Bravo, geddit?) A very brave lawman from the jail tried to sneak up behind me and I let loose a hail of lead at point blank range but hit nothing! I did bring him down the next turn but I also lost my head honcho doing so.

I was now receiving fire from the advancing posse and continued to lose men while inflicting almost no damage, I really must change my ammo supplier for the Mexicans. Cut down to only a couple of Banditos my boys got out of Dodge.

On the other side of main street the Law found themselves up against two groups of bad guys and it looked for a time they would be overwhelmed, a small group from the jail tried to intervene but were too slow. A hectic run for safety commenced with lead flying everywhere but on target. Simon's Desperado's made heroic efforts to release their man and were foiled at the last moment by Julian putting a bullet in his head.

According to the Law they had won, but as it was my game I declared that the murder of the prisoner had shown the dark side of law enforcement and therefore the game was a draw. Not a bad game but the addition of two extra players slowed it down too much, this would have been fine for an afternoon bash but not a club game given that time is precious. Lesson learned. Julian had tarted up his 4Ground buildings and done an excellent job, I shall have to follow suit when I get the time.

Just after Christmas it was my sons 40th birthday, we got him some Eddie Cochrane memorabilia but my wife insisted I paint up a Robert the Bruce figure as I had bitterly disappointed him when I sold my Scots army a year or so back. Graham can play a tune but not a wargame was my reply, it fell on deaf ears as did my insistence that model soldiers do not come in 200mm scale on a horse just like the statue at Bannockburn and no matter what she said it was not going to happen. I did however find a 54mm (that's normal love) figure and painted it up for him.

I have at last finished my third phalanx, it was way behind schedule with the Festive Season and then my manflu, but I completed it this morning at around 0730 hrs, it was weighing on my mind. I was going to move on the fourth and last phalanx but have decided to have some fun and am going to paint up my initiative markers and rally point and possibly some support troops I have on the way before the heavy stuff. I was at a loss as to what to use but settled eventually on Greek Gods which I got from Wargames Foundry, they arrived today and are very nice.

Kampfgruppe Anders

Before we had our epic War and Conquest struggle yesterday we played a Bolt Action game on the Saturday, I haven't played BA in a while and Stewart has only a couple of games under his belt but we had all day. I am not keen on the scenarios used in the rules so I decided that the British had made a successful attack on a village in Normandy and were awaiting the inevitable German counterattack, this attack would be an armoured Kampfgruppe from 2nd Panzer Division. The British would get reinforcements but they would be unsure what would turn up and on which road and when.

I was the British and Stewart took the Germans, I originally had three infantry squads with some heavy weapons support and an artillery observer, I had to rely on a 6pdr AT gun and a Cromwell for anti-tank weapons, I had an armoured car also. The Germans came on in numbers with five squads, two in halftracks and two in trucks, they also had an armoured car and a small halftrack as well, the real punch came with a Panther, Panzer IV and StuG III.


As they arrived the Panther took a long range shot at the Cromwell which was behind a stone wall, the shot bounced off but it had given me a shock, however I decided to leave the Cromwell where it was hoping the Panther would not be a lucky tank. I did withdraw the armoured car as it was looking down the barrel of the StuG. I had set up my 6pdr to deny the main road to the Germans but of course as they now came down both sides it was in a useless position.

The tank duel continued and I hit the Panther but my shell bounced off, I think I hit it twice and got nowhere. The Germans now poured fire on my advanced squad behind a hedge, due to their cover and being afraid to pop their heads up they took very little casualties, I moved the armoured car over to this part of the battlefield hoping to use it against the halftracks and German infantry as and when they broke my front line. In his urge to kill my guys Stewart forgot my PIAT team hiding behind a tree, the enemy armoured car ventured into range and bang, it went on fire and its turret jammed, but it was not knocked out, my armoured car also took a shot and missed. Around this point the Cromwell brewed up from a Panther shot.

The German assault on my right was not pressed as much as on the left, I loosed mortar rounds, small arms and dropped a barrage on these troops, all I got out of it was setting the Opel truck on fire, I did hit the top of the StuG but did no damage, I was most dischuffed. The StuG eventually gave me an opportunity to assault it with one of my squads, these brave lads clambered all over the vehicle but sadly to no effect apart from dispersing from their efforts. There was now nothing to stop the StuG turning on my centre squad.

I did get more British troops and the first to arrive was a Sherman tank on the left hand road, I drove it into the same area as the burning Cromwell, I also moved the 6pdr to this side but left it in the middle of the bridge sealing off the road, what was the chances of more stuff coming on that side? Pretty good as it happened, a Churchill now rumbled on on the same road, gah! By now I only had one squad in the village and the last one was coming under increasing pressure, seeing as I had backed my armour into a corner and it was move six we called a halt, Kampfgruppe Anders had won back the village, my famous curry and the pub beckoned.

I would play this again but instead of rolling for each reinforcement and what turned up I would make one roll for all of them, albeit they might come on on different roads still, I would also start rolling perhaps from move 3 and maybe make the game a little longer as we used a big table and a lot of troops. A good four man game perhaps. One thing which did stand out was the change in going Down, this now gives a -2 rather than a -1 to hit and this allowed my front line infantry to survive for far longer than they should have, we think we will go back to -1 for home games in future.

A good weekend of wargaming, more tomorrow night and back on the bloody War and Conquest field on Thursday, the year is picking up. Oh and I am now 99% OK.