Colonial Flags

I managed to find some authentic flags for the period:

Austro Hungarian:


British:


French:


German:


Italian:


Japanese:


Russian:


United States:

There were only 45 stars in 1900

Some other flags of interest.
Russian Navy:



Italian Navy:


German Navy:

After a few days off I have been busy.

All the Austrians are painted and based thats 5 officers and 30 men. Also on the painting table are 48 British, just need varnishing and basing. More figures are on order to get the correct amount.

43 Germans also on painting table to go with the 1 officer and 8 men I already have. Onto the Austrian Hungarians, already painted are 1 officer and 8 Hungarians. I have undercoated 4 officers and 22 men.

I have out an order in for some more Russians as I am short of a few for these, I have sufficient for the other Nationalities French and Japanese. I know Rich is supplying Japanese but for completeness I am painting these up to.

I have the Nordenfeldt gun painted, so have ordered Maxim Gun, Colt MG and a field gun for the Italians. Also ordered are a number of sandbags from Ironclad Miniatures.

Its all going very well, and I have more time to take off so am really into the swing of painting again, the good weather helps.

More Boxers

Alan Owen has sent some pictures of the Boxers he is painting for the Gauntlet game:






I have got a dew days off work now so will get stuck into painting some more colonials.

Crossing the Lippe, August 1985

A group of Lancashire and Yorkshire-based SOTCW members today put on a Cold War Commander game at the Hammerhead show in Newark. The venue's a bit gloomy but hopeflly these pics will give an idea of how it went.

Here's Rob Connolly setting up the Soviet forces.

The white lines are ridge lines; they block line of sight in a more realistic way than the small hills usually seen on wargames tables.
The scenario involved a Soviet Motor Rifle Regiment (less one MR battalion but reinforced by an East German T-55 battalion) advancing from the north (left of table in this shot) and attempting to establish a bridgehead on the southern bank of the Lippe.

We diced randomly for air superiority each turn. A Luftwaffe F-104G showed when the NATO side had air superiority.

One of my new Su-15 Flagons indicated Warsaw Pact air superiority.

Phil Gray particularly asked for this shot - Soviet Air Force menaces Stuart Adams's Chieftain squadron.

Here we see the Warsaw Pact forces approaching the river. They continue to take heavy casualties among the Motor Rifle Battalions, many infantry dying whilst still mounted in their BTR-70s. The T-55s and T-62s are unable to do much to the enemy Chieftains.

T-62s attempt to cross a hastily laid bridge in the teeth of heavy fire from the Carl Gustavs of British infantry lurking in the woods.

In the west, The T-55s move up to cross the railway bridge. They were to get across only to roll double sixes on their next command roll. The resulting command blunder led to them withdrawing back across the bridge never to return!
Not long after this shot was taken the Soviet force reached its break point and failed its next command roll. The British had held the River line!

Thanks to Rob Connolly, Stuart Adams, and Phil Gray for playing. It was good to meet up with some other members (Hi, Rob!) and some potential members.

The Japanese have arrived!

I finished painting my Japanese contingent for the game.

As per our decision to go for a 1:1 ratio for the defenders, I`ve done 24 men and four officers (including the two visitors).

Most of the figures are Combat Miniatures 20mm from their Russo-Japnaese War range.

The bulk of my force, painted up as line infantry in tropical uniform and light order equipment. The yellow hat band indicates a line regiment, the red shoulder boards are for their infantry branch of service.

Imperial Guard in full kit and dress uniform. Red hat band indicates they are Imperial Guard, once again red shoulder flashes for infantry branch of service.

Naval ratings (Elheim Figures - British Naval Landing Party)

Imperial Guard Lt. Haraj (converted standard bearer), Naval Capt. Morita (Elheim naval officer)

Capt. Ando, Col. Shirba - military attache (painted up with green hat band and shoulder boards as a cavalry officer)

First Game

On Thursday night Will and I tried our first Boxer game using the figures I already had together with Terrain we had lying around. I had written a set of simple rules and had a few ideas I wanted to try out.

The table was set up with several legations:


The rules for the Colonials was using a D6 to hit. Range of 12" hitting on a 5. During the game we amended this to 0-6" hit on 4, 6-12" hit on 5,6 and 12-18" hit on a 6. Boxers who were poor shots only hit on a 6. Troops in the open get no saving roll. Behind sandbags and boxes save on a 4+ and behind a hard wall save on a 3+



Melee was by rolling a D6 for each figure in contact and adding all dice together. For each multiple of 6 a figure in the open is killed. Behind sand bags each multiple of 9 kills a figure and behind a wall each multiple of 12 killed a figure.

The basic combat rules worked very well.

D3 groups of boxers arrived per turn. At first we used a clock dial (on a D12) for arrivals. We tweaked this through the game so that boxers arrived in the Foo:


We settled on the numbers of boxers in a group as 8 + D6. There was certainly pressures on the legation.


Morale for the boxers was 2D6. when they took a casualty they had to score equal or less than the number of boxers left. Its surprising how a small group of 4 or 5 boxers can keep coming!!! If they failed a morale test and the group was very small it was removed from the table. larger groups that retreated stopped out of range (or joined another group). Each turn the group grew by 1D3 figures. Once they reached 12 they could advance again.

We tried a couple of method of ammunition limitations and we settled on a system I designed some time ago. At the start of the game each legation has 3 ammo chips (we used counters but for the final game we will use wooden cubes from german board games). Each turn a legation could fire as many times as they wished (up to 3). Now here's the kicker. At the end of each turn you have to draw new ammo chips from a bag, however, there are a number of dummy chips in there of a different colour. So you may get no ammo for next turn!!



Next turn you can throw all the dummy chips in and draw back up to 3. It gave a real dilemma for legations do they fire at long range or at medium range how many times do you fire. The British legation did run out of ammo at a critical time, yikes and the Italian legation was abandoned:



We also had random event by putting 2 or 3 different coloured chips in the bag too, fires to legations, the finding of the international gun etc.



The other thing we did was recovery of casualties. For each casualty you threw a D6 if a 6 is rolled you got one of your wounded back. If your legation was on fire you could not get them back so in encouraged the colonial players to put out the fires. Likewise if you abandoned the legation you could not get casualties back.

The game went really well and legations were under pressure and had difficult decisions to make.

The final photo shows Wills wall which we agreed he could extend and we'll use it as the city wall for 1 length of the table