19C - War of the Antipodes - Attack on Sydney

The aggressive Victorians have completed their plans and now are starting the war against NSW.

Some of the Victorian government were unhappy that the attack will be a surprise and said that the civilised practice is to declare war first. The Minister of War stared them down and stated. “We will pass the declaration of war to the Government of NSW when we occupy the NSW Parliament House! Just before they sign the surrender documents.”

NSW defenders are:

Two ray guns and a company of infantry in Sydney Observatory

Two fortress guns – Heavy Artillery in Dawes Point Battery

Two companies of infantry, one squadron of cavalry, one artillery and one Gatling gun at Hyde Park and Hyde Park Barracks

Two medium artillery guns on Fort Denison

Two medium artillery guns and one company of infantry in Fort Macquarie.

Victorian attackers are:

Three companies of infantry, Gatling guns and artillery landed on the east side of the Botanical Gardens.

Four Airships. One armed with two medium artillery and the others each carrying a company of infantry.

Plans.

Victoria has landed by airship in secret a force on the east side of the Botanical gardens. Hidden in the darkness they await the appointed start time. The landers returned to their embarkation point to load up with Infantry and then go back to Sydney for the assault.

Victoria's plans. Objectives are red stars. Red arrows are the first phase and yellow arrows the second phase.

The Victorian airship troops will land on Fort Denison, Fort Macquarie and Dawes point battery and take them by coup-de-main. With these forts captured the remaining Victorian ships at sea can safely dock a Circular Quay and land the follow  up troops of EMU’s and Cavalry plus additional artillery, Gatling guns and Infantry replacements.

The Victorian airships

The troops landed in the Botanical Gardens will march across them to capture the Governor General in his home and also the NSW Parliament building. They will also threaten the Hyde Park Barracks to prevent the troops there reinforcing their comrades in Fort Macquarie or Dawes point.

The Victorian troops from the Botanical Gardens

Once the immediate objectives are secured they will march south and create a line across the city to defend the unloading of the EMU’s and other troops. Hopefully the NSW troops in Hyde Park Barracks will destroy themselves trying to get through the defence line.

As soon as Fort Macquarie and Dawes Point Battery are captured the airships will return to base for more reinforcements and guns to take the place of those destroyed in each of the forts. The Fort Denison troops will be transported over to the city once it is taken and reinforce the assault there. The remaining gunship airship will stay on patrol over the city to destroy any resistance.

NSW Plans

NSW’s leaders are feeling confident and the troops are not on high alert. With the announcement of their new ray guns to be made early the next month they think Victoria has missed its chance to act. To protect their secret ray guns they have placed a company of infantry there. Victoria is unaware of this new force and have left them out of their plans.

Fort Denison has two guns facing out to the entrance of the harbour. Dawes Point Battery has the main guns of the defence but they also face out towards the entrance. Only Fort Macquarie has the artillery and infantry available for all round defence. The guns cover the approaches to Circular Quay.

The main force in the city is in Hyde Park Barracks with another company of infantry camped in Hyde Park. The NSW army commander is also there ready to lead.

NSW troops deployed

Special Rules.

Victoria will move first but their placement on the board will be their first move. All NSW troops and guns will start at red reliability and must use the action points they get each turn (if any) to raise their reliability to blue – each action point raises reliability by one level. If during this process they are attacked or use their action points for movement or fire they can no longer raise their reliability. This means that Victoria has to strike hard while NSW are still getting their act together.

Turns 1 and 2

As the sun rises in the east the Victorian army moves onto the board.

NSW starts to wake up.

The Victorian Armoured Infantry land on Fort Macquarie and assault the defenders

Dawes Point Battery under attack.

Fort Denison under attack

NSW is quickly overwhelmed

Turn 3

Victorian Turn

At the end of the Victorian turn the Victorian flag flies over most of their objectives. The Governor General’s Home, Fort Denison, Dawes Point Battery and NSW Parliament house are all flying the Victorian flag and under their control. The battle is going well and fighting in Fort Macquarie should soon be over and the ships waiting at sea can approach and unload the occupation force.

NSW Parliament House is occupied and Hyde Park Barracks is attacked.

NSW Turn

The Victorian Airship is flying down Macquarie Street with its guns pointing menacingly to each side. The NSW Cavalry squadron moves out of Hyde Park barracks to go to the assistance of Fort Macquarie. They are then followed by the infantry company from Hyde Park. The NSW officers and troops look up in awe at this monstrous machine floating above. They know what it is but were not expecting one in Sydney. And why is it flying the Victorian flag!!!!

Victorian Airship flies down Macquarie Street

The Captain on the deck of the airship is feeling smug and secure, knowing that he is in the most powerful vessel in Australia, immune, he supposes, to any realistic threat. He bellows out orders to his guns to get ready to fire on the NSW troops below.

Just then, from the Sydney Observatory comes two great coherent light beams that smash into the airship causing mayhem and destruction. “What the hell was that!” screams the captain, “prepare for evasive manoeuvres! Get me engineering on the speaker!” 

His ship is barely afloat. Then another two beams of light crash into his ship sending it rocking but seemingly no more damage is done.

Below the NSW troops tentatively cheer. They hope that whatever did the damage to the airship is on their side.

"Target acquired and capacitors at 100% sir!" "Fire!"
From Observatory Hill the whole city is visible.

Turn 4

Victoria

Alas for the Captain of the Victorian Gunship, Engineering does not respond to his frantic calls (he rolls a one and gets no activation points), the airship moves forward a half move and remains in line of sight of the Observatory.

With Dawes Point under their control, the Victorian infantry urgently heads towards the Observatory while the airship that brought them there turns and smartly exits the battle, flying low and dodging the many ships in Sydney Harbour it manages to escape the Observatory guns. Soon it is flying safely away to get reinforcements.

Likewise on Fort Denison, the Victorian flag is left flying and the infantry company re-embark on their airship and head for Circular Quay to assist with the rest of the battle. Once again with threat of the Ray guns the airship makes good time (it rolled a six for three activation points) and is able to unload on Circular Quay.

In Fort Macquarie, the Armoured Infantry only get one activation, no doubt caused by the consternation of the Observatory firing, so they can only fire at the artillery guns and cause some damage.

NSW

The first Ray gun on the Observatory again targets the stricken airship with two blasts. The first blast hits dead on with potentially 8 damage, but the Victorians make all their saving rolls and the ship just rocks under the bombardment, its Captain still frantically screaming at engineering. 

The second blast also hits dead on with another 8 damage points, despite making another 7 saves the eighth save fails and the ship crashes to the ground in flames on Macquarie Street just in front of the NSW cavalry.

The Victorian Generals shake their heads and wonder what else is waiting in store for them. Only 5 minutes ago everything was going to plan.

Turn 5

The Victorians race towards the Sydney Observatory to knock out the Ray guns. 

The NSW red coats form a perimeter around the Observatory while the Victorians rush from all directions. 

The NSW troops, still unaware that Fort Macquarie has fallen look to go down Pitt Street now that Macquarie Street has been blocked.

The Victorian airship crashed in Macquarie Street

Turn 6 and 7

Observatory Hill is surrounded and assaulted from both sides and eventually falls, but not before the crews of the Ray guns have made their escape after destroying their equipment.

The Victorians assault the Observatory

NSW are forced to retreat under the relentless Victorian assault and build a final line around the Townhall. Everything else is under the control of the Victorians.

The final positions. Only the Townhall remains out of Victorian hands.

So the battle ends. 

Will NSW counter attack before the Victorians get their reinforcements ashore? The Victorian Generals hope that there are no more surprises from the NSW army.  They set up their command post in the dining room of NSW Parliament house and discuss their next move.

Elvish Longbow Fascists ELF

The Elves have built a civilisation based on the concepts of beauty, elegant design, high culture, epic coolness, total superiority, and a complete disdain for any of the other races.

Their leaders are a family of tyrants, the WhiteCheats, who have passed the superbly designed and elegant crown down their family over thousands of years. So well designed the blood stains wash right off.

The cities of the Elves are creations of great wonder and fantastic design. It is a pity so few of the other races ever see them as it would raise their opinion of the elves from a distinct loathing to an envious dislike. The Elves are very particular of who they let into their cities and towns which are surrounded by woods and lakes of great natural beauty. The Elves happily slaughter anyone they find sneaking about them and it is a favourite pastime for the younger elves to lurk around the woods, enticing unsuspecting visitors to enter, to lead them astray, and then kill them in entertaining ways.

They naturally hold the other races in contempt. The Orcs are crude and disgusting, the Dwarves are disgusting socialists and despised as a race of regicides, and the humans barely tolerated.

The only members of the other races that the Elves will voluntarily talk to are wizards, who by dint of great knowledge and skills can be considered to be worthy of some respect, despite not being elves.

The main weapons of the elves are the bow and the sword but they also employ wizards on the battlefield.

The Elvish Army

Elvish swords men

An Elvish Heroine

The Elvish General

An Elvish Hero

Elvish Bowmen

Elvish Bowmen

Elvish Wizard

19C - War of the Antipodes - VSF Rules

Background

To play my VSF campaign between NSW and Victoria I needed a set of rules and I decided to write my own.

Link to Rules

I wanted something relatively simple, of only a few pages (similar to FUBAR) but which had enough rules for morale, machinery reliability (from GASLIGHT) and also able to manage reasonably sized armies of toy soldiers.

I was not going to attempt to create a realistic set of rules with lots of detail as these would be very long and time consuming both to write and to play. To this end the rules represent many factors in a very limited fashion or ignore them completely. Hopefully I still get some of the “flavour” of the period they are set in.

I feel that reliability of machinery is important for this era and it was something I wanted to include in the rules. However I do not want it ruining the game, if due to bad dice rolls, a machine can just sit there all game doing nothing. 

To cover unit morale and experience I decided to combine machine reliability with human training and morale for a single “reliability” indicator that would cover them both.

As casualties or damage are taken reliability will decrease for both troops and machinery. This is reflected by the decrease in reliability levels during the game. Reliability effects the ability of units to carry out actions and their effectiveness in combat and so is also a proxy for morale.

Action points were included to give some variability in units’ reactions and to create some of Clausewitz’s friction or fog of war. Each turn units will roll to see how many action points they get that turn and then can spend them performing different actions.

Action point generation are biased to give each unit the chance of acting each turn. High reliability / trained troops are likely to do more than less reliable/trained troops and to ensure that troops will not stand around (staring at each other in embarrassment) both high and medium reliability troops will always do something.

Action points also give the opportunity for highly trained undamaged units to out shoot less trained or battle damaged units as each turn they are likely to fire more and with greater effect.

I also like the idea that when your troops are out of enemy line of sight your troops can move further as this gives more reason to hold reserves, switch attacks, etc. than if troops can only move the same distance all the time. On a large enough board you can do flank marches with some (but not complete) confidence that the troops will get there in time. To do this I have included the ability to move multiple times if a unit is only in the enemy’s LOS for one of the moves - as long as you get enough action points.

Multiple moves can give an attacker an advantage but only at the risk of an attack becoming disjointed as some troops move faster or more often than others.

Suppression is inspired by that in FUBAR where initial losses are not permanent but can be recovered. Action points spent on removal of suppression levels can represent damage control on machines or taking cover for other troops. If the decision is to press on regardless of the damage or fire then the next casualties or damage will be more permanent.

The markers on the bases are to remove the need for bookkeeping or having dice next to the figures, or in the case of FUBAR having troops on their side. Using the blue, green, yellow and red bars as markers is inspired from computer games where these indicators are common on screen.

I didn’t want any type of troop type to dominate the game so I think they all have trade-offs and benefits. The practice battles seemed to go the right way and to be reasonably balanced. The other side of troop types is being able to represent everything but without having too many rules or special cases. I think this has happened and the generic nature of the weaponry, saves for damage, and the reliability factors mean that many things can be represented within the rules.

Army Commanders were added to the rules simply because I had painted and based them for each of my armies. The rules give them the ability to affect the battle, to “rally” troops and get them to do more, but only in a limited area. These abilities seems to be consistent with the role of commanders in a battle.

The rules have turned out to be fairly “bloody” and combat and unit destruction is fairly quick. I think that this makes a better game (though not very realistic).

Combat is also biased towards the unit that fires first and in a fair fight, the unit that fires first will win. However, this seems to conform to reality and just proves that when attacking you need to concentrate against defenders with at least double the forces.