Armies and enemies of the Portuguese in Africa 1415-1670 This review of warfare focuses on south central Africa, from what is Angola (west central Africa) today to Mozambique (south-east Africa). This area is what the Portuguese referred to as a the Pink Map during the Scramble for Africa although I do a small diversion to Ethiopia. The review is not complete but I figured I should publish it as is and refine over time. This is the period before the Scramble for Africa, the early period of the Portuguese explorers – the period some historians call Medieval Africa.
General
In
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Jamie couldn’t make it to our regular meet up, so Adam brought along his fresh off the painting blocks figures for the Burma Campaign and I set up a pick up game that I thought would be interesting. Japanese Imperial Army and British 14th Army. Adam doesn’t yet have enough figures for Mac’s Missions in Burma, so this is a fairly small game in Crossfire terms.
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Bruce Stewart has a collection of Kiwis for the Italian Campaign. He posted a couple of Crossfire after action reports on Facebook and gave me permission to repost them here. One of them is for my own 2 Companies a Side – A Generic Crossfire Scenario. The second is a scenario from the Italian 1944. Bruce games with 1/56 figures and 1/48 – 1/50 vehicles. Being from Facebook these are predominantly photographic reports.
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A while ago I created a couple of generic scenarios to play test new elements of Crossfire . One of them featured three companies attacking two and is called the amazingly creative name 2-3 Companies a Side – A Generic Crossfire Scenario. Andrew Fisher and friends played this scenario and Andrew sent through a battle report. Unlike the original this game features Germans and Poles in the 1939 Polish Campaign. Most words are Andrews.
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Day 2 of the 2019 World Wide Stalingrad Campaign for Crossfire is upon us. This is, more or less, the Crossfire material that Stephen Phenow sent the Finchley Wargaming Club. I have changed the format and put it into my normal template. And I’ve added a few bits that seemed missing. Where possible I’ve used Steve P’s words.
The Germans have replaced their depleted battalion with a fresh one and given them more combat engineers and more heavy artillery. The Moving Clock (Timeslip) is now under German control. The Soviets had their infantry refresh but lost support elements e.g.
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Chris Harrod, Jamie Wish, Adam Landa and I played Day 1 of the 2019 World Wide Stalingrad Campaign based on Steve Phenow’s Briefing. Crossfire of course.
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This is, more or less, the Crossfire material that Stephen Phenow sent the Finchley Wargaming Club for Day 1 of the 2019 World Wide Stalingrad Campaign for Crossfire. I have changed the format and put it into my normal template. And I’ve added a few bits that seemed missing. Where possible I’ve used Steve P’s words.
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I’ve already posted on How many figures will I need to start playing Crossfire?. The answer is about 40 figures per side, about 80 total. But following a comment by Andrés F., after my Play Test of Mac’s Crossfire Missions v3, I thought it would be interesting to calculate how many figures are necessary to play Macs Missions on the Eastern Front. We’re talking pick up games for Crossfire here. If you want to be able to play all main force options and all the reinforcements, the answer is, quite a lot of figures.
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My older daughter (Dana) is in Year 7 and in January she came home with some home work that got me excited … she had to make a castle. And Dana wanted to do a Motte and Bailey Castle. Oh, wow, modeller heaven. We only had two weeks so we got stuck in.
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Back in 2014 I blogged about What to use for Crests in Crossfire. To be fair I didn’t really like any of the ideas but the “Long tiny hills” had some merit. So I did a version 2 of them and I’m very happy.
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Andrew Fisher and a couple of friends played my Crossfire at Position Four: The Village P Scenario. In the absence of Russian figures they had to substitute Polish and moved the date back to 1939. And that meant replacing the StuGs with Panzer Is and IIs – totally appropriate for the Polish Campaign. Andrew kindly sent through an account of the battle. Judging from the battle report it seemed to be a good game. All words are Andrew’s.
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Decades ago I purchased some lead headstones from Military Miniatures in New Zealand (now defunct). I figured I should do something with them. So here you go … a home made cemetery in 15mm.
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Adam is keen on the 14th Army in the Burma Campaign. Accounts of the campaign feature pagodas (i.e. temples) in the villages. Luckily you can buy roughly 1/100th scale pagodas from pet stores (or Amazon or eBay). Unfortunately, these are all Chinese or Japanese. And it doesn’t take long on google to discover Burmese pagodas are unique. They feature a golden umbrella in a variety of patterns but basically a spire with wider and narrower bands around the spire. Gold of course. And the base is a white dome. Hmm. I can’t buy one, so I’ll make one.
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I have a long term interest in the Portuguese colonial exploration. Amongst a sea of possibilities, two locations stand out for me: Malacca on the Malaya peninsular and Sri Lanka. So I wondered what 15mm Wargaming Figures are available for Malay and/or Sinhalese. It happens that most people use the same figures for both so I can imagine a combined force that mixes the figure options. So here are the options and a bit of a commentary / comparison at the end.
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The Crossfire supplement Hit-the-Dirt introduces Boulder Fields and Rock Fields as Crossfire Terrain for scenarios in the Italian Campaign. My post Types of Terrain Features in Crossfire explains how they are used in the game. In this post I explain how I made mine. Simple but excessive is the summary. Simple because I start with actual rocks. Excessive because I base, paint, and flock.
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