Fred’s 2024 Painting and Gaming log

[fred.]

Eisenhower - Western Desert DAK vs 8th Army

We decided to play Eisenhower agin this week - the 4th game since its release - we're clearly enjoying these rules!

This time switched the action to the Western Desert 1941/42, for a fictional game, using broadly historical formations. What was surprising is that you can get all the DAK on the table for a Rommel game! I based the British forces on 8th Army troops for Operation Crusader.

The Germans were the strategic offence, and as such had 25pts more to play with, which was probably spent on their forces being largely veteran, rather than in more units.



Early in turn 1, the DAK are attacking from the far table edge. They have the fairly large Italian Ariete Division at the back left, then 5th Light, 21st Pz Div and 15th Pz Div from left to right, and on the far right the 90th light which is all infantry.

The Germans had placed two objectives on the left hand side of the battlefield (which is a little larger than normal at 10x14 squares, as the grid on my desert mat is 12cm). I had placed on in the mountains on the right. The map is from one of the generic ones provided with the rules. Red objectives are German held, those coloured green in post production are British held.

The 5th Light has already successfully attacked 1st Army Tank Brigade pushing them back, and capturing the undefended objective on the left. The deployment order, is defender, attacker, then finally objectives. So the Defender has to spread fairly thin to hope to cover the likely location of the two attacker placed objectives.

The British have 7th Armoured Division in tactical reserve, 22nd Armoured Brigade in the centre, and 1st South African Infantry in the mountains on the right. 2nd NZ div is off table in reserve.


DAK success!

This is the start of turn 2 - And the British have been heavily pushed back - objective markers have moved in the night phase the DAK did capture the 2 on the left in turn 1. The Germans were able to concentrate force (and roll some very good dice) in this turn leading to some big advances. I don't recall why a German division (probably 21st Pz Div) is so far back - I suspect it only had 1 Op available so after attacking couldn't exploit. On the left Ariete were able to make a transit move through the soft ground.

At the rear 2nd NZ Div have arrived (I rolled doubles for reinforcements so the whole formation was available to deploy).




The New Zealanders reinforce the defensive line, and 7th Armoured make some local counter attacks.

On the right 90th Light attacks into the mountains vs the South Africans - fairly ineffectively.

Both sides are starting to suffer a lot of attrition (the hex makers are hits, the brown side is 1, the yellow 2 - units only have 3 hits). In the night phase Exhausted (yellow) units can recover to worn by spending 1 of your stockpiles.


Starting to reach stalemate - some of the German units are now digging in, to avoid counter attacks. In the game prepared units fight first in combat, which can be quite significant. British Air strikes are slowly blunting attacks as well.


The British shuffle fresh NZ units on to the objectives - so even though I was suffering losses, the Germans couldn't take the objectives. On the right the SA troops are getting battered by heavy artillery strikes. With the Germans taking this objective.

Whilst the first turn was 2:1 to the Germans, the next 3 where 2:1 to the British - so the Germans trail 5:7


Yellow exhausted markers everywhere as both sides have run out of stockpiles to recover their troops. The German attack in the centre has petered out, they just don't have enough fresh units to have a decisive hit. I do wonder if they should have kept pressing even at the loss of units, just to whittle down the British forces.

On the right the 90th Light should have taken the objective again, and forced a 6th turn - but they had been too confident and not moved their second regiment up to be in position to attack! So my 1 exhausted unit managed to cling on, due to some solid defensive dice rolling that meant they won the combat against their attackers so weren't forced to retreat.

The British score 3:0 this round so handily won 10:5, even though losses where massively in the German's favour  - who only lost 2 units vs 12 British



Another great game.

I was really pushed in the first couple of turns, and all my reinforcements arriving at the start of turn 2 (and my troops having fallen back so far they could easily get to the front line) was very helpful.

Later in the game I was tempted to counter attack the Germans, especially where they had exhausted units, but the risk always seemed too high, so I largely sat in defensive positions absorbing the attacks by shuffling fresh units in.

I was pleased at how quickly I was able to research some historically plausible forces and get them turned into Eisenhower forces.

[Steve J]

Great looking game once again Fred !

[steve_holmes_11]

It's great seeing all these Eisenhower games.
I have the rules, but have not played, for lack of enthusiastic opponents.

I get the impression that the combat has a lot in common with old Avalon Hill games.
Meanwhile the supply, and stifling owes a lot to the Japanese board game Go.

I would love to see more about your methods to create scenarios.
Scenarios are somewhat lacking in the official rules.

[fred.]

Thanks Steve and Steve 

Shame you haven't got an opponent to play against Steve H - though they may be fairly solo friendly as there isn't really any hidden info in the game, and the defender is often quite passive.

Scenario wise

The latest Western Desert one was the quickest to put together as it largely followed the Fictional Game rules within Eisenhower. Where it varied was I had a look in an Osprey and on Wikipedia to find unit names and structures.

Given how high level and abstract the rules are it's fairly quick to count up the number of tank and infantry battalions in a formation, check how much artillery it has - which gives you the base. The only question I have had is what to do with Recon and Anti-Tank formations. In the Desert game I decided to count the German recon formations as Mechanised Infantry - giving them good attack range, but not that hard hitting. I ignored any equivalent formations on the British side (not least as they weren't obvious on the Wiki page) but also I think from a doctrinal perspective they weren't used as battle formations.

These unit counts then mapped pretty closely to the Army Lists given in Eisenhower (which is pleasing). I did find my forces landed about half-way between a medium and a large game - but it was trivial to work out what the points difference between Offence and Defence should be.

This probably took about 30-45mins to do - it was surprisingly quick.

For terrain I rolled 2d12 to get two maps from those supplied, the first didn't feel very western desert, the second fitted much better.


For the Sedan game, it was a lot more involved.

For the terrain, the map in the Osprey France 1940 book was a very good match size wise for an Eisenhower battlefield. Then it was a case of sketching a grid on top of a copy of the map - I drew this directly on, and I think I was lucky in how I aligned it. I think I should have spent a bit longer aligning the grid to the map so that key features fitted with the grid well.

Then I made a gridded map on squared paper - this was fairly quick to do - the hardest bit is deciding which terrain features are significant enough to be represented. I chose to use urban for villages on the western side of the map. But bocage may have been better (I have to say that the bocage terrain type is badly named - it probably should be called villages and farmland, as that is what the description refers to (and how it is used in the Epsom scenario).

Working out the forces and the timeline took a bit of effort - perhaps because of the way the Osprey is structured, it covers the whole battle of France day by day so it takes a bit of scanning to find the Sedan bits in each day and extract them out.

Also resources for French forces are thinner than for British or German ones, so these took a bit more searching (but again I found the Army Lists in the rules were super close to the historical formations - so in future I might just go with the Army Lists).

Do ask more, if the above isn't clear or complete.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

You have been busy Forbes, great painting and two lovely write ups. 

[steve_holmes_11]

Thanks Fred, most generous to take the time and share your methodology.

I think your rankings for Recon is credible, through it's been a while since I dallied among divisional ToEs.
From what I remember, German Recon was organised as battalions, including some relatively robust armoured cars.
Pre D-day, I recall the British having armoured car companies (Lighter stuff) and carrier platoons.

I've toyed with Google Maps as a source for terrain.
The photo mode gives a nice impression of land and big features.
Flipping to map mode shows the precise routes of roads and waterways.

Of course, Google Maps shows the modern world; motorways, enlarged cities with sprawling suburbs.
Period maps, or a bit of imagination is necessary here.
Overlaying the grid seems an artform.


One tip I could share (regarding grids).
Don't feel compelled to zig zag the rivers precisely along square boundaries.
It sometimes looks neater, or more natural with some curves and diagonals.
This can leave a few cut-off square corners - just ignore them.

[Raider4]

Of course, Google Maps shows the modern world; motorways, enlarged cities with sprawling suburbs.
Period maps, or a bit of imagination is necessary here.

These any help: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection?

[Last Hussar]

Is Eisenhower a Sam Mustafa game? - I do like Blucher, so am willing to spend money on his rules that fit with my forces.

[fred.]

You have been busy Forbes, great painting and two lovely write ups. 

Cheers Will. Finishing the figures has taken a while but they are done which is the key thing. 

[fred.]

Is Eisenhower a Sam Mustafa game? - I do like Blucher, so am willing to spend money on his rules that fit with my forces.

Yes they are 

[Last Hussar]

I've toyed with Google Maps as a source for terrain.

Try doing this for 1809 - Aspern and Essling are now suburbs of Vienna!

[fred.]

One tip I could share (regarding grids).
Don't feel compelled to zig zag the rivers precisely along square boundaries.
It sometimes looks neater, or more natural with some curves and diagonals.
This can leave a few cut-off square corners - just ignore them.

This is a good tip - I do try to use more rounded terrain where possible - in the Sedan game the main river sections I allowed to follow a diagonal as I didn't see them having in game impact. The canal I made linear - not least as it's a canal but also those river pieces where largely straight peices

[steve_holmes_11]

These any help: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection?

Very nice, thank you.


I checked out Antwerp.
It's already gridded.
The key and scale information makes conversion to tabletop relatively easy.

[steve_holmes_11]

Is Eisenhower a Sam Mustafa game? - I do like Blucher, so am willing to spend money on his rules that fit with my forces.

Yes, there's more information here: https://sammustafa.com/downloads


You'll need a gridded play area.
Your stands represent battalions, and are mostly foot, motorised, or armoured (I think those are the types).

[pierre the shy]

Thanks Fred, most generous to take the time and share your methodology.

I think your rankings for Recon is credible, through it's been a while since I dallied among divisional ToEs.
From what I remember, German Recon was organised as battalions, including some relatively robust armoured cars.
Pre D-day, I recall the British having armoured car companies (Lighter stuff) and carrier platoons.

I've toyed with Google Maps as a source for terrain.
The photo mode gives a nice impression of land and big features.
Flipping to map mode shows the precise routes of roads and waterways.

Of course, Google Maps shows the modern world; motorways, enlarged cities with sprawling suburbs.
Period maps, or a bit of imagination is necessary here.
Overlaying the grid seems an artform.


One tip I could share (regarding grids).
Don't feel compelled to zig zag the rivers precisely along square boundaries.
It sometimes looks neater, or more natural with some curves and diagonals.
This can leave a few cut-off square corners - just ignore them.

Welcome to the wonderful world of scenario design using gridded rules....as Steve Holmes says compromises about terrain are sometimes required to enable features to fit. Learnt a fair bit about that working on our War of the Three Kingdoms scenarios for the "For King and Parliament" ruleset.

Google Maps is a great resource but it does have its limits when trying to work out what places looked like physically 2 - 300 years ago. Sometimes however one does get lucky. For our Scots book we were, thanks to the National Library of Scotland, very fortunate to have digital overlays of Roy's map of the whole of Scotland that were made around 1750 available online.

We have moved on to Ireland now, and some battlefields are not covered by contemporary, or at least historical maps. However sometimes luck is with us. I have been working recently on the Battle of Rathmines which took place in 1649 just outside Dublin. Nowadays the whole area has been swallowed up by urbanisation but I did manage to find a good map of the area around 1760 here http://www.dublinhistoricmaps.ie/maps/1600-1799/index.html.

I have been able to use that as the basis of my battlefield map (lots of fields and hedgerows!).

I don't have the time to try Eisenhower myself but it looks like an interesting set of rules. Best of luck to all those budding scenario designers on the board.       

[paulr]

These any help: Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection?

Very useful, bookmarked

[fred.]

Yes, there's more information here: https://sammustafa.com/downloads


You'll need a gridded play area.
Your stands represent battalions, and are mostly foot, motorised, or armoured (I think those are the types).

The 3 main troop types are

• Infantry
• Mechanised Infantry
• Armour

Then there are some sub types.

Infantry can be split into Leg and Motorised - but we just use the same figures for both, sometimes I have put a truck or two with the motorised infantry, but not always. The truck only seems useful if you have the odd motorised infantry formation, to remind you which it is.

Armour can have 5 further options

• Standard (virtually all the tanks!)
• Inferior
• Superior
• Infantry Support
• Tank Destroyer (US only)

Which can easily be represented by respective models (eg PzI for Inferior, Tiger for Superior, etc). But the 4 specialist ones tend to be quite few in a game. 


Overall you need quite a lot of infantry for these games, and not that many tanks.

[steve_holmes_11]

A chap on the Facebook group has created a counter generator, and shared it here.

Extremely useful if you want to try it like a boardgame, with counters instead of figures.

https://www.iandrea.co.uk/wargames/resources/ehower/eisenhower_counters.html?cvis=Show&scenario=Blank&stock=4&style=Silhouettes&nat=1&resart=4&bcol=White&d1name&d1qual=2&d1art=1&d1ball=White&d1bar=White&d1b1num=6&d1b1type=1&d1b2num=6&d1b2type=2&d1b3num=3&d1b3type=3&d1b4num=3&d1b4type=4&d1b5num=3&d1b5type=4&d1b5t1=true&d1b5t5=true&d1b6num=3&d1b6type=4&d1b6t1=true&fbclid=IwY2xjawGIa6JleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRAgypnqucM9YWpKmFMXJHa4aEPx2NMcVwv4tyvr_toZFDvQOTZAXF2k0g_aem_IKFJNjfb7xcmM3_fOa-X3w

[hammurabi70]

Yes, there's more information here: https://sammustafa.com/downloads


You'll need a gridded play area.
Your stands represent battalions, and are mostly foot, motorised, or armoured (I think those are the types).

Both the clubs I play at want it without grids so I have had to do a rewrite.  First trial of the grid-less rules next week.

[Last Hussar]

There's another WW2 set to Eisenhower (can't get at the site at work). What's the difference? Which do people prefer?