Print and Play for Free: The very first war (-games) in history

Where did it all start? There would be no wargaming without wars, but when did the world's very first war take place?? One thing is certain, and that is they took place for so long time ago that there are no actual historical records documenting them (except for some 10 000 year old cave-paintings). Therefore there are only hypothesis claiming that the first battles were no actual wars but more spontaneous violent conflicts between hunting parties claiming the resources. Hunting parties were armed with spears, clubs, stones, fire and later also with bows and slings.There are also hypothesis claiming that Homo Sapiens violently replaced the Neanderthals and that the extinction of the Neanderthals was a result of a over 100 000 year long 'skirmish' with Homo Sapiens claiming their resources and conflicts over hunting ground. 

Again, there are no historical records, but there does exist some few evidences with 'battle-damaged' skeletons and some cave-paintings showing battle between humans.

Cave painting of a battle between archers, Morella La Vella, Spain

To support these hypothesis we know that our closest relatives, the chimpanzees (and males to be more specific), regularly teams up and attack and kill other male chimpanzees from rival bands. This implies that cooperative aggression evolved in our same ancestors. 

Neanderthals were cooperative big-game hunters using weapons like thrusting spears and clubs. The Neanderthals were more massive muscular builds and had tougher physics than modern humans, and were stronger. Some claims that they couldn't trow objects like spears very well due to their physics. But they must have been superior fighters in close combat.

Homo Sapiens were more numerous, had larger population growth and needed more territory to hunt to feed their growing population. On the other hand, this must have given them numerical superiority in battle after a while. Homo Sapiens hunted with the same weapons as the Neanderthals, but they were more light built and were more dependent on the invention of ranged weapons like throwing-spears, bows and slings making them able to fight from a distance.

There were no regular war declared or big battles, but there seems to been more like small scale raids and ambushes between hunting parties.

If you want to read more on the Subject:

• BBC: Did Neanderthals go to war with our ancestors?

• History of Yesterday: The 100 000 year war between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens

Evidences or not, I became curious how a battle between modern humans with ranged weapons and physical more superior Neanderthals (but without ranged weapons) might have looked like.

The Rules

I didn't find many free wargame rules covering prehistoric periods, and those I found included hunting, wild animals and dinosaurs in som degree. I wanted rules from the period focusing on man vs. man. I guess parts of  different rules covering ancient and medieval periods can work, as such rules are more available. -Just skip some weapons and armour. I was even thinking of 'backdating' Pete Kautz' 1 BC Toy Soldier rules to prehistoric by rewriting them. I ended up backdating my homebrewed Rules of Engagement to cover Prehistoric Warfare, and even before any 'Rules of Engagement' even was invented in real life yet regular combat or battles. 

Link to the rules: Rules of Engagement - Prehistoric Warfare Rules of Engagement - Prehistoric Warfare 

The Armies

Like the rules I didn't find many miniatures to cover this period. -Except for some few and very expensive miniatures. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on this experiment, so luckily I found some free prehistoric paper miniatures I could download and print at Junior General. The website covers miniatures thru the whole history, even some prehistoric. I settled for 'Prehistoric Hunters' for my Neanderthal army, and 'Upper Paleolithic hunters and gatherers' for the Homo Sapiens. I printed enough miniatures to make 3-4 hunting parties of 5-6 members for each side. The benefits of printing miniatures and armies from Junior General is that they are free and they come ready 'painted'. All you need to do is cut them out and base them. I think this is a very underrated source for wargaming miniatures. 

There are free bases to go with the miniatures at the Junior General site, and you can make some of cardboard to make them even sturdier. I chose to be fancy about the basing and 3D-printed some found for free at Thingiverse. I think it's still within the scope of 'print' and 'free' as mentioned in the heading.

It didn't take more than 3 evenings after work to print, cut and base these 2 armies

The Game

Scenario:

A hunting party of 3 teams, each with 6 members, of Cro-Magnons coincidentally run into a hunting party of 3 teams, each unit with 5 members, of Neanderthals in an area both claim to have exclusive rights to hunt. The units have a mix of different weapons, but only the Homo Sapiens have ranged weapons like bows, javelins and slings. The mission for each side is to eliminate the other side to claim the territory.

The gaming table. It's a good spot to hunt, as the big game and prey comes to drink water

The Neanderthal hunting party of 3 teams, and mixed weapons

The Homo Sapiens hunting party of 3 teams and mixed weapons.

AAR: 

Time:    1 hour

Turns:   9

Result:  Neanderthal victory

The hunting parties were sneaking around the lake to look for prey, and they couldn't actually see each other before they were pretty close. The Neanderthals in the bush decided to wait to see what the humans did as they could strike from a distance with their ranged weapons.

 

Contact! The hunting teams on the other side of the lake could see each other, and the Homo Sapiens shot at the advancing Neanderthal teams. These ranged weapons weren't so precise, so they hit only a few of them. The Neanderthals knew they didn't have a chance on a distance in the open aganst these weapons, and hurried to engage in a melee. 

One of the hunting teams of Homo Sapiens decided to run around the lake to fall the advancing Neanderthals in the back and relief their tribe members. But as they were running past some vegetation a small team of Neanderthals showed up from the vegatation and engeged them in hand to hand combat.

There was no time or distance, so the Homo Sapiens couldn't use the advantage of their ranged weapons...

...and had no chance against the raging Neanderthals.

On the other side of the lake, the Homo Sapiens managed to slow down the Neanderthal advance with their ranged weapons...

...So the Neanderthal unit that recently eliminated a whole team of Homo Sapiens, started to run around the lake to fall the Homo Sapiens in the back and come to their tribemembers relief.

But the Neanderthal units managed to close the distance and engage the homo sapiens into hand-to-hand combat, and the Homo Sapiens lost their advantage.

The last 2 Homo Sapiens remaining decided to flee the battle, and was almost caught by another Neanderthal team in the flight, and they barely managed to escape. We know that the Homo Sapiens eventually will gain surperiority by being more numerous so they'll probably be back some day to claim the scarce resources again. 

The Conclusion

I've been considering to try out 1:72 scale for future wargaming projects for a while, as smaller armies and terrain pieces are easier to store in this space. If I am to 3D-print more terrain and vehicles on my 3D-printer, it will be a lot quicker in 1:72 due to reduced size and the printers size limitations. I've been a little put off by paintings miniatures this size though. The miniatures from Junior General are about 20mm and gives a good feeling about how it feels to game in this scale. As I've already mentioned, I think the resources on Junior General are highly underrated, and I consider downloading more miniatures from there for future gaming projects.

Historically correct or not, no one knows for sure. -But this is a really budget-wargame you can easily print and play for free. -And it is fast as well. If you have any other suitable rules you prefer, use them instead! Feel free to share your experiences if you play this scenario or rules.

In honour

Which day may differ from country to country, but today the 8th of May it's Veteran's day in Norway, on the same day as the VE- and liberation day.

This picture has been used by the armed forces in Norway in several different publications and occasions to promote service for Norwegian forces abroad. And it probably worked as intended,  because it, amongst other things off course, motivated me for such service when I was a kid.

When I grew up, and got a 'civilian job', I found out that the person in this old photo actually was my new boss. It's a small world. Thank you for your service Boss! In honour:

Even if it's easy to forget in our everyday lifes, it's important to remember that Freedom isn't to be taken as granted or free. In memory of those who stood up for something much bigger than themselves. All gave some, but some gave all, and some didn't get quite back home!

I salute you all! Thank you for your Service!!

Rules of Engagement 19th Century - Another Shootout in a 'Coffeyville-scenario'

Rules of engagement in the West

I've made a home brewed house rules called 'Rules of Engagement for Wargaming' based on my experience by playing a lot of other free downloadable wargame rules for toy soldiers, which my own rules also are heavily influenced by. Now I wanted to tweak my home brewed house rules further to see if they could be adapted for other periods as well. As I'm found of westerns and 'Old West'-gaming, I've tried to make my rules more '19th century friendly'.

So I decided to replay the same scenario as I played with Thor Sheil's OMOG - One Man, One Gun 19c and my own homebrewed 'Once Upon a Dice in the West' in an Old West scenario, based upon Dalton gang's robbery i Coffeyville in 1892; An Outlaw gang had to tie their horses slightly away from the bank, while a couple of the gang-members looks after them when the other members robb the bank. Can they robb the bank, get back to their horses and leave the town without getting caught??

The bank is further down the street from where the outlaws placed their horses

The 'Forces'

Playing the same scenario, I decided to use the same forces; 2 members of the gang are watching their horses while 4 gang members has gone for the bank. These have been recognized on their way to the bank, so the town sheriff and 2 of his deputies are alerted and also on their way to the bank. 4 citizens have armed them self, and are ready to try to stop the robbers from stealing their savings. A small Army-detachment of 2 is also located in the outskirts of the town. My rules are not entirely based upon 'units', but on 'characters' as well, so I treated the Sheriffs deputies and the Army-detachment as 2-men units, and all the others as single characters. The Sheriff and one of the robbers I made 'elite characters' to give them the skills of professional gunfighters.

The Game

The robbers were totally ruthless an very offensive when leaving the bank, shooting in all directions...

...and quickly gained the initiative in the shootout. Managing to wound the Sheriff and one of his deputies, the robbers got an advantage and could start on their 'retreat' towards their horses and to the escape.

When exchanging fire with the ruthless robbers, the townsfolk realized that they lacked the necessary marksmanship, and after a failed morale test the citizen in the house on the other side of the street just had to retreat inside and shut the door. He didn't come out again before the robbers was about to leave the town and it was 'safer'. 

One of the robbers who were guarding their horses, rode quickly down the street towards the gunfight to cover his fellows retreat. - And succeeded. He was taken out when the law regained the initiative, shot in the back when trying to catch up with the other fleeing robbers later on. But then they were by their horses already.

3 of the robbers managed to ride away with the loot while 'Pedro' gave them necessary cover to do so.

Due to the townsfolk's poor marksmanship they didn't manage to hit him behind that wall, but they proved them self better in fistfight instead and was able to knock the last robber out so the deputies could arrest him. The rest of the gang had already left the town with the loot. I suppose the Sheriff will have to arrange a posse when he can find members with better marksman skills.

The Conclusion

This game lasted about the same time as a 'good western movie' and 12 turns. I think using so many individual characters made the game longer, and it would have been more fastplay with smaller 'units' instead.

I think the rules are so general that they will easily fit other conflicts in the 19th century as well, either being Napolonic, American Civil War or Colonial wars. I think they can be used for some 18th century wars as well, just omit the most modern weapons in the charts. -So I've labeled the rules as such;18th and 19th century.

There was one thing I was not quite satisfied with the core rules in the 'Rules of Engagement', which I decided to change. Off course it's more difficult to hit targets on a distance, and even harder on even longer distances. But in the core-rules of ROE it only gave a -1 penalty for targets further away than 'Long Range', meaning that on distances over 'Long Range' all different weapons would have same accuracy and hit probability. That is not so in the real-life so I've updated the the rules so this only applies for distances between Long Range and double Long Range depending on the individual weapons. For distances over twice the Long Range, the hit probability is so low anyway that I've just given a general penalty of -2.

Another thing I updated in the core-rules is that a unit that fails a morale-test and are moving back two full moves, are considered fleeing and are less likely to fire in this panic.

I provide the Rules of Engagement for Wargaming with miniatures for 18th & 19th century warfare here on my blog, so you can have a try at it as well if you'd like to. If you do, I really hope you had a good time as I did playing these rules. Please feel free to post your conflict, scenario and experiences here if you'd like to as well. 

Link: Rules og Engagement for wargaming with miniatures for 18th & 19th century warfare

Someone's pieces of plastics, are Someone's else's pieces of 'gold'

As I've written in this blog earlier, there is not a big or interesting market for toysoldiers in Norway. After the haydays in the 60-70ies, the interests and demand for military toys and toy soldiers declined to almost nothing. So we don't have any annual toysoldier-show and the market is scarce. They are simply not easy to find in Norway anymore, despite that all had them in the 60ies or 70ies.

Therefore I was quite surprised to find the following set on a fleamarket not so far from where I live. They put up some items they guessed would be interesting for auction (to get a better price), like this set of Airfix 1:32 scale American Infantry.  I just placed a (very) low bid to start somewhere and to see if there was any others interested in it. I was actually the only bidder and got it for my very low initial bid at just € 4.34, £ 3.88 or $ 4.82 (!)

This was actually the very first soldiers I got from my parents as a kid in the 70ies, and they were from the 1975/76 Military Series. This box of the other hand was from the very first issue of Airfix American Infantry in 1:32 scale from the 1969-71 Military Series (brown box).

Even if the seller claimed they were all there, I was very curious about the content and the soldiers state due to the age of this set. I was very surprised when I opened the box, not because they were all there, but because they were in a pristine condition. They were not 'dirty', all the mouldings were crisp and none of the barrels were broken (bent but not broken). Not even on the M1-carbines (!). These looks like they've never seen the level of combat mine from the 70ies experienced. This was indeed a very rare find.

I was not aware that the box showed figures that wasn't actually in the set. I guess the Thomson SMG pose was used in the American Paratrooper set.

Well, I guess that this rare find actually fits in my scope of 'budget wargaming'.

If you haven't been to any fleamarkets yet this year, maybe you should 

ONUC - Opération des Nations Unies au Congo

If you've been reading earlier posts in this blog, you have probably noticed that I've used a wargaming scenario from the UN operation ONUC in Congo for 15 games and reviews now. Between 1960 - 64 some 1173 Norwegians served in this mission. I wanted to show what the Norwegian Armed Forces Museum in Oslo displays from this mission in their INTOPS section, and what initially inspired me to paint my armies the way I did and game from this conflict. There was also in this museum I bought my army in the museum-shop in the first place, and the miniatures that started my wargaming.

ONUC

There was not a very big display from this mission, but a Jeep, some weapons used by the Norwegians and the Congolese. The weapon collection from the Norwegian contribution was not complete as the service rifle the M1 Garand was not included.

IFOR

Already in the INTOPS-section of the museum I was also curios to see the display from the mission I participated in 1996/97 in Bosnia. Again there was only one but even smaller display and with very limited contents.

It belongs in a museum...

You know you're getting old (er) when most of the equipment and uniforms used in your own service belongs in a museum:

Ironically even I belongs in a museum these days. 

- I work in one (!)

I've seen this piece many times before at the museum, but I've noticed that Alan from the Tradgardland made a nice artillery support for his ski-troops. Here is the prototype:

Modelling

After all this is a blog about military modelling, so I think it would be fair to add some pictured from some of the modelling displays there as well. As Norway is a maritime nation, a lot of the models have a maritime theme:

Wanting to get out of the forced union with Sweden, Norway started to modernize all branches of the armed forces, including the navy in the early 20th century

In 1905 the union with Sweden was dissolved peacefully, and Norway had one of the most modern navies at the time. It didn't last as some of these ships were still in service at the outbreak of WWII

In WWII more than 30 000 sailors and 806 modern (civilian) cargo ships were armed and went into allied service to transport supplies in convoys from the US to Europe

German submarines, sometimes operated from bases in the occupied Norway, was a threat to these convoys  

Despite of heavy escorts 3700 Norwegian sailors and 473 ships were lost

The Norwegian Armed Forces museum in Oslo is a nice museum, and if you're in the neighborhood I recommend you to visit it.

Military modelling in the garden

To me military modelling is more than just wargaming. I'm also very interested in model railways in different scales and gauges, and the benefit is that model railroading can easily be combined with military modelling.

After a long winter which is slowly turning to spring, it's more tempting to do outdoor activities again. This weekend a good friend of mine invited to 'open house' and encouraged people to bring along their own (Garden-) trains to run them on his awesome Garden railway.

I hastily put together an improvised short military supply train to bring along.

It looks like Thomas the Little Tank Engine is lurking in the background

The Engine is a 'militarized' 'Billy' from Roundhouse, made to run on 45mm track.

The little Jeep is a 1:18 scale model I found on a Model railway exhibition 

The cars or wagons are by LGB. Probably going to repaint them.

Several members in my MRC have garden railway equipment, and some of them also have large garden railways at home. We meet in each others gardens every now and then, socializing, eating snacks and run trains together. This is a very nice and social way to execute this hobby. A hobby which is not only trains, but can have a military content too.