From a LGB Starter Set to a 16mm-scale Heeresfeldbahn

It's been summer in Norway and not much time for wargaming or other indoor activities. The summers usually are quite short here so the time is mostly spent outside. Fortunately some aspects of military modelling are made for outdoor purposes. Some years ago I was in a model railway shop in the city where parents live, and I was at that time not into big-scale modelling or G-scale trains. -But in that shop I saw a very nice Starter Set from LGB in IIm/1:22,5/ G scale which depict a island train from the Frisian island of Wangerooge. It was a price worthy and high quality starter set and not the 'toy like' and 'sub quality' often found in such sets. The benefits of buying a Starter Set is that you get everything you need to be up and running for a reasonable price. What really caught my attention about it was the locomotive which was of the very same type which was originally built for the German Army during WWII to improve their logistics on the Eastern Front. The locomotive was a Heeresfeldbahn HF130C, which about 350 was built. After WWII many of these locomotives was decommissioned and saw mixed service on different civilian narrow gauge railways in several countries. Obviously also on the railway at Wangerooge. -And suddenly I was the happy owner of a new Starter Set and into large scale garden railway modelling.

LGB has never built a model of the HF130C-locomotive in it's original military livery, and an idea was born to revert it into it's original livery and use. In the Starter Set there were also 3 goods-wagons; a tanker-, a flatbed- and a boxcar. All of them would be very credible as German military wagons in a 'Heeresfeldbahn'-train with a new paintjob. I was also inspired to do a model of a German military narrow gauge as there was a such nearby where I live during WWII. -It served a small airfield with gravel, and probably also munitions and fuel. An old idea was about to come into fruition. The good thing with writing a blog, is that it helps pushing old modelling projects.

It's surprisingly few photos of this locomotive during it's military service due to some 350 was built

I discovered that the locomotive is made to 1:19th scale despite of LGB's general 1:22,5-scale. This really makes the locomotive to 16mm scale and not the ordinary LGB IIm scale. This makes it run well togheter with my 16mm Roundhouse Billy in WD-livery. The wagons in the starter set are closer to 1:22,5 scale though. 

Besides a new paintjobs, I decided to further detail the rollingstock by adding some load and details to them. First I wanted to add typical military loads like tanks and big cannons, but keeping in mind this is a narrow gauge railway I don't think they could carry so big or heavy loads. I could 'downgrade' the loads to armored vehicles and such, but think they might still be too heavy for such light rails. Besides I have not seen any photos of such carloads on any Heeresfeldbahn either in books or in WWII footage. What I've seen in photos it seems like such narrow gauge railways mostly carry general cargo and supplies and sometimes troops. I also wanted my military loads to have a slightly more 'general' appearance so the wagons would't look too completely out of place if I wanted to run them behind my British 16mm scale W^D livesteam locomotive every now and then. I discovered that there weren't many WWII German objects in 1:19th scale to be found, except for some very expensive ones in 1:18 scale. I searched Thingiverse for propper items and resized them to 1:19 scale and 3D-printed them on my aged FlashForge Finder (I think it's time to upgrade my 3D-printer soon). I've found the online Scale Converter by Scale Modelers World very useful in this matter. Even though converting different STL-files to exact 1:19 scale, they don't seems to be in same 'scale' sometimes (even if they are by measures). 

I haven't seen very many photos of these locomotives in military service, and certainly not in colors. I've seen some few color-photos of preserved ones in different military gray liveries, but as they are slightly different regarding colors and which part was colored which. I imagine that all these locomotives were not painted exactly to the same color codes. I've also read somewhere that German steamlocomotives operating near the front were painted in a very dark grey color during WWII. I went for a standard German color; Panzer Grey. I also replaced the under-scaled LGB-engine-driver with a 3D-printed one to the same scale as the locomotive; 1:19. While working on the loco I decided to go fancy here and add radio-control by Piko to it as well (as a lot of the other members in my MRC does). I think this must be the easiest and perhaps most inexpensive way to add RC to a garden train. 

This was the easiest wagon 'militarize', as it only got a new coat of paint, and new plates simply made by self-adhesive label stickers which can be printed from an ordinary inkjet:

Not much to repainting was needed on this wagon. My oldest son recently served 2 years in our naval forces in the Coast Guard, where he also operated fast patrol crafts. I wanted to make a homage to him and his service. As I suppose there were not many 'naval loads' on a Heeresfeldbahn (deep inland on the Easternfront), I had to look for some maritime items which were army related. I found the answer in the Sturmboot 39, and added some suitable loads to the 3 Sturm-boats as well; I guess the outboards are in the large crates and their machineguns are located in the smaller crates. I read somewhere that they carried 20L of fuel each , and added some Jerry cans as well:

Besides repainting and adding self adhesive label stickers, I replaced the disc-wheels with spoked ones to this wagon to make an appearance of an 'older' origin. I also improved the roof by adding 'tar paper' made with 'sport tape'. I'm not sure what kind of cargo the car is currently carry as it could be anything, so to add some interest to it I added some few military riders and their 'mascot' to it. The latter being a Jack Russell Terrier and a second homage in this train; This time to our beloved Linus.

After fitting the locomotive with RC reciver and battery, there wasn't much space left in it for other things in it. To add a little further interests to the train I placed a battery operated sound capsule with diesel sound from Train-Tech to the boxcar. The sound is not so loud, and not so annoying that sound equipped locos often are (to all others but the one driving them).

This is how  the starterset from LGB turned out after a 'revision', and how it could have looked like from the beginning. They have the models for making it, so I hope they will use them for making some sort of a military train in the future. There are several military modellers and wargamers who also are into model railways, and this would be a good entry.

It looks like it's approved by Linus too

I've converted the Starter Set into a very basic German 'military train', and to further expand my Heeresfeldbahn I have collected some more goodswagons from LGB, and due to they are very colorfull and toylike they will need some repainting and perhaps detailing.

3 other members in my Model Railway Club also has LGB models which has a military origin from WWII German Heeresfeldbahns, namely the steamlocomotive HF110C. They're not to LGB's general 1:22,5 scale either, as they actually are closer to 1:20 scale and 16mm than IIm. 2 of them are in civilian liveries, but one is in a freelanced German military livery. I'm looking forward to my MRC's coming running sessions, which we arranges at each other's garden railways through the whole year. It seems like they will have some military presence now...

My LGB starterset used to fit in my 30L panniers, which was practical when visiting friends. With somewhat more fragile models I think I need a bigger pannier (even if I have a Honda NC750X with a frunk).

Dedicated to Jørgen and Linus

Bolt Action

After posting the GhatGPT generated Tiny Troops; Fast and Furious Wargame Rules and the battle report after playing them, several have commented that the rules have similarities and references to the 'Bolt Action' rules. As I haven't played Bolt Action before I couldn't tell, but it made me curious about the Bolt Action rules. These are actually not another free wargame rules you can just download and play for free, and therefore actually not within my scope of this blog focusing on 'Budget Wargaming'. -But, can you make Bolt Action a budget Wargame and play 'Bolt Action' without having to buy the 'Bolt Action' rules? -Not by illegal copying or anything, but just by using information found in open and public sources?? 

I've found the rules summary for free online on several sites and combined with so many different 'how to play Bolt Action' videos found on YouTube I've decided to have a try to see if it provides enough information to play the commercial Bolt Action game by Warlord Games for free, and within my scope of 'budget wargaming'. The reference and rules summary can be found on Warlord's own site, and on the blog Jay's Wargaming Madness for even further details. For YouTube reference there are tons of 'how to videos' out there when it comes to BA. - I don't know if BA is considered to be a particularly difficult game to play since there are so many different 'how to play it videos' on YouTube? For this game I used the Bolt Action Basics playlist.

Since I don't have any Bolt Action items such as order dice or pin-markers, some kind improvisation was necessary. For pin-markers I used some 'fire markers' I initially made for 'Wargame in a Bag'. For order dice I considered just using ordinary D6 in 2 different colors in a bag, but decided to go fancy here and 3D-print some order-bullets I found for free at Thingiverse simply colored as 'Team Blue' and 'Team Red' (just like the oposing teams were marked during my own service). They're good for 3D-printing as they don't need to be balanced or anything (like throwing-dice). The bag to draw the order 'dice' from is actually the just the bag which came with my army men (never throw anything away!). For miniatures I just used regular 54mm army men.

As I was going to play this game SOLO I was curious if 'Bolt Action' had some Solo-mechanics. After searching Google I didn't find that Bolt Action had such, but there are others that has made mechanics to play it solo, so I chose some Bolt Action Solo Play Cards by Martin Otten. 

I had pretty high expectations to this game as there seems like a lot of gamers considers this as a kind of leading game and reference for easy and realistic tabletop wargame rulesets for miniatures and was eager to try them out. Perhaps it would be fair to play it with my earlier 'Battle of Lumbaya'-scenario, but a normal game of Bolt Action seems to be about only 6 to 7 turns, and that is too few for my previous 'Lumbaya-scenario', as it would almost just take that number of turns just to get all the units into positions. Besides, after about 16 games with the same scenario and setup I'm (more than) ready to play some new scenarios and setups. To have something to compare them with, I'll attempt to play the Bolt Action rules with the same scenario and setup as I did with 'The One Page Rules' and the ChatGPTs 'Tiny Troops: Fast and Furious Wargame rules':

The scenario

Bolt Action is a WWII game, but I've placed this skirmish some few years later than that, as most of the equipment used in my scenario were WWII-style anyway. I've placed this skirmish to the United Nations largest mission in both scale and operational scope during the Congo Crisis 1960-65, when UN troops 'peacekeeping' was actually more offensive 'peace enforcement'. I decided to play the UN and 'Team Blue' as I have a soft spot for the UN-troops as almost 1200 Norwegians participated in this mission. The Card-generated opponent played Katangese Gendarmerie and 'Team Red'.  

Situation:

Two UN vehicles from the UN base at Kamina were performing a reconnaissance mission on the roads  between Kamina and the city of Kolwezi. Outside Kambezi they came under heavy mortar shelling from Katangese forces and they were probably both hit as the UN HQ at Kamina cannot reach them by radio anymore. 

The UN HQ sends out search and rescue patrols to find the missing reconnaissance-unit, and it's expected that the roads in the area have taken damage and are impassable for other vehicles, and it's only reachable at foot.

The Katangese forces in the area are aware of the possible UN-wrecks and sends out patrols to find them, and to seize anything of value such as documents like the UN SOPs and codes for radio-communications.

Some houserules to this scenario seems to be required though; It takes 1 man 1 turn to search a vehicle, and it takes 1 man 1 turn to examine  a casualty. To check a casualty's condition, roll a D6, and if the roll is the same value or higher than the turn number for that turn, the casualty is alive and can be medivaced. Casualties can be medivaced at half speed. 

Forces:

• Katangese:
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (Mauser 98k) and 1 LMG (FN MAG)
• 1 inexperienced rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (Mauser 98k) and 1 LMG (FN MAG)
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 5 rifles (Mauser 98k), 1 sniper rifle and 1 LMG (FN MAG)

• UN:
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (M1 Garand) and 1 LMG ( MG3)
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles (M1 Garand) and 1 LMG (MG3)
• 1 regular rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 5 rifles (M1 Garand), 1 bazooka and 1 LMG (MG3)

Regarding troop quality and morale Bolt Action differs between with inexperienced, regular and veterans. M1 rifles do not give a -1 penalty when fire on the move. The MG3 is a MG42 equivalent, and gains an extra dice for firing.

Mission:

• Katangese: To find the immobilized UN vehicles and search them for valuable things such as secret UN documents, orders, maps, SOPs and radio-codes 
• UN: To find the missing reconnaissance-patrol and save the members of the unit, and make sure no graded documents in the vehicles fall into the hands of the enemy.

AAR

Time:    1 hour and 50 minutes

Turns:   7

Result:  UN victory by eliminating 2 Katangese squads and capturing their order-dice, and successfully searched one vehicle and started a search into the second vehicle. None of the casualties could be saved unfortunately. 

As time was an important factor to save their comrades, the UN issued run orders to quickly get to their supporting positions and to the scene itself.

The Katangese Gendarmerie approached from the other side, but somewhat slower and safer as 'advance-card' was drawn for them

This made the UN the first to approach one of the vehicles, and they could also start to examine the casualties from it.

Trying to avoid the UN forces to succeed with searching the vehicle, an inexperienced katangese squad run for it and entered close quarter combat, killing a first responder and a casualty. Not very heroic.  They didn't know they were running right into a kill-zone, and a UN squad eliminated the whole Katangese squad.

After searching the rearmost vehicle where none of the casualties could be saved, the UN advanced towards the first vehicle and the casualties there, but were met by Katangese fire as they also had approached the first vehicle and started to search it.

The UN forces had to halt and exchange fire...

And perhaps the UN had better weapons, equipment and training, as the fire-fight was starting to take a toll on the Katangese Gendarmerie, which was downed due to several failed order-tests. Soon they lost another squad.

The UN squads exploited the Katangese passivity and approached the first vehicle and started to search it. It was obvious that the Katangese understood that they were now fighting for their lives so they opened fire again.

One of the UN squads failed an necessary order test and..... -FUBAR!

... -even if it looked like the UN had the upper hand in the battle, the squad panicked and start fleeing the battle...

As the end of turn 6, a roll was made for a turn 7 (on a 4+). Now the few remaining Katangese Gendarmes was outnumbered and outgunned, and it seemed like the fleeing UN-squad also was going to return to the battle again. None of the casualties by the first vehicle could be saved by this time, but the UN manged to search both the vehicles and seize the classified material there. 

Pros

• Easy to learn wargame rules on platoon level.
• I really like how units being fired at or charged immediately can react on the action taken against them by going down, or fire back at the charging unit unless they have already activated that turn. 
• Intentionally for 28mm figures, but works well for 54mm figures too. I've even read about people using these rules with 1:72 scale figures.

Cons

• Difficult to build armies with different qualities without the rule-book regarding their options and points. I just made 2 armies of the same size and quality, so they were balanced.
• I suppose veteran units have higher motivation than inexperienced ones, and therefore would be easier to activate first or earlier in a game. When activating in Bolt Action,  you don't get any benefits for trying to activate a higher leveled unit as far as I can see, as you just pull order-dice from the bag and activates randomly. Perhaps players with veteran units shoul be able to pull two dice from the bag, choose the best one of them and put the other back into the bag again?
• This con is not on the Bolt Action rules themselves, but on the Solo Play Cards. They don't include 'AMBUSH' action as an option on their cards. This makes the AI-player more likely to push his troops faster and deeper into combat, than perhaps would be in reasonable. In my game this resulted that a card-driven team did a very stupid move and just ran into the kill-zone. These solo cards will perhaps not work so well for scenarios where the card driven opponent are supposed to be defending.

Conclusion

Bolt Action by Warlord Games is not only the rules them self, but includes own dice, templates, miniatures and vehicle as well. In my local shop the order-dice is like $20 (!). As I have a 'budget-scope' on this blog towards wargaming, I thought I was going to conclude that I was not willing to start using $$ for a specific wargame system as there are so many free and really good wargame rules online. Famous last words. - After playing a game of Bolt Action by Warlord, I really liked these rules, and will probably play them again. The Bolt Action rules have much in common with and many of the same mechanics as with a lot a lot of the free wargame rules I have reviewed so far on this blog, but I liked the way the 'Bolt Action' have combined the different mechanics into their ruleset. Even if I plan to game it with other miniatures in other scales and perhaps 3D-print the necessary templates and so on, I do actually consider to buy a rulebook now...

If my 'budget approach' to Bolt Action are fair to the rules you buy in a rule-book, I let others who have actually played Bolt Action with licensed products to decide. I just wanted to see if it was possible to play Bolt Action without having to get the rule-book (or any other official Bolt Action items), and I have a feeling that with all information provided online about how to play Bolt Action it is actually possible to play a basic game of Bolt Action. If you want a more complex and detailed game with even more options, I think it would be easier to get a rule-book to find all the information in one place. If you're in a wargaming community and BA is one of their games, you'll probably going to need all the other official items as well. 

Feedbacks from gamers who have played Bolt Action is welcome.

Disclaimer: While working on this blogplost it's come to my knowledge that the Bolt Action rulebook are copied and uploaded and available for free online. I belive to upload a licensed product and download it again when you know it's copyrighted is probably illegal even if it's for your own use. Anyway it's highly unethical to do so. For this blogpost I've only used as initially stated the reference sheets by Warlord Games them self, supported by some of the endless videos on YouTube on how to play this game. Therefor I still considers to buy a copy of the rules when I can find a good offer for it.

Tiny Troops: Fast and Furious Wargame Rules

I asked the ChatGPT for a suitable name for the game this AI-service suggested in an earlier blogpost. The ChatGPT suggested to call it's own rules for 'Tiny Troops: Fast and Furious Wargame Rules'. I wonder if these rules lives up to it's name?

I posted a link to my last blogpost about letting ChatGPT generate some easy to play wargaming rules on some wargaming related Facebook-groups I'm following, and it created some debate and seemed some what controversial to use AI for this purpose. I was curious about the suggested rules and wanted to try them out to see if they were so playable as they firstly seemed. To have something to compare them with, I decided to play by the same setup and scenario as I played in the previously reviewed One Page Rules Army Men Combat v2.0.

I usually play my games solo, playing both sides my self as good as I can. Since the ChatGPT was so involved already by writing and naming the rules, I wanted to see if it was (artificial-) intelligent enough to play one of the sides if I fed it with these situation, movements, developments, results and so on. Besides, using the ChatGPT this way may be less controversial than letting it generate the rules themselves perhaps? Since I have a soft spot for the UN-troops as almost 1200 Norwegians participated in this mission I let the ChatGPT play the Katangese Gendarmerie in this game. The ChatGPT needs to be persuaded to join a game as it's AI and don't want to play a game as it actually can't. It will however give guidance and advice for movements and actions for units in the game within the rules, so I'll let it 'guide and advice' all movements and actions for the Katangese Gendarmerie.

The scenario

I've placed this skirmish to the United Nations largest mission in both scale and operational scope during the Congo Crisis 1960-65, when UN troops 'peacekeeping' was more offensive 'peace enforcement'.

Situation:

Two UN vehicles from the UN base at Kamina were performing a reconnaissance mission on the roads  between Kamina and the city of Kolwezi. Outside Kambezi they came under heavy mortar shelling from Katangese forces and they were probably both hit as the UN HQ at Kamina cannot reach them by radio anymore. 

The UN HQ sends out search and rescue patrols to find the missing reconnaissance-unit, and it's expected that the roads in the area have taken damage and are impassable for other vehicles, and it's only reachable at foot.

The Katangese forces in the area are aware of the possible UN-wrecks and sends out patrols to find them, and to seize anything of value such as documents like the UN SOPs and codes for radio-communications.

Some houserules to this scenario seems to be required though; It takes 1 man 1 turn to search a vehicle, and it takes 1 man 1 turn to examine  a casualty. To check a casualty's condition, roll a D6, and if the roll is the same value or higher than the turn number for that turn, the casualty is alive and can be medivaced. Casualties can be medivaced at half speed. 

Forces:

• Katangese:
• 1 rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles and 1 LMG
• 1 rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles and 1 LMG
• 1 rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 5 rifles, 1 sniper rifle and 1 LMG

• UN:
• 1 rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles and 1 LMG
• 1 rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 6 rifles and 1 LMG
• 1 rifle-squad with 8 members, armed with 1 smg, 5 rifles, 1 bazooka and 1 LMG

Mission:

• Katangese: To find the immobilized UN vehicles and search them for valuable things such as secret UN documents, orders, maps, SOPs and radio-codes 
• UN: To find the missing reconnaissance-patrol and save the members of the unit, and make sure no graded documents in the vehicles fall into the hands of the enemy.

AAR

Time:    3 hours (!)

Turns:   10

Result:  UN victory

It all started very good, and the Katangese forces advanced towards the UN-vehicles slowly from cover to cover... 

The UN forces also advanced very slowly, and due to limited firing-ranges the forces needed to move for several turns before they got within firing-range of each other. One of the UN-squads started to examine the casualties outside the jeep, and started to search the jeep, but was interrupted by the advancing Katangese gendarmerie.

It seems like the Katangese forces focused on trying to defeat the UN forces first, and search the vehicles afterwards. The continuous Katangese fire harassed and interrupted the first aid given to the 2 casualties outside the jeep and the search inside the vehicle it self as the UN had to return fire.

After exchanging fire for a while, the Katangese forces started to take a toll and had several casualties. It seemed like the vehicles was out of reach for them now, and they were fighting for their lives instead. This made it possible for some of the UN-troops to start searching the jeep again, but none of the casualties could be saved by this time/turn.

One UN squad charged into hand-to-hand combat and eliminated one of the Katangese squads.

The few remaining members of the other Katangese squads were soon under so heavy fire, that the remaining 2 Katangese squads were soon eliminated as well. The UN-forces started to search the other vehicle.

While the UN-forces seized all the classified documents from the vehicles the very last Katangese survivor was retreating. -actually more fleeing the scene.

Pros

• Nice mechanics for unsaved hits and outcome of melee. On the other hand these effects probably prolonged the game.

Cons

• Several of the cons were already pointed out in the comment-section section in my last blogpost by readers and fellow wargamers. Firstly the rules don't specify the games turn sequence. I just rolled for initiative every time activation was needed, using yellow dice for the Katangeese forces and Greens for the UN. High roller got to activate a unit.
• When morale tests are needed seems unclear in the rules, and I just followed the example of other rules by testing a unit's morale if it was halved.
• The rules states that a LMG can fire twice per turn, but does not says if it fires two times during a turn or if it just fire once with 2 dice. I played by rolling 2 dice for the LMG to indicate a higher rate of fire to a specific target. On the other hand the HMGs cannot 'fire twice' within a turn, but they fire on a longer range and has a higher hit probability with a 3+. These rules makes it impossible for a HMG to inflict multiple damage on a target, as it probably would do in real life.
• I don't know why the rules says that sniper rifles can only fire once per turn, as all weapons except for LMGs can only fire once per turn.
• The movements are very limited, and especially if moving through rough terrain. This makes the advancements very slow. It doesn't help playing with the ChatGPT either as it's very time-consuming to both read and write with the ChatGPT.
• I think the firing range for rifles are too short, as it equals only 3 fully movements. Even the bazooka has a longer firing-range than a rifle which would not be the case in real life.
• The rules have no benefits for being in cover, and does not make it harder to hit targets in cover.
• No rules stating that heavy weapons needs more soldiers to serve them. Here all weapons can be operated by a single soldier.

Conclusion

It is a lot you can use ChatGPT for; making rules and act as an opponent. I asked if it could write this blogpost and a battle report as well, but the suggested text made no sense, so I had to do that my self. 

Despite of the name of the game, it was not so Fast or Furious. -Especially not fast if your opponent is an AI which you need to write and describe every move on the game to, and take time to read how it will react on them when activating. I found this time-consuming, even if some of the comments by the ChatGPT were amusing. 

Would I do it again? I think the cons outnumbers the pros for these rules, so I'll probably not doing another game with these rules. I know AI-apps take everything "from here and a little there" found online and combine it all into an answer, but I don't think this game combination was very successful though even if it looked good at first glance. I think the rules have so many basic shortcomings, that I'm not even going to put them among the other free wargame links and download section of this blog. I guess they can be tweaked further to the better by continuing asking the ChatGPT for further rules and details trying to improve its shortcomings. I did not initially do that as I wanted to try the ChatGPTs capacity to initially suggest a ruleset without having to follow up and give too many corrections and further specifications. Perhaps I should?

Would I play with a ChatGPT as an opponent again? -More likely; Perhaps it works better for even smaller games and even simpler scenarios?

To quote the ChatGPT at the end: "Based on the information provided, it appears that the situation is unfavorable for my squad, and your units have gained the upper hand. I accept the outcome, and it seems that your forces have successfully completed their mission. Well played!" (...) "it was a pleasure playing with you".