Playin' with the big boys

Big as in 1/32. Playing = test game of Nuts!

It has been around four years since I first acquired the rules with the intention of doing some squad level games of the Second World War. They had passed the read test, but what about a play test?

Stephen and Julian travelled up/over for the game.

July has been 'visitor season' for us, so I did not get a chance to re-read the rules before hand. The fellas were extremely patient as we used the first couple of moves to get accustomed with the basic mechanics. They are quite easy to come to grips with, albeit idiosyncratic, as were the details of shooting, mêlée and vehicles as we progressed.

Simple game, simple scenario. A couple of squads of paras making their way from the drop zone to the Arnhem bridge. German defenders in woods awaiting them.

The German infantry defenders (front) with possible reinforcing squad of Waffen SS behind (accompanied by a PzKpfw V).

Two squads of paras, one with jeep and 75 mm pack howitzer.

Julian advanced the first squad of paratroops carefully towards the woods, spread out and going prone at each 'step'.

Sgt Smithers and the other leadmen entered the edge of the wood, sparking an 'in-sight' test for the closest German defenders.

Successful with the test, the Germans opened fire, hitting Sgt Smithers who used his 'star' quality to downgrade the hit to a 'duck back'. Corporal Clobber and the other paras returned fire killing the German rifleman who had hit Smithers and taking Col. Klink 'out of the fight'.

Not a good opening for the German infantry with one rifleman 'definitely dead' and Col. Klink 'out of the fight'. However Cpl Harte and Pte Krak remained in place with the MG42.

Paratroops' grenade attack! Fell short.

Unscathed, Harte killed one of the paras and forced the others to take cover.

A second grenade attack also missed the target, but the charge by the paras was more successful. Harte and Krak killed in the ensuing mêlée.

Lead by Corporal Clobber, the paras prepared to advance further into the wood...

While this combat was occuring, Stephen brought the second squad of paras down the road, jeep and gun to the fore (a combined roll of 7 for the initiative had produced reinforcements).

Next turn, we rolled a double for the initiative, producing a 'possible enemy force'. The Waffen SS and tank entered the game.

Kaptain Konrad and his squad come on behind the Panther. It probably should have been a Stug to be more accurate for Arnhem, but that PzKpfw V looks so good!

The Germans seized the initiative, so the Panther moved towards the second squad of paras, stopped and opened fire with the main gun.

The thin-skinned jeep was no more, but Captain Flashman jumped clear (thanks to his 'star power') directing the remaining members of his squad towards the wood.

That brought an enjoyable little game to an end.

It had been great to finally have a go with Nuts! and to get the 1/32 figures back on the table after so long. Both will feature again at some stage for sure.

Thanks to Stephen and Julian for making this first game with Nuts! such an enjoyable experience with laughs a plenty.

Rules

Nuts! 4th Edition by Two Hour Wargames (2017).

Figures and vehicles

Airfix British Paratroops

Airfix German Infantry

Mars German Elite Division (Normandy 44-45)

Classic Toy Soldiers German Panther tank (camouflage)

Newray Willys Jeep 1/32 Scale Diecast Metal Model

Gun that came with a packet of toy soldiers

The weaving path of opportunity

It's funny how things come together sometimes.

I have been considering what map I want to use for the Greater Northern War campaign. It needs sufficient detail for map movement, but not so much that it is overawing.

I had a search for a contemporary map (contemporary to the early 18thC, that is) that could do the trick. One looked promising.

Map of Europe in 1700 from Atlas Minor ou Briesve available online from the Royal Belgian Library.

Then I realised that it lacked sufficient detail. It and others in that atlas will be useful for reference though.

As will those from King George's Military Collection and the Digitales Archiv Marburg. None will do for a map for the campaign.

The idea of merging maps from contemporary boardgames (contemporary to us, that is) came up in discussion between Julian and me. Getting the scales to fit could be tricky, but the main negative is that I don't want to use hexes.

It seemed that the only answer was to draw my own.

Where to start?

I have a Rand McNally Atlas of World History that seemed a good starting point. None of the maps can be used directly as they have arrows and text relating to the points that are being made/period shown. So, again a useful resource, but not THE resource.

Then, I found that someone had drawn a blank map of Europe in 1700. Seemed marvellous!

Political map of Europe in 1700 (by a user hurricanehunter on DeviantArt).

All I had to do was to print it on a large sheet of paper and draw in the bits that I wanted... Hmmm. Perhaps not. What about if I used it as a background in my drawing package EasyDraw? Yeah, that would be better and easier. Or would it?

Oh dear, this was getting all too hard. Perhaps I would have to just use a hex map after all. Time to think about it for a bit.

Work came to the 'rescue'. I picked up a project that meant I had a lot to do in a short space of time, so no time to think about drawing maps (or even to paint figures).

Yet, opportunity weaves an interesting path.

As part of the project, I did some simple statistical analyses using R. Now, R is probably something most of you have never heard of. It is a computer language, developed from S and S plus, that is open source (i.e. completely free), and is supported by a huge community of people who develop packages for tasks related to data analysis, visualisation, manipulation... and more. In short, it is bloody amazing.

R is script-based, so can take time to work out, but, because of that, it is really flexible. There are loads and loads of examples on the web (back to that huge community).

Anyway, in addition to doing my bit of stats, I wanted to present a spatial representation of locations for the data, but one that was somewhat 'opaque'. I'd seen a graph done by a colleague in another project, where the locations of data points had been presented on axes of longitude and latitude. Brilliant.

Two-three hours of searching, finding options, changing script, getting errors, repeat and repeat and I had my graph.

What (the #@$!) does this have to do with my map for the campaign? In searching for how to do this, I found examples or how to draw graphs in R.

"Hang on a minute," I said. "I'll save those pages for later and see what they are about."

A brief version of 'later' came along and I looked at the examples on the web more closely. I was excited at the prospect. I even found a heap of publicly available shape files that would probably help with layers for my maybe, eventual map.

A bit more 'later' came today when I had finished the reports, so I decided to have a first pass at drawing a map.

This quick, first pass developed into several hours, but I am happy with progress and the prospect of having something functional, flexible and reproducible.

Following the steps in the example on the web and using the R package 'rnaturalearth' gave me this preliminary map (scaling a map of the world to show the bit that we need for this campaign).

I did not want the borders of the countries, which are modern. How to remove them? Too easy, as it turned out as it had been done for me. Simply use the set 'coastline' from the R Natural Earth collection. Overlaying the rivers and lakes took a bit of search, try, fail, search, try again, but I got there!

One overlay done, I was off. Mountain areas from the European Environmental Agency (probably too coarse, so I'll have to keep looking).

I need some cities. What had I done wrong? Ah, this was only a sample file. Not public domain, they want payment for this set of data circa 1700.

The free World Cities dataset worked, just a few too many!!

Making them grey is a nicer look, but still too many. No matter. I can edit the Excel file and reload it as a shape file (or just make my own from scratch).

That was enough for now.

 

Happy with progress so far and having a way to improve what I have—edit the cities, try to find a file with a better representation of the mountains—it is time to turn in.

 

Good night.