Fauxterre1930 – The Wargaming Erratic

Part 4: Fauxterre 1930 “A” division retreats

Narrative

The Corinovans are in retreat, “B” division has been destroyed holding the coastal city of Viana and now inland, “A” division is dangerously exposed to isolation by the rampant Gombardian forces.

Remnants of “B” division and elements of “C” division in retreat, continued to try and intercept Gombardian thrusts on “A” division’s eastern flank.

My previous Fauxterre post covered the strategic situation that lead to this action.

The game

Essentially this is an escalating engagement and I simply used the scenario from Neil Thomas’ “An introduction to wargaming”. His World War Two rules reflect his simple yet interesting approach you can find in his more popular books like one hour wargames, C19th Century European warfare or ancient and medieval warfare.

The rulebook offers four scenarios

Encounter

Frontal assault

Surprise assault

Escalating engagement

I opted for an escalating engagement action reflecting the chaos of a rapid advance experienced by both sides.

I took the real world unit lists in the book and came up with two slightly different lists for the Gombardians – plenty of armour like Germans while the Corinovans were more likely to field infantry like the French.

I used my own table for observation – everything had an observation rule to help cause friction that’s required for a solo game.

The scenario set victory conditions based on three shared objectives – the winner having two or all three at the end of the game. I had a count down variable tracker but this had not expired when one side patently had run out of forces.

The three objectives were the

Town

Sawmill

Orchard

Both sides quickly acquired either the sawmill or town.

It remained simply to fight it out for the orchard.

As the table was created first before selecting the scenario it was also the case that the opposing forces diced for arrival points.

Each side had 9 units and deployed 3 units to start but I also applied scenario requirements that all six remaining units arrived on an improving odds dice throw each turn.

Here is some of the key action.

The base cloth can use its grid but today I am using Neil Thomas rules with measured distances

The walled orchard – soon to be the centre of attention

In the distance an old sawmill nestles beneath the hill

The action now centres on the walled orchard

The gombardians are beginning to wear down the Corinovans in the orchard

The battle moves toward a conclusion

The gombardians are now driven back to the town area

A few Corinovans hold the orchard and so have secured the “two objectives” orders. The gombardians have failed and decide to withdraw leaving the town in the possession of the Corinovans.

The Gombardians had arrived with armour which fits the scenario of a fluid front in the campaign situation. But they did not have enough infantry to take on the Corinovans in the congested orchard area.

The army lists therefore helped create an asymmetric game and the armour heavy force on this occasion lost.

The Painting Portrait 25f Logistics

AHPC15 not only saw me make progress with my mid C19th century armies. Much delayed Fauxterre 1930 or my Lockdown Bricks and Mortar Shop project actually got in on the act.

Back in Covid times I decided on a whim to try and build some WW2 armies by walking into shops and physically buying stuff! Yes I know this is a bit of an old technique nowadays. At the time the logic was “get out and about”.

As it happened I had found a book in a shop window and snapped it up by………walking in and buying it. At the time shopping was a weird but satisfying escape. Sold as a vintage item it was Charles Grant Snr’s Battle! Practical Wargaming (B!PW)

Now this book gave me a way into WW2 on the limited basis I was looking for. Also Grant was quite happy to use german and US kit for his Russian forces – in other words country kit for that country only was not that important (of course the Russians used any kit they could lay their hands as did the germans) and indeed his forces were RED v BLACK – pure fantasy. Ok so that meant Russians versus Germans in reality.

Now this fed my need for a “fantasy historical” WW2 set up. I would use the technical aspects of the period but mess up the actual forces involved and of course the countries would be make believe. Thats Fauxterre. Sorry no zombies or rayguns.

In keeping with a theme I had developed, Fauxterre 1930 started to take shape. Why 1930? Well I had on this particular journey become more and more interested in the early war set up and less and less the final years. This escalated into pre war when I started to look at aircraft. I was quite taken with the transition from biplane to monoplane. And before you know it I was looking at AFV technology.

Did you know – the fairy swordfish biplane flown by the British Royal Navy fleet air arm in the 1930’s was still in combat duty in summer 1945 armed with rockets! so much digression….

The net result is I am trying and failing to get Fauxterre 1930 off the ground. My Plastic Soldier Company US and Russian troops were my first choice for figures when it was Fauxterre 1940 and are fine for the early war period but somehow I don’t like the figures if I roll back a decade. I do like them but not for Fauxterre 1930! They work for Fauxterre 1940 so would be ok but that is parked for now.

On a trip to a toy show I picked up some bin end corgi trucks.

And before you know it I had added to my Fauxterre 1930 logistics kit.

This is a link to my AHPC15 entry.

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/01/from-johnb-sinews-of-war-143-corgi.html