by Mike Demana (article courtesy of HMGS Great Lakes' "The Herald")
When you're planning a wargaming project, there comes a point when you have to reach in the wallet and plunk down cash or credit card. All the dreaming about this or that aspect of the period, reading books from the library -- all that has cost you nothing but idle time. You can still back out. However, there is a point of no return in your project when you can go no further without pulling out your wallet.
As my friends and I were driving down to Warband '05 from Columbus this past February, I'd reached that point. The rules adaptations (melding together Heroscape and AK-47) were done, for the most part. The time and period had been chosen: Congo's independence in the early 1960s. With me on the drive were Allen and Tom, my friends from our regular Sunday night gaming group who'd been interested in building forces for the project when the time came. Now was the time, I told them, Liberation Miniatures catalog in hand, and made them commit to how many packs of this and how many of that they wanted. The day before, I'd done the same, scribbling down my list.
Liberation Miniatures has a wonderful selection. In its African Rebels and Government Troops sections alone, there are 45 packs of 20mm troops to choose from. Toss in the sections covering South Africans, Rhodesians, Somalis, and Western troops that you can use as well, and the array is almost bewildering. You feel like the proverbial "kid in the candy store," and would love to try one of each, but definitely can't afford it.
So, the question becomes not "How many do you want," but "How many do you need?"
In my AK-47/Heroscape rules, each player was to control a force of from 3 to 5 squads. A squad was defined as 1-3 vehicles and/or 3-9 infantry figures. In collaboration with Tom, I'd come up with the following point system:
Point Costs
Unit Type: Militia / Regular / Professional
Infantry, small arms: 4 / 8 / 12
Infantry, LMG: 8 / 12 / 16
Infantry, RPG: 8 / 10 / 12
Mortar Team: 15 / 18 / 21
Jeep or Truck (includes driver): 6 / 6 / 6
Jeep or Truck w/HMG(includes driver, gunner): 16 / 18 / 20
Jeep or Truck with recoilless rifle (includes driver, gunner): 18 / 20 / 22
Armored vehicle (includes driver): 14 / 14 / 14
Armored vehicle w/HMG (includes driver, gunner): 24 / 26 / 28
Armored vehicle with recoilless rifle (includes driver, gunner): 26 / 28 / 30
Grenade: +1 point per grenade for each figure, above
Each force (or "faction") was limited to 200 points worth of troops and vehicles. In addition, each would be designated as one of the types listed in Peter Pig's AK-47, which are: Religious Movement, Colonial Power/Settlers, People's Popular Front, Superpower Backed Client Forces and Dictatorship. Each of these faction types has additional restrictions, which chiefly limit the number of squads of each troop quality (Militia, Regular or Professional), or vehicles it may purchase with its 200 AP. For example, in a Religious Movement force, 3 or 4 squads MUST be of Militia troop quality.
In addition to the Faction limitations, I tossed in some "ratio" restrictions so that some clever guy doesn't come up with an entire force of light machine gunners, or something similarly silly (NOT saying anybody in my group would do this...!). To give the players a template -- an idea of what I envisioned in the game -- I created some sample forces and e-mailed them out to them. Here are the first two that I am actually building.
Warlord's Force - this represents the forces of a local strongman -- a Colonel in The Congo's army, or "Force Publique." The backbone is three squads from his army unit, augmented by some local militia toughs he's armed. This force was bought as a "Dictatorship" faction.
200 points, 2 vehicles, 24 infantry
Ghanaian UN Contingent - troops from dozens of nations soon arrived in The Congo after independence, ostensibly to help its forces preserve order. Some contingents had their own political agendas, though (following instructions from their nation's prime minister rather than their UN commander). Those of fellow African nation Ghana were accused of this. Thus, I chose a Ghanaian UN force as more likely to meddle in local power politics, and less likely to refrain from using force. This faction was bought as a "Superpower Backed Client Force."
188 points, 3 vehicles, 20 figures
You'll notice the Ghanaian force only goes to 188. Well, I made the Warlord one up before I finished the rules adaptations, and the Ghanaian one afterwards. The final rules adaptations require each force to reserve 8-20 of its 200 AP for use on the Political Maneuvering charts. So, I'll have to go back and trim some troops from the Warlord's forces before I actually field them. As it is, the Ghanaians are ready to take the field, and use 12 of their points on the Political Maneuvering charts. Also notice that in the Warlord's force, two of the regular squads are identical: 4 small arms, 1 RPG, 1 LMG. That follows the ratio restrictions I created of a maximum of one LMG OR RPG per 3 infantry armed with small arms.
So, all of the above could (and mostly did) happen before that moment when I plunked down my credit card and made my order with Liberation Miniatures. Well, the "plunking" was electronic, since Liberation Miniatures is based out of England! Early on, I'd decided that to save money, I'd buy no vehicles with my initial order. I would hope to be able to scrounge and adapt 1/72 scale, die cast or dollar store toys to make up the civilian and military vehicles the forces would field. I would buy some loose .50 caliber, .30 caliber and M60 machine guns (and a couple recoilless rifles) to help convert these vehicles, though.
I also decided that I wanted to paint the figures up as generically as possible, so that I could use them for more than one faction. I would buy a range of troop types, from the most ragged militia types Liberation Miniatures produced to the most uniform, beret-wearing professional types. So, I sat down and examined their African Rebels and African Government Troops lines. The packs are mostly divided into two types. The first is a pack of usually 10 figures armed with small arms, generally AK-47s, but some other small arms, too. The second type, usually listed immediately after the above, are RPG or LMG types that would go along with that pack. For example, pack NEG 27 is "10 Rabble/Militia with AK47." Beneath it, are packs NEG 32 "3 Rabble/Militia with RPG 7" and NEG 33 "3 Rabble Militia with RPK" (a type of LMG).
So, since in my rules, I'd set a max ratio of 1:3 for RPGs/LMGs to small arms, I wanted to make sure roughly 1/3 of my order was these specialist figures. So, it really came down to which packs of small arms I wanted to buy. I decided to go with one each of the following:
From the African Rebels line:
This produced 80 infantry figures with small arms. I then picked out packs to equal a dozen figures each worth of RPGs and LMGs.
And since I also wanted a force of white mercenaries (these saw extensive action in The Congo), I went through their Rhodesian and South African lines and gleaned the following troops from them:
And then to go with them, I bought RHOD4 "LMG pack," and SADF10 "2 figures with RPG7," and for the heck of it, a SADF5 "Man firing 50mm mortar."
Next, I made my first "mistake," buying a pack of British Infantry (FALK1) and LMGs (FALK2) to use as UN personnel. The listing described the helmet as "camou covered," which I read as a cloth camouflage cover -- not bits of grass and such. I'd planned on painting the helmets UN blue and using the figures as any of the contingents with British style uniforms. When they showed up with the obvious detailing for vegetation on the helmet, I chalked it up to an "Oops." Not sure what I'm going to do with them now...
So, what did I think when my order arrived? To put it simply: Wow! These are great figs, with LOTS of personality. Even in the 10-figure packs, every pose is different. When I unpacked and sorted the shipment, I felt like the candy store had shown up on my doorstep! Ours was a large, "one of these, two of these" kind of order, but Liberation Miniatures got it exactly right. Plus, he generously flexed his shipping and handling rate, charging us less than what was listed on his website. Of course, perhaps with the dollar as weak vs. the pound nowadays, he could AFFORD to charge less than the 20% shipping listed on his website. Either way, it was much appreciated, as was the shipment arriving within a week. As it turned out, it came just in time for me to take sample figs to Cold Wars for sizing when scouring the Flea Market for vehicles.
I'll give more detail on the packs themselves in my next installment in this series: Painting the Forces. With all these pounds of lead sitting on my desk, the time had come for something else in this project. It was time to break out the paint brushes, plunk my butt down at the painting table, and get to work!