Operation Nostalgia - Background and Planning

 I have toiled over campaign ideas to really kick off my 6mm hobby.   Oh boy do I tend to go overboard and this campaign may very well be beyond overboard.  Not only is this a combined arms campaign with Naval, Air, and Land units but, it will also be handling logistics of the above units as well!  So I'm either obviously crazy or I have some sort of self-hate to punish myself in this manner.  But either way here we are the first order of miniatures has been placed.

This campaign was first discovered on a solo blogger by the name of Grymauch.  Please go check him in that blog is amazing and he really has become my role model for Historical blogging.  But the campaign that he ran and I will also be doing comes from "Wargames Illustrated" issue #74 all the way back in November of 1993.  At this point that issue is over 30 years old.  So lets breath it to life!

What is Operation Nostalgia?

So this campaign was laid out originally way back in 1974 in "Wargamer's Newsletter" but was later polished by Richard Marsh.  This is a fictional WWII campaign set in the Aegean.  This campaign will involve forces from 4 nations:  Germans, Italians, British, Americans.  

How does this fictional campaign fit into history?

I'm going to take a quote from the Wargames Illustrated Issue on this:

"Nevertheless, there were those amongst the Allied commanders - notably a group known collectively as 'The Island Hoppers' - who were far from satisfied with the strategic plan.  With the Axis still rocking on their heels from their disastrous reverses. they argued that waiting until July to strike again was giving the enemy time to regain his balance and reinforce the Mediterranean theatre.  Their proposal was to launch an immediate small-scall assault on the poorly defended Aegean islands - a far 'softer' sector of Fascist Europe's underbelly than Sicily.

This audacious plan soon reached the ears of the senior commanders and then Winston Churchill, who immediately warmed to the idea of a swift follow-up blow. He also saw the logic in an operation which would further dismay the Italians, eliminate yet more Axis airfields and which offered the possibility of tempting Turkey to enter the war.

 More cynically, the allied command saw the opportunity for a grand diversion that could be resourced from the 'leftovers' of the Tunisian campaign.  If it succeeded then the benefits would be great; if not - then at least the Axis would be distracted from the true goal:  Sicily.

With the general concept of a strike against Axis-held Aegean islands accepted, the 'Island Hoppers' set about planning the enterprise in detail.  The assault was to commence on the eve of the North African victory.  I seemed likely therefore, that the Allied Task Force would set sail in early May, 1943.  'Operation Nostalgia', as it was dubbed, would soon be under way. "

With this being my first solo campaign and large one at that.  I'll need to lay things out in an organized manner for both tracking and planning.  I'll be utilizing Microsoft OneNote to manage turns, logistics, history, casualties, OOBs, etc. 

Rules for the campaign will mostly fit with General Quarters 3.3 campaign rules.  Air combat will be resolved in either General Quarters 3.3 rules or Blood Red Skies.  The first few air battles I may play in both and see how the results turn out.  Land combat will be played out using Blitzkrieg Commander IV.

Most but not all games will be played solo but if their is interest from my local group I may play some battles at the club.  

First models to the painting bench will be the Naval units.  Stay tuned for paint progress and Naval games.

 

 

 

 

 

Combined Arms: Into the Guadalcanal

 Several from my local gaming group jumped on the Combined Arms pre-order as soon as Warlord Games announced it.   Our group likes to bounce around from game to game, system to system, era to era in a somewhat unorganized fashion.  With that we were hesitant to jump into a major campaign that could take up the better part of a year.  Combined arms even with a shortened victory point end game threshold still could have 15 or more campaign turns each turn having the possibility of up to 6 engagements that could be resolved on the tabletop.  With that my copy bounced around my closet for weeks and months before I had the free time to put something together to run this game. 

Combined Arms was built around the Warlord Games WW2 family of games:  Bolt Action, Victory at Sea, Cruel Seas, and Blood Red Skies.  These games tie in not only with resolving engagements on the map but also are modified with the player cards.   These cards allow modification of the tabletop games with additional units, pregame movements, modified deployment, and so on.  Blood Red Skies being the only Warlord system we regularly play.  We will be modifying the campaign rules to interact with General Quarters 3 for our Naval Engagements and Fistful of TOWs 3 for our Land combat.  

 

We will be playing our campaign in Guadalcanal with 4 players.  2 Players taking the IJA/IJN and another 2 taking the USMC/US Army/US Navy.   Each pair will share an Initiative Card hand and work together on the map portions of the game before breaking off into tabletop engagements.  

More to come on our implementation of General Quarters and Fistful of TOWs to come soon.  If all the plans come together we will see battle reports after Adepticon in April.