A few extras for Chain of Command in the Far East

I was really pleased when the much awaited Far East Hanbook for Chain of Command was published earlier this year. While the handbook gives us a very comprehensive set of rules and army lists for the theatre there had been an earlier variant which was published as part of the Malaya 1942 pint sized campaign in the TFL Christmas Special 2015. 

We played the Malaya 1942 campaign back in 2018. It was our first in that theatre and an opportunity to use my recently painted Japanese and Australians. Since then we have also played Last Stand on Opium Hill a campaign set in the final days before the fall of Singapore. Both of these were using the variant rules from the Christmas Special. Not all of those rules survived the lengthy research and play testing period that led to completion of the Far East Handbook, although the new rules have retained much of the same spirit and flavour of the theatre.

One of the things that struck me about the new handbook was the treatment of Japanese fortifications. As they did historically, eliminating these calls for innovation and new tactics. That led me to put together a short campaign to put those fortifications to the test and see how they could be dealt with in the course of a game. This was based on reading several accounts of the action on Nunshigum Ridge during the battle for Imphal in 1944. Suitably entitled Bunker Busting on Nunshigum Ridge I've reported all of our games here on the blog and if you haven't followed them already you can find them here.

I created models of various bunkers with this and other campaigns in mind and you can follow that process in this post. 

As you can see I decided to create them to appear on the table as they may have in real life - sunk into the ground and barely noticeable. That's meant there was no way to put figures inside. In order to track what's happening to the occupants during a game I've come up with a 'holding box' for the figures that I can keep to the side of the table. 

I've made it quite a visual piece as I intend using it for participation games I will be running at CanCon in Canberra in January 2025. I think it goes without saying that there is no reason why I shouldn't use it for all my games featuring Japanese fortifications of which I hope there will be many.

The holding box is a variation on the idea I came up with for my platoon boards. Using foamcore I cut out shapes to correspond to the bunkers for two Japanese squad prepared position LMG bunkers and for one Ambush bunker housing an MMG team.

I've represented the logs that would have been used to construct the bunker interior with bamboo BBQ skewers, the same skewers I used for the bunker apertures in the models that will appear on the table. I cut them using The Chopper, a very handy tool that has helped me with so many terrain projects.

It's indispensable for cutting jobs like this and makes it easy to cut lots of pieces quickly and to the same size.

For some time now I've been wondering what to do with several A4 sized pieces of model ground cover that I bought many years ago for my 1/35 scale models. Despite trying to find applications for them for gaming they are too small to really fit any project and the ground cover too different to blend in with my other basing material. 

Finally I've found a use for some of it and in this situation I think it's very effective.

For the participation games I've used a cheap A4 picture frame as a holder and that's allowed me to add labels to clearly identify each bunker and match it to the one on the table. 

A couple of spare palm trees were a finishing touch that I couldn't resist. They can be removed easily, as can the picture frame, so it all packs away without taking up too much space.

One new rule in the FE Handbook is the Zero Attack! a variation on the Stuka Bombardment rules that appeared in the Blitzkrieg 1940 Handbook. While these don't need representation on the table their effects last for the whole first turn of a game and so I like the idea of having a marker to show this on the table. I saw a beautiful one created by John Pilatos (of John Bond's Wargaming blog) when I participated in the CoC event at the MOAB show in Sydney recently. So that inspired me to make use of an existing model of a Zero that I made several years ago.

I removed the propellor blades to make the aircraft look less static and folded up the undercarriage. That was simple enough, the real task was to create a suitable stand. 

The explosion was made using foam, in the same way I make my other explosion markers. You can see how I do that in this post. Sure, it's not necessary to have something like this to play a game but it definitely adds to the narrative.

The FE Handbook continues the use of the Red command dice as a way of representing superior training or leadership in certain units that can be expected to perform above average. The units that have this option usually lose that extra dice at when their force morale drops to a certain level. In a similar way some units will have to start moving units back to their jump-off-points when their morale reaches a very low point. These are marked on the force's particular morale track with their order of battle. To help remind us when those levels are reached I've created a couple of simple markers to place on the force morale trackers so we won't forget when these levels are reached.

How that works can be seen in the picture below. I'm currently playing the Driving Charge campaign set in Malaya and the Japanese force represents well trained and motivated motorised reconnaissance platoons from the 5th Division. Here the Force Morale Track shows a Red dice is automatically available but it is lost when their force morale drops to four. Similarly if their force morale drops to two then they must move one unit back to a jump-off-point.

Here's how their force morale board appeared at the start of one of our games. They began with force morale at 10, that's marked by the rising sun symbol. The Red marker is in four and the J marker is in two. As the game progresses and if Japanese morale falls then the rising sun marker is moved to track it. Once it reaches the Red marker we know the dice is removed.

The return to playing in the Far East has been a good opportunity to bring out my terrain for that theatre. As always there are several extra pieces to make and a chance to refresh those that I have already. I'll be covering some of those in a future post.