Taking the intro scenario from the rulebook, I have worked through the engagement, highlighting some of the rules through various moments in play.

I really enjoyed my first engagement and look forward to more games.

I have put initial observations up over on the Battlefields & Warrior Blog, together with some photographs. 

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/06/first-contact-test-of-resolve-rules.html

Last year I saw this in signed hardback for around £23 from Waterstones (High Street UK book store). I kept picking it up and putting it down because I had recently bought Fisher's book on the same subject.

To my mind, the Fisher book is a bit more detailed down at the tactical level and I had bought it with a view to doing some scenario design for WWII squad games.

Anyway, the Hastings book is now out in paperback at £11, but the Sainsbury's Supermarket (UK High Street retail) has it on their shelves at £6.

I picked it up as being, in my view, an easier read and more likely to move up the reading queue for a proper cover-to-cover read. I quite like Hastings's writing style.

The hot weather persists with a 50-year record broken yesterday and expected to be broken again today, together with very high humidity, so not much 'real stuff' getting done here.

I have taken the opportunity to start reading the Test of Resolve rules, but I dozed off three times, dropping the book and now have some creased pages .... hugely annoying to my wont of keeping things pristine!

I was not finding them the clearest of reads in places, but then came across several pages of definitions at the rear of the book and that certainly helped.

Containing some innovation, I think they will benefit from just running an example slice of a game and working through the process, which in fact is what scenario 1 is intended to do.

Interestingly, the rules were reviewed by Little Wars TV two years ago and overall they recommended the rules, but had a sticking point with the presentation, citing no index and it being hard to look up individual points.

They also talked about the cards being printed in the rear of the book, but they are not there now. I checked the info panel and see that my version is v1.1 and I wonder whether following the comments of Little Wars TV, the cards were removed and replaced by the pages of 'definitions'. That would make sense.

I am though really glad that I met the authors at the game show and sat at their demo table to go through some of the processes. The game does not appear at all difficult, but some sections need double reading to be clear to author intent.

I am liking what I see and will keep on top of this, with the weather starting to break tomorrow and the grandkids visiting, I may get a chance to throw some dice on Sunday going into Monday.

My figures get brushed on matt varnish once painted and then once fully based and flocked they get a quick swipe of a rattle can matt varnish .... but that is a job for the better weather and never over winter.

So, these are the Napoleonic Austrians that I have painted since the end of last summer and includes the batch that I did for the winter painting challenge and they were brought together a couple of days ago for their spray varnish.

They have now cured and are back in barracks. The French figures that need a rattle can coating have taken their place on the spray tray. We are entering a 4 day heat wave, so I either need to wait until that has passed or get lucky and get a cool early morning. 

Its actually nice to see them all together because it really shows the progress that has been made since last year and despite me almost resenting the hours poured into painting time, seeing them together like this is the reward to that effort.

I visited the Phalanx show (UK) today at St. Helens and had a very enjoyable time.

I may have discovered my 'go to' rules for the Wars of the Roses games and I picked up some bits that will help both the Wars of the Roses project and the Napoleonic 1809 forces.

There is a write up on the blog, together with some photographs.

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/06/phalanx-wargame-show-uk-2026.html

For last night's game I returned to the ASLSK The Guards Counterattack scenario, simply because I have been intensely looking at the rules and they are still at the front of my memory.

Mike has not played a Squad Leader based game for a while, so this game was just about doing the rounds of re-familiarisation. 

The Soviets threw themselves into the attack and the first half of the game can be characterised by the Germans getting a run of unusually good dice results and that hurt the Soviet attack, to the point that the German defence started to look like a series of unassailable stacks of powerful firegroups. On their right, the Germans were encouraged to go over onto the attack and advance into an enemy held stone building.

Then, almost out of the blue, everything flip-flopped the other way. Cpt. Denikin had been broken and had falled back into a hex at the rear of a building with three other broken 6-2-8 units.

He is a powerful 10-2 leader and in the Rally Phase, he recovered to good order and so did the three units with him, the Soviets made a broad attack across the entire board, initially resulting in three separate successful Close Combats - suddenly there were broken and DM'd German units everywhere, falling back into a shrinking perimeter.

The Soviets took their second stone building and it was pretty much over - a Soviet win and a very dynamic game.

Above all, the play had done its job of getting Mike back up and running with infantry combat. The depth of the possibilities as much as any complexity, makes this an unsuitable game to fully explain to a person before play, they would just feel bombarded by information. Better to explain a couple of key things and then learn by play as the various nuances pop up over play.

I just very loosly covered First Fire / Defensive fire and the moving in the open / non-assault move penalties and we were off.

Well my painting discipline has collapsed and these French Voltigeurs have been idle on the painting corks for a while now.

They are primed white and as a set of 9, these will give me 3 skirmisher bases, much like the Austrian Jäger that I did back in April (see the painting tab on the left menu).

They are metals (hence the rattle can primer) from Eagle Miniatures and come with bayonets attached, which I have nipped off.

My French forces are in desperate need of these chaps and really I could do with another three bases, whether to repeat with metals or go via the Perry plastics box is still to be decided.

It has been many years since I put the 'Guards Counterattack' scenario down on the table.

With my renewed interest in Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kits, plus the purchase of Beyond Valor, I have been able to get this scenario back to the table.

Once again, I am in the streets of Stalingrad trying to decide what to do with the 37th Guards.

I have done a bit of a write up over on the Battlefields & Warrior blog for those interested in an ASL scenario being played with ASL(SK) rules.

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-guards-counterattack-aslsk-ish.html

The recently released Battles for the Ardennes by Decision Games is classed as 'deluxe', but it came with errors on the counters and in the rules. 

The company has issued replacement counters and they have updated the rules as an e-file. However, this whole thing annoys me, I have a 'deluxe' game with nice looking rules and end up not being able to use that rulebook, but relying on downloaded sheets of paper instead!

Solution ..... send off the PDF download to a print on demand company. My 32 page replacement rulebook has arrived. I had it printed on 120 gm paper rather than 80 gm and as an after-thought, I was bothered that the pages would be too thick, but it's all fine and looks good.

There is a very slight sheen to the booklet, the original has a more matt finish, but outside of that you wouldn't know the difference. For an all in price of £12.97, I thought preserving the 'deluxe' aspect of the game was worth it.

But that aside, it is also all rather clever that these days the man in the street has access to the power of print - at one time only the big printing houses had that.

Last night for our face-to-face game, we returned to the Victory in the Pacific game, which we had recorded after the last session.

The game opens with the Japanese having already inflicted significant damage to the Allied fleets and this part of the game needed to use that advantage to expand their empire before the Allies recovered their strength.

At the Marianas Islands, the American fleet caught a smaller Japanese force napping, but the Japanese put significant ground-based air support in the zone and caused the U.S. to retire after just one round of combat.

However, it was a much different story at the Central Pacific Ocean zone. Manoeuvering had caused substantial forces from both sides to clash. The Japanese had hoped to spring a surprise with their three powerful carriers, the Akagi, Shokaku and Kaga, knowing that the Americans lacked air support.

However, it turned into disaster for the Japanese as the Americans succeeded in having a 'night action' over the Japanese wish for a 'day time action' and so in the battle, the much larger American force meant that the Japanese could not shield their carriers .... they were in the front line against battleships for gunnery action! [Air units need a day time action to fight].

It was just pure luck that two of the carriers survived the round of combat and were able to limp home, but the rest of the Japanese fleet suffered grievously.

It was a turning point in the war as the Japanese were no longer strong enough to be of significance in any one place while defending everywhere else. If the Japanese could have won their roll on getting a 'daylight' turn, the situation would likely have gone very much in the favour of Japan.

Of greatest disappointment to the Japanese was their failure to secure the Indonesia zone and the access that it gave to the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Their war plan had been to secure this area (for the constant stream of victory points) and hold it with minimal forces, while fighting a rearguard action against the Americans' inevitable growing strength in the Pacific area.

Here the Japanese had pretty much destroyed the entire Allied navy, but in trying to secure Singapore (port), they were largely defeated and frustrated by the powerful land-based Allied air wing.

Unfortunately, the gaming session once again ran out of time, but we had reached a point that the tide had turned very much and permanently against the Japanese, things from then on were only going to get worse, especially as the huge numbers of American carriers started to enter the war.