It is Morning, 18th June 1863. Confederate Major General Ewell has been ordered to the town of Graysville, which sits on a strategically important part of the road net. There he holds 1st Brigade under Colonel Scott in reserve, while his 2nd Brigade (Brigadier General Elzey) is dispersed further forward and has been deployed beyond Mott’s Run to cover the two approach roads and associated bridges. 1st Cavalry Brigade is deployed to cover the small rise that overlooks Old Mine Road,

A Union division under Brigadier General Shields in approaching. His orders are to secure Graysville with all haste.

I have taken the inspiration for this campaign from Charles Grant’s book ‘Programmed Wargame Scenarios’. Accordingly I spent yesterday writing down orders for the two sides, but more importantly, similar to the mechanics proposed by Grant, for each confederate unit and currently held position on the map, I have recorded a dice driven response to any hostile action.

What this means is that, for example, as Dowdall Church is attacked, the 31st Virginia regiment located there will dice against a number of pre-determined response. So until that happens, we will not know how 31st will respond. Mostly the responses are weighted towards a certain decision, but who knows what the dice will give us.

Likewise, I have set up some variables for the Union attack. At the start of play, a D6 will determine how Shields will deploy and direct his division. So the first thing we must do is to determine that. Let’s work out Shield’s initial plan now!

Roll a D6 …… 2, that result says;

1st & 2nd Brigade, plus Battery H push down the Old Mine Road. 1st Brigade will clear Peavine Ridge and 2nd Brigade with the artillery will push on along the road to seize Duffy’s Mill.

3rd Brigade will advance directly down Piney Turnpike to capture Rock Spring, while Colonel Brodhead will take his two cavalry regiments to secure Dowdall Church.

These manoeuvres are a pre-cursor to the union taking the bridges across Mott’s Run and advancing onto Graysville.

Next, we shall see  the Union advance onto the map and see how the forward confederate elements respond to the ‘sea of blue’! No doubt a relay of messages and orders will quickly follow.

The AAR will be taken up at the Graysville Campaign tab in the menu to the left.

My second campaign undertaking of the year is about to start. The Graysville Campaign tab over in the left menu explains what this is all about and shows the map that I will be using.

I have spent the evening setting up the confederate positions, writing orders for those troops and also writing up a response type system as described in Grant's 'Programmed Scenarios' book.

Each location has some variable responses, dependent upon the roll of a D6 as that location is approached by the Union. That means even though I have set them up, I will not be 100% sure what they will do or how they will respond.

Likewise, I have set up some variables for the Union attack. At the start of play, a D6 will determine how their division intends to attack, so as I write this post, I don't know how their force composition will prioritise, deploy or advance.

I have decided to use my own rules for the campaign. As the campaign unfolds, I will update the campaign folder. 

Over on BoardGameGeek, a gamer has modified some of the starter scenarios to also include Fatigue Points and Orders, so that the full flavour of the system can be experienced with a smaller one map scenario.

I thought this would be the ideal next step for me to explore this system and broaden my rules knowledge.

It is a 6 turn game and concentrates on L ´Estocq's Corps counter-attack against Davout.

I am doing an AAR over on BoardGameGeek and will updating that post after each of the six hourly turns.

LINK for anyone interested.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3453153/aar-variant-of-l-estocq-saves-the-day

For last nights face to face game, I put down the introductory scenario from Eylau 1807, published by Sound of Drums. I have version 1.5 of the rules printed out and the latest version of the play aids.

The intro scenario (The Battle for Night Quarters) has the Russians already occupying Eylau with Baggavout and the centre artillery. Essen’s and Markov’s divisions are in support.

The French are entering from off map. Their initial main force will advance up through the village of Freiheit, from where they can assault Eylau. Turns are hourly, starting at 2pm. Being an intro scenario, fatigue points and change of orders are not used to keep things streamlined and simple. So both armies are classed as being under ‘Attack’ orders from the outset and these cannot be changed.

An attack order essentially allows both movement and contact with the enemy.

We had decided not to play the scenario competitively, but to just use the evening to explore the system.

The French and Russians both have their own activation cubes in a draw bag. When a cube is drawn, the side owning the cube can activate one of their divisions. If a red cube is drawn, then simultaneous fire is resolved by the infantry of both sides that are adjacent to an enemy and by any and all artillery that has an enemy within fire range.

In this scenario, there is just one red cube in the draw bag, together with 6 French cubes and 5 Russian cubes, so over the hourly turn, there will be 11 divisional activations and one fire phase.

 By the end of our short evening (2 1/2 hour session), we had only played half the scenario, as it takes a bit of time to absorb all of the various nuances that fall from the rules. 

I think we had probably got to a point that our grasp on the rules would allow us to start playing faster and indeed better as we started to better understand the relationship between cavalry, infantry and guns, we did plenty of daft things just to explore those aspects.

While I am playing, I like the involvement that is going on down in the hex. I like the differences between say column and line etc, though as I reflect, I am left thinking that if you multiply all of this nuance across the full battle, it is going to take quite a while to play.

Though I would counter, that in a full game, the order system would be in play and plenty of formations would be on hold / retire or regroup orders, so the tempo and therefore the game time would be reduced. I won’t know until I play the full game.

I did have one single moment that caused me to doubt the mechanic of only firing once per hourly turn (in this scenario), when the red cube was pulled and that was when French cavalry suddenly appeared before the Russian heavy guns. The red cube had already been pulled, so the guns could not fire at range. They would of course get a chance to defensive fire if charged to contact, but it just felt strange that the guns were effectively silenced via the mechanic, while the smartly dressed cavalry of IV Corps paraded in front of them.

Again, to counter that, in the full game there will be two red cubes in the bag, so all firepower can be used twice in an hour - but as this is draw dependent, we are still held a little hostage as to when artillery can be used in the full sense, even when their entire formation (i.e. 2nd Division) is activated. This is just a single observation and at the moment, I am content to believe that it is a very intentional design decision and that over the course of play, it will look less questionable.

I have been reading here about cavalry being potentially over powering, though those comments seem to fall from the playing of the next scenario, which is French infantry Vs Russian cavalry. In my scenario, both sides have cavalry, though in my game they didn’t meet, being on opposite sides of the battlefield. I didn’t get the sense that the cavalry was over powered. Their function seemed fine, with a blend of function ranging from screening to charging. Infantry going into square is really what the infantry should be doing against a cavalry threat and I don’t really think much of the idea of infantry advancing against a cavalry force in a meaningful way anyway. The best way to deal with enemy cavalry is with ….. cavalry and guns.

Guns are quite fickle. Mine dealt out some deadly fire (not always!) but they are VERY vulnerable to the enemy contacting them or being forced to limber up and retreat. I had my guns stacked in two, which is good for firepower, but being stacked with an infantry unit gives them better resilience.

I do quite a bit of solitaire gaming and the mechanics here strike me as being favourable to solo play. The randomness of chit pull very much helps that. 

I have become a collector of series games, simply so that I have to learn less game systems to keep on re-learning before each play. My examination of Eylau 1807 sits against a background of me wanting a napoleon ‘go to’ series. I presently own Hexasim’s Eagles of France and Vae Victis Jours de Gloire. Of those I think I prefer the Eagles of France system, but prefer the smaller footprint of JdG, but both games take too long to play (for me). My last playing of Hexasim’s Ligny took me 11 hours. A great experience, but too long on my table. I fear that Eylau 1807 doesn’t advance the cause of faster play. It is another longer game, even though I think I prefer its mechanics. So am I still looking for the right Napoleonic system for me?

I am now going to go back into the rulebook for another read through. There is a lot of nuance here and the learning curve means that a couple of small games are a good idea before tackling the big one. I don’t think the game will serve our face to face sessions because our sessions are too short and the game is too big to be left set up while we play enough sessions to reach a conclusion. 

However it may serve me for solo play. I have invested quite a bit of time in the game (and money, getting V1.5 professionally printed) so now that I have gone through the initial learning curve and have the system mostly under my belt, I will put the full battle up. I think it is only after playing the whole thing as intended by the designer, can an objective decision be reached as to whether this is the series for me. The purchase of the game and my learning to date at least deserves that.

I like the idea of smaller scenarios, but I think here, one needs to see them as purely learning situations and not as stand alone smaller scenarios and certainly not as competitive. The smaller scenario plays out of context against the full battle and so it is too easy to draw conclusions from them that may not be true of the system as a whole. Perhaps the game needs some better smaller scenarios. Ones that are more reflective of the full system and can give those players with limited space and time a better feel for the whole thing.

Wargames Illustrated magazine hit the high street shelves today with issue 446 (Feb 2025)

I am liking the recent couple of covers and as I pick up my watercolour and oil paint brushes again after years of absence, there are elements on the cover of both issues that I fancy using for some practice and fun painting.

A couple of articles caught my eye that I immediately jumped into. Firstly ‘Epic Alterations’ this features the the napoleonic Epic armies of the wargaming group ‘Friends of General Haig’ who put on a demo game (Battle of Grossbeeren) at the most recent Warlord Games Open Day, with their infantry strips cut in half AND rank up in three ranks rather than the suggested two. They have also done some figure conversions (head swaps!) to build up a Saxon force.

Secondly, an article called Matchlocks 1672 shows Andy Callan’s Matchlock rules (free in a recent WI issue) being used to cover a French / Dutch game. All played on a 6’ x 4’ table with small orders-of-battle, it all looks rather do-able to game in the home setting.

There is also an article that discusses the Valour & Fortitude rules (Free) expanded to cover ECW. The magazine includes two army lists, which are in any case available on the Perry website, but here, the page of background notes is appreciated.

I note that Sainsbury (UK supermarket) has started selling the magazine in addition to the WH Smith (high street newsagent) outlets.

At Last! He says.

I have just completed enough of the Warlord Games Epic figures to get my ACW Graysville Campaign going.

Yesterday, I based 6 Union mounted cavalry bases, 2 Union artillery bases, 2 Confederate mounted cavalry bases and 2 dismounted Confederate bases.

The artillery are on the supplied 30mm x 40mm plastic bases, but everything else has been put onto 55mm x 25mm MDF.

While this painting fury has been targeted to get the Graysville campaign up and running, the consequence has been that it has also significantly moved the main ACW Project forward, which has Phase II tasked with getting the numbers ready for the McPherson’s Ridge scenario, as described over on the ACW Project tab, so the next few months should see quite a bit of Blue & Gray gaming.

This just dropped through the letter box ..... Vae Victis issue 178 covering the Imperial Guard at the battle of Eylau 1807.

Based upon the Jours de Gloire system, but modified for the lower scale of battalions, we get two scenarios.

The first has an A3 map that takes in the lower part of Eylau town and the cemetery and this deals with French Guard Infantry plus support.

The second has a map on the flip side of the main map and being a smaller affair, the map is just A4 and this one deals with French Guard Cavalry (cuirassiers).

The scale is reduced to 100m per hex.

While I wait for the English version of the rules to appear on the VV website, I have used Google Translate to pick out some things and it appears that rather than formation activation being based upon blind chit draw from a cup (as in JdG), there is an alternating method of formation activation.

The French have 5 higher formations on the counter sheet and the Russians 4.

The blurb says this is playable in 1 - 2 hours, so it looks like something that will hit my table soon. I hope the system is only slightly modified from JdG, as I know that system quite well and have the professionally produced English version of the rules.  

Things are racing along! But I knew this would be a brief fight as the German intention was to withdraw from the outset, so I thought I would squeeze in aniother game.

Never-the-less, despite my 'I know where this is going' thoughts before the game, it still gave an interesting fight with surprises and the potential for prisoners this time. The Krosnogord Campaign tab has been updated.

The campaign doesn't actually have a functional night turn as such, however, I am using the night period for some campaign function and a brief update will be added to the campaign folder just to keep the chronological sense going. I will update that tomorrow.

After that, I will likely pause the Krosnogord Campaign, while I get the ACW campaign (Graysville) up and running. Both campaigns will then proceed with equal time given to each.

The post Christmas plans are certainly moving at a pace with campaigns and shorter games getting thrown into the mix

The afternoon game has now been played and the Krosnogord campaign folder on the left has been updated. We end up fighting in more marsh, but I like that even with random selection of the maps, we have a bit of consistency here with bad terrain.

The map here shows how with the map for the second game (top) inverted, the Soviet forces in the centre, due to the restrictions caused by the marsh, now have to attack on a very narrow frontage across that neck of land.

In other news, the Epic Confederate cavalry (mounted and dismounted) got their mat varnish this morning, so by tonight they can be added to bases, awaiting basing paste and flocks. Once done the ACW camaign should be able to start.

This is a home brew fictitious campaign. I came across a campaign system in a figures wargame book and saw a similar situation on one of my boardgame maps that involved a valley, intersected by a river. Taking the two things together as a base for campaign and then using a tactical boardgame system to game out the campaign provides a marvellous opportunity to get some bigger theme gaming done through a series of smaller games.

Campaign setting

July 1944, while fighting in southern Poland, Soviet forces have come up against a mountain range, where the German positions on the high ground dominate the ground below, bringing accurate artillery fire onto anything that moves. Looking for a way to break through, 1st Brigade  have been ordered to advance into a mountain pass. Their objective is to probe west and take the town of Krosnogord at the far end of the valley. To reach it, they will have to cross the River Wislok, which could be well defended. If they can push beyond Krosnogord, the break through will be complete.

I will be using the tactical WWII boardgame, Old School Tactical published by Flying Pig and designed by Shayne Logan, to fight the various actions, but with a figures system to manage the campaign.

The final chapter in Charles Grant’s book ‘Programmed Wargame Scenarios’ (2nd Edition) has a generic campaign called Reconnaissance in Strength and essentially works as a ‘ladder’ campaign.

It is actually a reconnaissance in strength type scenario that deals with an advance along a mountain pass / valley by the Blue Force (Soviets for us), which will fight over eight game tables, before reaching the final table - the town. We shall replace the individual tables with the small maps that come with the boardgame’s various support modules.

Red Force (Germans for us) is defending the main town at the end of the pass, but they also have detachments further forwards in the valley, with the intent of delaying and disrupting Blue Force.

I will run this campaign with a series of short After Action Reports, so that the reader can follow the progress from map to map. It will probably be played over several weeks or months. I have opened a campaign tab in the menu on the left, to provide an ongoing chronological account.

The order that the paper maps will appear in the chain of advance will be chosen randomly. The final map is fixed and will be map number 1 from the ‘Phantom Division’ module, as this has concrete type building structures that will represent Krosnogord.

There are various mechanics in Grant’s book that will be used in the background to manage the campaign. Red Force can be ordered by the system and accordingly although I am handling both sides in each battle, for the German forces, the programmed system will be used as I sort of ‘Game Master’ things along. 

The record will be written mostly from the perspective of the Soviet attacker, so that the reader gets a vague idea as to the German player’s intentions and strengths, which are only revealed as the campaign unfolds.

The order-of-battle here reflects ownership of mainly 1st Edition OST Vol I upgraded to 2nd edition (east front) and the Red Blitz module, hence there is something of a hodge podge collection of unit types in the Soviet Infantry battalion, with companies of standard rifle sections, Irregulars and Guards, which is an unrealistic mix at this formation level, however, the game’s counter mix is what it is and those variables should give the Soviet player some interesting choices as to which troop types should be used at any one time and place. Just think of them as green or veteran etc.

Here are your available forces ……….. Captain Voronin

Soviet Order-of-Battle

Commander of 1st Brigade - Captain Voronin (You the player)

1st Infantry Battalion

Captain Sokolov

1st Company

Lt. Grenko

9 Rifle sections, 1 sergeant, 2 LMG, 1 Molotov, 1 ATR

2nd Company

Lt. Balakin

1 x Commissar

9 Guards Rifle sections, 1 sergeant, 2 LMG, 1 Molotov, 1 ATR

3rd Company

Lt. Aliyev

9 Irregular rifle sections, 1 sergeant, 2 LMG, 1 Molotov, 1 ATR

Heavy Weapons Company, 2 HMG, 2 x 57mm A/T guns with 2 trucks to tow

1st Tank Battalion (understrength)

Lt. Ivashin

1st Company - 10 x T34 / 76

2nd Company - 4 x T34 / 85

3rd Company (attached) - 5 x JSII

1st SMG Company (attached) 7 Shock sections, 1 Lt. Chekov, 1 sergeant, 3 satchel charges,

Reconnaissance Company 1 x Lt (spare), 2 BA-10 armoured cars, 3 trucks, 3 x 1st line rifle sections, 3 x sapper sections, 2 LMG 1 Sgt 1  flamethrower (sapper only)

Artillery support is randomly determined at the start of each battle.

All Gut Check ratings are 7 with the following exceptions.

Guards and Pioneers are 6, while Irregulars are 8.

Impulse Points - For each battle, the Soviet army gets a basic 4D6. After the first battle, this is always modified. At the conclusion of each battle, check how many casualty points the force lost during that battle. If it has been 12 or more then in future battles the Impulse allowance is permanently reduced by 2 points. These are cumulative modifiers, so if the Soviets have taken 12 or more casualties in two battles, their Impulse allowance for the fifth battle would be permanently lowered to 3D6 +2. Note in the final battle, regardless of any loss, Soviet Impulse Points are always returned to the full 4D6.

I put the starter scenario to the table today just to get a feel for the game's processes and mechanics.

This is just a five turn scenario and covers the fight at the end of 7th February for the town of Eylau, which starts the game occupied by Baggavout, supported by Essen and Markov.

Pounding up the road and passing through Freiheit is Laval with 2nd Division (IV Corps), who are under attack orders and making heir way to Eylau.

It is 2 PM, other significant French reinforcements will reach the field on turn 2 (3 PM).

Well, so far January has not yielded any 'real' on table gaming, but hopefully the desert will become an oasis in the coming weeks as campaign planning  and painting start to pay off.

The ACW Graysville campaign progresses. The Photo shows a Confederate order sheet. The first column will show ongoing unit losses. The rest of the the sheet is for unit orders .... the current order and if a replacement order is due, then the time / turn that the new order will replace the old and this is based around distance from the brigade commander, so hopefully that will bring a discipline of keeping the brigades together, rather than a free for all!

24 Union cavalry from the Epic range have just had their wash, so need a small highlight, matt varnish and then basing. These have felt harder work than hoped, but I think it is the batch size that has caused that.

Once the varnish is dry, I will get these straight off the sticks and put 8 Confederate mounted cavalry and 8 dismounted cavalry plus spare horses for horse holders onto the painting sticks and hope to fly through them within a week, while I get the Union cavalry based.

I am quite keen to get the ACW done, not only for the sake of the campaign, but I have had a nod that a small commission that I have put out for some Napoleonic French is close to completion and I will soon need to press on with painting some Prussians to fight them! .... another future project!

At the conclusion of getting the Confederates painted, I will be fully campaign ready. I am just reading a couple of Osprey books from their campaign series covering Shenandoah 1862 and 1864 with a view of capturing anything from divisional actions that I would like to see represented in the campaign - just to give a feel thing.

The WWII ladder campaign is pretty much ready, so some Old School Tactical games should start to flow shortly.

Also on the boardgame side of things, I have just done a first reading of the Eylau 1807 rukles and punched enough counters to set up the intoductory scenario, which covers the initial contact / fight for overnight quarters.

It is a cut down action that doesn't involve all of the system, but it is enough to give a feel of tempo and casualty rate etc, together with all of the base mechanics. This should reach the table over the next couple of days.

The quality of the components is very good. In all my years of boardgaming, I have never seen counters push out so easily from the frame and without any side or corner nibs!

Our face to face game was cancelled last Friday, due to snow / ice, but with everything thawed and a respectable warmth in the air, this Friday should see the first face to face game for 2025.

So all things considered - at last! the gaming dice should be rolling soon.