Today I put an ACW figure game on the table, based around the slice of action created in the Gettysburg boardgame played last week.

I have put a write up about that process and the game, over on the RECENT GAMES page - see the menu on the left (3rd tab down).

The first day has been played through. There is a full account under the ‘Recent Games’ tab in the menu on the left.

Aside from the above, I have selected one aspect of the battle - the Confederate attack on the Union left flank against the Brigades of Rowley and Stone.

I am just doing a bit of research on this to break it down into a regimental order-of-battle to take the mini action to the tabletop as a figures game.

A write-up of that should appear here in the not too distant future.

Unusually two games are presently on the table today, both from Worthington Publishing’s American Civil War Brigade series.

The first went up yesterday, this being the latest module ‘Gettysburg’, a big two mapper using the new v1.4 rules. So far, I have just been playing through the first day. The time is currently 1100 hours and Buford’s cavalry (under white dismounted counters) have been pushed back off Herr Ridge and worse, have lost their artillery (Tidball).

Wadsworth’s Division is just arriving to support the cavalry and with Meredith’s Iron Brigade leading, we can expect the Confederates to get a bloody nose … Archer has already taken heavy casualties and been repulsed twice. 

I am taking my time with this as it is on the table that I stand at while gaming and my back has been playing up, so, little and often is the way to get through this. 

The second game went to the dining table this evening for our face-to-face game. This was Shiloh, which I have had for a few years, but not actually punched out the counters until today. Since I have been using v1.4 in the past 24 hours with the Gettysburg, I have stayed with those rules and retro fitted the rule changes backwards to Shiloh.

There are two scenarios, the first day scenario and the combined first and second day scenario. The first day scenario is supposed to play in 2 - 3 hours, so I took a punt on this for our evening game. As it happened, though we very much enjoyed the game play and the situation, after 2½ hours we were pretty much at the halfway point - so we didn’t get the proper end of game resolution that is my wont and I have no idea how that playing time estimate was ever arrived at! 

Shiloh games are interesting as designers have to approach the issue of a Confederate attacker coming upon Union troops that are still in their encampments. Here the chosen mechanics work well.

V1.4 of the rules essentially brings 3 new elements when retrospectively applied.

(1) Melee - the sequence of play offers an additional phase that gives another opportunity to fight, but there are nuances to this and generally I have found that unless a moment is critical, I have not really wanted to use melee much as it just allows the defenders to pour even more (enhanced) firepower into the attacker.

(2) Panic - When a unit routs, it leaves a panic marker behind and this makes adjacent friends slightly more likely to fail their own rout checks if they are called for.

(3) Column - This effectively has tied column movement to roads. Previously, as long as a unit was more than 4 hexes away from an enemy, it could claim a movement bonus for moving in column. Being tied to the road net is much more intuitive.

Overall, I like the changes. The game is meant to be at the lower end of complexity to be able to get through the bigger battles, so really rules bloat is something the designer needs to jealously guard against and here the rule advances have not really threatened that. 

I am giving some serious thought to doing a small ‘fast play’ alternative to the rules, so I would use all of the components, most of the engine, but just get it moving a bit faster for our face-to-face sessions.

I have been doing a ton of work on my ‘1 page’ ACW rule set. They are intended to have three or more divisions on a small table, so need to have something of the fast play touch and need a top down view of the battle (i.e the remoteness of the divisional and corps commander level).

They now sit at 5 pages. 1 page of basic explanation, 1 page of charts and processes, 2 pages of examples and a 1 page small intro scenario. They have a working title of ‘Have the Men Advance’.

The first draft got a heavy rewrite before play, even at the early stage of writing out the examples, when some things looked skewed. Now I am taking isolated processes to the table, well to a large piece of cardboard actually. This post looks at a run through of the combat segment.

In our little sideshow two Union brigades from 1st Division have made contact with a single Confederate brigade, which is located behind defences.

Only artillery used ranged fire so all of that approach to contact nuance that I get with my regimental rules of defensive fire etc doesn’t happen here. The idea is that in this instance we are divisional commanders looking across at one of several actions that currently concern us and we see some of our people fighting yonder.

The Confederate Brigade order is to HOLD, they don’t have a fall back plan! The two Union brigades have orders to ‘Attack the Confederate defences at ‘point x’ and take possession of the position and defend against counter-attack’.

Both Union brigades are Competent, the Confederate brigade is Superior. The time on the Game Clock is now at 10.45 AM.

It is the Union part of the turn. They have advanced to contact during their movement phase and anything in contact must fight a compulsory round of combat in the following Combat Phase.

The Union attack - Roll 2 x Average Dice (2,3,3,4,4,5) and sum them up. We have rolled 8 (good). Now the modifiers. There is a -1 for fighting against a superior enemy, a +1 for having more units than the enemy and a -2 for the enemy enjoying defensive terrain. Our 8 is modified down to 6.

Checking the results we get ‘ALL involved units (brigades) each suffer one HIT’. Both sides stay in contact. This has been rather indecisive.

It becomes the Confederate part of the turn. They could attempt to move away by test for Initiative to see whether they can override their orders, but choose not to try. So it goes to Confederate combat, which is mandatory as both forces remain in contact.

Roll 2 x Average dice and sum. We get 7. Modifiers are +1 for being superior and -1 for the enemy having more units, so the final modified score is remains 7.

Result - Each attacker (Confederate) takes 1 HIT, each defender takes 2 HITs. This has increased the Union brigade number of HITs to three on each unit.

At the end of a full turn, any brigades that have suffered new HITs during the current turn must take a Brigade Resilience test. The Confederates pass their test, but the frontline Union brigade fails and is removed from play.

This causes the Union division to test for effect. The more brigades that a division loses, the harder it is to pass the test. In this instance the division passes, so all is well (other than losing a brigade and the other now carrying 3 HITs!), but a fail, depending upon the severity of that fail, would possibly see all units belonging to the division either suffer an additional HIT (this does not generate a new test) each or see the division shattered and removed from play, so it is an anxious moment.

At the very end of the turn the Game Clock is advanced randomly by the roll of dice. We see that when the next turn starts it will be 11.12 AM.

Perhaps in the wider scenario, the Confederates have reinforcements due at 11.15 AM, so they will have not quite arrived yet …. drat those dice / hoorah those dice! (depending which side you are on).

Play now reverts to the Union, will they press the attack or retire? They have attack orders, but they could attempt to override these by taking an initiative test!

The Confederates are on 2 HITs, I think the Union brigade should retire, then they can get the divisional guns to do what perhaps they should have done in the first place! :-)

Well that all went pretty well. Afterwards I needed to change two rules. One was straight forward, but the Divisional Test highlighted a problem regarding the maths underpinning the check and that needed some more thought, with a different approach being my conclusion. Version 1.3 is now being sent to my printer. I will have to re-read through the examples of play to make sure nothing has fallen over there following the changes.

Do not adjust your set! …. this is just a posed picture combining a boardgame and my recently painted Epic figures, but the image encapsulates three things.

One - Gettysburg (the boardgame) from Worthington Publishing is going on the table for a run out of the day one scenario. This is a big two mapper game.

Two - The Warlord Games’ Epic ACW figure forces continue to grow. If the boardgame throws up an interesting situation with just a couple of brigades per side, I will take that situation to the tabletop using the Epic figures and play it out there as a regimental level game.

Three - I am working on a one page (lies, lies, lies, this will probably need 2 pages!) set of rules to play a higher level ACW figure game, with divisions and corps, but with very simple rules to allow it to just flow, with a very top down detached view.

Many years ago, I put together a 2mm Napoleonic game that sat on an 18” x 18” battlefield, with Austrians and French forces. The two essential game elements were that a game clock ran in the background which ticked away as the game progressed. Secondly, all units had specific orders of what to do.

The idea was that to change a brigade’s orders, the commander would have to send the order (distance) and then once it arrived the order would have to be translated into action (delay) and so it might for example take 2 hours of game time on that game clock, for a new order to be implemented by the brigade.

The interesting thing that fell out of this was that by time a new order arrived, the situation may have already changed again and the new order effectively loses its relevance and sometimes it would simply be better to leave a unit to carry on with the original order than to cause the disruption of change for no actual game benefit.

Anyway, my ‘1 page’ rules are really just for my own indulgence to see if I can capture the essence of those early napoleonic games that I was playing ….. plus they will bring Average Dice to the table (2,3,3,4,4,5) of which I also have fond memories.

Since buying the Epic Hannibal box set, I have been on the lookout for a good complimentary read. The various Roman history sections in book shops are quite good on first glance, but there seems to be a gap when it comes to the Punic Wars and more surprisingly on one of history’s great figures …. Hannibal.

Anyway, today in one of the large Waterstone Stores (UK), I came across this gem, Hannibal by Patrick Hunt, published by Simon & Schuster.

These things have the potential to be a bit heavy going, but on first glance, this is very readable and presented very much as a wargamer friendly book. 

There is a brief introduction to Hannibal and the geo-political setting. From there-on-in, the book flows through the initial crossing of the Alps and in effect becomes a chain of  accounts of all of relevant battles.

This presentation style allows the reader to read through the text from start to finish, following the journey and life of Hannibal or it can be a ‘pick up - put down’ book with the reader just accessing the particular chapter that covers the battle that interests them.

If we take as example my immediate interest in the Trebbia battle, it is covered by Chapter 11 with 12 pages of description. There is a helpful black and white map and useful sub-headings such as ‘Reconnoitering the battle site’ and ‘Trebia River as a weapon’. It certainly is enough to put the meat on the bones as a pre-read to putting a game on the table.

The back cover has the typical review snippets and I thought this probably said it all “Particularly illuminating in discussing Hannibal’s famous crossing of the Alps in 218 B.C. … Hunt excels in his descriptions of the battles” Thomas E. Ricks, The New York Times Book review. 

My systems have been down for a couple of days, so this post is a little late.

While reading the excellent ‘Programmed Wargame Scenario’ book by Grant, I came across a small Fog of War scenario, intended for solo gaming with figures.

It struck me that the theme of the scenario would easily travel over to the boardgame format, in my case, the Old School Tactical system and so I set about a conversion which gave a very successful short game.

For a full account of the conversion and action, click on the RECENT GAMES tab in the menu on the left.

Wonderful nostalgia gaming!

Napoleon’s Last Battles designed by Kevin Zucher and originally an SPI title in 1977 has a long history and certainly holds a place in the heart of many an older gamer.

The game was in effect a quad game of the four individual Waterloo battles and all those four independent maps could marry up into a single large map, so that the three day event could be played as a campaign scenario.

Covering the battles of Quatre Bras, Ligny, Waterloo and Wavre, the first edition was a fairly simple and very playable game. Over time ‘improvements’ have been suggested and with this latest edition, published in 2015 by Decision Games, the gamer is presented with the original system, plus a myriad of options that hang off said improvements.

Of most interest to me is that the original game fell from the writings of authors that at that time had a ‘British’ centric point of view of the campaign. Works since then have highlighted the valuable contributions of the British Allies, of note is the initial resilience of the Dutch-Belgians and the active determination of the Prussians to reach Wellington, while holding part of the French army at Wavre.

There is therefore an interesting section in the rules in which many of the original counters are swapped out for new counters that have different values on them.

However, for my initial game, I would just like to play the system as originally presented, just for its own sake.

As an aside, the original designer has taken the original system and added to it, producing a series that has become known as the ‘Napoleonic Library of Games’, so there are a wide number of battles that have NLB engine at their heart.

First up to the table is Quatre Bras, with Marshall Ney facing off against Welllington.

The above photo was taken at the end of the 3 PM turn game. Campi (French) has taken Gemioncourt, but Jamin has suffered heavily and been removed from play. Wellington’s first reinforcement has arrived, ensuring the security of Quatre Bras.

As the game played on, I hit what to me felt like a problem. I had included the ‘Commanders’ rules, this gave the Anglo-Allies Wellington with 4 command points and Orange with 1 command points, so effectively, in this small space the Anglo Allied army was pretty much always in command.

The French just have Ney, with his single command point. So on any given turn, he can either activate Reille’s 2nd Corps or Kellermann’s 3rd Cavalry Corps …. but not both.

The impact of this became quite telling when I had put the cavalry wing out on the right, ready to hit Wellington’s flank, while Reille’s 2nd Corps was to assault the front.

There was every prospect that such an attack would really harm the Anglo-Allies position, but I was unable to coordinate the attack because Ney could only activate one of those two corps - very frustrating and I feel, unrealistic to the situation presented.

The French lost, so I re-ran the game. The French again lost, but this time it was because on two consecutive turns, all of the attacking French combat die rolls went really badly and they were twice thrown back all along the line.

As a corps, they could survive this set back, but in terms of the time left for the scenario, the loss of those two turns (two hours) meant that Reille would never have enough time left in the game to reach Quatre Bras or in truth, do any real further harm without finding himself enveloped.

Had I played the first game without the optional leader rule, there would have been no command restriction to stop the combined attack of two different corps in the same turn - but I do like a bit of command and control and I feel (hope) that in a bigger game, with more command in play, that things should smooth out …….. so, Ligny is next!   

The goal was to have a three regiment Union brigade done by the end of September and I can ‘just’ claim to have got that done in time, with the basing materials going on yesterday - phew!

Really it should be no big deal, as my regiments are only small at 2 bases each, but I had several days of not painting and in the end decided the best way for me to paint is to just do two or three colours each day, regardless of whether I felt like painting or not. This discipline just ensures that things get done, but that each session is not onerously long!

There is still plenty to do for the ACW Mill Creek project, as each side needs three brigades of infantry, but I like the look of the thing and it has been a shot in the arm to press on and get more done.

Surely a small AAR report can’t be too far away :-)

Five Months of Hell in Italy - by the prolific James Holland and published by Bantam, is a 540 paged hardback, recent release.

My late father fought across North Africa, landed at Salerno landings and fought at Cassino and as I browsed this book in the shop, I just felt that I perhaps owed it to him to have a greater understanding of that part of his life - a subject that in life, he never talked about.

There is a bit of Cassino theme going on at the moment, as my tactical boardgame system of choice, Old School Tactical (OST), has just been expanded with a major release to include the Italian theatre.

I have a couple of smaller books on the Cassino subject, but Holland’s work just seems so more encompassing.

The opening pages has a group of really nice maps, so that each of the four battles can be put into context, plus closer examinations of significant points of interest. Included is an interesting technical sketch of Monte Cassino in profile, something that I have not seen before.

I have only flicked through the book, but the easy writing style and detail filled text, typical of James Holland, is present here. Looking forward to this.

For the shading of figures, after years of experimenting with various washes and shades etc and using home made recipes involving floor polish without being fully convinced, I have finally come across a product that suits me.

Coat ‘d Arms, now supplied by Battlezone Miniatures, do  pots of ‘Super Shader’ in Light Brown, Dark Brown and Black. I only use the black so have no experience of the browns, but I find it gentle, flowing into the folds and not staining the high points of the figure in the way that inks often do, but it is still sufficient to provide a unifying effect on the figure.

I have used it on both 28mm and 15mm.

The technique that I have adopted is to put the wash all over the figure, using enough ink to be liberal but not to over flood and then immediately go back in with the brush to lift of the ink in those places that it is clearly pooling.

I have no idea of the ingredients, but it does behave in a similar fashion to those mixes I have made myself using small amounts of acrylic floor polish and similarly, this product does leave a glossy sheen.

Once done, I go in with a small number of highlights and then matt varnish the whole figure. I think you could get away without adding highlights, I just like the slight ‘pop’.

It is sold in a glass jar and a metal twist lid and one of the things that I found with the first pot was that over time, the jar lid became harder to get off as the residue from using hardens and interferes with the free operating of the cap. To get around this, I now decant a new bottle into a plastic bottle that has a dropper type cap - you can pick these up quite cheaply in cosmetic shops.

Anyway, bottom line, for those that like a wash, the recipe here can be applied directly with nice results. The black is a nice tone that seems to work well across the colour spectrum.

Please note, as with everything on this site, it is paid for by me and it only gets mention here if I like it.