Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment
Above photo - Wars of the Roses
My Wars of the Roses ImagiNations campaign at Piggy Longton continues.
It is 1472, there is continued unrest in the country as Edward remains at large, seeking support to fight against King Henry.
Lord Stanley has advanced his forces to Piggy Longton to support Lancastrian Lord Darcy, who is under threat from his Yorkist neighbour, Lord Trebian.
But as his contingents approach the hamlet, he is attacked by Sir. Bartholomew Rolf, one of Trebian's most trusted commanders.
Today the 28’s went to the table, after a long gap, for fisticuffs.
For this game, I decided to have a go at using rules from a boardgame for all movement and combat … Blood & Roses from the Men of Iron series by GMT.
It was relatively straight forward, converting 1 hex from the boardgame to 2” on the tabletop, while my familiarity with the application of procedures and process in the boardgame made things proceed fairly smoothly
I won't go into too much detail here as this action will no doubt become the subject of a write-up.
Another new Rapid Fire scenario book
The second release this year from the Rapid Fire people.
The Road to Carentan gives us four 101st Airborne scenarios covering the period 6th - 11th June 1944 as follows;
Angoville-au-Plain (D-Day).
Vierville (D-Day +1).
Saint-Comr-du-Mont (D-Day +1).
Purple Heart Lane Breakout (D-Day +4)
The 36 page booklet will be familiar to those that collect the books in the series, good heavy card stock paper, plenty of colour photos with the scenario format having the usual colour schematic map, orders-of-battle and special rules.
New to the presentation of this volume is;
1. Each scenario includes a page of modern photographs of some of the key buildings that will be represented on the table.
2. A photograph of a rather nice wargame table for the scenario is now included with each scenario (I assume that each are the tables that the scenario was play tested on).
3. The usual scale is slightly altered here, with 1 infantry figure on the table representing just 5 men.
4. Very usefully, at the rear of the book, is a list of all the figures and vehicles that players will need if all four scenarios are to be played. This is easy enogh to do oneself, but it is nice to have it as part of the booklet. So for example the most 60mm mortars that the scenarios demand of the Airborne is 2 bases and of Panzerschreck teams, just two bases are needed.
The scenarios use U.S. paratroopers, German Fallschirmjägers and German infantry, though for now, as I don't have paratroopers, I will just use ordinary infantry as proxy.
I had no idea that the booklet had been released until I saw it being plugged in the latest Wargames Illustrated magazine. It arrived within two days of ordering on first class postage (UK).
These booklets are lovely, if you are looking for a rather nice stocking filler! this might just fit the bill.
Epic ACW project update
At the start of November, I had planned that four more Confederate infantry regiments should pass across the painting table, to bring the ACW Epic project very close to completion …. but I lost my painting rhythm mid month and 10 days slipped by, so I have been frantically trying to catch up with 2 or 3 painting sessions a day.
I am going to blame the shorter month (30 days) :-), but I nearly got there. Three regiments are painted and awaiting basing. The fourth regiment is mostly painted, it just needs some highlighting now that the wash is dry and then finished off with matt varnish.
So I can see the 4 regiments being done fully done and based by 2nd December or so - not bad!
The good news is that for completion of this stage of the Epic project, I just have one more Confederate regiment to build and then I can put on a game with fully painted armies for the ‘Action at Mill Creek’ scenario ( with 7 - 8 regiments per side plus artillery).
I’m sure I will have the final regiment done by 10th December, so another pre-Christmas treat I hope!
My units are only small - 2 bases, each of two strips, so 40 men on a 120mm frontage, which should allow for a small table to be used. For those interested in such things, stayed tuned.
Airborne scenario - OST
It has been a while since I have looked at my Airborne module for the Old School tactical system.
The module has 6 scenarios associated with the D-Day paratroop drops, mainly relating to the town of Sainte-Mére-Èglise.
The first Scenario - Drop Zone Charlie is actually covering the attack on Le Chemin by those units of 101st Airborne that had managed to land in some good order (rather than widely scattered!).
We played it as a face to face game. The system makes the Paratroopers very powerful. They have good morale, are treated as elite and claim an extra points worth of cover, probably due to their field craft.
Anyway, they pressed hard on the initial German defence and formed a couple of 'power stacks' that basically gave devastating fire and raked the defenders, taking out their HMG and reducing a couple of sections.
But then the German reinforcements came on and at first sight, we both thought that the fight for the Airborne would now be a struggle ..... but their stacked units continued to carve up the defence.
In the end, the Airborne took 2 of the 4 objectives, but the casualties inflicted are added to VP's and in this regard the Airborne soared ahead on points to a decisive win.
Scenarios 3 and 4 are the big scenarios in this package and cover the landings and battle at Sainte-Mére-Èglise, with waves of German reinforcements arriving. These pair of back-to-back scenarios look very inviting to do as a Christmas game. I might even set up a Sainte-Mére-Èglise folder, so that the action can be given a bit of depth here with extra pictures.
Gettysburg - end of day one fighting.
I have been playing the rest of day 1 (see previous posts). The 1800 hours turn has just been completed and there are just a couple of daylight turns left.
The Confederates have been successfully pushing the Union back and two important events have happened.
Jenkins’ cavalry (Confederate) won the race to reach Culps Hill, but now Cobham and Candy from Geary’s division (Union) are assaulting the slopes …. Can the cavalry hold out until Early’s division reaches them?
Perrin from Pender’s division (Confederate) has taken Cemetery Hill, but is being assaulted from all sides by a couple of Union divisions. the first assault was repulsed, but now Birney’s division is moving up and about to enter the fray.
It is difficult to see how Perrin and the rest of Pender’s division can hang on as any meaningful help is more than two hours away …… but, who knows, they have resisted one assault already, perhaps this is their day!
In some ways the game is a slow burn, with units maybe taking 1 loss in a turn, passing their morale and so staying in place. But the accumulation of hits does start to grind units down and once they hit 50% loss and become ‘shattered’, you get this swing point when increasingly the dynamic of fresh Vs tired units starts to make its presence felt in the game.
EDIT
The day is over. This became a very intense and enjoyable action, with the two victory locations mentioned above seeing much holding of breath every time the dice were rolled.
Jenkin’s cavalry dismounted and held the top of Culps hill, in each round of fire, they managed to cause enough enemy troops to recoil that the Union found it difficult to get a concerted assault going against the cavalrymen.
Plus the steep slope and woods gave heavy modifiers to the die rolls and then each time the Calvary men had to test morale - they passed! In the end a couple of brigades from Early’s division did manage to get to Culps hill and support them, so that position looks pretty secure.
In terms of lucky dice, it was a similar story over at Cemetery Ridge, but there, it was more the case that Perrin (Confederate) has high morale, so despite repeated losses, they were passing their morale tests and staying put. For them, it has been much harder to get support up to the ridge.
The rest of their division (Pender's) has been pretty chewed up and Johnson’s Division is struggling to get through ….. however, Union losses have been very high and a goodly number of their units are under rout status, it feels like a rotten door waiting to be kicked in!
Treating this as the 1st Day scenario, the Victory point were counted up. Possession of both Culps Hill and Cemetery Ridge (albeit a small part of it now), offers the Confederates a Minor Victory, however, when this is adjusted for casualties, it is upgraded to a Major Confederate Victory - a good bit of gaming.
Black Friday treat.
These arrived today from Anschluss Wargames. They are resin (3D print I think) 1/144 (12mm) WWII models. I occassionally order just a few at a time to fill out various gaps in my collection, hence the eclectic mix here.
You are looking at a platoon of 5 x T34/76 early, 1 x Panther G, 1 x StuG III, 1 x JSII and 2 x Universal Carriers.
Anschluss are doing a 15% Black Friday discount at the moment, which on a small order of this size, basically covers the postage charge (internally within the UK).
The detail on the models is nicely done and those with a turret come in two parts, the body and turret. The Stug and Bren carriers are single prints.
I never know whether this kind of material needs priming, but I do it anyway with vallejo poly primer, brushed on.
Just something else to add to the painting queue :-)
In the background the Gettysburg 'Day One' battle rumbles on, with some nice moments making for compelling play.
First morning of Gettysburg
Gettysburg game from Worthing Publishing sits on my table.
I am going for the three day battle and yesterday I managed to play the morning of the first day, which is 6 one hourly turns.
It has opened in much the same way that Gettysburg games generally do. Heth has been pressing in what becomes the centre, but a whole series of really low die rolls (equals poor firepower) by both sides has allowed the Union cavalry to avoid being crushed by the advancing Confederates by repeatingly withdrawing.
The photo on the left shows first contact with the Confederates defending Herr Ridge. Archer (green square means below average morale) will be sent reeling back after facing canister fire from Tidball's guns. However, Davis does put Gambles cavalry to flight and he gets a foothold on the ridge. This unhinging of the Union defence will see Bufords cavalry and guns voluntarily fall back towards Willoughby Run.
By noon, the result of the cavalry repeatedly falling back is that the cavalry are now pretty much intact, apart from Tidball's artillery, which has not fared well in the repeat withdrawals. In my last game, the Cavalry had fought a harder battle and were largely exhausted by this point. It is also true that Heth's brigades remain relatively fresh!
Now, Rhodes is arriving to reinforce the Confederate left and of more urgent concern to the Union is the fact that Pender’s division (Confederate) is moving out to the right …. Stretching the Union defence along the flank position of Seminary Ridge.
It is turning into something of an ACW week as I ‘up’ the painting session to try and make my end of month goal for painting the Epic Confederate figures. I might just do it, but we are in the last three days of this shorter month …… serves me right for having the middle of the month off :-)
Epic Hannibal
Whilst my own Epic Hannibal box is in a long painting queue, I enjoy the blogs / videos that other people are showing regarding their collections.
7th Son has just put up a YouTube video of an AAR from a scratch built scenario that has some interesting elements. I particularly like that the game only starts with two divisions (Hail Caesar) per side and that reinforcements then bring the game to standard army size.
The mix of force types between Roman and Carthaginian make for some dynamic games.
My own stuff has been temporarily based to accord with the style use by ‘Scotty’ in his series of Hannibal videos. This is a variation on the Warlord Games' system, so perhaps I should just get that to the table and start testing the basing style in play before I commit.
Her is a link to 7th Son video
Old School Tactical - ANZIO
I put Scenario 5 up on the table yesterday from the 5 scenario Anzio bonus booklet just released.
'Wet & Wild' covers an attack on American units hunkered in and around a church on 27th March 1944.
I know that I have read about this somewhere, but my Google Fu and checking my reference books have failed me so far!
This is essentially a German battalion level attack (3rd Panzer Grenadiers) across open farmland to prise the Americans out of some local buildings, one of which is a church, with a graveyard attached.
One of the notable aspects of the campaign was the dire weather and heavy rains which turned everything to mud. This has the effect of slowing the Germans down as they moved across farmland to engage. The essence of the scenario seems to be that the Americans must inflict as many casualties as they can on the slow moving German infantry before they become overwhelmed.
At first I thought the game was tough on the German player .... by game end, I changed that opinion to this being tough on the American side, though I think some of my initial placements did not help them.
Warriors of England
We played our second face-to-face game of Warriors of England (Published by Multi-Man publishing) and Mike's fourth face-to-face game last night.
The subject covers the late medieval Wars of the Roses. Each of the three previous playings have gone in different directions, but with the Lancastrians losing. Mike was keen to explore a Lancastrian victory and chose to attack strongly at the first opportunity.
This caused the Yorkists significant harm in terms of early loss of both territory and military strength, an important matter with the two fledgling forces. This then had a dominoe effect over the first four turns as the victory point gap widened with the Yorkists struggling to gain enough territory to keep the VP's in closer balance.
By the end of turn four (less than halfway through the game) the Lancastrians scored a Sudden Death victory based upon their victory point score.
This leads to the interesting speculation as to whether there is a way to crack the game, discovered by repeat play. The question will be whether a Lancastrian strategy of opening with an aggressive attack will always swing the game in an inevitable direction? Only further plays will see.
The opening attack is of course dice dependent, so a failed initial Lancastrian attack on poor dice rolls would negate such an opening advantage, but the opening attack has leader benefits that offer a +1 on attacks, so in terms of balance, the attacks will more often than not go the Lancastrian way.
In terms of how the board looked on Turn 4, I think the Yorkist player could have fought on with the possibility that by Turn 5 and the capture of Yorkshire, the Victory Point track might have dipped below the 'Sudden Death' point ...... but, that doesn't take into account the Lancastrians doing well in other parts of the board. Regardless, I doubt that over the course of the game, the Yorkists could have ever brought the VP marker back into Yorkist favour.
No doubt the 'Sudden Death' rule is there to reconise that a tipping point of no return has been reached.
A further interesting point is that on each turn, who goes first is subject to a pair of die rolls. If the Yorkists win this, then having regard for this particular Lancastrian strategy, what would be the best Yorkist move to counter that.
So there is still a bit to explore here. Overall I think the game and system is enjoyable, we just need to see whether 'a certain opening move' becomes too decisive.
Painting for the ACW Epic project
I have recently lost my paintig rythmn and discipline to do 40 - 60 minutes of painting every day to get the Epic ACW project moved forwards.
The idea was that the project would be fully painted for a game just before Christmas.
Anyway, its not too late, the paints came out today and a bit of catch up is needed to get two more units done before the months end, so I will need two or three sessions a day until 1st December.
That will leave me with just a couple of Confederate units to do in December, which should be do-able and still leave some time for a Christmas game.
I have a small number of Napoleonic French with a Commission painter to give me a leg up with a new project starting early next year, probably involving the Prussians.
I saw a really nice blog today with an interesting Napoleonic Epic game on a domestic sized table.
LINK
https://sparkerswargames.blogspot.com/2024/11/valour-fortitude-bergen-op-zoom-1814.html
Jena - the battle turns.
With the French breakthrough in the centre, the threat to the village of Kappellendorf, sitting astride the Coalition line of communication became immediately obvious, so it was with relief that Hohenlohe heard that Rüchel's wing had reached the battlefield and was advancing on Kappellendorf. They were moving up to cover the main lateral road on what was now becoming the Coalition's left.
It was becoming increasingly obvious that sending Soult out to the French right was a serious miscalculation. The battlefield had become split into two separate entities and Soult had become stuck in front of a narrow clearing between two large woods at Rödingen, effectively pinned by just a handful of Holtzedorf's brigades.
Despite their absence (together with The Guard) from Napoleon's main thrust, the French were making surprisingly good headway as Coalition losses started to mount and increasing numbers of units were caught up in a rout.
At around 1615, Lannes made another breakthrough, causing several Coalition units to rout and leaving Hohenlohe surrounded near Kotshau (see photo above), though he eventually managed to fight his way back to friendly lines. Rüchel's wing had arrived in the nick of time.
Regardless, the battle was now tipping with increasing certainty in favour of the French. Their entire front was collectively pushing and squeezing the Coalition back onto their lines of communication towards the Kappelldorf part of the battlefield and in the closing moments of the day's fighting, Murat's cavalry was close to isolating that town.
For the French, it was Lannes who had made all of this possible, hammering away at the Coalition defences for several hours. In the end it would be the overwhelming numbers of casualties suffered by the Coalition that gave the French their victory.
For the Coalition it would be fair to say that pretty much everyone had given 110%, but Holtzedorf pinning Soult and the timely arrival of Rüchel at Kappelldorf, were probably the formations that caused the French the most frustration in the game, together with the rendering of Ney being ineffective for so much of the game - in no small part due to the fact that the enemy cavalry kept his best troops in square for much of that time.
I now have a better understanding of what the scenario demands, so I imagine a second playing will give an even better game.
Although I played over three days, with the odd turn here and there. I think this battle would fit into a couple of evening sessions. If you stop at the half way, there is very much a game still there to be had, though I think the second half of the game might see (as mine did) a very obvious advantage going to one side and the other being left on the back foot. It depends upon your player character whether this sort of thing would suit you.
It is fine with me as I like to fully explore outcomes and seeing things played though to the reward of collapse or whatever, but more competitive players looking for a game rather than the pure history might lose some enthusiasm in the last couple of turns and want to call it on turn 6 (it is a 7 turn game).
From that perspective, I rather enjoyed my solo experience with the game and it does solo very well. Plus as a chit draw game for activation, you can walk away from this game after any activation and come back to it at any time as each chit draw is very much self contained, rather lime a mini turn.
Jena - Crisis in the centre
1100 hours - 1245 hours, while the French left was hanging on for dear life as Ney's position collapsed, in the centre, Lannes (French) had been pressing Tauentzien (Coalition) around Vierzehnheiligen (an important victory point location for the Coalition to retain).
Suddenly here, Coalition defences fell apart and Lannes' brigades (identified in the photo with a reddish / brown stripe on the top of their counters) moved out in multiple directions to fully rupture the Coalition line, creating a significant gap.
Neither side had immediate reserves on hand to either fill or exploit the gap and Lannes would need a couple of hours to reorganise his Corps and bring it back to functioning cohesively (required by the system's Command & Control rules to keep the corps together) - was this to be an opportunity lost?
Fortunately, within the hour, Murat (French) would arrive on the battlefield with his cavalry corps, advancing up through Jena and passing through Cospeda and Lannes' positions, to manoeuvre onto the top ground, around Klein-Romstedt, directly threatening to unhinge Hohenlohe's line and in particular Grawert's wing.
The Coalition line will now need to reorientate to protect their line of communication at Kappelledorf, just 4 Kilometres away, from Murat's threat.
The initiative seems to have passed back to the French, though the issue for them will be whether they can bring sufficient force to actually smash the coalition before it can respond - they will need to do this to carry the day.
More to follow!
