The Blind Swords series was originally designed by Hermann Luttmann and published by Revolution Games. The product has now been split into a set of series rules and a playbook for each volume, and other designers have come on board, allowing the series to have now reached volume 12.

Vol 12 covers the first day at Gettysburg. Units are regiments and grouped within brigades. A chit draw system activates the brigades, bringing a natural chaos as the order of activation is most uncertain and there are also event chits placed into the chit draw that shake things up a bit.

I wanted this volume particularly for the opening hours of the battle, which is the part of the battle that interests me the most, with Heth probing the Chambersburg Pike and attacking across Willoughby's Run, pressing Buford's dismounted cavalry, who are desperate for support.

I am hoping that this will become the series that I rely upon for my ACW boardgaming.

I have been here before, having owned volumes I - IV, but each game had a single rulebook and the differences brought to each volume to model the batle, to my mind, became a bit difficult to track. By splitting the rules, so that the series part stays standard and any new rules and scenarios are placed into a playbook makes things much better in that regard.

Through the post today, this lovely Wars of the Roses Hail Caesar supplement by Warlord Games and bought from Caliver Books (UK). 

Again, another purchase based on a YouTube review (this one by 7th Son).

As I bring back my 28mm Wars of the Roses to the table, this is full of background info, loads of actual and what-if scenarios and a rather nice looking campaign game. ….. plenty to keep the collection serviced. 

They have the new ‘household’ formation which combines melee troops and bow into a single unit, but it fights as a linear formation, so it can either shoot or fight in melee. I will have to explore that a bit more before using it.

I agree with the concept, but for my own games I treat the bow and bill as two separate units, with one behind the other, bill in front for melee and the rear archers acting as support and when the archers are in front, they can shoot at range.

Plenty to try out .... an excellent buy.

Through the post box today, A Napoleonic ruleset - Soldiers of Napoleon.

This has been out for a while and though I have been interested, the fact of it being card driven, has always made this seem not the game for me ..... however;

I have been watching a few videos, particularly the one by Wargames Illustrated Magazine, where they interview and game with the author and my interest had been tickled enough to put an order in.

Two headline aspects are 1. Your battle, using 2 - 5 brigades on a side, is actually sitting within a larger engagement and things that are happening off table (i.e. to your flanks) may come to influence your game - the cards bring some of this narrative.

2. The cards are used rather like those in the boardgame 'Commands and Colors' - each card has a value for orders that can be given to a brigade for its various battalions to act OR it can be played for its special event (such as - Fierce Cavalry Charge) OR it can be played for its rally value.

So far, those who I have come across in reviews seem only to have good things to say about it all and I think part of that may be because the system offers something different, plus narrative type rules are becoming increasingly popular.

Anyway, we shall see. The company (Gripping Beast) have two download campaigns that could be used with my French / Austrian pairing, one for Wagram and the other for Austerlitz, so they are on the list.

In the meantime the rules do include stats for the Austrians in the War of the 6th Coalition, so I will do a bit of practising in that setting for now - hopefully I will like the rules. there is a bit of reading and a learning curve to go through, but my enthusiasm is high.

I was pleased that in our latest face-to-face game, to get an opportunity to return to a game that I designed in 2011 covering the Anzio landings in 1944.

‘Anzio: The Bloodiest Beachhead’ was put out as a Desk Top Published kit in 2011 and soon after, a wargame company picked it up and started to arrange contacts.

Anyway, for a couple of reasons it didn't go ahead.

Last night's game saw a pleasing return to the game with both sides continually involved, looking for moments of gaining a manoeuvring or positional advantage or having to block off the enemy attempts at doing the same, on a map that is surprisingly nuanced, mainly because the road net is so important as mech units have a good chance of becoming bogged if they attempt to leave the road, due to the severe  rain / mud problems that plagued the campaign.

I had forgotten how aggressive the Combat Table is. It encourages attacks and the consequences reflect the grinding and attritional nature of the campaign.

Anyway, an enjoyable flash-back and I may start hawking this design around again, looking for a publisher.

Just a few turns into the game and British reinforcements start to arrive in the form of Divisional stacks... (read killer stacks)! They are just too powerful for the Germans to deal with, unless the Germans can get behind them to cut off retreats following combat - not easy.

The British reinforcements enter play from the far side of the map, the west of the UK. They can arrive by rail and travel any distance on rail as long as they don't move adjacent to enemy while so travelling.

The only way that I can see to help counter this during the first couple of turns is to move all of the German Luftwaffe to the western air zone, hopefully survive the dogfights so that German planes allocated to Ground Attack can be used to interdict those rail routes and thus hold back the reinforcements, giving the Germans a fighting chance between the beaches and Canterbury.

This unfortunately gives us big air battles over the west of the country and potentially no air action over the front line - very questionable. Plus once those reinforcing divisions can arrive, they will do so all at once and just overwhelm the Germans.

The Germans did manage to capture Folkestone for its port and Ashford, but a quick counter-attack by one of the arriving British divisions re-took Ashford and the strength of that Division meant that any German attack on it would be futile.

I was going to restart over and try again... but lost the will! I just couldn't find enough pleasure to soldier on!

I am just partway through the invasion turn and the Germans have identified their 5 landing beaches and the drop zones for 7th Fallschirmjäger (near Folkestone) and 22nd glider (near Ashford).

I had considered a more randomised setting up of the German force, but in the end decided to follow the narrative from the Sealion book by Richard Cox, which is based on the original plan.

These proposed hexes are kept secret from the British at this stage. Next the British get a chance to change some positions (a reflection of poor German intel on British troop dispositions), then the paratroopers and gliders check for scatter, then 15 randomly drawn (representing landing chaos) German units will hit the beaches.

It will take a while for the Germans to get their divisions together, which they need to do for effective stacking, but they also need to get going. Capturing a port is essential ...... Folkstone looks the best bet!

Anyway, the game is underway and I will update progress over the next days in a full post.

I don’t often get surprised by an Osprey Publishing release, as I keep an eye on their 3 month advanced schedules, but I walked into Waterstones (UK Book Store) and fell upon this.

Part of the blurb on the back says ‘It is one of the least documented conflicts of the period, but remains significant, not only as the final decisive action in the bloody Wars of the Roses, but also due to the nature of the soldiers present on the battlefield. This book explores the role these various factions played and how that contributed to the final victory’.

As always, it looks an easy read with nice illustration and maps. Occuring just a couple of years after the Battle of Bosworth, this is a  good addition to the Wars of the Roses project and as it just happens, this afternoon, I glued up the next base worth of archers for the Lancastrians as part of the ‘winter prepping’.

Operation Sealion was the proposed German invasion of England, intended for September 1940. It didn’t go ahead, but as a subject, it leaves us with a great ‘what if’ to explore.

In 1974 The Daily Telegraph newspaper in association with the Department of War Studies at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, ran a large wargame covering Operation Sealion.

At the table were 6 players, each a significant figure from various branches of the armed forces and so this was no ordinary wargame, but one in which each of the participants had unique insight into the realities of what could and could not be done within this semi-fictitious setting. It would involve the real battle plans and military capability of both sides, but in the game, the invasion actually went ahead. Apparently at the end of the game, those present felt that the outcomes from the game were in fact the most probable.

In 1975 Richard Cox gave us his novel, ‘Operation Sealion’. It drew upon the conduct of that wargame as a narrative framework, giving us an imagined account that starts just a few hours before the invasion, seen through the eyes of both military and civilian experiences.

The first two thirds of the book gives us the story of the invasion and the response of Britain and her allies. The final third of the book provides a number of informative chapters by various authors, giving insight into the various realities of politics, resources, organisation, preparation and the central characters of the time that success or failure of Sealion might hang on.

I will avoid mentioning how the campaign concluded, allowing for the dear reader who may well want to find that out for themselves in the book. I have recently bought an out of print boardgame that covers the subject and I shall bring that to the table and conduct my own ‘Sealion’ to see where that ends up, no doubt the book will enhance the enjoyment and understanding of the game.

Cox opens with dawn, 23rd September 1940 as the first 8000 Fallachirmjägers, 600 Junkers and 52 Transports pass over the Kentish coast at Hythe. Barges and motor boats head for beaches between Folkstone and Seaford, loaded with infantry divisions with the prime aim of capturing most of southern England within 10 days. Their recent victories of France, Holland and Belgium made these young soldiers confident, competent and enthusiastic. 

‘A huge flotilla of German barges stretch across the whole sweep of Dymchurch Bay and planes overhead in their hundreds head towards Hythe and Saltwood’.

‘There were 300 Home Guard in Hythe and not all had rifles yet’.

‘Beaches at Dungeness, cuckmerehaven and Newhave were being assaulted and in the first three days 110,167 men came ashore’

‘It had been predicted that it would take eight days for the Germans to gain Kent and Surrey’.

‘Several of the Junker 52’s were shot down. One crashed on the little golf course by the Imperial Hotel, setting off half a dozen teller Mines’.

“Latest reports show they have taken Dymchurch, Camber and Pevensey, Sir”.

Peter Fleming, brother of the famous Ian Fleming (Bond Writer) worked in intelligence and he was responsible for creating the ‘Stay Behind Parties’, small groups of citizens that would sabotage supply lines and the rear echelon. These groups had a life expectancy of around two weeks.

‘The South Westerly wind had risen to Force 4 and the waves had reached almost the maximum that the Rhine barges could cope with’.

RAF report … September 23rd …. 237 of our Aircraft are out of action from a total strength of 1048 operation aircraft, plus another 192 in store.

Australian and New Zealander formations that had been recently rescued from the Dunkirk beaches were on hand to put in prompt counter-attacks.

The German second echelon totalled 500 guns, 900 tanks, 3,500 vehicles, 7000 horses and 24,000 men. They needed a port and so the capture of Folkstone became a critical German objective.

Within a few days, enough territory had been taken to fly in the Reichsprotektor, an SS officer who represented Hitler on British soil and was tasked with running security. His first proclamation concerning an incident local to his headquarters -   “Unless information leading to the arrest of the saboteurs is received by the authorities, the hostages from the village will be shot”.

I shall leave it there. 

Richard Cox was a pilot and reserve paratrooper major and for some years was a war correspondent. His book was first published in 1975 and the most recent edition was published in 2024 by Silvertail Books. I picked my copy up on the Kindle for a holiday read.

Note, if you do a computer search on ‘Paddy Griffith Operation Sealion’, you will be given an Amazon page that shows a book about the actual Sealion wargame played at Sandhurst.

I will come back to this once I have played the boardgame.

For this week's face-to-face game, we decided to have a go at what is essentially the introductory scenario in the 'By Swords & Bayonets' package from GMT.

This is the latest volume from the Great Battles of the American Civil War series, which is a fairly complicated system, but this release is specifically intended with its smaller battles and supporting documentation to help the gamer get through the learning curve.

As I was playing it, I thought that much was very similar to the Men of Iron system and the Great Battles of History (covering the Ancient world), which I am quite familiar with, but here there seems to be an additional level of chrome and we found ourselves checking and double-checking everything.

However, the game did 'what it said on the tin' in terms of being an introductory package and even though we only managed to play two full turns, some of the processes were becoming more familiar and we enjoyed it enough to want to come back for more and I think the bottom line is that this just needs some playing hours thrown at it.

In the near future, 3 Days at Gettysburg from the same series is going to be re-released and looking at this detailed system, I can only imagine that the opening hours of the battle that involved Buford's cavalry is going to be a really interesting, detailed and nuanced action to get involved with ..... and that, I have to say, is much better than playing a bland or superficial look at the same action.

In our action the Confederates moved down below the creek to defend the lower ground and got promptly mauled by the Union troops.                                                                                                                                                                     

The system uses chit pull to determine which side can activate a formation next, producing a dynamic flow of play, in which your brigades might activate twice in a row. Each unit has a cohesion number and various tests are made against that value, in a sort of 'morale test' sort of way.

For a 'simple' battle there was a good bit going on in this scenario. The Union have mostly green troops, that must test before charge to contact. The Confederates have got entrenchments and both sides score Victory Points for their occupation, which very much encourages the Union to keep attacking. 

As the Confederates got pushed back onto the creek, they became crowded and their units suffered failed disorder checks as units retreated and crashed through other friendly units in their efforts to back upon the bridge.

Looking at the scenario, it seems nicely balanced and I suspect that had our game concluded naturally, it would have been pushing into the territory of a draw. The next time this goes onto the table, I think it would be worthwhile for the Confederates to just give ground very slowly in the hope that their own force stays intact and that the Union run out of time to occupy enough entrenchment hexes, to get enough victory points for it to matter!

Anyway, I have come home, quite keen to get my copy out and to get it punched .... also I have heard that a streamlined and simplified version of the rules is being prepared. These will likely be cut down in the way that the 'Simple' Great Battles of History fast play rules have been - but I like those and so I look forward to the same being done for this system.

As I re-familiarise myself with Black Powder, I remembered how tough buildings are to attack and thought I would run through the routine to take another look. 

There are some headlines features for the Built Up Area (BUA), with three being particularly effective; (1) a defender that is hit gets a +2 to their Save roll. (2) if the occupant is forced to take a break test, then it can ignore ‘retire’ results. (3) at the end of each round of hand-to-hand combat, the occupants get an automatic +3 bonus hits against the attacker.

The attacker has a couple of things that they can do to increase the effectiveness of their attack (1) use artillery before an assault goes in and hope to inflict a hit and / or a ‘Disorder’ result on the occupants. (2) make maximum use of supports. Having support to the rear and one to each flank will give the attacker +3 Bonus hits against the defender - surprisingly, cavalry can be used as a support.

In the above scene, a lone Prussian battalion is holding the walled farm. A French brigade of 3 Infantry battalions and a cavalry regiment are putting in an attack. The French unit at the front of the farm gates will be the attacking unit and the three friendly units around it will be adding their support.

I have already allowed the French to make two turns of artillery fire at medium range, but this does not produce an effect.

The attack is described as a charge and as such, as the attackers close to contact, the defenders will be able to get off some ‘closing fire’ musketry. Even though this is limited to just two attack dice, the Prussians are lucky and inflict 2 hits (not Saved) and a Disorder (that is very lucky!).

The attack is executed in the Hand-to-Hand Phase. Helped by the +2 Morale Bonus on the their Save rolls and the +3 Bonus Casualties that the defenders in buildings inflict on attackers, the Prussians score the most hits and the attackers are forced to take a Break Test. They roll badly and the lead battalion is removed from play. This loss causes the other three French units to take Break Tests, but they are fine.

At the end of all of that, the French Brigade have lost a battalion and the Prussian defenders have 3 hits, which makes them shaken.

The French decide in a subsequent turn to attack again. This time equal hits are inflicted (a bit of lucky dice really for the attacker) and so this time both sides must take a Break Test. The French fail and retire, but the Prussians fail catastrophically and are removed from play! 

This leaves us with the dilemma that neither side holds the farm …. which player will be the first to get a unit in there? If the Prussians get there first, the French will have to do all over again!

So that took a 4:1 attack over two turns to get a result, which compared to some of my previous games is quite good ….. but only if the French can be the first to get a battalion into the farm.

Perhaps the farm could have its +3 Bonus casualty value lowered to a +2. I think in Black Powder the general +3 bonus feels a bit more like it is representing a ‘Hougoumont’ style strongpoint, a +2 might feel a bit more of a typical period building complex. 

Reading accounts of Napoleonic battles often refers to a village changing time multiple times over the space of a couple of hours. A building strength of +2 (or even a +1) might get us closer to that sort of thing.

While this was still on the table, I thought I would run it again, but using my own rules.

In the first assault, the French failed their pre-charge Competency test and so only put in a ‘half hearted’ assaulted. Needless to say, they were thrown back.

They wanted to attack again, but under the rules units cannot charge on consecutive turns, so they use turn 2 to re-organise and bring the fresh support up to be the lead unit.

On turn 3 the attack went in. It was another half-hearted attack, but even so, the attackers came off best, forcing the Prussians to abandon the farm and allowing the French lead unit to move in.

Even though I have always thought of Black Powder buildings as being a bit too strong, on this occasions with Black Powder the farm was vacated on turn 2, where-as in my game the farm was not captured until turn 3. Though that is unusual for a Black Powder result and I think going forward, when using Black Powder, I will just drop the melee bonus on buildings from +3 to +2 unless there is good cause to want to treat the building as something of a fortified place.

My 28’s have sat rather lonely on a shelf for a while, but recently, both the Napoleonic and Wars of the Roses collections came out for some table action and the pleasures of just moving them across the table were renewed.

The Napoleonics cover French and Austrian forces. Last year they started as a 'from scratch project' and were brought, fairly quickly to eight units per side, where they formed the basis of a ‘Pocket Army’ article for The Wargamers’ Annual 2025, titled ‘Pocket Armies on the Danube’.

The intention always was that this starter force of eight units should be expanded at leisure to around twelve units per side ….. but unfortunately the ‘leisure’ aspect of that sentiment has had the life beaten out of it and here I am, a year later, no further on.

So as a bit of a palette cleanser from the Epic stuff, I am putting a French unit under the brush.

These infantry units each contain 20 miniatures. I used to paint in batches of 20 for that reason, but I am now trialing a move to just doing 10 figures at a time, so I knocked up a tray to take 10 of my painting corks and here we have the first half of the unit. The second half will include the officer, drummer and standard bearer. I am hoping that painting small numbers like this will make the painting habit a little more bearable and more in keeping with that notion of being a leisurely pursuit!

These are Perry Miniatures lastics from their French Infantry 1812 - 15 boxed set. These have been a relatively straight forward build, you just have to glue on a head, backpack and a pair of separate arms and they are done (good), though I am not dreadfully keen on the bayonets being attached for marching troops, especially as my hands keep catching them. All my units so far do have bayonets attached, but I think for this unit, I might nip them off before they get their primer.

I prime with hand-brushed Vallejo poly black and then dry brush with a couple of coats of off-white, to help keep colours bright and to better define the various parts of the figure and equipment.

Anyway, they should make a nice painting project for September and the Napoleonic project can then claim to be moving forwards ...... slowly!

Having given the Epic Prussians a Landwehr Lancer unit earlier in the month, I decided to give the French their first cavalry unit and they too have lancer models, so these went onto the painting sticks. 

They have been done as Chevaux Légers Lanciers, line lancers, not to be confused with the 1st Regiment of Polish lancers of the guard. This is the 1st Line Regiment with scarlet facings, the first of six regiments converted from dragoons in 1811 and rather colourful chaps they are too.

They have white plumes on their helmet except for the elite company sitting on the right flank of the unit, which had red plumes.

They were involved in the 1812 battles with Russia and 1814 actions at Dresden, Leipzig and Hanau.

In 1815 during the Waterloo campaign, they operated on the French right and were used against Bulow’s Prussians as they emerged from the Bois de Paris, who were advancing on Plancenoit (hence our photo).

I have continued with the 80mm x 60mm base, which holds 12 cavalry models set in two ranks. It is easy to image 2 - 3 of these horse bases forming into a cavalry brigade without their footprint taking up too much space on the table.

I think next, the Prussians could do with another base of Jäger, while the French need two bases of skirmishers to keep up. That should at least be a fast hit to help the monthly base count!

I think last month I pushed too hard on the painting front and it has left me a little unenthusiastic for painting this month, so perhaps overall less pressured painting might actually lead to better productivity in the long run.

I have just found some rather nice 28mm resin barricades and thought I would have a go at them for a change of pace. I primed with a rattle can in a sort of iron red and now with acrylic I am trying to put a dark brown base coat down, but that red is proving a real bugger to kill! Even dragging out my artist quality acrylic paint doesn’t have the covering power on a first pass - never mind, we will get there ……. Eventually! :-)