Some 9 posts ago (4th September) I showed this base as a bare bones project with everything on it unpainted. It is now dressed up and ready for action!

The two 10mm buildings are the stone workshop and a stable block buildings from the Battlescale range as sold by Pendraken Miniatures. I have no idea who does the walls, but I suspect I bought them as 20mm castings, but here they serve as ‘high walls’. The front gate is home made from balsa wood and wafer thin bass wood.

The total footprint is a compact at 6½ x 6½ inches, but it still has a decent presence and of course there is potential for the modeller to make it smaller by going using a smaller base with less rough ground around it. 

I just have a couple of errors to correct, which will take nothing more than a couple of minutes and the tip of a paint brush to fix.

Primarily, I see this as providing a Built Up Area (BUA) for the Napoleonic period, though frankly it will fit a wider range of subjects - even tanks parked outside would not look too out of place.

If doing this again, I think I would pre-paint before fixing and then do a tidy up and wash once glued, it would just be easier to reach all of the parts without swearing!

I don’t often watch lengthy YouTube videos from start to end, but I thought that this was particularly well done.

(link at the bottom of this post).

Martin and Robin from the 7th Son Channel present their ‘learning’ game of Soldiers of Napoleon by Warwick Kinrade. When I say learning, it is fact a well presented game with the duo already having a good grasp of the rules and by the end of video, you will have a good understanding of the mechanics and will certainly help with a buying decision.

It is really helped along by a splendid looking table that helps convince that a good game with 28mm can be played off the domestic table.

At my last two or three wargame shows, I have picked these up - put them down - picked them up - put them down, totally undecided whether to buy. This video has really helped me.

Some headline features are that;

The rules use paces for measurement and so are scale agnostic.

A hand of specialised cards are used to progress the turn. Each card has three features. You can play it on a brigade commander to give a number of units orders, the cards have random order values. You can play it for the Special Event, for example the card might give you a round of enhanced cannonade to use all of your guns and you can play it for function such as Rally. 

The system assumes that you are playing a small section of a bigger battle and so things are going on around you ‘off-table’ and some of those things may influence your game, so for example in their game, nearby British guns got a chance to target one of the on table French units. Success and failure on your ‘off board’ flanks might also influence your game.

In the video, each side has a small division of three brigades, which is the size of game I particularly favour.

The game is underpinned by Victory Points, which are earned throughout play from various situations, once a player scores enough VP’s to match the other side’s Morale Value, they win.

With a battle that potentially fills the table, the cards do help shake things up a bit to keep play flowing and interesting and so playing exactly the same game twice has the potential to play out differently each time.

I am not a huge fan of cards, especially those system that allow play of cards against the other person in a sort of ‘Gotcha’ style, with the card having no intelligent relevance to what is happening on the table. Here, the cards are tamer and have two functions sitting side by side.

One is to drive the command system and the other is to introduce special events to help the narrative, though it is interesting to note in one of the comments at the foot of the video, the poster says something along the lines of - you end up playing card play rather than playing a game of Napoleonics., an interesting observation that I don’t fully concur with, but they have a point.

The sticking point for me on cards is that it undermines solo play. It looks to still be playable solo judging by the cards that I saw drawn, but the hassle of managing two decks when gaming alone is something that I don’t mind passing on. Overall for me and my solo game, it is a solution to a problem that I don’t have, but for others, I can see it giving interesting games and bringing a strong narrative.

It would be the Austrians that interest me and their stats etc are in a second book and I must admit, I don’t like being pulled down the codex / supplement route. I will still carry on picking it up and putting it down at wargame shows though :-)

LINK

https://youtu.be/644FCug7TiM?si=awYZpDVXjnbSmOAI

An interesting, infantry only, scenario from Flying Pig Games’ Old School Tactical system. This comes from the ‘Red Blitz’ module.

Background - When Army Group Centre collapsed and cities capitulated, there were many pockets of isolated German soldiers left behind. They were called Ruckkampfers and these survivors of the obliterated divisions tried desperately to make it back home. They were ruthlessly hunted by special Soviet hunter groups and the partisans. 

Short on food, water and ammunition, this depleted company moves West.

The basis of the scenario is that a small German infantry group must move towards the west edge of the game board. They get victory points for exiting the board.

A small group of Soviet soldiers enter the board in front of the Germans on the opening game turn to block their way. The Soviets get victory points for inflicting casualties and capturing German soldiers.

After turn 4, the Soviets get an opportunity to test each turn to see whether a partizan unit enters the game area. There is a 66% chance that one will arrive on each turn. They arrive in random locations on the map. 

To further hinder the Germans there is the ‘walking wounded’ rule that reduces a German squads movement allowance from 4 to 3 MP’s once it has taken casualties and been flipped to its weaker side.

The player with the most victory points after 14 turns wins.

We played this face-to-face tonight. At the start of play the Germans drew the SECOND CHANCE luck card, which allows a one off re-roll of dice and the Soviets got TANK HUNTERS, which of course in a game without tanks was useless! :-)

Report - The sides start far enough apart that In the first part of the game, there is not much else to do other than the Germans hope for high impulse rolls to get as much of their force moved up as possible, while the Soviets seek out good defensive positions and then spend impulses to roll for additional cover.

As the lines closed, the Soviets called in mortar fire and while missing the intended target, it did catch Captain Weiss and a rifle squad moving through some trees. The airburst rule kicks in for artillery attacks on woodland and the section took casualties, though Weiss remained cool and managed to lead his men over to the right having spotted a weakness in the Soviet line.

Elsewhere the Germans had become embroiled in firefights with defending Soviet forces …. The clock to get off the map was ticking!

The first of the Soviet partisans started to emerge and take up positions to thicken the defences. Then the dice stopped being nice to them and only one more partisan was to arrive over the next four turns!

It almost didn’t matter …. the Germans were stuck, pinned down. Captain Weiss broke the stalemate by pushing up the flank (German right), attracting sniper fire. His men flushed the sniper out, who fell back to a more central position, but from here, she took aim at Weiss as he moved from cover to continue his advance and that, as they say, was the end of that - Weiss fell to the ground like a stone!

With that line of advance closed and the Germans still bogged down in the centre, we worked out whether the Germans could escape the map, with just 3 turns to go, it was clear that they wouldn’t make it and so we called the game (unusual for us) with a Soviet win.

The German player felt that the scenario was tough on the Germans, the Soviet player felt that the German player should have kept moving and pulled the Soviets out of their protected cover, but the German player countered that moving over open ground would have had deadly consequences to German forces - an interesting discussion.

We both own the game and decided that we would each replay the scenario in our respective homes as a solo venture and test the tactic of ‘enthusiastic’ forward movement Vs higher casualties.

Needless to say, as always with this game, we got a good evenings play out of it.  

I bought this Osprey title as a primer for my Trebbia project, a battle occurring 16 years earlier, but still sharing common ground on things such as weapons, tactics and organisation.

One of the things that intrigued me was that the Triarii (3rd Roman line), divided into two and moved out to the flanks to extend the front line. I have a boardgame that covers the battle in some tactical detail and as I type this, I am not sure that the system is flexible enough for me to do that, because of heavy doctrinal restrictions on the Triarii - something I must dive back into and make sure that I have understood the rule properly.

I have put some observations up on the ‘Presently Reading’ tab in the menu on the left (8th item down).

Another model passes across the paint table. I’m not sure who makes this windmill, but it is described on the Pendraken website as being from their Peninsular Range.

I have owned this before, but it got ‘disposed of’ in the great clear out last year ….. so here it is again!

(some may recall seeing the first model last year in the Wavre play by mail campaign that I ran. This little beauty kept cropping up in the Moulin de Bierges battles).

I quite like its charm and it looks right on the table. It has a good presence while still offering a small footprint - ideal.

I’m not really quite ready for needing this yet, but the wind sails are made from metal and once the cold weather starts, there will be fewer opportunities to use rattle can primer on them, so I used the recent warmer days to get them done.

The body is good quality resin without any air bubbles. I have added a couple of bags / sacks to the base using Milliput. Since I will generally be using a european setting, I painted the roof tiles brown to represent wooden tiles.

The only bit of work needed was to drill out the holes for the support to take the sails to make their attachment a little stronger. It is a ‘handle with care’ item as I guess a knock or a drop might distort the sails beyond recovery.

This is a nice item - recommended.

The latest Vae Victis magazine has just dropped through the door and the game inside covers the Battle of Cowpens from the American War of Independence.

I only pre-ordered this about 3 weeks ago and paid around £15, which includes the postage from France to the UK.

The quality of the magazine is superb and you get a separate small rule booklet, die cut counters and a small map (double spread). The magazine and rules are in French, so I await the availability of the English rules translation, which normally follows the magazine by around a month.

I don’t really know anything about the system, but note there is a morale track on the map, I like that sort of thing. There are only 13 - 15 units per side and playing time looks to be around 90 - 120 minutes, so I mainly bought it as a short session game for our face to face meetings, plus I have a gap in my AWI game resources.

Judging by the rulebook, there is a fair bit to this, so hopefully a bit of meatiness lays behind what is otherwise a small game.

For those with figures, there are some rather nice AWI scenarios in the magazine covering 1780 - 81, giving the  battles for Camden, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse and Hobkirks Hill.

I will use my translator software via the iPad to study these further.

There is a new replay report over on the RECENT GAMES page (see menu on left).

This covers an American contact with the Italian Coastal Defences as presented in the Anzio scenario package.

It’s a really handy scenario for re-familiarisation or to fit in a short gaming session, though you do also need Volume II for the American order of battle.

Since posting the replay, I have now played it a second time (face-to-face) and it went right down to the wire. At the end of the scenario, the Axis had won, however the Extended Play die roll gave us another turn, just enough time, literally on the last die roll, for the Americans to pull a win!

Firstly, I would just like to thank those who are visiting and supporting this site on a regular basis and for gamers who have contacted me over recent weeks to give a personal thumbs up - thank you, your comments are appreciated.

I continue to be busy with doing wargame ‘work’ for other parties, so as a side distraction, I have just started to put some bits together to get a farm complex onto the table. It will be multi-period, but a prime purpose will be for my napoleonic Epic games.

I did have the official Epic ‘La Haye Sainte’ farmhouse produced by Sarissa Precision. It was a lovely replica, but I felt the foot print was too big for my table, so a smaller ‘representation’ was called for.

This has a MDF base, rescued from an old MDF building kit that was going nowhere fast. The various slots for its construction have been filled and the edges chamfered. The underneath has also been scored with a craft knife, as I was told that this stops warping. I don’t know whether that is true, but I do it ……. just in case! :-)

The two 10mm buildings are (1) Stone Workshop BAT-10B040 and (2) Stable Block BAT-10B041. These are excellent quality resins, produced by Battlescale, which I now believe are only sold via Pendraken. The above are the Pendraken codes.

I have no idea who produced the walls, but I’m pretty sure I bought them as 1/72 pieces, which gives them a good height for our high walled complex and they look okay against the 10mm buildings.

The gate is a home bash item, made from balsa wood and very thin slivers of basswood (I think!).

Overall, I think that is going to turn out a nice piece. There is room inside for a single unit to claim occupation and await to be ejected!

This will be a slow burn project, just adding things such as basing paste and roof paint etc when I have those things already out to work on other stuff.

Epic ACW have just moved onto painting sticks. There has been a bit of a lull on the old painting front, so it is time to jack that back up.

Arriving today in the UK and ordered on Kickstarter last year, the latest in the tactical series from Flying Pig Games gives us plenty of Italy / Sicily action and some new orders-of-battle.

In fact it has two parts, as it was released together with its expansion sister module. ‘For The Empire’, at the same time.

The main game box (Volume 4) has a large game board (30” x 41”) labelled Map 9, which has a goodly amount of farmland on it and elevations. It is loosely based around a valley feature with a small stream at the bottom, winding its way right across the board.

The counter sheets bring us British, Italian and German forces and the rules are marked version 5.75, so are really just a tidy up of 5.65.

The playbook offers 14 scenarios with six of those based in Sicily, the rest in Italy. There are a few new items, such as the dug in panther turret and commandos, which can use the new stealth rule, effectively allowing them to move at half rate without attracting opportunity fire.

Moving across to the expansion - For The Empire, brings in Canadian and New Zealand troops, while for the Germans, fallschimjägers are introduced. The mapboard (map 10) is liberally covered with ruined buildings and the board is involved in the Cassino scenarios.

Again, we get 14 scenarios. 5 are Cassino based involving New Zealand troops and the other 9 are Canadian based scenarios, with one taking place in Sicily and the rest in Italy.

As I went the Kickstarter route, I did also get the bonus Anzio scenario booklet. This has 5 more scenarios, all of which use American forces, which need to be sourced from the Volume II module (North West Europe), plus both maps 9 and 10 are needed if all scenarios are to be played.

Scenario one covers the first stages of moving inland and American forces come across Italian coastal forces, backed up German rear echelon troops. This looks to be an excellent starter scenario for anyone trying to re-familiarise themselves with the system as it is small, has low unit density and no vehicles.

There is a British tank commander counter in the core module called Lt. Smith. I am advised that this is a nod to me from the designer for some of the support articles that I had written about the system. Thanks Shayne, nice touch.

Taken together, this is a fantastic package and great support for the series, well done Shayne Logan (designer) very clearly a ton of work has gone into this to get such a fine game into our hands.