Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment
Hannibal
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.
Figure scenario to boardgame
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.
Napoleon’s Last Battles
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!
Completed Epic Union Brigade
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 :-)
Cassino ‘44
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.
A shade / wash
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.
Ruckkampher again!
Re the post from the 20th, this tactical WWII scenario from the OST series went back onto the table tonight. I wanted to explore the premiss that if the German force cut loose and put the emphasis on advance rather than getting bogged down in prolonged firefights, that their goal of exiting the map was achievable.
Well, they advanced much further, but took heavier casualties, which in the end, the victory point count tipped too far in the Soviet favour - so a German win is still a remote outcome in my playing.
However, it would be fair to note that the Soviets got very lucky with the dice. Several of their dice rolls in a short space of time were scoring 10+, which ensured that the Germans were suffering either casualty results (flip) or eliminations.
Their Luck Card gave the Soviets a fire mission of off board mortars, in addition to the one that the game’s order-of-battle. So all told there was a lot of hurt going down on the Germans, who were advancing over open ground.
The German tactic of cracking on with the advance, did pull Soviet units out of their covered position, which is a help as every moment spent moving is a moment not spent firing.
It was a fun game, with a couple of occasions when the last impulse point really mattered.
Overall, the scenario is a fun challenge and that it feels like the path to a German win needs cracking … but is time to move on!
Battle of Stamford Bridge 1066
(Boardgame) - As part of the proof reading of rules for the Legion Games edition of the 1066 games (that will include the additional battle of Gate Fulford), Geoff Noble and myself are further play testing the three games.
Today I am putting Stamford Bridge on the table. Compared to the slow grind affair of Hastings, Stamford Bridge is pure hack ‘n slash. There is a brutality to the action in this game and casualties build at an alarming rate. Who will be the first to push the other over the edge!
To reflect the time that it took Harold to clear the west bank of the River Derwent and form up on the other side to face the Viking army, there are some initial movement restrictions to the Anglo-Saxon army. There is also an optional rule to swap out some of the Housecarls for mounted Housecarls, which do get to move early, though I am not compelled by Snori Sturluson’s (writing in 13th Century) suggestion that Harold deployed cavalry and so today, everyone is fighting on foot.
Turn 1 - Viking archers start moving out intending to extend the flanks.
Turn 2 - Anglo-Saxon archers follow suit. The front line of Saxon Housecarls hold their centre back, while moving out on the two flanks to engage the Viking shieldwall. In the system, the fighting value of the frontline Hirdmenn troops are unknown to either side, they are flipped face down, representing that some of them have left their armour back on their ships …. but which ones!
I don’t think that I have ever witnessed such bad die rolling, with four out of the six attacks rolling 1’s (very bad for the attacker). The Vikings take full advantage of the situation and counter attack on the flanks. The Saxons just about hold, but an archer unit on the left goes ‘out of arrows’ and all three archer units on the right are swept away!
Turn 3 - The Saxons stabilise the line and on their right, Waltheof leads a counter-attack, rescuing the flank. One Saxon Housecarl unit breaks into the shieldwall, but is contained and removed from play, forcing a moral check on those adjacent Saxon units. Harold has already lost 4 units, a D6 is added to that number, only a result of 6 (to make 10) can cause a local rout ….. a 6 is rolled! The first routers of the game are two Housecarl units. The Housecarl desperately need the Fyrd to move up and fill the gaps in the line.
Turn 4 - The hack ‘n slash starts and both sides take heavy losses and gaps open and individual units drive into the flanks of others. Gyrth, fighting on the Saxon left is taken by surprise in the flank and dies, causing more local routing.
Turn 5 - The Orri reinforcement (Viking) enters the battlefield. This is the part of the Viking army that had been left behind, 10 miles away, with their ships. They have run all the way to the battlefield and arrive pretty much exhausted. It will take a couple of turns for them to contact the Saxons, who are being forced to fall back towards the strategic bridge crossing on the River Derwent.
Waltheof dies fighting on the Saxon right. I am seeing 7 Saxon units with rout counters on them fleeing ….. that tells its own tale of where this battle may be going!
Turn 6 - Things are so serious that Harold takes his bodyguard of Housecarls and attack in the centre. Tostig (Harold’s brother, but ally of the Vikings) takes this moment to attack Harold. His bodyguard fight to the last, but Harold escapes to another nearby Housecarl unit.
Both lines now have gaps and a Housecarl unit sees an opportunity to slip through the enemy line and strike at Hardrada (Viking King), who carelessly has stood away from friendly units, the King falls! (As happened historically, when notably the Vikings fought on).
Turn 7 - (system rule - from turn 7 onwards, due to sheer exhaustion, any of the Orri Reinforcement that disorder or rout, cannot recover to good order). The Saxons fall back, but a determined Tostig again attacks Harold, but Harold holds the line.
(System rule - once per game, the Orri Reinforcement can call ‘Berserker Rage’, when all of their good ordered Hirdmenn get a +1 in attack. This is to represent what became known as Orri’s Storm, when the reinforcement attacked with such ferocity that the Saxons came close to collapse). The Vikings use this turn to make those attacks. Of course some of the Hirdmenn themselves become disordered and under the exhaustion rule those units will not be able to recover and so lose their offensive capability.
Turn 8 - As the Saxons fall back, Harold is assailed by both Tostig and Orri, each with their bodies of men, but with a charmed life he escapes back and joins a band of Fyrd.
Turn 9 - A decision needs to be made, should Harold personally counter-attack the now exposed Tostig? No … for Harold to advance and give up his present position, would expose the bridge to Viking attack..
Again Tostig and Orri launch an assault on Harold’s position and again Harold holds, though Tostig dies, his unit routs as does Orri’s contingent ….. amazing! I thought Harold after his run of good luck had just about had it!
Turn 10 (final turn) - The Vikings continue to press, but their momentum has been lost and the Saxons are able to hold their line - the bridge crossing and Saxon line of retreat is secure.
It was pretty obvious during play, that despite Harold’s heroic example, the Anglo-Saxons were getting the worst of it and they found it pretty difficult to recover from those initial heavy losses on their opening attack and the Viking counter response. Totting up the victory points confirmed it, a clear Viking Win (non-historical).
With Harold still alive, the Vikings might well assume that at some point Harold will return with a new army ….. but what wasn’t know by either side was that in just a few days time, William of Normandy would invade the south coast and Harold would be needed to deal with that emergency (Hastings).
Well that was a thoroughly enjoyable game, enhanced by quite a lot of leader involvement, from which the dice gods could quite easily have seen the end of either Harold or Orri. As it was, the two Saxon commanders Gyrth and Waltheof died, together with King Hardrada.
Commanders enhance a units chance of recovering from disorder / rout, so their loss will see more persistent disorder as well as their own +1 combat modifier being lost.
It can be quite counter intuitive to attack when you are are your knees, but taking opportunities of inflicting casualties on an enemy that may be exposed is the only path to victory.
A Farm Complex
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!
Soldiers of Napoleon
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
Ruckkampfer - Russia July 8th 1944
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.
Re-finding a painting style
I have become somewhat disenchanted with using contrast type paints for the ‘fast paint’ effect on my Epics.
I should say outright that the product is good, but that my painting style and skill lacks in allowing me to get the best from them.
I am finding that firstly I don’t paint neatly enough on the first pass and so frequent repair work becomes the norm, which adds time. I’m not keen on some of the very light highlights that result by the nature of the paint and so I end up using a wash (which defeats the object of Contrast Paint) and then going in fairly heavy handed with the highlights, which again adds time. So overall, for me, not very speedy painting at all, plus I’m also not very keen on how some of the lighter colours can end up looking too luminous, it is not the look that I want for my military figures.
So I am going back to my more traditional style, but with two techniques that are making a difference. Firstly, I am keeping the standard acrylic paints fairly moist and fluid, by constantly cleaning the brush and also regularly dipping the tip of the brush into water ever so slightly, just to keep the paint mobile. I am working off a wet palette which also helps.
Secondly, for the Epic strips, I have labelled which strips will be on the front rank and which will be on the rear. Everything gets a good block painting, but for highlights, repairs and finer detail, only the front face of the front rank and the rear face of the rear rank are getting the extra attention. The rear front and the front rear … don’t!
I could and should take this even further and do absolute minimal painting on the aspects between the two ranks that are not really seen, but my painting discipline is not yet relaxed enough to allow me that bit of naughtiness!
This isn’t rocket science, I know many are doing it …. I’ve just been slow to catch on.
It is also helping that I have dropped some unnecessary screen time, that general browsing that costs and hour or two each day and to which we slowly surrender ourselves without much thought. This has liberated enough time to allow two lots of half hour painting sessions a day.
On other fronts, proof reading and final rounds of testing the 1066 games are presently taking my time, but there is light at the end of the tunnel!
Epic ACW Union are on the painting sticks. I want to have a brigade of three regiments done by the end of the month.
On boardgames, Vae Victis have just release their English rules for Cowpens, but I note the charts have been omitted, so I need to wait for them before getting that to the table. In the meantime, I have Stamford Bridge and a Hastings game to play.
Forever onwards and upwards!
The Battle of Zama 202 BC
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).
10mm Windmill from Pendraken,
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.
