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.

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.

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!

Earlier this year, we got a new volume in the ongoing series ‘Jours de Gloire’ (Days of Glory), which covers Napoleonic battles.

Deux Années de Gloire (Two Years of Glory) gives us four classic battles, Jena, Auerstaedt, Eylau and Friedland from the 1806 / 07 period.

I have been away from the system for a while, so to ease myself back in, I thought that I would break into this set by playing Jena first.

While the game is quite detailed, the package oddly does not give a historical notes. For an account of the battle, I referenced the wonderfully illustrated book, ‘Jena, Auerstaedt - The Triumph of the Eagle’ published by Histoire & Collections. Though just giving a single chapter, it is rich in detail and it gave me a better idea of the direction that each army might be looking at.

This is a 7 turn game (there is also a 5 turn competition scenario) that starts while still dark and then plays through the 14th October until nightfall at 1800 hours.

If you click on the image you will get an enlarged view. I have drawn a line between the two armies because to my eyes, it is not that easy to tell the forces apart because the counter colours chosen are rather similar in this battle.

You can see the coalition forces are divided and those about to receive the French assault are too far away from the main body (2nd Group in the photo) to get early support.

The fragmented nature of the coalition is nicely replicated by the systems method of 'order' and 'activation'. It takes two to three turns for the commander chits of the coalition formation to be available to go into the draw bag, so in effect, these forces are present, but ineffective. Further the group about to be attacked by the French are too far away from the army commander, Hohenlohe, to be put into command, so they are on 'Limited Orders' making their responses, sluggish.

I was part way through the first turn and Lannes V Corps had done rather well with their attacks ..... then I remembered the special rule that due to the early hour combined with a heavy fog, turn 1 is treated as a night turn ... Doh! The French guns would not have able to attack at range.

So with only a few formations activated, I have been able to easily re-set the game and will start again tomorrow!

The bit that I played took a while because my head was in the rulebook, but everything is clicking in place now and I do like the detail and nuance that the system allows to fall from the game.

Today, after some time sitting on the shelf, the Wars of the Roses collection hit the table, together with my new(ish) ridge feature fro S&A Scenics.

The ridge was actually bought for a planned Hastings game and it has a wider footprint and a flatter top to take the 28mm Anglo-Saxon army that was expected to fight on it. It is conveniently made in two parts, which match up perfectly, while giving easy storage.

The scene is essentially set for a session to become re-familiarised with the Hail Caesar rules from Warlord Games, the main elements of which quickly came back to memory.

I once again need to get the Piggy Longton campaign underway, we are at the start of 1472 with the year stretching before us, so perhaps, this should all happen in January, so that the years can be played out as an actual year.

Siege of Khartoum is a boardgame designed by Stephen Kling and published by The Historical Game Company. The game covers the Mahdist revolt and the situation created when the Mahdist isolated the town of Khartoum. 

General Gordon has been sent to organise an evacuation, but defies the Government and instead organises a defence, while waiting for a relief force. Can the Mahdist capture Khartoum before the relief column arrives?

This is a small format boardgame with hex and counters and a canvas map measuring 17” x 11”. It should play in a single session.

Of particular note, the rules are just 3 pages long, plus a page with the terrain chart. This is a series set of rules and there are now several titles in the series. I already have Poltava.

Each of the games, to fit with the common game engine, has an element of fortification on the map, though across the various games, these do not necessarily always translate as forts ‘proper’, but fit a variety of situations in which some have redoubts or perhaps a good defensive position such as the heights at Wagram or the heights at Saratoga.

The game engine relies on a ten card deck of cards per player. A card is drawn at the start of each player turn and it will state how many units you can move, how many you can fight with and also include a special rule, such as ‘Omdurman’s Rockets - Any Egyptian unit in Fort Omdurman may attack twice during Combat at a range of 4 hexes this turn’ and it is here that the flavour and history of the action is introduced. With 24 turns, the card stack will be cycled through two and a half times.

We played the game face-to-face tonight, but called the game part way through as it seemed impossible for the Mahdist player to make any headway to get into the fortified areas. My oponent, playing the Mahdist side described the situation as dispiriting.

However, for a first playing, I sense that there is a learning curve as to how to get the best use out of the armies and so I am going to play it again solo, now that I some experience with the demands of the scenario and thought about it a little, for my next game, I will use and deploy the Mahdist differently as follows;

1.  Understand that this is a 24 turn game, so it probably needs that full playing time for the situation to 'develop' as it should.

2. On set-up, keep the 1-5-3 units out of the battle, they will be needed later once the fort is breached ..... they don't have much value in the elim pile!

3. Initially use the artillery to attack the units on the fortified walls, while concentrating all efforts on taking Fort Omdurman (on the other side of the Nile) and perhaps knocking the artillery armed steamer out.

4. Wait for the special event when the River Nile narrows (recedes), the additional expanse of dry land created will allow Mahdist forces along the Nile to move through that and circumvent the fort walls. The defence will be stretched. This is the point that all of those 1-5-3 troops can be unleashed.

note - this event will be played during the second round of card draw, so will occur on one ofthe turns between 11 and 20, one has to hope it is sooner!

5. There is errata that states the Mahdist Felucca (ships) with troops on can convert to infantry immediately if they land and still have 1 Movement point left (Without MP's left they wait until the next turn to unload).

I think the narrow focus of the Madhist plan will make the initial turns fly by.

Anyway, for good or for bad, that will be the plan - we shall see.

I didn’t really know too much about the campaign before getting the game, but my exposure to the game has left me wanting to take a deeper dive into the history, so it must be doing something right. There is a bibliography at the end of the rule book, which is helpful.

I bought my copy from Second Chance Games (UK) who seem to have a goodly range of all the games in the series - there will be something for everyone in that list. More on this in the coming days!

I saw this painted unit of 5 Epic bases on e-bay and thought the painting quality was worth the punt. They have just arrived and I am delighted, but have a few observations that interest me enough to mull over.

These were sold as 5 bases, no doubt because that would be a 'standard' unit in Epic ACW Black Powder. However, I have dropped to units of 2 bases for a standard unit, so I can divide this collection into a 2 base unit and then a second 2 base unit ... or a 3 base unit if wanting to show a 'large' unit. So this takes my current Union collection from 7 units to 9, a nice boost indeed.

I like looking at figures painted by others as it gives away painting technique. On the web, these looked very nice and detailed. Set up in front of me they also look very nice and detailed, but on close examination I was surprised to note that crossbelts, hair and belt furniture had not been painted.

This is a bit of an eye opener to me, as I spend a couple of extra painting sessions with my figures doing those very thing, plus items such as facial hair, water canteens and bayonet sheaths and yet on the table, that doesn't seem to matter.

So the question for me is whether or not I am doing too much detail for the effect that these will give on the table - am I still in 28mm mode? If this does cause me a change in painting direction to a more short hand version of what I do now, then considering how much Epic stuff lays before me, then this e-bay purchase my be the best money I have spent on the hobby!

 It looks like the painter has used traditional acrylic rather than the popular contrast paints and I feel that it is this, with its rich depth of colour density that helps carry the figure

The other thing is, they are based on MDF to 60mm and I use 55mm. I am in 2 minds about changing that. My hesitation is not for any sense of laziness, but rather, I do not want to damage the figures.

It is interesting to see that the painter has chosen to present the unit resting in an MDF (from Warbases) movement tray. Handy for the initial moves in column, but obviously not working once the unit falls out into line.

Anyway, it shows that it is worth keeping an eye on e-bay, as the odd gems do pop up (I searched under Painted ACW Epic). These cost me £57.50 with post included. Because I do paint practically all of my own stuff, these purchases won't happen too often, but as a 'leg-up' they are certainly a great help.  

It has been a while since I last played, but armed with the latest ‘Designers Cut’ version of the rules and the ACW army lists, I re-ran the Mill Creek scenario, which I played a couple of days ago under my own rules.

I have played the Mill Creek scenario many times and more often than not, the Confederates will claim the high ground (their first objective) in the closing moments of the game, but they generally fail to capture both ends of the bridge (their second objective).

So today I mixed things up a bit and assaulted the hill with a single Confederate brigade, while having the other two brigades assault the bridge. In effect this pitched 5 Confederate regiments against 2 Union regiments at the bridge, so visually there was an overwhelming tide of grey and so you would want the result to reflect that …. and it did!

Even before the end of play, the Union were in a state of full retreat. Thanks to poor die rolls, only one of the three reinforcing Union regiments had entered the table, so a counter-attack at the bridge was a non-starter. At the Hill two Union regiments were soundly routed off the high ground and the artillery forced to retreat (in my last game, all three of those unit were unsteady and compulsively retreating - so the outcome was much the same, just a different way of doing it).

Under the V&F rules, I found myself changing the description of the bridge to ‘defendable terrain’.

I played the rules with two tweaks. Firstly using my Epic scale figures, I dropped all measurements to ⅔ and that looked right and seemed to work rather well.

Secondly, I don’t like card play that builds up a ‘hand to be played’ with the inevitable ‘Gotcha’ type moments that fall out of that. I do however like the Random Event nature of the cards so I kept them in the game, but instead of allowing a hand to build up, in the Fate Phase, the next card is simply turned and played by the player that turn - or lost! It seemed to work fine.

I quite like the Double Move action as that does bring the sides into closer contact much faster and allows the game to get going properly. I also like the support rules that allow nearby unit to contribute to a units fighting strength, both for firing and melee. It feels a sensible half way house from allowing units to simply gang up.

There are some elements that sit comfortably with my own rules, for example, fire occurs early in the turn and those that fire, cannot then subsequently take an Action in the Action Phase. Also the  rate at which units deplete in the field is comparable to the rate of loss in my rules, with the final collapse similarly occurring, though V&F does allow for a possibility of rallying off loss, which my own rules don’t.

I found the Rally rules to be quite tame and more often than not will mainly be allowing units to recover enough strength back that they stop being shaken. It feels natural to do this when units consolidate a position that they have just taken, as they catch their breath and I suppose in part, it reflects re-organising the ranks and getting some cohesion back.

I do like that the system makes the action across the table feel like it is being conducted by separate brigades, so that even on a small table there is a sense of several different points of crisis emerging for one side or the other.

Overall, I find myself favouring the V&F rules and I just need to fully regain my familiarity with them, which has reduced this past year as I have been putting attention into my own rules. They feel like they are telling the story a bit more cohesively than my rules do.

Certainly, by now, the V&F rules have been heavily tweaked from their starting point and due I suppose to them being free rules, there has been a lot of play and feedback and the latest edition is all the better for that.

More of this I think!

The ACW project is all about getting enough figures painted, to play my Mill Creek scenario. Having just completed the Union forces, I thought it was time to give the scenario a run out. Tap on the graphic for a closer look.

Today I am playing with my own rules, but I will run it again soon and play with the Valour & Fortitude rules with their new ACW lists.

There is a bit more about this game over on the ‘Recent Games’ tab in the menu on the left.

Once I have played a V&F version of the scenario, it might be interesting to do a compare and contrast type post.

We had a face to face game last night, with Multi Man’s Publishing’s (MMP) strategic game on the medieval Wars of the Roses conflict.

The game comes in their ‘Special Ops’ house magazine and is a direct relative of their Warriors of God game, which covered The Hundred Years Wars.

The strategic map of England is divided into major districts such as all of Wales or all of the West Midlands or all the South West, while there are overseas zones to represent Ireland, Calais, France and Burgundy. Scotland, obviously bordered to England, is also represent by an external zone.

Overall the game plays smoothly and I was easily introduced to the game as a first time player. It played to a full and proper conclusion within a three hour session (good). To describe the whole thing in a single sentence, I would say there is a similar underlaying feel to the game as say the Braveheart style of game from Columbia Games.

It is something of an escalation game as the number of nobles and the troops available to the player starts relatively small and then generally increase through the game, so that towards the end of the game, measure and counter-measure between the two sides becomes a more considered thing as one has to pick the battles that they think will bring the best chance of victory and the subsequent control of a region that may fall from that.

At the final count of the Victory Points, it was a very close affair, with the situation playing out tightly until the last turn, keeping both players very much in the game.

At just £35 from Second Chance Games (UK) the four main groups of people interested in this particular issue of the magazine will be; those wanting a solid, enjoyable game that plays in a single session, those collecting Area Movement style games, those wanting the late medieval subject matter and those involved in the Advanced Squad Leader system as there is also a load of support material for that system in this issue.

Overall, a good game with plenty of re-playability.