Commanders, a wargame digest

Commanders, a wargame digest

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Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment

16 Dec 2023

Board Game Geek subscription drive

BGG are running their annual December drive for donations. The $15 one off payment translates to a £12 Sterling cost, one can of course donate more.

I find BGG useful to look for boardgame errata and also for reviews, cutting down the chance of me buying something that I may not actually warm to, so a cost saver in both short and long term.

Anyone interesting in a subscription donation can visit boardgamegeek.com and the instructions are on their home page. 

15 Dec 2023

Re-visit Plancenoit

Another go at the ‘Prussian Steamroller at Plancenoit’ scenario from the Waterloo campaign.

This was a face-to-face game. The Prussians are trying to take Plancenoit / exit the map on the Plancenoit road.

The French VI Corps are blocking the Prussian advance and they are joined by the Young Guard, who take up position in Plancenoit itself.

The first part of the game saw the two Prussian Corps get rather intermingled as the units advanced into a narrow congested front. Their artillery failed to get into adequate positions to support the infantry attacks.

Prussian infantry assaults were repeatedly beaten back, though at the same time, they were successfully wearing down French VI Corps.

Over the space of a couple of hours, the Prussian artillery grouped together at the front line on the Prussian right and inflicted heavy casualties on the French left and in particular, they delivered a devastating blow to a French cavalry division that had attempted to charge a collection of nearby gun batteries.

This actually turned out to be an illegal move by the French as the direction of attack took them away from their ‘ordered objective’ and they should have first taken an ‘Independent Movement’ test and even if they had done that, they would not have had enough movement points left to launch a ‘Prepared Attack’, so would have had a +2 penalty.

As the clock ticked, though the Prussians didn’t seem to be taking much ground, their repeated assaults were starting to significantly wear down Mouton’s VI Corps and the Young Guard, to the point that they both came close to becoming demoralised.

In the end, despite the French defence being close to collapse, the Prussian attacking divisions had just simply become too worn to keep up the momentum of attack and the game was declared a French victory, based on the fact that they still held the majority of objectives.

We had a similar problem with the Prussian cavalry as we saw in the last game, they are easily tempted to be drawn out and concentrated on the Prussian left, then finding the terrain too constrictive and the Guard infantry positions in the town too strong to be able to make any further useful deployment, though I suppose this time around, they did keep quite a bit of the Young Guard strength pulled out of place to defend the lower parts of the village.

As a stalemate settled across the field and with Plancenoit remaining in French hands, the game was called in the Prussian favour.

12 Dec 2023

Marching into the collection!

This is a battalion of my Warlord Games Light Infantry. They are late war, so sit outside my 1809 project time frame - but that does not bother me.

They are easy to put together and come with decals to attach to the cartridge cases (slung to the rear).

There are flags in the set and I have chosen 14th Light Infantry to be represented here.

I don’t know why, but my box had 2 officers and no drummer, which is a bit of a shame.

All-told, I am quite happy with these. They took longer to paint than I would have liked, but I just need to tweak the technique a little.

11 Dec 2023

Velikiye Luki

The Velikiye Luki game that I ordered from the States has arrived and the good news is that it did not attract a Customs charge. I don’t know how the Customs thing works, despite checking out the website, but I assume there is a certain value that is allowed in before a charge is made, or perhaps it is the paper nature of the game that exempts it ….. who knows!

Anyway, it is here and it looks good. On this basis, if more games are released, I will direct buy them.

On the table here today and yesterday was the ‘Prussian Steamroller to Plancenoit’ scenario from the Waterloo game by Hexasim. Throughout play it looked like a brutal Prussian assault would just crush the French, but as it turned out, the game was decided literally in the last few dice rolls - so that is good.

Photo’s were taken, so this will almost certainly end up with a write up on the blog.

At last! The 28mm French light infantry have left the painting sticks, been based, flocked and matt varnished and are ready to put away as done! They look superb …. Well, to my eyes at least :-)

This now makes way for 8 AB 20mm Soviet SMG figures for a Rapid Fire formation - it is also a nice break from shiny buttons and pom-poms!

8 Dec 2023

Eagles of France

Face-to-Face game tonight, Mike broke open his copy of 2nd edition Waterloo, by Hexasim, which uses the Eagles of France system. 

To get ourselves up and running, we chose one of the two intro scenarios - d´ Erlon attacks.

This has the French attacking the Anglo-Allied positions around La Haye Saint, a fortified farmhouse.

It is only four turns long and somewhat heavily scripted, with restrictions each turns as to what can activate and with the Anglo-Allied forces very limited in their ability to instigate melee.

In our game the French Grand battery opened fire on the farmhouse and with a rather excellent die roll ….. routed the occupants, allowing their infantry to follow up and capture the complex.

Next, on the left, a powerful French attack overpowered the Anglo-Allied guns - an excellent French opening.

To win the French also had to take part of the lane on the other side of the farmhouse and it was here that their infantry started to take heavy losses, their Quality Rating dropping to just 6 when their units flipped to their weaker side.

Never-the-less, they pressed on and took a section of road, which gave them a ‘sudden death’ victory.

We have been away from this marvellous system for too long and were a little rusty. Playing confirmed to us that you need to play this scenario once to better understand what to do in the next replay.

The other intro game, is the Prussian Steamroller, covering the Prussian attacks at Plancenoit. I have played Plancenoit a few times this year with different systems, so it would be nice to squeeze this in before the year ends to compare ….. overall, a good session to bring this system back onto the radar.

6 Dec 2023

This year’s Wargamer Annual

Last year, the postal strike meant that my Wargamers Annual (available Caliver Books) did not arrive until January, but this has taken just three days to arrive - dropping through the letter box today.

I do like an annual, it is no doubt a nostalgic hit from a youth filled with annuals and comics, but regardless, in a digital age, it is nice to get good old paper and ink in the hands and have some quality reading time with a coffee.

I think this is a better issue than 2023 and by that I mean, there are more articles that are of prime interest to me.

The article that made me push the button concerns ‘Bath-Tub Borodino by Angus Konstam’.

I had played a bath-tubbed Borodinio earlier in the year from the scenario preseneted by Keith Flint in his Shadow of the Eagles rule set and that went very well. It turns out that Angus’ presentation is based on that same scenario, with some twists, so plenty there for me to enjoy.

There is also an article by Bill Gilchrist, looking at the 5 game ‘teasers’ set out in Charles Grant’s Imaginations ‘Raid on St Michal’ campaign book. Bill is using Black Powder, so another captivating piece for me, I love the ‘teaser’ period of wargaming.

Then there is the Rapid Fire based game, with the Hamburg area of Germany represented over four tables in a multi player game. Plus plenty of other stuff in the 102 page volume (no adverts).

All-told, a good Christmas read for me.

2 Dec 2023

Bulge!

It’s December …. Time for the Battle of the Bulge to hit the table.

Our face-to-face last night saw Worthington Publishing’s 1944 Bulge hit the table.

The photo shows ‘at start’ positions in the centre, just in front of Clervaux. In this design, Clervaux (a fortress town) seems to fall rather easily, aided by the design allowing river crossings not being restricted to bridging points.

The knock on effect is that the Germans are fairly certain to arrive at Bastogne and take it, before the 101 Airborne reach it, so we seldom get the historical situation of the Airborne defending Bastogne.

The Airborne can be supplied even when surrounded, so their presence at Bastogne would make that a hard fought for town.

Aside form that sort of historical skew, the game is always good fun and the tight focus of geography and objectives allows the game to play along ‘typical’ Bulge narrative. 

It does make the German player desperately look for breakthrough opportunity and the Allied player desperately try to close down all gaps and in that regard, the design does give the players the right emotional connection to the game.

This is an easy game to bring to the table and is just a further vindication of my decision to move to fewer rulesets.

1 Dec 2023

Panther build coming to an end

The two Italeri fast build Panthers are in the final stages. they just need a dry brush with Zandri Dust and then a light coat of matt varnish. 

It is too cold for the rattle can today (UK) being below zero, but I am told that by next Friday (1 week away), temperatures will have risen to 8 or 9 degrees and so the matt varnish can wait until then.

The ‘Current Build’ page (see index on left) has been updated with some extra detail.

Gaming tonight, face-to-face, so I am off to brush up on the rules and get the counters set out.

29 Nov 2023

Experiment in overseas postage

Legion Games (US) have just released a mini game, Velikiye Luki by Michael Taylor, the first in a number of mini games by this author.

It is a very tradition hex and counter game, which attracts me.

It is a small format game and so normal price is just $20 and is currently on promotion at $16, at that price it is unlikely that they can circulate it distributors as there just isn’t enough money in it …… so, I have ordered it direct (US to UK).

Cost is $16 plus $18 for postage which works out to £28 Sterling. What will be interesting is to see whether something of this value attracts a Customs Duty when it hits our shores, which for me would be around a further £18 plus a £10 collection fee by Royal Mail - which would make the whole deal financially punishing enough that I will not repeat it, but I am hoping that this comes in under the Customs tariff level and so will be free of import duties.

We shall see!

The game is played on an 11 x 17” map, with 64 counter, 8 pages of rules and a playing time of 1 - 2 hours, so I am getting this as a potential to make our short face-to-face game viable. I will report back on how this all goes.

25 Nov 2023

New Waterloo title

We played Fourteen Days in June last night. This is a Steven Pole design and published by Strategemata.

It is looking at the Waterloo campaign. You play on a large map, of which the historical battlefield of Waterloo / Wavre / Quatre Bras and Ligny would sit in an area measuring 4x3 hexes.

In our game, Grouchy formed the French left and took a strong cavalry force on a sweep around the Anglo-Allies right flank, aiming to cut Wellingtons line of communications - this causes what is effectively an out of supply situation for the Anglo-Allied army. Wellington was not effectively able to counter this.

In the centre, Napoleon met Wellington’s main force and was defeated in the first battle and was forced to retreat, where he joined Ney and the Guard. A couple of days later (two turns) they advanced again towards Wellington with a combined force, this time defeating him and followed up to make a second attack with a view to crushing him.

Interestingly, though the French goal is Brussels, in our game, the French army ended up further left than historically the case, so instead of the historical approach via Quatre Bras / Ligny, the French are on the road from Mons and they meet Wellington at Soignies near Braine-le-Comte.

In the photo you can see the difficulty of the Allies. Napoleon has got himself between the two armies (classic Napoleon tactic). Each is much weaker than Napoleon and the French will be able to deal with one before they can both act, that combined with the the fact that Anglo-Allied supply line is cut and that Wellington has taken heavy casualties, is enough to call the game in the favour of the French.

The French right had remained fairly quiet, an early Prussian attack had curtailed French activity, but this was not followed up, as Blucher’s forces then started to move to help Wellingtons position.

Overall an interesting game, but I think it needs the first game to best understand how to play a better second game. For example, the bulk of the French cavalry stayed with Grouchy, which may have been put to better use had some of it’s cavalry divisions been drawn off to help Napoleon in the centre, who was fully reliant on the Guard cavalry for his attacks.

One to return to.

24 Nov 2023

Victrix Old Guard Grenadiers

Taking advantage of the Victrix Black Friday sale, I ordered a box of Old Guard, the discount of 20% basically equates to free postage, so that was worth doing. I also took a couple of sheets of the Little Big Man shield decals for the 1066 project.

I already have (unpainted) the Warlord Games Grenadiers, but these are quite big figures and done in metal. That would be fine, but I am basing 10 figures to an 80mm base and that really does make the base too heavy to handle without risks to bayonets etc.

To solve the Warlord problem, I had mounted the Guard on temporary bases with 4 figures to a 40mm base. The weight distribution was fine, but it gave a 16 figure unit instead of 20 over the same frontage, which I felt didn’t give the sense of a solid body of men, so the plastics will work out better and I can get at least two units from the box …. should I ever need two!

23 Nov 2023

Did the Princes survive the Tower?

A few days ago on UK TV, there was a documentary centred upon author Philippa Langley, who proposes that the Princes in the Tower (Yorkist) were not killed by Richard III, but rather later became significant figures in battle and invasion plans against Henry VII (Lancastrian).

This is the author, who a decade ago, made the discovery of Richard’s body being buried in a car park.

For this investigation, she set up a website, encouraging people around the world to check their archives for evidence. She then enrolled the services of a legal man, to ‘forensically’ scrutinise the evidence that she collected.

The bottom line is that evidence could not be found to support a view that the boys died in the Tower - other than the Tudor account itself. On the other hand, she did find evidence to point to the fact that the boys had existed in later years and been involved in rebellion. The legal / experts assessed the evidence to be genuine.

So the bottom line becomes the issue of those rebels in Tudor history described as ‘imposters’  actually now probably being the princes - all fascinating stuff. Will we start seeing books on Richard being re-written?

I have downloaded the newly released book on the Kindle so get some wider insight into the investigation. I can see some of this at some point being drawn into my fictitious Piggy Longton saga. 

22 Nov 2023

Heavy handed clearance!

I know a bit has been signalled here about my streamlining and paring back of hobby material, but I have likely gone further than alluded to here, enough that my gaming has a refined focus on a fewer number of elements, while still being more than rich enough for me.

I have put a blog post up that expands on this a little, but perhaps more interesting will be the reader comments that follow, telling of their own experiences.

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2023/11/rebalancing-hobby-collection.html?sc=1700668144820#c8225697961916906879

18 Nov 2023
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