We move to the afternoon turn of the 19th. The Union advance continues and three actions result.

1. The pursuit of Ashby's confederate cavalry by Brodhead.

2. The assault on the bridge behind Duffy's Mill

3. The fight for Rock Spring

I managed to get two of those actions fought today. The third should be done over the weekend.

I will refrain from saying too much here, as the Campaign Diary will be updated over the next few days to take account of all of this and to keep everything in context of the 'bigger picture'

These smaller battles that have framed the opening 24 - 36 hours of the campaign are quite fascinating to play, even though for the most part it is just needing a few units per side. I think that is because the narrative of the campaign is the bigger thing that these smaller games plug into. They are very managable actions and the close focus on just a few units seems to make them matter more than would be the case when there are many regiments in play.

The photo here shows the opening moves of the Union attack at the bridge behind Duffy's Mill. Also note, the confederate brigade commander Elzey, who is at risk of getting cut-off, is racing through the woods for the safety of the bridge

The impact of earlier actions are starting to be felt and here, the union commander decided to hold 5th Ohio back out of the battle due to the mauling that they had suffered earlier that morning at Duffy's Mill.

With several things about to move to the games table, my painting regime has ground to a halt.

To kickstart that, I have switched over to jacking up my WWII Pocket Army project, just for a change of painting subject, plus the WWII stuff can get cycled across the painting tray quite quickly.

I have clipped some 12mm Victrix German infantry from their sprue, which are now on the painting sticks, I will follow that with either 3 x StuG III’s or 3 x Panzer IV’s and add these to the already done anti-tank gun platoon (2 x Pak 40, in the photo). This can for the basis of a late 1943 battlegroup.

Once done, I will mirror that with a late 1943 Soviet force. I can certainly see all of this getting to the table before the summer - even faster I hope. 

These starter armies are to be the first replacements of the fairly substantial 20mm - 1/72 armies that I sold off last summer. WWII has been absent from the figures table for too long.

In the meantime, I read a couple of weeks ago in the recent Miniatures Wargames magazine, that the Rapid Fire people have brought out another Rapid Fire Reloaded booklet to add to their growing library of scenario booklets.

This one is called Monty V Rommel, Desert battles late 1942 and it just so happens that the YouTube video covering the publication popped up in my stream this morning. I am not particularly a desert fan, but for those interested in how the scenarios look, here is a Rapid Fire link. They include a bit of footage of real tanks at a public show - Bovington perhaps! 

Victrix have just brought out 12mm 8th army infantry .... so perhaps this will be a future project after all.  :-)

https://youtu.be/7IazutgbWKE?si=uW3tlEkdiuDiMRRx

For our Friday night game last night, Mike put the Baetis Campaign on the table. This is a three day battle from the Second Punic War presented in the C3i number 37 magazine, which uses the same game engine as Mark Herman’s Gettysburg / Waterloo and Rebel Fury games.

The map is very functional. The dominant terrain feature that you can see is rough ground, which confers a defence bonus to the defender and slows movement. It is a good example of a map that allows a player to better 'read' the battlefield and its signifcant / relevant features.

Having played the system a few times for Horse & Musket games, it felt a little odd doing it with ancients as in my minds eye, the ancient battle is one of organised bodies of units, advancing / defending in line and it is the turning or breaking of the line that is critical. Here individual units have a lot of fluidity when manoeuvring …. however, this is a three day campaign, rather than a single afternoons battle and each turn is representing half a days worth of action and in truth, the engine transfers to the Ancients period rather smoothly and thoughtfully. 

The designer has added nuance to get an ancients feel. For example horse have difficulty operating in the presence of elephants, though to my mind, the elephants don’t particularly feel as powerful or significant as they might or offer their erratic contribution to battle (they could become a liability to their own sIde). Perhaps in this time frame, elephants were less of a thing - my knowledge on the subject is too weak to say. 

In essence there are two areas of fighting on the map. The photo here shows one of them at the start of play, with the Romans in red and the Carthaginians in blue.

In this part of the battlefield, the Romans made a quick dash for Amtorgis and got it on day 1. At the end of play this was one of the things we wondered whether a different early outcome would have changed the direction of that particular battle area. 

To spice things up a bit, the Carthaginians secretly deployed their reinforcement (1 unit) to enter the map in the Roman rear area on this part of the map, to threaten their camp ….. but the Romans responded in a timely fashion (just) and blocked the threat, but it did show the value of distraction with this tactic.

The Romans went on to win in this part of the battlefield and held out in the other part, so overall a clear win for the Romans.

Afterwards we discussed the merits of the game and we both felt that the first game was needed for us to better understand what tactics we should pursue in second playing, so though I think the game will generally run along similar lines on each outing, there is opportunity within the system for each game to remain interesting once you get down amongst the hexes.

In any case, we had enough fun with it to conclude that we would play it again.

Usefully, it is a short game of 5 turns, so it plays to a full conclusion in around 2 hours.

It was only a few days ago that I was playing the Duffy’s Mill battle in my Graysville Campaign, that I noticed I didn’t really have as many ACW type buildings as thought.

So with the campaign having the potential to throw up a fight for Graysville itself at some future point, I put in a small order to Pendraken Miniatures for the rather lovely 10mm Buildings from the Battlescale range that they stock.

I like to use 1 scale lower than the figures for buildings and at 10mm, these make for a good backdrop to the Warlord's Epic range.

The annoying thing is that I have owned a fair amount of Battlescale 10mm before, but got rid of it in the 'great clearout' a couple of years ago!

Anyway they arrived today, just three items. Claperboard House No 2, a Watermill and a Tiled Timber Cottage. Together with what I have, the representation of a small town will be quite do-able now. 

The Battlescale stuff is good quality resin, without air bubble pock-marks and has nice raised detail, making them easier to paint. So I think I can get these across the painting table in plenty of time for ‘that’ battle …… should it arise!

Wargame Rules for Armoured Warfare at Company and Battalion Level 1925 to 1950, Bill Farquhar, a pseudonym used by John Salt.

These have just dropped through the post, via the print on demand service ‘Lulu’. I have only had an opportunity to briefly browse them, but my nostalgia button is already in overdrive!

In the 70’s Wargames Research Group (WRG) were the rules staple of most wargamers, reinforced by their use as ‘standard’ on the convention circuit.

Amongst the wide range of periods covered my WWII rules of choice were the 1925 - 1950 Armour & Infantry set. These covered platoon to battalion level action and between these and my 6mm figure collection (pocket money affordable!), I played the hell out of them and several of the pages still are imprinted in my mind’s eye.

In 1979, WRG brought out their ‘Moderns’ set, covering 1950 - 1985 for the company to battalion level game, with an armour focus. The cover looked exactly like the cover shown here, but in a pale blue instead.

Today, John D Salt has brought us a set of rules that sit between the above two sets, that is, the ‘Moderns’ version, but for the earlier period of 1925 - 1950. Essentially the text has been taken from the Moderns set, with things like helicopter and ATWG rules removed and all the 1950 - 1985 aspect has been replaced with WWII troop and vehicle types.

There is much here that is familiar to me and from that commemorative style cover to browsing the content, I have already found a simple pleasure in just owning it.

It needs to be understood that this is an old school style rule set. There are some things that these days can be a little slicker, like observation rules, but that is not the point, these rules are meant to be fully sympathetic to WRG era of the 70’s and in that regard, they absolutely are. It is a job well done.

One of the first things I do when looking at a new WWII system is to see how the author has handled the German Tiger I tank compared to the Panther tank. It always makes for a fascinating study, as the former went into production in 1942 and the latter half of 1943. The Tiger I was a heavy tank, formidable at the time, with a fearsome reputation, but just a year and a half later, the Panther tank, a medium MBT, had made a generational leap in design and their comparison is says much about the nuance of gun / armour rules.

Plenty of systems have them as close equals, some even give the Tiger an absolute advantage, surely something that could only be attributed to elite crews, but this is what we have here;

[The first thing I look at is the Armour Classes page, which is set out just like my 1975 set, only more comprehensive in terms of vehicle types listed].

The Tiger I armour  is classed as V front and IV sides and for armour it is grouped in the same class as the A22 Infantry Tank, Mk IV Churchill, KV-1, m41, and the up-armoured T-34. The guide tells us that Class V armour covers 90mm - 120mm and Class IV is 65mm - 85mm.

The Panther armour is classed as VI front and III side and for armour it is grouped together with StugPz IV, Jagdpanther, M4A3E2 Jumbo, SU-100, SU-85M and Centurion. The guide tells us that Class VI covers 125mm to 160mm and Class III is 45mm - 60mm.

The notes indicate that protection is a combination of armour plate thickness and slope, the quality of the steel and fasteners used, plus good design presenting no vulnerable spots of shot traps. Clearly that superbly sloped Panther front armour is at play here. I love this sort of stuff!

I won’t know until I have read all of the rules whether size /profile has also been used to shape the final placings … as the little Hetzer looks good in the stats!

For Firepower, the Panther’s 75/70 gun and the Tiger’s 88/56 are close performers …. i.e. you never want to be on the wrong end of either of them, but when it comes down to actual stats with standard ammunition, the Panther’s gun has the edge over the 88/56 at range (for penetration, it rightly is the case that the 88 has better HE performance), but it is by a present, but small margin, that will really only influence the margins of some of our engagements.

As an example of the performance of these sort of guns, the Panther’s 75/70 is automatically penetrating all armour classes of IV and below. At Class V a die roll of ‘6’ is needed at 2750 metres, with -1 to that die roll for every 250 metres below that. So at 2000 metres the die roll would need to be ‘3’ or higher. This formula is used for each higher armour class thereafter, with Class VI starting at 1250 metres and Class VII (Tiger II, Elefant and Super Pershing) at 250 metres.

For game scale the player uses 1mm = 1 metre or 1mm = 2 metres depending upon size of figures used. I will be using 10mm / 12mm figures on a domestic table, so will likely go with the latter.

There are (of course) To Hit charts and on the longer ranges, the Tiger gets the slight advantage.

There is Target Acquisition and this is obviously done in the old school way (as the rules are a lift from the 70’s text) and on first sight the number of modifiers to this is a reminder of some of the heavy lifting that rules of that generation were built around. However fellow blogger John H. Has play tested the rules and in his review, he felt the modifiers quite quickly became familiar.

I have found looking into these rules a real pleasure. The task was to re-create a rule set that would nicely compliment what WRG were doing between 1973 and 1979 and to ‘imagine’ the set that WRG would have brought out, had they taken that next step in their WWII tactical rule development. In that, these are a perfect fit. It is like stepping back in time. I am that teenager again!

It is a comprehensive set and of particular note, it is fully self contained. All the troop types and vehicles you will want are here, so no ‘Codex’ style supplements - you just buy the rules.

In the links below, fellow blogger John H has a combined review with an AAR that gives a deeper overview than this post. That post also contains links to other replays, so you might want to check that out for some wider opinion.

The Lulu page is here to purchase the rules;

https://www.lulu.com/shop/bill-farquhar/wargames-rules-for-armoured-warfare-at-company-and-battalion-level-1925-to-1950/paperback/product-wdkk97.html?q=bill+farquhar&page=1&pageSize=4

A limitation of Lulu is that it doesn’t print single sheets of card, so they can’t bundle play aids when printing and sending the book. My understanding is that The Wargames Website (UK wargame forum) has proposed to host the PDF, but I couldn’t find it. There is an e-mail address in the rulebook, which I used and John Salt kindly e-mailed me the PDF. Of course, they are on the same deep yellow background as the 70’s original, just adding another level of WRG authenticity.

Fellow Blogger John H’s AAR and review is - Here

https://hereticalgaming.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-farquhar-version-review-of-missing.html

The Graysville Campaign folder (menu on left) has been updated with the morning actions of Friday 19th August.

The Union divisional commander Shields is currently giving more responsive command as he is in a forward position, While all messages to Ewell have needed to travel further and messengers have been restricted to the bridges whilst traversing Mott's Run.

Ewell has moved his headquarters to Laurel Hill and the action is getting closer to the bridges, so that should help him.

This morning's fighting gave a pure cavalry on cavalry fight, with a sabre clash, which surprisingly my rules have not really been exposed to and from a narrative point of view, they performed fine.

This will probably be the last action of the campaign for a couple of weeks as I have a vacation coming up. I home to get another Krosnogrod battle in before then.

We played our first face-to-face game of Rebel Fury last night (Chickamauga) and both enjoyed the playing experience very much. I have not followed the Q&A over at BoardGamegeek and found that the rule book answered everything that I wanted to know - so errat free rules, who would have thought!

I particularly liked that the rules follow the sequence of play, so for starting out as a newbie, it is very easy to follow what needs to be done next, just by working through the rules along with the sequence of play.

We really liked the ‘approach to battle’ aspect of the game. This is primarily a game of manoeuvre, with a need for one to manoeuvre better than the other.

It seems that the player that has achieved a few key positions is best to then pass to try and close down the enemy manoeuvre opportunity - as long as you have moved to do some key things you wanted to do, then that is fine. It also seems an important tactic to advance into contact in some places quite early, so locking down enemy units.

The combat is of course brutal ……. often for the attacker :-) but we started to find ways and places of trying to get as many advantages as possible before attacking and especially to avoid attacking in those places that looked risky to the attacker.

I didn’t see water crossing costs in time as an issue, they are important terrain features and in the time frame / scale that we are playing, this is a full division trying to do something in half a day. I also thought the brutal combat was realistic (harsh but realistic) as again representing half a day of action, my limited knowledge of the period is that formations would basically attack until they burned out and that very often could be measured in around 3 - 4 hours or so of sustained fighting - so frustrating but realistic.

Overall, our experience will have us coming back to the system, hopefully repeatedly. We need to get better at what we did, for example we both used artillery at the same rate, until it ran out and we need to think about that a bit more and we probably made more attacks than we should have without maximising our positions first. We should also have given a bit more thought to developing manoeuvre and attacks against the enemy flanks, rather than trying to break the centre.

Definitely a ‘thinking’ game that fully involves the two players throughout. I think there is an art to knowing when to pass for best effect on the enemy and also to know when a unit is likely to be already disadvantaged in combat and perhaps save your artillery rather than waste ammo on that that particular situation.

For the record, the CSA could have won on casualty points - 12 points to zero, but in any case they won on the strategic objective by pressurising the Union line to fall back so that a lower lateral route (costing few hexes to traverse) from entry hex to city could be gained.