Oh My! This is an impressive box of goodies. I pre-ordred this from Sally 4th Miniatures, who were offering a kind and respectable discount of just over 20% (thank you).

It is chock full. I seem to recall reading that this is their biggest Epic box to date and the box is certainly deeper that their big Pike & Shotte / Gettysburg sets.

The important stuff I noted on first opening ….. lots (and lots) of figures for Carthage and Rome, nice shield decals and the updated Epic Hail Caesar rulebook in an A5 type format, which presents the rules with a Punic Wars perspective.

Also of interest is a large paper map, gridded in squares, which allows the figures to be used as a boardgame, that is something that I will explore and report back here once experienced.

The elephant sprues look amazing. I bought the wargames Illustrated magazine earlier this month, which had an Epic Roman sprue on the front and the way the 3 rank units clip together to minimise painting time is pretty imaginative and welcome. All told, this is an imaginative set.

The rulebook has a lot of scenarios, with many thankfully aimed at the 6x4 table. I have always had a fascination with the Trebbia battle and some (many!) years ago, I built two 2mm armies specifically to fight the Trebbia action and so I think I will build up the forces (using a temporary glue) just for this scenario and have a go at appreciating both the battle and the scale. This way, I can game with the raw plastic as they ‘slowly’ go through the painting cycle.

A great package, offering many game hours to explore the Punic Wars.

I will be putting up a TREBBIA Project page in the menu on the left very soon, so you may want to keep an eye out for that if this sort of thing interests you.

On UK radio, there is a long running fun quiz show, that amongst other things, has the panel members singing the words of given song, to the musical score of another song. Hilarity you might think, I’ve never found it so!

Anyway - I did the wargame equivalent today, I took the rules of one boardgame and with some modifications, applied them to another boardgame …. I wish I could get those few hours of life back!

I have been playing Hexasim’s Eagles of France (Napoleonic) system quite a bit lately and have the rules firmly under my belt and like them.

A new game in the Jours de Gloire system dropped through the letter box the other day, a system that I have not played for a while. The systems have some similarities and perhaps that is why, on finer points I frequently get the two rulebooks confused. So today, I put one of the smaller JdG battles, Quatre Bras 1815, to the test of being played using the Eagles of France rules and game markers - would it work?

It actually played okay, but felt a touch flat. I am guessing the brain processing was harder because visually I saw a JdG game, with most of its rules probably still deep in my memory, so subconsciously I was fighting against that, while over laying the Hexasim rules. It was all a rather needless exercise and the game felt a bit mechanical rather than intuitive.

I recall years ago trying to develop a hex based napoleonic game for figures and using GMT’s Command and Colors game parts to play, but while playing, I just couldn’t ‘un-see’ the Command & Colors game. I’m sure the same effect was taking place today.

The photo shows the game after a couple of turns. The Anglo-Allies have been falling back towards Gemioncourt, but their guns had already heaped a load of hurt onto the advancing French.

You can see up on the left, French cavalry are about to fall on that flipped Allied unit (Saxe Weimar), but the infantry successfully rolled to go into square and the cavalry attack failed (the cavalry would later rout when close range artillery caught them forming up again).

Looking at the Anglo-Allied reinforcements (the first of which can be seen at the top of the photo) marching towards Quatre Bras, I can’t see the French having much of a chance.

Edit - they didn’t! 

In the menu on the left, 5th tab down, sits the ACW Epic Project button.

I have updated the page, adding a discussion about terrain, painting and basing, particularly concerning the gap between figure blocks if the provided 60mm bases are used.

There is a photo there that illustrates the issue, which may be worth a look if you are bothered about ‘that gap’.

The latest game module in the Jours de Gloire (Days of Glory) system, dropped through the letter box today.

Just released by Vae Victis, this module called Two Years of Glory, covers the battles of Jena-Auerstedt (1806) and Eylau & Friedland (1807), which is an absolute bonza bundle of battles for the napoleonic fan.

The game comes with 4 maps, 3 ½ counter sheets, plus rules and scenario book, written in dual language (French / English). Units are brigades and regiments, the hexscale is 500 metres and the time scale is 1 turn covers 1 hour and 45 minutes.

I can see this module selling out even faster than the Austerlitz game did.

For those that don’t know, each formation is represented by two command chits, placed in a draw cup. The chits are drawn one at a time and ‘that’ formation is activated, so there is no certainty as to what order formations will become available to you. The last chit left in the cup is not drawn, also adding an extra dynamic to the game.

It is a while since I have put this system to the table, so it needs jacking up a bit in my memory, but I think once I get these to the table, I will do all four in sequence.

Each full scenario also carries a smaller scenario, though in the bigger games, even a 5 turn game can take more than one session to play. I shall have a look and see what is the most playable and report back.

A face-to-face game, with a smaller scenario from the Austerlitz game (Eagles of France system), looking at the southern end of the battlefield around Telnitz and Sokolnitz, which sit on the Goldbach Stream.

Davout thinly holds the area with the lead elements of IV Corps. The rest of the corps are off. Board and will arrive as reinforcements over the coming hours. The Coalition have orders to strike and take Telnitz and Sokolnitz and the dynamic of the game is whether they can do that before Davout’s numbers grow.

The game starts at 7 AM and plays for 5 turns, each representing one hour of real time.

When you play the full campaign game and there are several opening options for the Coaltition to take, seeing the thinly spread Davout at the foot of the Pratzen Heights makes for a very inviting target, even though as a player you know that the whole of his French Corps will soon assemble and that you will struggle against them, opening the attack against Davout is just too compelling to ignore …. plus the the high victory points for that area just draw you in.

One of the fascinating things about wargames is how individual parts of the battlefield, thanks to situation and dice can see narratives unfold that surely deserve recounting and so it is here, with the tenacious (in our game) Tirailleurs du Po.

They are a small unit of 308 Italian soldiers, allied to the French. As a gap opens in the French centre at the Goldbach and it suddenly starts to look like a potential crisis point, this small unit works its way across the northern arm of the stream into wooded ground that sits in a loop of water.

The position is good, proof against cavalry and terrain that protects against both infantry assault and gun fire. Further, the troops are classed as light and so get a +1 bonus to their own fire.

So what can be hoped for from this small unit?

The first assault is launched by a single powerful column (stack) of infantry and the Tirailleurs Defensive Fire, sends that column routing off into the distance (the red arrow in the photo).

The shock to the Coalition caused Dokhturov to make a much better prepared attack (3 attack stacks), preceded by artillery fire. Despite facing the overwhelming numbers and taking heavy fire (flipped to the weaker side), the small band of Tirailleurs held out for another two hours, by which time, Davout had brought enough support up to the centre position to keep it secure from breakthrough.

On another day, our dice would be less lucky and we wouldn’t get our little story of a little unit bravely battling to save a Corps!

By mid-point in the game, it was looking a tough uphill struggle for the Coalition, but towards the end, the Castle and Telnitz fell to them, but with the clock ticking down, the Coalition were not left with enough time to turn that into a victory - Davout had held on for long enough - the battle would be decided in other parts of the field.

As always, the system gave an entertaining game and we play this often enough now that the system is pretty familiar to us, so not too much time is spent with the rule book.

Out of the Blue, there has been a bit of re-organisation, plenty of selling and some buying, which has brought about a different sentiment to my hobby approach.

Over the next few weeks, I have a few things flowing into the collection that on the face of it will look like I have gone into a free-fall spend and might appear a little ostentatious. However that is not where my mind is at the moment.

Indeed, my hobby spend is about to significantly contract as I hit a point of being content with pretty much everything that I have.

The goodies that should arrive over the coming weeks have each been paid for a month ago, 3 months ago and last year (a Kickstarter), so with the approach of August, I am already entering a somewhat cash neutral position.

This is not something that I have deliberately sought out to do, but rather an accidental discovery as the wargaming planets align and I find myself re-appreciating what I have.

I should add that I am going through a bit of re-organisation, re-buying some of the things so quickly divested last year, but that is set against a background of making a tidy sum at a recent ‘bring ‘n buy’ held at a wargame show, together with a concerted effort to off-load the unloved / surplus stuff onto E-Bay (I really find that quite tedious), plus the local refuse centre has played its part!

My Hobby area is split into two areas of interest, boardgames and figures.

On the boardgames front, I have pretty much already moved towards series games, with multiple games / modules using the same rules. I just don’t seem to have the desire anymore to ‘buy to try’ in the way that I used to. New purchases will be to either expand a current game series or it will be to get  something that is a one-off and special.

I have been quite strict and anything that is not in my ‘A’ star group has gone …. No ‘B’ listers or any ‘also ran’ titles!

I am not left with a lot, but I see that as being really helpful.

I have come to really appreciate the idea of getting familiar with fewer rule sets, increasing the chance of getting games to the table and for our face to face games to flow better / faster, plus a de-clutter really does bring a cathartic element to it.

For figures, I just have to look at the stash still waiting to be painted and the enthusiasm to add to that is no longer there. I collect both sides and so that also means accepting that some new periods that I fancy getting into will not get the green light any time soon. I have abandoned the 1066 project, others  face the axe and AWI is now off the cards, which was to underpin an evolution of my eagles at Quatre Bras rules..

I have accrued a ton of terrain that not only hogs space, but doesn’t really get to the table as it simply doesn’t need to and it has become obvious that I can actually manage with a smaller terrain collection.

Rather like the last time I did this, I have to be careful not to get carried away, once I get into a serious clearing out mood NOTHING is safe - seriously!

All of this feels a little at odds with by usual drum beat of ‘we need to spend to keep the small wargame businesses going’, but I am where I am and consumerism, at least for now, is not an aspect that is actually helping my hobby.

I like the concept of ‘Pocket Armies’ which helps keep figure projects contained and restrained. My 28mm Napoleonic project has just hit their 8 units per side target and the recent Epic ACW project has divisional sized forces (7 - 8 regiments per side plus artillery) on the painting tray, slowly getting cycled through and sent to barracks, ready for their ‘Action at Mill Creek’.

In an effort to reduce my screen time, I have not posted anything fresh on the Battlefields and Warriors blog for over two months - though I note, despite the lack of fresh material, that it remains a frequently visited place, with over 10,000 hits a month still being the norm (thank you, I feel a little bad about not servicing that support).

Posting will carry on here. The re-structuring of this site (see the menu to the left) will help more fully ‘showcase’ interests, but it just needs a bit of time for each location to be populated in a meaningful and useful way. I have paid up my hosting fee for this site until October next year.

None of the above is an expression of regret, far from it, my enthusiasm for a cleaner, tighter, more focussed collection is running high. I expect to start up a number of small projects and also hope to get some sort of campaign going to get the benefits of linked results and ‘the big picture’.

There is new stuff waiting in the wings. Some of it might take a while to filter into here, but as always, I hope the content of the site tickles the fancy of those with similar interests and who are looking to get good games within the domestic setting of the dining / kitchen table.

So there we are, a happy wargamer, who suddenly has a keener sense of what is what!

How long will it last :-)

I allowed myself a small distraction on the ACW Epic project, to build a terrain piece for a future Antietam scenario to include Dunker Church as an objective.

The ACW project effort currently is going into getting the terrain and an order-of-battle for my fictional Battle of Mill Creek scenario, but as I have been putting together some trees for the Epic scale, I thought I would dig out the building and use one of them to enhance the building base.

The building is the ‘Chapel’ model in 10mm from Battlescale’s lovely range. The tree is a ‘ready build’ from Woodland Scenics, with additional clump foliage added. The base is a pre-cut MDF shape from Charlie Foxtrot. I have used a craft knife to chamfer down the edges.

When the time comes to do a Dunker Church battle, it will either be loosely themed on the battle or perhaps I will play my Antietam boardgame from Worthington Publishing and allow that to generate the scenario.

I’m not sure how to treat the feature yet. Should a unit merely have to touch it for it to count as being occupied / taken etc or should the feature be allowed to hold a single regiment (with the unit being held off table and just a flag put onto the feature).

I don’t think that in reality the building and immediate surrounding area was big enough to ‘hold’ a regiment in the correct sense, but the representational aspect of a ‘Built Up Area’ as we use them in wargames does have appeal. 

Tonights face-to-face game, another scenario from GMT’s Men of Iron series, taking advantage of playing this while the rules are still fresh in our memory.

A most intriguing game, that held both payers attentions throughout.

The burden of attack is with the Lancastrians and though their force looks the strongest, especially with all the mounted troops, their formations are harder to activate each ‘turn’.

In our game, the way the Lancastrian line took up the advance was for the mounted to become the left wing,  but they were very tardy, struggling firstly to get across the brook and into a good attacking position and then being stung by Yorkist bowmen as the horsemen formed up.

In the centre the Lancastrian infantry, strengthened by men-at-arms on foot, went head to head with the main Yorkist body, but surprisingly they got quite roughly handled and not helped by the fact that they had to negotiate a defensive belt of caltrops, which slowed them down and disrupted the attack.

Towards the latter part of the battle, as the forces were tiring, the Lancastrian bowmen on the Lancastrian right took advantage of the depleted Yorkist numbers, by making a series of short advances preceded by volleys of arrows.

The Yorkist were getting ‘boxed in’ and seeing their situation as hopeless, withdrew from the field in good order.

The rules delivered nuance and created narrative moments such as when the Lancastrian centre was close to breaking, but found the fortitude from somewhere to hold on - a good game, deserving of a replay.

The new Gettysburg game from Worthing Publishings, in their Civil War Brigade series, goes onto the table.

In this shot, we see Buford’s dismounted cavalry with artillery support are holding Herr Ridge.

Heth’s first two brigades (the orange stripes nearest the viewer), Archer and Davis, have travelled up Chamberburg Pike in column and have now fallen out into line to assault the Union right.

A couple of gamers, who are better placed than me to judge these sort of things, have commented on BoardGameGeek that they feel the initial Union reinforcement (under Reynolds), takes a tad too long to reach this part of the battlefield and that on the Confederate part, there is a feeling that initial Confederate reinforcements, Brockenbrough and Pettigrew will advance without the restraint of their historical caution and that those two things taken together, give an opening to the game that does not replicate the historical situation.

My opening moves here are to test that assertion out. I will read a few opening accounts of the battle and create a timeline of where units historically might be expected to be or what they were doing within the structure of our one hour turns and from that, see if an opening tweak is needed.

Overall, there is a looseness to any battle that is essentially a meeting engagement, so I need not worry about subsequent reinforcements. This  will be interesting to research.

As for the Confederate opening move, they assault the ridge in the face of Union artillery and cavalry carbines and suffer 1 casualty point (which equals 100 men). They enter a fire fight, both side take casualties, but both pass their Morale Tests, so hold.

The Union really need to give the advance some momentum, so they use the new Melee rule from the new version 1.4 of the rules. This additional attack can be risky for the attacker, but in this instance, the assault by Davis pays off and Devlin routs.

The Union right is now unhinged. In the Union part of the turn, though there may be a temptation to have the Union artillery fire offensively, wiser counsel might suppose that a Union withdrawal to the next feature, Willoughby Run, will be the safest option …… we shall see!