Maintaining the traditions of the Battlefields & Warriors blog, at 0700 hours on Christmas Morning, I will upload a link to a Christmas 2024 Newsletter both here and at the B&W blog, which though shorter than previous years, is still expected to run for around 30 pages.

It is just a bit of christmas silliness from my e-pen, highlighting some elements of my wargaming year.

While it is a bit of self indulgence, the effort that I put into it is grounded in simply creating some wargame reading stuff for those not particularly doing Christmas, for any number of reasons and just wanting to get through the day.

Of course, everyone is invited to read, whenever it fits in with busy plans.

Kind Regards to one and all.

Norm.

For my generation, Michael Palin is of course noted for his Monty Python fame and more latterly as a travel writer. He tells a good story and is one of those people who can naturally hold an audience in a calm and relaxing way.

At some point in his early life, an aunt delivered a satchel of family documents and photographs to the Palin household. She was ‘that’ person common in many families who seem to be a walking Who’s Who of all the relatives past and present.

Michael spots a photograph of a man in army uniform and asks her who it is. He is told that it is his Great Uncle Harry, but the tone of the reply is somewhat dismissive of the man, as though he didn’t come to much and of course this does no more than intrigue Michael into wanting to know more.

In recent years, Michael Palin had the opportunity to dig deeply into his Great Uncle’s life, helped by diaries that Harry had kept during his adult life. His research is also helped by the fact that the things Harry did and the places he visited or worked in, tended to be bureaucratic in nature and so there was a paper trail to help fill in some of the gaps.

The fascinating aspect of the book is that Harry, at the heart of it all, was an ordinary man, not marked out for excellence and not the typical subject for a book, but Palin gives us a compelling read of the life story of his Great Uncle, writing in a warm and easy style.

We get to know Harry in a rather intimate way and I found myself liking him for his simple ‘man in the street’ character. Without giving too much away, the journey of the book gives us insight into the men of his age, who signed up eagerly to fight for King and Country, when Empire, class and social etiquette were institutionally embedded and people moved around within the empire, experiencing a different world outside of their birth place.

What I can give away, because the author does so on page one of the book, is that Harry dies on the battlefield in WW1.

So his is a short life, but the story ends up not just being about Harry, but being a commentary on the hundreds of thousands of men like him, who offered up to what ever their commanders asked of them, with a total sense of self sacrifice, resignation and doing ones duty! 

The numbers in single regiments and brigades that might die in one operation, one day, one action, are shocking and you are left sharing a feeling that as time marches on, surely Harry’s time will soon be up and that he will simply join a list of names on a memorial.

As you get near the end of the book, the anticipation builds as you wonder whether ‘this’ is ‘the day’ and you can’t help but hope that instead he gets one more day of getting letters from home, or receiving a postal order for a treat or popping to the local village and hanging out with the French girls for some friendly company and escaping the war for a few hours.

Overall, this is a very thoughtful book. The idea of just looking at one ordinary life and along the way telling the story of what happened to an entire generation makes for compelling reading. It struck me as a very easy read that at times is so gentle that it felt like it wasn’t particularly going anywhere as yesterday could feel like today and also tomorrow, but by the end of it, a very big story has been told - Recommended

I had a really enjoyable session yesterday as the completed ACW Epic project went onto the table, that is, I played the Action at Mill Creek scenario with fully painted forces - very satisfying.

I reverted to my own rules and during play, four more notes were scribbled into the margins. I also dragged in an additional photo taken during the game.

One minor change concerned the attributes for brigade commanders. During set-up a couple of commanders managed to get attributes, one got 'Lucky Commander', which allows the commander to make two re-rolls during play.

However, the rule allowed the commander to also force a re-roll on enemy dice and on reflection, I thought that this was too powerful, so the attribute has now been restrained to use with the commander's brigade in question.

It turns out he wasn't such a lucky commander after all, because on each of the two re-rolls, his new score was less than the original one!

Enough changes have happened now to justify getting another copy of the rules printed .... if only to give me some more clear margins to write stuff in :-)

Anyway, a most excellent way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

I ummed and arred  about getting this, but eventually jumped and it arrived today, intended as a Christmas present. It is a two map boargame covering the battle of Eylau 1807.

my reasons for indecision were that while the game components were reportdly lovely, there were said to be problems with the rules that raised questions about playtesting and also of the strength of the language translation.

it looks like behind the scenes, some goodly work has seen improved versions of the rules, with us being at 1.4 now and 1.5 about to be released any time soon.

It is true, the components look lovely, though it is a biggie of a game being a 2 mapper and over 1100 counters, but there are some single map scenarios. A flick through the original rulebook that comes with the game looks like it is quite slick, so the full game might be all the more playable for that.

I have the Vae Victis Eylau, so a comparison might be interesting. I note the system uses strength markers, so that counters are slowly reduced as they suffer the rigours of battle.

This basically means enough troops have been painted to play out the ‘Action at Mill Creek’ scenario.

Checking my records, I was somewhat surprised that I started painting units for the ACW Project in July. I have been putting a lot of time into them, but realising that this has still taken some 5 months just to get a basic project up and running is a little disappointing and makes me realise that for other similar Epic projects I really do need a faster approach to painting these little fellows.

I don’t particularly want a slap-dash look - I have done that before and regretted it every time I played with those. figures, but I think I should be ignoring a lot more detail than has been the case.

One of the problems is that I take a lot of pictures of what I am doing and digital photography can be a cruel medium as it shows all the detail (or lack of) in sharp images, so I want stuff to look nice ….. but also, I just want some figures on the table to get as many games as possible.

To carry on building the ACW set, I will need to keep the same standards, so that the army looks like a cohesive whole, but new ‘from scratch’ projects will give an opportunity to be less demanding on standards, getting the troops to the table will need to be where the emphasis falls.

I do have some Napoleonic Epic strips with a commission painter, to help give a boost to a planned 2025 project, so of course, that will set its own standard that I will be obliged to match.

You will note that the box of Union troops on the left, have a movement tray at the front with 5 bases in them. These sit outside the project and are just something that I found on e-bay that I thought would give me a leg-up to get the expanded second stage of the project going.

Anyway …… there are now enough troops painted for a game and in that regard the initial goal of the project has been realised. The above photo shows the collection for the Mill Creek scenario and you may agree or not, but I think they look rather nice.

There are a total of 42 bases, so perhaps the time taken to paint them is not so bad after all!

The important thing is that I can take my reward by putting a pre-Christmas game on. The terrain and everything else needed has been gathered.

I have updated the ACW EPIC PROJECT page, 6th tab down on the left menu and this outlines the project from inception to today and discusses the rules that I am favouring ...... at the moment :-)

I have been looking at doing a small WWII campaign for either figures or the Old School Tactical boardgame.

I was re-visiting some posts from my Battlefields & Warriors blog (which is currently ‘resting’), when I came across an article that I think is worth re-highlighting here and given a fresh airing.

It concerns a WWII campaign system, together with fast play rules.

Matt Irsik runs a free downloadable e-zine called Warning Order. In issue 58 he covers the topic of campaign and provides a supporting set of fast play rules.

It is obviously designed as a figure game campaign, but I have a number of stand alone small maps from my Old School Tactical system (Squad Leader boards could serve the same function), which could be used to build the campaign structure shown in the photo here.

Anyway, my blog post uses his systems to put down a quick game to highlight the essential campaign mechanics. It also includes a link to Matt’s site, which has issue 58 listed for download.

Further, in my example, a pinboard is used to play the game, so anyone strapped for space or wanting to play multiple campaign tables at the same time, might find that an interesting part of the post.

Re-connecting with the article has me keen to get a proper campaign up and running - hopefully in the first quarter of next year.

If you like what you see at the Warning Order site, might I humbly suggest hitting the donate button. His site can accept a one off donation of any size of choosing. He puts a real ton of effort into keeping each issue going and sharing that work and I get the impression that although his audience is quite large, there are relatively few people supporting those efforts with a ‘thank you’.

In one of the following issues, he takes this campaign system to the 80’s, Cold War gone Hot type campaign for anyone preferring the modern period and his fast play rules for that are great for those of us wanting to easily navigate the complexities of the relationship between modern guns and vehicle armour.

As an aside, if you have something like a hospital visit due etc, downloading an issue or two onto your tablet is a great way to pass some time in a waiting room :-)

Link

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2022/07/campaigning-and-fast-play-wwii-tactical.html

Published by Academy Games, 878 is a board game covers the Viking incursions against England.

Each turn the Vikings get a new invasion force to attack the coast of England and over a number of turns the Viking player will hope that these incursions collectively will have imposed increasing control across the English landscape.

The picture on the left shows one of the cards played each year to create the invasion force. This card will see the Vikings get 11 Norsemen and 4 Berserkers under the leadership of Björn Ironside. This force is allowed to attack any coast - not just the North Sea, so he successfully assaulted Wessex (south) which meant that the english army now had Vikings in front of them and at their backdoor!.

The English force will attempt to maintain control of England by fighting the Vikings and reconquering territory that has fallen to the Vikings and they do this with nobles, the thegns and local militias.

In our game, the Vikings initially landed in Northumbria, with a plan to take the main centres of influence and that with Northumbria secure (i.e. nobody to their rear), start to press deeper down into England.

Despite a successful Viking opening, a swift english counter-attack saw them pushed into the very top part of Northumbria and an early total defeat looked likely.

However, the system is quite forgiving and in our game, events quickly flipped and the Vikings first dominated the north and then central England. In a desperate bid to change the balance of superiority before the game ended, the English player launched attacks against the weaker held towns and with two victories, brought the Victory Point tally just within their favour.

However, the Viking player had the final activation and likewise took two areas, regaining the advantage in territory held and calling a win.

The ending pushed towards something on the gamey side of things, but regardless, it was one of those games that played in a single session (2 hours)  and went down to the last attack, which are both things we favour in our face to face games. 

The second release this year from the Rapid Fire people.

The Road to Carentan gives us four 101st Airborne scenarios covering the period 6th - 11th June 1944 as follows;

Angoville-au-Plain (D-Day).

Vierville (D-Day +1).

Saint-Comr-du-Mont (D-Day +1).

Purple Heart Lane Breakout (D-Day +4)

The 36 page booklet will be familiar to those that collect the books in the series, good heavy card stock paper, plenty of colour photos with the scenario format having the usual colour schematic map, orders-of-battle and special rules.

New to the presentation of this volume is;

1. Each scenario includes a page of modern photographs of some of the key buildings that will be represented on the table.

2. A photograph of a rather nice wargame table for the scenario is now included with each scenario (I assume that each are the tables that the scenario was play tested on).

3. The usual scale is slightly altered here, with 1 infantry figure on the table representing just 5 men.

4. Very usefully, at the rear of the book, is a list of all the figures and vehicles that players will need if all four scenarios are to be played. This is easy enogh to do oneself, but it is nice to have it as part of the booklet. So for example the most 60mm mortars that the scenarios demand of the Airborne is 2 bases and of Panzerschreck teams, just two bases are needed.

The scenarios use U.S. paratroopers, German Fallschirmjägers and German infantry, though for now, as I don't have paratroopers, I will just use ordinary infantry as proxy.

I had no idea that the booklet had been released until I saw it being plugged in the latest Wargames Illustrated magazine. It arrived within two days of ordering on first class postage (UK).

These booklets are lovely, if you are looking for a rather nice stocking filler! this might just fit the bill. 

It has been a while since I have looked at my Airborne module for the Old School tactical system.

The module has 6 scenarios associated with the D-Day paratroop drops, mainly relating to the town of Sainte-Mére-Èglise.

The first Scenario - Drop Zone Charlie is actually covering the attack on Le Chemin by those units of 101st Airborne that had managed to land in some good order (rather than widely scattered!).

We played it as a face to face game. The system makes the Paratroopers very powerful. They have good morale, are treated as elite and claim an extra points worth of cover, probably due to their field craft.

Anyway, they pressed hard on the initial German defence and formed a couple of 'power stacks' that basically gave devastating fire and raked the defenders, taking out their HMG and reducing a couple of sections.

But then the German reinforcements came on and at first sight, we both thought that the fight for the Airborne would now be a struggle ..... but their stacked units continued to carve up the defence.

In the end, the Airborne took 2 of the 4 objectives, but the casualties inflicted are added to VP's and in this regard the Airborne soared ahead on points to a decisive win.

Scenarios 3 and 4 are the big scenarios in this package and cover the landings and battle at Sainte-Mére-Èglise, with waves of German reinforcements arriving. These pair of back-to-back scenarios look very inviting to do as a Christmas game. I might even set up a Sainte-Mére-Èglise folder, so that the action can be given a bit of depth here with extra pictures.