Having missed the Partizan show today due to limited mobility, I set about catching up on a number of wargame tasks. One being to hex out a couple of my old gaming boards to have a little dabble with figures and hexes.

I created a hex template on the computer. Printed it to a large self adhesive label. Fixed to card and then cut it out. I now had my shape and started to draw around it on the board to create a platter of hex cells.

For those that have done such things, you will know that there are three universal truths about doing home made hexed boards. 

1 - No matter how careful you are, you will start in one corner all fine and dandy, but by the time you reach the far corner, the hexes are not sitting aligned properly, the angles are slightly out and some fudging has to be done.

2 - Your swear box will gain a few more coins.

3 - No matter how good your back is, by the end of the process …. It will be buggered!

Anyway, it is done, will it work?   …. I don’t care! I have set it aside for a couple of days :-)

I used two boards, each 2’ x 4’ MDF, giving an area of 4x4. I adjusted the hex template to around 5¼”. This allows for 4½ hexes wide and 10 deep per board. With the boards placed together, that gives a total field of 9 hexes wide by 10 deep, with the grain moving left / right across the 9 wide bit. I.e. the hex vertices are pointing forwards into the depth of the board (10).

That gives a total of 90 cells, which is not a lot compared to the standard 13x9 grid that comes with GMT’s Command & Colours boards. However, this time around, I am less fixated on the number of cells as I am of their size and functionality.

The biggest problem with using figures on hexes is that the hexes are typically not big enough to include decent pieces of terrain and certainly less able to cope with both terrain and figures together - unlike a boardgame, which has the counters just sitting on a 2D map.

Going with the bigger hex helps address that. Also, in truth, if playing on an open table, units are generally having a frontage of around 5” or less and have movement allowances of around 4 - 6 inches and weapon ranged of 6 - 12”, then the 5” cell broadly accommodates that and in our minds eye, we could say that on a typical 4’ x 4’ table, our wargame generally has around 90 such locations, its just that they are not gridded off to be obvious, but they are there.

This has gone a bit full circle for me, as some 25 years ago, I was using the 5” hex with soft plastic ACW 1/72 figures, to good effect, I always thought and in fact it was my home brew rules for those game that gave the first version of my Two Flags - One Nation rules.

For now, I am just going to run a few test games on the bare boards with their hex outline and if it feels like it has a future, I will either prettify the boards or source a game mat that has 5¼” hexes already marked out.

A lot of my epic stuff is on 60mm bases, so two bases side by side will nicely sit in the hex, as would a second line or column formation or artillery battery or a platoon of 10mm / 12mm tanks.

I quite like the idea of completely filling a hex with woods or buildings and then instead of trying to force troops into the same space, leave them off the table and just place a flag marked in the hex to show its occupation. Anyway, more to come …… maybe :-)

EDIT - I have just had a quick look at some of my boardgame maps and things like Quatre Bras, the fighting for the St. Amand Villages and Ligny, look quite do-able at the same scale that the boardgame uses in this 9 x 10 hex gaming space.

The affair with OSG’s Library of Napoleonic Battles continued last night in a face-to-face game from the ‘La Patrie en Danger’ module, examining the fighting around Brienne - La Rothiere, January 1814.

This is a short game that seems quite finely balanced. The French are on the attack, but there forces seemed to have arrived in the area in a higgledy piggledy fashion and they need a couple of precious turns to move up and sort themselves out, so that they can attack with sufficient strength.

There are reinforcements, but there isn’t enough time in the game to get any use out of them, so Ney must manage for the most part with what he has at hand.

I launched a cavalry charge, which is very interestingly handled in this system, but it is fraught with danger for the cavalry. It makes you really only want to charge with cavalry if there is a pressing need, which I think is probably a good restraint. They can fight normally when adjacent to an enemy, it is just the charge thing that makes one hesitate.

So why charge? Well as part of the sequence of combat, attacks are declared and then there is a sub charge phase. The cavalry move INTO the hex of a unit that will be attacked by other forces. The charge table is consulted and applied. Your hope is that the cavalry stays in the hex while the adjacent attack goes in. If the attack causes the defender to retreat, then it will retreat into the Zone of Control that the cavalry now exerts - removing the retreating unit form play.

But because I am so lucky! My cavalry were repulsed with 50% losses!

The highlight of the game (for me) was one of those ‘last roll of the die’ moments, when Ney took the Young Guard into Brienne and took the hex that is worth 10 Victory Points (see map above), but as good as that was, the French still lost the game, with the Coalition gaining a Marginal Victory.

All-in-all a good session, with a game played to a conclusion in a single sitting. I am increasingly inclined to get the full Waterloo Campaign to the table for the June anniversary …… but! I am tinkering with the thought of swapping the maps out for those in the cousin game ‘Napoleon’s Last Battles’ to give a tighter focus and more room (bigger hexes) for the counters counters - we shall see if there are any scale implications that impact on the system. 

Re the below post - The battle of La Souffel has started. General Jean Rapp is thinly stretched, covering seven miles of river, with its seven crossing points. Austrian III Corps with Crown Prince Wilhelm of Württemberg is approaching and as their numbers build, Rapp waits, fearing  the inevitable breach.

This is a recollection of the first action. 

3 PM, the first of the Austrians are reaching the Souffel River and Wilhelm is keen to press as quickly as possible to get a foothold over onto the southern bank.

There is a loop bend in the Souffel, where Mundolsheim nestles between its two arms. The town is defended by Voyrol’s Infantry brigade and supported by the guns of 16th Artillery.

To cover the bridge on the western arm, Beurmann’s infantry have take up position on the northern bank of the Souffel, intending to slow down and frustrate the Austrian advance. 

Attacking from Lampertheim, across a stream, Czolich’s infantry and Kinsky’s cavalry, with 1:1 odds evict Beurmann, who falls back across the Souffel and takes up position immediately behind that bridge. The odd’s actually favoured Beurmann and a short delaying action of just a couple of hours would have been a great help for the French … but there we are!

At the same time, Luxem’s brigade attacks across the eastern bridge, hoping by some slim chance to unseat Voyrol from Mundolsheim, but they suffer an ‘Attacker Retreats 2 Hexes’ result and recoil back.

By the end of the hour, the French are now fully behind the Souffel and have all of the immediate bridges covered. The river can only be crossed at the bridges and so the Austrians must now bring up their guns and put pressure along the river, hoping that it will give at some point.

La Souffel 1815 (Austrian Vs French).

Battle - La Souffel, Rapp’s Last Stand, 28th June 1815.

Media - Boardgame, hex and counter, Napoleon’s Last Gamble, OSG.

Special - All the battles in this series offer the actual battles themselves and in addition, have an Approach to Battle option that usually starts the game on the previous day, so as the combatants enter the battlefield, they ‘may’ march and deploy differently than the fixed set-up of the ‘Day-of-Battle’ historical scenario. Also, the game has two card decks (this is not a card driven game) that are optional to play. 

I am going to play this once as a ‘Day of Battle’ scenario and then again, expanding it to using the 'Approach to Battle' option, plus the cards, just to compare the two experiences.

Background - ‘Three days after Waterloo, Rapp began a slow withdrawal from the Rhine, pursued by the vanguard of Schwarzenberg’s Army. On 26th June, the heavily outnumbered Rapp skirmished with the Austrian III Corps. Two days later he made a stand along the Souffel River and the Austrians attacked.’

I do like anniversary battles and with next month being June, something big from the 100 Days campaign begs to be played. This boxed game by Kevin Zucker offers the four main battles fought 16th - 18th June, plus the unusual action outlined above and the four battles can be combined into a campaign game.

I will use the Souffel battle just as a bridging game, to keep my hand in on the system, intending to play one of the bigger waterloo scenarios some time in June. I am also playing a scenario from thuis system on Friday face-to-face, so that will further embed the system for things to become absolutely second nature.

It is a convenient sized scenario, using just a ½ map (17” x 22”) and a relatively contained order-of-battle. I am hopeful that this will sit in a single gaming session. I am now set up and ready to go and will likely play this initial bash tomorrow.

The photo shows the approach of the Austrians and encircled are the three objectives on the river line. Victory is determined as a combination of casualties and objectives taken / held.

In the latest Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine (issue 135), Roy Harper has penned an article called ‘General Victor’s determined stand’, that covers the three Austrian attempts at taking Marengo, in which Roy outlines how Victor’s outstanding defence around Marengo played a significant part in giving Napoleon the time he needed to prepare his later counter-attack …… the one that famously saved the day!

This is a lovely collection of three scenarios, nicely set out and each being an escalation of the previous one in terms of the size of force and each fought over the same terrain.

The first attack has just 5 - 6 units per side and is playable in a small space and this is the game that we are playing today. 

The Fontanone stream is fordable to infantry, but a unit will halt for one turn in the stream and once on the other side will be marked disordered.

To win, the Austrians by the end of play must have at least one unit on the other side of the stream or at any point in the game, have captured the village of Marengo. The Austrian part of the table is covered with vineyard, which I have represented with trees.

The author says he tends to use General de Brigade rules for this scale of game, but the stats provided are for Black Powder. I used my own home grown rules.

On the face of it, this looks a fairly impossible task for the Austrian force as they do not seem strong enough to overpower the defence, however the French left flank of two battalions are fixed in place for the whole game and the Austrian axis of advance is towards the other flank - so who knows, though there is likely good reason why two more scenarios follow!

The Austrians are allowed two rounds of pre-game artillery fire and this causes the battalion at the bridge to temporarily fall back. The Austrian line advances … and then one of those quirky moments, a Random Event generates ‘Confused Orders’ and the French guns pull out of the line …. Oh No! This is the moment that with open fields of fire, they should be hurting the Austrian advance.

The first Austrian assault on the bridge is repulsed.

The Austrians enter the stream in front of Marengo, but likewise, they are thrown back by good musketry.

The 1st Battalion of IR53 are in front of the French guns, the gunners must have panicked, because despite the close range, their fire was ineffective and the return fire from the Austrian line was devastating (3 hits) and the guns pulled out …. again!

A second assault over the bridge was repelled, but this time Austrian combined losses have been so great that the battalion wavers and falls back, unfit to return to the fray. There will be no further attacks here, the Austrians must now rely on forcing the stream around Marengo.

Generally the attacks fail and the Austrians seem to be picking up a lot of disorder markers, but are having real trouble in rolling them off, resulting in them becoming increasingly disordered.

I should say at this point that after a couple of turns of too and fro, this came down to two single, connected events. One Austrian battalion having crossed the stream assaulted the village, they were narrowly repulsed and that was followed up by a French counter-attack by an infantry reserve battalion that had moved across from the bridge. It was enough to throw the Austrian battalion back across the stream and with the rest of their force retreating, they had lost the capability to press the attack further.

So a French win, but the Austrians did get their moment … it just needed some kinder dice.

Looking at scenario 2, this is played in the same space, but reinforcements arrive for both sides, which will allow for a renewed assault and new vigour.

That all worked very well. I like with the smaller scenarios how the impact of single events cary so much weight and bring a sense of increased importance as to what happens at any one location.

Here there were two moments when fire inflicted 3 hits on the enemy and that is a big deal, not fatal, but very unhinging. Also, the French artillery on a couple of occasions drew curses from the French commander. 

There was an instance when the defenders at Marengo scored just one hit on an approaching Austrian battalion, but the battalion failed their capability test (like a morale test) and retreated back across the stream, effectively setting them back for two turns. Each of these things added some welcome narrative to what on the face of it looked like a fairly certain outcome.

I very much enjoyed the game, which was small enough to give one of those elusive opportunities for a mid-week outing … thank you Mr. Harper.

Quote

All three remaining tanks came into view simultaneously, but from a different direction. While their gun barrels swivelled back and forth, searching for us at our old position, Valeriy struck at the central tank. The tank caught fire, but at the same moment our tank destroyer was violently rocked, spattering us with bright flame from the right side. The thought flashed through my mind that there was no smoke inside the vehicle – it meant we were not on fire! Raising the morale of the men, in a firm voice I ordered: ‘ At the left tank - fire!’

Having just painted a couple of SU 122 self propelled guns for my Soviet Pocket Army force (see April 28th post), I was unsuccessfully trawling the internet to find some examples of SU 122 actions, particularly against StuG IIIG’s, when I came across a wargame blog called Steven’s Balagan and he has some good information  on the SU 122 being used at Kursk.

I was wondering how he had found such good detail, when my own trail had gone cold and then I saw his reference to a book by Vasiliy Krysov called Panzer Destroyers, Memoirs of a Red Army Tank Commander, published by Pen & Sword, which he said was available on Amazon.

So I checked that out. There was a hard copy for £137 (Yikes!) and a copy on the Kindle for 99 pence. Obviously it would have been rude not to get the Kindle version! :-)

Anyway, it is a very helpful book. The language is slightly on the stilted side, but the information is very good, there are even a few hand drawn situation maps that look like like they have been drawn with wargamers in mind :-)

I’m sure I will find some scenario inspiration within the book and these sort of ‘tanker’s memoirs’ are excellent for taking source material to inject some realism and better feeling into my rules.

Regardless, at 99p, the Kindle download is superb value for money …. Thank you Steven’s Balagan wargame Blog! 

Over the past few days, I have been playing out the last moments of the campaign, which has seen the Graysville Campaign 1863 folder in the left margin updated with the final three posts.

The first covers the actions on the Morning of Saturday 20th June 1863, the second covers the manoeuvres during the early afternoon and finally there are some campaign / playing thoughts in a post called the 'The Diaries of the Divisional Commanders'

Thanks to everyone who followed or dipped into the posts. I will leave the folder up for the forseeable future, so that it can be read as a cohesive whole.

I'm not quite sure how these things rise back to the top of the viewing lists, but on visiting  my Battlefields & Warrior Blog this morning, I had noted that an old Piggy Longton post from November 2021 has resurfaced asa post of interest.

It is ages since I have had the Wars of the Roses troops to the table and reading the post and enjoying the article has made me quite keen to get another Piggy Longton' game done soon,

Anyway, for anyone look for a medieval coffee moment and a reminder of what lord Darcy has to put up with, I have copied the link to the post here.

Link

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2021/11/festival-of-osrics-chapel-piggy-longton.html

The latest Wargames illustrated mag hits the UK high street shelves today, bagged with a free Epic 'Celt Warriors 2' sprue. Apparently the sprue is worth £10, so if it is your sort of thing, the price of the mag is off-set.

I have recently been looking at my Hannibal Epic as I research and draw up a scenario for Trebia, one that will need fewer bases than the scenario provided in the Epic Hail Caesar rule set, to get get the scenario closer to a 'pocket army' battle.

I am going to look at incorporating this Celt sprue into that plan and since the sprue comes with a chariot, it might be nice to make up one interesting large base that has the chariot sitting amonst the infantry warband. Anyway, it is a very nice looking thing with good figure detail.

As for the mag, there is a rather nice 7 page article on the Celts and one on Spanish Napoleonic Infantry 1808- 1811. There is also a substantial article on 'Gaming in the world of Irish Myth'.

For me, overall a worthwhile issue, especially with that sprue.

I have started a new day of ACW battles in Graysville Campaign, but a disappointing escalation in my back / leg pain makes it difficult to do much, so this is being left set up and I return to it every few hours to do a turn, which go very quickly with these low unit density battles.

Hopefully sometime over the weekend, I will have done enough to update the  campaign folder here and that will likely be my next post.

Funny how things work out. Yesterday I pulled the Pike & Shotte Epic figure set from the shelves for a browse. That took me to pulling the Warlord Games’ ‘TO KILL A KING’ supplement down and reading through the various actions.

I have always enjoyed this supplement as it covers some of the very small actions as well as the ‘main battles’.

Anyway, I was in a quirky bookshop today and saw this title. At 430 pages before reaching appendix 1 - 11,  the book covers in some rather nice detail the various Civil War actions in the County of Lancashire.

By necessity, scenario introductions to their subject are often short bland affairs and this book puts the meat on those engagement, plus it gives an account of the war from a Lancashire perspective, including the involvement of local families.

The boundaries of Lancashire at the time were enlarged compared to the present day, so we have the additional context of the involvement of Liverpool, Manchester, up to Lonsdale / Furness.

I was hoping that Stephen Bull might have done other similar titles to cover other counties, but it appears not, so I assume him to be a local author to Lancashire, which may be what sits behind his command of the subject.

Anyway, I think this will be a useful companion once my Pike & Shotte games start to reach the table.

Perhaps a surprising choice for the initial vehicles in the Soviet collection.

With attention now turned to getting a Soviet mid war Pocket Army up and running to mirror the German force completed a couple of weeks ago, while the first five bases worth of Soviet infantry are still on painting sticks, these two SU 122’s have pushed their way into the front of the painting queue.

For their vehicle support, the Germans got three StuG III’s and I suppose one might have expected the Soviet starter force to have T-34’s or even SU 76, but I like the character of the more unusual SU 122.

These are 1/144 resin prints from Anschluss wargames, with nice detail and they hold the paint well. The transfers have been taken from my Victrix 1/144 SU 76 kit.

I did do quite a few stages on them to vary that green, but in the final analysis, the eye doesn't really pick that up, so I think in the future I would cut those out and save time.

I did particularly like the Pegasus model (see below) of this vehicle that I had in 1/72, but you could fit four of these little fellows in the same footprint (if that's what you want), so the 1/144 (12mm) is a good fit for my table, though  I am unlikely to want more than two of these models.

I rather miss the 1/72 stuff, but on the flip side, there is something compelling  aboute the 10mm / 12mm models, I just need to get more of them done and get a few games to the table.