Dear Diary - a rolling 4 months of comment
All things Jena Auerstaedt
Starting out with the Epic scale for DBN armies, I have something of a blank canvas. My Napoleonic 28’s are French / Austrian, so I wanted to take the opportunity to field something different and the Prussians is where my gaze has fallen. So the Epic project will see a pairing of newly formed French / Prussian Pocket Armies.
Rather than just going with some generic forces to fight some generic actions (which I find fine most of the time), selecting a theatre / battle might just impart some extra flavour on the play and so my shelves were scanned for inspiration.
‘Boom’ as the cool generation is saying! Jena - Auerstaedt 1806.
I have a rather beautiful book on the subject, Jena Auerstaedt - The Triumph of the Eagle, from the pen of E.G. Hourtoulle and published by Historie & Collections.
The 120 page hardback, it is chock full of illustration, including lovely full colour uniform plates and nice clear maps of the actions, while also supported by a very readable text on the action and good order of battle and organisation notes - it is a dream book for the wargamer!
Alone, that would be enough for me, but my beady eye noticed that I also have four boardgames on the Jena Auerstaedt subject;
The Coming Storm by Kevin Zucker from Operation Support Studies.
Trois Batailles en Allemagne by Didier Rouy from Pratzen Editions and Legion Games.
Jena - Auerstaedt, one of the old Napoleon at War Quads, recently republished by Decision Games.
Deux Années de Gloire, of the Jours de Gloire series, published by Vae Victis
If nothing else, this offers a ton of play opportunity and will allow me to really get a detailed appreciation of the battle(s) and also, there will be that thing of situations created in the boardgame playings, being suitable for transfer to the figure table, where they might generate some interesting set-ups for the DBN armies.
At the moment, I am quite happy working with themed scenarios rather than getting hung up on pouring hours into going for exact historical replication of battles.
Having a quick look at the characteristics suggested by DBN for my two armies in 1806, The Prussians get a -1 to their command point allowance, their musketry range is reduced to reflect their lack of skirmishing capability, they get a bonus in close combat and cannot use column for assault.
The French get a +1 to their command point allowance and an additional bonus when using column attack.
These differences might bring some interest to the table. Anyway all of this is looking like there will be a goodly amount of Jena related gaming over the coming months.
There is some box artwork for the four games mention above over on the Battlefields & Warriors Blog if you want to see that. LINK.
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/09/all-things-jena-auerstaedt.htm
Reinforcements!
I made a run out today to the Warlord Games' shop to pick up the main bits needed to complete stage one of the DBN Epic project.
This turns out to be one box of Prussian cavalry and one box of French infantry. As an extra, I added a French Foot artillery limber.
I already have a Prussian limber fully painted, which I did as a bit of a fancy when doing the Napoleonic Pocket Armies, however, it seems that these have a specific use in DBN, acting as the Army baggage, stationed in the rear, so now I will have one per side.
I hadn't realised that Prussian Landwehr have their own box set rather than sharing a sprue, but they can wait, I have plenty in the painting stash to be getting on with and I already know from experience, that if I have too many unpainted Epic sprues winking at me, then I lose the enthusiasm to paint!
As I have decided to get the figures based BEFORE painting and then to do a rough and ready speed paint job on them, then I will soon be setting up games with these little unpainted fellows fighting their way to victory while they wait for their turn at the painting table.
I have done this sort of thing before and it becomes quite motivational to see the armies with one more painted unit each time they go down onto the table.
A new folder for DBN in Epic
Over on the left menu, 5th yellow tab down, I have opened a new folder for my DBN project that is being based around the Epic scale figures from Warlord Games, together with some games with figures from my 28mm collection.
It is early days, but the folder will be added to as the project moves forward.
A tale of two tank platoons
I have just re-bought back into the 'Panzer' series, which looks at WWII tactical action.
In September 2018, I put up a post called A Tale of Two Tank Platoons. In introducing the game play, it looked at an action from the perspective of how tank crews from both sides on the east front were trained.
I think the post has been one of my favourites during my time as a blogger and so rather than write up something similar, I thought I would simply give a link back to that article - I hope you enjoy it.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2018/09/panzer-and-tale-of-two-tank-platoons.html
The 1066 games get closer to release.
I am advised that my 1066 boardgame (Dragon Ships and Iron Knights) and Geoff Nobles 1066, Year of Destiny boardgame, both published by Legion Games, have arrived from the overseas printers and are sitting in Chicago, waiting for customs clearance.
It is a fair bet that they should be ready for shipping out to customers by the end of September.
Closer to home, with DBA in mind with the Epic scale figures, I have sent off for some MDF bases (55mm wide) with a view of getting two DBA armies temporarily mounted, so that I can carry on using the rules, while the units get rotated through the painting queue one by one.
Hopefully as they arrive, I will have the figures for another French Dragoon unit, painted and ready for basing.
Finally, I would just like to thank those visitors who are popping in here regularly to read this stuff.
A first game with DBA
To give the DBN rules their initial outing, the napoleonic 28mm French and Austrians were ordered to the table. These figures are based on 80mm bases and here, 1 base represents 1 unit.
For the starter game, I went for the standard 12 points army per side, which roughly equates to 12 units per side and used the scale of 40mm equalling 100 Paces.
A table 4' by just over 3' was enough to allow the armies to breathe.
The French army included a Cuirassier unit and one of their artillery batteries was horse. The Austrians had jägers that can operate in 'bad going', plus they got 2 hussar units that count as Superior.
French columns advance over the bridge, crashing into the Austrian muskets, pushing them back, but there was a nuanced problem in the French getting off the bridge. There we Austrian hussars in the area and the first unit off the bridge couldn't turn to face that threat, because they were operating in the Zone of Control of enemy muskets and they couldn't just attack the muskets, because they would expose their flank to the hussars .... so, they pulled back to within the confines of the bridge!
A shooting match started there, which just started to rack up casualties. The bridge had become a stalemate.
In the centre, the French slowly advanced, inconvenienced by the fordable river. They did manage to engage the Austrians, but not in time for anything to be resolved there.
It was on the French left that the drama unfolded. French Horse Artillery engaged the enemy jäger, while the cavalry, led by the Cuirassiers, struck at the Austrian Grenzers.
It was close, but one unit of Greasers were seen off, bringing the total Austrian losses to 4, which brought the game to an end with a French victory (the French had only suffered 1 loss).
Actually, over on the Austrian left, their hussars had positioned themselves ready to strike the French right flank. For fun, I played this part of the action out, just to see whether another turn would have helped the Austrians ..... it didn't, the hussars were (just about) seen off!
Overall that was an enjoyable first game with DBN. I will take the rules away for a re-read, which have been helped by this playing.
The 28's looked magnificent on this compact table and the randomised number of Command Points generated each turn for each side, helped keep things fluent. This small game that would end when one side had inflicted 1/3 losses on the other (4 units) took 6 turns to play, probably taking no more than a couple of hours for a first game.
For the same account, but with extra pictures, you can visit the Battlefields & Warriors Blog. Just click on the first photo and manually watch the slides. LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/09/first-battle-with-dbn.html
An opening shot from the game table
Above - the French left flank in my first go at DBN in an 1809 game. I am playing with a 12 point per side game, which equates roughly to 12 units on each side. The table is 4' wide by just over 3' deep and units are deployed at 600 Paces into the table (which at 40mm to 100 Paces, is 240mm). The figures are 28mm.
This is the cavalry wing comprised of 1 x Cuirassier (elite), 1 x Hussar and 1 x Horse artillery (elite). In the background you can see the stream and part of a windmill and to the right is the French centre, composed if line and light infantry.
I must say that to the MK I eye-ball, it all looks very nice.
A bad back and legs have seen me pack away two boardgames games, barely started, over recent days, so this is the third attempt at getting a game going.
Having set it up, I will start play tomorrow and for now just content myself with re-reading the rules. I am also partway through another video of an 1809 game, which is helping embed the rules to memory.
Blogger is still being a nuisance. Anything posted on the Battlefields & Warrior Blog does not seem to pull through to other blogger's Blogrolls, so in effect the post is invisible without a direct link from another source, such as here. This is seemingly a problem for all wargaming blogs that I visit, apparently Google are aware.
The effect of that is that I am discouraged to spend the time on the usual type of report for this DBN game, which would get posted over there and likely not be seen, though I may be able to use over there as a photo dump and then link to that from here, just so any readers wanting to, can get a chance to see some pictures - or at least more pictures than I can show here due to the site structure.
I will do some game comments here, perhaps on the 'Recent Games' page (left).
Armies for DBN
Having just obtained the DBN rules (Napoleonic) I am quite taken by them.
An early option is to get my 28mm French / Austrian figures onto the table and use their big bases as individual DBN units.
I have also started to build an Epic scale Pocket Army for the napoleonic French and Prussian forces and it makes some sense to re-direct that project, while it is in the early stages, to work for DBN.
That has seen me put the razor saw to my Epic dragoon and horse artillery bases! to bring them down to 55mm frontages, but I like the look and perhaps this is the most viable way for me to hit a few birds with one stone (small armies, small playing space and fairly easy game rules).
I have expanded a little on this over on the Battlefields & Warriors Blog, where there is a nice photo of what I am doing with the Epic bases.
I think I am likely to put a project page up here at COMMANDERS, to discuss and share ongoing progress.
LINK
https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/09/dbn-by-alex-testo.html
The archers of Lord Clifford (Lancastrian).
As part of the ongoing re-basing of my Wars of the Roses archers from a single base per unit to a pair of bases per unit, to work with the Test of Resolve rules, I am pleased to see Lord Clifford’s archers converted and marching off the painting table.
There were 7 archers on the original 80mm base. I have painted up another three figures, with their red / green tabards, to get 2 x 80mm bases, each 40mm deep with 5 figures on each of them.
These are all Perry plastics.
Drive on Voronezh
The game moves on very slowly, due to an increase in my back / leg discomfort.
Here is the end of Turn 1 and 4th Panzer have created an opening in the Soviet line at Tim.
By the end of turn 2, they have increased that penetration and are moving between the Oslo and Seim Rivers. The only issue that I see here for the Germans is the shortage of follow on troops to help consolidate the penetration.
I am in the rulebook quite a bit, not because this is a difficult game, but because it has a few aspects to it that are different. It uses ZOC's and ZOC Bonds. The ZOC bonds are rigid, but outside of them, units can traverse ordinary ZOC's, although more slowly (and retreat through them!).
The turns move along quite quickly, though I am just about managing a turn a day at the moment, as I stand at this particular table and that soon brings on discomfort.
In other news the DBN2 rules arrived yesterday, just 1 day after ordering. I noticed that the postage paid was 24 Tracked - so thank you Alex.
Just ordered these;
This is a Napoleonic variant of DBx type rules, produced by Alex Testo.
It was the work that I have been recently doing around my Napoleonic Pocket armies in the smaller scale that got me thinking about these rules. The 12 element army can essentially be thought of as a corps.
The rules are well supported by Alex, with quite a lot of YouTube after action reports, which include some bigger games such as Eylau.
Only a few days ago, he put up a video to discuss the rules, which made me jump off the fence to buy. A hard copy is £12 plus £4 postage.
Anyway, here is a link to his recent discussion about the system if you think this might interest you. If you go into his info panel below the video, there is a link to his web pages, where the rules can be bought (contact page) and where some free downloads of battles can be accessed.
LINK
Back into the collection!
Panzer by Jim Day and published by GMT arrived ..... again! I say this because I have twice previously owned the game and perhaps there should be something in that, that should stop me wanting to own it again.
Anyway, I have re-taken a fancy with it and when browsing through GMT's P500 list, I noted that the this base game to the Panzer series had gone out of print and was on the P500 list for reprinting but with just 48 backers.
Now considering it has already had its third print run and it is a niche interest, I am imagining that it may linger on the P500 lists for some time. I did a quick check with Second Chance Game (UK) and they had just sold 1 copy and had 2 left in stock, so there was no time to hang around really, if I wanted this, I needed to jump now and so I did.
The artwork is a bit misleading, but lovely. It harks back to the Avalon Hill's Panzerblitz game, when in fact Panzer came from the Yaquinto line-up and had two follow up modules, Armor (west front) and 88 (North Afrika). There are now 5 follow on modules in the GMT Panzer game, but I think stocks are okay, so there isn't such a rush to dive into them (phew!).
There is some complexity to the game, but is a lovely thing to own. More to come.
Last night we played Gate Fulford from my pre-production copy of the game.
The nice thing about this scenario is that even though it has the same game engine, it plays quite differently from Hastings and Stamford Bridge.
The session was good with both sides fully engaged in the play throughout and it sat comfortably into a short session.
There is a bit of an AAR up at BoardGameGeek on this link;
LINK
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3763743/a-replaying-of-gate-fulford
