Oooh, a bit testing time wise, while I am still painting up my Danube 1809 project, but while I have a break from glue solvents and rattle cans, I am starting a mini sideline project that needs neither of those two things.

This is another ‘Pocket Army’ affair, this time using the EPIC figures from Warlord Games. This will be a slow burn project and progress will be recorded here on the Commanders site.

I have opened a new tab in the left menu (5th button down) that will follow the progress of the project. There is a bit of text there now for anyone interested.

Arriving in the mail today - GMT’s Rebel Fury, a package that covers six ACW battles. Units are typically divisions and there is a focus on pre-battle manoeuvre, with hexes equalling ½ a mile and turns equating to 12 hours.

This will be interesting to compare with the Worthington system that I commonly play, which is more tactical with units at the brigade level and hourly turns.

It is the first volume in what is described as the Heritage series, that will cover ACW actions. We first saw the system in the small Gettysburg game that was presented in one of the C3i magazines. It was then further developed for the Waterloo game that followed in a later C3i issue and here we are now, with a refined version of the system.

The first volume gives us; Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg (solo).

The headline mechanic is that players alternate back and forth moving single units, with their manoeuvre side typically moving up to 4 hexes. Once they reach an enemy Zone of Control (1 hex distance) or a Zone of Influence (2 hex difference), the unit flips to its Battle side and can now only move 1 hex at a time, though units can repeatedly activate throughout the movement phase, as long as the other player has had a chance to move one unit.

It is at the lower end of the complexity scale and can play in one to two hours. The only thing that I may dislike is that in combat, each side rolls on their own table first, to see if their strength and modifiers plus dice roll bring any advantage. Each player then takes their result to another chart and cross references those two outcomes to get a final combat result. That may just be a tad more convoluted than it needs to be for when I play solo, we shall have to see. The counter density is low enough that this might not in any case be cumbersome.

I like that each battle has its own counters, so they only need sorting once. More to come.

I am quite keen to get to the scenarios in the recent Rapid Fire booklet (The Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry) and to that end, have gone through all four scenarios, making a list of the troops needed to do them all.

While I am happy to proxy some units, there are others in the stash that need building. One of the scenarios has US forces and they do like their jeeps!

I have two already built and painted, but need six. I bought another pair of jeep models in the Italeri fast build wargamer series from Hobby Craft (UK) today and digging around the stash, I found this box from Academy - an old purchase from Hobby Craft.

I have already made up the German Kubelwagen, which is a nice model, so this afternoon, in the glorious sun … before the thunderstorm! I decided to make up the jeep. All the parts go nicely together, though for my needs, there is some build redundancy there, as there are four engine parts, which you don’t see with the bonnet glued down, but it is a nice touch if wanting to make a vignette, plus, as an option, you get a clear acrylic bonnet, so that the internal parts can be painted up to be displayed. 

You also get the HMG, which are not included with my other jeeps. It doesn’t have a crew / passengers, so I will sort that separately, but it does have decals.

There is useful Kettenkrad model in the box, which I haven’t seen anywhere else at 1/72, so that will bring a touch of interest when built.

The French Hussars have gone onto the painting sticks (dread), while the Duchy of Warsaw infantry have been glued to their bases and await basing paste to be applied.

I have been re-reading v1.4 of the Civil War Brigade Battles rules and during this week will put up the Antietam boardgame for the full battle. There is something compelling about trying to capture the Sunken Road and Dunker Church.

In the background, I am brushing up on the Hail Caesar rules in preparation for the next Piggy Longton game, now that Lord Stanley’s contingents have been flagged and based.

At last! The 4th Grenzers have been flocked and flagged. These have actually been painted, based and had ground paste applied since the first couple of days of May, but have lingered for a week now, waiting to get flocked.

I found them to be more work than their completed look might suggest, not really sure why, but I think some of my colours were more opaque than I would usually use and so double and even triple painting delayed things.

They are an unusual bunch with their vivid colours, especially when they sit next to all of that white uniform of the Austrian Army.

Anyway, these are the plastic Landwehr figures from Victrix, painted up as Grenzers and are acceptably adorned with the Corsican hat.

Since these have been off the painting sticks, the new Perry plastic Duchy of Warsaw figures have been getting a lot of painting attention and I am really surprised how quickly I have got these to the inking stage - though I have been doing double painting hours each day.

Anyway, they are progressing so quickly that this morning I primed the Perry Plastic French Hussars, so that they are ready to go straight onto sticks, as the 6th Hussars, when the Polish figures come off.

This does seem like I have become a painting demon, but the truth is, I am under a bit of pressure to get things done because I have committed to writing an article for a journal and a time constraint is ever present.

As a consequence, my two hussar units are the last that need to be done to see stage one of the 1809 project complete, with both French and Austria having a ‘Pocket Army’.

In the photo, the lead model that you can see in the foreground is Marguerite d’ Anjou, the formidable wife to Henry VI. The model is by Athena Miniatures  (link https://www.athenaminiatures.co.uk/product/18--vignette-4---marguerite-danjou ) and is soon to go into the painting queue as she has a part to play in some upcoming Piggy Longton saga!

In the UK, there is a hobby craft chain, unsurprisingly called ….. HobbyCraft. Anyway, looking at the fabrics for the wargames table, I found some dark green, short pile ‘teddy bear’ fur.

Thinking this might make some good woodland bases and textured patches of countryside, I bought a metre (by 2 metres wide) at £12.50

Once home I cut some irregular pieces and squares. Now in the photo, it doesn’t look so good, but to the Mk I eye, it does …….. but cutting it left fibres everywhere, chunky bits and super fine bits (which were so fine, you could only see on a black background), plus the whole things was charged with static, so the fibres stuck to everything.

Anyway, it kept shedding and I decided the whole thing was a nuisance and that the super fine fibres were unhealthy so …… into the bin and chalked up as a potentially nice idea, but a failure.  So the search continues.

The Duchy of Warsaw have gone onto the painting sticks and compared to my Grenzer are painting up much faster, though I am throwing a lot of hours at it - perhaps they are just a more pleasurable painting experience.

I am finding with the Contrast paints, you need to know when to switch over to traditional paints. If you do everything in contrast, then there is extra work when either going over those colours again in full bodied paint or when applying Wraith Bone layer paint to tidy up overspills of contrast into other areas of the figure.

Anyway, I had set myself to the end of May to get the Polish unit done, but I’m sure it will come in much sooner than that and then I can start on those hussars that I keep putting off! 

With the release of the Gettysburg module by Worthington Publishing (not yet in the UK), we get Version 1.4 of the Battles of the Civil War series (replacing rules 1.3b).

With a downloaded version of the new rules available, I took the Burnside Bridge scenario from the Antietam game for a spin, to see how well these rules retro fitted earlier games.

Each new version of the rules has the new sentences highlighted in green and this set is just full of that green, signalling a significant re-write

There is a post on the blog discussing V1.4 and how it worked out with the Burnside Bridge game.

Link

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2024/05/worthingtons-antietam-burnside-bridge.html

Aside from that, the Grenzers for my 1809 project are almost ready to leave their painting sticks …… thank goodness! These have just felt harder work than they should, I think mainly because their ‘ugly’ stage lasted so long despite how much time was spent on them and some of my colours were not opaque enough, especially the orange and oddly the brown, requiring second coats and more. Anyway, a dirty wash has helped unify their colours.

At midnight last night I was adding highlights to the face and the green oak leaf on the helmets. Today they will get a matt varnish and hopefully move to basing tomorrow.

Then I think, those tasty Duchy of Warsaw infantry will be moving onto the painting sticks …. Though my conscience is saying ‘stop putting the hussars off’!

There was a series of Napoleonic games called the Napoleonic 20 Series, in which the designs never had more than 20 units on the table.

There were rumours of an ACW version being made, but that seemed to fizzle out ….. but no, Multi Man Publishing had a working model and thought it justified making print, so they published via their house magazine - Special Operations.

So, last night we had a face to face game. You get a full sized map with large counters and more to the point, this is fast play system with low counter density, allows for the whole 3 day battle to be played in a single session …… if you get that far!

A big part of the engine is that each side has a morale track and that various actions and losses / gains will lower or raise that morale level. The moment one sides morale crashes to zero, they have lost.

In our game, the Union aggressively countered the Confederate advance …. Too aggressively, by spending those precious morale points to support attacks and the Union Morale track quickly reduced down to two points!

In the photo, the Confederates have successfully pushed the Union back. They have established their line based on an axis running from Culps Hill. At the point the photo was taken, the Union were sitting on just one morale point!

Needless to say, that was not enough to withstand the rigours of combat that followed and their morale collapsed, giving the Confederacy a victory.

It was a good initial outing that got the rules under our belt and demonstrated the tempo of play.

Next time should see a more measured game, whether we get to see the historical ‘fish hook’ defensive line of the Union emerge, we will not know until then, but we were starting to see the start of that in our game, so it should be replicable.

A fun game and importantly, one that will play to a proper conclusion in a single session. I think we both want to see this one on the table again. 

Through the letter box today, the latest addition to the RF Reload line-up.

There are four scenarios inspired by the James Holland book 'Brothers in Arms' and thankfully, all are playable in a 6x4 space (if using 1/72 sacle).

I have put a short piece up on the blog, that gives further detail. I can see this being a very popular title.

LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2024/05/joy-new-rapid-fire-reloaded-booklet-is.html

On the painting sticks, I have 4th Grenzer and frankly they are looking a bit parrot like with all the contrasting colours.

At first I thought these would look quite drab with the brown tunic, but here is contrast everywhere, such as orange facing and yellow piping down the blue trousers.

I think the ink wash will come to the rescue here and dampen everything down and I will likely go with minimum highlighting. Having said all that, it is a nice break from painting all those white Austrian uniforms.

I was hoping to have these done by the end of the month, but no chance of that, so I am throwing a lot of time at them now, so that they don’t impinge on the May painting.

The image here has been taken from the Baccuss 6mm website, which has some good uniform illustrations and a good range of 6mm figures for the Napoleonic period.

For gaming, I am about to put the Burnside boardgame scenario (see below) back on the table ….. but with the new 1.4 version of the rules, which ae available as a download and which will appear in the newly released Gettysburg game, which is yet to hit UK shores.

It will be interesting to see how the rule updates retro fit the older modules as there are some notable changes to the new set. We get a new additional melee phase, which follows firing. There are column / line formations instead of the old strategic movement and when a unit retreats or routs, it will now effect any neighbouring units that take morale checks over the course of the turn, so there is a bit to unpack there.

Since I played two games of the Burnside scenario last week with the older v1.3b rules, playing again now will give a good opportunity to look at comparisons.

With 12 of the 16 units now painted in my 1809 project, another game went to the table to test the Auberge scenario.

Using my own rules, eight units per side gave a fairly decent game. The French plan was to concentrate their infantry in front of Auberge and take it by weight of numbers. The Austrian plan was to concentrate on their left, sweep past the wood and strike the hill on the French baseline.

The French were twice repulsed in front of Auberge until they eventually overwhelmed the Austrians and took the village

For the Austrians everything fell apart on their left flank pretty early on. Their cavalry clashed with French cavalry and suffered heavy casualties and were then chased off by French horse, The supporting Austrian infantry columns were forced to stay in square as the victorious French cavalry remained threateningly close by.

With both of the Austrian flanks compromised and French light infantry holding the woods, the Austrian position was untenable and they withdrew from the field.

Considering these forces were pretty much evenly matched at the start of play, it was interesting to see how one side went to total collapse, though the French in Front of Auberge was getting a hard time and at one point the Guard reserve moved off the hill in case they were needed.

One thing I have noticed in the past when essentially playing with two brigades per side, which tend to form wings, is that each force will often win with one brigade on one side of the table and lose with the other and you get a revolving door effect. I think in general, introducing a third brigade per side in such scenarios helps bring a bit more dynamism to proceedings with a more definite win / lose result.

The rules seem to be holding up well, so more of the same over the next few weeks. The Austrian Grenzer infantry have now been taken off their temporary bases and put onto painting sticks this morning, I am hoping to get through these quite quickly …….. but then I thought the same about the Grenadiers! 

Last night we sat to a face to face game of scenario 3 in Worthington Publishing’s Antietam game.

This is a quite tightly framed scenario in which the Union attack across Burnsides Bridge, a real bottleneck of a situation, while they send a couple of divisions off board (downstream) to  find a ford, which will allow them to re-enter the board on the Confederate side of the river, emerging at the woods.

Each such division when leaving the table, rolls on a chart, to see how many turns delay there will be before the Division can find a ford, cross and re-enter the game.

Our game can be described in three parts.

Part 1 - the Union get tied up at the bridge, not being able to dislodge the Confederates on the escarpment in front of them. They send two divisions off board to find the ford. Casualties are fairly even as it is mostly artillery that trades fire.

Part 2 - The Union find the Ford and emerge at the woods on the Confederate right flank, but are held there. The Confederate line starts to lose cohesion as the large Union regiments lay down a lot of fire and the Confederates start taking heavy casualties, causing several units to rout.

Part 3 - the Union break into the area around Burnside Bridge, allowing their two divisions there to get across and get a respectable foothold on the other side, which included getting behind the Confederate troops that were pinning the Union divisions that had earlier re-entered the board. The crossfires inflicted huge damage on the Confederates and they were forced to fall back onto a position at the lateral road.

There was one moment of Confederate satisfaction, when the Union right fell upon the Confederate left. Only to discover that they had advanced straight  onto a concentration of Confederate guns and they were duly thrown back, but this was not enough to save the Confederate position as what can only be described as the taking of horrendous casualties forced them to retire.

At the outset of the game, one might be forgiven to thinking there wouldn’t be much of a game in this, but it turned out to be a corker, a tight contest, with both players fully involved throughout in try to eek out an advantage here and an advantage there, to turn the tide in their favour.

Overall a good scenario for a competitive face to face game that concludes in an evening.

While mooching today at Waterstones (UK book store), I came across this and was surprised that I hadn’t met it before.

The Battle of Brunanburh was fought AD 937 ….. somewhere!

That’s right, we are not quite sure where this significant battle between Anglo-Saxons and. Viking / Celtic Alliance, was actually fought.

I recall in one of the issues of Medieval History last year, that the Wirral Peninsular was a strong contender and there is a lovely map in the book of how the peninsular might have looked pre-drainage (thanks to Lidar technology).

But there are other contenders, including the Humber, with the battle seen as a Northumbrian affair and even as far south as the Severn Valley.

Many years ago, I had a booklet on the battle and it referred to a stone or a rune that had a depiction of cavalry on it and which was believed to relate to the battle, which fuelled a debate on whether what we have always thought of as infantry only armies (Shieldwall tactics), did in fact have a cavalry element.

I don’t know what this book has to say about that, but I am eager to dig into it.