More Crazy Tiny Wargames

 I'm continuing to tinker around with very tiny wargames using the Portable Wargme Rules. Even my wife was, "wow, that's really tiny!..." so I guess that's something to be said...
I also took a cue from the blogs out there in that I put the "Diceshaker" app on my ipad and used it to generate the die rolls. It actually works really well and is a sort of no nonsense die rolling app that works just fine for this.

I played Quatre Bras out a couple of times with the British winning the first go and the French the second...so fun all around. Such a small game is pretty cool because I just kept it set up on the kitchen counter and played a few turns over my coffee this morning before the kids woke up and I headed off to work...and without the tell-tale clatter of dice, I was able to keep the wife slumbering too!

French columns assault Gemioncourt Farm

French columns take a drubbing from disciplined Brit volleys...

A second game experimenting with a gradual arrival of Brit reinforcements as in the historical battle...

The French get the better of the British left in the initial stages of game 2.

The Black Brunswickers held strong in Gemioncourt Farm in both games despite heavy assaults from French columns.

And finally I had a few minutes this afternoon after work to dig out some old plastic minis from a Parker Brothers Battle Cry game from the 60s...the board is long lost but I still have the minis so I pressed them into service. This is a hypothetical layout of Gettysburg at a very abstract level without ridges (that I am going to make this weekend) to see if I can stretch Bob's portable rules to their limit on a 7" square?!

Battle on a Postage Stamp

 Ok, so it's Sunday night and my daughter and I spent an hour in our garage (oft referred to by my bemused wife as..."daddy's game storage room"...) and turned up some interesting finds. It seems several years ago I had contemplated a "Really Tiny Wargame" using an old portable chessboard....I had painted over the chessboard using "green chalkboard spraypaint" and then for lack of figures and rules...had stashed the board away for a future inspiration. Fast forward to this afternoon and we opened an old box and what was sitting on top but the little green 7" by 7" chessboard! Now immediately my synapses started firing and thoughts of how cool it would be to have a Really Portable Wargame using Bob's rules. So this evening I marked off a 7/8" grid, 8 squares by 8 squares, and dug out some of my 6mm Adlers and picked out 2 armies of 12 elements and set up the ultimate tiny wargame!

 The battle is Quatre Bras, I think referred to in history as the "Battle on a Postage Stamp"...I thought it appropriate that this super small sized game would model one of the great but really small Napoleonic battles of the war.

 The "table is a 7 x 7...inches that is...! The Adler 6mm figures are just the ticket to pull it off, and the "Portable Wargame Rules" will be the rules of choice for this one. It may be a stretch...but it will hopefully be a fun experiment.

View from the French side towards Gemioncourt Farm...Quatre Bras off in the distance.

 I have a few resin cast 6mm houses, but houses from a Monopoly game would work as well. I'm thinking of making wooded square bases to place on the grid instead of bits of clump foliage.

A 7" by 7" wargame

I'm contemplating how to make hills...and streams at such a small scale...
The squares are only 7/8" so not much room for terrain, but still, it looks like a wargame.

Portable Wargame: Quatre Bras

I find myself strangely compelled by "The Portable Wargame" by Bob Cordery... it really appeals to my sense of simplicity and abstraction. So I decided today to put the rules under a bit of "stress" by posing a historical scenario...one of my favorites,... the 1815 Napoleonic Battle of Quatre Bras. I used the order of battle found on Wikipedia to get a proportional set of armies...and I was off and running.

I used a larger hexboard that I pirated from  another Command and Colors Game ...an "epic scale board"...in that system.

The units in the game equated to brigades in the historical battle. The order of battle breaks down in units as follows:

French

15 infantry units
3 Field Artillery units
2 Light Artillery
1 Dragoon unit
1 Cuirassier unit
1 Guard Lancer unit
2 light cavalry units
1 command unit
......total of 25 units plus 1 command

Anglo-Allied

11 infantry units
5 artillery units
2 cavalry units
1 command unit
total of 18 plus one command

as I am still getting used to the rules so I didn't differentiate for "guards," "lights,"  and such but I think such distinctions can be integrated into the rules later.

the French advance...

the Brunswickers occupy Gemioncourt Farm...

The battle was fought as per the rules with the addition of my "squares rule" mentioned in the last post.

The French came on in fine style and made good progress initially  by turning out the Brunswickers from Gemioncourt Farm in the early stages... but not without losses.

Eventually the French assault gathered momentum and the assault on Gemioncourt became a full scale fight.

The French captured the farm after a sharp fight...and then consolidated to make an assault on the Quatre Bras ridge.

but in the process the British force held on doggedly and caused significant casualties...the French send light cavalry unit around the British left flank but it meets the firm defensive squares of the Highlanders

a view of the attacking French columns

Wellington moves to the crisis point!

the British hold firm!

...ultimately, the French make a game assault on the village of Quatre Bras but their strength is spent...and a final flurry of musketry from  the British Guards seals their fate and they remain in possession of Gemioncourt Wood as well as the crossroads of Quatre Bras....

...and as the Iron Duke would say..."it was damned near run thing!"

The rules again gave a good game in 1 hour...and the rules worked for a historic scenario, which in my book is real test!....again, the rules are bloody, but as Ross noted in the last game, it demands that commander be aware of his reserves...and that was decisive in this game...as it was in history. the French exhausted all their infantry, and at the end the British had 3 brigades of infantry intact, hanging on to Quatre Bras,... so the battle went to Wellington!

One of the interesting things about this battle was that the forces were unequal...the Brits were outnumbered, but the managed to hold the French as in the original battle...a very good outcome for the rules, and one that begs to be tried again.

I am interested in developing a better use for the command unit...instead of being just a target...it seems like it runs from the enemy instead of moving to the crisis points. Perhaps it can influence combats in the vicinity or such...

I have a new interest in my 6/10mm because of these rules!!

Having a Go With Hexes

It's been raining here in SW Virginia for so long I think I might apply for "Honorary Brit Status"...or maybe move to Seattle and be done with the sun for good... and to cap it off my son was sick and home from school as well so nothing to be done for it but...break out a game!

We decided to try out Bob Cordery's "Portable Wargame Rules" based on Joseph Morshauer adapted to hexes. I had just read Ross McFarlane's AAR of a game using the rules and thought they would be just the ticket for a quick game.

We used my 6mm Napoleonics and the hex board from a Command and Colors game from GMT. The terrain was some of my homemade (using Polymer clay) buildings and a few store bought buildings as well. We fabricated a few hills by tracing around some of the C&C games tiles on to 1/4" balsa and sprayed them...(amazingly building the hills took only about 20 minutes)...and then we got to it.

We each had an army of 18 stands (the rules call for 1 1/2 times the number of baseline hexes to set the size of the army).


Now Napoleonics are a notoriously difficult era to simulate what with all the "rock, paper, scissors" nuances to deal with and such, but for this game we decided to use the rules as written to see how they worked and then adjust them later for Naps.

As the game progressed, I did cook up a simple "infantry squares" rule that seemed to work well: We said infantry could elect to form squares when an enemy cav unit moves adjacent...by doing this the infantry gives up it's roll against the cavalry in the Close Combat phase. The cavalry in turn has it's combat power reduced to 2, and if it fails to destroy the infantry unit, it is retreated one hex after the combat and is pinned. The infantry unit while in square cannot fire and takes an initiative point to change formation out of square.

We managed a few turns before my son lost interest (he's five after all...), but I soldiered on. The French after a turn of cannonade, advanced a strong force on the left and pressed the Brits hard. A couple of Highland units stood fast until destroyed by overwhelming numbers. The rules are bloody, but fun in true Morschauer style, and I didn't mind the level of abstraction at all, as I found you quickly had to get into making some hard command choices as with casualties your initiative dice begin to dwindle.

those 6mm fellows are tiny but aggressive!

The rules as written have a two hex infantry fire range which seemed long using 6mm, (but would work great in mid to late century battles).  I used it anyway and chalked up the long range fire to skirmishers and "tactical" (i.e, non Grand Battery) artillery fire. In a future Napoleonic rules "tweak" I might try making two hex infantry fire a "pin only" result.

The battle was winding to a close as the French assault on the left slowly began to strangle the British command rolls...but we had to wrap up the game when the wife came home from work and said, "Is this what you guys have been doing all day?"

.... ahh the lot of a married wargamer is fraught with peril...

18th Century...The Return!

Sometimes a ruleset will reinvigorate my interest in a period. In this case Rick Priestly's Black Powder rules have got me going again both for my 18th century ImagiNation stuff and for Horse and Musket in general...I'll be posting a more detailed report of the rules but for now, suffice to say that I've been re-reading Charles S. Grant's "The War Game Companion", and his "Raid on St. Michel" campaign in addition to playing through the Black Powder rules using my 6mm Naps, some pictures of the games are shown here.

French massing to the attack...terrain sculpted using "Sculpy" clay...(works great for 6mm)...

Brits and Portugese ready to resist the assault. ( all the figures are Adler 6mm)

I played through a 6mm battle but realized that I was missing some critical elements in the rules, so I set up another game and things worked out much better. It always takes me a few plays through set of rules to get in to the finer points of play.

Playing these rules has also inspired me to finish a bunch of 25mm RSMs that I been sitting on waiting for inspiration...so now the 25s are finished and the ImagiNations game is back on!!!...more on that in the next post. Until then, here are images of my 6mm Adlers in action.

French attack columns try conclusions with a solid Highland line.

French and Brit Cavalry go toe to toe!



Overview of a 6mm battle...the table width is a mere 24" ...just enough to fit on my kitchen countertop


The terrain boards are Masonite (or "hardboard" for my Brit readers...), simply painted with roads and rivers to be used "geomorphically"... I made them a long time ago for a Franco Prussian War 15m collection that I still occasionally play...and since the "Black Powder" rules do encompass that period as well, I may break out my Franco Prussian War stuff as well.

Nothing better than a great "toolbox" set of rules!

Green Jackets... Part 3-Done in a Weekend!

So I had a good weekend of painting despite lots of errands and small things to do for the wife. —We are on an austerity campaign to shop more carefully for food so we spent a couple of hours today making a list for the week's food and shopping smart (for a change...) so we did really well in that department. And on the painting front the 95th came together nicely and really quickly so I now am on to some French Voltigeurs (Perry plastics) to oppose them so that I can get right on to a Peninsular War skirmish. I have a British Battalion (the Buffs) finished as well so some pics of that soon. Now that I have a couple of units (Brit and French) also waiting in the wings that are already assembled based and primed so I have high hopes to get a basic Naps force table ready in the coming few weeks. (Those Sharpe novels have really given me some good momentum!)

The only small problem was that I found the Foundry Brit figures are slightly smaller than the Perry and Victrix plastics (the plastics are 28mm and I think the Foundry tend towards 25mm) so I will probably eventually sell these 95th figures when I get a set of 28mms that are more compatible...but generally I think they will be fine on the table for now.

Green Jackets Part 2

Another shot of the shading on the 95th. This shows the figures with the first couple of layers of green shading. So now its a black under coat followed by a base coat of Citadel "Orkhide" Foundation paint. Then a wash of Citadel "Thrakla Green" wash. Then a mix of the base green with a touch or two of Vajello 70915 Deep Yellow to highlight the next layer followed by a final highlight of the base green and a bit of white. I may try another final bit of base really lightened on the highest creases but I'm not sure...the green looks right on the actual figures but this closeup looks a bit to light, so I'll probably leave it as is. The faces are Vajello medium fleshtone with a GW Flesh wash...this, when dry, will be highlighted by the medium fleshtone.

Green Jackets!

I got a shipment of Foundry British rifles from "The War Store" and got right to them since I'm reading the Sharpe stories and that puts lots of momentum into the project. Painting the 95th is a challenge for me since I have never quite figured out how to paint highlights on a dark green uniform. It seems like whenever I lay in the highlight it lightens the green too much or if the highlight is too dark its gets lost and the figure just remains to dark.

So I'm going to try it again and maybe do a little research on the web on some of the figure painting sites and maybe get it right this time!

I also am using a Citadel green wash over the base green to further darken the detail on the basecoat. The first pic shows the comparison of the base green and the washed version on the right. It also brings up the "greeness" and the contrast so that from a distance the figure doesn't just look black.

Back In the Breech

Recently having finished the final novel (number 20!) in the wonderful Patrick O'Brian series of Age of Sail stories (the Aubrey Marturin series). I finally got around to starting Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series on the Peninsular War. I know I'm a late-comer to these stories but I had been saving them for when the time was right to plunge in. So to help jump-start my Napoleonic collection I started the first Sharpe book....and of course it starts right out as advertised...a cracking great read and lots of scenario ideas right off the bat. So my Naps got some real momentum in the past couple of days with the assembly and mounting of a second British line battalion and a good start on a Light battalion. I was even keen enough to purchase some Foundry Brit riflemen for skirmishes so they are on their way from The War Store as well. So the combination of novel and a new set of Citadel washes to try out, —and... though a martini is not recommended if you are trying to paint, it surprisingly helps with the tedious process of assembly on those plastics! ;)— ...the formidable painting task has gotten a nice push forward.

...and finally I just had to put up a pic of my little guy's latest pirate island. For any dads out there, if you ever get a chance to read "Floor Games" by H.G. Wells (available free from Project Gutenberg) its probably the best advice for how to really play with children, a short read but really a classic. Be warned, that after you read it you will probably start buying any toy that contains decent terrain (trees mountains etc) no matter what else is in the box...not that us gamers don't already do that by nature!