An Odd Idea

 I was reading the classic "Little Wars" a few nights ago (something I do from time to time to get re-inspired), and an idea was rekindled in my head regarding how to make woods on the gaming surface. H.G. Wells had a set of large rectangles of wood planks that, when stacked, served as hills. Though it's not mentioned in the text (but outlined in some detail in his "Floor Games"), his approach to making woods involved having the hill boards drilled in a grid to take short branch cuttings from actual trees to make his wooded areas. You can just make out the grid of holes in the pictures in "Little Wars". I've always wanted to give that idea a try but never had the wherewithal to tackle it given that it seemed like a bit more than was necessary to produce woods. But the idea still hung around my thinking and finally ran into an opportunity to give it a try...now this is an odd idea for sure as it involves "damaging" a game I own...but I still thought it had good possibilities so I decided to give it a try.

A Reb unit assaults a wood defended by Union infantry and a battery of artillery. (The game board is a bit shiny and I was thinking a quick coat of matte spray might make the whole look of the game a bit more like a tabletop wargame rather than a boardgame.

Basically I took the idea of drilling the game surface to accept trees to one of my "Battle Cry" game boards to try a way of producing wooded hexes without having to use the flat tiles included in the game.

The result is kind of cool, but perhaps a bit "out there" if one wants ever to resell the game. And maybe just a bit too "fiddly"....I just drilled each hex vertices using a small bit (1/16") and sized to take the trunks of some nice little wire trees I got on sale at my local hobby shop. I forget the manufacturer of the trees but they are simple twisted wire trees with some clump foliage glued on. But when you stick them into the board surface it gives a fairly good alternative to the woods tiles. (I think this idea would work even better if you laid the gameboard on a piece of blue styrofoam insulation so the trees would hold better in the surface.

I'm still not completely sold on this idea. I just drilled a corner of one of the two Battle Cry boards I own just to experiment with it. I have to give it a few days to see if I really want to drill all of my boards this way. it just seemed to me that if I was painting the figures I should do a little more with the terrain. It kind of warps the boardgame idea...but the effect is pretty good.

I also want to do the full treatment of this idea for my 40mm homecast horse and musket stuff by doing up some layers of boards drilled to H.G. Wells specs. (...and not to mention the new Spencer Smith 42mm 'Little Britons" has got me on full alert... with calculator in hand trying to work out how to afford a classic set of "Little Wars" toys soldiers! (Many thanks to Ross for the link!)

Nothing like some experiments to get the gaming juices flowing!

Exciting Holiday Find

 I don't normally love the holiday season because here in the states it can get a bit crazy. But one thing I always look forward to is the holiday decorations that can be turned to good use for wargaming. Today I found a Christmas tree rug 30" in diameter with a nice green grass surface on one side and a smooth black rubber surface on the back. it was under 10 dollars and I bought one and headed home with my gaming wheels turning!

I got home and gave the rubber backside a coat of blue acrylic loosely applied letting some of the black show through...making a nice ocean texture. Then I got out a hex "template" that I had saved after punching out a Battle Cry boardgame a few years ago...(my wife calls me a hoarder but it's for just such a moment that I save things.

I got a hole punch and punched the vertices of the leftover hex sheet giving a good sized template to use for laying out some ocean "terrain" for my predreadnoughts. I just used a white gel pen to mark dots at the vertices and then freehanded the sides of the hexes...(a little drawing ability helps here...) The result is loose but effective. And the board is 12+ hexes across ...and at the game scale I think works with my ships, (1 hex to 1000 yards)which would be extreme engagement distance for ships of that era. Ships are allowed to use movement points to turn more than one hexface since the scale of the hex allows even the largest ship to turn within the hex. This is a variation of Bob Cordery's Naval version of his Memoir 44 based rules.

 I enjoy the way the circular board gives a sense of there being a horizon. It also reminds me of the "battle board" in the old Avalon Hill Bismark game...which I think I still have somewhere in my garage.

Now what to do with the grassy side....

PS, I found this mat at Lowes.

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.

Return of "The Green Mile"!

It was bellwether day here at the Lead Gardens as I was granted an official letter of tolerance from the Grand Duchess to use our rarely used but much cluttered guest room as a place to set up a more permanent (...ok, "semi" permanent...) gaming table so I don't have to disrupt dining and homework operations on our family table any longer (and not have to travel to her store across town to use the back storage room). And to make it even sweeter, I now have a room with a door!...an all important feature now that we have a new and remarkably destructive rascal of a Siamese kitten in the household.

I have, in the past, been known to make a merry joke at my lovely wife's expense but this gift of space has made me a true believer in her ongoing benevolence.

So after a day of cleaning, I was able to set up the entire expanse of my "Green Mile" in all it's 8' x 5' of classic wargaming glory! This very hour I am setting up another scenario from C. Grant's "Raid on St. Michel (I do have the re-fight of the Battle of St. Michel promised last post already finished up too, but it will take a day or so to get it written up.)

A Short Game and Another Critical Foot

I played out the "Threat to the Flank" Scenario (p. 4 CS Grant "Scenarios For All Ages") over the past weekend and I took overhead pics each turn just to see how it would look. Also at turn 4, I got a crazy idea that since I had lots of green paint left from my table project, that I could add a foot to my table without much trouble and just a little bit of expense. So I "called" the game at turn 4 a guarded victory for Grolstein since they did get across the river and were poised to make their flank attack...picked the game up...and I then made my way to the local hardware supply store and bought 4, 2x5 foot sections of hardboard to expand my table to an 8'x5'.

I have found (as C. Grant mentions in "The Wargame" that a thinner table tends to make the games somewhat stereotyped and the forces lack room to maneuver with large battalions, so I think the extra foot will be a big improvement...now, where did I put that paint roller...

Here are the game pics in sequence:

Turn 1
Both sides race for the bridge (bottom,...the upper half of the river is fordable) The Grolstein Cuirassier Regiment is ordered to ford the river and attack the Bleiherzen center.

Turn 2
Grolstein Infantry makes for river under heavy fire (top) and the Hussars and Dragoons clatter across the bridge with the Grenz firing across the river in support.

Turn 3
Infantry trade volleys at the top and cavalry melee at the bottom...light infantry engaged all along the river...

Turn 4
Austrian Dragoons in Grolstein service follow on across the lower bridge hitting the Bleiherzen Dragoons in the flank and sending them off in retreat...at the top, the Hungarian Musketeer Regiment Esterhazy, despite heavy casualties and the loss of the Brigade commander still manage to get a foothold across the stream.

Heavy cavalry battle in the center... though one squadron of Grolstein Cuirassiers manage to capture a gun, their commander falls... and the other squadron is driven back across the river by a bold charge downhill of Blieherzen horse

the final push by Grolstein's infantry across the stream...at this point the battle was called in favor of Grolstein, though the Bleiherzen Army manged to withdraw in good order.

In this game I used "The Wargame" rules as printed so I was using a I go-You go turn sequence...there was not much difference from my card driven approach (outlined in an earlier post)...the rules are a blast either way!

...hopefully next time the two armies will meet on a larger field!

Birds Eye View

I got a nice postal surprise yesterday in the form of 2 books I ordered from On Military Matters. I'm now the happy owner of Stuart Asquith's book on "Solo Wargaming" and C.S. Grant's "Scenarios Through the Ages". So after a late night in bed pouring over these two gems, I went over to my gaming space this afternoon after classes and laid out a new scenario to play. My last battle pics involved my entire 18th c collection but to really have a good game its generally better on my table to put fewer units out to give more space for maneuver. So today I set up a flank attack scenario from the Grant book.

According to his book, it's based on the tactical situation of the "Battle of the Boyne" fought in 1690. I found the situation pretty interesting with a sweeping flank attack and the importance of a bridge (a terrain piece a few of which I just finished). I just had to half the number of units to have a better fit for my 4x8 table. The resulting initial set up looks really promising and I'm going to play it out over the next couple of days.

Here are a few pictures taken today after the forces were all laid out. There is a portable set of metal steps in the storage room where my game space is located and I pushed it over to get some top-down pics of the table...somewhat unusual, and more like an aerial shot.

The Green Mile

Now that my newly painted table has dried sufficiently, I spent a couple of pleasant hours just setting out figures and terrain to see how things would look...and surprise!, surprise!...eventually my entire collection of 18th century figures was on the table....

Perhaps if I get a few spare hours this weekend I might go ahead and fight this one out...I set things out based on a map I sketched up this past week for a battle that might logically follow the storyline after the forces of the Duchess defeated and pursued a Bleiherzener raiding force in the "small scenario" I recently posted...this one battle would center on the city of Königswald, a few miles over the border of Bleiherzen.

I really like the new green table surface....who knew that going "old school" could be so invigorating! Here are a few pics of the "set down" today: (...and please bear with me gentle readers, on the ofttimes blurry photography...I'm going to get it right eventually...I promise!)

...the Erbprinz Fusilier Regiment von Kluge in action again...

Austrian Artillery in the service of the Duchess

overview of the town of Konigswald and its Bleiherzen defenders...and, in the upper left distance, Grolstein Jagers hold "der Jagdhüttenberg"

Austrians massing (at top) outside the village of Gleissen...

Fuzilier Regiment von Kluge standing strong after its stalwart performance in "the small scenario"...the Duchess' Austrian "mercs" massing in the distance

Cavalry massed for battle...

Bleiherzener Musketeer Regiment von Pfhulstein...

Bleiherzen's Prussian allies marching up through the Konigswald town square...

Grolsteiner combined Grenz, Hungarian mercs. and cavalry brigade closing in from the north...

...more Prussians and Colonel Gerlach's Jagers in the distance defending the slopes in front of of the town of Oschlt.

Bleiherzen/Prussian cavalry

Near the village of Gleissen, the Duchess' Cuirassier Regiment 1 awaits its moment!

Going Green!

It's time,... he said to himself... off of work early..., and he jumps into the car headed for the local DIY store for a gallon!?...do you really need that much? ...his inner voice says...of course!,... he answers... ("what's that" the wife says...as he tries to sneak the gallon can past "the guards"...)...oh nothing much, a little paint... ...just a little of the most beautiful... (to a gamer...) shade of green that he can imagine!! A few paint rollers and a few hours later and voila!...the reverse side of his flocked gaming boards are turned to the finest "Old School" Green!

ahhh...quite a cathartic moment I must say and I can't wait to lay out another battle on the new table! Stokes...you magnificent fellow!!...somehow it all feels... So Right!!

Before...

after...

and without futher ado... the Bleiherzeners decide to parade before the city gates...

...despite their recent seback on the border...by God, they still parade splendidly!

I Hate My Game Table!

OK.... I know, ... every time I look at the darn thing I see something I could do better... right now a darker color...or perhaps on the backside of the 4x4 sections I'm thinking a classic green finish with no flock...more "Old School"...and I'm lusting after another foot on the short dimension...making it a 5'x8' instead of 4'x8'...and the "Geo Hex" hills are really starting to show their age...maybe a little work with some MDF and a jigsaw will fix the hills...I should just count my blessings for being able to have a 4x8. But I really love the images I'm seeing of a more "abstract green" table (a la Henry Hyde's demonstration games)....What to do...what to do...

...as our gaming evolves...so does the world it happens on(in)...