2nd Life Guards

These chaps are AB figures and so is the flag. Again, another set thats been lying around my desk for ages. I particularity liked the swords on these figures which are often sculpted too small and give the impression of big knives! Blue Moon  cavalry figures seem prone to this error. AB have gotten the British heavies 'right' in this respect and are fine figures.

These were present at Waterloo and formed part of  Somersets brigade which comprised of 1st and 2nd Life Guards, the Kings Dragoon Guards and the Royal Horse Guards or the "Blues". These figures are sitting awaiting their turn, along with Ponsonbys Union brigade.

Game of Blucher - Quatre-Bras

I foolishly agreed to umpire a game of Blucher at the club last night and with it being the 16th June it had to be Quatre-Bras! I've had no experience of playing Blucher so hence the word foolish! I read the rules several times and thought I got the jist of it but that fell apart once combats started.

Darrel and Peter were the allies and Ian and Paul were the French. I used the scenario from the Blucher website (by Sparker), and it did a pretty good job of scheduling the troops, starting at turn 16 and ending at turn 30. The only thing I disagreed with was the immediate availability of the cuirassier brigade, and I gave a foot artillery battery and a horse battery to the allies.

To keep things simple I did not use hidden units, unit characteristics or characteristics for the commanders -  except allowing an extra combat die if attached to a unit.

Main events were the aforementioned cuirassier brigade getting hit by the Dutch battery losing four strength points one lucky bombardment. The Prince of Orange was attached to Merlens light cavalry brigade which suffered casualties and the poor old Prince became a victim himself which really pleased Marshal Ney (Ian). We ran out of time but the allies held Quatre-Bras and the French held part of the road to Ligny, so hence a draw. There are not many pictures as I hadn't much time in between thumbing through the rule book and offering advice.

Hard to say what I make of them - rules are a bit more complicated than Grande Armee, I probably should have played a couple of game before doing this. My worst mistake was misinterpreting the reserve move, I thought it was 8 BW but is in fact 12 BW !!!! This is why we ran out of time at the club to complete. Basically the French were taking too long to march up.  I think giving a few more tries would do it justice, assuming the guys at the club will still speak to me.

Brunswick Uhlans

Completed these guys for our Quatre-bras game on Tuesday night. These are CGM figures (from Spain) and are generally ok, although I think the sculptor had difficulty with the czapkas, AB's they ain't but price wise I can't complain. They came with separate lances but these were without pennants, so I discarded them and used some metal lances (25mm spears?) from North Star, the pennants are from ordinary photocopier paper and cut to size.

Some scenary and more casualty markers

These trees have been kicking around in my spares box for quite a few years - I decided to buy some ERM terrain templates and stick them in groups of 4,5 and 6. I bought the trees years ago when I got back into wargaming, I cant recall the make but they were a big mixed bag of deciduous and conifers, they were a bit tall for 15mm so I cut them in half and doubled the number of trees! The deciduous are already based singly on poker chips obtained from Asda. Which reminds me, I really need to get some felt to mark the outline of woods.

I'm not a fan of 'look at me I'm just been shot' poses, so I cut the bases of some of the French and British and with a bit of work with the pliers got them to lie down.

15mm SYW Battle of Kolin

Tuesday saw another game at the club, this time the army of old Fritz was pitted against the Austrians. This game was hosted by Ian and there was eventually four of us playing. Ian and John (Prussians), myself and Neil (Austrians). The battle of Kolin was fought on the 18th June 1757, historically the Prussians narrowly lost this one after a series of blunders. I dont know enough about this period of history to comment further, except to say that Ian and John did a bit better! We recreated only a part of the battle, the main bit was off-table to our right. In both cases, the Austrians were supposed to capture a road to prevent the Prussians sending in further reinforcements to the main battle and the Prussians were suposed to capture a hill preventing the Austrians from doing the same.

Apart from Ian who was rolling some good dice we had some laughably miserable die rolls, we tried to blame young Alex who came to see what all the noise was about. The rules were developed by the Tyneside wargames club and are free to download from their website.Anyway, here are a few pictures when I remembered to take any. Again, not much of a battle report.

The rules had command pips (1D4) for each general, my general on the left flank was "average-incompetent" which for those who know me is probably a good estimate. However, these were chosen by chance for each commander with the Prussians having better odds for obtaining good commanders. It meant that poor commanders  were -1 for command roles, average  meant no modifier and good commanders had +1. There were markers for orders for each unit, and to change an order meant using up a command pip. 

 Yours truly ponders a difficult move.

They all look so beautiful at the beginning.






The Prussians debate strategy.

 Austrian right flank holding onto objective(Neil)

 Austrian Cuirassiers and Dragoons charge.

Prussian cavalry more or less wipe out their Austrian counterparts and then proceed onto the infantry.

casualty bases

Rather than just place the dice next to the damaged unit I thought I paint up some special bases instead. A few people seem to be using them and I quite like the effect. I went for rectangular bases rather than circles so they can join up flush against the unit they are attached to. as you can see I made space for two 7mm dice, just in case. The frames & dice were bought from minibits.

So I bought some French, Prussian and British OG casualty packs, and will probably get Russian and Austrian as well. Debating whether or not to use dead horses for the cavalry. Examining the packs, most of the French are lying down as expected with only a few standing up like this guy who looks as though he's just realized he forgot something. The Prussians have a couple of poses that dont look like wounded, probably same again with the Brits.

AWI game - rule testing

Last night at the club Neil and myself went through a playtest of his horse and musket rule system. The rules are called "Battle Factor: the age of cannon 1704-1865".

Neil brought his AWI figures and I played the patriots (or rebels depending on your viewpoint of history), I had two regiments of Continental infantry, two of Buckskins, two ranger units and some militia. In addition to four generals, a cannon and a unit of cavalry.

The rules I think played well, they were well written which is a good quality in any rule set, they are evolving but most of mechanisms will probably stay the same with some minor retuning as he has worked on these for a while.Neil was very patient while I blundered through the game.

Each side must secretly determine two objectives (sensible military ones!) and at the end it may be possible for both sides to 'win', mine were to capture the crossroads and the church. Neils were more sensible, he also wanted the crossroads but also the high ground overlooking the crossroads!

Command and control is based on a 1D6 roll for each general and the C&C, low rolls mean you cant move, change formation or fire as mush as you would like.

All hits are determined by rolling sixes, easy to remember that. Maybe use fives as well for close range rather than adding extra dice?

The number of musketry and melee die are decided by the frontage in mm, I think it was 1D6 for every 40mm.

Artillery and musketry are not deadly, although at close range they can be. The important factor for deciding results is in melee, again causlties can be light it is the morale acsendence that determines if a unit is pushed back or not.

At about 50% causalities a unit will begin to start suffering the effects of these losses, as these go beyond 50% they cannot attack or advance and will finally rout. The information is kept on rosters and is not onerous.

When movement and firing occur the defender can react either by firing back, or a formation change. Reacting troops are noted by markers, as well as those that reacted by firing.

I think the recoil rule may need to be rethought as I kept wining a melee repeatedly and the losing unit sort of got stuck in front of a friendly unit and could not retreat further. Usually, based on my limited experience I would expect to see these pass through the friendly unit causing disruption or not depending on the rule set.

If you lose a melee, (die rolls are compared and the loser is pushed back), you can follow up but the winners use five dice to the losers three. So having lost once expect to lose again.

Joining the Whitley Bay war-games club has been one of my better decisions, I'm actually playing!

In terms of game play, I concentrated on the crossroads my continental infantry won several melees pushing the British back, one of them routed off the board. The church was just about in my setup zone so that was objective down already. The woods north east of the church were filled with indians and British light infantry, I failed to take the woods and my militia and rangers were pushed back. The British centre was overrun with 3-4 of my battalions and more or less won the game. On my left flank Neils dragoons routed my cavalry and caused panic with the remaining infantry battalion posted there.

I must apologise for the fuzzy quality of the photos, my hands shake and the lighting isn't too good in the hall.