Hobby Update: Boardgames - Europe's Agony; Battle Ravens; Achtung Spitfire! & Squad Leader

Although I haven't been doing much blogging recently, I have been doing a reasonable amount of gaming.  For some reason what I have been doing hasn't really lent itself to reviews, AARs or analysis, so I thought I would just summarize my recent activity here, as a marker for myself as much as anything.

Thirty Years War

 The main gaming with miniatures has been more horse-and-musket gaming with Simplicity in Practice: I will deal with that in a separate post.  Boardgame-wise, the main focus has been on playing Thirty Years War: Europe in Agony:

 As far as Thirty Years War games go, this one seems to have been reasonably popular and supported.  A couple of rules questions were answered on the BGG forum quite quickly after I posted them, so some people are definitely still interested.  I am still feeling my way through this game, not so much for the rules as for how the basic strategies of the game work.

Showing the scope of the game - the play area is bounded by Holland - Brandenburg - Franche-Comte - Hungary.  That covers the majority of the Thirty Years War theatres with the remainder being handled by cards.

The area around Bohemia, Austria and Hungary sees a lot of action early on, as the Imperial forces try to defeat a powerful rebellion in Bohemia and a less powerful rebellion in Hungary.

Bavarian forces face some relatively weak opposition around Ulm, but intervening here will cause a negative political reaction in Germany; plus, do these troops need to be sent to Vienna or Prague instead?

Spinola's Spanish are the single most potent military force in existence in Europe at the beginning of the Thirty Years War. Combat in Holland is slightly abstracted by the way and uses a card-driven set of events rather than the usual battle/campaign/siege model in the rest of the game.

My first few games (covering the early years of the war) have been good fun and have shown considerable promise for use as the 'engine' for my proposed Thirty Years War re-fight.  Some very rough, initial observations:

1 - The initial set-up (both in the published game and in the many proposed variants - there is too much chance of easy Protestant dominance in the published set-up, and the variants still seem quite generous to me).  The slight worry here is that the number of forces on the board at the beginning of the campaign are pretty small and the rules quite attritional, so it is very easy to get into some quite odd and one-sided situations very early on.  I don't know how much I should worry about this, but it is noticeable.  Contrast this with the game in the last campaign: Caesar's Gallic War.  That game had some similarities in terms of mechanics, but there was very little Caesar or Ariovistus could do in the first turn to achieve a large degree of dominance.

2 - Sieges seem quite easy to succeed in.

3 - Battles in the game system can be quite mutually bloody: I got three total mutual destruction results in the first three turns!  Nothing about the odds involved makes me think that this would be a real outlier result.  I would be surprised if miniature games replicated those kind of loss levels, so I wonder if that would change the dynamic of the game too much.

4 - The card play is quite important for the strategic framework of the game (new powers intervening, support from foreign powers, generals being recalled, and so on).  There has been some scepticism online about how much some of the cards will get used, although playing solitaire with single sequential draw, it hasn't been too much of an issue in practice for me.

So, some things to think about, but all looking very promising as a game in its own right and as a workable campaign engine for re-fighting the Thirty Years War in 2022.

WW2 Air Wargaming

The air wargames The Portable (Air) Wargame & Achtung Spitfire! have both got to the table recently.  Nothing much to say about either of them: the former is my simple, flawed but IMHO quite enjoyable variant of the air rules from Bob Cordery's Developing the Portable Wargame.  The latter is a comprehensive but for my tastes over-complicated and slow game of WW2 air combat; however, it does seem to produce pretty accurate results and has some great scenarios in.

This is probably the single wargames scenario that I have played the most: two Bf109Es with a slight height advantage take on 3 Hurricanes over France, March 1940.  It is such a great test scenario for WW2 air combat.

The historical result again in this one: one of the 109s is shot down, whilst one of the Hurricane's is damaged (the second 109 escaped easily after this image).

Another great favourite of mine: a simple solo scenario, with PO Richey in the the Hurricane trying to shoot down a lone Dornier 17 at low level in France...

Having damaged it earlier, Richey lines up for one last attack before the Dornier escapes...

And on this occasion, brings it down - just!

The two scenarios above are really good for testing purposes, because they can be played out with Achtung Spitfire! and then compared with simpler sets of rules to see if the simple rules allow things which are simply impossible in AS.  If that happens, it is probably time to change the rules to bring them back to AS outcomes, without introducing AS complexity.  That is basically why I have played them so often!

The third scenario: Blenheim IFs patrolling over France...

About to tangle with Bf110s. Eek!

I think...flying the Blenheim IFs in this one is always going to feel a slightly masochistic exercise...

I often think of this engagement when I hear/read someone riffing on "it isn't the equipment, it is the pilot/crew/soldier" a bit too hard...

Anyway, like a pack of hounds on a wounded fox, the last Blenheim IF goes down...

The same again, but with a larger (double-size) scenario, six Blenheim IFs against eight 110s.

Anyway, all very interesting with AS! and very fun with my much slimmer rules. I must get those rules properly written up and posted (although to be fair, they haven't evolved that much since I last put them up); I am experimenting with some slightly different numbers though, and using d10 rather than d6.

WW2 Tactical Ground Combat:

On a nostalgic whim, I asked for a copy of the classic Squad Leader for Christmas:

I don't think I have much particularly interesting to say about this at this time, except that the basic rules and structure came back really quickly, even though I can't have played for well over 20 years; and that it really was good to get back to Colonel Berki and his boys braving the German machineguns!  Entirely coincidentally, Henry Hyde (from Battlechat podcast, although this particular comment was on a Patrons only Patreon-Q&A session) mentioned that he too had recently bought a copy on a nostalgic whim, although in his case he doubted he would ever get it to the table...I have managed to overcome that particular hurdle, at least.

The initial attack goes in, and despite the usual losses, Berki and some of his riflemen have managed to get across the street...

Lots of fighting across the board now...

 

I didn't take any more pictures of this one, but you get the idea!  I loved it, and have played the Guards' Counter-Attack a couple of times now.
 

Battle Ravens:

Over the Christmas holidays, I also managed to get out Battle Ravens, finally.

This one definitely falls on the 'game' rather than 'simulation' side of the fence: to be honest, one could replace the counters with warriors on for a few different coloured stones and it would work just fine as an abstract boardgame.  The mechanics are really good, give an exciting game and my 11-year old grasped this one without any dramas.  Highly recommended as a game, although it isn't going to replace Comitatus, Dark Age Infantry Slog or even DBM for the wargamer of the period!

Very nice board and counters.  The paper figures are in exactly the same style as the Peter Dennis 'paperboys' which have been doing the rounds for the last few years, and none the worse for that.