Hobby Update 14 Jul 26...and a game!

The push to get through the lead mountain continues. Next up were a bunch of Fireforge Templars, plus some unknown - maybe GW? - late medieval style cavalry? The former are new, the latter second-hand and in need of some restoration...

There area still a few bits to touch up (and a missing arm!) on the cavalry, but they are looking a bit better than they were.

(a Viking that had been missing from the previous batch also sneaked in)

I based the Templars for the desert. Not sure if that was the best choice, we shall see!

And on Sunday, I actually got around to playing a game. I ACTUALLY GOT AROUND TO PLAYING A GAME! I was sitting in the garden doing some reading, then I was doing a few things with original D&D (playing out a few example combats to remind myself of the mechanics) and then the urge really struck me to just play a game, so I set up an old favourite: Scenario 1 from the One Hour Wargames book, with my Baccus WSS figures and the Polemos: Ruse de Guerre rules.

 

 

The Set-Up: 

The 'Anglo-Dutch' at the bottom, facing the 'French' at the top.

I rolled for forces from the book (slightly modified to allow for 9 units instead of 6) and generated the following armies:

 

The Anglo-Dutch Army:

Duc de Aunis

1st Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Murray, Colyear, Portmore)

2nd Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Ferguson's, Lord North's, Leven's)

3rd Brigade: 2 bases of Dragoons (Lord John Hays', Ross'), 1 base of 6pdr Foot Artillery  

 

The French Army:

Lord Lancaster 

1st Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Berwick, Galmoy, Dorrington)

2nd Brigade: 3 bases of Infantry (Dauphine, Sault, du Roi), 1 base of 6pdr Foot Artillery

3rd Brigade: 2 bases of Horse (FitzJames, Sheldon)*

Slightly on the exaggerated side, but all real units - all Scots in the Anglo-Dutch army, apart from Ross' Dragoons (Irish) and the artillery; whilst the Horse and the 1st Brigade in the French Army are all Irish.

(*okay purists, I know that these are really the same regiment at different times...)

The Dutch Scottish Brigade (1st) on the Anglo-Dutch Left.

The Dragoon Brigade and artillery in the centre.

And the 2nd Brigade (Scots' Brigade) on the right.

The Irish Brigade on the French Left.

The 2nd Brigade in the French Centre.

And the Cavalry on the French Right.

The Battle:

The French Army takes the initiative in a shallow echelon, leading by its left (top-right), with its right slightly refused; the Anglo-Dutch have slightly advanced and pivoted their left-hand brigade (Dutch Scots' Brigade) to counter this.

Things get serious. The Dutch-Scots' Brigade has advanced to check the advance; the French 2nd Brigade has pivoted to engage them, although this has slightly disordered the advance; note that some of the British Dragoons have fallen back to avoid French artillery fire. The Franco-Jacobite cavalry has trotted forwards (top-left), threatening to charge

A wider shot

The Irish infantry move forward to engage their Scots' counterparts...

The Dutch-Scots' traded a volley with the French and then charged forward. The Franco-Jacobite cavalry then charged the left-hand battalion of the Dutch-Scots' (Murray's Regiment)

The result: Murray's Regiment (left) ingloriously collapsed and ran; most of the French infantry was pushed back (Dauphine and Sault, centre)

But Dauphine's Regiment subsequently broke when the Dutch-Scots' resumed their firing! (top)

The action then switched to the Anglo-Dutch Right: the Irish and Scots regiments traded close-range musketry volleys...with the most devastating results! Fergusson's Regiment was routed (bottom-right), but all three of the Irish regiments were broken!!

After a few more moments, the French position becomes untenable - the two remaining regiments of Dutch-Scots' (Colyear & Portmore) stop any further French cavalry attack, and also break another French regiment (Sault) by fire. The remaining unbroken French infantry and artillery are unable to do too much to stem the rout.

The position at the end, when the French Army gives way.

Game Notes:

A very crushing Anglo-Dutch victory - but the real victory was getting an actual game on the table; or in this case, the garden grass. It was great fun, although it was over a little quickly (not perhaps as quickly as the photos imply, the game was slightly more involved in that, I skipped over some bits). The rules were fine, remembered them all straight off, except whether units which support to a flank recoil when the base they are supporting does (they definitely do so when supporting from the rear). The musketry looks highly decisive, but this is deceptive - the firefight between the Dutch-Scots and the French was pretty ineffective and it needed a further combination of bayonet and a second firefight to produce a decisive result. On the other hand, the musketry exchange between the Scots and the Irish witnessed 4 '10's being rolled out of 6 dice, which accounts for the sudden destruction of the French left. The Franco-Jacobites did have their share of luck - the successful cavalry charge on the Dutch Left was a low-odds (but high pay-off) tactic. It was just that the Anglo-Dutch (ok, Scots) were luckier all in one go...

 The scenario is the first one (Pitched Battle One) from the OHW book - based on Ceresole, apparently. 

 Game on a 2'x2' board, using Baccus 6mm figures, with the Polemos Ruse de Guerre ruleset. 

Hobby Update - 13 Jun 26

 Not much time for games or hobbies recently, but not quite no time. Gaming is still pretty much stalled: no space, no time, not in the best of spirits and difficulty in translation of 'general desire to play games' (which remains as strong as ever) into actual games on the table. But I have made a bit of progress on the painting front. For some of it, you will have to take my word for it: my phone died and with it a few progress pictures. But the following should give a sense of what I have been up to!

Some Japanese infantry for my littlest to use against his US Marines. They are nice figures, but painting them really brought out that there is a more-or-less generic WW2 infantry look: the Soviets, the Poles, the French, the Eastern European states and the Japanese do look quite similar, really! Sure, there are differences and noticeable ones too, but at a sufficient level of abstraction, they are quite close. 

I have also been doing a lot of fixing and restoring from the pile of 'casualties' - figures that have been broken over the years, or the odd figure that got left or forgotten or whatever. For example, this next batch is the WW2 British Airborne that have been in the pile for a while:

Additionally, I fixed a bunch of Perry Agincourt-era Men-at-Arms, some Zulu warriors and some Mahdists, some British opponents for them both, a few Romans, some WW2 German grenadiers, a few Space Marines, etc.

 

Of much more recent vintage (from the recent Partizan) are some British Colonial artillery. For some reason the clash of Redcoat, Zulu, Dervish and Pathan really inspires my little one (of course, there is a very obvious reason: he has watched Zulu (and Zulu Dawn, and The Four Feathers, and Khartoum, just like a lot of the more veteran wargamers!). He bought some painted British infantry for the Sudan, and then got this Perry set as well.

 The little one's collection has come on quite a lot over the years!

I have managed to get a few of my own figures done too, in the margin! These are the first batch of Duchy of Warsaw infantry. There are another 4 infantry units in the pile to complete, plus some extra skirmishers, then I will move onto the cavalry and artillery.

(also another British Para from the bits box has been restored in the background). 

 Coming up, I am trying to finish a bunch of 28mm WW2 extras for the the little one, and then a few more of the 6mm Polish for me. The main effort is on really getting down the lead mountain which has grown much more than I comfortable with over the last couple of years. Making progress on the 28s is key I think, since they are the ones that take the storage space, plus I can get through the 6mm stuff quite quickly when I put my mind to it.

I suspect the game drought may last a little longer, until I can sort out time, space and mental energy, and, in the end, fix on what I actually fancy doing. Possibly the fundamental tension is that OTOH playing some simple games is the best way back in, but my mind is being drawn to more complex affairs. I might have a go at some of the simpler scenarios in SPI's ETO, inspired by Martin Rapier's recent re-fights of some of the early WW2 campaigns.

Hobby Update 08 Apr 26 - A Million Hits

One million hits used to be the sign of a very popular blog. These days it isn't quite as true since much of the traffic will be scripted bots but still, I guess it is a nice milestone to have reached anyway!

 Recent lack of blogging has very much reflected a lack of activity on my part. A combination of being super-busy at work and (another) move around at home has eaten up both my time and space. And also, as is very much the pattern for me, when I reach a certain level of stress I seem to gravitate towards RPGs rather than wargames. I have created quite a nifty OD&D character generator and editor, I suppose!

So, apart from a somewhat unsatisfactory WW2 game that I abandoned, I haven't done any wargaming at all, and only a little bit of model-making. Such as that was, it included an mdf Roman Villa: 

A very nice piece from Sarissa I think, and not too complicated to build - for my youngest.

And then a bunch of Warlord WW2 US Marines - as usual for WW2 28mm stuff, these were for my youngest: 

And finally a few Baccus WW2 bits and pieces for me:

German anti-tank guns (75mm and 88mm), anti-aircraft guns (quad 20s and 37s, Mobelwinds), some movers (Sd7s) and some Demags.

And some British Bofors guns, some 2pdrs, some carriers and some scout cars. I found doing the WW2 figures strangely difficult, I think my eyes really are going a bit - I don't find the equipment that easy to pick out.
 

Next up will be some more stuff for the bairn - some Warlord British for the Zulu War,  some WW2 Japanese and doing some repair work on some Space Marines that he tried but didn't quite turn out as he hoped. After that, hopefully I will be able to get back to some of my own projects, although I am not quite sure what I will prioritize. I have some more WSS stuff to do (which I just love painting!), some Ancients I want to rebase and add to (particularly Successors, who seem to be really useful as Ancient armies go), a Byzantine Army to paint up, some Napoleonic Poles, and quite a bunch of little additions. It feels like I have cut back on buying stuff a bit over the last couple of years, but not as much as my painting has been cut back, plus I am painting for two and that really slows things down. So I should proabbly cut down even further on the buying but...I don't particularly buy much stuff for me generally so part of the way I structure my life is in thinking about the next show and buying myself a few figures. Ho hum. So, at Hammerhead for example, I limited myself to a pack of WSS figures. I wanted to buy a fair bit more but restrained myself, hoping I will get the pile down a bit. Perhaps I need to start thinking about buying more painted miniatures in the future?

I am off for a couple of days at the moment. More important than the painting is actually working out a way of getting some games in, and where the models can be stored and accessed to make that happen. My lovely long-awaited table in the garage has yet again been buried under the excess stuff from the house, so it is really a matter of finding a place to squeeze in somewhere.  The key thing to decide is how much to try and attempt this way. For example, I could do 6mm WSS no problem, two sides, small board, limited terrain, easy. Should I try and fit something else in? 6mm Ancients is a possibility. 6mm WW2 works great on a small board, but seems to really benefit from having a wider range of models and terrain to support it. 6mm TYW/ECW works quite well too I guess, as does 6mm Napoleonics. 15mm WW2 skirmish might work, but terrain gets to be an issue much more quickly. Portable Wargame stuff is obviously designed for this kind of thing. 28mm skirmish is harder to pull off on very small boards unless you keep the figures to a minimum, and then it feels like a lot of terrain for a quite limited number of games. 1/4800 Napoleonic Naval and 1/600 WW2 Air might work. So lots of options to choose from, but I do need to actually make that choice if I am going to get more games in - wish me luck!

Three Featherstonian Battles: #2, the Battle of Platt's Vale

The second battle in this Featherstonian trifecta is a scenario modified from the Horse & Musket scenario in Wargames, the Battle of Plattville. My version, the Battle of Platt's Vale, is set in the War of the Spanish Succession instead of the American Civil War, although I am using one of my favourite sets, the Polemos: Ruse de Guerre set, which are reasonably generically Horse & Musket, to keep in the spirit of the thing.

 

 

The Forces:

Red Force (the Anglo-Dutch):

3 Infantry Brigades, each of 3 Infantry Battalions

1 Cavalry Brigade, each of 3 Horse Regiments

1 Field Artillery Battery

 

Blue Force (the Franco-Jacobite): 

3 Infantry Brigades, each of 3 Infantry Battalions

1 Cavalry Brigade, each of 3 Horse Regiments

1 Field Artillery Battery

 

Each army has an infantry brigade as an advance guard, entering on the road (south for Blue, north for Red). The balance of each army will arrive after an hour (i.e. on turn 4). 

 

The scenario objectives are a little under-specified in the original, but it seems that a side needs to control all three hills, the bridge, the village and the church to win.

 

The Set-Up: 

 

The village of Platt's Vale in the centre, with the church on the hill just to the West. Plattswood is to the West, and Creek Hill to the East. Crow's Creek seperates Creek Hill from Moleshill (top-centre) and Hare Hill (top-right)

The Franco-Jacobite advance guard: Berwick's, Dillon's & Clare's Regiments.

The Anglo-Dutch advance guard: Lord North's, Ferguson's & Leven's Regiments behind Moleshill.

 

The Battle:

Initial manoeuvring leads to a face-off of the Scots' Regiments on Hare Hill down onto the Irish Regiments in Crow's Creek.

The volley fire of the Jacobite Irish regiments is devastating: Ferguson's and Leven's Regiments are routed quickly. Lord North's Regiment beyond the bridge is wavering also, but it has routed Berwick's Irish Regiment in its turn

The Scots' Brigade of the Dutch Army marches forward toward's Platt's Vale on the other flank

Meanwhile, the English Brigade has arrived in the nick of time to contest the hill, and the Cavalry Brigade has boldly advanced across the stream to threaten Dillon's Regiment in the flank

The French Brigade moves up to occupy Platt's Vale.

Whilst the Franco-Jacobite Cavalry (Lifeguards', Fitzjames', Sheldon's) moves forward onto the hill to counter the Allied Horse; more Irish infantry move up the road to reinforce the Advance guard, but are somewhat delayed by the survivor's of Berwick's regiment

The remaining regiments in the French advanced guard (Dillon's and Clare's) boldly move onto the hill, correctly judging that Lord North's regiment would not stand their approach, given the destruction of the rest of the Allied advanced guard. 

The Allied cavalry manages to shake out into order to face off against the Franco-Jacobite Horse; meanwhile, note in the background that the English brigade has launched an attack on the Franco-Jacobite advance guard on Hare Hill.

Continuing to fight brilliantly, Dillon's regiment routs the lead regiment with its musketry - this leads quickly to the panic and rout of the entire brigade!

The position at the culmination - the Scots' Dutch and the French Brigade are just coming to grips around Platt's Vale at this point.

But with two brigades routed, the Anglo-Dutch Army is fought out and withdraws.

Game Notes:

Great fun this quick game - I just really like these rules! They rattle along but with the tempo mechanic being really easily modified for solo player.  The formation morale rules put a high level of jeopardy and randomnes into the game too, but still giving a strong signal of what is likely to happen. For instance, the Franco-Jacobite advanced guard took a bit of a risk in advancing whilst Lord North's regiment was still in action: but it was a reasonable chance that it would give way without further fighting, and so it proved. In contrast to the Polemos: SPQR game I played earlier in the day, the reduced number of outcome moves and simplified play sequence make it definitely less brain taxing.

Like Neil Thomas' rules, these rules seem simpler than many but they really do produce very similar and at least equally plausible outcomes, with a lot less mechanical fuss. This game did finish relatively quickly, partly due to the exceptional combat performance (i.e. very good rolling) of several of the units; partly due to the relatively generous movement rates per turn*. but mainly due to the smoothness of play. Really enjoyed that! It is a good scenario too, lots of tactical interest as there is potentially a lot for each side to do.

Buildings mainly by Leven, figures from Baccus' WSS range. 

 

(*An infantry unit in Ruse de Guerre moves at the rate of light cavalry in Polemos: SPQR. this isn't necessarily a problem, but it does make the game feel a lot faster. It also means that formations can defend an attack a lot of ground quickly, which changes the feel of the game a lot - reserves can 'get there'. Much of this is to do with the author, Glenn Pearce, designing his rules for big multi-player games, where you need to design speed in if you are going to get anywhere).