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As with the first unit of Fort Henry Guard recasts, I have painted them as 1870-ish Canadian militia rather than Ft Henry Guard (cuffs, shako plate, colour of buttons and the cuff pattern if you were wondering). As painted these figures would be just right as my old unit, then the 5th Battalion (Royal Light Infantry) from Montreal but I already have these in their later guise as the Black Watch of Canada. Due to petty prejudices I am reluctant to field more Ontario units if I can avoid it and so these will represent New Brunswick's York County Regiment from around Fredericton where my brother and two additional generations of his offspring live. At least its familiar ground and the first Fenian fiasco was aimed at New Brunswick after all. That settled I can ship them off to Atlantica.
I have various non-wargaming commitments over the next two weeks as well as a few nights away visiting and wargaming with
Of course, having stripped down the rules so I can fight pitched battles with every unit I can physically cram onto the table, I've remembered that that isn't what I wanted to do with this collection. I have other armies for that. Instead, I want games which encourage a good narrative, like a MacDuff To the Frontier or a Sword & the Flame game but played on the grid if possible or at very least using elements rather than individual figures. I need to reread some of the past Square Brigadier game reports that seem to have produced that sort of game and try to figure "why" and "how".
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| This is a picture from the 1st NorthWest Rebellion game played in April 2014. The one that got me thinking about all this. 2014 game report: "and-it-cuts-like-knife" |
The NEW Canadian Militia looks excellent- great work there on your 54mm. Cheers. KEV.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kev
DeleteWhen you want to do massed armies, do massed armies. When you want to do a narrative, do a narrative. When you want to do both at the same time - as in smaller narrative force actions leading a big battle narrative battle - do that. The two types are not mutually exclusive, use all your armies for both... and to be honest the massed effect battles look good and should be attempted at times just for the spectacle. I admit that I sometimes like setting as many troops as I can on the table just for a 'Review.'
ReplyDeleteTo a point I agree, but its not about the number of figures on the table. The plan for this collection is to be able to play a small, short game of an hour or two with good narrative or a field a table full of troops for an all day affair a few times a year. Where it seems to be headed at the moment is for a small game of 20 minutes or a table full of troops in 2 or 3 hours with an over all tale with neither having much to hang a narrative on.
DeleteThey are jolly smart chaps ! .
ReplyDeleteTo look at at least :)
DeleteGreat looking figures lovely seeing them painted up. I look forward to seeing them on the battlefield soon.
ReplyDeleteAlan
Me too,
DeleteThey are great looking figures; and being a big fan of 19th century militias, it's good to see someone creating militia figures. Did any Canadian militias have grey uniforms like the British volunteer Rifles? I
ReplyDeleteNot that I aware of but I think there may have been a few in maritine colonies before Confederation. If any surface here, they will be shuntled off to fight for the rebellion.
DeleteI'll echo previous commenters: Lovely new troops! I watched The Man Who Would Be Kind (1975) late last night for the first time in over 40 years. At one point, Danny and Peachy, the two main characters, trained the Kafiristanis in rifle drill (Martini-Henry rifles were mentioned early in the story), and I found myself wondering: How accurately the film reflected actual British rifle drill of the time (late 19th century)?
ReplyDeleteBest Regards,
Stokes
Its been too long since I've seen but probably not very much would be my guess.
DeleteDear Ross,
ReplyDeleteStokes raises an issue which I have come to a conclusion about. What we know of army practice often does not make it to the screen because the writers or directors think that it either doesn't look good or it isn't dramatic enough. Would the company commander at Rorke's Drift actually have barked out "At 100 yards volley fire...." from what you mentioned he would have simply told them to "present." And even if he did, would the soldiers have actually held their fire to only shoot at 100 yards. I thought that the Martini-Henry was effective out to at least five times that range. More than that we have the image of the British soldiers in the film "The Four Feathers" being told to hold their fire until "the last possible moment" which was very dramatic but not very realistic.
Your figure painting and rules writing are - as usual - quite excellent. When you re-visit earlier game AARs remember that sometimes a game hinges not on the rules but on a stroke of good fortune for one side or the other. It can also work in reverse as in a recent game where I had a 5% chance of shooting down an attacking enemy plane and succeeded in doing just that.
Again many congratulations on excellent painting and fun games.
Best Regards,
Jerry
Thanks Jerry, good points as usual. I'm not sure how much the drill changed between SniderEnfield and MartiniHenry but if the troops were steady and the officer waited until the Zulus were 100 yards away before ordering Ready! presumably they would have waited thought might not have taken time to aim! I believe that holding your fire went out with smoothbores.
DeleteI agree that low odds die rolls at critical moments can make for memorable moments, but only if the rules allow such things to happen. Likewise allowing the player to make choices at different levels (unit to general) may be less "authentic) than enforcing a strict POV but it also distances the player from the toys and the action, focusing him/her rather on the overall picture. That was the intent of various changes but I seem to have momentarily forgotten that the colour and excitement are my favourite bits!
From Brian:
ReplyDeleteLots of things in MMG that I like - the simplicity and focus on what's
important, removing worn units (in many games they just clutter up the
baseline, better to take them off but to keep separate for campaign
purposes, (if a general wants to keep them on the table he needs to give
them some priority) merging units - a really neat idea and very
applicable to War of 1812) Two thoughts.
Real Generals have to deal with the ability (or lack of) in their
subordinates (commanders in the rules) so I like to rate them for
quality eg bumbling / cautious / competent / pusher. This links to the
number of orders they can give. Your die roll could then be a -1/no
change/+1 effect on the number of orders. I'd also suggest that there
should be an option in the opening moves to order forward a formation
with one order. This is lost once the action starts.
The other thought is on sequence. I find implausible that a unit fires
and the target doesn't fire back. I'd thus suggest that their should be
the option to do so (if they do, then they don't fire again in their
'turn'. It certainly keeps both sides involved.
I tried to post this as a comment but it didn't want to let - feel free
to so if you want.
Hi Brian, Thanks for your emailed comment. I've seen references on other blogs to people not being able to comment, not quite sure what's going on.
DeleteIf there are others not able to comment here I haven't heard but my email is listed above if anyone wants to reach me.
re your suggestion for command modifiers, well, I like to think of the Commander as me and I need to no modifier and find my brain provides plenty of friction on top of the die roll :) I used to have modifiers for subordinate commander quality and personality (rash, bold, indecisive, cautious etc, especially in bigger games. They may be back one day.
My original idea for the orders die in pre-grid days was that each moved one formed "brigade", this being a Brigadier with several of his units properly aligned but on the square grid I found it too limiting as fighting on say a "North-East to South-West axis was more difficult than fighting on a North to South or East to west access. That made no sense to me. This short radius had a similar effect but still wasn't quite right since units could be incidentally within range while doing something else. I'm still working on a simple yet effective wording to cover lines not aligned with the grid.
I have the same issue with the separate fire phases and have tried various variations over the year and the simple answers have always had the best result despite not always having the most intuitive feel.
The idea is that firing at ranges of 2 or more represents long range firing by advanced skirmish lines which rarely had a significant effect other than to entice the other side to halt and fire back but a long exchange of fire could result in a few casualties and severely depleted ammunition supplies.
Melee for infantry on the other hand is 90% close range firing where both sides are blazing away and heavy casualties can ensue and even one side giving way. I have in the past allowed a choice of assaulting with the bayonet while the defender fires but the higher the level the game is set at, the less control and 1st hand knowledge the over all commander should have, he just gets to see the results.
Works ok for a table full of dozens of regiments of small figures engaging in a battle but less so for a handful of 54's in a skirmish which is why these draft rules are going back into the files for a different setting.
Not quite sure if I want to be all levels of command at once, or use a simple sort of simple AI for the top command, probably the 1st as more old school.