The Battle of Nolac Hill: Day 1

I had been planning to play this game using my own rules but it occurred to me that given the idea of a game in a box that I could take with me and talk someone into playing a game, using a published set of rules might be a good idea. Since I had my copy of Developing the Portable Wargame on hand, it made sense to try that.

The Attacking force moved quickly, hoping to take the hill before reinforcements could arrive. The infantry launched a direct assault while some cavalry turned the flanks, while others,backed by archers, moved to intercept the defender's reinforcements.

Several turns later, the hill was still holding while beyond the hill, the attacking Knights were having a hard time breaking the enemy shieldwall.

By turn 6 of 15, the attacking army was 'exhausted' and unable to attack. The only units to have made it onto the hill had been forced back and no others could advance onto it. The game was over. 

Well, that worked, but it was a little quick for my tastes. The combat was very attritional but what I noticed most, was that despite being very simple, there are some important rules tucked away here and there that are easy to miss or forget, especially since some things are done differently from what is intuitive to me. I'll have to make a 'cheat sheet', arranged for how my mind works, before I play another game. 

Before that happens though, I should replay the scenario using a gridded version of my own rules, and just maybe, try playing the scenario using the One Hour Rules, maybe.

And its a wrap!

Well folks........its done!

OK OK...nothing around here is ever "Done" done. There's always the possibility of a tweak or addition of a few extra bits, but the stated objective has been reached. 

Its even got pictures on the side!
(OK, the pictures may cover info about what was originally in the box but, more importantly, they are to remind me what's in this box when in 5 years time, I'm digging in the closest, even if I can only see one box side.)

The box is roughly 11"x 7" x 2" and weighs just under 1 pound. Inside is a painted, gridded battlefield with terrain items, 72 painted figures, rules, dice, and cards: everything you need to play! 
(and NO!, I'm NOT marketing these for sale! ) 

Now what? I'm not sure. 

I'm tempted to put the big version of this on the table or to have another run at a skirmish game, or to play the last game in the Gathering of Host Raid mini campaign, but there's a backlog of non-hobby stuff to do and spring seems to be arriving early. Might just go back to the painting desk with some bigger figures. Something that's actually better if I only do it for short bits of time.

Game in a Box Pt 2

The recruiting, equipping and training is done, the rules have been refreshed, the terrain hastily made up and the table set. 

A small encounter between Dominion forces and Rebels as a new campaign season opens.

This has to be the fastest I've ever gone from the germ of an idea to the first game with newly painted soldiers taking the field. Nine days from the first thought of putting together a 'battle in a box' of some kind to playing the first game (that's a couple of hours of hobby time over nine days) . The first five days were spent examining my options given a $0 budget, the next 4 days saw some 74 figures  painted in roughly 10 hours including minor conversions to over half of them (eg such as removing brims from kepis to make 'pork pie' forage caps etc). Luckily I didn't need to do much research to roughly duplicate an existing collection.

OK, the little guy is not an exact replica but he's a toy soldier not a model!  

One of my first decisions, even before choosing the period, was that I wasn't going to do any complex conversions or any carefully detailed and shaded painting on a horde of tiny (less than 20mm) boardgame pieces that were going to hide in a box with a few outings a year IF they were lucky. My decision to tie the small game to my 54mm collection and backstory, made the whole thing easier. 

The Dominion forces seen from far, far away...

It didn't take long to realize that my eyes, esp my depth of focus and speed of refocusing, and my steadiness of hand has deteriorated again from last winter when I painted up the new Hat 1/72 ACW figures. The toy soldier route was a good decision from that angle but these also remind me of my old Marx Miniature Playset figures.

Some of the handful of least damaged 30mm Marx hard plastic figures from my Over The Top playset.

But enough jawing! I need a bite to eat and then there is a battle to fight! 

(Best get to it before the little blighters start without me!)

Deeds Not Words!

OK actually,  the surprise snowstorm yesterday led to me being recalled to the active duty list and pressed into service several times yesterday by the highest level of authority.  (She's not very big but....)

Turn 6. All troops are on table. The opposing infantry are bickering over the woods.

However, I had time to clear the table, ready for a new game. Of course, once I packed up the troops it seemed somehow wrong not to act on the idea of refighting the scenario in a different period. The 1950's lads hadn't been out recently....so I broke out The Portable Wargame, had a quick flip through and went at it.

Blue has been pushed back but the tricksy government forces prefer running away to dying for the autocrats while the Rebels seem to preferring dieing for The Cause.

It was a disaster! What?! Well, maybe not a disaster but things didn't feel right.  I reached for the book and checked the design notes, reread the rules more carefully and found my problems. Well, couldn't let it rest there so this morning, I reset and played again.

That is one of the joys of Solo wargaming, you can do 'do-overs'.

The brakes are on! The Rebels are exhausted but they hold the ridge and the enemy has been teetering on the edge of exhaustion for some time now. If they would JUST die instead of falling back!

 The scenario started the same. I assigned the Rebels (aka Redcaps) to "Red" and the Government (aka Green Helmets) to Blue.

The game that followed was not at all like the horse and musket one, except that at the end it was close, not as close but close. The odds of Blue winning outright were probably thinner but if the rather slow witted Blue Commander had been on top of his game, an attack plan that took more account of the rules, such as exhausted armies not being forced to withdraw, thus needing to be pushed off the hill unit by unit, they could have done it. The overly aggressive Red commander might have done better as well if he had focussed more on holding the objective though exhausting the enemy worked once those who had made it onto the ridge were forced back or destroyed. Of course if the random unit chart had offered up 2 tanks instead of 2 anti-tank guns, that would have helped too!

An exhausted Red clings to the ridge. Blue pours in fire and sends troops to infiltrate onto the hill hoping to be able to grab a toehold and drive the Rebels off with fire. Of course, Rebs just,  don't, retreat!! Eventually the Green Helmets are driven off or killed and their force is also exhausted. The Rebels have a few units on the ridge either out of range or line of sight and are happy to wait out 2 turns for the official victory.

OK, NOW I'm ready to clear the table and start a 3 game linked scenario solo minicampaign.

54's, ACW, 16thC  or Medievel Fantasy?  Hmm where should we go?

The Portable War of 1812.

I have found over the years that in many ways I am a "bear of very little brain". To be more precise, I am one of those who learns to do better by doing than by just reading or being told something (as long as I have read or been told what I need to know before trying).

Anyway, one learns to cope but the process often involves "do overs" and I've learned not to judge rules in particular without at least three games with analysis in between. Two games is however, enough to report on.

PNW Game 1.  Not having a ground scale to work with, I used the frontages of the armies as a basis for scaling map to table. For the 1st game I decided (against my better judgement) to use the single deck activation option.

The US had 7 infantry units, the 2 small regiments in the 1st Brigade being amalgamated for game purposes, a unit of light cavalry and an artillery unit not yet on table. The army counted 33 SP's if you leave out the Commander which I did since I was not allowing him to use any of the commander bonuses as previously mentioned. This gave them an exhaustion point of 11.

The British had 2 infantry battalions and a bunch of detachments which is where it got tricky. I ended up putting 2 Elite rifle units for the Voltigeurs and Mohawks and another for the combined flank companies and Canadians in the gully and a 3 SP infantry unit for the detachment from the 89th Foot. They also had a gun and an off table gunboat. In retrospect I should probably have reduced the SP's  of the detachments and Voltigeurs 1 more each. I also should have counted the offtable gunboat as firing indirect unless the target was right on the riverbank. At any rate that gave the British 22 SP's and an EP of 8. (I didn't count the gunboat)

I then proceeded to deploy the troops historically and follow the original plans as long as possible.

This was the point where I discovered that I was having trouble remembering all the details of the rules (as simple as they are, the rules are still more complicated, or at least detailed, than any I've played in ages). In particular, after all these years I have trouble remembering that units roll to hit themselves in melee. (Ok that's a deliberately contrary way of putting it.) I decided to rename the melee roll as a Saving Throw and that made enough sense that I was able to remember.

What surprised me though was that I hadn't really appreciated how deadly shooting was. A stationary infantry line has a roughly 85% chance of scoring a hit against a target in the open. Even in woods it has a 2/3 chance of hitting dispersed riflemen who have a 1/6 chance to reply effectively. It took me to the last turn to realize that the riflemen could form line in the woods and thus shoot better with no lose in manoeuvrability in the woods. This seemed superficially wrong so I rationalized it as the line representing a unit with a proportion of men skirmishing with the rest in support to the rear.

Since the US forces historically seem to have begun in column with a screen of skirmishers I deployed them in column. In game terms this was as slow as the line but less effective. Even when the columns charged the faux riflemen, the charge bonus was only against line not dispersed. In the ensuing melees the Americans rolled low and suffered heavy SP losses as they pushed the Voltigeurs back. These latter, being Elite, usually rolled up and happily gave ground to avoid losses. So far the result was reasonably historical if a bit too deadly.

In the plain, the US infantry was suffering from deadly artillery fire and struggling to cross the gullies under fire (I treated crossing the gullies as fording a river). By the time they struggled into small arms range of the main British line it was all over. They had lost their 11 SP's. Since the British had no strategic need to drive the Americans back, the battle was over. The US had drawn 80% of the activation cards and suffered 80% of the casualties.

I stopped to review the game then decided to shrink the battlefield slightly, add the extra SPs for the general, change the activation method to rolling for initiative and replay the game with a better understanding of the rules.

The resulting game was quite interesting and enjoyable although the US again did not manage to come anywhere as near to success as they did on the day and their artillery barely made it onto the table. I think the British might need to have their SP's weakened a bit as well as reducing the firepower of the gunboat. A new battleplan for the US might also help.

I'd like to try out the Corps game using fictional armies but those troops are still out of service  and I have other things I want to do so it'll have to wait.

Teaser: Portable Napoleonic Wargame Played

Against the odds I got the new 1/2 unit painted AND managed a Portable Napoleonic game today.

Game report and thoughts will follow.

Time for Every Other Purpose

There is nothing like deciding to do some particular hobby thing to make free time shrink. However, some progress has been made and tomorrow (knock knock)  looks like a day off for me.

Furbishing and refurbishing in progress.

Of course, finding time and light and quiet for painting is harder some days than time for thinking about rules etc. For example I can do the latter, but not the former, when having couch time with a couple of hounds.

This means I've had another read through the rules and have realized that I had missed a few things and need to rethink one or two things.

The first is that I was imagining more rules about the "riflemen" unit type than actually exist. For example, I was imagining a fire benefit beyond range, melee penalties beyond reduced SP and better ability to move and shoot in woods. So, in order for my musket armed light infantry to be of much use, I am going to have to treat them as Riflemen straight up. Luckily, officially there were no US rifle units present at Crysler's Farm so I don't need to represent their superior accuracy or their reduced melee ability for this game. I find it odd that my Mohawk warriors and Voltigeurs don't move through woods better than line infantry but I can live with it.

I'm not quite sure what to make about the rules for shooting in and out of woods except to be sure that I am misunderstanding something. As written, a unit must be on the edge of a wood to fire out which is fine. However, a unit not in the woods can fire at a unit which is not on the edge, a unit which cannot shoot back!  Well, maybe in woods elsewhere but not the kind of woods we have, you can't see 10 feet into the woods around here from a position outside of the woods. Visibility does open up a little once you get past the thick underbrush on the edges so the 2 square range inside woods is fine, especially since it means there is an option for  a firefight in woods.  I think I'm just going to add a house rule that says troops outside a wood may only fire at a unit on the edge. Tit for tat.

The artillery effectiveness seems a bit too severe for fighting in America, far too easy to get to a point of automatic hits for my taste. For now I'm going to play them as is but the British will have to consolidate their guns and all fire from the gunboats will treated as more than 2 squares.

Lastly there are the Commanders, the rules allow them to make a very significant contribution to shooting and melee and there are situations where this would be appropriate. At Crysler's Farm though, the British were very ably commanded by the Colonel of the 89th but he seems to have been too busy commanding to engage in any heroics. On the other side the US Brigadiers seem to have been fairly active but the acting commander also seems to have had his hands full just trying to get through the day. So, for this battle only, I am not going to represent the Brigade commanders and will prohibit the "army" commanders from joining any units.

Right! First priority for Saturday is get the table cleared and reset and finish getting the small armies table ready. I'm hoping to play in the afternoon but if not I'll at least get set up for a Sunday game.
 

A change is as good as a rest.

It feels like time to give some of my other figures an outing.

Last May I made a mould of a War of 1812 master figure that I had worked on off and on for several years, cast a dozen, and painted one sample. The rest have been in the painting queue ever since.

Recently Bob Cordery presented me with a copy of his new Portable Napoleonic Wargame and I've been waiting to give them an outing. The War of 1812 is about as close as my remaining collections get to Napoleonic so it seems like time to paint up some more Americans then give it a go.

Having read the rules over again, I am going to make two changes for the War of 1812.

The first is that while the British made good use of light troops, they had no rifle armed troops in Canada. I have decided to treat British light infantry, and native warriors as riflemen but with a range of 2 but to give real riflemen a bonus when shooting at other skirmishers.

The second change is due to there being no evidence of infantry in North America forming square when charged by cavalry. At Crysler's Farm, when the American Dragoons charged the flank of the British 49th Foot, these merely refused their flank and repulsed them with volleys of musketry.

Actually, there has been quite a bit written in the last few decades about cavalry vs infantry in the Napoleonic Wars indicating that squares were neither quite as universally employed as thought in the mid20thC nor quite as universally successful once you get away from the British experience. But I'll leave the European experience alone for now and for just the War of 1812 I will remove the square rules including the bonus for cavalry in melee with infantry not in square.

I'm looking forward to fighting Crysler's Farm using the PNW but first I have some figures to paint.

Zulu's? No mostly I won.

Every time I get the old Britains' out, I seem to get the urge to paint more of them and to play another game. It occurred to me that by expanding the One Hour game to full table size and using double the number of units to maintain the ratio of unit foot print to battlefield, I was robbing myself of the opportunity to have a simple, clear, distinction between really quick, simple  OHW scenarios with  a handful of units  in a corner of the table and longer, more complex Grant Teasers with larger forces on the full table, all while drawing from the same armies with the same campaign background. By adopting a scale of 1 square per 4" on the OHW table instead of 3" as in the previous game, I could use a 1:1 ratio of units equating to the smaller 4" frontage suggested by Thomas for his scenarios.

I reset the table using 81 squares instead of the previous 144.

"Zulus sir! Dozens of them!"

 Since only my Zulu War units are set up for my planned 6 figure infantry units, and haven't been out in over a year, I decided to go to South Africa.

The shrunken layout with hippo instead of a cat.

 Once I got the troops out I remembered that I hadn't gotten around to adding spearmen and the like to the Tin Army and decided that I was over due for a Portable Wargame anyway.

One unit of Lancers tried to deal with 3 Zulu units but they zoomed past them and bounced them and, well, I think they did manage to stick one Zulu in 5 rounds of melee before they were surrounded and cut down.

The line gets pushed back but thank heavens there was a Taboo preventing the Zulus going into the woods. The British are also grateful that for 4 turns the Colonel single handily held off 2 units of Zulus in hand to hand combat after the Naval Brigade was cut down. 

Turn 15 of 15.  A desperate, last half of the last turn  British counter attack got the Rutlandshires to with 6" of the road thus earning a technical but cheesy win.

As usual,  the Portable Wargame  served well and the game came out at roughly an hour so the whole thing can be considered a success.

Now I want to play a full Grant game but I need to get back to bringing the armies up to scratch since a few of the existing units are short a few figures  or are temporarily mounted on slightly wider bases which won't allow 6 figures in a 5" square and I need to add a few more units to both Canadian and American armies.

We have work to do!

A Portable Speed Bump

With winter winding down, I made the trek in to Ron's yesterday for our first game of the year. We had yet to try the WWII Advanced Portable Wargame so we decided to give it a go.

When I arrived the scene was set for France 1940 using the Two Sides of A River scenario from CS Grant's Programmed Scenarios.

About 4 turns in, its pretty clear to me that I am not equipped to halt the Blitzkrieg in this open country. Ron however, was still worried about how to get past the woods to my rear.

Boiling down the scenario forces and translating them into SP's  I ended up with roughly a reinforced infantry battalion with 4 infantry, and 1 each MG, Mortar, light ATG and Carrier (Scout Car) units backed by 2 25lb Field Guns and a pair of French Char B tanks. Ron had a gazillion Pzr II, 35T and Pzr III tanks backed by some infantry in halftracks and a Stuka.

It was rapidly evident that we had a complete mismatch between our expectations, the scenario layout and what the rules are designed for.

Our first clue was when I discovered that the 5 mile range of the 25 pdrs translated to a mere 8 hexes  and rather than being able to cover most of the board as I was used to in past games, they could barely fire across the river. That meant I had to move them, a 3 turn process to move even 2 hexes. I think I manged to fire twice all game. If I had checked that before deploying I would have deployed one on either side not that it would have helped much.

The second issue was when we tried to figure out how to classify the tanks. The Char B was obviously heavy and the PZRII light so we made the 35T's and PzrIII Medium. All well and good but since the rules don't cater for varying levels of armour protection, only range, it was soon clear that the 20mm guns on the PzrII's were able to shoot up the supposedly near impermeable armour of the Char B at their maximum range of 3 hexes. Since heavy tanks can't fire and move, it was easy for the enemy to close and shoot the Char B's to pieces with them hardly getting a shot off. We really missed having separation between offensive and defensive capabilities for tanks. Using Elite and Poor attributes might have helped if I'd thought of it before the game but I'd have been happier using the house modification that I adopted when testing the rules last year (See portable-wargame-review).

We also got a bit confused once the Stuka started to fire its machine guns which led Ron to want to fire the machine guns on his tanks at my infantry rather than using their small calibre anti-tank guns. This seemed reasonable, though not covered, but when Ron pointed out that the rules said the airplane got 3 dice per MG he wanted the same for his tanks but I flatly drew the line there. (More on the air rules below )

The whole level of the game is at a higher level than we are used to and we hadn't  made nearly enough mental adjustments or adapted the scenario properly to fit the rules.

Anyway, it was still an enjoyable game and far from one sided though it was over in about 8 out of 15 turns when my forces became exhausted and he had a clear path around my flank.

We turned our hand to a quick air to air game. It was fast and fun but was almost Reallllly fast. Luckily, just as we were starting I noticed that while the air rules state that planes roll 3 dice per MG, the examples show them rolling 1 per MG. I suspect that the 3 dice rule was an error and we followed the example instead. This was lucky for his Stuka as I was only rolled 4 dice per attack not 12 when my fighter got his Stuka in his sights. Even I couldn't have avoided hitting him with that many dice.

The sun was in my eyes, that's my story.

Anyway, a fun day out. Now back to the Great War.

Hold the Bridge!

Tuesday's game was Crossing Point from CS Grant's Programmed Scenarios. We divided the army point values by 50 to get the number of Portable Wargame SP's per army then used the suggested lists as a guide.

We made one change in the rules, we shortened Infantry musket fire to two hexes. Light infantry remained at 3. This seems to have allowed them to better perform their harassing task and made them less prone to having to engage in firefights with superior numbers as their only tactic. 

The enemy appears!

I drew the Defender again  and took the Allied army since I could fill much of the roster with troops I had painted. I ended up with a force of 2 medium cavalry, 4 infantry, 2 light infantry and 2 artillery (plus my commander). A total of 30 pts (We each took a free commander). My job was to deny a river crossing to Ron. (Exhaustion pt of 10)

That made Ron the attacker with the Austrians. He chose a list with 1 light cavalry, 1 medium cavalry, 1 light infantry, 10 infantry and 2 guns for 49 pts. (Exhaustion of 16) Then he had to roll to see if he marched on using one road or two. Luckily for me he rolled up 1 entry point. His mission was to establish a substantial bridgehead on my side of the river.

We set a time limit of 15 turns.

As my 2nd battery is wiped out by counter battery fire, I wave my hat at the Austrian commander who can be seen waving back from his position hear the enemy artillery. (Oh for toy soldiers with move-able arms!)

Ron is not usually an impetus commander and he decided to deploy all of his army before making any serious attacks. In this case however, having to arrive by one road meant that the game was half over before he was in position and he had been so busy avoiding unnecessary casualties that he hadn't inflicted many either and the river was still between us, the primary defences still intact. 

Once deployed, he pressed forward, pausing to silence my guns so they couldn't enfilade his infantry but that took time too and my light infantry had moved into position to snipe at a range where they were safe from return fire. 

At this point it became obvious that he had made an error in laying  out the terrain, the folds in the river were far too deep, making the approaches to the bridge too narrow and too enfiladed. None the less it was what he faced.

Now I am a fan of de Saxe and Suvarov and given the narrow space and short time, I'd have massed my infantry and gone in with the bayonet, full speed, packing my units in two deep to prevent the forward ones from retreating.  Might have been a bloody but glorious defeat or I might have pushed him back and forced my way over the bridges. We'll never know.

What Ron tried was a slow advancing fire fight, making sure that all units could retreat if needed. Unfortunately, due to the narrow frontage and the fact that I could enfilade him from across the river, my units ended up inflicting twice as many hits as they received despite being outnumbered 2:1.
Worse than that for Ron, the fight took a very long time with little to show for it.

A dash at the other bridge by his cavalry had some success but each time a counter attack drove him back. 

The battle winds down. My counter attack against the near bridge has resulted in both sides falling back but he has yet to cross a bridge let alone establish a bridgehead.
(The coloured chips mark units that have acted this turn as an aide-memoir.)

At last when time was up neither army was exhausted but he was 3 SP's away and I was at 4. I only needed to hold however and in that bottle neck he needed a lot of time and he didn't appear to have enough SP's to allow him to push across the bridge even if we'd had more turns to play.

After the  game we took the big loop out of the river and Ron may just play it over again solo. I'm quite content with the victory as it was.

Roman is a Groanin'

Ron and I had another go at a Portable Ancient Wargame today.

The Scenario was Broken Ground from Programmed Scenarios. Ron with 30 SP of Gauls was defending a hill line. I was attacking with 45 SP of Romans.  I suggested that we use a turn limit for the game and suggested my usual  15 card initiative deck with Black indicating that the Gauls go first that turn, Red indicating Romans go first. If a Joker turned up the turn was over. When the deck was done, the game was over.

This gave the Romans 15 turns to have undisputed control of ALL of the hills behind the Gallic start line.

1/2 way through the game. The Romans, whom the omens (die roll) advised not to bother scouting since the Gauls would obviously be sitting on the hill line, were somewhat taken aback to be attacked by the Gauls before they had even  marched on and deployed!

Seeing that I had flubbed the die roll to be allowed to deploy on table and given the Gauls low value in defence, Ron decided to launch a preemptive strike. Thank goodness that his combat dice weren't better and that once my cohorts started arriving to reinforce my light troops, they had above average dice! 

A lengthy seesaw battle began which ended with the Gauls being exhausted but the Romans still being stalled. However gaps were appearing and finally I managed to coax some of my light units to roll a double move and exploit an involuntary gap just as I finally drove Ron to his Exhaustion Point. He was pretty much forced to retreat posthaste with me hot on his heels, hoping for an initiative flip to let me catch him. Didn't happen and the clock was quickly running out.

Once back near the hills, Ron was forced to turn and face first my cavalry and light troops and then my panting Legionaires. At last on turn 15 I had at least 1 unit on each hill but Ron still had 3 units defending as well as one with General attached blocking one of the passes.

I managed to eliminate 2 units but only pushed back the 3rd. So there I was, on the brink of exhaustion and not in undisputed control of the high ground.  A Gallic victory.

3 hours went by in the blink of an eye as the turns seemed to fly by while the advantage slipped back and forth with me trying to break through or go around Ron's line and the terrain while he kept shifting to keep his line and zones of control (ie adjacent hexes) intact and block me while whittling me down. Victory hung in the balance right up to the very last die roll!
(Sorry for the lack of pictures, I was too engrossed in the action to remmber.)

Sometimes the obvious, cautious tactical choice isn't  the most effective one! His plan was risky but paid off.

Another great game!

Ancient Hexes

At last! A game! A good game!

The Setup.

Ron had been planning another attempt to convert DBA3 to hexes but I countered with the Portable Ancient Wargame. The scenario was Hill Line Defence from Programmed Scenarios. I drew Gauls and Defend. Sigh.... I'd much rather have rolled "Defend with the Romans" or "Attack with the Gauls" but Omens are Omens.

I spread my 9 units out, hoping to have the speed to concentrate once I could identify the Roman's main thrust. Ron concentrated his 11 units in the centre, but initially threatening both my flanks with light troops. As he slowly closed he finally shifted his line of cohorts to his right and rapidly struck the hill on my left.

I was outnumbered in units and missile power but even more so in exhaustion points and was unable to make much use of my barbarian charge bonus while defending. My best hope seemed to be to try to slip past his flank to try to distract him while attacking some of his weaker units and to launch a preemptive charge to use my barbarian charge bonus to inflict losses and to gain retreat room for myself.

Alas, between being a little slow to commit and some unfortunate initiative flips my plan did not quite work and the main battle saw the Gauls in a fairly passive defensive mode on the edge of the hill while my flanking manouver had minor impact.

Mid-game. The Romans have pushed onto the hill and my diversionary flank attack has stalled but all is not yet lost. 

A unit of Roman cavalry managed to push through my line but despite driving it back against the table edge, I just could not get the final hit which would destroy it so it persisted in being a major obstacle to a controlled withdrawal.

Relentlessly the main line of Roman infantry pressed forward, pushing me off the left hand hill as I reached my exhaustion point of 12.  Technically, according to the scenario victory conditions, the game was a draw at this point but Ron had only lost 7 out of 15 exhaustion points  and without a time limit I had no doubt that he could surround and destroy me before I could exhaust him  and even if I did, his ballista and slingers  could eventually  finish the job so I conceded. 

The exhausted Gauls have been pushed off the largest hill and concede.

This was our first test of the published version of the Ancient Portable Wargame and provided just the sort game we were looking for with simple rules with no "gotcha" tactics. The dice had their effect at times but I can't blame my defeat on them!

We did come up with a few minor house rules.

The main one was to enhance the  rules for breaking contact. They say that a unit can not move adjacent to the front of another enemy unit but may move adjacent to the flank/rear of an enemy. We added that it may not attack that unit that turn if they do and banned a unit from moving away then circling around to finish the move in contact with the flank of the unit it had disengaged from.

We also decided to modify the shooting arc to a straight 120 degree arc on the hexfield. This was just to make it easier to trace the arc of fire, especially for the ballista.

Lastly we rules that if a General was attacked on his own, he could not fight back in close combat and did not stop units from moving on but was not automatically killed either.

The Wood of Tears

Tuesday Morning.

The sun rises over St. Margaret's Bay as the tide moves in. If I had swivelled 90 degrees, due south  towards the narrow mouth of the bay, and if the world was flat, I could have taken a picture of Bermuda roughly 1,250 km away.   

Civil Wars in 1/72nd plastic became an accidental theme for the weekend as I broke open my Portable Russian Civil War carrying case. I do have my own rules but the portability just cried out for Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame.

Red artillerymen await the order to open fire while the Generals breakfast together. 

The basic playing field was a Hotz Desert Mat with 3" hexes and dabs and sprays of green paint. Having,  somehow, not brought the log cabins for the scenario I planned to play, I just threw a low ridge line with scattered woods to one side and dealt out two balanced armies, each of 15 units plus a general, for an encounter game. Both sides would begin off table with the goal of seizing and holding the ridge. The exhaustion level was set to 8 for each side and simple elimination was agreed upon. All units were average.

The armies, whose composition was heavily influenced by the contents of the boxes they came in as well as by the failure to equip the large numbers of recruits in holding camps, were composed of:
General with staff, 5 cavalry, 6 infantry, 2 field guns, 2 MG (one of White's being a Tchanka) and 1 machine gun armed Armoured Car or Light Tank. An insufficient number of limbers were treated as window dressing.

Game 1. The Red army swiftly seizes the ridge line before the White's have even arrived on the field. and it waits, and waits, and...

 I don't particularly like dice activation systems since there is no way to avoid the chance of infinite rolls of '1' in a row so we opted for the solo card draw. Not having brought 2 decks of cards we just extended the range to two higher and two lower and used the two Jokers. The first game saw 3 Red cards then a Joker, which allowed me to grab the ridge before Rob moved a finger. That was then followed by a seemingly endless stream of high Black cards interspersed with Jokers. At that point I suggest we ditch one of the Jokers since the pack was small and things went a bit more smoothly with me being able to get off a shot or two before the game ended. 8 vs 2 was the score in Rob's favour.

Each coloured ring marks a lost unit from that army.  In the background a hint of red marks what Rob later christened the 'Wood of Tears'. 

 The day was young and the game fast so we reset and this time the cards behaved normally with occasional short runs but basically balanced. The game played out very differently with Rob's tank cutting a  swathe through my left flank cavalry then running amok amongst my guns. Only the courage of the dedicated patriotic gunners which inspired them to keep retiring their guns rather than running saved the day. At last more Red Cavalry galloped up and finished off the isolated tank. Losses were fairly close at 6 a side until a dashing Red assault tipped them over the edge. It didn't end the game though and has his shells crashed down on my troops I feared a draw but when counter battery fire, directed by General Ross himself, finally smashed the last White field gun, it was all over. They couldn't advance and were out of range of the ridge which I occupied. A narrow win but my one win of the weekend!

Game 2. A Red victory! Urrah!
(The red discs indicate that enemy artillery has ranged in on that hex.)

 At this point Paul stepped in as Red commander. Rob, already seasoned in the rules, handled him very roughly at start, aided by his ally, the sequence deck, but Paul doesn't give up easily nor do card runs last forever and soon the game was being very hotly contested.  In the end Rob's third victory of the weekend was stoutly contested but a victory none the less.

The terrain was laid out by instinct for balance rather than deeply planned but the right most wood, lying across the centre line turned out to be a key position for a flank march covered from direct enemy artillery fire. By the end of the third game some 9 or 10 infantry units had died trying to take or hold this little grove:
The Wood of Tears.   

Huzzah 2017 Part Two

Saturday morning was to have been a morning for wandering about looking at games, chatting and so on but... one of the HAWKS who was scheduled to run a game Saturday morning had had to cancel so our table was empty in a full venue. I decided to set up an unscheduled  Portable Wargame session and nabbed one of the Sunday signees as well as Rob and gave the Zulus an outing. It seems the Zulu miniatures were unable to pass on any of the experience gained during the play tests and superior technology won out in each round. The last one was close however.

See Rob's blog for more pictures of the Pike and Shot game and the Portable Wargame.  ( sharpbrush.blogspot.ca )
and also Jeff's blog. (armchaircommander.blogspot.ca)

After a quick lunch on the run it was time for some American Old School Wargaming with Joe Linares and George Nafziger's Pas de Charge! from 1977. Joe had gamed with George back in the day and had acquired his collection of Hinton Hunts.

Little figures, big battalions and brain exercising arithmetic.

The game was based on the battle of Verona/Caldiero but boiled down to fit the table size and time available. Once again there was a good group of gamers on both sides of the table and some tense moments with some failed high probability and successful low probability rolls keeping everyone on their toes.  The combat rules involved a little bit of simple arithmatic like (no of figures x (2d10+factors)/200) sort  or say (34 muskets * 73) etc. We did a fair amount of rounding and guestimating on the corner of the table I was on but I noticed a few smartphones with calculater apps appearing on the far corner of the table). Despite that the rules were easy to grasp and played quickly.

The battle lines are drawn c Turn 3 or 4.
Alas these pictures are the best my cellphone could do in that light, the rest were even worse.

I commanded the Austrian Advance Guard, the only troops on table at the start. I placed my gun on a small knoll in the middle with infantry on either side and Uhlans guarding my open left. 

My Uhlans did very well, not running away until the enemy got close. My Grenzers did some what better, trading fire for several turns and not running away until charged by four French battalions. Even then they had the presence of mind to successfully make the narrow chance shot at the enemy General as they ran. The French then failed three fairly easy morale checks one after the other leaving one disordered battalion to charge my lone gun.

This gun was my Premiere Etoile of the game. It drew first blood in the game, helped drive back the first French infantry probe,  routed an opposing gun as it unlimbered and then with my personal figure at its head, stared calmly at the mob of French infantry rushing uphill at them. As the crisis approached they passed a difficult morale check and then  unleashed the most deadly possible shower of canister into the French attack sending the mob running back down the hill. 

Since the opposing forces had fought to a messy draw on the far side of the table and time was up, that battery was key at our holding the vital road exit. At least until the French regrouped  but that would be another game. Its a pity one can't really take credit for lucky rolling but I will claim some for choosing a solid position and not letting myself be drawn out of it and for not retiring prematurely in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds.  Luckily the overall Austrian Commander was one of the better sort who used his reserves well and supported his subordinates.

Anyway, I'm not tempted to go back to rules needing constant arithmetic and much counting of noses but I had a good time and it did get me thinking about slightly more tactical detail in low level games.

My HOTT army in battle as I stare befuddled and rather bare headed at a ruler trying to remember how many cm=100 paces.
Propaganda shot by Rob, stolen from his blog.

Saturday evening was a much needed bit of relaxation and real food and the annual chance to catch up on life outside wargaming with Rob and Irene. We followed that up with a game of 1/72nd Hordes of the Things. I found that the previous 4 days and a few sips of a very nice Shipyard Ale (They support Huzzah so if you see one grab it and support them. One of the tastier American beers actually (sorry).) were getting to me and I was having a hard time thinking clearly but that in itself may have helped as did not being one of Rob's usual opponents. That is to say I made rather different tactical choices than his usual opponents make making me a little harder to predict. I was also still lucky but a victory first time out for a wargame army is always sweet. (Future opponents please note that buying me dinner does not guarantee you a victory) 

One of Sunday's big events the 25/28mm North West Frontier game.

Sunday morning and the last gaming session followed in its time. Already many people had cleared out but the room was by no means empty. I was up early(ish) and had two Portable Wargame tables set up.

Eric, another HAWK, loses Hook's Farm to the Americans Blue Army.

On one table I had the squared cloth and a choice of 54mm armies: Hook's Farm with Red vs Blue or Zulus vs British on the same terrain minus buildings.

On the other table I had a 3" gridded Hotz mat with the choice of 1/72nd Russian Civil War or Boer War.

Red and White fight over control of a small village.

I was too busy briefing players and answering questions to keep records of how many games were played or of any coherent details but I think there were about 7 games played by 6 new players. In every case the players picked up the rules quite simply though it took a few games to start picking up some of the tactical subtleties. Most of the games were fairly evenly fought where both players had equal experience and all were fast. Everyone who played seemed to have enjoyed the game and a few asked about where to get a copy since it seemed to fill a niche for them.

The 54's were quite popular with passer's by and with the players. (Only 1 game was played with the 1/72nd setup).

Another photo stolen from Rob's blog (see above).
For those who excuse off-scale minis please not that while Rob is noticeably taller than me in pictures, his head is roughly the same size.  

And then it was over, just a long ride back, another short visit with family, a planned tooth extraction a day or so  after I got back and so on. In other words, back to real life. Sighhhhh.

Its going to be a very busy domestic month ahead but there will be more wargaming blog posts appearing here regardless, just not about Rough Wooing, Zulus or Portable Wargaming, not right away at least. Time to get back to those new Prince August moulds I think and possibly some skirmish-y games.

Test of Arms

My very first wargames were not set in the ancient period, it wasn't until a visit home for Christmas 1972 that I first pitted a new box of Airfix Romans against an equally new box of Ancient Britons. Ever since then ancient/medieval wargaming has been one of my primary wargaming interests though somewhat receding of late. So when Bob Cordery mentioned that he was developing an Ancient Portable Wargame, I volunteered to read over and play test the current draft. Since they are still in development I won't be sharing a lot about the proto-rules or the feedback that I will be sending Bob, just a few general impressions and a quick look at my first test game.

Duke Imonsay deploys his army with his Valdurian allies atop a hill on his right flank.

The rules are essentially a variant of the original Portable Wargame sharing as many rules and mechanisms as possible which makes it easier to move back and forth between period for those like me that dabble in several. The biggest difference comes from the characteristics of the available unit types backed by additional special unit characteristics for a handful of historical troop types.  This approach allows Bob to cover the basics of over a thousand years of warfare in a simple but effective manner but leaves the rules feeling fairly generic. Luckily it is easy to use the unit special rule idea to add appropriate flavour for specific campaigns.

The basic troop types are light infantry and light cavalry, fast with the ability to shoot 2 squares with bow or javelin, heavy infantry and heavy cavalry slower but with a melee bonus, and various traditional specialist units such as elephants, chariots and artillery.  One of the specialist troop types that I was tempted to try was Gallic or German tribesmen who are fast but weak though they can sometimes claim a charge bonus. However, not only would I have needed to stop and base up a few more units but my Viking barbarians are more shield wall types so generic heavy infantry it was.

An overview of the opposing battlelines at the start.

Since I have divested myself of all my 25mm and 54mm ancient armies, apart from some Sassinid Persians and some medieval Scots, I turned to my 40mm Elastolin collection of Huns, Vikings and Romans for what could be seen as a comic book Rome vs Barbarians battle or as part of my fictional, not to say Fantasy campaign world. Any resemblance to a real battle, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

On one side was the Northern Confederation (aka the Barbarians) under King Preisages who commanded 4 heavy cavalry, 5 light cavalry, 3 light infantry and  7 heavy infantry totalling 59 strength points. (I didn't count either general for any purpose for this game.)

Facing them, in defence, were the Border Guards under Count Imonsay with 4 light cavalry, 1 light infantry and 9 heavy infantry assisted by an allied Valdurian contingent of 3 heavy cavalry and 1 light infantry totalling 59 strength points.

An army losing 1/3 of its strength points becomes exhausted and is unable to act aggressively. After several attempts, I'm still pretty vague about how aggressive one can be, shooting seems pretty aggressive to me but is apparently ok as is attacking an enemy who is already adjacent to you when you are activated.   To make it easier to track, I counted out 20 casualty rings for each side (white for the Romans who were assumed to have medical teams to bandage the wounded, red for the bloody Barbarians.) and when they were all issued, that side was exhausted.

Midway through the battle the opposing infantry is engaged in an indecisive scrum with the lines heaving back and forth with the Confederation light cavalry puts pressure on the Count's left wing.

The game began with the  "Barbarian" (the original Valdurian chronicler's prejudice, not mine) horse archers rushing forward to attempt to turn and then crush the Count's left while their shield wall advanced steadily. On the far side of the battle a few barbarian skirmishers came forward to attempt to drive in the Valdurian archers and try to draw their heavy cavalry off the hill.

The game went on with the battle lines pushing and shoving each other forward and back without a breakthrough on either side. The light cavalry held out better than I expected, inflicting few hits but being recoiled more often than losing strength points. (Dice!!) The Count finally decided to throw the Valdurian heavy cavalry forward to disperse the enemy skirmishers and turn the enemy flank.

Alas, the Valdurian Companions, the elite shock troops of the army, were barely able to nudge one small company of enemy skirmishers back off the hill and the attack stalled. On the left, numbers eventually told and the Count's light cavalry started to get cornered and pressed up against the reserves and the recoiling main line and as the second light cavalry unit was eliminated the army became exhausted.

At this point the Barbarians were also only a few points away from being exhausted even though they had not lost a single unit. Rather than risk going over the threshold the King pulled back all of his troops out of contact and outside bow range of the one remaining Valdurian archer and then his horse archers began shooting apart the Count's left flank. As unit after unit was removed the Count had no choice but to signal a general retreat.

The Valdurians still hold their hill but their cavalry has been unable to ride over the skirmishers in front of them, The main battle lines hold but the Count's left flank has collapsed and it is now a matter of retreating before the wild barbarian riders completely swamp the centre and slaughter them to a man. 

On the whole the rules did what they were designed to do. They achieved a believable over all result which could easily have been reversed and by and large the troop types worked. The failure of the heavy cavalry to sweep away the handful of untrained peasant skirmishers in open ground was troublesome despite moderately unlucky dice. The heavy cavalry had a small melee advantage over the skirmishers but it was so small that a minor wobble in probabilities was all it took for the skirmishers to more than hold their own even when flanked.  Possibly a Poor rating for the skirmishers to distinguish them from well armed, well trained professionals would have helped.

The push and shove of the infantry scrum felt right for these armies and the light infantry was about right against other infantry. The light cavalry worked better than I expected given that they have to move into heavy infantry charge reach to shoot. I'm still not convinced that Crassus could be destroyed by Parthians under these rules but possibly if the Parthians were counted as Elite, Horse Archers as well as Cataphracts and the Romans downgraded to ordinary heavy infantry. In any event I must fudge something to try that match up.

Although the rules worked fairly well and the game was enjoyable it lacked a certain amount of tension for me since everything is very incremental. A slow grinding fight sounds right for opposing infantry lines but less so for light troops and cavalry and there is no chance of anything else. It also still feels odd to me that my army could be exhausted without losing a single unit but that it will never collapse in rout like so many ancient armies but that may be largely an expectation formed by habit.

I also noticed something else rather interesting. Old habits die hard and in this game like the previous Zulu ones, I kept forgetting that units adjacent to an enemy do not have to initiate melee on their own turn, especially when they have already taken hits and are fighting against an enemy to their flank! Must make myself a reminder on a QRS.

Another old habit was formed by decades of having separate movement and melee phases in a score of different rules sets. I often forgot to resolve combats until all were done or did some and forgot others. Again a note and a closer attention to process would soon cure these old habits.

Anyway, I will be sending off more detailed technical comments to Bob and start planning another test battle. I would like to see an elephant in action and try the artillery rules as well.