The Quick Version

This game was worthy of a proper battle report but no correspondents or professional photographers from the Newport Noodle were on hand. (Possibly they were also working overtime in the garden during a rare burst of good weather.)   I'm afraid we'll have to make due with a quick summary of the action and a few fuzzy snaps.

Somewhere around turn 5 or 6 out of 15. 

The scenario was a meeting engagement with both sides arriving, one brigade or battery per turn on one of two randomly selected roads. Units arriving were deemed to be out of command and had to dice accordingly before entering the board which slowed the arrival of some troops by a turn or three.   As the game got rolling I decided that control of  three of the road exits would constitute victory.

An early assault on the town by the Highland brigade was halted with heavy casualties by the late but timely arrival of the Grey Brigade. The Rebel commander ended up operating on exterior lines and had trouble getting his remote subordinates to act quickly and in consort,

Eventually the Rebels got their act together and got aggressive. Two brigades supported by two batteries drove back the Dominion left and pushed the Grenadier brigade back out of the central wood thus threatening Dominion control of the main road.   

Turn 14 of 15. On the last turn Red went second and with desperate all out charges on both flanks, drove Blue out of the town and turned their opposite flank, breaking a second Rebel Brigade although at a high cost. In the end, both armies had taken heavy losses but the Dominion troops held three roads and had inflicted significantly higher casualties. I ruled a marginal victory for General Douglas's Redcoats.

Alas (or thankfully depending on POV), discussions of details, rules and plans will have to wait and be largely forgotten but it was a good game and confirmed that things are on the right track.

Battle of Weeburg Day 1

Late in February, with both armies reorganized, reinforced and resupplied, the fighting resumed.

General Douglas pushed a small body of infantry and artillery ahead of the main body to seize the small crossroads town of Weeburg. The day was well advanced when the Rebel army finally appeared. (Rebel arrival times diced for by unit.)

The Grey Brigade arrived first and deployed on the double. 

After Rebel skirmishers were spotted, the Dominion artillery shelled the small wood in the centre.

Despite the late hour, the Rebels attacked. On their left, the 2nd Brigade come under effective fire  but pushed forward to envelope the Dominion flank.

Moving swifter than thought possible (chance card plus initiative flip), the Rebels managed to  flank the redcoats  but their attempt to take the ridge at the point of their bayonets was repulsed regardless. 

The sun was already sinking by the time the Grey Brigade began it's assault on  the West Ridge. 

Casualties were heavy on both sides but the Rebels did not have time to reorganize and attack the town before dark. Already the sound of bagpipes could be heard as the head of the Highland Brigade approached the battlefield.Both sides pulled back slightly and consolidated their positions to await the arrival of the main armies.

For sure, there was going to be a proper battle in the morning. 

The Battle of Lonely Hill

There's no better way to come up with a solution for a nagging problem than to stop thinking about it.

The NorthWest Mounted Rifles had galloped forward to seize the hill (see) but were driven off by the Zouaves. The swift arrival of reinforcements allowed the Queen's forces to drive off the Zouaves in turn.

In this case my original intention was just to tweak my Square Brigadier rules so I could use more figures and play longer games without them dragging. However, lurking below the surface was that suppressed urge for something more like playing with toy soldiers and less like a board game even if that board game worked well and was fun.

Both sides rushed reinforcements to the front. An indecisive long range firefight followed while the armies extended their lines and prepared for a decisive attack.

What I ended doing, step by step without seeing where I was headed was creating exactly what I had wanted, a fairly conventional toy soldier game with units of individual figures (even if fixed to bases for convenience) but using a grid for measuring.

The Queen's forces won the build up race. (1 die each turn for 4,5,6 to bring on a new unit.) 

The key decisions were to use larger units on smaller squares and to allow units to spread across multiple contiguous squares, measuring movement, ranges and arcs of fire  separately by 3" square. (Invisible or nominal squares at the moment but soon to be marked.)

The Rebels have no option but to strike before the odds get worse or give it up. A fierce and prolonged close quarters fight resulted but the attack was eventually thrown back.

The result was so much like a simplified MacDuff game that I borrowed the morale and charge resolution and various other rules from MacDuff as well.

An attempt to rally was broken up by rifle and artillery fire and with all of the Rebel Brigadiers wounded, the Rebel army suddenly collapsed.

The result was exactly what I have been looking for. Now to bring my 6 and 8 figure infantry units up to 12, do some dismounted cavalry, get some limbers painted up  and......

The Defended Frontier (click on link to read the short, 4 page, version of the rules.)

A New Way of Doing Things

I was tired yesterday with no afternoon obligations so I hauled out One Hour Wargames, my 54's and The Square Brigadier and had a small, quick, and rather dissatisfying clash of advance guards over an isolated hill in the middle of nowhere. Having time left over I started thinking back to last fall's ideas about a different, more 'Old School' approach to my gridded games. In no time at all I had decided that I needed to change the grid, rebase all of my 54's and paint extra figures to bring the units back to 8 figures each. Wisely, at that point, I called a recess and left the room.

Today was a snow day, lots of time for some proper analysis of the issues and possible solutions and time for a test game of a  different, more traditional approach with bigger, multi-stand units.

The NorthWest Mounted Rifles dismount and open fire.
(Ok ok, here they appear to be armed with lances and pistols but that's merely artistic licence. )

The result is much closer to my Hearts of Tin rules than to the Square Brigadier but uses the grid for measuring to avoid the mid-game search for rulers and squinting at small numbers(and not just because my eyes are dim and I'm occasionally stubborn).

It'll take me a while to get the quick jottings translated into (hopefully) clear rules but not too long.  Essentially standard units will switch to 4 stands of 3 infantry (because that's how they're based and partially organized now), 3 stands of 2 cavalry and a gun stand with 2 crew + a limber stand with 2 crew.

My grid of 6" squares is now a grid of 3" squares (theoretically at this point) each of which will hold 1 stand. The stands of a unit must maintain unit integrity by staying in adjacent or diagonally touching squares unless they are detached to become a separate unit, to garrison a house for example. Movement and shooting ranges are measured for each stand.

From there its pretty conventional but now, for example, my 6 unit forces saw 60 infantry and a gun fighting 48 infantry, 6 cavalry and a gun instead of 15 and a gun vs 12, 2 and a gun. The extra number of figures (or strength points)  allowed for more dice and thus a more average curve of results while still leaving room for extremes. At the same time, the reduced number of manoeuvre elements made each command choice more significant with less room for error thus increasing the tension and mental focus for players.

Mid-Game. The Queen's army is finally all on table but the Rebels are still straggling on and the hardest fighting is still ahead.

Next post should be a battle report. A link to the new rules should follow by the weekend.