The Winds of War stir a new Draft (Amended)

The ideas pot has now been seriously stirred. Over the last few days I have seriously considered a late 19th/early 20thC version of Charge! as well as a set based on Featherstone's Battles With Model Soldiers, Dick Larsen's rules for that inspirational 40mm Anglo-Egyptian game and of course good old MacDuff.

Apart from aiming for fast, simple and decisive, I'm hoping that the effect will be to emphasize player choices with quick success or failure and the ability to possibly recoup from failure and try again. Since my table is relatively small, I am keeping movement and ranges short so that rifle fire does not sweep the table. Long range fire is assumed to be happening without decisive effect and thus without being resolved or noted. This should allow the use of on table reserves. A side effect is that once troops enter the danger zone they will cross it rapidly meaning fire must be fairly deadly.

Following on from previous discussions morale will largely be integral. For a long time I have considered wargame casualties to represent a loss of fighting capability rather than a direct representation of killed and wounded and I am going to stick with that. For now all troops will be considered equal and I'll leave the question of how to handle inferior and superior quality units until I see how things go. Basic units are companies of 8 infantry, squadrons of 4 cavalry and batteries of 1 gun plus crew. Several of these plus an HQ can be grouped into a battalion equivalent.

Test game Oberhilse vs Faraway and Rebels circa 1905

Here is the Quick Reference version:

The Tin Brigadier
(Using combat option B)

Sequence: igougo. Roll 1d6 for orders. An order is required to move, rally, entrench or to use indirect artillery fire. HQ can store up to 6 orders. Battalion may activate on 1 order if BHQ present and all doing same thing.

Movement. Infantry: move 12" or move 1/2 and shoot/melee. +6" in column on road.
Cavalry 18"  May mount/dismount at end of turn.
Artillery 12" ending limbered. Heavy artillery 6" ending limbered.
MG 12" or shoot.
Occupy village 1/2 move.
Terrain effects by scenario for now.

Shooting. Must have LOS except indirect arty fire.
Double dice vs column in open
1/2  dice vs entrenched or in cover. Round down but minimum of 1.
Killing zone: Reroll misses vs next unit in line of fire within 6"

Rifles 12". 5,6 hits  1 die per 2 extended or entrenched infantry or dismounted cavalry.
MG 18",  4,5,6 hits  3 dice per gun

Artillery.  Arty must roll die equal to or more than range in feet to hit then roll for effect. Light gun 2 dice, -1 to acquire. Medium Gun 3 dice, Heavy gun 4 dice +1 to acquire. If target is acquired fire may be repeated without rerolling if there is LOS and target does not move more than 6". Indirect fire requires an order each turn (abstraction of need to pass fire request etc). Howitzers may fire over terrain, other guns may not shoot over terrain within 6" or at target with 6" of dead ground or over high hills.

Charges. Defender may choose to shoot and remove enemy casualties before melee or may fight in melee.

In melee 1d/2 infantry, dismounted cavalry, artillery, 1d/1 mtd cavalry on initial turn only. 4,5,6 hits.

If one side takes more than it inflicted, it immediately retreats a double move in disorder.  If tied, melee continues on next player turn  with no defensive fire. Active player may choose to retreat in good order instead of fighting.


Morale. A company forced to retreat in disorder may not advance or shoot until rallied by throwing 5,6. This requires an order. Unless specified otherwise by the scenario a side losing more than 1/2 of its companies/batteries/squadrons must concede.

Entrenching. An infantry unit not within 24" of visible enemy may entrench. This requires an order to begin. Roll 1d6 per company needing to accumulate 10 pts to entrench. Add 1 d6 if sappers are attached. Entrenchment is lost if unit moves. Units without tools may not entrench.

I'm gonna need more men!

Combat Option B

Roll 1 d/2 inf, 2 per gun 3 per MG. 6 hits fortified, 5,6 vs cover inc arty with gunshield, 4,5,6 extended in open, 3-6 column in open. Indirect fire arty must roll 1 d6 =>range in feet. Etc  
Melee 1 d/2 inf/gunner, 1d/cavalry. 4,5,6 hits.

The Wisdom of the Young

That's The Brigadier Peter Young.

At the end of last week's post on early 20thC rules , I dropped in  a last minute comment about OS rules and player morale vs unit morale. It wasn't a planned comment that I had thought on, it seemed to come straight from my subconscious to the keyboard. Once aired however, it got me thinking and it got/me digging through my library. Not through history books but through wargaming books and it got me thinking again about morale but more on that in a later post.

One of the early additions to my wargaming library was the Knight's Battles for Wargamers book on Bull Run. I don't have it anymore alas, loaned to a non-wargaming friend that had expressed an interest but who I lost touch with. I do however have the Alma one and it appears that they all have the same introduction by Brigadier Young. He wrote various interesting and useful things in the introduction but there were two that are particularly relevant. One was his comment that:

"elaborate Morale rules are a waste of time. Morale is in the mind of the wargamer himself, for ultimately a war game is a duel between the two opposing generals themselves. Do not let them hide their deficiencies behind the alleged failings of their metal or plastic followers!"

The other occurred while discussing the range of battles that the series aimed to cover. He mentioned that he would like to see it expanded to cover some modern battles but that "...... it is not a bad idea when refighting these modern actions to fight them with the troops and the rules of the Napoleonic Age......." . This is indeed what Lawford & Young did in their book Charge! where the classic Battle of Sinttingbad was apparently inspired by the Battle of Sitang Bridge in Burma. I'm not going to suddenly decide to fight WW1 with my War of 1812 figures but it has given me ideas about the various late 19thC toy soldiers that I have or that I want to paint but haven't been able to figure out what to do with once painted.

Scruby infantry extended in front, Zinnbrigade Prussians painted red in march column and a Zinnbrigade mounted officer with a Scruby head. Scruby British artillery in the background. 

 As my WWI German "army" grows, I've been thinking about the opposition. For various reasons, despite the existence of a purchase option, my conclusion is that I HAVE to sculpt and cast Highlanders and British line infantry. Its now been 2 years since my last successful sculpt and mold project and even then the mold was so so. There has been some sculpting of masters, some of which I was ok with but the last mould was a complete bust. I could really use a successful mold but if so, I need to justify the cost and effort by casting more than a dozen figures. That encourages planning for a bigger game.

Scruby Jaegers/Marines from their Boxer Rebellion range painted in WWI graygreen.

I know that the sculpting and casting is going to take me more than a weekend and I can't start the war proper until the figures are cast and then painted but if I pay some heed to the Brigadier's advice and field some colourful figures, in red or blue, to brighten the table, I now have enough troops for a small test  of an alternate OSW style game which is where this started with a test game in 2011 .

Answering the call

100 years ago today (Aug 4) Britain declared that Canada was going to war with Germany. Canadians answered the call in their thousands but when the war was over  we took steps to ensure that only our own politicians would make that decision in future.  (Not that that has helped a whole lot.)

Meanwhile yet another call, a Google Hangout one this time, was answered with the result that foreign intervention, American this time, has disrupted my 1914 arms race by luring me into a 16th C wargame,  and he didn't even let me win!

My clever plan of rushing light troops forward to delay  his march until my superior numbers of pikemen could secure victory was foiled by one group being over run by obviously not very noble heavy cavalry while the remainder was shot to pieces by an equal number of the enemy whose crossbows appear to have been unaffected by the rain that must have dampened my powder. Luckily my inferior weight of horse was able to see off their opposite numbers leaving everyone on board tired and confused but happy to be there.

However, discipline and   a sense of purpose has triumphed and the 16thC castings that flooded out of the cupboard today have been shooed off to one side and the Scruby Jaegers are now, at long last, in the process of donning their uniforms.