Take Aim!

Its a pity the 1860's British army drill book didn't have  "take aim" and "fire!" commands. Instead, when ordered to "Present" the soldiers were to lift the rifle from "Ready" (waist high pointing at the enemy) to the shoulder, aim carefully but quickly, fire and return to "Ready" on their own time.

It was really too dark and dimly lit for taking pictures at my desk down in the wreck room but the figures are painted and glossed, their bases have a base coat of green which needs to dry for several days before getting dry-brushed (the sawdust soaks up paint like crazy and takes forever to dry properly) and I thought they deserved a quick Sunday morning post at least.

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 old long time friends. Once that is done these lads will see action.

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".

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"

Slow and Unsteady Beats Stalled

As predicted, there has not been a lot of time or energy for hobby stuff this week but not a lot is not nothing and I was getting very tired of see a handful of bits and pieces of Ft Henry Guard on my desk waiting for the missing bodies and heads to be cast.

The problem is that I don't do well at small rushed bits of time, quality control tends to suffer shall we say. So, a bit of rough metal here and a mould fault there that got missed until priming, a head swap that ended up a bit wonky...

The 2nd company of the Ft Henry Guard
is beginning to be identifiable.

Thank goodness Toy Soldiers are more forgiving than fine models. A few extra coats of thick paint before the details are added can work wonders. The final coats of gloss varnish will do the rest.

and the answer is...

My gut usually knows when something is right or wrong but my brain can be slow to get from wrong to right. I understood well enough that what worked for a quick game with a handful of units was not working as well for a larger, longer game.

My first guess was that maybe I was after something more traditional and something "more". I just wasn't sure exactly what sort of traditional  or what "more" meant so during the dribs and drabs of time I've had this week I scoured various old favourite rules and scenario books as well as past versions of my own rules and doodled with various drastic changes, none of which made it to the table.

My floor lamp died today so the pictures are even worse than usual.

Today it dawned on me that the rules had been slipping back into focusing the Tabletop General's attention on unit details. They were also allowing too many opportunities to micromanage risk and allowing careful management to assure obedience to orders subject only to combat results and carelessness.

So, the first main step was to remove the various ways that had crept in to keep units in the game. Now, to be fair, in most of the sorts of small wars engagements in the era that my Toy Soldier games are set in, during most battles, most units survived the day  despite heavy losses. Battles like Little Big Horn,  Isandlwana, and Maiwand, were exceptions which is what made them so famous as catastrophes. However, removing units is much more dramatic and fun and simpler in a game than any of the alternative ways of tracking an army's capability to keep fighting.

Somewhere around turn 10 of 15. A flanking counterattack by Rebel cavalry has shattered the  Highlanders and nearly turned the tables but the Queen's gunners had their range. 

So, for the umpteenth time, I removed the various overt rules designed to reflect the tactical value of close support etc in favour of removing units after a standard number of hits which in turn increases the value of local supports and reserves to react to flanking moves and to plug gaps.

Then I reinstated my old Orders Dice system inspired by DBA's pips system.  This works by rolling 1d6 to determine how many formed Brigades and detached units may move this turn. Unused orders may be stored to top up the next die roll. I kept the turn tracking and chance card deck but only for those two tasks.

I also once again replaced any rally rules with upping the number of hits each unit can take and allowing 2 battered units to merge at the cost of taking a step closer to army morale collapse.

The combat and other rules remain very close to  what I have been using for the last few years.

Calling the resulting rules "The Square Brigadier" didn't feel right since the player is obviously intended to normally be a Divisional Commander or equivalent and I want to still have a small, quick game for the war of 1812 so I'll leave that be. There is proof reading and expanding of explanations to be done but I am happy to finally have a set of rules to carry the name:   The Model Major General which I've been wanting to use.

A trial, medium sized, game was needed, it was a rainy day and the table was still set up so I reset, swapping sides. The result was a squeaker of a two hour game with a dramatic finish with my attention focused on overall tactics.

Turn 15, the setting sun casts long shadows as the Rebel's finally break.

It looks like a busy couple of weeks ahead with some away games in view but hopefully I can get some more toy soldiers painted up before I get sidetracked into the 16thC again.