Enter the French

This is the first of hopefully four or five posts showing the French in my AWI figure collection. All of the French figures were painted by my uncle Ralph, who in addition to being a fantastic painter has also been a mentor to me in wargaming since he got me started the hobby. Ralph painted these figures over a decade ago and at some point decided he wasn't going to finish the army and he sold/traded/gave them to a mutual friend of ours. I obtained them from that friend in a trade for a large collection of 20mm ACW figures as I was switching scales to 15mm. Since I didn't buy or paint these figures, I'm unsure of their manufacturer.

This is a mounted French general, and a single stand of French Marines. The marines are based, as all my French infantry are, on linear bases, but with a more dense figure population than stands from all other countries. I did this to represent the fact that the French didn't adopt the loose 2-rank formations that the British, German and Americans did. I should have put them on deeper massed bases but this didn't look right. I'll still allow them all of the V&B factors for infantry Brigades, I just didn't like the look of the deeper bases.

The French marines fought in several skirmishes along side Lazun's Legion at Gloucester Point during the Yorktown campaign. Although they fought in smaller formations than this stand represents in some scales of V&B, I can use this stand at lower (Wing scale and lower) scales or I can use it at the higher scales to represent a unit of converged marines for 'what if' games. I actually have a good idea for an alternate Yorktown game that I'm planning on using them for in this role.

Mare Nostrum

Mare Nostrum was a one-day ancients campaign game run at our wargaming club this past weekend by our current president, Mike Coppinger. The rules were something he's modified from another similar game he and other club members have played in the past. The campaign was centered around the Mediterranean sea during the Punic Wars. We fought five rounds of tabletop games generated by the campaign rules using DBA to fight the battles.

The major factions were Rome, Carthage and the independent countries of Greece, Numidia, etc. I played using Helenistic Greek army. Although I began the campaign as an independent, I was enrolled as a Carthaginian ally to even up the number of players in each faction. Considering my performance, I think Carthage would have been better served with me as an enemy than an ally!

This was a great day of gaming with good friends. The day was definitely won by Rome, as all of the Roman players did very well, including the winner, Jason Bostwick who did a masterful job of pulling off his first win of the day against me, 4-3, sealing the coup-de-grace with a mutual destruction attack on one of my units using the proverbial 'buttocks of death' move which destroyed his and my units at the same time!

Mike Coppinger has provided some excellent photos of the games, players and scores on his Picasa site, including a good photo of the souvenir DBA ruler designed and sponsered by Michael Bailey (thanks Michael!). I'd like to thank Mike and everyone who participated for a great day of gaming!

For those who noticed I took some time off from my Wargaming blog, I apologize. I've been re-energized by a recent trip to Historicon and should have plenty to post in the upcoming months.

Volley & Bayonet: Road To Glory

Frank Chadwick has published Volley & Bayonet: Road to Glory, i.e. version two of his Volley & Bayonet rule set. I use V&B for all of my AWI games and like it very much. V&B Road to Glory looks like it will be a EXCELLENT revision of an already great rule set. The booklet is well illustrated and contains plenty of photos, diagrams, the well-indexed rule set and plenty of scenarios with orders of battles and maps.

Volley & Bayonet: Road to Glory can be ordered directly from the author at his website: Test of Battle Games I'll be sure to write up a short review of the new version of the rules after I get a chance to run a few AWI games using them.