Hannibal at the Gates Rules Published

For those of you who've been following all of the game after-action reports and my ancients miniature painting, Ralph has published his excellent rules, Hannibal at the Gates that we've been using for these games. The rules cover ancient warfare in the period between the Battle of Marathon to the Roman reforms of Marius.  For those interested on obtaining a copy of the rules, they're available through Amazon.com here. It's a complete set of rules with diagrams and many color photographs and complete army lists for all of the involved armies.

For more photos of my painted units and photos and write-ups of many of our play test games you can access my other Hannibal at the Gates blog articles here.

Steady Boys! Play Test

Yesterday I visited my uncle's for a rare weekday mid-day game. A few of us are off for holiday shutdown, or retired so we were able to come up with enough players for a game. Ralph is working on a new set of rules for ACW continuing on his success of Hannibal at the Gates, Nexus and Charlie's Napoleon's Rules of War. All three sets use a two D-6 roll as the primary mechanism with similar combat resolution procedures. Steady Boys! is the ACW variant. Units are regiments made of a varying number of stands based on the regiment's size. Basing is flexible enough to use what you already have. In Ralph's case units are made up of multiple Volley & Bayonet stands.

The scenario we played was a hypothetical meeting engagement. The Union were Peter, Charlie and Rob. Mike, Bob and I (all not pictured) were the Confederates. The Confederate plan was to defend in the center and right where the fences and terrain made attacking difficult, and load up on the right pressing over some low hills across a relatively open area.

The Union also chose to defend on our left (their right) while putting a massive battery on the hill that dominated our path of attack. Bob bravely pressed forward into the valley of death. His troops fared poorly losing an entire Brigade plus heavily damaging two others. The exchange eventually cost the Union one full battery on the hill and the other was eventually withdraw, being heavily damaged.

My attacks on the far right were first repulsed by Rob, then partially successful, but eventually I was stalled by Rob's Zouaves on the right.  In the center with their battery destroyed, the Union switched to the attack, but were treated similarly by our hilltop batteries as we were by theirs. The end result was both sides felt they had payed to dearly for a battlefield not won by either army. A hard slug fest of a game. In the end, possibly a slight edge to the Confederates, but in reality best to call it a good old fashioned tie.

Murray Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to all. I've been swamped lately and not a lot of time for updates. I hope to get an end of year summary written up during holiday break from work.

I hope all of you enjoy the holidays with your families and may you get plenty of toys under the tree!