Continental Ties

My aunt Elizabeth has been researching our family tree for several years now and at a family gathering this weekend she and I had a great talk about my military ancestors. During our talk she showed me several pension documents from one of my relatives who was killed in the American Civil War. I'm going to be getting copies of those documents so I can learn more.

Of even greater interest to me is the fact that an earlier ancestor of mine was William Bond, who died of illness at Mount Independence near Fort Ticonderoga while serving as the commanding colonel of the 25th Regiment of Foot from Massachusetts during the Saratoga campaign. Think of my surprise to find out that I wargamed a battle which took place just weeks after my relative's death just days before! Well my interest in the 25th Regiment of Foot and Col. William Bond has now been piqued and I'll be doing more research into this interesting part of my family's past.

First Carnage & Glory AWI Game - 2nd Saratoga

I've owned all three versions of
Carnage & Glory for several years and have always wanted to start running games using the rules. This year at Historicon I watched while my friend Leo played in what appeared to be a very enjoyable game of C&G for an AWI battle. On my return home from Historicon I convinced myself that it was time I finally got to trying out the rules for myself using my AWI figures. I wanted a small to medium sized game in order to be able to learn the rules without being overwhelmed. For the battle I chose the battle of Bemis Heights A.K.A. the 2nd Battle of Saratoga. Since I had just purchased the British Grenadier scenario books, I used the scenario included in the first scenario booklet as a starting point, converting the figure counts back to full 1:1 scale, and inputting them along with my extrapolated unit ratings into the Carnage & Glory order or battle editor. This is an interesting scenario which allows for Benedict Arnold to lead the American attacks from the start of the battle, an ironic 'what-if' which I kept in place.

The only Northern Conspiracy member who's had experience running C&G games is my uncle Ralph Gero. Ralph was very gracious and offered to co-GM the game with me to help get me on my feet. Ralph's help in reviewing my initial OB and in helping run the game was greatly needed and made the game go smoothly. I'm sure without his help the learning curve would have been much steeper.

The scenario starts out with the King's troops advancing on Bemis heights at the moment the advance forces of Poor's brigade engage them. The British Grenadier scenario has Morgan's forces deploy on board in a flanking position, but for my scenario I had Morgan march on the board in order to allow both sides some opportunity for maneuver before the battle lines became fixed. Opening positions are shown in the photo at the top of this page. Of note in addition to the new set of rules I also needed to create two new redoubts for the scenario which are shown.

The opening moves by the British were to withdraw their lights and detachments from their forward positions and re-deploy them on their right flank in anticipation of a flank attack. Poor's Brigade advanced echelon left towards the Hessian redoubt sending the 2nd New Hampshire through the woods on the extreme left.

Learned's brigade, which arrived on turn two, pressed on towards the British formed line to the right and once it was within effective artillery range the British opened up with a scalding series of shots that bounced through Learned's lines with devastating effectiveness. After a couple of turns the entire Brigade was retiring or routing to the rear. This photo was taken on the first turn of the British artillery fire. Over the next few turns, the British pressed forward on their left while the British Lights and Morgan's troops fought a back-and-forth battle at the end of which found Morgan's Virginians pressing forward towards the British rear with the British light infantry pursuing them, although without the fortitude to press home a charge due to exhaustion from prolonged fighting.

With both flanks having fought themselves mostly to a conclusion the battle was just starting in the center, near and around the Hessian redoubt. The 1st Connecticut militia performed in a truly militia-like manner, delivering an ineffective volley in one turn, a devastating volley the following turn, then retiring in disorder the turn after that. Nonetheless their one good volley sent the 24th foot to the rear in rout, and the turn after that the 3rd New York sent the British Forragers routing to the rear as well opening up the redoubt for the final assault.

By this time we were having so much fun that I forgot to keep taking photos. The assault on the redoubt by the 2nd New Hampshire and 3rd New York was almost spoiled by the British grenadiers who charged the 3rd New York as it began to charge the redoubt. Luckily for the New Yorkers, their volley into the Grenadiers on the way in was enough to throw the Grenadiers back allowing the 3rd New York to continue on to the redoubt. Although the Americans drove out the Hessian Grenadiers, the Hessians reformed immediately and were prepared to contest their redoubt when we called the game as a complete British victory. The Americans had some fabulous successes later in the battle, but not enough to outweigh the devastation they received at the hands of the artillery early on.

I'm planning to run this game again in November at our monthly game night. For this upcoming game I'm going to correct some of the small errors I made in the OB on the computer and in the labeling of the troops. I'm also going to remove one battery of British Artillery, but increase the Hessian Jager numbers from 60 to 120. Their small numbers, while historical in fact, didn't allow them to make the contribution they did in the actual battle due to the way the calculations in C&G handle small units. 120 men should give them the impact they need to match their performance at the actual battle.

C&G has a very interesting post-battle summary that tells you the actual losses, captured colors, and most interestingly, which unit received 'honors' at the battle. Not surprising to anyone at the game, honors in this battle went to the RA Reserve Section of British Artillery. Their initial devastating volleys on Learned's brigade followed up by their relentless prolonging to face new threat after new threat earned them the name of the RA Reserve Flying Foot Battery. Commanded by Art Fossa, they were definitely the deciding factor in the game, even if they were pushed to utter exhaustion by the end of the battle. Art is pictured below, left, in the white shirt doing, what else, measuring the range for the RA Reserve Section.

Thanks to all the players, and my co-GM Ralph. Everyone really played along and had fun despite any of the glitched that arose from my first time hosting a C&G game. I can't remember laughing so much as a GM in a long time. Great fun.

More photos are available on the Northern Conspiracy Events Gallery page.

British Grenadier! at Historicon

My good friend Byron took a bunch of wonderful photos at Historicon and sent them to me to include on the Northern Conspiracy's photo gallery pages. When Byron stopped by the British Grenadier! game I was playing I asked him to snap a couple extra shots so I could use them here on my Blog. My thanks to him for taking these great photos.

The game I played was a 25mm battle of Bunker Hill game hosted by our southern neighbours, the Boston Trained Bands wargaming club based in Malden, MA. Richard Claydon and his assistant GMs from the Trained Bands were excellent hosts and ran a very good game with beautiful terrain. To facilitate quick learning of the rules, and a fast-paced game some of the British Grenadier rules were used in a modified form. The most major change I noticed was the players were allowed to move their units as they liked instead of having to issue and adhere to written orders. This sped up play and made for a fun convention game. The other major change was to allow casualties to take effect immediately rather than waiting for 3 levels of disorder. This helped the game come to a conclusion in the time allotted.

My opinion? I liked a lot of things about British Grenadier! The rules definitely have an 'old school' feel in some ways, but also have some modern components. Played 'by the book' home in a club environment, rather than a convention environment, I think they'll be quite fun for smaller battles where the difference in morale and quality of the two armies is as important as the size of the forces. British Grenadier! has the unique quality that it can be used for battles where smaller forces of British Regulars took on large forces of American rebel militia.

I purchased the rules and both scenario books. The scenario books are quite informative and the scenarios run the gamut from small to large battles both in the north and the south. Even if you're not going to play all of the scenarios in them they still seem quite a good value for the money. I'm looking forward to playing some of my own British Grenadier! games in our club as well as meeting up with the Boston Trained Bands for some future games.

More of Byron's photos of this game can be found on the Northern Conspiracy galleries. Richard Claydon has also posted some more photos of the same game over on the British Grenadier forums on the General de Brigade site. Also of interest to at least one of my subscribers are photos Byron took of a First Carlist War game that his good friend Mark Stevens ran at Historicon.

Blue Max game at Historicon '09

My friend Rich Oster (on the left) and I have been friends and fellow Blue Max fanatics since meeting at Historicon about a decade and a half ago. Since Rich lives in Ohio and I live in New Hampshire we only get together at the Historicon conventions. This year Rich wanted to get his Gotha on the wargaming table and we joined forces to put on a huge Blue Max game for the occasion!

I was involved in the original conversion of the Blue Max Board game into the first edition of the Blue Max Miniatures rules. Phil Hall was very generous to give me co-authoring credit for my work on the project but truthfully all of the hard work was done when he originally created the excellent board game. Since that time I've continued to play Blue Max, but Rich has continued to follow Phil Hall's improved rule set which Phil has developed with Eric Hotz. The new rules, now called Canvas Eagles, are available for FREE, including all game aids and aircraft charts on Phil and Eric's excellent site http://www.eaglesmax.com/. The current version includes many improvements to the original system as well as much improved artwork on all of the airplane charts. Everything you need to play is provided in printable PDF format. Rich and I ran our game with the new Canvas Eagles rule system which all of the players, only a few of which had ever played Blue Max or Canvas Eagles, were able to learn quickly.

The game was surprisingly bloodless for a three-hour fur ball of over 20 planes in the air. We had one early 'Golden Bebe' shot as one German pilot pulled a 'pilot killed' chit, but for many turns both sides jousted only causing minor damage until late in the game when each side lost an additional fighter. With the Gotha successfully dropping it's bombs on the Allied airfield and the Germans only suffering two fighters lost the game was declared a minor German victory. I'd like to thank Rich for running the game with me and also I'd like to thank all of our players who approached the game in a fun and very sportsmanlike manner. At conventions you meet all types of gamers and this was a great group of new friends I hope to game with again in the future. Additional photos are available on the Northern Conspiracy events photo gallery page.



I also got to play my first game of the "British Grenadier" AWI rules and enjoyed it enough that I picked up a copy of the rules and the scenario books. My friend Byron took some photos of the game while I was playing and when I get copies of them later I'll probably make another blog entry about the game and my impression of the rules.

Off to Historicon 2009

I'm off to Historicon again this year! I promise to bring my camera and take photos for the blog. Also I'm co-hosting a game this year with my good friend Rich Oster from Ohio. Rich and I are running Event S-410 on Saturday at 7pm. Here is the event description from the PEL:

S-410 - Blue Max Flying Circus
Sat. 7 PM, 3 hrs, 10 players
GM: Richard Oster with Alan Wright and TWA
WWI 1:72, Rules: Canvas Eagles (Blue Max varient)

Come fly with the infamous Richtofen's flying circus escorting a Gotha Bomber (yes a Gotha in 1/72 scale). Richthofen's flying circus has been
ordered to excort a Gotha bomber to its target. Fly with Manfred and Lothar Richthofen,Ernst Udet and even Bruno Stockel from the movie The
Blue Max. If you prefer the good guys fly Eddie Richenbackers' Spad XIII with the allied powers to stop tyrany.

Come play in our game, or just stop by and say hello.

Just a quick update on why you haven't seen a lot of new painted figures on the blog lately. Recently I suffered some water damage in my hobby room due to a leaking clothes washing machine. I've spent the past two months repairing and remodeling the room. The work is finished and hobbies have resumed. Both will be the subjects of posts after I return from Historicon. See you all there!

Second Field of Glory Game - Part 2

To kick off the holiday weekend we all returned to my friend Mike's house on Thursday to finish up the second Field of Glory game in our Second Punic Wars campaign. This photo was taken by Mike and so see the rest of the gallery you can visit Mike's Picassa page.

In this second session I continued to try to stem the flow of Carthaginian lights in the woods on our left flank, but Leo (playing for the other side in this game) continued to dominate my Velites eventually routing all four units. To shore up the flank my partner and CinC of the Roman army, Mike brought in some Legionaires to defend the ground outside the woods while I clung percariously to the hill to the west of the woods. During this prolonged delaying action Mike was finally able to press home the attack in our center and right with our legions. Although it was a touch-an-go situation for many turns, eventually Mike was able to defeat the Spanish on the right flank and then isolated, the Gauls also gave way. After these areas were in control Mike was able to turn several battle groups to our faltering flank and rescue me from my almost certain defeat.

In the end Mike's play saved the Roman army and won the field of battle in a narrow victory over the invading Carthaginians.

Second Field of Glory Game - Part 1

This past Saturday we got together at my friend Mike's house to play the second Field of Glory game in our Second Punic Wars campaign. One of the players had to leave before we finished so this will be post one in a two part series on the battle. For this game we also brought in a gun-for-hire, our friend Leo, to help out pushing the Carthaginiains. Leo will probably end up being a Roman player eventually but we were desparately short on Carthaginians so for his first game Leo was a turncoat. These photos were taken by Mike and are just a few of the many photos that he took. To see the rest of the gallery you can visit Mike's Picassa page.

This second battle is the battle of Ariminium, in Northern Italy. As you can see the Carthaginians have brought their Elephants over the Alps with them. Again they caught the Romans unaware and have attacked a small portion of the Roman army in hopes to destroy it quickly. If the battle looks familliar to those that read my entry from game one, that's because the situation and terrain dictated a similar defensive deployment. The battle took a while to develop as the Carthaginians deployed in a very compact deployment and used the early turns if the battle to deploy and re-deploy their assaulting troops into positions of their choosing.

These photos show the first early combats of the battle. On the right (also the Roman right flank of the battle) you can see the Numidian light cavalry skirmishing with the Roman Legionaires. The left photo shows a large skirmish battle in the woods on the Roman left flank. Early losses have forced the Carthaginians to withdraw one battle group of skirmishers and replace it with a fresh one. The Romans also swapped out one battle group of velites to allow it to recover its morale. When we return on Thursday night to finish the game many fine Roman and Carthaginian soldiers will meet their maker on this field of glory.

Pegasus Bridge

This past Saturday (June 6th) I played in a 20mm World War II game run at our club's game day. The scenario was the D-Day attack by the British Ox and Bucks glider airborne troops on the Pegasus bridge. The game was run by fellow Northern Conspiracy club member Mark Decouteau.

Mark chose to run the game using the Crossfire rule system. Our club played Crossfire fairly actively for a short period right after the rules were published, but since then they have not seen a lot of use. After playing in Mark's game and enjoying it thoroughly, I'm actually fairly surprised that we haven't played more Crossfire. After playing in Mark's game I have a renewed enthusiasm to host some Crossfire games of my own.

I'd like to compliment Mark on his scenario design and especially his terrain. Crossfire is very dependent on good terrain for the rule system to work well. Mark not only had a sufficient ammount of terrain, but his tabletop was quite beautiful as well, right down to the scratch-built gliders!

Board Gaming

In addition to historical miniature gaming, I also like to get together with a group of friends to play 'Euro Game' boardgames. We used to get together every Saturday afternoon/evening for a long while, but eventually our schedules started interfering with that. Since then we settle for getting together for a Saturday anywhere between one and three times a year. We call these game days 'conventions' just for fun, named after the host. This past weekend I had a great time board gaming at Combscon 2009 redux. You can read all about it over at my friend Scott's boardgame blog - The Settlers of Dune.

If you're a miniatures gamer, don't overlook our hobbies origin - board gaming. Board gaming is still alive and popular in Europe. The European game designers are putting out some amazingly fun games. Our group prefers those based on economic or rail themes, but if you're looking for military boardgames, they're also still being developed. My favorite resource for board game information is the Boardgame Geek website.

First Field of Glory Game

Until now my experience in the world of ancients gaming has been fairly limited, consisting of mainly DBA and big-battle DBA/DBM games as that's what the ancients aficionados in our club prefer. Recently some of the ancients gamers in our club have been trying and enjoying the new Field of Glory rule set. One of my club mates, Charlie decided to start up an ancients campaign revolving around Hannibal's invasion into Italy during the second Punic wars. During our annual First man of Rome DBA tournament this past March I was the winning Roman player and current holder of our First Man of Rome trophy, so I felt obligated to represent Rome in the campaign with my fellow Roman commander, Mike Coppinger. Opposing us are Michael Bailey as Hannibal, and Randy (King Jubba) Fields as co-general of the Carthaginian forces. This was the first conflict of the game, with Hannibal's large army catching the defenders of Tarentum isolated. This created a game with Hannibal's army having a large advantage in numbers, almost 2:1.

Here we can see Hannibal's forces, marching onto the field of battle. They're an impressive force with a large cavalry arm, Galls, Psoli, and almost as many imitation legionaries as the Romans have true legionaries. Our only advantage at this battle was the terrain. There was one choke point on our side of the board, and just like a scene out of 300, we chose to defend that point and force the Carthaginians to attack us in waves, rather than allowing them to outflank us. At least that was the plan....


Here the much smaller Roman army marching onto the field of battle. We deployed the majority of our skirmishers out on our right flank, while the rest of the army marched on between two woods, hoping to beat the Carthaginians to the town directly ahead so we could anchor our flank on it.




This is a photo midway through the battle as our line has reached our goal and deployed to receive the Carthaginian attack. Guarding our flank in the woods are several units of skirmishers. In the town on our left a single unit of skirmishers with cavalry and Triarii in reserve behind the town. At this point it was time to wait for the assault to begin and try to survive the onslaught.


During the initial melees, we fared pretty well, giving as well, or sometimes a bit better, than we received. My co-general Mike Coppinger did a masterful job of defending the woods on our right flank from multiple assaults, but eventually the Carthaginian numbers weighed in there and our defenders in the woods started to get eliminitated, unit by unit. In the center we were able to repluse all of the Galls, but when the Carthaginian heavy infantry hit our line which was softened up by the Galls' attacks, our units began to fail. This photo was taken just before we called the game. Although our army broke, we felt good being able to inflict similar numbers of casualties on a numerically superior force. Hopefully in our upcoming battles we can campaign our way into fights where the numbers are slightly more equal. Hannibal won this battle, but the war is far from over!

I've posted several more photos from the game on the Northern Conspiracy's Past Events page. So what were my first impressions of Fields of Glory? I liked a lot of the mechanics and the combat resolution seemed straight forward and easy to understand. The disruption/disorder system still confuses me a bit, and I think that the casualty and morale mechanics are quite 'dicey', i.e. the rolls of the dice tend to impact the results more than the tactical situation does. All in all I think they're worth consideration for larger ancient battles. I'm going to get a copy of the rules of my own so I can better understand them. The rulebook is a wonderfully illustrated hard cover book which seems more than worth the cost. I'm looking forward to future games in the campaign.