Napoleon's Rules of War Play Test

Yesterday we got together to pick up the unfinished battles of Reggio and Oglio and play a play test game of my friend Charlie's new Napoleonic rules, Napoleon's Rules of War.  It was a good game and the 28mm units look great on even a large 12' long table like mine. We had a great time and came up with a few pieces of input for Charlie to consider for addition / revision. These rules are shaping up to be a good, fun fast play set of Napoleonic rules.

Battles of the Oglio & Reggio

My friend Robert has been running a hypothetical northern Italian Napoleonic campaign that a few of us have been enjoying. The first two battles were generated and happened on the same day of the campaign. Because I have a table large enough to host both at one time we're playing them in my basement gaming room. Today we played for the late morning and all afternoon and made good progress on both battles.

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Battle of the Oglio

This battle features a major river intersecting the tabletop with two bridges and troops from both armies flowing on throughout the first day of battle. Our armies (the armies of the east represented by Prussian and Russian figures) started holding one bridge, with the enemy establishing a bridgehead on the other. Turn one cavalry reinforcements for the East allowed us to contest the bridgehead. When we called it the Western army (represented by French and Austrian figures) had a considerable figure advantage but were still fighting to expand their bridgehead.  Photos below are mostly sequential with the final photo the status of the game as we broke for the day.

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Battle of the Reggio

This battle features the stone-walled town of Reggio which is nestled between two major rivers and abutted with a small forest. A minor marshy stream is also present on the battlefield southwest of the town. The Western army started with two corps if infantry occupying the town with three Eastern corps assaulting. Later in the day each army added an additional cavalry corps.  Again photos are relatively sequential with the final position shown in the final photo.

We hope to continue both games tomorrow if possible. If not we will be scheduling another day of gaming as soon as possible.

January 2013 Game Night

Last Friday was our club's first game night of 2013. We started things out with a bang with three excellent games and a huge turnout of members and guests. First photos are of Mark's WWII naval game using Axis & Allies War At Sea miniatures. The scenario pitted early war British and Free French ships against a fleet of Italian ships. I believe the allies won this game sinking many Italian ships in the process.

Next up was Earl's 28mm ACW skirmish game using Brother Against Brother rules. The scenario was taken from Sherman's march through Georgia and features all arms of the ACW: infantry, cavalry and artillery. 

I played in Charlie's 28mm Napoleonic game. This was the debut of a set of house rules Charlie is working on that are called "Napoleon's Rules of War". For a first public showing the rules were surprisingly mature and quite fun. Everyone picked them up quickly and the results of the combats seemed historically reasonable. I'm guessing we'll be seeing more of these rules in the future...at least I'm hoping so.

2012 Year In Review

2012 was another very good year for me and my wargaming hobby. Despite losing about two months of gaming time to having cervical fusion surgery (the Peyton Manning surgery I call it) I still was able to paint a lot of figures and play in a lot of great games. Top honors for my favorite unit painted this year has to go to my 15mm Flames of War Aufklärungs platoon shown to the left. Honorable mention goes to my 28mm Numidian light cavalry for Field of Glory.
Painting totals for 2012 are quite respectable for me:

• 25/28mm Figures Painted: 62 - Mostly Pirates, but also includes twelve Old West Gunfighters and the above mentioned Numidian Cavalry
• 15mm Figures Painted: 130 - Entirely Flames of War WWII both early and late war
• Painted 15mm Vehicles: 32 - Again entirely Flames of War WWII - mostly late war
• Terrain/Misc Created: 47- Mostly laser-cut items including templates and terrain bases. Most notable were my 28mm Pirate Boats.
• Stands Re-based: 11

Non-Painting Totals for 2012:

• Purchased Painted 15s: 295 - Mostly Ancients to complete my Seleucid army and start a Carthaginian army
• Purchased 15mm Vehicles: 5 - Australian Bofors Battery and transports
• Puchased Painted 28s: 33 - Two units of AWI Americans
• Games Hosted: 5 - Down from last year mostly due to me missing two months due to my surgery
• Games Played: 27 - More than two games a month - not bad for missing two months!

In the next day or two I'll post up a review of last year's goals and how I did and I'll set about setting some goals for the upcoming year.

Battle of Praeneste (Part II)

Yesterday Charlie and I got together to finish up the battle of Praeneste that's been sitting on my gaming table half completed since before my surgery. Charlie did a good job of finishing off the Romans continuing his good play and very hot dice. In this session Charlie was able to kill six (6) more Roman battle groups while I managed to kill a Carthaginian elephant. Thank goodness they break when only one is killed or I would have been skunked for the day.

Charlie, Mike and I will get together soon to play out some more board game moves and get another tabletop game set up. So far this system has made for some very good tabletop games.

Below you can see the aftermath. Roman dead on the left, Carthaginian on the right.

December 2012 Game Night

Last Friday our club got together for our December game night. These are a treat because we only have them when there is a Friday between Christmas and New Years Day that doesn't interfere with either holiday. Three games were run. Here are some photo's of Phil's 15mm ACW game of the battle of Antietam's sunken road action for the 150th anniversary of the year of the battle.

 Next up was Ed's 6mm 'Armies at Lutzen' 30 Years War game. This is what Ed calls a 'Battle Management' game putting the players in the role of wing commanders rather than unit commanders. Stress is put on having units in and out of combat to manage fatigue, etc. The figures don't show up well in these photos but each stand was a tiny diorama depicting unit shapes and formations.

I played in Ralph's 28mm WWII game which used Frank Chadwick's 'Men Under Fire' rules.  This game featured a German defense of a town and train against an attacking American force of infantry and limited armor support. This was a good game where the Americans destroyed us with a flank attack with their armor with the Germans not having any of their anti-tank assets in the right place to stop it.

All I Want For Christmas Is GAMING!

Last Friday I got together for some pre-Christmas gaming with my good friends Mike, Josh and Scott and a new friend Alex who I've met before but only gamed with for one short game. We all got some time off from work to get in some long overdue board gaming.

We started out with an all-vs-the game spaceship rescue game which I forget the name of. We went 1 and 1 against that game. After that we broke out Endeavor as my choice. I proceeded to stink up the joint coming in I think dead last. After that Josh (or was it Scott?) picked Power grid which Mike was able to win beating me out on a tie breaker having the same number of cities but beating me handily on cash holdings. We finished up with a game of Small World, which I thought I was doing poorly in, but ended up second to Scott by a couple of points.

I've never had so much fun getting my ass kicked all day. We always have fun gaming as a group. Hopefully we can pull off another day of gaming soon. This session might possibly get documented over on Scott's blog, Settlers of Dune, but don't hold your breath - he's a bit behind on updating it.

Walken In A Winter Wonderland

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year - or alternative holidays that you and your family may celebrate.

I'll be on shut down from work the week between Christmas and New Years day. During that week I have a lot of gaming planned. Look for a flurry of blog activity over the next two weeks or so.

AJ

15mm AWI Game

Last Friday night we got together at my friend George's house to play some wing scale AWI using Volley & Bayonet. George has recently finished construction on his wargame shed he calls 'the clubhouse' and it's quite a nice place to game.

The game was a return to wing scale V&B for Revolutionary War battles. Since it was George's first game in this scale in a few years we felt our way through the game and had a pleasant time. My friend Mike had some very nice sharpshooters which did quite a nice job of obliterating my force - see the dead on the windowsill. It was mostly an action of attrition as once he had done his damage my remaining force was able to kill his sharpshooters and push into the vacated woods only to be sent packing by another American regiment.

Wing scale V&B works nicely. I promised to put on one of my scenarios for George at an upcoming game night sometime this spring - probably April. I think it might just be time to revisit Monmouth courthouse again. That is one of my favorite scenarios for AWI V&B.

28mm Numidian Light Cavalry

This is the first of several 28mm units that I'm painting up for an upcoming First Punic War campaign that a few of my wargame club friends and I will be partaking of next year. Several of our group have 28mm hoplites that have been gathering dust. With our recent increase in enthusiasm for the Field of Glory (FOG) ancients rules they have decided to re-base for FOG. Not having any 28mm ancient figures I thought I would contribute to the effort by filling in some of the missing battle groups needed for the campaign.

This is the first of those battle groups - a six (6) stand unit of Numidian light cavalry. The figures are from Old Glory and were nice clean sculpts with good animation. My only minor complaint is the galloping horses are too long to fit on a 40mm deep base. This required me to mount this unit on 50mm deep bases. Even with the enlarged base depth I still had to trim the galloping horse bases about 5mm. Spears and javelins are 1/64" steel 'piano' wire sharpened to a point and then dulled for safety. Each is glued into a hole through the figures hand insuring a secure grip. I hope they will last a nice long time.

The shields that come with the figures are all the domed shields. I chose to replace half of these with flat round shields I made on my laser engraver. I'm more used to seeing Numidian shields feature hide-covered flat shields than domed ones. Both types shields were adorned with hand-painted decorations: hide patterns for the flat shields and appropriate symbols for the domed shields.

This is the second unit I've shaded with the Army Painter Quick Shade product. This time I diluted the quick shade 3 parts quick shade to one part mineral spirits. I very much liked the results and will continue to use this ratio until my can of quick shade thickens up a bit more from evaporation.