A QUICK POST

 I have been meaning to write this post for close to a month now. At the end of July, we played a further game in the random Dog Wars battles. This saw the United Packs Commonwealth attacking a well defended Wolfenstein Empire position. This is a long, slow, battle and I had no illusions of it being played to completion. 

Empire Forces Marching Out of Town to Take Up Their Positions on the Front. 

UPC Cavalry Advance to Try Catching the Empire Infantry Before They Reach the Safety of the Redoubt.  

Empire Cavalry Thwart the UPC from Capturing the Redoubt Undefended. 

The Battlelines Clash. UPC Cavalry Forces the Empire Cavalry Back. UPC Light Infantry Begin to take the Woods. In the Background the can be seen the Assault on the Village.

Cavalry and Infantry Fighting Tooth and Claw for Their Respective Sides. 

By games end the Empire was in a strong position to continue the battle. Neither side had made enough of an impact on their opponents to qualify for a victory. A well fought but inconclusive battle. 

Upon my return from my trip the Fall Campaign will begin. This time the UPC will attempt to gain control of the North. 

FIRE ON THE FRONTIER and THE NEXT BIG LITTLE THING

The third battle of Rebels and Patriots was the Bullets and Beans Scenario. This saw a group of Loyalists defending their wagons from a patrolling band of Continentals. This was played by a couple of returning gamers and a few new players. The game was played on July 5th, the day after the 247th Birthday of the United States of America. 

The Opening of the Battle. Loyalists in Their Wagon Lager as the Continentals Come Pouring in from Three Sides. 

New York Continental Line Milling About Trying to Get Their Berrings in the Early Morning Light. 

As the Full Light of Day Arrived so did The Rest of the Loyalist Forces. The Continental's Fire had a Very Limited Effect on the Garrison Troops. So Little in Fact They Felt Cocky Enough to Bring up Their Unengaged Troops to Support the Firing Line. 

While the Fire Had Begun to Have a Telling Effect on the Defenders, There Own Return Fire had Reduced One of the Attackers Key Line Units to Half. Meanwhile the Defenders Reinforcements Where Now Close Enough to Influence the Battle.

On the Other Flank the Continentals Militia Who are Protected by Woods Were Having an Effect on the Defenders. They had Also Cause a Bottleneck for the Follow Up Regular Forces Delaying Their Needed Firepower. 

The Delay had Been Costly as by the Time the Regulars got to the Fight a Quarter of Their Unit was Lost. Meanwhile Luck was with the Loyalist as an Extra Line Unit had Joined the Battle. 

With Over a Third of Their Force Lost and Now Heavily Outnumbered the Continentals Gave Up the Fight and Headed Back to Their Homes. 

This was a complete disaster for the Attackers. Poor initial placement had kept half their firepower out of the fight. More importantly the Loyalist never missed an activation roll, and scored at least one hit, and more often multiple hits on every fire action. While the Continentals suffered from a number of low ammunition Special Action results, the Loyalists were rewarded with extra troops. On my last post I said that to gain an overwhelming victory you needed to have a lot go your way, or your opponent needed to have things go wrong. In this game both of those things occurred to give the Loyalists a decisive 4-to-0 victory. 

On to the next project, which is making Command & Colors: Napoleonic into a full miniature game. To address the hardest part for me, the painted miniature, I have decided to use the printed flats from WoFun. With this little preamble...Behold. 

Front View of the French.

A More Typical View of the French. 
Cavalry on the Flanks, Line Infantry and Artillery in the Center, Light Infantry with Skirmishers. 

A Closer View of the French Infantry. 
Line Across the Center, Artillery in the Middle, Light Infantry Right Foreground with Skirmishers.  

This is just the start as there are lots more French for me to edge paint and whole armies of Austrians and Russians to oppose them. 

I am off to Gen Con for the next few weeks. When I return, I will be working on the next batch of these troops, along with more buildings. I hope to complete enough to get a game in before mid-August. 

HOUSE DISASTER AND MORE AWI

 It has been nearly a month since I last posted and I can sum up the delay in one phrase, Gen Con Prep. The big show is less than two weeks away, and I will be heading to Indianapolis in a week. Still, I have not only been working, but I have new buildings finished and a couple of AWI games AARs. 

Building Disaster: OK, not really. I have been constructing new 15mm 4Ground buildings for my upcoming WWII game. The first batch is all damage buildings, while the second are more of the intact versions. As usual my goal is to have enough to make towns, and eventually cities to fight in. 

Vehicles Added to Provide Scale. The Central Grand Hotel is Missing its Roof. I Have Spent a Long Time Trying to Dry Fit This. It is a Tricky Thing. 

On the AWI front I ran two games of Rebels and Patriots. The first is a repeat of the previous scenario with new players. This was a reversal of the last fight with the Colonials making a very strong defense against the Loyalist forces. A last-minute surge by the Loyalist Regulars saw them pull off a tie in Honor Points but having suffered tremendous casualties in the process. 

This Time the Colonials Chose to Make Their Initial Stand at the River on Their Left Instead of on the Hill Behind. 

Colonials Also Chose to Make a Direct Defense of the Bridge.

A Command Failure Forced the Light Troops into an Assault Against the Bridge Defenders. This Turned Out to be a Blessing in Disguise. On the Opposite Flank the Colonials Fire has Chased of the Iroquois and Compelled the Loyalist to Advance Through the Woods.   

A Quick Dash by the Light Infantry Took the Bridge Objective, but Only an Amazing Morale Check Allowed Them to Hold it. In the Right Background can be Seen the Loyalist Advance from the Woods into the Open Ground. The Capture of that Objective on the Final Turn Prevented a Loyalist Disaster. 

Consistent Poor Command Rolls and Colonial Firepower Prevented the Rest of the Loyalist Forces Ever Crossing the River. 

A lot has to go right to win a decisive victory in Rebels and Patriots, or a lot wrong. I will have another ARR with my next post, and a preview of some upcoming things in 2024. 

HOUSE PAINTING and THE RETURN OF SOME OLD FRIENDS

 This is a wargame blog, so if you are expecting living rooms and a group of revelers, you're in the wrong place. With my friend Bob moving to the wilds of Canada to become a "Damn Fureigner", he has been purging game stuff, so I have now acquired our entire collection of Glorious Revolution figures. These have not seen a gaming fields since 2015. The years have not been kind and I need to do some figure repair, along with getting Bob's bases to match mine. A few things of interest are with Bob moving to Ottawa, I will be inclined to start running my games of The War of 1812, Plan Red - Naval Operations Against Britian in Canada and the Carribean, and I maybe even have to add Perry Miniatures British Intervention Forces (1860's) for Rebels and Patriots. Damn Canadians!!!  When are they just going to accept that they are the 51st through 62nd States of the USA. Yes, I know there are 13 bits of Canada, but I am not sure we want Quebec as a State. Of course, this could just be part of my insidious plan to move all the people from my county up to Canada so we can double their population and take over. Bwaa Ha Ha!!!

Joking aside, I will miss having Bob around to tryout all my crazy ideas on. Best wishes in your new home in the Great White North. 

The other part is I am now in the process of adding new buildings to a number of my games. I have a lot of 4Ground buildings that I need to assemble for AWI, WWII 15mm and Toy Soldiers WWII. There is also a lot of 3D printed buildings for Toy Soldiers Classic, and an entire 6mm cities for Micro Armor. As with most projects I have plenty to keep me painting until the end of time. 

AWI Settlers Cabin

 

New Toy Soldiers, and Dog Wars Building 1.

Building #2

The Combined Armies for Glorius Revolution. Williamites on the Left, Jacobite's on the Right. As with Most Projects Bob Finished Well Before Me.  

Jacobite Army

The First Battle with Williamites on the Left and Jacobite's on the Right.   

A Closer View from Behind the Jacobite's. 

On a nostalgic level it is interesting to see how my terrain has changed over the years. The GW fuzzy mat is long gone, replaced by Cigar Box printed mats. The hills are still around but now get hidden when used. The river has been replaced, only to be bought again. The buildings are still around but are getting added to. I don't know what became of the bridge, which is to bad as it looks rather nice here. Like with many gaming parts, rules, figures and terrain, it will be interesting to see where it develops in the coming years. 

American War of Independance - On the New York Frontier

 

This week I ran a game of Rebels and Patriots. I had geared it at 36 points per side as I had expected 4-6 players. It turned out to be only 4 players, so everyone had plenty of troops to use. Unlike a lot of Daniel Mersey's rules, failure to activate a unit does not end your turn. This turned out to be a very good thing as there was a lot of poor dice rolling for activations in this game by both sides. 

The scenario was for a force of British and Loyalists to scout the area to determine the Continentals intentions. For the Continentals it was to prevent the area being scouted and cause as much damage to the Crown forces to make it too costly to continue. 

Colonials Initial Deployment. All of Their on Table Forces are South of the Fox Stream, mostly close to Van Ives's Farm and Scott's Hill. 

About Midway Durning the Game. The British had Been Slow to Deploy, while Their Allied Tories and Natives had been Rapidly Advancing to Bring the Fight to the Colonials. Here Thay have Just Completed Scouting of Green Tree Medow. The Opening in the Upper Right Between the Two Woods. 

A Short Time Later the Natives have Chased Away the 3rd New York from the area of Scott's Hill. They are Coming Under Heavy Fire but have Managed to Scout the Hill. The British 60th Lights have Finally made it to the Bridge. 

Late in the Game the Continental's Rifle and Minutemen have Finally Made an Appearance. Their Firer has Greatly Reduced the Tory Line Infantry. Up Until now The Crown side had Things Going Their Way, but in two Quick Volleys Washington's Riflemen had put Some Serious Hurt on the Crown Troops.   

Games End. The Crown has Succefuly Scouted Three of the Four Areas of the Battlefield. While the Continental Riflemen have Pushed the Win into a Pyric Level.  

Everyone had a good time despite what I can only call some hideous dice rolling. I will be running more of these games in the future. A lesson I hope was learned that while firepower can weaken troops, it takes guts and cold steel to move them off a position. Future games will see players creating their own Commanding Officers, which is something I left out since this was a learning game. 

I feel that each person controlling an 18-point force is sufficient. It will need to be, until I paint up another great block of figures for this game. There already are Culpepper Minutemen, New York and Connecticut Regulars in official uniforms, as well as a large group of the British 24th and now that I have seen them in action, forces from the Iroquois Confederation will all be joining in. 

Bits, Bobs and Future Projects

 I have been working on a lot of projects simultaneously, so thought I would share what is coming in the future. First off, if the map is not a giveaway, there are the campaigns. WWII Toy Soldiers, see previous post, 19th Century Unification Wars, Dog Wars, and another project are all being given maps. The first two will be sharing the same map, or at least s similar one. The rest will have their own as their setting are quite different. 

Painting, painting and more painting. My never-ending chore that is self-inflicted. Like most gamers I have enough figures already to keep me at this for two lifetimes. OK, more like three or four lifetimes. I will never be done, as there is always a next project. I don't really finish any project, I just need to add a few more figures. Honest! Everything just needs that extra unit, or two, or three, or dozen, or ... To that end I added the new Army Painter SpeedPaint 2.0 to my collection. It's just a few colors. OK, OK, it's 89 colors, including 10 metals, and as SpeedPaint that means no deep shades, highlights, just each one doing a single full shade coat. Will I use all of these? Oh sure. 

Organized and Ready to Go. 

WWII Toy Soldiers painting continues. I have completed all the basic forces and am now on to the filling out stage, things like more First Line Infantry, Mortars, Anti-tank Rifles, trucks, tanks and so on. I have multiple sets of rules to tryout, Arriba Espana, Xenos Rampant, and Chain of Command. Each of these has their own feel and complexity and I need to decide which works the best for the games I want to run. 

Republican MGs

Royalist MGs

Royalist SMG Unit

Royalist Mortar and Anti-tank Rifle

High Command of Both Sides and Kaboom Markers

Bob and I got in a few play test games of Arriba Espana and Xenoes Rampant. I need to create a crib sheet for Arriba to help track all the things you do in the game. Xenoes turns out to be a bust. We played two games in under twenty minutes, and both were disasters. Xenoes looks like it would be fine to play alternative rules for 40K, but not very good at WWII. 

First Turn of Game One. 

Start of Game Two. We Both Have Learned a Few Things from Our Earlier Playthrough. 

End of Game Two. Bob Nearly Won This as His Forces are About to Breakthrough When His Army Becomes Exhausted. My Own Army was on the Brink of Exhaustion Too. 

WWII Toy Soldiers Progress - Part 2

 

I have started working on a map for amongst other things the WWII Toy Soldiers. This is the outline I am working from and there is a lot of changes I will be making, but this is the starting point. 

I got some more figures completed and am close to having enough ready for the first play test. My target is to have that ready early next week. No new troop types like Machineguns and Mortars added yet, but those are next on deck. I thought while I was posting I should add some better pictures of the Republicans. 

Royalist First Line Infantry

Royalist Second Line Infantry and High Command.

Royalist Artillery 

Royalist Army

Republicans and Royalist Side-by-Side View. 

Republican First Line Infantry. 

Republican Second Line Infantry.

Republican Artillery. 

The Republican Army. 

Royalist Defending a Border Town Against a Republican Attack. 

Republicans Storm the Town. 

Republican and Royalist Second Line Infantry Clash Outside of Town.