Campaign Tree

Many months ago Bluebear Jeff challenged the EvE community to create a mini campaign using a few scenarios from Brigadier Grant's Scenarios for Wargamers. Now in possession of the fine tome I have taken up the challenge for the armies of Fromagere and Weinpfalz. Initially I will try a short three game campaign.


I had intended to wait until I had prepared more "Old School" type terrain peices but I will press on and therefore begin with an encounter based on scenario - #40 Dominant Hill. This requires minimal terrain and will get us off the mark


The scenario suggests seven units a side and is simple reconaissance strength encounter. The mission - to seize and hold the crossroads. However control can only be achieved by ensuring possession of the village and the hill that dominates all approaches.


The next scenario will depend upon who wins the first game. The campaign is based upon an invasion of Weinpfalz by the forces of the old fox the Duke of Fromagere so should they lose they will need to fall back over the River Wein. So the scenario will be based on #6 Rear Guard but with an evacuation over the river rather than the sea.

This would be followed by a Weinpfalz attack on Fromagere adopting scenario #19 Assault River Crossing. A tricky one, trying to establish a bridghead in the face of the enemy. This would end this campaign and I would begin another.


However should the wily Duke manage to win the first game then scenario #1 Positional Defence will see Count Olaf commanding defending his country on a table that looks very like a mini Fontenoy.


Defeat for Otto would lead to Reinforcing a Town scenario #14 where another loss would mean a campaign victory for the Duke.

With good luck and a following breeze battle will commence on the morrow.

Octobers military disasters

I keep trying to get my son interested in wargames but to little avail. Not as exciting as Call of Duty or whatever the latest Xbox fad is.

However to keep his dad happy he agreed a quick game of Crossfire which, I told him, needed the same sort of tactical skills as COD.



Unfortunately the battery gave up on the camera so only a couple of shots of the table before deployment.

A typical Crossfire set up with lots of terrain pieces to move between.

We played a simple scenario with Jack (my son) ordered to assault the village with a couple of Italian companies and HMGs. I held the village and surrounding woods with half the number of French. Jack quickly grasped the simple mechanisms of the game and, with pretty poor firing on my part, had quickly outflanked the French and charged in decisively.

In less than an hour the Italians held the village and the poor French were destroyed.

Perhaps I need to get my own Xbox .

I forgot my camera for my monthly game at Birmingham Wargames Society this month but no doubt there will be questions in parliament.

As commander of a large British and native force it should (in hindsight) have been relatively easy to get a wagon train across the veldt. With a couple of cannon and a gatling gun I naively assumed we could simply mow the Zulu hordes down. There were of course "farsands or 'em" but "we are British Old Chap".

The Zulu plan, I discovered, was to draw us into the valley.

However Blackpowder's command system meant that the British really didn't want to move. Bored waiting in the bush the Zulus attacked. The British sent out the cavalry to hold up the impis but even the lancers had little success. Out in the open there were just too many natives and we were over run.




Not an auspicious wargaming month. At least we live to fight another day.
I

January 2011

After New Year January seems to loom ahead like a dark cloud of cold and, well, dark cloud. Now however it seems to have flown by. It's been a busy month on the work and family front but some wargaming projects have progressed a little; some well and some disappointing.

The year began with a decent multi corps 6mm Napoleonic battle. We played this using a simple set of rules based heavily on BlackPowder mechanisms. They seemed to work quite nicely.

On the workbench four sqadrons of dragoons have (finally) been completed as have another three companies of foot for the forces of Fromagere.

I had hoped to be well into a regiment of hussars for the wicked old Duke. However the priming went sadly wrong. I have been using Plastikote primer for the plastic figures and have had no problem with it. However I did find that a couple or three bayonets of the new infantry had flaked which I assumed was simple rushing the spray job and missing these spots - easily fixed.

The hussars however were a disaster. The plastikote simply didn't dry - they are still tacky after three weeks. I suspect that's a couple of dozen figures wasted. Fortunately they only cost about £7.00 for two boxes. Had they have been Foundry or Front Rank at £2.50 a horseman I might have been upset.

I did wonder if it was the soft plastic of the Hat figures that didn't like the primer but my best guess is that the atmospheric conditions were too poor. Perhaps too cold or too damp or both. Anyway most disappointing.

After extensive research ie browsing the websites of fellow wargames bloggers I went down to the local art shop and purchased a jar of gesso. I have primed the next company with this interesting stuff and while the process is a fair bit slower than spraying I'm hopeful it will be a foolproof method of priming my plastic - and possibly metal too.

As no wargamer can resist a bargain and a digression, I found myself buying Songs of Drums and Shakos, I think for $5 for a Pdf that I received within the hour. These simple but subtle Napoleonic skirmish rules have had great reviews on TMP and other sites. Needing only a dozen figures a side, at most, it shouldn't prove too difficult to paint up a couple of squads to play on the dining table.

Of course as they can, with a little tweak or two, be used for SYW freikorps actions, C18 American wars, Revolutionary wars, Carlist, Italian Independence, Colonial etc etc etc. I suspect a few more wars can be visited for minimum cost. I think I can smell the Vendee not far away!

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Snow has now gone from Fromagere and Weinpfalz but after watching German Art on BBC4 wanted to have a Caspar Friedrich painting.








Holidays almost over but managed a bit of painting last week.

One of the sure things about his time of year is that the camera is out of battery power. So no piccies of the four squadron dragoon unit newly recruited for Fromagere.

Being of a cheesy disposition I chose yellow coats - never again. I hate painting yellow. Figures were the delightful Zvezda Swedish GNW dragoons.

Also a new company for each of the three infantry units are well under way. This will bring the regiments up to 72 men and officers. The aim is to be able to be divide a regiment into two companies each giving a "battalion" of 32 hatmen and 4 officers. (Again Swedish Zvezda).

Santa proved generous this year. Some jolly nice CDs - Bach and Art Pepper (not jamming together but would have been interesting), a few boxes of Zvezda (GNW and SYW grenadiers) and the Duchess bought me a Kindle e-book. Downloaded "Brigadier Gerard" in seconds - for free - and "Barry Lyndon", though that was 74p!

New Year resolution - play more games.

Why?

As a child I spent my weekly sixpence pocket money on a toy soldier, US cavalry, second world war infantryman, cowboy, sometimes a knight. With friends, father or often alone I would line them up and fight mini battles on my bedroom floor. There must have been hundreds - I wonder what happened to them all.

Of course teenagers don't play with toy soldiers do they? But when I found "Charge! or How to Play Wargames" in the local library (between chess and football) it was a revelation. Playing with toy soldiers didn't have to end with primary school and short trousers. But of course other things got in the way, music, girls, football etc etc. And despite attempts at painting up an army of airfix, and later Spencer Smith's plastics I never actually got round to playing a game using Charge rules. And yet every so often I would pore over the games and friendly banter of Mr Smith and Mr Jones as described by messrs Young and Lawford (I actually bought the library copy for 20p).

Wargaming didn't go away and University provided a few opponents mostly in the revolutionary new, cheap, easily stored 6mm. Later Birmingham Wargames Society provided a friendly place to fight. Keeping up to date with the latest innovations armies appeared and grew and were sold, rules came and went 10mm, 15mm, 20mm. WRG, RFCM, Volley and Bayonet, Crossfire, Impetus, we tried them all. But none had what Charge! had. Je ne sais quois?

But now, courtesy of internetland, I find I'm not alone in this mini obsession with a 1967 games book.

This blog is my incentive to creating two armies and two imagi nations to fight table top games in the manner of messrs Young and Lawford. The nations are Fromagere and Weinpfalz; the Wars of Wine and Cheese.