Napoleonic Play Test

Today my friend Steve came over for a play-test of a heavily modified version of Jeffrey's 'Napoleonic Rules for a Large-scale Wargame with small-scale figures' (not a very snappy title but it has some interesting ideas and mechanics).

Most of the changes concerned: translating the rules to work on a hex-grid; 'simplifying' the order system, replacing textual orders with a brief code; and, some ideas to ease book-keeping (peg-boards) and calculations (look-up tables).

The photo below shows the armies as set up; Steve commanding most of my French (on the right) against about two-thirds of my Prussians (on the left).

This was a fairly big game for a play-test, but rule machanics really need to be tested at the intended scale for a fair test.  And now, just for the sake of it, a couple of close-ups to show the troops (all Heroics & Ros) in a bit more detail.

In the game, orders typically take a turn or two to arrive, and are recorded on small chits as shown below in the example of a French order below.

In the order above, 'A1' means the order is to attack and the axis of advance (AoA) is directly ahead.  For the French '1' means directly towards my side of the table and the other hex vertices are numbered clockwise from this direction.  The order was sent in Turn #1 from the divisional commander (B) to one of his brigades (B1) - sorry about the soulless naming of commanders and units (actually Jerome Bonaparte to Bauduin).  

The book-keeping was done on a peg-board which allowed the recording of casualties and disorder suffered by each brigade (artillery batteries are also treated as brigades).

Each brigade's order (either Attack, Support or Defend) is also recorded, but if the brigade is reacting to a change of situation (COS) the order is moved to the 'COS' slot indicating its order is currently suspended.  They will not revert to their order until either they receive a prompt from a commander or another COS allows them to do so.

Combat is initiated when opposing brigades come into contact.  The relative strengths are compared and the dice (d20) thrown are modified by tactical factors.  This may result in one side or the other routing immediately, if not then the combat will last for a number of turns after which the same dice are thrown for combat resolution - which will always result in one side or the other retreating.  In the latter case a marker is put down indicating what is happening as shown below.

This marker ...

Shows the combats odds (force ratio of the two sides) is 'Band C', in favour of the Prussians (placed behind them), will last for one turn, and the Prussians have two tactical advantages when throwing the dice.  Later in the game we also added the turn number in which the combat would be resolved to remove any confusion.

As for the battle, the French put in a big attack on the Prussian right ...

... which saw both Prussian brigades on that flank forced to retreat, each sweeping the other along until retreat they reached the edge of the world and fell off!

Prussian success elsewhere, including driving back a massed column attack ...

... was nowhere near as decisive and the Prussians decided to call it a day and retire before the French could re-organise for a second push.

While I now have several pages of suggested modifications to think about, we both felt the battle flowed reasonably well and gave a much better feel for difficulty of controlling an army by generals limited to what they could see and communicate by mounted courier.  

So, all in all, a fairly successful play-test but still a lot of points to ponder and some careful thinking to ensure that any changes introduced only streamline the game further rather than adding complication and slowing it down.

Great-coated WiP

The latest batch on the work / painting table is a unit's worth of 20mm Hinton Hunt (HH, but most are probably copies) Napoleonic French infantry in greatcoats, all recently emerged from the bleach bath to remove their old paint jobs.

There's enough here for a 24-man unit (battalion) and a 6-figure skirmish unit, and rising above it all (on a cocktail stick up his fundament) is an HH personality figure of Dorsenne.

There's a fair bit of figure bashing happening.  The advancing figures used for the battalion (FN12) are all grenadiers.  This means all the figures in the fusilier companies need their epaulettes, sabre-briquets, and the shoulder-belt it is suspended from, removed.  All the figures are also getting their shakos changed to covered shakos courtesy of some thick coats of white paint.

The biggest job was to create an officer standard bearer from a firing figure, the arms requiring a lot of repositioning.  There's still more work to do on these can be seen below, but this is a WiP.

The rear view shows the backpack's removal (officers wouldn't carry one) and the extension of the sabre briquet into a sword.

This figure still needs the shoulder belt for the 'holster' for the flag pole, an eagle for the standard (to be taken from another figure) and a head swap for one more appropriate for an officer.

The head from eagle bearer will used to replace that on the Newline Design drummer I'm going to use for this unit; this will make him blend in better with the HH figures around him.

The drummer's greatcoat will also get more folds sculpted into it to look more like the HH figures in the rest of the unit.

Then it will be on to painting them, I want to paint the skirmish unit to look like this, for me iconic, illustration ...

... from this book.

For the larger unit (battalion) I shall base them on this illustration except with a grey shako cover to tie them in with the skirmish unit.

21st Panzer Ready to Roll

It was only when writing the last post that I realised I had completed the 20mm vehicles for future Chain of Command (CoC) games that I had featured in earlier Work in Progress (WiP) posts and just put them away in the cabin without posting.

So, time to dig them out and show what the finished articles look like.

The lead vehicle in an old MMS metal kit only included in the picture for comparison with the resin and white metal vehicles from Early War Miniatures (EWM).  The others are described in turn below:

UNIC P107 U 304(F) troop carriers 

These are 'built' straight from the EWM 'kits' with a resin body and white metal wheels, tracked running gear and MG42 mount.  The figures are also those supplied with the vehicle, albeit I only used 6 of the 8 seated infantrymen provided.  The camouflage scheme is taken from a WW2 photograph of this vehicle and gives them (IMO) a lot of character.  

One slight niggle is that the gun shield on the MG42 mount on the P107 was different but I decided to let that pass. 

The driver and commander have been glued into the front seats as shown below alongside the 150mm self-propelled gun.

The seated infantrymen in the back can be removed, as they are all attached by their feet to a false floor as described in a previous post (Becker's Specials - Build Complete-ish).

Sdkfz 135/1 150 SPG LS(f), 150mm self-propelled gun

This was also pretty much built straight from the 'kit', also with a resin body, and white metal gun mounting and recoil spade.  The few minor changes also were also discussed in the earlier post.  

The camouflage scheme for this vehicle was taken from this book which I had treated myself to; it's jam-packed with beautiful artwork.

The gun crew in this vehicle can be removed as they are also fixed to a false floor, the shell cases around their feet, as planned in the earlier post, making the joints more robust.

Pak40 Somua MCG S307(f) Panzerjäger

This vehicle was the real inspiration for the whole batch as it's in the Too Fat Lardies 'Kampfgruppe von Luck' pint-sized campaign and Hans Hoeller's memoirs 'D-Day Tank Hunter'.  Its camouflage scheme was also taken from the book mentioned above but slightly tweaked to match that in the photos of Hans Hoeller's book.  As this was an ambitious kit-bash of the EWM P107 kit I shall indulge myself with a flurry of captioned photos.

Left side

Right side

Front

Rear

Close-up of fighting compartment

Close-up of scratch-built tools

It's not perfect, but I'm still pretty pleased with this effort, and it deserved the up-market crew from AB Figures (actually a Flak crew) who are secured by magnets in the figures and the seats.  The biggest error is the retention of the seating down either side of the fighting compartment.  This was error in reading the plans I used but fixing it would've undone much of the work put in and I doubted the structural integrity of the resin body would survive their removal so I decided to leave it as is.