Wargaming Projects - 3 of 4 - The Present

A Potted History of my Wargaming Projects

Prehistoric; Past; Present; and, Pending

Part 3 - Present Projects: which if not complete (is a project ever complete?) are at least currently being gamed with when I can, for which reason many of these have already been featured on the blog.

This post will be a bit different, as many of my projects which have reached gaming status have already been featured on this blog so many will just have one photo and a link to previous post.

This time I'll go in, more or less, chronological order - fantasy comes last on the basis that it hasn't happened yet.

25mm Ancients (Hinchliffe, with a few Minifigs and Lamming)

I started this army back in 70s and, as discussed under 'pre-historic' projects here, were originally intended as an Alexandrian army but became a generic Successor collection, and the above photo shows all my pike, 250 all told, i.e. just enough for a single syntagma, the smallest tactical unit.

These guys have been used for various versions of 'Ancients' rules by the Wargames Research Group (WRG) and while currently based for the DBx rules series they also get used with 'To the Strongest' (TtS), albeit having to provide the armies for both sides.

The TtS rule-set also encouraged me to make special markers.

The latest use of these troops (here) was for a sort of mash-up of DBM with TtS, i.e. using a grid-based movement system like TtS but DBM for PIP activation and combat.  

Although some further mods will be required to handle recoiling troops (a grid square is too far for a recoil) this is likely to be the way I will continue to use these as the game was quick and fun.

15mm Gladiators (Chariot Miniatures)

A quick filler of a project to make an equally quick game to fill the gaps between bigger games during gaming weekends with friends.  This uses the Ludus Gladiatorius rules and has been featured before on this blog e.g. here.

15mm Normans (Essex Miniatures)

An old project that was originally going to be a First Crusade Army, but not too keen on the Essex Byzantines, I decided to switch it to 1066, but couldn't find an Anglo-Danish and Viking range that I liked.  Luckily my friends have suitable opponents so, while I don't have any opponents for them, they do get used.

15mm Wars of the Roses (Minifigs, Roundway, Peter Pig, et al.)

When DBA first came out, I thought that if you used three armies on each side you would get something like the three Battles that Wars of the Roses armies tended to form up in.  Of course, before I'd finished the armies, many of which I sent off to get painted, DBM came out so I've tended to use those instead, albeit the photo above is from a game using 'The Perfect Captain's' A Crown or Paper - Coat of Steel battle rules. 

These troops get fielded reasonably often, especially in Chit games as described in one of my early posts on Chit Game here.

25mm ECW (Hinchliffe with just the odd Minifig, Warrior or Garrison interloper)

These were mostly Lee Gramson's collection from his now defunct 'Going Back to the English Civil War' blog.  We had corresponded via that blog when he said he wanted to sell the collection as he was moving to Spain, I jumped in the car and drove down to Hythe (IIRC) to pick them up.  My incipient OCD forced me to re-base and re-retouch many of the figures, including: head-swaps; replacing Blu-tack modelled elements with Milliput; adding reins to the horses; replacing swords with steel rod; and, painting new aluminium-foil flags.  The latter was triggered by the kind present of a hand-painted Royal Standard from 'Wellington Man' of the 'Hinton Spieler' blog ...

... which encouraged me to get back into painting flags rather than printing them.

What I was surprised to find during this project, was that I found it much easier to refurbish old figures rather than start from scratch with bare castings, and all this work was done in far less time than I had feared.  I have since added several units to expand the collection further, and Hesilrigge’s Lobsters are the only unit left on my 'To Do' list.  I am pleased to say that these have become one of my favourite collections and get regular use and should be familiar to readers of this blog, like their last post here.

30mm Toy Soldiers (Spencer Smith Miniatures - SSM)

My SSM War of Austrian Succession (WAS) collection, like the ECW collection above, is another of my favourites but unfortunately gets less use than I would like.  I'm also waiting on the new owner of the Spencer Smith moulds to put them back production to complete a few loose ends.

The genesis of this project, inspired by the 'Charge' rule-set, was one of my earliest posts (here) so I won't repeat it here.  Several battle reports are also posted, including a five part series on a refight of the Batte of Mollwitz (here).

15mm 1745 Jacobite (Essex Miniatures plus the odd Freikorps)

This project was started after reading a blog on adapting DBA for the '45 Jacobite Rebellion, and seeing the very nice 15mm Essex highlander sculpts.  It stalled a bit when I found that the rules didn't give a very good game but the project was rejuvenated (and re-based!) by the use of Sam Mustafa's 'Maurice' rules for the '45 on the 'Shrine of Sadness' blog.  

They don't get a lot of use and I think this post is the only time they've featured on the blog. 

6mm Napoleonics (Heroics & Ros, with some Adler artillery)

When these came out in the 70s, they were the ideal answer for students short of cash, space and time to paint.  A group of us all picked an army, and I chose the Prussians (post 1808) and now have three 'brigades' (a Prussian brigade was the equivalent of other nations' divisions) each in its own magnetic storage box like the 'East Prussian Brigade' shown below.

Unfortunately, the problem with everyone doing a different army became apparent when the guy with the French emigrated after Uni leaving lots of allies with no enemies so I also started to put together some French.  I now have four French divisions based on Reille's Corps at Quatre Bras plus Kellerman's entire cavalry corps - at a figure ratio of 1:12 for infantry and 1:15 for cavalry.

Better still new wargaming colleagues have built Austrian, Bavarian and French forces one, even built some sculpted terrain for Waterloo.

The rules for these games have typically been home-grown, based on many others, but recently we've been getting good games using Neil Thomas' 'Napoleonic Wargame Rules' (NTNWR) - the latest being here, and it's likely that, with a few mods, we'll stick with these for a bit.

20mm Vintage Naps (Hinton Hunt, Alberken, DK, etc. - mostly copies I fear)

This project is entirely down to bloggers like 'The Hinton Spieler', 'Hinton Hunt Vintage Wargame Figures' and others who seduced me with the charm (yes, I know it's subjective) of glossy vintage 20mm Napoleonics.

I have a long way to go to get anywhere near completing the planned armies, and the number of unpainted castings in the loft is a bit disconcerting, but at least I've now done enough for a game, the last being here.

28mm Old West Gunfights (Guernsey Foundry)

This project was originally built for use with 'The Rules With No Name' by Bryan Ansell, a free download from Wargames Foundry who now produce these figures.  They have also benefitted from being one of the few projects for which I've actually put together a decent amount of terrain - in this case a scratch-built township.

Nowadays, they tend to be used with the Too Fat Lardies 'What a Cowboy' rules, but have so far only made a single appearance on the blog here.

 

1:2400 Russo-Japanese Naval (Panzerschiffe)

Inspired by a campaign system by David Manley published in both Miniature Wargames (MW) and Wargames Illustrated (WI), this project proved very quick to complete with resin ships from Panzerschiffe.  The entire campaign as played has been posted in four parts: Intro; Part 1; Part 2; and, Part 4.

Wings of War (Commercial 1:1444 WW1) 

Not much to say here, as it's a complete game system produced commercially, requiring no modelling or painting so hardly a 'project'.

20mm WW2 Normandy (FAA, SHQ, MMS, et al)

This project originated with an article entitled 'BOCAGE ‘44' by Andrew Grainger in WI#15 with rules for fighting an Infantry platoon in Normandy.  I was drawn to this by the way troops were more often pinned by fire rather than killed or wounded.  For this I put together an infantry company of three platoons (at about 80% strength) and a troop of tanks (3 Cromwells & 1 Firefly).  I then ran games as a 'Dungeon Master' with players commanding a platoon troop and working together to achieve an objective against a motley collection of Germans.  I as umpire would roll to see if any enemy were present every time players exposed themselves to a new line of sight - the games had a real sense of jeopardy.

But then along came Chain of Command (CoC) and the collection is now used almost exclusively for that.

1/1200 WW2 Fletcher Pratt Naval (Airfix)

Although they haven't been used for some time now, I still consider this project active, but it requires a church hall or similar to play.  These very old rules, that had predicted the demise of the Graf Spee if she met a group of cruisers are very simple but give really convincing results.  At my last club we fought every action of the Bismarck's short career and got an almost identical result to history in every case.  Unfortunately, there's a lack of 1:1200 kits, I had to kit-bash an HMS Prince of Wales to make a Rodney ...

... and getting up and down from the floor plays havoc with my knees so, I'm not sure these will get run out again - shame.

 

28mm LotR Breaking of the Fellowship (Games Workshop)

A lovely quick project that allowed me to game with Games Workshop's (GW) delightful Lord of the Rings figure range - I wanted to paint some figures but didn't want to build armies.  I designed a game to just represent the breaking of the Fellowship from when Frodo has fled from Boromir who tried to take the Ring, until he departs, leaving his companions behind, to take on the quest to Mordor by himself or, hopefully, with Samwise.

The use of playing cards for a very simple movement and combat system was stolen from a Three Musketeers participation game I saw at a convention, and the 'hidden movement' system I read about somewhere so long ago I don't recall where.  This was all described here.

28mm LotR Dragon Rampant (Games Workshop)

This project was really just an expansion of the Fellowship project - see above.  I had been picking up cheap GW LotR figures from eBay for a while with view to doing different scenarios when I encountered the Dragon Rampant rule-set.  This fired me up to send off the stored plastic to Fernando Enterprises for painting as I knew I'd never spare the time from my historical projects for this.  The end result, some fun games of Dragon Rampant like that here.

Well, that's all for this instalment of the potted history of my wargaming projects past, present and future, the previous instalment can be found here.

Old Boys Weekend - Game 3 of 3

The Battle of Neumarkt Sankt Veit, 24 April 1809.

A refight of the action at Neumarkt Sankt Veit (hereafter just Neumarkt) which saw a Franco-Bavarian force led by Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières face an Austrian army commanded by Johann von Hiller.  Hiller's numerically superior force won a victory, forcing Bessières to retreat to the west.

For this we used, a slightly tweaked version of Neil Thomas' "Napoleonic Wargame Rules" (NTNWR) as from an earlier trial games (here and here) we all felt they "had something".

The Scenario

The scenario was shamelessly copied from Jemima Fawr's Miniature Wargames Blog (here) - go to her blog for a map - modified slightly for our 6mm troops.  My interpretation of this is shown below, viewed from the south-west, the top left corner, as viewed, being north.  The roads were all frantically cut out of sheets of coloured card on the Thursday before the weekend - not great but, held down with small tabs of double-sided tape, they do the job.  

And again, from the north-east ...

... and a repeat, this time with the crossings named, and the various formations outlined: the Austrians in yellow; Bavarians in light blue; and, French in mid blue.

While the Austrians were intended to have much of their army off-table, a mistake in setting up meant there were fewer troops than there should be on-table at the start.  This was rectified in the game by them magically appearing in the first turn.

I had intended running this as an open game, i.e. all players aware of what was the scenario entailed, but with the Franco-Bavarian army tasked with getting all its troops across the river, before it could withdraw them to avoid the overwhelming Austrian force.  The other players (Steve, Martin and Keith) all however said they would prefer to play knowing no more than the real commanders did.  So, I briefed them on what was known to their commanders, and, as I was also playing, undertook to act in the same way; they're a trusting bunch.

The Battle

This game was very absorbing, and I was very absorbed.  What I mean by this is that I forgot to take many photos so, this will be brief and front-loaded.

My main issue, as the French, was how to get all my troops quickly over the river as they were all jammed around Neumarkt.  Some of my cavalry, no doubt frustrated by this bottle-neck, were already looking to go home (if you can spot them).

Martin, the Bavarian commander, had the opposite problem, with all his brigades, except his cavalry, across the river, widely spread and in danger of being defeated in detail.

At least he had his artillery nicely deployed and waiting for any Austrians who might show up.

And show up they did, some as if magically appearing from nowhere (courtesy of the deployment cock-up noted above).

Back on the other side of the river, my French were caught on the hop, and lost precious time having to get into march columns.  Realising it would take too long to get everyone over the Neumarkt bridge, they sent their guns and one division to cross the bridge to their right (Hundham), and another division and a brigade of cavalry to the bridge to their left (Kinming).  Their cavalry crossing at Neumarkt, thanks to another terrible staff blunder, only moved at infantry marching pace - D'oh!

The Bavarians, by contrast were expecting something of the sort, and not surprised by the appearance of more Austrians, were ready and waiting.

And their guns bid the Kaiserliks welcome.

Similarly, the Bavarian cavalry was ready in march column to cross the river at Hundham with the minimum of fuss.  Hopefully they would be well clear before my forming march columns of infantry arrived to use it.

The Austrians continued their advance and yet more arrived.  The French were still in some confusion, and their cavalry continued to move at infantry speeds - saving their horses?  Also, it was rapidly becoming apparent that crossing at Kinming and Hundham was going to take longer than doing so at Neumarkt, as the bridge there was already clear.  But, order, counter-order, disorder, convinced me it was better to stick to the plan than change it.  Also, the plan would deliver a consolidated French division with cavalry support to both of the threatened Bavarian wings, or so I reasoned to myself.

In the centre the Austrians had parted like the Red Sea to escape the Bavarian artillery.

But yet more Austrians were still arriving.

The overall situation was starting to look grim, with the Franco-Bavarians pinned against the river and many troops still to cross; one French brigade had been marched past the Hundham crossing and was making for the Wolfsberg bridge to strengthen the right flank currently only held by light cavalry.

And just in case it's not clear which side is which, the image is repeated below with a broken red line separating the two sides, Franco-Bavarians to the right and Austrians to the left.

Shortly after the French started crossing at Kinming to stop the Bavarian right flank being turned, yet more Austrians appeared.  This time on the French side of the river and marching towards the Kinming bridge.  Luckily the second French infantry brigade had not yet crossed so it hastily deployed into line, while that in the act of crossing did an about face and retraced its steps.

The rest of the battlefield at this point is shown in the image below, the leading units of the newly arrived Austrians (actually my Prussian figures masquerading as Austrians) can be seen just on the edge at the bottom right of the image.

At this point it was clear that retreating back across the river was the only safe option for the French and Bavarians, but was it even possible now?  The Austrians weren't helping as they started to press harder in the centre to make any withdrawal hazardous at best - we hadn't been placing smoke for musket volleys but the units in the image were exchanging fire.

On the French right around Hundham, the recently crossed infantry brigade continued to advance to cover the withdrawal of the light cavalry and the guns who were already making back towards the bridges.

On the French left, they had actually gone onto the attack to try and keep the Austrians [Prussians] from taking the bridge at Kinming.  The first French infantry brigade successfully drove back the enemy brigade at bayonet point several times, while, through the most egregiously lucky dice rolls, escaping all harm from the musketry of the second enemy brigade (again a shocking lack of smoke in the picture).

While this was taking place, the French light cavalry (Hessen-Darmstädt Chevauxlegers?), in the absence of the infantry that was to have crossed at Kinming to join them, had to sacrifice itself in taking on the Austrian infantry to protect the Bavarian's flank.

Their sacrifice was followed by that of the gallant infantry brigade that had been fighting to hold the Kinming bridge.  In its weakened state, after eventually routing the opposing infantry brigade, it was attacked and routed in turn by some Austrian light cavalry (Uhlans).

Unfortunately, at this point we had to call time and agree the outcome.

The bridge at Kinming was still heavily contested and not really available to either side to use, but with the French light cavalry destroyed trying to hold off the Austrian infantry, the leftmost Bavarian infantry brigade was about to be rolled up from the flank.

Similarly, their brigade on their right flank, while holding its own against the Austrian brigade to its front, would soon find itself outflanked after the Bavarian cavalry brigade to its right was driven off (cavalry do not fare well attacking fresh infantry frontally).  Also, the enemy infantry to its front was about to be reinforced by a brigade of grenadiers.

To add to the Bavarian's troubles the French on the right flank, despite having only just crossed the river, had, almost all, managed to withdraw back across the river using both the Hundham and Wolfsberg bridges.  This left the Bavarian cavalry exposed and unsupported, other than by the French artillery now safely deployed on their side of the river.

A quick look at the casualties removed, and we agreed that the battle had largely replicated the historical result, albeit with both sides taking heavier losses, a not unusual finding with most sets of wargame rules. 

Post Mortem

While we had not 'finished' the battle (although we had a clear result), and much time was spent manoeuvring rather than fighting, we agreed that it had been an interesting scenario and an enjoyable game.  And what's more, the difficulty manoeuvring brigades through a fairly cluttered environment, was judged to have given a real sense of the command and control problems in trying to get one's force where needed, when required.

In short, we all felt that these rules, despite their inherent simplicity are a very effective set and we will undoubtedly be playing them again.