TRUMPETER SALUTE 2011
Convention in Review

A review from my attendance at the April 1-2-3 event.

Overall I'd rate the event a 7/10 on my games convention scale.

I spent most of the Friday night, April 1 doing a lot of 'catch-up' with the lower mainland of BC tabletop game players. Many of whom had also not come to a Salute event for a few years also. I even managed to connect with a few Vancouver Island players, including a new one that lives not far south of me here.

I was with my sons in the event, so I was careful to monitor them as they got into games and made connections with the adults in the game play atmosphere.

Now some visuals:




On Friday there was a best of session game run by Colin Upton, using a modified Sword and the Flame and his own 'flavor'.







I counted 6 players and at one point there must have been 20 crowded around the table.



My boys were attracted to the LEGO and Canvas Eagles WWI aerial combats.







Also going on during the Friday were WWII games (there were a lot of these at the event - much more than I have ever seen before), including a Squad Leader looking one...sadly the GM was not to be found.








John Westra was also doing his WWII fighters in "Check you Six".





Saturday brought a new set of tabletop opportunities.

The boys got into Star Wars minis battles (using the plastic ones) and more Lego.

I did a skirmish game with Doug Hamm, of Larry Leadhead fame, and his innovative approach to using cards as part of the movement system brought a new set of ideas for me in skirmish action games.

Then came the 'main event' Battle of the Piave River using SHAKO II rules with Chris Leach in attendance to give some rules clarifications.








Having been a player in Shako before (not version 2) I was tasked at Eugene de Beauharnais, commanding the Army of Italy. The combination of great painted minis, well done terrain and really good sportsmanship on the part of everyone involved led to a "BEST of SESSION" award for the game. The added bonus of commanding a French Victory helped my spirits.


Here is the Austrian final position as seen from Macdonald's HQ


Here is the Italian-French position as seen from Eugene's HQ


Part of the bonus I did get in a game with Colin Upton for the first time!



As a team on a winning side!

Saturday wrapped up for me with an Age of Reason rule re-fight of Minden. Amazingly enough I got tasked to the French side again teamed up with Colin Upton.

It took me a bit of review to get the rules clear again on AoR, once I had it clear we saw the best way to setup and got another victory as the British player chose to come forward with only 1/3 of his cavalry and I sent ALL of the French Cavalry after it. The British horse was routed, then the close combats got bogged down with infantry. No action on the part of the Prussians could change the result... their right flank was gone and French horse was ready to unleash behind the main Prussian lines.

Sunday brought a lighter crowd and I had my SHAKO game, a small action decided by the players as neither had ever played before. I had them roll for terrain and layed out the tabletop accordingly.

Some British and Spanish vs French in the peninsula.




With a very aggressive plan the French Player essentially RAN straight at the British lines. Their cavalry appeared on the flank as planned and cut down the British Light Dragoons, sadly the French chose to approach in columns and this cost dearly as the Royal Foot Artillery blew away one battalion and one more collapsed under the combined weight of fire from British Foot and a bayonet charge into the fresh British lines. The French cause was lost and they would soon be in retreat.

The game was excellent for demonstrating how fast from set up to conclusion of action a simple game could be. We were done in 2 hrs 15 mins.

Just as we completed a reporter from the Burnaby Now arrived and did a series of photos ... I plan to show links to them once I find out where they are.

I then did a Shako discussion with a curious gamer to show how simple the overall system was, took about 20 mins to do that in the process of saying the farewells.



Colin Upton won the best of session with this Ticonderoga, using Age of Reason, game. Followed swiftly by the announcement of Colin Upton winning the BEST OF SHOW for his two session winning games! Well done Colin!

The cap off to the day was winning a draw prize and a table host draw prize!


A few vendors were present, most notable was Imperial Hobbies.



The canteen crew were fabulous.


Much fun had by all!

Napoleonic Wargaming

A new blog that I have come across is Napoleonic Wargaming, the author is currently working out campaign mapping issues.

I find it interesting as this is exactly the issues that I am struggling with for the 1809 Campaign Game that I am still working on putting into action in the not too distant future.

Computer Problems solved?

I have had a few weeks of connectivity challenges, brought on by a worm that kept on shutting down my system.

Yesterday I had to purge the whole system and clean it all off. ~sigh~


Unfortunately this also means that much of the work I had done towards the 1809 game has been wiped clean also. ~sigh~

Time for work and other higher priorities has come on and I cannot see a hole big enough for running the whole game -alone-.

I am still seeking helper players and keen tabletop gamers for the project, control systems will be more humble (in the end that may be a good thing).

It also means that many of my email addresses are lost, so if you have communicated with me in the past and have not heard from me in a while please do send me a new message (so that I can recover all those missing email contacts).

I am also still going to do the Kingdom of St. Maurice and Frankszonia battle ~ going into next week. I need the OOB for BOTH sides sooner rather than later though!

CORUNNA

Rafa Pardo of Project Leipzig (1813) has posted an excellent piece regarding the famous fighting retreat of Sir John Moore at Corunna.

Yet another of the bi-centennials of the Napoleonic era that is passing.

A Piece of the Funcken Collection online...

At long last there appears to be an online resource of the wonderful artworks of L & F Funcken.

The images from thier texts have served as inspiration for my troops and I am certain the troops of many table-top war gamers the world over.

Clash of Empires

Key players are now something of a focus, since I should have to get on with drafting them.

For the French the most important will be Napoleon, however, interestingly enough, I will not need to have this player decided on first.

Others in the French camp are Marshals Berthier, Davout, Massena, Bernadotte, Bessieres, and Lannes. Also are Generals Oudinot and Marmont. Key alternate theatre players are needed to fill the roles of Viceroy Eugene in Italy (to start) and Prince Poniatowski (in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw). That makes about 11 players potential here, with just the Corps commanders (not including the Guard = which I had thought to put in the Bonaparte player's hands).

For Austria the players will need to fill a variety of diverse roles: From the Emperor Francis I (yes his role may be filled by a referee, but an active player could also be fun = especially if they are totally separated from the tabletop actions). Archdukes Charles, John and Ferdinand round out the imperial family. From the military side there are roles for FML Nordmann, Kolowrat, Rosenberg, Louis, Keinmayer, and Hiller; GdK Bellegarde and Lichtenstein (a very important role as this commander was very much in the confidence of Archduke Charles the Generalissmus); also FZM Kolowrat. Further consideration is being given to players taking on roles like the parts of the Aulic Council, chief of staff Mayer and more political positions like Metternich.

The inclusion of personalities like Metternich also lead to considering things like the Fouche, Murat and Talleyrand plot along with the ongoing Talleyrand informant role that was going on between Talleyrand and Metternich.

Other possibilities that may be taken on by players, or left in the hands of referees are roles fr Tsar Alexander (goaded on by the Doawager Empress), King Fredrich III of Prussia (or some members of the Prussian court who are both hawks and doves) and the ever-present British hands, offering cash or a landing in the low countries to 'mix the pot'. Whom might be chosen as the 'action' part for these forces are yet to be decided.

The action areas are also going to be left more to the players design, indeed I am toying with the idea of simply naming the Austrian rump left over in 1806 and permitting the players of the Austrian forces to re-organize, recruit and train as they please for three (relative) years during the pre-game setup so that they get the sense for all the troops under their command and the supply and services that such an army needs; for this was something that the Austrian commands at least were good at.

More to do obviously but I wanted to toss all this out into the mix as fodder for the coming disucssions.

Clash of Empires
War of the 5th Coalition


At least I have a catchy name for my Coalition Wars project.

For now more development is called for.

My initial view was to try and arrange a series of games connected to the 5th Coalition, perhaps with Empires in Arms or some other boardgame being used to 'set-up' the tabletop situations. This has changed.

I reviewed Bruce Quarries suggestions to use the ONC series of maps and permit the players to fully organize their own columns. With bases, cantonments, supply lines and the like spread all over the map. I like this approach as it permits more players to take part, and expanding the game is easier.

For now I am still seeking the primary players, for Austria and France.
Still seeking some referees for the 'big picture' stuff, that will be moderated using the ONC maps, possibly scanned and then plugged into some map control or manipulation software. I am still partial to incorporating cyberboard somehow as it will permit the administration of so much of the game to be done easier and to track what is where and when in a simple way. Simplifying any parts of this game plan will be critical.

Coming up will be a search for more players and the tabletop(s) to run the game(s) on.

One thing that another technical savvy gamer pointed out recently was to try and have webcams or other 'live' inputs for the players not at the table...possibly putting the cameras down low (for a more accurate perspective), then having them 'pan' about a bit so that the web player can 'scan' the field before amending his orders...

All of these items and more are on the table at this point, more to do...including casting enough Austrians for me to paint over the wet monsoon months.

5th Coalition Wars

More thinking about the 1809 Campaign Idea.

I have reviewed Bruce Quarrie's "Napoleon's Campaigns in Miniature" again, and have resolved to work out the 'big picture' using many of the concepts he covers.

The main point being to use the Operational Navigational Chart - ONC series. It is 1:1,000,000 scale, meaning that a single milimeter on the map equals 1 km on the earth. This also makes controlling the far flung situations easier...though I am still considering working on a Cyberboard Game box to handle much of these functions simpler also.

Part of the desire to put it into some electronic form is the need to have many GM's should all the people I am contacting want to take some part...

Still musing and still taking in the emails about others thoughts regarding such a cross-continental plan.

I am also planning to use some Global Navigational Charts - GNC series to help 'manage' the really big picture!

War of the 5th Coalition:

rpardo has asked if I have any website focusing on this and I do not yet.

My first thoughts can be seen here.

I am hopeful to find as many interested gamers as possible to co-ordinate some sort of a re-creation of the 5th Coaltion.

I have recently re-read Osprey Campaign Series #33 In the back of this book there is an excellent treatise of wargaming this campaign by Dr. David Chandler.

I am keen to make some attempt at this sort of kreigspeil on as large a scale as we can possibly muster.

Dr. Chandler wrote of using a mail system to manage things, we can do this now on a planetary scale with e-mail.

I did a similar sort of thing on a smaller scale during the mid 1990's using e-mail to co-ordinate some games. The french player decided to 'quit' due to other life needs and we decided to end the game with a second French Revolution taking place in 1807. Talk about a wild series of battles!!! Davout ended up as the new 'grand general' after a massive series of battles in northern Italy. Everyone at the final battle had a great time.

We may be able to limit things more in scope so that only about the next 9-12 months will be involved.

Perhaps there are enough interested Napoleonic players or participants to pull this off?

Drop me a comment or email via the link on my information page here in blogger.

Austrian Infantry booster done.

The white coated infantry you have seen moving thru its progress over the past few months is now done.

69 more foot troops added to the Austrian forces I have already.

You can see some bare metal beside these militia troops (in top hats I love them, they look so very different from the 'Line' troops), they are the second wave of red coats that I need to get base coated this week and press on with the painting progress. The aim is to put brush to metal daily this month!

Progress on Austrians.

The last batch of Austrians may be ready to finish this week (provided I can spare the time...)



The muskets are all 'wooded' now and packs etc are filled in. Next up will be barrels & bindings then some metallics.

Then will be the last 'white' layer on the tops of the uniforms and then the collars & cuffs.

Finally will be the minwax 'dip' coat. Something I hope to be doing by sunday!

More progress...

Brush action tonight, at least an hour or so.

Got more done on the Austrian Infantry, did a layer on the Hussars and managed to get 4 battalions of British Infantry mounted to the painting sticks (after cleaning during the week).

The painting spaces have also been re-vamped so I should be able to get in 1/2 hour or so a day in painting time. Something I shall need in order to get the British Peninsular forces whipped into shape in time for Vimeiro (and likely more Peninsular actions afterwards)!

Busy brushes.

Also today I managed to get in a few hours of painting time (though interrupted many times).

The Austrian Infantry must be done this month, I am working hard to get the cavalry done at the same time.


Must clear the project space for all those red coats!