English Civil War battlefield meeting engagement discussion

Over at Grid based wargaming - but not always an interesting tabletop setup system has been advertised.

my new terrain cards ... ready for first action in November 2019

Amazingly enough it is almost exactly what I had designed into my 12"x12" terrain tiles for DBA and Hordes of the Things back in the 1990s.

The difference here is that the terrain is for 'layout' in the open tabletop rather than the grid of squares that my DBA system was.  Since my terrain tiles were fixed in place (for the hills and forest spaces and swampy ground) there was limited 'adjustment' that could be done, though I had put the terrain in an 'off center' location that allowed for the spinning of the terrain tile to move the non-clear space to where it was *more or less* desired.  As a quick throw-down system to complement the quick DBA system it was more than adequate.  The problem was it was so heavy, being made of 3/4" plywood and sand.

So now I shall engage with these new cards and see what comes.

The next game is to 'set-up' our coming ECW campaign idea and see where it all leads.
I think I'll do up the random cards as well and give them a go ...

Next up ECW in November, along with a poker night and a return to Pulp!

Campaigning season nearing an opening?

recently reviewed titles

I have been away on a road trip with family, during the little down time I had (#1 driver on a 7800 km round trip over 14 days), I managed to get in a re-reading of the Grant and Bath titles.

While Tony Bath did have some interesting input for just the ACW period, sadly most of his work revolved around the details of a long-running Hyborean game that he had run in the 1970s and was very much an ancients and points system tour-de-force.  GDW must have been happy with any 'uptick' in sales after his product hit the shelves.

Grant was more of a generic approach and touched on loads of subjects in all time-periods and even some of the speculative fiction in high-tech and fantasy realms.

The Nanaimo group has been discussing a campaign in ACW for some time now and I have put in a few immediate observances from my 21+ years of running Napoleonic (100 Days and Campaign of Nations) and Sci-Fi (Battletech mostly) minis campaigns on written postal, email and electronic forum systems as well as playing in at least three 'local' campaigns with Jeff Hudelson (of BlueBear fame).

The responses prompted me to review these titles so as to come at the resolution from a text supported point of view.

As this is potentially a local based game with email as a control factor, two methods come to the forefront by Bath and Grant:

Mini Campaigns (p61. of "Setting up a Wargames Campaign")

For this a series of teams of twos or threes were used.

While Tony did it with ancients and Wars of the Roses, we could just as easily use this for ACW:

Each 'side' breaks their available forces into three parts, then decides on the strength of forces to engage on one of three battlefields (which could be blind random or known by both sides and thus make overall plans for), with retreating forces kept track as well as the surviving winning forces (with each side having some recovery of wounded and routed troops, as well as the winning force on a field getting better re-supply) for a 'final push' game where the winner of the best of three takes on the looser of the best of three with the surviving attacking forces against the surviving retreating forces.

Thus you could see the first two battles going to one side and the third battle simply conceded, with a sacrificial blocking force to allow the majority of the troops to retire to the 'final battle' to attempt to shore up the final defender forces.  Alternately the first two might split and make the third an all important tie-breaker and deciding battle for who will be having a chance to conquer and who will need to last-stand defend.

Okay, so much for something quick, as this will only take four table-top encounters to come to a conclusion, Bath writes about 'mini-campaigns' as something to fill in while a larger one is being organized or when a larger campaign has 'gone quiet' and isn't generating the expected field battles.

four battle mini-campaign

The Use of Board Games (Chapter 23, p134-136, "Wargames Campaigns")

Here Grant uses a full chapter to expound on the value of using already existing board-based war-games to conduct the 'strategic' or 'operational' level of movement on the board map system, then convert the 'encounter battles' to the appropriate tabletop system that you may already be using to run the miniature battles.

While Grant admits to not having used the system himself, he vouches, as do I, for the effectiveness of using such games.

Columbia Games has a pair of games to simulate the American Civil War from the grand strategic point of view in Virginia, with Bobby Lee and in the west with Sam Grant

Here I leave a copy of the map from Sam Grant, as the discussion has been revolving around using the war in the west as the basis for a series of connected battle actions, hence a campaign.

Sam Grant map from Columbia Games

What campaign effects and systems have you used?
What were the results?

Campaign of Nations - Cyberboard tools complete

The cyberboard game box for the Campaign of Nations (1813) has been sent out to the prospective players today.

In another week I plan to set up some conversations about the game and start a test run.

Just the 'pieces' on the map, no details as you need to have cyberboard to get that data

For now I share with you, dear readers, this sample map from the game box.

Maloyaroslavets - Post Action Fast Update

Maloyaroslavets tabletop for the Dak-Kon game

Here, seen from directly above is the tabletop map for the Maloyaroslavets game that I ran at the Dak-Kon games event in Courtenay over the past weekend.

I had the space to spread out more, though I decided to stay compact with the one tower of minis for storage before use in the game.

Dak-Kon 17 Maloyaroslavets game setup ready to deploy troops

I have plans for a full AAR in the next couple of days.

Battle of Smolensk V - 18th August

Campaign map of Smolensk

Throughout the 18th very little activity took place, clear evidence of Napoleon's lack of drive, but by the end of the day most of Ney's men were over the newly repaired bridge, Junot's corps had arrived outside the city, and the leading units of the IV Corps were close by.  On the Russian side, the day saw the final breakdown of cooperation between Barclay and Bagration.  The latter, on his own authority, set out with is men for Solovievo, leaving only four regiments of Cossacks to hold the vital crossroads at Lubino, 18 miles east of Smolensk.  It was only late in the evening that Barclay's army began to follow their comrades.  All day, therefore, Napoleon missed a fine opportunity of placing part of his army between the two Russian forces.  A single corps would have sufficed for the task.  This inaction is partly explained by his uncertainty as to whether the foe were heading north or east, but Napoleon's abilities seem to have been in temporary eclipse.

~ D. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, p.788

Battle of Smolensk III - 17th August

Battle of Smolensk

The 17th saw a great deal of confused fighting in the suburbs, as the three French Corps attempted to storm the city, but for all their gallantry the French proved incapable of penetrating the main defenses, although their guns were pounding the houses of the Old City into rubble or blazing ruins.  Doctorov clung grimly to his main positions, and when dusk fell the French had little to show for their pains apart from 10,000 casualties.  The Russians lost between 12-14,000 men during the two days' fighting.

~ D. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, p. 786

A Russia Campaign Mappe

I have been fiddling around with the maps again and this time came up with a huge Russian Campaign Mappe.

Campaign Map of East Prussia, Baltic and Russia

I plan to incorporate the map into a Cyberboard game box.

The one here is a .jpg that has been compressed so that it would not take up too much memory space or take too long to load.

Battle of PULTUSK



Glancing through my collection of Napoleonic books I found the Dec 26, 1806 battle, ok ACTION, of PULTUSK as the destruction of Prussia was winding down and the Russians were continuing to retreat, one commander General Bennigsen, chose to turn and fight one last time. Marshal Lannes commanded the infamous V Corps of the Grand Armee and was to receive support from the 3rd Division of the equally famous III Corps.

I have compiled the photos and an AAR will be coming later this week.

Vauban Fortifications

Amazing photos at this site, many thanks to Frankfurter of Frankzonia for bringing this to our attention!

1809 Campaign continues to dominate my planning and thoughts.

I have plenty of Austrians in helmets to paint and many Frenchmen that should serve as a variety of forces in any campaign game.

Currently I have been assembling a map and control system for use across the internet so that the massive moving armies can be properly accounted for in their movements.

This way great encounters should be able to be organized...from the single piquet actions to the company assaults at bridges over the Danube like Regensberg...to field actions such as Sacile and Raab.

I do not have the forces needed to do such massive things as Aspern-Essling or Wagram...though I could do smaller 'parts' of these great battles, I think it would be great to connect with some other gamers to run a massive series of battles over the summer months ... possibly connecting with some gamers that can simulate something like Essling or Wagram.

Drop me an email if you think you might like to take part.

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!

Fantastic Central European Map!

Rpardo of Project Leipzig (1813) has found the most amazing map of south central europe, centerted around Austria-Hungary.

First published around 1910, so it includes the railways, however the detail is excellent and all place names have their proper Germanic spellings!

If you are looking to have more 'actual' window dressings in your campaign games and your game takes place in the region covered then this site has all that you need!

3rd Military Mapping Survey of Austria-Hungary