Austin,College Station, Dallas, Ft.Worth,
Houston, Midland, San Antonio, Waco

We ran two games this Sunday at GHG. One was a four-player Field of Glory game and the other was a four-player Lasalle game.

The Field of Glory game matched up Greeks versus Carthage in North Africa. I don’t have a lot of details on this game but hopefully David McClellan or Fred Askew will chime in and let us know what happend.

Leftmost: Here is an overview of the table setup. This was a very terrain-crowded table with several fields, hills, a big copse of woods in the center of the board, and a village.

Left: Bob and Alvero look quite happy at the start of the game. They are running the French and are defending.

Right: This French Chevauleger regiment has wandered into a veritable firestorm of Russian fire.

Rightmost: The Russian cuirassiers finally wander onto the table on turn 9 and make thier presence felt.

This was a very interesting battle. Bob Huey and Alvero Erize (Francisco’s brother who was visiting from Argentina) ran a Liberation period French army with an organic light cavalry support option. Francisco and I ran Russians with a corps cavalry support option. The French were defending and they had a lot of channeling and blocking terrain to help them. However, since they had all their troops at the start of the game and we had to roll to bring in our cuirassier brigade the French boldly advanced out to attack the Russians and make them earn their way to the objective. There was a lot more jockeying around for position than I had seen in previous Lasalle games and casualties were very light. Sadly my heavy cavalry did not make it on the board until turn nine. I blew past Alvero’s lightly held flank and destroyed one of the french gun batteries, but a plowed field slowed my advance to the objective and the game ended on turn 19 with me a good two turns away from capturing the objective. The game was a draw and it took about 3 and half hours to play.

Finally, after many years, we seem to have stumbled on a set of Napoleonic rules set that more than three people will play. Do you want to find out what all the Napoleonic hubbub is about? The guys at GreatHall Games will be running a game day dedicated to playing Lasalle the last sunday in February. We will have several loaner armies available and plenty of sub-commands for those who want to give the game a go but don’t have any troops based for the game (yet )

Come on out and give Lasalle a try!!!

Dave da Happy Nappy

By Dave da Webhead

I was really suprised at the club turnout on Valentines day. There were about 15-18 folks at GHG and four different games were being played. Kevin Dunn set up a 28mm Edgehill battle using playtest version of Field of Glory Rennaisance. William ran the latest version of Frank Chadwick’s Command Decision game in 10mm. Several guys from Austin and some vistors from San Antonio played a big Field of Glory ancients game. Finally, Jim, John Annhaiser, and I played Lasalle.

The seven pictures above were taken during the big English Civil War game. Kevin Dunn set up Edgehill. We have played this battle several times over the years using several different rules sets. Lance, Dave Allnutt, and Rob Smith joined in the fun for this game. I talked to Rob briefly after the game and he said the battle was inconclusive but a lot of fun.

William, Francisco, Bob, and Frank played the new version of Command Decision with 10mm figures. The GDW edition of Command Decision was all the rage way back in the early 90’s when we playing on the UT campus. It will be intersting to see if this new edition makes in inroads into the Flames of War crowd. They were still playing when I left so I didn’t get to ask them how the game turned out and if they liked the version of the rules or no.

There was a four-player game of Field of Glory ancients and we had a couple of guys from San Antonio pop in to join in on the fun.

Last, but not least, Jim, John, and I played Lasalle. Jim ran a British infantry force with Brunswick allies and John played a Bavarian force. I ran the Brunswickers for Jim. Like all the Lasalle games I have played so far, this one was a lot of fun. I even managed to end up on the winning side for a change. John held out as the defender till turn 19. He had lost all of his infantry around turn 15 and was reduced to sending in piece-meal cavalry assaults to continue to contest the objective. Eventually his luck ran out and he blew his army morale.

by David McLellan

We played the first two scenarios of the Cactus Air Force campaign last Sunday. Francisco has provided a description of the battles. Here are a few photos of the first engagement. I’ll post more from the second battle later.

Taking the Measure
4 Wildcats (one Vet) against 6 Zeros

1. Wildcat formation close up
2. Zero formation close up
3. Initial setup long view
4. Closing for action – long view

5. Head on pass – turn 6 first firing– one Zero receives airframe damage
6. The furball grows
7. First blood to the Americans. Guess which plane had airframe damage and failed a maneuver check?
8. But the Japanese strike back
9. And strike again for two more kills.

At this point the Wildcat vet dove out and we moved on to the next scenario.

I forgot all about this but the Millenniumcon 12 photo album is on the Millenniumcon 12 website… I put it up in November but forgot to tell many people …
http://www.millenniumcon.com

It took a little experimentation but I finally figured out how this version of Wordpress works with the ‘target=_blank’ image attribute. It seems to change with each new version but I have it figured out now and can update other folks posts so their images pop up in a new window when you click on them. Wordpress has a plugin that is supposed to do this by default. I installed it but its not working so I have to edit posts by hand to make the target=_blank work at the moment.

Dave da webhead

by David McLellan

There were four games taking place this Sunday. I’ll give a brief photo essay of the games. I’ll also ask forgiveness in advance if I get any names wrong and promise to do better in the future.

1. Hank (Successors?) prepares to take on Bob (Syracuse) in FOG
2. Hank’s pike block gets into Bob’s spearmen leading to a decisive victory.
3. Will, Chris and Danny are playing FWC Skirmish. No idea how this came out.

4. Biff and Chris overlook their allied setup in an FOG game. I think they had British Paras and American Infantry.
5. Mark moves some of his Germans. Justin contributed an Italian force to the Axis side.
6. Near the end of the game, the allies hold a river line against the Axis advance. This was a large game with 3000 to 3500 points on each side. Looks like a good time was had by them.

Several of us started the Check your Six Cactus Air Force campaign. We played out the first two scenarios. I plan to write up a more detailed battle report on this game and post it later this week.
7. First battle, Six Zeros take on four Wildcats. 3 Wildcats lost at a cost of one Zero. Banzai!
8. Eight Zeros escort five Kates in an attack on Henderson Field. Eight Wildcats defend. Details are sketchy on the outcome of this one.

Sorry for any site inaccessibility problems lately. Our host has been upgrading their servers, and it appears a password file was corrupted. No worries, all the LSHM files are backed-up regularly by the site host and the local LSHM admins.

In the meantime, please enjoy this photo of a WWII era Chi Ha tank. The model is 1/72nd scale. The Museum of the Pacific in Fredricksburg has one of these in their re-enactment collection.

by David McLellan

Kevin D set up a Black Powder learning game. It was the “not-Shiloh” battle from the examples in the rule book.

Bob H, Kevin S, and Sander commanded the Rebel brigades, with Chuck in overall command.

David M, Phillip, and Lance led the Union brigades with Randy as Union commander.

Here you see the Union camp and setup as well as the initial two Confederate turns. We became experienced with evading charges and fire combat, as well as giving and executing movement orders.

The Union advance continues. Sander takes up a blocking position on the Rebel right flank and disorders the Union battery and one regiment with accurate fire. Kevin rolls a blunder when attempting to charge the Union pickes - and gets … charge nearest enemy for his blunder move.

We see some action in the town as Phillip’s reserves enter and Lance sends one regiment across the bridge. Sander and David trade fire for a few turns, and David’s Union troops close to close range. Randy makes use of the CO to remove casualty points, and finally one of Sander’s regiments breaks. His brigade also reaches its brigade failure point at the same time.
Note that Reb artillery. Kevin rolled another blunder and got to charge nearest enemy with the artillery, placing them on the flank of the Union brigades that had damaged Sander. My brigade was close to breaking as well, but I managed to hold on.

You can see action at a distance between Bob and Lance. I lost track of what was happening over there.
The Union cavalry seemed to fail it movement rolls often, and just got into position as the game was ending. In my best Judson Kilpatrick imitation, I ordered them to charge the shaken and disordered Rebel infantry. Not a good idea. I pushed the infantry back, but nearly went shaken as well as taking another try at making my entire brigade shaken.

By Dave da webhead

A number of us old Napoleonic grognards and not a few newcomers to napoleonic wargaming are turning to a recently published ruleset titled Lasalle, by Sam Mustafa to rekindle or in the case of the newcomers start our interest in Napoleonic wargaming.

Napoleonics is one of those wargaming periods that for some reason tends to fractionalize its player base. Back in 80’s when I first started playing it was the feud between Empire, Napoleon’s Battles, and Column Line and Square. Then Piquet came on the scene and folks seem to either love or loathe that rules set.

For a number of years recently, at least here in Austin, Napoleonics seemed to lie pretty much dormant with a few cabals playing their favorite rules set in the garage but nothing much went on at the club Napoleonics-wise. Now comes Lasalle. This is a tactical rules set and the scale of play is pretty much a division or so on a side. The rules are very professionally presented and written with the novice rather than the veteran player in mind. Probably the best feature of Lasalle is the army builder system in the back of the book. This is basically a scenario generator that allows two players to get together and design a scenario on the fly. It can also be used for tournament play. The average game time for an army-builder scenario is 2 to 3 hours.

The turn sequence is a little odd for veteran gamers but it seems to work well. The troop ratings are a little homogonized and no allowances are made for units with unique battle histories (nothing special about the Prussian totenkopf hussars, French 10th or 57th ligne, etc.) but there is nothing to prevent you from adjusting things a bit if you want to create a historical scenario and not use the army-builder system.

All in all, I am excited about Lasalle and encouraged by the number of folks in the club who have expressed an interest in the rules. We are planning to run a Lasalle boot camp at Great Hall Games tentatively scheduled for February 28. I know at least a few loaner armies will be available for folks who want to try the game but don’t have an army for it.

MAY 21 – 23, 2010
Sheraton Hotel – Fort Worth
1701 Commerce Street
Ft. Worth, TX 76102
Phone (817) 335-7000
www.sheratonfortworth.com

Be part of history. Join us for our Inaugural Year! Whether you are an experienced gamer or a novice, we will have the right games just for you. Miniature Games – Board Games – Role-Playing Games
Bring in a game and find people to play! If you’re interested in signing up to be a Game Master, contact Matt at msims@swbell.net.

For more information, check out our website: www.texicon.net.

Pre-Registration Prices: $25/day or $35 for the entire convention. At The Door: $40 for the entire convention. Space is limited to 200 people per day. Pre-register early to ensure you can attend.

Owlcon is a long-running convention featuring both role-playing events and miniatures gaming. It is held on the Rice University campus in the student center.

From the Wargames Factory -there’s a pre-order effort for plastic sci-fi minis.

Check it out:

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=40034

 I pre-ordered 12 spruces which I would use SGII rules and my bastardized Space-Hulk version of the same.

Justo
www.MAG-CON.com
832-527-4849

Our West Texas LSHM Chapter tried out “Uncharted Seas” from Spartan Games this past Saturday. We played a 725 point game, Elves vs. Dwarves, in a straight up sink or be sunk format. Andrew Becker & Mike McGrail ran a core Dwarven Fleet reinforced with 2 subs and 2 x Heavy Cruisers vs. Faron Bell’s Elven core fleet reinforced with an extra Battleship, 1 additional frigate and 2 dragon flyers. The game was very reminiscent of the old GW “Man ‘o War” and we thought it played very well.

The fleets were well balanced with the dwarves having the edge in fire power & armor and the elves being sleek, maneuverable & fast. We used the Fleet Cards which offered race specific magic & tactical cards during play. We thought these really added a great deal of flavor to the game. We used Litko tokens & small dice for game markers vs. book keeping and thought that worked very well.

We took turns setting up along the opposite board edges of our 3.5’ x 7.5 playing surface and were just outside of max range. I deployed in line of battle w/ my Elven Fleet with the cruisers in the lead, followed by my 7 frigates (divided into two squadrons) and then my 2 Battleships bringing up the rear. My two dragon flyers were set up at the other end of the board. The Dwarves were deployed running abreast with a 3 frigates on the extreme right, 2 heavy cruisers, 3 regular cruisers, 2 subs, the battleship and another squadron of 3 frigates.

I drew first blood as my dragon flyers made an acid run toward the frigates on the right and sank one of the fragile ships. As we maneuvered for positions, my superior maneuverability worked to my advantage as I ran down the middle of the dwarf cruisers with my 2 frigate squadrons and dished out damage to both port & starboard. I managed to disable a cruiser, sink a sub and damage a couple of other vessels during the maneuver. This would prove my greatest feat during the game, as the game would quickly turn against me. My two dragon flyers were “shot” down (one sustained a catastrophic hit, spewing acid all over the area which sank another dwarven frigate) and my 3 cruisers found themselves outmatched against 2 heavy and 2 regular cruisers. They began sustaining damage while only dealing superficial blows in return.

I quickly found out that I mis-deployed my Battleships to the rear, as it took quite a while for me to get them into battle. Though they are fast for a large ships, they were still quite slower than their frigate & cruiser escorts. By the time the elven battleships came into range, the dwarven cruisers had blasted thru my cruiser screen and came around my left, while the massive dwarf battleship closed range on my right. The frigates (only 4 now remaining) had run downwind and were coming back around but not before the elven capital ships began taking damage. In desperation, I rammed a cruiser and boarded the dwarf ship only to see both the crew of my battleship and the dwarf cruiser be annihilated in the action. The game ended as the remnants of my proud elven fleet limped away as the dwarves enjoyed a captured battleship & frigate as prizes. We shall be back for revenge!

We very much enjoyed the rules & system and look forward to playing again!