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

By Dave da Webhead

We did a big playtest of Rob and Scott’s Glory Napoleonic rules this Sunday. This was our first serious attempt at a non-Peninsular game. The setting was 1813 and the French (Ken, David McClellan, David Morgenthaler, and Kevin Stork) took on a hodgepodge allied force of Austrians and Russians (me, Micheal, Gordon, and Frank). We still don’t have enough figures painted up so we did some proxying from our Penisular armies but it was still a pretty game even though the figures didn’t bear close scrutiny

Left: Overview of the initial setup from the allied side of the table.
Middle: French guns deploy behind a hill ready to prolong up
Right: The allies after their first move.

The scenario was a meeting engagement with the objective a ford located in the center of the board. We rolled for terrain and I got 2 built-up areas close to the objective, two gentle hills on either side of the towns and 3 roads, all in all a pretty nice setup. The French only had one road to feed in reinforcements so I think we came out ahead on terrain deployment. Young Michael and Gordon had trouble bringing in reinforcements. This was epecially troublesome for Micheal as the French had deployed their best brigades (two Bavarian battalions, a battalion of Wurttembergers, and a Nassau battalion ) and their best artillery to face him on that flank.

Left: Michael (white t-shirt), Kevin Stork (red t-shirt), Ken (blue striped golf shirt), and Frank McReynolds (standing semi-out of frame). Note the huge Austrian battalion in column in the foreground on the left side of the table.
Middle: Micheal continues to have trouble bringing in reinforcements, I shift two of my battalions over to support him.
Right: Micheal’s gun battery gets some support from an Opelchenie battalion I just painted up (we were running them as regular troops).

Ken gets full points for aggressiveness as he sends his battalions hell-bent-for-leather into the teeth of Michael’s gun battery. Unfortunately for Ken, I bring up two supporting battalions and fire from the guns staggers his formations as the Bavarians fall behind and the Nassau battalion continues to advance. Dave Morganthaler brings up some French conscript battalions to occupy the ford and the orchard next to it. French artillery wrecks havoc as Kevin Stork has the guns well positioned and his dice rolls aren’t bad either. Bavarian Jagers move up the allied left flank and Michael doesn’t really have much to oppose him. I bring over my general to help roll for desperately needed reinforcements for that flank. I can’t remember if it was Gordon or Frank, but one of them had a general killed by artillery fire and Gordon can’t seem to get our cavalry to appear.

Left: Nassau battalion continues to advance even though the Bavarians have faltered. Michael finally gets a battalion of infantry in support. One of Dave Morganthaler’s conscript battalions reaches the ford and comes under heavy fire from my battalions in the town.
Middle: The Nassau battalion comes under murderous fire from two infantry battalions and close range canister. They break.
Right: Gotta love the look on Dave’s face when he gets the order to attack with his conscripts.

Things gets really nasty for the allies when we try to launch attacks. Gordon finally gets his hussars but they come in on the wrong road and attempt to charge the Bavarian Jagers. One of the big Austrian battalions tries to assualt a conscript french battalion. Both attackers come under murderous supporting fire especially from artillery and both attacks are bloodily repulsed. What little gains the allies have from these attacks is lost because the neither attack is properly supported.

Far Left: Nassau battalion in full flight after a valiant advance is finally broken.
Middle Left: Gordon’s Hussars (proxied with some Spanish cavalry models) finally show up but on the wrong flank.
Middle Right: Huge Austrian battalion breaks after it comes under murderous fire trying to charge.
Far Right: The hussars flee.

We get in 6 or 7 seven turns before we need to stop because its getting close to five o’clock. We determine that the battle is a bloody draw. The Allies are bloodied to the point that they can no longer sustain an attack and the French conscripts are not up to the task of pushing my Russians out of the town to take the objective. A very fun game with lots of action. A few more rules refinements are discussed post game (as per usual). We’ll see what Rob and Scott come up with after this game.

We had our first inaugural LSHM DFW Wings of War Fly In and with four of us in attendance we were able to complete a pair of games in short order. My son took the honors with his newly christened “Beagle Flyer” gaining two kills and Jeff was able to polish me off in the second game pretty much single handedly.

We used several house rules including deflection and tailing and were happy with their results all in all but as expected our games resulted in several more suggested modifications…(grognards will be grognards!).

Scott

From an email by Jim

We are going to start a Wars of the Roses online campaign here in Texas. Turns and campaign action will be conducted via the internet using Cyberboard. We will use the Kingmaker map and House Rules adapted from Kingmaker and the online Sun in Splendour game. The Cyberboard gamebox will be supplied. Written rules will be emailed to participants. Battles will be fought on the tabletop in Waco, Temple or Austin by whoever is available on engagment days. Note that you do not have to participate in the tabletop battles to participate in the campaign.  You can participate in the strategic/online portion of the game and let others fight the tabletop battles who are within driving distance to Waco.

We will be using Might of Arms for the tabletop battles. For more information, join here -

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/warsoftherosesinminiature/

I finally have the rules in a state where I am comfortable making them available on the website.  There may be some tweeks here and there but I think we are really close to a final version.  For those that aren’t aware, When Dreadnaughts Ruled the Sky is a set of rules I developed to use with the Aeronef line of Victoriana Sci-Fi airships that have become popular with a number of club members. 

Along with the rules, Francisco Erize has created a very handy spreadsheet that takes a lot of the work out of building a ship.  I am including a link to both my rules and Francisco’s spreadsheet with this article.

Here is the link to the rules set  When Dreadnaughts Ruled the Skys

Here is the link to the spreadsheet for Building Ships for WDRTS

Here is the link to the Ship Design Sheet for WDRTS

By Dave da Webhead

Last week, Mike Gesser and Richard Wheet came up from Waco to playtest Mike’s Essling scenario he plans to run at Millennium.  He is using the Napoleonic Warfare rules published by Saga and written by the late Terry Gore.  I had read these rules about a year ago and did not remember being terribly impressed by them.  I have to say that I am MUCH more favorably imposed towards these rules after having actually played them.  The unit of manuever is the infantry battalion / cavarly regiment which is a scale that I like a lot.  They are fast-play (meaning that you aren’t bogged down by charts and rules minuteau).  After playing Mike’s game, Bob Huey and I walked over to the counter and ordered a copy of the rules.

Left:  Mike Gesser (standing grey t-shirt) runs his Napoleonic scenario for us.
Right: French and Austrian forces clash at the town of Essling.

In addition to the Napoleonic game, there were a couple of FOW games being played.

Left: Russian Horde moves out in a meeting engagement scenario.
Middle:  Francisco Erize tries his hand at Flames of War - he liked it.
Right:  A couple of Hungarian vehicles.

This week Warmaster Ancients has been all the buzz at the club.  Friday night, Francisco and Mike Fischer ran a beginners clinic for people interested in Warmaster.  It was very well attended with about 6 or 7 newbies showing up.  Sunday there were two additional games of Warmaster Ancients.  All in all, I think we have about a dozen club members who are interested. building armies, or actively playing Warmaster Ancients.

Left: Chip’s Persians take on John Annhaiser’s army.
Right: Bob Huey found his 10mm Roman army and played against Martin and Jim Mundt.

Last, but not least, the third installment of the current Condotta Campaign was run.  There were six players (sadly I showed up late and had to take a bye).  Rob Smith (Imperial) played Kevin Stork (Venecian) and their game was a draw although Kevin had a moment of glory when his militia spearmen crushed an Imperial pike unit.  Kevin Dunn (Milan) played Nevyn (Swiss).  Nevyn won a smashing victory.  Lance (Papal States) played Mark McKenzie and that game was also a draw.

Left:  Group shot of the Condotta players getting underway.
Right: Lance’s Pikemen advance towards the enemy.

 Incident at Station H53 (Direct Link to Battle Report)

We had a good time and my gaming skills are once again proven. 

Later,
Scott

I’ve just returned from Cold Wars, where I got a chance to play Carnage and Glory for the first time. I found the games enjoyable and I’m leaning towards purchasing a copy. Does anyone in the LSHM group have experience with this ruleset? Playing it twice at the con gave me a good short-term feel for the game, but I was hoping someone has more extensive experience with the rules.

PS Dave maybe we should have a category for discussing various rulesets under the “articles” heading (just a thought)

Thanks,

Chris

Latest installment of the Saga of Shorty is up at:

Point Blank Home Page

Follow the “new” link to the Gamer’s Gallery (the newest links are at the top).

Rules on sale by the end of the month.

Later,
GG

From a post on the LSHM_DFW yahoogroup by Scott Clinton

For those of you who missed Scott’s post on TMP, here is the link to a Sci-Fi game he recently ran using a variant of his Point Blank rules.

http://home.swbell.net/grog1/pointblank/shortysretirement.htm

We got together here in College Station yesterday and did three playtest games of a FOW mission that I wrote. The basic concept originated as a multiplayer big table scenario, but I thought it could be turned into an interesting mission in the standard FOW 1500 point, 6′ x 4′ table format as well. This scenario represents attempts by the attacker to breach the defenders front line and push deep into his rear area before reserves can arrive to seal off the penetration. It uses some fortifications without requiring the huge mass of stuff required for a Big Push missions.

In my game, I took my Soviet lend-lease tank battalion and attacked Christian, who was fielding my panzerpioneers. The table featured a town in the very front of Christian’s deployment area, with a big hill in front of it. A wide open space on my right extended toward the rear of the table where a large hill loomed up in Christian’s rear. Christian layed a belt of wire across the hill, denying me the easyapproach for my motostrelkovaya company and a stuck a band of mines in front of the town. I had two objectives foward on my left near the town and 3 more in the rear part of the table on the right. I planned to sweep the motostrelkovaya over the nearer ones and send the mass of tanks (17 M3 Lees) across the open ground to grab the rear objectives. However, Christian deployed the platoon with the halftracks in the town (7 pioneer halftracks plus two command tracks) and that many mobile MGs forced me to deploy half the tanks into the twon as well. As the game played out, I was able to inflict heavy casualties on the infantry in the town, but could not cause them to fail morale and Christian was able to make enough clever placement of the halftracks so that they could shoot up the infantry and was eventually able to kill them off. The tanks on the right came under ambush by a platoon of Marders and created quite a spectacle with 8 burning hulls littering the plain. The BA-64s caused some minor stir, capturing a couple of the deep objectives before being mowed down by the German armored cars and the Marders. Christian was able to retake most of the objectives before the game ended, resulting in a 5-2 German win…

After our three games, we generally liked the feel and play of the mission and thought it was fun. We made a tweak to the defender’s reserves, since the attackers were disadvantaged in all three games and it should provide for a fun game. Give it a try and feel free to post comments.

Deep Battle

Later

Brian

Sorry, not much historical content in this post, but I am sure you all want to see some miniatures for the Thanksgiving holiday.

First, here is a “54 mm” Celt from the La Tene period. I hope you will enjoy this larger scale Pegaso miniature.

Second, this ventures into fantasy, but I hope you will enjoy these Lord of the Rings miniatures. I think the Game Workshop LotR skirmish rules make some excellent games. I wouldn’t mind making some historical games with these rules. I partucularly like the turn sequence: both move, both shoot, and both resolve combat simultaneously. Somewhat lessened I-go you-go.