The Guards line up ready for battle!
In an ideal world, where we all have plenty of time and unlimited resources for our hobby, we could spend hours re -enacting all the battles of the Napoleonic era, exploring the ‘what if’s’ and ‘if onlys’ of history on accurate terrain boards, with all the right troops in all the right uniforms! It would be the ‘Carlesberg wargaming club’. However, for me the reality is that I get to the club once a week on a Thursday evening and we fight a battle that lasts for about 2 hours using the troops that I have to hand with a rules system ( Black Powder) that allows an easy flow to the game on a gaming cloth with a few pieces of terrain to make it look pretty. Sure, once in a while we get to play the ‘mega’ battle on a posh table with special scenario rules and the correct force but that this is a rare exception in my gaming calender.
The real problem is that there is a tendency to just line our armies up on the table and try and win the game by breaking more of the enemies units than he breaks of yours. OK, it’s still good fun but it can get a bit repetitive. So we were looking for a quick fix to make our games a little bit different and to start to introduce a bit of narrative into the games – this is the ‘back of a fag packet’ ( in our case more likely to be the back of a crisp packet….) solution.
The Line Advances!
We quickly came up with a list of 6 simple scenarios and before our game we roll a dice to decide which scenario we will play. The exception being of course, when the same one has come up and every one groans ‘we played that last time’ – just roll again and let the dice decide. Here is the list that we are using at the moment. The intention of course is to add to them, rolling a D10 or D20 would be even more interesting!
Scenario 1 – The River
The battle is fought on a table with a river running across it. We use strips of painted paper to represent the river. It’s not the quality of scenery that you would find in Wargames Illustrated but quite adequate for a club battle. The river sections are about 12 inches long and we place a dice on each section. As a unit attempts to cross the section of river, roll the dice. On a 1 to 3 the unit will become disordered as it crosses. A roll of 4 to 6 means that the unit crosses safely. These are just our basic river rules – we have quite a few variations but these simple rules add another dimension to the game and will give commanders something else to think about when planning their battle.
Scenario 2 – One of your brigades is late!
Just pick a brigade on each side and roll a dice. The dice roll indicates on which turn ( 1 to 6 ) it arrives in your deployment zone. A variation on this scenario is to test each brigade in the army. Roll for each brigade, on a 1 or 2 ( or whatever you deem appropriate) the brigade is late. Then roll to see when the late brigades arrive. Great for players with Prussian armies…..
Scenario 3 – Flank March
The two opponents roll a dice. The winner will get the flank march option and can choose a brigade that will deploy on one of the side table edges. Roll a dice to decide which on turn ( if it’s turn 6 it can be tricky…) your brigade will arrive. When the turn arrives for deployment, roll a dice. On a 1-3 you can deploy on your left flank, 4 -6 it’s your right flank. We allow deployment anywhere on the side of the table so beware – you may have an enemy brigade that is effectively deploying in your rear!
Scenario 4 – Off Table Deployment
Both armies start off the table. Before any orders are given to a unit, roll a dice. In the first turn, on a roll of 5 or 6 you may place the unit in your deployment zone on the table and issue it with an order as usual. On this first move, movement is reduce by one order. In other words the maximum that you can move is two ‘orders worth’ of movement. You can apply the rule to individual units or brigades or a mixture of both. After that, movement is as per normal Black powder rules. On turn two, the dice required to deploy is reduced to 4,5 or 6. Turn three, you need 3 to 6, turn 4 you will need 2 to 6 and this stays in place so if you throw a one in turn 5 your brigade still will not arrive! It happens and can be quite frustrating. We rename those units as the Grouchy Brigades…
Scenario 5 – Capture the Flag!
A simple objective is placed in each half of the table. The objective is to capture the opponents objective whilst protecting your own.
Senario 6 -Pitched battle
Straight forward enough – back to the usual set up in deployment zones and beat the enemy. You can give this a bit more flavour by altering deployment zones rather than just lining up along the back of the table.
The other interesting variation is how to place the scenery. Rolling a dice for this is a good idea but we just tend to take it in turns to set the table out each week. We have had some interesting results when we have asked a non participant player from the club to set out the scenery though!
Stopped by the Cavalry!
The scenarios have certainly thrown out some interesting games. The pictures that I have used for this blog article are from our game last week where I had the Flank March. I thought that I would easily pin my opponent and out flank him with an extra brigade of three battalions of Infantry. As it turned out he held those battalions in check with his cavalry and after forcing them into square, proceeded to pound them with his artillery. I was then forced into trying to rescue my flank and more Battalions were drawn out of position and the army was eventually broken as they were pushed into square as well and shaken by artillery fire. It was the most effective use of cavalry in a Black powder game that I have seen and despite the musket fire that the cavalry were facing, by clever use of rotating the cavalry and rallying them it was the infantry that broke first!
The Flank is in Trouble!
I’ve been blathering on about my Carribean force for sometime now but have yet to use it on the field of battle. There have been two problems; one, the lack of a rules set and more importantly, the lack of an opponent! I started to collect and paint the Trent Miniatures Caribbean figures because I thought they were superb models. The sculpting is of high quality with some really characterful models in the range. Add to that, the uniforms look pretty good and there is plenty of scope for all sorts of variety when putting together a force. The theatre of action, the Caribbean islands in the late 18th Century provides plenty of scope for all sorts of battles, from small scale skirmishes to full on battles, naval landings and sieges. And of course the scenery will be interesting – anything from Plantations to Jungles.
Well, as usual, the answer was right in front of me. There is a superb rules set by the very talented Alex Buchel of Studio Tomahawk called ‘Muskets and Tomahawks’ for skirmishes in North America during the 18th Century. I could see immediately that it would be very straight forward to transpose the Caribbean forces over the North American Forces in the rules set and I could use my figures on the wargames table! Luckily there are a few players at my local wargames club that play M & T’s, so I asked one of them, John Grant (or Nice John as he is known locally!) if he would take me through the rules with a practice game. John has a terrific set up with plenty of scenery and AWI figures, so the game was great fun and confirmed my impression that the rules set would transpose to the Caribbean. The next step was to ask if I could use my Caribbean force in a game!
As we go into the Easter break it seemed appropriate to paint something vaguely egg shaped and as the Glyptodon had been sitting forlornly on the work bench in just an undercoat I decided his time had come!
On Sunday 15th, I was up in Manchester (Old Trafford, to be precise) to watch Tottenham play Man Utd and rather than just visit the Theatre of Dreams, ( or on this particular day, Theatre of nightmares – Tottenham lost 3-0!), I made a day of it and visited the Imperial War Museum North.
The next Battalion that I should be painting is the final Hanoverian Landwehr Regiment, The Osterode, but even the excitement of finding that they have green facings and shoulder tufts hasn’t convinced me that another 24 red coats is a good idea at the moment. Then there’s my lack of officers in my army – I’ve got a nice pack of Warlord mounted officers to finish…red coats again though.
Then I have my own Deezee range that I am supposed to be painting. I’ve got a bit stuck here as I have undercoated a Glyptodon but I think that I should try to airbrush him rather than paint him, so he’s been relegated to the back of the table along with some Pterodactyls that I have started but cant quite visualize how I am going to base them. Along with the Deezee, I have some superb models from Lucid eye and I really like the look of the new Cromagnons but I was disappointed with my last efforts with Ze-Khor & Harranna so I’m not in the mood for painting these.
The title of this weeks blog says it all! Progress has indeed been slow and I am stretching my ‘sculpting’ ability and patience to their limit. The Hanoverians are the problem. I’m trying to match the conversions that I have done to the original Victrix models that I had painted. The first task was to make some blanket rolls to go on their backs in the place of packs. I have actually cheated with a couple of the models and despite saying that I would cut the british packs off of the ones that I had put on in error, I decided to leave a few on. May be those guys had picked a few spare packs up from Quatre Bras! Anyway, modelling the blanket rolls was not too difficult, although a bit time consuming, as I am not used to working with green stuff. You can see the result in the picture above – I think that once they are painted they will be fine.
Having finished the Lion Rampant Campaign, it’s back to painting my Napoleonic Army. I’m still working on the British 6th Division at Waterloo and having completed the English Regiments, I’m back on the Hanoverian contingent. There were four Hanoverian Landwehr units in the Division, Verden, Lunberg, Munden & Osterode and so far I have painted two of them. So on with the third unit now. First of all a disclaimer! I have decided to model two of the units wearing Stove pipe shakos and two wearing the flat field hats for no other reason than they will look nice on the wargames table. Actually finding accurate descriptions of exactly what the Hanoverian Landwehr really wore is difficult to say the least, with the usual conflicting advice from various sources and experts.
