Napoleonic Battle: France v Spain 1808

I finally managed to find some quality time and play a battle. I chose an Iberian encounter between a French force led by General Moreau against the decrepit General Cortenesca. Both generals were pretty poor and this became evident in the game where I was following my solo amendments to the letter.

The French advanced on a line of Spanish defenders and managed to make reasonable headway despite a surprise attack from a unit of Spanish cavalry. I found the Spanish poor command rating to be a real problem in allowing me to co-ordinate any credible response to the French thrusts and with a few units going awol, of their own accord, the game was up after turn 7. I took a defensive outcome on my Battle plan generator, modified with a downward penalty due to the General, as an exceptional result, entailing a general retreat for the Spanish army. This conceded the field to the French.

A fine game, although it didn't show off many of the French strengths. The unpredictable Spanish were fun!

Campaign Board Game

It's the start of 2013 and I've loads of projects to achieve. I must start playing some more games and publish the battle reports on the AMW Yahoo Group. Over Xmas, I bought a couple of versions of the old Waddington's Campaign game, which I played when I was a child. Beautiful pieces, beautiful board, lovely rules. I've done my usual and have created a host of amendments. I've just played a superb "Austerlitz" re-fight between the French, Austrians and Russians. I think this game is worthy of future investigation so I'm going to play a SYW match with five nations involved.

Projects Over Christmas

With the Christmas holidays fast approaching it's time to think about some special projects. First, because I've got relatives coming, my sacred "room" has been designated a bedroom, which kind of precludes any wargaming activity. My shelves have been "tidied" and the miniatures stored away. As an alternative I'm considering a more simulated approach by looking into the possibility of using cardboard counters or top-down unit views on a gameboard. I've a few ideas involving using the top-downs on some of the paper gaming sites, combined with the use of terrain tiles, overlayed by a perspex cover to keep everything in place.

Second up is to complete my trawl of all the rulesets and army lists for completeness. I'm still actively developing the Future Wars rules with a new "universe" close to my heart concerning the series of wonderful books produced back in 1978-80 describing the evolution of the Terran Federation, written by Stuart Cowley, and illustrated with loads of visually stunning artwork.

"Classic" Traveller Setting: The Spinward Marches

I've been inspired by some battle reports I've seen on the web dealing with military simulations set in one of my favourite roleplaying settings from the 1980s - the Traveller RPG universe which deals with the "Classic" period in the Spinward Marches. I've created army lists and rules modifications to recreate this in my Future Wars Wargaming Rules in the files section. These accompany my Space Marines adaptation with a similar in depth treatment of the various factions and military forces. I've restricted it for now to planetary assault task force lists which cover the marine contingents of the Imperium, Zhodani Consulate, Sword Worlds etc. I've had a lot of fun developing these and a few are still WIP such as how psionics should work. I've played a couple of minor skirmishes to see how the new rules play out - no issues so far and it delivers a nice atmospheric feel which appeals to my 80s nostalgia trip. Hope to get a full battle report of a larger scale action posted this weekend.

World War I & II Variants

I've been doing a bit of research to back up a few ideas I have on the go regarding alternative histories set during the inter-war period.

1. British Civil War - I've been quite intrigued by the development of the "A Very British Civil War" wargame genre over the last year or so. This got my interest first and I've developed some army lists for the factions which I've placed in the WWII Rules in the Files Section. The conflict is set in 1938. I've designed a nice little scenario which I'm going to play out this month.

2. War Plan Red - inspired by the article in Miniature Wargames which outlines a conflict between the USA and British Empire over Canada. I watched the documentary on Youtube and was hooked to the idea. I'm developing some lists which detail the early war in 1935 and then the wider conflict set later in 1936-37. The later armies include some WWII AFVs developed earlier such as the A13 and M3 Stuart.

3. WWII set in the 1930s - to cover the Axis powers, UK, US, French and Soviets. Loads of early tanks to play with.

4. WWI extended by 10 years. This postulates an extension of the conflict past 1918 up to 1928 with all the possible technological advances this would entail. Bit of a nightmarish WH40K future history.

5. WWII extended beyond 1945 combined with a technological revolution - power armour, dreadnought walkers etc. These pet projects should keep me occupied for a bit!

Scottish Wargaming Armies

As I'm a Scot with a keen interest in both my own national aswell as military history in general, I thought I'd combine this into the creation of a list of Scottish armies throughout history during the periods when we were still an independent nation. Commencing with a Caledonian Army that can fight at Mons Graupius through the Dark Ages and Medieval periods into the Renaissance, covering Covenanters, mercenaries in the Thirty Years War and Montrose Royalists. All interesting stuff and I now need to start playing out some of my creations.

Battle of Leuctra 371 BC

I played a simulation of this classical battle between the Thebans and Spartans this afternoon. I chose the same historical deployments with 12 units per side. The battle commenced much as the original did with the cavalry clash and advance of the Theban left, however, the Spartan horse didn't scatter as they did historically and put up a holding resistance which bought time and allowed the entire phalanx line of both armies to eventually clash. It was looking good for the Spartan alliance until the deadlock suddenly broke on the strong Theban left with the destruction of the Spartan units and a spate of fortunate rolls from the Boetian allied phalanxes on the Theban right. As the Thebans turned to roll-up the remaining Spartan allies these conceded defeat and fled the field. A real hard fighting contest which went closer than the historical battle but with much the same outcome. The phalanx cohesion rule worked very well and made for rapid and bloody unit contests which seemed very in tune with phalanx warfare. I think I should have given the Spartans an advantage here to account for their superb drill and modify this to the second base loss resulting in the cohesion loss. An excellent game with lots of period drama.