My Collection: Dragon Pass (1980) Avalon Hill

I managed to get a pristine copy of Avalon Hill's reprint of the White Bear, Red Moon game by Chaosium. I had a good copy which, I rather stupidly, sold a few years ago. The good news was that I didn't spend much more than what I got from the original sale. 

The game looks superb and what a map. A colour representation of the version in the first editions of Runequest. I played this RPG a lot back in the late 70s early 80s and having a game that simulated the background conflict was always very appealing. Now that I've retired and gotten back into Fantasy and Science Fiction gaming I'm thinking of resurrecting my old Second Edition and using the game board do some solo roleplaying in Dragon Pass.

The cat is excited with this prospect.

 

 

One Hour Wargames: French v Russians 1807

I wanted to experience a larger game than the usual six unit limitation so increased my force lists to twelve on either side. The game was played with vanilla rules, the only variant being the introduction of some unit quality characteristics. This worked through a random determination of the list and the establishment of thresholds on morale once a certain number of hits had accrued. So for levy, once they were reduced to ten hits or below any further casualties from combat would be doubled. For trained this was five or below and Elite, no impact. I also wanted a representation of army morale so I deemed once one third of units were lost the threshold would increase by five across each class so elite would be five, trained ten and levy fifteen i.e. all casualties received. This mechanic worked very well and increased the speed of the game compensating for the larger number of units involved.

The game pitched a force of French against an experienced Russian side with both contingents incorporating a reasonable mix of unit quality and experience. Movement at the early stage was increased by ruling that troops outwith engagement range were allowed double moves. This proved essential for the Russians as they had to redeploy a large portion of their force from the left flank over to the right where the randomly determined objective of the town had been defined prior to a distribution of the deployment, again using a random method.

The game moved on at a rapid pace and it wasn't long until both forces were hotly engaged on both flanks, with the centre largely empty.

The battle lasted for eight turns and over the course the French hit the third loss barrier first. This started to have a impact on accumulated casualties and with the Russians hitting their morale level soon after it quickly descended into a bloody and exciting affair. 

The game ended with a narrow Russian win. All together a very enjoyable experience and still within a reasonable elapsed time of just under two hours. The cat was deployed on the bed so spared me her tactical attention (which helped).

Memoir'44: Pegasus Bridge

This is a scenario that I always enjoy playing. It's short with only 4 victory medals required but always seem to me to have endless variations and surprises. I had an hour or so to spare so thought I'd set this up as a quick game. It turned out to be just that but still very entertaining. Close and hard fought the British paratroopers managed to pull a surprise by occupying both bridges and achieving victory after turn five.

Here was the setup.

Here were the final positions showing how the concentration of British units managed to snatch the win.

The cat watched on from the vantage point of my Omaha Beach Victory Games board game box lid. At least in terms of subject matter it was a topical position to observe from.

War of the Spanish Succession: The Battle of Ortmund using Neil Thomas Wargaming Rules with 18th Century Modifications

I decided to mark my return to the wargaming habit by having a battle between my Marlburian British and French forces. This was a fictional encounter around the village of Ortmund and Frekoft between the forces of Lieutenant General Lumley and the Marquis de Maisonelle.  

This was the setup with both forces arrayed into line of battle following deployment from approach columns. 

The forces were equally matched with the British having a special rule advantage of Platoon Fire and and it would prove to be a decisive factor in the firefights around the village of Ortmund.

I used my new play-mat which my son gave to me as a Father's Day present and found it an excellent surface to hold my little 6mm figure bases in close formation. 

The cat wasn't as impressed and looked on with dispassionate neutrality as the British rolled up the French line with a decisive but costly victory. Rules used were my 18th Century modifications to Neil Thomas's sound Napoleonic Wargaming rules.

 
 

My Collection: Air War SPI (1979) Part 1

I decided to start up my blog again as I'd missed my regular posts and had previously found it a nice way of spending the odd half hour chatting about my little interests and passions. A lot of things have happened since my last post in ...2021! So plenty to keep me occupied with in getting on-line and discussed. It might also act as a gentle catalyst into getting me to play some games and find more time for the hobby.

First up is my recent purchase on e-Bay of an old school classic of the 1980s board game fraternity Air War by SPI. This is most definitely the most complicated board game I've ever played. I remember it took me a whole morning and with help from my friend for me to take off and make a turn and then I crashed! His big brother was actually a fighter pilot in the RAF at the time and he jokingly said it was harder to understand this game than his flight training. 

The game makes a merit of being ultra complex and I suppose before flight simulators this was a close as you could get for a reasonable outlay to the real experience of fighter combat. Anyway it was a thrilling exercise to get some mastery of the game and it also helped with understanding the tactics and subtleties of modern air combat.  

I will go into the game components and rules in more detail in my Part 2 and leave you with a view of the cat in its favourite position, this time in another one of my grail purchases, the Avalon Hill version of the old classic Kingmaker which I will review soon.

 

 

 

 

Memoir'44: Battle of Arracourt

I hadn't had a game of Memoir'44 for ages so I tried a scenario I'd never played from the base game, the Battle of Arracourt. This was a major armoured confrontation with plenty of artillery thrown in on the Allied side.

The game started well for the Germans who immediatly launched an armoured assault on their right flank knocking the US tanks back to the next hill line. This was followed up by a hand of good cards for the Americans who initially countered the German advance but over time their options narrowed so that they ran out of anything in the centre and couldn't activate their artillery to good effect. 

The situation became dire as the German tanks pressed on to the US baseline and the game ended quite abruptly with a 6-2 victory. Looking back I would have played the Americans much more cautiously and waited for the Germans to move towards me but the game did give the feeling of a force put into panic by some aggressive tactics that completely unbalanced them so from that perspective was quite a sobering gaming experience.

The cat made a dash across the battlefield towards the end! 

 And after I packed away the game pieces, basked in the glory of victory.

Some Recent Acquisitions

I've been spending a small birthday fund that I'd accumulated at the start of the year and have made several interesting purchases that I'm sure are going to give me a lot of payback once I've invested a bit of time in them.

First up was a set of rules I'd wanted for some time, Sharp Practice. This fills a nice little niche allowing large skirmishes which is a wargame I really enjoy. Also set during one of my favourite periods covering the entire black powder era. So it will be with a Napoleonic focus at first but whose not to say whether I will dabble in ACW or AWI scenarios too. I also got a set of cards at a reasonable price and these are very nice.

Next was the WWII version of the rule booklet for Battlegroup. I was so impressed with the Cold War set and had seen such good battle reports on YouTube and on-line that it looked to be a very promising candidate as my preferred WWII ruleset. Also Amazon was selling this at sales price so enough said! It is a lovely book with excellent illustrations and clear, well written text and explanations.

I've also always wanted to recreate medieval skirmishes ever since I used to play out extensive battles with my 1/32nd toy soldiers in my early teens. So the prospect of a clear and simple ruleset at a below £10 price was irresistable. This ruleset has a great reputation and reading through it I was immediately impressed and  enthused. I even searched out his Dark Age adaptation Landwasters and Raven Feeders so I can extend this without any trouble into the earlier period and use my Anglo Saxons and Viking figures. There is even a Fantasy version that I've seen but that's a future project.

Final purchase is the WRG 1685 to 1845 Wargaming Rules. A bit old school compared to the others but was this was more a substitution and preservation move to replace my original rule book and prevent any further wear and tear. By getting a nice fresh version that is in a pleasing A4 size format I can now leaf through the rules with confidence that I'm not causing further damage to my precious original. I read through these again and they are still absolutely up there as one of my favourite sets of rules. They have a charm and quality that just just lends itself to the size of game I prefer involving only a handful of brigades.

So that was a well spent budget delivering a lot of bang for the buck. The cat was content with some treats that I managed to divert a small portion of the funds for.