Blucher - Making a late start

Blucher campaign extensions and army packs.

Seven years after buying the rules I finally got round to an introductory game of Blucher, Sam Mustafa's grand-tactical Napoleonic game.

Many thanks to fellow club member, Simon, who organised and umpired the game. My opponent, Dave, commanded a Spanish force in defensive positions while I attacked with the French. I eventually managed to take a village in the centre of the Spanish position, but did not achieve the breakthrough I was hoping for. Simon pointed out that I should have made more use of my troops' superior skirmishing ability before rushing in.

Napoleonics are a foundational wargaming period. I've flirted with them over many years, but I'm no expert. While the tactics of column, line and square are for many the very essence of period flavour, I'm more pulled by grand-tactical games that allow one to fight whole historical battles, at least potentially.

Blucher is widely played and reviewed so it's rather late to go into detail about the rules. What I do want to write about is the use of the pre-printed unit cards and some thoughts on modelling terrain.

While the game we played employed conventional 6mm scale scenery, the armies consisted of the commercially available preprinted unit cards and I have to say that I was so engrossed in the game that I never missed or even thought about the absence of lead (or plastic) figures.

I now have all the extension sets and army packs, and these give me far more wargaming flexibility than a collection of model figures rooted in one time and place. Although I have 6mm Napoleonic armies that I was going to use, I'll now stick with the cards.

Two of the great advantages of card, tablet or block armies are their modest storage requirements and the ease with which they can be transported, and I'm thinking about scenery which meets the same criteria.

While I could create purely 2D scenery using felt, I'm currently considering slightly more realistic scenery which is nevertheless in ultra-low relief. Done properly I think it could look quite good and rather like an aerial perspective.

I already have a good collection of game mats, relatively shallow hills and roads and rivers, so that leaves urban and forest areas. For villages I'm thinking of using a template with low grey rectangles to represent houses, although I do have some Monopoly houses and hotels that could be put to use. I also have some 2mm lead buildings, but part of the aim here is to reduce weight and maintain a symbolic style. The houses would be of uniform height (no church steeples) so that unit cards could sit level on the top when villages are garrisoned. Forests would be templates covered in clump foliage, again of uniform height.

Twilight of Divine Right

I never got round to playing Twilight of the Sun King but I’m currently looking for a set of Thirty Years War army-level rules and had no hesitation in ordering the 17thC variant of TotSK - the equally evocatively entitled Twilight of Divine Right - together with the scenario book of TYW battles.

The rules are written by Nicholas Dorrell and published by the Pike & Shot Society.

Regardless of how the rules might play, my first inclination with any new rule set is to look at the unit types, basing, and overall game ‘size’ in terms of elements and playing area.

ToDR offers a good range of unit types including four types of infantry formation. Units can also vary in quality and size, and infantry can have different firearm ratios. This is all good, and in a very clever special rule, the short-lived Swedish Brigades can switch dynamically between different firearm ratios during a game to reflect their flexible formations.

The game measures in Base Widths (BW) which can be any reasonable size, but 60mm is suggested with most base depths half that. However, most units consist of two bases and would thus occupy an overall footprint of 120mm x 30mm. As the bases are always placed side by side it isn’t really necessary to use two physically separate bases. A single base would suffice while remembering that a BW is half that. Using two bases would maintain more compatibility with other rules and would be fine for Regiments drawn up in two Battalia with one Battalia on each base, but would not be so good for Early Tercios which I wouldn't really want to split across two bases.

If using 60mm wide bases (120mm-wide units) the table typically needs to be 6’ x 4’ and can go up to 9’ x 5’. I’d certainly want to use smaller bases/units and a smaller playing area, as long as that didn’t make measurement and movement too fiddly. I wasn't quite sure what that size should be but I received some very helpful advice on the TotSK Yahoo Group.

The smallest measurement in the game is the range of pistol cavalry at a 1/4BW. Assuming you didn't want this measurement to go below 1cm, the unit bases would have to be at least 80mm wide (i.e. BW of 40mm). That would reduce the table size to two-thirds which would be 4' x 2'8" up to 6' x 3' 4", which would be much more manageable sizes for the space-challenged.

So how many units would you need for a battle? The smallest scenario has 21 units while the largest has 80. With numbers of that order and my preference for smaller unit bases, I’d probably go for 2mm blocks, Kriegspiel-style blocks or MDF counters, but all these musings are highly provisional.

Postscript

Rules author Nick Dorrell mentioned a possible reason to stay with 2 bases per unit, rather than 1 large one. For the largest battles you can then use a single base as a unit.  That's a very interesting option as it instantly halves the figures and playing space you need for larger battles while retaining visual impact for smaller ones.

Might & Reason: Mollwitz

 The Austrian defence viewed from the Prussian end:
infantry to the left and cavalry to the right.

My club comrade Chris put on and umpired an introductory game of Sam Mustafa's Might & Reason. The game was an abridged version of the Battle of Mollwitz (1741) scenario. The real battle was fought between Prussia and Austria during the early part of the War of the Austrian Succession. The Prussians had to dislodge an Austrian scratch force sitting on their supply line. The game featured Chris's balsa block armies which were enhanced by authentic flags and worked very well. My fellow club member, Kim, was given command of the Austrians, a difficult assignment, while I got the Prussian killing-machine and an exceptionally lucky run of high dice throws.

Bloody Big Battles! - Blocks or figures?

Labels for blocks

I was just about to place an order for some 6mm Franco-Prussian War figures when I wavered at the prospect of buying and painting almost 50 packs of figures, and that would be just to do the battles of the Imperial period. In the meantime, the use of the blocks, Hexon and wooden toy village buildings has received a lot of compliments. I've therefore decided to put any figure orders on hold for the time being.

I began with block labels showing standard  NATO symbols. They don't have the 'Xs' and 'Is' used to denote level (e.g. 'II' for a Battalion) because while in one game the blocks might represent Platoons, in another they might represent Divisions or anything in between. I soon realised that it would often be important to indicate facing, so I later added triangular arrows.

Bloody Big Battles! Langensalza II

I finally got a chance to replay the BBB Langensalza scenario, this time with a better understanding of the rules. I commanded the Prussians again, but it was a very different game.

In the first game I had failed to get my troops moving and had fallen back on the defensive.  This left the Hanoverians free to cross the Unstrut and assault with their superior numbers.  If attackers are not halted by defensive fire, the actual assaults are resolved without the hardware advantage that would otherwise accrue to the Prussian Needleguns.

Before the battle: view from the Hanoverian side. The wide brown felt strips are roads. The thinner strips are streams. The dark green area to the centre-left is marsh.

In this game I fulfilled the conditions for keeping the Hanoverians at bay by continuing to probe the Hanoverian positions. Under the scenario rules the Prussians have to attack, but this can be very staged and piecemeal. With four units and various stages of 'attack', the Prussians could potentially delay the Hanoverians for 8 turns even without actually assaulting anything directly. The Hanoverians need to disrupt the Prussians to stem this advance. If they succeed the Hanoverians would be released to do their worst.

The Prussians by-pass Langensalza to threaten Merxleben. Apologies for the inverted Prussian blocks. I had attached some hooked pads to the bottom of the blocks to stop them from slipping but they stuck to the felt roads far too well. (They have since been replaced with paper.)

Frustrated by my delaying tactics, the Hanoverians moved two infantry units forward in the face of close-range fire from my Needleguns lining the  embankment of the stream. Luckily, I also took out the two central Hanoverian artillery units. This gave me a big advantage in the developing firefight. Far from stemming my advance the Hanoverian centre was threatened with destruction by fire.

The 25th Regt lines the embanked part of the Unstrut, bringing the Hanoverians under intense fire. One Hanoverian artillery unit has been stripped away.

By the end of turn 4 the Hanverians saw no hope of drawing, let alone winning, and conceded the game. BBB author Chris Pringle reported that he has won this scenario as the Hanoverians even though he was held up for 5 turns, but probably not from such an adverse position. As a small scenario, Langensalza is prone to variable outcomes, but that makes it interesting and worth replaying.

The 11th Gren Regt moves up in support. The second Hanoverian artillery unit is destroyed.

Anyway, I'm very glad to have now concluded a proper game and look forward to trying some American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War battles.

Hexon hills

WARNING: I'm leaving this post up for now, but experience has shown this is actually a very bad idea. Although the hooked pads do improve adhesion on Hexon, they also exert a vice-like grip on felt roads and templates. Simply adding another paper label to the underside of the blocks provides quite enough friction to keep the them in place on 2-tile high Hexon slopes. 29 January 2016

I've used my ceramic blocks with flat Hexon tiles before, but not with Hexon hills. I was just setting up a game when I discovered that the blocks slide down Hexon slopes like an ice-cube on a hot tin roof.

I subsequently bought some self-adhesive hooked pads designed for gripping textile surfaces. Partly for reasons of economy and otherwise to minimise damage to the Hexon, I cut these into quarters and applied them to the backs of the blocks. A small amount is quite enough to get a grip on any Hexon incline.

My steel-based figures have more traction, but any future Hexon slope purchases will be of the 1-tile-high variety rather than 2-tile-high type in order to minimise the ski-slope effect.

My introduction to Command & Colours

The first scenario from Command & Colours Napoleonics

Despite my enthusiasm for wargaming with hexes and blocks, I played my first couple of games of Command & Colours Ancients only last year, although I had previously played a couple of games of BattleCry, the ACW variant of the system.

As the game system has been out for some time and most readers are probably more familiar with it than I am, I won't attempt a comprehensive review, but I would like to share a few points in its favour for the benefit of anyone who hasn't played it. One's first impressions of a game are always improved by winning. I did win both games, though my opponent inevitably attributed this to lucky dice throws rather than tactical genius!

More cheap blocks

Whilst browsing an economy hardware store, I came across a Jenga-type game, but in miniature. The game had 48 smoothly finished wooden blocks, measuring 45mm x 15mm x 10mm. At only £1.99 each I decided to snap up four while they were still available.

I don't have any immediate use for them, but I think they could, for example,  make good 20thC ship counters. Being wood they are obviously lighter than my 'ceramic' Mah Jongg tablets and may be prone to shifting about, but that won't matter so much if they are used for a hex game.

Rifle and Kepi: Solferino Batrep

I recruited a couple of friends at my local wargaming club to try out my Solferino scenario for Martin Rapier's Rifle and Kepi rules while I umpired. Since my previous post I've added in the French I Corps. The map and OOBs are below.

The first lesson was how not to set up Hexon II. I put it together upside-down with just a few clips and then tried to turn it over. There was a resounding crash as the pieces came apart and clattered down on the table (without mishap). I should have used more clips, but in order to speed things up we placed the Hexon on a blanket which held it together well enough.

Solferino Hexed

Solferino was the climatic battle of the Franco-Austrian War/Second War of Italian Unification of 1859 and my first 19th Century Grand Tactical project using Martin Rapier's Rifle and Kepi rules and Hexon II terrain. Some time ago I did begin collecting 10mm Pendraken figures for this, but I'm currently utilising the block armies.

I eventually decided to work from the map on page 59 of Richard Brooks' Solferino 1859 as it has already been stripped down to the essentials. Ignoring, for the moment, the northern, Piedmontese part of the action, I was able to get the main part of the battle onto 16 (4x4) Hexon tiles, which also happen to sit comfortably on my modestly-sized dining-room table.

Each hex represents an area 1 kilometre across. Woods are too small to be represented and high ground has not been considered. The road network has been created with 10mm wide felt strips, mostly in 12" lengths. These can easily be bent from side-to-side so there is no need to cut any curves. Cutting felt accurately is awkward. I marked it out with a ruler and a dressmaking pencil which leaves a white mark. I then cut it with scissors. All the roads shown took about half a square foot of material. I'm currently lacking blue felt for the canal and have temporarily employed a cut-up plastic bag. I haven't depicted any rivers. I don't know how significant they were.

The roads took quite a long time to set out. For a club night I would probably take a more rough-and-ready approach.

Hexon, felt roads and block armies

I've been so busy since my recent retirement from work that I've had virtually no time for wargaming, modelling or blogging, but I've broken the back of a lifetime's domestic backlog and today the coast is clear for bringing together some of the components of my 19th Century grand tactical project using Martin Rapier's Rifle and Kepi rules.

My first aim was to try out felt roads on Hexon to see how/if they stick and how wide they should be. I am planning to use brown roads for this project and black roads for my 3mm 1940 Hexblitz project. I'm glad to say that, as expected, the felt adheres quite well. The strips shown are 20mm wide. Perhaps 10mm would be adequate and, indeed, better.

The buildings are old 1/300 card ones.

Tablets for 19th Century Grand Tactical project

My quest for domino-type tablets for representing units at Grand Tactical level were rewarded almost immediately when I came across a second-hand Mah Jongg set in a charity shop for £5.75. It contained 144 white crystalline tablets measuring about 28mm x 20mm x 7mm. They have a nice chunky feel and seem ideal.

I would be posting a picture of some tablets with labels attached. The designs were quick to execute but my colour printer is currently producing rather mushy results so I'll have to experiment further.

I'm not giving up on figures, but these counters will give me a head start.

Counters, blocks or 2mm?

Painting all the armies I'd like to have for all the rules I'd like to play is too demanding on time and space, if not pocket, and I find myself thinking more and more about counters, wooden blocks or Irregular Miniatures' 2mm strips.

I began with making some counters for Maurice (pictured above). Counters are very cheap and straightforward. I adapted some top-downs from the Junior General website and printed the designs onto labels which were then cut with a scalpel and applied to smart laser-cut MDF bases from Pendraken.