Chain of Command-Glider Landing

 

A couple of weeks ago myself and William got together at L'abyss to play a CoC game from the 1940 handbook. We played with William's 15mm figures, he took the Germans and I took the French defenders. I did find the writing in respect to Glider Landings in the source book a little obscure, but after some thought we played the Attack on an Objective (scenario 6) from the V2 rulebook.

The PM as well as the JOPs, William designed and made some gliders which act as the German JOPs on his MDF laser printer. They were quite nice

Here is a photo from the end of the game. the French got a pretty good defensive position set up and was able to drive off the Germans. 

It was an interesting game, I would have to play it one more time to get a better sense of the game play with the gliders. But it was fun and thanks to William for setting it up.

Pickett's Charge-Early's Countercharge December 1862

About a month ago myself and Graham got together to play a game of Pickett's Charge at my apartment. This was the first time I had played the ruleset in almost 5 years and it was Graham's first go. With the success of our GdA wargaming in the Napoleonic era, I felt it was time to get in more divisional wargaming, this time with the American Civil War.

I already had a fairly large Union army but had no CSA troops, but with the help of Old Guard Painters in the Ukraine and Gajo Games in Utah, I was able to field a small Confederate force for wargaming. I am hoping to put together a Pickett's Charge game for our club's first Lardy Day that is coming up in January. After quite a bit of research I decided that an interesting engagement to play out on the table was Early's Countercharge against Meade during the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. 

I decided to make all the troops regulars, with both Commanders having 5 Staff Officers (ADCs). I played the attacker while Graham played the defending USA forces. Almost all the USA regiments were standard sized while the majority of the CSA regiments were small. 

I will not do a report but we were able to get in 8-9 turns before it became obvious that the Confederate attack had failed. Here are some photos from the game.

CSA to the left.

Summary

This was a very useful test of the scenario I hope to put on for Lardy Day.

Table Setup- The first thing that was obvious to me was that the rail tracks were out of scale for 15mm wargaming. I have redone these now and I hope they look better on the table. I also placed too many linear obstacles on the table making the CSA advance quite difficult. Otherwise the table seemed ok and with the game being fought along the short axis should bring the troops into combat fairly quickly.

Order of Battle-I think it better to go with just 4 Staff Officers for the Union with 5 for the Confederates. I also need to combine most of the CSA regiments to have more standard sized units on the table. I think it is OK to keep every one has regulars for what is essentially a demo game. I will deploy all the troops with the Union in line and the Confederates in column.

Anyway that is the plan, let us see if anyone signs up for the game.

CoC in 15mm-Delaying Action

 

A week ago Saturday, I got together with William at the abyss. He had expressed interest in learning the Chain of Command ruleset, he had one previous game an this was to be his second. He had been putting together a 15mm force for WWII and wanted to put them on the table. I had not played CoC with 15mm troops for more than 10 years so I was looking forward to it.

William had a French and German force put together and decided to go with the Delaying Action scenario from the v2 rulebook. He also put together all of the terrain. the OB is as follows, we diced for supports before the game on Discord. The Germans were the Attackers.

French 1940 Infantry Platoon (FR+1)

2 SL

VB Team w/JL

3 Groupes de Combat w/JL

Supports

AAMG

Franc Tireurs

Escouade de Fusiliers Motocyclistes

Canon de 25mm ATG /JL

Great Army Group A, First Wave Division (FR+4)

2 SL

5cm Mortar Team

4 Squads w/JL

Supports

Shabby Nazi Trick

Red Dice

Sniper

Stuka Bombardment

le.18 IG

Photos

As usual I forgot to take many as it was quite an exciting game.

The Objective was the red roofed building in the centre. William almost flanked me in the Patrol Phase as you can see he got a JOP in the forest on my right flank.

The Stuka Bombardment was quite effective, catching the actual Objective on fore. It collapsed at the end of turn one.

William was agressive in his defence advancing on both flanks.

The Germans made short work of this GdC.

Well this was quite an exciting game, The hedges blocked LOS up to 2". My attack was a little slow to get going but the Germans did advance up the table. I have never seen anyone like William for throwing triple sixes on his Command Dice, thus unlike most games of CoC there were actually many turns. I had brought down the French FM but William started the Final Countdown while I was still some distance away. I was able to get close but alas time ran out for me before I could get to the Objective. This was quite a fun game and we used many of the new mechanisms that have appeared in v2 of CoC.

It was the first time in a while that someone else supplied the troops and the terrain for a CoC game and I really appreciated it. Many thanks William for doing that and for an exciting game!

ACW 15mm Terrain

 

Recently, I have been working on getting some Pickett's Charge games back on the table. This is a ruleset by David Brown which is similar to his Napoleonic ruleset Général d'armée. I played quite a few games several years ago with my friend Adam but have never set up a game in Montreal for our wargaming club. I am a little limited as I do not have a CSA army but I am working on this now. I also know that version 2 of Pickett's Charge is in the works but I suspect that it might be another year or so before we see it.

In the interim, I felt it important to work on some terrain for the game. My sense is that terrain is more important for the ACW than for Napoleonics, especially linear terrain. I already have several buildings, crop fields and trees that are suitable. I do have a lot of snake rail fencing but otherwise my linear terrain and barricades were lacking.

To test my new Centauri Carbon printer, I thought it would be a good choice to print some small terrain especially picket fences which can be a challenge in any scale. What follows are my efforts.

It does not look like much, but there is 5' of snake rail fence as well as 5' of picket fence. 

Really happy with the print of these fences from 3D PrintTerrain ACW set.

Some log barricades 

This fencing was put together some years ago and comes from Battlefield Terrain Concepts. It was pretty beat up and I had to reassemble more than half of the pieces.

Some resin field barricades from Battlefield Terrain Concepts

A mixture of resin prints as well as some 3D Prints. I am not sure how the haystacks came out but I think they are OK.

Lots of 3D printed stone walls.

Overall, I am quite happy with how everything came out, and I should be good for most battles. I still have another package of snake rail fencing to put together.....a tedious job which can be put off in the short term, but for now I will have to shift focus to some CSA troops.

Little Wars TV-Tombstone Tinderbox

 

Some months ago I bought this starter set from Little Wars TV, I had been playing some Old West games with my friend P-Y in a playtest of a soon hoped to be published new TFL ruleset. P-Y has a complete set up in 28mm with beautiful figures and some great terrain. We played quite a few games and we are just waiting now for the playtest to be complete and see the final version of the rules. I really have no intention of duplicating P-Y's efforts, I just have no more room here to expand into a different era especially in 28mm. Remember, I sold over three thousand 28mm Napoleonics to get a 15mm Napoleonic army which took up a lot less space.

But I have to say I was intrigued by everything being in one small box and I really believe Little Wars TV has done an enormous amount for wargaming in the US. I wanted to support their efforts. It was quite impressive what is in the box.

Set up for the shootout at the OK Corral

The Clantons

The Earps

Also included is a set of rules, dice, playing cards and a Tombstone campaign. The campaign is 3 tables and tracks the events of shootout between the Earps and the Clantons at the OK Coral and the subsequent chase through the Wild West. It looks like fun.

The 15mm figures are from Old Glory and I believe they represent various historical and fictional characters from Old West. I am not sure who is who, but I do recognise the "Man with No Name". The figures are nice enough and the cardboard buildings are sort of interesting. Would it be the path I would take, probably not......but I have to say it was a lot of fun putting it together and if I ever wanted to play a small game of "What a Cowboy", I could!

My ACW Collection

I have recently reorganised my Union army in order to expand it so I can play larger games of Pickett's Charge. I felt I needed 6-7 infantry brigades so I chopped down my 12 stand regiments to a more varied assortment of small, standard and large regiments according to the ruleset. Each infantry stand in Pickett's Charge represents 80-100 men with 3-4 stands being a small unit, 5-6 stands being a standard unit and 7-8 stands being a large unit. Certainly when you look historical ACW OB's the regiment size was quite variable especially for the Union early in the war. I had to buy some extra painted figures from GAJO games in order to bring my army up to strength. They have pre-painted Old Glory figures and although not as nice as my Blue Moon's, they were certainly nicely painted and mixed in well.

I have to thank my friend Mike for picking up some Flagdude standards at Fall-In as unfortunately they are going out of business and I really believe they were the best flags on the market. I recently got them all stuck on the stands and I have to say they look great as the below photos will attest.

I will be hoping to get some games in with my friend Adam, who has a comparably sized Confederate force. I recently discovered that George at Musings on Wargaming and Life has written a series of excellent ACW scenario books under the Potomac Publication banner which are available at Wargame Vault. So it seems I all set!

The Collection of 20 infantry regiments in 6-7 brigades, 2 cavalry regiments and 3 artillery batteries. There is one Commander in Chief stand with 7 Brigadier stands as well as 3 Sharpshooter stands.

Western Contingent with troops from Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana

New York Contingent

Northeastern Contingent with troops from Maine and Massachusetts

I have 3 more cavalry regiments to base and probably should paint up a few more skirmisher stands but I think I have a good force with which to play many more games of Pickett's Charge.