15mm Battle Masters - Imperial Knights

The original Battle Master box came with the following Imperial Army units:

• 1 unit of "Lord Knights" (3 knights)
• 3 units of "Imperial Knights" (3 x 3 knights)
• 3 units of "Men-at-Arms" (3 x 5 halberdiers)
• 2 units of archers (2 x 5 minis)
• 1 unit of crossbowmen (5 minis)
• 1 "Mighty Canon" (1 canon with 2 gunners)

The stickers provided with the game give some indication of the background of these units...

Pictures from Board Game Geek...

15mm Battle Masters - Introcuction

Although the miniatures ended up re-used into a makeshift WFB army and I have no clue where the rest of the game went, I remember Battle Masters foundly... The game main issues was it's huge vinyl play mat (about 1,50m squared - that's 5 feet for those of us still using body parts to measure stuff) that forced us, back in '93, to play on the floor...

More Quar Memoir

Although my Quar infantry + All Quiet on the Martian Front steam tanks + Memoir 44 rules idea didn't exactly end up as promising as I initial thought, I kept toying with it...

After having a look at the other Command and Color system like the original Battlecry (ACW) or C&C Napoleonics and browsing through the Memoir 44 cards database I came up with the following solution...

This cute little Panzer III is about to be eaten by a huge All Quiet on the Martian Tank Baldwin MkIII!
Picture by Steven MacLauchlan at Outpost Zero.

Use cavalry instead of armour as the third basic unit of my games and demote steam tanks to special units. After all, this is not-WW1 so tanks are much less prevalent and cavalry much less anachronistic than during WW2.

Some play testing and fine tuning will definitely be needed but I expect to end up with basic unit looking like this:

• Infantry moves 2 hexes without fighting or moves only 1 hex and fights, fights with 3/2/1 dice at ranges 1/2/3, may Take Ground on a successful Close Assault.
• Cavalry moves up to 3 hexes and fights but does so with a slightly shorter range than infantry (3/2 dice at ranges 1/2, or 3/1, or maybe even 4/2 or 4/1?), may Overrun on a successful Close Assault.
• Artillery moves 1 hex or fight with 3/3/2/2/1/1 dice at ranges 1/2/3/4/5/6, ignores LOS and terrain.

The steam tanks would take a leaf of the Memoir 44 Tiger special unit's book:

Memoir 44 Tigers special unit cards. Picture from Days of Wonder website.

• Each unit is a single miniature (thereby solving my initial problem of not being able to credibly fit three tanks in an hex) but each hit needs to be confirmed by a second die roll. That gives them a 1 in 12 chance of being hit but a single "hit point" (thus on the average needing the enemy to throw 12 dice at hit to destroy the unit) making it both tougher than the regular Memoir 44 armour unit (1 in 3 chance of being hit and three "hit points" thus needing an average of 9 rolls to be destroyed) but also making it possible to destroy the unit with a single die roll (albeit a lucky one). I think it gives the steam tanks a nice "monster with an Achilles' Heel" feel that suits early tanks quite well! And I can live with introducing a second die roll in the fight system as it stays confined to a select few special units.
• I'll probably reduce the speed to "Move 0-2 and fight" and drop the Overrun rule (but maybe give them Take Ground instead, although taking ground sounds more like a purely infantry affair?) to make them more the pondering behemoths I want them to be and give the cavalry more of its own tactical niche instead of just making it poor man's armour...

And with this Memoir of All Quiet on the Quar Front is back on the rails!

This Quar's Memoir

I couldn't sleep last night and had another of those "Eureka!" moments... Flashback a couple of years: I bought Memoir 44, a WW2 themed boardgame by Days of Wonder whose rules blew my mind! 

They might not be for everyone: they use card activation and quite a few wargamers would call them over-simplistic! Sure, they're quite abstract and I wouldn't call them a simulation of anything by any stretch of the word but it all ends up being great gameplay allowing for good miniature-pushing time without taking the slightest risk of brain cramp rule-wise while still allowing for some Clausewitz Friction and Cornelian "tactical" choices!

In fact, using just the basic rules (no special units or card, and not too much terrain) at first, I'll  use this game to introduce my four and half son to wargaming about any time soon.

Just in case you've never heard of the game...

Memoir 44 board set up for the Omaha Beach scenario. Picture from the manufacturer website.

Small World

With both role-playing games campaigns cancelled (too many players with other engagements and/or approaching the end of the year thus having too few games left to launch a new scenario), I had a game of Small World with a couple of buddies. 

The game was fresh out of the mail, as I had finaly remembered about spending that Amazon gift card my brother got me for my last birthday in January... A few week more and it wouldn't have been worth anything any more!