Second World War Wargaming (SWWW) is one of the chapters, and thus a set of rules, from Neil Thomas' book Wargaming an Introduction.


I have a fair number of well-painted, 15mm WWII miniatures, all based for Flames of War, which I no longer play. (I don't know of anyone in the immediate area that still play those rules, although there are a number of people that have collections from when FoW was the "thing".)


I have been looking for quite some time for an alternate set of rules where I can use my troops, based as they are, and still get a good game going.


The latest attempt was using NUTS! Big Battles. I usually play rules from Two Hour Wargames incorrectly for at least the first three tries. I don't know why. But these did not feel right.


Previously, I had tried Peter Pig's Poor Bloody Infantry (PBI), but I always got hung up on the pre-game. So maybe "tried" is not the correct word. I thought about it a lot. A few people said I would probably need to make some additional LMG bases given that they are embedded in FoW and they are separate entities in PBI. Right or wrong, that sort of turned me off.


When I first read SWWW I noted that they were intended as "skirmish" rules (every miniature represented a single man, weapon, or vehicle) using singly-based miniatures, but included army lists in the classic Neil Thomas style, where you would have a variety of unit types and weapon systems befitting a battalion strength attack, but were playing somewhere in the platoon to company level.


As I indicated previously, that aspect of Neil Thomas' rules turned me off, although I admit I am warming up to it.


Well today I decided to actually try some of these rules that I purchased and see if they have the problems that you imagine they do when you simply read through them. I find that some of the issues that you flag turn out to be nothing. Either you missed a rule or a rule is more nuanced than you originally read, so the issue becomes a non-issue. Sometimes, however, there are issues that arise that develop from a game, and you realize that the rules don't cover the situation adequately. Such as this game using these rules.

Before I gave the rules a try I read a particular blog article about these rules. The article was over on Soldier's East and it provided a number of observations about the rules. One thing that struck me is that how to operate armored infantry in a half-track wasn't very clear to him either. As it happens, my scenario sort of pushes that boundary.

Battle for Some Village

This is actually the same board that a gaming buddy and I used for our test game of NUTS! Big Battles. The forces were pretty much the same too.

The Germans would have three large Pioneer squads entrenched outside a village at a key crossroads. Also in attendance was a single StuG III assault gun and an armored truck packing a quad 20mm anti-aircraft gun. The Germans would be defending the center plus the entrenchments to the west. On turn four a Gepanzerte Panzergrenadier squad would enter from the road to the east. On turn eight a second StuG III would also enter, from the same road.


The American forces consisted of a full armored infantry platoon, fully kitted out with weapons and half-tracks. They would enter the board, along with a single Sherman tank, from the west or the road in the northwest corner.


On turn ten two Sherman tanks would appear on the northwest road as reinforcements. As you can see by the force above, the starting American forces are pretty formidable. Six M3 half-tracks with six Bazooka teams, two LMG teams, one Mortar team, one Sherman, and a lot of infantry makes for quite a starting advantage.

My setup for the Germans was pretty standard. The AA is in the crossroads, ready to catch a marauding American aircraft trying to attack the StuG III. The StuG is hunkered down, ready to take a shot at anything that comes down the road. The three infantry squads are in entrenchments (pretty significant cover), while the platoon commander is resting in the shade in the small wooded area by the town.


When I played the Americans in FoW I frequently tried using the armored infantry mounted in half-tracks. I liked the looks of them, but was never really sure how they operated. I finally bought a copy of Osprey Publishing's World War II US Armored Infantry Tactics, but it was so confused (as it actually was during the war), that I did not get much from it. In fact, within the span of a few paragraphs you can read how the half-tracks were not and were used to support the infantry with their machine guns after the infantry dismounted.


Nice looking pictures though!

Put another way, I am never sure when to dismount my infantry: as soon as possible or ... until it is too late? (The latter usually happens to me, to be honest.)

So, one good way to test a set of rules is to do something ... 'stupid' ... and see what happens. If it works out, those are probably rules to step away from. My initial thought was to move infantry into the two farm houses on the west side and engage the entrenchments with fire. But then I decided to take a few squads and just run up on the entrenched troops and keep the infantry mounted. Let's see what happens!

Turn 1

First and Second squads swing around the south end of the western approach to the village. Because they moved more than a half move they cannot fire. Meanwhile the Third Squad and the Machine Gun Squad advance onto the board and dismount. Because they transported units are dismounting the half-tracks can only make a half move. The Mortar Squad sneaks down the wooded road from the northwest, but does not dismount the mortar team. The platoon headquarters remains in the center, hiding from the StuG. The Sherman barrels down the down to engage the StuG.

As a side note, all of Thomas' rules are eminently tweakable. For example, the American Shermans have gyro-stabilizers on them, allowing them to fire on the move. The normal rule for firing the tank main gun on the move is that the tank may only make a half move and fire. I decide that American gyro-stabilizers allow the tank to make a full move and still fire the main gun. Adds a little flavor without too much added detail.

The Sherman – being at very long range – misses the StuG.

The first thing that I note is that the ranges of the rifles and LMGs are basically only 12", with 6" being short range. So I actually have to move up to 12" before I can even fire. First surprise: the small arms firing ranges are not very long.


The Germans return fire with all of the infantry stands that they can and get nothing. At this point it was necessary to work out how the armored infantry in half-tracks would work. Shooting at the infantry is like shooting at a unit in cover, so you roll to hit on the Cover line. Once you have obtained a hit the infantry gets a save. Normally infantry can have anywhere from a 3+ save to a 5+ save, due to its morale state. But because armored infantry does not check its morale while mounted in its half-tracks, that means that its save while mounted is 5+. (Remember, the bonus for cover has already been accounted for in the To Hit roll.)

I fumble a bit trying to calculate the firepower numbers. That is basically because I am unfamiliar with my troops, they are a non-standard formation (in size and composition), and I keep changing my mind on what the figures represent (use WYSIWYG or a standardized formation?), plus there is the unfamiliarity with the rules.

Pro tip: don't print your rules double-sided. It only adds to the confusion in trying to find charts because then you have to look on both sides of the page.

The StuG fire also missed the very long range shot. Being an assault gun, the StuG cannot move and fire. The best it can do is pivot and fire. Meanwhile the AA truck repositions to south of the village in order to disrupt the armored infantry attack. I figure the half-tracks won't stand up to quad 20mm guns for very long.

Turn 2

The Americans continue to swing to the south of the village. This allows them to put the buildings and the small woods between their fragile half-tracks and the StuG. If the StuG crew wishes to fire at the attack, it will have to move, sacrificing its fire for at least one turn.


This is where the second surprise comes in. The armored infantry and machine guns from the half-tracks find out that you cannot obtain an effective hit against entrenched troops until you get to short range, or 6" or less! So again the armored infantry do not get to fire as they are still out of range.

The Sherman, however, switches to HE and lands a hit on one of the entrenched squads (indicated by the orange blast marker). This shell is equivalent to ten mortar shells(!), but again the chance to hit entrenched troops is so low that no hits result.

I decide to flank the turning flank of the American armored infantry with my AA truck. Going over the open ground with that vehicle is horribly slow! (I think I was mistakenly moving it as a Truck, rather than an Average speed half-track.)

I also decide to move one of the infantry squads out of their entrenchments so they can better get stuck in and support the center trench. Maybe not the best of moves against all of those mobile American pillboxes (the half-tracks), but I have to try something.


I decide to gamble and shoot at the flanking half-track on the north side of the village rather than shifting the StuG to the south. It misses.

Although several German units are firing, and there are a few hits at long range, all of the hits are saved so no American casualties have occurred yet.

Turn 3

I now understand that I have to move up to close range with my American armored infantry in order to effect any hits against entrenched troops. Now I know that the German pioneers don't have any panzerfausts, panzerschrecks, and such amongst them, but the Americans should have expected them to. Nonetheless, I continue to push forward on the attack in order to see just how much of a mobile pillbox these rules allow armored infantry in half-tracks to be.


I pour fire into the central entrenchment three half-tracks, a armored infantry squad, and the platoon headquarters and amazingly obtain four hits. Now we are getting somewhere! But rather than use my final half-track and armored infantry squad to pour fire into the exposed infantry, I only fire a few SMGs at them, obtaining one additional hit. The remaining fire goes against the (armored) AA truck, to know avail. Further, the Sherman again misses its shot at the dodging and weaving AA truck!

Turn 3

After making the morale checks, this is what the German units look like. Yellow markers indicate that the bases are suppressed, meaning it can neither move nor fire. But, it also means that the figures get a save of 3–6! Light green markers indicate that the bases are partially suppressed, meaning it can move half and fire at half effect, while it has a save of 4–6. (Note that Thomas never uses the term "suppressed" or "pinned"; that is just my description.)

By the way, I use red glass pebbles to indicate a hit that happens this turn (as a reminder for the unit to take a morale check) and then convert the hits to grass green markers to show previous hits.


The colors are a bit hard to distinguish in the photos, but the central squad is suppressed and the southern squad is partially suppressed.

Although it looked pretty bad for the Germans, between the AA truck unleashing its quad 20mm fire, and the remaining squads getting really lucky with their fire, you start to see what happens when you don't calculate the math of getting into close range. The American armored infantry were blown away.


Let's review the math, shall we? The armored infantry needed to get into short range as long range shots are totally ineffective against infantry entrenched. When in short range they hit on a '6' and the enemy saved on a '5–6'. When the infantry return fire they hit the armored infantry on a '4–6' and they save on a '5–6'. Basically triple the casualties.


I did two things wrong here though. I definitely did not mark the entire southern squad as partially suppressed, so 2/3rds of the squad fired at full strength. I also might have accidentally fired the central squad. It looks like an awful lot of casualties for a situation where the central squad could not fire at all. If I did that – and I am not really sure if I did – the central armored infantry squad (with seven hits) would have been unscathed.

That said, the AA truck counted as two HMGs (that had to fire on the same target), for a total of 12 dice. It had a good roll and combined with the fire of the southern squad, filled that half-track with holes. The fire against the headquarters half-track (top of the picture) was very lucky. The Germans landed all three shots and the Americans saved none. It happens.

With the attacking forces crippled, I draw a curtain closed on the scenario. (That and my gaming cave was getting a little chilly and the dogs wanted their dinner.)

Conclusions

Yes, another post about another set of rules by Neil Thomas. I hope you are not getting tired yet.

Hey, I bought this book specifically so I could do something with all of those lovely Baccus 6mm Franco-Prussian War 1870–71 figures I purchased. It was going to inspire me to paint all of those guys up. Well, the rules weren't the problem. Neil rules seem pretty historical. It seems that the wars that I was most interested in were ... well ... pretty one-sided. It is kind of hard to convince people to join in games where they know (or strongly have the perception) that one side is going to lose, and you are going to have to be creative in defining what "winning" and "losing" really is.

Case in point: I played a small portion of day one of Gettysburg and the scenario was pretty lopsided. We drew, according to the scenario design but I think my gaming buddy nailed it: we did a lot better than the historical Generals (especially him; his command historically was wiped out) so we won.

I am trying to get another miniature project off of the ground and thought I would like to try a European army from this period. I also wanted to specifically try these rules, so glancing through the book I immediately rejected the Franco-Prussian War as I did not want to duplicate my 6mm army-in-waiting. Too many I knew nothing about. I settled on the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 (Seven Weeks' War). Now I know that the Prussian for this war are effectively a duplicate for the Prussians of the Franco-Prussian War, but nothing else grabbed me. I could use the Austrians for the Second Schleswig War 1864, where I could also bring in the Danes. And, although the Austrian uniforms had changed, I could still fake it pretty good and use them for the Franco-Austrian War of 1859. So, it seemed pretty good. (My second choice was to finally break down and do the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, but I thought that it might not be sufficiently different from Napoleonics. My third choice would have been the Crimean War.)

I wanted to play the rules as straight as possible, but I wanted two core changes:

1. I wanted to try a game now, and not a year from now, so I needed to reduce the figure count on each unit. I reduced all units to a single base. However, I kept track of when four hits were received with markers and then used a different colored marker to indicate when a base was lost. So Infantry and Cavalry still had the equivalent of four bases, Skirmishers two bases, and Artillery one base. The base for Artillery was 1/2 the width of the bases for the other units.
2. I wanted to play the game on a square grid. I created a gridded map where each square was the width of one base. (Remember, one base equals the frontage of one unit, which is two bases wide in Neil's rules.) Making sure I did not mess with the ratio of unit frontage to distance moved and distance moved to firing range I converted all measurements to Unit Widths.

Both changes worked pretty well, and I do not believe changed the flavor of the game, or more importantly, the math of the design.

Sorry, no pictures or battle report. I was using unfinished, unpainted, prototype figures and a hand-drawn map with a dotted grid and terrain features. It looked ugly but was functional. So, no pictures. Okay, just two (click to enlarge). I call it: Cartman joins the Austrian army. Intentionally very minimalist. They are about 12mm in height.

 

Those are the only ones painted.

Here is one big takeaway from playing the rules, army lists, and scenarios. Neil Thomas believes in bathtubbing  games (playing tactically at one level – in this case one unit equals one infantry battalion or artillery battery – but treating each player's army as if it was a much higher level command, like a Corps or Army). Practically all of his rules are this way.

The other is that this set of rules would seem to play better solo than as a one-versus-one or multiple players per side. Why? Well the scenario I played had the attacker (the Austrians) losing two units right off the bat due to random events while the defender (the Prussians) was able to forward deploy three of its ten units, putting them occupying all key objectives. There are so many variables – die rolls for numbers and types of troops, random events, who attacks, which side of the board you enter from – that it could lead to interesting games, but not necessarily interesting for both sides. I looked at the start and figured (correctly) that the Austrians were going to get their butts kicked (they did). It was very interesting to play, but I am not so sure it would have been if I had played the Austrians against a player.

Memoir '44 is like that. Their scenarios lean more towards being historical than being balanced. That is why when I organized a Memoir '44 tournament I made sure that each round was two games, each player playing once on each side, using their combined score to determine who won. It almost seems like you should do that with Neil's rules, if you use all the elements (random armies, random events, etc.).

But as a solo player, interesting scenarios – even if interesting from only one side – is still interesting. You don't feel like you lost. When the side you think will win you think "Okay, well that was what I was thinking would happen." But when the other side wins, you think "Cool! I won! I pulled it off!"

The basic turn sequence is:

1. Change Formation
2. Charge
1. Declaration
2. Move
3. Defensive Fire
3. Move
4. Fire
5. Hand-to-Hand
6. Morale

The interesting idea is that formation changes, unlike his Napoleonic rules, as free. It costs no movement and the act of changing does not affect later combat (although the formation you change to will affect combat). Effectively, you can be in any formation you choose, when it is your turn, but you have to live with that choice through your opponent's turn too.

One of the more surprising aspects of the game mechanics is that infantry formations in Line cannot move, effectively putting everyone into assault columns every time you wish to maneuver. Given the rule above, that means if your line infantry moves, you inflict lighter casualties in your turn when you fire, and you take heavier casualties in the enemy's turn. This blunts one of the worst aspects of many rules systems, which is the "Alpha Strike", or as Wally Simon used to put it "Gotcha' Gaming". If rules allow the player to fully move forward and then fire with full effectiveness, essentially a player can move from outside of weapon's range into range, fire, inflict casualties and thereby reduce the fire effectiveness of the enemy, all before the enemy can react. This is the "Alpha Strike/Gotcha'" and the whole point of the game then becomes dancing around the table trying to stay far enough away so the enemy cannot Alpha Strike you, and see who makes the first mistake. By blunting the Alpha Strike advantage the player who initiates it get to hit first with weaker damage, but theoretically that is offset by taking more damage in return.

Another surprising aspect of these rules is that firepower cannot stop a cavalry charge, except by utterly destroying the cavalry unit. (Actually, it cannot stop any charge, for that matter.) Yes, cavalry takes a nauseating amount of damage, has no save, and has an additional morale check if fired upon while charging by the charged unit, but even failing the morale check(s) only increases the casualty count; it does not stop the charge. My guess is that Neil's attitude is "so?" After taking huge damage it will throw less dice in hand-to-hand. Except that my experience is that it did not play out that way, which is good. No one really wants a whole section of their army to be totally useless. Just understand that if your Napoleonic rules doesn't make your cavalry a "one-shot" weapon, these rules will. If you charge infantry frontally, you may actually succeed in that charge, but it is the last charge you will make in the game with that unit. (Of course, there is always horrendously bad luck in either direction.)

When I played my test game I did use the command and control rules (which hurt the Austrians even more). Basically your commander's rating determines which column you roll on for how many units are commanded each turn. For the Austrians it was 4–6 and for the Prussians it was 6–8. However, there are a few exceptions: skirmishers are always in command and don't count towards the total; and the Austrians can command one extra artillery unit. I think the reason I never felt the pinch for command points is because of the loss of the two Austrian units before the game started due to the random event. They always seemed to have just enough. The Prussians never had a problem at all. The biggest problem is remembering to fire with half effect if the unit is not in command. Playing the rules more would solve that problem.

All in all it was an enjoyable game even though the Austrians got stomped and the board was practically cleared of them by the end of turn four. With the Austrians being forced into column by special rule (they cannot form line) stopping for a firefight is a bad move. Further, the fact that they were using muzzle-loaders and were up against breechloaders meant that they had no saves in those firefights while the Prussians did. So the Austrians made a lot of charges, some of which succeeded, but many of which did not. It basically allowed the Prussians to shoot twice as much (once in defensive fire and once in their turn). I think that is why the game ended so quickly. Games with lots of charges will crank the firepower up, while firefights will be a slower attritional battle.

I will definitely play this again. Like with DBA, I wonder how well it plays when you scale it up?

After a few false starts I have decided not to review rules until after I get a good test game or two in. It is usually only one test if I think the results are good. If the game itself has some interesting concepts that I am working through I will sometimes post the battle report before post the review. That does not mean that the game has passed muster, but that it has certainly piqued my interest.

Hail of Fire (available in beta on WargameVault) is a:

company-level, WWII themed miniatures war game designed to be both simple and easy to learn while keeping both players engaged in the action! And best of all, the rules are only few pages long! So print out the PDF, throw some models on the table, and jump right into the exciting tabletop combat!

Using a fast, interactive turn sequence, players are always in the fight. The addition of hidden action points, fast and easy deployment, and a delayed combat resolution system ensures that both commanders will be fighting the friction and fog of war as much as they are each other!

After chatting with the author on TMP in various threads I also learned that these rules can easily be used with troops using Flames of War basing, which is why I picked them up. I like Neil Thomas' Second World War Wargaming, and intend to give them another try, but I am still open to other rules.

I purchased the rules, downloaded and printed them out, and decided to give them a try this weekend. Now blogging the action while gaming always slows the game down tremendously, but it also helps you remember what part of the rules you got stuck on in the moment you got stuck. As I wanted to provide some good feedback to the author, I figured that in the beginning I needed to take this slower approach. Besides, I had already read the author's rules previously, resulting in askedquestions, and I discovered that his writing style is a bit ... subtle. So here goes part one of the first test game.

Hail of Fire Test Game 1

Terrain

The battle runs east-west with the Americans attacking from the west and the Germans defending the east side of the board. Note that I am not playing on the long edges, but the short ones.

View from the South

View from the North

By the way, ignore the river that suddenly ends. That was the spot where I was keeping my iPad while blogging.

Forces

Initially I just started pulling out troops and using what looked good and sounded reasonable. At some point I thought I was way out of line in points, so I decided to buy my troops according to my Third Edition Flames of War army books. I used the generic ones, not any unit or battle-specific ones.

The Germans have the following forces:

• Grenadierkompanie
• Company Command HQ
• Two Panzerfaust SMG teams @ 35 + 20 
• Anti-Tank section of one Panzerschreck team @ 20
• Mortar section of two 8cm GW43 mortar teams @ 40
• Sniper section of two Sniper teams @ 100 
•  Grenadier platoons 3 @ 120 + 10 each
• Platoon HQ section of one Panzerfaust SMG team
• Three Grenadier squads totaling six Rifle/MG teams
• Grenadier Machine Gun platoon (under strength) @ 60 + 5 + 50
• Platoon HQ section of one Command Panzerknacker SMG team
• Machine Gun section of two MG42 HMG teams
• Two HMG nests
• Grenadier Anti-Tank platoon @ 80
• Platoon HQ section of one Command SMG team
• Two 7.5cm PaK 40 gun teams
• Grenadier Assault Gun platoon @ 220
• Platoon HQ section of one StuG G
• Two Assault Gun sections of one StuG G each

Total: 1020 points.

The German forces arrayed

I am allowing all of the Company HQ to be on the board and not count towards the unit totals. Unlike man other rules, one-half of the defender's force must be kept off-board in reserve. That means three units are on the board (the Anti-Tank platoon, the Machine Gun platoon and a single Grenadier platoon) and three are off (two Grenadier platoons and the Assault Gun platoon).

The Americans have the following forces:

• Medium Tank company
• Company Command HQ
• Two M4A1 Shermans @ 140
• Medium Tank platoons 2 @ 205 each
• Platoon HQ section of one M4A1 Sherman
• Two Tank sections of one M4A1 Sherman each
• Armored Reconnaissance platoon @ 110 + 5
• Platoon Command M8 armored car team
• M8 armored car team
• Mortar Jeep team with Hull MG
• Recon Jeep team with AA MG
• Armored Infantry platoon @ 225 + 20
• Platoon HQ section
• One Command Rifle team
• One Rifle team
• One Bazooka team
• One M3 half-track with .50 cal AA MG
• Two Armored Infantry squads each of
• Two Rifle teams
• One Bazooka team
• One M3 half-track with .50 cal AA MG
• 60mm Mortar squad
• One M2 60mm mortar squad
• One Bazooka team
• One M3 half-track with .50 cal AA MG
• LMG squad
• Two M1919 LMG teams
• One Bazooka team
• One M3 half-track with .50 cal AA MG
• Field Artillery Battery (155mm) @ 110
• One Gun section of two M1 155mm howitzer teams (off board)
• One Observer Carbine team with Jeep

Total: 1020 points.

The American forces, all fuzzy

Any American units can start up to 14" on the board from the western baseline.

Pre-Game

I did change the pre-game rules a bit, but it should have no real affect on game play.

• My playing area is 50" by 60", not 48" by 72".
• My baselines were the short edges, not the long edges. I did that so I could have more range and because the terrain "felt better" going east-west than it did north-south. Plus, I did not want to rotate all of the terrain after I spent so much time setting it up.

All defending forces on the board are considered hidden and dug-in (in hard cover, until they move). All attacking forces are considered hidden¹, but not dug in. The interesting part is that hidden troops do not need to pre-plot their positions and are revealed later in the game. This reminds me of the Flames of War ambush rules. When a hidden infantry or gun team is revealed it must be in the player's deployment zone – although it may possibly be deployed even farther forward (but not farther than their forwardmost unit) – and must be either outside of line of sight of the enemy or in concealing terrain at least 12" away from enemy infantry and gun teams or 4" away from enemy vehicle teams. Hidden, defending, vehicle teams that are concealed are spotted at twice the above distances. Reconnaissance units can spot enemy teams further still.

Turn 0

Hail of Fire uses a command system to determine how many orders each side gets each turn. At the start of the game each player secretly rolls a D6 and that is the number of "Hero" points that they have. These are essentially command points that can be used at any time. Once used they are gone. However, there is a luck-based system for replenishing Hero points.

The Americans roll a '4' for their Hero die while the Germans roll a '3'.

The Germans place their objective, a communications bunker to the east of the village, west of the river.

Objective for the Americans to capture

The Americans indicate that their objective is the farm house south of road.

Objective for the Germans to capture

It wasn't really clear to me on how to start. Technically both sides are hidden¹, which means you cannot check line of sight to see who is revealed. So I decided to allow the Americans to deploy all of the units that they wanted to deploy onto the board, revealed. The rest would remain hidden and thus have to follow the rules of hidden units revealing themselves. After the Americans deployed all of the revealed units, the Germans would then reveal any of the units they wanted to and deploy those forces to the board.

If no units were in line of sight, it would still be "Turn 0" and the Americans could then move, unit by unit without regard to the number of Order (as described in the rules) until something did come into line of sight of the Germans. At that point Turn 1 would start. Of course, if after deployment by the Americans and Germans enemy units were in sight of each other, Turn 1 would immediately start.

The Americans decided to deploy their reconnaissance platoon and nothing else. As they are reconnaissance teams in vehicles, they can spot enemy infantry and gun teams out to 10" (to 20" for enemy vehicle teams). Because there are linear instances everywhere (hedges, but not hedgerows), the reconnaissance team is 16" from the centerline (which is the German's deployment zone) and they can only see 10" (there are no vehicles hidden on the board), the Germans can decide to deploy nothing. However, because they want the Americans to go to Turn 1 as soon as possible, they decide to deploy a sniper.

American recon moves in from the west while a German sniper is revealed as being deployed in a house

Turn 1

The Americans roll a '6' and the Germans a '5' for their orders. This means the Americans get one order while the Germans will get five and can act first. Ambush!

The Germans start by trying to bring one Grenadier platoon on (south of the road, east of the field complex) and the Assault Gun platoon on (via the east road) by using three orders. Only two infantry teams appear on the edge of the table. (No picture, because it is right where the iPad sits.)

The sniper wants to fire on the lead (recon) jeep so we can see how that works. Now there are no Sniper team rules in Hail of Fire so here is what I am doing.

Sniper: 24" range, Rate of Fire 1, Armored Vehicle Assault -, Infantry, -1 Firing modifier
In hindsight, the range should probably be 16" as the firing modifier allows the sniper to fire at double range and still obtain a hit fairly easily (4+).

The sniper uses the fourth order to fire and scores a Received Fire Point (RFP) on the recon jeep. The recon jeep will have to resolve the effect of the RFP once the unit receives an order.

The concept that you don't know the effect of your fire until the target unit receives an order is an interesting one. A player can completely avoid the effects of fire until he needs to unit to do something (like move or fire). This allows a unit to survive on an objective, for example, until it acts. Unfortunately, you have to take that Received Fire Check right at the time you need the unit to do something, so waiting too long increases the chance that the unit is destroyed from accumulated fire.

Now I reach a questionable part of the rules: can a unit fire more than once? It specifically states that "a Unit may be given several orders over a single turn" and does not put any qualifiers on that statement. Elsewhere in the rules it indicates a gun team may not use a fire order after having used a move order in that turn. But that is it. I am going to allow it, until I get an answer from the author on TMP.²

So, does the reconnaissance platoon want to use its order to return fire, move to cover in reaction, or does it want to wait until it is the acting player to move or fire?  There really is no reason to wait so the Americans decide to use its single order to make a reaction move.

First, the Americans have to resolve the RFP on the recon jeep team. This is passing a Received Fire Check (RFC). All small arms fire at soft-skinned vehicles resolve as if firing at infantry in hard cover. The sniper gets a suppressed result against the recon jeep indicating it must be rallied before it can move or fire. Rallying can be attempted each time the unit receives an order and it has no RFPs (so not this time). Rallying is basically passing a Quality Check, which is rolling a 4+ for this team.

The reconnaissance platoon rolls a '7' on 2D6 for a movement of 7". The command M8 can add 12" to that move if it stays on the road. Everyone moves to a position of cover (as best as possible).

The American recon platoon reacts to the sniper fire

However, the lead M8 has moved forward enough that it is within 10" of a hedge line that I was considering for placing my German grenadier platoon. If I don't place it now – allowing the recon unit to spot them – I will lose my chance to place them there.

There is a rule that states: "If revealed during enemy movement, subtract the distance moved from the listed ranges." So, the M8 moved 7", reducing their spotting distance from 10" to 3". That rule allows the Germans to reveal an infantry or gun team in concealing terrain as close as 3" away if done in reaction to the M8 unit's move. Once its move is over, that rule would no longer apply, so the unit would need to be outside of 10" range.

I decide to reveal the Grenadier unit and place it behind the hedge. It is just too good a position, and I need to put forces on the board to stop the drive on the communications bunker.

The German grenadiers are revealed

I need to keep RFPs on the recon jeep so that it cannot rally, so I fire the sniper at it again as my last German order for the turn. Unfortunately, the sniper did not like the idea of sticking his head out when staring at six machine guns and two 37mm cannons, and he missed the shot.

Turn 2

The Americans get two order and can act first while the Germans get one order.

The American give a fire order to the reconnaissance platoon. This allows the recon jeep to attempt to rally, but it doesn't succeed, so it does not get to fire with the rest of the teams.

The grenadier platoon – actually one specific team – is declared the target and any other team within 6" (and apparently, whether in the same unit or not³) can also be an eligible target if enough RFPs are scored.

There are, of course, no M8 armored cars defined in the game this early in the development cycle, so I use the M3 Stuart for the main gun stats and note that the M8 has two Vehicle MG entries.

M8 AC: armor off the scale at the low end
Main Gun: 16" range, ROF 2, AT 2
Vehicle MG x 2: 16" range, ROF 2, AVA -, AT -, May not fire if Main Gun is firing

It looks like it makes more sense to fire the MGs, given that main guns and vehicle machines guns – whether hull, co-axial, or the commander's AA MG – may not both fire. With the two M8s I would get eight dice @ -1 (concealment) as opposed to four dice @ 0 (no concealment when firing HE from main guns). The mortar jeep adds two more dice @ -1 for a total of ten dice @ -1. There are a total of five teams that can be hit and an astonishing five hits are scored!

Germans undergoing heavy fire from the American reconnaissance platoon

The Germans decide not to react, so play stays with the Americans, who think it is time to order a tank platoon. It is at this point that I realize only defending vehicle units can be hidden on board, and as there are no positions on the board for American vehicles to be out of line of sight, so that means they have to come on from off board.

Actually, I am good with that as the action so far has represented the reconnaissance platoon revealing the potential ambushes and now the cavalry is riding to the rescue. The Americans order a platoon of Shermans to move up the road. With their roll and the road bonus they move 14".

American Sherman platoon advances on the board

The Germans have one more order and the sniper again attempts to continue the recon jeep's suppression, this time succeeding to put an RFP on it.

With American tanks coming on the Germans need armor reinforcements. The Germans decide to use all three Hero points to obtain reinforcements and they succeed. The assault gun platoon can now be ordered onto the board next turn!

German StuG platoon ready to clank on the board

Thoughts So Far

To Be Continued in Part Two…

Footnotes

¹ As it turns out, this was incorrect. Vehicle teams on the attacker's side are not considered hidden. This is a case where one general rules says all attackers are hidden and then a later rule specifies that only the defender's vehicle teams are hidden. This is what I mean about the author's sometimes subtle style of rules writing.

² Asked and answered. Yes, a unit can fire more than once per turn if given multiple orders. If it has enough orders it can fire multiple times in both the active and reactive phases.

³ Asked and answered. Yes, fire designated as being at a team with one unit can hit a team in a different unit as long as that second team is within 6" of the first team and within range and line of sight of the firers.

Continuing on with my test game of Hail of Fire (Beta) by Retroboom, and available from Wargame Vault. If you missed it, you can find Part One here.

Turn 03

The Americans get three orders and the Germans get one.

The reconnaissance platoon gets the order to fire. The previous hit against the recon jeep team from the sniper needs to resolved ... and it comes up destroyed. The German sniper team has killed the crew!

The recon jeep team is destroyed

By the way, I forgot to define the mortar jeep team in the reconnaissance platoon.

Mortar Jeep: Soft-Skin
M2 60mm Mortar: 24" range, ROF 2, AVA -, AT -, Can fire over friendly troops, HE

The reconnaissance platoon fires at the same team in the grenadier platoon that it did last time and scores only one hit. There are now a total of six hits on that platoon. Again, the Germans pass on reacting.

The Americans decide that they need some infantry, so they order the armored infantry platoon onto the board. They will still be mounted in their vehicles, so they move 2D6". They want to pass by the farm house south of the road (the objective for the Germans) up to the vineyards, where they will let the infantry dismount. They roll an '8', which means they fall well short of reaching the dismount point. The Germans do not react.

The American armored infantry move on in their half-tracks

The Americans have one more order, but the likely move by the Germans is to order their armor onto the board, which is far enough away that the Americans are unlikely to be able to react. With that in mind the Americans use their last order to move the armored infantry one more time, to see if they can get the infantry into the vineyards.

There are no rules for embarking or disembarking from transports, so I am going to take a guess that, because the author intends each order to be very granular, it is going to take a full move order, rather than a traditional 1/2 move of the transports, like other rules. So that means that the infantry essentially roll a move and measure from the vehicle to see how far they can deploy¹. Given the distance, I am going to make a transport move for another 7". (And I seem to have lost that picture! No matter.)

As expected, the Germans move their assault gun platoon onto the board with a spectacular 17" move (includes the road bonus)! The assault guns are now within long range of the half-tracks.

The StuGs come clanking up the road

Turn 04

The Americans get three orders and act first while the Germans get two orders.

With the StuGs in sight the armored infantry platoon take a move order and disembark the infantry. (There do not appear to be any 'disembark from the flaming transport' rule yet, so I did not want to take a chance.) The infantry can move 6". The Germans do not react.

The American armored infantry platoon dismounts into the vineyard

The Shermans really need to deploy, but they are bottle-necked in their position. Rather than solving the issue, the Americans decide to try and put the Germans on their back foot. They order another Sherman platoon onto the board, only this time they are going to come down the northwest road, threatening the flank of the assault gun platoon. They get a 13" move down the road.

The Shermans move on (view from the north)

The Germans react by moving the assault gun platoon across the ford and into the outskirts of the village. Fortunately for the Americans, that is just outside of short range for the German StuGs (24") to the Shermans.

The StuGs ford the river and are in the outskirts of the village

The Shermans on the central road still have to do something though. They need to deploy into line, and if possible, get into their short range (16"). If they can just get a big roll ... they get a '6'. [sigh] 1" away for the lead Sherman to get into short range! So the best they can do is stay out of the StuGs short range, sitting at 25" away.

The Shermans advance cautiously

The Germans react by firing with the StuGs, but they miss all shots.

Turn 05

Initiative switches to the Germans as they get four orders and the Americans get two.

With the armored infantry platoon in the vineyard it is time to resolve the fire on the grenadier platoon and let them open fire before it is too late. As it turns out four of the five teams are suppressed, including the platoon leader, and one of the teams is destroyed.

More than 2/3rds of the grenadier platoon is suppressed or dead

It is at this point that I notice that infantry teams are rated as Rifle, MG, or SMG, but there is no Rifle/MG team. I decide that for every Rifle/MG team firing, the even numbered teams will count as Rifle and the odd numbered ones will count as MG. A pitiful five dice fire at concealed targets, scoring two hits. One American rifle team and one bazooka team take a hit each.

Weak fire against the American infantry in the vineyard

The armored infantry react by trying to form a skirmish line. First they have to resolve the hits. They are in soft cover so there is a greater chance they will be destroyed, but both teams are only suppressed. The infantry rolls a 4" move while the half-tracks roll an 8" move. The half-tracks moving through the vineyard need to pass a quality check or stop after moving 1" into the terrain.

The American infantry keeps pushing for the hedges

First I have some housekeeping: I did not read the rule very well when I thought it said that the attacker was placing an objective on their side, rather than on the defender's side. Makes a lot more sense. So the farm house is no longer the objective, but rather this wrecked Marder.

Second objective is in the northeast corner, along the north road

Also, there is a chit system to determine when the game ends and who wins. At the beginning of every turn the attacker must pull a chit for each objective that have not captured and still hold. That means that means that I have to pull two chits for turns 2, 3, 4, and 5 and when the total reaches 18, the Americans have lost. After pulling 8 times the American score is 11. Yikes!

One more thing. The author said that it is a rule (not yet in the game) that revealing an observer would not start Turn 1. Although he did not have rules for snipers, he would have included them in that rule of who would not trigger Turn 1. Given that, I will give the Americans back one more turn, which lowers their chit score to 9. (He really needs to come up with a name for that score. Break Point?)

Okay, so now the Americans really need to get on their horses. I don't think that the rest of the defenders are going to make it on before the Americans break and run!

The Germans spend another order to fire with the grenadier platoon, in an attempt to rally before the Americans roll over them. Three of the four teams pass, with only the platoon leader failing! The Germans get to roll a respectable 11 dice this time, scoring two hits.

Grenadiers rally and put more fire on the American armored infantry platoon

I would love to react with the Americans, but they really need to capture that Marder objective and slow the Break Point clock down, so they need their order for the Shermans on the north road later.

The Germans use an order for their StuGs to fire at the Shermans on the central road. They score one hit on the Sherman platoon. Now here is something not mentioned in the rules – but don't worry folks, the author is reading this blog post – the hits are not resolved until the unit takes an order, just like infantry, but when you resolve it later you really need to remember the AT of the hit and whether it was taken at long range (because it gets +1 to its armor) and whether it was a flank shot. So I am going to use hit markers with numbers on them, with the number indicating the AT of the hit. An "L" will designate it was a long range shot and an "F" will indicate whether it was a flank shot.

Sherman takes a AT 3 hit on the front armor (it should also have an "L" for long range)

With one order left the Germans decide to shift initiative to the Americans.

The Shermans on the north road continue to move down the road towards the objective. Mind you, only one of three on-board, hidden units has been revealed so far (the sniper being free), so the Shermans are definitely expecting the anti-tank guns to pop out. You can definitely feel their caution as they roll a '4' (on 2D6) and get a move of 10" down the road.

Now the Germans have two options. With a 10" move they can only spot a gun team 0" away (4" after they stop moving), so I could put them in the woods to the southeast of them. The other option, and one I originally considered, was across the river and behind the hedge line. The latter position covers down the road in case any more reinforcements come (there are none, other than the company command, which I have failed to bring on yet), while also covering the objective without having to move. The woods, however, immediately gives a short-ranged flank shot.

One possible ambush position

(For the keen-eyed of you those at NOT anti-tank gun models, but infantry guns. I could not find my 75mm anti-tank guns, only 88mm ones, so went with these models.)

I decide to take the hedge position as pivoting the guns in the confining space of the woods would be a nightmare. The Germans reveal and orders opportunity fire. They have four shots at short range, scoring one lousy hit!

The PaK40s open up and hit the Shermans (the marker should be a "4L", not a "3")

(I noticed later that a PaK40 has a '4' AT, not a '3').

The Americans suddenly remember Sgt. Rock is in that Sherman platoon (I remembered I had four Hero points I could spend)and decide to drive on to the objective. But first we need to resolve that fire. The RFP has an AT of 3 and the Sherman has an armor of 1, so one Ping die is rolled and two Penetration dice are rolled. One Penetration die has no effect, as does the Ping die. The other Penetration die, however inflicts a hit (presumably of the same AT?) requiring the tank to check again next activation. Some sort of delayed effect, I suppose? (I am sure the author will chime in and tell me.) There is nothing stating that it is affected in any other way, so I allow it to move with the rest of the platoon. They get a 11" move (17" if they stay on the road)! They bag the objective!

Objective captured!

Turn 06

One of the previous two chits I drew are now applied as they have still failed to take one objective, so the Americans are at an 10 Break Point (BP). The Germans now need to pull two chits – one for not having one of the objectives and one for having enemy turns on its half of the table – and gets a total of 3.

The Germans have four orders and the Americans two.

The Germans order their anti-tank guns to fire at the Shermans on the objective. At short range they score two hits.

The PaK40s hit the Shermans again

The Americans react by firing. The first Sherman now has four penetration dice to resolve and two ping dice. The two hits stay on, but nothing else happens. "Hey Charlie, do you smell smoke?"

The second Sherman is destroyed.

One Sherman goes up in flames!

The Shermans open up with their machine guns, rolling 8 @ -1 (concealment), scoring two hits. Rats! There is only a 16% chance that they are not suppressed (or dead)! They have effectively shut down the anti-tank platoon! The Germans move with the assault gun platoon, shifting to the right, towards the objective while still protecting their flank from the Shermans on the central road by using the buildings to block line of sight.

The StuGs are moving so fast the cameraman can't get a clear shot! The Shermans are flanked.

Now here is an interesting nuance of the rule in giving orders. You can only give an order to react if you have been fired upon – by returning fire or moving – or if an enemy just moved into view. As one of the StuGs was visible when the Shermans moved to the objective, this is not a unit they have not seems before, so they cannot react. The Germans have gotten the drop on them because the Americans chose to ignore them. The assault guns fire at the Shermans with six dice. Ouch! Five hits.

Fortunately for the Americans, no more than two hits can be registered against each team in one fire order, so one hit is dropped.

The Shermans are really racking up the hits

The problem is, this fire is not resolved and won't be until the unit is given an order, which may be never. That means they will keep counting as on objective and on my half of the board until they are eliminated. (For that reason alone, they are not going to react and resolve the hits yet.) The answer is: infantry assault, That will either destroy the tanks or force them to retreat (if the Germans win the assault.) Besides, I need to try out the assault rules!

The Germans reveal the Company 2iC with attached Panzerschreck team.

Captain Schmidt appears in the rear with the Panzerschreck team

In Flames of War a panzerschreck team as a tank assault value of '5', while a panzerfaust has a tank assault value of '6'. In terms of AVA in Hail of Fire, it should be pretty high. (A 'Bazooka/'Shreck' is listed as an AVA '4'. A bazooka team in Flames of War is a two-man team with a tank assault value of '4'. A panzerschreck 'team' is four men with two tubes. I think I will use a '5' for the panzerschreck team and a '6' for the panzerfaust as the other AVA values seem to match the Flames of War tank assault values.)

The Germans order the 2iC's command into an assault. Will he make it (he is more than 4" away)? Yes! (You didn't expect otherwise, did you?)

Step 1: Assaulting unit must pass a quality check. Success.

Step 2: Teams not assaulting may fire. None.

Step 3: Any unsuppressed enemy teams within 8" of the assaulting teams may fire. That would be the Shermans. But here is a catch! The rules say that the teams "may be issued a Fire order , without requiring Order Points be spent." So they WILL have to resolve those hits prior to taking their defensive fire. (I assume they could also opt not to fire, but I don't think they would do that in this dire circumstance. Who knows. I haven't studied the odds yet.)

The first Sherman, who was smelling smoke, has to survive eight penetration dice and five ping dice. (I finally took into account that PaK40 hit correctly.) Boom! The Sherman platoon leader has to face four penetration dice and two ping dice. Boom!

The Sherman platoon is wiped out. The Germans regain the objective.

Wow! That was exciting! And, that immediately raises the American Break Point by 3 (2 chit draws) to 13.

Step 4: Close combat. None.

Step 5: Check who won. Germans.

Step 6: Losers retreat. None.

Hmmmm. There is no Step 7 that says the winner takes the loser's position. I allow it as it is pretty traditional. The Germans take back the objective.

The Americans take their last order and move their armored infantry platoon forward. Two more rifle teams are suppressed and infantry moves 3".

The armored infantry hit the hedge line. The LMGs are in position

Turn 7

The Americans draw two more chits for a whopping 5, bringing the game to a close as they hit their Break Point of 18.

Final Thoughts

So, the defender only revealed and used a small fraction of their force. When I started playing I was sure that the reinforcement system was "broken", because it was so hard to get forces on the board. I still think that a unit that makes the roll to come on board should not have to wait until the next turn to move them. If you have the orders, you should be able to roll on. But, it is not that critical. What does seem a waste is that a '5' on the reinforcement roll brings on individual stands. Total waste to me. Never used those teams at all. Either allow the whole unit on with a '5' or else it means no reinforcements.

With everything else I think my only complaint is a trivial one and easily explained away: there are a lot of undefined rules, weapons and vehicle data, and so on. Taking on WW II is a huge undertaking. Now if you are a rules writer, it could also be a gold mine if people like your rules because you can sell army and campaign books, just like Battlefront did very successfully with Flames of War. But I think people are going to shy away from that commercial concept. So how long will it take for the author to actually finish this?

If, as the author states, he was looking to create a system that allows someone who used to play Flames of War (like me) and wants to use their troops without rebasing, then you can probably assume that said person also has a lot of old Flames of War books. If you really want to draw those ex-Flamers, maybe coming up with a guide for converting Flames of War data to Hail of Fire stats would be just the ticket. As I noted in the assault description, the AVA values seem very similar to the tank assault values. There is a start.

As for the rules themselves, I again have to state again that the rules for handling and deploying hidden troops are simple, but well done and using them makes for a fascinating game. The author indicated that some people that have tried his game shake their heads and then simply deploy everything on the board and play it straight. They are missing out. I think that if they play a game against someone who uses the hidden deployment rules well, they would get crushed and start coming around to that way of playing.

I hope I played the Resolved Fire Check correctly in relation to assaults. If it does not play that way – i.e. if the unit defending in the assault does not have to resolve the hits before conducting defensive fire – then that portion of the rules are broken. (I suspect that I played it correctly though.) An infantry assault is just the ticket to force an armor unit sitting on an objective to finally resolve the hits so you can see if it dies or not.

I am not sure I like getting a hit as a result for resolving a hit on armor. I would like to hear the rationale for it before deciding.

One thing that felt "wrong" was resolving hits on armor. Because the resolution is delayed, it produces a "correct" result, in my opinion. The problem is that the resolution is complicated by factors from the hit itself. I solved it by putting numeric and letter designations on the hit markers, but it still is clunky when it comes time to resolve them. Maybe rather than rolling a number of dice equal to your AT for each hit, you figure out how to make placing one hit for each point of AT work. Subtract one for long range, add one for flank? I don't know. This is the one component of the game that felt out of place because of its comparative complexity.

The last item that struck me was how easy it was to suppress a gun team. Rather than treating a gun shield as hard cover or some such rule, perhaps it can reduce the chance of suppression. It just seemed like with the number of dice being thrown by tanks with their hull and co-axial MGs it was too easy to suppress a major portion of the anti-tank gun platoon's firepower. (In my case, all of it.)

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little peek into Hail of Fire (Beta). I certainly enjoyed playing it.

Update

Footnotes

¹ Asked and answered by the author. To embark or disembark it is a move by the infantry. The transports do not move on that order.

I don't know about you, but I am getting old. Miniature wargaming is beginning to take its toll on me. After a gaming session I will usually have back and leg pain – not really bad pain, but annoying pain. I think that is why for some time I have been drifting to board games with miniatures. You still get some of the visual appeal of miniatures, and you get the small, easily reached boards. However, sometimes you want to try some miniatures rules that are not designed for a grid, or maybe even for a small gaming space. Now I am lucky to have a whole guest house as a gaming space where I can leave things set up, but even so, I don't always want to use that much space. Maybe I have a big game set up that is playing out over time and I just want a small, quick game and don't want to disturb the big game. Or maybe my back just hurts and I just want to play a game at a small table where I can reach everything.

So, when I tested out Neil Thomas' rules Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815–1878 (WNCE) I needed to use smaller units so I would, frankly, not have to have so many bases. I could get started quicker. When someone asked on a forum how to convert another set of rules to a grid I thought I would elaborate on my response to him in this article.

It is all about ratios

If you want to keep the flavor of a game intact – the way that the rule's author intended – you really need to understand that there are a few ratios that are critical. One if the ratio of a unit's frontage to the distance it can shoot. So many rules with flexible basing requirements fail to mention this. If you halve a unit's frontage, but keep the shooting range and angle of fire the same, you have doubled the firepower density of the game. You will find that it plays much bloodier and therefore faster. Other rules in the game might be thrown off by this. An example would be that if you get 'X' number of hits in a turn you have to take a special morale check. If achieving 'X' hits is considered exceptional, doubling the firepower will make this more common and thus you would be taking more checks than would be considered normal within the course of a single game.

Unit Frontage

I was not only converting WNCE to a grid, but I was changing from a four base unit to a single base unit, so I really needed to look at the unit as a whole. I needed to look at the unit frontage for the base rules and compare it to what I was going to use. Neil's recommendations for basing 15mm figures is 40mm wide bases with four bases to the unit. However, units are arranged in formations of two ranks of two bases each. (There are some exceptions to this, of course, which I will cover later.)



Given that three inches is 76.2 millimeters, the two formations are roughly the same size in width and depth. (Why 3" bases? It all began when I was ordering from Litko and instead of selecting 50 bases I selected 500... I was wondering why they were so expensive!) Rather than do complex math I decided to call it even; one of my bases if the equivalent footprint of a 15mm infantry unit in Line formation (or a cavalry unit) in the base rules.

Base Widths and Unit Widths

The first time I encountered rules using "base widths"(BW) as a unit of measurement was the Polemos rules system. (They also have "base depths", or BD measurements which are essentially 1/2 a BW.) DBA 3 famously went to BW measurements and upset more than a few people. So what is BW measurement? Quite simply it is changing all of the measurements in the rules from a set number of centimeters and inches to increments of whatever the width of your bases are. In this case, because I am using the distance of a unit's frontage, it would more properly be called Unit Widths (UW).

By converting all measurements to UW, we can maintain the ratios of unit frontage to shooting distance and movement distance. Here is what the converted movement distances would be, in UWs.

Unit	Terrain				Deduction per Turn
	Open	Woods or Town	Crossing Streams	Road
Infantry (Loose Order)	1 1/2	1	1	2	1/2
Infantry (Close Order)	1	1/2	1/2	2	1/2
Skirmishers	1 1/2	1 1/2	1 1/2	2	0
Cavalry and Dragoons	2	May not enter	1 1/2	3	0
Artillery	1 1/2	May not enter	May not cross	2	0

Just a note about the Deduction per Turn column. In Neil's base rules the number represented a fraction of the movement that the unit lost for each turn. (Turns while using Road movement were never penalized.) The numbers here represent UWs, not fractions. Because I am using 1/2 UW as the minimum unit of measure (more on that later), I have rounded the values up, which makes units less maneuverable than in the base rules. Not an ideal solution, but as you will see, with a grid turning becomes less of an issue.

The shooting ranges are also easily converted to UWs.

Weapon	Range
Steel Rifled Artillery	7 1/2
Bronze Rifled Artillery	6
Smoothbore Artillery (Shot and Shell)	4
Smoothbore Artillery (Canister)	1 1/2
Later Breechloading Rifle	3
Early Breechloading Rifle, Rifle Musket	2
Smoothbore Musket	1
Skirmishers	+1 to Rifle or Musket Range

You immediately start to see an issue, however. There are a number of 1/2 measurements. The original goal in my mind had been to make the game board's grid size the same as the UW. In my case that would have meant 3" grid squares.


My intent was not to allow bases to position themselves diagonally within the grid, but only orthogonally. So a square grid that was 1 UW by 1 UW would allow you to fit two units in a square and you would know which unit was in front of which, and which way it was facing. Units would have to be aligned horizontally or vertically, but units could face in opposite directions. But if I allowed for measurements of 1/2 UW/grid, it would be a little more awkward.


So the best decision was to make each grid 1/2 UW and to double all of the measurements. This would still make the ratios between unit frontage, shooting range, and movement distance correct, but would make counting and positioning easier.


So now our data tables look like the following.

Unit	Terrain				Deduction per Turn
	Open	Woods or Town	Crossing Streams	Road
Infantry (Loose Order)	3	2	2	4	1
Infantry (Close Order)	2	1	1	4	1
Skirmishers	3	3	3	4	0
Cavalry and Dragoons	4	May not enter	3	6	0
Artillery	3	May not enter	May not cross	4	0

Weapon	Range
Steel Rifled Artillery	15
Bronze Rifled Artillery	12
Smoothbore Artillery (Shot and Shell)	8
Smoothbore Artillery (Canister)	3
Later Breechloading Rifle	6
Early Breechloading Rifle, Rifle Musket	4
Smoothbore Musket	2
Skirmishers	+2 to Rifle or Musket Range

There is only one more measurement in the rules and that is the retreat move, which comes out to 3 grids.

Diagonals

The one area where most people complain about grids – especially square grids – is shooting or moving at odd angles. Actually, these odd angles are generally what create the most friction (read: arguments) in games. Is the enemy within the 45º firing arc, or are you turning greater than 90º, when the movement penalty is doubled, and so on. Further moving at angles other than orthogonally means you inevitably run into a scenario where you are a fraction of an inch or a centimeter in or out and time is spent debating whether the shot or the charge should be allowed or not. (It happened at my last game of Black Powder and was settled with a die roll as the two players could not agree. Still, this does not happen in grid games.
That said, if you do not want players be forced to fire or move straight forward, you need to devise a method of counting distance. I always liked the way Rivet Wars counted distance.

When calculating the range to the target, only a single diagonal may be used.

These are examples of what that rule means.


The red path shows that it counts three squares, one diagonal and two verticals. The green path shows one diagonal, three horizontals, and one vertical. The one vertical is because the rule specifically only allows one diagonal to be used when counting distances. Note that Rivet Wars tends to have must shorter distances, so it works. In WNCE you can see that the measurements are as short as 1 (the movement of Close Order Infantry in Woods) to 15 (the range of Steel Rifled Artillery), so perhaps it is better to allow one diagonal per 8 grids in distance.

Note that this would apply to all distance counts, such as movement. If a unit can move 3 grids, this move is perfectly legal.

Turning

All turning is by 90º, which is one way to justify the high penalty. A unit turns by changing its front face by 90º or 180º. Turning 180º is easy; simply reverse the facing of the unit, keeping the unit in the same two squares as they started in.

Turning 90º can be handled in two ways, depending upon how maneuverable you want your infantry units to be. (Remember, only Infantry takes a deduction for turning.) In the figure below, the light blue rectangle represents the starting position of the unit, before the turn, while the medium blue rectangle represents the ending position. The arrows represent which way the unit is facing.


If you want units to be fairly maneuverable you could allow all four maneuvers, which essentially represents wheeling the unit left and right, forward and back. If you think they should only be allowed to wheel forward, then only allow options 2 and 3.

Exceptions

There are three exceptions in my conversions: Skirmishers, Artillery and Infantry Columns.

In the base WNCE rules the Skirmisher unit is only two bases. We can easily handle that by allowing 1/2 the hits before the unit is destroyed. The primary difference comes in that the formation is always one rank of two bases, so when reducing this down to a single base, the unit footprint should actually be 1/2 the depth of the Infantry and Cavalry formations, i.e. 0.75" for me. In the end, I don't think that really matters. Further, in WNCE Neil never specifies the depth of any stands, so I don't think it really entered into his equations either.

Artillery is even smaller in that in the base WNCE rules the Artillery unit is only one base. That means that the unit in these rules should also be 1/2 the width and 1/2 the depth. I did not do that but instead used a base that was 1 1/2" wide and 3" deep. *Cough* The 1 1/2" width makes the Artillery unit the proper width and the 3" depth allows me to put a limber behind the artillery, facing away. That way when the Artillery is limbered and on the move the horses face forward, while when deployed the gun faces forward. It looks much better and saves me from sawing bases in half. So again, a compromise in that I used a base twice the depth expected. (Artillery bases are traditionally square and not rectangles, as the models are so deep.)

Finally we get to Infantry in Column formation. One of the main points of going to a single base per unit – besides the obvious point that it would take me less time to get up and running – is that I don't need to account for formations anymore, or at least not in the traditional of shuffling figures around. In WNCE you change formation only with Infantry (Skirmishers and Cavalry only have one formation and Artillery is either Limbered or Deployed). You change to Column when you wish to move and you change to Line when you wish to fire more effectively. There are a couple of exceptional armies – the British in the Crimean War get to move in Line and the Austrians in 1864 and 1866 always stay in Column, as do the Russians in the Crimean War – but for the most part you can simply indicate the formation by indicating the movement. However, even Neil gives an exception in his rules. If you are in Line and you turn, you are still in Line, but you fire as if you were in Column.  So that is an exception I also deal with. If a unit in Line wished to turn, but make no other movement, I mark it in a special way denoting that it is in Line (which matters for Hand-to-Hand combat), but fires as if in Column (which is much less effective). I deal with it by placing small arrow-shaped markers. If the arrow is green, the unit moved as a Column. If the arrow is brown, the unit turned while in Line. Simple.

When I did my test version of the WNCE rules, I was using these conversions, although I had not fully marked out the 1 1/2" grids (they were still 3", but I played on and counted the half grids). I think it worked pretty well.

Now that I am expanding my armies, I am looking to how to scale the grid game up as well. Actually, it is pretty easy. If you double the frontage of the units from one base to two, you double the grid values in the tables. (You will also be doubling your table size, but that is another issue.) If you finally get to the point where you have collected and painted four bases per unit, you are just doubling the depth, so there is no reason to adjust the grid size or counts any further. Four bases per unit plays the same as two bases per unit.

Hits

Even Neil is Too Relaxed Sometimes

Why is There a Part Three?

When I ended Part Two the Germans had declared victory after wiping out one of the American tank platoons, but after discussing with the author how I totally blew the anti-tank fire and how to determine when the game ends, I decided to continue the game. Note that the point one Sherman had a hit and now that has been resolved, resulting in a suppression.

Sherman is suppressed

There has also been discussion by the author about modifying the RFC table – specifically the odds that a team in hard cover will shrug off the hit – but as changes have not been published and I am in the middle of a game I am not changing the numbers.

Turn 7

The Americans draw two more chits for a whopping 5, bringing the total to 18. (The new Break Point for both armies is 30, so the game is not over and the Germans have not won.)

I finally rolled a turn in which the initiative rolls were the same, so that causes a reset of the Hero dice. The Germans get a '6' and the Americans get a '4'.

There is still a glitch in the rules that says if you tie in orders the high roller goes first. There is no "high roller" on a tie and the result would be 0 orders for both. This seems like an artifact from a different version of the rule, but I rule that the process is to re-roll Hero die, reset 'count up' die, and neither side allowed to issue orders unless they use Hero points (neither side does). This is bad as the Americans keep drawing chits while the objectives are lost.

Turn 8

With two objectives in the hands of the Germans, the Americans again have to pull two chits (0 and 1), raising their total to 19.

The Germans get two orders and the Americans one.

The Germans still have a suppressed grenadier platoon leader, one undeployed on-board unit and company commander, and two infantry platoons off-board. The Germans use two orders (using Hero points) to get one of the two off-board platoons available for coming on Turn 9 as reinforcements.

Another German platoon is ready to march on using the east road

Next, the grenadier platoon gets a fire order, allowing them to attempt to rally the platoon leader. Fortunately they succeed. However, I just noticed that platoon leaders do not have the ability to fire, so it will not really alter my firepower. So with five stands I get 13 dice @ 5+ firing at the armored infantry. I score five hits. Ouch! I put as many hits on the bazooka teams that I can, but one had to go on one of the LMG stands (the main target).

Americans hit hard by the grenadiers

The Americans decide to react with the armored infantry, so first they resolve the hits. I got some amazingly weird results: two shrugged it off (including the LMG), two died (a rifle team and a bazooka team), and only one team was suppressed. The returns fire consists of two bazooka teams (2 dice @ 6), two LMG teams (6 dice @ 5+), one rifle team (2 dice @ 5+), one light mortar team (1 die @ 4+) and five half-track MGs (10 dice @ 5+) for a total of six hits in return! The entire grenadier platoon has taken a hit each!

Germans will likely have the entire platoon suppressed by that fire

The Americans use a single Hero point to bring on the artillery forward observer with the company commander. The FO moves on the board 8" and the CC 6" by the farmhouse north of the central road.

Moving so fast the photographer had a hard time taking the shot

As the FO moved earlier in the turn, it cannot call in a barrage this turn. However, the company command Shermans can fire at the StuGs at long range, if they choose (the StuG was 31 1/2" away!), but they would have to use another Hero point. I would have 4 dice @ 6, which is not very good odds, but I decide to go for it anyway. All misses.

Turn 9

With two objectives in the hands of the Germans, the Americans again have to pull two chits 3 and 0), raising their total to 22.

The Americans and Germans each get one order, with the Americans having initiative (they rolled higher).

The armored infantry continue to pour on the fire into the grenadier platoon. Three of the American rifle teams rally first. Repeating the same fire as last time, they score five hits, putting a second hit on each team save the platoon leader.

The Germans are getting crushed under the weight of fire

The Germans order the grenadiers to "Go To Ground", which allows them to resolve hits and "ignore all killed results". Now it does not say "convert to Suppressed" but "ignore", so I am counting it as no result. (In this case it actually mattered, as I had one team roll a '6' and a '1'!) All teams are suppressed save one heroic team that shrugged it all off.

All but one team suppressed

Turn 10

With two objectives in the hands of the Germans, the Americans again have to pull two chits (2 and 2), raising their total to 26.

The Americans get four orders and the Germans one. This is just what the Americans need if they want to stay in the game.

The FO is issued an order to Observe. (I am not sure if that is really a Fire order or this is just another order type that needs to be listed in the Orders section of the rules.) If the FO does not move or fire for the remainder of the turn, next turn it can call down the barrage. (I need to try that in this game, if only for testing purposes.)

The armored infantry are ordered to advance in preparation for assaulting the grenadiers. The last of the teams shrug off their suppression. They roll 4" for their move.

The American assault begins!

The Germans finally deploy their last on-board unit, the HMG platoon. (Did you remember that there was still one more?) They fire a whopping 8 dice at the armored infantry in the open, killing the mortar team and suppressing a rifle team.

Ambush by the HMG nests

The armored infantry pushes on, hoping to get into assault.

Now here is an interesting situation. As the Americans have a new order, they can rally if they have no hits. Because you resolve hits immediately when caught in the open, essentially you can immediately attempt to rally.

The rifle does not rally. The armored infantry rolls 3" for their move and the half-tracks 8".

The author indicated that you can opportunity fire not just to units moving into view, but to all units moving in view.

The Germans spend a Hero point to again fire the HMGs. Three hits with one bazooka team being killed and one bazooka team and one rifle team being suppressed. Unfortunately, at the end of the turn the armored infantry are going to have to check morale, as they have now lost their fourth team.

The Americans desperately try to get out of the Kill Zone

The armored infantry use the last American order to attempt an assault on the grenadiers. Both rifle teams shrug off suppression while the bazooka team does not. The infantry roll 4" for the move (6" for the half-tracks).

1. The Americans pass their quality check, so they head into assault.
2. All that can make contact do so.
3. No assault units fire.
4. Defensive fire from HMGs and single rifle team in grenadier platoon results in three hits. That suppresses three rifle teams, one of which was in contact.
5. The Americans have six unsuppressed teams for close combat, the Germans one. The Americans scot four hits, the German one.
6. Casualties are removed.
7. The Americans have five unsuppressed teams remaining, the Germans one. The Americans win the assault.
8. The Germans retreat to the house across the street and to safety. 

The Americans win the assault, but at what cost?

The Americans end their turn and the Germans decide not to use a Hero point to bring on their reinforcing platoon.

Because each side has to take a platoon morale check, each has to pull a chit. The Americans pull 2 raising their total to 28, while the Germans pull a 0 chit. The Americans roll morale and ... fail! So do the Germans! The Americans again draw a chit (for failing the morale check), drawing a 2, finally meeting their Break Point of 30. (To rub it in the Germans pulled another 0.)

Interesting question: given that failing a morale check results in the unit being destroyed, does the side draw another two chits? I think not, as I believe that situation is for a unit that is wiped out by means other than morale. It should probably say that though.

Conclusion

If you have perused my Wooden Warriors blog then you know that I have been working on 42mm Napoleonic wooden soldiers for some time now. (There are a lot of other projects there too. I get distracted all of the time.)


What I have not really found, however, is a set of Napoleonic rules that work well with figures of this size. (Given the girth of the figures, they are closer to 54mm in feel.) I can only do so many Napoleonic skirmish games before I end up recycling the scenarios. My plan was to use The Sword and the Flame for them, but with 24 figures for each French ligne infantry unit, that is going to take time.

So when I saw a battle report of a group in the Netherlands using 54mm Napoleonics figures I perked up. Especially when I started counting figures in the pictures and it looked  like they were using infantry units of eight figures and cavalry units of four figures. The report said they were using the rules About Bonaparte by Partizan Press and so I set about finding the rules. It turns out that I could only find them available for sale at Caliver Books in the UK (On Military Matters in the US did not have them), so I put them on my wish list and waited until I found a more compelling reason to make a larger purchase before getting them.

I have had a few frustrating bouts with the UK postal system, so I am always hesitant from ordering anything there. Now that Baccus 6mm miniatures are no longer sold in the US (Scale Creep Miniatures is no longer carrying them), if I need to expand any 6mm armies or fill out a unit, I will probably have to bite the bullet and deal with it again.

As it turned out, Cigar Box Battle Store came out with a new mat using a 6" square grid and they promoted it at the same time as promoting a new book called Tin Soldiers in Action (which I will review in a future article) by Partizan Press. This too was only sold at Caliver Books, so I decided to finally place my order and get the two rule books.

About Bonaparte

Production Quality of the Book

Basing and Unit Sizes

Troop Types

Formations, Groups, and Movement

Army Lists and Periods

I saw an ad for Cigar Box mats on The Miniatures Page about a month ago and it was advertising a cross-promotion. Cigar Box had a new mat with a 6" subdued, square grid. (It actually looks a bit brighter and less brown than this. It is just my camera.)


The cross-promotion was a new book entitled Tin Soldiers in Action, Fair and Square Rules, From 1680 Until About 1914 (TSIA). (Long title, I know!) I purchased them from the only place I could find selling them, Caliver Books. Why did I buy them? They use a grid, they claim to be fast, easy, and decisive (as in delivering a definitive result) and that the rules were not vague or ambiguous. They mentioned that they used all kinds of basing and that they could be gamed solo. Finally, they cover a lot of the periods that I like to play and have armies for.


So, why are they "fair and square" rules? Well, to start, you play them on a 6" square grid mat (should be no surprise there). As to the "fair" part, well they are like Black Powder rules in that they are a "toolbox" and you use the rules in the book in various combinations to produce the results that fit the period, nationalities, and battle you are fighting. They also have several methods for determining how to setup a fair battle, including having a points system.

I was playing another test game of Neil Thomas'Second World War Wargaming with a gaming buddy and he saw my wooden 42mm Napoleonics soldiers (like the one below, shown with a 28mm WW II soldier, a 15mm British Grenadier, and a battalion of 6mm French line infantry [in white uniform]) and he said "we have got to get these on the table".


Well, if you had read my rule read-through of About Bonaparte, that was exactly what I was trying to do. I just could not find the right rules yet. (I haven't given up on About Bonaparte, by the way, it just needs some work.)

The Book

First off, understand that this is not just a set of rules. Like Neil Thomas, the Hofrichters have produced a book that covers a number of aspects about wargaming, one of which is rules to use. So if you read that the book contains 268 pages, do not panic. They are not all rules. In fact, most of the pages are not rules.

It is actually hard to get a page count on the rules because the book is profusely illustrated throughout and contains sidebars, examples, and tables. In addition, it is not small type, which I am grateful for. The core of the rules start on page 59 and end on page 90. There are rules before and after that, but as I said, this is a toolbox, so the vast majority of the rules you will not use in most games.

The Basics

The first problem I encountered was with the unit sizes. There are two game scales: Large Scale Standard (for "European Style Warfare") and Small Scale Standard (for "Colonial Style Battles"). Large scale had one tin soldier ¹ equal 150 men while small scale had it equal 50 men. So a 12 tin soldier unit equalled a Brigade or a Battalion, depending upon the scale you were using.

That did not sound too bad except that I did not have that many figures. In this sense About Bonaparte was superior in that infantry units were eight figures on four bases and cavalry units were four figures on four bases. I really did not want to start tweaking the rules off of the bat, but if you don't have enough figures – sorry, tin soldiers – you don't have enough. So, I decide to halve the unit sizes. This required modifying the numbers in some other rules, like:

• Minimum size unit went from two tin soldiers to one,
• Capacity of the square would halve,
• Tenacity calculation would have to change,
• Number of tin soldiers that can fight out of the square would halve,
• etc.

So my six man units are now equivalent to units of 12 tin soldiers, which fit nicely into the small scale format, especially as my units represented individual battalions.

The biggest change was halving the number of figures that can fight out of a square. The new values would be:

• Infantry (closed) 6 shooting and 9 in close combat
• Infantry (open) 3 shooting and 3 in close combat
• Cavalry (closed) 6 in close combat
• Cavalry (open) 3 shooting and 3 in close combat

The Scenario

Given the wooden soldiers that I had available, the French would be attacking a combined British and Prussian force. I decided to allow the Allies to anchor their flanks on some forests, while the French have a hill from which their artillery can fire.

View from the Allied side

View from the French side

The Forces

The Allies

British Commander in Chief (CiC): (King of Hearts) Note that he looks strangely like a Russian Guard Cossack. But Picton was dressed in an old coat and a top hat, so maybe it isn't so strange after all.

British Light Dragoons: 2 wooden soldiers, superior professionals, light cavalry with carbines, skirmishers (Jack of Hearts)

Prussian Landwehr x 2: 6 wooden soldiers, average amateurs, infantry with muskets (King of Diamonds)

Prussian Volunteer Jagers: 2 wooden soldiers, average amateurs, light infantry with rifles, sharpshooter, skirmishers (2 of Diamonds)

The French

French CiC: (King of Clubs) Note that I have a gaggle of figures representing the French CiC. There is the Officer in bicorne on foot, the porte fanion, the drummer, and the vivandiere, all to represent the CiC. What can I say? The French!

French Line x 4: 6 wooden soldiers, average professionals, infantry with muskets, skirmishers (King of Clubs)

French Lights Commander: (2 of Spades)

French Lights: 3 wooden soldiers, average professionals, light infantry with muskets, skirmishers (2 of Spades)

French Foot Artillery: 3 wooden soldiers, superior professionals, foot artillery with medium muzzle-loader guns (Queen of Spades)

French Carabiniers: 4 wooden soldiers, superior professionals, cavalry with close combat weapon (Jack of Spades)

Note that the British and the French have their CiC on the same card as their line infantry. This means when the line's card is drawn, the CiC will also act. Units without their own Commanders (British Light Dragoons, Prussian Landwehr, Prussian Jagers, French Foot Artillery and French Carabiniers) must stay within two squares of the CiC in order to take two actions per activation. If they are outside of that range, and not in open formation, they may only take one action per activation.

It seems that, at this scale, I should have a Commander for each Brigade (two to four units) with the additional assets attached to the Division Commander, who is the Commander in Chief. In this instance, the French have an additional Commander, largely because I have one painted up. Time to start painting mounted Commanders!

Turn 1

The French Line and their CiC act first. They take move twice forward for their two actions.

The Prussian Landwehr get to act next. Although they are in command, they are amateurs so they can only take two actions if the two are the same type, i.e. move twice, fire twice, etc. As the French are still out of range, this means they cannot fire. If they move, they will be unable to fire. They decide to pass.

The British Light Dragoons can move through the Landwehr – as they can move two squares for each action – so they would clear their square.

Troops can interpenetrate if they clear the occupied square

But that would put them in range of the muskets of the French line infantry.

The single Voltigeur in the square is just a marker to indicate that skirmishers are out. There are no actual French troops in that square.

Given that they are fresh, with no casualties or disorder, the Light Dragoons would likely lose that close combat. They instead choose to move around the left flank. As long as they stay in open formation they will be in command. This also allows them to threaten the French artillery.


The British Line have two actions and can either fire twice with skirmishers (which is a pitiful one die for each fire action) or move forward one square into musket range and fire once. They decide to do the latter as the French Line have already gone for the turn.

Ranged combat is pretty simple. Muskets fire into the adjacent square (including diagonally) and they get one die per two wooden soldiers, so they get three dice. All modifiers in TSIA are to the number of dice rolled, not to the rolls, so all you do is count the how many 6s you rolled. Unfortunately for the British, they score no hits.


The French artillery finally gets to fire. They don't like the looks of the British Light Dragoons coming for them so they decide to let loose with canister, which goes out two squares. Just like with musket fire, artillery fire gets a set number of dice per wooden soldier in the unit. In the case of canister fire it is three dice per wooden soldier, for nine dice. Note that there is a modifier that applies: the dice are halved if firing at light cavalry.

Somehow I thought that there was an addition modifier that doubled the dice, canceling out the halving indicated above. Rather than rolling 4 1/2 dice (5), I rolled 9 dice. I am sure that this mistake had an impact on the game. But actually I am relieved that it was a mistake as I was feeling that the canister was too powerful.

Three hits are scored and the British Light Dragoons are destroyed. (I need to paint more of them so they will last a little longer!)

The Charge of Light Brigade ends quickly

As there is no separate commander for the French Carabiniers, and they cannot move in open formation, they must either stay within command range of the CiC (two squares) or operate with only one action per turn. They decide to stay in reserve for now.

The Jagers move into the woods and fire at the French Line on the right flank. Even though they have only two wooden soldiers, they get two dice for firing. Their Sharpshooter doubles their dice, which is normally one die per three figures when firing a rifle. They score no hits, however.

Last are the French Lights. They advance into the woods opposite the Jagers. As it takes two actions to reach there, they cannot fire this turn.

End of Turn 1

Turn 2

The French Line again acts first. There are four units in the command, and each has to complete their actions prior to moving on to the next unit. The first unit to fire is the one facing directly in front of the British that advanced, but they score no hits despite shooting twice. The second unit fires twice on the same British unit, scoring 1 hit! I ponder whether I should charge with the third Line unit, as the British will have to check morale – called a Tenacity Test – before close combat is resolved. I decide to fire and inflict more hits if possible, increasing the chance it will be disordered. Unfortunately no more hits are scored.

The British unit taking casualties now makes a Tenacity Test. It started with six figures, so has a Tenacity of 2 (original unit size divided by three). It has to roll two dice (its Tenacity value) and score under or equal to the number of soldiers remaining in the unit. However, as this unit is Superior, it rolls one less die. So anything other than a '6' and it passes. It succeeds. If it had failed it would have been disordered.

The British Line gets to act next. The British CiC moves forward to the line getting hit, attaching himself to it. The reserve line unit advances to the right flank in order to fire. Unfortunately, none of the British fire scores hits.


The French artillery is now blocked. Although it is on a higher elevation, it still cannot shoot over troops unless firing at another unit on a higher elevation. It decides to limber and move 1 square (a single action).

The Jagers shoot twice at the line in the open, ignoring the Lights in the woods to their flank. They score one hit. The French unit taking the casualty must take a Tenacity Test, needing 5 or less on 2D6. It fails, therefore it becomes disordered.

The French Lights decide that they want to charge the Jagers and clear out the woods. So it declares it intends to charge, moves once and then charges as its second action. It moves out of the woods so that it is not adjacent to the British unit, so that the British will not get to provide supporting fire (see Step 2 below).


Step 1: perform the Close Combat Test, which is done by each unit in the close combat (attacker and defender). Roll 1D6 requiring a 3+ on the die or the unit suffers disorder. Both units pass.

Step 2: perform Supporting Fire. Supporting Fire allows enemy units that are adjacent to the attacking unit to fire in support of the defending unit. This fire can occur regardless of whether that unit has already fired this turn or not. The major difference between Supporting Fire and normal ranged combat is that Supporting hits on a '5' or '6', rather than just a '6'. As the French Lights decided to attack from the 'flank' (really, there is no flank, it is just a position not adjacent to any enemy units not being charged), there is no Supporting Fire. Had the Lights charged straight in the British Line unit would have been adjacent and thus been eligible to provide Supporting Fire.

Step 3: perform defensive fire. When the defending unit has a ranged weapon it gets Defensive Fire, which allows it to strike first. The Jagers get one die per wooden soldier with a rifle and no other modifiers. However, they score no hits.

Step 4: roll for the attackers and for defenders without ranged weapons. These attacks are simultaneous. The French have three wooden soldiers who get one die each. They miss too!

I messed up this too. As you can see in the picture above I have four wooden soldiers (and one Commander) rather than three. It did not matter. I could never hit with them.

Step 5: test for Professional Risk to Commanders. If a Commander is attached to a unit that takes casualties, there is a chance that the Commander is also lost. However, as no casualties were inflicted on the French there was no risk.

Step 6: determine the winner of the close combat. As neither side inflicted losses, it is a draw and it requires that both sides roll-off, with the Jagers getting +1 for defending the woods and the French getting +1 for having an attached Commander. (This is one instance in which die roll modifiers are used, rather than modifying the number of dice rolled.) The Jagers win! The French are forced to retreat two squares and are disordered.



The French Carabiniers move to their right flank, poised for a charge!


The Prussian Landwehr can no longer afford to stay unengaged. The left unit moves into the woods, becoming disordered in the process. The right unit shifts left and fills the hole in the line.

Turn 3

For the units that have disorder (the round yellow markers), it takes an action to rally and remove it. However, units in disordering terrain, such as the Landwehr in the woods, cannot rally.

The French line continue to maintain initiative. The disordered unit recovers and then fires into the British line that just advanced upon it and score a hit. This so disconcert the British that they are in turn disordered by the fire. All other fire by the French line is ineffective.

The French Carabiniers continue around the left flank, moving four squares around the woods and into the British rear!


The French Artillery unlimbers and fires canister v c at the Landwehr in the woods. It again score a brutal three hits with canister. The Landwehr fail their Tenacity Test and one wooden soldier deserts, leaving two wooden soldiers remaining in the unit.

Note that woods do not provide cover for infantry in close formation, unlike many other rules. This time I got the canister results right, with it rolling nine dice against the infantry.

Wow! The entire French force moved before the Allies were allowed to even move one unit.

The French Lights remove their disorder and advance around the flank of the woods to take another go at the annoying Jagers in the woods.

The British line removes their disorder where necessary and fires into the French line. The unit on the right scores a hit and disorders their enemy. The unit on the left score two hits on its counterpart, also disordering it.


The left Landwehr unit, despite being down to two wooden soldiers and disordered, actually scores a hit on the line. It does not succeed in disordering it, however. Nor does the other Landwehr unit. Finally, the Jagers score no hits.

Turn 4

The French Carabiniers turn up first, but they pass. There is still way too much potential support fire against them if they charge in.

This is the one aspect that may bother many players: there is no facing and there are no flanks or rear. Looking at the picture above depicting the end of the turn, if the French Carabiniers attack any one of the infantry units in the open, the two adjacent infantry units can provide supporting fire. Being in the rear presents no advantage, save that there is no friendly infantry blocking access to any particular Allied unit.

The British line finally get to act before the French line.

Note that this creates a "double move" effect where one side can go last in the previous turn and move first on the following turn. Using this to your advantage when it randomly occurs can make a difference in the battle. In this case, the French have not been able to recover from their disorder.

Both British line units declare their intent to fire one volley and charge their disordered foe. The unit on the left scores a hit and a French wooden soldier deserts.

The unit on the right goes first with their close combat. Both sides pass their Close Combat Test. There is no supporting fire for the French. (The rules do not allow units being charged to provide supporting fire to another close combat.) French defensive fire from the charged unit takes out one wooden soldier. The British inflict one in return. It is a draw, but the British win the roll-off, so they are the victors. The French lose one more wooden soldier as a deserter and retreat two squares. The British do not advance.


Moving to the second close combat, after both sides passed their Close Combat Test, the British unit with the CiC takes one hit from supporting fire (from the French line unit to their left), but no hits from defensive fire. It inflicts one hit on the French in return. Calamity strikes when the British troops look back and see that the General has fallen! Furious, the British rout the remaining wooden soldiers of the French line. (Drawn close combat and the British win the roll-off. The last defeated French wooden soldier deserts as a result of the lost combat.)


With the British CiC gone, all of the Allied troops are out of command, save the Jagers. With dwindling troops and French cavalry to their rear, will the British be able to punch through?

To be continued...

Battle Notes

Footnotes

I could not leave the game hanging, but I thought that the last article was getting a little long, so I stopped it where it was. In this article I finish my test game, go over what I got right and wrong, address some comments from Facebook, The Miniatures Page, the last blog article and ... the authors!

Turn 4 (Continued)

When we last left off, the British had just shattered two units of French line infantry, but at the cost of the Commander in Chief. I had a sense that this was going to finish the Allied side, but I had to play it to a conclusion.

The French artillery, sensing that a retreat by the French may be forthcoming, canisters the poor Landwehr in the woods, scoring 1 hit. As that leaves only one figure standing, it routs and the unit dissolves.


With their second action, they limber and move to their left, beside the reserve.

The Jagers, seeing the French lights poised to charge again, switch to the right side of the woods and let loose with their rifles, but scored no hits.

The decimated French line shakes off their disorder and adjust their formation. All volley and skirmisher fire, however, is ineffective.


The remaining Prussian Landwehr unit, despite giving two good volleys to the French line on their left, has no effect. Things are looking grim for them because the French artillery is within canister range and they are likely to tear holes through their ranks just as easily as they did with their sister unit in the woods.

The French lights, seeing the collapse of two French line units decides that they need to return to the battle line and ensure the command does not collapse.


The Allies are down to four units and holding the interior line against three French infantry units and an artillery section. Further, they have a French cavalry unit at their back. To complicate matters further, they are now all out of command as they have lost their beloved General (even if he did dress like a Cossack).

Turn 5

Again the French Carabiniers act first. Although the Allied left flank is weakened, there is just too much supporting and defensive firepower out there as no one is disordered. They pass. They really needed to go after the French line inflicts damage and disorders the British. They just have not been very lucky in this regard.

The French lights continue to skirmish with the British line, this time scoring a hit and (surprisingly) disordering the unit. (Of course it had to happen after the cavalry passed!)

The Jagers get two actions as they are not out of command (being in open formation), but as they are amateurs, it must be two of the same actions. They fire at the center French line. As they are firing rifles they have a range of 2 squares and thus get to fire at full dice. They score a hit, but have no chance to disorder the unit as the CiC is attached to the unit. (The CiC also passed his Professional Risk Test.)

The French artillery unlimbers and fires canister into the center British line. Amazingly the British weather the storm of canister and lose one wooden soldier. (That was 18 dice thrown!) Further, they pass their Tenacity Test and are not disordered.


The French line continue to pour volley and skirmisher fire into the Allied line. The left unit hits one Landwehr, but they are so elated at not being canistered by the artillery that they pass their Tenacity Test. The center's skirmishers cause a hit on the center British unit, finally disordering it.


The Landwehr volley against the French, but scores no hits.

As the CiC is dead, all the British line can do is recover from their disorder.

It is pretty clear now that the Allies are doomed. I wanted to play it out to confirm my suspicions, but once the British were down to one action for each unit (except the Jagers) I began to see the implications. You get one-half of the moves, one-half of the firepower, the inability to recover from disorder and do something else, etc. You can no longer act decisively, you can only react. Perhaps if they had won the card draw, but again every French unit ended up acting before all of the Allies, save the Jagers.

So What Went Wrong?

Nothing. This game played out very well, with results that I thought "felt right". Other than the errors I made with my tweaks regarding Tenacity, which I noted in the first part, the only other error was one I could not rectify: not enough Commanders, especially on the Allied side. Perhaps I should also say that I probably only should have used two gunners and possibly even one for the artillery because it felt very powerful, especially as the Allies did not have any. That said, if I had included Allied artillery (which I am working on!), I think that the artillery would have dominated the game even more.

Are these rules going to be played again? Absolutely. Probably not going to tweak anything save the Tenacity calculation (a divisor of 3), the Tenacity Test (use D3 instead of D6), and the Desertion roll all because I am using very small unit sizes. (Trust me, I want to get to the day that I can fill the table with units of 12+ wooden soldiers each.) I will probably experiment with using a D3 for Desertion, rather than simply removing one tin soldier, but I may settle on a D2.

Comments

From Archduke Piccolo: Tenacity test. Since you have halved the number of figures per unit, when taking a tenacity test, the 2D6 score should be not greater than DOUBLE the number of figures remaining with the unit in order to preserve cohesion or order. A French unit reduced to 5 figures must score equal to or less than 10 (2x5) on 2D6 to be OK. I reckon that will fix your problem. It seems to me that the British are treated too kindly though, even with the parent rule set (if I understand them correctly). A 6-figure British unit would have to be reduced to 2 (TWO) figures only to run any danger of disorder (2x2=4), and even then is 2-to-1 (67%) favorite to remain OK. A French unit so reduced would have barely a 17% chance of preserving order (having to roll 2,3, or 4 on 2D6). A British unit reduced to 3 stands automatically retains its order; a French unit reduced to 3 just over a 58% chance of doing so. I guess one might expect a certain extra 'stickability' (from the Latin, 'stickabilius') to attach to the Brits, but that much?

Actually, I rated the British superior not because I believe in Anglo Superiority, but because of the disparity in the numbers of troops I own for the French versus for the Allies. I knew I could not get away with the Prussians being rated highly – they were Landwehr after all – so I decided this would be an "elite" British regiment and rated them Superior without fully understanding the implications of this.

Regarding the Tenacity calculation, I agree with your basic math. By rolling 2D6 against a unit half the size and with the same Tenacity score (because I halved the divisor), I was throwing the math off. A 12 tin soldier unit losing 16% (two tin soldiers) would need a 10 or less on 2D6 to pass. But with my changes it was rolling a 5 or less on 2D6 after losing one tin soldier in a unit of six. One possible was to rectify that is as you said: count each tin soldier as two, thus losing one figure results in 5 * 2 = 10 to roll on the Tenacity Test. As you can read above, I was also considering rolling D3 instead of D6.

All that said, the author Rüdiger Hofrichter, who contacted me in Facebook, offered the following suggestion:

The divisor of 6 is no accident. If you change it, it collapses also the probability matrix hidden in the rules, which is based on the kill ratio calculated by Scharnhorst. You also have seen that by reducing your scale you get poorer results. My advice after reading your report would be the following: don't change the rules but rather count every wooden soldiers as two tin soldiers! Treat every wooden soldier as if it has two hit points and mark every uneven hit on a unit which a chip. You will see that you get better results. Play the British with 6 wooden soldiers (as if they were 12 tin soldiers) and the French with 6 or with 12. Your cavalry will be 2 wooden soldiers (as 4 tin soldiers). Your strong artillery could be 3 wooden soldiers (as 6 tin soldiers) or a weaker 2 wooden soldiers. Try this and you will have better results. More dice to roll and more fun.

Although I am not keen on the hit markers, I will indeed try this next time. What I tried did not work; I admit that. (But it was still fun!)

Before I played this test game, but after I had purchased the rules, I found a thread on The Miniatures Page that talked about the rules. The comments were split between positive and negative, with the negative complaints dealing with the issue of translation from German to English. Given that this was published by Partizan Press and I recently had a taste with another set of translated rules by them, I could understand the potential for concern. But I have to admit, I did not find it an issue. Everything was pretty clear to me.

That does not mean that I got everything correct – if your read the first part then you know that clearly I did not – nor that I was not confused at times. But the confusion did not come from a poor translation or a phrase turned oddly, it came from my own expectations. What I mean by that is at some point, after reading, playing, and reviewing a lot of rules, I have come to create a mental checklist in my mind where I start looking for certain rules and when I don't immediately find them the reaction is confusion. Surely I missed the rule! It must be in there somewhere!

As I have noted previously – especially when writing about Neil Thomas rules – cutting out those rules sometimes leads to something better. I think the first time I really became aware of it was when reading Sergio Laliscia's Drums and Shakos: Large Battles where he used the concept of a reaction move. This cut out all kinds of special exceptions, like forming a hasty square, cavalry counter-charges, and opportunity fire. Because he provided a general mechanism for the player to react and do something when it was the opponent's turn, he did not need all of these special case rules. (Mind you, it did not stop me from asking Sergio where the "hasty square" rule was though.)

This is the sort of sublime simplicity that I see with Tin Soldiers in Action. My confusion arose because I did not see a slew of "exceptions" in the rules. It is only when you play it that it comes out. This is largely why I don't review a game anymore until I try a test game or three. There are so many things that you miss when all you do is simply read the rules. It is these exceptions of game play, and figuring out how the rules handle that, which cements in our mind whether the rules are worth a second shot or not. So, I am not discounting others opinions on how well the rules were translated, but I did not find the rules hard to understand. Maybe Neil Thomas had prepared me for something new and different.

I would like to share a couple of other comments from the author:

Regarding flanking: the French cavalry move to the Allied rear was only possible because the enemy cavalry was already gone. The Allied line was still intact and could have formed square. But the cavalry is now out of command as it is not in open order. So yes, it is possible to move far behind enemy lines. But can the move really be exploited?

The answer is: no. Although you may think that I was not aggressive enough in the game by not charging with the French cavalry, I could quickly see what would happen. Remember, the basic rule is that ranged combat hits on a '6' and close combat on a '5' or '6'. (I was obviously speaking to my blog readers there and not the author!) When you contact a unit every enemy unit adjacent to you (the attacker) can fire upon you and they hit as in close combat, not ranged. As my dad used to say: "You have got to be tough if you are going to be dumb!" With those odds, that is going to hurt.

Think of it like the aerial scene from Waterloo where the French cuirassiers are attacking the British squares. (Here is a Youtube link to remind you. Advance to about the 3:00 minute mark.)



You as the Commander-in-Chief do not have to worry about details like whether the unit formed square; it did. The cavalry flows by and all around you the mutually supporting squares are blasting the cavalry. The only difference is that you don't have to physically change the units to reflect the squares (but you can).

I could not exploit the move because I never got the French Cavalry card drawn after the British Line was disordered and before they could recover from it. If I had, that would have been a case where the cavalry charges from the smoke and hits the enemy before they can effectively form square.

By the same token, at the end the British could not afford to stay disordered and carry on with reduced firepower. If they had not, the French cavalry would have seen their opportunity and charged. The threat was enough to force the British to give up their sole action to removing the disorder, which in turn was enough to convince me that the Allies had no hope of winning at the point.

Try to play with one victory square and a clear mission how to win. This will focus the figures on a purpose and around the victory squares.

Understood. The honest truth is, I had not read the rest of the book when I started the game. I don't usually worry about victory conditions as test games are for trying crazy things and seeing how the rules handle it, and getting a feel for the rules.

As it turns out, there is a scenario, Hook's Farm, on the TSIA page on Boardgamegeek. This is something I need to try, if only because it promises to have a solo engine.

Finally, Jonathon Freitag, whose blog Palouse Wargaming Journal I have followed for quite some time, asks: Do you recommend "Tin Soldiers in Action" as a worthwhile addition to my already large stack of rulebooks?

Well, here is my official review.

Game Ratings

Using the review system from before, here are the game ratings for Tin Soldiers in Action (TSIA).

Drama– do the rules create tension during play?

Yes, largely through the card-based activation mechanism for units. You do not know what order your units will be allowed to act. This creates both a number "missed opportunities" (where your troops have already acted before an enemy unit becomes vulnerable) and rare exploits (such as when you move last in one turn and first in the next, effectively getting a "double move" against the enemy). Also, Commanders play more of a role in these rules than in others, so the loss of a Commander hurts your command and control compared to those rules which have an "automatically replaced commander" rule.

I have yet to play the hidden deployment and scouting rules, so that may add an additional element.

These rules rate 4 out of 5 in Drama.

Uncertainty– are there enough elements that introduce uncertainty into the game?

All combat uses chance elements (dice) to add uncertainty. For the Horse and Musket period, you will typically be throwing one die per two figures firing, looking for 6's, and one die per figure in close combat, looking for 5's and 6's. You will not necessarily score hits every turn, especially when using lower figure counts like I was. The Tenacity Test, which is the morale check taken after receiving casualties from firing, further adds to the uncertainty of combat. Being disordered halves your effective combat power and makes you very vulnerable to subsequent morale checks. Further, recovering from disorder limits your response on your following turn.

Command and control is uncertain in terms of when you activate compared to other friendly and enemy units (as indicated above). You will only rarely get perfectly ordered unit activations

These rules rate 4 out of 5 in Uncertainty.

Engaging– do the rules allow the player to make meaningful decisions that lead to consequences?

Given that some of the elements of command and control are taken out of the player's hands – which units act in which order, for example – it is definitely less engaging than rules in which the player has God-like control. Also, given that the consequences of some conditions, like disorder, have such a large impact in the game that it is almost automatic that you have to address those conditions first. Finally, although there are still strong chance elements in play, the odds of attacks are pretty easy to calculate once you get a hang of the rules, so you often find yourself discarding options because the risk is too high or reacting because the threat is too high. Some people may define these qualities as highly positive and thus rate this differently.

These rules rate 3 out of 5 in Engaging.

Unobtrusiveness– do the rules get in the way?

No. Obtrusive have lots of exceptions for special cases. These rules have few such special cases to worry about.

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Unobtrusiveness.

Heads Up – are the rules playable without frequent reference to a quick reference sheet?

There may be a quick reference sheet in there somewhere. Given that this is a rather thick book that does not have a lay-flat binding and that you don't want to ruin its spine, the authors should probably create a quick reference sheet and post it to Boardgame Geek, where they have their scenario posted.

That said there were only three places I referred to in the rules – the allowable actions, the firing table, and the close combat sequence – and after about turn 2 only one place (the close combat sequence). The basic mechanic of the game – modify the number of dice rolled not the die roll – makes it very easy to remember how to play the game.

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Heads Up.

Appropriately Flavored– do the rules 'feel' like they represent the period or genre being played?

As I stated in the first part, TSIA shares a trait with rules like Black Powder: they are a toolbox and it is intended that you do a little bit of research and work out amongst your fellow gamers how best to represent the units, armies, nationalities, and period. Do not get me wrong, they provide plenty of material to help you do that; you will not have to make up rules to fill in the gaps. But if you are looking for hard and fast army lists for the period these rules span (1680–1914), you will not find that here. Again, depending upon your preferences, this may not be bad thing.

One point I do want to make is that I thought the transition from period to period – late pike and shot, horse and musket, rifle and sabre, and the start of the machine age – was well thought out in the combat rules, making these rules usable through such a rapidly changing 250 years of military history. In this regard, I think the authors did as nice a job as you see with Neil Thomas'One Hour Wargaming. (Some people may not see that as a compliment, but it is.)

These rules rate 4 out of 5 in Appropriately Flavored.

Scalable– can the rules be scaled up or down – in terms of figures or number of units played – from a 'normal' game?

This is certainly something that I tested, at least in the downward direction! There are a few basic numbers and ratios to watch out for, such as square capacity, the number of figures that can shoot or close assault, and the physical size of the square itself that will limit just how much you can scale up or down. But "out of the box" there are two scales to the game to start with, plus there is the variation in unit size. So these rules, without any modification at all, handles large variances in the number of figures that will be in play.

As for units, there is not really a lot of unit "maintenance" that the player is concerned with, so I can see there being a pretty good variance in how many units can be handled by a single player. Largely the built-in command range and the number of commanders the player has access to will be the limiting factor on the number of units in play.

Given that the activation mechanism is card-based, I can see that you will have to think how to handle player downtime when your opponent is taking their actions. This can also be an issue with multiple players per side. As the card represents a single command, belonging to a single player, everyone else will be waiting for that one player to finish. But a lot of rules have to deal with this issue, even ones that don't use card activation. There are plenty of suggestions on how to engage multiple people at one time when using these sort of "one person at a time" activation methods.

These rules rate 4 out of 5 in Scalable.

Lacks Fiddly Geometry– do the rules require fiddly measurements or angles?

Let's see, all measurements are regulated by a grid, so there are no fiddly measurements. There was only one rule that actually addressed facing (the Axis of Attack) and it was dead simple with clear diagrams, so there were no angles to deal with. Need I say more?

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Fiddly Geometry.

Tournament Tight™ Rules– are the rules clear and comprehensive, or do the players need to 'fill in the blanks'?

Let me start by saying that my preference is towards tighter rules, where everything is spelled out clearly by the author, not looser rules where the author leaves certain mechanics up to the individual players, gentlemen's agreements, and a roll of the die where agreements cannot be found. So a high value means 'tight' and a low value means 'loose'. If you like looser rules, subtract my rating from '6' and that would probably be your rating!

The only reason these rules do not rate a '5' is because of the toolbox approach to defining units, armies, and periods. Otherwise they would have the highest rating. Although I got some rules wrong, I could see that it was my own misreading of the rule (or more likely, my bias on what I expected the rule to say). I find the rules very clear and unambiguous. Using simple, clear mechanics with very few "exception rules" really helps in this regard.

I don't think you could run a tournament with these rules unless the unit selections, army lists, and period flavor were defined for the players. Letting everyone do what they want and relying on points to balance it out does not work. (I am sure that I am going to be told that Europeans do, indeed, use these rules for tournaments!)

These rules rate 4 out of 5 in Tournament Tight™ Rules.

Solo Suitability– do the rules have elements conducive to solo play?

There are no hidden elements to the game so that alone usually grants the rules high solitaire suitability. Having a mechanism to randomize which units act next is usually an element that solo gamers inject into other rules, sometimes with disastrous results. So having that mechanism built in and accounted for is just icing on the cake.

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Solo Suitability.

Component Quality– are the components provided made with quality?

This is a new rating, meant primarily for board games, which addresses the quality of the physical components.

These rules only come printed. This is a hardback book with textbook quality binding. Given the thickness of the book I am not sure it is capable of having a lay-flat binding. The quality of the paper and the legibility of the type screams quality. Maybe over time I will notice something that changes my mind, but my previous purchase of a Partizan Press book does not even come close to the quality of this book. For that reason alone – well, okay, and the fact that I like the rules – the higher purchase price is justified.

These rules rate 5 out of 5 in Component Quality.

Summary

There is so much of this book that I did not cover, but for the most part I review rules, not books. These rules are very accessible, in my opinion clear and understandable (moreso when you break out the figures and try them), will lead to near zero disputes, and can provide a decisive game in a reasonable amount of time.

Will everyone like these rules? No! Every rules author must decide where to add detail and where to abstract them away and players will not always agree on where that line should be drawn. If you think that there is "no way" you could play a set of rules that don't have you changing from line to column to square, you probably won't like TSIA. If you think there is "no way" you could play a set of rules that don't care about facing, then you probably hate board games and probably won't like TSIA also.

If you like Neil Thomas and wish he had put his game on a grid, you will like these rules.

Highly Recommended.

Loss of Commanders

In the Conclusion to Tin Soldiers in Action I ended the game after the Allies lost their Commander-in-Chief as I realized that everyone was out of commander, save the Prussian Jagers, and thus would only have one action per turn. It looked like the French were going to fire twice each turn while the Allies would, at best, fire back once, and that is only if they did not have to spend an action clearing the disorder.

What you did not see was that I was desperately trying to find the commander replacement rule. At first I thought that the rule did not exist, that it was just another rule on my list of expected rules every game should have. And I was okay with the game ending in a loss if you lost your Commander-in-Chief. However, I was on a business trip this week and I took my copy of TSIA so I could read up at night (I still had not read the sections after the period lists) and I noticed that there were some rules that stated certain figures "act as like Commander figures, but are not replaced when removed, like Commanders are". I messaged the author and he pointed me to the rule I missed. (There is always at least one!)

At first, I did not like the rule. If Commanders are so easily replaced – essentially with no penalty – players would continually risk them. I went back and re-read the rule.

A new commander may be sent in as a replacement at the end of the command range phase.

So that is actually not so bad. The normal turn sequence is that you turn a card, see which command is activated by that card, see which units within that command are in command range and which are out, then carry out the actions for each unit in the command. So in my test game I lost my Commander-in-Chief during his action phase. So when his card came up next, on turn 5, all of the unit would be out of command on that turn, then his replacement would reappear. So you are guaranteed to lose command for only one turn of actions. So it was possible for my troops to continue to soldier on from that point; it was not quite as grim as I had imagined.

The Points System

The French

The Allies

The Modular System

I wanted to have another go at the rules Tin Soldiers in Action to see:

• How it would play unmodified (i.e. correctly played),
• Whether the "feel" of the rules change by period, and
• How much of an issue it would be to use bases with multiple figures on each.

I don't really anticipate any issues, but I always like to check my assumptions. Of course, in order to do that you have to have a sufficient collection of figures in one period where you have both sides! For me that is really only 6mm Napoleonics and 15mm American Revolution. (I have a sizeable 15mm Ancients collection, but given that they are De Bellis Antiquitatus armies, they are scattered across three thousand years of history in packets of 12 stands each.) Given that I am currently rebasing my 6mm Napoleonics, that left my trusty American Revolutionary War (ARW) troops. Time to blow off the dust!

After I pull them out of the cupboards I see the issue: I never finished that basing project from the last time I pulled them out. They are based properly (for what I was going for), I just did not finish dressing the bases. So they don't show very well in pictures. Nonetheless, they are certainly functional for gaming.

Tin Soldiers in Action, American-Style

So the first thing I need to do is organize my figures into units, commands, and armies. Most of my units are four bases each of three figures, so 12 figures per unit. Given the small size of ARW units, that seems fine. Some of my units are a little larger (18 figures), some a little smaller (8 figures for cavalry), and one a huge militia unit (27 figures), so I thought this would be a good test to see how well each unit size worked.

It seems like a unit size of 12 is pretty significant in that it will have a Tenacity of '2' and can likely sustain 3-5 casualties before you start worrying about whether you will pass your Tenacity Test. It is also significant in that a square can only have a maximum of 12 infantry figures firing out of a square.

It also looks like a unit size of 18 is significant in that it aligns with the maximum number of infantry in a square that can fight in close combat.

One of the reasons why I do not play a lot of ARW is because I have never found a satisfactory set of rules that felt right to me. Most rules are obscene in that they rate all British as vastly superior and all Patriot militia as trash troops. The facts are that, like the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War – every war that has lasted over the course of several years – you cannot paint the troops of the early period with the same brush as troops of the later period (no matter which war you are referring to). There were British units that were green and performed poorly and there were Patriot units that performed superbly.

Infantry Rating

Personally, I tend to play the Southern Campaign ("where the war was won", as we Southern boys like to say), only with Northern Campaign unit sizes and uniforms ('Yankee Doodle' units). By 1781–82 I think things started becoming very much like described in the Rebellion supplement to Black Powder:

When infantry met infantry on the battlefields of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe the dominant tactic was for opposing battalions to form lines facing each other and fire their muskets at close range until one side could take no more and ran away or surrendered. Bayonet charges and hand-to-hand combat were considered rare.

At the outset of the rebellion, the British battalions in America retained the close order line as the preferred battlefield formation. ... Within the British drill manual there were three further arrangements. "Order" placed the files 18 inches apart, "open order" increased separation to 36 inches and "extended order" to as much as ten feet between men in the same rank. Each of these also progressively increase the gap between ranks and collectively they are sometimes referred to as "loose order". There was not specific skirmish formation, but in battle the command "to tree" would direct the men to disperse in woodland to take advantage of cover. The latter instruction could be given to any infantry and was most definitely not reserved only for designated "light infantry" or "skirmishers", although some units were naturally better suited, equipped and trained for this kind of bush fighting.

Upon assuming command of the army, General Howe re-trained his battalions to adopt "order" in two ranks as their default battlefield formation and with some exceptions this remained the case for British and Loyalist infantry for the majority of the conflict. This change in preferred formation reflects a number of the reasons why the rebellion is unique amongst Eighteenth Century wars. Firstly, the lack of effective cavalry meant the infantry were seldom compelled to adopt dense formations to repel charging horsemen. Secondly the terrain of North America made maneuver in close order a slow and cumbersome process; by adopting a looser formation the British were able to move faster than rebel battalions, who lacked the proficiency to do this, allowing them to gain the tactical initiative. Thirdly the two sides were fairly closely matched when it came to exchanging small arms fire, but the rebels would seldom stand to face a charge, prompting the British to adopt shock tactics which required the ability to maneuver at speed, only closing files at the point of contact. It is important to remember that the tactical flexibility of being able to open and close files rapidly as the situation demanded, required infantry who were drilled to a high standard and sufficiently battle-hardened to not panic when changing formation in the face of the enemy.

For this reason, I decided to try something I had never done with other rules: classify a large number of troops as light infantry. In terms of Tin Soldiers in Action (TSIA), this meant giving a lot of troops the light infantry designation rather than infantry. This creates a bit of issue in that:

Light infantry encompasses all types of jaeger, rifles, fusiliers, tirailleurs which are trained as skirmishers, in ranger combat, or in reconnaissance. Light infantry fights in skirmish line, marches in open formation, utilizes cover and operates independently.

This actually goes a little too far. What we want in infantry that can use open formation and get the benefits of cover, but does not operate independently. So the question becomes: do we change infantry by allowing it to use a new special ability (+) to operate in open formation or do we add a new special ability (-) of not independent to light infantry?  First, I wanted to look at TSIA and its references to infantry versus light infantry and open formation versus close formation to see what made more sense.

Under Unit Size (page 52) it refers to "Infantry, closed formation" and "Infantry, open formation" with no reference to light infantry so we can see here that it is referring to "infantry" as a branch and not as a unit type. Under Action Phase (page 63) it breaks it down as "Infantry in Closed Formation" and "Infantry in Open Formation". The only references to light infantry are to the action "adopting open formation" being limited to light infantry. It is when we get to the Multipliers For Ranged Combat that we start to get to decisions that have to be made.

The multiplier "ranged combat against light infantry in open formation" (emphasis as indicated in rules) implies it is the open formation that is granting the benefit, rather than being light infantry. That said, there are three modifiers that discuss getting cover in structures and they are worded as "ranged combat against (light) infantry in [structure] (except by heavy artillery or siege artillery)", which implies – correctly or not – that it is the aspect of light infantry that grants the benefit and not being in open formation (which is not a requirement of the modifier). There are the same sort of modifiers for "(light) infantry" defending structures getting a benefit in close combat, regardless of formation.

So, there is a difference between classifying these special troops as infantry that can adopt open formation or light infantry that is not independent. Initially, I decided to choose the latter, but as I write this I have decided to change to the former. The light infantry designation implies a much greater ability to defend structures that merely operating in open formation would bestow. So, there will be a new Special Ability (+) added to the list:

Can Operate in Open Formation: allows the unit to adopt open formation. Wherever a rule states "light infantry in open formation", treat it as applicable to this unit. Thus the unit is granted the benefits of rallying in terrain, cover, etc. as if light infantry in open formation. Note that this does not grant the unit a designation of light infantry.

Skirmishing

The next issue to resolve is that skirmishers in TSIA are representative of 19th Century warfare and are not the same as skirmishers in ARW. Entire units skirmished, rather than a component of the unit skirmishing ahead of the rest of the unit. This concept of one die worth of troops being one square forward of the main body doesn't really work. As light infantry is automatically granted skirmishers and infantry can be granted that special ability, we need to add a new Special Ability (-):

No Skirmishers - Light infantry does not get the benefit of the skirmisher special ability. (Further, infantry may also not be granted the skirmisher special ability.)

Units Without Bayonets

No Bayonets - all Close Combat results are multiplied by 0.5. Note that there is no effect on the Close Combat Test ².

Dump and Run

No Limbers - Artillery that cannot limber and unlimber. It may only move using a prolong action. Regardless of the professionalism of the gunners, the training of the unit must be rated as amateur.

Prolong - Light and medium artillery can move one square at the cost of one action, for a maximum of one square per turn. Terrain restrictions apply.

Preparation

Footnotes

Let me start with a disclaimer. This post is meant as constructive, even if it sounds critical, to the rules authors and potential rules authors out there. When Phil Barker was developing version 3 of DBA via a public forum, he always complained bitterly how Americans were all rules lawyers. I know that the term 'rules lawyer' is usually meant derogatorily, but I feel like there are two versions. The first is the negative one, the person who attempts to twist the meaning of rules due to unfortunate wording in order to gain competitive advantage. We all don't like them. The second is the person who believes that there is no way to determine an author's intent other than by reading the rules as written precisely. I admit it. I am one of them. That is why I have a Tournament Tight™ rating for rules.

I am in no way trying to denigrate the Tin Soldiers in Action rules. I like them, a lot. In fact, I think I like them better now. All that said, here we go...

Mistakes Were Made!

One of the good things about global communication today is that doing things like having a conversation with the author of a set of rules you just purchased is possible, despite the fact that he is in Brussels and I am sitting out in the middle of nowhere in Arizona on the Mexican border. Unfortunately, like most guys I knew growing up, none of us learned more than a semester of any foreign language. (And we only learned that much because we thought it would be an easy credit!) So understanding may not always occur despite the fact that words are quickly and easily appearing on your screen.

Tin Soldiers in Action (TSIA) got a rap in the first review I ever read of the rules as "being hard to understand" and "poorly translated". (My own review brought out some of the same remarks.) I remember thinking: "What are they talking about? The rules seem pretty clear to me." I honestly did not get it.

Okay, there were some phrases I would have said differently. In some ways I find some explanations verbose, especially the ones that I feel 'go without saying'. But, I did not really complain about it. But as many of you who have read this blog for awhile my style of writing is that I spew a stream of consciousness (or at least I think so); I say out loud my thought process. Some people appreciate that and others ... well I don't know about the others. I don't think they comment.

For rules authors that read my posts I think it helps them get into the head of at least one of the people reading their writing, which in turn they can use as an example of when they are being unclear. (Of course it is also a signal as to how dense some of their players can be too!) A good example of this is my babbling on about TSIA and whether to classify American Revolutionary War (ARW) infantry as "light infantry with no skirmishers" or "infantry with can operate in open formation". I then picked through the rules citing references to "light infantry" and "open formation" trying to figure out which option would modify the rules the least. In that analysis I came to one big conclusion: there was a significant difference in the light infantry designation as some rules applied to light infantry in open formation while others applied only to light infantry. I was actually proud of my deep analysis of the rules.

Too bad I was wrong.

According to the author, I had been reading the rules wrong. The references in modifiers to combat it often states "(light) infantry". I thought this was an odd way to indicate light infantry, which is a unit type, but I did not think much more of it other than "I wish he had not phrased it that way."

Here is the issue, and I have seen it in several rules. TSIA creates categories of figures called "branches" (as in "branches of service") and they are: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. They then categorize figures by unit type. The unit types for the infantry branch are: infantry and light infantry. Start to see the issue? Now, whenever the rules refer to "infantry", do they mean the infantry branch, which includes all infantry unit types, or do they mean the infantry unit type, which excludes light infantry?

It turns out that the author intended the designation "(light) infantry" to mean both the unit types infantry and light infantry! Hint to future authors out there:

1. Don't use the same term twice, giving them two different definitions.
2. Don't use new terms without defining them first.
3. When using groups of values explicitly list out all values unless you have defined terms for groupings.

For example, if you are going to define the category of branches, I can see why you don't want to name them "foot", "mounted" and "equipment". So "infantry", "cavalry" and "artillery" makes sense. But that means that the unit types cannot be duplicated. It should have been "heavy infantry" or "line infantry" instead of "infantry" and "heavy cavalry" or "line cavalry" or "battle cavalry" instead of "cavalry".

After this revelation I started reviewing what else was wrong with the way I was playing because I misread the author's intention. As I indicated above, not only was "infantry" duplicated, so was "cavalry". There is one key modifier that said "(light) cavalry" and I had assumed that it applied to light cavalry only. No, it applies to both unit types in the cavalry branch (cavalry and light cavalry). That means that all cavalry gets a multiplier of 0.5 when being shot at. (Note modifier does not apply in close combat.)

I asked the author to query some of his European players (there are two large groups out there, in Brussels and Hessen, I believe) and see if anyone had misinterpreted the rules as I had. (I suspect not because the two authors live in Brussels and Hessen.)

No offense meant to the author, but I do not see this as a translation error, but as lack of clarity in writing. I say this not to be cruel, but to help any other would-be authors out there on how easy it is for others to misinterpret something that is so clear and simple in your mind. Having played numerous games with rules authors in which I never read their rules and had a jolly old time, I can understand how easy it is for authors to get a false sense that their intent is perfectly clear in their writing because everyone in their test group plays exactly as they play. It takes something like this – someone completely outside of your influence who has to read your rules from start to finish in order to be able to attempt a game – in order to truly get a sense of how understandable your writing is.

It also takes a babbling data geek like me, who likes to run off at the mouth – well fingers in this case – and says every last little tidbit in his head to be able to get a crack at where your readers might go astray.

I knew I was performing a public service! 😀

So, what are the ramifications for TSIA? None really. These "changes" actually makes the game cleaner in that it feels like there are less exceptions to worry about.

• (Line) infantry can only be in closed formation.
• Light infantry can be in either closed formation or open formation, unless affected by the special rule always in open formation.
• (Line) cavalry can only be in closed formation.
• Light cavalry can be in either closed formation or open formation, unless affected by the special rule always in open formation. 
• Structures benefit all infantry.
• All cavalry takes less casualties from ranged combat.

Let's talk about that last bit.

Cavalry versus Ranged Combat

ARW Ratings

Background

I have been collecting 15mm American Revolutionary War (ARW) figures for a long time now. The first ones I collected and painted were Airfix and I started doing that at about 14 years old. At that time I had been gaming with an established wargaming club that had tens of thousands of 25mm Napoleonics figures and when I mentioned the ARW it was always "Why would you want to play that? It is just Napoleonics without the cavalry!" I read some books (but not very serious ones) and it did not seem like it was 'Napoleonics without the cavalry', but I could not really put my finger on what it was. In any case, I could never convince anyone to collect armies with me so it became a solo effort, as it still is today.

If you have read this blog for a while then you know that I have tried a number of rules with my ARW figures, including a variant of De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) that I called DB-AWI, a variant of Hordes of the Thing (HOTT) that I called Heroes of the Revolution, a variant of Warrior Kings that I called One More Volley, a variant of '61–'65 that I called '76–'83, a variant of Neil Thomas'Napoleonic Wargaming (that I did not call anything), Clash for a Continent, The Sword and the Flame, Black Powder (before the Rebellion supplement came out) and I forget what else. And those were the ones I tried. I bought even more rules including Disperse Ye Damn Rebels, Washington's Army, 1776, The Complete Brigadier and I forget what else. Always it just didn't feel right to me.

One of the problems seemed to be an issue with movement ranges versus firing ranges. If the movement was too long and the firing too short, the British could often simply charge in without bothering to stop and fire, running off the Patriots without a problem. That was the second problem: too many rules were written by obvious Anglophiles. It was rare to see rules that rated British Line Regiments – any of them – as anything less than Crack, Superior, or Elite. To me this was not only overly generous to the British, it was sloppy research.

I still kept reading the books and buying the materials. I really started preferring the battles in the Southern Campaign (later war). The Patriots got better, especially the Continentals, so they seemed a lot closer run affairs. Besides, that is where the war was won, not in the North. 😉

Revelation

As I stated in my previous piece on the ARW, I agreed with the concept of how the ARW was fought, as described in the Black Powder supplement Rebellion:

When infantry met infantry on the battlefields of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe the dominant tactic was for opposing battalions to form lines facing each other and fire their muskets at close range until one side could take no more and ran away or surrendered. Bayonet charges and hand-to-hand combat were considered rare.

At the outset of the rebellion, the British battalions in America retained the close order line as the preferred battlefield formation. ... Within the British drill manual there were three further arrangements. "Order" placed the files 18 inches apart, "open order" increased separation to 36 inches and "extended order" to as much as ten feet between men in the same rank. Each of these also progressively increase the gap between ranks and collectively they are sometimes referred to as "loose order". There was not specific skirmish formation, but in battle the command "to tree" would direct the men to disperse in woodland to take advantage of cover. The latter instruction could be given to any infantry and was most definitely not reserved only for designated "light infantry" or "skirmishers", although some units were naturally better suited, equipped and trained for this kind of bush fighting.

Upon assuming command of the army, General Howe re-trained his battalions to adopt "order" in two ranks as their default battlefield formation and with some exceptions this remained the case for British and Loyalist infantry for the majority of the conflict. This change in preferred formation reflects a number of the reasons why the rebellion is unique amongst Eighteenth Century wars. Firstly, the lack of effective cavalry meant the infantry were seldom compelled to adopt dense formations to repel charging horsemen. Secondly the terrain of North America made maneuver in close order a slow and cumbersome process; by adopting a looser formation the British were able to move faster than rebel battalions, who lacked the proficiency to do this, allowing them to gain the tactical initiative. Thirdly the two sides were fairly closely matched when it came to exchanging small arms fire, but the rebels would seldom stand to face a charge, prompting the British to adopt shock tactics which required the ability to maneuver at speed, only closing files at the point of contact. It is important to remember that the tactical flexibility of being able to open and close files rapidly as the situation demanded, required infantry who were drilled to a high standard and sufficiently battle-hardened to not panic when changing formation in the face of the enemy.

This basically described what I was thinking. British troops had adopted light infantry tactics to account for the American woodland terrain. Patriot troops were always trying to play 'catch up', first by mimicking British close order, battle line tactics and later British light infantry tactics. The result would be that generally British troops could out-maneuver Patriot troops, especially the lower quality one, and their goal would be to close in quickly, disorder the enemy in a sharp firefight, then close ranks and charge, sending the Patriots running. Whether the Patriots would 'win' depended upon how well they volleyed before the gave up the field. The Patriots wanted to make every British victory costly, in terms of men. This was a war of attrition.

The British, in turn, realized that in order to win they needed to defeat the 'hope' of the Patriot army, the Continental troops. By defeating this symbol of organized rebellion they hoped to stifle rebellion at the local level and encourage loyalists to fight for the Crown.

Modifying Tin Soldiers in Action

Footnotes

Time for something a little different. Recently I have been trying to get the troops that I have painted into a usable shape for the tabletop. They are either not based or they are based in some way that I cannot easily use them for the rules that I have decided upon. The biggest challenge I have is with 6mm figures, as I have never been completely happy with my previously basing methods.

Well, that is not completely true. When I use larger bases, I am pretty happy with the results, but not with smaller bases. As it happens, I am now going with 1" by 1/2" bases for infantry. (I refuse to use bases that are a multiple of 20mm anymore, but that is another story.)

Basing 6mm troops seems to always have the following issues:

• Most basing material (gravel, rocks, volcanic sand, grass tufts, clump foliage, twigs, foam-based flock, etc.) is too large and thus way out of scale of the figure.
• Given the close spacing of the figures, once they are fixed to the base it is very hard to get basing material between the figures while also not getting the material on the figure itself.
• Where figures' bases are not touching, and gaps appear, it is hard to get glue into those gaps in order to fill them, and then to get paint onto the filler without also getting it on the figure.

My basing method for 6mm is:

1. Make sure the bases to the figures are painted either an earth color or a grass color. This usually means touching up cavalry and skirmisher infantry because they were painted on strips and have to be cut off of them before mounting.
2. Tack the figures to the base, minimizing the gap between the figures for infantry. Unfortunately, due to the number of figures that I use for cavalry bases it is too few to put them close together; they gaps on the sides would be too great. (I probably need to change that at some point.)
3. Secure the figures by adding another layer of glue. I have it overlap more of the figure's base.
4. Add another layer of glue and sprinkle a mix of sand, very fine gravel, and volcanic sand on top, knocking off the excess.

From this point is where I generally have issues. In the past I have tried adding spots of glue onto the base and sprinkling ground foam flocking or static grass, but the closeness of the figures has made it hard to reach the inner areas of the bases without accidentally flocking the figures.

The thing I have always searched for was a very small nozzle that I could use to place glue in these tight areas. Well, recent experiments with "Writers"– acrylic dimensional paint – has led me to the DecoArt Ultra-Fine Writer Tip, which allows you to "write" fine lines with acrylic paint.



As you can see in the photo below, the writer tip is very much like a drafting pen, only without the wire nib in the center. This tip is attached to a screw top, allowing you to screw it onto paint bottles.



In order to ensure the tip does not get clogged, the cap has a tiny wire that inserts into the top, pushing paint material out.


It screws on the top, acting as a cap. I am not sure if you are expected to keep the cap on permanently or to remove and wash it each time. But given that I put my grass green paint into a one ounce bottle and that is what I will use the tip for, I am not taking it off.


So rather than following the original plan – to use this time to apply glue to a tight area – I decided to give it a try for its intended purpose: to "write" with acrylic paint. I decided to try and draw on patches of grass onto the sand base and see what it looked like.


The above is an extreme close-up of a stand of 6mm infantry (Belgian infantry 1815, to be exact). Notice how the paint lays down pretty precisely in lines? I also like the effect that the paint has when soaking into the sand, giving the grass a "clumpy" look.

Granted, you cannot see this when holding the figure at arm's length, but you can tell that it no longer looks like the figures are standing out in the Arizona landscape. Once I paint the sides of the stand, I think it will look decent. I think I am also going to go back to the craft store, buy a few more, and use different colors for each writer, allowing me to have multiple colors for the foliage.



I do have very small grass tufts (for 6mm figures) and I do find that adding one to three tufts per stand makes it look pretty nice. Also, I used the writer to draw little lines from the top of the base down a bit, making it look like grass growing on top of earth. So I think I may have found a method I am happy with.

Arm's Length View of Stand

Arm's Length View of Painted (left) and Original (right)

Close View of Painted (left) and Original (right)

I think both views are enhanced by adding the green color and tufts. I am playing around with thickening the craft paint I use as a basing color to see if I can get it closer to the consistency of toothpaste, without excessively clogging the tip. This might also make for some interesting effects.

By the way, my painter for 6mm is pretty good, isn't he? 😊

One of the 'new things' that I wanted to try over the Christmas holiday was wargaming over the internet. That does not sound very new, especially because I have already been wargaming over the internet, such as when I won that BattleLore campaign run on Vassal (gloat, gloat). No, what I wanted to try was playing a miniatures game over the internet and not using Vassal (besides, there is no module for what I wanted to try, Tin Soldiers in Action).

My Prussian Jägers are aching to get into action!

I have heard about webcam gaming, which is basically pointing a web camera at your table or using a handheld and showing your opponent what is going on, the state of the units, and so on. Your opponent may or may not have a similar setup on their own side. Sounds interesting but my main gaming space has a weak internet connection, so it would not support the amount of bandwidth I needed. I would either need to clear a large space in the house, risking the wrath of my wife, or I would need to scale something down. Fortunately, I had already done this exercise with Neil Thomas' rules Wargaming Nineteenth Century Europe 1815–1878 in my article Converting Rules to a Grid and a Small Gaming Space. As Tin Soldiers in Action (TSIA) is already on the grid, all I needed to do was to convert it to a small gaming space. Basically, scale the table down in size.

The scenario I was to play was Invasion of Back Cup Island, which comes from the back of TSIA. The scenario in TSIA is nine squares wide by 12 squares long, so with 6" squares that means a 4 1/2' by 6' table. Nope. I would need it down much smaller than that.

Although I have a good 4' by 4' space on the dining room table, because of its height, it is very hard to reach all of the way across. I usually game on the table by either making a game board out of foam core board or poster board. The foam core boards are generally 20" by 30", but you can buy larger ones like 30" by 40" and 48" by 96". I did not have any of those larger boards around, so I decided to use poster board that I had, which are also about 20" by 30". That meant I would have to use 2" squares. Pretty small! (In hindsight, I should have gone out and bought a 30" by 40" board and used 3" squares. More on that later.)

A simple game board drawn on poster board

Unit sizes were 12 figures per unit, so in order for that to fit in a 2" square, bases sizes would have had to be 1/2" or less (four figures wide by three ranks deep). It was starting to look like I would have to use 6mm figures and not use figure removal, but a roster system for tracking casualties.

The next surprise was that the scenario was not horse and musket, but a Jules Verne scenario set in about 1870–1896 due to the technology used. Well, all I had sufficient quantities of were 6mm Napoleonics or 6mm Space Marines, Space Elves, and Space Orcs. I was running out of time (the game was slated for the day after Christmas at 2 PM), so I bit the bullet and decided to make counters. 😞  Had I decided upon 3" squares at the start I could have used my fledgling Austrian and Prussian 1866 armies for the game, and quickly made unpainted units for the ones that were missing! But the stores were closed and I was running out of time.

Actually the counters were not so bad. I was able to put the unit name, stats, and 12 hit boxes comfortably all within about 1 3/4" square. This allowed me to use a pencil to mark off casualties as we went along, so the unit was the roster. I drew up a sheet of unit counters in Word using tables, printed it to paper, and glued them to wood squares in order to give them weight, so no accidents would happen with a gust of wind.

Pieces used for the game. The "O"s are the hit boxes.

I was all set up, ready for my game with Rüdiger Hofrichter (the author). I would be the attacker and he would be the defender (which is running a static defense, to be honest). The game is well balanced, but I knew it was going to be tough for me because it introduced a lot of new elements that I had not played, like fortifications, entrenchments, houses, modern artillery, siege artillery, and armored gunboats for starters.

As I said, the scenario is a Jules Verne-like story. The Evil Count (Blue defender) and his pirates kidnap a scientist and forces him to make not one, but two Ultimate Weapons. The International Force sends out their military to invade Back Cup Island, where the scientist is being held, to rescue him and destroy the weapons. The problem is: the Ultimate Weapons kick some serious butt.


The map above shows the layout. The International Force (Red attacker) enters the board on row 12. The four victory squares are C2, G4, G6, and G9. You must capture and hold all four by the end of the game (turn 9, although it could end at turn 7 or 8); failure to do so means the International Force loses.

The problem is that two Ultimate Weapons have been built, are functional, and are manned by crews. They are entrenched in E2 and G8. In game terms, the Ultimate Weapon is the biggest and baddest artillery defined in the game (WW I siege artillery) in an era of muzzle-loading, rifled field artillery and early breechloader naval guns. They hurt. Worse, they can hit any unit on the board that they have line of sight to.

Essentially the attackers have four infantry brigades, an artillery brigade, and an armored cruiser to punch through all of this. The assessment of this scenario by the author is that you only have about two turns where you can delay. Otherwise you need to keep moving in order to reach the opposite end of the board by the time the game ends. (For reference, an infantry unit moving flat out – no firing – can move two squares a turn.) All that sounds good, but you do not have the space to spread out and use your superior numbers.

If you have read previous battle reports then you know that my style is to see if I can break the rules. Although I felt that I had already sufficiently field-tested TSIA, there were so many new elements introduced that I decided before the game to go into 'break it' mode ¹. I knew I was going to be beaten, badly, because I was warned that this was a tough scenario for the attacker, yet well-balanced, and heavily playtested.

I am not going to go into a blow-by-blow, as this was not really intended as a battle report as much as it was a 'miniature gaming over Skype' report. How did we pull it off mechanically. First, one of the core components of a TSIA game is the card deck. There is one card for each command on each side. In the case of Red it had six commands, while Blue only had two. Thus the deck consisted of eight cards, mixed together. So one of the players has to be responsible for the deck, creating it, shuffling, pulling cards, and calling out (or showing) the card pulled ². I let Rüdiger handle that.

The other element of chance are dice (lots of dice!), so you typically have three methods: roll your own, use an die roller app, or let one player roll all of the dice. Actually, this last option did not really dawn on me, but Rüdiger suggested it and I was game. He would roll all of the dice and call out the results. (I would not even have the excuse of bad die rolling given that I was not rolling any dice!)

Game play was pretty easy, actually. I was like playing a modern version of Battleship. A card would be drawn and that would indicate which command would act next. The player would then indicate the unit in that command to take action by calling out the unit's name and grid coordinate location, state the action, and if the action were a move, what grid coordinate it would move to. If it was a double move I would simply change it to 'taking a double move' and then state the grid coordinate of the second move square. It actually worked very well and moved along very quickly.

When it came time to combat, we would state the unit firing, the target unit by grid coordinate, and then work out the dice together. Rüdiger would roll the dice and call out the hits. The only hitch was when the die roll was so horrendously bad against me I think he felt a little twinge of guilt and wanted to show me the roll. I was saying "no, no" but he would fumble with the camera and try to get it aimed and zoomed in.

As you can imagine, gaming this way requires a certain amount of trust between the two players. If you have that level of trust then I say forego completely trying to show your opponent the die rolls as it slows the game down. If you are the type that likes to roll your own dice, I would still say to forego showing the die rolls to the opponent, unless you have some two camera setup (which I am not even sure is possible with Skype). If the trust level is not quite there, or you want to keep a record, you can easily use an online dice roller like Rolz to handle the dice for you. It is easy, free, and you can get a private chat room so no one else comes in and starts rolling dice.

In my case, I did not have any trust issues, don't care if I roll the dice physically, virtually or not at all, and the last thing I want to do is look at the actual dice that just chewed through half a unit without the ability to fling them across the room! 😄

I really like playing gridded games and scenarios, so as I find good version of both, I have a tendency to make game board from foam core board or poster board so that replaying the scenarios are much quicker and easier to set up. As I continue to expand my minimalist 12mm armies (like the Prussian Jägers 1866 and 1870, at the start of this post) I can see doing more game board using 3" squares. My bases are exactly 3" by 1 1/2" (although the artillery are 1 1/2" by 3") and infantry can comfortably fit 12 figures on the base, I could potentially have 24 figure units. Cavalry would be four to eight figures per unit. Or I could just put a removable label on the base and use hit boxes to indicate the number of figures in the unit, as I did with these counters. In any case, I can see using these armies to explore new periods in a small space (2' by 3'), using a gridded board.

Would I game over Skype again? Yes. I think this is a great way to teach someone the rules, for example. For me, as I love dissecting rules, it is a great way to game with an author of rules or someone very experienced with a set of rules I am trying out and not flub it so much as I did with Hail of Fire (Beta). On the other hand, me doing what I am doing now helps authors test the clarity of their writing. Just by seeing how badly I twist the rules they can get clues where they need to tighten it up.

Which is what happened in the game with Rüdiger and I. I don't think he will mind me revealing this little bit, but it turned out that there was a translation issue that had a noticeable effect on the game, or at least I think so. It turns out that when calculating the dice the English rules say "round to the next whole number" while the German version says "round to the nearest whole number". So when Rüdiger and I were calculating the number of dice to roll and it came up different, I was able to point him to the rule and ask why he was doing it differently. That is when he discovered the mistranslation. All in all, I feel good about helping him with these little tweaks and fixes. My understanding is that a second printing may be upcoming, so these changes might be able to make it in. For now, if I play any of you, just remember that the rules is actually round to the nearest.

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Footnotes

After my debacle with the Upfront Kickstarter I now view Kickstarter like a raffle ticket, only with better odds. First they tell you about the prizes and how much it costs to buy a ticket. But you can't buy the ticket yet, you have to wait up to 30 days first. If they can get enough people to buy into the raffle, you get this notice that hey, it is time to pay your money for that raffle ticket you said you wanted. But that is all well in advance of the actual raffle so there is a lot of waiting again, and when the day comes, only then do you see if you won. With all of that waiting, I often forget about that raffle prize. So when I win, it sort of comes as a surprise to me.

On the Friday before Christmas I get a notice that I have a package arrived. Having a rural post office I cannot get it before Christmas, of course, because they aren't open on Saturdays like the city slickers have, and Monday is the official "day off" holiday for Christmas, so I only just picked up my package(s) yesterday. Merry Belated Christmas! It turns out the package is from Worthington Games and it is the Hold the Line Kickstarter raffle that has paid off.

I had purchased Worthington's first game on the topic, Clash for a Continent (CfaC) and had played every scenario. Like various Command and Colors games, they had opted for using wooden blocks rather than miniatures. Unlike Command and Colors however, they had opted to use a single wooden block for each unit and to rotate and flip the block around, like some Columbia Games' block games, to indicate how many strength points remained. It was a clunky mechanic, but it worked. But the real issue was that the other components were flimsy. The game board was glossy cardstock, as were the terrain tile overlays. Further, the artwork for the woods looked ... odd. It looked like someone took an overhead picture of a pile of green sponges. No matter, I had plenty of terrain tiles from BattleLore and it fit the hexes perfectly.

At first I heard that CfaC was a Command and Colors clone, but that is far from the truth. There are no sections on the board, nor any cards. Orders are issued by throwing a die to get command action points and then assigning those points to units in order to indicate which units can take action. Much more reminiscent of DBA than anything. Combat was also a simple combat table using D6 rather than special dice. But I digress.

Worthington later came out for a replacement to CfaC called Hold the Line. It expanded the period to include the War of 1812, I believe. I am not sure because I did not buy it. I downloaded the rules from Worthington's web site and so no appreciable changes, so I did not bother as I heard that Worthington mostly issued this edition because they had run out of copies of CfaC and decided to rebrand the game. They also changed the units to counters.

Eventually – perhaps after seeing what the Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) did for The Great War (Richard Borg's World War One game, similar to Memoir '44 – Worthington decided to team up with PSC and produce another version of Hold the Line, only this time they were going to include 20mm (😖) plastic miniatures. (Actually, I did not know they were going to be 20mm at the time. I thought they were going for 15mm.) I had no real interest until they said they were going to revamp all of the scenarios and include even more. I looked at my no-longer-played copy of CfaC with its partially torn box cover and decided it was time for an upgrade.

And here it is.


The boxes are nice and sturdy, using thick, pressed cardboard (as you expect with modern games) and not using the corrugated cardboard box like CfaC.

The rule book and scenario book are printed professionally on nice, glossy paper. The rules are a mere 12 pages of large type while the scenario book comes in at 36 pages with 34 scenarios! The quick reference card is a little unusual in that both sides contain the exact same information. It makes me wonder if it was a misprint, but there really are few charts in the game. The flags are glossy stickers and reminiscent of the ones provided with the old Battlecry game.


You get two bags of 20mm miniatures, red for British and blue for Americans. This is not a buckets of dice game, so three dice is not skimping. No one uses more than three dice in combat.


Here is a close-up of the figures. Note that the artillery pieces are glued together and needs some straightening. The plastic is a firmer soft plastic.

There are figures for line and light infantry (shares the same figure in cocked hat, the flag differentiates the unit type), militia (round hat), artillery (no gunners), Commanders, and cavalry (in helmet).


You may notice some similarities with the American infantry. The only difference is that the line infantry is in a defending pose rather than a march attack pose. The cocked hat on the American (and as you will see, the French figure) has a defect, however, and the back brim is significantly higher than the left and right brims (the turned up parts) so it gives the figure a pointy-headed look. I will have to sand it down because, truth be told, it really bothers me.

Actually, I might very well sell the figures because I have so many singly-based, painted, 15mm figures that I have more than enough to use them for this.


My biggest complaint for CfaC was regarding the thin terrain tile overlays. These tiles are thick like with BattleLore and Memoir '44. Good heft to them, so they are less likely to shift. Unlike many other games what is on the back side of the tile makes sense for what you see of the front side. For example it might be a village on the front and a village in the woods on the back. It is not like Memoir '44 where it leads to a search through every single tile looking for that curved river segment that sometimes appears on the back of a woods, hill, or village.


The game board itself is featureless, but there is no discernable, repeating pattern. The coloring is more yellow than green, but still looks pleasant. As you can see, the sections are thick. The board is one-sided; the reverse is black with binding tape to strengthen it.


The French and Indian War comes as a separate, boxed expansion. I am assuming they are selling it this way.

It includes some additional terrain, an expansion book (2 pages of rules, 13 additional scenarios), flag stickers, and French, Indian, and Ranger figures. Note that two of the new scenarios are for the American Revolution, as they include Indians in the British forces.


The French forces are really disappointing. They are the exact same figures as the Americans, only molded in off white. The militia should look like coureur de bois, not round hat with feather. The funny part is that it include cavalry for the French, but no scenario uses them and they are modeled after the British light dragoons, so totally inappropriate. If anything, they should be Lauzun's Legion hussars.

The Indians are green as they can be used by either the British or the French. But, as you can probably guess, there are scenarios where there are Indian units on both sides. I can see having to do something to sort that out.

The Rangers are green also, but they only appear on the British side, so it does not make sense that they are not red. I assume it was a cost-cutting measure.

If they had made some Indians in white and some in red, then made the Rangers in red, they could have still limited themselves to two colors, but they would have probably had to give us more Indians.


I did not intend to do a review of the rules – maybe at a future date – but skimming through the rules they look exactly the same as CfaC with some additions for new terrain types and the Rangers. The main changes are exactly what they stated at the start, which is to revamp the scenarios and add a lot more.

There were two additional figure types – Scottish Highlanders and Hessian Grenadiers – that were optional figures to purchase, but I did not get them. Given that the figures are 20mm, I just did not want to add another scale. I have so many painted 15mm figures that are still not based, the idea that I should paint these was just too much. So no reason to collect even more that I would not paint. Further, those figures are not required for the scenarios, but they are usable for specific scenarios, like Bushy Run and Trenton.

All in all I am happy with the purchase. Even if the figures were 15mm, they would be more of a nuisance (because I would be compelled to paint them), so that they are 20mm convinces me more to just sell them off.

I had initially planned to play the demonstration scenario "Hook's Farm", using Tin Soldiers in Action, with a gaming buddy from Texas (Justo), but we were not able to complete the armies and terrain so we could both play the two sides over Skype, so my wife suggested (!) that we play a game instead. Well, given that I had "Hook's Farm" set up, I suggested that we try that. How easy would it be to teach my wife Tin Soldiers in Action (TSIA)? More importantly, how would she like it?

My wife has played a few games with me over the years, but she is typically so engrossed with her garden that she would rather work out there than game, so the games have been few and far between. She started gaming when we met a couple – Marv and Betsy from New Mexico – and saw that not only did Betsy participate in gaming, she was an avid gamer. Betsy taught my wife DBA and, although she liked it, she did not stick with it. What she did like, and played a number of times, was the card game Dominion. She also played a few games of Abaddon with me and really enjoyed that. So none of the really hardcore stuff, but still some military oriented topics every so often.

Hook's Farm is a simple, introductory scenario converted from the scenario of the same name in H. G. Wells' book Little Wars, that you can download from the TSIA files section on Boardgame Geek. It uses a simple 8 square by 8 square grid board, which even if using the suggested 6" squares, only requires a 4' by 4' space. I was using 3" squares though, so this scenario fits nicely into the "small space gaming grid" category.

Map of Hook's Farm

The defender (Blue) sets up his forces in rows 1-3, with a single unit allowed in square D4, which is Hook's Farm, and the victory square. The attacker (Red) deploys her forces in row 8. Red rectangles are houses, green blobs are woods, and multiple squares outlined in brown are hills.

The forces are pretty basic with each player getting four infantry units, two artillery units, one light cavalry unit, and three commanders. The Blue defender must eliminate one of those units, of his choice, before the start of the game.

Here is my board all set up.

My version of Hook's Farm, viewed from the attacker's baseline

The board is the backside of a whiteboard. As it is metal, and magnetically receptive, it works well with magnetized bases (which mine are). I also magnetized the cardboard hills and the wooden block houses. (The hexes on the side are to indicate the grid number, which is used when playing remotely over Skype. They play no role in this game other than to demark the boundaries of the board.)

Hook's Farm takes place somewhere around the time of 1850. The infantry are armed with rifled muskets and the artillery with smoothbore muzzleloaders. I have been working on my 1866 Austrians and Prussians and I wanted them to take the field even though it was slightly out of period. Rather than altering the scenario, I used the figures to represent the Blue (Austrian) and Red (Prussian) sides.

The Blue/Austrian/Defending Forces

Commander-in-Chief and Austrian Cavalry Reserve

Although the unit has only four figures on the base, it actually has 12 tin soldiers on the roster. The cavalry unit depicts an Austrian Hussar unit.

Austrian 1st Division

This consisted of two infantry brigades, an artillery battery, and the Division Commander.

Austrian 2nd Division

This also consisted of two infantry brigades, an artillery battery, and the Division Commander. However, I decided to eliminate one of the infantry brigades as part of the scenario requirements.

As you can see in the picture, the infantry on the left is an older style, where the head is made from a round bead. The newer style, shown in the picture of the Austrian 1st Division, has the head made from a flathead, screwhole (furniture) plug, which looks much better as a shako in this scale.

The infantry on the right are modeled after the Austrian Jägers battalions, with the cock feathers in their top hats.

This artillery battery is incomplete. I have finished neither the gun or the limber.

The Red/Prussian/Attacking Forces

Commander-in-Chief and Prussian Cavalry Reserve

The cavalry unit depicts the Prussian 1st Hussar Regiment. The Commander-in-Chief is a Prussian Cuirassier Brigade Commander.

Prussian 1st Division

Prussian 2nd Division

Let the Game Begin

My wily opponent tries to distract me

Deployment

The Austrian defenders, deployed.

Turn One

Turn Two

Turn Three

Turn Four

Turn Five

As I was playing the variable turn end (for no particular reason other than to force the attacker not to dawdle) there is a chance that the game ends at the end of turn 5 or turn 6, rather than turn 7. Rita's rolling of sixes had been hot so I ask her to roll for an early end, and it does! I tricked her into rolling another six and won the game!

The sun sets on Hook's Farm, with the Austrians still in possession of it (with a mere two tin soldiers). Rita gives me a sour look and says "What do you mean I lost? How could I have lost when I killed all of your soldiers?!?" But she laughs it off, even after I offer to continue playing. I know she would have taken the farm on the following turn. There was no way to stop that damn gun line.

Conclusion

The last game I played was a scenario called "Hook's Farm", which was adapted by the author of the rules Tin Soldiers in Action (TSIA) from a scenario of the same name in H. G. Wells' book Little Wars. I had built my version of this scenario in order to play it with my gaming buddy, Justo. I live in Arizona (USA) now and he lives in Texas (USA), so we were going to play it over Skype by each of us having a board, miniatures for both sides, and markers. As TSIA is played on a square grid it is very easy to call out the grid number of the unit moving or firing and the grid number where you are moving to or firing at. Sort of like the old Milton Bradley game Battleship.

I was farther along with the miniatures and board, so when Justo missed the first deadline, my wife offered to game with me as we had not gamed together for some time. It was a mercy killing. Although technically she lost, she had beaten the snot out of me and her main attacking force was still intact.

Justo got his miniatures finished and we played a game at the tail end of the New Year's holiday and it was fun. I was attacking that time but ... well, I got smashed again. Really stupid move on my part right at the start and it put me on my back foot for the rest of the game. I got so distracted by that error – and Justo was on the hunt for blood – that our picture taking sort of petered out. That is why there was no battle report.

So, we decided to run the game again last night/this morning with Justo attacking this time. Hopefully this battle report will show more of the subtleties – and dare I say it (because the author of TSIA will read this), some of the peculiarities – of the rules. Also, you will get a double view of each turn! The first picture of each turn will be Justo's version of the game, while the second picture will be mine. Note that he was using American Civil War paper figures (and a cat), while I was using handmade, wooden Austro-Prussian War figures. Note that most of our pictures are end-of-turn shots.

Actually, neither Justo nor I are using the right period figures for the scenario, although Justo's is probably closer to the mark. The scenario has the infantry armed with rifled muskets, so that works for both sides of the ACW and for the Austrians in the Seven Weeks' War, but not for the Prussians, who are using early breechloaders. The artillery in the scenario have smoothbore muzzleloading guns. Again, this still works for the ACW, but due to them being rated as "medium", they are insufficient to be used as 12 pounder Napoleons. Ironically, the Prussians were still using smoothbore artillery, but the Austrians were already using rifled artillery. As for the cavalry, the scenario gives them only close combat weapons and no ranged weapons or revolvers, so they are really not suited for either ACW or the Seven Weeks' War cavalry. Probably the best representative would be armies from the 1850s, such as the Franco-Austrian War of 1859.

The Scenario

Deployment

Turn One

Reinforcements! Peanut makes a flank attack!

The '5' and '6' are hits. All nine infantry are cut down.

This allows me to take a cavalry breakthrough.

In TSIA, cavalry are pretty much fire-and-forget, one-shot weapons, which to my mind is as it should be. A cavalry breakthrough occurs when attacking heavy cavalry simply wins a melee or attacking light cavalry wins the melee by completely wiping out the enemy unit. A cavalry breakthrough allows the cavalry to continue the charge and attack units adjacent to the losing unit.

At first I hem and haw over whether to stand, advance and take the position, or take the cavalry breakthrough. The second option – to advance but not take the breakthrough – makes no sense. To stand means that my cavalry will be blocking my artillery's shot next turn, unless I get lucky enough to move my cavalry before my artillery is commanded to act. To breakthrough, however, means that I will take fire from both an artillery battery and an infantry brigade (albeit one with 50% losses). Justo points out that I will still take the fire if I stand there, laughs and calls me chicken, so I go ahead and take the breakthrough. (Real strategic thinking there, eh?)

But now the issue is: which unit to charge? If I charge the artillery, here is the sequence of events for resolving close combat.

1. Both sides take a morale test. The artillery cannot fail the test because it is superior, unlimbered, and has an attached commander.
2. The infantry conducts supporting fire with three dice.
3. The artillery conducts defensive fire with nine dice.
4. I conduct my close combat attack with the remaining figures, getting two dice per tin soldier.
5. If I win, there will be no more units within my axis of attack, so the cavalry breakthrough ends.

If I charge the infantry, here is the sequence of events.

1. Both sides take a morale test. The infantry will fail 33% of the time. If they fail they will be disordered, halving their dice in combat and making them more susceptible to losses if they lose the combat.
2. The artillery conducts supporting fire with nine dice.
3. The infantry conducts defensive fire with three dice, unless they failed morale in which case it will be two dice.
4. I conduct my close combat attack with the remaining figures, getting two dice per tin soldier.
5. If I wipe out the infantry, there are additional units within my axis of attack, so the cavalry breakthrough can continue.

Clearly the infantry are the better odds, but the artillery would be a bigger loss to Justo. Justo continues to razz me saying that the only real choice is to continue to kamikaze with the cavalry. I choose to charge the infantry to show him that my cavalry is just as fearless as his were last game!


By the way, I have my Commander-in-Chief with me, so if I lose him, the game is over for me unless I can kill his Commander-in-Chief too!

Justo rolls and whiffs, something like one or two hits. I cut the infantry brigade down and continue on to his second crippled infantry brigade cowering behind the artillery.

Now ponder that for a moment. My cavalry will be charging into a third, half-strength infantry brigade with two artillery batteries firing canister in support. The artillery batteries alone will be firing 18 dice and the infantry six dice (assuming it holds morale, otherwise it would be three), so that it 21-24 dice, needing ...

All of the sudden it dawns on me. I say: "Justo, have you been counting only the '6's as hits or both the '5's and '6's as hits?" He bursts out laughing and then groans. He has been whiffing because he was only counting '6's! I tell him that I don't know how to back out of this and do it over. He tells me not to worry about it, let's keep going. I allow the first artillery battery and the infantry to hit on '4'+ (but the second battery is still '5'+) to somewhat make up as compensation. But his dice went cold and he still whiffs, but at least this time it was legitimate.


That said, the losses are just too much and I lose the combat. I retreat in disorder to the woods, take a single loss to desertion, and lick my wounds.

As it turns out, Justo was right. To not advance and take the breakthrough would have been a waste of the unit. I was going to take all that fire anyway when his cards came up. You pretty much have to view cavalry as one-shot and do as much damage as possible once you decide to commit them. If, in the end, you are allowed to retreat, count your blessings.

Oh, and my Commander-in-Chief survived.



My infantry brigade defending Hook's Farm is down to four tin soldiers. It is looking grim. My cavalry is down to three figures. (I have a yellow marker in my photo instead of an orange, so it is mismarked. Justo has a missing stand in his photo, but I suspect that is the work of Peanut, who has been batting Justo's paper figures around as he takes a paw in the game.)

Turn Five

This is the critical last turn of the game. (We are not playing the optional rule, Variable Ending, which gives the attacker an advantage by letting the game play out as long as seven turns.) It is after midnight for Justo and approaching midnight for me. We are both getting punchy.

Luck continues to be with me. I rotate out the infantry from Hook's Farm and move in my artillery unit. What I have noticed is that the artillery simply do not fail morale rolls. All of my units fire first, so I pour fire into his artillery in an attempt to whittle them down. Each artillerist lost can cut his dice down by as much as three dice per tin soldier.

I fail all of my rolls. I throw the crippled unit in the house (G4) into the fray (at F5) in hopes of blocking a charge by Justo's infantry on the left flank (in G6). It does not work. Justo's cavalry charges and wipes me out, clearing the way.

Justo ends up with the last three cards of the game. Everyone he has that can pours fire into Hook's Farm. I go from four artillerists to two. Justo's last unit moves and charges into Hook's Farm. I have two artillery batteries and one half-strength infantry brigade defending or providing supporting fire. They cut him down from 11 tin soldiers to four. Justo rolls his last attack and scores no hits.


The game is over and I have won.

How close was this game? If the artillery unit in Hook's Farm had lost one more figure, it would have been reduced to one remaining artillerist. In TSIA that means that the unit is removed as the remaining figure runs off. That would have left my Commander-in-Chief holding the Farm.

When a unit commits to charging into a square for close combat and the preceding fire or morale tests causes the defending unit to be destroyed, the charging unit automatically wins the close combat and may advance into the square. The infantry brigade would have avoided all of the supporting fire.

When the infantry brigade reached the square, it would have found a lone Commander-in-Chief. I would have had to roll a die and on a '6', I would have been captured and would have lost automatically. On a '1' through '5' I would have been forced to retreat, leaving him the victory square, and thus also have lost.

Now, I do not like to point out an error of my opponent any more than I like mine being pointed out and published in a blog. But – sorry Justo, this is an important point – if his infantry brigade behind the artillery had moved as indicated with the dashed arrow to square D6 and fired, he could have obtained that last hit. What were the odds? Well, there were four tin soldiers left, firing at one die per two figures, shooting at unlimbered artillery (half dice), so he would have had a single die roll, needing a '6'. Not good odds, but...

Conclusion

I wrote a 'rules read-through' on the rules About Bonaparte (AB) and it achieved exactly the opposite of what I was hoping for. I wanted to give people an idea of what the rules were like without it actually being a review. You know what a review of mine looks like: it has ratings of 1 to 5 for various factors that I consider important.

I was approached by author of another set of rules, soliciting for an analysis and review (unpaid, of course), and after reading them I refused. I told the author I did not like the level of complexity in his rules. Had they hit me up when I was 20, I would have probably loved his rules, but not now. A review by me would have come out negative no matter how hard I tried and so I would not do the review as it would not have been fair to him. The rules were not bad, just not my cup of tea.

Well, intent does not always count. Some saw the AB post as a review, and a negative one at that. To my mind I have only written two negative reviews on rules. One, actually started as a particularly glowing review ... until I played it. After a conversation in email with the author, I knew I was never going to be able to translate what he was saying onto the tabletop. Some rules are just too hard to play without the author being there to help you over the rough spots. The other, well, let's just say that when I am excited about the sound of a product, spend a fair bit of money, wait a long time for that product, and then it breaks my heart, well maybe I am bad at being a spurned wargamer.

I admit, the single factor that irritated me regarding AB was the shoddy printing. That is on the printer for producing the poor quality and the publisher, and the bookseller (who happens to own the publisher) for accepting such poor quality and then turning around and selling a product that they had to have known would fall apart. Trust me, I have not read my copy of AB more than once and it already has sheets falling out.

After having emailed the author of Tin Soldiers in Action – which is another offering from Caliver Books, and published by Partizan Press – several times I have been made aware that the duties I thought were done by the publisher appears to have shifted. In other words, authors are now largely becoming responsible for translations and editing, not the publishers. Wow, have the times changed. So my comments about poor translation and editing was not an indictment solely on the publisher, but upon the author and his team. (I still think the publisher should have a strong role as the product is being put out under their banner.) I still stand by my statement that I could not always determine what the author meant, and could cite some examples, but I have no intention of going through that exercise again. The production quality and the translations are what I termed the "ugly" and the "bad", respectively. I labeled the rest as the "good". However, one reader took exception to my characterization. Massimo Mannari in a comment said:

Hi Dale,

I am the the translator for Italy of About Bonaparte and I have some doubts about your review. The truth is that even your "good" looks "bad" in your words and that, with all the references to other wargames, you accuse AB of being [copied from] other games that also appear very different as a starting point. We speak of a wargame with a free battlefield and of battalion of Toy soldiers in 54mm. A scale not so simple to use in wargame. Again, you find the complicated game system, when this system allows the best use of the units, the movement, the shot, the morale and the choice of those who move simply rolling the dice. You don't remember like rolling dice are [not] so simple, the Flag seems, from your description, incredibly easy to obtain, as well as obtain two or more. It is not so. For the Caliver edition, for many things I could say that you are right, but I have seen many [rules] and, at the same price, they offered [bad] graphics and [are] simple black and white. So to end, I think you're just discouraged those who could be interested in the game, finding similarities with products with other features and different starting points, a result that transcends your same considerations.

Thanks for your space,

Massimo

So not everyone agrees with my characterization that the rest was shared in a good light. Nonetheless, I offered Massimo the opportunity to write a rebuttal, with the promise that I would publish it on my blog in his words. My guess is that he contacted the author of AB as that was the email I received next.

Hi Dale,

I want to thank you for the review of About Bonaparte. Happy to see someone has taken time to do so. First: sorry if my English isn’t perfect, my native language being Dutch (Flemish) , so if I typed mistakes I’m sorry for that.

Maybe, for better understanding , I’ll start by telling a bit more than in the article how About Bonaparte grew.

My first contact with wargames dates from the end of the 90s. As you know, I am a 54mm collector. My first contact were Fire and Fury and variants from Belgian clubs, and I started to make an Austrian army in 54mm, Patrick going for the French, to use with these rules.

Somewhere in around the year 2000 another 54mm collector invited us to for a new board game he was enthusiastic about. It was Battlecry. And indeed I was immediately a big fan. I immediately tried to recreate it on my table tennis table, with white dots being the centre of a hex. The Austrians had their first battles. (when I made the first dice painting normal dice, I was forgotten there were the crossed sabres on the sixth side. Really. I did buy a Battlecry game afterwards when but by then we were used to wargame with our own version )

Then first thing I changed however was the melee: now in a charge, both sides could throw dice. I did find it logical the defender could also throw dice. In Battlecry, a unit that has suffered losses keeps his number of dice. It was strange too from a wargamer point of view, so we changed that too.

You know, every change I did add was due to logic. In those first battles, we had an hussar unit that charged the French Old Guard unit, and breaking it. Our friend Adrien, was furious. This is one thing that could never happen. Also, the game table, without scenery , after a few games, started to be annoying and it wasn’t that simple to insert scenery pieces with the dots. Also, formations were so important in the Napoleonic period they had to be introduced. The hex system had to go. But that also applied for the use of cards as you do not longer have a clear centre, and wings. Had a bit to think on that but you know what the solution was. I do indeed not make a difference in moral and abilities of the individual command figure (why make things complicated), but that can be adjusted by the number of aides.

So the use of dice for command also is in my eyes a very good solution. Letting an order been given to groups also.

I did read a lot of books and battle reports on the Napoleonic period, and I tried to what was important on the battlefield being reflect in the rule with adjustments. So indeed the doubling of flags. A cavalry charge has it: both for the attacker as the defender. Why: the impact on moral of seeing hundreds of cavalry charging towards you : units will break faster. On the other hand, cavalry is harder to control by its officers, and with a failed charge will also have the possibility to flee faster.

Is that logical? Think so. It also influences you as a player, just in was for historical commands: using your cavalry is a gamble, and certainly against fresh troops at the start of the battle not a good idea. Better use them as a kind of fast reserves . Now skirmishers: +1D to shoot, -2D when you shoot a them. Why? First of all, skirmishers are picked men, the best shooters , better weapons so yes a +1D. So now the -2D , how do they fight: they use cover and fight in an open formation, and when they see a line aiming at the for a volley, well they duck. If you only look at the firing they indeed look supermen. So what makes skirmishers vulnerable : close combat. That’s why they have a minus in close combat and they opponent a +1D. Against cavalry it is even more. They can try to evade. In the rulebook, the test stand by stand, as I had seen in another rule. But it makes the game complicated with the unit sometimes split, so recent games we test the whole unit at once. Chances to evade infantry are greater than against cavalry.

So yes, you must be careful where to use your skirmish troops., as indeed was the case in Napoleonic battles. Concerning support. It was obvious already from the beginning still using the dots on the table, that there is a difference between two units against each other and a unit facing two or three opponents. We did play a lot in those days, and tested many versions, and the simplest one if in the rulebook.

By 2003 the rule was how we play it still now, but was only the modifiers a few sheets of paper. Beginning of 2005 we did our first game at a convention in Ghent, and in November 2005 we did Austerlitz at the Crisis convention in Antwerp. http://www.hat.com/Othr8/Donvil86P.html Some club member that are used to more complex games asked to add other changes in the rulebook, but what wasn’t logical and didn’t matter according to historical accounts had no chance.

I have made other games before becoming a wargamer, so I know, less is more. As Our club has grown over the years, I think the rule makes sense.

Ow yes, concerning defensive fire, offensive fire , I have played a few times with a rule that hat, moral before the charge, defensive firing, moral test for the attacker, offensive fire, moral test for the defender, the fight, consulting a complex table, moral test for the looser. It takes hours to finish one turn. In AB all that is concentrated in one dice throw. Can’t be more simple.

I haven’t seen C and C rules yet, but as I understand, it has also changes compared to Battlecry close to what we have done. So it seems Richard Borg had seen the same logical things we did. If you want to make a Napoleonic game with some realism starting from Battlecry , I ‘m sure you will have to add the same changes to reach that result. In the end, most Napoleonic war games on battalion size units must have comparable mechanisms or else they fail.

When I started to think about putting the game we played into a rule back into 2007 , I first called it IIAC, referring to the dice.

Here under the mail I did send to Dave of Caliver Books back into 2009. I took Caliver 3 years to finalise the project. And yes I think I made a mistake in that mail as it seems Battlecry dates from 2000.

This is my first mail of 2009 to Caliver

From: dirk donvil [email address deleted]
Date: 2009/2/15
Subject: IIAC - request for publishing
To: ask@caliverbooks.com

Hi Dave,

The last decade has seen an incredible growth of Napoleonic and AWI figures in 54mm. Italeri, Armies in Plastic, CTS, Barzso, Conté, A call To Arms, etc. have created a wide variety of figures, and now Hät has also announced even Wurtenbergers and Bavarians.

So what seemed impossible 10 years ago due to lack of figures has now become an opportunity : wargaming in 54mm.

In annexe you'll find the beta version of my 54mm Napoleonic Wargame rule. I started in 1999 creating the rule and after all those years writing, rewriting and playing it has resulted in the IIAC rule.

It is a simple fast play rule, different from other rules by the special dices and game mechanism, yet resulting in historical acceptable outcomes and a lot of fun. I have also foreseen the use of other scales.

I 'm also working at an ancients version (simpler in unit formations yet more complex in warrior types), and planning to make an ECW version. The original is in Dutch and I am planning also to make a French version.

You can find some battle reports at the Hät website with these links.
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Donvil01P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Donvil04P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Donvil09P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr7/Donvil07P.html
http://www.hat.com/Othr8/Donvil12P.html

So you can see publishing this rule is really an opportunity.

Regards
Dirk Donvil
[contact information deleted]

Now complexity. Most old school wargamers I know find my rule to simple, to much a childplay game. So my first thought reading your comment on the rule being too complex, was that you were joking, making fun of the rule as some of the old wargames did. So I’m perplex to see you are serious about it, first time that I did receive that reaction. Suppose it is due to you having CCN in mind . All adaptions are in my eyes pure logic.

In 2008; I made an ancients version(About Caesar). It is more complex than AB. Simply because there are so many troop types having their specific way of fighting. Did compensate it by reducing formation possibilities. Did also change the flag system, and yes it’s a bit complex, but it increases the impact of veteran and elite troops, as historical reports show us. Also made a Renaissance version (https://marstonmoor54mm.blogspot.be/) and a “Lord of The rings” adaptation , the latter not published, only in Dutch, club only).

Quality of the book: [inaccurate statement about printer deleted] I made the book with Word the illustration in Excel, that’s the software I have. (Should I be ashamed of my work?)

The article in MW. Yes I reused the intro of the book. The article tells the same : how the rule came to be. Should I have written a different story? Is it that chocking, did I did something wrong? I don’t see the problem. The editors both at Caliver and at MW both didn’t remove the mistakes from it, sorry, but I can’t do anything about that. If you want to edit it for me, feel free to do so, I will make the changes.

So, finally I would like to challenge you Dale, after reading all this: can you make abstraction of CCN and test AB with a fresh view, and see why it works for is now for 15 years, and why even someone from Holland is driving two hours to participate with our games. I you need dice, I will send you a set. In annex also the AC and ACr, and the annex from the mail to Dave back in 2009. I think all this is a bit long to put in a blog comment, but seen the reactions are really negative, I think about it.

Cheers

Postscript: Concerning the printer discussion. It is obvious Partizan/Caliver has/have released some books with poor quality compared to most of their books. I think you should contact Dave about your concerns. For me, in the whole, is not an issue. What triggered me to react on your comments on AB was what was years of work, playing and testing could be interpreted by readers as a simple copy paste job from CCN. That did … hurt.

By the way, only one part of Dirk's email was deleted (other than removing his personal contact information), and that was because of, I believe, a misunderstanding of what I wrote about the printer in my original blog post. The printer is, in fact, in Malta. My copy of the rules were not printed by Partizan Press. (Nor was my copy of Tin Soldiers in Action, so I suspect that Partizan Press is no longer printing, but only publishing, but I could be wrong.)


I could address Dirk's objections point-by-point, but I won't. I don't want there to be any hint that I am being more negative than I apparently already have. Anything I say will likely be taken as being critical of Dirk's design decisions.

Let's face it folks: we don't all love the same things. We don't always agree on what should be modeled in a game or how it should be modeled. One man's logic is another man's error. If you have read me long enough then you know how I think in terms of simplifying games and removing the details that, to me, do not matter. That said, my commentary can hardly be an accusation of copying and pasting someone else's work. AB was too far off the mark from the original, which turned out to be Richard Borg's Battlecry (1999) rather than Richard Borg's Command and Colors: Napoleonics (2010). (I figured it was not based on the latter, by the way, given that it has not been out that long. I had not figured that it was based on Battlecry as it took out a lot of elements from that set.)

You can see my comparison of Richard Borg's various games in this article that I wrote back in 2011. My devotion to his rules has been for some time. My first article was June of 2010 for the second campaign we had run for Memoir '44, but I had been playing Memoir '44 for at least two years prior to that. I just never thought to blog about it. Which is all to say, I can recognize when I see mechanics similar to Richard Borg's.

But does that mean that if I make a combat system that uses opposed die rolls for combat, adds factors for the attacker and defender, and then use the difference in the rolls to determine the outcome, putting those outcomes in a table that I have ripped off Phil Barker and DBA? No. I noted the similar mechanism to Ganesha Games'Song of engine, but did not call it a rip-off. Because, in the end, it is not the concept of rolling dice and comparing results that matter, but the values that you use to modify the roll and the table that interprets the differences to an outcome.

The same applies to the idea of using the die itself to define the odds. I took that same concept in my articles on bringing Battlelore to the tabletop (Part One and Part Two of the game), or when I decided to try and make a company-level WWII game (see the section on Dice as Chart Replacements). I even published the graphics for those custom dice. I don't consider this a rip-off either as, again, the magic is in the odds, not that you burned the odds into the die. (Just going through my old posts is making me want to revive the system!)

I think if you go back and read what I actually wrote about AB it was not that I accused the author of ripping off Richard Borg, simply that I recognized where the ideas sprang from. I then began documenting point after point of where the author had changed from the original, introducing his own ideas. In the end, however, the author did not see my remarks as being that way. Which is unfortunate, because I am not rendering an apology. I did not make such an accusation. The author thought I was incorrect, or failed to see the logic of his design choices. He is entitled to his opinion. I felt that the least I could do is give him a platform to respond to the very readers he was concerned about that I had wrongly convinced not to buy his rules.

All that said, I make this promise to you, the readers: if you think I have done wrong with a review, let me know. Write a decent argument and I promise I will publish it here.

I haven't been touting it much lately, but I have been getting a lot of my 6mm troops, especially Napoleonics, ready for battle. Some of it is rebasing old troops [sigh] and some of it is unpacking from a painter I commission.

Now I usually go on about how easy 6mm figures are to paint, but let's just say that my buying got way ahead of my painting. Way too many auctions with people selling off unpainted and partially painted armies. Actually, I picked up quite a few painted troops too.

I have been using a painter from Flint, MI named Mike Crowley, and I have to say his painting talents of the small guys is pretty good. He is also pretty fast too. All of the figures depicted here are painted by him.

All figures depicted are Baccus 6mm, unless otherwise noted.

Napoleonics

British

French