Recently I got a Warcry battle report in my Youtube feed, which is unusual because I think I watched one battle report when the game first came out (more than a year ago) and I think the only thing related to Warcry that I have watched since is when The Battlecast Youtube channel made a video on why Justin did not like Warcry, and why he was no longer going to do battle reports of it. Put another way, Warcry did not appear in my feed for about a year, unless some other channel did something on it, like Tabletop Minions does, because that is a real Games Workshop fanboy channel. (You may be starting to get a sense that I watch entirely too much Youtube. In my defense, I do not have television, per se, only Amazon Prime Video.)

Anyway, up pops a battle report for Warcry and I note that the thumbnail looks nice (well painted minis, good terrain), but what strikes me is that the video length in about 15 minutes long. I know that game of Warcry and Kill Team can be short, but almost every video I have seen listed is in excess of 30 minutes, usually more than 45 minutes, and too frequently in excess of one hour. This is largely why I do not watch battle reports on video; they are too long because the players go into too much detail and they are largely unedited. (At best the pause the video and restart when the narration picks back up.) Needless to say, I was intrigued that the video was so short, but also how could a game get so out of whack that someone would lose a 45 minute game in one-third of the time?

So, I play it and proceed to watch a very well-produced, tightly-edited video of a solo game of Warcry. When I say "well-produced" I mean ... well, something good enough to write a blog post about. Why? Because I feel like my own battle reports lack something. For example, pictures are nice, but they are either zoomed out so you can see the whole battlefield (the context of the action), but cannot see the detail, or they are zoomed in for detail, but you lose the context in the larger battle. So you end up making a lot of pictures.

Have you ever tried blogging a game? Simply looking at pictures later that I took during the game doesn't always bring back to mind what the picture is actually trying to show. If I can't figure out what the picture is of, and the story it is trying to convey, I surely know you can't because you were not there. So I always wonder: are other people able to follow along?

Another method I tried is to blog during the game. Needless to say, this really slows down the game. To be honest, not all games are blog-worthy so there will be a certain number of games where you expend the extra effort, but end up never using it. But, this method does have one advantage, which is what I am always trying to capture in my battle reports, especially solo games: what was I thinking at that moment. I am interested in the decisions that a player has to make, given the information they have at the time, and why they make the ones that they do. My goal is always to try and encapsulate that thought process and codify it for making programmed opponents for solo play. (Yes, I know. Tilting at windmills.)

Back to video battle reports. Unless you are really invested in the gamers themselves, I generally find the chatter and jokes not only distracting, but overly time consuming. I also used to think showing the die rolls was a time waster, but this particular Warcry video showed all the die rolls and did it in a snappy manner. I still think it could save production time by cutting out most of the die rolls, but that is the video maker's issue, not mine. He (I believe his name is Donny Stout) uses picture-in-picture to not waste viewer's time. What I have found is that his camera work is such that he can go in close to show detail, then pull back to show context of the larger battlefield.

So, the channel is Dice Chatter and it largely only has battle reports of Warcry. There are a few Age of Sigmar battle reports, but they seem to have dropped off. The channel seems to have started as an RPG channel though, and switched to Twitch for that content.

Anyway, I thought I would mention this as I think his recent battle reports are good examples of engaging content that cut out the fluff and leave the meat. The only thing I would like to see change is him explaining some of his decisions. For one thing, it helps you understand his thought process and for another helps add to the excitement level when you see he gained (or missed) a result her was looking for. He talks through that a little bit after the game is over, but it always makes for better content to hear it at the time they are thinking it. The guys at Little Wars TV use that method and it is really effective.

So, I am not asking you to rush out and subscribe to this channel (or any other, for that matter), just asking that if you like good battle reports, what elements of it make a good battle report? What triggers your brain when you start watching or reading a battle report and you think "well, that is enough for me" and you switch away? What are you referring to if you start thinking "I wonder what ..." when you are reading or watching a battle report? Most importantly, do you watch battle reports on Youtube? What defines a "good" battle report for you?

This was long overdue, but as I head towards retirement (three more years) I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and to buy a dream tool that I had been pondering for a long time: a laser cutter and engraver. Now you might be wondering why this is on this particular blog and the answer is because it will absolutely play a role in cutting out parts for my wooden warriors.

In the past I used a Cricut cutting machine to cut out arm shapes and Spanish bicornes from craft foam sheet and, although I liked the flexibility of the material, I did not like how it took paint. With a laser I will easily be able to cut out shapes in 3mm and 1/8" thickness.

Right now I am in the experimental phase. I have long drawn images for wargaming using various drawing packages on the Macintosh. I bought the Glowforge Plus and it accepts SVG format files as input for 2D work, i.e. cutting and scoring. I have been using Inkscape for years, and that saves in many of the formats that the Glowforge accepts.

My first experiment was creating a painting rack for my paints. I use Pro Acryl mostly right now and they have a large bottle size than the craft paints and the Vallejo/Army Painter sized bottles, so I thought I would cut out my own as an initial project.

I looked at other paint holders and I noticed that many have the paint bottles standing straight up and down. The better ones stack one on top of another. I didn't really want that kind. I wanted the bottles angled and showing the color as much as possible.

The top plate of the holder has holes slightly larger than the bottle's diameter (30mm) so the paint bottle can slide in comfortably.

I decided to cut out two of these sheets so I could double up on the sides and make it stiffer.

The bottom has small holes so the bottle's tip could slide in.

I really like how I can see all the colors so easily. It takes up a bit of space, but I don't want stackable holders where I have to unstack them to remove a paint bottle and I am tired of having to pick up bottles to look at the color from holders where the bottles stand straight. If I were afraid of the bottles leaking I could still reverse them (tips up) and see the colors while being able to easily grab the bottle.

This was a really instructive project and I look forward to doing more. Right now all of my projects are more wargame accessories and the like. I generally don't like markers and tokens on the table, but use them in battle reports. Arrows to show movement or retreat, X to show combat or unit elimination, etc. I used to cut them from craft foam. Now I can draw up anything and have it cut from cardboard.

One of the great shames I hold is that I am really lazy about removing mold lines from my miniatures before painting. One of the things that simple painting methods generally do is highlight those mold lines. Don't believe me? Try dry-brushing, washing, or using contrast paints on an area with that mold line. Not only will those things show the line, but it will highlight it as the light catches on the edge and magnifies it.

Oh the shame!

Another area that is a problem, especially with the newer Games Workshop snap-together miniatures, is that they are designed to snap fit tightly. But if they don't, perhaps because of some imperfection in the plastic injection, they do not come together, creating a gap, and are next to impossible to pull apart without breaking the posts, or even the whole miniature.

In the picture below you can see the better side of a squig. This one did not go together very well and created a huge gap (red dashed area). In the past I tried a number of solutions: gel super glue; baking soda and liquid super glue; gloss varnish; various adhesives like white glue/PVA, tacky glue, and Modge Podge; sculpting material like Miliput, Green Stuff, Vallejo Modeling Paste; and Squadron Putty. Success or failure largely depends upon your ability to get the material into the gap, how fluid the material is, setting and curing time, and the size of the gap.

Things like adhesives tend to be very fluid, and thus hard to keep in place if the setting time is too long. Solids like putties and pastes tend to be harder to get into place (and only into the gap) and have long curing times.

I have heard of Bondic before, including as a gap filler for modeling, but had never tried it. Bondic is a liquid adhesive that is cured by shining a UV LED light on the material for 4 seconds or so.

Given the quick cure time, I decided to give it a try. It is not exactly cheap ($40 for who knows how many gaps and models), but as you can see with the gap above, if I can fill that easily and cure it quickly (so I can continue to prime the figure immediately afterward), it might well be worth it.

As you can (hopefully) see in the image above, Bondic easily filled this very large gap with ease. Although the material is fluid and thus runs, it is pretty viscous so it does not flow everywhere like white glue/PVA or superglue would.

If I were to have any complaint it would be that there is no real sign that the material is cured. It does not change colors or frost over; it simply remains glossy and clear. Because of that, if you need additional layers to fill the gap you might have to fill, cure, paint, inspect, and then repeat. Given the incredibly fast cure time, however, this is possible.

Further, because the material does not cure at all until UV light hits it, you do not have to worry about the material hardening if you leave the cap off, or that you have to rush to cure. In fact, I had a set of 9 miniatures that needed gaps filled and I was able to do all of them at once, cap the adhesive, then cure all of the miniatures. Doing something like that with baking soda and superglue or fast setting epoxy is not really possible.

As I use it more I may revisit the issue, especially if my opinion changes, and update you here.

 Have you ever wished for a material that you could use to strengthen miniatures without  significantly altering it or increasing it in size? I always dreamed about a 'plastic coating' that I could put on a miniature that would somehow make weak parts more rigid, like swords, bayonets, spears, flag poles, and such. The image below shows an example of what I mean.

I purchased an Aztec army from a gentleman selling off his friend's collection to help out his friend's widow. The figure on the right is what I received (less the basing). Notice the spear in his hand. These figures are not pewter, they are lead, and the spear is like limp rubber. It does not take much handling to bend the spear shafts. Eventually it will break.

The figure on the left is one that I washed and touched up, but also where I replaced the spear with steel piano wire. (That point is deadly sharp, I can attest!) I had to replace the spear on that one because it was so badly damaged it was unsalvageable. It would have been nice to be able to put a coating of some on the lead spear that would make it more rigid and less prone to bending without having to remove the spears that were epoxied (not white glued or superglued, but old, solid, two-part epoxy) to the hand. Each figure would require drilling and scraping that old epoxy out and in the end I lose that distinctive, cast obsidian spearhead.

Noticing last night how the Bondic filled gaps and essentially looked like a clear, hard plastic in the gaps, I decided to try some on the lead spears to see how well it held up after the Bondic cured. Given the quick curing time it does not really have enough time to droop and bead on the underside to the extent that two-part epoxy does.

First I straightened out the spear and then I put a very small drop on the top of the spear, spreading it out with the applicator tip just on the topside. I cured that and tested. It definitely added rigidity, but it went from limp rubber rigidity to that of medium softness plastic. Better, but still not there. I applied a coat to the underside, cured, added another to one of the sides, and cured. By then it was starting to feel as rigid as hard plastic.

The Bondic did not appear to add substantially to the size and volume of the spear, but you could feel the unevenness of the application. If I painted over the material with paint I am sure you would see it. Instead I will probably varnish over it with matte varnish in order to take away the obvious shine.

I will let you know if my opinion on using Bondic to strengthen miniatures holds up. If it does, I can see using this on spears, swords, and bayonets on 6mm figures (especially resin printed miniatures) and soft plastic figures like Airfix and their sort.

Recently I purchased Little Wars TV's rules for the American War of Independence/American Revolution "Live Free or Die" (LFD). The description from their website is as follows:

Live Free or Die is a fast-playing, 4-page set of wargaming rules designed to allow players to fight the most famous battles of the American War of Independence. In this game, the regiment is the basic tactical maneuver element and the role played by heroic leaders is emphasized. Whether you're a new player or veteran gamer, Live Free or Die is easily played from a single-sided quick reference sheet!

These rules are based upon the old Andy Callan rules "Loose Files and American Scramble" (LFAS). LFAS was largely centered around the concept of morale loss rather than personnel loss, i.e. markers are added to reflect morale degradation rather than removing figures. LFD builds upon this basic concept and adds a few of its own, such as: Leader values reflecting their grand tactical and tactical value; scenarios; and more structure on how the game should be played.

Command and Control

The leaders in LFD are called Leaders and Lieutenants, but should more properly be called Commanders and Sub-Commanders given the ranks of the people defined in the scenarios. I will grudgingly use their terms though.

Leaders will have two values: Command Points and Stars. Command Points (CP) are used to order units into action. Stars are used in two ways: to possibly obtain more Command Points each turn; and modify the effectiveness of some unit actions.

Command Points

Leaders generally have a rating of 4 to 7 Command Points. These are used to spend each turn to order units into action. For example, you can move all Regiments (units) in a Brigade within 3" of each other for 1 CP. On the other hand, in order to move a single Regiment outside of Brigade cohesion (3") it also costs 1 CP. This is a really good example of how they simply push players to play "realistically". Want to run each Regiment in any direction? Fine, but you cut down on the number of units that you can do that with. This is very similar to the effect in De Bellis Antiquitatus (DBA) when the block of troops start breaking up and require an increasing number of PIPs (command points in DBA) to restore cohesion.

Both Leaders and Lieutenants have 1 to 3 stars, which allows the player to roll 1D6 per star, granting an additional CP for every die rolling a '5' or '6'.

Turn Sequence

LFD is different from many rules in two ways: players both perform actions simultaneously except for Movement and Charge phases; and the firing step occurs before the movement step. These two mechanics definitely make the game feel differently than most IGO-UGO games, as there is no "Alpha Strike".

An Alpha Strike occurs in rules when the two sides are separated and out of combat and then one player moves, gets to attack, and the defender removes casualties all before they have a chance to take any meaningful action. Games with an Alpha Strike can easily see the player on the receiving end effectively lose in a single turn reducing many games down to min-maxing the army list building and hoping to win the critical initiative roll.

LFD, by forcing firing to occur before movement, removes the strike as the units must be within range the turn prior to firing and firing and casualty removal occurs simultaneously, giving neither player the advantage. It also cuts down on the players jockeying units around, hesitating moving units into range for when the rules dictate that units can only move orfire.

I think that they decided to not make the Movement simultaneous so they did not have to deal with the issues of prorating movement, unit collisions, and units potentially catching enemy units while changing formation. Instead, the side that moves second may not get to move at all when the enemy is forcing contact.

Combat

All combat produces demoralization markers, one for each hit. Basically each base rolls one die, requiring a '5' or '6' (only a '6' if firing at Skirmishers, Artillery, or units in heavy cover) if they are delivering hasty fire (they will move this turn), or two dice per base if they are volley firing (no movement that turn). Units in Column, Skirmishers, and 4th Class regiments cannot volley fire.

Artillery range is 20" for Light Guns, 10" for Field Guns firing canister, and 30" for Field Guns firing ball. Musket range is 6", while Rifles fire 10".

Movement

Infantry move 6" in Line, 9" in Column.

Skirmishers, Cavalry and Leaders move 12".

Field Guns move 6" and Light Guns move 9". There is no limbering and unlimbering. In this period the horse team handlers were civilian and once the battle started, the guns were unlimbered and manhandled by the artillerists and infantry assigned to help.

Terrain either slows the unit's movement, provides heavy cover, adds demoralization when moving through it, or some combination of the three.

Morale

As units move, take fire, and participate in melee they accumulate demoralization markers. When 5 have been accumulated the clears all markers and removes one base. The loss of a base (which can also occur in melee) forces a morale check, which requires rolling 1 or more dice, looking for any to have a '5' or '6'. If met then the morale check is passed, otherwise the unit retreats, potentially causing the closest unit within 3" to receive demoralization markers (which may in turn cause a stand loss, morale check, and retreat).

The key to the game is using your Leaders and Lieutenants to attach to units and clear demoralization markers (this takes 1 CP).

Summary

The rules are pretty basic and straightforward. You generally want to roll a '5' or '6' to get a success (sometimes it requires a '6') and you have to manage demoralization as a resource during the game. Because rallying costs command points, there will be times where you have to stop the line, dress it (i.e. rally off the demoralization markers), and then continue on. If the demoralization starts piling on and you cannot manage it, you will start to lose stands. That effectively lowers you ability to inflict damage on your opponent. LFD is a game of attrition.

My local gaming buddy Shawn and I tried it out using a cut down version of the Guilford Courthouse scenario. It ran much like our games of that scenario using Black Powder. The first militia line at the fence disrupted the British advance, who stopped in the middle of the field to return fire. Eventually the militia morale cracked and the units ran. The British cleared the fence and immediately had to halt to reform.

The interesting part is the mechanic that LFD uses to simulate this need to halt and reform – using a Leader or Lieutenant to rally off the markers – produced the same effect as disorder and failing a command roll does in Black Powder. However, the mechanic in LFD comes as a series of choices (you decide which leader to use, which unit to rally next, and spend the command points) whereas Black Powder presents it to you as a series of frustrating, unlucky rolls ('6' on firing, and a high 2D6 roll when issuing orders).

Would I play the rules again? Sure. I prefer it over Black Powder definitely. It requires a lot more bases than I have – we used half-size units in our test game – but I don't like all of the markers, so I would need to come up with a better system that looks cleaner.

My one complaint is that the ability to force a morale check is wholly dependent upon the lack of enemy leaders. British Line firing at Patriot Militia does not force it to check morale any faster than if Loyalist Militia had been firing upon it. In the matchup between British Line and Patriot Militia the British only win because they are more likely to survive the morale checks while the Patriots are not. But the retreat (morale failure) is not what causes the loss of the stand; it is the source of the check. Basically all troops inflict casualties at the same rate, irrespective of quality. They win the firefight by passing morale and not retreating. Many gamers will probably look upon these rules as pro-Patriot (despite having been written by an Englishman). I see this more as a balance against the rules where the 1st Maryland will never be rated as high as the British elites, such as the 2nd Guards (whom they charged with the bayonet in this battle).

I had a truly horrendous mishap with a set of plastic Warhammer 40K figures that I have had for at least 20 years. I put them in a Sterlite plastic tub that – although not airtight, had a pretty good seal – and some sort of material started decomposing to a gas. When I was excavating through my pile, looking at old troops and found these in a long lost vein of plastic and pewter, I opened the tub and out came a very strong chemical smell, much like plastic solvent.

When I started going through the troops I realized that nearly all were damaged. The bases were curled or melted, and guns were warped out of shape.

There are a number of things to fix with some of them – like the above Dark Eldar army I bought – but my beloved Tau were the things I wanted to fix first, which largely only had base damage.

I have seen clear acrylic bases for sale, mostly touted for basing in skirmish games (individual figures or a weapon team), with the advantage being that your bases would 'match' the surface you are gaming on because you would see the board, table, cloth, or mat below. No more troops with a desert landscape scheme on top of your NW Europe landscape board. Because I had to rebase these troops, I decided to give Litko's bases a try. (This was before I purchased my own laser cutter.)

Here are the troops on a simple 'desert' felt gaming mat.

Same troops on a 'grass' felt gaming mat.

Same troops on a textured 'desert' canvas game board.

And finally on a cyberpunk-themed, silk-screen on neoprene, game mat.

Clearly, the bases are not going to be 'invisible'. The light will always catch the edges. But one thing I have noticed is that the smaller the scale of the figure, the more that it is the base of the figure(s) that catch the eye and not the figures themselves. So not having a large contrast between the base and the board does seem to make the figures pop.

What do you think?

WoFun Games makes a series of miniatures where the picture of the soldier, cavalryman, artillery, etc. is printed onto a clear acrylic sheet and the figure outline is cut out using a laser cutter. They offer both 18mm and 28mm sizes and use (for the most part) Peter Dennis' art for the figures. These are essentially 'flat' miniatures with separate front and back images.

I bought the 18mm Renaissance Full Pack as I wanted a fair experience, rather than nickel and dime a unit at a time. Why that pack? Well, really, Renaissance is the one area that I don't have a good collection of. I figured that if I chose my favorite period (American War of Independence) and I really liked the figures I would be sorely tempted to sell off my metal miniature collection! 😄

Here is what a sheet out of the box looks like.

Here are some of the figures, some of which are put into the optional, slotted bases.

You can see that the tabs on the feet are rather small, so the idea that you might pull these figure out, store the figures flat, and add to the back to the bases before the next game makes me skeptical how either the tabs or the slots might hold up. I don't think I will be taking them in and out myself, but I was curious, so that is why I bought the bases. (By the way, the bases are all 30mm x 20mm, which I consider to be non-standard.)

As you can see, the figure from the base of the foot to the eye line is 18mm. These are definitely slimmer figures than normal. The next two pictures show that.

The British infantry in the round hat to the left is a smaller "15mm" figure (I believe Old Glory). Compare the arms and hands. (The figures to the right are MicroWorld 6mm Renaissance.)

The above gives a better look at the proportional difference.

So, in the final assessment, I have played with 'flats' before, but they were left/right side view. That is not how we normally play, we tend to view troops from behind and the fronts of enemy troops, so this view is more natural. That said, you need to get used to cavalry with no depth. I think I can only reserve judgment until I game with them and see how it 'feels'.

I definitely would not purchase the bases again because of the oddball size. Of course, I have a laser cutter, so making slotted bases is not an issue for me. But I like Peter Dennis' artwork – I have his War of Spanish Succession book – but do not like to reproduce the pages in color and I definitely do not like cutting the figures out. Because of this I have considered getting the Brothers ScanNCut in order to do the work for me.

I like the thickness of the acrylic, but I thought I might not like the fact that the edges were clear. Now that I see them I am pretty good with it staying clear. Again, gaming with the figures and time will tell.

 I recently played a game of Ravenfeast, a set of Viking-era skirmish rules by the guys at Little Wars TV, with my U.S. gaming buddy Shawn (not my Australian gaming buddy Shaun 😉). Although I messed up a really important rule, it still played well enough that I could both get a sense of how it should play, and that I wanted to try it again.

Ravenfeast

Ravenfeast is a really simple set of rule – which I honestly prefer these days – in that there are very few mechanics, the dice rolls are in the unit stats, and everything is pretty easily applied. What I mean by that is shown in the movement rules. There is no wheeling, movement is by figure, not unit, figures can pass through friendly figures without issue, and firing is 180º to the front.

This probably gives you a hint about the game scale. As I said it is a skirmish game, which to me has always been a figure equals a single man, but also that each figure acts autonomously, not as part of a unit. (Warhammer 40K and Flames of War are both examples of games where a figure represents a single man, but figures move as part of units, and thus are not skirmish games, to my mind.)

That said, you can play larger actions, both in the sense of running more figures, and in having the figures represent more than one man. The former is possible because of the simplicity of the rules while the latter is just a form of 'bathtubbing'; the figure represents any number of men, but it still fights in the game as if it were a single man. In my first play of the game we played the 'Ashdown' scenario that can be downloaded from the Little Wars TV web site, which allowed us to put 30+ figures per side on the table.

Turn Sequence

This is not a typical IGO-UGO turn, but rather where the turn is broken down into phases and both players perform in that phase before moving on to the next phase. The phases are:

• Initiative
• Rally
• Movement
• Missile
• Melee
• End

Initiative

Each players roll a D6 and subtract a modifier for having Leaders and Heroes. The lowest roller gets to choose whether they go first or second.

Having the initiative only has any significance in the Movement phase. When a figure moves into contact the opposing figure is pinned and cannot move (although it can change facing in melee). The only way to escape is to disengage from combat and grant your opponent a free attack against you.

In the Missile and Melee phases you still resolve combat in player order, but figures killed may still make their attack, so there is no 'Alpha Strike'.

Rally

Figures that fled during a previous turn and were marked with a Coward Token (see "End" below), must roll their Morale Rating or lower in order to remove the Coward Token and act as normal in the upcoming turn. Failure to do so and the figure is removed from the battle.

Movement

Movement is handled simply in that you measure the path moved on the board. No rules about having to move in straight lines or not being able to cross over friendly figures' bases (you stop on contacting enemy figure bases though). The only complexity is terrain. There are essentially two type – area and linear – each with their own way of dealing with moving through or over it. Area terrain requires double the movement to move through and obstacles reduce movement by 2" each. In general foot figures have 6" or 8" of movement and mounted have 14" of movement.

Missile

Bows shoot 18" and javelins 8" and require a clear line of sight. That means that skirmishers cannot fire from rear ranks. (You may wish to 'house rule' that, allowing figures in base-to-base contact with a friendly figure to not obscure the shooter's line of sight.)

Generally speaking missile troops have terrible stats. The Missile skill determines the number or lower on a D6 that the shooter must roll in order to score a hit. The defender then rolls their Armor stat or lower to cancel the hit. With most missile troops having a stat of 2 and the unarmored fyrd having a 3 for armor, the odds are against you taking down the enemy with missiles.

Melee

All figures in base-to-base contact with an enemy figure may attack in melee. Figures have a Melee stat that they must roll or under in order to inflict a hit. As with missiles, the defender then must roll their Armor or under to cancel the hit. Figures generally have 1 wound although the Hearthguard, Heroes, and Mounted troops generally have 2 and the Warlords 3.

Unlike missile attacks there are modifiers to the die roll needed for melee, such as -1 if the attack is across an obstacle or uphill, or -1 if engaged by more than one enemy.

There is one special item that must be noted when die rolling. If the Melee roll is a natural '1' and the Armor roll a natural '6', a free second attack is rolled (with no save) to see if the second hit is a gruesome wound, causing a morale check to those in close proximity.

Shield Wall

It would not be a Viking game if it did not have a shield wall rule. Three or more figures, armed with shields, not engaged in melee, may form a shield wall during the movement phase. Once formed the group moves at 1/2 speed, may only move straight ahead or a 1/4 move back, and may never move over obstacles.

Once formed the figures in the shield wall get +2 to their Armor, +1 to their Morale, are not subject to the bonus for being attacked from the rear, are not subject to the penalty for being engaged by more than one enemy, and can fight in melee from the second rank if armed with a spear.

A figure cannot leave one shield wall and join another in the same turn.

End

As you were going through the phases, you were accumulating Blood Tokens (when a figure is hit by missiles or in melee) and Raven Tokens (when hit with a gruesome wound in melee) on figures and now you must resolve them. If the number of Blood and Raven Tokens on a figure equals or exceeds it wounds (again, most figures have 1 wound), the figure is removed, along with the Blood Token.

After figure removal each side then must roll morale for the following:

• Leader was killed this turn (every figure in that warband)
• Warband suffers over 50% casualties (every figure in that warband)
• Hero was killed this turn (any friendly figure within the Hero's Morale rating, in inches)
• Death Worthy of a Song (every friendly figure within 6" of a Raven Token)

Leaders and Heroes do have a function in that any figure within their Morale Rating in inches can use their Morale Rating as their own, as long as the Leader or Hero passes their morale roll first.

Figures that fail their morale rolls flee their full move back towards their baseline and are given a Coward Token. If the fleeing figure is in base-to-base contact with an enemy figure, that figure gets a free attack.

Note that once you lose 50% of your figures in the warband, you will basically take a morale test for each figure every turn, so your army will disintegrate rapidly (as it should).

Additional Rules

Ravenfeast includes a number of cards, called Rune cards, that target figures, terrain, and even opposing players taking effect immediately or last a phase, turn, or even the entire battle. It is a way to 'break the rules' by injecting a chance element into the game. They are completely optional.

Another optional rule is to introduce currency into the game. Each player starts with a certain amount and scenarios may have objectives that grant additional currency. Currency can be spent on certain things like a re-roll during the game, an additional Rune card, or even adding a Berserker to your warband. This makes more sense if you are playing a campaign, of course, because you can slay the enemy Warlord and loot their bodies and add it to your loot.

Although Ravenfeast primarily focuses on Vikings, rules for Saxons – and their stats – are included. The Saxons main advantage is that they get the Mounted Spearman.

Ravenfeast does have a points system, but it is recommended that you play scenarios and campaigns.

Big Battle Ravenfeast, which is what the 'Ashdown' scenario is, basically introduces the concept of using the exact same rules as normal Ravenfeast, but treating each figure as representing more than one man. It doesn't matter how many, but play it the same. Forming a shield wall does require a Leader or Hero to be close by, however.

And what Dark Ages came would not be complete without a fantasy variant. There is a separate download for that which includes trolls, dragons, wolves, spells, and other monsters.

Scenarios

In the base rulebook there are three scenarios, "Back to the Boats!", "Fight for Honor!", and "Pillage and Burn!". More scenarios can be downloaded from the Little Wars TV web site and found on forums. You could easily adapt scenarios from Saga.

Final Analysis

Ravenfeast are really simple and straight forward rules that my old brain can digest. Almost no die roll modifiers to speak of and everything is rather 'standardized'. If I have to keep anything close to hand it is all of the special rules surrounding a shield wall and the stats for each of the figure types.

Comparing Ravenfeast to Saga

Although it might seem like we are comparing two very similar games, we are not. Ravenfeast is a true skirmish game (by my definition), but Saga is not as the smallest autonomous group is the unit, not the figure. Saga is what I would call these days a 'grand skirmish' set of rules. Games of Saga with 8 points can run from 29 to 85 figures, although this is not typical. Saga can handle more figures because figures are grouped into units, reducing the number of autonomous groups the player must manage. Figures in a unit thus become glorified markers for the number of hits a unit can take.

The telling difference between the two rules is that once the figures get stuck into melee, there are little to no decisions to make in Ravenfeast; you roll dice until a decisive result is achieved. In Saga you are always rolling the Saga dice, choosing special abilities, and planning for which units to buff and how. In this regard it makes Saga richer, but more complex.

One of the nice aspects of Saga is that each faction has a distinctive 'feel', which is supposed to reflect how they fought historically. Scots are a wall of spears, Saxons cluster in large supporting groups, the Irish have lots of missiles and even the occasional wolfhound, Vikings their ferocity, and Normans their crossbows and charging cavalry. I think you can simulate this flavor in Ravenfeast through the use of faction-specific Rune cards. Wherever you see a special ability in Saga, you could translate it to a Rune card. Not only would this simplify the faction concepts in Saga by reducing special actions to one-use cards, but it would also get rid of needing expensive custom dice.

The one criticism of Saga that I have never voiced on this blog is the seeming ahistorical nature of how it represents combat by putting like type figures into units. That wasn't really how it was. As shown in this diagram below from European Medieval Tactics (1), battle lines were formless not a series of units in line formation.

Our rules just do not play out like this. One thing Saga does represent better is the concept of 'fatigue', but it can really only do this because it groups figured into units with standardized stats. I think Ravenfeast would be all the better if fatigue could be incorporated, but because each figure is a unit, it would be a nightmare of markers to try and track it for each figure.

Overall, I like the simplicity of Ravenfeast, but it lacks many things that make Saga an interesting game, such as the management of resources (fatigue, dice, etc.), faction 'flavor', and meaningful decisions for the player to make that impact the game. I definitely want to look more into incorporating ideas from Saga into Rravenfeast.

Sword and Sandals is a variant for One-Hour Skirmish Wargames, published by the author John Lambshead. (You can download this for free in the Files section of the Facebook group One Hour Skirmish Wargames fan page. Basically it extends OHSW backwards in time, allowing you to play pre-gunpowder eras, adding additional rules for melee weapons and armor.

My gaming buddy Justo wanted to play OHSW virtually, so first I had to figure out how to do that. Normally when I do virtual games I play on a square grid and we call out grid references, like the childhood game Battleship. "I move my Infantry from A4 to B4 and then fire on your Skirmishers at C4." Believe it or not, I did not want to use a grid this time, but a good, old-fashioned ruler. (I know, I know, very strange of me. I will pay for it in back pain tonight, I am sure.)

Secondly, I wanted to get good shots of the game in progress because I was going to be pointing my phone camera to the board using Discord, so Justo could see the game. I decided to try using an overhead shot so that action farther away from the camera would not be distorted and I would not have to move the camera around. (Let me know if you think this works compared to my earlier efforts.) Whenever I did overhead shots before, I would basically stand up on a chair and shoot downwards. It was very hard to tell when I had the camera centered and aimed properly. This time I decided to use a microphone boom to hold the camera directly over the table. We will see how it works, but here is what the setup looks like.

For the figures I wanted to use my large 42mm wooden figures as I thought they would be more visible for the game, plus I have not used them in a while. My choices were Napoleonics or Dark Ages, so I chose the latter.

For the terrain I was considering using my wooden terrain and a grass colored felt cloth, but decided to go with some printed cardboard terrain hexes that I purchased on Kickstarter some time ago. Ironically I see these still on sale in a local hobby shop, but the company that manufactures them is out of business. I think given the overhead view, using flat terrain will be sufficient. Besides, the hexes are very colorful. The figures are just a little large for 42mm.

This is a bit of experiment as I am not really sure if the action will be easily seen. (You can always click on an image to look at the larger version, of course.) Here is how a game in progress might look from overhead.

Whereas this would be the shot I would normally take.

As I say, feedback is always nice.

The Forces

Viking Raiders

Motivation 2 (2 points)

Name	Weapon	R	H	S	M	A	D	Points	Number	Special
Warlord	Axe	2"	1	4	5"	1	3	13	1	Leader 2, Tough 2, Bruiser 2 Inspiring
Hearthguard	Axe	2"	1	4	5"	1	3	5 (20)	4	Bruiser 1
Berserker	H Spear	1"	2	3	6"	2	2	6	1	Bruiser 1 Tough 1
Bondi	H Spear	1"	2	3	6"	2	2	4 (8)	2

Total: 49 points, 8 figures, and 8 pieces of loot.

Saxon Defenders

Motivation 1 (1 point)

Name	Weapon	R	H	S	M	A	D	Points	Number	Special
Warlord	Sword	1"	3	2	5"	1	3	14	1	Leader 1, Tough 2, Bruiser 2
	H Javelin	12"	2	3
Huscarl	Axe	2"	1	4	5"	1	3	5	1	Bruiser 1
Fyrd	H Spear	1"	2	3	6"	2	2	4 (16)	4
Fyrd	Knife	½"	3	1	8"	2	1	3 (12)	5
	Self Bow	24"	1	1

Total: 51 points, 11 figures, and no pieces of loot.

The Scenario

The Viking Raiders are fresh from raiding the local church and laden down with loot (not being able to find beasts of burden). They are heading back to their longship unaware that the local fyrd is waiting for them at Stony Creek.

Objective

For the Viking Raiders, exit the board using the road to the northeast with the majority of their loot. If the Saxon force fails morale any loot they have picked up will not drop; it will be carried off with the retreating Saxons.

For the Saxon Defenders, recover the majority of the loot from the Viking Raiders. If the Viking force fails morale any loot they still carry is dropped. (Yes, I know it is not fair.)

I leave it to the players to determine how extensive the victory is by comparing loot possession.

Special Rules

Loot

In the beginning, each Viking figure carries one Loot counter. A figure can only carry two Loot counters, at most. For each Loot counter carried, a Move action costs +1 Action Point (AP). A figure not in hand-to-hand combat range of an enemy figure can drop or pickup one Loot counter for 1 AP.

Example: The Vikings have 9 AP. Viking A has one Loot counter. He drops the Loot (1 AP), and moves away (1 AP). Viking B has one Loot counter. He moves to the dropped Loot (1 AP), picks it up (1 AP), and moves (5 AP, 3 for second Move action plus two for carrying two Loot counters).

The Vikings must keep at least one figure within one Move action of any dropped Loot counters on the south side of Stony Creek. (A figure can guard more than one dropped Loot counter with one Move.) There is no requirement to guard Loot counters dropped north of Stony Creek.

Note that there is no penalty to carrying Loot counters to hand-to-hand combat or shooting, only increasing the AP cost to each Move action.

Stony Creek

There are three ways to cross Stony Creek: via the ford on the left; via the foot bridge in the center; and anywhere else in the water.

Figures crossing via the foot bridge have no penalty to movement. The bridge is only one figure wide, however.

Figures crossing via the ford have a minor movement penalty. Draw a card: if it is red, the penalty is 2" off of your figure's movement allowance; if it is black, there is no penalty. You will have to pay this penalty for each Move action in which you enter or are within the ford.

Figures crossing through the water have a major movement penalty. Draw a card: if it is red, the penalty is 4" off of your figure's movement allowance; if it is black, the penalty is 2" off of your figure's movement allowance. You will have to pay this penalty for each Move action in which you enter or are within the water.

Test Game

Gaming buddy Justo and I decided to try gaming this virtually, over Discord (as discussed above). I don't really have good shots of the game as I was using an overhead camera. Besides, I write terribly unentertaining battle reports. Instead, I want to discuss issues that came up in the game, which highlights some of the (very dramatic) differences between One-Hour Skirmish Wargames (OHSW) and Sword and Sandals (SaS).

Card Draw Rate

One thing that is immediately obvious is that SaS draws cards at a much faster rate. In OSHW a typical hand-to-hand combat has the attacker drawing two cards and the defender drawing one, so three cards for a single combat (spread across the two decks). In addition, that combat will be decisive; either the attacker or the defender will become a casualty.

Because the mechanics of SaS are draw to hit then draw to wound, and the card draw is based on the weapon and armor, true melee figures will pull multiple cards for each draw. Let's take two spear-armed figures with no metal armor and a shield fighting one another. The attacker pulls two cards to hit (for the spear) and the defender pulls two cards to avoid the hit (for their armor). If the attacker succeeds they then draw three cards to wound (for the spear's strength) and the defender draws two (for their armor's protectiveness). That results in up to 9 cards drawn, rather than 3. If the figures have Bruiser, as the Elite warriors will, add another card for each figure and each level of the Bruiser skill.

What is the net result of that? Actions do not resolve as the Joker appears much more frequently. Further, any scenarios with turn limits will have to be adjusted as you will burn through the decks faster, hitting the Jokers faster, and thus ending the turns with fewer actions resolved per turn. There were many a turn in which one side would draw a high number of AP, only to have a Joker come up after two or three actions, killing both player's turns. There were even turns in which the first action hit a Joker on resolving the wound of the first attack, effectively meaning no action whatsoever was completed that turn.

Indecisive Hand-to-Hand Combat

The kicker is that only if the attacker's best card for wounding beats the defender's by 7 is the defender killed. So hand-to-hand combat is very indecisive, comparatively, and requires many more attacks in order to get a decisive result. (If the attacker wins by 1 to 3 the defender is pushed back and the attacker can follow up. If the attacker wins by 4 to 6 the defender is pushed back and knocked off of his feet, making him very vulnerable.)

This may not be a bad thing, in terms of realism. Hand-to-hand combat becomes and attritional grind, looking for the opportunities where opponents are outnumbered, where there are breaks in the line, and where opponents have fallen and are vulnerable. The net result, however, is that a game that was once one hour long could now be very much longer.

I do like the effect on the melee with pushing and shoving around, but that can be achieved by driving your opponent back (always) on a hit, and when I try this again I will likely adjust the numbers to beat by 1, 2, or 3 to knock down, and beat by 4 or more to take out of action.

Final Analysis

I like SaS and would play it again, but I would definitely end up using fewer figures and trying the changes above or using the armor rules that I am trying, which is that light armor adds one card to the defender's draw while heavy armor adds two, using normal OHSW hand-to-hand combat rules. I can see that adding attack modifiers for heavy weapons is also a good idea, so a heavy weapon would add one or two cards for the attacker. I get the author's desire to rate weapons for both agility and damage, as he did with armor, but the numbers generally come out the same.

Also, the author did not define whether abilities like Bruiser apply to the hit draw, the wound draw, or both. Using my method, with only one draw, there is no question as to how it is applied.

I definitely liked the movement in the melee. My experience with hand-to-hand combat is martial arts and fighting with pugil sticks while in the US Marine Corps and I know that hand-to-hand combat is anything but standing there taking swings at one another. So any rules that reflect that movement is right in my book. OHSW does not need that distinction because there are no draws; either the attacker or the defender goes down. So if I were to continue with the hit then wound method in SaS, the charm of these rules would be this fluid combat.

If I continued with less decisive combat, however, I would definitely want to add a rule for fatigue, which I think is an important element in hand-to-hand combat.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game with SaS.

Recently there have been a number of posts on the Facebook group Wargaming Neil Thomas' rules where people have noticed that their favorite troop type or army list is not available in his rules One-Hour Wargames (OHW). I have offered my own suggestions, but I noticed that some (you know who you are) like to add new rules and complexity to OHW, despite the fact that the author intentionally stripped these rules down to the bare minimum and has plenty of other rules with slightly more 'crunch' that are much better for tweaking. I have generally resisted the idea of modifying OHW, although I have created an AWI variant, one for the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and some thoughts on how to use it for the Age of Sail. But the thought behind all of the variants were that I would not add any significant new game mechanics.

One poster to the group wanted to play the Arabs during the Medieval period, but he felt that the standard Medieval army list (3-4 Knights, 0-2 Archers, 0-2 Men-at-Arms, and 0-2 Levy) did not fit the historical model. So how should he modify the list and, given that the majority of the army were horse archers, how should he model them?

The second part, how to model Horse Archers, was much more interesting to me. Before I put out what my proposal would be, let me take a bit of a tangent.

De Bellis Antiquitatus or DBA

Although my first ancients and medieval games were using WRG Ancients, 4th Edition (and later 5th and 6th Editions). I stopped gaming ancients about 1984 and did not pick them up again until about 2008, when I was introduced to (one of) the WRG Ancients successor, DBA.

I really took a shine to DBA, as did our club, due to its simplicity and small army size. One aspect of the rules that confused me, however, was that most troops that you would have thought could shoot enemy units at a distance could not. Light Horse and Skirmishers (tribal javelin throwers, Balearic slingers, Cretan archers, whatever were all lumped together) would all fight the enemy by moving into contact. Basically they looked like they were engaging in melee. Eventually I found the DBA Fanaticus forum and I asked the question: "why can't these troops shoot?" Basically the answer was that, historically, all of these troops shot from very close range, either to ensure they hit, or to ensure that their hit actually did some damage.

I looked it up and sure enough, these troops did fight from very close range. Rather than giving them very short ranges (in the order of 1" or 2"), the author chose to visually model their tactics of running up, firing, and retreating, as melee. Equally as important, the results of combat with those troops typically produced a result where if they lost, they would simply retreat rather than be eliminated.

I took that concept of visually representing this close-range skirmishing as melee, with combat results reflecting the likelihood the skirmishers would simply retreat, with me to other games. But I noticed that OHW did not model skirmishers this way at all. The author models them as shooters and when they are contacted in melee, they cannot retreat away.

Horse Archers and Light Cavalry

I don't believe in modeling horse archers as shooters. I guess I agree with the DBA model that says they don't really have enough mass and range to act like troops that stand and fire mass volleys at the enemy. Instead they charge up, loose their archers, and quickly retreat, often firing backwards as they did so (the so-called 'Parthian shot'). It is easy to model the close range aspect, require the unit contact the enemy in order to fire, essentially having them engage in hand-to-hand combat (from a game mechanic aspect).

"The bulk of the cavalry was made up of lightly-armed warriors, protected by no more than fur or hide jackets and headgear. The shock force of the Scythian host was the professional, heavily-armed cavalry commanded by local princes. Both horses and riders were well protected. They fought in formation, under discipline, and brought to the battlefield considerable experience of warfare. The engagement opened with a shower of arrows and sling-stones, followed at closer range with darts and javelins. The heavy cavalry then charged in close formation, delivering the main blow on the center of the enemy's array. … When the enemy had been broken the lightly-armed mass of the Scythian horse closed in to finish them off."

— The Scythians, 700-300 BC

"When battle began the light cavalry advanced through the gaps in the heavy jaguns [battle formations] and poured a devastating volley of arrows and javelins into the enemy ranks. At the same time either or both the wings of light cavalry began an encircling movement to take the enemy in the flank or in the rear, a tactic known as the tulughma, or 'standard sweep'. If any light troops were forced back by an enemy's determination they calmly withdrew, shooting as they went, and their place was taken by other units. Very soon the enemy would become disorganized, at which point a charge by. the heavy cavalry would be ordered."

— The Mongols

But, the primary rule in the Ancients, Dark Ages, and Medieval rules are that once contact is made, it can never be broken off. If we flip to the Horse and Musket period rules we can see that the author does model this behavior of engaging and then retreating; he does so for Cavalry in the gunpowder era. What is we use that same mechanic? What if we say that Light Cavalry can move into contact and attack, but if they do not eliminate the unit then they must retreat 6" back, out of contact? This mechanic would fit nicely with the horse archer/light cavalry tactics were are trying to model and yet is not simply pulled from thin air as the author uses this same mechanic elsewhere.

Light Infantry Skirmishers

Which brings me to the Skirmishers. Just like it makes no sense that the light cavalry be modeled as standing and firing at range, the same is true with light infantry skirmishers.

"The Greeks broke down the fortifications and charged out, but they were unable to catch the Bythynian [Thracian peltasts]. The latter fled from the charge, but kept hurling javelins from both flanks; every charge merely caused more Greek deaths. It was said that only 15 hoplites escaped from this massacre."

—The Thracians, 700 BC - AD 46

What about taking away the Skirmisher's ability to fire at range and replacing it with the ability to skirmish, as defined above. The unit moves into contact, rolls for hand-to-hand combat, and if the enemy unit is not destroyed, it retreats out of contact. Given that a Skirmisher's movement is normally 9", I was thinking that it keeps that movement rate when taking a Move action that does not end in contact, but gets a 6" movement rate if it skirmishes (ends in contact), then retreats back 6".

Enemy Contact with Skirmishers

So what happens when the enemy contacts your skirmishers (whether infantry or cavalry)? Should they be able to get their whacks in or not? I think it should depend upon a number of factors.

• Are the chargers infantry or cavalry?
• Are the skirmishers infantry or cavalry?
• Are the chargers contacting frontally or from the flank or rear?
• Are the skirmishers being contacted by more than one unit?
• Do the skirmishers have room to retreat?

To my mind, an infantry skirmisher will never be able to outrun a charging cavalry unit, so contact will have to be maintained. A cavalry skirmish will always be able to outrun a changing infantry unit, unless some other factor comes into play. Otherwise, I think I would allow an infantry skirmisher to outrun infantry and a cavalry skirmisher to outrun cavalry, unless some other factor came into play.

If the contact is simply frontally, or from the flank, I would adhere to the rules above. If from the rear then you have been outmaneuvered so infantry can contact infantry skirmishers and cavalry can contact cavalry skirmishers. If you are contacted on two sides, your skirmishers cannot escape, regardless of who the chargers or the skirmishers are.

By 'room' to retreat I mean would the retreat movement take them off of the board. Which direction can the unit retreat? Always towards their baseline, never towards the enemy baseline nor laterally. If the retreat would take them off of the board they do not retreat and are contacted.

Summary

I know, I know. You should not tweak OHW. The whole point is for the combat model to be simple. I feel like this isn't too bad because it uses a model for hand-to-hand combat that already exists (for the Horse and Musket period cavalry) and represents Skirmishers better. Let's face it, unless it is a specific period and scenario were a Skirmisher is necessary due to terrain, you are probably like me and you groan when you roll up a Skirmisher.

Abstracting the Battlefield

Recently I noticed an increase in the number of blog and Facebook posts about '3x3' gaming. Wondering what it was I did some more research and found that it is basically abstracting the battlefield away into a square gridded battlefield of 3 squares by 3 squares (hence '3x3'). Actually, it is slightly more complex.

As you can see in the diagram above, the board is comprised, by row, of you side's Reserve area, your baseline, the center 'no-man's land', your opponent's baseline, and your opponent's Reserve area.

The board is further sub-divided into a left flank, center, and right flank. This effectively makes nine separate positions where units can maneuver and fight one another. All area terrain would be contained within a grid, thus defining the terrain for all of that particular grid location; there would be no areas within a grid where units would be 'in' the terrain while others were 'out'. Linear terrain would generally take the form of being 'on the lines' between areas.

The reserve areas are considered off-board and touching the left flank, center, and right flank of that side's baseline row.

Generally movement is simplified to foot troops moving one grid orthogonally (never diagonally) and mounted, fast, or vehicular units moving two grids. Close combat occurs by moving into the enemy's grid, small arms ranged combat is one grid away (again orthogonally), and longer-ranged weapons two or more grids away.

Although these boards are represented as a grid of squares, I consider this more of an area movement game than a square gridded game, but that is me.

The more I thought about this 'new' style of game, the more I realized that I had played it before, more than two decades ago. The game was called Dixie and it was a card-based wargame put out by Columbia Games. As a game Dixie was simple, but fun, but what hurt it was that Columbia Games was trying to capitalize on the collectible card craze that Magic the Gathering had started and had produced randomized decks, making it more expensive to collect the whole series. (They later realized the error of their ways and produced full sets people could buy, but I think it was too late by then.)

Dixie came out with three versions, each representing a different battle in the American Civil War, but all followed the same basic rules. The image above shows the abstract battlefield that it used. You will note the similarities to the 3x3 format. The primary difference is that there is no 'no man's land', or middle row. Each side goes straight from its baseline to the enemy baseline.

Dixie did add an advanced rule that allowed a player to make a flanking attack, moving straight from the reserve (the player's card hand) to the enemy's left and right baseline area, but these flank positions were not proper areas where units were held; it was more of a visualization to help you understand how a unit could go straight from the reserve to the enemy's baseline.

Another game that drew upon this concept — and gave credit to Dixie as inspiration — was GMT Games'Sun of York, also a card-based wargame, only this representing the battles of the War of the Roses.

As shown in the image above, this has been the most 'complex' of the designs to date (that I am aware of). It is similar to the 3x3 model, having three rows and three columns, along with a red and blue reserve, but also having separate red and blue flanking positions. Further, the flanks contain units and those units can push into the enemy flank positions. (No combat occurs on the flanks, however.) As with all other formats, you can never push units into the enemy's reserve area.

Conceptually, I think I actually like a mixture of the Sun of York and Dixie models. I like the single flank areas of Dixie, but I prefer them to be actual positions where units are posted. The archers in the woods at Agincourt come to mind. I do prefer the 3x3 grid for the main battle area that both 3x3 and Sun of York share. I am not sure why 3x3 does not account for flanking attacks. Perhaps because it envisions itself as being a portion of the total battlefield while both Dixie and Sun of York are reflecting the entire battle?

Another element that might define the scope of the action is the stacking limit applied to each cell of the grid. I think most players allow only two units in the 3x3 model while both Dixie and Sun of York allow four (plus Leaders).

Representing Campaigns and Battles

Recently I started playing Marvel United (MU) — a superhero versus supervillains game — with my wife (she has taken pity on me while I am still recovering from foot surgery and cannot go out and game with others) and it also abstracts the battlefield. If you think about the storylines in comics it is generally a series of battle vignettes in various locations between the superheroes and the supervillain's henchmen, with an occasional short fight between the superheroes and the supervillain before a final big fight between them that generally (hopefully) ends in the supervillain's defeat. MU models that by making each area of the map a different location where battles can occur, with each location not being broken down any further as these are not mass actions but rather skirmishes between a few people on each side.

Summary

Games like these allow players to quickly fight battles and get to a decisive result very quickly, minimizing the fuss and muss generally required with rules that have players carefully measuring movement and ranges, changing formation, and jockeying for position to optimize tactical effectiveness. In these games simple rules determine how units within an area face off and combat one another. The most optimal formation is considered to be automatically used by the unit commanders (which you are not; you are the overall commander), so all such details are abstracted away.

If you like these sort of games, they not only allow you to get into and resolve them very quickly, they are often designed to be gamed in a smaller space, such as a folding table. I personally like them because they also allow you to stay seated for most of the game, much like a board game does. But that is because I am an old man who will have back pain by the end of a multi-hour gaming session.

If you have seen other format of these area-type game boards, let me know. I know that the AWI miniatures rules that I reviewed, The World Turned Upside Down, promised to be an area map battle game, and that was what definitely drew me to it initially. Ganesha Games'Of Armies and Hordes is similar to MU in that the areas are more for the campaign and the battle is fought out in that single area location. You could easily combine those campaign rules with something like the 3x3 model to 'zoom in' and fight out the battle once you determine which area on the map the conflict occurs. (Hmmmm...)

Wargames are Puzzles

Recently I watched a video on how to play MU and the narrator said "Marvel United games are basically giant puzzles. You pick the supervillain that you are going to fight and they have specific characteristics — henchmen, attacks, hit points, ways they can be defeated, victory conditions, etc. — that you look at the determine which team of heroes and tactics you should select to defeat them. That is the puzzle solving part of the game experience." I thought about that and recognized that wargames are effectively the same. They are complex puzzles to be solved.

I know that when I wrote about Tactical Exercises and Micro-Games back in 2011 I was alluding to this idea. When you have the task of taking a house (skirmish) or a town (mass battle game) within a larger battle, the taking of that structure is a puzzle. There is a certain way to approach the task, you need a certain amount of troops compared to the defending force. You run these micro-games performing these singular tasks in order to understand the 'formula' for success.

For example, when I was 13 or so and playing Column, Line, and Square (CLS, a figure-heavy set of Napoleonics rules) I would generally bash my troops against a town trying to take it and always losing. One day an older gamer said "let's just play you attacking a town" rather than playing a larger game that had all kinds of elements, like roads, woods here and there, some walls and hedges, and so on. He said all that other stuff are distractions. "Right now, you need to focus on how to take that one building." So, that is all we had on the board, one building and nothing else. He took some points and bought Russians and I had more points (because I was attacking) and I bought some French. Got slaughtered. Rand it again and still got slaughtered. He said "Why were you slaughtered?" I realized the math of the situation — the minuses I had to contend with for firing at troops in cover — and came to the conclusion that if I truly needed to take the house, I did not have enough troops to overcome the penalties. So we started playing the same game with me getting increasingly more points. Eventually I won and I came to realize that there are some puzzles you cannot solve, i.e. attacking a town in CLS with only a 4:3 point advantage will always result in a loss, so the winning move is to figure out how to not attack the town. After that weekend of playing the same simple battle a dozen times and reaching my Eureka moment, I became a much better player. That was also when I realized that I liked wargames not because I like playing games, but because I like solving puzzles.

The problem with many rules though is that they throw so many variables into the mix, then beat the puzzle right out of the game. Most players cannot work through the probabilities of a dozen turns worth of dice rolls to determine the odds of winning. (I certainly cannot.) Adding other factors like troops defending terrain (-1 to firing for cover), and whether they will even be able to reach that cover before you have a chance to fire (because of variable movement rates) and many rules get reduced to games of chance. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying to remove all elements of chance (although I do play and did review various deterministic rules), but some rules just go to far.

I have talked with a number of gamers, however, that feel the opposite. Whereas I like to analyze games, in fact that is a particularly strong element of my enjoyment of gaming, others tell me that they enjoy more the rolling of the dice and seeing how the battle unfolds. Sure, they like to win too, but if the 'story' was a loss but fun that is far more preferable to a boring win. I have been accused many a time of being too over-analytical and taking all of the fun out of gaming, but that has only made me realize the two general types of players: puzzle solvers and gamers.

What about you? Are you looking for rules that are puzzles or games?

One of the hardest goals I have ever tried to achieve is to add context my games. There are plenty of ways to try and achieve that, but I think the one most gamers go for is to play scenarios in the context of a larger campaign game. Hopefully, the larger campaign provides you the forces for each side, a location to be fought over, and both previous and subsequent battles will be affected by the results of the battle you are about to fight.

So what is a "campaign"? Essentially it is a larger game intended to consist of a series of smaller games, linked together over a span of time and distance. Sounds simple on face value, but it requires the gamer to consider many factors that they normally abstract away from normal, tactical play, such as supply and logistics, marching rates (outside of the battlefield), and thinking about multiple objectives spread across distances. With campaigns you have to figure out if you want to continue to abstract many of those factors away.

Rather than talk about the different types of campaigns, this post is going to focus on a map campaign that I started with gaming buddy Justo (in Texas). It started with watching YouTuber The Joy of Wargaming's series Five Villages (which starts here), which was a map campaign he played using the rules The Chosen Men (so it was a skirmish campaign). I decided to play that same campaign after watching the first four episodes. (I should have watched the fifth episode before starting the campaign, by the way.) I drew up my own version of the map (putting it on hexes), created the opposing forces, and developed some rules (largely taken from the original campaign). The next problem to solve was: what strategic orders do I give each side?

Because my intent was to play the battles out solo – the objective of the campaign was simply to produce scenarios for battles to be played out on the tabletop, especially unbalanced and unlikely scenarios you would not play face-to-face with an opponent – I decided to enlist my gaming buddies to provide me the basic strategies for the two sides and then I, as umpire, would execute the orders for both sides and resolve the resulting conflicts.

I enlisted gaming buddies Justo and Chris (from Ohio) for the two sides, but it turned out that I did not convey the requirements adequately and it fell through in about a week. That said, Justo had a map campaign in his tool box – also based on a The Joy of Wargaming (TJoW) video series, in this case an Imagi-Nation map campaign (which starts here) – and he suggested that I give the orders to one side, he does it for the other, and we each play out our own campaign separately. Rather than use this plan for my original campaign, I decided to go ahead and try this one.

Initially Justo provided two map drawings, but eventually I ended up converting these to hexes.

Westonia	Eastonia

As with the video series, Justo and I decided to use the system provided in The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG) by William Silvester for conducting map movement, dealing with supply and logistics, weather, mobilization, and determining the number of initial forces. (Because the campaign is measured in days and not weeks or months, recruitment is not an issue.) Now, my opinion of this book has been pretty low since purchase. When it comes to solo wargaming, I really don't want to lean on random tables and this book does that heavily (as does Featherstone's). But as I looked through all the variables you have to contend with, it seems like this is a good way to start until you sort out your own rules with fewer fully random tables.

Justo had created the maps, set the city sizes, drew in the terrain and roads, and stopped sort of determining the force composition and location. That is where our campaign started.

I saw that the map favored Westonia, as it had more lesser villages (class C, D, and E urban areas), and thus would have a smaller army, so I chose Eastonia as my side figuring it would likely be the defender. Here is the full process that we used for our campaign:

1. Select campaign map ✅
2. Select which side you represent ✅
3. Roll your side’s forces
1. Roll total forces for each city
2. Divide Regiments into Line Infantry and Line Cavalry
3. Subtract the number of Line Cavalry from individual Companies; that is the number of Artillery Batteries
4. Divide remaining individual Companies into Light Infantry and Light Cavalry
5. Assign Regiments and individual Companies to cities
6. Name Regiments and Companies
4. Divide forces into Brigades
1. Define Brigades (which Regiments and Companies, from where)
2. Roll Brigadier Generals’ Commander Competency Rating (CCR)
1. No more than three Brigadier Generals per side
2. Any additional Commanders will automatically have a CCR of ‘3’.
3. Assign Brigadier Generals to each Brigades
4. Name Brigadier Generals
5. Make a Muster Plan
1. Define the Muster Rating of each city.
2. Identify Muster Point for each Brigade.
3. Define travel from origin Cities to Muster Point.
6. Define an Action Plan
1. Identify starting time for each Brigade
2. Identify general orders (attack, defense, delay, etc.)
3. Identify route of march
4. Identify goal of campaign

Step 3, roll your side's forces, comes straight from TSWG, which is as follows: Class A gets 2-5 Regiments (each of 5 Companies); B gets 1-5 Regiments; C gets 4 Companies; D gets 3 Companies; and E gets 2 Companies. Given that both sides started with one A and three B class cities, both sides would start with relatively the same number of Regiments. Note that 3.2 and 3.4 above defines what class of troops come from these sources, Line Infantry and Line Cavalry only come from Regiments, and thus only class A and B cities produce those troops. The class C, D, and E towns only produce Artillery (in limited amounts), Light Infantry, and Light Cavalry. So my feeling was that the extra towns of Westonia would not produce a significant advantage in troops, but enough to justify me being the defender.

As with TJoW, we decided to have one Line Cavalry Regiment for every five Line Infantry Regiments raised, rounding fractions up. I rolled up fifteen Regiments, so that gave me three Line Cavalry Regiments and twelve Line Infantry Regiments.

With three Line Cavalry Regiments, you are allowed three Artillery Batteries, subtracted from your total number of Companies (28) raised from your C, D, and E towns. In hindsight I think that may be a little too few batteries, but we press onward.

Of the remaining Companies (25) we decided to have one Light Cavalry Squadron for every three Light Infantry Company, rounding fractions up. That gives me seven Light Cavalry Squadrons and eighteen Light Infantry Companies. Along with our three Brigadier Generals, this is my total force disposition.

I am not going to bore you with the nitty gritty details of where the units ended up, but my basic plan was to pool my Light Cavalry in certain towns so those forces could muster and move faster to engage the enemy while the rest of the units muster for defense. My sole goal was to attack on the south road, taking the first C class town on that road, and attempt to hold on to that until the cessation of hostilities, hoping I could win that in subsequent peace negotiations or at least use it as a bargaining chip in the event I lose any towns or cities.

By the way, given that we are not using any siege artillery and the class A and B cities are fortified, there is essentially no way to capture the enemy's cities; only the towns are vulnerable.

The first wrench in the campaign was that Justo did not want to determine, at the start, which side was the attacker and which was the defender. Rather he wanted to have each side write attack orders without knowing who was attacking. I thought that was a little strange, but agreed to it. After all, we would each be playing our own campaign so whoever ended up attacker in one campaign might well be the defender in the other's, so I guess it made sense and was easier than writing one set of orders if you are the attacker and another if you are the defender.

My Version of the First Elope-an War Campaign

I will be reporting on my campaign here and on my Solo Battles blog, given that the tactical play will likely be solo (though not necessarily, if I enlist the aid of local or virtual players).

The Westonian Duke, after sending his daughter ahead to Eastonia to eventually be married to the Prince of Eastonia, and subsequently finding out that the Prince had absconded (eloped) with his daughter to another country, decided this was the final straw. After decades of attempts to make peace with the Eastonians, by tying their families through marriage, this was too much! With the loss of his daughter there was no treaty between the two, especially as the Count of Eastonia was claiming it was their strumpet of a daughter that lured his son and heir away! This means war!

Westonian ended up as the attacker so I have to determine how long it takes Eastonia to react to the news and send out their mobilization orders. Looking at the Mobilization table in TSWG, the Eastonian's mobilize five days after the Westonian's do. Clearly the Count did not figure the Duke would react so poorly to the news.

Diary

April 3, 1750

Light Rain (6) greets the Westonians as they start to muster. Each city has a Muster Rating to determine how long it takes the news to get to that city, and how long it takes the local garrison commanders to get their troops mustered locally.

April 4, 1750

A light rain continues. Troops in Tresvoces, Siayfin, Avrafin, and Vacaque have completed their muster.

April 5, 1750

The rain has stopped (7). The troops above are moving to their Brigade Muster Point while the remaining troops complete their muster in their respective cities and towns. (I did not roll a single Westonian city with a Muster Rating of '1', which is the slowest Muster Rating. They have clearly been contemplating this action and have been drilling.)

April 6-8, 1750

The Vanguard of the Brigade SLT completes its muster in Astaelfin and prepares to move on towards Firnskuppe.

April 8, 1750

Mobilization orders are sent out to all Eastonian units. Units will muster in their cities and towns on the 9th through 11th, depending upon their Muster Rating.

April 10, 1750

The Vanguard of the 1st Westonian Brigade arrives in Firnskuppe, just as the Firnskuppian Husaren (two independent light cavalry squadrons) complete their muster. One Light Infantry Regiment and one Light Cavalry Regiment versus these two Husaren squadrons… Not quite your normal matchup to play on game night!

Fighting Tactical Battles

The next question is how to fight tactical battles, going from the campaign map to the tabletop and back. In this regard Justo and I have again decided to take our own routes. We can use whatever rules we like to fight out the battles, but they need to be able to map to our unit structures.

One-Hour Wargames

I am considering using Neil Thomas'One-Hour Wargames (OHW), especially for the simpler battles. I like the basic mechanics of either moving or firing, which feels right for this period. The issue is how to represent the units?

The basic unit in the campaign is the company. Towns and cities provide a certain number of companies to the army. Cities provide the line units, and thus are organized in units (regiments) of five companies each. Towns can either combine their companies into consolidated regiments (again, of five companies each) or use them as independent companies. Given that an OHW unit is 15 hits, that can easily be translated as 3 hits per company in a five company regiment. That would make independent companies and squadrons as 3 hit units. Any permanent losses in hits from the unit can likewise be reflected back to the campaign by removing a company for each 3 hit loss.

The problem with this, however, is that a unit maintains its firepower/melee power regardless of the number of hits remaining, so five 3-hit units are far stronger offensively, than one 15-hit unit. The former would be throwing 5D6 in combat while the latter would only be throwing one. How to resolve that?

Another method would be for one OHW unit to equal a company, but force the companies in regiments to operate together (in formation). That might be interesting. Basically it would be scaling OHW up (tremendously), as this first battle would be 10 units versus 2.

Finally, I can just see forcing all independent companies to consolidate into units of five companies, with the fractional unit having three hits per company.

2x2 Napoleonics

Justo will be using 2x2 Napoleonics by Rod Humble, which was also used in the original TJOW campaign. Although I enjoyed those rules immensely back in the day – it was one of the first rule sets that Justo and I played almost 20 years ago when we first met – I have to say that I have outgrown them a bit. Roll a D6, add modifiers from a table, and compare the result to a chart (which is fairly easy to remember). Very 1970s-80s.

One-Hour Skirmish Wargames

Interestingly, Justo and I discussed these rules on our last call. The idea was to convert the rule mechanics – using a standard deck of cards as the sole chance element – to mass combat. As I pondered the idea more I liked what I was coming up with, but I don't want to hold up the battles as I try and sort it all out. So maybe later in the campaign or another one.

Well, that's the start. I have a butt stomp to play out. I'll let you know how it goes in the next post.

 Last week I finally got enough of the preliminary work done on the Map Campaign – refer back to that post if you have not read it already – that I was ready to game out the first tactical battle. Unfortunately, because Westonia caught Eastonia flat-footed, it is not going to be much of a battle, given it is ten companies versus two. Nonetheless, one goal of this campaign was to create scenarios that I would not normally concoct when playing face-to-face, such as uneven battles and, well, this was about as uneven as it was going to get. Nonetheless, I did not want to throw troops away. So I needed a way to fairly deal with a situation where troops might want to voluntarily retreat from engagement.

In the campaign played on They Joy of Wargaming (TJOW) YouTube channel, he generated the tactical map of the tabletop – influenced by the terrain on the larger map where the engagement took place – then used each side's Commander's Competency Rating (CCR) to determine who had the tactical advantage, and thus could pick their baseline (with their opponent generally getting the opposite side). From there I would play the battle, but if a side wanted to voluntarily retreat because of their position being untenable, if they could roll their CCR or less on a D6 (rolling every turn), they would have the option to retreat off of the board.

As I indicated last time, I was still trying to figure out how to move from the campaign map to the tabletop and back again. Primarily, because I could be dealing with very few troops, which rules would I use that could deal with something as small as ten companies versus two, to 5-10 Regiments per side? Playing One-Hour Wargames (OHW) was pretty much what I decided upon, but how to scale up and down.

Modeling Campaign Units in OHW

The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG) uses Regiments of five companies, so I decided to equate that to one full-strength (15 hit) unit in OHW. Initially I was going to allow the use of independent companies on the battlefield, but decided against that, as it is against the spirit of the OHW rules, in my opinion. All companies of the same type must be consolidated into Regiments. Regiments not at full strength will have fewer than 15 hits. That said, not all unit types are created equally in OHW.

In OHW the Skirmisher unit type is pretty weak. It has 15 hits, has cover benefits when in terrain, and moves faster as it represents unformed infantry not constrained by formation and 'dressing the line'. One important note that Neil Thomas makes is "Units of Skirmishers are only half the size of close order foot, and their musketry is correspondingly less effective." An OHW Skirmisher unit is thus 2 ½ companies in size, not five companies. So now, this give me a tactical choice: I can either run five companies of Light Infantry as a Regiment, which in OHW is an Infantry unit of 15 hits, or as two Skirmisher units, each of 15 hits. (The extra hits reflect the inherently lower casualties that skirmishers take due to their dispersed formation and the ability to use lesser cover not typically reflected on the tabletop.)

So, the Light Infantry is now modeled, what about the Light Cavalry? I decided to allow the same sort of options: they could either form up into five squadron-strong Regiments of Cavalry or 2 ½ squadron-strong Skirmisher units. Yes, I am going to allow a mounted Skirmisher unit. It will fight exactly like a normal Skirmisher unit – including the ability to fire (while mounted) – but will have a 12" move as Cavalry units do. Does that make them better than normal Skirmishers? Yes. The reason I will not downgrade them in some way is because I do not want to add any additional rules, and because their numbers are constrained by the campaign itself.

Conversion to OHW Units

As stated above, Regiments of Infantry and Cavalry consist of five companies/squadrons, which nets them 15 hits in OHW. For every company or squadron short the unit loses three hits in OHW.

For Skirmishers, however only 2 ½ companies/squadrons are required. Given that everything in the campaign is modeled as whole companies, how do I model the ½ companies? I don't. If a Skirmisher unit only has two companies (80% of 2 ½), it will be a Skirmish unit with 12 hits (80% of 15 hits); a one company Skirmisher unit will have 6 hits.

Conversion Back to Campaign Units

With 15-hit Infantry and Cavalry units, for every three whole hits lost – whether permanently from deaths or temporarily from wounds – the unit will lose one company/squadron from the campaign. With Skirmisher units, they lose one company/squadron for every six whole hits lost.

For units that have fractional company/squadron losses, I will use dice to determine if the company/squadron is lost, e.g. an Infantry unit lost five hits, resulting in the loss of one company (3 hits) and a fractional loss of another company (2 hits). I roll a die for the fractional loss and on a 1-4 (D6) the company is lost while on a 5-6 it is not. This should help alleviate some bookkeeping, requiring only the tracking of companies and types and not of men.

What do you think?

Please note that I have started using Amazon affiliate links for any Amazon product I feature in my blog posts. You don't have to use them, of course, but anything Amazon gives me does not affect the price you pay, so using it contributes to my caffeine-fueled blog posts' funding.

For those that have not been following I decided to try my hand at a map campaign using the tables and ideas in The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG). Part one of the campaign laid out the basics, then another post spoke about how I was going to convert from Regiments and Companies that TSWG uses, to the units and hits that Neil Thomas'One-Hour Wargames (OHW) uses so that I could use the latter to play out the tactical battles. I played out the first 'battle'– The Battle of Firnskuppe– on the Solo Battles blog. There I showed how TSWG creates terrain layouts for the tabletop and puts some of the factors in TSWG – like the Commander Competency Rating (CCR) assigned to each Brigadier General and force commander – into play.

The basic scenario for the first battle was that the vanguard of the northern Westonian forces – a Regiment of Infantry and a Regiment of Cavalry – sprung to the attack while the Eastonian forces were still mustering. All that was there to defend the Eastonian frontier town of Firnskuppe was an understrength Mounted Skirmisher Regiment. (Note that Mounted Skirmisher is a new unit type for OHW. It is basically a Skirmisher unit that moves 12" as it is mounted on horses.)

I used some old Kings of War Battlefield Cards to determine the battlefield condition both sides had to deal with, the objectives for each side, and the stratagems they had available to them. Looking over the condition cards (there are 14 of them), five are normal conditions, six had easily interpretable conditions, one useless condition, and two hard to interpret conditions (they were written for the Kings of War game system). I think in the future I would prefer to produce my own table of conditions, and increase the odds that the conditions are normal. That said the Reduced Visibility condition had a very good feel to it – the Westonians had surprised the Eastonians and attacked first and although the latter knew the former were across the border, the Westonians had decided to attack early one foggy morning in an attempt to achieve surprise…

One thing of interest that I noted after the battle is how easy it is to become invested in one side or another. There are lots of ways to play solo, but generally you are either playing one side and trying to program the other, non-player side, or you are trying to program both sides. I told myself I was doing the latter, but the reality is that I did the former. I was more emotionally invested with the underdog Eastonians (who I had generated the campaign orders for both Justo and I), so when the Westonian Cavalry flanked the town by moving into the fields at B4, I immediately bugged out.

The whole point of the campaign is to provide interesting scenarios, especially ones you might not normally want to play out on a game night with a face-to-face gaming buddy. The Battle of Firnskuppe (BoF) was just such a scenario. First, it featured two units versus one in a game where it is normally six units versus six. Second, the one unit was the weakest unit in those rules versus the stronger units. So why play it, other than "because you need to know the results"? Well, for one thing, I did not know what the result would be, in terms of campaign impact. BoF was very terrain dense for a OHW game. I added a new Mounted Skirmisher unit type that had all of the weaknesses of the Skirmisher unit type, was more restrictive regarding terrain, and had only a marginally better movement rate of 12" rather than 9". (In hindsight I think it should probably be 15", but that is another discussion.) When we play games unlinked to campaigns, we tend not to think of battlefield casualties – or we minimize the impact – but only of victory conditions. Did we win the battle?

In OHW terms one side took six hits while the other took two, resulting in no lost units. One side 'won' because they achieved more victory points than the other. There wasn't even an obvious reason why the Eastonians retreated because they were giving better than they got.

The Eastonians were firing with 1D6-2 each turn (1.67 hits per turn), while the Westonians were firing 1D6-2 but would have to halve the hits (1 hit per turn) due to the cover the Eastonians were in. If the Westonian Cavalry charged they would hit with 1d6+2 hits (5.5 hits per turn). The Eastonians firing at the Westonian Cavalry would have had 1D6-2 with ½ casualties (1 hit per turn) so once the Westonian Cavalry got into position it should have immediately charged, dispersing the Mounted Skirmishers.

So, why did it play out the way it did? Clearly my own personal bias crept into the stupid play of the Westonians. The Westonian Cavalry could have hit on turn 2, effectively ending the battle with much higher losses to the Eastonians. Or maybe I am just not as analytical 'in the moment' as I like to think.

Even though I am declaring myself a cheat I am going to let the results stand. So how does this affect the campaign?

Converting from Tabletop Back to Campaign

TSWG offers a simple method for adjudicating casualties for the victor: ½ of the total casualties are killed; ¼ are severely wounded; and ¼ are lightly wounded. Killed casualties are replaced after one month; severely wounded casualties are replaced after two weeks; and lightly wounded casualties are replaced after one week. For the defeated the breakdown is the same, but the wounded will be captured – meaning they will not be replaced unless there is a prison exchange – if the victory was decisive.

This begs the question, however: how do you determine total casualties? Let's start by looking at Neil Thomas' notes in OHW:

"My combat rules work on the principle of having units acquire hits throughout the game, to be eliminated after garnering 15. They retain their full fighting ability until destroyed; this reflects a model whereby real casualties are at a fairly low level, but that the sustained experience of combat will steadily degrade a unit’s morale, at which point it routs. This is both simple and historically accurate: most casualties in any ancient battle (and those of most other periods too) were inflicted when the enemy fled, rather than the initial clash of arms. Essentially, loss of morale is reflected in elimination, rather than having to make frequent checks on a unit’s status, which tends to be a feature of complex wargames rules."

With this it is obvious that the six hits sustained by the Infantry Regiment do not reflect a loss of two companies of men, but that morale of the Regiment was down 40% because of ammunition depletion, fatigue, the morale effect of a few men being killed or wounded, and unwounded men leaving the firing line to resupply ammunition, help the wounded to the rear, or simply being ineffective out of fear. he unit did not have two of five companies become casualties.

If the emphasis on unit loss and not hit loss then it is better to come up with a table reflecting casualty effects of a unit loss.

I have no idea if these numbers are any good, but I need to try somewhere. Note that the table determines total casualties, so ½ of the companies are replaced after one month, ¼ are replaced after two weeks, and ¼ are replaced after one week. How do we deal with fractional companies? Roll dice to see if you round up or down.

You might question how realistic this table is. What does it mean by "removed", for example? (It means the unit or combat type that rolled the die that caused the unit to be removed, by the way.) What if the unit removing your only inflicted one hit? Won't this lead to unrealistic play like trying to use Cavalry to run down your unit in close combat in order to get a deadlier result? Well, yes, but I don't see it as being 'unrealistic'. If you were routed by Cavalry, for example, they probably ran you down, rather than you outrunning them. Artillery fire was particularly deadlier than musketry, so their casualties tend to 'stick'.

So, how do the casualties play out from BoF?

Westonian Infantry: 9 hits remaining, so it loses one company on a '1'. If it does, that is ½ company killed (50% chance), ¼ company severely wounded (25% chance), and ¼ company lightly wounded (25% chance). So roll a D100 and 1-50 counts as killed; 51-75 counts as severely wounded; and 76-100 counts as lightly wounded.

I rolled a '5', so no company was lost.

Eastonian Mounted Skirmishers: 10 hits remaining, so no losses.

Rest and Recuperation

TSWG is silent (as far as I could tell), on the need for rest and recuperation after a battle, although The Joy of Wargaming hinted at it being otherwise. I noticed that he indicated that it took a day for rest and recuperation after a battle, but he took note, for example, whether light cavalry was uncommitted at the end of the battle. Those troops could be used in pursuit of defeated enemy forces.

The Westonian Infantry spent the remaining day and the next day resting and bringing the town of Firnskuppe under control. Meanwhile the Westonian Cavalry patrol around the town: two squadrons down the road towards Erlenloch, where the Eastonian Cavalry retreated; two squadrons down the road towards Grimme Hutte; and one squadron into the woods north of Firnskuppe.

This leaves a possibility of a skirmish between two squadrons of the Westonian Cavalry and the two squadrons of the Eastonian Cavalry that headed down the road to Erlenloch. But first I need to think about how to handle some of these tactical decisions – such as what to do when you are pushed out of your muster point – better. So that's it on the campaign front for now.

In Other News

So, not that I am looking to garner any sympathy, but more to explain delays in this campaign and other blogging activity I thought I would let everyone know what is going on with me.

About two years ago I was formally diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes (type 2). Part of my general problem was that I had hallux rigidus, a degenerative arthritis of the big toe, in both feet. The result is that I would get bloody sores on my big toes, making it difficult to walk as well as spreading blood all over the carpet, which really upset the wife. After months of treatment I decided to have surgery to correct the problem. In October 2020 I had my first surgery and they removed the defective left toe joint and replaced it. That surgery went as well as could be expected, so I decided to follow it up and replace the right toe joint in October of 2021.

Before any surgery you doctor has to clear you. Well the second checkup was worse than they first in that my diabetes was worse than previously. How much worse? Truth be told I was borderline acceptable. A score on my A1C of 9.0 was considered a fail and I was at 8.9. But I think I browbeat my doctor into clearing me anyway – I just wanted to get back to 'normal' and be able to fully walk again – so I went ahead with the second surgery.

The first sign of a problem was when I woke from anesthesia. I was flopping around like a fish out of water. Despite having been under anesthesia twice before in my life (all after the age of 50), I had never had a bad reaction nor found that I was allergic to any medication. This time I apparently had.

After getting home I did not strictly follow the recovery regime of icing and elevating my foot that I had the previous year. That plus the stress I had put on my stitches after the surgery caused my stitches to pop open, introducing an infection to the metallic implant. I did not even know an implant could get an 'infection', but apparently it can and it is bad if it does. Antibiotics cannot really work on digging out an infection from an implant. So after three months I was back on the table and they were removing my implant.

The doctor took no chances and essentially removed the implant and would not put a replacement in. Ironically, by the time of the second surgery on the right toe I had radically altered my diet and brought my diabetes almost under control. Basically an A1C reading of 6.5% means you are diabetic, while 5.7% to 6.4%is pre-diabetic. I had brought it down from 8.9% to 6.2%. Although it would not matter with regards to getting a replacement implant, it has mattered tremendously in healing after the second surgery.

The wound to extract is much larger than the wound when the implant went it. I am pretty sure she took more than the implant; what they call the 'grandma method', which is to basically fill it up with flexible cement. I would still be able to walk, but I would not have as much strength in the foot to push off, so no more hiking and mountain climbing for me. (I never did those things anyway.)

Because the wound was much larger it was going to take longer to heal than the last one (and that had been three months), so they were really worried about it getting infected. The first therapy they wanted to try was a wound vacuum, which is to seal the wound in a vacuum, 24 hours a day. The negative pressure not only stimulates the cells to heal faster, but it helps keep infections out. The downside is that you have to wear a purse-sized pump that sucks the air out of the wound. As the wound was on my bog toe, that meant an air hose ran from the dressing on the wound up through my pants leg, out of the top into the vacuum pump unit at my waist. Thank goodness I work from home. I suddenly discovered the benefits of old-timey nightshirts! It allowed me to look like I had a t-shirt on while attending Zoom conference calls.

So, three times a week I had to change the dressing on the wound. Once per week I went into the doctor's office so she could inspect the wound and measure progress. Well, it turned out that I was healing very well, but the special adhesive they use on the wound dressing is something I was allergic to, as I was breaking out in a very bad rash wherever the adhesive was put, which was largely around the wound. So after about a month the doctor called an end to that given that my rash was just getting so bad. But the wound was healing nicely. New cell growth.

The other issue is that because the wound was so large, and the risk of infection was so high, I was on very strong antibiotics. These were so strong apparently that the doctor had never prescribed them before. My wife is a nurse and she looked them up and this is sort of an antibiotic of the last resort. She was surprised it had been prescribed and that I had been on it so long. Well these antibiotics have a lot of side effects, one of which is killing your gut biome very effectively (the natural result of which is always having diarrhea) and that you can break out in a rash. So not only did I have a rash about the wound from the allergic reaction to the adhesive, I had a rash breaking out all over my body.

When the doctor took me off of the wound vacuum she also took me off the antibiotics; I had simply been on them too long. I was fine with that because it caused a lot of nausea, so my quality of life was down pretty badly. Mind you, I was still wargaming face-to-face with people during this period, but I was always dragging. To counter the antibiotics she told me to get some probiotics to help repopulate my gut biome and bring my gastrointestinal issues to heel. So I did.

Well, it turns out that some people can be affected by heavy probiotic usage and it comes in the form of acne. I would like to think that once upon a time I would not have been one of those people, but after all of this heavy pharmaceutical usage and sickness I should not be surprised that I am one. I broke out in pimples all over the body. Seriously, I thought that somehow bedbugs had gotten into the house and they were bug bites because I would have more red spots every morning. Finally they formed the heads and I looked at the side effects of the probiotics.

One of those pimples turned out to be a monster though. It was on my shoulder, very painful, and I finally had the wife attend to it as I had recently lost an entire weekend to fever. My guess was that it was from all of the inflammation from the acne and rashes, but it had apparently come almost completely from this one pimple/cyst?/whatever. My wife used about a dozen medical sponge gauzes to drain the pus and blood from it that night. We patched it up and I had a fever spike, but the fever broke that night and I felt a lot better the next day. But my weekend was lost.

I would like to say that the campaign has been trudging along because of all of this, but that would not be strictly true. First off, the wound is healing really well. I have moved on to silicon skin graft every week now to higher grade skin grafts every other week. The wound continues to get smaller and not show any complications. So my mobility is up, especially now that I don't have a pump to deal with and dressings to change every day. No the campaign is slow because map campaigns are a lot of work. Plus, the people I game with face-to-face are all climbing out of their lockdown routines and becoming more active and social again, so I have more (welcome) distractions. I need to get out more. No, I chose the wrong time to start a solo campaign; I should have started it months ago.

So bear with me as I intersperse writing up about this campaign with other topics. The latest craze has been playing the cooperative superhero game Marvel United. I like the chibi style of the figures and the comic style that I am painting them. Here are two of the latest supervillains that I have painted.

These should be two tough supervillains to take down.

 One of the diversions from playing the First Elopean War Map Campaign is, after a long period of self-imposed lockdown, I want to get back out and socialize in the local gaming community. That generally means playing a popular game put out by Games Workshop. (By "popular" I mean that at least one other person is playing it, has their own figures and rules, and you do not need to plead with them to get in a game.) The last one I played like that was Warhammer Underworlds Harrowdeep. I thought that I would not like the new format, which is to play using the game decks straight out of the box, as it takes away the deck-building aspect of the game. But as I look upon my Warhammer Underworlds (WU) journey, that was actually the aspect of the game that made it expensive and ultra-competitive. By Games Workshop removing that 'pay-to-play' aspect from the game, it became much easier to grab a pre-defined deck, a warband, your core box, and go. That said, it is not a game for the sleepy (or the sloppy) as one mistake in the game can cost you a win.

Back in March 2021 I received my first box from the Marvel United Kickstarter. I joined the Facebook group for it and started watching the posts of people painting the miniatures and playing the game, but my copy sat on a shelf, unplayed.

Why? Well I definitely liked the miniatures. You see, they are in the 'chibi' style (big heads, smaller bodies, tiny limbs).

We played the game and at the end she said "That was fun. Let's do another." We have since played it several times. Within a couple of weeks the wife and I played several sessions and she (nor I) had tired of the game.

Another part of this story is that I had a local painter paint up the Guardians of the Galaxy expansion (which is selling for an insane amount on Amazon) and that had not been cracked open either. When the painter asked me if I wanted to start up the Monday night gaming sessions I quickly suggested we try MU and put his figures into action.

How the Game Plays

Each player selects a superhero and gets that character's deck of 12 cards. Their cards are unique to them and reflect the style of the superhero along with their superpowers, making their gameplay thematic.

Every card contains action icons on the bottom of the card. Some of them also have a Special Effect that represents the superhero's special power.

Here are the four action icons that are in the game.

In general the game has one supervillain, which is controlled by a set of rules and a deck of cards. Just as with the heroes, the villains are unique with their own powers, villainous plots, threats to the heroes, and deck of cards. Instead of using action icons, like the heroes, their cards represent whole actions that they take for the turn, including a move, any attack(s) they make, any crisis they create, and any special effects they create.

Basic gameplay is for either the villain or a hero to play a card from their hand to the Storyline, which is a chronological sequence of played cards that forms the narrative. The villain always plays the first card from his deck of 12 cards called The Master Plan deck.

So in the example above the villain (cast in red plastic) is at '6'. Their card indicates they move four locations clockwise. That would land them at '3'. As there is no hero figure at '3' (they are at '7' in the image), he has no one to attack, but there are other effects to a BAM! After those are resolved, he draws two thugs and places it on the card at '3', and adds one thug each to the locations to the left (clockwise) and right (counter-clockwise) of the location where Red Skull ended his move.

After the villain plays a card and resolves it, play goes to the heroes. In the beginning, the heroes will take turn in rotation and play three cards, one from each hero, before the villain gets to play another card. Note this is three cards regardless of the number of heroes. In this example above there are actually four heroes being played – Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, and Black Widow – so only three would get to play before Red Skull takes his second turn. After that, the fourth, first, and second would play one card each, then Red Skull, and so on.

At each location there are up to four different elements: civilians, thugs, a threat card, and an end-of-turn effect specific to that location. There are three basic missions to the game (indicated in area '1' on the board, represented by Mission Cards): clearing threats, defeating thugs, and rescuing civilians. So if a location has a civilian token on it, you can rescue the civilian, placing it on the Rescue Civilian mission card. Same with thugs at a location. Your hero can defeat them, placing their token on the Defeat Thugs mission card. At the bottom of each location is a Threat Card, which is unique to the villain you are fighting. For example, Red Skull has three cards representing his three henchmen that need to be defeated: Bob the Hydra Agent, Lady Mantis, and Crossbones. Other threats require heroes spend actions to clear the threat. Once a threat is cleared from a location, a threat token is placed on the Clear Threats mission card.

Completing missions is the first objective of the heroes. This is because the heroes cannot damage the villain until at least two of the three missions (Clear Threats, Rescue Civilians, and Defeat Thugs) are completed. After that, they can start beating the stuffing out of the villain. You can complete these missions in any order.

The rub is that after the heroes complete the first mission, the villain gets a little anxious, realizing that the heroes are onto them, and they start playing their Master Plan cards after every two hero actions. So timing the completion of the first mission with the second becomes critical to success. (By the way, if you finish the third mission the heroes get an extra benefit.)

So, how does this tie back to the action icons? A Move icon allows a hero to move one adjacent location, clockwise or counter-clockwise. An Attack icon allows you to defeat one thug, remove one hit point from a Henchman, or remove one hit point from the villain. A Heroic icon allows a hero to rescue one civilian and (frequently) allows the hero to clear ⅓rd of some Threat cards.

Why is This a Great Game?

It is co-operative. So what makes it so? The one element I did not tell you about is that when a hero takes their turn not only do they get the action icons from the card they played, the special effect (if any), and the action icons from the card played by the previous hero. So when you play a card, not only are you trying to make sure you have useful actions, but that the next hero does too. That leads to a lot more conversation between players, especially when you get towards the end and you are desperately chasing down the villain while trying to stack enough Attack icons to bring them down when you catch up.

Every decision you make is meaningful. Besides the villain-specific loss condition there are two additional general loss conditions that the heroes face: if a hero has no more cards to play; or the villain must draw a Master Plan card and there are no more cards to draw. Therefore, there is a time limit the players face. Heroes cannot afford to throw away action icons unused. Further, your card play impacts the following hero's turn, so playing cards with icons unusable by the next hero is not doing the team any favors.

It can be played solo with little effort or loss of quality. There is a documented system for playing solo (S.H.I.E.L.D. mode), but most players I have spoken to simply play the heroes as one would do normally with two players each controlling a separate hero. The key to successful solo gameplay is that the opposition is already programmed, so reducing the number of cooperating players is relatively simple.

It is a very simple game and easily taught to new players. There are essentially nine pages of rules, all large print and with lots of illustrations. I recently taught three people how to play in about five minutes. Two were seasoned gamers, but the third was a relative novice, especially to these types of games.

There is a lot of replayability given the combination of number of heroes being played, which heroes are used, and which villain is fought. Here I am just talking about having either the core Avengers or X-Men set. Adding in the dozen (plus) expansions adds so many heroes and villains you could easily play this game every week for years without playing the same game twice. In fact, there is probably too much right now.

Given that I am trying not to play anything that is not painted, I am using the same set of heroes and villains more frequently and I still do not feel like the games are cookie cutter. Yes, Red Skull has a distinct feel much different than say, Taskmaster or Ronan. But multiple games against Red Skull, even if I keep using Captain America and Iron Man, don't play out the same due to the random elements in the game. There is the order of the villain's cards, the order of the hero's cards, which locations are used (you use sic out of eight possible choices), and where the threat cards are placed. That is a lot of potential variation.

Have you seen the miniatures? Okay, so chibi-style is an acquired taste. Because the figures are a softer plastic, details are not as crisp as you might expect. In a way, though, I like that. I prefer painting on details.

For example, the lines on Rhino's horn is not texture on the figure, but all paint effect.

Summary

This is not a 'war' game, but it is a game featuring combat, as you might expect with the superhero genre. Because of this I feel like it is more 'acceptable' subject matter for players that don't want to play a pure, historical wargame. For people that don't want to learn a lot of rules and simply want to get started, this game is also ideal. Like chess, it has few real rules; the depth is in the play.

MU has a flavorful feel. It is not a tactical battle like Marvel: Crisis Protocol nor an RPG game like Champions. You have the superhero cinematic feel of moving to a location NYC Central Park, battling it out with the villain's minions, rescuing the civilians, then moving on to the next crisis that the villain has created. Eventually you collect enough clues (complete missions), close in on the villain and finally battle it out with them, determining whether you have defeated them once again, or whether you are going to have this issue's cover showing your hero's broken and battered body with a tagline of "Death of [Your Hero]?"

More importantly, all types of gamers will find MU fun. It can be tense as you are down to the last few cards and you haven't whittled down the villain enough. It can be exciting as you envision the move that will allow your hero to end it all in victory. If you are analytical like me you will love devising the strategy for how to defeat the villain, i.e. which missions to clear first, and so on.

Highly recommended if you want casual, fun play, especially with other casual gamers. This, however, will not scratch your tournament-level competitive itch.

 No, I have not given up on the map campaign, The First Elopean War. While I admit that most of my time had been spent painting of late, what stalled the campaign most was trying to organize it. To be honest, I sort of rushed the moves in order to get to my first battle and so I kicked some organizational tasks down the road. Well after the first battle all of that came due as I could not really pick up where I had left off with complete confidence. So I basically started over, so to speak, by calculating where every unit was.

But in order to do that accurately, and not end up with the same issue every time I stopped for a battle, I needed to fix my maps. The hexes needed grid numbers on them so I could make references in my campaign diary as to where each unit was on any given campaign day.

Reorganizing

At first I tried putting just the row letters and a few column numbers on the map. That worked for a little while, but I found myself counting hexes so frequently that I decided the only logical thing to do was note all the grid numbers for each hex that I would use. As the campaign rules require you to stick to the roads in order to maintain supply, I really only needed numbers for each town, city, and road hex.

Although it is hard to see without clicking on the images to expand it, there is a letter followed by a number for each of the hexes containing towns, cities, and roads. Now I have an easy reference for unit location. Needless to say, this took a bit of time to modify.

Once that was done I could go back and create a campaign diary, listing each unit of each army, by day, and note their position on the map.

In this example I have a section for the weather, by day, and the entry for April 3rd for the Westonian Army (which mobilized first and it attacking Eastonia). Each entry shows the city where units were starting, which city they were mustering into Brigades, and how many companies, by type. On subsequent days they would show hex grid references.

Here it shows units in motion, plus the two Brigades that have fully mustered by April 12th (and with Brigade SeLasTraga in battle at Firnskuppe, Eastonia).

Campaign to Tabletop and Back

As I was mulling over some of the comments on the blog and in Facebook (both the Solo Wargaming with Miniatures and Wargaming Neil Thomas Rules groups)

Hearkening back to the discussion about how Neil Thomas treats casualties in One-Hour Wargames (OHW), the real losses to personnel do not occur until the unit has taken quite a few hits or has been eliminated from the board. I decided that I wanted to revamp the table. Rather than focus on losses in 'companies' I decided to keep the units whole and track the number of hits it had.

Given that the initial hit losses, according to Neil Thomas, are morale and not very many men, most of those hits can be shrugged off.

Note that Mounted Skirmishers count as Cavalry for casualty determination in the above table.

As it stands, the outcome of the first battle has not changed. Neither unit lost any hits permanently.

Campaign Progress

On April 14th, after having regroup from the clash at the town of Firnskuppe, and being joined by additional forces, Eastonian forces close in from the East and South onto Firnskuppe in an attempt to harass the Westonian vanguard garrisoning the town.

Meanwhile, East of Nuevo the Westonia Brigade NoSeLasTraga clashes in the woods with Eastonian light cavalry.

Again, this will be two clashes in which the Westonian forces outnumber the Eastonians. The latter are desperately trying to hold back the Westonian armies while the Eastonians continue to muster units and form their one brigades.

I will post the battles on my Solo Battles blog, as I experiment with more techniques for solo gaming.

Map Campaign

This is the continuing saga of my solo map campaign, using The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG) for the campaign rules and Neil Thomas'One-Hour Wargames (OHW) for the tactical rules. If you missed it, here are part one, part two, and part three. So far I have fought the First Battle of Firnskuppe and the Second Battle of Firnskuppe. Much of this was inspired by the campaigns of Mr. Wargaming on The Joy of Wargaming Youtube channel. The goal of this campaign was to create a series of linked battles where each battle has some context and is not just a random, disconnected scenario. I wanted to produce some interesting scenarios, especially unbalanced affairs that you might never normally play in a face-to-face game. (So far, it has done that, but I am just getting started.)

The Action So Far

The Westonians launched a surprise attack, declaring war on the Eastonians five days after they had already started mustering their troops for a war. Because of this the initial action has been between the vanguard of the Westonian Northern Army and the frontier defense forces of a few towns in the line of attack, centered around the Eastonian village of Firnskuppe. Firnskuppe has been temporarily lost to the Westonians, but the Eastonians are mustering their Northern Army to take it back before the bulk of the enemy army arrives.

Meanwhile on the Southern flank, the Westonian Southern Army has started marching on the Eastonian town of Tierwelt. Unknown to them, Eastonian frontier forces are waiting for them in the extensive forest lying between the two countries. That engagement is the subject of today's post.

The Forest Battle

One of the other goals of this campaign is to use some of the various game accessories that I have collected over time and gauge how useful they really are. In the First Battle of Firnskuppe I used a (now out-of-print) deck of cards called Kings of War Battlefield Cards. This provided me with objectives and stratagems for each side and conditions for the battlefield. The Second Battle of Firnskuppe allowed me to experiment with Warcry Battleplan Cards. This provided me with a deployment plan for each side, victory conditions, and a twist to the battle. One might say that there is some overlap between the two, but I think it would be very possible to combine both in a game. Something to ponder.

Today, however, I want to explore another resource and that is something that more people praise OHW for than the rules: the scenarios. A lot more people play the OHW scenarios than do those that play the rules. The OHW scenarios cover a variety of issues, so why not list out the one sentence summary of each – ambush, flank attack, meeting engagement, etc. – and use that for picking a scenario. But how do you figure out which scenario to pick?

In 2006 I 'discovered' a set of rules called Mythic Role Playing (and the stripped down version Mythic Game Master Emulator). Here is a quick explanation of Mythic:

Mythic Game Master Emulator
Create dynamic role-playing adventures without preparation. For use as a supplement with other systems.

Mythic Role-Playing brought true, solo play to the world of tabletop role-playing in 2003, kicking off a solo revolution that continues today. The blue book Mythic Game Master Emulator contains the ground-breaking solo emulation rules from the Mythic red book, giving you everything you need to play any RPG system without a Gamemaster.

Mythic adventures are meant to be played off the cuff, with perhaps a few minutes of brainstorming to come up with the initial setup. Through a Yes/No oracle system, Mythic guides you through your adventure as you test your expectations. A Random Event mechanic throws narrative curve balls at you, and the Chaos Factor keeps tilting the story throughout your adventure to change up the pace.

So the basic idea is to ask a series of Yes/No questions – generally the ones you consider having the highest probability of occurrence first – and use die rolls to determine what the answer is. Using these answers you have critical decisions made about the 'story', in this case the scenario. I used Mythic for gaming solo with miniatures some time ago and it worked well.

Scenario Generation

For this battle I had it in my mind that the Eastonians, as they are much faster (Light Cavalry), and a smaller force, that they have some chance of scouting out the Westonians. Using Mythic I asked a series of  questions to drive me towards a scenario.

• Have the Eastonians out-scouted the Westonians, i.e. spotted them first? Yes.
• Have the Eastonians detected the enemy without being detected? Exceptional Yes.
• Have the Eastonians been able to get into an ambush position? Yes.
• Have the Eastonians been able to get into a position where they can disrupt the Westonian supply line? Yes.

This gives me an idea of what the scenario should be like. Because the Eastonians can ambush the Westonians they will be allowed to start any place on the board, save a few locations. Further, they will be given the opportunity to achieve an objective that will allow them to disrupt the supply lines of the advancing Westonian army. Let's take a look at the board first.

Terrain Generation

The battle is taking place in the middle of an extensive forest with a poor road cutting through it. This road runs from a C class town in Westonia (Nuevo) to a C class town in Eastonia (Tierwelt). Imagine a road cutting through the North American wilderness in the 1750s from a British frontier town to a French frontier town and you have a pretty good idea of what I was envisioning.

Because the hex was forest with road, and all surrounding hexes were the same, or just forest without a road, I decided to use the same card system for terrain generation, but with some changes. Draw one playing card for each square of the grid (there are six rows of six columns, so 36 cells) and there would be a 50% chance (any Red card) of the square containing light woods, a 25% chance (Spades) of being clear of terrain, and a 25% chance (Clubs) of having special terrain. If special terrain was indicated draw another card and that indicated if it were light wooded hills (the second card being Red) or a heavy woods (the second card being Black). Once you have determined the terrain for each square, draw a road in a logical place from West (left) to East. Here was the board generated.

Battle Plans

The Westonians have two basic battle plans that I can see.

1. Push through as quickly as possible, trying to exit off of the East side of the board. (50%)
2. Exploit the gaps in the woods (C1, C3, C6, and D1) to deploy troops and destroy the Westonians. (50%)

The Westonians will use battle plan #2.

The Eastonians have two basic battle plans.

1. Ignore the minor victory objective (moving troops off of the board) and fight as hard as possible in inflicting damage on the ambushed troops. (50%)
2. Attempt to obtain a minor victory. (50%)
1. Attempt to get just the small Mounted Skirmisher unit off of the West road. (50%)
2. Attempt to get both units off of the West road. (50%)

The Eastonians will use battle plan #1.

Deployment

The Westonians will enter the board at C1 and are trying to get off the board at C6. That said, there is no requirement for the Westonians to exit the board during the battle. As the Eastonians can ambush the enemy they are not allowed to setup in rows B, C, or D, but can set up in any column in rows A, E, and F.

The Westonians will be marching on the board (BG Don NoSeLasTraga prefers to put his Cavalry in the rearguard, not the vanguard). Their forces are unaware of the Eastonian presence, so they must advance down the road at one square per turn until at least one Eastonian unit reveals itself.

Artillery, Infantry and Cavalry on roads may move through woods squares, but because they cannot deploy into that terrain, they are limited in what they can while in those squares. Infantry may only fire from squares that are clear of woods terrain (light or heavy). Cavalry may only charge from squares clear of terrain if the target of the charge is also in clear terrain, and all squares moved through are clear terrain. Artillery may fire from clear terrain to any other square as long as they have line of sight from the center of their square to the center of the target square. Artillery may always fire on an adjacent square that they are facing, even if they are on a road going through the woods.

Deployment for the Westonians is a march column, with three Infantry units in the lead, followed by the Artillery, followed by two Infantry, and the Cavalry unit bringing up the rear. The first Westonian unit will enter C1 on turn 1.

The only stipulation to Eastonian deployment is that they not be deployed in rows B, C, or D (red striped area) and that it not be a square visible from C1. Once the Westonians take their first turn, however, the Eastonians may move to any square.

Because of the Eastonian battle plan, all three light cavalry companies have decided to form into a single, over strength unit.

Conditions, Stratagems, Minor Objectives, and a Twist

For this game I am mainly relying upon the scenario to determine victory. The Westonians win by being able to exit the East (right) side of the board (via the road). The Eastonians win by preventing that.

However, the Eastonians can obtain a minor victory by exiting a unit off of the West side of the board (via the road) before all of the Westonian units exit off of the East side (or are destroyed). If the Eastonians obtain this minor victory not only will the Westonians be forced to spend one day regrouping after the ambush (if there are any casualties), but they will require one additional day chasing down the Eastonians, driving them back down the road Eastward as the Eastonians will be disrupting their communication and supply lines.

Previously I experimented with the Kings of War Battlefield Cards, but also the Warcry Battleplan Cards. This game I will use both.

Because the Condition cards are so powerful, I decide that there is only 25% chance of there being a Condition (drawing a Heart from a card deck). There wasn't.

The Stratagem cards drawn were Sudden Faith for Westonia, and Advanced Scouting for Eastonia. Sudden Faith allows one unit to get a die roll modifier to a Nerve test. See the Thoughts on Changes to One-Hour Wargames (below) on how this might be incorporated. Advanced Scouting only applies to normal games in which troops deploy forces. As this game has specialized deployment rules as it is, this simply means that the Eastonian troops are hidden and their location is indicated on a map until they are revealed. (Not much of an advantage in a solo game!)

The Objective cards for both sides were appropriate only for games in which both sides are attempting to command the field of battle. As this scenario does not fit that model, they are ignored.

The Twist card is Battle Frenzy. The description is as follows: "A killing madness has enveloped the combatants, and they hack and hew at one another in a frenzy of blades and blood." This is an interesting card for two reasons: 1) I was considering whether the Westonians should be allowed to become desperate given that they cannot fire when jammed in march column in the woods; and 2) when I started developing this scenario – an ambush in the wilderness on a poor road – I immediately envisioned the painting of Braddock's Defeat.

Also, Bushy Run comes to mind but in that story the Highlander's desperate charge lead the British to victory.

Because I drew this card, I need to allow the Infantry a chance to fight their way out, despite the Horse & Musket rules for OHW forbidding it. Because of the Battle Frenzy card, I will allow all units (except Artillery) to charge into close combat with the following modifications:

• Cavalry charging units in the open do so using the procedure indicated in the main rules.
• Infantry may charge the enemy in the open or light woods, but do so inflicting D6 - 2 hits. If the enemy unit  are Skirmishers or Mounted Skirmishers, they will retreat one square to their rear, otherwise the attacking Infantry must retreat if they did not destroy the enemy unit. If the enemy retreats or is destroyed, the Infantry take the square.
• Cavalry may not charge the enemy in light or heavy woods.
• Skirmishers may charge the enemy in any terrain other than impassable terrain. Mounted Skirmishers may charge the enemy in any terrain other than impassable or heavy woods terrain. Both unit types inflict D6 hits, but must retreat if they did not destroy the enemy unit.
• Skirmishers and Mounted Skirmishers do not get half casualties in close combat, although Cavalry continues to get that benefit.

All the scenario modifiers are done, so now it is time to play the battle. But first…

Thoughts on Changes to One-Hour Wargames

I have been trawling through the various blogs and forums of late, looking at how others have been tweaking OHW. Although I have previously stated my desire not to do that, I have committed probably one of the larger tweaks out there: converting this freeform movement game to a 6", one unit per square, grid-based game.

So what are some of the things I have seen out there?

Skirmishers

I noticed that MarkusB of the Wargamer's Block blog has been putting out a number of OHW-related posts. His post on changes he would make to OHW combat has a lengthy bit on Skirmishers. The three major changes he suggests are: 1) enemy units fired upon by Skirmishers cannot reduce their hits due to cover; 2) fire from Infantry and Artillery are halved; and close combat hits from Cavalry are doubled.

The shift in the power dynamic between Infantry and Skirmishers would definitely shift. Currently, Skirmishers in the open firing at Infantry in a town inflict D6-2 hits, halved (rounding up). The return fire from the Infantry is D6. So this is an average of 1 hit per turn versus 3.5 hits per turn. Under MarkusB's proposal it would be 1.67 hits per turn versus 2 hits per turn.

Note that Skirmishers shooting at one another are D6-2, not D6-2 halved. 

Hussars, Cossacks, Chasseurs a Cheval, etc.

I all honesty, no one else is talking about this; it is me. These are basically alternate names for Mounted Skirmishers. Mounted Skirmishers move 12" (maybe it should be 15"), can move through most of the terrain that Skirmishers can move through, and can fire (d6-2).

In light of the Skirmisher changes proposed by MarkusB, which of those should be carried over to Mounted Skirmishers?

First, I do not see Mounted Skirmishers as Sharpshooters, which is the justification behind Skirmisher fire negating cover benefits.

I do see their dispersed formation and lower unit size as justification to grant them half casualties from Infantry and Artillery fire.

The biggest question I have always had is whether Mounted Skirmishers should have any capability to enter close combat. I cannot see them being allowed to charge Infantry or Cavalry, but what about Artillery, Skirmishers, and other Mounted Skirmishers? My inclination to the latter question is "yes". I could see giving them D6 in close combat, but not halved casualties against hits caused by Cavalry (or Mounted Skirmishers).

Activation Tests

This is one I have seen mentioned in Facebook groups and is often also called a morale test. The most common version I have read is to force a unit to roll dice each turn to determine whether it acts or not, whether than be moving or firing. I have read about both rolling against hits and against remaining hits. Given that I use understrength units in my games, I like the idea of rolling against remaining hits.

An example system might be to roll 3D6 each turn and if the roll is equal to or lower than the remaining number of hits in the unit, the unit can act this turn, otherwise it cannot. Note that in this system a roll of 16, 17, or 18 would mean that a fully strength unit could not act, satisfying those players that want that 'combat friction/fog of war/chaos factor' in their game. Also note that a unit with only 1 or 2 remaining hits would never be able to act. For those that believe a unit is perfectly functional, even with a few casualties, you could use 2D6, meaning your unit is immune from effects if it has 13 or more hits remaining. You could also go to a 1D12 or 1D20, so a unit would never not be able to act (if it rolled lucky enough).

Rolling against hits, rather than remaining hits, can get a bit tricker if you use units with hit values other than 15 as then you would need to track the number of hits lost and the number of hits remaining. Logically, you would also be saying that a unit that started at, say, 12 hits has the same morale as a unit starting at 15 hits. I personally think that as units get smaller in relation to other units, their morale tends to go down too.

Resolving Combat

There have been several proposals to changing the combat system while not messing with the odds that Neil Thomas uses. The first one I saw was Kaptain Kobold's Five Hits System.

Units roll one, two or three dice when firing, corresponding to 1D6-2, 1D6 and 1D6+2. Each score of 4 or more is a hit. Units can take 5 hits.

Then came John Acar's Three Hits and Six Hits Systems.

Six Hits System: We can have each die hit on a 3+ instead of a 4+.  Each unit will take 6 hits.  With this you can match more closely the hit rates of the original rules.  Thus 1D6 (.67) will take 9 hits to kill a unit.  2D6 (1.33) will take 5 turns to kill a unit.  3D6 (2) will take 3 turns to kill a unit.  You can simply double or halve damage as necessary.  Round fractions up as per the rules.  It occurred to me that instead of halving the damage you could simply change the hit number to 5+ for half damage.  Double damage becomes more problematic though.  You are still doubling numbers…which is fine but perhaps slightly cumbersome.  If you like this system, you can simply use a single D6 per unit to track damage and still apply the rest of the rules as is.

Three Hits System: So, a normal chance to hit is now 5+.  Each unit can take 3 hits.  So, 1D6 (.33) still kills a unit in 9 turns.  2D6 (.67) still kills a unit in 5 turns.  3D6 (1) kills a unit in 3 turns.  Now for the cleanup.  If the rules call for half damage, simply halve the probability to hit.  So half damage is the same amount of dice but hits are on a 6 only.  If the rules call for double damage, hits will occur on a 3+.  With this system, you only need two kinds of colored markers.  Yellow, for example, represents 1 hit and red represents 2 hits.  The third hit removes the unit of course.  This system will provide the greatest degree of uncertainty.

I am fairly certain I tried the Three Hits System, but I cannot find the battle report. As John points out, what these systems do is create more chaos and less certainty, which is another way of saying that the combat will be more luck-driven. By reducing the number of die rolls, each die roll becomes that much more critical. As it is there are not that many die rolls in OHW, so reducing them to even fewer seems like you are swapping … what? … for using fewer dice to mark your hits? (By the way, I now use dice to mark remaining hits, given units can start with more or less than the standard 15 hits.)

MarkusB suggested another method (Same Chaos Variant), which I have seen with other rules, but not seen suggested for OHW.

You’ll need four types of tokens, labelled “4”, “6”, “8” and “x2”. Every time you attack an unit, put a token corresponding to the maximum damage that attack could do. So an 1d6-2 attack on the flank would put a “4” token stacked with a “x2” token on the damaged unit. Every time you acquire a new token, tally the total of potential hits so far. Only if and when the total potential hits reach or surpass 15 (or the number of hits the unit has, for understrength and overstrength units), roll all of the dice corresponding to tokens. If those ‘actual’ rolled hits a total 15 or more, the unit is destroyed. If you roll a lower number, the unit is still fine – but it still keeps all the tokens it acquired so far.

I like this method as definitely increases the 'fog of war' by not defining precisely when a unit will break while at the same time not reducing the number of die rolls.

Changing the Turn Sequence

In the same post cited above MarkusB proposes changing the turn sequence from Movement → Firing → Close Combat → Unit Elimination to Firing → Movement → Close Combat → Unit Elimination. Essentially Movement and Firing switch positions in the sequence.

The complaint, and thus the justification for the change, is that you cannot coordinate actions between units with the current sequence. For example, you cannot fire with your Artillery or supporting Infantry while your Cavalry charges as the charge move will generally block line of fire to the enemy unit, or you may have ruled that a unit cannot fire on an enemy unit in close combat.

By conducting fire first, units will have clear line of fire as charging units will not have moved yet, so it allows for units to double up on the enemy, which is pretty powerful. The following images show the difference. The left image shows that, because the Cavalry moves first, the Artillery's fire will be blocked. The right image reverses the order in the turn sequence, so the Artillery will be able to fire before Cavalry can move.

The net effect of this, of course, is that it allows units to double up on the enemy. So is this a good thing or a bad thing? Also, is it a realistic thing?

One of the complaints agains OHW is whether or not each period feels different from the next. I think it does, but do wonder whether sub-periods within the larger period have enough feel. For example, the Seven Year's War and the Napoleonic Wars both fall within the Horse & Musket period, but should their battles feel the same? Obviously I don't think so as I wrote my own AWI Variant for OHW.

If you look at other game designs, such as Richard Borg's Command & Colors (CC) series, the big difference you will see between Command & Colors: Napoleonics (CCN) and Command & Colors: Tricorne (CCT) is the use of a Combined Arms mechanic that the former has, but the latter does not.

The rules for CCN state that, for combined arms combat "When an ordered infantry or cavalry unit is about to attack an enemy unit in melee, one or more ordered artillery units may combine their battle dice with the attacking unit. A combined arms combat must be declared before any battle dice are rolled." Changing the turn sequence in OHW would allow that sort of tactic to be replicated.

Another tactic in CCN is to threaten an Infantry unit with a Cavalry unit, forcing it to make a decision on whether it should form square, and if it does, to hit the Infantry unit with Artillery or Infantry fire. Although this is harder to replicate in OHW – especially if you are not using the optional Square rules – it would be very hard in the current turn sequence unless you are approaching the enemy from two directions, i.e. going after different faces of the enemy unit.

For me, the question of whether this change should be made is centered around time. I used to think that if a unit moved and the other unit did not, then the moving unit should be penalized because it was not spending its full time shooting whereas the other unit was. Sort of a "volume of fire over time" concept. When you realized that many of these rules have turns representing anywhere from 30 minutes to one hour you can't rightly assume that the non-moving unit is actually firing the entire time. If you have ever played the fascinating, but exceedingly tedious Chef de Bataillon (CdB) by Scotty Bowden and Jim Getz you know that the idea of battles lasting hours could not have meant that troops were firing two-three rounds per minute for very long. You would run out of your 60 rounds in 20-30 minutes, not even one game turn. (In CbD, turns were much shorter, however, as they were trying to use realistic time and ground scales, hence the tedious nature of the game.)

So, is allowing a unit to fire effectively – represented by the full D6 of hits they inflict in a turn – and allow another unit to make a full move distance charge all in the same turn realistic? Probably, because much of combat is "hurry up and wait". Most games use non-charging rates of movement as units did not quick march all over the field constantly. There was a lot of wasted time reordering the troops, dressing the line, waiting for orders to be delivered by signal or messenger, etc.

A better way to think of combat is a lot of waiting with short bursts of furious action. By changing this turn sequence you would be implicitly saying that units can coordinate their actions in a single turn.

The question to my mind remains: at what point in time should this effect start to occur? Certainly by the time of the Napoleonic Wars, but not at the time of the American War of Independence, according to Richard Borg. That would split the Horse & Musket period and maybe that is what it needs. Maybe that is one more thing that the rules need to get a better period feel. (Squares are another. I do not allow troops before the Napoleonic Wars to form square. Certainly by the Rifle & Saber period, in Europe, they had stopped. In the Colonial wars it was less a "wall of steel" defensive formation against cavalry and more of a "stop from being surrounded" defensive formation against superior numbers.)

Changing the Range of Horse & Musket Firepower

Another suggestion by MarkusB is to change Infantry shooting range and firepower from 1D6 for 12" to 1D6+2 for 3" and 1D6-2 for 12", the idea being that their deadly firepower is really only at very short range, otherwise it is terrible.

I think if I wanted to simulate that I would grant Infantry the ability to go into close combat with Infantry, and consider that the short range firefight. You could also use the old Ancients and Medieval rules of units in close combat cannot move, accurately simulating the pinning effect of the inability to get unstuck when you are in a hot firefight. That would also grant you the 1D6+2 for that close combat roll. The one change would be that a unit turning to flank while 'contacted' by the enemy would not get to fire on the turn it moves. (If you get flanked and contacted by Infantry, you deserve what you get.)

Secondly, I don't think I would adopt 1D6-2 for normal shooting. If anything, I would probably drop the range to 6". But at this time I think that is too much of a change. I look forward to reading MarkusB's battle reports on how it went. (Hint, hint.)

Enfilade Fire

I've seen mention of enfilade fire before, essentially a unit firing down the length of a unit in march column or down the line (flank) of a deployed unit. Basically the effect is to increase the damage inflicted on the unit being enfiladed.

To me, the farther a unit is away, the less likely the enfilade fire will have must effect. Also, I only consider massed fire as gaining an advantage. If I were using the 'Infantry Firefight' rule above I would only allow it to count if attacking from a flank, i.e. the double effect of a flank attack in close combat would be called 'enfilading fire'.

For Artillery I would allow it better firepower if it could claim enfilade. I would allow enfilade if firing at: an Infantry unit is in square; an Infantry or Cavalry unit is on a road moving through terrain that it cannot normally move through, e.g. woods, marsh, etc.; and the flank face of an Infantry or Cavalry unit in terrain that it can normally move through, e.g. it is deployed into line. I will leave it to you – like Neil Thomas does – to determine exactly what angle it is a flank face or not. Oh, and what should the bonus be? I would grant Artillery 1D6, not 1D6-2 x2.

March Column

A march column essentially grants a unit the ability to move faster on the battlefield in exchange for being exceedingly more susceptible to damage by enemy fire and close combat. A unit commander generally will not risk entering into this formation unless they believe they are out of the dangers of combat, i.e. out of the line of sight or range of enemy attacks. That said, a unit commander will use that formation if they need to move faster on the battlefield, such as shifting a position behind their own lines.

As mentioned previously, a march column can be inferred is a unit is currently on a road moving through terrain that it normally cannot move through, such as Infantry or Cavalry moving through woods. You can either always consider moving Artillery to be in march column or not. (I tend towards not.)

One way to model the unit commander choosing to use march column is if the unit starts and ends their movement outside of 12" from all Infantry, Cavalry, Skirmisher, and Mounted Skirmisher units and outside of all line of sight or 48" (if in line of sight) of Artillery.

The benefit of a march column move is that it provides +6" (one square) of additional movement.

I'll Pause Here

I intended to include the battle report for The Ambush on the Forest Road here in this post, but decided that it is getting too lengthy. Look for the battle report (and the rule changes to OHW that I am going to experiment with) on my Solo Battles blog.

Painting Update: Marvel United

Our group continues to play Marvel United once a week. (Actually, I was able to sneak in an extra game as my wife and I went to a friend's house, and his wife seeing that my wife was playing, decided to learn the game too.) This continues to motivate me to paint more villains (red band on the base) for us to fight and more heroes (blue band on the base) for us to use, keeping the game fresh.

We start with Doctor Octopus for the Spiderverse and part of the Sinister Six expansion. He is destructive to the game's locations, which is an interesting twist for a villain. We have fought him several times on Easy Mode and always won. I had fun painting him, but this was the second attempt on painting the tentacles. I wanted to get a 'shiny metal' look without using metallic paints. (In fact, the only time I use metallic paints is on the base.)

Next up is Drax the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy. Interestingly, the skin color scheme for him was what you see, which is different from the green tint they used in the movie. I wasn't too happy with my painting efforts here, but he looks good on the table.

Next is Kraven the Hunter, also from the Spiderverse and one of the Sinister Six expansion. I just finished painting him, so we have not fought against him yet. Again, this color comes from the game; his hair was black in the comics.

 

Next up is Moon Knight. He was a request from one of the players. I need to clean up his cape a bit as the shadows look too ragged to my eye. I like how the moss turned out on the stone pillar he is standing on though.

 

Next is Sandman, from the Spiderverse and the Sinister Six expansion. The sand was contrast paint with dry brushing on top. I really like how he turned out. He is tough as an opponent as he gains health as the game goes on, but we still managed to beat him.

Next is the Vulture, from the Spiderverse and the Sinister Six expansion. He is obviously the new 'model' as the one when I was a kid (in the 1960s) was an old, bald-headed guy in a green suit that eventually got cancer. In Marvel United he is, for some reason, exceedingly tough. You cannot go after him with just any team of heroes as you will lose horribly, as we did four times in a row. He has yet to be beaten. (I need to paint some more heroes in order to have the right combination of movement and healing to defeat him.)

 

Next is Black Panther, also a request from a player. I wanted to trying a blue-black style for his black suit, but I think it ended up way too blue. I like it though. All those little white and gray lines were a pain though.

   

Last is Luke Cage. I painted him for two reasons: 1) I saw a painting video on how to get good yellows by first underpainting with pink, and I wanted to try it (it worked); and 2) I wanted to try and paint the wrinkly effect on a bald head, and he had one (it worked). I think I also did well with the Borderlands cel style using high contrast colors (three shades of yellow and three of gray) with no blending, just hard lines. You can see that in the other figures, like the wings of the Vulture, the suit of Black Panther, and the tentacles of Doctor Octopus.

   

Wow, even though I only fought two battles on April 14th, it feels like a lot has happened. Certainly in terms of scenario and rules development it has.

Campaign Update

The Second Battle of Firnskuppe did not produce any casualties, but it should have. (I am still experimenting with a campaign casualty system and both sides got off lightly in this battle and the first.) The Ambush on the Forest Road, however, was a bloody affair as the Battle Frenzy Twist card came up, allowing units to fight in circumstances where they normally would not be able to fight at all (but at reduced effect). The downside, however, was that it increased casualties.

One of the things that this last battle has helped me to develop is the backstory of this campaign. You would have thought I would have worked all of that out, but I sort of go with the idea that you don't try and figure out details until they become necessary. Granted, this makes the backstory fit the narrative after the fact, but I am okay with that.

The Ambush on the Forest Road felt very much like playing out Braddock's Defeat (a.k.a. The Battle of the Monongahela), which I would never have even considered gaming out normally. (Okay, that is a lie, I did try it out in a game of Clash for a Continent by Worthington Games. I have also played The Battle of Oriskany, another bloody ambush. But generally I avoid them, and have never played them with an opponent.

This campaign was ostensibly between two neighboring countries – Westonian to the West and Eastonia to the East – and was developed by my (long-distance) gaming buddy Justo. He saw the campaigns on the Joy of Wargaming YouTube channel (hosted by Jon Mollison) and he decided to create his own version of The First Elopean War, but he never completed it. When I suggested a campaign based on another campaign from that channel – which was a skirmish campaign, not a "two nations at war" campaign – and it fell through, Justo convinced me to try his campaign.

Basically the campaign takes elements straight from The Solo Wargaming Guide (TSWG) – which Jon uses quite heavily in his own campaigns – one of which is force generation. Each village, town, and city produces a certain number of troops and garrisons for the campaign, which is the currency that the player has for the campaign. Basically A- and B-class cities produce regiments and C-, D-, and E-class towns and villages produce companies. Normally, a regiment consists of five companies.

Here is where something interesting took place. Justo wrote up his troop muster and orders (for Westonia) separate from me, while I wrote it up for Eastonia. I wrote up some campaign rules to fill in the gaps that TSWG left and one area that I touched upon was what to do with these independent companies. I allowed players to convert a certain number of independent companies to Artillery companies for one thing, but I also had conversion rules for turning them into light infantry and light cavalry. I used those light troop rules, but Justo did not. Justo wanted all of his independent companies not designated as artillery to muster and consolidate into line troops – both infantry and cavalry. Essentially Westonia was a nation with no light troops while a considerable portion of the Eastonian troops – about ⅓ of them – were.

Westonia was Great Britain in North America before it realized that it needed to develop light troop capability and Eastonia were the French and their Indian allies.

The Ambush on the Forest Road was not The Battle of Monongahela, but The Battle of Bushy Run! The "Battle Frenzy" that the Westonians displayed were the Highland troops. The only problem was that the Westonians took far more damage.

So, I am left with a campaign where one side has no light troops and the other side does. That may definitely be an advantage to the Westonians on the set piece battlefield, but as you can see, they have 15 miles of woods to travel through, and hard-riding skirmishing cavalry caught them on the march. Worse still, light infantry and more light cavalry are only 1 ¼ day behind. Even if the next battle on the forest road is not an ambush, I fear it will me much worse for the Westonians if they try and push through to Tierwalt (the destination town they have orders to capture).

Even worse, even though Westonian troops have captured Firnskuppe with a surprise attack (Eastonia was hit here first), the troops are stuck when it comes to advancing on Erlenloch (the east road route from Firnskuppe) as it goes through heavily forested roads.

The route southward is even worse.

This makes for a very interesting problem for Justo. (I have lit up the Justo Signal and have asked him how he wants to proceed.) As Eastonian forces converge on the Westonian troops in the forests, I think the latter are going to get torn up while they are in march columns. As for the Eastonians, they may be able to push the Westonians back, but can they take the eastern Westonian villages and keep them? (My objective for the campaign was to only occupy Nuevo, the first village on the southern road (see the second image above), and sue for peace, gaining some advantage in the ensuing peace negotiations.

Campaign Casualties

I tried to get slick with my previous campaign casualties rules, but they simply do not work. I am not going to go back and alter the casualties for The First Battle of Firnskuppe, as those troops have already been used in a second battle, but I am going to alter the casualties from that second action.

When a unit is eliminated, it takes 33% permanent casualties if it was eliminated by musketry, 50% if by artillery fire or close combat with foot troops, and 67% if by close combat with mounted troops. This is the "killing blow"; you do not have to mark hits by type and figure things out proportionally. For units not eliminated the casualty rate is 25%. All hits lost round up. These losses are permanent for the duration of the campaign although we can look at replacements if this campaign runs long enough.

First Battle of  Firnskuppe: no casualties.

Second Battle of  Firnskuppe: one Eastonian Skirmisher unit was eliminated by musketry so it drops from 12 health to 8. One Westonian Infantry unit lost 14 hits so it drops from 15 health to 11.

Ambush on the Forest Road: one Westonian Infantry unit was eliminated by musketry, so it drops from 15 health to 10. Another Westonian Infantry unit was reduce lost 14 hits so it drops from 15 health to 11. The Eastonian Hussars lost 2 hits so they drop from 18 hits to 17.

One thing I have realized is that casualty rates will determine how decisive each battle is, and how short your campaign will be.

 Personal News

Let's get this one out of the way. First off, I am retiring in about six weeks. I am 60 years old (and I turn 61 in October) and although I planned on retiring October 2023, circumstances force me to retire early.

I am a computer programmer by trade (in the U.S. home mortgage software market – talk about niche) and I have always said that I could probably continue on even if my hands went, because there is such good voice recognition technology out there, but if my mind ever went, I was done for. I used to be known for my attention to detail, but lately I have not been able to focus. I am easily distracted. Worse, I don't just forget where I left off at, I forget that I was not finished with a task and my mind tells me I was.

This apparently happened pretty quickly. My company awarded me a huge bonus and raise last January for being a top performer in the company (Zillow); now I can't remember to complete a task.

I knew it last Tuesday when I was in a Root Cause Analysis (RCA) meeting – otherwise known as a "who screwed up" meeting – and someone was showing a result from my application and I knew it could not "have happened". The previous day I had changed the code at their request and there were three dates in the change. My documentation (rare for a programmer) noted all three changes. The comments in the code noted all three changes and the change number that ordered it. And the code was changed … in two places. I must have gotten an email, chat message, or phone call and by the time I was done, did not remember that I had not finished. But it was not just forgetting; it was my mind being sure that I was done. Not a single thought of "oh, I have to check to ensure I finished that".

Lest you think I give up easily you have to understand that this was simply the last event in a long line of them that I was not admitting to. In fact, I was started to even hide them. I would blame this or that for why things went wrong, but the reality is that it was me.

I called my brother (four years older) because I remember him saying about six months ago that he had been diagnosed with something, and I wanted to be sure what it was. He has Parkinson's. We talked about it and I am pretty sure I do not have that. I have none of the motor skill symptoms. Also, mine is not a feeling of forgetfulness. I am not one of those people always saying "now what was that I was trying to remember?" It does happen on occasion, but my problem is more an arrogant assurance that I have remembered something – like finishing a task – or not even thinking to do something.

So, I decided that I did not want to go from 2021's top performer to 2022's guy that we want to get rid of. I want to be able to leave with a little dignity rather than milk the job for every last dollar until they feel like they have to fire me.

Fortunately, I have been a lifelong saver and I married a woman more frugal than I am, so I can afford to drift the remainder of this year and all of next year. I can pull sufficient money out next year from my retirement fund (we call it a 401(k) in the U.S.) and draw on Social Security at 62, if I want.

So What is Next?

I decided to give my company four weeks, so that I could transition my work and archive of code to a new person on the team. If they get someone in to replace me, all the better, but I have pretty specialized skills. It took them nearly a year to find me.

My manager reminded me that Zillow pays out its bonuses partially every quarter and that if I wait an additional two weeks that means I accrue about 500 more shares of Zillow stock (which declines in value every day), so I decided to wait for that. I am already leaving a lot of money on the table, but no need to rush out that quickly.

After that I need to head to a neurologist and figure out what is going on. My brother, who is a research scientist (his specialty is mosquitoes and pesticides) thinks we were poisoned as kids (Florida was famous for spraying residential neighborhoods with "safe" pesticides in the 1960s and 1970s), so hopefully it is something treatable for me.

If not, well that I why I want to leave the workforce now. I want to spend the rest of my time doing all of those things that I always told myself I would do "when I finally retire". I am going to paint and game, of course, continue doing more blogging, but also travel more. The wife and I are looking at using AirBnB to visit various places in Panama, for example.

Another project is to get rid of old games and junk that have accumulated that I just know I will never get to again. We all go sometime and the last thing I want to do is burden my wife or the kids with having to get rid of "the crazy old man's toys". Not that I think I will get any money back for it. More that I would like to see it go into someone's hands that would us it. (One of my gaming buddies did the same to me about three years ago, giving me all his Spanish Civil War 15mm troops that he knew he would never get to. I never got to it either.)

Multiple Scales and Multiple Genres

Which leads me to this topic. I have long been pondering getting rid of some miniature collections. But which ones? I rarely considered, when looking at shiny new figures to buy, whether I had all of the necessary accessories to go with those figures. Largely I mean terrain. Sure, there are some things that work across periods, like hills and trees, but building, other structures, even roads can very much be period specific. (It is funny how many times I use roads with 15mm scale tank treads showing for roads in my 15mm Ancients and AWI games, and as foot paths in my 42mm Dark Ages games.)

What scales should I keep? (I have collections in 6-8mm, 15-18mm, 25-28mm, 32mm, and 42mm, with a few, rare pieces in 2mm, 3mm, 10mm, 20mm, 1/72nd, and 54mm.) What genres should I keep? (I have collections in … uh, never mind.)

I always thought about having one (smaller) scale for mass battles and one (larger) scale for skirmish games. But that is still potentially two sets of terrain. Here are the conclusions I came to so far.

6-8mm: I like this scale for one reason, and that is because I now have a tendency to play games on smaller areas, like 20" x 30", 2' x 2' and 3' x 3'. Figures that are 6-8mm work great for this size table. There are just two problems: 1) my eyes are failing so painting them is hard; and 2) I find it very hard to identify what the troops are, especially if I try and use 'realistic' basing with flocking, sand, etc. Some of the best terrain I have for this scale are old Monopoly houses and hotels, which you can buy very cheaply on eBay.

15-18mm: I have a lot of troops and terrain in this scale. The largest collection is probably Ancients/Dark Ages/Medieval, but they are in DBA-army size groups, i.e. about 12 stands per 'army'. Second is AWI and third is WWII. Terrain is largely for WWII. (My terrain for DBA was always flat felt or foam rubber because no one used realistic terrain, as it got in the way of game play.) The ability to paint this is better than 6mm and I can recognize troops better. I keep telling myself that this is what I will focus on.

25-28mm: For me this is the nostalgia scale. I started miniature gaming with 25mm Napoleonics. I still have miniatures that I painted back in the 1970s and 1980s, plus too many old (valuable) Citadel miniatures from the 1980s and 1990s. What I do not have anymore, is terrain. Further, the little terrain I do have is Space Gothic. (You know what I am talking about.) This scale is very paintable, vision-wise, but due to their larger surface area it takes more time. Also, manufacturers are cramming the details on these things. Finally, if you decide to go with this scale, storage of miniatures, and especially terrain, starts to become an issue. On the positive side, other people are more likely to be using this scale. (But I generally provide both sides anyway.) Also, there is the question of whether I can play anything other than skirmish games at this scale if I do not have a 6' x 4' board.

On a side note, Marvel United is basically somewhere around this scale (or 32mm), but I consider it an exception to the 'keep or dump' decision. Unlike traditional miniatures, the figures in Marvel United are very much tokens for a board game and thus the idea that you need terrain for them isn't true. So, I will keep these as they neither fall in the skirmish or mass category for tabletop wargaming. One might include all miniatures from board games, in which the terrain issue doesn't exist, in this same sort of category. That would mean my Star Wars figures from Imperial Assault could be kept.

32mm: Although the new figures from Games Workshop might fall into this category, for me it was Star Wars: Legions. As a rule set it is definitely something I no longer play, nor will pick back up, so these are a definite candidate of figures to clear out.

42mm: The only miniatures that fall into this category are my wooden soldiers that I make. I have a Napoleonic and Dark Ages collection, along with appropriately scaled trees, but not much else in the way of terrain. Felt always works for roads, rivers, plowed fields, etc. As long as I stay away from structures, I am good. Ironically, I have found it easy to play skirmish games with these figures, but mass battles require a 6' x 4' table. I tend to use smaller unit sizes (6 figures or so) anyway I tend not to put a lot of figures on the table. The largest hassle with this scale is the larger surface area requires more paint and time, with a tendency to want to add detail as it is so visible.

I know one of the first tasks once I retire will be to get rid of all my 32mm Star Wars Legion troops, followed by the 28mm Bolt Action, Warhammer, and Warhammer 40,000 figures, both painted and unpainted. If I get rid of all of those, I may not have to make the decision between 15mm and 6mm. The 6mm collection is actually pretty small, physically. Also, there are some incomplete line in my 15mm collection to get rid of like the Marlburians, Polish 17th Century, Renaissance WoFun figures (experiment that failed), and even Napoleonics (my 6mm Napoleonics collection is far larger and more consistent).

My goal is truly not to buy any more.

Recent Painting Videos

As part of my resolve to move away from 25mm to 32mm figures strengthens I realize that I need to either paint or sell all of the 15mm figures that I already have. I have a number of random AWI figures that need treatment, plus have a number of WWII troops from the Flames of War days to be painted, but by far the largest collection is unpainted Ancients. I remember Brookhurst Hobbies had a 50+% sale on Xyston Miniatures – and I love those sculpts – and I purchased a couple hundred dollars worth at sale prices. Maybe 100+ packs? Some insane amount. I have a whole 33 liter/35 quart storage tub filled with these packs. (I admit temporary insanity.)

Nonetheless, I saw a painting video using Army Painter's Speedpaint – which I bought as soon as it became available, in order to give it a try – for historical miniatures and I decided to give them another try.

My initial complaint with Speedpaints is that it was too blotchy, like Citadel's contrast paints. Added to that the paint reactivation issue that Youtubers talked about and it seemed like it was off to a bad start. I gave them another shot anyway and I must say that I think they work better for 15mm because there are no large, flat surface areas (unless you are paining vehicles), so you just don't see the problems. As for reactivation, well I just make sure I seal them with a spray varnish rather than a brush-on one. The one thing I do know is that they do not like traditional acrylic mediums and flow improvers. I would also use a separate set of paint brushes with them (as I do with Citadel contrast paint, India inks, acrylic inks, varnishes, and gesso).

It was this video that had me break out the contrast paints once again. Of course, just when I do that Citadel decides to increase the size of their line of contrast paints and have changed their Shades line to use contrast paint formulation, so they are weaker (wash) versions of contrast paint. It makes sense because washes and contrast basically do the same thing, which is appear stronger in the cracks and crevices and weaker everywhere else. With washes (Shade) we just want that tint to be as weak as possible while still maintaining sufficient color strength in the cracks. The bad part about the new line: I hear it will cost $195 to buy all of the new contrast paints. (I am not even sure that includes the new shades.)

I have lots of Arcadia Quest chibi-style figures to paint (in addition to my Marvel United figures). I painted this monk up with contrast paints and shades in very short order.

I started by priming him bright white rather than the typical black then white zenithal. I spent some time inking him with a black micron pen before sealing it with varnish (so the ink would not reactivate from the solvents in the contrast paints). At that point I was ready to color the figure, much like the process in old school comic books (draw, ink, then color). You can see the blotchiness of the colors – I clearly need to watch the video above again, and practice more – but I think the overall effect is acceptable, especially given the time it took to get the figures on the table.

In addition to all of this I reconnected with Matt, my co-author on the Wooden Warriors blog, to see how things are faring with him. (Things are fine, but he finally caught Covid after dodging it for more than a year of teaching classes.) Neither of us have made a post there (I hope to rectify that soon), so I wondered whether he dropped out of the hobby or whether he was simply not making figures anymore. It turns out he has revived his interest in old board games, like Heroquest, and had obtained a set and was merrily painting away. He told me about a Spanish YouTuber living in Malaysia and his channel Rush the Wash. His technique to is zenithal prime and then use contrast paints to get his figures out on the table quickly. (Previously he white primed and used Citadel shades, glazes, and inks – the latter two some very old products – to paint his figures.) Ironically, this was a style I had been trying to accomplish for a long time. A long time ago – we are talking late 1980s here – I used to paint a number of things with Higgins, Windsor & Newton, and Bombay India inks. These days it seems like few places, other than online art supply stores, carry a decent range of colors, so I drifted away from it. However, I purchased a DBA army or three from Timurilank in the Netherlands and I saw that he had a transparent color glaze look to his figures – you can see an example in the first picture of this post on his blog – that I have been trying to replicate for awhile. Rush the Wash was all about that style. Also, you can find videos from a few others on the "slap chop" painting style, but I think that is less distinct. I think my 15mm ancients, above, reflect that style, only without the gloss varnish.

More Marvel United

We have been playing a lot more of this board game, both as a group, face-to-face, and virtually using Tabletop Simulator. The former games give me more incentive to paint my miniatures while the latter allows me to play a campaign with other people around the country.

Here is what I completed on my painting table. First up is Silver Surfer. We played him once and he was powerful, almost too powerful to play against anything but the strongest villains (like Thanos).

I decided that the first set from the Marvel United X-Men series that I wanted to paint was the Fantastic Four expansion. So I started with the Human Torch. He comes cast in an ugly transparent orange plastic, so I primed him white and used Pro-Acryl transparent red acrylic paint and Bombay crimson India ink for the body, and Pro-Acryl transparent yellow and orange acrylic paints and Bombay yellow and orange India inks for the flames. The base is contrast paint and Pro-Acryl acrylic paints for the highlights and base rim. The only thing I might add is thickening the black to outline the eyes.

I have been doing a lot of painting of late, as part of my trying to figure out which scales to keep and which to shed.

Wooden Warriors – French (Napoleonic) Marine of the Imperial Guard

One only my Wooden Warriors blog I finally made two posts. The first was about how to use my laser cutter for something other than making paint racks and wooden bases; I decided to take a different approach to making Napoleonics shakos. I did a test and then painted up this French Marine of the Imperial Old Guard.

 

6mm Napoleonics Painted with Citadel Contrast Paint

Someone on one of the Facebook groups had asked about whether anyone had tried painting 6mm miniatures with Citadel Contrast Paint. As I had done some 15mm in the past, I decided to give it a go and report on the results. I decided to try a harder subject that the standard Space Marines or Space Elves; I went with Napoleonic-era Bavarian troops.

First a couple of notes. Firstly, 6mm closeups always look horrible; they just do. You really find out how shaky your hands are when you photograph 6mm troops. You can actually see details, flaws really, that you just don't see when you are looking at them about 1' away (or farther).

I started by priming the miniatures white with Pro-Acryl white primer. It is a nice, thin white that does not clog the detail, which is important with 6mm, especially if you are going to use Contrast Paints or Speedpaint. As there are older Baccus sculpts, they are very rough and thus will take these types of paints well.

Here is what they look like, fully painted. (I later took a little more white to the trousers and cross belts to make them more solid.)

 

Overall I was good with the results, but I really need to look at the results of figures that are more crisp. The older Baccus sculpts are very 'rough' and I was not keen on them. But I love the newer sculpts. Also, using the gray Contrast Paint as a replacement for metallic paint is not really a good idea, so I would change that and go back to a gunmetal color.

Next up are Xyston 15mm Later Achmaemenid Persians. I bought a ton of Xyston 15mm ancients when Brookhurst Hobbies had a clearance sale and I have had them heaped in a pile of shame every since. (Greek Hoplite and Thracians are two of the armies that I vowed I would have a large collection on, one day. They would practically all be Xyston miniatures too.)

I started off airbrushing on a Zenithal primer. I started with Pro-Acryl black and fully covered the miniature. Then I swapped in Pro-Acryl white primer without cleaning the pot, knowing that it would come out gray. I liberally covered the figures, leaving only the undersides untouched. Finally I drybrushed white on top to pick up the highlights. 

Next I started carefully laying down the contrast colors, doing white touchups for areas where a darker color was laid down over an area where a lighter color was intended.

   

Here are the final results. For the most part I had to use light, opaque highlights over the areas with Contrast Paints to remove the 'tide pools' and 'coffee stains'. The newer Contrast Paints that have less contrast, such as the bright yellow on the purple and yellow figures, as opposed to the yellow-brown on the other figures. The former did not require yellow highlights (I actually shaded with Shade Paints), while the latter definitely did.

 

Overall I think the older Contrast Paints are too 'brutal' for 15mm. It is better to go with a base color and use Shade Paint or a wash to collect in the recesses. If you want three colors go with a base color as a mid-tone, highlight with a lighter color (use more contrast between the base and the highlight than you would with 28mm figures), and then wash with a darker color. The tint from the wash will tone down the mid-tone and highlight, bringing down the contrast, and match well with the shadow color it gives the recesses. For me, Contrast Paints do not seem to be the solution for 15mm. It flows too well for the scale.

The last experiment came from watching a video by Bunker6. He paints a lot of Games Workshop Epic Warhammer 40,000 figures – roughly 6mm – and he puts a lot of detail into them. I decided to see if I still had my eye and hand (because if not, the unpainted 6mm were going to be on the chopping block).

I started with the new Imperial Fist Yellow Contrast Paint because: 1) these are meant to be Imperial Fists; 2) I don't have any other yellow that is that exact hue; and 3) these are supposed to be one of the new single pigment colors that cover well and are low contrast (which is ironic for a 'contrast paint'). First off, it does cover well and the flow characteristics are generally nice, but the smaller the scale the less you want your paints to flow. As this was my base coat for the model, and nothing was going to be a lighter color, I did not care that it flowed off of the areas where I put the brush. If anything, it ensured that I did not miss a spot.

Personally I think I put in a little too much detail, but nonetheless I went forward with the exercise because I wanted to see whether the effort was wasted or not. I already consider this picture too zoomed in for tabletop view, but not so close that it looks closer than bent arm's length (the range most people generally use when they pick up a stand to look at it). I can still see the attempt at details, like the grey behind the knees (rubber parts in the armor), the black stripe on the helmet, the red glowing eyes, and the black and silver bolt gun. I can also see one other detail that you probably don't see and that is only because I intentionally painted it: I painted a yellow highlight color and a yellow shade color. Is it worth it? Not sure. But I answered my question: I can still paint 6mm troops to an acceptable table standard with my eyes and hand.

A Note About Army Painter Speedpaint

My experiments with Army Painter Speedpaint has been disappointing. Largely because they are not really acrylic paints, but some form of 'resin' paint. Water causes them to reactivate, so adding acrylic highlights over them causes them to partially blend with the color being painted on while also popping the color off of the primer, exposing the white (or whatever the primer color was) below. Not a good effect because you cannot really control it. Dana Howl (YouTuber miniature painter) was the first that I saw that suggested the way to deal with this was to mix your acrylic paint with either Speedpaint Medium or another Speedpaint color, effectively turning it into a custom Speedpaint color. A lot of people must be doing this because Speedpaint Medium is very hard to find right now and where you can find it, it is double its normal price.

One thing I have found out for sure is to not mix Speedpaint with acrylic mediums like matte medium, glaze medium, metallic medium, etc. It makes it into a gloppy mess that spreads even worse than Speedpaint, that Flow Aid or water does not seem to fix.

At this point I see Speedpaint as an 'all or nothing' solution.

Sad News

More than 15 years ago, while still trying to build a gaming club in Sierra Vista, Arizona, I was searching The Miniatures Page for players who might be within driving range, but were to the east (i.e. we were closer than Tucson, Arizona) and thus underserved, gaming-wise. I found Marv and Betsy Schmid and despite them being five hours away (in Deming, New Mexico) they said that they would be happy to hop in their camper and come to Sierra Vista and teach us this game called De Bellis Antiquitatus (a.k.a. DBA). They had numerous armies and all the terrain we would need. It was a smashing success, such that many of us started collecting DBA armies. It also led to the discovery of HOTT, me creating American War of Independence version of DBA (DB-AWI 2008) and HOTT (HOTR 2009), and even a blog (now inactive) about my DBA games.

Over the years my wife Rita and I have alternated visiting with Marv and Betsy, us going to their house or they coming to ours. Gaming buddy Don and I once dropped by on the way to a DBA tournament in Albuquerque, New Mexico for inspiration and last minute tips. We even went to a state park with a lake together to swim, camp, and game.

Part of what I have been doing of late is re-connecting with people that I haven't spoken to during the lockdowns, especially those that are not in my immediate area. That has led to some great conversations with people across the country and around the world, but sometimes it leads to sad news. It took finding an old mobile phone, recharging it, and retrieving the phone number I failed to transfer over to my new phone to finally reconnect to Marv and Betsy, only to find out that Marv had died last May of brain cancer.

Needless to say, Betsy is still trying to cope with the loss, but Marv had a large wargaming collection and she was trying to get a hold of me in hopes that I would take it off her hands. Right when I am trying to downsize my own collection… So, right after I retire next month I am going to head to Deming to inventory his collection, see what I think I can "move to a good home", i.e. what is sellable, and work with her on managing the sale of his collection. Hopefully I can sell things off on Facebook, The Miniatures Page, Fanaticus, and eBay and send her checks periodically. I know it will be a lot of work, but it is a bit of repayment to a couple that showed us a part of this great, fragmented hobby that ended up being a big part of my wargaming experience (and this blog), plus it will show me how to reduce my own collection.

In a way this is something I have been considering, and although it is a bit morbid, it is something we need to consider. What will happen to your collection when you pass? Are you sure the kids will take it? Are you sure your friends will? Do they know they are going to be tagged to disposed of your collection? Is your wife expecting to recover some of the costs of your hobby? Does she know that you "invested" in a depreciating asset? Does she know who to contact about your collection? Does she know how to sell it? Does she know a reasonable price? (Do you? When was the last time you sold?)

I posted a message on a DBA forum on Facebook to try and get a sense of what the market for painted 15mm DBA armies is. Ten years ago I used to scour eBay, Fanaticus, and TMP for painted DBA armies and paid what I felt was a premium buying them. But I stopped playing DBA after 3.0 fragmented the player base. Like Flames of War 3rd and 4th Editions, I just couldn't get into the next edition, despite buying the new rules. I was done. And with that exit went my knowledge of how viable the market was.

Fortunately, it appears that the market is still good. Not only are people still playing DBA 2.2, 2.2+, and 3.0, there is a new derivative called Triumph, but it appears that Art de la Guerra (ADLG) using the standard DBA basing. So I feel better about taking on his DBA collection to sell for her. His WW II and Arab-Israeli micro armor, however, jet age Check Your 6 aircraft collection, however, are a different story. But just like the old joke about how to eat an elephant (one bite at a time), so to with how to move someone's lifelong collection. Enough whining!

Here's to you Marv. You will be missed.