Engagement at Arnhofen: scenario

You've seen the models, you've read the battle report, now you can read and play the game. Here's the scenario for the Engagement at Arnhofen game:

Engagement at Arnhofen (1Mb)

Enjoy responsibly!

_Update 20/11/2011_: changed wording of Bavarian orders (thanks Phil) and increased picture resolution.

The battle of Holowczyn: scenario

Update February 2, 2016: Apparantly the link was broken to the document describing the scenario. This link is now restored.

We've fought this one twice now, and there's at least one more time to follow, so I think the scenario is as finished as it will get. Here's the battle of Holowczyn.

Holowczyn: deployment

Here's the final map for the deployment of the Holowczyn scenario:



Main differences with the previous one are reworked hills (thanks Alan), blended-in terrain and -- obviously -- the Swedish and Russian units at deployment.

Mapping experiment

As mentioned yesterday, I have been experimenting with a new way of drawing maps for scenarios. It basically consists of a mix of drawn features and photos of actual terrain pieces. Here's the first result, a map for the Holowczyn game with the first four Swedish units already on:



It still needs some work, such as (obviously) adding all the other units and blending in the photos a bit more, but it is finished enough to give an idea of the final look. Comments appreciated!

The battle of Bir Bagahr

(Update July 2024: Link to pdf document restored)

Tuesday night, the Schild en Vriend Gentlemen Wargamers (we're too few to be called a club, and this sounds much better :) ) gathered round my wargames table to fight a fictional WWII desert battle. We used my 1:300th figures and [Blitzkrieg Commander](http://www.blitzkrieg-commander.com) as the rules. This is the scenario we played:

pdf file describing scenario.

The battle lasted for six turns and was declared a draw. The British, after a horrendous first two turns wherein they lost most of the Coldstream Guards to a well executed Italian artillery strike, broke into the Italian postions with both tank battalions and were poised to sweep behind the ridge. The Italians, having only suffered very light losses so far, were retreating towards the oasis with one battalion, with the other two in Bir Bagahr and cowering on top of the ridge respectively. As umpire, I judged that the battalion on the ridge would probably not survive the attack of British tanks and infantry, and that the other two battalions would hold out till nightfall before retreating. So, a draw as the British did not destroy the Axis, nor did the Axis manage to keep the British away from the gap in the escarpment.

Photos of the game are in [this Flickr set](http://www.flickr.com/photos/robartes/sets/72157625869097440/). A sneak preview:

Battle of Ingenstansby

Update February 2016: Link to pdf document restored.

Last Tuesday we played a Great Northern War game, this time using the Black Powder ruleset with [a number of modifications](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000386.html) to adapt it to that period, theatre and set of opponents.

The scenario was the battle of Ingenstansby, a fictional battle which I've played three times now using two different rulesets (Beneath the Lily Banners and now Black Powder), adapting it to lessons learned each time so it's close to getting well balanced and playable :):

Battle of Ingenstansby (504Kb)

The game went pretty well, for a first game of a new ruleset. Eddy, as Swedish player, chose to attack the Russians behind the stream immediately while advancing on his left flank in the hope of drawing out some Russian troops there. Phil, as tsar Peter, defended the stream and Ingenstansby with his best infantry brigade and advanced on both flanks with the cavalry.



One of the nice things about Black Powder is that is meant to give a good game in a single wargame evening, which in this game meant that units were in contact at the end of turn one. Unfortunately for the Swedes, their attack in the center faltered when it met the concentrated fire of Golitsyn's brigade and two field guns - one regiment broke and streamed away to the rear, while two other were stopped in their advance by the murderous fire.



On the flanks it went a bit better for the Swedish player. On his right, the cavalry managed to chase of an attack by Russian dragoons and horse grenadiers, while on the left a hastily formed infantry line bounced another cavalry attack. However, in a brilliant move by Phil, one squadron of Russian dragoons managed to outflank this line and wreak havoc in the Swedish rear, overrunning two struggling battalion guns and forcing the king to seek refuge among the right flank cavalry for fear of being overrun.



All in all a good game, of which more pictures can be seen in [this set](http://www.flickr.com/photos/robartes/sets/72157625288357287/).

I did however have the feeling that the players had little tactical decisions to make, largely because of the move distances of the units in Black Powder. After a turn, and at the latest two, the major lines of the battle had been set and it became essentially a dice rolling exercise with little maneuver left. The battle was set in concrete after two turns. Next time, I think we'll reduce the move distances by a third - my table is 6x8 while most of the games by the author's group is on a 6x12 table. The excellent summary sheets [here](http://perrysheroes.free.fr/spip.php?article259) make this conversion easy :).

Apart from the movement distances, I'll make some adjustments to our Black Powder adjustments :), mostly in the unit stats. I'm thinking of giving the Swedish infantry 'Elite' to make it more likely they will continue to advance through enemy fire, and upping both sides' cavalry HtH scores. But that will be the subject of another post.

Crisis 2010 - Poltava game thoughts and documents

Update January 2014: Links to documents at end of document restored.

We took our Poltava game to this year's Crisis. The game was well received we thought (at least it seemed there was nary a moment when there was not at least one person taking photographs of the game) though we did not win any prizes with it. Some pictures (among many others) can be seen on various forums:

• Wargames Society Forum
• Steve Dean's forum
• Bennos Figures forum

Let me just copy one of the last forum's pictures here, which shows what happens when you let one of our more enterprising members umpire the game :) : the ahistorical collapse of the Russian left flank.



Anyway, while there have been some rumblings and musings in the extended gamer group (all four or five of us :) ), we had fun on the day and we got two 18th century horse and musket armies out of it, which we intend to use quite a lot.

I'll leave you with two documents for the game: the (English language) handout and the list of cards (and thus the rules) we used for the game.

• Handout
• Cardlist

The Pilsen Prerogative: a Trafalgar scenario

Last night, a bunch of us played a game of [Trafalgar](http://www.warhammer-historical.com/acatalog/Trafalgar.html). The game is the first in a narrative campaign called _The Enbevian Endeavour_. For those of you unfamiliar with our use of the term 'narrative campaign', allow me to explain a bit.

Over the years, like many wargame groups, we have played a few full blown campaigns, some successful but most, as usual, foundering after a few moves. As with most game groups, we find that the high level of commitment needed for playing in and especially running a full featured campaign is often difficult to achieve. However, campaigns do give a large added value to wargames, so to still capture some of that we have been doing these things we call 'narrative campaigns'.

A narrative campaign is essentially a series of linked scenarios, often involving the same two (or more) antagonists in every scenario, but only linked in a general overarcing story line, not through any campaign system or rules. We find that a narrative campaign gives the added value of a rich context to the individual games, without the attending overhead of an actual campaign. For those familiar with the recent publications by C.S. Grant and Phil Olley, _The Raid on St. Michel_ and _The Annexation of Chiraz_ (get them from [Caliver Books](http://www.caliverbooks.com) ), the scenarios in those books can be played as simple linked scenarios and are thus very similar to our narrative campaigns. We stand in the shadow of giants!

Anyway, I've currently got a narrative campaign underway for SF space (and land) games (_The Beryllium Wars_), and have yesterday started one for Napoleonic age games. This one features the nations of Enbevia and Posch-Enhausen, going to war over a seemingly innocent proclamation involving beer. The first game in this campaign, _The Pilsen Prerogative_ (I'm big on alliteration :) ) is a naval game using Trafalgar rules. You can download it here (warning: big 6.3M file):

The Pilsen Prerogative

A full battle report will follow, but as a teaser I can tell that the Posch-Enhausian navy managed to score a hard fought victory. Many ships were left ablaze and/or sunk.

Blitzkrieg commander game - Vache invers�

Blitzkrieg commander game - Vache inversée 024


Originally uploaded by ahuyton.


As Bart mentions the final attack, here is one of the better pics. The British close in from the left flank, driving off the heavy German armour. On the right is the wreckage of two US shermans and the advancing US infantry.