Last summer I reported that I had started on putting together an MDF kit for Hougoumont. I finally managed to put together the last building.
Below you see the entire construction. The next phase would be to give the entire structure some colour and/or pimp it with some additional geometric elements (e.g. windowsills etc.)
For size comparisons, I also put some 42mm and 25/28mm figures next to the buildings. Good news is it could work for both scales.
This weekend I hosted an ACW game, in a new imagination-cycle of what could become a narrative campaign.
The scenario is based on the scenario "Kuhstall" for the 7YW, and published in the The Wargamer's Annual 2018, which itself is based on the Battle of Cowpens. It involves an attacker who has to cross a ridgeline, deal with some hidden troops, to finally take a 2nd ridge in order to control a bridge over a river. In our setup, the Union took the role of the defenders and the Confederacy the attackers. Rules are our own houserules (in continuous development ;-)), and unit names are completely imaginative.
I set up the table beforehand, this is how it looked before my wargaming friends arrived:
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| The table as seen from the Union (defender) side. The confederates will enter the table from the far side. |
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| The Union will have to defend the ridge on the left, and the Confederacy will enter from the right. Only 4 light units for the confederacy are already setup. |
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| The reinforcements for the Confederacy - they would come on the table in 2 "waves" with a 5 turn interval. |
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| The battlefield as seen from the Union side. |
Bart V, Bart D, and Wim arrived, and after the usual pre-game chatter and selecting drinks, we were ready to start the game. Bart V would play the Union (2 brigades), Bart D and Wim would each play a Confederate flank (2 brigades each). I would plumpire - although since 2 of us were not fully familiar with my house rules, plumpiring resolved to umpiring ;-)
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| Bart D and Wim pondering their initial setup, which meant selecting what units to put in the first line and 2nd line, as well as selecting their commanding generals from randomly selected cards. |
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| Bart V doing the same, deciding on his initial deployment. |
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| Bart V was commanding the Confederate right flank. The initial infantry regiments are marching forwards. |
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| Lots of the fun in miniature wargaming is manipulating the toys. |
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| Bart V trying to decipher the rules (all on a single A4!). |
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| We have progressed a few turns, the 2nd attacking line is setup. |
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| A view from the Union right flank. |
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| Another view from the union right flank. |
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| Yes, sometimes dice have to be recovered form the floor. |
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| The Confederate attacking line is forming, ready to cross Devil's Ridge. |
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| The game in full swing. |
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| Heavy fighting all across the front. |
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| Another view along the frontline. |
By this time, it was almost midnight, and we decided to stop the game. Some still had an hour of driving to do. The game hadn't progressed as far as I would have liked, but we decided to call it a draw.
Here are some more views of what the game looked like when we stopped playing (I took these pictures the next morning), but with all the clutter (dice, markers, ...) removed.
After the game, each player could also select a unit which did heroically well, and these units will receive a special ability for our next game. It's a nice way of introducing some continuity in a series of linked games, without worrying too much about heavier campaign mechanics. Bart V selected the Maker's Mark Militia, for stopping 2 cavalry units, Wim choose his Elijah Craig's Cavalry, and Bart D selected the Rebel Yell Rangers for charging opposing infantry in the woods and routing them without suffering a single loss themselves. The commanding officers which were selected from an iniaital draw of cards will also have a probability of receiving a stat or ability increase.
Overall, it was a fun game, although the scenario was perhaps a bit too ambitious in terms of number of units and game length.
I finally decided on the final list of my fictional ACW units - with a little help from Chat GPT. All based on whiskey and bourbon brands. Some purists might say that some brands rather reflect a name that is more appropriate for 'the other side', but as with all imaginations in wargaming, inventing names is part of the fun.
Union Infantry
Union Light Infantry
Union Cavalry
Union Artillery
Confederate Infantry
Confederate Light Infantry
Confederate Cavalry
Confederate Artillery
I'm running an ACW game this coming weekend, and I thought it would be a good idea to generate some fictitious names for units. Some fellow wargamers across the pond probably might consider this sacrilege, but why not? As a European, I don't have a strong emotional connection to the American Civil War, so some playful imagination-style names wouldn't harm our wargaming. After all, for other periods, scenarios are full of "Bratwurst Grenadiers" and "Kartoffel Cuirassiers" fighting for the bridge over the "Schnaps River".
That's all very well, but how to come up with invented names that sound plausible? Or to be more exact: that sound plausible for a European whose native language is not English ... It's a small pet-peeve of mine: lots of the pseudo-French, -German or -Dutch used by English-speaking wargamers doesn't sound at all plausible to me ;-)
This is exactly the sort of problem why ChatGPT was invented (yes, they had wargaming imaginations in mind!), so I decided to have some fun:
Through various wargaming forums, I heard that Bryan Ansell passed away yesterday.
Although I never met or talked to him, he had a large influence on me when I was starting out in wargaming during the 80s. As a Games Workshop afficionado during those days, his name was very familiar to me, most notably because he was mentioned as first author on my very first miniature ruleset I ever bought, Warhammer 1st edition.
He also was featured with his chaos army in Warhammer Armies for the 3rd edition, in a very iconic photograph.
I'm updating the magazine index ... the Xmas break is a good opportunity to do that.
Not that I'm running behind that much. Mostly the latest issues of Wargames Soldiers & Strategy need to entered. Since I stopped my Miniature Wargames subscription some months ago, my influx of new issues is now manageable, although I did buy a stack of backcopies of Vae Victis in November.
I noticed that apparantly I never did receive WSS 125. Stuff to read (magazines, books, ...) is entering our house at such a pace that sometimes things remain unread for months, so it's sometimes not obvious if an issue of a particular magazine is missing. Anyway, a quick email to WSS was quickly answered, and a replacement copy is now in the mail. Thank you Karwansaray!
But what are my wargaming plans for 2024? Honestly, difficult to say. Games have been scarce in 2023, so at elast I should play more games. And my favourite convention CRISIS will be organized again in November (not in Antwerp, but in nearby Sint-Niklaas,). So something to look out for! Perhaps I might even set up a game there ... :-)
After a first playtest of my homebrewn fantasy rules, I decided to set up a second battle. When testing new rules, I always like to go for what I would call "unusual situations". After all, most wargaming rules operate within a specific set of assumptions: density of troops, density of terrain, etc. But they also operate under scenario assumptions - whether the game is a straight battle or whether roleplaying and other story elements are part of the scenario.
So for a second playtest I decided to set up a classic scenario, based on Thistlewood, an article that appeared many decades ago in White Dwarf (issue 45) for Warhammer 1s edition, and written by Joe Dever. It is the type of fantasy battle that drew me into fantasy wargaming: a combination of battle and certain elements of roleplaying, which is also something I would like to see in my own Horn of the Dragon rules.
(There is a whole series of blogposts on Thistlewood on the BroadSword and Beasts blog).
But first, the original article. I still have a complete run of White Dwarf 1-84, so it was easy for me to look it up.
Then, the setup. I do have a decent collection of late 80s fantasy figures and scenery, so to remain in the spirit of Thistlewood, these were drafted once again in service.
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| An overall view of the battlefield. I tried to recreate the original map as close as possible, but some interpretation is always necessary. It doesn't make much sense to recreate maps to the millimeter, but it's more important to capture the spirit of the scenario. |
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| The Village of Thistlewood. The houses are cardboard houses from the old Warhammer Townscape set, and originally made available through the Warhammer 2nd edition scenario packs. |
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| The Wizard's Tower. It's a resin model by Gedemco, and 80s Belgian wargaming company. |
Since my rules are unit-based rather than figure-based, I had to translate the figures given in the text to a number of equivalent units. Nothing too complicated ...
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| Orc units and Pack Wolves. |
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| More Orc units, the Wyvern, and Ugrash Ka, the hill giant leader of the Orcs. |
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| The King's Army. |
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| More units of the King's Army. I used some of my old chaos centaurs for the Royal Centaur unit. |
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| More units of the evil forces. Trolls as well as undead. |
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| Another view of the troll and undead units. |
Now the only thing left to do is to play the game :-)
Last night Eddy and I playtested my new set of fantasy wargaming rules. Originally, there would be 5 of us, but due to various personal circumstances, three of my friends had to cancel, so this left the both of us with plenty of time to test out some rule concepts.
It has become a running joke in our gaming group that one day I would design "the ultimate set of fantasy rules". That is of course a moving target. Rules ideas and fads in wargaming come and go, so any ruleset will only reflect the preferences of the wargamers at that point in time. But it is fun to tinker with one's own rules (at least I think so). So we had a first playtest of "Horn of the Dragon". The title is a playful reference to a fantasy roleplaying campaign I played many, many years ago, but I think it sounds cool. Wargaming is an industry of cool, after all.
But anyway, for this first game I dug out some old fantasy collections. One is a Barbarian army, mostly old Citadel and Grenadier figures, and the other a Lizardmen army, mostly Harlequin figures. I also wanted to add some fun elements, and hence I introduced the "Behemoths": elephants for the Barbarians, and giant reptiles/saurians for the Lizardmen. I set the game in an Egyptian desert. It's a fantasy game, after all!
The rules were inspired by well-tested mechanisms that I particularly like:
As I mentioned before, I also added "Behemoths", and the mechanisms for those were inspired by an article in Wargames Soldiers & Strategy issue 97, "Elephant Archos", written by Jeff Jonas. It describes a game featuring elephants, and based on the battle of Raphia, and apparently one of the few ancient battles in which there was actual elephant-elephant combat (didn't check that, though). Behemoths could be hesitant to move forward, or get into a rage making them stronger, but also more prone to stampeding.
During and after the game, we had some good discussion about what worked and what didn't, and how we would tune the rules towards the next playtest.
I won't bother the reader with a detailed battle account, so here are some pictures (more pictures in Eddy's battlereport on BGG):
