Big Pat and Rabbitman's Grand Day Out

My horse and musket era loving friend, Scott, has always come to my house to play, when his work and mandatory overtime permit. But he's been quietly building a nice comfy wargaming room in his house in deepest darkest southern Ontario. He's ony 40 minutes away, but he's south of the 401, and that is Here There Be Dragons land in my mind.

But he invited Big Pat and I down for a big Napoleonic game last Saturday. We would finally have a chance to fully enjoy Scott's preferred rules, General d'Armee 2e, and, of course, beer and pizza together.

I was a wild man, and two beers.

We played the Plancenoit scenario from the 1815: the Hundred Days scenario book. Scott built his Austrians in the later shako, instead of the helmets, to match his Waterloo campaign uniformed French. So we just assumed Napoleon had beaten Wellington and Blücher, and was now facing the Austrians and Russians along the Rhine, or we were somewhere in Saxony in 1813.

Our congenial host and Game Master, Scott in foreground,  and Big Pat on the right. The table is 12 feet by 7.5 feet.

Austrian Landwehr 

French holding the town. My objective is to capture 2 out of 4 Built Up Areas. 

The church counts as 2 BUA

Austrian horse artillery 

Austrian cavalry 

Young Guard and Guard 12 pounders dispute entry to the town 

French artillery moving to the flank.

Austrian CiC and caisson for those "Out of Ammunition" results 

Landwehr attack on French center building up

Austrian pinning attack on left. Brigade of Grenadiers in column moving forward 

9 battalions of Landwehr assaulting flank of Plancenoit church

Austrian left wing

Austrian center 

Austrian right. Cavalry charged. Crossed sabres and recoiled. Then stared at each other for the rest of the game. 

My Austrian skirmish line actually won the firefight! Pushing a little harder on my left.

Reserves arrive. Battery of 12 pounders and 6 battalions of line. They kept rolling 'Hesitant' so I never got them up to make another attack in the center 

Landwehr charging Young Guard behind a thick hedge. Lost the fight, recoiled, rolled badly, entire brigade of 6 battalions evaporated!

French reinforcements propping up the center 

Overview Austrian right wing close to Game End

Grenadiers pushing into town. 

When your Grenadiers have 'Glory!' and 'Elan'

Some of the pictures are out of order, because of how Blogspot uploads them, if you're wondering why troops seem to be moving back and forth. But you get the idea.

Game end, Austrian left wing

A battalion of Landwehr had broken into the church, but then got pushed out before I could capture a second BUA with my Grenadiers. The Grenadiers drove into the town, pushing Young Guard in front of them. At game end I was in a good position to attack the house in the photo above from 2 sides, but it would have been too little, too late. 

It took us about 8 hours of playing to get through 14 or 15 of the 16 turns for the scenario.  It was just super to actually have enough maneuver room and big enough forces to really get the most out of General d'Armee. 

Scott is hoping that this will inspire me to get some more Russians done. 

Sky Aemyril -Rules for Airship Battles on the World of Alwyd

Had today off for reasons, so while waiting for the phone to ring, I cleared off my messy wargames table and unrolled my sea mat to try playtesting my airship battle game idea. I published the initial draft here. As you can see from the pictures I've gotten more ships painted this past week. This about half of them.

Royalist battleship emerges from cloud cover in Game 2 to fire a broadside into the Crusader heavy battleship

I decided that I had too many ships identified as Carriers in the first post, and thought that some, or most, could be battleships. So the ships previously identified as battleships have now become battlecruisers.

I also decided to add a "heavy" battleship. Yes, we could call it a dreadnought, but that seems very earthlike to me.

Class BB - Heavy Battleship 9 Damage Points, 6 heavy batteries, 3 light batteries SLOW 0-2 MEDIUM 3-4 FAST 5-6

Class BC - Battle Cruiser 7 Damage Points 4 heavy batteries 2 light batteries 1 rocket pod SLOW 0-4 MEDIUM 5-6 FAST 7-8

Royalist battles cruisers and cruisers

Crusader Cruiser squadron

Game 1. I rolled for where each fleet set up and they rolled for opposite short sides of the table.

I decided on a doubles initiative roll that a storm would arrive and move across the battle space like some alien horror from Original Star Trek.

Flanking cruiser squadrons veering to avoid the storm

Crusader Cruiser squadron is caught and thrown into disarray, with some minor damage suffered.

Even though they can't shoot as a unified formation now, they get some good hits, blowing up the Royalist heavy battleship.


Cruiser goes down from accumulated damage points


Royalist Battle Cruiser explodes!

Crusader Battleship explodes

So that was interesting. I was madly scribbling notes across my print out as I moved models and rolled dice. There were a few things missing, like a proper set up and weather. The complicated Formations weren't working, and I decided to just measure moves and shooting instead of using the hexes.

I decided to add proper set up, borrowed heavily from Nimitz.

• Each side rolls a d6. Low Roll is Disadvantaged.
• Disadvantaged Player starts with a 12"x12" box 12" in from the right hand corner of his table edge. He rolls a second dice. 1-2 adds a second 12x12 directly to the left along the table edge. 3-4 12x12 box adjacent to upper left corner. 5-6 12x12 box on the top of first square. He deploys his fleet inside these two boxes (yes, he can include the area between the corners if he rolled the diagonal boxes). The fleet is pointing in the direction from initial box to box rolled.
• Advantaged Player then sets up anywhere on his half of the table.
• Roll for weather.

Roll 2d6 for Weather after both fleets deploy.

1/1 Big Storm covers a 12"x6" area. Roll for where around the table it starts. Every turn it moves 2d6 towards the opposite table edge/corner. +1 on the damage roll for any ship caught by it.

1/2-5 a 6"x6" storm

2-5/2-5 2d6 3" clouds placed alternately around the table

1/6 12"x6" cloud bank roll for initial placement and moves 2d6 across table

2-5/6 6"x6" cloud bank

6/6 Clear Skies

After lunch I cleared things up and set up another game.

Game 2. 

Crusaders are the Disadvantaged Player and rolled 1-2 for Deployment. Then we got 2d6 clouds.

Clouds are placed alternately by the players.

For Activation I reached for the This Quar's War: Clash of Rhyflers card deck. 3x 3s, 4x 4s, 3x 5s. Draw first card and discard face down.

Advantaged Player gets first card. 1 Activation you can Move or Shoot a Formation or Single Ship. 

A Formation or Ship that has Moved can be Activated again to Shoot. But may only do each only once per card.

The black pipe cleaners are marking who has fired.

Ships can only move as a Formation if they are bow to stern in line with no more than 4" between posts. Ships in squadron may "follow the leader" to stay in Formation.

When you're a Squadron of Destroyers and find yourself going broadside to broadside with the enemy Battleship Squadron!

Your Destroyer only scores 2 hits, but you roll really well on the Damage

Boom! A fire is started on the Royalist Heavy Battleship which promptly explodes some ammunition! 

Later in the game the Royalist Destroyer Squadron repeats the performance. Close range Rocket salvos blowing up a Cruiser and a Battleship.

Still need to clarify maneuvering. But Nimitz's one 90 degree turn somewhere during the move seems OK.

Measuring from the posts and using the hex bases for firing arcs still seems to work though.