Thursday, July 30, 2015

(Not) Brother Against Brother Napoleonic Skirmish Game #2

Last Friday my friend Ed had Byron, Charlie, Mike, George and I over for another go at his Brother Against Brother Napoleonic house rules. This time George and I were the French and Byron, Charlie and Mike were the Prussians. Like the first go around, the Prussians got a good jump on the half-timber barn and commanded that flank from it. George and I pushed into the park with our forces. George had about the same luck pressing the Prussian left as the first playing of the scenario (none at all). Pressed from the hard cover of the barn, I eventually also withered. The Prussians handled the French roughly and won the scenario by a good margin. Well played to them.

This is a good scenario and a second play reinforced the fact that Ed's house rules are all good steps forward in an already good game system. I'm looking forward to more games using Ed's modifications.








Saturday, July 18, 2015

(Not) Brother Against Brother Napoleonic Skirmish Game

Today, the Saturday of Historicon, those of us who stayed home were invited our our friend Ed's house for "Historicon North". Planned was a day of gaming with multiple games. In truth we had so much fun playing the first game that we played straight through lunch and pretty much spent the day on it. I think I speak for all who were present, it was totally worth it!

The game was Ed's first unveiling of his house rules for the popular Brother Against Brother ACW skirmish rules.  Ed's changes include a new dice-based morale check system which includes risk to officers and special events. It also contains some formation choices for units that are on the 'nice and simple' side of complexity. Just enough for flavor without being difficult to use.

The game was a meeting engagement between the French played by Mike and Charlie and the Prussians played by George, Peter and myself. Control of three of five terrain objectives would win the game. Four of the objectives were quadrants of a garden park and the fifth was a villa outside the park. The Prussian plan was to try for the villa, but if the French beat us to it. switch our attack to one of the French quadrants of the park.

Early on it looked good for the French to snipe one of our quadrants. Just as Peter stabilized things there, George took control of the villa. This position would prove dominant for the remainder of the game. On the other flank, Peter's green Prussian Reserve company was unstoppable. They simultaneously dueled a French line unit and conducted charge attacks against a French grenadier unit in the flank. Holding out to the last two men they held the flank and helped drive the French from our quadrant sealing the game. That unit only had 2 privates and a sergeant left at the end of the battle, but before they fight again they'll be a lieutenant and two sergeants!

Thanks for the great game Ed. It's was the next best thing to going to Historicon.










Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Northern Conspiracy July 2015 Game Night

Last Friday our club had our monthly game night for July. Due to the holiday week turnout was low, but I did get to play in a great ancients game hosted by my friend Don. The game featured Ralph's Marathon to Marius rules and was a historic scenario, The Battle of Telamon. Don used 15mm figures, which worked just fine with Ralph's rules even though all our play tests were done using 28mm figures. Don and I played the Romans who surrounded a Gaul raiding army from two sides. Bob and Ralph played the defending Gauls.

The Gauls quickly sorted out that the Romans would be attacking from two sides and formed up a good defence with Bob probing my Etruscan infantry with his cavalry aggressively. Don's command took a while to get on line while my command fought the Gauls doing well against Ralph and approximately even against Bob. Don's command was able to do very well against Ralph's opposite battle line sealing the victory for Rome. In the end the two armies were only 3 victory chips different from each other with both armies starting with approximately 30 chips, so the victory for Rome was marginal. The scenario which Don play tested three times was well balanced. With die rolls being more even the outcome would have easily been a coin flip for either side to win.

I was running late to the event so I went directly from work and didn't have my camera with me. Because of this I stole the above photo from our club website, courtesy of the club president Phil. The rest of his photos can be seen on our club gallery here: http://thenorthernconspiracy.org/clubportal/eventphotos.cfm?clubID=2685&pubmenuoptID=29222

No, I am not sleeping in the photo, I'm just thinking really hard. Hey at least I'm wearing a Gettysburg polo shirt!

Sunday, July 5, 2015

A new distraction

Sorry that I have been quiet as of late. I've just recently picked up a woodworking lathe that's been a new distraction and big sink of hobby time. I'm sure from time to time I'll be creating wargaming-related items on this, mostly terrain-related.

In the future I don't plan on blogging my woodworking projects, at least not on this blog. I may from time to time post a notice when I might be focusing more time on it such as now.

Below a quickly turned mallet for inserting drive centers into wood, a close up of the lathe head and speed control and a pile of shavings left after you turn a piece of firewood into a mallet.