Serious wargame planning

that looks like playing with toys....

At least that's what my wife says. Anyway, work being very tough at the moment I have had little time to think, let alone progress any of my projects. So I took a little time out yesterday to ponder the battle board.

This is not yet complete but I have managed to do some more painting and its coming along nicely. Another couple of goes and all of the basic colours will be complete. I then need to think about whether I outline the hexes and whether I spay with varnish. Both could quite easily send me back to the drawing board.

First, I used some of my A&A miniatures (the older style 12-15mm size). They fit quite nicely into the hexes and overall I think look quite good. The board with two Panthers about to hold off a couple of Shermans and an M24 but with an airstrike coming in.

Here comes the Tempest, I believe the term is dakka dakka dakka...woosh bang might be a bit childish!

Close-up of a surprisingly nice Panther.

I'm seriously considering whether I can use Norm Smith's Into Battle rules using the minis and this hex grid.

Next up is to deploy the 6mm ACW armies. With a river/sea board edge this might be Shiloh. Rebs converging on the Yankees.

 

I quite like the visuals, it looks rather neat but a couple of things occur to me. First, the base colours are darker than the board (i.e. the darker green which will be the colour for all full land hexes). Second, its hard to tell the sides apart from a normal distance from the board. I may need to colour code the bases. I'm still planning to use Neil Thomas' 19th century rules for this in a heavily modified format.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around, sorry, seriously planning. I was therefore delighted to see Mr P Aspic has also been blogging about his battle board. I was interested to learn that his hexes are 7" across. Mine are just short of 54mm side to side. Whilst I would love to have a bigger battle board this size has been scientifically selected. It will allow me to play any of the Command and Colours games, the hex grid sizes for which vary slightly. I therefore have a gully between each hex to allow for size differences. I also have a very SECRET plan for the board which will make use of the gaps between the hexes, although this is on the back of an envelope for now.

Neil goes to the ACW again

Army lists for the ACW (2)

I have put together two army lists, not surprisingly these are for CSA and USA forces.

CSA circa 1863
Infantry	Elite, Rifled Musket, Loose Order
Skirmishers	Fanatic, Rifled Musket
Cavalry	Average, Dragoons, Muzzle Loading Carbines
Artillery	Smoothbore
Special rules:   1.     Command level: Good   2.     Conditional charges: If the charge is defined as “conditional” as per the rules (paragraph 2a), roll one D6 and score 4-6 to successfully charge. Add +1 to die roll for elite units.   3.     Dismounted cavalry: Use the dragoons rules but with the following modification:   a.     I don’t think that cavalry should be able to move and fire. Not because I think that these evolutions were not rapid, but to give the players additional decisions to make that will have an impact. My rule modification therefore is that cavalry can either be mounted or dismounted in a turn but not both. b.     At the start of the player turn, mount or dismount cavalry units in the Changes of Formation phase. Use a marker to denote dismounted cavalry. c.     If mounted, cavalry may charge and move as per the dragoons rule, but may not engage in fire combat. d.     If dismounted, cavalry may not move or charge into combat. They may conduct fire combat.
Commentary:   This army represents the core of tough and reliable volunteers from the start of the war before casualties whittled them down in 1864 and 1865.   Charging into contact in this war was not always successful and depended primarily on the morale of the attacking troops (or their naiveté in the case of US levy troops) hence the changes to the conditional charge rule. However, the charging unit does not have to outnumber the target, they just need to have the required level of self-belief!

USA circa 1863
Infantry	Average, Rifled Musket, Loose Order
Skirmishers	Elite, Rifled Musket
Cavalry	Average, Dragoons, Early Breech Loading Carbines
Artillery	Smoothbore or Steel Rifled
Special rules:   1.     Command level: Average.   2.     Conditional charges: : If the charge is defined as “conditional” as per the rules (paragraph 2a), roll one D6 and score 4-6 to successfully charge. Add +1 to die roll for levy units.   3.     Dismounted cavalry: As CSA list.   4.     New levies: Roll one D6 before the start of the game:   1-2: Add 1 levy unit 3-4: Add 2 levy units 4-5: Add 3 levy units (if force pool allows).
Commentary:   The US continued to create new units throughout the war resulting in the presence of levy troops even in 1865 such as the infantry units converted from heavy artillery troops.   This is the US army before the development of their cavalry arm into first class mounted infantry with repeating rifles.   Note that the rifled artillery was iron (wrought or cast) so not strictly steel but let’s treat as such for the game.

The next job is to convert the rules to hexes, I see that Norman has already had a go at doing this for Neil's Napoleonic Rules so I wonder if I'll come up with something similar? En Avant!

Neil goes to the ACW

Using Neil Thomas' Wargaming C19th Europe for the ACW (1)

To return to my attempt to use Neil's European rules for the ACW, here is the next step.

I have a limited number of 6mm troops on 40 by 30mm bases. I plan to use these on a modified M44 board. As they are blocks, I will need to use markers for casualties.

My force pool is quite limited:

ACW Force Pool	CSA	USA
Infantry	10	10
Skirmishers	2	2
Cavalry	2	2
Smoothbore Artillery	2	1
Rifled Artillery	Nil	1
Generals	2	2

I will be using the Pitched Battle Scenario (scenario 1, page 51) from Neil's book so I need to modify the army selection table to fit my force pool.

Army Selection Table: Pitched Battle Scenario
Die Roll	Infantry	Skirmishers	Cavalry	Artillery	Generals
1	7	1	2	2	2
2	7	2	2	1	2
3	7	1	2	2	2
4	8	1	1	2	2
5	8	2	1	1	2
6	8	1	1	2	2

 
At the moment, I plan to use two generals for each army. When I consider the rules in more detail I intend to use the command rules, or at least a variant of them. For the artillery selection, where the USA player has 1 unit, they can use either the smoothbore or rifled piece.

Next step, lets do some army list things.

By the way, I found myself very pleased with the Bavarian blog piece, it went together really well with no formatting problems. I didn't expect to encounter any difficulties with this one but if I had any hair left it would all be gone by now!

And finally, something about wargaming

Converting Neil Thomas

One of my projects has been in gestation since 1998. I bought some Irregular 6mm ACW troops with the intention of playing a DBA type game on a small board (120 by 60 cms). I finished the troops a few years ago but am still working on the board. I have finally decided to make it into a M44 type board with hexes (that's another story) and I'm about half way through.

Some troops on an early version of the board:

Troops of the Union variety...

 

General and friend....Yeehah!

Making the board look like M44....

Well on the way.......

Avoid husband abuse by using little rubber things... on the board of course!

Now you know I have some toys, next time I'll explain what Neil is being converted into and why I can't play anything out of the box, ever.