Dave's Game Blog

Cold Wars 2010, Lancaster, PA

2010-06-30T21:27:00.000-04:00

With Historicon 2010 coming up I figured I'd better post the pictures I took at Cold Wars 2010. These pictures are in reverse order from when I took them (Thursday and Friday). Click on any picture for a bigger version...

90mm Medievals

GHQ Terrain Maker hexes

Volley and Bayonet and Glory - full scale (3" square) bases and 6mm figures

Battlefront World War II

Field of Glory Ancients in 28mm

WWII game run by Frank Chadwick using his Men Under Fire rules

Author Frank Chadwick running a game of Men Under Fire (WWII squad level)

My ACW Game at Historicon 2007

2007-08-20T07:32:00.000-04:00

At Historicon 2007 I ran an American Civil War (ACW) game using the Piquet:Field of Battle rules. No one signed up for my first game on Friday evening (in retrospect I should have set the game up anyway to see if any passersby wanted to join in, although to be fair my game was located in Distelfink at the back corner table next to the double doors) so the game didn't go off.

My second game on Saturday afternoon had 5 players, 2 on the Union side and 3 on the Confederate. The game was a fictional setting set in 1862 near Manassas. I used the order of battle from the Kettle Run scenario from the Johnny Reb scenario book "Across A Deadly Space" available from The Last Square. The objective was to see who could get the most regiments across the creek that cut diagonally down the center of the table. The Rebs had more units of a lesser quality and less artillery than the Yankees. The Rebs had better commanders - all being D12's except for one which was a D10. All of the Union were D10's, which I think was the problem with my scenario. The rebs usually won initiative and also found it easier to get double and triple moves, so they got across the creek first (the Rebs also had a slightly better card deck). The Union had big problems getting their reinforcements that were in column on the road to get out of column formation. Interestingly enough, the Union right flank was completely destroyed by a confederate player named Dwight who had the only D10 leader on the Reb's side. Dwight just kept rolling high, getting double and triple moves on "even" rolls (which lets you change one "move" segment into a "maneuver" segment) so he would soften up the union then change into attack column formation and charged into close combat.

I think for the next time I run this I will up one of the Union commanders to a D12 and maybe drop one the Confederates to a D10. Note that after I spent 15 minutes explaining the rules and scenario, it took 2 hours and 45 minutes for the Union to fail their Army Command roll and retire from the field. Field of Battle is a very fast playing game.

Here are some pictures from the game (click on a photo to view a really big version of the photo):

This is the initial setup from the Union side. I designed it so it would take just over two move segments to hit the creek. The creek is fordable at all points and counts as class II terrain, meaning you have to stop at the creek edge before crossing. All the woods and hills were Class II terrain as well. The buildings were just for show and did not block line of sight or have a defensive value. The colored versions of the charts were downloaded from the Piquet Yahoo Group.

Another shot from the Union side about halfway through the game. Down at the bottom on the Union left flank, the game was pretty static. The Yankee artillery on the hill kept driving back some Rebs who kept rallying back while the superior quality Union forces on the creek bank kept the poorer quality Rebs at bay. At the top of the picture, several Reb regiments drove "hell bent for leather" across the creek and plowed into the Union right flank with devastating results. In the center, the Union reinforcements are still on the road with command control problems.

A view from the other end of the table near the game's end. The Union troops at the top of the picture are the reinforcements that finally got their act together and deployed. The Reb's at the bottom of the picture are the ones that charged across the creek at the beginning of the game and wiped out the Union right flank. The long white things are "smoke" that mark when a unit has fired (a unit can fire at anytime even if it's not your turn. Once a unit has fired it cannot fire again until it's side draws an Infantry Firepower card which removes the smoke marker). The small red markers are Unit Integrity (UI) hits. An infantry unit can take 4 UI hits before it is in permanent rout - if it takes a 5th UI hit it is destroyed. I do not remove stands for casualties. The figures are 15mm - about 50% Old Glory and 50% everything else which I picked up at flea markets and eBay already painted. I put 6 infantry figures in two ranks on a 1.25" square base - 4 bases in a regiment. Passersby gave me nice comments on my flags, which were the free flags from warflag.com scaled 20% bigger than normal 15mm flags (a trick I learned from Dave Waxtel - oversize flags look better than correctly scaled flags).

Photos from Historicon 2007

2007-08-19T10:22:00.002-04:00

Back in July I went to Historicon. I went there primarily to run some American Civil War (ACW) games using the Piquet:Field of Battle rules. It's a 13 hour drive up to Lancaster, PA from where I live in Columbus, GA (I used to live in Albany, NY which is only 5 hours from Lancaster). I went the Cold Wars 2007 and Fall-IN 2006 as well, but I think from now on I'm going to limit myself to Historicon and try to get to more of the cons down in the Southeast.

So here are some pictures (click on an image to see it full size)

My friend John Rigley (standing, middle) from Albany, NY
running his famous Moby Dick game:

A Flames of War game:

From the Flames of War tournament:

This game (below) is using the 90mm pre-painted figures you can buy at Target.

Below is a photo of a very large WWII game using
the Command Decision 4 rules and hosted by
Frank Chadwick, the author of the rules.

The next two photos are an AWI (American Revolutionary War)
game using 54mm figures (run by the same GM who ran the
90mm game).

The photo below is from the Poor Bloody Infantry
demo game run by Peter Pig (Martin Goddard).
I was the Japanese defending against two American
players. My opponents rolled terrible dice and
eventually gave up in disgust - I don't think they'll
be buying the rules... :)

Welcome!

2007-08-19T10:18:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my new blog! I've had several free websites\blogs before over at MSN but they always seems to go down\get erased, etc.. so I decided to try Blogger as it seems pretty popular.

My blog deals with my gaming exploits, particularly with miniature wargaming, but also with boardgaming - mainly the so-called "Eurogames". I've been playing boardgames since the 1960's and wargames\miniature games since the mid-70's. I hope to post plenty of pictures.