Old Collection, 'new rules' (ACW 15mm)

Years ago we lived in a apartment condo during an occurrence of many fires damaging suites, I told The Wife that should we encounter such an emergency to grab the two large duffel bags of my 15mm ACW and throw them off our second story balcony.  Her “what about the wedding photos?!” was dismissed.  Priorities you know…..

But yes, this was, and still is one of my favourite my wargame collections.  Not having brought it out of the bags for many years, I decided to layout my terrain to see what was still needed. In a rather interesting coincidence KevinA emails me that very day with his new ideas for averaging the huge swing the Fire and Fury ACW Rules d10 rolls can produce.  I was intrigued and so with terrain already in place, PeterM joined us as the Union defender against KevinA’s Reb attack. The existing charts using the ‘weird’ d3s, low-average dice, and troop quality modifiers had the game move along in a more realistic manner rather than the ‘I have all the advantages but you rolled a bleeping 10 to my only a 1!!’ situations were avoided.  Leaving the terrain on the table (how real life can get in the way) we played a second, continuing scenario with Craig joining us as "Stonewall" using more of the table for a good game.

(for the record, I decided require better fields but have enough trees. I used only 1.5 of 3 boxes.  One does need many trees for a 19th C. American battlefield.)

The table set up including the fun little additions in my collection including an observation tower (center), and balloon (right center) and solid wood buildings and fences.  Must get some more farm animals; the sheep (lower center) gives a cute accompaniment.

1859 Game concluded

This post is for my wargaming friends Peter, Craig, and Kevin who suffered through my 15mm 1859 scenario on Friday night.  

With introductory rules, a (probably) too numerous contingents, and a flawed deployment consignments, the battle was only half-concluded by late night.

The next morning, looking at the table, thinking to put everything away, I decided I had the time to play the game out and perhaps clean-up the rules in the process…and yes, have fun playing.

We had concluded on Friday with the Austrian maneuver, so I started at the “top of the inning” with the Piedmontese continuing their rather ‘measured’ advance on the Austrian held river crossings.  I continued with Peter’s usual low dice rolls for unit initiative [ in fact, rolling no higher than 3 for all twelve Piedmontese units! This on a simple d6 die…..]

The Piedmontese army of 1859.

The Piedmontese advance (left) and the Austrians (in white) defending the town and river crossings

The French continued their attack on the Austrian left wing.  The Grenadiers of the French Imperial Guard combined and threw back a Hungarian unit but the attached French General was killed. This would not help the activation of the other units in his division.

The French Guard Grenadiers combine to attack the 'Hungarian' unit.

The ‘African’ Division of elite Zouaves, Turcos, and French Foreign Legion had already been worn down but the large stoic Austrian formations.

A interesting combat happened as the tiny but eager French Guard Lancers unit , resplendent in white, charged into their Austrian counterparts down the tree-lined road but were ignominiously bounced! They quickly rallied but the second round on combat against the equally tiny unit of Austrian Uhlans all but destroyed both units.

The tiny French Guard Lancers (in white) charging down the road - to their doom....

The now infamous particular Piedmont unit formed in road column ready to assault the town crossing, again rolled several successive ‘1’  for maneuver, declining every effort to move, like it had for Peter!  It was thus that the Piedmontese struggled to get any coordinated attack against the towns.  However, in a bold, some may suggest foolhardy attack, the small unit of elite Piedmontese Bersaglieri moved gained the most northern town and surprisingly continued to hold it against overwhelming odds as the Austrian masses could not coordinate any serious counter-attacks. But the Austrian attacks would eventually occur against the small unit beleaguered Bersaglieri so the Piedmont General attached himself to the only untouched infantry unit left to him and would try to lead it across the bridge into the town. However, the well-placed Austrian guns along side the town blasted him and many of the would-be attackers, stifling all thought of further Piedmontese assaults.

The elite Bersaglieri (on road) bravely attack against overwhelming numbers and succeed to gain the town! (yes, dice rolls had much to do with this!) 

It must be confessed that the Austrian commander started his retreat north to his LOC but that the Piedmont holding of the their only town was tenuous and the French elite troops were largely destroyed, this might have been premature ....but very historically accurate depiction of the Austrian High Command attitude!   

The battle was concluded at that point, both sides worn to exhaustion but the Austrians with more intact units giving them the slight victory.

Historic Battle of Tegula (Zulu Wars)

Editoral note: originally written in September 2015 (!) this post was overlooked but the project still holds interest for me. As I have had nothing to post for awhile I thought I should fill in the gap....

Have no idea why my interest in the Zulu Wars but probably because I watched Zulu and Zulu Dawn movies in my early days and kept those images in my head.

Thus any magazine article about the Zulu and warfare involving that South African tribe strokes my interest.  An old wargame magazine description by Ian Knight [ Miniature Wargames  No.25 ] of the engagement between the colonists of Durban, Natal and the Zulu in 1838 had me thinking. (oh, oh, here we go off onto another "project" !! )

The abbreviated history goes something like this:

A Voortrekker deputation to Port Natal to ask the English Settlement for assistance against the Zulus was met with success. In 1838 John Cane and Robert Biggar with 14 other English settlers, 30 Hottentots and over 3000 native levies went as an expeditionary force in support to the Voortrekkers Commandos of Uys and Potgieter. (who were attacked a day before and were soundly defeated) After crossing the Tugela River the Expenditionary force came across the Zulu military kraal (camp) Ndondakusuka at the foot of the mountain but the lack of full resistance soon indicated that this was a trap and as dawn slowly appeared some 10,000 Zulu warriors appeared on the scene and fierce fighting ensued. The line of retreat across the river was cut off and the expeditionary force was surrounded. Thus on the 17th April 1838 ended the battle of Tugela,  Few of the expeditionary force escaped from this battle.

To distinguish the supporting Port Natal native troops, they were given white cloth head bands.  These "Hottentots" and some 400 of the natives were trained and armed with muskets, while the rest were armed as native warriors, some of which were Zulu expatriates.  This made the selection of figures easy and I simply added a green-stuff headband to those Natal allies. It was said that the natives would wind yards of cloth around their heads so the resulting headwear resembled a turban! This certainly helped in my modelling efforts as it is quite easy to apply too much green stuff to the small 15mm chaps.



 As with all my wargaming with the Zulu I use a heavily infused DBA style rules  (...thus far....) , so each force is of 12 elements - the Zulu look more numerous as I use double sized stands for them.  As I have yet to play this scenario I may indeed have them twice as large to equalize the effect from the Natal musket armed troops.   Because of the disproportional effect of firepower in the battles of this era, the Natal 'army' has 5 of its 12 elements as "rifle" armed, with the warriors equal to those of the Zulu.
The deployment is conjecture of course but does follow the DBA mandates.  The kraal starts with one additional defending element.  I may make the mountain smaller and closer to the Zulu side with the Natal army closer to the centre of the table.  In light of the historical battle, perhaps tell the Port Natal player that the idea is to save the army and not fight the Zulu....but the Zulu won't know this of course!
Not really pleased with the look of the table/basing and may change all this in the future but this small project is an interesting one for me.

Napoleonic Poles vs British?? 15mm fictional battle

Can't resist playing in any Napoleonics game... actually, any miniatures game.  Monday's affair was set up with a nice map for each side and even off-table troops!  Francis brought out the Poles - all of whom I painted and subsequently sold to him last year and his British - some of which I also painted - to defend a hill position.

My old Old Glory 15mm Polish.  The white clad units are the Polish 13th Infantry Regiment who were distinctive from the dark blue uniformed units of the rest of the infantry.  Staring at this photo I realized perhaps why I sold these as the poses are rather strange, looking as they are of running into hurricane strength winds?  

With Kev holding the right flank, our plan was simple as we had the defend orders. I plunked down on the hill and awaited the inevitable charge up the gut by DaveMc., while Kev had to deal with Francis' onslaught.

Francis lining up artillery fire on Kev's British.  My position is in the foreground with the red coat Marines on the hill.

With woods covering my left and centre, with a skirmish unit within to act as a tripwire, I deployed my artillery in front of the hill knowing DaveMc will aim right at them and so soften him up.  Kev had the same idea and so we lobbed shot after shot/dice into the mass of Dave's Poles and rolled very poorly.  Not one shot hit!   Not one.

The loyal allies of Napoleon then overran my artillery - not that I cared at that point as they could not hit anything anyway so no big loss! ~grin~.  However my steady British Marines stopped their advance with a volley and counter-attack throwing them off the hill.  The units of my left then formed columns to quickly swing inward to complete the disintegration of DaveMc's division.

The Poles charging to be repulsed by the steady (from the dice anyway) Marines.  All these 15mm were painted by me and in Francis' collection.

Meanwhile, Kev had to defend against Francis who is a very experienced Shako2 rules player and who gained the reinforcement of the Polish light horse brigade from off-table.  With Kev rolling rather poorly overall, outnumbered and hit in front and flank, his division collapsed.  However as I would have time to establish a defensive posture in time to meet Francis's forces, the British were given the victory.

The right flank action

Shako2 is very much a tactical game with only an overlay of grand-tactical effect (a simple divisional "arrows" indicating direction of attack).  However it does this rather well with easy to remember modifiers.

Good to see my old 15mm boys in action

A"stagger" marker.  Each nation has their own in a "national" regimental flag

Medieval Irish for DBA

My new part-time job as a charter bus driver is quite the time-eater with lots of time away from the house and more importantly the painting table!
Having downtime between delivery and pickup during the day, sometimes I can get a bit of basic painting in while sitting in the cramped seats of the bus.  With only poor natural lighting and poor positioning hunched over as I am, no great detail can be done as you can imagine;  and for my version of the Irish with their rather plain dress and, well knowing that many poor brush strokes can be covered up by a heavy wash of paint, I set about doing this army of 15mm for my DBA collection.

lots of painting gaffs but really I couldn't see a lot of the details sitting on a bus.  Even with my reading glasses on.  Sigh.

These are converted Corvus Belli Numidians - which were needed for the bare Irish legs - on which I added "green stuff" cloaks

Corvus Belli Irish Kerns from their old HYW range. The first strip has been given a wash stain already.

The completed army. Yeah, well it's DBA ain't it!

Close up of the spearmen

Close up of the General as a light horse element

ACW balloon

While tossing about boxes in the household storage looking for something, a box of very old and unused Christmas stuff fell and out rolled a plastic tree bobble.  I intended to quickly stuff it back in, when I was stuck by the shape and size.  My wargamer brain kicked in immediately and I thought...hmmm....it may just work!

So later that evening I put everything else aside and tried to be inventive.  What I had seen was a balloon, a 15mm-ish sized balloon from the 'ribbing' typical of the Christmas tree ornaments.  Well, long story short, I finally came up with a facsimile of a period balloon.  Certainly not historic by any means and certainly not even structurally feasible, probably not aerodynamic to be sure, but kinda looks the part.

Absolutely no mathematics was involved in the following!  I merely started by eyeballing the height which I thought was high enough to look the business but as low as possible to not make it too top heavy. (ed. ~8")  Needing to firmly anchor the, thankfully, light weight bobble/balloon I used a rod of aluminum which I twisted around a real twig/ scale tree. It was further anchored by using one of the 15mm OldGlory weird poses, in this case a soldier heaving a large rock over his head (!) and drilled a hole through what would have the rock and fed the rod through the now grasping hands and then up into another hole drilled in a solid cube of balsa wood forming the basket and thus finally into the hollow interior of the upside-down bobble.

"Engineeringly speaking" I have thus placed all this light weight directly over the anchor point for stability which is further helped by the tree "buttress". All this on a card stand with a surprising and welcomed, small table "footprint".
 I gathered some 'green stuff' to to create the loose part of the balloon under the inflated part which further hides the wire.  The wire, while very thick in scale (hey it was what I had at hand!) was painted to look like rope. While ideally I would have liked to have more soldiers holding the rope none were at hand, so I would hate to be that poor soldier who seems to be that close to being suspended himself, but he makes the use of the wire look like a guiding rope hanging from the basket and thus perhaps the illusion of a flying American Civil War observation balloon.

 A few quick photos before I get on to other more pressing stuff.

ACW ambulance stations

Moving back into my roots a bit,  painted the last of my 15mm ACW collection.  This was remarkable in that the last time I painted 15mm ACW was some 7 years ago (!) and that for some Confederate cavalry adding to the previous endeavours some 9 years before that!

Had to do a bit of reorganizing to get all into the plastic bead trays I hold within the one carrying bag.  I include photos of both a typical tray - in this case my Union Zouaves some 180 figures - and the opened carrying bag itself which actually has all the space filled with these trays.

I have made specific instruction for the wife to grab this bag on her way out of the burning house.  Forget the wedding photos Dear, but make sure this is safe along with the adjacent terrain bag......

I also include a couple of other photo from the collection; the signal tower so I can tell my war game opponent that I indeed HAVE instant command with my far flanks and the pontoon punters to WILL allow my crossing of the "unfordable" river.  Hee hee....

some of the odder posed figures were cut in half, the muskets cut out of the hands and replaced by barge poles so that the pontoons could be pushed across.  The pontoons are solid pieces of balsa wood

I also painted the last of the Generals I had in storage for years now, including one of the famous Confederate commanders.  The stone wall I created on the base is a literal and figuratively big give-away!

All the figures are from the Old Glory 15mm ACW range which is extensive and with nice touches such as the ladies offering comfort to the wounded in the ambulance vignette.  The two identical sets can be, as I have done, painted as Union and Confederate.

Battle of Falkirk replay

AndrewM called a few days ago and asked "Want a game this evening? Something 15mm."  Ah, OK I agreed.  So I brought out my 15mm Highland Jacobite storage box which says "complete" on it.  It was right as I had given myself all the scenario information for all three of the major battles of the '45 including for the Battle of Falkirk.  So I could quickly lay out the terrain and get all the markers in order. When we sat down, we reviewed the rules which are, as usual with me a home-brew, and got to it.

There is much 'practicality' to the look of my collection and thus the effect tot he game.  The bases are designed to be contained within the slots of my plastic boxes. And while the 'ravine' and 'bog' are simple cloth they do the trick. The Highlanders, The Irish and French Scots are all two stands to a unit, the British regulars three as that is how many units I could create and which I which need for each of the historical scenarios based on the limited numbers I had.

 The figures were painted when I was having back problems and while I was in such pain I decided I might as well do the tartans anyway.  So when lying on my stomach with elbows propped up to hold the brush and figure in my hands and one leg at a weird angle, I completed both 15mm armies.

The game produced a historic result. While we forgot to decrease the British shooting due to the rain of that day in 1745, it did not affect the game as the highlanders came up, gave an effective volley and then charged into the weakened British regulars.  Andrew was rolling a lot of sixes mind you, so the British were more torn up by firepower than would be expected.

Overview of the battle from behind the British lines. The ravine is on the right, the impassable bog on the left of the photo. The advanced British dragoons (historic deployments, remember) are already disordered - as indicated by the round markers - as are most of the regulars.  The highland gun fire was proving to be a bit more effective than it should be with the many sixes rolled by Andrew and, as the red dice of my English shows, I rolled yet another one.  I do that a lot.

Contact.  The British militia, as represented here by the 8th Foot of Culloden battle, was the last hope of the British victory, or at least a draw but had little hope against the enthusiastic Scots.  Yes, the Highlanders rolled right over the redcoats including charging the poor dragoons.  

Andrew enjoys the 15mm smaller affairs and any of the smaller historical battles as they have 'narrative' and can be done to a conclusion in a short evenings.  Can't disagree with that.

15mm English Civil War collection

Dug out my old 15mm ECW stuff the other day.  While I have moved away from painting these small types [much to still paint tho'!] still half my wargaming collection is 15mm.  Large collections of ACW, this ECW, Italy 1859, DBA Ancients, Zulu colonials highlight the extent.

While in other collections I made the basing fairly "realistic", for these I went the other direction and simply flocked them the same as my mats.  Hopefully the groups of men stand out.  The rectangles shape of the bases themselves, while useful for the playing the rules, hopefully somewhat hidden from notice.

The numbers of figures on each stand was dictated by the packaging of these (mostly) 15mm Essex figures as they are in 4 horse bags.  The infantry are some 12-14 strong with many extra pike used as standard bearers.

most of the current collection

the Parliamentarian side with Cromwell's horse in the background

the Royalist regiments

the Scots