Leuthen Solo

So it took a while, but I finally finished assembling the church and ten paper regiments (thirty stands) of heavy cavalry. The Prussians got cuirassiers and the Austrians what I think are heavy dragoons. The Wofun chaps will count as "regular" cavalry. Infantry are easier to tell apart, since I have plenty of the plastics in grenadier or fur caps.

"the lighter the category of cavalry
the more pronounced the curve in the blade of its sabre."
- Christopher Duffy

Of course, then I procrastinated getting the game going. It's the last day of December, so I think I can still claim this is an anniversary game. I've also been reading a book on AWI naval warfare, and working on the DnD 5th Edition Player's Handbook (not that that will be much use past May when a new edition comes out).

Junior General's Leuthen scenario is even more basic than others in its class on the site; for example, columns aren't a thing, so all units move at the same speed. Although those 24 inches from the enemy may make double moves. Fair enough.

The setup, on a 4x6 table (smaller than the recommended 5x7):

Range is unusually short in this scenario; most have guns with 24" range, but here it's 12" (infantry have 6"). The sides start 18" apart, so movement is in order. Perhaps to make this feel like a larger battle? On the other hand, units can both move and charge.

Turn 1: On the right, the Austrian cavalry start to sweep round the Prussian left flank. On the left near Leuthen, the Prussian cavalry drive the Austrians back into Leuthen and kill their commander, Nadasty.

Turn 2: The Austrian cavalry drives back the Prussian flank guard, wiping out half of it, but on the left the Prussian horse fight their way into Leuthen. The Prussian infantry and artillery haven't even fired a shot yet.

Decimated Prussian horsw sweep through the village.

Turn 3: Prussian cavalry gets around Leuthen as the Austrian infantry reserves reverse ranks to hold them off. The Prussian left is still holding out against the Austrian cavalry, who can't make it over to Leuthen to hold off the looming Prussian infantry. Cavalry fight their way through the Leuthen defenders.

The equivalent of Rot-Wurzburg did not hold this time.

The church is practically surrounded.

Turn 4: While its left flank desperately holds out in Leuthen under heavy fire from the Prussian center-right, the bulk of the Austrian army tries to form a line behind Leuthen to hold off the Prussian horse. The Prussian cavalry has got past Leuthen by now while the infantry is firing into the town and causing casualties. I think this is definitely a Prussian victory, though their cavalry has taken a beating.

While Prussian horse is following up, I think it's clear
that the Austrian infantry could finish forming a line on
this side of town before the Prussian main force arrives.

I find the Junior General rules a little fiddly for a solo player because of the morale mechanism - before melee both sides must remember to check.

1. Attacker checks - if failed, no charge
2. Defender checks - if failed, lose a base and fall back
3. Melee roll-off - loser loses a base and falls back.

Each scenario is slightly different, but all of the "horse and musket" types taken together make for a nice, simple set that, as intended, would work well for kids. It would help if I had an opponent to remind me of the steps, though!

The other issue - and this is my own fault for "mixing" miniatures - is reassembling the units in their correct groupings and boxes. I might have to find a way of notating the regiments, perhaps by sticking tabs under the bases.

It is two hours to midnight here on New Year's Eve, so I at least completed the Leuthen anniversary game in the same month! All the best to you and yours, and here's to more gaming activity in the new year. Thanks for all the commentary and encouragement I've gotten from readers - community is key to gaming, even online. See you next year!

Merry Xmas

First off, the two parts of Christmas Carnage '23, as recorded by Jim Johnson of Sitrep Podcast:

We did not have an end-of-year Regatta. Instead, we tore Das Krieg Haus apart.

No photos, sadly, because the result is indescribable. Basically, our landlady has learned that our wooden mezzanine - indeed everything of wood, including the tables - is unsafe unless built by competent and licensed builders, which they weren't. So we spent a busy Saturday disassembling the clubhouse into a stack of wood, to be removed to the dump, and several stacks of models and terrain, some of which have also been removed to the dump or intended for sale. The rent is also going up, to a bit over a thousand USD a month.

Until Das Krieg Haus was a thing, the club met in members' garages and living rooms, and there was no general storage space. If we have to go back to everyone carting their stuff around for games, there will be fewer games and fewer players at each. (South Florida is big, and driving around it is hell.) So a meeting was held, and some thought given to better organization and greater dues. The plan is to buy folding tables and deep metal shelves - possibly to even have open gaming at several smaller tables rather than the massive clashes we normally have.

I was "voluntold" as Librarian, for obvious reasons. Ah, well. If I have to do the job, I'm happier sorting game supplies and books than managing a department or branch, which is why as of tommorrow I'm transferring to another branch where my responsibilities will be (somewhat) less. More crowded, though - the branch has an open plan and the work area is under construction, so I won't be storing as much useful supplies there as I'd like. My supervisors have expressed willingness to let me run games for the kids, so we'll see how that goes. Most likely I will run them for appropriate historical anniversaries - the 180th of Olustee is coming up, and right in the middle of Black History Month, too.

I brought a complete Games Workshop "Warhammer Alliance" set with me and picked up a couple family board games - the DnD stuff will remain at my old branch for my interested coworkers to make use of. I'm undecided whether to get into the new edition, given Hasbro's poor reputation at present. Will probably pick up copies of the 5th edition starter sets if the local teens seem interested, but I still prefer simpler "one-page" games when I can run them. The catch is that building a regular group really requires "regular" rules that the players are at least passingly familiar with. So if I don't do DnD, Warhammer may work better if I can get away with using it.

A few of the games I'm bringing to my new branch.

I also took home a couple things from the club collection:

Some more foam hills. These are higher than
the ones I bought from Amazon. The more
the merrier for a Northwest Frontier game!

Foam "seascape" boards. My home table
can only handle six, but I got talked into
sixteen. Well, might use 'em at work too.

Finally, I've finished all the paper minis I need to run a Leuthen scenario. Will probably try that next weekend.

Center - paper heavy cavalry. Sides: Wofun troops and
paper commanders. Bottom: Paper Leuthen Church buildings.

Thanks for reading, this year and always. Here's hoping your gaming in the New Year is creative and fun. Best wishes!

Battle at the North Pole

Today about eight members of the South Florida Miniatures Gamers played in another game DMed by "Oriskany Jim" Johnson of Sitrep Podcast. I'd gotten up early for a Sunday, was browsing Youtube, and spotted this "prep" video for the game:

("Whoops, forgot about this one...")

I hastily decamped to Das Krieg Haus and made it in time for deployment.

As usual, Jim provided a fantastic table of scratchbuilt terrain to play on:

    

If it's not obvious yet, this is Santa's workshop. Among the defenders:

I got the Toys For Tots squad led by a USMC bear, and Santa himself - the only flying model on the board. Other units included reindeer, elves, snowmen, polar bears, and a displaced yeti named Colonel Bumble.

Our opponents?

I've never played HALO, but that's a lotta guys.

Gun emplacements ...

... and Warthog vehicles were particularly intimidating.

Some of the good guys' deployment:

And those on the side of the Grinch:

Eep!

Justin the Mammoth leads (nonflying) reindeer.

Most important, AI holographic objectives. Take these out
and the defenders get bonuses to their rolls.

Table as a whole. HALO's objective is the lit-up Christmas tree.
If they have anyone touching it for an entire turn, they win.

The rules are very basic, and would work well for a snowball fight (that's presumably what the otherwise unarmed defenders were throwing anyway). I need to try this before I leave my branch (moving to a different one after Christmas); one of my coworkers has plenty of Christmas critters and decorations.

Left out is cover - +1 to the roll - and open and difficult terrain
movements are reversed. There are no morale rules.

HALO won initiative, and dropped a hurricane of fire on us. The reindeer mostly became venison, but the polar bears won so many of the rolloffs that we started calling them the Iron Bear Brigade. Justin the Wooly Mammoth, one of our commanders, was gone too. I was nervous about losing Santa, our fastest and most powerful piece, and kept him out of view.

"How do deer throw snowballs?"
"Chernobyl."

In Turn Two, we managed to knock out one of the powerful Warthogs, and I took the risk of flying high, where Santa could see everyone, but everyone could see Santa. Luckily, he took out one of the holograms, while a sweeping movement by the elves got the other. Next turn, Santa took a wound and hastily dropped back down.

Snowmen and bears hold the line.

The Yeti fearlessly leads on the right.

I selected thematic ice-blue dice for my units.

Brisk firefight ice fight on the right.

High move distance relative to the table meant double envelopment could be a thing. Unfortunately, ours left the primary objective unguarded, and ten HALO troopers descended upon it in triumph.

A bitter fight in bitter cold.

Santa's boys raced back and knocked out all the blue HALO unit, narrowly avoiding a knockout loss of the game. But a sniper took out Santa.

He's a magical elf. He'll recover
in time for next year, right?

At this point, the tree was defended; HALO's center thrust was gone, but they had defeated everything on our left; and HALO's right was going down to defeat under the overall leadership of the Yeti. My Marine bear picked off the sniper ("Zero Dark Thirty," was my inappropriate quip) and the game ended with an unbroken, if decimated, line of snowmen and bears between what remained of HALO green team and the tree.

If HALO meant High Altitude Low Opening, these guys
have just reenacted Arnhem.

A missile launcher team hides out of view...

... as very cute bears look on from a lovely scratchbuilt bridge.

So the North Pole is safe in the end, but HALO has a moral victory having taken out Santa. Who will deliver the toys now?

It belatedly occurs to me that there should have been severe range penalties on all sides for fighting in the dark. Since it's December above the Arctic Circle.

A fun and diverting game, in which I actually managed to learn the rules! Though, true to form, I kept asking the GM questions anyway. "Can we go faster sliding on the ice?" "Can we cause a snow avalanche?"

Next week, the annual Regatta!

TSATF, Fastoso variant

My fellow South Florida Miniatures Gamer Jeff, AKA Sgt. Guinness, just kindly introduced me to a variant of my favorite ruleset, The Sword and the Flame. It's by Mark Fastoso, as shown in a number of scenario books he wrote back in the day which I shall have to hunt down.

TSATF is based on 20-man infantry units, 12 cavalry, four gunners. Infantry and cavalry are commonly split in half as well.

Turns out even smaller sizes can work. Fastoso's co-author Roy Jones posted the rule changes in threads on The Miniatures Page such as this one:

Infantry: 8 men

Cavalry: 6 men

Artillery: 2-3 men (artillery fire in TSATF is based on the number of crew).

Stragglers: D6 roll - 1-2:one, 3-4:two, 5:three, 6:none.

Why is this important? Because of my oddly-proportioned Great Game collection from Wofun. Most of the units range from 15-20 infantry, 8-10 cavalry, and there aren't so many of these units that you can build a large game. The Indian Army selection, for example, have what would be three TSATF units and one and a half cavalry units, while the Russians only have one (1) infantry unit. Granted, this is plus Cossacks, Central Asians, etc, but still.

Then I took a closer look. Turns out the late Larry Brom chose his unit sies randomly, possibly based on the box sizes of the miniatures he was using. And given the popularity of half-units in the game, it's not all that farfetched that even smaller numbers could work.

I'm also considering Bob Cordery's classic Bundok and Bayonet. It is a larger-scale game, with five men to a company but still twenty to the battalion. (So my units would still be undersized.) It looks good, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet, and TSATF is more familiar. We'll see. I may try both.

Of course, there is the obvious but costlier solution of just buying more. Unlike Paperboys, though, I don't think this lot are available in print.

Two companies of Bengal infantry.

Five (!) companies of Afghan regulars.

A mere eight Bengal Lancers to a unit (I have two of these).
 Would four- or five-man squadrons work? I'd have to reduce
 stragglers even more... though some players leave them out.

I'll try it! After I run Leuthen with Wofuns and Paperboys, that is. Plastic Seven Years War 10mms will be out soonish, and that would be an excuse to buy more of the colonials...

The famous church in 18mm scale paper.
Easier to build than it looks!