Remote Charge!

Today I taught my brother Josh to play Charge! over Discord.

A bit tricky. But interesting, as it turned out.

I picked the classic Sawmill Village again for the scenario.

Like my previous Charge! game, I reduced the table
size, moves and ranges, substituting cm for inches.

Navarre Regiment, Bulkeley's Regiment and Royal Ecossais.

Essendale, Royal Kempston and Calein Highlanders.

Setup.

As per the scenario, we set up in opposite corners. In hindsight (given it took us three hours to do this) we should have set up across the long edges. The goal was either to seize the center of the field, or reduce two of the opposing three battalions to under 50%.

I took photos after each move and sent them to Josh over Discord. It may have been my phone, but I eventually found that Discord could not save photos I took to immediately post them - I had to go back and forth between Discord and my camera app. My brother was patient, though.

Turn One- we're both in column.

Josh, underestimating distance and moves, formed into line early.

Discovering he hadn't enough room between the buildings,
Josh "obliqued" forward and to the left, keeping his gun
on his right flank...

While my infantry debouched into the field from the hills.

By turn 6, my gun has found a commanding position
on the hill, but Josh has formed his line and is
plinking away at my gun with his own.

Turn 8: I have two regiments in line to Josh's three.
My third is hot-footing it around the tower.

Musketry begins. My gun is
down to one crewman.

The French line is breaking up
as Josh attempts to put all his men
in position to fight. Close-range
fire begins.

Turn 11: the firing is furious.
My gun is now unmanned.

Josh's left-hand regiment is down to half strength and
will have to fall back out of the battle. My 
nearly-equally-reduced right-hand unit forms into
column (meaning it can fight in four ranks to Josh's two).

As the French unit retreats,
Josh hopes to lay on to my
flanking column before his own
lads get into his line of fire.

Turn 12: My column is badly hurt by a volley but then
charges in...

And wins the combat, as my flanking column overruns
the left-hand French and manuevers...

... into position to charge a flank.

At top center, my center regiment is marking away out of range of Josh's swinging right flank, as it is one man from being half strength and thus losing me the game. This is because in front of the French line can be seen my worn-out assault column falling back out of the fight.

On turn 15, the 14-strong French
to the left are retreating; I've narrowly won.

End result:

• Two French regiments reduced under 50%.
• One British regiment reduced under 50%, another at 17 strong out of 32, and gun knocked out.

I'd say honours were about even.

Mistakes were made, of course. 

• Shooting is semi-simultaneous, so that those killed in a turn may return fire in the next. I thought that only happened during the same turn rather than the next, so that Josh (as the first player) lost troops to my return casualties fire, but could not in turn fire his own casualties in his next turn.
• Unit-retreating begins at 50% strength, not 50% minus one.
• An understrength unit is not simply wiped out when contacted, but still fights - if at half effect. This made a difference when my flanking column contacted Josh's understrength unit and we decided that, as in Warhammer, it was automatically eliminated.
• Finally, playing the game photo by photo was wearying, and video would have been quicker and clear. (The catch being that an overhead camera would make it hard to tell flat units apart...) I couldn't figure out how to start; a video call would have done the trick, but then I think I could not have taken photos for this blog.

Ah, well. It was a practical experiment, and above all I got to play a game with my little brother, which happens quite rarely. Even with voice and still photos only, it was enjoyable.

I am almost done with the Saxons for the 960 Project; just a flag or two and a handful of alternate shields to add and then I can send them off to Peter Dennis. (He's offered to base them for those of us across the pond, so shipping in an envelope shouldn't be too difficult.)

There will also be gaming at Das Krieg Haus 2 this weekend, and I'll try to make it. See you after.

In Remotest Bassignana

I worked late Thursday, so missed entirely the club 80th anniversary reenactment of D-Day, as presented by GM Pete Panzeri and recorded by Oriskany Jim:

But today I've got another game, my second with Jon Freitag and Fields of Honor, this time set in 1745 Piedmont. Let's see how it went!

The sides are me and Brian (Austria and Sardinia) vs. Doug and Alan (Bourbon France and Spain). All members of the Virtual Wargames Club. A difficult task for my side. I haven't followed Jon's previous run-thrus of this scenario, so I'm going in blind.

Now where did I put that dice tower...?

Lex has a new toy.

Note: This isn't entirely IgoUgo - initiative dice are drawn for each brigade. Also, I had trouble grokking Zoom and ended up looking from the Gallispan side for most of the game, and I didn't get many screenshots either. At one point, I tried to order enemy cavalry to charge. The others reckoned this was because I was using the browser version - will have to update. Another reason is that, unlike in the ACW game, most of the units on both sides wore white. I have seen that as a "fun" (depending on which side you're playing) mechanic - if you mistakenly fire into your own side under the impression they are the other side, it counts!

My side's deployment - I command the right (Austrians) while
Brian has the left (Piedmontese). Bourbons across the river.

Turn 1: Alan's (enemy right) opposing infantry moved up to the river. It was actually a creek - harder to cross in line than in column, but not really a detriment to shooting or fighting.

Next, Brian (our left) retreated a cavalry brigade.

Doug fired at my gun and scored a hit.

Then I went. My gun returned fire and hit the infantry regiment opposite.

Brian's turn again, firing across the river again and doing a hit on another Gallispan unit.

Doug's de Grammont brigade started into the river.

End of turn 1 as seen from the Bourbon side of the table.

Turn 2: I went. Couldn't do anything, really, being out of range still for musketry. I fired my light gun (on 2d10), but got a 1 and 5 when I needed 6s to hit.

Doug moved forward into the river and over the bridge. After some back-and-forth, Brian decided to pop out his light infantry and fire into them. There was a brisk exchange.

Then Alan charged two cavalry regiments from the bridge into the Sardinian unit with King Emmanuele next to it, and moved an infantry regiment into the river on his flank and the light infantry's. Before the cavalry melee, though, Brian marched a musketeer unit forward and fired. He managed to eliminate one of the Spanish cavalry regiments! Close combat was also lucky for us and the second cavalry unit was killed off. The brigadier was also hurt, so Doug's infantry was "out of command."

Brian and I fired our guns into the central infantry regiment in the stream, to no effect.

The light infantry on our left, faced with four splashing line regiments, retreated into the woods.

Infantry and Cav advanced on my side of the table. I got three musketry hits (with first fire) but only one converted to a wound.

Still doing alright, but cracks are showing...

It was at this point that I became increasingly confused, which is one reason why the following notes are so sparse. (Or maybe it's the other way round.)

Turn 3: Doug crossed the river and slammed into me. With poor dice rolls, a cavalry unit was eliminated and my brigade broken. This is not bad per se - a minus one to rolls - but break half your brigades and you've lost.

I advanced infantry to the river and tried to stem an attack by two regiments. I got four dice, two hits (on 3+!), doubled for there being two opposing units in the hex, but my opponent saved all but one hit.

Like I said, I can barely tell these guys apart...

(These mini-dice are not very good, are they?)

Brian and I egged each other on here, persisting in ill-advised attacks. So did Doug, but his were more successful. Someone quoted Claverhouse - "He fears his fate too much, or his desserts are small, who will not put it to the touch to win or lose it all."

So we started to fall back. At this point I think the Bourbons had earned the minor victory conditions of holding three of the settlements - the major conditions were to hold Bassignana, the bridge on our side of the table, and two settlements.

"Advance in the opposite direction!" Note that both our flanks
are no longer in touch with the enemy.

Turn 4: Some of our reserves turned up on our back line, for all the good it might do.

Alan's right flank (our left) went after Brian's light infantry in the woods. His line infantry advanced down the road, but Brian managed to counter-charge and destroy the regiment with his cavalry.

Then we lost a cavalry unit AND King Emmanuele (whoops). This meant that three of our four brigades were broken, and the survivors had to retire per Sudden Death conditions. End game, earlier than expected.

I rolled poorly today, but the real issue was my own confusion. Though, when you think about it, this mirrors the confusion of real generals. At least we pretty much mirrored the historical result of the battle!

I rather think it might have been a better idea to pull back my brigade - which turned out to have the best regiments, like grenadiers and guards - towards Brian's side of the table. By the time I decided on that, it was too late.

No blame to Jon here - as usual, his presentation and GMing were excellent. The time flew by, and I barely thought about the rules at all. It may not sound it from my description, but I enjoyed the game. Hopefully I can get another in, less than two-plus years from now!

'Til next time!

A Much-Delayed Report of the Leisurely, Protracted Battle of Finchley Common

I swear I wasn't procrastinating. At least this time. Really. I've had vertigo for a week now, so jumping up and down from the computer and leaning over a table were pretty counterproductive. I've got some medication and exercises for it now, so let's see how long this takes me to write.

As a reminder, we used the D3 Jacobite rules from Gridbased Gaming But Not Always. My theory was that, because the rules are a page long, the game would go quickly. In practice, it took around a week. I was lucky to have a very patient opponent! Fellow Paperboys enthusiast George Bisset was even happy to take the clearly disadvantaged Jacobites. As we played remotely, I sent photos of my table and we exchanged moves on Facebook Messenger.

Each unit is represented by two infantry or cavalry bases or one artillery base; each unit has 8 hit points.

Opening positions. Government in two lines with guns in the
front rank; cavalry and a mortar on the flanks. Jacobites in three
lines with cavalry to the fore and three guns to the left.

Turn 1: George started off by charging towards my guns with his cavalry - one unit in each direction. His infantry. Once I remembered the Highlanders would outdistance the one French regiment (represented by Ecossais), he decided to hold them back as artillery guards. His guns all targeted my rightmost dragoon regiment and did a whopping five hits - George's response was "NOW THAT'S SHOOTIN!"

I held fast and swept my cavalry in from the flanks:

My infantry were still out of range (6") so my guns plinked away for a few hits on one cavalry unit, one highlander unit, and one gun.

Turn 2: Communication was a bit confused at this point - because I moved the highlanders 4.5 inches they were smack on the line between squares, which took a little explanation. In practice my photography seemed useful, and comments like "your infantry are a move and a half off, and your cav in range to charge this turn" got across well enough.

George charged my batteries and spread his infantry out a little, with his rear flank units attempting to extend the line.

The Jacobite guns managed to wipe out one of my dragoon regiments, while the cavalry charges were highly successful; between charging bonuses and the vulnerability of guns (which take double hits in CC) they knocked out my two outer guns.

My own moves in response were a bit complex. The Household Cav on my left moved forward and around the Jacobite flank - one struck George's cavalry in the flank, and one charged the infantry unit George had moved to extend his line. On the right, my dragoons did exactly the same thing. My Guards regiments fired a volley, to little effect despite having a "first volley" bonus. One charged Highlander unit broke and retreated towards the built-up areas on its start line. The other units took serious damage, but not enough to wipe them out.

The "ongoing" combats were more worrisome. The rules-as-written do not cover ongoing combats or the fighting scores of units that can't charge. After a little thought, and with George's agreement, I made two decisions:

• Units that cannot charge do their normal firing damage in melee.
• In the second and later turns of a combat, all rolls are at -1. (Remember we're rolling D3s, so this is pretty significant.)

It seemed to work, especially for the gun crews who wouldn't be very effective in melee.

Next, I realized that if units can only attack one opponent - and splitting attacks isn't that useful when you only have D3 to work with - George would have to make a choice.

Fight my guns but be flanked by my cavalry...

Or fight the cavalry but unmask my guns.

Fortunately for him, I then remembered it was his turn, so his infantry could simply charge the gun!

Turn 3: George's units simply moved forward, his front line charging my Guards front line. By now, as he pointed out, this was effectively a solo game, and if I'd felt healthier and run the turns faster it certainly could have been. I lost a third gun to the infantry charge, while my Guards regiments held. Morale in these rules is simply a 2d6 roll against the number of hits taken, and since at this stage my engaged units had 3 or 4 hits, it was difficult for them to roll under and thus break - though I had at least three rolls right on the number! I rallied off most of the hits on my Guard, which meant we'd both used all our "morale" rolls up - three apiece assumed to be from commanders rallying the unit, returning lost HP. In my own turn, I rolled a lot of threes on D3, but without doing enough damage to break my opponents (in part due to the -1 penalty for ongoing combat) so the fights went on.

Since only highlanders and cavalry may charge, my militia could only stand and fire rather than advance into the gaps in the line.

Only 2 has a clear line of sight here - I assume despite
the 45-degree LOS that Militia 1 and 3 can't fire into melee.

Turn 4: George's units either moved forward or continued to battle mine, while his guns shot at their only target - my mortar on the hill. None of my units broke, but they all took enough damage that many would go away next turn. I fought back; flanking helped me destroy three of his units, though this put my victorious dragoons again in the sights of George's guns.

One of George's units broke - into the back of my cavalry, which was sweeping around his flank. Here was another grey area in the rules. Had the cavalry been facing him, I'd have ruled George's infantry destroyed; had the infantry been unbroken, it would have charged into George. Neither seemed to match the events, so instead I had the broken regiment angle around.

The situation on my right - victorious dragoons with a battery
of guns just staring at them.

Turn 5: Despite some gleaming opportunities to hurt my cav, George decided to be characterful and retreat instead. Granted, he would then have been countercharged by my infantry, but at this point I think he was a bit worried by my Cannae-like flanking attempt. 

Half a highlander square. One useful thing that prevents
easy flanking is that a charging unit may only change facing once.

Another of my dragoon regiments was destroyed by fire. In my turn, my cavalry charged his highlanders, while my infantry lines started to move forward across the field.

Turn 6: Another thing for which there aren't rules; withdrawing from combat. I'm used to Warhammer games, where melee continues interminably unless one side or the other fails a morale test - rules for voluntary breaking are rare. In our case, we just allowed it - since only one side fights in a round, it seemed punishment enough that George's retreating units could not do damage to mine. On the other hand, his guns could still fire. At this point I turned to solo work - with George's permission, we just retreated his units, breaking and otherwise, towards the built-up-areas on his table edge. By the end of Turn 7, his survivors had made it to this line, and mine were halfway up the board. At least this is not a Culloden-like defeat for the rebels, who reasonably can wait until dark and slip away from their defensive position.

Casualties: (All units began with 8 HP, those listed are hits lost rather than remaining)

Jacobite: (Units 1-2 cavalry, unit 9 Ecossais, all other units Highlander)

• Gun 1 - 2 hit
• Unit 1 - destroyed
• Unit 2 - 6 hits
• Unit 3 - 6 hits
• Unit 4 - 7 hits
• Unit 5 - 4 hits
• Unit 6 - destroyed
• Unit 7 - 4 hits 
• Unit 8 - destroyed
• Unit 9 - 3 hits
• Unit 10 - 7 hits

Government casualties:

• Gun 1 - destroyed
• Gun 2 - destroyed
• Gun 4 - destroyed
• Gun 5 - 7 hits
• Household Cav 1 - 2 hits
• Household Cav 2 - 3 hits
• Household Cav 3 - 4 hits
• Dragoon 1 - 1 hit
• Dragoon 2 - destroyed
• Dragoon 3 - routed off table.
• Guard 1 - 4 hits
• Guard 2 - 2 hits
• Guard 3 - 3 hits

So the Government actually lost more units - particularly guns, though in context the guns if not the crews would be recovered. George's side had nearly all units still alive but many had taken debilitating casualties and could have been destroyed if we continued in the open field. Of 104 hit points in his army, George lost 63, while of 176, I lost 66. My back line, except for one militia unit, never saw action.

George's reaction to the rules and the game was favorable. 

Me: I think the Scots came out of it pretty well - with a little luck and a willing sacrifice at the end they could have done serious damage to the Brits. At least to the cavalry, thus avoiding a pursuit...

He: I had the impression we were starting to get the worst of it, hence the withdrawal, which worked fairly well.my original plan was to form on the buas and hope you'd attack, and also look for a weak flank. if I had to attack I was surprised to find you so forward on turn one and decided to close right away.

Me: I mostly figured the Brits would be - parading on the parade ground. I also ran quickly out of room for the units. In hindsight, I could certainly have attacked, what with outnumbering.

Issues to think about before the next time I try these short-but-sweet rules:

- Auto-destruction if breaking but trapped?

- What roll to hit during protracted combat?

- Leaving combat voluntarily?

End result - Bonnie Prince Charlie loses the Battle of Finchley Common, but manages to retreat safely with the survivors. Will he make it back to Scotland with Cumberland's and Wade's armies between him and home? Probably not, but might be an interesting skirmish down the road.

Despite the delays, George was very complimentary and offered to be my victim opponent in future remote games. Thanks to everyone who's followed this desultory little campaign.

And happy New Year!

Brawner's Farm, Fields of Honor, and remote gaming

 I had the opportunity today to play a remote ACW game, representing the action of Brawner's Farm, August 28, 1862. It was against Ivan Edwards, and presented by Jon Freitag of the Palouse Wargaming Journal. 

I was particularly eager to try this for two reasons. 1) As a librarian, I want to learn about remote gaming, as live programming is off-limits at my workplace for the foreseeable future. 2) I got to play the Iron Brigade, which I am building in paper for a try at Glory: 1861. (They'll represent a US Regular battalion, being in the same uniform.) In between rolls, I was cutting out more strips; I seem to like doing something with my hands while conversing on Zoom.

In both cases, I was fully satisfied.

The American Civil War was the genesis of my interest in history; I visited Gettysburg at the age of six and bought my first copy (of three!) of the Golden Book History of the Civil War, which had these awesome maps in it:

I agree with another blogger that this is the most influential
book on the Civil War, and for the same reason.

But while I became an amateur authority on the Civil War in first grade, Brawner's Farm, a sort of prequel to Second Bull Run, was never on my radar. The first I learned about it was from A Brotherhood of Valor by Jeffry D. Wert, which I read last year and is a parallel history of the Stonewall and Iron Brigades. Brawner's Farm was the latter's baptism of fire.

It was also my baptism of fire into wargaming online, and the ruleset Fields of Honor, as ably gamemastered by Jon Freitag. I've been following Jon both on his own blog and on Wargaming for Grownups, where he also participates in remote games as well as running his own. He was concerned about this particular game because the figures are only 10mm, so this was a bit of an experiment for him as well as for us.

The field of battle.

I played the Union, which is why this view has them at the "bottom." The Iron Brigade (Gibbon's) is to the right, Doubleday's to the left, one battery in the center and three more to the right off-camera. It took a while before I got used to taking screenshots, and I'm sure Jon's own report will have much better pictures. He was taking closeups, and while he had a "floating" webcam for closeups we never actually used it. Which suggests that the overhead system worked well. Even at the small figure scale, the Union units are easily identifiable.

Union right flank, first turn,

Here the Iron Brigade has moved off the road (but still sheltered by the woods, which turned out to have the same light-cover designation as the fence lines). Artillery is also visible, and exchanging fire as the Rebels started with only artillery on the board. The small base behind an infantry regiment represents the brigade commander, while the guns have limbers. Each gun base represents a section of two cannon, with three making a battery with appropriate bonuses to rolls. The Rebels got bonuses for having two batteries in the same hex, as their standard size was four guns rather than six.

Doubleday's brigade on the left also moves off the road.

After turn two, the flank Rebel guns are eliminated,
but infantry reinforcements are coming on table.

Units are rated by weapon type (muskets, rifles, smoothbore or rifled guns, howitzers) and morale rating. This last provides bonuses to D10 rolls and saves. I had a Union-blue sparkly ten-sider (picked up at Supercon a couple weeks ago) which I ended up rolling for most everything and was remarkably lucky at shooting and saving throws, to the point that I wouldn't have blamed my opponent or the GM for being suspicious. It should be noted, however, that the "standard" throw in these rules is 5+, and the Iron Brigade all got +1.

"Rebels, Sir! Thousands of 'em!"

By turn three, I'd moved the Iron Brigade into the defensible position of the trees, and advanced Gibbons up the table, but my left-hand artillery were still out of position. I am easily torn by dilemmas, which can be frustrating for my opponents as I take forever to choose. Here I could leave my guns in the open, but masked by Gibbon's infantry. Or I could move them slowly into the woods, where they would be in cover but even less able to contribute.

The center holds, as an attack on Brawner's Farm develops.

As it turned out, it was possible for them to move through the woods and unlimber in a turn, so I moved them that way. It also turned out they were howitzers and could fire on the now-occupied farm, even though it was beyond the "military crest." Negatives to the roll, of course. As the two farms were the game objectives, and my guns held the one on the right, my intent was to bombard Brawner's, take it with infantry, and hold it against all comers.

Unfortunately, the Rebels had more troops, and they were closer to the farm than I was.

"Up and onward o'er the slope
Comrades lie around me slain"
-- Alasdair MacDonald

I also tried sending a regiment after the last guns on my right:

If it weren't for my lucky Union die, this would have been suicidal.

This turned out to be the Second Wisconsin, about to write a fictional page in history no less incredible than the one they actually wrote on the day.

They charged down the guns, and on the way took a charge of canister and the shared volleys of no less than five Confederate regiments. With their commander, they had a good saving throw - but they had to make around fifteen saves.

It helped that, in these rules, the firing side must effectively be behind its target to enfilade it. (Jon will change this for the next go-around.) The Second didn't make every save - but they didn't fail any either until the very last volley.

Gibbon's Brigade at this time was trying desperately to take Brawner's farm in the center-left. Both combats went on for another two phases, and still failed to dislodge the Rebels. In the end, I was driven back.

Charges on both flanks ultimately failed.

My Union-blue die was lucky only so long as I was rolling for firing and saves from firing. In melee, it choked every time.

I can't really blame the dice. I really did overextend myself. The end result:

My center is okay, but I hold nothing else save the farm.
And what's that to the upper right?...

We gave up at this point. The Rebs can be seen sweeping around my left. My right is still free, but the fresh Rebel brigade in the corner is in marching column. They will probably reach their second, winning, objective (my guns in the right-hand farm) before my battered Iron Brigade can get there. My gambles had failed.

I was way outnumbered, of course!

The game was a fine test of the rules, and of remotely playing a game on this scale. I certainly learned a bit. From my own perspective, hoping to GM games like this myself, I have greater understanding of what it takes to present the game to the players. By the end even my slow mind was internalizing the rules, but Jon's GMing practically made that unnecessary. He provided options and provided the targets for rolling. He also did some of the rolling himself; I might use something like rolldicewithfriends.com for a game like this. In an educational sense, this game worked because the players didn't need to think about the mechanisms, and could focus on our maneuvers.

Ivan commented that it felt more like a boardgame than a wargame, and I'm inclined to agree. This is mostly, I think, because of the top-down view and the fact we rarely used closeups; the units (each of three elements) look more like blocks than like groups of figures. Gamewise this is not a bad thing, but it's a bit cautionary for me; if I try something like this it will be with Paperboys, which I suspect from overhead will be virtually unidentifiable. A lower angle, something like my earlier FKR game may be better, especially because the figures are what I hope will most interest and attract my newbie players.

Closeups:

Iron Brigade at the fence.

The Confederate view.

It also felt like the divisional game it was, because from the player's view we couldn't identify our regiments - their names and stats were visible to Jon but not us. We saw them as brigades, and the simple game mechanisms supported this. At this scale, the commander cares less about his units' formation, range, cover, etc and more about the overall effect - Did I win or lose? How well or badly? (This is the same way I run simple roleplaying games - it works just as well on a small scale!) Paddy Griffith discusses this in his book Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun, which notably uses the same four elements to represent a regiment, brigade or division, and decreases the battle resolution as games grow "larger."

A good, fun game that wound up in around three hours. Well done to Jon, and congratulations to my opponent, Ivan! Jon gave the impression he will run this again with some modifications; maybe I'll try it again and see if I can do better. See you then.