Huzzah 2019 AAR

It has taken me a week to get to my Huzzah report.  Ross Macfarlane has, as usual, written circles around me and gotten all of his Huzzah material posted already, although it might be noted that he has the advantage of being retired. For those not already familiar with Huzzah, it is an excellent local convention run each May by the Maine Historical Wargamers (MHW) in Portland, and has the additional special advantage of being about halfway between my house in Delaware and Ross's house in Nova Scotia.

In preparing for this year's Huzzah, Ross and I had agreed that we would field games using our Not Quite Seven Years War collections.  Mine hadn't been out in a year or so, at least until we did the remote playtest of the Ambush scenario a few weeks ago.  Following the playtest, we agreed on the force levels we would use at Huzzah.  I brought two 24-man infantry units, 2 12-man infantry units, 2 12-man cavalry units, a 12-man sapper unit, and a couple of guns, plus some command figures.  Two 6-liter boxes have been calculated to be the most that will fit under the seat on most commercial flights, and that all fit, once I selected the cavalry from those who were't waving swords in the air.

Infantry ready to go

Cavalry, with a few needed taller figures cushioned in handkerchiefs

Armies on the go; 2 6-liter Really Useful Boxes

Getting the troops through security was interesting, as always.  I could see by the look on the x-ray operator's face that she was trying to decide what to ask, so I just jumped in and said that it was a box of toy soldiers.


I met fellow HAWK Duncan Adams at the airport; we hadn't planned to travel together, but the limited air schedule from Baltimore to Portland meant that I wasn't completely surprised to see him.  We had a limited HAWKs team this year, just four of us altogether.

We arrived at the hotel in good time, before the MHW people had finished setting up registration.  Registration was the one element of the convention that didn't go as well as the MHW had probably hoped.  It was entirely my own fault that I forgot to register in advance, but the computer system they were using this year turned out, as they discovered, to be unable to register people at the door.  Handing them cash in return for a handwritten badge was not a problem, but it did have the knock-on effect of leaving me unable to register for any games, since I wasn't in the computer system.  They said that they would return the paper game registration books next year, or perhaps they will have the computer system worked out.  I will also make sure that I am properly registered...

Ross arrived within an hour, and we decided to set up a test game of A Gentleman's War in the afternoon session.  I don't have much to add to Ross's account of the battle.

A couple of turns in; initiative cards and rules prominently displayed

We were pleased with how the rules played, particularly as a two-player game.  I was a little slow in picking up the implications of the initiative system, and Ross was able to get better use from his artillery.  So, the forces of Schoeffen-Buschhagen were eventually compelled to retreat, leaving the village in the hands of the Rosish.

After supper, we set up the second game.  This was the ambush scenario (#30) from C.S. Grant's Scenarios for Wargames, using Ross's home rules, "With MacDuff to the Frontier".

S-B Adelmann Regiment advances to its blocking position

S-B von Nordhafen Regiment also moving to block

Wachovian Hussars facing down the Rosish cavalry

As Ross has noted, the Schoeffen-Buschhagen ambushing force put most of its strength into a blocking effort along the road, and left the light infantry off to their left to harass the convoy, and, as it turned out, lure a significant part of the convoy escort into chasing them into the rough ground away from the road and the wagons.  The S-Bs managed to win the game by not losing their patience .

I took the Saturday morning session off, to do some shopping and get my Gencon event wishlist in order, because the Sunday of Huzzah was also the opening of the Gencon events registration.  I was fairly restrained; although I did pick up a nice clean copy of  the Avalon Hill edition of Kingmaker and a couple of figures for my Dark Ages/Saga collection.

On Saturday afternoon we set up the second game we were running, the Sittangbad scenario from Charge!.  Ross and I occasionally slipped and referred to our usual forces as "my side" while gamemastering.  As it was, what felt like an endless array of "his" forces came rolling across the table at "mine", which were attempting to evacuate supplies and mine a bridge.  Excellent work by the King Rupert Jaegers in holding the farther town slowed down the advancing Rosish tide for just long enough to mine the bridge.  Rosish grenadiers had just assaulted "my" troops guarding the bridge and were in a position to clear the engineers if they drew the next initiative card.

Starting view of the table, prior to Rosish entry; key bridge at the upper left

S-B forces form a line to hold, following an initial cavalry melee

Just in the nick of time; the general and the engineers cross the bridge to safety moments before the explosion

Happily for S-B, the card fell for "us", and the general and the engineers made it to safety as the bridge was demolished in the explosion.  Unhappily, a dragoon regiment, the remaining grenadiers guarding the approaches to the bridge, and half of the engineers were left on the wrong side and compelled to surrender.  It is to be hoped that a prisoner exchange will occur soon.

Jeff Bickel's C&C Ancients Gaugamela game

I spent the evening session commanding the Persians against Alexander in a Command and Colors Ancients game run by Nova Scotian Jeff Bickel.  As expected, Alex was hard to beat, and we didn't...

We tried one more session of A Gentleman's War on Sunday morning before we departed.  I got busy running the game, and didn't end up taking more than one picture.

Rosmark artillery takes a toll of S-B Grenadiers

As noted in Ross's report, he used a fire advantage carefully, and the S-B infantry attack was repulsed without too much difficulty.

We talked about next year's convention over lunch; the current notion is that we will dust off and expand the French Revolution collection for the game(s).

Meisterzinn pieces for a new 1793 unit

Checking available Meisterzinn head castings against Funcken illustrations

More on that to follow...

Huzzah 2018 After Action Report

I have been in the habit of attending Huzzah, in Portland, Maine, for several years now.  This got started when my friend Ross Macfarlane had been unable to make it down to a Cold Wars for a while, and suggested that we meet somewhere halfway between his home in Nova Scotia and mine in Maryland.  It's a twelve hour drive for me, or a relatively short flight, which seems like a long way to go for a local convention, but between an opportunity to stage games with Ross and the fact that the Maine Historical Wargamers put on a great show, it's worth it.

This year I had planned to fly, so Ross and I ended up deciding to run a Dragon Rampant game, using my portable 1/72 scale plastic fantasy set.

Portable fantasy game configured for an air trip the week before Huzzah

I've been working on the 1/72 scale plastics a fair amount this past year.  For air travel, they have the advantage of being light enough to carry around, and also light enough that the bases stick to the magnetic travel boxes very firmly.  The configuration shown above was from the Detroit trip mentioned in the previous post, and I had to dismount the top box to get it jammed into the overhead compartment.  This time, I left that at home and just brought a 6 liter box with three war bands worth of troops (about 35 60mm x 40mm bases) and the 12 liter box with support gear such as scenery, dice, tokens, and rules.  I had some curiosity from the TSA agent boarding in Baltimore, but no problems.  Norman showed up with a fourth war band and some spares in a 4 liter box, so we had two thirds of the game in hand.

My older son, Norman, elected to come up with me this year, so I met him at the airport on Friday morning, and we had an uneventful flight to Portland, arriving at the hotel and convention venue around 10:30.  Huzzah has elected for easy planning, and has each day set up with gaming time slots, so that there are two on Friday, after lunch and after dinner, three on Saturday, one after each meal, and one on Sunday, after breakfast.  I have not typically had much problem getting into games, but apparently Huzzah is getting to be more popular, because most of the games were fully signed up throughout the weekend.  As a gamemaster, I was registered and had a badge, but I hadn't gotten around to signing up for anything in particular.  I did a quick search through the registration books and found a few open things, which is how I ended up playing in a 1973 October War tank game using "picoarmor" and the Spearhead rules, an old set by Arty Conliffe.  I was reminded that Arty's design philosophy was that commanders were constrained in their abilities to control events, so, like Armati (his ancients rules), Spearhead seems really designed to be a two player game.  There aren't really enough decisions to spread them among multiple players.

Picoarmor, more visible en masse than I expected

I elected to take the Syrians, which turned out to be functioning in the role of ducks in a shooting gallery.  The Israeli Centurians were effectively indestructible, so it wasn't my best game of the weekend.

Ross and I neglected out "best practices" handbook a bit this weekend, mostly due to my real life being a bit hectic recently, so we had not staged a trial game of Dragon Rampant by Skype beforehand.  Therefore, when he proposed that we should do a warm-up game in the Friday evening time slot, it seemed like a prudent idea.  We recruited a few other players and grabbed an empty table for a simple head to head slog between the six war bands we were using for the morning game.  As a result, we made some pen and ink changes on the hand out sheets; for unfamiliar players the terminology used by the game seems to be difficult to pick up.

Ross had originally proposed that we use Scenario 10, The Alliance, from C.S. Grant's Programmed War-games Scenarios as the basis for our Dragon Rampant  game.  After the Friday night test, I was generally unworried about the scenario; the game tends to be a little swingy anyway, so sticking to scenario victory conditions was unlikely to be a main concern.  

Barbarians of the Cold Islands in action

We modified the rules for multiplayer games by using side activation; each of the three players on a side got to act until a unit failed its activation roll, after which play passed to the enemy.  We issued each player three reroll tokens, good for an activation or morale roll, so that they had some luck mitigation available in the event of bad rolls.  Nevertheless, this game does work better as a two player game, and six is pushing the upper limit of what can remain fun.  As Ross noted, the point values are approximate, and I'm not sure that our war bands were actually balanced as intended.  On the barbarian right flank, for example, 30 points of Cold Islanders with "bellicose foot" (essentially berserkers) were unable to make any headway at all against a 24 point war band of Robin Hood-Style archers and scouts.  Nevertheless, the players seemed to be enjoying the game, so we'll call it a success and plan better next year.

I had the tables turned on me, as it were, in the afternoon session when I found myself appointed commander of a Saxon force in a six player Saxon/Viking Lion Rampant game on account of my familiarity with the rules.  I was able to get in a few solid attacks with my household mounted force, but, on the whole, the Saxon fyrdsmen seemed to be outmatched by the ferocity of the Vikings.  The gamemaster used a similar concept to the reroll tokens, except that he gave out two per player and they were automatically worth a successful roll.  As with my game, six players seems to me to be about the practical limit for any game in which players are acting approximately one at a time.

54mm Accurate AWI foot in action

After a leisurely supper, I was invited to play in a pick up game of Osprey's Honours of War, which I picked up on speculation a while back (as I already have figures) but which I hadn't read.  This was hosted by Al Coughlin, using 54mm figures from Accurate and All the King's Men.  I do love the toy soldier look of the big figures on the table, but the rules were probably not anything that I see using in the future.  

Ross's 40mm homecast WWI

On Sunday morning, after the traditional breakfast at Cracker Barrel (next door and an easy walk from the hotel), we ended up doing a reprise of Ross's Friday game, a 1914 scenario using home cast 40mm figures and a gridded map.  I'm not a big fan of gridded maps, but I think that has more to do with not wanting to fuss with constructing one than the actual games.  I took the Germans on the offensive against my son Norman's French and British.  Apart from some success on my right flank, where I was able to push my scout cavalry and bicycles up through the woods, attempting to attack the redoubt in the center of the board was a costly mistake.  It needed a lot more artillery preparation, and I see how WWI offensives ended up starting with weeks of bombardment.  

Ross, Norman and me, at departure time

I managed to avoid most of the shopping for the weekend, spurred on by the knowledge that everything had to go back with me as a carry-on.  I did end up picking up a few books from the flea market, something on the 30 Years War, something on the Ottomans in the 16th and 17th century, and a copy of the old WRG guide to Armies of the Greek and Persian Wars, one of the few I don't already own.

Ross and I agreed to work toward a 16th century game using our 40mm collections again next year, so I guess I am committing to driving next time, as that project won't pack in flying luggage very well.  I decided it was time to add to my mold collection for the period, and ordered some sample Landsknecht molds from Berliner Zinnfiguren, which carries a range from Artidee/Creartec, while I was sitting at the airport waiting for our return flight.

Overall, it was a fun convention, as always, and I am looking forward to next year.

Huzzah 2017 After Action Report

After taking a year off from Huzzah in 2016 (for my son's college graduation), I made the trip again this year.

Huzzah takes place in Portland, Maine, at a hotel near the airport, which makes flying very practical.  This year my significant other was up for a road trip and some shopping at the nearby L.L. Bean outlet, so I was able to pack my 40mm Renaissance figures to be half of a game run with my long-time collaborator Ross Macfarlane.  In some future year, though, I may find myself limited to staging a game that is air-transportable, but that's a topic for a different post.

The general stress of life has been a little high this year, so I was fortunate that Ross was up to the task of doing most of the planning for our game, as well as acting as the convention liaison for the contingent of HAWKs who came up for the weekend.  As the convention approached, I have been working on something else entirely (1/72 fantasy), so Ross dipped into his vast collection of miniatures and came up with a 1/72 Hordes of the Things army so that we'd have an alternative pick up game.

Irene and I reached Portland on Thursday evening after an uneventful drive.  Official gaming at Huzzah starts after lunch on Friday, so there was a little time to relax and make ready.  When Ross arrived, we grabbed a table for a quick review game of the 40mm Renaissance rules we use, and then moved on to our first official game.

We were both in a 54mm English Civil War game, using plastic figures from A Call to Arms and the Very Civile Actions rules from The Perfect Captain.  The gamemaster, Jeff Estabrook, had chosen the Battle of Brentford, immediately after Edgehill at the beginning of the war, as the basis of his scenario, and we had a good game of pushing around pike blocks.  I used to do ECW in 25mm, but sold them off some years ago, figuring that one pike and shot project (40mm 16th century) was probably enough.  I think I'll maintain that resolve, but I was reminded that I like the toy soldier feel of gaming with the big figures.

My troops at Brentford

Ross surveys the battlefield

Ross and I set up our game in the after-supper time block.  We used a generic scenario drawn from the Stuart Asquith book on solo wargaming, which we set in the 1544 Boulogne campaign, part of Henry VIII's second French war, and which is more or less the default time frame for our troop collections.  The scenario involved two forces on converging paths, each tasked with holding a village and exiting troops off a single road on the far side of the field.  Our forces were somewhat asymmetrical, with the French being heavier, and the English (and allies) being superior in firepower.  I thought the game went well, with all of the players remaining actively engaged right up to the end at the four hour mark.  The French were edged out of the village and blocked from exiting, but it was a near run thing in both cases.

My pikes, French today, advance toward the village

The starting positions; armies converging

My village of Fat Dragon Fold-flat buildings

The English advance guard

Push of Pike!

Ross ran an impromptu demonstration of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame rules in the Saturday morning block, and I had a go at evicting the British from Zululand a couple of times, using an eclectic mix of 54mm troops from Ross's collection.  Forces ranged from A Call to Arms plastic Zulus to 80 year old vintage Britains, recently restored and repainted.  I already have a copy of The Portable Wargame, so happily I'm ready to try this at home, perhaps using some troops that haven't been out in a while.

Some war-games veterans here...

On Saturday afternoon, local gamer Rob Wheeler (who does business as Pennyfew Painting) stopped in to deliver some commissions and to play a couple of rounds of Dragon Rampant.  His war band was composed primarily of vintage Ral Partha figures, and I fielded two different bands, one of mostly Ral Partha figures, "The Masters of Lizards", and one entirely of early Heritage figures, "Forest Defenders". They were equally unsuccessful, so I will be looking for some revenge at a future convention...

Two Robs

Heritage Treemen send the Ral Partha bugbears packing; one of my few moments of triumph...

Rob's army advances; my RAFM Reptiliads are helpless.

I had not preregistered for anything for the convention (see comment regarding life stress above), so the Saturday evening games were pretty much closed out.  Therefore Ross, Irene, and I had an unhurried dinner at a steak place across the street, and then came back to set up a pickup game of Hordes of the Things, using the 1/72 scale plastics we had brought.  Once again, my skills were wholly inadequate to the situation at hand, and my army was sent packing with a 6:1 loss ratio by Ross's barbarians (built from a mix of Revell Saxons, Orion Vikings, and the classic Airfix Ancient Britons).  

Ross with his improvised army

Ross's Black Cauldron

Ross did a reprise of the Portable Wargame on Sunday morning, so I had a quick session using Russian Civil War figures against fellow HAWK Duncan Adams, before heading out for the long drive home.

Time to go until next year

Huzzah remains a great local convention.  I was glad to be back this year, and look forward to attending again next year, although I might be a little more proactive about registering for games in advance.

Huzzah 2015

A belated report:

Huzzah, the annual convention excellently run by the Maine Historical Wargamers, took place in Portland, Maine, from May 15th to May 17th.

This was my fourth Huzzah, and my favorable reports on the previous three events led my club, the Hawks, to dispatch an expeditionary force this year. Counting our remote member, Ross Macfarlane, we had eight in attendance, and hosted seven official games.

Ross and I have typically been deciding on our Huzzah games at the previous convention, so we had known for a long while that we were planning on running two Charge! games using the Prince August 40mm home cast figures, as part of the ongoing action in the Not Quite Seven Years War. Having chosen the project, the decision to drive was made for me, because the stuff needed can't really be brought on an air trip. So, I and my SO drove up on Thursday, and were ready to start bright and early on Friday. Huzzah added a Friday afternoon gaming block this year; if things keep going this way, perhaps Friday mornings will be next...

Ross and my son Norman both arrived around lunch time on Friday, from opposite directions. Ross and I are working on a set of fast play Old School fantasy rules as part of what I've been calling the Aurora Project. We wanted to take the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to put a game on the table as part of the rules development process. Hordes of classic 25mm fantasy figures would have been difficult to carry along with the 40mm NQSYW figures, so I brought my 6mm DBA/Hordes of the Things box and we improvised a bit.

We hastily drew up a scenario in which a combined force of elves and men attempted to drive off a force of orcs and allies before they could complete an elaborate spell to destroy the castle (seen below around the middle of the table).




The woods, visible around the middle of the table on Ross's side, turned out to be a significant factor, as the humans and the elves got separated and their attacks were not coordinated. Mounting casualties eventually caused the elves and men to retreat, and the orcs were able to complete their spell and destroy the castle.



With that experience, we can now proceed with rules refinement.

Ross and I staged the first of our NQSYW games Friday evening. The scenario was "A Chance Encounter" from Scenarios for Wargames by CS Grant. This is a meeting engagement, in which advance guard from the two armies (the Northern Alliance and the Pragmatic Coalition) attempt to seize and hold a strategic village. In this scenario, both sides had approximately equal forces, with a balanced mix of light infantry, line infantry, cavalry, and artillery.



As it played out here, the Coalition forces were able to seize the village before the Alliance forces reached it.


However, to the south of the village, an extended cavalry melee commenced, which was eventually won by the heavier Alliance cavalry. As usually, terrible casualties were suffered by the Wachovian Hussars. As night fell, Coalition forces held the town, but were surrounded by Alliance forces, and the ultimate victory would have depended on whose main body arrived first the next morning. I'm sorry I didn't make some notes on the strengths and positions, as it would have made an interesting follow-on scenario for a future game.



Our second game was on Saturday afternoon, and was Scenario 1 from the same book. I got so involved in actually running the game that I didn't get any pictures of it myself. Here's one taken by Chris Palmer, Pragmatic players to the right, Alliance players to the left:





In this situation, an advancing Pragmatic army was faced with an Alliance army holding a defensive position based on two towns, supported by three small redoubts. The Pragmatic players chose to mass their cavalry opposite the open area to the right of their line, and the Alliance players also deployed their cavalry in the same zone. The Pragmatics planned to demonstrate against the town on the left, strongly attack the town in the center, and advance behind a cavalry screen to seize the redoubt on their right. The demonstration on the left eventually proved too costly for the Wiegenburg regiment, which was forced to withdraw. In the center, the Pragmatic attack handily carried the the town. On the right, the attack was delayed while the cavalry battled it out. Eventually weight of numbers told for the Pragmatics, and the Alliance cavalry was forced to retreat, but the melee last long enough for the sun to be setting before the attack on the redoubt could be carried out. The Alliance army was deemed to have held the position long enough for reinforcements to arrive, stalling the Coalition advance. All in all, with a marginal win and a defeat, it was not a stellar little campaign for my forces. While we can often beat our traditional rivals of North Polenberg, the stouter troops of Rosmark have proved to be too hard a nut to crack in recent encounters, and it may finally be time to sue for peace...

Huzzah runs an informal flea market on Sunday morning. I was pleased to find a box of Exin Castillo castle blocks, which are nicely sized for 25mm figures.



My younger son has been looking for an expansion to the Exin castle I've owned for years, and was very pleased to find that I had acquired a "12", one step up from the "11" we've had, so I expect some sort of castle-based scenario in the future. I was able to re-home a bunch of the Reaper Bones figures, particularly the ones from Bones II, and then used some of that money to invest in a group of vintage Hinchliffe Byzantines and allies, which I'll report on later.

We headed home around lunchtime on Sunday, and I was able to use the amazing elements of modern technology to coordinate our Gencon event registration while in the passenger seat on the way home.

Overall, it was a great convention, and I hope to be able to attend again next year, if my son's college graduation isn't the same weekend...

Looking Ahead: Huzzah Preparations

(It's my turn for technical difficulties...the pictures are posted as separate blog postings...)

For the past couple of years, my long-time collaborator Ross Macfarlane and I have split the difference in the distance between our homes, and met at Huzzah in Portland, Maine. I hope he'll be able, some day, to return to a Cold Wars or a Historicon, hauling his horde/hoard of Not Quite Seven Years War figures for another megagame. In the meantime, though, Ross has us signed up to run an American War of Independence game using his With MacDuff to the Frontier rules. I haven't played a MacDuff game in a couple of years, having been distracted with other periods, and Ross has been tinkering with the rules in the meantime.

Thus, I was glad to have the opportunity to virtually drop into Ross's gameroom yesterday for a playtest session of the convention game.



Yesterday turned out not to be a particularly good day for the Internet, and we had some technical difficulties with the videoconferencing capabilities of Google Hangouts (rather than Skype). This left me with a bit of fog of war, as can be seen from the screen capture above. Neverthess, Ross was a good sport about moving the camera around as necessary.

The scenario involved two groups of settlers racing for a fort in an attempt to avoid Loyalist and Indian raiders, reinforced by some Hessian jaegers and grenadiers.

In case any potential Huzzah players are reading, I will not discuss the scenario too much. The key to the game, as far as I can tell, is that it is more likely to go well when your troops actually arrive on the table... The scattered raiders attempted to intercept the wagons, but never achieved local superiority and were eventually driven off piecemeal.

Remote games run a little more slowly than live games would, not counting the technical difficulties, but it still makes for a pleasant experience, and I'm rateful to Ross for hosting this time around. My turn next time...



Inspired by the game, I combed my French and Indian War collection for my contribution to the Huzzah scenario and mustered them in a Really Useful Box, in preparation for the trip. The figures, as usual, are a mix of Irregular, Sash and Saber, Prince August, and Nuernberger Meisterzinn.

Huzzah! AAR

Trip Report--Huzzah!, Portland, Maine, 3-6 May 2012 

The kids and I got organized on Thursday morning for our road trip to Huzzah! We haven't done an extended road trip since the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships last July...which may not sound like too long, but certainly feels like it. The car felt almost spacious, since we weren't hauling any of the terrain for the 40mm Rough Wooing games planned, just the figures. That left us with the room for a contingency game package, my case of 6mm DBA and Hordes of the Things armies. We arrived safely around 8:00 Thursday night, and settled in to discuss a few things with Ross. 

The convention proper didn't get started until Friday evening, with the first gaming block at 7:00. That left us with some time to invest. As Norman and Ross have noted, we started with a warm-up game of Basic Impetus. The hotel had the tables set out after breakfast, so finding a place to spread out the game was no problem. 

6mm Roman Cavalry

The battle unfolds; warbands  are surrounded?

William, Ross, and Norman all deep in thought

By the time we were finished, things were starting to look lively. We took a lunch break to go downtown and get my son a lobster for lunch, which he hadn't had before. I have, and not being a fan, I ate something less intimidating. The registration desk was set up by the time we got back, so we took care of the formalities. We were pleased to find that we could sign up for games for each time slot when we registered, being accustomed to the HMGS Cold Wars/Historicon system which only gives you one guaranteed entry per day. I chose to stretch a bit and try some games I don't usually play, but more of that in the proper order.

 We still had some time on our hands before the first official game, so we set up a final playtest of our Rough Wooing scenario for the convention. Norman posted a report as part of his convention coverage. As the French commander I found that the weight of the cavalry force on my right flank was enough to flatten the English, and my left flank distracted their center forces enough that my center was able to move forward and seize the gun. I had the opportunity to take the French side again during the third running on Saturday and found that it was not so easy to do again...

 For my official game in the evening, I signed up for something tricorne-ish, the battle of Chotusitz from the early part of the War of the Austrian Succession using the Carnage and Glory computer-moderated rules. I will be honest: As a player of Old School games like Charge!, I have not thought that something like Carnage and Glory would be to my taste as rules, but I wanted to give it a fair shot. The gamemaster was Richard Wallace, and he did a fine job of keeping the game moving, although, as I expected, the need for everyone to interact with the computer each turn through the single point of input/output was the limiting factor. He also had a beautiful table, done with fake fur to represent grass, and an amazing set of 28mm figures to populate it, so the game was a visual treat. Nevertheless, the computer moderation appears to be addressing problems that I don't usually have with Charge!, and I really miss rolling the dice. If, after all of the factors that the computer takes into account, you are left with the planning assumption that a unit is good for one fight with a similar unit, you're not much better off in realism than you are with Charge!, and you've added a cumbersome mechanism in the computer I/O.

Prussian cavalry charge during Chotusitz

 My Saturday morning game was a modern Afghanistan skirmish using the popular Force on Force rules from Osprey, also in 28mm. I'm not sure about the scenario balance for this one, but the rules seemed to crank along with reasonable speed, at least in the absence of vehicles and heavy support. A foot patrol of Americans, however, did not turn out to be nearly enough against four times their number of militant irregulars. The mechanisms, from what I could see, reminded me of Crossfire (in the movement, which, as explained, involved bounding from cover to cover with the enemy given the opportunity to interrupted with an uncommitted force) and what I can remember of Stargrunt (with a squad's fire generated a handful of dice of various shapes depending on weapons and training. I don't know how closely the GM was adhering to the written rules, though. It might be an interesting topic for a game-in-box, though, so I have ordered a discounted copy on speculation. I'd implement it in frugal 1/72 scale plastic, if I were to do it, though...

The village looks quiet enough...

 We had four players for the first Rough Wooing game, on Saturday afternoon. For whatever reason, the English were having trouble in making good use of their longbows, and the French won fairly handily. I was starting to wonder about the scenario balance, but changed my mind after the second game. Due to the shortage of players, Ross and I each took a role in the game, and the tables were firmly turned. I was making no headway at all with the French, and the game resulted in what looked like an easy English win. The moral of the story is that one would have to check a scenario multiple times to be assured of having the balance correct.

French right wing; gendarmes and lancers in profusion

French center advances; the gun is visible ahead

English and French swordsmen clash in the bog 

French center in some confusion, evening game

 As a result of playing so much Rough Wooing in a short time, and stressing the rules with the exceptional situations presented in a larger game, Ross and I have a 'to-do' on some rules clarifications. We also spent some time discussing games for next year, and where projects were going, which he's already covered on his blog. I went a little easy on the shopping (sorry, dealers!), but nevertheless came home with an Elven tower on discount for some fantasy skirmish gaming and a copy of Christopher Duffy's book on Frederick the Great's army for some inspirational reading as we run up to Historicon and my NQSYW games there.

Peking Legation scenery

Ross's Aroostock War game

Ross and Norman in 40mm American Revolution game

Boxer amphibious game

...and another

Norman trying some quinqereme action

 With the long drive home, we were unable to play in a Sunday morning game, but, overall, it was a great show, and I'd be pleased to be able to do it again next year. Perhaps a HAWKs roadtrip is in order...