Wagons roll

A slight distraction - I sorted out some figures that hadn't been used for a while for a game, looking though the contents of the box there were a number of items needing rebased of which this is the first. These are a selection of the different Pegasus wagon sets used for the American Civil War.

Little & Large - ACW Artillery

A pair each of Strelets Whitworth Rifles and 30 pdr Parrott Rifles. The supplied crews have been mixed up somewhat to provide a couple of heavy gun crews with 4 man crews and four light gun crews. I painted one of each figure as either Union or Confederate.


The Whitworths are nearest with Confederate crews.


I checked to see if the mortar crew would also fit with the 30pdr.

ACW Siege Mortar

Many years back I acquired an Italeri Union Artillery set, which included a Mortar. I assembled and painted it and the crew at the time, but couldn't decide how to base the figures up so they were consigned to the "painted but no current use box". The Wargamers' Forum had a "shelf queen" challenge and I thought of these, but the challenge ended before I rediscovered the mortar. I have now found it and based up the crews so it can be used as either side.

Gauntlet - Gettysburg day 3 and other games

A dry day after the torrential rain returning home yesterday. Rather than continuing the Korsun game, we switched to ACW after I was tempted by Steve's 10mm Gordon and Hague figures. he had a lot and looking through the new Black Powder "Glory Hallelujah" I picked the Gettysburg day 3 scenario as something suited to an all day game. Typically we had to make compromises with the number of figures per regiment to fit in with Steve's army, but we had enough figures, just! I took the roll of umpire, trying to remember all the well reasoned differences in the rules. in hindsight there were a number I missed, so perhaps we should have tried a smaller scenario first. However all six players had a great game. Despite the small scale we used 66% scaling for the game so the action moved quite quickly.

General Hancock (Jamie) surveys the neat Union line as Pickets Division heads for the Union left (note the authentic beard, but the hair length might be more suitable for JEB Stuart...)


After a couple of turns the Confederates surge onwards, but not as quick as they would have liked.


Gary S (playing Trimbles Division) ponders changing his command dice.


While Gary H (Union left flank) contemplates the advancing Rebels


The Union right comes under pressure


At long last Trimble (Confederate Gary) troop get into action and begin to roll up the Union right flank.


Unfortunately by this time the Confederate right under Pettigrew had been defeated and as people had to depart It was declared a very historical draw. Generally the ACW amendments worked well (when I remembered them) but the were a number of flaws in the scenario such as failing to define the objective and "point Z", which highlight poor proof reading of the book. I'll try and write a review once I have fully read it and played at least one other scenario. Thanks to Jamie, Richard, Gary x2, Andy and especially Steve (who provided the terrain and figures) for their participation.

Some other games at Gauntlet

Craig Cartmell demo'ing "Daisho"


and his other new game "Blood Eagle"


A big fantasy game Kings of War?




Dark ages game by Steve Oates (The Baggage Train)


One of the Flames of War competition boards for the desert


and for winter! Independently Pete D, picked the same trees as me


A big Team Yankee game on day 2




of course there were boardgames and other games such as X-wing, Frostgrave, etc. and the traditional WRG 6th edition contest. It seems everyone had a great weekend of relaxed gaming in ta friendly environment. Roll on Gauntlet 2017.

In memoriam - Donald Featherstone

Like many others I decided to play a Featherstonian game to mark the passing of Don.

Many years ago as a young sprog I remember finding his book "War Games" in the local library and spent many hours/days/weeks reading and re-reading the text and imagining when I could have a collection to play the games described. Of course times moved on and rules with them and I have never actually played a game from the book. So the die was cast and a decision made, it would be the "Action in the Platville Valley". I found a willing volunteer (Ian) who also had a copy of the book.

What can I say, but the hobby has moved on enormously since 1962 when the book was written, now one might despair at the quality of rule writing and how it covers various situations that will crop up in a game. Here are a few omissions (from a very modern perspective and no disrespect intended as the players probably knew how to handle it, but never wrote it down) which caused us some problems:

• Changing formation - how long does it take what's the mechanism?
• If a unit losses 50% and all it's officers does it test morale once or twice (since there are no modifiers for more than one cause)
• Describing all the terrain in a scenario, e.g what class of river was bull creek?

As for the battle itself, it produced a great deal of entertainment, especially when searching between the ancient and horse and musket rules for how to handle a situation (basically melee and morale were covered in the ancients section) Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so there are no pictures of what was a very messy battle.

It just shows that nostalgia is exactly that, we have built on the foundations that Don established and for that alone we should be thankful

RIP Don

Defence of Oak ridge and Blochers Knoll

Back to Day 1 of Gettysburg at the club on Thursday night with some action on the North-West flank. The scenario came from an old copy of Miniature Wargames #229 by George Anderson.  Plus some input from the Fire & Fury rulebook Gettysburg scenario and WSS #66, the ACW themed issue.

A write up and a few pictures from the confederate viewpoint can be found on Sediments blog.

Some notes on converting the scenario to Black Powder.

• I normally use 4 bases of 5 figures as a regiment (45mm square) and 66% scaling. But given the scale of the action I had to downsize and use 3 bases and 50% scaling. Rather than converting individual regimental strengths the number of regiments in each brigade was calculated by dividing its strength by 400 with some rounding to ensure the overall totals were correct. This makes it a lot easier for players to handle.
• My armies were originally organised for Fire and Fury, so command stands were in short supply, but I used this to advantage with brigades alternating between those with flags (command stands) and those without.  It made spotting brigades easier.
• Batteries were represented by a single base with a marker added to indicate those with 6 guns, instead of the normal 4.  in hindsight it would have been better to add a couple of extra Union 4 gun batteries and reduce the confusion.  Guns with my newer basing were rifles and the older smooth bores.
• Smoothbore batteries were rated 3/2/1 and rifles 2/2/2 and adjusted to 5/3/1 and 3/3/3 for 6 gun batteries.  Their maximum ranges were increased to 80" (40" at 50% scaling) to fit with the scenario.

Overall thoughts

• Scenario was too ambitious for a single evening, but another hour would have seen a clear conclusion
• Three base units work well on a grand tactical level.  Firing is particularly easy as each base gets one dice so splitting fire between targets is simple, similarly the ara of fire and clear view of target.
• 50% scaling is clumsy, something using base widths would be easier

Fun with basing?? ACW dismounted cavalry

As I had gained some extra dismounted ACW figures to boost my collection I decided to mix them in with the older figures and then distinguish each "unit" by giving them a distinctive base.

The overall collection, only one unit of each side has standard basing.


The wheatfield, using coir matting cut into chunks, the hardest part was thinning down the base.


Fenceline, not full height as the figures are quite low


Cabbage patch, an astroturf sample. I'll use some more to make some fields as it will be easy to move figures across.

Figures are a mix of various plastics with a number of old Jacklex figures bought from the Harrow Model Shop many years ago.

Union Generals

I picked up a number of the Strelets Confederate General Staff as part of a trade, some will appear later in a different guise, but these I just repainted as Union commanders as I already had a set for the Confederates.

ACW Limbers

Whenever possible I paint limbers to go with my artillery and with plastics it's always an economic option, but it does mean that I often end up with plenty of spare gunners. To go with the artillery painted earlier, here are the matching limbers, all using the old Airfix American Civil War figures.
During preparation a couple of horses snapped showing their age, this is something that occasionally happens, but I've never found a definate cause. Since all plastic is UV unstable over time one possible cause is that the figures have been left in daylight for a considerable period, but this doesn't explain many of my own old figures that this happens to as they are stored away in dark boxes in cupboards.

Will

ACW Artillery

Well I got bored of all the white with the Teutonic knights and decided to do something different. I found in the last few games of Fire and Fury that I was short of artillery, so I picked up some second hand Airfix, some were already painted so they were given a spray of oven cleaner to remove the paint. Although all my ACW figures are based with green scatter, I decided to continue with upgrading the basing for these.
The artillery colour should be olive green, but I've continued with the same grey that I've used since the beginnings of my ACW collection, I can't remember how I came to use the colour.

Hopefully within the next week the Teutonic knights will be completed.

Will