Small thing amuse small minds

Hello all.

I have been experimenting with a new graphics package. In this case, Inkscape a vector graphics editor. Now, I have been involved with computers for many years but I have never ever completely got my head around how to use a graphics package. So I am quite pleased with these first efforts and I feel encouraged to try some more.

The War of 1812 campaign: Introduction

Many years ago when I was a teenager, there used to be a magazine called "War Monthly" which I would read in the newsagents as I was to cheap to buy them, though one of my friends did. One of them contained an article on the battle of Lundy's lane which described it as the bloodiest battle of the Napoleonic Wars. I cannot remember a single thing about the article but it certainly left an impression and a longing. Much closer to the present day I come across "The Incredible War of 1812" and a monster was born.

The appeal of the War of 1812 is its size as there are no large battles requiring lots of troops. Further most of the battles are suitable for play with units representing battalions which is a scale that appeals to me especially big units. It is also a bit obscure but all its participants wrote in "English" so it is easy to research. Unfortunately its appeal is lost among the rest of those I game with. So I am going to do this as a solo project.

I would also like to explore a couple of ideas in its execution. One of the problems I have experienced in several campaigns was declining player interest. The approach that I am going to take is to split the campaign into years and theaters of war and each will be played out as sub-campaign that forms part of the greater picture. So we will start in 1812 with four sub-campaigns covering the sortie of the American Navy and three invasions of Canada. Each campaign will continue until either it has achieved its objective or admits failure. Now if time permits and the troops are fit enough a second campaign may occur in theater such as what occurred in the West after the defeat of Hull's invasion of Canada. Of course if you are like Dearborn then the whole campaign season will be wasted and nothing of import will occur.

So thats all for the moment. Next will the sortie of the American navy.

Table top campaigning

Many years ago when my eyesight was better my friends and I got into wargaming with 6mm figures, my personnel collection is mostly Napoleonic and Microarmour. Now we play 15mm and are thinking that that perhaps they are a bit small and hard to paint and 25mm is the way to go. So the 6mm sit in their boxes high upon the shelf all but forgotten gathering dust, even ebay does not appear to interested in them.

Is there any way to make use of them? Perhaps there is, though the ideas I am going to try to outline here are still very rough.

Currently I play Sam Mustaffa's "Might and Reason", as well I have played his Grand Armee along with other brigade size rules such as Napoleons Battles and Volley & Bayonet. Indeed my 6mm Napoleonics are based on 15mm Napoleon Battles bases. My basic idea is to shrink these games from inches to centimetres. Normally this is done so that large battles such as leipzig can be done on a single on a single table or to allow smaller tables to be used. As such little on modification needs to be done to any of these rules to play a game at this scale. The basic 9x6 foot wargame can become an area of about 15x22 kilometres under one of the might and reason scales of 12cm to a mile. This translates into a hefty slice of southern Saxony from the border to Dresden.

For a game at this scale visability and hidden movement are important considerations. The naked eye can distinguish a mass of troops at 1700 yards, infantry and cavalry can be told apart at 1300 and uniforms at 500. With a bit of fudging this can be translated as the number of brigades can identified at 12cm, the type of brigade at 8cms and the subtype at 4 cms. So anything outside 12cms can be hidden from your opponet. Hidden units could then be replaced by a column marker of some sort. A column can be divided into 2-3 sub-units consisting of the 1st & 2nd lines and an optional advance guard. When two forces are within 12cms each player announces the number of brigades in their 1st line while all troops in 2nd remain hidden. The 2nd line may in fact be a dummy.

I like the idea of allowing for players to use a screening force and outpost lines, but the more I think about the more complex it becomes. A player can use a small column for the same tasks.

Not all troops should be deployed in columns. A static garrison can be just identified as such rather be sub-divided into 1st & 2nd lines. Further you can then roll to randomly reveal them to the other side. The idea being that eventually information about static garrison will leak out.

Once players get with 12cms then combat becomes a possibility but they will only know how many brigades are deployed in each others front line. A player may at this stage decline to advance further or they may commit themselves to move forward in order to establish the strength of the second line. Rather than move straight into fighting the battle have simple competitive die roll between the players. If the defender wins then the attacker has failed to gain any intelligence about the defender. Some possible die modifiers are:

1. Stronger front rank
2. Cavalry superiority
3. Controlling the high ground
   

While an area such as described above is tempting as a game. The problem exits that at this scale it may still not be big enough as it barely a days march across. Now while moving to 2mm or even cardboard may appeal to some and may be a good idea at least part of the idea is to use what resources I have and to maintain some visual appeal. It remains to be seen if it can work within the limitations I have set no matter how artificial.

Of course there is always room for more chrome. Some possible chrome are camps, convoys and lines of communication. Camps provide for a player to hide the number and location of troops in plain sight of his opponent, though with the problem that if you loose your camp and its associated baggage you will have to retire from the table top. Convoys provide supplies as well as the opportunity to conduct operations such as the destruction of supply convoy during the siege of Olmutz. Finally at least for the moment is lines of communication which traditionally was an objective that you wished to drive your opponent away from.

One major drawback to this as a campaign system with separate battle resolution is the need for two tables.

This could work really well if also linked with a siege that can also be played out on table.

The game would work with an umpire, even possibly without one.

So there it is, a bit rough as I said earlier and not without its flaws. But I think it has some possibility and feel inspired enough to start looking for a scenario for a test play.

Recreating the seven years war. Part 1 of X

I have almost finished reading "By force of arms" by Christopher Duffy, so now I have feel the urge to comment upon its implications for wargame design. This is the second volume of his history of the Austrian Army during the 7YW, which is the second edition/rewrite of his earlier work "The army of Maria Theresa". this volume concentrates upon an operational history of the army. Now for those ignorant sods like myself for whom English is their first only language it is an invaluable source and possibly the best you can get at the moment.

Now part of his thesis is about the evolving skills of the Austrian Army and their ability to conduct complex operations. The signature piece being the attack by multiple columns such as the attack at Hochkirch as opposed to the unitary force which is the how we normally think of the deployment of lace wars armies. A unitary deployment has the infantry in centre deployed in two line with cavalry upon either flank, the whole moving and fighting as a whole. Frederick himself using the traditional unitary deployment in many of his battles until quite late in his career, though he did have his variation of it. Nor were the Austrians alone in using it, Frederick himself used it at Torgau and the French and Prince Ferdinand in West Germany were also moving along similar lines.

So like many wars you beginning fighting the old fashioned way and by the end of new technologies and tactics have transformed warfare as we know. We are normally used to seeing this best represented through the evolution of technology. In WWII the technology has markedly evolved and matured as pretty much every weapon system at the end of the war is there at the start. WWI has similar technology changes including the introduction of whole new classes of weapons. The 7YW is also a war where many changes occur not in the technology but in how the generals approach the war.

An introduction

What is the ammunition box about?

The short answer is wargaming.

The long answer is whatever takes my fancy but primarily wargaming. At the moment my interests are wargame design, the war of 1812, WWII and the seven years war. But of course this change as like many of my peers we are attracted to collecting bright and shiny little figures and so suffer from short attention spans.

So what temptations am I resisting at the moment.

• Napoleonics. Goodness knows why, but I have subscribed to the empre mail group at Yahoo. I haven't played this for 25 years. I also have a book on the 1805 campaign waiting to read that me tip over the edge. Just shoot me now.
• Age of Sail. I have been think of doing a solo campaign of the war of 1812. So whats the first action of the war that I need to recreate. Its Rogers cruise around the Atlantic with the US fleet. That means painting and rigging of ships a true test of hand eye co-ordination a reminder that I am getting on.
• WW1. The war to end all wars, the project to end all projects. I bought some 15mm Minifigs late war that are telling me that they need to be rebased to Flames of War. Why, I ask but they insist. That goodness I haven't found any rules yet.

Actually its the story of a man and his toys. The neverending avoidance of maturity and the battle between good and evil, right and wrong and column vs. line.

Curses another fine mess

Well this is it. I have become a blogger. Of course I bear no responsibility for this its all Davids fault. I know that I have been thinking about this for a while but he acted and created one. Now I have reacted and created one all because I followed a few links off his blog.

Now while I have been thinking about creating a blog for a while the urge to act had been dormant until now.

So this short rant is over for the moment, more will come and some may even be interesting. You have been warned.