A project update

With Crisis Point out of the way, I thought I'd provide an update on the other things I'm working on. In terms of "which comes first" they are:

Muddy River Blues

I put this Sharp Practice campaign on hold while we all prepared for Crisis Point. Now I need to refamiliarise myself with what's going on in Hendricks County, Mississippi. Fortunately I've been keeping a detailed campaign diary so I just need to find some time to go through it with the players' orders. Look out for more reports as things develop.

Stary Boleslav part two

The Cold War Commanders group is known for putting on attractive Cold-War-period games in 1/300th scale at various conventions but in particular at Joy of Six. In recent years we've tried to move our Jo6 games away from just being spectacularly large to showcasing alternative approaches to 6mm gaming and emphasising the opportunity for punters to try out the rules (be that Cold War Commander or, last year, TacWWII).

This year we plan to revisit the Czechoslovakia 1948 alternative history in a game showcasing the Cold War Commander version 2 rules. The plan is to put on a game that:

• Looks impressive,
• Avoids the impression of "some blokes standing around a static diorama",
• Avoids the danger of "some blokes playing a game and ignoring the punters",
• Moves fast enough that people who want to try out the rules can do so without having to wait ages for the organisers to finish moving a hundred units just to finish a game turn.

The plan is to build on the narrative of my Crisis Point game with the addition of a Soviet airborne operation to capture the bridge at Stary Boleslav. This will give us the opportunity to demo some fighting in a built up area as the paras move out to capture their initial objectives.

Another part of the table will represent the spearhead of one of the Soviet Forward Detachments fighting to reach the city. This will provide a break from urban combat and give us obvious movement from hour to hour throughout the day.

The Siege of Puebla 1863

I plan to offer a Sharp Practice game at various Lardy Days starting from this year's Steel Lard. I want to explore street fighting in the horse-and-musket era. The Siege of Puebla, during the Second French Intervention in Mexico, provides a great opportunity to do that.

At present I envisage a four player game with two French players attacking and two Mexicans defending. I'm currently digesting as much source material as I can find. Google Translate is proving a boon in this regard.

I've found an indication that one battalion of Tirailleurs Algeriens was in the army at Puebla so my Turcos can provide one of the player forces. 

The second French player will command a company from 99e Regt de Ligne, which will be represented by models from Foundry Miniatures' Legionnaires. I've just added another eight of these guys to the collection and have fourteen more to paint.

One of the events that I want to capture in the game is the general turning up to observe the situation on the front line. This occurred to both sides historically with the French General Vernet de Saumiere managing to get himself killed in the process. I'm not sure yet how I'll handle this in the game. A Random Event is one option but I'm also considering giving one of the players a card to play to make a general turn up on either his or his opponent's baseline. This chap, from the Foundry Mexican Characters pack has just been matt varnished and will get based shortly.