More ACW developments

With Crisis Point out of the way and with Andy T seemingly well on top of the planning for our Joy of Six game, I find myself increasingly focussed back onto Sharp Practice in general and the American Civil War in particular.

My plan this year is to put on a game at Steel Lard that doesn't require ridiculous amounts of specially built terrain. I don't want to get hyper-focussed on one project to the exclusion of actually enjoying my gaming and I really can't afford the storage space for a large amount of new terrain. 

The plan, then, is to create a game that uses my existing ACW collection and little or no scenario-specific terrain pieces. That game is provisionally titled Running From Bull Run. It's inspired by this painting:

I want to create a game where most of the players represent Union officers struggling to put together some sort of ordered rear-guard in the chaotic aftermath of defeat in the first pitched battle of the war.

It seems like a good idea to take advantage of the space available at Patriot Games and the fact that I now have two very nice Geek Villain mats to create a long table (12'x4') depicting the Warrenton Turnpike, down which the Union troops are fleeing. I already have enough road sections and a river and bridge that can represent Cub Run and disguise the join between the two mats.

Game rules are in development - I'll certainly need to find a different way of handling morale as any reasonable assessment says the Union Force Morale has already reached zero!

-o0o-

The other consideration for Steel Lard is that I don't want to find myself in the position (again) of having to put on an emergency game because a game-runner's had to drop out at the last minute. Inevitably the players in any such game get a little short-changed.

My plan, then, is that Running From Bull Run can be replaced, using more-or-less exactly the same forces and terrain, by The Battle of Patriot Run.  This would be a fictional, up-to-four-a-side battle still using Sharp Practice but designed for minimal umpiring complexity. The presence of a river (the Patriot Run of the title) dividing the battlefield into two halves would allow the game to run as two parallel, smaller games to keep the action moving.

Having said that I don't want to get involved in building loads of new stuff, I do have some unpainted figures and want a variety of troop types either retreating down the turnpike or in line of battle astride Patriot Run.

After a little research I decided to paint some Perry plastics as the 13th New York Infantry, a unit that at Bull Run was in grey uniforms with pale blue trim and dark blue kepis.

Next to the drummer stands a white metal officer kindly provided by Richard Phillips. Obviously they're all yet to be properly based. Some more of these guys and some RP-provided zouaves are also on the list of things to paint.

-o0o-

The final ACW project that I need to work on right now is the Muddy River play-by-email campaign. It got delayed while Richard was working away from home and I need to spend a few hours detailed study to remind myself where we're up to in the story. I do want to get the campaign completed so I can properly report here on how things transpired. Keep an eye out for developments!

Crisis Point 2025 - Sunday report

On Sunday morning we gathered once more at the Village Hall to start some new games. 

Andy and Neil went with Maurice again (I should perhaps point out that the rules are named after Maurice de Saxe, the German general of the War of the Austrian Succession and not the BeeGee of the same name), this time with a larger game depicting a second attempt by the Honourable Black Sea Company to establish a presence in Andreivia.

Again the British were unsuccessful in their efforts. Good! That means I don't have to make any adjustments to the previously published "History of Andreivia" timeline.

Great news was that Mark was able to join us after the previous day's hospital visit. He quickly set up his Force on Force game, recruited Matt and Stuart as players, and got started.

Somewhere in the Southern Hills

The British are coming!

I do like the burned-out car

An Andreivian T-55

Finally I persuaded Ron and Jamie to play in my Port Gibson Arc of Fire game.

This was the fourth run-through of the scenario after two player-run games at Steel Lard and a performance starring John and Andy back in February. 

In the February game the rapid firepower of the dismounted Union cavalry's breech-loading carbines dominated the affair and some lucky dice rolling by John (General Green was killed early in the action)  gave the boys in blue a comprehensive victory.

This time the Union troops were late deploying; Confederate skirmishers under Sgt George W Reagan made a dash for the sunken road in the centre of the battlefield before the Tiffin card ended the first turn with no Union units on the table.

On the second turn Jamie's luck appeared to have turned slightly and he managed to deploy Lt William J Gore's dismounted cavalry in a skirmish formation in front of Lt Harris Biden's infantry.

Almost immediately a random event would see Gore's cavalrymen low on ammunition and only able to file at close range. This was the first of a series unfortunate events as far as the Union side was concerned.

The main Confederate units deployed at the Shaifer farm whence the family were preparing to flee with their belongings.

Sgt Reagan's skirmishers having deployed in the sunken lane it was obvious to Jamie that he would lose a firefight so he launched Biden's line infantry into a charge.

The first round of the resulting fisticuffs saw Biden killed and the result a tie. This called for an immediate second round. Again kills were equal and this time Reagan was knocked unconscious. The third round saw the Confederate reduced to a single survivor and the Union men reduced to three! Both formations were effectively destroyed.

Meanwhile Gore's Union cavalry men were, thanks to poor movement dice rolling and the effect of Shock, unable to get out of the arc of fire of the main Confederate line or to catch up with the small group of Rebs under Sgt Jeb Bush who were escorting the Shaifers off table.

In the end it was a complete Rebel victory. Ron managed to avoid getting two Confederate generals killed. All in all it was a far cry from the previous run out of the scenario.

Oh and if you're wondering how an ACW action fitted with the theme of the weekend, I pointed out at the start of the game that many of the Confederate troops at Port Gibson were recent immigrants from Andreivia!

Given the challenges involved, I was pleased with how Crisis Point went. Having said that, it's apparent that the event can no longer be what it was originally. The loss of the Royal Hotel and the Padley Farm B&B mean that we'll no longer have people staying in the village and socialising on Friday and Saturday evenings. 

At the moment I don't plan to organised a weekend-long Crisis Point next year but the venue remains a possibility for when I want to put on larger games. Maybe when Chain of Command 2nd Ed comes out I'll be inspired to put on something substantial.

Crisis Point 2025 - Saturday Report

The past weekend saw a gathering of wargamers at Dungworth Village Hall near Sheffield for the latest Crisis Point weekend. It turned out to be a classic example of the wargames community pulling together to produce a really enjoyable experience despite the fog of war doing its best to mess things up for us.

At 10:30 on Friday evening we were expecting to have two 20mm scale games set during the 1990s Civil War in Andreivia. I would be running my Arc of Fire scenario Attack in the Northern Hills and Mark Kniveton would be giving us A Hilltop Village, another Andreivian scenario using the Force on Force rules.

By 10:31 Mark had got in touch to report that his grown-up son had been injured in a hit-and-run incident in Barnsley and was in hospital. Obviously Mark would not be able to be with us on Saturday and we were suddenly down a game!

Fortunately a quick exchange of texts with Andy Taylor and Neil McCusker recruited these two fine gentlemen to dust off an idea that had been parked since the the great Covid-Crisis-Point-Cancellation of 2020. They would run a game set in 1760s Andreivia using the Maurice card-driven rules. This was of course a tremendous load off my mind as the event organiser!

I'd been able to set up my game on Friday afternoon so Saturday morning just needed a quick briefing to the players as they arrived followed by re-allocation of players to games to fit the new situation while Andy and Neil set up their game on the table-tennis table I'd originally earmarked for Mark.

My game used two tables. The western one had two Andreivian-Armenian-controlled villages connected by a road zig-zagging up the valley. 

Hamadzaktun (foreground) and Khndzori Arahet (rear), both held by the Armenians

The eastern table represented another valley with one village occupied by the Armenians and another (Melas Gora) under Andreivian Government control.

Menak (left) under Andreivian-Armenian control and
Andreivian Government-held Melas Gora (right) 

The valleys were connected by the Maghali Pass.

This was a terrain piece I threw together out of polystyrene packaging material in the week or so before Crisis Point. I have no plans to keep it as I can't see myself using it again but I wonder if there's some owner-of-a-wargames-venue in, say, Staffordshire who might find a use for it?

With six players of varying levels of familiarity with the rules, I was too busy to do much in the way of documenting events but here are a few pics:

Russian airborne troops supported by a T-80
advance on Hamadzaktun

An Armenian T-55 advances to engage the
Russians

Armenian militia in Khndzori Arahet

Russian grenade launcher team deploys to
cover the advance

An Armenian militia mortar team

An Armenian sharpshooter team deploys into some rough ground

That T-55 again

The battle for Menak between Armenian militia
and Russian Naval Infantry was fierce.

Melas Gora was well defended by Andreivian
Government paratroops

A Russian MiG-27 on a ground-attack
mission. The camouflage is good innit?

By the end of the game the Russians
hadn't managed to destroy either of
the Armenian artillery pieces bombarding 
the International Airport

We had planned that the game could continue into Sunday if we needed it to but in the event we were happy that the Russian attacks had made as much progress as they were going to without significant reinforcement.

The Andreivian Government had three victory points as a result of holding Melas Gora but their hopes that ATV News would get pictures of Russian atrocities were scuppered when the reporters' car was peppered with Russian bullets early in the game. The Russians gained a single victory point for taking Hamadzaktun and might have got another for Menak in another hour or two but they didn't get close to taking out the Armenian artillery. The Armenian guns had continued to fire throughout the game and as a result the Armenian players reached their target of five victory points. I'm therefore calling it a victory for the Andreivian-Armenians.

Elsewhere Andy and Neil had set up their Maurice game. Unfortunately I only got a couple of photos on Saturday.

Forces of the British Honourable Black Sea Company 
advance by columns

Saturday saw the Ottoman Turks and their Andreivian allies defeat the British after a long battle that seemed to provide plenty of entertainment to the players.

With both games finished on Saturday afternoon I had the unusual opportunity of tidying away my toys completely. In previous years I've still been packing away after six pm on the Sunday! We didn't have anyone stopping over in the village so I could have a relaxing evening albeit one spent making sure I could set up another game for Sunday.

Another Andreivian Tale

Andy came over yesterday and we played some Andreivian Arc of Fire. Details on the Andreivian Tales blog here.

On the workbench (March)

Following my last post on "Eking out the supplies" here's an update along with some other productions from March.

First up is a second PVC board off-cut recycled as a paved village base with a 20mm Russian para for scale.

An even smaller piece of the board has provided this little vignette of a cockerel on a dung heap next to a brick wall. The wall is from foam-core with the paper layers removed. The bird was, I suspect, from the old Airfix Wagon Train set; I acquired a number of elements from that set as part of a mixed second-hand lot many years ago.

This latter piece can be used on its own or alongside the previous one.

And here they are serving their intended purpose with one of my old Middle Eastern buildings...

And finally for now, here are some Andreivian road signs identifying the villages (and the routes to the airport) in the game coming up in a couple of weeks' time.

Bases from left-over MDF pieces, signs from cardboard and bits of paperclip! They should help the players remember which houses on the table correspond to which village on their scenario maps.

Eking out the supplies

When I was gainfully employed I had access to an on-site print shop that produced a large amount of public information material printed onto expanded PVC board. I managed to blag several quite large "off-cuts" that were otherwise unwanted and they make great bases for wargaming models. Much easier to work with than MDF.

Now that I'm retired I'm having to eke out the remaining supply. I've even gone as far as recycling the base of one model I decided not to retain.

This first piece is just such. I'd built a 20mm scale French maison on a hill for my Menton 1940 games but I was never entirely happy with it and it look up an enormous amount of storage space so it's been demolished and all but the base went into the bin.

This offcut from the original base will form a generic village base onto which I can place some Middle Eastern buildings, again in 20mm scale.

The edge was already chamfered and I've engraved irregular paving slabs with an old ball-point pen. Some traces of old hot glue and areas of crazy- rather than rectangular paving will add a lived-in look to the thing.

And here's one I made earlier to show what I'm aiming for as the final result.

A small, unbased house should look better on this rather that being plonked straight onto the terrain cloth. While I could have permanently based my Middle Eastern houses, based houses take up more of my valuable storage space. These pieces can just be thrown into an old shoe box with the houses.

Construction (such as it was) used the usual terrain gloop (Quick Drying Polyfilla stained with brown acrylic paint) on the irregular edge with the straight edges kept plain so they can butt up against straight road pieces. 

Speaking of straight road pieces, a couple of long, straight sections of 5mm MDF that came in the packaging of some Ikea furniture seemed too good to throw away so I painted them grey as tarmacked road sections. To link them to my existing glooped-hardboard roads, I created this jointing piece from more of the left-over PVC board.

Crisis Point 2025 - places still available

This year's Crisis Point gaming weekend takes place 12th and 13th April this year at The Old Band Room (aka Dungworth Village Hall), Dungworth, near Sheffield.  This year we have three games all taking place in the 1990s during our fictional Andreivian Civil War.

Battle in the Northern Hills

A multi-player Arc of Fire action that sees the Russian forces moving to destroy Andreivian-Armenian artillery pieces that have been shelling the Russian-occupied Tcherbevan International Airport. Run by Richard Crawley, this game builds on arguments made during a Matrix Game more than a decade ago!

A Hilltop Village

A Force on Force game run by Mark Kniveton. Troops loyal to the Andreivian Government (or at least one faction within it) are attempting to clear an hilltop village of Andreivian-Turk militia. UN Peacekeepers may have something to say about this! <ark's 20mm models are lovely and the game is sure to be visually impressive.

Landing at Mdinar

The 6mm fans among us (Richard Phillips, Andy Taylor and Neil McCusker) will be running a Cold War Commander scenario in which the Russians attempt to reinforce the assets previously landed from the Black Sea Fleet and establish a secure land corridor to supply the airborne troops holding the International Airport. 

If you'd be interested in joining us for what I'm sure will be a splendid weekend's gaming, please contact me by commenting below or by email to crawleystorrs<at>gmail<dot>com

A Warwick! A Warwick!

Baroness Counterpane and I had a couple of days away in historic Warwick over the weekend. Lots of interesting historical stuff to look at. 

I didn't get to visit any of the three regimental museums in the town but Lord Leycester's Hospital is well worth the entry price.

The central courtyard immediately had me thinking of duelling musketeers and cardinal's guards.

In the main building there was a display of muskets, sent up from London so the Brethren (retired soldiers resident in the hospital) could defend themselves from Chartist rioters in the mid nineteenth century. 

There may be a Sharp Practice or What A Cowboy scenario in there somewhere.

Another happy find was Metropolis Vintage Toys. I'm a sucker for an old Matchbox kit and this one caught my eye.

It's not one I remember from my childhood and it turns out that's because it's a 1983 kit. It came out after I'd gone to university and long given up making aircraft kits. Scalemates indicates that this is the original 1983 boxing of the kit. 

I'll have a go at building it using the decals in the box. If they've degraded badly I'm sure I can create a fictional scheme using some from the spares box. Either way the aim is to finish it as a display model but I might have a go at including a rare earth magnet so it can appear in a game using one of my flight stands.  Could be ideal if we ever do a "Sink the German battleship" game in 1/72nd scale!

Napoleonic Prussian officer backgrounds

It's been a while since we first came up with the idea but I'm still hopeful that Richard P and I can get a chance to play some Sharp Practice set during the 1812 French invasion of Russian Livonia (modern Lithuania and Latvia). The idea is for me to play a small Prussian force in French service.

Not this small but you know what I mean

I've said previously that I find the Sharp Practice Officer's Breeding Table a bit too "British" - great for the officers Sharpe encounters in the Peninsula but not quite appropriate for a campaign where all of the characters are Germans or Russians. 

After a little digging through the biographies of Prussian officers I've come up with the following suggestions for adding personal backgrounds to our Sharp Practice Prussian officers. First up we roll 2D6 to see where our officer originates:

Then another 2D6 determines his family background:

Next we can we work out how he first joined the army:

After that we can use the usual Sharp Practice tables to give us the officer's personality traits, skills, physique, looks, and charisma. The exception I would specify is that I don't see any reason to treat all of our officers as "Foreign Johnnies". I'm therefore going to add an additional D6 roll. On a 1-3 the officer's character is rolled on Character Table A and on 4-6 on Character Table G.

I need to determine the character of Leutnant von Hitwunde, the commander of my small Prussian infantry force.

I start off by rolling 10, 6 and 9. So von Hitwunde is from Pomerania; let's say he was born in Rostock. He's the son of a diplomat or courtier so he's not going to be penniless. He joined the army as an officer candidate or Gefreiterkaporal in his current infantry regiment.

A 1D6 roll of 4 indicates that we'll be rolling on the "Foreign Johnnies" table but the following roll of 11 means he's an honourable sort.  He has no particular skills but a 5 on table D means he's a strapping fellow who'll get +1 on tasks requiring strength. 

Finally, rolls of 8 and 2 reveal that he's fair of face but thoroughly dislikable as a character. Given the reputation of the Prussian Army, I'm going to interpret this as meaning he's a rigidly-by-the-book disciplinarian.  It looks like there's a good chance his men will leave him to his fate if he gets knocked out on the battlefield!

I'd appreciate any feedback you'd care to give on these tables. Please drop a comment if you think I've got anything wrong.