Project finished?

As many of you know I started this blog as a means to follow and motivate me in my project building forces of the Little Britons figures from Spence Smith. The plan laid out in the first few posts was to paint eight units of Infantry (12 figures each), 4 units of Cavalry (6 figures each) and 4 units of Artillery (3 figures each).  The first game was played in March 2015   using One Hour Wargames. After a few more games of that and one of With MacDuff to the Frontier by Ross Mac Howard was bitten by the Shiny Toy Soldier bug and began painting and working on a set of rules known as A Gentleman's War despite all the distractions, a little over a third of the posts here refer to this project, I finished my goal of forces for the project. Three years in the making. Inspired by Grand Duchy of Stollen I decided to do a review of my troops.

The Cavalry

US 10tth Cavalry, RCMP, Hungarians, Bavarians and Generals.

 The Artillery

The Artillery, Costa Rica, Switzerland, Austria and, Serbia.

The Infantry

 Belgium, Egypt, Greece.

US Marines, Hawaiian Guard, US Infantry, NYS Volunteers.

Spain, Argentina, Canada.

Now is this project finished outside of playing games? There's a unit of Dutch bicycle troops on the painting desk and four bags of figures unpainted in the drawer. Along the way I had decided to paint flags for many of the units and may finish out the remainder putting each Infantry unit at an Officer, Standard bearer and twelve privates. Oh! and I bought some molds to cast my own figures just because. 

Thanks for reading.

Colonial AGW

Howard came over for a game of A Gentleman's War using the Colonial variant. I was a coalition force going to the rescue of a unit of Spaniards defending the oasis. Howard was the Moroccans causing what ever mayhem they could.

The figures are a mix of 40mm manufacturers, Little Britons, Scruby, Irregular and unknown 40mm semi rounds that Howard has added putty to to make them into Moroccans.

The Spaniards were able to hold off two assaults while the relief force was able to fend off their attackers but not with out the loss of the Marines and the R.C.M.P.

Harlem Heights part 2

Matt and I got together to finish our game of the Battle of Harlem Heights. Between games we had visited Jim's blog and read the tutorial on the rules. We had gotten most everything right and just needed a little clarification. We still wondered a little about the checking of morale on units that were shaken. We decided to play it as a shaken unit that fails one di remains shaken It's clear that if they fail two dice they route.  It was great to get all the figures on the table. We made it through about seven turns before time was called.  We didn't finish out the scenario but the victory conditions were a little vague. We'll certainly take these rules out for another game as they were easy to use moved quickly and provided a good result.

Britishwe' ford the river, 

Rifleman harass the Brits

American reinforcements arrive.

The British move to assault the American line.

Heavy fighting at the edge of the buckwheat field.

The Americans pile in.

Hessians reinforce the British line.

First play of The Portable Wargame

Back in the summer when it was announced that Hobby Town was closing I  started looking at other places  to play and how to deal with the options we had available. One thing that popped up was  The Portable Wargamel . It seemed like a good idea and a way to play on kitchen and dining room tables that could become our gaming space. We've been lucky in that one of our group has a dedicated wargaming room so we've been getting some great games in there. However the schedules don't always work out so this week I broke out the table I had made and Howard and I gave the Ancients rules from Developing the Portable Wargame a try.

Initial deployments

The Romans advance.

The Carthaginian line starts to falter.

The thick of the battle.

Legionnaires fend of an elephant and flank attack.

Carthage has reached exhaustion.

The rules are pretty strait forward but we managed to get a few things wrong somewhat over thinking things. Each units Has a number strength points ranging from 2-5. Combat is resolved with a D6 with hits being on a 5-6 and the roll modified by different tactical factors and troop type. If a hit occurs the a die is rolled on results table which either reduces a units strength point or allows the unit to fall back a grid area. The game plays until one army is reduced by one third of their total strength points at which time they can not longer take aggressive actions. It ends when the other side is reduced by one third. With about twelve units per side the game took a little over an hour to play. It was fun, offered some tactical challenges and yielded a firm result. I liked the grid system for movement and firing and will certainly give these another try for this period and the early 20th century set.

Check out Bob's blog for more reports and information.

http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/

Fife & Drum at the Appollo.

We've been trying to get a larger game in recently but usually run out of time for a conclusive finish and/or are unable to leave the game set up for the next session. This week we were able to work things out to make it happen.

We decided to try AWI as both Matt and I have collections and wanted to get them out on the table. I've really only used mine once before. For rules we looked at British Grenadier, Black Powder and Fife & Drum AWI. We went with the Fife & Drum rules as it was decided that they would have the shortest learning curve. It was a good choice!

I took the Harlem Heights scenario from the BG #3 book as it looked like the force size would fit our collections. I layed out some Geo-hex hill and Matt placed his new purchased Cigar Box mat over them. I'm liking the look of the mat and it covers the hills very well eliminating the seems that you get with Geo-hex.  Trees,fences, roads, stream and field set down and we were ready to play.

We took a quick scan of the play sheet and made sure we both understood how the rules worked and started rolling dice.

British lights advance on the Americans.

View from behind the American line

The lights take casualties but still advance on the Rebels

More Patriot forces arrive to hold off the Kings troops.

The British commander rallies off shock.

More Rebel troops arrive forcing the Lights back

British reinforcements arrive

at the ford.

heavy fighting in the buckwheat field.

American riflemen harass the Kings troops at the stream.

We made it through five turns in about 70 minutes. The British had only two units engaged up until turn four while the Americans had about seven. A few question arose which we talked trough to keep the game moving but all in all it was easy enough to just use the play sheet. After the game I read some of the explanation on the Alte Fritz blog and it seemed we got most everything right.

We'll continue the game next week and see how it goes as more troops enter the battle. I'm pretty happy with the way the game played so far.

Looking at the photos the mat seems a little washed out. I'm sure it's a camera setting on my phone. The mat color is more vibrant in real life.