2023 in review

FoG II Medieval: Rise of the Swiss

In the first half of the year I managed to play a few games of Xenos Rampant and Blucher and produced the Blucher low-relief scenery. 

Towards the close of the year I filled some hours of insomnia by playing through the 100YW English, Burgundian, Swiss, Timurid and Matthias Corvinus campaigns in Field of Glory II Medieval. I've always found computer games to be a good way of easing myself back into tabletop gaming.

Finally, I pulled my finger out to write the last four posts for this blog before year end. Occasionally I find time to read and comment on other wargaming blogs.

Some games of Blucher

I fought another three games of Blucher in 2023 but seem to have photos only of the first two. They all utilised my new, flat scenery, and were all played against fellow club member, Simon, who kindly introduced me to Blucher.

French vs British

This was very much a fight to take and hold the central, urban objectives. I commanded the British. AFAICR I may have achieved some initial success but was beaten back on my left flank.

 Russian vs Ottoman

This game was loosely based on an historical battle. I took the Russians and attacked uphill turning the Ottoman right flank.

Ultra-low relief scenery for Blucher

As planned I developed some light, very low relief scenery for use with the Blucher unit cards which sit on top of the terrain pieces. The aesthetic idea was that the table should resemble an aerial view and be as convincing as possible at first glance, at least from a distance.

As my wargame club is in walking distance, I usually load my stuff into a shopping trolley. I always have that option, but my idea for this project was to keep things as light as possible so the game could be carried in a bag. Given that the armies are just cards, burdening myself with heavy and bulky 3D scenery seemed disproportionate, and, indeed, rather odd in comparison to the flatness of the units.

Anyway, here is the scenery I made or utilised in the order of table placement:

HILLS

As the hills are placed under the game mat, there are no aesthetic requirements and they can be very rough and ready. I’d accumulated a lot of foamboard offcuts, so I sandwiched these between hill templates cut from new card and trimmed with a scalpel.

The templates were sized and shaped to maximise storage in Really Useful Boxes, and the templates and offcuts were stuck with a Pritt stick, a huge bonus as Mrs Phalanx is particularly averse to glue fumes.

I've nearly exhausted my supply of offcuts so if I need more hills or other shapes and sizes I'll revert to my initial plan which was to make hills from card and plastic milk bottle tops.

Alternatively, I can also use any of my existing hills, most of which are reasonably light. Once under the game mat, they will all look the same!

GAME MAT

This is an old felt cloth and not my best game mat, but it's light and soft, and shapes itself over hills put underneath. Think of the creases as natural folds in the ground!

ROADS, RIVERS, MARSH, PLOUGHED FIELDS

These had already been made or bought for previous games. A small metal bridge is my one concession to conventional wargame scenery.

FOREST

These are made by applying a diverse mixture of Woodland Scenics Underbrush Clump-Foliage to leatherette templates using Hob-E-Tac glue. They bend to fit hill contours. They have been fixed with a spray of Scenic Cement. As suggested in the rules they are mostly 3-base widths long which is also a nice fit for storage in RUBs.

ROCKY GROUND

I didn't want anything heavy, tall or messy. I eventually hit on the idea of using broken up cork floor tiles.

BUILT UP AREAS

The village or town areas are 100mm (4") squares so they can be conveniently occupied by a single unit card with a little space to spare to remind players that attackers are entering rough ground. The buildings are from old Monopoly games picked up in charity shops. Some are finished as city areas, the rest as villages. Making the BUAs was fun.

FORTIFICATIONS

Flat lolly sticks with matchsticks. I added Tetrion Filler to one side to create revetments.

The terrain pieces are stylised but convincing enough. More pictures of the scenery will be featured in game use in my next post.
 

Two more games of Xenos Rampant

I played two more games of Xenos Rampant early in the year but my memory of them is now a little hazy. The first was against my friend Ian and utilized my still unpainted 15mm Near Future armies. I was wondering if more cover would overcome the tendency to get bogged down in firefights. There was more movement in this game until the forces converged at the centre where mine were convincingly ground down.

The second was against Ian's house guest, Ivan, utilising some of Ian's 28 mm 40K armies in a crowded urban environment. Some of the units had only a hand-to-hand capability and this also helped to induce movement. It was an aesthetically attractive and fun game which I marginally won, shooters having some advantage over those trying to close.

Since playing these games my attention has been drawn to the 'Stabilised Weaponry' attribute which allows infantry to move and shoot as an ordered activation in the same way as vehicles. I will try this in the future in another attempt to avoid shooty games.

My forces on this side. Ian's in the distance.

 

In the first of these two games, the progression to the centre is pretty obvious in these overview photos.

My heroic humans move forward...

...backed up by mortars.

The monstrous opposition was beaten back.