Bloody Big Battles! with lighter-coloured hills

It was pointed out in the Bloody Big Battles! Groups.io group that the hills in my last post ought to appear lighter than the lower ground, and certainly not darker. So I've set about correcting this with a new approach. The green felt patches are a clever solution if placed on top of a gaming mat, but not worth the effort if placed underneath. I will keep them as an option if not using a plastic tablecloth.

First step in the new approach is to lay down some foamcore. I'm just using odd offcuts in the photo above but I intend to cut more regular shapes. The foamcore is 5mm thick. A single layer (5mm) is hardly noticeable. Three layers (15mm) is unnecessarily high. Two layers (10mm) seems about right.

The foamcore is laid inside - not to the edge - of the hill's footprint. It doesn't have to be exact and the shapes can be rectangular. The closer it follows the hill the better, but the important thing is to leave a gap between the edge of the foamcore and the contour on the map. 

 

Next step is to soften the edges of the foamcore by laying some white felt. These are 1ft/30cm squares. They don't have to match the hills. They just have to cover them. (This photo is from an earlier experiment with larger pieces of foamcore.)

 

The finished hill with the top (tablecloth) layer back in place. 18mm WoFun standees are able to sit on it without falling over or sliding off, hence the decision to make them 10mm high. The hill is subtle and continuously sloped. The game edge is defined by the traced contour lines. If using multiple-level hills, I could add more layers of foamcore, but height is still demarcated by the drawn contours. 

Bloody Big Battles! on a tablecloth

 

A replay of the Bloody Big Battles! Vimeiro scenario gave me the opportunity to test the disposable tabelcloth approach to terrain. I thought I was buying paper tablecloths but they turned out to be plastic and semi-transparent. This actually turned out to be an advantage.

By placing the tablecloth over the printout of the scenario map, I was able to see exactly where the river, streams and roads were and to easily replicate their courses with masking tape. I didn't need to grid the tablecloth or draw on it, though I did choose to outline the hills with an indelible OHP pen to give them a distinct edge. This will be especially useful with multiple-level gradients.

Before applying the tape, I had stapled the tablecloth to the printout along one side to anchor it in place. On the night I just had to unfold the whole thing and everything was in place except the hills. 

Printout, felt hill and peeled-back roads layer.

I then peeled back the cloth, placed my pieces of felt onto the printout for the hills, and then put the tablecloth layer back with the roads etc neatly running over the top of everything. The terrain was completed with felt for the sea and village templates, and 3D buildings and bridges.

Thanks to the full-size printout, it was quick, accurate and easy both to produce the tablecloth layer in advance and to lay the hills on the night. Set-up time immediately before the game was reduced from 50 minutes to probably less than 20. 

This approach works well for me. The aesthetics could be better, but they could also be a lot worse! Of course, it increases the amount of pre-game preparation, but I should be able to cope with this if I limit new battles to one a month.

Terrain for Bloody Big Battles!

Vimeiro from Matt Bradley's draft scenario in the Groups.io B3 group.
Armies are 18mm WoFun Peninsular War Napoleonics.

It's about ten years since I last played Chris Pringle's Bloody Big Battles! which is a shame. So returning to it is a voyage of rediscovery. Happily I was able to recruit a crack team of players to get to grips with the navigation. The rules are not long or complicated but my comrades collectively described them as "very nuanced". BBB/B3 is excellent fun as a multiplayer game, and I am grateful that having provided and set the game up, Ian, Kim, Simon and Bob took the lead.

My main part was providing the scenery and that's what I'm going to write about first. Recreating the topography in the scenario maps is foundational to B3. When playing the game the first time round, I used Hexon II to recreate the complex and 'continuous' terrain. This rendered the maps accurately and was quite magnificent once you got used to the aesthetic of hexification. 

But the battles using Hexon were played at home with unlimited set-up time, and it is totally unrealistic for me to transport and construct terrain of that sort for a club night game. After some initial attempts to revisit my original options a scan of the B3 group on Groups.io brought me to a video by Konstantinos Travlos.

Konstantinos (author of Bloody Big Balkan Battles!) simply puts down variously-sized felt shapes to build up the hilly areas. This approach also allows great accuracy. Combined with a gridded mat, I thought it would be very straightforward to recreate any scenario map, and everything is reusable. But in the heat of the moment it actually took the best part of an hour to set up, and that is just too long to keep players waiting. The felt hills worked well enough but the felt roads and rivers were too flimsy and easy to displace.

My next plan is to draw each map onto a disposable tablecloth so most of the work can be prepared in advance and the battlefield can simply be unrolled on the night. This doesn't require or preclude the addition of 3D elements - BUAs and woods on top and a token indication of elevations underneath. Feature edges like contour lines will be drawn and precisely demarcated so there won't be any ambiguity. Roads and waterways will be indicated with masking tape. These are all solutions I've seen other users apply.

As an interim measure, if I don't get time to prepare a cloth, I will simply use a paper printout of the map. I discovered that my veteran version of CorelDraw is nonetheless capable of printing an image to tiles, so it's possible to blow the maps up to 4' x 6' and then print them as a set of A3 pages which can be taped together. I know from previous experience that paper is unappealing and has its problems, but it's a quick and easy solution.

Using larger bases with Bloody Big Battles!

Half-base 10mm lead 'singles' for BBB: more
problematical with WoFun standees.

I might have been a little hasty in dismissing the use of WoFun 10mm stands for Bloody Big Battles! My thinking was that as they're 40mm-wide I could use them as double bases, but I'd still need singles, and that presents some challenges.

I could commission WoFun to create half-width bases and fill them up with individual skirmish figures. Or I could go a step further and commission 50mm x 25mm and 25mm x 25mm bases made to exactly replicate BBB size recommendations. But cavalry might remain problematical.

Using larger bases has been discussed on the Groups.io BBB group, and this simply involves using strength counters. One could even use a single Volley & Bayonet style base but BBB author Chris Pringle suggested 2-base units as this allows you to physically represent the difference between Line and In Depth formations. The suggestion of 2-base units was a lightbulb moment that completely simplifies the organisation and collecting of armies, so this is what I'm planning to go with as and when WoFun produce their 10mm Franco-Prussians.

Rather than actually using 2-base units throughout, I'd probably maintain more granularity by using 1 large base for 2-base units, 2 large bases for 3-5 base units, and 3 large bases for 6-7 base units. Artillery units would use 1 large base. 2-base units can't use In Depth so only need one large base. Skirmishers wouldn't be represented, but I'd know from the combination of ID label and strength counter if they were originally present or had been lost. 

I prefer the 18mm WoFun figures, but 10mm, as ever, has more mass appeal, is arguably better for grand-tactical games, and is a closer match for the later 19thC 6mm buildings I've already accumulated.

All I need now is for WoFun to produce the standees.

2026 Plans

My re-labelled mahjong blocks

My plans for 2026 are centred on three sets of rules:

1. Maurice.
2. Bloody Big Battles! (B3)
3. For King & Parliament!

For Maurice I have the WoFun 18mm War of Spanish Succession armies, though I also remain interested in gettng WoFun '45 Jacobite Rebellion ones.

For B3 I've started to collect WoFun 18mm Peninsular War forces. A B3 Peninsular War campaign book is due out this year. In the meantime there are already some scenarios available on the B3 group at Groups.io. These armies might also be used with General d'Armee 2 if I get round to something more tactical.

For later 19thC B3 battles I have the Kriegspiel-style blocks, though I'd be very happy to use 18mm WoFun Peter Dennis standees if they were to appear. WoFun have mentioned doing Franco-Prussian War in 10mm but these would be on 40mm bases, too wide for B3. 40mm bases could be counted as doubles, but I would still need singles, especially for skirmishers. If using lead figures I could create singles, but cutting WoFun figure groups in half is not an option! An alternative would be to go with 40mm bases and increase typical table size to 8’ x 5’ but that runs contrary to my general preference for more compact and manageable games.

My For King & Parliament! Forces are all ready to go. I just need to arrange some games.

If I exhaust these three areas, a return to the various Rampant rule sets is next on my to-do list.

2025 review

A furious cavalry melee. From a Maurice 
War of Spanish Succession game with 
18mm Wofun standees.

My main areas of focus this year have been Eisenhower, Maurice and collecting Wofun standees.

I've had to ration computer use because of migraines so posting blog articles has suffered, but I did manage some gaming, collecting and even some modelling/painting.

Eisenhower gave me the incentive to base and paint some of my 3mm 1940 French and German armies originally bought for Rommel.

Maurice has been a welcome return to another set of Sam Mustafa rules. I do have 10mm SYW armies for this but never got round to painting them. I now have 18mm Wofun War of Spanish Succession armies as indicated in the photo here.

I also accumulated Wofun 18mm English Civil War armies, but haven't yet used them, and have now started to collect Wofun 18mm Peninsular War forces.

I also relabelled my ceramic blocks for playing later 19thC Bloody Big Battles! again though I would prefer to use Wofun Peter Dennis 18mm Franco-Prussian War standees if they ever appear. 

I'll post separately about my plans for next year...

Hannut for Eisenhower

The Germans have taken one Objective
but they are Worn and time is running out.

Ian and I are working on the Hannut scenario I converted from Rommel to Eisenhower.

Having only two Formations a side worked perfectly well. Fellow players will note that the forces were spread thinly in comparison to other Eisenhower scenarios, but that's the way it was.

The German advantage in Ops, Stockpiles and starting with the Momentum was augmented by banning the French defenders from starting Prepared. That was to reflect the historical Belgian failure to build the expected defences, but as the two forces are more-or-less identical, this is a tough job for the attackers who usually enjoy more points. 

If the Germans fail to take one or more Objectives early, it becomes impossible for them to win the game.

Of course, a scenario doesn't have to be balanced. For competitive purposes you can swop sides, play a second game and add the scores together, but we are working on ways of giving the attackers more of an advantage, including Barrage cards and forcing some of the French to arrive as Reinforcements.

Once it's more developed, I'll post the map, OOBs and further details.

DRP 3mm 1940 forces for Eisenhower - completed

Four complete divisions in
a shallow A4 Tuff box.

I completed my 3mm armies for Eisenhower. Painting is now getting quite difficult for an old chap like me, so this is probably my first and last 3mm project. I had two main precepts: to make the vehicles and figures 'pop' and to avoid oversize base texturing.

Whereas the aim in real life would be to camouflage men and vehicles and to blend into the background, that would be totally counter-productive for such tiny models. The colour scheme needed to be lighter, contrasting and simpler than in real life. I also wanted to avoid using sand or static grass in a way that would be out of scale with the models.

The bases were intended to be dioramic, so my first step was to arrange and stick the models down. Here I made a mistake. I should have put slivers of card under the vehicles so they were of a height with the infantry and I could then have applied filler between the models to hide the base edges and level everything up. By putting filler only around the infantry, I ended up with a lumpy effect.

I attempted to disguise this problem by adding irregular areas of sand to represent scrub. This was a partial success, but the end result looks more like bramble patches on Wimbledon Common than Belgian fields.

With the models, filler and sand added, I gave everything an overall wet brush of dark brown. I then dry-brushed the vehicles using light versions of the historical base coats with no attempt to add secondary camouflage colours. I block-painted the infantry in 2 or 3 colours, but one would probably have done. This approach was essentially the same as I've used for larger scales that I've based before painting.

On the plus side, I think my decisions to restrict the colours and make the models 'pop', and to avoid out of scale texturing, were correct.

On the minus side, I should have pre-based the vehicles to match the infantry as explained, and then I wouldn't have had to add the scrub. I should also have chosen a less vivid green for the grass and dry-brushed it.

My WoFun plans

WoFun Bavarian Foot

It will take time to sell off the armies I've decided to let go, and completing what remains of the lead mountain is even more uncertain, but as readers and fellow compulsive collectors will appreciate, I can't let that stand in the way of my accumulation of new WoFun armies! 

I've now got enough English Civil War standees for the Montgomery scenario in For King And Parliament, and can move on to collecting something else, at least for now. 

 

The areas that interest me most are the War of Spanish Succession, the '45 Rebellion and the Peninsular War, all in 18mm. Since posting my first impressions of WoFun I have settled on the 18mm ranges which I now think are the best balance between aesthetics and versatility. I have also been in contact with Vali Dumitru at WoFun and they are happy to supply half-sprues, removing the duplication problem with 18mm. I also asked about their plans for metal standees, but these aren't for now. WoFun are great communicators and couldn't be more helpful. 

 

Renewal of interest in the WoSS was originally inspired by Simon Miller's forthcoming Lust for Glory rules, but I can also use Maurice, and, at grand-tactical level, Bloody Big Battles, games I play already. 

 

The '45 has been a very long-standing interest. I've planned to do it several times, but never committed, partly due to the prospect of the mass painting of tartans! WoFun changes all that. 

 

I already play Blucher with unit cards at grand-tactical level, but Napoleonics at tactical level is another thing. There's a huge choice of rules for this, but I'm leaning towards General d'Armee 2 despite its complexity, and looking at the Peninsular War because it's a rich area and, for me, a fresh subject to study. The same armies could once again be used with Bloody Big Battles at grand tactical level. With 30mm wide bases, the 18mm WoFun standees are close enough to the 25mm BBB standard. 

 

The story doesn't end there as there are lots of other ranges that may become available such as the Monmouth Rebellion. The armies for that are on the small side but might work with FK&P.

Too much stuff

I've got too much stuff, a lot of it completely unpainted or unfinished. I've made a list. So far the inventory covers just the land forces, and it's by no means fully detailed. As I intend to keep this list of shame updated, I've added it as a page (Periods & Scales) to the top menu.

I intend to sell off the stuff I least want and, if I can, work on the unfinished stuff I most want to keep, theoretically meeting somewhere in the middle. 

eBay used to be the obvious place to go to sell off wargames figures, but I've seen very negative reviews recently. Selling stuff at shows is possibly better, but will take a lot longer.

The only figures I'm going to buy in future will be WoFun standees, painted 3D figures (if the temptation arises) or maybe unpainted 2mm/3mm models that could be finished relatively quickly.

Consolidating my figure collection follows on from the great purge of my library, an ongoing process I started over six years ago. The book purge has made life more manageable, and there's nothing I regret getting rid of.

The immediate problem with the figures is that many of these are stacked two-layers deep so I can't immediately see everything I've got at a glance. So the first step is to send more books to charity shops so I can spread the figure boxes out. As I said, I've got too much stuff.

WoFun: storage logic 3

The final format for storing my WoFun standees, using 5mm EVA sheet stuck with a hot glue-gun. Perhaps I've lived a sheltered life but I've never used a glue-gun before. It was great fun until I accidentally glued a strip of foam to my fingers. That's when you find out just how hot the glue is and how well it sticks.

WoFun: storage logic 2

Thank you, Simon Jones, for putting me on to self-adhesive foam insulation tape. Attached to board, it's ideal for my WoFun storage trays. Arranging the foam with slots between was just the right approach, but my extravagant use of the tape makes this disproportionately expensive. 

If I get some sheets of hobby foam and cut and stick them myself, I may be able to achieve an adequate result more economically.

WoFun: storage logic

My WoFun collection(s) will ultimately fit into robust, stackable and conveniently sized plastic boxes, ie 4L or 9L RUBs according to the fundamental principle of wargame figure storage.

In the absence of magnetic sheeting, there has to be another way to stop the stands from rattling around or ending up in a  heap when being transported to the wargames club.

18mm shot, horse and pike stands are all different heights, but share two common dimensions: they are all about 30mm wide and about 20mm deep, front to back. 

Logic dictates that the most flexible and efficient way to store them (and to identify and deploy them) is to lie them down in trays. 

My prototype solutions featured homemade card trays, but I will probably switch to sponge with slots to catch the bases. The ultimate solution may look very different, but I think I've found the right form factor.

WoFun standees: first impressions

A Bluecoat regiment

Modellers, painters and figure collectors should look away now! These aren't for you!

I received my first WoFun standees order - 18mm English Civil War Royalist and Parliamentary forces. The good people at WoFun also threw in a complimentary sprue of Scottish cavalry. Cunning!

On first sight the figures were very vibrant (in a good way) if a little smaller than I had imagined. I rocked the first set of figures backwards and forwards to remove it. This was a mistake as I did a tiny bit of damage. It's better just to push the cut-outs forward. Once I got used to it, it was simple and fast to remove the figures and push them into the supplied MDF stands.

Other than playing with counters or blocks, this is the first time I’ll be able to put armies on the table without condemning myself to months or even years of painting and the common prospect of losing interest in a project long before it’s completed. At my age and with little time for painting, this has become a pressing consideration. Reducing the hobby to a pure wargaming experience is liberating. Of course, I will still be doing little bits of modelling and painting for fun, but it won't be the treadmill on which most previous gaming has been dependent.

Personally, I wouldn't choose WoFun flats for a skirmish game, and I don’t think 2D tanks would be very convincing, but for linear warfare with the players generally facing the front or back of the playing pieces, I think they will be quite convincing.

WoFun armies raise a few questions: duplication, storage and whether to 'pimp' them.

The 18mm sprues typically contain two sets of the featured product which is OK for line infantry but may not be appropriate for rarer units. Unwanted duplicates need to be swapped or sold. 28mm sprues provide a single set of figures so are not affected by this.

I normally base figures on steel so they can be stored and transported safely in plastic boxes lined with magnetic sheet. I'm not sure what to do with these figures. I've yet to find out how brittle/resilient they are, and whether they need to be glued into the stands. They are extremely light - virtually weightless - so it will be quite easy to carry a large number of them and a pity to change this. If I utilise some bubble wrap and am careful, it should be possible to keep them as they are.

It's common to run a black marker around the rim of the figures, though this may reduce the vibrancy. Flocking the bases is also popular. The most extreme thing is to paint the edges to match the faces. I'm not currently planning to do any of these things myself. The last two steps do transform the look fantastically, but they contradict the whole 'ready out of the box' concept.

I'm happy with having chosen 18mm for this particular project, but I'm not entirely convinced this is the best choice in every respect. Although the detail is there when viewed close to and at eye-level, once on the table they tend to look like dark blocks. This is even more characteristic of the 10mm ranges. 

Smaller is darker because a smaller surface reflects less light and is more difficult to see. When painting smaller figures, you compensate by using brighter paint. In this case, I guess Peter Dennis's ink and wash illustrations have simply been digitally reduced which appears to give more emphasis to the ink, and less to the wash.

This does not seem to bother other gamers. 18mm is apparently a lot more popular than 28 mm, and there is huge enthusiasm for 10mm Napoleonics.

Even in full, natural, daylight the stands seem
to present with a lot of 'black ink'.

For my War of Spanish Succession project I'm now inclining towards 28mm. The aesthetic appeal of the Baroque period is an important aspect for me, and the larger scale will show Peter Dennis's brilliant artwork to better advantage.

The 28mm sprues contain half the figures which means that armies will cost twice as much, but the increase in footprint is minimal. A 4-figure 28mm base is about 40mm wide as opposed to about 30mm for the 18s. If playing the envisaged grid game (Simon Miller's Lust for Glory!) this will mean using 6" rather than 4" squares. For Sam Mustafa's Maurice, which I play already, I don't think it will make much difference.

For the WoSS there are two areas where I might intervene, albeit minimally. One is repainting facings and stockings where required to produce specific regiments and to utilise any spare stands. The other is adding 3D paper flags. I'll explain more if/when the time comes.

Whatever the downsides or challenges, I won't have to paint hundreds of figures or risk a further increase in the lead mountain.

Eisenhower: markers and terrain

 

 

Picking up paper markers without long finger-nails is extremely awkward so I printed the designs from the SHAEF document onto self-adhesive labels and stuck them to MDF bases. The objective markers are flipable between Allied and Axis and the unit status markers between Worn and Exhausted.

 

 

For Prepared positions I created some 3D markers using 10mm resin sandbag emplacements from ScaleFiend. I need to get more of these. I'll be using them as markers for 10mm, 6mm and 3mm armies, though they are obviously only in scale with the largest of these.

 

Finally, I made some 4" square Bocage markers using strips of pan scourer. This one is a prototype and a bit messy. It's not quite finished but basically there. I don't intend to paint them. As with the low-relief BUAs and woods I made for Blucher, they're symbolic rather than realistic and the units will be sitting on top rather than 'within' the features. They will look best with 3mm models but will do as markers for 6mm and 10mm. As based, 3mm, 6mm and 10mm models will all fit within 4" squares which gives a nicely compact table, but 6" squares definitely look better aesthetically. Keeping these markers to 4" means I can use them with both sizes of grid.

3mm 1940 for Eisenhower

It was in 2013 that I first mentioned my interest in doing 3mm French and German armies for the Battle of Hannut in May 1940. This developed into the Rommel project before being abandoned, but I've recently been mining the lead mountain and am now processing a fraction of the accumulated Oddzial Osmy 3mm kit for use with Eisenhower. 

The photo shows the entire armies for Hannut: two German and two French armoured divisions. Although historically the largest tank battle then fought, it's small for a game in which there is normally a minimum of three formations (divisions) a side. Each base represents a battalion of tanks or motorised infantry. The German tank battalions were of mixed type. Although the obsolete Panzer Is and IIs predominated, I’ve modelled them as Panzer IVs (the cutting edge) as this makes them more useful for later campaigns.

Lust for Glory! and WoFun

I saw two things at Salute that lodged in my brain and have been festering ever since. One was Simon Miller's forthcoming horse and musket variation on To The Strongest! provisionally entitled Lust for Glory! The other were the WoFun plexiglass flats.

After some intense soul searching over the last few days I've fully resolved to invest in the WoFun  War of Spanish Succession and English Civil War standees. Both of these will be used primarily for Simon's grid games - LfG! and For King & Parliament!

Although intrigued by WoFun, I wasn't initially convinced, but the more I thought about it, the more I was attracted to the style of the 'figures' and the straightforwardness of the pre-printed approach. They will be ready-to-play after a couple of hours' assembly and light to carry.

It has also helped me to come to terms with the obvious: I will never complete more than a tiny fraction of my accumulated lead mountain and might as well start disposing of it. 

An initial ECW order is in and a WoSS order will follow. The disposal side will take longer and be more difficult. This is undoubtedly the most revolutionary development in the history of my adult wargaming career.

It took some time to decide on the scale. The beauty of the artwork shows best with the larger figures,  especially 28mm, but the ECW rules require some flexibility in unit representation (e.g. small, large, pike-heavy, shot-heavy etc) and this was best offered by the 18mm stands. I'm not attracted to the 10mm flats as it's quick and easy to paint 3D figures in that scale, but my attitude may change if I decide to invest in Napoleonics. And maybe I'll also look at the '45, another period I've always wanted to do.

The missing months

I didn't have time to post much to the blog last year or to do any painting, but I did keep up the gaming. I won't go into too much detail at this remove, but feel compelled to make some sort of report to appease the god of completeness (if there is one).

Following an initial game of The Men Who Would Be Kings, my friend Ian wanted to try out 1914 by Great Escape Games. This was far too gamey for me for an historical game, but it did inspire me to revisit Square Bashing. We played a lot of games and I even dug up, reorganised and based my 10mm Chinese Warlord Era armies.

A 1918 Square Bashing game.

After that we moved on to Dead Man's Hand Redux by Great Escape Games which was a refreshing diversion. This is inherently gamey, but that's more acceptable to me in this cinematic, fun context. Ian has a huge collection of Old West figures and buildings to draw on, not that you need much for this boutique game.

A tense moment in Dead Man's Hand Redux.

Later in the year we returned to Xenos Rampant in order to prepare for a demo game at Cavalier 2025. With the Cavalier plans sorted, Ian agreed to explore Eisenhower which is where we are now and on which I've already posted.

 

Operation Crusader: Eisenhower using Ian's 6mm
North African forces.

 
Our focus on Eisenhower was interrupted last week which gave me a chance to join a game of Crossfire kindly organised by club member Hamish. I was severely over-exposed to Crossfire in 2014 when preparing the Crossfiregrad demo game for Cavalier 2015 and haven't wanted to play it since. I can hardly believe that's ten years ago. But time heals and last night's game piqued my interest again.

I commanded two platoons of German veterans fighting off three platoons of British supported by HMGs, heavy mortars and a Churchill tank. The British didn't cover their attack by properly smoking or suppressing me and were thus convincingly seen off. I destroyed two platoons and the Churchill.

One of the many great things about Crossfire is that a good game can easily be staged within the 3-hour window of a club evening.

My last Salute?

There was some fantastic scenery at Salute 25 but the usual horrible lighting and noise level gave me a pounding migraine which lasted all day and into the evening. I also sat on a chair which was apparently broken and collapsed under me. Nobody had thought to put it out of the way.

The trade stands were dominated by Fantasy/SciFi start-ups flogging myriad ranges and rules, and big box shifters reflecting the commodification of the hobby.

I found a couple of games of particular personal interest: Simon Miller's Lust for Glory (in development) and an excellent and amusing presentation of the Two Fat Lardies' Chain of Command.

But as long as the show is at ExCel and on its current trajectory, I will probably never go again.

This is also the first year that I didn't notice anybody that I used to know when I was a member of the South London Warlords back in the Seventies...

 

 

Eisenhower: First game impressions

Surrounded German lorried infantry

Although I hadn't expected to be able to play it so soon, my good friend Ian agreed to give Eisenhower a try. Although it's too big for a first game, I wanted to play the Operation Epsom scenario as I have the appropriate kit. We didn't use the advanced rules.

Terrain is very simple at this scale and straightforward to lay out on a grid. I got some pan scourers to represent  bocage but hadn't had time to finish them properly. The felt rivers didn't bend along the 4" squares and will need to be rethought. If using a 6" grid I have rubber rivers which should fit, but I'll keep the bocage to 4" squares so everything fits in.

I grabbed some wooden blocks to act as ‘Prepared’ markers but they were much too big and clumsy and need to be replaced with something more discrete matching the unit base frontage, probably a little row of sandbags.

The 4" grid worked fine, kept the game compact and left room round the edges of the playing area for game paraphernalia, which was convenient but unsightly. A 6" grid would look less like a car park, something that always struck me about playing Tim Gow's Megablitz with 1/72 models. I am, however,  indebted to Tim for the original inspiration to game at the 1 base = 1 battalion scale.

Anyway, we diced for sides. I got the British/Canadians and Ian the Germans. Epsom is a very crowded battlefield and Ian's deployment was well considered, pretty much wall to wall and reinforced by utilising bocage and rivers. The Germans are veteran and the British only trained except for the Canadians (which I could and should have used more aggressively).

I had plenty of mediocre infantry to attack the German infantry in the bocage, but as the Germans were all Prepared that would allow them to fire first rather than simultaneously.  Worse still was the prospect of attacking the Superior German armour in the open, some behind a river. When attacking across a river, you have to throw for Friction which means some units may drop out or even suffer a step loss.

Given the daunting prospect of trying to break through, I placed the 11th Armoured Division - my only decent armoured formation  - on the right flank, and they succeeded in sweeping around that flank. By the end of the first day I had eliminated three German infanty battalions and taken two objectives. The German lorried infantry in the bocage (top photo, ringed) lost a combat and were exhausted, but their mandatory retreat was blocked so they effectively surrendered.

On the second day I surrounded two Panzer battalions that would have been isolated by the close of that day and suffered damage (ringed units in the lower photo). I decided to attack them as well using the Shermans behind them but this just resulted in all the units becoming worn.

Surrounded German Panzers

However, attacking anywhere else looked suicidal. At the very least it is would have required successive waves of fresh troops and would  have been very attritional. The Germans also had strong forces in reserve, so although I was pleased with the initial British success, I think the game would have turned in the Germans' favour if we had continued. I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who has played this scenario.

Anyway, the important thing was not so much the detail of this particular game, but to see how the rules worked and what the game felt like. In about two-and-a-half hours, including setup, we got into the second day. This slow progress was mainly down to unfamiliarity, procrastination (especially mine) and the size of the game. We both felt the game worked well and enjoyed it. The mechanisms were simple and elegant especially the use of artillery and we didn't encounter any unresolved issues.

With regard to the absence of reconnaisance functions, raised by Neil Patterson in the comments on the last blog post, we felt that this didn't matter in a game where everything is apparent and there are no hidden units to be discovered. Recce units, if represented, become just another battalion. The vast majority of tabletop games I’ve ever played have shared this Godlike visibility, while the small number featuring hidden deployment have often proved unsatisfying. There is no point in using model soldiers if they are not actually placed on the table. At the end of the day it’s a game not a simulation.