April 2026 Report

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What the hell happened to April! A third of 2026 has gone but hey we are still alive and that is a good thing 😁

Our first game of the month was a 1980’s Cold War action using what seems to have become our go to set of rules, Modern Spearhead. The rules require a bit more work in terms of the pre game set up but overall the result is worth it.

This game was a bit of a hasty set up following last minute cancellations that scuppered the original planned game. As it turned out we had a fine time with our reduced numbers creating a follow on game from the end of march where both sides are racing for a strategic crossroads further along the front from the original battle. In this scenario a Bundeswehr armoured brigade was taking on two Warpac armoured regiments, one East German using T72s and one Soviet using T62s and T80s (yes we know they should all be the same tanks in a regiment but we only realised that after we’d painted them!).

The Bundeswehr advanced with their tank battalions on either side of the crossroads over the countryside with attached AA cover while the Marder’s carrying the combat teams sped up the road to seize the buildings around the crossroads.

The Warpac forces split the battlefield in two with the Soviets (above) advancing en masse on the right and the East Germans mirroring on the left.

The fight for the crossroads soon got going with the Marder combat teams having the slight advantage of having got there first.

This was our first go at the rules for fighting in built up areas and we’re not sure we got it quite right🤔 It certainly got a bit tense and ultimately the Soviet BMPs overwhelmed the Marders.

We made liberal use of air assets on both sides and the TOW armed Lynx (on loan from the RAF) proved pretty devastating.

And the Frogfoot were equally devastating for the Soviets – ouch!

The Hinds weren’t quite as effective as usual and the much maligned (by us anyway) AA cover did actually work.

Ultimately however the Bundeswehr had to concede the battle area, the crossroads was taken and the two main tank brigades were in retreat with losses being followed by the intact East Germans.

I still don’t thing we have got the balance quite right and whatever you may think about points value games they do give you that. The army lists for the rules are great but without a brake on what you can deploy there can be a tendency towards a miniatures arms race – ‘well the list says I can have 4 Harriers so I will’.

Our next foray was Eastern Renaissance with the Poles and Swedes being turned out along with support acts – Germans for the Poles and Danes for the Swedes.

Because the armies hadn’t seen the light of day for a while we kind of overdid it! Remember that Gary Oldman meme “Everyone!” well that was us 🤣

The fun aspect of the period is the maniacs known as the winged hussars. No set of rules depicting these guys should allow anything other than “charge!” and the Polish player duly obliged.

By a quirk of deployment the hussars, on the left of the Polish line, ended up facing the bulk of the Swedish pike, in this case the Scots Brigade.

But the hussars didn’t care and after a thrilling series of charges, melees and charges again the Swedish wing gave way. The hussars however were in no fit state to do anything about it.

Over on the other wing waves of German, Swedish, Danish and Finnish cavalry crashed into each other in a series of attacks going one way and then the next. Ultimately the Germans gained the upper hand and the Swedish wing collapsed. Victory to the Poles.

The game was way too big but it did look very pretty 😀

Next up was a return to Iran Iraq using Cold War Commander, this time with several amendments.

Our fight was an encounter action between the Iranian 92nd Armoured and the Iraqi 26th Armoured. The 92nd featured two battalions of the mighty Chieftains, a single mechanised infantry battalion and an armoured cavalry battalion. The Iraqis had three battalions of T62s and a mechanised infantry battalion. Both sides had air and artillery support.

As is typical of these kind of games the individual battalions arrived piecemeal, here the Iranian mechanised infantry race for the relative safety of the built up areas.

Unusually the airpower arrived when called, Tomcats set to make a mess of BTR60s.

The stars of the show for the Iranians were the M150s sitting on a convenient hill flinging TOWs across the table.

Iraqi infantry scrambling from their BTR60s and deploying their Gazelles to go hunting Chieftains.

Iraqi tanks piling in on the left,

The Iraqi advance stalled at the dried river bed – that open ground is deadly!

The Iraqis did manage to get their SU-22s into play and gave the Iranians a bit of a scare.

Ultimately however it was an Iranian victory, two of the Iraqi tank battalions were finished (mainly due to the TOWs) and the rest were pinned at the dried river bed.

In terms of the modifications we tried, generally they worked. The big one was leaving casualties on stands rather than removing at the end of the turn, this certainly meant that the Chieftains had to be a bit more circumspect (although still pretty deadly). The changes to the Recon rules seem to be going in the right direction as do the changes to the vulnerability of the infantry. Our next task will be the rules on cover.

Next was return to our Guadalcanal campaign, this time a fictional interlude before the final game to take account of how well the Americans have been doing.

As always the game is played to simulate night shooting and the Japanese objective is to bombard Henderson air field effectively before daylight comes.

Once the map movement was over the sea became very busy!

The game very quickly became who can sink the most opposition using torpedoes 🤣😂

Although gun fire did account for some.

Eventually dawn came and the airfield remained undamaged. One game left to go…..

Our final roll out was one from the ongoing development of the Timurid era rules, this time Mamluks v Timurids.

For this encounter the Timurids divided their forces into two Persian/Timurid cavalry divisions with elephant support, a large militia skirmish infantry force featuring bombards, naphtha throwers and hand gunners and an allied Turcoman division. The Mamluks had two divisions of Emirs Mamluks, one of Royal Mamluks, their own Turcomans and their own militia infantry.

The Mamluks deployed their Turcomans and Royal Mamluks on the right, the militia skirmish infantry sprawled across the centre and the Emirs mamluks on the left. The Timurids mirrored the enemy militia with their own but used this screen to cover their two Persian divisions while the Turcomans took the right flank; the Timurids therefore risked having their left turned on the gamble of overwhelming the Mamluk centre.

The initial turns were all about the shooting, after all virtually everyone had a bow!

Given how rubbish they all were, the skirmishers held up remarkably well but eventually decided that the rear was the best place to be.

Sooner or later you need to get stuck in if you are going to win a battle and both sides obliged.

On the Timurid right it all went their way and in due course one division of Emirs Mamluks was on the run.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse 🤣

On the Timurid left however the story was as expected, the Turcomans filled the void and despite the best efforts of the left centre Persian division the Royal mamluks were able to break through.

Ultimately both left wings were finished and the centre had nothing going on – both militias were shot up so we had the classic wargamers draw.

Overall I was happy with how the rules played out despite having missed a couple of things – duh! Some more work to be done but nearly there I reckon.

On the reading front it was an eclectic month with the Ordnance Survey book being the star read – I didn’t even realise I had it in the collection!

On the painting and modelling front I finally applied myself to painting and basing a job lot of micro armour stuff I got off eBay recently.

I should have enough to field an independent Soviet tank regiment to bolster my East Germans.

Because I only had a vague idea of what I had painted I put up a load of photos on the Modern Spearhead Facebook page and two members were super generous with their time and expertise. Sometimes social media can work really well 😊

Well that’s it for the month. Spending this weekend working out the troop deployment for our Minden game at Partizan, hope to see you there. In the meantime, play well, play fair.

March 2026 Report

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Wading out of a very wet March into the emergence of Spring and some decent games behind us.

First out of the gate and a first for us as a group was a Western Desert game in 20mm using Rapid Fire Reloaded. We had discussed doing Western Desert for over a year maybe in 10mm using our existing desert terrain when Dave acquired a matched pair of Germans and Allies and so we were set.

The scenario was fictitious but using the orders of battle from the various publications put out by the rules publishers. In our scenario we had an Allied force holding out at the top end of the 8 x 6 table awaiting relief from Commonwealth forces arriving from either side of the long edges near the bottom of the table. About two thirds of the way up of the table Italian and German forces were arriving from either side of the long edges with the objective of preventing the relief. The Allied force holding out was purely representative, the game was the four commands.

Full disclosure, we got stuff wrong 😮 For instance it wasn’t until we were half way through we realised we were using the wrong quick reference sheet 🤣we were using the one for the rules as they were not the cut down version they now are. We also got the wrong stats for some of the vehicles but our enjoyment was undimmed.

The keynotes of the game were as follows.

The initial Allied advance saw some early success with the elimination of a Panzer III company.

And then the Marder IIIs went up in smoke. “great set of rules!”

Then the Axis started to get their act together with the Germans doing all the heavy lifting so far.

The Italians made an appearance 🤔

But the “tommies” didn’t have it all their own way.

And a level of revenge was extracted.

Quite how stuff got this close to each other we weren’t sure……

Definitely got something wrong 🙄

The Commonwealth forces didn’t break through and so we called it. Reflecting on the game afterward we all said we enjoyed it and would play again, just need to do a bit more reading up on the admitedly very simple (but elegant) rules and use the correct play sheet 😁😂

Next was my personal favourite, Successors. This time we had a ‘what if’ encounter between Demetrious Poliorcetes and Lysimachus set against the real campaign of 288BC where both general manoeuvred but never met in battle.

Neither side was flush with pikes. Demetrious had 2 battalions against the 3 of Lysimachus (one of which was Veteran), both sides had Hoplites, allied Athenians for Demetrious and the more traditional mercenaries for Lysimachus. Both sides had a mix of formed and skirmish cavalry, a single veteran Xystophoroi each and others of equal or lesser worth. Demetrious outnumbered Lysimachus on the elephant front 3:1 and both sides had a plethora of peltasts and psiloi.

The terrain was mainly an open plain with several low hills and light woods scattered about. Lysimachus deployed with all of his cavalry on the left wing under Phietaeros fronted by the single elephant squadron (1 model) while the infantry occupied the centre and right in a single line, Thracians on the left, pike under Prepelaus in the centre and the hoplites under Menas on the right, all fronted by psiloi. Demetrius also deployed his cavalry, under Pithon, in one wing but on the right so amazingly the cavalry were opposite each other – this had a positive effect on the game, his centre and left read from right to left, pikes, hoplites, peltasts, all fronted by psiloi.

Given the configuration of the armies the opening turns were all about the cavalry. As the infantry trudged forward the horse had at it which was great fun but much like the reality of the time fairly inconsequential to the real fight.

Demetrious had the advantage in elephants and Lysimachus the advantage in numbers and morale class of his cavalry.

The battle swung back and forth to no real advantage, the Xystophoroi of Lysimachus retreated off table being forced back by a combination of elephant and skirmish horse working together, two elephants panicked and created their usual mess but none died and the satrap horse of Demetrious both routed and later rallied at the camp.

The real deal was of course the infantry clash and this time we had a proper clash and a proper result.

Once the psiloi had done their thing, which largely favoured Demetrious, their was a marked reluctance to actually get stuck in – some pretty poor morale rolls across the line and a reluctance from the players to put their leaders into the units to beef up their chances.

Eventually the fires of courage were stoked and troops committed albeit a little on the uncoordinated side.

From the off it was going to be Lysimachus day, he gained the upper hand and never let go.

His hoplites routed their opposition hoplites and the Demetrian peltasts, his veteran pike routed their opposing pikes and one of his other pike battalions routed the 2nd opposition hoplites. The only consolation for Demetrius was his other pike battalion routing their opposite numbers but it was a decisive Lysimachid victory.

As a game this worked almost perfectly. The cavalry had their own little fight and that was that. The infantry lined up and went for it (eventually!) and a decisive decision was obtained, the final line up favoured Lysimachus in that one of his hoplites got to take on the weaker peltasts – javelins not being great against long pointy sticks and one of his pikes faced hoplites but that was just the luck of the draw. A good game and recreation of the time and the place.

Our next foray was the Carlist Wars and a refight of the battle of Ormaiztegui, January 1835, a modest and fairly indecisive battle which we reckoned could be easily fought to a conclusion, although this wasn’t helped by a power outage on the evening of the game. Gaming by candlelight, how quaint 😀

The Carlists began the game in control of the village of the battle name with portion of their force and the rest moving up, the Isabelinos were therefore on the attack all along the line.

The initial defence.

Battle being joined seriously all along the line with the Isabelinos struggling to maintain their offensive.

The fight for the village begins with a musketry duel. I’m not convinced by the teddy bear fur.

The Isabelinos launched a bayonet charge at the walls.

Despite the desperate fighting at the village the Isabelinos ran out of steam, their attack columns had stalled and two generals were down – desperately leading those attack columns, so they called it a day and we blew out the candles 🤣

Next, another refight, this time Dennewitz, 6th September 1813 using Volley & Bayonet.

One of those games where some troops are on and others are coming at various times, particularly noted for the great long column the bulk of the French army was in as it marched up from the south (off the table) which left Bertrand and his IV Corps to start the battle.

The Prussians opted for an aggressive policy to open the battle given their initial disparity in numbers demonstrated by von Oppen charging his Dragoons into the Chasseurs of Lorge which saw the eventual destruction of Lorge but left von Oppen unfit for anything else.

Continuing the theme, Thuemen attacked Morand in a fight which left both divisions exhausted.

The long French column of VII and XII Corps came marching on – the blank bases representing the strung out column of the brigade base. The French players really struggled with this concept during the game which affected their ability to deploy effectively – not a rules problem, a player problem.

Fontanelli’s division gave a good account of itself storming the Windmill Heights held by by von Lindenau but eventually fell back exhausted leaving the Prussians just about clinging on.

At Kaltenborn, where the French had gained a tenuous lodgement von Bullow’s cavalry restored the line and gave the strung out column a fright.

It took some time but Oudinot finally got his Corps into some kind of fighting shape.

And threw everything in to breakthrough.

Now the French were getting it together but would they breakthrough before the end of the assigned number of turns?

In short, no, but they did do better than their historical prototype so there is solace to be gained there.

A tough game and a real struggle for the French.

Next up, Wars of Religion, Early Spanish v Early Dutch. Another village to defend, this time by the Dutch and their English allies. The Spanish Tercios and Walloon loyalists are out of shot preparing their attack, both sides cavalry are out on the open ground.

Spanish lancers and pistoleers preparing to advance.

Dutch lancers and supporting cuirassier. “the ground’s a bit uneven m’lord”. I think I actively dislike the teddy bear fur.

First cavalry clash.

Initially the fighting favoured the Spanish but then in an amazing turn around (also known as bad dice) the Dutch gained the upper hand and scattered their opponents.

It soon went from bad to worse as the Spanish cavalry line dissolved and two unscathed Dutch cuirassier regiments were galloping free on the Spanish right.

Tercio preparing to storm the village. They will in fact be stopped.

The freewheeling cuirassier are about to overrun the Spanish guns. I don’t know if the ‘disordered’ marker is a battle condition or an accurate reflection of the effect of the teddy bear fur 😃

The game kind of petered out – sometimes games do that, the collapse of the Spanish cavalry right wing was compounded by the failure of the Walloons to do anything on the left which meant the Tercios were stalled and unsupported. Dutch victory.

Our final game was a second run at Modern Spearhead in an ambitious (maybe too ambitious) two day game. We had a written scenario with situation reports for both sides – Operation Gorky Park for Warpac and Operation Rapid Response for NATO and OBs for East Germans, Soviets, Belgians and BAOR. I’m not sure whether the effort that goes into this is worth it but it gives me a sense of time and place.

In brief, the scenario was an initial Soviet advance has pushed the Bundeswehr defenders back across the river Oker in full retreat but divisional reorganisation has stalled the Soviet advance briefly and now they are about to resume the advance with only one tank regiment but reinforced by an East German tank regiment. Objectives; secure the autobahn and bridge over the Oker, secure the town of Braunschweig and its adjacent power plant, seize the goods and passenger rail lines. Meanwhile, at Braunschweig, the Belgian 17th Armoured Brigade has been rushed forward to defend the town and its power plant, keep the rail lines open and maybe recapture the bridge over the Oker; a BAOR taskforce is promised to be coming up the autobahn at some point.

Getting troops on the table took some time but finally we got started.

The Warpac players opted for a two flank attack; the East Germans would advance on Braunschweig and the passenger rail station while the Soviets would secure the autobahn bridge and swing wide to seize the goods station and the power plant. The reality of this plan meant that the East Germans did the heavy lifting and the Soviets were too far away to help.

The East Germans crossed the Oker with two battalions, one via an old stone bridge and the other further up via a recently laid pontoon bridge.

One of the two Belgian Leopard battalions moved up to a walled lane on the right flank of the town.

The Soviets rolled forward en masse, it looked pretty impressive…

The second Leopard battalion moved up early on the bridge – this might not have been the best of moves 🤔

The Soviets called up one of their Fitters for an attack run, it didn’t achieve much but we learnt how the air rules worked.

The BAOR arrive early, great for the Belgians, not so great for the east Germans.

Some Lynxs arrived so we got to see how the helicopter rules played out.

A general note on the air rules as a whole. The mechanics are relatively simple but the detail is in the load outs and mission types which we kind of made up as we went along, to get the full value we are going to have to do some pre work before the next game.

Not to left out the Harriers joined in the air war 😁 Now they were pretty ineffective and have limited game time but the need for AA to be up with the battalions was clearly illustrated.

The Soviets crawl on.

The Lynxs are back….

….and we find that ATGW are pretty good at blocking bridges 🤣

Soviet motor rifle battalion racing for the rail bridge.

East Germans seriously engaged and it isn’t going well.

Nope, still not going well.

Some compensation for the East Germans.

Its all going terribly wrong for the East Germans as the attack on Braunschweig falls apart and what’s left of the battalions fall back across the Oker.

Safe and sound.

The game was planned as a 12 turn game but by the end of turn 10 it was essentially over. The East German brigade was well and truly screwed and in retreat while the sole Soviet gain was the main bridge over the Oker. Yes the Belgians finally had both Leopard battalions in retreat but the combat teams were firmly ensconced in the town and power plant – we didn’t get to see how close combat worked and the BAOR combat group was untouched – shells just bounce off the Chieftains 😂🤣Successful NATO defence.

Reflecting on the game afterward it was perhaps over ambitious for our second game but that said the rules played out perfectly ok despite us screwing up on some of the finer points. What the ratio of NATO to Warpac brigades needs to be for a more ‘balanced game’ – I hate the phrase, I don’t know. More work required. So far though the change to the rules has been an overall positive experience.

On the reading front, these two were finished. The Norwich book is late 80’s and shows its age in places but the author does know how to tell history in a readable way and that is to be welcomed. The Afghanistan book is one of the many produced at the time and generally along the theme of bad political decisions, unclear aims, brave soldiers etc, better and more honest efforts have been produced since.

Finally, went to my mate Marks funeral; Rammstein’s “Adieu” as the entrance music – epic 😀

And on that note, thank you for reading and goodbye until next moth.

February 2026 Report

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A short month but still keeping ourselves busy.

First up was the next in our Guadalcanal campaign, this one being what is known to history as ‘The First Battle of Guadalcanal’ A per our previous games the initial movements were plotted on gridded maps, adjudicated by the umpire, and once sightings had been made the task forces were deployed. Objectives were simple, the Japanese to get close enough to the opposite table edge to bombard Henderson Field and the Americans to stop them. The game was played at night so limited ranges and the rules, as usual, were Victory at Sea.

The Japanese were first on and sailed straight forward towards the deploying American fleet. Both sides had split into two task forces and these arrived at different times on the table.

The early exchanges favoured the Japanese with the Salt lake City going under due to gunfire from the Kongo and more devastatingly from destroyer fired torpedoes.

The USN got revenge on a measly destroyer 🙄

The second Japanese task force arrived and things were starting to look a bit grim for the Americans.

However the the Cushing unloaded every torpedo it had at the mighty Congo and down it went with a roar – loud shouts from the American player!

Ships were now starting to fill the playing space as both sides manoeuvred to get in close enough to fire and get the best angles. Many torpedoes were let loose.

The Atlanta was sunk by torpedoes, along with the Sterett, the Juneau and the Cushing; American losses were climbing.

The Americans did manage to sink the Nagara – a glorious event I failed to capture, and things looked grim but on turn 7 with dawn not far away 3 US heavy cruisers arrived and it was time for the Japanese to go or face massed aerial bombardment from the planes they had failed to destroy on Henderson Field.

Despite their losses the game was a win for the Americans mainly due to the fact that the Japanese lost sight of their objective and got distracted with sinking American ships and not bombarding the airfield. One game left to go in the series.

Next up was a very ambitious (maybe too ambitious) refight of the battle of the Battle of Hastenbeck 1757, the first serious engagement of the Seven Years War.

Our plan is to work our way through all the battles in Savory’s, His Britannic Majesty’s Army in Germany During the Seven Years War, a bit of a tall task that will keep us occupied for this year and probably the next.

At Hastenbeck an ‘Army of Observation’ comprising Hanoverians, Hessians and Brunswickers under William Duke of Cumberland stood on high ground behind the village of Hastenbeck facing a numerically stronger French army under the Marshal Charles d’Estrees.

Belying the popular image of French incompetence d’Estrees showed sound strategic abilities in crossing a major river at night and marching quickly to force Cumberland to fight or lose Hanover. As the armies deployed d’Estrees showed further initiative in sending a large flank force under Francois de Chevert to turn the Hanoverian left on the Obensburg, wooded high ground which Cumberland thought to be impenetrable.

The battle was a slog, as was our game – we were genuinely exhausted at the end. The attack by Chevert made good headway to start with driving in the weak opposition and signalling to the main army to begin their attack. Cumberland, realising his peril, ordered several grenadier battalions out of the line to restore the position on the Obensburg and sent frantic calls to the rear for whatever troops were available. The French centre advanced slowly across marshy ground at the foot of the hill and took serious casualties from the Hanoverian guns on the high ground but eventually overran the guns and Cumberland began to withdraw, a French victory in the making. However on the Obensburg the grenadiers had held up the French long enough for some late arriving reinforcements to turn the tide somewhat assisted by one of Cheverts brigades mistaking a Swiss brigade for Hanoverians and opening fire! d’Estrees now thought he was having his flank turned and so halted the attack. By the time both commanders realised they were still in with a chance of victory it was too late, Cumberland was retreating and d’Estrees had lost the momentum to pursue the allies.

We began our fight with Chevert already in place but after the allied players had taken their places – cries of WTF! were a joy to hear, nobody it seemed had actually read up on the battle 😂

All along the French front the battalions began their advance.

The early fighting was of course on the Obensburg and Cumberland the player sent messengers galloping off to the rear – he was told he had reserves, while he sent additional couriers to the grenadier battalions guarding his forward guns and to the brigade on the left of the line to turn to face. All of this of course took time even in wargaming terms and so he had to sweat it out and hope his jaegers and weak line held out.

And they did! The French were hampered by the terrain and their numbers meant they kind of got in each others way. The jaegers were eventually driven off along with their supporting line infantry but just as the disordered French were emerging from the woods the Hanoverians were turning to face, now it would be a different kind of a fight…..

Back in the centre the French line pressed slowly on braving the artillery bombardment from the hill.

In time, and it seemed like forever to the French, their troops began to pierce the Hessian line although all semblance of order was gone and so individual battalions made headway while others fell back to rally and come again.

The Hessian 2nd line moved steadied themselves as the first line drifted back spent.

On the right centre the French had high hopes that their better disciplined Swiss brigade would make a dent in the Hanoverian line but they were literally shot to pieces and the brigade collapsed.

Back on the Obensburg the reserves arrived and turned the tide, Cheverts attack ground to a halt.

Over on the far right of the allied position the Hanoverian horse received orders to advance against the French left, mainly comprised of the grenadiers de Roi who had collapsed the Hessian line. Not the best of choices especially as this was the signal for the opposing French horse to respond.

Chevert managed to rally enough of his command to threaten the Hanoverian line but not enough for a final push.

The high water mark of the French attack, left centre. The Hessian brigades have failed their morale checks, several battalions have virtually ceased to exist and their cavalry had been halted by musket fire, the best they could do now was cover a retreat. The French facing them are only slightly better off, the Grenadiers de Roi battalion are spent but the Grenadiers Royaux are in decent enough shape to occupy the crest and there are plenty of cavalry following on behind.

The high water mark of the French attack, right centre. The Hanoverians are in full retreat with several battalions virtually destroyed, the Brunswick centre however is virtually untouched and stands defiant. The opposing French are pretty much done, their first brigade was shot to pieces and virtually ceased to exist, the second and third line are at the crest but in no condition to go any further. On the right however the German brigade followed by an Austrian brigade is in good health having pushed through the shattered Swiss and advancing steadily.

And that was it. A costly French victory but a victory nonetheless. I don’t know about the little generals but I was knackered!

A complete change of pace next, 1980’s cold war Europe using a ‘new’ set of rules, Modern Spearhead. Yes I am well aware that Modern Spearhead is not new at all having been published in the late 80’s and perhaps has had it’s time in the sun. However one of our group has become a bit dissatisfied with our go to set, Cold War Commander, and so in the spirit of comradeship we agreed to give MSH a go, the scale is roughly the same and no rebasing was required so off we went with a simple scenario; an understrength Soviet tank division tasked with breaking through the NATO lines (ie get off the other side of the table) and a reinforced Bundeswehr tank brigade tasked with stopping them. We opted not to use the artillery or aircraft for this game so we could concentrate on the basic mechanics.

The rules require written orders (very perfunctory) but importantly a map on which you mark the exact route of advance for each brigade from which you cannot deviate without a higher level command. Personally, I loved this. We also used hidden movement via the maps which meant one of us had to be umpire which in a small group like ours is not ideal. For me this didn’t work and I’d rather we didn’t use it again, it was too much messing about and quite frankly whatever the player can see it doesn’t matter as the map route is king.

The Soviet player initially advanced on a broad front which we soon realised was a mistake as it meant that a single Soviet tank battalion would end up facing off to more powerful and flexible NATO battalion which in the battle of the armour would be death for the Soviets. In terms of shooting the rules are brutal!

The NATO player deployed out from his start lines to try and seize choice terrain and dominate the battle field. In this early encounter he certainly did and the Soviet player became a bit despondent.

As we played on the Soviet player got more of a hang of using the terrain but his commands were still strung out across the table.

Changing orders for NATO is easier than WARPAC and so the Bundeswehr were able to go on the attack and try and exploit a gap in the Soviet lines.

After a chat and a reset the Soviet player started to deploy to take advantages of open flanks – the smaller number of Bundeswehr can’t be everywhere.

And to deploy multiple battalions – kill one there is another to take it’s place.

The Bundeswehr traded space and fell back.

Ultimately the Bundeswehr gun line held and the Soviets failed to break through.

Overall I liked the rules and hope we can play them again with guns and planes. Are they better than CWC? The jury is out for me. They are certainly more nuanced, you have got to think about your plan a lot more carefully and some of the mechanisms are better, the orders and map I have already mentioned, target priorities means that you don’t have elements artificially shooting all over the table just to score easy points, the comparison of attack and defence is simple and the fact that elements only fire once in a turn should make the game quicker – ours wasn’t but it was our first go. The army lists have a feeling of being a bit of a work in progress and the lack of a points system makes creating a balanced game a bit of a challenge – I recognise that many gamers can’t stand the idea of army lists and points and I sympathise with those views but the relative worth of one unit against another does give you an insight into how the rules writer saw his game unfolding.

Next up was an away game of ACW using Rebels and Patriots upscaled for brigades. The game was the first in hopefully a series of campaign games set in the Shenandoah Valley. Two guys who live away are the divisional commanders who submit orders to the umpire who in turn comes up with a battle day, those of us lowly brigade commanders who can make it turn up with our brigades and play, those who can’t make it then their brigade has got ‘lost’ on the way to the fight.

Our first game then featured two Union brigades attacking across a field and a stream against three confederate brigades with superior artillery. Why? Because that’s what the orders from division said to do 🙄

To avoid the obvious problem of numbers the Union concentrated on one side of the field and attempted to overwhelm the two brigades facing them before the third one got into the action.

Initially the plan worked quite well, the artillery sited themselves on high ground and did some damage, the infantry advanced covered by some effective skirmisher fire and the cavalry regiment actually charged and saw off a rebel regiment.

Then it all went to pieces. The cavalry were stuck in the middle of the Confederate lines and got shot up badly, the advancing infantry were ambushed from woods and the third brigade dragged its big guns into range and eliminated the Union guns. The Union commanders then decided discretion was the better part of valour and retreated.

Our final game was a return to our Dark Age/Early Medieval set up which hasn’t seen the light of day for over a year!

For this one we did a semi historical set up in that we chose the period of the Tyrants in early 5th Century Gaul, specifically the encounter in 410AD between Constantine III and his former protégé Gerontius outside the walls of the city of Arles.

Constantine had the slightly larger but more cosmopolitan force; his son Constans commanded a body of Roman horse on the right wing supplemented by Hunnic mercenaries, working left along the line was a body of militia from Arles under Germanus, then a body of Roman foot under his other son Julian (actually dead by this time), and finally a body of Burgundian allies under Edobich next to the walls of Arles. Constantine himself deployed with Constans (historically he stayed inside Arles).

Deployed opposite was Gerontius. On the right, under the walls of Arles, was the man himself with a powerful all Roman cavalry contingent, next to him was Apollinaris and four regiments of Auxilium Palatinum and then out on the left a Visigoth allied contingent of horse and foot under Theudis.

A general advance by both sides occupied the first couple of turns and then first blood was tasted by one of the Equites Superior regiments under Gerontius who smashed into the lead Burgundian warband and sent it rolling back where it came from. An unexpected result that left a bit of a hole in the Constantine left flank – in fairness all the odds were with the cavalry and they rolled incredibly well.

Not to be outdone, Constantine trotted his cataphracts into the Visigoth cavalry who similarly fled pursued by the Romans…

Who then ran into the Visigoth foot who were made of stronger stuff and held on.

The fighting then locked in all along the line as general order was lost and each body fought its own little war.

Auxilium taking on ‘barbarians’

Constantine’s foot centre grinding forward against a the Visigoth cavalry now commanded directly by Theudis.

More of the infantry centre.

Gerontius and his cavalry have now seen off all of the Burgundian contingent and are turning in on the Constantine centre.

We just didn’t have the time to finish it ☹ The Burgundians were gone and most of the Visgoths but the cavalry of Gerontius were now in the rear of Constantine so we called it a victory for Gerontius. Slightly unsatisfying but not every game can be perfect.

In other news got some additions done for the Iran Iraq project.

Read this. A bit dry. A pure history book rather than a history book that informs my hobby.

Went to our first show of the year, Hammerhead. Visitors only. Well attended, decent mix of trade and games.

I got distracted playing in my mate Charlies Napoleonic Naval game, so no further photos. Out of the Lardy school, which as anyone who knows me isn’t my thing, but here we didn’t have any of the silly pun names and nonsense random events, just a game that played well and gave you a notion of Napoleonic naval warfare.

And finally it was goodbye to my mate of seven years Mark Woolley of M & C Painting who lost his three year battle with bowel cancer. I met Mark as a customer at the Reading show when it was still at the Leisure Centre and then became friends over the years. A big personality, always free with his advice on paints & painting, and a ‘unique’ sense of humour. I shall certainly miss him.

On that sombre note February is over, bring on March and the Spring.

January 2026 Report

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So, a new year dawns and our kick off game was Iran Iraq using our usual Cold War Commander rules.

This one was a narrative driven game, 12 turns long. Both sides began off table – the Iraqi 10th armoured brigade coming from the east and the Iranian 92nd armoured brigade coming from the west, and both were aiming for the main highway. The Iranians began the game with an armoured cavalry battalion on table proceeding east in column on a minor road and the Iraqis had BRDM-2 Sagger platoons randomly placed on the tabletop. Both sides had pre determined possible entry points for individual battalions but these could not dice to enter until the recon elements had reported back – a die roll for each element determined the turn number.

I wont detail who arrived when but the choice of where was critical. The Iranians could arrive on the minor road used by the cavalry, further to the south, in the corner, initially covered by a hill and north behind the river bend facing the town – in they chose this route they were given bridging equipment. The Iraqis had their own minor road facing the town, the northern end of the main highway and the far northern corner. The Iranians chose the table edge behind the river for their mechanised infantry and aimed for a small village, their two Chieftain battalions chose the minor road and the corner. The Iraqis chose the minor road for their 1st & 2nd armoured plus the 10th mechanised and the corner for the 3rd armoured, all the Iraqi armour were T72s.

In the opening moves the Iranians dithered; the infantry occupied the ruins for no real reason and then later got out and went somewhere else – apologies for the photo of the flying infantry, players just can’t resist! the M150s were under utilised – blasting the opposing BRDMs would have been a prudent thing to do. The Chieftain battalions rolled badly and so the initial fighting was over to the cavalry.

The Iraqi mechanised arrived before the tanks and occupied the town over the next couple of turns, sighting their Faggot and Sagger support platoons to cover the open ground to the south. An added plus for the Iraqis was the prompt arrival of their FAO who took up residence on the radio tower hill with a clear line of sight over most of the battlefield.

Well before the Chieftains arrived the 2nd and 3rd T72 battalions arrived; the 3rd rolled into the town and pretty much stayed there for the game – that town was never going to fall, the 2nd rolled south toward the highway intent on messing up the cavalry, the FAC found himself a nice little hillock to sit on.

Heading towards the halfway point of the game the Iraqis were doing a good job of combined arms co-operation. The FAC successfully called in the Mirages on two runs and that along with supporting tank fire eliminated the big threat of the M150s – the M150s did get off some shots and some T72s burned but there was plenty more where they came from 😁 Up in the north it became a bit of a turkey shoot, at first the Iranians couldn’t decide whether to push for the river or occupy the village so just sort of sat around and then rolled blunder upon blunder which left their HQ reduced to being essentially inactive which meant that when the Iraqis called in their artillery (one barrage of which was smack on target) a lot of M113s and the men inside died 😢 The Iraqi 1st battalion also arrived and headed south toward the sacred mosque – couldn’t be occupied by either side.

Passing the half way point the Chieftains arrived along with the FAC and FAO but it was going to be an uphill struggle.

One of the fun aspects of an Iranian force is the sight of F14 Tomcats roaring over the battlefield; what is not so much fun is when they deviate way off target and bomb the sacred mosque twice! Cries of “war crime!” echoed across the table – somewhat ironic in the light of modern day events but we are playing a wargame.

The Iraqi air continued to be more successful and pecked away at the plucky cavalry battalion.

Back on the ground the Chieftains did start to make their presence felt and the Iraqi 2nd battalion felt the heat in a big way effectively ending up as a burning screen for the 1st battalion who sneaked around the now burning mosque.

The game soon became one of cat and mouse as the Iraqis tried to stay out of the way of the superior Chieftains and hoped to score just enough hits to push the Iranians beyond their break point. If I’m honest this did become a bit ‘gamey’ but somewhat inevitable I guess.

As the game entered its final stage the Iranians had managed to avoid reaching their break point by 3 points and so theoretically it was a draw but objectively the Iraqis had scored a victory and the Iranians would be forced to withdraw.

The game played out over two sessions, that wasn’t the intent but I think on the first day we were all still suffering from ‘Christmas stodge’ so our faculties were on low power 🤣 Reflecting on the game itself, the narrative worked out fine and gave both sides a challenge; for the Iraqis, deal as much damage as possible before the big boys arrive – they did! for the Iranians, use the on table stuff to establish an early dominance – they didn’t. The die rolls for arrivals certainly favoured the Iraqis but the Iranians didn’t help themselves by dithering; they dithered about crossing the river – one of the tank battalions would have been the better choice here because even if it didn’t cross it had the range to shoot a fair way across the table, they dithered with the M150s and they dithered with the Chieftains – way too cautious about the ATGWs. A good start to the year and a game that was also noteworthy for a huge amount of blunders on both sides which provoked much hilarity all round.

Next on the calendar, and still on a cold war theme, was a personal away day down Oxford way to play a divisional level game on a 27 foot long table over two days using a set of rules under development by Alasdair Harley who came into contact with via Facebook – I went away for the weekend to meet a bloke I met on Facebook 🤣

I liked the rules. Each base (see above) represented a tank battalion for Warpac – I think NATO forces are slightly different and so you fight at a brigade level which means that some things are a bit abstracted but overall it worked well.

As the Warpac player you do feel like you are using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut and the losses do pile up, which in theory is what most think might have happened. Overall I had a good weekend and would play it again.

Back on home turf we refought the battle of Nordlingen 1634, the one the Swedes should never have fought and having fought as the Swedes I can see why!

For those in need of a history lesson the Swedes under Gustav Horn and Bernhard of Saxe Weimar took on a numerically superior Imperial/Spanish force in defensive positions under the cardinal Infante Ferdinand and Ferdinand of Hungary. On the Swedish right Horn relentlessly attacked uphill against entrenched Spanish tercios for several hours while Bernhard occupied the Imperial centre and right to prevent them reinforcing the left. The disparity in numbers meant that Bernhard was hard pushed to do anything of note and so consequently Horn fell back exhausted and as he tried to disengage was hit by an Imperial counter attack which swept away the Swedes in a rout which saw the end of Swedish involvement in the war.

In our attempt at history the armies were deployed as per the historical prototypes – as much as can be determined from conflicting sources but once deployed players could act as they wished.

Our redoubtable Swedes opted for the cavalry stratagem, using Bernhard’s cavalry to batter the right of the Imperial line and to filter Horn’s cavalry across the back of the Swedish line to follow on through the gaps punched by Bernhard. Meanwhile Horn would demonstrate against the fortified hill position.

The problem with plans is they rarely survive contact with the enemy 🙄 Bernhard’s attack didn’t go quite as well as expected and was stopped almost as soon as it began. The ride of Horn’s cavalry took longer than anticipated and when they arrived there were no real holes to exploit just defeat to reinforce 😮

Bernhard did manage to commit some of his infantry but numbers told against him.

There was a bit of a fight for the hill when the cocky Spanish came down to fight like proper gentlemen and got a bit of a duffing but the death of Horn and Spanish cavalry flowing round the flanks now that Horn’s own cavalry had gone meant that history was repeated, just differently.

Our final battle was Timurids v Mamluks in the ongoing development of my rules for the period. The battle was an equal points game – refights and narratives are somewhere in the future. The Timurids featured two divisions of formed cavalry and skirmish cavalry plus elephants equating roughly to a tumen of 10,000 overseen by the Army General and his Guard plus a separate contingent of White Sheep Turcomen. The Mamluks featured the Royal Mamluks accompanying the Army General, two divisions of Emirs Mamluks, exclusively made up of formed cavalry supported by city militias plus separate contingents of Black Sheep Turcomen and Bedouin.

Looking out from the Mamluk lines a stream between two low hills flowed diagonally across the table ending in a wooded pond area on the edge of the left centre of the Timurid baseline. A track entered from the opposite corner to cross the stream and end at an abandoned crusader fort in the middle of the battlefield. A low hill extended from the Mamluk left edge centrally into the gaming area, an obvious magnet to both sides.

The Mamluks deployed from the hills/stream left to their side edge, Turcomen next to the hill, then Emirs Mamluks with Royal Mamluks behind and then past the castle the Bedouin screening the other Emirs mamluk division.

The Timurids deployed with both divisions on their right between the table edge and the wooded pond with the Turcomen out beyond the pond over the stream. The Guard sat behind the centre.

My vision for the rules and the games is lots of arrow fire with contact in the closing stages and within the first two turns the Bedouin experienced just that; they advanced up to the low hill and were met at the top by a barrage of arrows from the skirmish cavalry elements of the right hand Timurid division. Two failed morale tests later and they were on their way.

The rest of the day saw the fight on and around that hill flow back and forth with the Timurids benefitting from better armour but hampered by stampeding elephants. Eventually the Timurids prevailed and the flank was lost.

In the centre it was much as I envisioned; skirmish cavalry in cantabrian circle firing out and everyone else letting fly where they could. The constricted space between castle and stream rather favoured the smaller Timurid division, the mamluks suffered from trying to fit in the swirling Turcomen, the Royal mamluks and the Emirs mamluks.

The battle was always going to be won or lost in the centre and as we played on that became clear.

The collapse of the Mamluk right.

As we closed the day out both divisions of Emirs Mamluks are gone. The Royal Mamluks remain but the Timurids are pushing both flanks and have uncommitted cavalry. The day belonged to the Timurids.

We had the chance to fight the battle again a couple of days later with different commanders. The Timurids deployed basically the same if a bit further over to their left which meant that the Turcomen were further over the stream. The mamluks deployed differently; their Bedouin were out on the far right hoping to swing around the Timurid left, the Turcomen were on the left screening one division of Emirs Mamluks, the other division was to the right of the castle with the Royal Mamluks behind.

This time the Mamluks were not so constricted in the centre and gave a better account of themselves.

On the ‘hill of death’ honours were more even and the slow moving Timurid heavy armoured formed cavalry took too long to get in and make a difference – thank Allah for elephants!

At the close we were back in the centre again with both sides having pierced the others line essentially leaving a stalemate.

Overall I’m pleased with the rules. Some more work to be done on the command and control especially the issuing of changes of orders by drums and trumpets – stay tuned 😂

Still haven’t got my mojo back for painting and modelling, just not feeling it. My reading fell victim to socialising but I have been reading this, an excellent read about Generals doing their best with limited resources and scant direction in an important but less well documented corner of the war – the Trans Mississippi. refreshing not having to read yet another book that is all about Grant.

That’s it, so until next time, play well and be respectful.

December 2025 Report

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The inescapable Christmas illnesses and Christmas events thinned our ranks a bit over the month but we struggled on manfully 😂

Our opening game was a return to Gerard’s 15mm Samurai with Ieyasu Tokugawa facing off to Ishida Mitsunari using our amended version of Battles in the Age of War.

A large portion of the game time with the rules is taken up in the pre game activities sorting out the quality levels of the various general under the Daimyo and the number of dice assigned to army traits such as treachery, spies, leadership, politics, etc. For us this generally takes about an hour which might be of putting for some players but we have all day to play so what the hell.

Notionally,Tokugawa was the attacking side with 3 clans distributed evenly over the table edge while Mitsunari, with 1 clan missing off table, made the best use of the terrain for his 2 on table clans.

The early couple of moves saw the Tokugawa army advance on its broad front. Opposite them the Mitsunari army tried to buy time until the third clan returned, Kenshin, on the left, fell back and Shingen, on the right, manoeuvred to the centre hoping the marshy stream to its right rear would delay the advancing Noataka clan long enough.

The first clash came with the centre clan of the Tokugawa line, Toshiie, hitting Shingen and ultimately collapsing it.

On the Mitsunari left, Kenshin and Honda met in a brawling conflict which ultimately saw Kenshin leave the field in defeat.

In the centre of the Mitsunari line the unnamed third clan had turned up and got itself organised but it was too late, two thirds of the army was gone, retreat was the only option.

Next up was a game of ‘For King and Parliament’ refighting a minor battle I’ve forgotten the name of 🤣

Full disclosure here, I’m not a particular fan of the mechanics of the Simon Miller stable of rule sets, they are too much like a board game for me and the playing cards and markers distract from the aesthetic. That said, if someone invites you to a game and you accept then you are obliged to keep your thoughts to yourself and play with a good grace.

Both sides were deployed more or less historically which meant the Parliamentarian foot had the advantage of the higher ground and largely kept to it forcing the Royalists to do the attacking. The cavalry from both sides was out on the flat land beyond the hills.

The cavalry actions occupied a good deal of the playing time with regiments being thrown in, rallying (sometimes) and being thrown in again. This was pretty brutal stuff (I think we might have got something wrong 🤔) but fun in a kind of abstract way.

Ultimately the cavalry space was largely empty with honours going to the parliamentarians.

The fight for the hill started while the cavalry struggle was going on and then occupied us solely until we called time.

My takeaway from the infantry combat was that the forlorn hope were especially effective…

And the ‘proper’ fighting was a bit of a lottery. But maybe that is as it should be?

Next up was what could be called a series of unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your viewpoint) events. Someone suggested we play French Wars of Religion a period we had not played for quite sometime and so we took on the second battle of any note, Saint Denys 1567, having fought Dreux 1562 twice already. The rules were our tried and trusted ‘For King or Faith’.

As a game this is a difficult call. Historically the Royalists far outnumbered the Huguenots as demonstrated by the time it took for the army to march out of Paris and deploy. No self respecting wargamer would willingly line up with 3 bodies of cavalry on the flat to face of to double their number, especially when those opposing cavalry were backed by Swiss, artillery and substantial bodies of home grown foot – the Huguenot foot were a few arquebusiers hiding in flanking villages. None the less that was the history so off we went!

Historically, the Royalists attempted to outflank the shorter Huguenot line but strayed too close to the villages and became disordered from arquebus fire. The Huguenot cavalry then charged these horse and saw them off into the Royalist main line where an inconclusive melee saw the Royalist commander, the Connestable Montmorency, killed and the Paris militia fleeing back to Paris. The Huguenots rallied back to the villages ready for a second round but the leaderless Royalists showed no inclination to fight on and the action petered out.

In our refight the Royalists were far better organised and managed to advance their whole cavalry line forward (more or less) – the rules restrict the number of units that can action to the skill rating of the commanders of the battailles.

First contact was between Francois Montmorency (Royalist) and Conde (Huguenot) which ultimately resulted in the death of Montmorency.

Next along the line the Connestable clashed with the Admiral Coligny and the Connestable defied history and didn’t die.

Despite their lack of numbers the Huguenots hung on.

Coligny retreated and the Huguenots committed their reserve infantry to stabilise the situation.

We had a random option for the Duke d’Andelot to cross the river Seine on the Huguenot right and he arrived late in the game – he actually arrived on the next day.

Out on the Huguenot left Biron (Royalist) charged and saw off Genlis (Huguenot).

With only a few scattered squadrons left the fight was over for the Huguenots and rallying on d’Andelot they yielded the field.

This is a tough ask for the Huguenot player and our Huguenots made a decent fight of it so well done them.

The Wars of Religion vibe had now got a will of its own and so we rolled into the next documented battle, Jarnac 1569, a confused mess which is difficult to unpick.

In brief the Huguenots under Conde and Coligny were spread out along a river line trying to prevent the Royalists under Tavannes from crossing but failed and their position was turned. This left Coligny with his half of the army spread over three villages and the only defensible point a marshy stream being approached by the Royalist advance guard. The ensuing battle saw the Huguenots defend the stream against superior numbers of Royalist foot until outflanked by cavalry who found a crossing point upstream. The fight then rolled back to the next village, cornettes of Huguenot cavalry were committed piecemeal to stem the flow and were swept away as the Royalists committed more cavalry to the fight. Ultimately the Huguenots were back at the third village as Conde arrived with the other half of the army. This completed what chose to call Jarnac part one and fought as our next game.

Our refight was as close as we could get to the small numbers of the original. A regiment of Huguenot shot defended the stream facing off to twice their number advancing on them. Behind them were a couple of cornettes of cavalry, then a village with enfants perdus, then some more cornettes, then the last village with a full body or horse and foot. Besides the foot facing across the stream the Royalists had a body of horse poised at the designated crossing point and then 3 regiments of reiters ready follow on at a predetermined point but who might arrive early on a random die roll – they didn’t.

The early moves saw the Huguenots do as well as their historical prototypes and hold off the larger Royalist force (above) – this was helped a bit by the Royalist player keeping one unit behind the other and not expanding out to one side to get more shots in.

The Royalist horse under de Guise crossed the stream and now the Huguenots were aware.

Partly due to luck and partly due to Royalist lack of concentration, de la Noue’s Huguenot horse caught de Guise in column and sent his force reeling back across the stream.

As de Guise was sent packing on came the reiters.

The fight at the stream went on with both sides losing regimental colonels.

At the stream de la Noue is reinforced by d’Andelot. Who will prevail, lance or pistol?

De la Noue and his cornettes are shot to pieces but d’Andelot presses his attack.

One of the reiters are stopped but d’Andelot is forced to retire.

One of the reiters that got through shoot up the foot at the stream.

The second (and somewhat reduced) reiters ride forward to be confronted by Coligny’s full regiment. I think we know how this is going to end….

Yep. Coligny sweeps away the reiters.

The Royalist advance is stopped. Losses will be adjudicated for part two.

In the historical version of what we called Jarnac part two (essentially later that afternoon) the battlefield had swung 90 degrees with the Royalists advancing in a wide arc from their crossing point and the Hugenots conforming. This left Coligny and Conde with 3 bodies of horse facing around three times their number in Royalist horse backed by several regiments of foot, the royal swiss and artillery while their own reduced infantry defended a line of swamps and ponds off to their right against the reiters. Just like Saint Denys the Huguenots attacked with massively inferior numbers but this time it went very badly, they got through the first line but the royalist infantry held firm giving time for the reiters to sweep onto the flank. In the confusion Conde was killed and the Huguenots extricated themselves as best they could.

In our refight the royalist flanking force was much reduced and this made a significant difference to their contribution, also the numbers of royalist horse were down, all a reflection of part one.

As our refight kicked off the Huguenots rather surprisingly turned about and retreated back across the road, reasoning that it would enable one of their units to face off to the advancing reiters and give the royalist cavalry more ground to cover before they got to grips.

The opening moves didn’t go well for the royalists; the Huguenots used some of the enfant perdus defending the ponds to take pot shots at their cavalry and managed to shoot oth Montpensier and d’Anjou out of the saddle essentially halting those units for a brief while and buying the Huguenots time – they were very lucky shots!

Out on the Huguenot right flank Montgomery’s horse stalled the brave breakthrough by the royalist reiters, three regiments might have been a very different story 🤨

In the centre the main bodies of horse clashed.

Numbers told for the royalists.

The advance of the Swiss ended it for the Huguenots.

I think we’ve killed off our Wars of Religion mania for a while now but it was a very useful experience for me at least. It reawakened my love of the period and has spurred me on to rework the rules in the light of new research and better ideas of how to play; a new year resolution before the year was out 😂🤣

In between the Wars of Religion mania we managed to experience a WWII skirmish game, rather appropriately using our snow covered Ardennes terrain.

Three squads of Americans were holding a crossroads unaware of an advance by two reinforced German squads.

The Germans had several rounds of off table mortar fire to plot prior to the game commencement and the Americans had three minefields that could be laid. Neither did a damm thing 😂🤣

The Germans approached by two routes north of the American positions, one over a bridge and into a wood, the second through the main wood and out onto the road flanking the American position.

Caution was the name of the game until it wasn’t. The Germans had to advance and used as much of the cover as they could, the Americans waited and when they did open up it was only with a single man to start so as to draw the Germans out and then open up fully.

The German advance down the road nearly worked except that as a last minute deployment whim the American player had deployed a sergeant with a Thompson forward in a stand of trees mainly to observe and what a gift a column of infantry presented. Merry Christmas!

Then it just got worse as a fire team down the road joined in.

It was officially a German disaster. Next time look before you move 🙄

And that was the month and the year over. No real hobby work done during this month, too many distractions but back into it next year. So it remains to wish everyone who reads this a Happy New Year and see you in 2026.

November 2025 Report

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Winter is coming. The games however are undeterred.

First game of the month was from our GNW collection – “Action at Sychevka” a narrative game.

In this fictional encounter both sides – Russians and Swedes were heading for the village of Sychevka, the Swedes thinking there are supplies there, the Russians because they have heard that’s where the Swedes are going. Both sides had separate columns heading towards the village; the Swedes had a cavalry vanguard under Horn (above) out in front but they got lost and have turned up on the far right of the Swedish advance and are awaiting orders, in the centre a 3 brigade infantry column under Count Lewenhaupt is advancing on the village and out on the left a 2 brigade cavalry column under Major General Creutz is emerging from a defile somewhat surprised to find Horn in the wrong place! The Russians had a 2 brigade cavalry column under Major General Bauer marching on, the centre and left was under the overall command of Field Marshal Sheremetiev comprising a cavalry & infantry force out on the left – 1 x cavalry & 2 x infantry brigades and a similar cavalry & infantry force in the centre with a cavalry brigade leading and 2 infantry brigades following.

Both sides had general orders of “advance to the village of Sychevka” (except Horn who was sitting around wondering what to do) and so senior commanders were having to issue orders as the enemy became visible and as brigades marched on. In the initial stages this rather favoured the Russians whose centre dragoon brigade under Tiernischov duly advanced on the village and got off their horses.

The opening action therefore centred around the dragoons holding the village which they did remarkably well – partly due to a rules cock up by the umpire (me!) and partly due to the normally aggressive Swedes being over cautious.

While the infantry struggle for the village developed the first cavalry action commenced on the Russian right as Kroptov and Golitsyn committed their brigades against Hard and Armfeldt.

This rolling cavalry melee occupied most of the game with Swedish regiments, Taube, Ducker, Smaland and Ostgota taking serious losses – Taube was in fact lost from the battle, while Kroptov’s horse grenadiers, and regiments, Archangelski, St Petersburgski, Tverski and Narvski took equally heavy losses. Both sides saw their brigades fail morale but the difference that decided the day was the better ability of the Swedes to rally.

Back at the village the Swedes had sorted themselves out and orders had been given. Stackelberg’s brigade (seen above) stormed the village driving out the dragoons and entering a firefight with Pfennigbeir’s brigade which ultimately they lost – both Jonkoping battalions were seriously shot up and the brigade retired hurt.

However the other two brigades of Lewenhaupt’s command, Sparre and von Liewen flanked either side of the village and took on Sheremetiev’s remaining 3 brigades – Sparre in fact took on two, Hallart and Golovin and smashed them both up.

Out on the Swedish right Horn didn’t have the best of days. When he received his orders to advance on the Russian left the dragoons he should have attacked had already dismounted amongst some burnt out buildings and proceeded to shoot him up supported by Hallart’s infantry (before Sparre arrived), forcing him to retire – Ostgota in fact left the table badly depleted. However, in an inexplicable turn of events the Russians got a bit cocky, remounted and came after the Swedes who rallied and gave the Russians a bit of a drubbing (seen above), this did however see Horn and his brigade leave the table giving chase to Repnin’s brigade.

We were now getting to the end of things, Sparre was getting stuck in – none of this shooting nonsense for him!

Bauer’s command was in it’s death throws.

The village was surrounded – buildings removed for ease of play.

It was over. A bloody day for both sides but by the end all the Russian brigades were on the run. Great game.

Next up a return to the Pacific with Victory at Sea. A simple equal points game this time with each side given free choice within the 1943 time frame and both sides having a “free” carrier and aircraft either on table or off. As a bit of a “can I do it?” the Japanese player chose to just have the Yamato battleship and the aircraft carrier off table – meant the air cover was slightly delayed in arriving, the Americans chose a mixed force from destroyers up to their own older battleship.

The game was essentially one of the Yamato keeping enough distance between itself and the Americans and preventing them concentrating fire. It nearly worked!

The main worry for the Yamato was the American planes and if the American player had handled them better it would have been a very short game!

However, the American chose to attack piecemeal and this allowed the Japanese player to “zero in” – see what I did there 😂and take out a lot of the American air strength.

They even got a chance to attack the American carrier.

And damage the Chicago and Houston.

The duel of the “big boys” saw the sinking of the New Mexico.

But you can’t fight against multiple ships and not take damage and the Yamato took some unlucky hits which slowed her and the sharks (aka American destroyers) began to circle.

Multiple torpedo hits and it was the end for the Yamato 😢

Our next game was a return to long neglected ‘modern’ skirmish, this time in our Syrian Civil War ruins set up.

Our basic scenario was Hezbollah and Islamic Front units clashing in the ruins of Aleppo. Both sides had a couple of squads plus a tank – the Hezbollah squads were smaller but better trained and they had a T72, Islamic Front were bigger squads but their tank was a T55, although they did have a truck mounted ZSU.

Both sides advanced cautiously, partly because it was the right thing to do and partly because we were a bit rusty with the rules – it had been over a year since our last game.

Both sides worked their way around the central hospital building utilising the cover as best they could.

One of the Islamic Front squads detoured into one of the wrecked buildings, a bad decision which effectively kept that unit out of the majority of the game as it picked it’s way through the wreckage to no advantage.

The “oh shit!” moment that can only happen in a wargame 😂

Fortune favoured the T72. Scratch one T55.

The bad luck streak continued for Islamic Front continued when their ZSU gunner was cut down before ever firing a shot.

Islamic Front fighters press on.

“man the barricades!”

Oh dear.

Both sides took losses but ultimately the losses were more severe for Islamic Front and they withdrew, ceding this piece of war ravaged ground.

Our next effort was a roll out of the Timurid project. This has been a long running saga of me rebasing (twice!) and reconfiguring all my old Mongol, Ilkhanid, Russian, Persian and Mameluke figures into a representation of the armies of Timur, Tokhtamish and sundry others of the C14th. There are far better and more accurate figures out there nowadays but the sheer expense alone was enough to kick that idea into the bin and frankly in a lot of instances the differences are marginal and the set up is for home consumption only. The rules are a version of the proven Successors rules and as a first run out I was really pleased.

Our armies were a Timurid force in two divisions both containing formed & skirmish cavalry plus an elephant and an allied division of White Sheep Turcoman. Facing them was a Golden Horde Mongol force in two divisions containing formed & skirmish cavalry, a Guards division of elite formed cavalry and skirmish cavalry and a division of Russian allies containing boyars and Polk.

Both sides advanced steadily and the skirmishers went into the wargames representation of cantabrian circle.

Once players got the hang of the idea that is was a game about shooting – nearly everyone has a bow, the arrows started to fly.

However, the stars of the show were the boyars who hurtled across the table, shook off casualties from bow fire and smashed a hole in the centre of the Timurid line – well that was unexpected!

Elsewhere it was all about the shooting and the person who managed to concentrate the most fire at a critical point had the advantage – in this particular run it was the Golden Horde who grasped the concept quicker than their Timurid opponent.

The collapse of the Timurid centre had enough of a ripple effect for the Timurid player to concede and we had quite a chat about the rules and the game – all positive and some good suggestions to go forward with, next task, rebase all the Russians to take on the Golden Horde.

Next up was a ‘reconquista’ game featuring a Norman excursion into Andalusia where they are met by a united front. The sides were pre set out so it was just a question of writing any orders and having at it.

The Normans were deployed in three divisions, strong right wing of knights, centre of spearmen covered by skirmishers and a left of allied light troops. Naturally it was the knights that started the action and all seemed to be going well.

Into contact, encouraged by their General and still going well. This is going to be easy…..

Meanwhile the Andalusian right gets into action and as the allied light horse fell away the General leads in his nobles to stabilise the situation. You know where this is going…..

“kill!”

And then there were two dead generals and it was all over. Oh dear 😭

Final game was a ‘back of beyond’ away game where the British were landing once again to plant the union jack where it had no reason to be opposed by two afghan hill tribes allied to Red and White Russians – history was a distant second here.

Each side had it’s own set of objectives, some easily achieved, some downright impossible, but the scenery and figures did look very nice.

Hill tribesmen ready for the conflict – they didn’t fire a shot 😂

White Russian Cossacks attacking an armoured car.

And destroying it.

I’m really not sure who won the game, it was more of a case who didn’t. The White Russians and allied hill tribe definitely failed, The Reds obliterated one British force but I’m not sure that was their objective 🤔, the other hill tribe didn’t appear until the end but the second British force disembarked and captured the railway station with minimal casualties so I guess they won. In these kind of games it doesn’t really matter, they are played for a laugh and plenty of laughs were had.

Some painting and modelling was done. Here a mosque for the 10mm set up.

Bridging units.

AA fire support.

Thureophoroi for the Successors.

This months reading. The McNab was an ok generalist assessment of the Roman Army, I wasn’t completely convinced by some of his takes. The Tom Clancy I read because of our interest in Cold War gaming and all I can say is, no wonder we were all paranoid in the 80’s! Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia is very much of it’s time and obviously not a Beevor mighty tome but in a slim volume it tells you a lot about the war in the snapshot of time that Orwell was in that particular front, still worth a read.

Well that’s it for November, Christmas is coming but there are still games to play before we drink and eat ourselves into oblivion so keep well and play nice.

October 2025 Report

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Coughs and colds have meant a bit of a lean month but we did have ‘The Other Partizan’

Our first game of the month was a 1980’s cold war attack defend scenario with the Soviets having to push on through after an initial breakthrough. The rules were Cold War Commander.

Outnumbered but not outgunned the Bundeswehr opted for taking the battle to the Soviets – big mistake!

The Soviets deployed a full tank regiment (3 x tank battalions & 1 x motorised infantry) plus air and artillery assets with the option to flank march (which they did) against 2 combined arms Leopard & Marder battalions and a small reserve Leopard battalion. The Soviets had to take the battle to the Germans and had 8 moves to do it in.

The Bundeswehr command decisions were not good and each mistake compounded another. The first was bunching one battalion up behind a fence line like a Napoleonic grand battery and never moving – originally this had some merit as the battalion was back from the fence line and so out of LOS but once up they were fair game to the HINDs and FAO/FAC call downs plus the added problem of this being the flank that the soviet flank march arrived on 😒

The second miss step was swinging the right flank tank battalion out of a perfectly good defensive spot and roar across the open countryside to try and turn the flank of the Soviets. This did have some merit as the Soviets had deployed en masse to their right (opposing the German left) but open ground in the rules (and in real life) is deadly. The better option was to utilise the cover to swing behind his own lines and reinforce the centre and left.

The Soviets made better use of the cover on their deployment frontage dumping off the infantry in a wood and using the BMPs to fire their ATGWs out from the edge.

As in all games there were some comedy moments, like the flank march that took FOREVER to arrive much to the frustration of the commander and the fact that the Napoleonic grand battery just plain refused to acknowledge it was there 😮.

Under the cover of their air and artillery (which didn’t eliminate anything much but did keep German heads down) the Soviets moved onto the high ground dominating the grand battery and with the help of the finally arriving flank march pounded the Leopards into dust – at odds of over 2:1 even inferior Soviet armour is going to mess up the opposition especially as the flank march was literally getting flank shots in.

By the end of turn 5 it was all over, the Germans were on the run and the Soviets pushed on through. Lesson to learn? If you are defending then defend, the longer range Leopard guns in cover will always have the advantage, as the Soviet player pointed out the German players just can’t resist roaring about the table 🤣.

Before our next game we had a group outing to ‘The Other Partizan’. This was our 2nd time of not putting a game on and the plan was to have one of the table sale spots to get rid of some of our excess stuff but someone screwed up the booking 😖😞😤. That said we were kind of glad the plan failed because the set up for those folk who were selling was poor. A gazebo/tent in the open in the generally better weather of May is fine but on a cold foggy day in October not so good especially as one side of the tent was open to the elements – thank god it didn’t rain. If the organisers are going to copy the idea of Hammerhead then bring it inside like they do and have the admissions & merchandising outside in the tented area, lets face it by lunch time the bulk of admissions are done anyway.

Now before I say anything else I need to be clear, I think Richard and Laurence do a fantastic job of organising the show – quite what will happen when they pack it in will be interesting, but it is billed as the premier show for quality games and I’m not sure that is so. In my view, and that’s all it is, quantity has taken over from quality, the number of games on display simply cannot all be premier league standard. The quantity also made it quite difficult to get around and view some of the games and I felt the games in the centre perhaps didn’t get a fair shake, again just my take, there are plenty of podcast reports out there lavishing high praise so I’m probably in a very small minority.

Next up was a refight of part of the 2nd day at Wagram using 15mm Volley & Bayonet.

Our chosen piece of history was the attack of Massena’s IV Corps alongside the Danube towards Klenau’s VI Corps while the main battle raged off to his right. The villages of Aspern, Essling and Breitenlee were his objectives.

The initial French moves were more of a stumble than a confident advance and the Austrians scored some early jabs in the developing contest overrunning some guns and seeing off an assault on Essling.

Not to be left out in the ‘how not to do it’ stakes the Austrians then obligingly sent Vincent’s hussars in against the cuirassier of St Sulpice and not surprisingly paid a heavy price.

The French still hadn’t quite got their act together and some piecemeal attacks got beaten back.

Aspern came under a far better co-ordinated attack and duly fell, the French were getting into their stride now.

The French continued to press and the Austrians started to fall back.

Breitenlee was stormed and the right and left anchors of the Austrian position were gone.

The field belongs to the French who despite a stuttering start did better than Massena on the day and completely destroyed Klenau’s command.

Next up was a weekend away in Stone for a cold war game with the Cold War Commanders group, my 3rd, Gerard’s 2nd, organised and loosely umpired by Richard Phillips. This years scenario was Denmark; a couple of divisions worth of Warsaw Pact elements were pushing north up the Jutland peninsula while a naval/VDV force assaulted the island of Fyn to secure the eastern flank of the advance. NATO was represented by the Danes occupying the island and the mainland shore over a bridge and West German, British and US forces defending the vital E20 highway. All told we had 13 players, a significant band of gamers in one space!

In such a large game it’s difficult to capture what is going on over the whole table so this will be what I managed to pick up from conversations and the occasional trawl up the table. What I do know is that as Warsaw Pact we had to seize the island and eliminate the HAWK batteries stationed there and size the town of Odense, then working our way down there were the towns of Middlefart, Kolding and the airport.

The first day was largely taken up with manoeuvring and initial contacts. The more serious fighting was on Fyn where the Danes were giving a good account of themselves and at Kolding where Soviet armour surged forward. Further down the table there was a lot of command fumbling as the East German brigade (me) stuttered forward and the Guards tank brigade (Gerard) hunkered down in woods opposite the the airfield not wanting to risk the open ground.

Second day was more intense as serious fighting erupted all along the front. First to go were the HAWK batteries, falling to VDV forces as the Danes were pushed back into Odense, the fighting for Kolding was brutal but it finally fell to the Soviets.

Down the E20 the East Germans had a bit of a scare when the the US airborne defending the road line launched a do or die assault on the hills overlooking their position where the FAO’s were sited but for once the artillery responded with little drift and the infantry battalion and supporting tank company were vaporised leaving the way clear for a push to the E20. Apologies for the tanks sitting on top of the trees, with so many players it just becomes impossible to have the time to make it look pretty.

At the airfield the USMC held on despite some serious shelling from the Guards armour – for some strange reason I don’t have a photo of this.

Time called, the East Germans had breached the E20 and were circling behind what was left of the US airborne brigade, further up the highway the Soviets had breached it in two more places. A clear Warsaw Pact victory.

This was quite exhausting and fair play to Richard for keeping us on track especially when players had several different interpretations of the same rules 🤣😂. Like all these big game events the actual playing area you are involved in is not much bigger than a large table at home and without a proper briefing session on something like the Friday night – something the WHC used to do very well, there will always be the tendency to fragment and become isolated in your approach to the game, this in turn can result in some players having nothing very much to do – the USMC player literally could do nothing unless Gerard attacked and there was nothing to force him to do so. I find it difficult enough to co-ordinate 4-6 players so 13 is way out there!

Back home and old reliable, Successors! Late period Seleucid and Ptolemaics took to the field in a curious battle.

The Seleucids went full on ‘super weapons’, 4 squadrons of chariots, 4 of elephants and 2 regiments of cataphracts, leaving a couple of pike battalions protected by Thureophoroi and Thracians. The Ptolemaics were far more sensible, deploying settler pike and cavalry, plus Galatian warbands and assorted other heavy cavalry. Because of their limited numbers the Seleucids opted for a compact deployment, elephants out on the flanks to dissuade any cavalry attacks and the chariots in the centre backed by either the cataphracts or the pikes with soft sand splitting the centre. The Ptolemaics spread out, settler cavalry on the left others on the right, pikes spread across the centre interspersed with their own elephants Galatians on the left of the pike and nothing on the right as there was a village to anchor on.

The battle opened with the chariots surging forward and making a mess.

Followed closely by the elephants who really did make a mess of the settler cavalry.

The spreading out of the Ptolemaics rather favoured the compact Seleucid deployment which if it got outflanked would have been in trouble but the elephants on the left put paid to the settler cavalry and the Ptolemaic left cavalry (above)were so far out that it took a lot of time to swing in and by then the centre was resolving itself.

The Galatians tried to turn it for the Ptolemaics (well the pikes were doing nothing 🙄) and clearing their way through bits of destroyed chariots (they only stand for the first contact and then are destroyed) but missile fire whittled them down.

In went the cataphracts and didn’t really do much.

Thureophoroi did no better and were seen off by the already badly mauled Galatians.

However as we called time the Ptolemaics were done. Both cavalry wings neutralised and their fighting Galatians about to be seriously duffed up. Seleucid victory.

A really odd but fun game. The pikes didn’t get a look in which from a Ptolemaic perspective was a real problem. The exotics on both sides were all over the show, we had chariots hitting elephants, elephants rampaging, dead elephants and destroyed chariots creating obstacles and the allies doing all the fighting!

Our final game was an away day fighting ACW using Rebels and Patriots, not my favourite set of rules but a pleasant enough game.

Four commands, four points of entry; Union from the north west & north east, Confederate from the south east & south west. Objectives? I don’t think there was one 🤔

None the less we all ended up near a creek and began blasting away.

The Union got over the creek and onto the high ground making heavy weather of some enemy skirmishers.

Confederates seize a different hill.

All fought out. Union on one side of the creek, Confederates on the other.

Well that was the games but in other news I did manage to get some Pendraken emplacements done to use as tank berms for our Iran Iraq set up.

And some Iranian bridge layers.

And an Iranian armoured cavalry battalion.

Plus some engineers.

And rebasing my myriad collection of Mongols, Russians, Mamluks, etc to become Timurids and friends/enemies. This is going to be a bit of a journey, the Timurids and Golden Horde are essentially done, Russians, Jalayarids, Mamluks next. Rules done enough for a first draft run through. Looking forward to it.

And I thought I’d start sharing what I’d read during the month, can’t share Audible listens very easily though.

Anyway, thanks for reading, comments always welcome. In the meantime, enjoy your gaming, respect your opponents.

September 2025 Report

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The Autumn is here but it’s been a good one.

Our first game of the month was Samurai using Battles in the Age of War (BAW) set in the Sengoku period (1467 – 1650) with some local amendments to suit our take on the period.

Our commanding generals (or Daimyo) were Tokugawa Ieyasu and Ishida Mitsunari, each commanding 3 divisions of 3 sonei each (well one had 4 but who’s counting). Under Tokugawa we had the Date, Maeda & II clans and under Ishida the Shingen, Kenshin and Uesugi clans.

After we had done the pre-game stuff (treachery, scouting, weather, etc), which does take a while but is fun and gets you into the period feel, Ishida was declared the defender and Tokugawa the attacker with a couple of objectives (a wood and temple area) and the ultimate objective of killing the other guy – points are awarded for objectives but the big points are in killing the other side. Ishida did really badly in the pre battle manoeuvre and ended up with his largest division off table and so having to dice for each sonei to get on the table each turn; accordingly he spread his forces thinly across the range of hills to his front and prayed he could hold on.

Tokugawa advanced slowly with little co-ordination between the clans. Maeda got into the temple area with ease but the slow going through it (and the wood) meant that they were effectively out of the fight – good news for Ishida 😀 The most aggressive of the Tokugawa divisions was the II clan on the left, who had the best general but failed to form a cohesive line of battle and as they closed the Shingen clan pounced, ultimately routing 2 sonei (lots of points!) and by game end had surrounded the remaining one.

On the Tokugawa right the large Date division spread out across the table and dilly dallied allowing time for Uesugi to get his off table sonei onto the battlefield and link up with the left of Kenshin. Thus by the time Date and Maeda launched attacks by single sonei they were easy meat for the now superior numbers of Kenshin and Uesugi leading to more routs.

And that was the game. A classic lesson of the fate of over cautious advances and uncoordinated attacks.

Next up was our old favourite, Iran Iraq. Another narrative driven game based loosely around Operation Badr, March 1985. It was a 12 turn game so stretched over two playing days.

In this scenario the Iranian 37th Armoured were dug in around the town of Ajairda supported by off table SP artillery. Forward of their position was the river Tigris with two possible crossing points; the steel bridge directly to the front over which the main highway ran into the town and the old stone bridge off to the right over which ran the old road alongside a dried up stream bed, a long derelict bridge over to the left was of no use to road traffic. The narrative required the mechanised infantry battalion to be deployed within the town limits with the option to entrench individual platoons (bases). The two armoured battalions (one M60A1 and one M48A5) had the options of deploying on table with optional berms or deploying off table and dicing to arrive once the shooting started. The player spread his infantry amongst the buildings and entrenched a number of platoons on the right of the town along with half of the M60s in berms while the other half were on the left of the town. The splitting of the M48s did give operational problems in the game as the commander couldn’t be in two places at once! The M48s were off table behind the hill on which the FAO took up his position.

As the attacker the Iraqis had all the tactical problems to solve but also more kit to do it with. They started with the 26th Armoured – two battalions of T62s, one battalion of mixed T54s & T55s, and one battalion of mechanised infantry plus an attached battalion of elite commandos. In support they had off table SP artillery, similar to the Iranians, but in the Iraqi case each armoured battalion controlled its own artillery – this should have proved to be an advantage but…… Also in support was a wing of Mirage ground attack aircraft under the control of an FAC. Several jump off points were available along the Iraqi baseline although their recon elements could be deployed further forward and the commandos could start at the banks of the Tigris.

Unbeknown to the Iranians the Iraqis had the option to deploy pontoon bridges over the where the ruined bridge was which they duly did. The commandos were a bit of a surprise too!

The Iraqis opted for a three pronged attack. The weaker T54/T55 tank battalion supported by the infantry would assault over the pontoon and pin the Iranian left, in the centre one T62 tank battalion would barrel over the bridge and on the left the other T62 battalion would cross via the old bridge and, using the dried stream bed as cover, turn the Iranian right while the commandos assaulted across the river in support. It nearly worked!

The initial Iraqi moves were all about getting into position while the air and artillery pounded away, unfortunately this was largely ineffective.

The first sign that things were not going to go according to plan was the commandos, they came under fire from the dug in tanks (somebody didn’t think about the better ranges of US supplied kit 😮) and within a couple of turns were down to half strength which forced a rethink and the remainder of the battalion worked their way along the river bank to cross via the old road in the company of the T62s.

Next it was the turn of the centre T62s, out ranged by the Iranian armour they took early losses and had a moment of ‘do we, don’t we?’ before pressing on over the bridge so as to get into range, after all the Iranians couldn’t shoot everywhere at once, could they?

Now the shooting had started the Iranians bought on their M48s to bolster the left.

By about the mid point of the game the Iraqis were over the Tigris; the T54/T55s were on the losing end of the tank duel on their flank but were holding out remarkably well once the infantry ATGW moved up in support, the centre T62s were over the bridge and the other T62s & commandos were advancing unseen behind the cover of the stream bed.

Then the Iranians decided to be stupid. Overconfident, the M60s on the right left their nice comfortable berms and moved out to try and pinch off the T62 salient at the bridge. Unfortunately this coincided with the commandos getting into position at the stream bed and letting loose with their upgraded RPGs, which rather made a mess of several Iranian tanks. This could have been a turning point if the accompanying T62s had gotten into the action but in the second half of the game they failed their command role 5 times in a row!! Yes 5 times out of the 6 turns left to play 😱

Over on the Iraqi right the old war horses battled on and quite frankly did themselves proud but a combination of the better M48s and some pretty spot on Iranian artillery ground the attack down and soon there wasn’t much left.

As the clock wound down the stuck T62s sorted themselves out and advanced against the Iranian right but it was all a bit late and the dug in Iranian infantry prepared to let loose with their RPGs.

At the end of the final turn the Iranians were still in control of Ajairda and it would take some serious effort to move them out. Yes they had certainly suffered a near disaster with the loss of half of the M60 battalion but on the other side the T54/55s were no more and the accompanying infantry were hunkered down along the banks of the Tigris while the centre T62s were slowly suffering losses as they sat in their salient.

This was a good fight, the scenario worked well and it was down to the last couple of turns. Analysing afterwards this could so have been an Iraqi victory but over caution and bad game management cost them – the famous 5 failures to activate wasn’t just down to bad dice it was fuelled by the player not recognising how he could help himself by managing the factors that influenced the roll, forgetting to fire the attached artillery multiple times didn’t help either 😂🤣

To round off the month we had a couple of skirmish games, a bit of a rarity these days.

First up was a WWII encounter with an intriguing little narrative. A senior British officer and his escort have crashed on a country road somewhere in France leaving him seriously wounded. They managed to get a distress call out before the radio packed up and a mixed arms platoon has been dispatched to find him, unfortunately the Germans have got wind of the potential prize and have sent out their own lads. Unfortunately for both sides a thick fog has descended and so each squad moves randomly for the first half a dozen turns leaving them all over the place as the game starts seriously, just as the umpire wanted 😁😁

German squad proceed down one of the many lanes having no idea where anybody is.

British take the high ground.

“Hande Hoch!” The Germans win the race.

And away they go. A fun little scenario that worked well.

Our final game was an away day Vietnam skirmish using ‘Surviving Nam’ a set of rules in development from a guy on LAF.

Now I’ve played a lot of Vietnam games over the years using my own rules and a myriad of commercial sets and I think I know a reasonable amount about the period and recognise the difference between popular mythology and reality so I approached this in the hope of maybe this will be ‘the set’.

The basic premise of the rules is that each player is a squad/fire team of say half a dozen figures, all Free World Forces, on some kind of pre ordained mission, there are no VC/NVA players. In an agreed order each player nominates a figure from his squad to activate by rolling one or two D20 die, if they pass (different skill level, different score required) then they can move, fire, etc. If they fail they draw a random event(s) card which has something happen, usually some kind of VC/NVA action, hidden machine gun opens up, fire team deploys, etc. And that essentially is the game.

Now if you are a big fan of dungeon crawler games then this could be quite ‘fun’ but it is somewhat reductive. At best it reduces the enemy to random orcs or xenomorphs who pop up for the sole purpose of killing or being killed, at worst it could be seen as downright racist as the brown people, and lets face it in these types of games it is brown or black people who pop up not the white guys.

Putting aside me perhaps being over sensitive the other problem with this type of game is that no one has any agency. The Vietnamese certainly don’t as their actions are driven by the cards and the die rolling for their actions, like shooting, are done by the players who drew the cards. But neither do the players have much agency because once cards start to be drawn the game becomes a glorified ‘whack a mole’ which is justified by a vague notion that this is what Vietnam was all about. Really?

Now all that said I had a fine old time with my ARVN out performing the US Marines by miles. Again, really? The other guys had great fun and are motivated to paint up some more stuff so success but Vietnam it aint.

And that was the month. Pretty varied and generally successful. What will October bring? Well Partizan for sure but no game from us just visiting.

August 2025 Report

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Summer is drawing to a close but the gaming keeps on going 😀 Seven games this month, a tidy number.

First outing was an away day game of DAK Attack! with some local gamers not of the group. I’d call the rules ‘Heroic History’, just enough history to make the game immersive enough but at the same time deeds of daring do is the general vibe.

In keeping with the above the players were assigned an LRDG group each and a sector of the German town and airfield to shoot up, get in and get out in one piece. The Germans were controlled by the umpire via a card system but were very much in reactive mode.

So, jeeps rolled in, shots were fired (a lot!), charges were planted and jeeps rolled out again.

Well some of the jeeps rolled out again 🤣 Losses were taken by the Brits but plenty of German kit was blown up so a very successful mission.

As a set of rules they worked very well and delivered exactly what they set out to do, I’d certainly play them again.

Back at base our next game was another of our 1980’s Cold War encounters, this time, Bundeswehr v DDR. Our narrative was that the Warsaw Pact invasion had commenced and in the opening days the BAOR had been displaced north by the Soviets and now the second echelon DDR troops were sweeping forward from the southeast aiming for a power station positioned in the northwest corner of the board, The Bundeswehr had hastily assembled a combat group in the southwest and were scrambling to cut off the enemy advance.

The game was designed as an 8 turn encounter game using mobile deployment in specific areas of the southern end of the board. Both sides had off table artillery but no air cover; the DDR had a full tank regiment – 3 x 9T72M tank battalions and a motorised infantry battalion in BMP1-1P’s, the Bundeswehr had 2 x mixed battalion of 8 x Leopard 2’s and 4 x Marder with attached infantry. The rules were Cold War Commander.

The Bundeswehr got on table straight away – better command values, and positioned the FAO and half a tank battalion on a convenient hill while everyone else headed north utilising the plentiful cover.

The DDR struggled to get on table and this definitely affected their ability to co-ordinate their efforts. The 1st Panzer roared came on and roared into a field where they got bogged down as the Leopards on the hill zeroed in on them and the FAO bought in M109 fire. Eventually the battalion was wiped out without firing a shot 😢

The 3rd Panzer, when they came on, executed a long right hook, utilising as much cover as possible and headed for the road to the power station.

The 2nd Panzer and BMP’s arrived late and were forever playing catch up which wasn’t helped by the panzers failing two first move rolls and rolling two blunders! Needless to say their contribution was minimal. The BMP’s nipped straight into a wood and kept out of the way but their ATGW advantage was negated by the electricity pylons stretching up the board. The pylons also affected the Marders but with their longer range tank guns this was less of a problem for the Bundeswehr.

The DDR did manage to get their off table into action but with zero effect.

And counter battery fire soon took them out anyway.

The exciting part of the game however was the actions of 3rd Panzer whose right hook had caught the Bundeswehr slightly off guard – they were too busy shooting the shit out of the rest of the opposition 🤣

And so it became a race for the bridge……..

The Bundeswehr threw everything they had at 3rd Panzer as turn 8 loomed.

But eventually 3rd Panzer were swept away and with the end of turn 7 the Leopards were on the bridge and the lights over West Germany could remain on 😁

Next up was a Reconquista game on the arid Spanish hillsides, Spanish Christian v Moslem Andalusian but with both sides having allied contingents from the other faith. Alfonso & El Cid commanded the Christians, co-operating for once.

The Christians had the better cavalry and took the fight to the Andalusians.

The opening skirmishing favoured the Andalusians.

Alfonso had to do a bit of steadying the infantry and the line held.

Meanwhile the Cid was leading his troops to victory with a sneaky flank attack – not very Christian 🙄

The game became quite the cavalry slog with both sides throwing in units and generals.

Ultimately it became a Christian victory with the Cid casting down his opposite number.

Next was the 2nd in our Guadalcanal mini campaign, this time Cape Esperance, influenced by the fallout from our first game. Again the battle was fought at night.

For this one we hade to think a bit. Our resident expert and umpire, Gerard, had us steaming by map in column – yes they deployed in column! Once visibility was determined the models came on but you still had to spot before you could fire and if a target fell out of spotting distance then it was no longer a target – very challenging.

Pretty soon the ships were all over the place and the spotting was a real pain but in a good way.

The Americans used their destroyers very effectively, getting in close to launch torpedoes, even though the early torpedoes were generally useless, but not always 😀

The more effective Japanese torpedoes certainly did their part – here the Boise goes to the bottom.

Followed by the San Francisco.

But American numbers (and guns and armour) told and the Japanese beat a retreat. Interestingly both flagships were sunk but the Japanese suffered higher overall losses.

Our next outing was on the plains of eastern Europe where an Ottoman incursion was being opposed by the troops of the Imperial borderlands.

The playing area was bisected by a meandering stream (representing the border) which was close enough to the Imperial left for them to use it to aid the defence by the Croatian horse and close enough in the centre of the line for the levy and mercenary pike to get to and defend the banks. On the Ottoman left their Tartar cavalry & Delis were poised to cross the bridge while across the centre & right were 6 bodies of Spahis screened by Azab foot.

The Ottoman advance was a bit of a mess, the Azabs wouldn’t move so didn’t provide a screen to the Spahis who advanced through them (at least they had bows) while out on the left the Tartars dithered and the Delis went home! The Imperialists were a bit more organised and on the right the Austrian and Hungarian nobles galloped forward.

Here come the nobles!

First contact was the Hungarian nobles splashing across the stream and hurtling into some waiting Spahi who were dispatched in short order.

Out on the Imperial left the Croatian contingents were doing nice work with their carbines.

On the Ottoman left the last unit of Tartars is about to run away and that flank will be gone.

In the Ottoman centre it all starts to go horribly wrong as the German mercenary horse and pike splash across the stream (out of shot) and start shooting up the Spahis.

Terror is infectious and the Ottoman centre dissolves. The Imperialists are not without casualties but no morale collapses were suffered which was a rot that set in amongst the Ottomans.

Our next foray was a Carlist War encounter. Government troops, being mainly the British Legion plus the Guards battalions, seeking to turf the Carlists out of a reinforced position.

Skirmishing was very much the order of the day for the opening moves with the Carlists having the better of it, particularly on their right wing.

Attempting to force the issue on the Carlist right the Government lost patience and rolled out the cavalry, perhaps a little bit too early…..

In went the Princess Hussars with plenty of “Huzzah!”

So much for “Huzzah!” 😂🤣😭

And then came the cuirassiers, who did a little better but had to fall back hurt.

But they came back for more and a Carlist general died trying to hold his troops together.

The cuirassiers finally chopped their way through and this part of the Carlist line was unhinged.

Out on the government right the lancers from the British Legion hurled themselves into the Carlist line.

And desperate squares are formed as the first line falls.

At them with the bayonet as opposing attack columns close.

Casualties on both sides mount but the Carlists now have three divisional generals dead on the field and so yield the ground. A bloody and pointless affair.

Our final effort was good old Successors, Antigonus v Eumenes.

To try and get away from the usual slog across the open field, historical though it undoubtedly is, a more narrative approach was tried. In this, Eumenes is marching for his camp, placed beyond a fast flowing stream and approachable by a single bridge. Antigonus and his son Demetrious have split their forces in an attempt to out manoeuvre their old enemy and have ended up on the opposite side of the table in two constrained areas, Demetrious upstream from the bridge and Antigonus separated from Eumenes by several low hills. Both sides had constraints about which troops (and Generals) could be where and then drew disposition maps.

Demetrious had all the good cavalry plus a single elephant backed by two pike battalions, which soon got left behind in the rush for the bridge.

Antigonus had the main body of the infantry backed by some satrap cavalry.

Eumenes opted to send his cavalry, backed by the Hypaspists, past the bridge to take on Demetrious and thus create a funnel behind them for the rest of the army to access the camp. But first those infantry were going to take on the host of Antigonus and see if they could do enough to make them pull back.

Eumenes had two elephant squadrons to the Antigonids one and so tried to use them as blockers. Here one crashes into the Antigonid veterans.

The result was inevitable but it did keep the veterans out of the pike clash which was about develop.

At the bridge, Demetrious just about won the race and the cavalry melees set in.

Out on the Eumenid right the big fight was about to happen and as can be seen the Antigonid veterans (top left) are delayed. in the foreground both of Eumenes infantry commanders have joined a battalion, Antigenes with the Silver Shields on the left and Teutamus in the centre. Antigonus himself, seen on the hill to the rear, didn’t commit himself and that would prove problematic.

After a couple of turns of bluster (also known as failure to charge rolls on both sides) it was the Eumenids who surged forward and the fight was on!

Back at the bridge the fight was in full swing as both sides fed horse and elephants into the fray. The action was favouring Demetrious but the killer blow was yet to be delivered.

On the hills the killer blow had been struck and the central Antigonid pike battalions collapsed and fled. The presence of Antigenes & Teutamus had kept the Eumenids in the fight at the critical moments.

There was still some fighting to do. The third Eumenid pike battalion was making hard work of finishing some hoplites but the inevitable would not be long and the Antigonid veterans were free and clear but alone.

At the bridge Demetrious was still battling away as Eumenes fed more troops into the fray but with his dad’s forces on the run we concluded discretion would be the better part of valour. The great Antigonous/Eumenes contest would continue for another season.

And that was the month, another fine one. Not much on the painting/modelling front, spare time has been spent on completing the rules for my Timurid forces and rebasing for the third (and last) time, hopefully they will see the table in a trial run next month. Until then, play nice and enjoy the weather.

July 2025 Report

westburywargaming4 Comments

Two shows and five games, a pretty reasonable month.

Our first game was WWII desert skirmish using our own tried and tested rules set. On this occasion a daring rescue attempt by SAS squads of two captured officers held at an Axis camp before transfer to the Gestapo for questioning.

The bulk of the Axis forces were asleep in their barracks while Askari patrolled the perimeter. The British were divided into 3 squads supported by an armoured car each, approaching from the cover beyond the main gate. Various scenario rules were in place for noise and and whether the guards would be alerted and how long it would take for sleeping soldiers to tumble out of bed.

The British de-bussed at a safe distance and advanced on foot with the armoured cars rolling on behind.

Impatience got the better of the British and before everyone was set the Rolls Royce opened up on the guard house eliminating the Askari inside. Now it was time to get a move on.

With the hornets nest duly disturbed the Axis troops began to tumble out into the square with the Italian tank crews leading the way into their fearsome tankettes 🤣

Unfortunately the lead tankette quickly went up in smoke and the Italians became a little more circumspect.

It wasn’t all wine and roses for the British however when the one tankette with an actual gun dropped a shell into one of the squads and downed two. Things were getting serious now!

As the British advanced into the compound the armoured cars gave very effective support fire.

It was starting to look like bullying now 😂

It was not all British hoorah though as once the Afrika Corps troops managed to push the Italians out of the way some serious fight back started to take place.

However it was all a bit too late by the Axis and with all the armour destroyed and most of the Italians & Askari dead or wounded the Germans had no choice but to surrender themselves and the prisoners.

Next was an interesting Successors game whereby Antigonus and his mighty host took on the western satrap Alcetas with both sides obscured by a belt of woods.

The Antigonids were pike heavy with 5 battalions ranging from Veteran to Levy supported by hoplite mercenaries. They were also heavy in horse with 6 units of formed cavalry. Where they were weak was in light troops, fielding only 1 unit of light horse and 3 of foot, but they did of course have elephants.

Alcetas on the other hand was falling over himself with light troops and that dictated his style of play. His heavy troops were 2 pike battalions and 2 hoplite battalions which he positioned opposite one of the breaks in the woods heavily screened by psiloi while his left was protected by 3 units of Psidian peltasts planning to take advantage of the woods opposite and his by some Thracians and more psiloi. The satrapal heavy & light horse was held back on the left to await orders to be committed to plug any holes that appeared.

The battle opened with a strong advance all along the Antigonid line but a far more cautious one from Alcetas – jibes about dragging his feet had no effect whatsoever 😂

The first serious action was the psiloi annoying the elephants which thy did very well and in due course we had panicking elephants and then dead elephants.

The early cavalry action was on the Antigonid right where Demetrious and half of the cavalry were massively outnumbered by the opposition and were ground down and eventually surrounded – lesson, don’t’ split your cavalry.

The other half of the Antigonid cavalry had a far better time beating up the Psidians.

And disappeared in a wild chase from which they never rallied.

At the two thirds point the game very much looked like it was going the way of the Antigonids. Demetrious was still holding his own on the right and the Median horse on the centre right under Peithon were making headway. Alcetas admitted he was worried.

The woods however were starting to become a bit of a pain in the arse – not least in trying to make sure weapons didn’t break off!

Eventually the heavy stuff got into contact with both sides mercenary hoplites slogging it out and both Antigonus and Menander (commanding for Alcetas) joining their troops to keep the combat going.

Then in a startling development the two Pantodapoi pike battalions, who had previously been protected by the Median horse, found themselves on their own, outflanked and showered with javelins and broke leaving a great big hole in the Antigonid centre.

Some consolation was gained when Antigonus’ veterans punched their way through but that just left them in a sea of enemy troops.

At game end Alcetas had the numbers and we called it a victory to him by a narrow margin.

Our next encounter was the final one of our Napoleonic north Italian odyssey, the battle of the Raab, 1809.

A much bigger game than our previous engagements (well for the French anyway 😉) the result was never really in any doubt, despite some early French efforts to completely cock it up, and it was all about how well the Austrians could do in defeat.

In an early effort to cock things up the French cavalry commander threw Guedin’s dragoon division across the Pancza stream and promptly lost it! Off to a great start.

A more circumspect approach was then adopted by the French and Laureston, supported by Sahuc, scored an early success on the French left.

This then led to a rapidly developing and fiercely fought contest on the Austrian right.

Meanwhile in the centre the French attack had gradually built and holes started to appear in the Austrian line.

Austrian grenadiers were desperately thrown in to plug the gaps but it was all a bit piecemeal.

French mass assaults turn the day.

Total Austrian collapse – every division is exhausted (Volley & Bayonet parlance). History does indeed repeat itself although our French paid a higher price.

Our final game was a GNW piece that stretched into two days. For this battle we had the table split by a major river, only crossable by a bridge leading into a town. A Russo Danish allied army was advancing up either bank of the river to contact a Swedish force reported as coming their way. The Russians and Danes had to deploy either side of the river although who took which side didn’t matter, the Swedes could deploy on either side or split to deploy on both sides and the split didn’t need to be even.

In the event the Russians took the right hand side with two brigades of foot, one of horse grenadiers and one of dragoons and the Danes the left with one brigade of horse and two brigades of foot. The Danes had the advantage of being on the side where the town was and maybe could beat the Swedes to it.

The Swedes opted to split their forces placing two brigades of horse and two of foot on the side facing the town and one each of horse and foot on the other bank facing the Russians.

In the opening moves the Danes won the race for the town (just) and this would prove to be a crucial event giving the Danes the advantage of receiving the forthcoming Swedish attacks at the halt.

Over on the Russian bank their horse (Kroptov and Tiernishov) splashed across the tributary stream to take the fight to the Swedes who lumbering forward.

The Swedes responded with their horse under Torstensson

The Russians were stopped but not overwhelmed and the Swedes fell back to regroup and the Russians realised they had got off lightly mixing it mounted so dismounted and started peppering away with muskets to keep the Swedes busy while their infantry hurried up.

Over on the other side of the river the Swedes threw in their first wave of cavalry under Hard but found that Danes weren’t quite so brittle as the Russians they were used to and so bounced off. No problem there’s another brigade to throw in.

In came the 2nd wave under Armfeldt and still the Danes held. Phew! The Swedes are now carrying some significant losses.

Back over the river the Russians are making a good show of it.

The Swedes have made a hole. Can they exploit it?

The Russian realise that they have more than enough troops to contain two Swedish brigades and so release Golovin’s brigade to march over the bridge to support the Danes – this will prove crucial.

In the town the Swedes and Danes slug it out. First with volleys and then with the Swedes trying to carry it with the pike & bayonet. Ultimately this is a failure and the Swedish brigade breaks with heavy casualties, ultimately rallying back at the table edge but spends the rest of the battle recouping its losses. The Danes now have the town and the Russians the bridge, its going to need a major Swedish effort to turn this around.

The Torstensson’s brigade breaks from accumulated casualties. It will rally but will need to recover losses.

The Swedes facing the Danes are now starting to gain ground so the Danes throw in their cavalry to stem the tide (see top corner). Sparre’s foot brigade is coming up behind the horse.

This is not good! The losses on Hard’s brigade reached critical mass and it only took one morale test for the brigade to crumble, The Danes breathed a sigh of relief.

The Danish line is finally breached by Sparre’s infantry but it has been an effort and they are not in a cohesive formation.

With the absence of Torstensson the infantry under von Liewen are being surrounded.

And breaks.

Golovin has shook out into line with 5 battalions of fresh troops and his right resting on the securely held town. His left is slightly in the air but about half of the Danish brigade has rallied and they are filtering in. The infantry under Sparre are too scattered to do anything in concert, Hard and Armfeldt are still recovering and Torstensson and von Liewen are lost. Emphatic Russo Danish victory.

In other news shows were attended! I’ve already spoken about Joy of Six but I also went to Attack! in Devizes.

The last time I went to Devizes I said I wouldn’t go again. Not because of the show but the distance, it is way too long a journey from Coventry in one day for what is an OK show, but circumstances meant I had to go so there I was.

My take on the show is that it is very old school and that has some charm but my impression was that numbers were low and two days is a stretch.

I did however manage to get some stuff done. This church and rectory for 6mm Cold War.

A power station for the 6mm.

A cypress grove for the 10mm Iran Iraq.

A copse for the Iran Iraq.

Acquired some pylons for the 6mm. Need a dark wash I think.

Another hill – because I haven’t got any of course 🙄

East Germans ready for action.

And I’ve chucked 3 years of work on a set of rules for my existing Timurid collection in the bin and been energised into doing something based on existing lines but different enough, hopefully!

And that’s it. Long may the summer continue. Be good and enjoy your gaming for as long as you can.