Wargame Warrior

The Battle of Lobositz has always interested me as a masterful plan by the best Austrian general Maxilmillian Browne to fix the attention of the Prussian army whilst he attempted to rescue the stranded Saxon army by a bold move with a flying column. My aim with the army briefings was to persuade the Prussians that they had a chance to crush an isolated Austrian body whilst the Austrian commander was tasked with occupying as many Prussians as possible for as long as possible.

Prussian briefing

Austrian briefing

This was also an opportunity to try out the Regimental level of the Cartouche Piquet rules.

The Austrians (red) set up with Croats amongst the vinyards on Lobosch Hill with infantry in support and two batteries of 12lber guns trained down the valley where the Prussians would advance from.

This was a semi-disguised scenario with asymmetric victory points (essentially the sides were after different objectives.) Both sides scored victory points for taking morale chips from the opposition but the Austrians gained bonuses for each additional command they drew into the combat and for extending the fight beyond 4 turns. The Prussians gained bonus points for defeating entire Austrian commands and for capturing the village of Lobositz itself.

 The Prussian briefing emphasised the ease with which their infantry had dealt with Austrian counterparts in the past (without specifically mentioning that this was the previous war 10 years ago.) and characterised the enemy as  being a detached force that was ripe to be crushed. This was to give them someof the historical over-confidence  that they showed.

 The Austrians were briefed that their task was largely as a diversion to allow General Browne to try to rescue the stranded Saxon army from its camp at Pirna Konigstein, losses were not a vital factor for them...

The Prussians lived up to this hope at the start of the game flinging their first command (six infantry regiments and an artillery battery) straight at the Austrian guns. The Prussians helpfully stayed in their company columns making them an excellent target for the German and Walloon gunners.

Perhaps sensing all was not right Frederick (Nick) immediately ordered his reserves into action, ordering his cavalry to make their way through the hills on his right and the rest of the infantry to make their way into action on his left. The reserve brigade of Cuirassiers were also hurried onto the table to support the troops already fighting.

Meanwhile the Austrian cavalry moved up to dispute the plain and attempted to disrupt the Prussian attack. One of the grenadier regiments blasted O'Donnels dragoons with musketry before they were tumbled back towards their baseline to escape the dragoons' sabres. The dragoons were however next shredded by accurate close-range fire from the battery of guns on the hill ( a 12 on a 12 sided dice!) and then finished off by the newly arrived cuirassiers.

Worse was to follow, as the supporting hussars were now caught in the flank by the Prussian cavalry that picked their way through the hills and now marched to the sound of the guns to enter the action at the crucial moment.

The massed Prussian horse swept into action and surrounded and destroyed the horse grenadiers to complete the pain for the Austrian cavalry.

In the centre things were not progressing so satisfactorily for the Prussians.  The infantry in their columns had hurtled forwards to get at the guns before too many shots could be fired into their dense formations. They were successful in this except where they encountered the supporting Austrian infantry. One of the regiments was sent scurrying back whilst the others, now in posession of the guns, were stuck before the village without room to deploy.

Infantry Regiment Pallavinci now showed its mettle by retaking one  of the batteries of guns after a long fight and then wheeling the rest of the regiment, marching calmly through their musketry fire  to take the Prussian grenadiers in the flank and send them pell mell from the battlefield too.

The Croats unchallenged amongst the vinyards on the Lobosch Hill also started to press forwards on the flank of the Prussian force seeing off a probing attack by cuirassiers with the fire of their baby battalion guns (1lbers!)

The battle now hung in the balance. The Prussian attack in the centre had failed and was in danger of being rolled up by the Austro-Hungarian infantry regiments. The  Prussian cavalry were unwilling to press their advantage being short of morale chips and without an obvious target.

Frederick decided at this point to cut his losses and withdraw his army from the field (perhaps suspicious of what Browne was up to elsewhere.) He was able to acheive this unmolested due to the lack of enemy cavalry or orders for them to pursue. The last Prussian command was recalled (6 regiments of infantry with artillery support) and the Austrians remained in control of the battlefield.

This result reversed history, where the Prussians pushed home their assault on the Lobosch Hill after early reverses and managed to break the Austrians if with much more difficulty than they were expecting. In victory points terms our game was also a narrow win for the Austrians. If the final Prussian command had attacked it would have added to their enemy's VPs but might also have won the battle. Piquet battles can turn on the last roll of the dice with many victories being grasped from the jaws of defeat and vice versa.

Regimental scale Piquet was a qualified success. Multiple Morale Chip totals for different commands does give a new overview to the game but also takes away the stress of seeing a single morale chip total whittled away as an army is destroyed.

More photos in the Seven Years War gallery.

Two boxes of Perry Miniatures Sudanese Tribesmen were part of the goodies bought at Cavalier. The first few have now been assembled, there are 40 figures to a box, great value at 45p each (plus labour!)

The box contains 3 x main sprue and 2 x "command sprue", as well as a set of plastic bases (for eBay) and a leaflet about Sudanese dress with some nice banners included.

There are enough heads in the box to field every figure as a turbanned Arab or every figure as a Hadendowa / "Fuzzywuzzy". There are a mixture of weapon options on the basic sprue but only exactly enough arms in total so every weapon set will have to be used (you cannot make all spearmen or all riflemen from one box.)

The "command sprue" again allows both figures to be either Hadendowa or Arabs and this time there is more choice of arms. You get a rifle, a sword, a drummer or a clenched fist and left arms holding a flagpole or pointing.

The figures go together very nicely as you'd expect. The arm options and seperate shields mean you can get a huge variety amongst your mobs of Mahdists. Pondering on the huge number of spare heads in a box I tried a quick experiment with some spare Wargames Factory  "Numidian" bodies and I think they go with the superior Perry figures rather well. (Front row 2nd and third from the left.)

If you can pick up any of these very cheaply they do add a bit of variety to your warbands and for the frugal use up some spare heads.

Three new units of hoplites painted, just need the bases finishing and a coat of matt varnish.

The figures are (from the left): old Foundry and 1st Corps, Immortal (now Warlord) and Essex Miniatures. The Immortal figures have Little Big Men Studios decals/transfers for their shield designs.

The others have a mixture of other transfers and hand-painted designs.

Spartans reinforcements are now receiving some paint. Yes, they do have Pilos hemets and no, I don't care :). If anyone does get the game for the SOA Battle Day organised (it's not me this year) we should at least have enough hoplites in 25mm.

I have had a copy of "Theatre of War" for several years without getting much past reading the first third of the rules.  A set of campaign rules based on the Piquet tabletop games system,  Theatre of War (ToW) uses the various sets of cards that are utilised in the tabletop rules. This is part of what makes the comprehending the mechanism such a chore, as cross-referencing to the basic rules quickly becomes confusing.  However, for a long time there have been discussions about getting a new campaign running and I girded my loins (mental loins that is) for another crack at Tow.

Persevering with the read through of the rules and then putting together the prep for a test game did  clarify the system and gave me a good feeling that there was a fun game lurking within. Proof of the pudding etc. being usually very true I proposed a tryout on a weekend where a specific game had not been scheduled and set about putting the map and cards together.

A map is, strangely enough, not required to run the campaign. Instread a grid is  randomly generated with difficulty of terrain and campaign value ratings. I chose to lay this grid over a depiction of a map (stolen from the Internet - thankyou Google) as I felt it was more fun this way.

The map with a grid overlaid:

The map with colour coded terrain values and numerical Campaign values.

The decks of cards are played in each campaign turn to allow armies to move and other strategic actions such as forming supply dumps. The cards also build up a Battle Hand that gives advantages when it come to fighting a battle. There is a hand limit depending on the season, so there is a compromise between having a good Battle Hand and having cards useful for strategic moves.

Plenty of blood but not much mud as this was also the first time we had got our Back of Beyond / Russian Civil ar figures on the table. This was a three way fight between White Russians (cossacks and Naval infantry), Reds (infantry and an improvised armoured car) and The Mad Baron's men (Mongol cavalry and Russian infantry.) The scenario was set somewhere south of Tashkent with mobile forces racing to capture a lost Rolls Royce armoured car.

It was an enjoyable game despite us all being new to the rules. The Reds' cunning ambush with a decoy armoured car camer to naught partly due to the referee blowing the ruse (sorry!) Plan B was to stay next to the train tracks and blast anything that came into range.

The principle victim of this trigger happy approach was one of the units of Mongol cavalry. They almost stumbled over the Red conscripts and spent most of the rest of the game scrambling back out of range their horses taking most of the casualties. Their colleagues headed into the town and got tangled up in a series of running fights with the locals in which they mostly came off worse.

The other White force managed to capture the armoured car, stripped it of its machine gun and then holed up all in one off the houses on the edge of the town.

The Reds attempted to storm the town supported by their ersatz armoured car but bursts of accurate fire friom their looted machine gun allowed the Naval infantry to see them off.

The White success was only marred by their failure to secure the Cossacks' horses which took the opportunity to scatter to the four winds.

I have suddenly become aware that 2012 is just round the corner (must be the annoying M&S Christmas ads.:roll:) and the realisation has occurred that painting time for the SOA Battle Day is slipping away. As a first step I decided to audit what figures are available from my lead pile to be inserted into the painting queue before April. Results summarised below:

Hoplites (28-30mm): 319 of those 136 are painted.

This seems better that it really is as the majority of the painted hoplites are in fact Etruscans. They will do in a pinch I suppose but I would like to have proper Greeks for Platea. This leaves 2 units of hoplites ready for action and 14 units of potential recruits (7 of these units look distinctly Spartan.)

My figures come from a wide variet of manufacturers (some comparison photos below) but I am hoping that if I can keep the large round (Argive) shields consistent variatioons in height and heft between the different sculpts will go unnoticed.

(The grey figures in the middle are Immortal Miniatures plastic hoplites, great value for the aspiring Greek general.)

Episode from the game that never was...

More pictures in the Photo Albums

In view of the up coming Battle Day, the progress of the armies should be up dated here.

The army lists should also be listed here.

hey guys thought i'd tell you that i found my old linka system plaster of paris moulds, they are scaled at 25mm

so any buildings within reason in that scale we should be able to reproduce (i have exact plans for la hay sainte farm house for instance and a medieval castle.).

im going to try and adapt the moulds (basically they give you tips for resizing hte completed components while they are still drying so you can snap them down to size.) for our 6mm world war two bashes as well, and the moulds dont look too unreasonable (if a bit large) for 15mm.

here's a link ...

http://www.linkaworld.com/

I suppose that this is the place for transient updates and news items...

Errrrm, oh I know, I just finished painting a unit of hangunners for the medieval / Hussite forces I've got no photos yet so here's some hoplites for Platea. It would be more useful if I hadn't sold them...