The situation I blogged about a fortnight has changed a little. The siege at Santiago is over, the city capitulating 2 campaign days ago. Cuidad Rodrigo is still witholding the French. The Anglo-Portuguese have finally moved decisively, striking East out of the mountains to attempt to relieve the siege. Anson and Fane’s cavalry brigades have looped back around the city and moved to Cabillas, breaking the French line of supply and placing themselves between the besieging forces and the French reserves that would march to their aid.

In the rush to get there before the city fell, the Anglo-Portuguese have strung themselves out on the small mountain roads, the vanguard who arrived on the 2nd only consisted of 3 generals and the Heavy Cavalry ! Fortunately, they know that 12k infantry will definitely make it during the 3rd and so the scene is set for the first contact.

Mike, the French commander is now given a difficult choice. Does he meet the enemy with his whole forces yet moving away from the siege lines will undoubtedly allow the city to replenish some of their stores from his own baggage, destroy his saps and positions prolonging the siege, or does he leave the siege in place, leaving a valuable portion of his forces behind? This isn’t handled within the system, it can only do so much of course, and at this stage we’re looking at setting the narrative backstory to the battle. Mike’s opted to leave 2 brigades of infantry behind keeping the enemy bottled up in the city. Since the Anglo-Portuguese forces are basically all mounted, I figure that the French advance towards them and they back off, eating into the time before their reinforcements will arrive to even the odds. So the table top encounter will start on turn 5 of the day. (Days being between 12 and 18 turns long in Principles of War. Since it’s raining and only April, I’m suggesting that the day will be 13 turns long, giving us 9 full turns to play.)

The forces are stacking up like this:

Beresford
Bradford’s Brigade
Portuguese Artillery
De Grey’s Brigade
Slade’s Brigade

Leith’s 5th Division
Spry’s brigade
Portuguese Brigade
Portuguese Artillery

Craufurd’s Light Division
Beckwith’s Brigade

I Corps
GdD Lapisse 2nd Division
Brigade Maison
Brigade Darricau
Artillery
Artillery (Attached from 3rd Division)

III Corps
GdD Musnier 2nd Division
Brigade Brun
Brigade Razout
Artillery

I’ve yet to work out whether the French units will be on table as a Brigade or Regiments. I think previously we’ve played Regiments but I need to check some past orbats. Either way, it’s shaping up to be a good game and I fully expect that there will be more to come. If the Anglo-Portuguese can’t make the French retreat, there’s a whole host of reinforcements in the area for both sides to turn this into a real meat grinder. A decisive victory one way or the other could swing the whole campaign in favour of the victor so there’s lots to play for.

As for Ambush Valley, I’m even more annoyed at this one. For a one/two man band to release something badly edited is one thing, but for AAG with their Osprey backing to release not only their error ridden main rules but to continue this tradition into the 3rd supplement, a second edition of both I might add, is a bit of a pisstake in my opinion. I seem to oscillate between thinking theres a good set of rules somewhere within Force on Force, to thinking that for a Blackhawk down kind of scenario its almost perfect but there’s only so many “skinnies” or insurgents I can duck shoot. For Vietnam I just don’t think it works. Putting aside the issues I have with the accuracy of the text for now, some of the rules are just bizarre.

I had a simple scenario set up for a platoon or so of US to escort some Villagers from the ville in the middle of the table off table. Opposing them were some Local Force VC. The US were D8/D8 and the VC D6/D8. The VC had 2 MG Bunker cards and 2 spike board traps (drawn randomly!). The first MG bunker card was played as an interruption of some US movement and placed in the treeline, unfortunately too far for the VC to claim “ambush” (? how there can be a maximum range to ambush the enemy I don’t know!) In the ensuing reaction tests, the US got the drop on the VC and managed to shoot first, causing both figures to become casualties. Purely because they’re rolling D8′s and the VC D6′s.

Every time the VC fired or attempted to fire in the game, they were just simply swatted down like flies. And then we have the “instant nuke” sorry artillery rules. Apparently artillery lands immediately, with no deviation. If the US can call it in, then it’s just devastating. By the end of the game, I had 2 MG bunkers and 3 squads of 5 figures all casualties. Of course I couldn’t actually find out what type of casualties they were because there was no one unhit within the requisite distance at the right point in the turn to check. It’s possible that with that figure close they could all have been fine (admittedly that would have needed a heck of a lot of 6′s to be rolled!). In return I’d managed to cause 4 Serious Wounds and 1 Light Wounded US figure. 2 of the Serious Wounds had come from the spike traps, which meant that for 3 figures hit, I’d lost 19. Now bear in mind that the VC were generally in cover (or fortified positions!), while the US were in the open. For a “outcome driven” ruleset, that just doesn’t sound right.

Back to FNG, I’m just trying out an ambush scenario since the table is still set up from the above game. As far as I can see from the rules, theres even more dice rolling than there was in the old version, something I’m not too keen on. I’ll have to see how they play, the one advantage of FoF:AV is that it’s quick (provided you can work out the rules of course), but that’s probably because one side is dead rather quickly!

Here’s a few pictures of the AV Action though.

The campaign continues on, the ,three remaining French players have stuck to their initial plan and while we’ve not had any battles result there’s been some interesting opportunities which have slipped through both sides hands through lack of understanding. Malcolm’s found much the same with his system, that when players have some incomplete information, they’re unwilling to act boldly.

The French invasion of Spain has so far captured the regions of Aragon, Old and New Castile as well as Catalonia.



Three main thrusts have crossed the Alps, the Northern corps captured San Sebastien on the first day of the campaign, and have moved southwest to Burgos where they then switched direction to the Northwest towards Galiza, besieging the capital Santiago as I type.

The Central thrust headed by Marshal Victor, the overall French commander, crossed the border at Lizaso and Roncesvalles, capturing the fortresses of Pamplona and Burgos and on to the regional capital of Valladollid. Anglo-Portuguese cavalry have been pushed back and onto the flank of the thrust and the two cavalry screens have repeatedly scouted each other as the two generals try to get more information on the others forces. The Fortress of Cuidad Rodrigo was invested a few days ago, trapping some Anglo-Portuguese forces there along with the garrison.

Now the most Southern thrust, Ney’s 2 corps have struggled through the terrible mountain roads from Lascun and Bagneres de Luchon to gain the main road from Zaragoza to Madrid. Both have been taken and Ney is now crossing the Tagus to the south of the Spanish Capital.

Had either Wellington or Beresford understood the situation a few days ago around Zamora, I believe they should have pushed to concentrate forces either at Cabillas forcing the French to attack over the bridged road, or even to loop North through the worse roads admittedly, but to fall on the rear of the French advance around Valladollid, as well as disrupting communications and supply lines, possibly even recapturing the region and gaining a bonus of Spanish forces raised in celebration. – Something they don’t know will happen of course though so you can’t blame them for that!

We’re paused for a few days across the weekend, Mike’s gone away and I’ve come home to my Dad’s as it’s the anniversary of my Mum’s death last year so I wanted to spend some time with him. I’d planned on going up to Vapnartak tomorrow, but with the snow coming down thick and fast at the moment, that might not be possible!

I’d like to finish with a hearty thanks for those who put their heads above the parapet and defended me recently. You know who you are and thanks.

The ships arrived within a couple of weeks which is excellent going from the US. Each class of ship is in its own bag with a diagram showing how the various small resin pieces, guns and masts and the like should be assembled. As I look at them, they appear to be rather complicated and fiddly, I expect an amount of swearing will be involved in putting them together. Many of the ships with small pieces seem to have a “web” of flash holding the small pieces together, which will need some careful trimming but it’s a clever way of making sure that they all stay together in transit.

The ships themselves look to be well cast, with a few bubbles, mainly on small details. There appears to be a few areas of flash or bloom, where resin will need to be removed carefully but I think with a little work they’ll be very nice models indeed.

Since starting this draft post (over a month ago!), I’ve actually managed to get 4 of the MTB’s, Vosper 70fters to be exact, and 2 of the smaller coastal freighters finished. I’ve experimented with the merchant vessels with two different washes, one gives a rusty kind of look, while the black wash I think looks better. I’ve left off the flimsy details of masts on the merchants, as they’re cast in such thin resin or plastic I don’t think they’ll stand up the rigours of gaming, nor could I work out exactly what went where and how they should fix.

I’ve got 4 MGB’s ready to start, their 20mm or 2pdr guns are fiddly as hell to cut out and glue on, but they do look pretty good.

Here’s a couple of shots of the stuff done so far.

The campaign has been running for a week now, and fingers crossed, touch wood etc, things have been going well with the system. Unfortunately I have had to boot one of my players due to a very insulting comment left on the blog which traced back to him so we’re down to 3 French players. If anyone fancies having a go at filling in, then let me know.

We’ve not had a battle yet but the signs are that we’re building up to one in the vicinity of Valladolid. Anglo-Portuguese Cavalry has been sighted there yesterday and I was expecting Marshal Victor to push them out today or set up for a fight tomorrow, but no such movement was made. I’m wondering if there’s a cunning plan involved, or if I’m guessing his location correctly in the first place!

One of the major shortcomings in the system has been the lack of working garrison and siege code, which meant that the French have poured over the border and captured the border fortresses with ease. Thats something that I really should have thought about before starting. I’m pretty sure that I’ve fixed it now and will be implementing it shortly.

Here’s a collection of screenshots from the system, as it’s occurred to me that so far most of you have only really seen the changelog and the login screen!

This screen shows the Orders screen, which as you can see contains a list of the brigades and commanders on the left. The player can select multiple choices here, then give them a destination and/or intermediate or waypoint direction. This allows the player to fine tune which route he wants troops to take, and also extend orders out to 6 legs away. Under the destination boxes, are a series of dropdowns and tick boxes which allow the setting of specific choices, Standing orders when meeting the enemy, priority for traveling down busy roads etc.

Here the player can review orders he’s sent to his units to refresh his memory!

This screen shows messages recieved. New messages are highlighted in the table in green and the blue headers allow sorting of the messages in ascending and descending order. I’ll eventually add some sort of filtering here.

This screen allows the player to look at the makeup of his brigades. Although the smallest element in the system is the Brigade, some small games may entail battalion or regiment level actions, so these units are all stored and viewable here. It also shows the morale/experience class.

This is the Headquarters screen, which shows a breakdown of information that is visible from the players current position. It gives a list of the roads out of their current location, the details of friendly troops at surrounding towns and also gives the player the opportunity to view road classifications on any town in the game.

The feedback from the players so far has been pretty positive and I’m hoping that they are having as much fun as I am. Hopefully the next update will have news of battle being met, and miniatures being required for duty. I’ll also try and find a satisfactory method of posting an image of movement so far on a map for those who are interested.

Since my day to day work is as a database manager, I figured I could do a similar sort of system in MS Access which could be emailed around and would suit my small wargaming group and the growing 6mm Napoleonic Collection I had. Several iterations later of both the campaign system and the tabletop rules later, we realised that Access wasn’t going to work for us, as it depended on everyone having Access for a start, and also chain emailing it around. An online version was a much better option and I changed my hosting to facilitate this. At this stage I knew no php at all, but Malcolm was helpful with certain bits of info and I picked up what I needed to know as I went. As with all things, interest and momentum waned on and off, a major push in time for presenting it at the Conference of Wargamers this summer left me massively dejected when no one opted to attend the session.

However, 2012 is the year of meeting objectives, or something like that, so with extra work over the Christmas break, I got the system to a point where we can start using it.

The basic premise of the system is that it facilitates running a campaign with zero paperwork and replaces the need for an Umpire. Users log into the system on the website , and are able to enter orders, view reports, send messages to allied players and run their game as they see fit. Turns can be automated but for now they will be run manually by me logging in as Admin and pressing the “run” button. A day’s game turn takes around 10 seconds to process, and players can see the results immediately.

There are still a number of areas I want to work on, and this is most certainly not a simulation of what Napoleonic Campaigning was like. It contains a number of compromises in order to increase playability and player choice and hopefully will give a stimulating and enjoyable context to our table top battles.

Essentially when the player logs in, he is viewing a static situation snapshot taken at for sake of argument 12.01am. They can send orders in preparation for the current day’s activities and read reports which arrived during yesterday.

• Weather is generated for tomorrow if required. (weather is generated in “blocks” of variable length and is seasonal, for example Winter provides a higher % chance of snow than Autumn, while Summer days may be extremely sunny, Winter days almost certainly will not!). The prevalent weather affects the movement of troops, moving in snow adds fatigue for example.
• Supply lines are checked to see if lines are broken, and reinforcements are generated and delivered where possible. Losses due to fatigue, disease and being out of supply are applied also.
• Unit Strengths are calculated for tabletop battles from the actual strengths, including a random factor of PoW. Additional Rulesets can be incorporated with a little tweaking, Mike was talking about using
• Napoleon at War for smaller confrontations for example.
• Regional Ownership calculations which have a bearing on Courier survivability. Regions have 2 factors which govern how much help or hinderance a friendly courier might get while moving through that region.
• Move Couriers (morning). This delivers or attempts to move, any couriers currently in the system. Any move orders the player has issued to his units will move in this phase. If they are delivered during this phase then troops can move during the current day. Couriers sent to other players who are in the same location or a single leg away will immediately be delivered in real time so you don’t have to wait for the turn to process.
• Move Units. Unfortunately while simultaneous movement is possible, its an absolute nightmare to code collision detection, so for now the system operates an IGOUGO turn sequence, with initiative being randomised each day. One side completes all its moves and then the otherside moves where it is able, ie not being attacked.
• At this point, the system may pause because a tabletop battle needs to be fought. Players will have warning the day before that a battle is due, but this turn allows extra forces to be moved into the battle location. They will of course arrive late on the table! Players will be unable to send further orders while the system is paused, but will continue to be able to view their messages, send messages to other players and generally plan their game.
• Generate Scouting messages. Units in adjacent towns to each other will report each others location and strength, using their Light Cavalry to screen their own forces if possible. Thus two forces, one of which has cavalry while the other does not, will report differently. The force with cavalry will get a nearly accurate report of the strengths of infantry and artillery, while the other force will simply know that there light cavalry about and may wildly under or overestimate their numbers!
• Move Couriers (Evening). This delivers or attempts to, any couriers which have been created since the morning courier movement. Any courier that moved in the morning, will NOT move again, although if a courier was in a location that it’s recipient has moved to, it will deliver the message.

The current campaign is based in the Iberian Peninsula and features Matt and Peter playing the Anglo-Portuguese army, while Christie, Mike, Richard and myself each have 2 Corps of French, poised on the Pyrenees border to invade Spain. The date is the 8th March 1809 and the campaign is not intended to be a recreation of the Peninsular War. One reason for this is that we only own about 8 bases of Spanish troops! The French are to capture all regions on the map, while the Anglo-Portuguese players are to prevent that. We’ve left it fairly open ended, and this may be a mistake but for now we want to get going and worry about that at the end. The first turn will process on Saturday morning, in the meantime the players had last night to discuss their tactics and strategy face to face, and from now on all communications should really be through the system.

I must say a massive thanks to Malcolm again, not only for his help, but also for generously allowing us to use his maps that he has handcrafted using Campaign Cartographer. They truly are works of art and a massive help to the players and umpire.

I have set the website up so that people who wish to view the game progress without taking part may do so and see a current situation map with forces drawn on it. Players obviously don’t have this luxury, and must piece their own intelligence together from their reports. If you want to view this, you must register and be set up to do so but I’m happy to do that if you’re interested.

I hope some of you have made it right down to the bottom here, so thanks for reading what must be the longest blog post yet, and for persevering with no eye candy to drool over. I will post updates of the campaign’s progress as we go, although I’ll have to be careful about what information I release as I’ve no doubt some of the players will try to have a crafty read!

Background

On the 27th June, the day after Operation Epsom began to outflank and eventually capture the city of Caen, Operation Mitten was launched to eradicate a salient in the line to the North of Caen and capture the two chateaux of La Londe and Landel. Troops of the 3rd Division’s 8th Brigade were tasked with these objectives and on the evening of the 27th the 1st Battalion of the South Lancashire Regiment attacked, running into heavy resistance and suffering many casualties for no gain in territory. The following morning the other two battalions of the brigade with tank support from the Staffordshire Yeomanry attacked again in the face of stiff opposition but by the end of the day were in possession of the objectives where they dug in and endured heavy shelling for almost a month.

Forces

British

1 CO (CV 9 )
2 FAO (CV 8 )
3 Artillery Units (25pdrs)
3 Artillery Units (Sextons)

1st Battalion Suffolk’s
2 HQ (CV 8 )
12 Infantry Units
1 MG Support Unit
1 Mortar Support Unit
1 Recce Carrier
1 6pdr & Carrier tow

2nd Battalion East Yorkshire’s
2 HQ (CV 8 )
12 Infantry Units
1 MG Support Unit
1 Mortar Support Unit
1 Recce Carrier
1 6pdr & Carrier tow

Staffordshire Yeomanry
3 x Sherman Squadrons, each of 1 HQ (CV 8), 1 Sherman Firefly and 3 Sherman 75mm.

* As far as I can tell, although the Crocodile tanks of B Squadron, 141 RAC were present on the evening of the 27th and took losses, but whether they took part on the second attack on the 28th I cannot say for sure. According to the War Diary they were on standby, so if you wanted to add a couple of Crocodile Units I don’t think it would be out of place. (Having said that, the War Diary mentions the attack on the 27th that the unit was supporting the E. Yorks, not the S. Lancs ?)

German

The German forces represent units from 21st Panzer Division, specifically 2 companies of 192 Panzer Grenadier Regiment, backed by tanks from Panzer Regiment 22. Later they were reinforced by troops of the divisional Pioneer Battalion who may have been riding halftracks. (Many thanks to R Mark Davies on TMP for this information).

1 CO (CV 9 )
3 HQ (CV 9 )
1 FAO (CV 7 )
9 Infantry Units
4 MG Support Units
2 Anti Tank Support Units (Pak 40)
1 Anti Tank Support Unit (88mm)
4 Panzer IV’s
1 Tiger
2 Artillery Support Units (150mm)
3 Halftracks

*(21st Panzer contained a large number of converted French vehicles, so the Halftracks would have been Somua AFV’s and the Artillery units would be Lorraine SP guns. However, you can use regular SdKfz 250/1′s if you need to, I did!)

**I rated all the infantry units and support units as fanatical which in BKC gives a bonus to command rolls to enter Close Assault, and also makes them less likely to retreat when rolling suppression/fallback. This I feel matches the accounts of the battle from the book.

Map

Notes:
* All open areas should be corn fields, woods count as light/orchards and the buildings are stone.

**The British may start from one of three options. Option one they start from the North table edge only, deploying in the red area which is approx 15cm in. Option two allows them to deploy to the West only, again 15cm in. The third option gives them free rein within both red areas. This is because I have not yet found evidence to say from where 8 Brigade attacked but the logical areas would have been to the North and/or West of the salient as Lebisey to the East was strongly held.

***The Germans can start anywhere within the Green shaded area, and may begin the battle with all units Dug In.

We’ve played the scenario twice so far and are about to play it a third time. When the Germans know which direction the British are coming from they have a very good chance of holding firm, when they are less certain then some elements can be found out of position quite quickly depending on set up. With the options in the Orders of Battle as well as set up, I hope that this scenario has some replay value and also interest to those who use other rules.

Please let me know if you have any more information on this Operation, or comments on the scenario.

Here’s a few pictures of our games. All miniatures are Pendraken 10mm, the buildings are a mix of Shellhole and Timecast and all the hedges and walls are from Timecast. Trees are a mix of home made and S&A Scenics.

British Troops close on Le Landel

Ambush in the Woods!

Overall view of the table from the North looking South.

Close in fighting for Le Landel

British troops moving through the corn. Smoke Barrage in the background.

German Counterattack almost on the British Startline

Combined arms attack on a dug in Pak 40

The figures themselves had a fair amount of flash and a lot of them have been cast with the moulds misaligned by the looks of it. The figures look very characterful with lots of detail, but when it comes to painting them alot of the detail is difficult to paint. A particular case in point is the strapping on the legs of several warriors. Its not the fine lines which are difficult to paint per se, but the angle of the legs makes getting a brush to them very awkward and the detail itself looks odd or badly executed.

Matt’s bought a bunch of Little Big Men Studio shield transfers to use. Unfortunately having used one, it’s obvious that despite being marketed for Khurasan specifically, the miniatures shields are larger than the transfers, leaving either a white ring around the shield or me to paint in the missing areas. Far more annoying than just painting the design freehand in the first place and that’s not taking into account the fact that the shield bosses have to be cut out of the transfers first and we’re talking 3-4mm squares here!

Anyway, here’s a few shots of some I’ve done so far and some WIP. I’ve tended to paint in shade and highlight (whether painted or washes), very little triad work here but after painting bigger figures recently I couldn’t go back to single block colours even if the figures aren’t mine. Please bear in mind that the pictures show some of the figures many times their size.

Beserkers

Bowmen

Bowmen with handpainted shield

LBM shield transfer

Guys in padded jackets

I was rather disappointed to find that I’ve seemingly miscalculated the number of British battalions required and have ended up 5 short, so that’ll be added to the number of Portuguese units (21) that I need to do. I’ve spent a large amount of time sticking labels to the bases identifying what battalion is what, and these are on Steel paper for use with magnetic numbers.

The whole army

Spencer’s 1st Division is complete and fully based, the only British formation which is!

1st Division

Hill’s 2nd Division is missing a couple of battalions.

2nd Division

Picton’s 3rd Division is missing the man himself (currently on the painting table along with Wellington, Uxbridge and a bevy of other Generals and ADC’s) and 3 Portuguese battalions.

3rd Division

Lowry Cole’s 4th Division is missing one battalion and needs its latest addition of 4 Portuguese battalions basing.

4th Division

Leith’s 5th Division is missing 6 Portuguese battalions while the Light Division is missing Craufurd (yes I’ve spelt it wrong on the label!), and the 1/43rd. I’m also going to add another 2 bases of rifles to represent the 95th and boost the brigades to 3 bases each.

5th Division and Light Division

This is Hamilton’s Portuguese Division and is complete. In this photo you can see the small magnetic numbers I’m going to be using to mark units for roster based games like Principles of War and Grande Armee which are our two preferred Napoleonic systems.

Portuguese Division

The orbat includes a number of Independant Portuguese brigades which are here, as you can see I’m missing three of the four required which means 12 Line battalions and another 2 Cacadores battalions of 16 men each to spread across the bases. I have another which is painted and ready though.

Independant Portuguese

Here’s the cavalry, although I have 2 Regiments of Hussars and the missing KGL Light Dragoons painted and awaiting (re) basing. I’ll probably add some more Light Dragoons before the end.

Cavalry

And lastly, here’s Beresford, awaiting an ADC or two and final basing. He’s the first black horse I’ve done in 6mm and I’m pretty pleased how it’s finished.

Beresford

My plan was to deploy one of squads to cover the east side of the first compound, ready to breach while another squad takes up a position in the drainage ditch to give overall front and left cover. The third squad and the HQ team were going to be held in reserve to come on table in one of the vehicles at a later turn.

Turn 1

In the picture above you can see the situation at the end of the first turn. (Picture taken from the East). 1st Squad has moved on to the board and is South of Compound 1, and 2nd Squad has started moving towards their overwatch positions amongst the trees to the West of Compound 1. The Taliban have opened fire with Dshk and a squad from the green zone to no effect at the team on the road, who with return fire have dropped a number of the Taliban. Matt then promptly made almost all his casualty rolls and won the initiative from me!

The next turn Matt again fired at me down the road, and again return fire from my guys was pretty effective in putting the Taliban down. In a D8 v D6 game, this sort of rolling is pretty handy!

Good Rolling

Again though, Matt made most of his casualty rolls. In response, I moved 1st Squad into position to breach into compound 1 and while trying to debus from the AAV I took several casualties and a pinned result and scurried back into the wagon.

Man Down!

The next turn I got the initiative back and breached the compound from inside which a group of 6 Taliban opened fire injuring one of my guys. My return fire though was pretty effective, right up until Matt came to roll for his wounds.

Effective Return Fire

Matt's Wound Rolls!

In the field, a DshK opened up on my squad advancing in the open, but my reaction roll gained a Fog of War card which was a sandstorm and took effect immediately. Matt wasn’t happy with the result meaning he couldn’t shoot at me, but his hidden troops were suddenly revealed and I could react to them elsewhere. I can see his point.

I sent a fire team into the field to deal with the DshK which went well, especially when a Taliban team on an overlooking rooftop opened up and I was able to smack them too.

Getting up close in the fields.

And that’s where we left it. Matt’s got a couple of wiped out teams awaiting casualty checks, and I’ve got 2 KIA so far. We’d planned on continuing again last Wednesday but my current health scare put paid to that. I’ll write up pt2 when and if we get it played!

Trouble for the Taliban in the Green zone