A long awaited father and son trip to England

Last week I got a few things off my bucket list as we took a father&son trip to England for some military history and miniatures gaming themed quality time! 

First we visited the National Army Museum and the Imperial War Museum in London, then the Tank Museum in Bovington. Next up was Warhammer World and a behind the scenes tour at Warlord Games in Nottingham, and Finally Salute 2024. 

National Army Museum & Imperial War Museum

I've been to London a couple of times before, but I haven't had the time to visit these two before. We were especially interested to see stuff related to the Napoleonic Wars and World War 1 and were not disappointed. Plenty to see. And a lock of Napoleon's hair. 

Bovington Tank Museum

The tank museum had lots of tanks, many of which you'll be hard pressed to see anywhere else. Apart from the obvious big cats, the highlight of the collection for me was the several WW1 tanks on display there. There was also a live show with tanks driving around which was good fun.  

Warhammer World

Warhammer world had plenty of huge battle dioramas, mostly made with modern miniature ranges. There was enough nostalgia available for old beards as well, fortunately. There was also a very well stocked Warhammer Store there (I finally got that copy of Realm of Chaos Lost & Damned) and of course, Bugman's bar. All in all, a great experience too. I'm a bit angry that one of the original Weta Anduril swords gifted the GW is unceremoniously crammed into a corner behind a door though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warlord Games

We had reserved a Behind the scenes tour at Warlord Games while in Nottingham. They manufacture, store and ship all their non-plastics on site and it was nice to see everything in action. They were very kind to us even though I'm sure Salute week meant they were quite busy.

Salute 2024

Last but not least, we attended Salute. I've always wanted to see a UK wargames show and Salute is the biggest one (at least I think so). We went there early and my son actually got pole position and was the first punter in. 

It was a very trade oriented show with so many companies selling their goods a lot of our time was spent going through them and shopping. There was enough time to look at all the games too though and we participated in a couple of demo games and a 20 min speed painting competition (Not to brag but I won).

Also, Richard Clarke treated me to his rendition of the Monty Python Finland song.

 

 

The best bit of the trip was that I could share it with my son. His positive attitude and joy was infectious and we made many happy, lasting memories on our trip together. Like running three kilometers through the busiest part of London to catch our train to Nottingham as the underground service was suspended due to someone jumping on the tracks ahead. We made it to our connecting train to Nottingham sweaty, out of breath and with three minutes to spare before the platform gate closing. Good times.

Yeah. There was so much loot we could barely get our baggage to fit the airline weight limits.

Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars. A tabletop wargamers' first impressions

Without much fanfare, a new official expansion to Mount and Blade: Warband was released. The new expansion, Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars, allows you to have some excellent Napoleonic multiplayer action with you playing as a single soldier in the battles. Have you ever played Total War games and thought it would be cool to play a game where you controlled only one man in the middle of all that? Well, this game comes very close. By looking at the official launch trailer you get the idea on what to expect:

I bought this expansion yesterday and was quite happy that I did. I played a session of the commander mode, where each player commands a company of about 20-30 AI soldiers. I took control of a German line infantry unit fighting for the British. How it worked was that I played a sergeant/officer armed with a telescope, sabre and a pistol, and was followed around by 25 AI line infantry soldiers armed with muskets. The server had about 15 players on each side, all commanding similar forces, so the battle would have looked something like a 28mm wargame from a birds eye view. Of course, I don't get a birds eye view because I'm down there, which is part of the charm. If that dragoon unit is sneaking around my flank in the cover of terrain, I won't see it until it's too late. It gives the tabletop wargamer a whole new perspective into the action. The graphics look good (not great) and the game should run on older rigs as well, even though your framerate may vary when there's a lot going on.

Commanding the AI teammates takes a bit of getting used to, but you can drill yourself to learning the correct key combos for commands quickly. You can order your men to hold a certain position, follow you, charge the enemy, change formation, hold fire etc. The best thing, which wasn't possible in mount and blade until the recent Fire & Sword expansion is that you can order your men to hold fire and then give orders for volley fire. Your men will load their muskets and then aim at the enemy, front rank kneeling. It looks great and when a long line opens fire at the same time... whoah. The smoke linger is better than ever and it can really obscure your vision now. At times I found myself firing into the white smoke without any idea on whether I was pointing anywhere near an enemy.

The weapons are nice and inaccurate, I found I can't hit pretty much anything at a distance. Infantry, cavalry and artillery are all modeled within the game, and I was suprised to see limbers pulling artillery pieces in the field, as artillery in the previous Napoleonic mods for M&B had been static. Artillery pieces take several stages and a while to load, but a grapeshot at close range is absolutely devastating to tightly packed infantry. There are rocket troops too, although I hope these don't become a common sight alongside artillery. Cavalry seems quite powerful, but then again, when they try and charge a prepared infantry unit to the front.. I ordered my line to fire at the last moment against a charging unit of cuirassiers and they fell down like flies.

The commander mode doesn't have respawning, and is played until one side loses their last soldier. This took about 10-15 minutes per match in my session. When the player inevitably loses the sergeant they start out with, they take control over one of the AI soldiers in his group, retaining control until the last man in the group dies. After that, he spectates the game until a new match begins. 

The commander mode enforces composition on the opposing sides so that you cannot take more than one unit of cavalry until your side has so and so many units of infantry. I don't know what the exact arithmetic behind this is, but it's a wise move from the developers.

What I've seen so far is very promising. I did see some glitches during the game, but I'm confident we won't be seeing cavalrymen riding high up in the air for long. I'm sure there will also be some balancing/realism issues to tackle until the end of the world, but playing the commander mode was just excellent. A friend of mine was playing in a 200 player game on a siege map without bots and said he enjoyed it a lot.

The obvious question many M&B veterans will ask is that is this just another mod you have to pay for like was in the case of Fire & Sword? After all, there are several free Napoleonic mods for Warband. I'll have to say I'm not qualified to answer that as I haven't played the free mods online, only as bot matches. The vets on the servers last night seemed to approve of it though, and I think there's a lot of polish in the game (including the nationality, heheh) which might be lacking in the mods. I'll have to play a couple more nights and try out the other gamemodes, but at the moment, I highly recommend this.

For those of you who don't know, you need Mount & Blade Warband to play this expansion. Warband is an excellent game in it's own right, focusing on medieval combat in a fictional no-fantasy world. It has a single player mode too.

Stay tuned, this was a "first impressions", not a review, and I need a couple more sessions under my best to see if there's something fatally flawed with the game. I The pictures in this post are taken here and there from the net, I claim no ownership. Look out for some holiday snapshots from me in the near future!

EDIT: Here's a couple of shots from today:

The frenchmen fire a volley

A view over the field

This commander match had about 60 players with 12 bots each. This one started to lag badly, which is unsuprising.

 

Fire & Fury: Gettysburg day 1 in 6mm

An overview of the field

We had a big Gettysburg game last Saturday with yours truly as the proud host. After the Bull Run game we played last summer and the Port Republic demo I organized in the autumn, I had a good base collection of miniatures and terrain for Gettysburg. I only did some cavalry for the Union, some infantry for the confederates and some small terrain work. The scenario is from the Fire & Fury rulebook with the portion north of Carlisle road omitted. This scenario would not see Ewell attacking the XI Corps defending Blocher's knoll, but I wrote the events into to scenario so depending on die rolls, the XI Corps would fall sooner or later and a confederate brigade of variable strength would appear from the north edge. Being generous, I made it possible for the XI Corps to hold their ground with very good die rolling and even send one of their own brigades to support the Union. I think this created a bit of uncertainty regarding the table edge and gave the players a reason to steer clear of the fighting going on off map.

The generals plot their movements

I was hoping I would get some new people to participate in this game and I was a little worried as before the con I hadn't received any messages from people wanting to join in. To my relief people started coming to me asking about the game and expressing their interest during the convention and on Saturday morning we got a visit from an eager group of wargamers from the nearby town of Varkaus. In the end we had 9 people taking up roles on the battlefield during the day, and only three of them had ever played Fire and Fury before! This meant that the two most experienced players including myself took up the roles of Corps commanders and acted in semi-umpire roles concentrating on advising the new players how to make their moves rather than plotting our own.

a view from the seminary at 10 am.

The scenario started at the 10 am turn (1 pm IRL time) with Heth's division facing Buford's cavalry division. Reynolds had just arrived on the field and Wadsworth's Iron Brigade was sneaking behind Herbst Woods to attack the Confederate flank at McPherson's Ridge. The Confederates started with an aggressive push against the Union cavalry. Buford's carbine wielding soldiers proved more than a match for them and sent them back to McPherson's ridge after some disorder results and casualties. Heth couldn't do much more than attempt to flank the union line from the direction of Oak Hill, but Union reinforcements blocked that approach also.

The union generals assemble. We've had a house rule that generals may not discuss strategy unless their "avatars" are physically close on the field. Often it results in an officer's club meeting that looks like this.

Pender's division arrives to support Heth.

The iron brigade holds the union left.

After some waiting Pender's division arrived on the field with some muscle and the attack on seminary ridge began anew. In a terrible hailstorm of lead the division was badly damaged on the approach and couldn't mount enough forces to throw the Union forces out of Seminary Ridge. At this point, the confederates had failed two charges on the ridge and the Union defenders were yet to lose a single stand! It wasn't looking too good. To make matters worse, The Iron brigade sent Pettigrew running back from Herbst Woods and was threatening the Confederate flank. If they could muscle their way through the Confederate artillery line, it would all be over.

Pettigrew and Wadsworth battle it out in Herbst woods. And yes, I know the Louisiana Tigers aren't supposed to be there! I ran low on stands!

At this point, the Confederate flank attack began. Rodes' division from Ewell's Corps arrived from the direction of Oak Hill and began a steady march towards Gettysburg. Heth was waiting on the Northern part of Seminary ridge just outside musketry range for Rodes to flank the Union defenders.

Rodes arrives and begins to turn the Union flank

Heth moves on Cutler.

 Seeing they would be soon be attacked from two directions, the Union generals made a risky decision. Heth and Pender were in bad shape on McPherson's ridge and the Union forces on the Seminary were still fresh. If they could rout the Confederates of A.P.Hill's Corps, they could then concentrate a larger force against Rodes. The Union attack slammed into the Confederate line and sent Pettigrew back. The Iron Brigade marched out from Herbst Woods and found itself the target of every Confederate gun on McPherson's ridge. From the Seminary, Buford's cavalry charged (while dismounted!) down into the depression between the two ridges but was sent running. One of Doubleday's brigades was shot so badly on approach that they broke and ran, leaving a gap in the Union line.

Union forces counterattack the ragged rebels.

The iron brigade drives Pettigrew all the way to McPherson's farm but expose themselves to rebel artillery in the process.

 The Confederates were quick to exploit this gap and charged the exposed batteries on Seminary Ridge, forcing them to retreat. The Union line was now cut in half, but A.P.Hill's Corps was in no shape to take advantage of this. Buford's cavalry and the Iron Brigade were still in good shape and a constant threat on the flank, even after the Confederate artillery forced the Iron Brigade to retreat back into Herbst Woods.

With Rodes' division pushing the flank, the Union line begins to turn towards Gettysburg.

 The Union generals' gambit had failed however, and they were running out of time. A couple of brigades marched to stall Rodes, but he sent everyone in his way running. The remains of Heth and Pender pressed the defenders on one side and Rodes was sweeping the flank. The Union line tried to refuse their flank to stop Rodes but it couldn't be helped.

At this point the Varkaus crew left and four generals remained to finish the three hours of scenario we had left. A tally of victory points showed that the Union was in a good lead at this point.

Rodes couldn't be stopped. The Union flank was too open and the forces were too few to stop him. The rest of the scenario was spent with the Union forces conducting a fighting retreat towards Cemetery Hill. Buford's cavalry and the Iron Brigade attempted to make it to Cemetery Ridge for a last defense, but the pursuing Confederates caused severe casualties during the retreat, including Buford himself, who caught a musket ball and fell to the ground.

Rodes pursues the Union forces relentlessly towards cemetery ridge.

Off map, XI Corps held long, but collapsed eventually. Rodes' division was joined by Doles' brigade, which had suffered during the attack on the Germans but was still in fighting condition. Rodes marched past Gettysburg towards Cemetery Hill scattering Union brigades whenever he could catch them. The line of Union defence was hastily arranged on the foot of Cemetery Hill, and the Union cannons tore great holes into Rodes' division. In this storm of lead, Pender fell, leading the remains of his division. The Confederates were finally getting worn, but managed a final charge on the line, capturing the Union guns and leaving the way to Cemetery Hill nearly open. Reynolds too was captured at this point, having averted his historical fate earlier.
 

The final engagement between Gettysburg and Cemetery Ridge

The scenario ends with Union troops just barely holding onto Cemetery Ridge.

At this point the scenario ended as Ewell didn't find it practicable to continue the assault. The players found it a sound decision as it was 1 am IRL time and the generals were quite spent. In the end, the Confederates won with 34 victory points against the 33 points of the Union. A close victory for Lee. The events proceeded more or less historically, but the Union forces did fare better than their historical counterparts in my opinion. Especially Buford's cavalry continued to be Reynolds' best asset throughout the game. The -2 "shooting at dismounted cavalry" modifier made them all but impervious to musketry, especially in woods, and in close assaults they were equal to line infantry (which made me think whether a stand of dismounted, skirmishing cavalrymen should equal a stand of formed line infantry at close range).

The game was a great success because of all the great generals we had controlling the forces. Everyone seemed to be in great mood and eager to play in the spirit of the period. The usual quotes were heard and we had a blast. I'll take the opportunity to thank the Varkaus group for showing up. We had a great time and I hope to see you at the Officer's Club in the future! Also worthy of mention is Janne, the overall commander of the Union forces, who couldn't help but expose his avatar, Reynolds to danger again and again, feeling the call of his historical fate. I'll hopefully meet you in the Shenandoah Valley next!

Three eras

Looks like my autumn is very active gaming-wise since this week I had the opportunity to play three games. Each of them represented a different era and a different style of wargame.


Fire & Fury

I went to see a friend of mine in the provincial town of Riistavesi and took with me the Port Republic game I made for last Warcon. Since I had only played it through once before, I was happy to get it on the table. So, 6mm ACW it was! Port Republic as a historical wargame is a bit of a lopsided battle. The Union troops on the board are initially strong, but are quickly outnumbered by Confederate reinforcements. It's a matter on how hard the Confederates jump up and down on the Union and to set victory conditions accordingly. This is why I designed an "equalizer variant" to the battle to make the opposing parties more evenly matched. This was quite easy and historically plausible as there were a couple of "Independent brigades" in the Shenandoah valley at the time accompanying another division. We signed the transfer papers and suddenly they were supporting Shields against Jackson. The scenario proved very even now, with both sides having difficulties gaining ground. In the end It was two victory points in favor of the confederates, but the situation was very much a draw. Stonewall Jackson himself was captured by a charging Union Brigade.


Julius Caesar

The next one was a block wargame. One of Columbia Games' newer offerings, it pits the armies of Julius Caesar against those of Pompey, so the Roman civil war was next. For those who've played Columbia's wargames, the game is instantly familiar. Movement on land and sea is familiar to War of 1812, and the game features a card driven system of activations, reinforcement and special events. Players have a hand of cards to activate their units each year. The card played determines initiative that turn, the number of locations (1-4) the player may activate and how many steps the player may repair and reinforce blocks (1-3). The special events range from getting a small bonus to combat to being able to steal a block from your opponent.



The scenario starts as Caesar crosses the Rubicon and progresses for a maximum of five years. Caesar has better troops and more of them, but he has the burden of attack and a temporary inferiority at sea, so it balances out. Although in our game lady Fortuna granted great victories and humiliating defeats, the game remained very close until the very last phase and battle. On the last turn there were lots of opportunities for the game to have ended differently, but in the end Caesar lost 6-7. It was very exciting and took us about 5 hours. Of Columbia's games, I think this one is the most forgiving to a player losing his blocks that I have played since players are allowed to reinforce a lot and returning an eliminated block into play costs the same as reinforcing another for one step. The only limitation is that some of the better legions can only come back into play in certain cities, and only if those cities are occupied by friendly troops. I warmly recommend this as a light block wargame, although it definitely takes more than the two hours printed on the box if the war drags on for the whole duration.

The game was decided in Greece and Pompey took a narrow win. The green stacks with the brown blocks have Julius' troops which have been hijacked using the special "Jupiter" event card.

Valor of the Guards

Last up, some more ASL! My game of choice for tactical Hex&Counter WW2 tactical action has gotten a lot of attention recently, and I'm quite happy with the situation. We played Scenario VotG9 "Eviction notice", which takes us back to the savage streets of Stalingrad. The Soviets are attacking a German position and have to assert control over the northern half of the field, which is no easy task. Both sides had a good number of elite troops, and the Germans were equipped with a 37mm gun. The Soviets had two T-40 tanks but it was the T-34 which gave the Germans trouble. The German gun wasn't able to scratch it and I won't mention anything about the antitank rifles they had. The T-34 could pretty much just waltz up and down the streets at will without fear as long as it wasn't tied into melee.

"Eviction notice" is one of the smaller scenarios in Valor of the Guards. The Soviets must take the right side half of the field in order to win.

The fighting in the buildings and rubble was pretty much what you would expect of Stalingrad. Lots of fire, lots of casualties in melee and little ground taken as a result. After some nasty casualties on the both sides, it was the Soviets who suffered most and were unable to claim the area they needed for a win.


So, Miniatures, Blocks and Hex&Counter games all in the same week, and it's only friday! A good cross section of the most popular ways to play wargames. I really cannot name a favourite type. With miniature games, I love the visual grandeur and the hobby aspect of building terrain and painting miniatures. Block wargames are without peer to present fog of war, bluffing and uncertainty the armies faced. Hex&Counter games represent a vast variety of different levels of command, scale and realism on a fairly inexpensive medium. Each type of game has their pros and cons, and I'm happy to play almost anything in the light-medium scale. ASL is one of the few "hardcore wargames" I bother with though, and I definitely shy away from the monsters.