Minor Change of Plans

As stated in my last post, we had planned on being camping this weekend.  We live in Southern California which has generally comfortable weather, but is somewhat prone to forest fires in the dry seasons.  Thursday evening a small fire broke out in the hills on the way to the campground we had reservations for.  By Friday afternoon the interstate we had planned on taking was shut down and it looked like the alternate route would be impacted shortly.  Friday at noon the fire was 8,000 acres, by 2 PM on Friday the fire had grown to 14,000.  As I type early Sunday morning it is now 80,000 and within 5 miles of the campsite we had booked.  So as you may have guessed, we stayed home.  Although we thoroughly enjoy camping and haven't gotten out as much as we would like, we're safe at home and upwind of most of the smoke plume (for now).
Staying home means progress on the wargames front though.  Late Wednesday my lovely wife sewed the edges of a small piece of duck cloth.  I then used a template and permanent marker to mark the corners of the hexagons for the map.  There are 9 rows of 8 or 9 hexagons.  Close ups of mat below.

Close up of mat with partially painted miniatures

Mat on coffee table

Template made from 4 pieces of printer paper taped together

Mat on an End Table (How's that for Compact!)

I am satisfied with the outcome of this mat.  I think it will serve me well for the foreseeable future.  I did realize as I was drawing the dots that only a few more rows and I would have had a mat compatible with a compact Commands and Colors map.  I do have enough scrap to make another that would be compatible, assuming I stick with 2" hexes. 

Tug-O'-War Campaign

This campaign setup is based on Bluebear Jeff's (saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com) work.  I have hopefully reduced the number of games that would be played in the campaign to increase the likelihood that I can make it through a campaign in a weekend.  I will be making a campaign supplement to my rules and using this as a starting point. 

For the campaign I will try to fight this weekend each nation will have at their disposal: 4 regular, 2 militia, 2 cavalry, 2 artillery, and 2 dragoon units.  These units will be divided up into 3 columns of four units, per v1.6 rules.  In each game only 2 columns will engage.  The third column will still have the chance to move disordered troops to ordered as described in the rough draft of a maples campaign ruleset below. 

A simple mapless campaign can be devised using a tug-o-war mentality.  The “front lines” begin at the center of the five positions.  A battle is fought at this position.  The winner moves the “front lines” marker one position closer to the opponent’s baseline. 

 

After every battle: All eliminated or disordered units roll 1D6.  Units move from eliminated to disordered to ordered by one position if; Units on winning side roll 3+, Units on losing side roll 4+.  Eliminated units which fail to move to disordered are permanently eliminated from the campaign.  Disordered units carry their disorder to the following battle.  Winner will choose which side to play in following game.

Attacking the enemy's position B: The defending force receives 1 new unit at full strength.

Attacking the enemy's position C: The defending force receives 1 new unit at full strength, and all disorder is removed. 

Any winner of 2 consecutive battles: Choose 1 new unit or remove all disorder from existing troops.

Any winner of 2 consecutive battles:  Commander is upgraded one position towards elite.

Any loser of 2 consecutive battles:  Commander is downgraded one position towards incompetent. 

Determined to Get Some Games In

I’m going camping on the beach this weekend and think I’ll have some time for a series of games.  v1.6 seems stable enough that I could probably manage a small campaign over the course of a camping weekend.  I’ve got a red army and a blue army somewhat painted.  Each features 4 regular infantry, 2 cavalry, 2 artillery, 2 dragoon, and 2 irregular units with 4 militia units unassigned to any particular army.  The dragoons, irregulars, and militia are in various states of paint, with some being near completion and others mostly primer gray. 

I have also been busy on the terrain front.  I have digitally designed and printed prototypes for hills, forest, forested hills, 3 types of built-up-areas, a road system, a river system, and the fords/bridges to make the two work together.  Unfortunately, my 3d printer had a malfunction that caused a part to fail.  The part is relatively cheap on its own, but my printer is a few years old, and the newer models can get very good quality at a lower price.  I have convinced myself that if I could sell my existing printer at a reasonable price, I would buy a new printer.  The new printer should be less likely to nickel and dime me on repairs like my current printer does.  I’ve been attempting to sell my printer, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for used printers in my area.  I’m also somewhat concerned that I’m going to lose my printing space in a few months.

Against my better judgement, and ignoring previous experience, I purchased a small piece of green duck cloth and am in the process of sewing the edges to prevent unraveling.  After that is complete I will be marking the corners of the hexes with a permanent marker.  Hopefully there will be enough contrast to make the hexagon pattern easily visible.  I had previously used a large sheet of paper and marked the corners with a pencil, but have decided I’m ready for something a little more permanent.  We’ll see if it turns out better than my last experiment.  Click “Hex Grid Failure” if you want to read about that debacle. 

v1.5 After Action Report

I played a game with the new v1.5 rules. I used Scenario Six from One Hour Wargames as a basis.  I quickly converted the map to hexagons and gave each side eight instead of six units.  My wife played the red army, springing a trap on my unsuspecting blue column. 
The game went fairly quickly with the red army rolling abysmally for activations.  The blue column was able to start turning the tide by using cavalry to charge the force blocking the road from their flank.  With nowhere to retreat, the blocking force surrendered and was eliminated.  This compounded the activation problem because the commander was attached to one of the blocking units, which meant that two iniative points were required to activate most of the red force.  Blue took advantage of their iniative point advantage and moved their disordered cavalry off the field, completing the mission objectives.  The game ended with blue successfully escaping with all eight units and destroying four of red's units in the process.


We only had time to play one game, but I wonder if I would have been able to stop blue's advance if I were the red player.  Sorry no pictures from this one.  It took us about two hours to play with frequent breaks to check the rules and there was the constant distraction of the dog who thought we should be playing with her. 


Overall, the game worked pretty well. Artillery felt pretty under powered and cavalry felt overpowered.  I'm probably going to have to reduce the melee starting value for cavalry and mounted dragoons by 1.  I don't know how I'm going to make the artillery more powerful.  My first thought would be to set their base ranged stat at 0 and have a -1 modifier for long shots, but that is statistically identical to having the base stat at -1 and a +1 modifier for close shots.  It might make players feel like the artillery is stronger and use it more.  Another option would be for the artillery to fire using only 1 activation point, even if they are far from the commander or getting a bonus for firing on the same tile as on the previous turn.  This would have the unfortunate consequence of forcing the players to remember where they fired last turn, or cluttering the already often tightly packed tiles with a marker of some sort.   I know historically artillery wasn't really that effective, but I think the four batteries on the field scored a combined total of one effective volley. 
If you have some spare time and wouldn't mind reading or playtesting my rules, I'd greatly appreciate it. 

v. 1.4 After Action Report

I played my first full game this Saturday.  It went very smoothly overall.  I want to play a few games solo to work out the kinks before playing with another person. 



I grabbed my copy of One Hour Wargames and found the first scenario that I could field with my current 3D printed terrain.  Scenario 3 was chosen.  Only the map (converted to hex grid), reinforcement, and victory conditions from One Hour Wargames were used.  To determine which units would participate in the battle, the eight units "painted" for each army were lined up and each unit rolled 1D6.  The two units with the lowest score would not arrive in time for the battle.  If three units rolled the same lowest value, those three units would re-roll until two units were identified. 



The game opened with a small contingent of the Red army occupying a strategic hill.  The Blue army marches towards the hill from the west, with orders to force Red off the hill and occupy the strategic terrain. 



The remainder of the Red army races in to defend the hill, but is plagued by confusion among the junior officers (represented by terrible activation rolls).  The first third of the game features some strategic maneuvering and artillery fire, but little significant combat occurred.  Battle lines developed alongside the hill and the clearing between the hill and the forest.  The clearing became significant to keep enemy cavalry from flanking the main lines and attacking the forces assaulting the hill from behind.  The forest served more as a maneuvering block than anything else.



Below are some more pictures.  I got a little caught up in playing the game and forgot to take pictures.  The game ended with the Red army surrendering after losing four of its six original units.  I need to take better notes while playing the game if I'm going to do this more often.  Pictures will be uploaded and added to this post shortly.

Ideas for further improvement:
Artillery should have +1 bonus if on a hill and firing into non-hill.
Follow up attacks for melee occupying vacated tile?
Retreat should be limited to cells non-adjacent to enemy units. 

Potential Uniform Plates

I've got enough miniatures 3D printed to field one army.  Now I just need to decide how to paint them.  They will all have a very simple paint scheme.  I won't be painting any buttons, sashes, belts, pockets, footwear, satchels, epaulets, or facings because my models don't have any.  The jacket will be one color and the pants will be another.  All tricornes will be black with a white or yellow brim.

Unfortunately I think I'll just be doing a blue army and a red army for now.  I'd like to keep them generic enough that no one looks at them and assumes a nationality, but historic enough that they wouldn't feel out of place.  I really like the look of a green and black uniform, but it doesn't stand out enough against green gaming surfaces and green forests. 

Below are my quick sketches.  I found the template from google, originally on emperor v. elector, and traced the outline in PowerPoint so I could easily fill the simple shapes. 

I appreciate all feedback on the uniforms.  In my actual painting, cuffs, belts, buttons, and scarves will be ignored.  They are included here only for reference.  I'm a little worried that Blue's irregulars and Red's militia aren't different enough.  I hope this is mitigated by the militia model being three soldiers and the irregular model being two soldiers.  I also don't really like how both armies use their color and white for regular/artillery and color and dark for all mounted units.  They seem too standardized to be from different countries.  I tired having a French-style white jacket and colored pants, but it didn't seem like it provided enough space for the national color to be easily recognizable, especially on the mounted and artillery units. 

Testing the Rules

I've been editing/tweaking the rules for a while and playtesting as I go.  I printed the models I've designed for Horse and Musket games at 18mm scale.  They were a challenge for my printer.  Their small size tricked the printer into thinking it could go a lot faster than it should.  I manually reduced speed to less than half of my normal printing speed for larger items. 
LINK https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2956951. 
I painted some of them with spray primer craft store acrylic paints.  I'm still working on the paint scheme.  I need a way to differentiate the dismounted dragoons, irregulars, and militias from the regulars.  My ruleset does not currently have elite or inferior units, so don't have to worry about making each unit unique.  Perhaps in the future national identities and imagi-nations may develop, but for now they're going to be army red and army blue. 
My lovely wife designed a template for making hexagons with 2" between parallel sides which she cut out of printer paper on her Cricut.  I used the template on a piece of packing paper to make a field 9 rows of 8 or 9 columns of hexes.  This size results in a compact playing  surface of18"x16".  It certainly isn't pretty but it works.  I think I have a piece of 1/8 hardboard laying around somewhere that might work if painted.
I conducted a solo play test to surrender this morning.  Occasionally referencing the rules, it took me just under 45 minutes from deployment to surrender.  The surrendering player did not make an effort to salvage forces by continuing play and retreating units off of the board, choosing to surrender once defeat was inevitable.
Lessons Learned:
Distinguishing unit types from a distance is critical. Irregulars and Dragoons look similar. 
Keeping units near the center of the hex makes determining facing easier.
Keeping track of initiative points is critical.  Solved by keeping dice off board with each pip representing an iniative point. 
Keeping your general alive and relevant is very helpful.  The combat bonuses are important, but the inability to rally can end the game quickly. 
I like that each unit completes its activation before activating another.  This prevents the problem of handling combined attacks.  The only real downside is that a unit could make multiple moves worth of retreated distance. 
Things I Might Change:
Currently two units of regular infantry can form a regiment and execute identical orders as one unit.  This can make their firepower overwhelming.  It makes them seem a little overpowered.
All units get a +1 bonus when attacking militia and a +2 when melee attacking artillery. 
Currently irregulars can engage in melee.  Based on the exact period in history irregulars could represent light infantry which would engage in melee or skirmishers who would not.
Currently artillery can reposition during the battle.  For most of the 18th Century, artillery was largely immobile once the firing began. 


I've done enough tweaks to the rules that I should re-upload them soon.  I'd like to upload them as a PDF.  What is the best way to do this?