Dungeons and Dragons Figures

I acquired a box of old Grenadier Miniatures D&D figures from my daughter who was having a bit of a clear out. They are very "old style" and just had black undercoat. Faced with a gap in painting as I waited for my Napoleonic Russians to arrive I decided to paint them up. 

I've been toying with getting a D&D rule set for a while - and still am. I cut my RPG teeth on the A5 booklet D&D/Greyhawk edition, and then AD&D 1st Edition. Cost precludes getting D&D, and even AD&D 1e is not cheap; and lots of people say some later editions have slicker rules, we'll see.

I actually also have an old set of D&D figures that I last painted up when my daughter was about 8 to teach her RPGs - all heavily black-lined and glossed up!

Mystery SF Figures

Needing some figure to support a Traveller RPG idea I'm working on I remembered some figures (25mm), painted and unpainted sulking around in my Striker box. No idea where they came from - possible the original Games Workshop shop in the early 80s, but I finally painted up the unpainted ones.

If anyone knows who manufactured there's I'd love to know, the adventurer figures in particular are great sculpts.

Here's the unpainted ones as I retrieved them from the Striker box.

Liphook - Margeno Megagame

A good game at Liphook this weekend. It was a smaller crowd and smaller battle, with less troops, but with still three big tables so it was the most open game I think I’ve very played there, with a reasonable amount of room to manoeuvre. I think its also the first time I’ve ever seen a unit fight its way across 2 whole table width.

The 3 tables looking W from behind the French lines (c. San Giuliano)

The battle was Marengo, with me as Napoleon and Nick as General Melas. As the heavily outnumbered French we had little option but to try and hold the line of the Fantanone stream. Nick decided to avoid a direct assault across the bridge to Marengo and instead put almost all his forces to the flanks. Kellerman and Murat did an ace job is using their cavalry to frustrate his advance, particularly in the south. With all our troops more or less engaged on the flanks he was then able to force a ford just N of Margeno.

Fantanone table now clear of my French (except Marengo!)

At that point I ordered a fallback to a new line at La Fournace. We managed to make a clean break and at this point apart from our cavalry (which was now pretty much spent) had suffered hardly any damage. Nicks parallel thrusts on our flanks continued. In the S Victor fount a village based defence, also making good use of the woods and vineyards. In the N it was more open and although Lannes tried to hold the vineyard line some good dice rolls from the Austrians, plus their surfeit of cavalry/artillery and some poor rolls on our side soon saw the whole of Lannes’ Corps streaming back beyond Villa Nova.

The middle table and the fight for the vineyards and wheat fields

Desiax was rapidly trying to get into a position to fall on the flank of the Austrians in front of Lannes, but Lannes gave way and a poor firefight saw Desaix frustrated and it was game over.

Austrians advance out of the wheatfields

Nick and the Austrians won 4 points to nil, and we’d fallen back (rather than be pushed back!) to a line which we were just about holding. Lannes was actually still a very potent force once rallied, and so we feel it was far from a  white-wash.

Kellerman's Dragoon's saw much action during the day - as in reality

Overall a good game for Liphook, with a nice amount of space to play in, a reasonable amount of troops on the table (not too many, not too few), and a reasonable, if still brisk, tempo to the play.
With Trevor “retiring”, there is just one more “classic” Liphook game to be played in September, but there is already talk about how to continue these mega-games beyond then.

More pesky Austrians!

Liphook - Jena Wargame

Half of the middle table!

Sunday as Liphook Historical Wargame Society's wargame of Jena. Having done all the Bicentenary Battles up to Waterloo we're now cycling back through 210th Anniversaries (Jena was 14 Oct 1806).

Three huge tables were set up, although only 2 saw use. Figures were 25mm with a 1:50 figure ratio and a 1mm=1m ground scale, and used the clubs Art of Command Rules (very old skool).

Some lovely Saxon cavalry

I started the game as von Prittwitz, which meant in reality being von Cerrini commanding the 1st Saxon Bde. My orders were to hold the French between Lutzeroda and Closewitz, the former being in bounds, but to give way once heavily pressed so as to save my good quality Grenadiers and let the French fall onto our main Prussian defensive line behind.

And matching infantry

The Saxons did quite nicely, the two battalions in Lutzeroda slowing the French nicely. But the real stars (and unofficial "unit of the match") were the Lecoq Grenadiers who ended up fighting about 10 rounds of melee and seeing off half a dozen or so French battalions. The star turn though was when there was a mutual pull-back after a drawn combat, so the French decided to fire on them to force a moral check which they would certainly lose. But I then played an "Ignore Morale Check" card, so they got to fight yet another melee.

The last stand of my Lecoq Grenadiers

By then it was time to leave things to the Second Line, so my Brigade pulled back to fill the line just E of Isserstedt and I handed over command.

My next appointment was at von Ruchel, bringing on his Corps from Weimar. We were tasked with reinforcing the Prussian right flank, just W of Isserstedt. The Imperial Guard were pushing our 2nd line hard E of Isserstedt but we were just holding firm. As the game ended by Corps had actually positioned itself in enfilade against the French left flank so I was already to roll their flank up and give them something else to worry about!

The battle developing in the centre

Overall a good game, the rules meant that as ever it was not particularly fluid, but at least it had a bit more movement than some of the games have managed.

There are acres of polystyrene under all that felt! All Trevor's hard work

Battle of Austerlitz AAR: 2 Dec 1805

Looking NE up the battlefield, Pratzen Heights between the players. Note more or less unused rear (E) table.

Sunday, down to Liphook for the Liphook Historical Wargames Society's refight of Austerlitz. With the Bicentenary refights ending last year the club is now revisiting old favourites, so this year its Austerlitz and hopefully Jena or Auerstedt. Trevor puts a lot of effort into organising these events and building the huge terrain (they are 25mm, 1mm=1yd scale), and the scope of the games is always superb. For this game we had about 7-8 a side, so people were pretty busy, and I found myself as Napoleon.

Napoleon, me, commanding forward from near Pratzen

From the Players Brief it looked like the intention was to do a proper refight of Austerlitz, with the allies trying to extricate themselves once the French fell on their rear. However the allies had other plans, and from turn 1 had southward moving columns moving as slowly as possible, and a large force (Miloradovich and Kollowrat?) moving directly over the Prazten heights for the French arrival point (we only started with Legrange's Division on the table down on the Goldbach). Given this in reality Napoleon is likely to have not deployed forward and either defend the Goldbach, or move back to fight another day at a better location, given that he was heavily outnumbered, but this being a wargame we had to stay and fight. So what followed was not so much a refight of Austerlitz as an unbalanced wargame over the Austerlitz ground.

Cavalry face off in the southern sector

The game was one of two halves. For most o fthe first half all the action was in the South as the Allies gradually forced us out of village after village, and Davout's small reinforcements were not enough to hold the retreat. However Davout's cavalry dominanace actually meant that we ended up holding all the open ground in the South, with the Allies just holed up in the villages (which unfortunately is where the victory points were). It was then more or less stalemate for the rest of the game. In the North the French fell back on Pratzan (but still held the Heights - or at least its trig-point!) in the face of the Allied advance, waiting for Bernadotte and the Guard.

The battle for the villages

In the second half the focus switched to the North. Bernadotte went forward between Pratzen and Blasowitz into a line of about 6 Allied gun batteries. The left flank was open though so the Guard and other Cavalry started a flanking action and took out most of the Allied cavalry in the North. Soult was reinforced by the Guard and Duroc's Grenadier Division which fought to hold the Heights, and drive a wedge between the Allied forces around the Heights and those facing Bernadotte. Through this gap one of Vandamme's gallant Brigade's made a bee-line for the Stare Vinohrady trig-point, worth 20 victory points. The game ended with the Pratzen spot-high contested, and Bernadotte still slogging his way through the Allied guns, but cavalry from Davout heading North to disrupt a renewed Allied attack on the Heights from the South.

The Russian guns that met arriving French

Not the most rewarding of Liphook games, but offset but a wonderfully expansive table - even if the fighting was reduced to 3 pockets, and almost stealing victory from the jaws of defeat - we lost only 30-40. Will be interesting to see what the casualty figures are like.

The fight on the Prazten Heights, Prazten village in distance to NW

Bernadotte's heroic assault on the Russian gun lines

ENDEX - Looking SW down the table, Heights mid-table

Craonne- Refights Compared

Positively my last post on Craonne, here is a map comparing the French front lines at 1100 (start), 1300, 1500 and 1700 (end) for each of the three refights.

(open image in a new window to see detail)

Obviuously lessons were well learnt from refight to refight - principally making sure that both wings had a balanced all-arms fore, and that Ney paid less and less attention to Ailes and more to getting to the far side no matter what. Whilst that may fulfil the scenario objectives having Ney arrive in the midst of the main Allied move up to Laon may not have achieved all that Napoleon wanted, and may have lost him Ney's Corps. Even in the third refight where De Morvan got off too, and most of the French could have exited as darkness fell having the Allies wrapped up in Bovelle casualties had been high and the troops would have been little use for a battle next day.

***Imported from old blog***