Spanish Civil War Action

 Last weekend I wandered down to Stig's for a game of Spanish Civil War using Rapid Fire rules. They are a nice set of simple rules that work well and are well written. It was Stigs 1st ever SCW game. I like SCW and the whole interwar period because I really hate super tanks, but fairly rubbish tanks are cool. In SCW the Nationalists maxed out with Panzer 1 and the Republicans with T26 tanks. 

The battle was a fairly simple one, I was an International Brigade with some AT and a couple of T26 tanks as support. I had to hold a town. As Republicans they were poorly trained and so had a -1 morale. Stig was the Nationalist Morrocan Falange, better trained and supported by AT, mortar and 5 Panzer 1. We both had 2 artillery barrages.

THe layout. I'm in the town with support on the hills to either side. Stig's Nationalists are advancing through the fields

Town guys, all classed as hard cover

Left flank, 4 sections, 1 MMG and command section

Stig's evil fascists, red flowers

General advance behind a smoke screen

3 Panzer 1s attack the right flank. The SCW is the home of the molotov cocktail. So we had a rule that all units had molotov cocktails and they classed as anti tank rifles with a 1 inch range. So to attack they would need to pass the hero test and then hit

1 unitpassed, chucked it's bombs and blew up a tank, they retreated and my flank was secure. That single action made the whole battle - great fun

The advance continues and casualties were high

We both reached our army break point. The Republicans did so first, with a poor morale but passed. I then spent 2 turns failing to cause the single hit i needed to make stig reach his break point. Many hits failed to cause damage. Eventually I caused the hit and Stig failed his break test and I won, but it was a close run thing.

It was a great battle and the rules worked perfectly. They will scale up well to bigger battles with multiple players

ImagiNation 7 Years War Scots Army

 I have posted a couple of times already my work on a 10mm imagiNation Scots army for 7YW. I love imagiNation armies and would like to have more. I even prefer fighting imaginary comapigns using real armies, see my Italian Wars stuff. All the figures are Pendraken

The premise for the Scots army is that they never undertook the Darian adventure and so were not bankrupted. They also didn't accept William of Orange as the king and the Stuarts are the monarchs of Scotland. After the civil war the English were more interested in colonial expansion and there exists an uneasy peace between the Scots and English. The Auld Alliance still exists and the French are supporting the Scots. At the outbreak of the 7YW the Scots sided with the French and Austrians against the Prussians

I've finished the last units

This is the Lowland Brigade

4 battalions

The final highland horde regiment, large, fast moving, inferior unit with no firearms

They are the Chisholms

The whole army, about division strength

The Highland horde (5 regiment brigade), a highland brigade (4 battalions) to the rear and the light brigade (3 battalions of border reivers - actually Rogers Rangers but hey)

The other wing. A 3 battalion highland regiment at the rear, the Scots Hussars light cavalry, the 4 battalion Life Guards and the 4 battalion lowland brigade

 With 4 field guns it is a nice army. Now to get them on the field

Battle of Hochkirch

 Managed to get in 2 days of gaming this weekend, and they were brilliant. Yesterday I went off to Matt's to refight the Battle of Hochkirch. Frederick has been caught strung out in camp by a much larger Austrian Force. I was the Austrians and had to capture the Prussians before they could escape. THe Prussians had to hold their defensive positions to allow their troops to make an escape.

As usual it's a massive table and used all of our infantry. I'm on the edge and Matt in the centre. He has his advance guard camped on the wrong side of the river against 2 massive brigades

At the other end of the table I again have very large brigades against is brigade behind earthworks in the centre

I have reinforcements due to arrive on his flank

Matt's main redoubt next to the village of Hochkirch. I have more reinforcements coming to his rear

I open my advance to the right to kick out the vanguard from my side of the river

I start to advance to the left

I double move and almost immediately kick out the vanguard, capturing the guns

My intital advance on the main redoubt is rebuffed but I'm heavily engaged in woods tot he right of Hochkirch

My artillery has pounded the redoubt and the Prussians are ripe for picking

I make my move. My reinforcements hace arrived to the rear but Matt is waiting, more of that later.

Lots of bad command rolls has stalled my attack to the right and my reinforcements have arrived beyond the river

Massed cavalry battle, I get the worst of it

But to the left another cavalry / infantry skirmish sees me get the better of it

I'm at the redoubt as Matt bugs out

I own the redoubt and will soon own it and Hochkirch

Here I come

But it's too late and Matt has sufficient space to bug out.

Brilliant days fighting and a well bakanced game. As always in wargaming we review what happened and the battle fought very well but there are 3 things that in hindsight we could have done better when designing the battle. We made the rivers too slow to cross and that stalled my attack to the right. The Austrians din't have quite enough space to rout before they were off the table and this chewed up my brigades. The prussians had loads of space and so whilst Matt had more units routing they recovered. Next time allow Austrians to recover on table edge. Finally when the location of reinforcements is known it is too easy to automatically set forces to oppose them on arrival, which happend with 2 of my sets of reinforcements. in future we will randomise thier appearence along the relvant talbe edge.

None of these things impacted the game play significantly  but we always like to tinker don't we. We are running out of battles and on 2 more major battles to go. They we wil swap sides and I'll be the Prussians.

Can't wait

Review of the Year

 Other friends are posting reviews of the year so I thought I would do the same. Happy new year

So last year ended with a massive Vietnam game at the wargames club formerly known as the Old Guard. There is another club of that name so we are now the North Riding Wargames Club.

Great fun was had by all and both mine and Dave's collections have grown significantly and we plan to return to Scarborough to put on an epic 3 day Vietnam game. I'm getting ahead of myself. In July Dave and I were invited to put on a massive Sudan game by Ged at his huge games room in Scarborough. A great time was had by all and I made some new friends. The blog post is here.

Throughout the year Matt and I continued to play 7YW games, I really enjoy these and have pursuaded the 2 Ians from the club to start armies - French and Russian. I've also added an ImagiNation Scots army to the fray and plan a campaign soon against them.

I played many games against Matt and look forward to more this year.

I only completed 1 new project this year, 10mm Spanish civil war and managed to game at IanW's house, which was lovely. Would like to play more of these on a really big table and the rules I wrote are designed for spread out forces.

The autumn was wiped out with a shoulder injury that left me bed ans sofo ridden for 3 months. I'm fine now and want to do much more gaming. I have no new projects in mind at the moment, but my lead mountain is enormous and will finsih off many collections. The only really new stuff is sci fi, I've a copy of xeno's rampant which looks fun and enough forces to develop a Bolt Actiomn Sci fi game.

I'm off tot he York show in Feb and Hammerhead later in the year, Dave and I are putting on a gangster game.

See you over the table