Remember Gordon! -- Campaign Game

The Beggara tribe made a hard run at the vanguard of the Anglo-Egyptian column and got bounced very hard.  The British and their allies have mad rifle factors and are doubled at one-hex range.   Despite reducing the attackers to a single unit, though, I was reminded that every A-E unit is all but irreplaceable in the scheme of the game's victory points.  MB attacked with three full stacks of four camelry each and was left with a single disrupted unit, but that one unit, had it managed to spear and club down one of my infantry regiments would have done real damage.  A good reminder for the future.

Also above, my named gunboats (at left) fired fecklessly at the approaching Madhists as well as one of the fortresses off shot to left.  Assuming it to be a matter of some significance, I've begun shuttling my "Friendlies" brigade (Sudanese fighting for the A-E) over the Nile.  Each unit absorb a gunboat for two turns, this loading sequence being the first.

These fellows, I think me, approaching from the Northwest, intend me ill.

Napoleon's Last Battles -- Campaign, Summer to Fall '16 -- The Trap Closes and Fin

My French made it thus far and no further.

I knew Blucher was wandering around to my right rear and had thought to reshape my lines to better protect their exposed right.  I also knew that Blucher was the only commander out that way so assumed it would be at least one more turn before MB could snap the trap shut.

I was wrong.

This is the aftermath of a 12 SP loss that also felled Marechal Grouchy.  It was preventable, but I desperately wanted VI Corps (which sustained these losses)  to stay in the game for as long as was possible.

Over on the left, I eliminated the forces of the Netherlands and the Brunswickers entirely, but there was no practical way for me to make up the points lost on the right.  A most gentlemanly concession promptly follows.

Lessons learned?

This game is about "pushing" rather than killing.  There just aren't enough killing results on the CRT to make direct fights worth the trouble.  Throw into the mix the dreaded exchanges and you've a recipe for cautious advance.

The most effective way to kill units in this system is to ZoC eliminate them.  I blame the fact that I've been playing the John Tiller Napoleonic games with ZoC elimination off for so long for my having forgotten this basic principle until it was far too late.

I know not what course others may take, but, as for me, D'Erlon and I Corps have to march like a rifle shot to cut off the Prussians at Ligny.  They will then either die of a lack of supply or have to fall back quickly.  I should have seen this sooner and taken advantage.

Overall, I'm looking forward to my next chance to play.  Even if this round, as I had to concede to HL, has me headed off to St. Helena.

Vive L'Empereur!

Napoleon's Last Battles -- Campaign, Summer to Fall 2016 -- 13

Four turns of daylight to go so I sent in the Guard.  The risk there, of course, is that any adverse result will drop all French demoralization levels by 20 points. Deciding nothing ventured is nothing gained, I launched the bulk of the guard at Ponsonby's men who had stuck their elbow out near a small stream.  My greatest fear, as always, was an Exchange, but I got a Defender Retreat and round one of the final fight went to the bearskin hats.

On the Allied right, I've now caused enough casualties to demoralize all of HL's troops except the British themselves and they're only 4 SPs away.  The biggest consequence of demoralization is that it doubles the movement cost of clear terrain and everything else gets worse from there.  As I've still got a notion of scampering Northwest in a desperate bid for VP, slowing him down that dramatically would be a good thing indeed.
 
That said, MB's Prussians are developing a pincer around my right that would have closed turns ago if it weren't for the fact that she's only got Old Vorwaerts to give orders to her corps.

She came hard after my right flank a couple turns ago, but managed only a DR despite having a 4:1 advantage.  Perhaps more importantly to history, Grouchy survived the repulse.

Napoleon's Last Battles -- Campaign, Summer to Fall 2016 -- 12

The morning of June 18, 1815,  has come and the French are a healthy distance South of Waterloo.

Still, we'll fight where we stand and that means pounding the Allied right.  HL's allies, notably not the British, took a bad beating in recent combats but, unless matters change dramatically, I'll likely get nowhere near the 230 VP I need for victory.  For those unfamiliar, I score 1 VP for every Allied strength point killed, two for every French strength point exited from the map en route to Brussels, and lose one VP for every point lost by the French. This, among other things, is what makes the exchange CRT result so dreadful.

The pocket is closing around the British, but, just off camera to the right, MB's Prussians seem to be plotting an envelopment of their own.  The Allies face an interesting choice in that they only need to prevent the French from earning VPs to win.  This can encourage the 19th Century version of the prevent defense.

And it's little bits and bobs of the Allies to the Northwest that prevent me from being able to bolt for Brussels.

Remember Gordon! Campaign Game -- And a Wee Bit of Napoleonic Info

I am greatly enjoying the tortuous decisions Remember Gordon! is forcing on me.  My column continues its slog and, as suspected, MB's mahdists are bearing down on me in earnest.  My forward infantry brigade (the Third Egyptian) has reached the spot at which it could build the zariba.  The problem is that it would have to give up an entire turn to do so for each hexside it wanted to construct.  At most, in one turn, its three regiments could build six hexsides -- hexsides the mahdists would be free to ignore with near impunity.

We did manage to disrupt a single charging camelry unit with artillery fire, but our combined howitzer fire from the Nile gunboats scattered well away.

The forward-most troops are arrayed as below:

On an entirely other front, sides have been chosen for the Vol de L'Aigle Kriegsspiel I'm soon to be running on the October 1806 Jena campaign.  Organizational details are available here:  http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=17869.0

I trust it will bear watching.

Combat Mission: Final Blitzkrieg -- Yeah, well, take THAT!

Once again it was Combat Mission: Final Blitzkrieg's turn to give me one of those moments that remind me of why I play games like this.  The scenario is a remarkable one centering around the fight for Chaumont.  My Allies have been losing badly to the well-hidden guns and better tactics of my opponent.  Stuck on the lee side of a high ridge, almost afraid of sticking our heads over the crest, in the last minutes of the game I've managed to creep towards a few of the VPLOCs to save honor if not a win.

In so doing I've desperately been trying to bring CAS down onto a house where I know a fair number of Wehrmacht are hidden.  I have waited.  And waited.  And cursed.  And waited.

Then, this turn...

Remember Gordon! - Campaign Game

The best wargames tell a story.  They don't just talk about the history of the events as one could find in any history book, but they make a case that events unfolded a particular way.  This, in part, connects to the notion that a player ought to be able to use the same strategy and tactics employed by participants and get similar results.  Going farther, though, it ought to give the player a feel for the challenges faced by those participants and, as organically as possible, take the player to the critical moments where battles broke one way or another and let the player explore both why and what can be done.

The "Remember Gordon!" campaign game is doing a nice job of this so far.

My Anglo-Egyptians are toddling slowly down the West bank of the Nile.  Some can move faster than others, but I don't want to string out the route of march too much so I'm trying to be patient.  The lead elements are almost at the spot where the zariba was built.

On the other bank, I've sent the "Friendlies" brigade (loyal Sudanese) down to kill the only enemy regiment on that side of the river while trying to stay well clear of both the Mahdist gunboats and fortress guns.

All this said, every swinging camel hump between here and Cairo is now bearing down on my relatively small band of marchers.  And this is only the first wave of several to come.  There's really only once place to go, the gap between the rough terrain visible at the top of the first photo above, and they should be through by the time I hit the zariba space.  Nervous times...

Squares, Hexes, and Polychromatic Geometry

Napoleon's Last Battles Campaign -- Summer 2016 -- 11

Now realizing that I'll have to start calling this Fall 2016, the rain and night turns spanning June 17-18 have now ended.  For those unfamiliar, in this system, rain and night prohibit both sides from doing anything but moving.  Units may not enter one EZsoCs and, as a result, may not initiative combat.

MB took this opportunity to drive her Prussians on the straightest possible route to Wellington's left.  She also did an adroit job of using ZsoC to block any attempt at my falling on her rear and disrupting her lines of a supply.  Combine this with HL's careful withdrawal northward and one gets a battle line drawn well south of Mt. St. Jean.  To wit:

On the plus side of things, I finally managed to take advantage of a 6:1 on my left, destroying a brigade of Netherlands' cavalry and infantry.  This, couple with Perponcher's untimely demise the day prior, makes HL's right all the more tenuous.

On my right, however, especially near Ligny (yeah, I know, I should have been long gone), there is just some sort of weird ahistorical buggery going on.  During the night, MB maneuvered a small group of Prussian cavalry around to my right, in my mind threatening my dodgy supply lines on that flank.  In the end, though, it was a demonstration and I over-committed troops I am going to want elsewhere.  With morning come, she's kept the better part of a division in the area, doing her level best to keep them from joining the "A" fight to the West.  We're going to have to swing well wide to avoid her.  I can't believe she'll want to pursue much further, but one never knows.

And, finally, I played RISK! for the first time in an age, and for the first time with HL.  MB has long loathed it, referring to it unaffectionately as "making change with (by turns) soldiers, hobbits, robots, Daleks, &c." depending on the re-imagining of it.  I was wooed by the new edition's cover art (although French heavies attacking Crimean-era gunners is a little weird) and the promise of the Secret Mission system to prevent the game from lasting six days short of forever.  It succeeded admirably in this, but it remains RISK! and, as a consequence, continues to receive a "Nope" on MB's scale of "Sure" - "OK" - "Nope".

A Wee Bit of Self-Promotion?

Looking forward to running a forum-based Kriegsspiel as part of a series on the battle of Jena I'm writing at grogheads.com.  Everyone interested in the period or an army-level KS is more than welcome to sign up.

Our numbers stand at six, but we could certainly take a few more.

All the opening info is here:

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=17808.0

Sicily '43 -- The End

Going from 600 to nearly 1,000 visits in a day is a rather nice thing.  Feel obligated to provide content.

PzC Sicily '43 three-way game just wrapped up this evening.  You can read more below, but the bottom line was that the scenario sought to simulate Patton and Monty's race for Messina.  I was the Wehrmacht and my friends Doug and Charles were the Americans and the British respectively. The scenario notes make clear that the Axis really isn't supposed to win this one, but we actually pulled off a major victory.

This is as close as either side got to Messina:

In fairness to both fellow, the terrain in Sicily is ghastly and really does benefit the defender.  Combine that with the hard ZsoC in this system and you have a recipe for very slow going.

This is a longer view of the end game:

I didn't care over much for counting VPs on this one.  After all, the Axis has had to leave (the HG Division left hours before the end...bastards...) and the Allies controlled the island, but I'm pretty pleased that I locked them this far out of town.  For those tracking such things, the Allies were stuck at a Major Defeat and would have needed another 1,000 VPs to get out of it.

Again, though, this is a great series and the game was an hoot.

Recommended.

Death of a Village -- a Small CM:FB Photo Essay

I play an awful lot of games -- I regret nothing -- and in that whirl of experience I can sometimes forget or take for granted those that are truly great.  The Combat Mission series, from its beginning over a decade ago, has been and is truly great.

One of the neat things about games that have a lineage like this is fans of the series get involved and improve OOBs, make vehicle skins, and can make crazy-accurate maps and scenarios.

My friend Doug and I have been pounding around Belgium for the past several months working on one of the scenarios for Combat Mission: Final Blitzkrieg.  Eponymously named "Baraque de Fraiture" it tells a part of the story of a worn out group of G.I.s who hold out against not only the 506th Volksgrenadier Division but the "Das Reich" 2nd SS Panzer for the better part of 24 hours granting critical relief to the men of the 82nd Airborne Division trapped at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

As good as this history is, though, what struck me after finishing my turn this morning was how this battlefield has evolved over the last hour and 15 minutes of game time.  Doug's Germans, true to the story, have a hellacious group of artillery stonks at their disposal and no small amount of armor.  He's too good a commander, however, to trust in artillery.  He knows that the only way to be certain that there's no one with a bazooka inside one of these well-built buildings is to knock it down.  And so he has.  Turn after patient turn.  This is just a small photo essay of some of the results, centering on the village itself.

The road in.  I, obviously, can't see Doug's vehicles, but I can see the smoke from those I've destroyed.

Further down the road, Doug had to cross this bridge under fire.

The crossroads at the heart of the village looking west.  Burning Shermans make me sad.

This one made me angry.  Driver couldn't back up quickly enough.  Entry hole for the round that killed her is evident.

Same tank, but further back.

Overview of the village from the rear.  Doug's troops approached from the top of the screen.  The Sherman from the photos immediately above is at the bottom.

An interesting website about the memorial to this battle is here:  http://www.battleofthebulgememories.be/stories26/us-army25/61-a-memorial-at-baraque-de-fraiture.html

It really does help one understand how angry Monty must have been...

As we wind down our three-way game of Sicily '43 (seven turns to go after this one), night has come and nothing I'm about to write could prove to be true come the dawn.  I know the Americans have managed to smuggle a few recon units behind the lines, although one of their number drove straight into one of my last redoubts in the dark and got itself disrupted.

Still, I've got very little to prevent Patton from steamrolling me if he chooses to do so over the last 14 hours or so of real time.

There are likely a whooole lotta guys betwen Fumari and Villafranca Terrena.

I now officially am declaring Monty out of the running.  The hard, locking ZsoC in the PzC series have him held pretty fast along the highway with little maneuver to the West.  Two companies of beaten, but "A" morale men are dug in like ticks and they won't be easy to dislodge.