Dice or No Dice

On a sunny Saturday in Hong Kong the monthly meeting of the Hong Kong Society of Wargamers saw the armies of Napoleon and Davout go head to head with the 6mm armies of Hohenlohe and Brunswick (freshly painted by Chris Doran). Given the competition from other games from colonial India to the depths of outer-space, only four generals could be assembled for this two table encounter. We drew for commands, Chris ending up with Brunswick against George as Davout. I drew Hohenlohe, finding myself facing off against my son as Napoleon and his cohorts under Lannes, Soult, Murat, Old Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. The rules being used were Sam Mustafa's 'Blücher'. The scenario was worked out by Chris, overlaying old battle maps on Google Maps to get the relative positions of rivers, streams and settlements right. Both battles began in fog, limiting visibility to 2 base widths. This would lift by turn 13 at the latest but the French would roll at the start of their turns and it wo

Fleurus once....

I n 1622 as Imperial troops besieged Heidelberg and ravaged the Palatinate, Frederick V, the Elector Palatine decided to disband his army. The German mercenaries of Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick were immediately hired by the Dutch and summoned to march north to help relieve the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom being prosecuted by the Spanish army in the Low Countries. To try to stop this move, Spinola, the Spanish commander, summoned the troops of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba who had been supporting Tilly in the Palatinate to march north as well. On 27th August, the Protestant generals found Córdoba's army blocking their path at Fleurus - near the site of the future battle of Ligny - and on 29th August they launched a frontal assault to try to break their way through. A five hour battle ended in failure for the Protestants. They pulled back and found a way to march around instead! On 13th February 2024, the battle was refought twice in a single day using the Twilight of Divine

Approaching Battle through the Fog of War Machine

In recent months I have been working on an intermediate level between the table-top battle and a high level campaign system, to give players a chance to manoeuvre before battle is joined, to chose position, obscure their intentions and sow doubt in the mind of the enemy. I am calling this, rather cumbersomely, 'Approaching Battle through the Fog of War Machine', shortened to FoWM until I can come up with a better acronym. This post will outline the first trial of the system and changes I intend to make. The trial did not begin from a campaign but from a scenario involving Celtic invaders into Greece in the early 3rd Century BC, being opposed by a coalition of minor Greek city states. The two armies were roughly equal in strength. The general terrain for the area was rolled for and set as a transition from lowland to hills. From this setting, the more detailed terrain for each of the 9 squares on the map was rolled for. This produced lightly wooded lowland in the 3 squ