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

Tests of 'Alala!'

'Alala!' is a set of wargame rules written by Simon MacDowell and published by the Society of Ancients " designed to recreate the ethos of ancient Greek warfare when hoplite phalanxes clashed in battle and the gods intervened in the affairs of mortals. Their principal application is for battles between the Greek city states during the Peloponnesian and Boeotian wars of the 5th – 4th centuries BC, but can also be used for the Persian Wars or later Macedonian conquest of Greece ." I bought a copy of the rules at Salute in April. Over the last few days I have run two test games to help learn the ropes and assess whether they will be good for use for land battles in a planned campaign based on the Lamian War of 323 - 322 BC. In this post I will outline how the rules work, give a brief account of the two test battles and share initial thoughts. Two quick games - using identical forces and very similar deployment - are not sufficient basis for an in depth review but the

Cheriton : The Refight

On Tuesday 6th February the small Royalist army under Sir Ralph Hopton and the Earl of Forth found itself locked in bitter contest with the Parliamentary army of Sir William Waller, using the Cheriton scenario from the 'Twilight of Divine Right' rule book. It took a bit of effort to get them to grips, as I will relate. The battle was fought across a series of ridges and intervening valleys, running East-West from higher ground in the East around Cheriton Wood. Along the northern edge of the board runs the North Ridge. The Royalists could deploy along this, except at the very eastern end opposite Cheriton Wood. The middle spur runs west from Cheriton Wood itself, the South Ridge from a little to the South of the wood, and finally the Hinton-Ampner Ridge formed the southern edge of the board. This is where the Parliamentary forces would deploy without any restriction. In the valleys between the spurs were several patches of heathland that were bad going, greatly limiting m

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