Campaign System for Craftees

More on this later, but here is an idea (for comment, please) for a campaign system to be used with a simple wargame system (should work for any era). I proposed this originally for Craftees players.

The thing I was thinking of for a Craftees campaign would be something relatively simple (in terms of details) but still stylistically fun. Maybe a simple point-to-point movement map, with some nice army markers made out of craftee-parts. Whatever period it would be for, use small armies (maybe 6-12 units) and simple battlefield rules (the Thomas rules would be great here).

Mark three armies on the map for each side.

Each node on the map would have a basic terrain type, dictating the type of battlefield (i.e. - open, hilly, wooded, river crossing, etc)

Alternate moving. First player chooses an army marker to move, and rolls 1d6. On a 2+ he moves the marker one node. Then he picks another (or the same) marker, and rolls again - this time a 3+. Then a 4+, 5+ and 6+ (meaning a maximum of 5 moves in a row). If at any time, he fails a dice roll, then the order changes to the other player.

Whenever a player moves an army marker onto another army marker, there is a fight. Both sides get 4d6 to determine attacker/defender. If one side outnumbers the cavalry of the other side, they get +1d6 for each unit of light cavalry more than their opponent, and +1d6 for each 2 units of heavy cavalry. Both sides roll their dice, and high roller gets to decide (after seeing the battlefield) attacker or defender. The defender then picks side of table, and sets up army. The attacker moves units on first turn.

Limit the game to a certain number of turns (or play to the written victory conditions if using the Thomas rules).

Once an army loses, it must retreat a d3 nodes (must move away from enemy, cannot encounter new enemy, cannot double back on same nodes - if it cannot do this, it is eliminated). Once an army loses twice, it is removed from the map. The winner is the player with armies left once his opponent is all gone.

If the campaign has multiple players, then the players not involved in a battle may take turns challenging a player on the other side to a "raid". A raid is played with half the units of a normal game, and if successful scores "operational points". If one side or the other accumulates 3 operational points, they can be spent to remove a "loss" from an army marker (remember that two losses make an army marker disappear from the campaign map). Raid losses do not count towards making an army marker disappear (since they aren't based on army markers, but take place, somewhere nebulously defined as "the front"). Raid battles always end when the main campaign battle ends, if it is not a victory at that pooint, then neither side gets an "operational point".

To Do - (1) print a sample nodal Campaign Map, (2) publish some notional army lists based on the Thomas rules.

Punic War Fun

The ODMS Blog has an After Action Review of a Punic War battle, fought September 10, at the Hangar.

The game was pretty good, but the Roman side used completely the wrong (ahistorical) army list. We used the Early Imperial Roman army list, rather than the Republican Roman army list. I would like to fight a similar battle again (using Warhammer Ancient Battles, with armies of 4000 points per side) using the proper army lists (from "Hannibal" - the Punic Wars supplement).

Some inspiration . . .

A good video of Zama, using live action dramatization. The Elephants and the anti-Elephant tactics are good.


A two part, more in-depth exploration of the battle of Zama, and some Punic War background. Relies a lot on computer animation, but it is good.








Tags: punic wars

More on the Russian Civil War

More work progresses on the Russian Civil War wargaming rules.

I will be running a scenario at Fall In (Crossing the Kolva) that details an attempted River crossing by White forces from Deniken's army, during the winter of 1919-1920. Stopping them are some quick moving Proletariat horse units. Tschanka's anyone?

A good chapter on Deniken's retreat can be found here:




Tags: Russian Civil War

Wargames Factory Numidians - part I

Okay, lets see if I can write a more lucid report than last time.

I spent a little bit of time putting together two units out of a package of WF Numidians this weekend, and wanted to report on it.

First of all, organization. I am doing two units of skirmishers for Warhammer Ancient Battles with these figures, but in order to maximize usefulness I will base them on WRG basing (two figures to a 60mmX30mm base). Each unit will have 14 figures in it.

I chose to model a standard bearer, leader (with sword) and musician as part of each unit. That left 11 skirmishers in addition. For the first unit I chose slings as their main weapon, and for the second unit I chose the bow that comes in the package.

My leaders and musicians were identical. I chose the ornate helmeted head, as well as a sword for the leader. I chose an unhelmeted head for all other figures in the unit, and the musician is given the curved metallic horn. For the standard bearer, there are two ornated poles in the set (presumably unit standards). I used these, unmodified. The more ornate one (for no particular reason) with the disc and the crescent, I gave to the archer unit. The other one (with the "horsetail") I gave to the slinger unit.

I chose a variety of arms and arm poses for the warriors of each unit, and also the heads are all at different angles. It took me only a few hours to clean and glue together all 28 figures - not much more than it would have taken to sort and clean a similar number of lead/tin figures.

The next step (painting) gave me a bit of a quandary. I could have taken a couple of routes, but I'll describe the one I did.

In order to paint figures this scale, I usually will mount them on popsicle sticks with a dot of white glue, and then remove the finished figures to glue to bases. This might have worked, but with the plastic figures, I was unsure. So I have glued them directly to the bases (which is quite spacious, since they are on WRG light infantry style basing). I will proceed to spray and paint them on those bases, and then decorate the bases once the figures are completed.

My next steps are to spray the figures black, dry brush them white (my usual technique) and then paint in all the detail layers over that. I'll report back when I am finishes (and will test my photo skills to see if they have improved).

ps- note, the term Nubian was not used once in this article.

Tags: numidians

The Passing of Rich Villella

I will always think of Rich Villella as a very good friend and also a good wargamer. I met him, first, at Campaign Headquarters, in the mid 80s when I was a shop clerk for Joe Legat. Rich and I spoke a couple of times about different wargaming topics, which led to conversations about girls, music and a number of other topics. Eventually, he got around to inviting me to wargame with the Williamsburg crowd that gamed (in those days) at a training building of Colonial Williamsburg.

I started attending those gaming sessions (weekend nights) a couple of times here and there (work and school permitting) and Rich was always a gentleman (as were the rest of the club). Rich always inspired me, in those days, not only with his expansive knowledge of military history, but also his welcoming friendliness; his eagerness to share a game with someone new; and his open minded approach not only to game ideas, but to any sort of conversation topic. After that, for a couple of years (while I was still working at the hobby store and an undergraduate) I would do a number of contract painting projects for Rich. It was always a good relationship, for not only would I get to paint new topics, but I would also benefit from Rich's knowledge of history. After college, I saw Rich on occasion on weekend game sessions, when I lived in Williamsburg, and continued to see him from time to time.

A few years back I heard that Rich had retired, and we saw each other again (after some time of sporadic contact). It was as if no real time had passed in between - we took up our friendly relationship and conversations on historical topics (mostly Ancient warfare, Napoleonic history, and more esoteric things, like Garibaldi and the Reunification of Italy). Just earlier this year, Rich hosted a Napoleonic game at the Hangar, which I played in eagerly (using Rudy Scott Nelson's rules - which Rich introduced me to years earlier, and which I still enjoy playing). I was glad for the experience. Just before the first Williamsburg Muster (our local convention - of which Rich was totally supportive, and served on our committee), he ran a French Foreign Legion game, which was a lot of fun as well.

Then, just a few days ago, I received the dreadfully sad news that Rich had passed away. The wash of sadness still hasn't left me. The world will be a much hollower place without my friend Rich in it.

Undead Army

So, I've been thinking of building an Undead army for HoTT. Here is the reason why . . .

http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1316

Tags: skeleton warrior

RCW Equipment Series - The FT-17

Renault FT-17



An excellent light tank of the early stages of WWII (France, 1940), was also used in the Russian Civil War, and a number of other conflicts/theaters (Rif War 1925-27; Spanish Civil War 1936-39). The FT-17 originally came into service during the Great War, during 1917. Before the end of that conflict nearly 3,000 would see service.
This tank was used (evidently) by both sides (Red and White) during the civil war. Notably, the Bolshevik government had the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory reverse engineer a number of captured, burned-out FT-17s and produce the first soviet-built tank - a copy of the FT-17, named the "Freedom Fighter Comrade Lenin" (now housed at the Kubinka tank museum). The factory would go on to produce T-34s for the great patriotic war. A discussion of the technical details of the Russian Renault can be found at Skoblin's History Blog.The FT-17 was the first tank to appear in Russia during the Civil War. They arrived, in a shipment of 20 tanks, in the port of Odessa, in December of 1918, to support French and Greek troops fighting the Bolsheviks. In subsequent fighting, six of these initial 20 were lost to the Reds. From then on, the FT-17 would appear on both sides of the conflict. They continued to be supplied to allied troops fighting against the Reds. Most tanks supplied to the White generals were actually British tanks (Mark V Heavy, Mark A Medium, Mark B Medium). [See the excellent "Armored Units of the Russian Civil War" from Osprey Books, by D. Bullok and A. Deryabin for more details. A preview copy from Google Books is viewable here


Some very nice websites showing scale models of the FT-17 are here and here.

For wargaming, wonderful FT-17 models are made by MiniFigs and also QRF. I have the latter, and they were easy to assemble, and look good on the field of battle. I will try to take some pix next time they see action.

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