More on Vassal, and those hexes again!

As I have been working on painting commissions during the last couple of weeks I have been listening to a series of Napoleonic pod casts, kindly sent to me by Tony. I have found them really informative and intend to work through the entire series. But I started with the two Peninsular episodes and learned much about the background to the campaign. I have also continued to get to grips with Vassal, which allows you to play all of the Commands & Colors Napoleonic scenarios on screen as mentioned here previously. All of this has continued to feed my enthusiasm for both the Peninsular campaign and C&C N in general. When I first played the 'Rolica' scenario on my table it was with the intention of writing up a blow by blow account for the blog, which did somewhat diminish the pleasure of the game, and most certainly destroyed the fast flowing pace of a typical C&C N game. I replayed the game using Vassal, but lack of understanding of the controls of the game also made that a slow and laborious experience. However, I am now pretty much confident with Vassal for C&C N now and so have re run the Rolica scenario once again! This time it is a whole different game - I'm up to speed, turns are rolling over nicely, I'm thinking more tactically, working on building a good hand for both sides, trying to push forward the Allies in the centre to pin the French to the ridge while attacking the French right flank with light infantry and horse artillery, and the left flank with the Portuguese in a more controlled and steady manner. The scenario aim for the British is to outflank the French and capture two designated hills behind the main French position on the flanks. 5 points required for a win in this game, with the 2 hills counting as 1 point each when taken and held. The game continues.

This leads me on to the purpose of this post. I have been Googling a lot of C&C N related sites recently as I wanted to get a picture of how other gamers use the rules for miniatures. I have to say that the boxed game as sold is probably one of the most attractive games I have seen, I am very attracted to the style of the board itself and the terrain tiles etc. For some time I have not been fully satisfied with my 95mm hex table as it stands. I think its because of the fact that unit spacing is too great in the larger hexes. After looking at loads of images ( a few linked below for example), I have decided to take a two tier approach to this issue. The 95mm hex set up will be left 'as is' for now, but in the future I intend to add further landscaping to the board for a more natural effect. But I now plan a reduced one dimensional board, using 70mm hexes (fairly tight for my 60 x 60mm bases, but that what I'm looking for). I'm going to create a single lightweight folding board, painted to reproduce the C&C N style game board, and matt varnished. I think the board will reduce down to around to 90cm long by around 60cm wide. I'm then going to order enough 70mm laser cut hexes from Tony at ERM to reproduce all of the terrain graphics just as they are in the box game. Plan is to keep everything one dimensional so that hills will be just a single flat hex, towns/villages will be graphically represented etc. What I hope to end up with is a larger version of the official C&C game board, presented in a way that is close in appearance to the boxed version but neatly painted and varnished by hand. I intend to use this board as the basis for playing my way through all of the scenarios using my 6mm miniatures. Somewhere in the pipeline is the official Russian expansion box, which may well open up future possibilities. I plan to get started on the new board later this week.

Hopefully it wont be long before I will be crossing swords with Conrad Kinch via Vassal, and I believe that Tony is also interested at looking into Vassal for a game. I am honing my command skills in readiness.

There is no doubting how popular Commands & Colors Napoleonics have become, a trawl of Google threw up many different interpretations of the basic board for use with miniatures, see the example pics below.

The first position Rolica scenario.

The board game is very attractive in itself (Google image).

I quite like this one!

Tonys 20mm version of the game - this is the business!

Wonderful interpretation!

The Vassal version - note movement and combat markers applied which are removed at end of each game turn.

The official Rolica 1 scenario.

Finally my interpretation of the above scenario - I am just not happy with this as it stands, despite the hours of work that went into it! The buildings are too dominant and out out of scale, trees too tall, hills just not right ..... I'm very much my own worse critic, but I'll get there.