More tabletop experimentation!

This morning I spent a couple of hours setting up and playing a game of DBN based upon a scenario  randomly selected from One Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas. This was Double Delaying Action, scenario #9. Basically, both forces are attempting to reinforce their respective larger armies five miles to the North. The Anglo/Portuguese force army may deploy anywhere to the North of the river while the French begins the game off table to the South entering anywhere along the Southern edge on turn 1. Essentially both sides aim to move units off the North edge of the table with some mandatory timings placed upon the British withdrawal of units.

It's a Peninsular War based battle, and I selected 12 point forces as below:

French.
French line infantry x3
Polish line infantry x2
Grenadiers x1
Light (skirmish) infantry x 1
Light cavalry x 3
Foot battery x2
+ Mounted command.

British/Portuguese.
British line infantry x 4
Portuguese line infantry x 2
Cacadore rifles ('jagers') x1
95th Rifles ('jagers') x1
Light Dragoons x2
Royal artillery battery x1
Horse artillery battery x 1
+Mounted command.

The main purpose was to see how suitable DBN could be for use with the OHW scenarios, and I wanted to record my overall impression rather than a full AAR.

Things began well. In DBN you roll a single D6 to see how many Command Action Points you have for the bound and the attacking French rolled a 6 and the attacker gets a +2 CAP's on first turn, excellent. The columns steamed towards the bridges with 2 units of light cavalry being first to cross. British bound and a 1 rolled for CAP's! I could do nothing but advance a battery of Horse artillery, which whilst having a shorter range than their foot brethren CAN move and fire. No hits. As the French started to come into musket range of two rather splendid looking Portuguese line units supported by cacadores I expected to see the casualties quickly mount up on the advancing French but volley after volley failed to score a hit which was quite simply down to terrible dice rolls. the French beating the active firers result each time. This happened across the front, on one occasion I had no less than 4 fire combats, some with supporting artillery or other infantry bases but again the French beat the British dice scores resulting in ineffectual fire. The French attack columns stormed onwards as the 95th rifles were driven out of the village by artillery fire (a high D6 roll), taking 1 hit and recoiling 600 paces, allowing the French infantry to move through the village and out the other side where more British line infantry stood waiting for them. Once again with both sides infantry having the same basic fire factor of '4' and both sides having a fire support it came down to that D6 roll with the active British again rolling low and the French rolling high, more ineffectual volleys!

I continued to play on, despite feeling a bit troubled at this point, French light cavalry successfully charged the Portuguese line but suffered hits in the ensuing combat, one unit going shaken (2 hits), fair result. Using artillery to support the fire of the infantry was still not sufficient to win a fire combat roll in some cases which I found a bit frustrating again down to poor die results in the roll off.

I could not help but to think back to my experience in the previous Commands & Colors game and how much more the game flowed, with the ramekin activation and order chit system allowing multiple units to be ordered in each bound. To roll a '1' on a D6 for CAP's on two consecutive bounds seemed almost beyond reason to me and I reached the conclusion that the wildly varied result of a D6 throw was causing the game to feel unbalanced in both movement and firing. Again I missed the good old C&C battle dice, so simple, and with the adjustments made under ramekin producing far more consistent results ( I made several test rolls).

Thus I find myself with something of a dilemma which is that whilst I do continue to enjoy playing C&C rules and especially with ramekin, I much prefer being able to use an open table free of grids. This may seem insurmountable, and maybe it is, but I'm giving it some thought.

Some photos from the game in the meantime.

Windmill and hill are along the Northern edge.

Rolling out Ramekin part 1.

With the arrival of my new Commands & Colors printed mat and some quiet time on my hands this morning I decided to give the Ramekin order/activation system a shot. I placed some simple terrain on the mat (still waiting for hills), and a fair number of troops of various types. Whilst it it fresh in my mind I want to record some initial impressions of how the game plays with this system, which I present more as a series of notes than a full AAR.

Ramekin replaces the command cards with Order Chits and does away with the left/centre/right play of C&C which I frequently found frustrating and slow. Each army commander holds a stash of chits according to his leadership quality, for this trial I just went with both Good commanders and 5 chits each in the stash. The stash can be added to each turn by rolling for additional chits and again for my run through I simplified the activation roll with a standard D6 allowing 1 to 3 additional chits. This really opens up the game and speeds up play, there is an option to give a unit 2 orders and units need to be within 3 hexes of a Leader to be activated. Where an ordered unit is more than 3 hexes from a Leader it is Out of Command and the order can be challenged by the other side where a roll of 5 or 6 is required for the unit to act.

Ramekin introduces a new concept to C&C, that of bounds. Each bound now comprises a pair of turns, this is rather clever and adds a whole new dimension to C&C as it is possible for a player to make two consecutive turns. This is tied in with the activation roll for the bound, I won't go into further detail due to copyright but it is something I think will work very well,  especially against a live opponent.

This game flew along and I felt a real sense of freedom to move units right across the front. I retained the standard C&C firing rules at this stage, although Tony has tweaked the rules by reducing the effectiveness of standing fire combat which can be very deadly, an opposing unit can be wiped out by a single volley. I will introduce this idea next game as I did feel a couple of units were blown away too easily.

Squares were a bit tricky and I had to retire to read and think about it. In the absence of the brilliantly simple C&C square tracker which retains a command card from the players hand an order chit is required to form square which reduces the stash whilst the unit remains in square (?). Two regiments of French Dragoons charged two infantry units side by side, one was 'bounced' by a flag roll the other engaged the square but the combat was not resolved. I'm still giving this some thought in the meantime, being a bit rusty on the finer points of some C&C rules, especially around fighting in square and combat resolution.

Another note to self to check the rules around defending/attacking a town/village. Where artillery for example at just 3 hexes range are reduced to zero dice due to the -2 for firing/fighting into a BUA this seems very harsh and I wasted a couple of orders before I worked this out! I must be doing something wrong here? The defending French infantry were finally forced out by a retreat flag, I'm sure this is not correct but I can't see anything about being able to ignore a flag if defending such? Again I am just making notes here and will correct them once I have figured out the answers.

I need to acquire some order chits next, as you can see I used the larger white dice for the game, the micro dice being used to show current unit strength after losses, they work quite well for me. There were a lot of dice about!

The game is still set up and in play and no doubt I will begin to get more to grips with some of the above as things move along.

Overall, so far I'm really pleased with the flow of the game over the card driven system, there is an option of using the tactician cards from expansion 5 which could introduce some more random events, additional combat dice etc but for the time being I'm keeping it simple. Any comments or suggestion/corrections to the above are welcome and part 2 will hopefully see more clarification.

Lockdown project parade & what next?

Hard to believe that almost three months have flown by since I decided to paint myself a couple of 12 point DBN armies as a lockdown project. I achieved that by the end of April as planned and have continued to paint on a daily basis since then. The switch to AB infantry certainly helped fuel the enthusiasm and I have now arrived at the point that you see below. I have no doubt that I will now expand the armies for the 100 days campaign, but this will be a more gradual ambition over the next few months.

I decided to stick with Blue Moon for the cavalry because the AB's are somewhat larger and I do not want to repaint my  cavalry, it's not so much the AB horses - which are beautiful sculpts - but the riders that do not sit well beside the BM's, although the infantry are a perfect match. As a nod in the future direction I painted a base of Life Guards and will add the Royal Horse Guards next, these guys are actually mounted upon AB horses and that works very well.

I'm well stocked up now with figures for the project, but once I have painted the second of my Portuguese line bases (tomorrow) I'm going to take a couple of weeks break and paint some figures for Old John that have been patiently waiting for some time now. Meanwhile with life slowly beginning to return to some normality I'm going to get some DBN games in on the new table including some of the scenarios from One Hour Wargames. I think I have achieved exactly what I set out to do three months ago with the overall look and feel of both the table and the figures.

18mm figures by AB and Blue Moon, painted April, May, June. British, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

280 line infantry.
42 skirmishers
20 heavy cavalry.
27 light cavalry.
28 artillery crew
7 guns
15 mounted generals.

 

DBN card table!

I mentioned that I have been on the look out for a second hand folding card table to use for DBN battles. My Daughter spotted this one for a mere fiver locally and today she bought it round for me. I had seen several on eBay in the £25 to £45 mark secondhand, but postage added another £15.00 or more to the cost, so this was a real bargain, in fact we gave the chap £10.00.

I wasted no time in re-covering it with the S&A scenic material, an easy job. Just needs a good clean up underneath but it's a nice stable little table and perfect for the job. This gives me the flexibility to set up anywhere in the house. It measures 2'6" x 2'6" (750mm x 750mm), just right for 12 point + DBN.

Of course I placed a few scenic items on it for the photos.

Hovels Spanish buildings completed.

I must say it was a joy painting these old buildings again. What I always liked about the range was that they were produced to a scale that was slightly reduced in order to be practical for the wargame table rather than strictly accurate. I had a few issues with the windmill to begin with, the sails as supplied (cast in metal) were a bit rough, but a bit of time spent filing and trimming was well rewarded and I am very pleased with the end result.

The buildings on the village bases (Non linear obstacles or BUA's in DBN) can be removed so that I will also able to use them individually on the C&C printed mat when it arrives. As you can see I numbered the spaces and bottom of the buildings so I know which fits where.

Latest additions to the figures include this French Hussar base and this wonderful 'Landing Party' base, a 10 figure set of AB figures, I decided to use just 8 for a looser order look. The Hussars are Blue Moon on AB horses, I'm still in two minds about future cavalry as the AB cavalry are just slightly chunkier so I may now stick with BM.

Placed a new order with Eureka this week for some French Guard, 2 bases of Young Guard, a Guard foot artillery battery and....... a base of Old Guard! I know they did not appear in the Peninsular but I could not resist them and I will expand. I have in mind generic games of Commands & Colors using all of the troop types available.

Wife's shopping morning tomorrow so I'll run through a 12 point DBN game on a 2 x 2 board. Been getting to grips with the close combat rules so this time things should run more smoothly. I'll also introduce the infantry v cavalry response test 11.14,and the cavalry charge bonus 11.22 from the optional rules.  Also need to keep in mind the Attack Column 7.5.2.3 rules (an Attack Column is formed of two friendly units one behind - and in support of - the other), and the Morale Hit Test rule 8.2.2.3 which is taken by  a unit in support of a friendly to front when the leading unit is destroyed in close combat.

All buildings are now removable from the bases.

Latest bases completed: Landing Party, Spanish Militia and French Hussars.

A Commands & Colors interlude!

I found myself with a couple of hours quiet time this morning and with the 18mm armies looking in good shape I decided to get out the old Commands & Colors board to play a quick 12 units per side game. Five command cards per side, French to move first, 5 VP's for the win. Must admit I was a bit rusty to begin with, but it soon came back to me, although I had to look up a few rules such as cavalry breakthrough and terrain effects (fighting uphill etc).

I played both sides as best I could and when discarding a card and drawing a replacement I did not look at it until it was that sides turn again. Both sides had fairly balanced hands which enabled fighting across the three sectors, the Anglo Spanish side held a 'bayonet charge'card which was only played on the final turn and effectively won the game 5/3. The 60th rifles and the Cacadore rifles fought well in the centre, although they took heavy casualties from a French battery before they put it out of action. As one would expect the battalion of British light infantry ( 5 blocks so rolling 5 dice when firing stationary) were a force to be reckoned with and gained 1 VP by destroying a French battalion with a single volley! French cavalry performed well. The Spanish (consisting of 2 line battalions, a militia battalion and a light infantry detachment), never really got into the fight, the line battalion that did advance was forced to retreat right back to the baseline by artillery fire (2 flags, retreating 2 hexes per flag).

All in all I really enjoyed myself and it reminded me just what it was that so attracted me to this game when I was first introduced to it by 'Foy' about 8 years ago now.

Set up, French to move first.

Freshly painted Spaniards!

2/1 to the Anglo Spanish.

4/2 but French turn.

5/3 the French centre collapses.

British light infantry and rifles fought well in the centre but were close to breaking.

Bayonet charge, and the final VP to the British by routing French light infantry.

The armies are coming on well now, so a game of DBN will be next up. I have managed to find a second hand card table 750 x 750mm which requires a bit of TLC but will prove perfect for the rules and will allow me to play in comfort.