A Day of Maurice

I picked up a copy of Maurice and accompanying cards last week from J & M Miniatures.  I made plans with my friend Dan and Mike G.(I know many mikes, so I always specify) to get together this week and try them out.


We got together around noon yesterday, and began setting up the table using terrain generation rules. I pulled out my Electorate and Asaryan force, and my FIW provincials and some Napleonic cavalry to support Dan's Poblacht forces.

We used 80 point armies(as that was the extent to which Dan could field forces). we also stuck with 2-base units for now as we don't have any larger figure trays, and Dan would have barely made 3 infantry units.   Dan's army played both the Asaryan and Electorate forces. his national advantages were  Skirmishers, Lethal Volley, and a la Baionnette! he kept these throughout the battles.  the Asaryan national advantages were Cadence, Steady Lads, and rally to the colours. the electorate took Professional Train, Oblique order, and Cavaliers.

the battlefield after setup

the first game saw mike take the helm of the Asaryan army  against Dan's Poblacht na hIbornea army in plains terrain. I GMed. Dan was the attacker, and took a unit of  Electorate cavalry as his mercenary unit.

 The  Poblacht  infantry advanced across the field, and the asaryans took up a defensive line on the road behind a stone wall. following that the cavalry advanced.  the cavalry traded blows but the sipahis eventually came out on top.

Asaryan Sipahis prepare to charge Poblacht Carbiniers,
who apparently get all the big horses

 Dan  Charged his infantry into the Asaryan line after softening up some of the janissaries. we then, as a group, discovered how good defending a wall is.  the hIborneans managed to beat one unit, the DISR from which destroyed the unit.  the one hIbornean elite unit lost and succumbed to disruption, one was outright destroyed, and a 3rd one combat.

at the point the game was almost over, but another cavalry pushed killed a 3rd group of Poblacht Horsemen and the game was decided.


At this point, Mike had to leave. Dan and I went and grabbed an early dinner,  and returned a few hours later for another game, this time  Dan was the attacker against my electorate.

now, as per my usual habit, I completely forgot to take pictures once we were embroiled in the game. basically, Dan concentrated all his activations on pushing my left flank.  I made the mistake of trying to think defensive. I did however place my pandours on the left masterfully, as they were just close enough to cause Dan some consternation, and could not charge en masse until they were dealt with. the left side became a struggle of wills.  Ultimately, Dan lost all but one fresh regular infantry unit, and i lost all my infantry. but it bought me enough time to make one last concerted push against Dans cavalry who finally moved form their starting position. this sudden cavalry charge  managed to save my flank just in time.  I caught one of dan's cavalry on the flank, and it was outnumbered. it was doubled and destroyed, and dan's army morale failed.

If Dan had managed to charge my first, or survive combat and attack back, the game could have very easily ended in disaster for the electorate.  So once again the Electorate is saved by it's cavalry(specifically the Metzger Curiassier!). this seems to be the norm for this army.

Dans drawing of cards was devilish in the least. he always seemed to have a counter to a card I played, and he constantly had tons of modifier cards. also, whenever he needed to hit with volleys on 6s, he always rolled at least one.  this was rather frustrating!

Generally speaking, Maurice is an excellent system. it's fairly fast, has plenty of turning point in the game, and the end result is not easily predictable.   the rules are easy to pick up, yet surprisingly complex. it gives an excellent impression of a struggle of wills.

 the only thing  all 3 of us noticed was that artillery is effectively useless. Dan and I discussed it after the 2nd game, and it definitely feels strange. I know artillery was not as useful during the seven Years War as it was during the later periods like the Napoleonic wars.  but if artillery was as useless as this game portrays it,  I doubt anyone would be using it by the napoleonic period!  to top it off, as the defender, your cannons are even more useless, since  the attacker can simply avoid putting things in front of them. so they never get the use canister unless you move them. generally speaking, it's better to move infantry or cavalry rather then artillery, since they can take melee and not be at a disadvantage.  Mike and I were also less then enthused that my gigantic Turkish cannon did the same amount of damage  as my electorate 3pdrs. again, this  could be historically accurate, but it jut feels wrong.

Last HG walls building painted, plus first line jagers.

Hi all.

I finally got to painting and basing the last H.G. Walls building I picked up at Hotlead a few years ago.  as per usual, I separated a roof with a  hobby knife so that is suitable for skirmishes, and based it with a fenced yard suitable for how we run buildings in massed combat games.

side on shot of the barn

The base is my standard 8x12" MDF board with some wood filler to make it a bit uneven. inside the wattle fencing, which is renedra.  I was originally going to do it my self with wire, but it was knocked off my base while i was wiring the fence, and all the posts broke off, so i gave in and picked up some fencing when i bought Maurice and Chain of Command recently. 

 Next I have a battalion of Russian Jaegers in line.  these are perry plastics with a spare foundry mounted officer from the Pavlov command pack. I am including mounted officers in lieu of standards in my line jaegers since they did not have standards.

Perry Napoleonic plastic Russians
with Foundry mounted officer.

 I really do like the quality of the perry figures.  so much that in fact that I'm planning on selling off my 2 warlord  Russian army boxes, minus 2 units of 16 Pavlov grenadiers. these 2 units are already painted, so i might as well not waste them.  these perry boxes also get exactly 3 units of 16 figures each if you add 2 command sprues(something I have in abundance).  

The warlord figures in the smaller boxes are more expensive for lower quality. In the army boxes they are a little cheaper, but come with only 1 set of  command(which are atrociously sculpted) and the average sculpting quality is noticeably lower then perry.  

if anyone is interested in the warlord Russian Napoleonic started sets, let me know via facebook(click the badge on the side bar). I'm in Canada(only mentioned because that has begun to matter these days)

Should have a  few pics of our napoleonic game at Martin's from the weekend up soon, and tomorrow we are trying out Maurice, so I'll be sure to take pictures of that as well.

Osterhaagan Dragoon Command

last week I decided to do a test painting of my Electorate dragoon regiment, the Osterhaagen Dragoons.  I always paint the command for that.

for this unit I used Front rank  Austrian Dragoons with swords shouldered. as usual the front rank offerings are quite nice, and paint up well.

 The officer on the left is Colonel Inhaber Karl von Osterhaagen, and the officer on the left is leutnant Torston Eberhart.

Since the dragoons descent from infantry formations, their ranks and flags resemble those of the infantry. As with infantry standards, the tassel colour is the same as the cross colour on the standard.

in other news, I was up for a quick visit  at J&M miniatures HQ. I picked up a copy of Chain of Command and Maurice(and accompanying cards). I'm in the process of reading Maurice, and hope to try a game out some time in the next week.

LOTR and testing my Tablet for miniatures.

well christmas was intersting and busy.

Back at the beginning of December I pulled out my old GW wor of the Ring collections and palyed a game with my friend dan.  This reminded me why  stopped playing the WOTR rules from GW. they are just to gimmicky and full of loopholes. plus magic can be game breaking. this to me is not at all what Lord of the rings was all about.

I mentioned I had a lot of 28mm LOTR to my friend Bevan, and he suggested trying mantic Games' Kings of War rules.  I have not pulled these figures out since a few months after War of the Ring was released. so we made a date (Dec 22nd) and i did some searching to see if anyone ahd done unofficial LOTR lists for kings of war. turns out only bad guys had been done.

 I took the liberty of trying my tablet out during the game for taking pics of miniatures. I have not done this before, but i do use it frequently at school in labs for taking pictures of waveforms, equipment setups, etc. and it works superbly for that.

Easterling/Khandish centre and left flanks

so we set about trying the game out. i did Saruman's Uruk-hai and Bevan ran the Easterlings & Khandish(just used Easterling stats for all), and we just used the chariots as Kataphracts that could shoot.

Khandish right flank

the game lasted maybe 1hour and 45 minutes, even with us constantly looking up rules.  the combat was bloody and fast.  I did not think the army lists were particularly well designed, and my pike crushed the opposing flank. 

Uruk-hai army

Still the rules flow fairly well.  one of the things I did not like was  melee rules. basically, the side that charges rolls it's dice, and the enemy just stands there and takes it until his turn. this just seems wrong. so one of the house rules for the next game was to make it so that once the chargers struck, if the unit receiving the charge passed it's morale test(remained steady) then it strikes back.

After the game I went about rebuilding the army lists from the ground up, cross referencing existing stats and special rules in Kings of War with what i know of my Lord of the rings Armies(Easterlings, Khandish, Elves, Rohan, and Uruk-hai).  then  on  December 30th we tried it again. this game was much less one-sided, although the Rohan Guard cavalry managed to make a quick break on the Easterling elf flank(wiping out a unit of Khandish cavalry in the process). I reacted with an Easterling pike unit flanking the guards, but a succession of terrible roles later and I had completely lost the flank, and my centre was locked in place  by a massive unit of Rohan foot troops.

finally we identified a few things we'd like the change.  we are going to migrate the system to a D10.  this will require some tweaking of Nerve numbers, but will allow for more differentiation in levels of armour(currently the system only uses 3+, 4+, and 5+). we are going to make heroes that are not combat worthy unto them selves. ie they are upgrades to units.  the last thing we are going to do is come up with a command & Control system. we haven't decided upon that yet, but it will likely end up being either a card driven system, or something more akin to War master.  either way Bevan and i enjoy more command friction in our rules, and we also enjoy tinkering.

I was also happy with how my tablet pics turned out. they aren't as good as a camera on a tripod, but they are still of respectable quality.

Disposable heroes AAR: Soviets vs Germans 1941

On December 7th I got together with my friend Martin Jensen and played a game of Disposable heroes.  I have not played a game in quite a while so it was a nice diversion before heading into an intense exam schedule.

Unfortunately  my pattern of forgetting to take pictures until the game is well along has not been remedied by my long absence.

The scenario was Germans attacking a small Village defended by the soviets. the German force was part of a sweeping action to cut off a larger soviet force, and this village and its stalwart defenders are dead in the path.  The Germans were to take the majority of the buildings in the town to achieve a victory. the Russians were to hold out against the German onslaught.

Martin played the Germans and had:
1x Platoon command w/attached LMG
3x 10-man infantry squads(each pslit into a 6 man maneuver setion and a 4 man MG section)
1x 6 man recon squad
2 80mm mortar
1 50mm mortar
1 50mm Pak38
1 panzer 2 D
2 panzer 3 Hs

The Soviets(played by myself) had:
1x platoon command(3 figures)
1x Political officer
4x  12-man infantry Squads( each deployed in an 8 man  maneuver section and a 2 man MG team)
1x Maxim MG team
1x 80mm Mortar
1x ATR team
2x T-34/76A

Martin and his Germans deployed on the quarter of the table seen in the trees below. My Soviets started on the far side of the crossroads in the village. 

the first turn was mostly maneuvering for position. i pushed across the crossroads into a few buildings. Martin spread out along the width of the table, finding cover behind hedges, in the trees, and behind the closest building of the town.

on the 2nd turn, Martin managed to kill a T34 form the front with a lucky shot.  being the ever-stoic soviets they are, the troops ignored the loss and contained fighting.  later that turn 2 of my maneuver sections let loose a devastating volley for their buildings, killing 8 Germans(4 each form 2 German maneuver sections) martin took refuge in the closest building, and we both dropped smoke to continue the advance.

for a turn or 2, we traded fire from buildings. the soviet ART team took some potshots at the PZ 3 and also at some infantry in the woods, but failed to hit.

Martin advanced a Pz 3 up his right flank. it looked like it was going to be a bust for him, as he consistently either failed to spot or failed to hit. I decided to Assault  him with a  one and a half maneuver sections. this turned out to be the worst thing that i could have done, as i failed 2 improvised assault in a row.  martin just ran an entire maneuver section down, and i had nothing to show for it but dead soldiers. good thing I'm a soviet commander!

In the last turn I managed to pile enough fire in to the building martin had occupied to force the lone survivor to retreat. I also hit and penetrated the PZ2 but  only killed one crew member, and the crew passed their check.

and the end of the game, i took stock of the losses on both sides.  i had effectively lost 3 whole squads of infantry, my Maxim, and a T34.  the Germans had lost a similar amount of their force, though still had all their tanks. fortunately, my last push and force Martin completely out of the town.


Martin has some stunning luck with his tanks.  i could not kill them to save my life.  I successfully continued using the massed fire of the soviet rifles, ans was quite lucky with  the fire from my maneuver sections.

In the soviet list, the MG teams are too small and die to fast, so I focus on bringing my maneuver section to bear.  While playing Disposable heroes, i have noticed a lot of people tend to focus on killing MGs early because they think MGs do the most fighting.  This tends not to be true of the soviet lit the way it is set up.  It usually takes people completely, by surprise but martin was up to the task.

it was an very enjoyable game, with plenty of ups and downs to keep you on your toes.


and now the pics:

Soviet positions turn 2

Blaster germans killed my T34!

German push on right flank.

 

Soviet improvised assault in full swing.

recon squad  bloodied but not beaten.

Final positions.

Map of the Electorate

well, yesterday I finished the last exam of what has been the most Exhausting semester of my post secondray career.  but I've been thinking for a while about making a more detailed map of the Electorate of Lustigzollern-Großgesaß. this was spurred by a friend inquiring how to make maps and various mapping programs. since I'm done school for the rest of the year I decided to sit down and try my hand at finishing off a map i had previously started.  all of the following has been done in adobe Photoshop.

A revised version of the original map that i had posted previously.

I had originally zoomed on one the electorate on the larger map i had made. i drew in the boarders and placed names of the provinces that make of the Electorate.

Today's Staring point.

 Starting from this point i went looking on the internet for something i could used as terrain.  i found a jpeg of hand-drawn mountains, forests, grass and hills, as well as building icons on deviantART.com. it was in the resource section of a group over there called Cartography-Guild. the artist's name is Star Raven, and he is by far more talented then I when it comes to hand-drawing things.

I tossed this jpeg into Photoshop and began cleaning it up to use as bits for my map.  once on my map, I split everything into layers by type(Hills, Mountains, Forest, Trees, Grass, roads, individual place names, etc). I do this with everything. it makes making changes far easier later on. at the moment i have 45 layers in the end product.

once all the icons were in place i used blending options to make the hills and mountains solid black, and i made the trees overlays and tinted them green.  I used the pencil tool in a separate layer to add all the roads, and applied a pattern overlay and an external glow to make it pop. i di the same thing to all my text to differentiate it from the backgrounds.

the map after adding the modified Star Raven terrain art & Roads.

 at this stage i decided i wanted to make it look a little more like an actual map on parchment. from the same DeviantART group i snatched some generic parchment and overlayed it on to the entire project. i also snagged a nice  map rose.   I then went to a City and Town name generator that I found online to generate names for different countries.

the completed map of the Electorate

I used Austria as the country to get the names for the electorate cities and towns.  for Ungar I used Hungarian and Croatian names.  for  Lagerlichhutland I used Germany and for Aquilonia I used Welsh. some specific places were required to have preselected names, such as Köztársaság(home of my Pandour regiment)  and  Lustigzollern and Großgesaß.  for the rest i just generated 50 place names and picked the ones I liked(which were often the hardest to pronounce).

I'm very happy with how this map turned out.  My Machinations do not always pan out, but this one did quite nicely.  I'll probably end up doing a few more for the other nations i have on the map(Arsaryan turks and Polish haiduks).

 I will eventually be doing  contingents from both Aquilonia(Consul's Highland guard, regulars) and Lcgerlichhutland(perry Hessian Jagers).

I have a backlog of stuff to post(mostly from the last 2 weeks), that will hopefully make up for my school enforced absence this semester.

RC Tanks To The Rescue!

I've been in a painting funk for abut 2 months. it sucks, because I had plans to do a lot of painting, and then suddenly i could not bring myself to paint anything.  it probably has something to do with my reenacting(of complete lack thereof) but that is a story for another time.

anyway, a couple of friends  got me interested n 1/16th RC tanks recently.  in case your unsure what is involved, these RC tanks have full range of movement(including turret) recoiling barrels full sound, and even smoke coming out of the exhaust.  but the test part is that they have Infrared laser emitters and recievers  that register hits, in a laser-tagish sort of fashion.

We attended the CanAm Tank Club's Battle day on July 21st, in Niagara Falls, Canada, and soon after decided to get into RC tanking.

I'll be refitting much of the electronics(being an electrical engineering student) but I'm also the resident painter, so I've been investigating how to paint these monster tanks(18-24" long). I ended up buying a gravity feed dual action airbrush and wanted to try out some of the new techniques I picked up.  So I pulled out my WW2 28mm vehicles box and produced Army Group North Miniatures Opel Blitz's and Sdkfz 10s, 2 of each.

AGNM Opel Blitz's

I started by airbrushing on a base coat of  Vallejo Model Air 71.052 German grey. then I applied 2 coats of  German grey mixed with 71.050 Light grey, getting progressively lighter with each layer. finally i applied  coat of  the light grey by itlsef to highlight  high areas and centres of large panels.
after this i applied a watered down  Vallejo black wash, and then used the straight black was and applied it to panel lines, creases, and gaps.  

 

AGNM Sd Kfz 10 1 ton haulers

After that i applied  some "paint scratches" using a dark red-brown that i mixed.  it was dabbed on using a scrap of  abrasive scrub pad(the stuff I used for hedges).  I then finished off all the details with a brush.

the effect is subtle, but all in all, I thought that this technique worked well, especially for the first try.

my friends bought  early tigers and panzer IVs to start their RC tanking.  i bought a single  Panzer III and plan to convert it into  Panzer III/IV, with the same paint scheme as it's World of Tanks Counterpart.  the Pz III/IV is one thank that has been in my garage since i got it, and no one has one at the tank club(yet), so it will be a unique addition.

I'm sure you'll see more of teh RC tanks as i start to paint them, so stay tuned.

French in greatcoats

I had a busy weekend.  I was at the local gaming store Saturday for  the grand re-opening(they moved to larger storefront 3 weeks ago) and 6th anniversary.  Sunday was up at the store again giving some 40K  bits to a guy who is trying to do some heavy converting.

despite all  that time a the hobby store, i managed to polish  of a battalion of great coated French(and a 40K IG Manticore for my friend).  and start a battery of french artillery in greatcoats.  yesterday I finished off the artillery battery.

Perry French in greatcoats, with Command from the Victrix
Old Guard Chasseurs boxed set

Perry Metal  French artillery in greatcoats.

the command in the infantry battalion are taken from the Victrix  Old Guard Chasseurs box.  the perry french box does not come with any great coated command(despite halving nearly have the figures in greatcoats).  I only need 3 of the 4 sets of command that come in the Victrix old Guard boxes(i do units of 16 , so in a 60 figure box I can get 3 battalions).  so this is a useful way of using up some more of those figures.

 I really like this victrix officer.  he is very nicely sculpted, and  is very dynamic. He is the nicest victrix figure I have pained to date.

the First Russians

I finished basing these russians Yesterday.


the first unit is the 1st battalion of the Smolensk regiment.

1st Battalion of the Smolensk Regiment,
12th Div., 7th Corps, 2nd Army of the West

these are warlord Plastic Russians with Perry Plastic command. The warlord starter armies only come with one set of Pavlov command. I had gotten the perry command for my birthday.  My dad got an email confirming that he wanted 22 Russian command sprues. they thought there had been a mistake.

these figures have gaiters which is not historical(for the later period these are for, 1810+. earlier they wore full boots, still no gaiters).  I painted them white so they are hard to see, but if you look at warlord pictures, tehy actually paint them black.

now you might note that the Foundry skirmishers below also have gaiters, and I painted them.  first, the foundry figures around 20 years old.  A lot of stuff that is proliferated on the internet wasn't in the mid 90s. Where as 2 years ago when the warlord stuff was released it was easy to find. The gaiters on the foundry figures were distinct enough that painting them white wasn't an option.  plus being Jagers, they already have a great deal of black, which further simplifies painting.  lastly, I'm willing to tolerate the  Gaiters on these figures because perry doesn't make Jagers skirmishing in fatigue caps(only in shakos), and I like to differentiate my Jagers  by using figures with fatigue caps. My units of Jagers in line will be  perry with fatigue caps)

Elements of the 5th, 6th, and 42nd Russian Jagers Skirmishing

I'll be Taking a bit of a break from Russians to paint a battalion of french in greatcoats, and a battery of artillery in great coats. I'll be sure to post them when they are done(hopefully by Monday)

NATO Forces Arrive!

I had intended to post earler, but i spent two and a half week dealing with reeneactment issues rather then painting..

US Abrams tanks.
These are actually M1A2s(post-cold war) but most
people can't tell the difference

Last week I finally got back to doing some painting. i pulled out some NATO Cold War Micro armour.  I've been meaning to do this for some time, since i sold most of my allied force(the USMC  battle group) to my friend Dan.

US Bradleys.
Again, these are post-cold war variants  but again the average
person can't tell the difference unless it's pointed out

German Leopard 2A4s

   
I painted up  both Tanks and IFVs for Americans and Germans, plus a few extra support vehicles for the Bundeswehr.

German Marder 1A3 IFVs.

German M110 SPG,  Jaguar 1, Luchs, and
2 command stands: 1 leo 2A4 with M577, and 1 Iltis Jeep

so now that i have a decent core of NATO opfor for my horde of soviets(these guys are outnumbered about 4 to 1 by  T80Bs and BMP 2s), I can start playing some game again when my friend Dan is NOT around.

I should be back later this week since  i have  several units of napoleonic russians waiting to be based.

Cheers!