You may have been wondering what happened to our Marching On Richmond Campaign? Well, after the May 1864 action we did successfully conclude the campaign and I will post the final 1864 and 1865 battle reports and campaign narrative sometime soon… Meanwhile if you haven’t already realised we were playing with a near final draft of Sam Mustafa’s “Longstreet” – the latest in his Honour Series of games… Longstreet is now finished and the books & cards have been printed and Sam is planning an August release, however in the meantime you can download a ‘Lite‘ version of the game from the Honour Downloads Page. This is a very cut down version, but for those interested will give them a taste of what the full Longstreet will be when it’s released in a month. Continue reading “Marching On Richmond: Sam Mustafa’s Longstreet”
Getting My 28mm ACW Underway
With all this ACW Action Going On it’s finally motivated me to resume construction of my 28mm ACW forces – I’ll be building both Union & Confederate Forces to provide opposing armies, and as originally mentioned I was looking at building these forces initially for Fire & Fury (for both Brigade & Regimental level games). However now that Sam Mustafa has Longstreet due as the next game in the Honour series I’ll be looking to build them principally for that but still compatible for Fire & Fury as well (and obviously they will be usable for Black Powder and similar if needed). I started this project about 4-5 years ago and got a portion of the troops painted up but then ground to a halt – however I’ve now started basing the painted troops and have more under-way, so here’s some photos of the initial portion of my Union forces…
Marching On Richmond: May 1864
After our rebuff in The Wilderness we quickly reformed as our army continued an on going series of manoeuvres and battles against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Part of my division (29 CT & 88 NY) had not been present at our defensive action on the hills and they now joined us as our remaining units recovered. No immediate artillery replacements were available for our lost battery, and the wonderful “Fighting Sixty-Ninth” was finally disbanded as there were less than half a company of men left in the regiment. Likewise the redoubtable 4th Vermont was lost to us – the last of it’s men falling into enemy hands after their brave stand in the last battle. On the positive side I have developed a strong rapport with the 5th Wisconsin and their Colonel, and a surprise visit by The President during this time greatly boosted the 5th Wisconsin’s morale and enthusiasm!
Marching On Richmond: The Wilderness 1864
On the 4 May 1864 we crossed the Rapidan River, and headed towards the Wilderness Tavern, the convergence point for our Corps, prior to heading south into the open terrain beyond on our march to Richmond… Prior to this march I had taken the decision to permanently disband the 20th Indiana (a somewhat problematic regiment for me at the best of times), its remaining men were sent to the 6th New Jersey as replacements. However the wily Robert E. Lee launched a rapid and unexpected counter attack on us the next day (5 May) and we were taken by surprise. My Division, being near the forefront, was rapidly deployed on what suitable ground could be found to hold the line while the rest of the army moved up into battle formation.
Continue reading “Marching On Richmond: The Wilderness 1864”
Marching On Richmond: Winter 1863
After our Bristoe campaign we moved into our winter quarters in early November 1863, however shortly after we were involved in the failed Mine Run Campaign through the wilderness (vaguely familiar terrain), but after it’s inconclusive result we soon retired and then encamped at Brandy Station, in Virginia, until the spring. During the winter my division suffered much attrition, but the men were cheered by the arrival of fresh units, including the smart looking 5th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment (finally we would have our eyes back, something we had missed since the 5th Cavalry had departed us in mid-1862), and Battery A of the Maryland Light Artillery, as always with our artillery a fine looking professional formation. Being an ex-Artilleryman I was much impressed by them, as with all our fine gunners!
Marching On Richmond: Bristoe 1863
As previously described to my readers, we had been recovering from our battle that was the preview to the great fight at Gettysburg. We had steadily but slowly pursued General Lee into central Virginia, but then in October he had suddenly turned around and marched North again, endeavouring to turn our western flank and get behind us (to cut us off from Washington). Retiring along the Orange & Alexandria Railroad we shadowed Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as both armies moved north.
Gordon & Hague 15mm Plastic ACW Packs
Bulk Packs Of American Civil War Plastic 15mm Figures
Interesting new product line for the 15mm gamers out there – from Gordon & Hague in the USA – Packs of 100 plastic 15mm scale ACW figures, with an assortment of about 80 infantry 10 cavalry, and 2 guns & crew, plus movement trays per base (total of 125 parts per box). Available from today (a Union & a Confederate Pack), with additional expansion packs due in March 2013. Professionally sculptured by a quality UK Figure sculpture too apparently.
Blenheim Redux! Another Take With Maurice…
Back in December 2011 before Sam Mustafa’s full version of “Maurice” was released Cam and I had been play testing it. As I previously posted we had done a re-fight of Blenheim, but weren’t completely happy with how we modelled the terrain and the armies – so with suitable adjustments to both we had given it another bash. I never finished writing up the battle report but did take a reasonable selection of photos – this is a photo gallery of our Blenheim Re-fight, Take 2, using Maurice. As with the previous game we did not have the suitable 28mm figures, so we instead had our Lasalle Napoleonic Armies standing in for the War of the Spanish Succession period troops. The play test is now rather redundant, and Maurice has now been available for 9 months or so, but I thought a few gamers out there might enjoy seeing the photos and our ‘bathtubbed’ order of battle.
Continue reading “Blenheim Redux! Another Take With Maurice…”
More Secrets Of Wargame Design
Following on from Wally Simon’s SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN: A Tabletop Toolkit of Ideas, Analysis, and Rule Mechanics (Volume 1), Russ Lockwood (of MagWeb fame and now the Center for Provocative Wargaming) has now published a second work in the series entitled: Wally Simon’s MORE SECRETS OF WARGAME DESIGN: A Tabletop Toolkit of Ideas, Analysis, and Rule Mechanics (Volume 2). Wally Simon was one of the founders of the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society (in the USA), and as a statistician he used his mathematical skills to analyse probabilities within wargame mechanics. With 25 years of work to draw on, this is the second in a series of ‘best of’ booklets that explore the nuts and bolts of wargame design as seen through his eyes, via the articles he wrote over the last 40 or so years.
Marching On Richmond: Fall 1863
Following on from our action on the Gettysburg-Hanover railroad, a major action was fought by the Army of the Potomac against General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia – this epic 3 day encounter was thought to have decided the war, but as usual the Confederates managed to slip away from us and retire to the safety of Virginia with our pursuit proving cumbersome and erratic. The outstanding performance of our new commander (General Meade) at Gettysburg was somewhat tarred by the escape of Lee and ‘his boys’ and we spent the next two months playing a very ponderous game of cat and mouse around Northern Virginia! However good news had come from the west, at the same as we were at Gettysburg, my namesake General ‘Ulysses’ S. Grant had defeated the rebs at Vicksburg, and finally wrestled control of the mighty Mississippi – the Confederacy was cut in two. Shortly after General Grant was promoted to command of all the U.S. armies and headed east to join us, basing himself with the Army of the Potomac.
Work Begins On Rorke’s Drift
Well its been much longer than planned and to get things along I have enlisted my mate Kieran (6mm Wargaming) to build my Rorke’s Drift Models and Base Board for me. I have been inspired by the SSWG’s (Southend & Shoeburyness Wargames Group) wonderful demo game from several years ago (you can see a full set of photos here, it was at Salute 2006 in the UK and I believe has been at shows prior to that), and they still reuse it regularly today (see this blog post from 2011). So Kieran has completed assembly of the buildings and we’ve done two mock-ups of the layout…
Felicia Day Goes Neo-Victorian ‘Steampunk’
Stumbled across this video blog episode from last year of the always entertaining & lovely Felicia Day (of The Guild), where she tries out the world of Steampunk: