Here I am, eating lunch at my desk. Yes I am back at work after a lovely week off spending time with the family, squeezing in Partizan and getting lots of terrain finished.
It is now a year since I put a counter on the blog site, and this has now registered nearly 29,000 hits - not too shabby. The post count now totals over 200, so if you haven't done so already, check out the archives. This time last year I was basing for Impetus (a project temporarily on hold) and gaming some Back of Beyond stuff (also taking a back seat to the AWI).
Time to reflect on the game at the club last week. This proved in my head that the smaller battles of the AWI can be handled by the "big battle" rules of Blackpowder by dividing battalions into sub units (companies, grand divisions or whatever) to ensure that a suitable number of manoevre units are on the table. In the Charlotte scenario last week, I split the first wave of each army into "small" units of 6 figures, while leaving the militia as "standard" 12 figure units and the British line battalions as "large" 30 figure units. While this does give the multiple small units an advantage in number of dice when firing etc, the larger units are more robust as individual companies can be picked off more easily and those 2 hits acrue really quickly and are harder to rally off by the commander who is managing four company sized units rather than a single battalion. So basically, it all balances out!
The wagons worked well as a scenario timer/objective - much better than counting turns and they present an extra tactical element ans the american player can opt to slow them down and hence delay the British reinforcements; although in the game I sent them a hell for leather as possible to the exit. A 6" move gave us about 12 turns until they escaped but the scenario could be tweaked by a 5" or 7" or even a randomised move.
I'll run the same (or similar) game next week before looking at some other small scenarios such as Spencer's Ordinary and a variety of skirmishes along the Santee River. It might also be possible ti use a similar approach to game parts of the Boston campaign. I'd like to game Lexington/Concord in ways other than the long "battle road" scenario - a series of smaller skirmishes like a linked campaign might work well.
Plans for tonight:
1. Get into the garage and texture the trunks of the trees
2. If the polyfilla has dried on the river terrain, get it sanded down and start to line the canal leading to the mill wheen with matchstick "planking"
3. Get some scenario writing done at long last - I have put off committing things to paper for the last few weeks while I let ideas settle in my head.
4. Maybe begin to plan how to base up my tents into a camp. I think small groups of 2-3 tents each would offer the best compromise between diorama quality and flexibility between scenarios.
cheers
It is now a year since I put a counter on the blog site, and this has now registered nearly 29,000 hits - not too shabby. The post count now totals over 200, so if you haven't done so already, check out the archives. This time last year I was basing for Impetus (a project temporarily on hold) and gaming some Back of Beyond stuff (also taking a back seat to the AWI).
Time to reflect on the game at the club last week. This proved in my head that the smaller battles of the AWI can be handled by the "big battle" rules of Blackpowder by dividing battalions into sub units (companies, grand divisions or whatever) to ensure that a suitable number of manoevre units are on the table. In the Charlotte scenario last week, I split the first wave of each army into "small" units of 6 figures, while leaving the militia as "standard" 12 figure units and the British line battalions as "large" 30 figure units. While this does give the multiple small units an advantage in number of dice when firing etc, the larger units are more robust as individual companies can be picked off more easily and those 2 hits acrue really quickly and are harder to rally off by the commander who is managing four company sized units rather than a single battalion. So basically, it all balances out!
The wagons worked well as a scenario timer/objective - much better than counting turns and they present an extra tactical element ans the american player can opt to slow them down and hence delay the British reinforcements; although in the game I sent them a hell for leather as possible to the exit. A 6" move gave us about 12 turns until they escaped but the scenario could be tweaked by a 5" or 7" or even a randomised move.
I'll run the same (or similar) game next week before looking at some other small scenarios such as Spencer's Ordinary and a variety of skirmishes along the Santee River. It might also be possible ti use a similar approach to game parts of the Boston campaign. I'd like to game Lexington/Concord in ways other than the long "battle road" scenario - a series of smaller skirmishes like a linked campaign might work well.
Plans for tonight:
1. Get into the garage and texture the trunks of the trees
2. If the polyfilla has dried on the river terrain, get it sanded down and start to line the canal leading to the mill wheen with matchstick "planking"
3. Get some scenario writing done at long last - I have put off committing things to paper for the last few weeks while I let ideas settle in my head.
4. Maybe begin to plan how to base up my tents into a camp. I think small groups of 2-3 tents each would offer the best compromise between diorama quality and flexibility between scenarios.
cheers
Congratulations on the fantastic level of hits you've had in the last year! A lot of the recent hits will have been from me I think.
ReplyDeleteI've only had 5,000 spread over 3 blogs since February.
I look forward to seeing your progress on the terrain.
Eddie.
Welcome back to the world of the working.Remember you cant be happy all your life :-)
ReplyDelete