Month: March 2012

In what has become an annual event, Chris Palmer and I supported Sam Fuson and Ed Duffy in running a wargame for the 114th Signal Battalion Officer Professional Development (OPD).  This time Eric Schlegel joined us.

In the past, Sam, Ed, Chris, and I ran WWII games using Look, Sarge, No Charts: World War II.  We’ve found that a bunch of folks unfamiliar with wargaming can easily pick up the rules.

This year’s event  was the battle of Chancellorsville, involving 45 players and 5 game masters.  Each of the senior leaders in the battalion assumed the role of one of the historical division commanders.  The overall commanders could determine their own battle plans and did not have to stick with the historical plan.   The Confederate commander played a cautious, delaying game, rather than the audacious plan  of the actual battle.

We used A Union So Tested: Look, Sarge, No Charts: American Civil War.  Sam did a tremendous amount of work preparing for the event.  He mounted over 4000 plastic 1/72-scale figures onto stands and made all the labels for the bases.  This took him over 400 hours of work in preparation.

We arrived at 0730 and were busy setting up the tables, terrain, and troops until 1000.  It takes a long time to get that many figures laid out.  This was a big game!  The pictures don’t really do justice to the size of the game.

In order to partially compensate for the numerical superiority of the Union, the Confederate forces were located off the table.  For the first three turns, the Union had to spot the Confederates.  This caused the Union players to be more cautious.  It also diverted a corps of Union troops to be diverted hunting for Rebs on their flanks.

Sam didn’t have time to paint all the figures, so most were unpainted.  Painted figures were organized into the elite regiments and brigades.  Purists might object, but even with unpainted figures the board was impressive.

Chris and I were happy to see that LSNC: American Civil War rules hold up in a game with 45 players.  The officers, senior NCO’s, and civilian leadership of the battalion seemed to get a lot out of the event again this year.  The event will be followed by a staff ride of the battlefield in which the officers, senior NCOs, and civilians will compare their actions in the game with those of the actual commanders.

I was recently interviewed for an on-line magazine, Bring Your A-Game. Here is the interview: http://bringyouragamemagazine.blogspot.com/2012/03/game-designer-buck-surdu-discusses-his.html

I continue to prepare for my Dr. Who game at Origins and Historicon.  I recently finished building drop ships for the Sontarans from some plastic, craft store ornaments and ketchup cups from a fast food restaurant.

The don’t look exactly like the ones from the TV show, but they are close.

I’m pretty happy with the result.

Chris and I ran a twenty-player pirate game at Cold Wars 2012 using the GASLIGHT rules.  We ran the game on Saturday night.  We were give an award by the convention awards committee.

The game featured bands of pirates roaming around the table seeking treasure.  There were two towns to sack, the governor’s palace to loot, a jungle temple, and a fort.  The pirates could choose to work together, separately, or change their minds!  Several groups of soldiers and townspeople tried to keep control of the riches.

We used straight GASLIGHT for this game, with each player controlling two units.

The townspeople in this town had a great plan.  They rounded up the riches from the palace and retreated into the church to defend themselves.  The final battle took place with several units of pirates attempting to capture the church.

The defenders of the fort held off the first wave of pirates.  Before the second wave could build up, the defenders loaded their treasure into a rowboat and set off for the town on the other side of the bay.   They didn’t realize that that town had already been sacked.

At Cold Wars 2012 I ran a GASLIGHT game, called Tripod Down.  A Martian tripod was destroyed by the Earth men near the small British town of Bramley, but the crew survived.  Three more tripods were sent to rescue the crew.

The game took place just prior to WWII.  The Brits had two anti-tank guns, dynamite planted as a sort of command-detonated land mine, a medium machine gun, and three squads of infantry.  The Martians had three tripods plus two crewmen from the destroyed tripod.  The game was built for six players.

In the picture above, the smoke near one of the tripods marks where the command-detonated mine exploded.  It caused no damage to the tripod.  In the next turn, the tripods melted both anti-tank guns.  I was worried the scenario was going badly.

Then one of the tripods lost its footing trying to climb over a cliff.  It was headed toward a British strongpoint to release its poisonous gas, but it fell over.  Before the other two tripods could get there to lift it up, a lucky machine gun hit caused the legs to fly off, rendering it useless.  The Martian crewmen then dismounted and scurried toward one of the other two tripods, exultant Brits in hot pursuit.

Stealing some equipment from a downed tripod, three Brits close assaulted one of the two remaining tripods.  After several attempts, they made it topple too.  The remaining tripod disengaged and retreated.  The end was a surprise to me.  I thought the game was going to be one sided in favor of the Martians, but the outcome was the opposite.

The tripods are from Riveresco (http://www.tin-soldier.com/), and the dismouts are Paroom Station from Brigade Games.

I’m still banging away at my Prussian corps for LSNC: Napoleonic Wars.  I needed one regiment of Hussars, but the figures come in a bag of 30 and a command bag of 9.  That allowed me to make 5 regiments (with one regiment short a figure, but hey, sue me).

After all the Prussian line and reserve infantry, it felt like these were painted in no time.  Interestingly, most of the Prussian hussars had different colored tunics and pelisses.

It turns out that Prussian hussars were not authorized standards until 1815 — after Waterloo.  The Old Glory command packs come with standard bearers, so I had to “make up” standard colors based on infantry designs.

I can’t wait to get these on the table, hunting down French stragglers!

These bases haven’t been labeled yet.  Sam Fuson is making up sheets of labels for us to post on the Web page when the rules come out.  One of them is the model Prussian corps (I corps) that I am painting.  Sam and I have been sending the labels back and forth to each other, refining them.  As soon as they are done, I’ll be printing them out and labeling all my Prussians.

I bought this pack at Fall In from Recreational Conflict.  As a break after 700 10mm Prussians, I pulled these out and painted them.  I’ve come pretty close to my goal of painting all the figures I bought from the last convention.  I’ve painted enough that I don’t feel bad about the 10mm Prussian cavalry I need to pick up at Cold Wars.  No I need to put together a jungle GASLIGHT game!