FoB2: The Battle of Morunnin

Battle of Morunnin, a photo by The Gonk.

We played our randomly generated Field of Battle scenario described here Friday night. It went well for the French, with Marshal Dalé's plan working perfectly-- the Russian hordes did, indeed, crash and break against the French rock.

We were a bit short on command stands, which played a bit to the French's setup advantages. Essentially, the Russians were forced to set up first, and the French responded by setting up entirely on the right half of the table. They placed the imaginary town of Morunnin on their left flank, and the entire left half of their line was able to anchor on a forest edge. On their right, they placed a grand battery-esque concentration of four artillery batteries.

Field of Battle 2 Random Scenario

FOB 2cover, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

The year is 1807. The Prussians have been humiliated, and the late arriving Russian Army, now under Bennigsen, is trying to surprise the French in a sweeping movement through Prussia.

In the van is Major General Barclay de Tommey (Tom G.), leading his corps on the Prussian town of Morunnin, where Marshal Francois Dalé's (K. Dale) French corps is assembling to halt the Russian advance.

Historicon 2013: Friday

Towards Devil's Den

On to Friday! I suppose technically Friday began Thursday night, as I stayed up late drinking Yuengling and just hanging out. I then work up early and hit the ground running again, in a hurry to do nothing. I may not have had any plans, but I can sleep at home! I cruised around, taking in the sites, strolling through the vendor hall, and hit the flea market. And in that flea market, I found...more Russians! For some very great prices, I picked up (if I recall correctly) sixteen stands of guns, two and a half regiments of cavalry, and another twelve battalions of foot!! At this point, I'm thinking this is about three, possibly four, divisions of Russians. That's more than I was planning on in the first place!

Piquet FAQ

I haven't mentioned it here, but the Piquet FAQ from Santa Clarita Wargamer deserves to be noticed by those with interest in the rules. He has also posted a lot of Field of Battle WW2 content lately, which I've found fairly interested. Along related lines, Brent Oman is currently developing a squad level FoB WW2 set. I'm very interested in that, as I feel more free to improvise scenarios. At this scale, just about anything could have happened. With FoB WW2 at company scale, I feel more contrained to try and follow history.  I mean , not that I actually run that many scenarios as it is...but I do have a Carentan map made up, and most of the figures ready for it.  I should really make the time to run it...

Field of Battle 2

I got Piquet's Field of Battle 2 last week! I've really been sold of FoB for a while. FoB2 doesn't really bring any big surprises. Blunder on the Danube has all the changes to the system. However, the coolest thing about it is, in my opinion, the scenario generator. It's a way to build a campaign-style framework around a one-off battle. Both sides have some options based around the quality of the Commander in Chief's command rating. You choose your focus between Deployment, Reconnaissance, Strength and Tactical Adjustment (once your opponent's disposition has been noticed). If you have a great C-in-C and he focuses his strength on Recon, you're likely to get more areas of the table to set up troops in, especially if your opponent has not chosen to emphasize Recon. However, there is still Fate. Each side gets three Fate rolls, which may or may not apply to each area. It's a simple system-- a d4 to choose the area, and a 50/50 roll to determine a positive or negative adjustment. However, these positive and negatives are rolled via a d12, so there are six adjectives for both the positives and negatives. You might get bonus to Recon due to Cavalry Screen, or Maneuver. You might get a negative modifier due to Bad Maps or Poor Staff Planning. It's enough of a description to give this Fate bonus a little meat to help explain why the scenario set up is what it is. Scenario creation is honestly not one of my favorite things, so anything that helps me come up with a more interesting scenario is a big bonus in my book. Combine this system with a simple "best 2 out of 3" campaign, and it looks to me that you can have some simple, but real, campaign fun.

Historicon 2011

Corner Kick!, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

Historicon 2011 was a lot of fun. The drive was very long, ten hours, but the facilities were nicer than the usual Lancaster Host (usual for me-- I missed last year, so this is my first HMGS East con away from the Host in ten years). I played in several great Piquet games, which have been spotlighted on Blunders on the Danube, as well as a game of Fireball Forward, which I'm looking forward to seeing published. I also finally made time to sit down for Bob Wiltrout's soccer game Corner Kick!. Ed: AND former local Brian met me for a midnight Blood Bowl 1-1 mauling of my Skaven by his Ogres, leaving 3 of my 4 Gutter Runners missing the next game-- one of which had to be retired-- and killing one of my players! All the games were really fun, and here you see my Number One Son (wearing his Germany jersey) back at home stomping my Argentinians in a game of Corner Kick! with his Subbuteo figures. I had two definite vendor purchases in mind-- D-Day bunkers from Armaments in Miniature and more Primaeval Designs prehistorics from Acheson Creations. Neither was there!! Naturally, I didn't let that stop me from blowing the budget in the vendor hall...

Blood Bowl Norse Painted

Blood Bowl Norse, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.

There! It took me longer than I thought it would, as it always does, but I have finished painting the Norse team-- nine Linemen, two Throwers, two Catchers, two Blitzers, two Ulfwereners, and one Yhetee. I still have the basing to do, but I want to experiment a little before I start, and then do them all at the same time so they hopefully match well. Despite the basing, they will make their fully painted debut as Björnsson's Bullies at tomorrow night's Painsphere meet up. My Field Marshals wouldn't mind a rematch against them myself...we'll see...

Piquet Cards

Santa Clarita Wargamer has recently written an entry on Piquet's use of cards to simulate command and control problems. It's worth reading if you're curious about Piquet.

For Auld Lang Syne

Welcome 2011! I can't believe it's 2011 already. We violated a few local ordnances this evening with a screeching round of fireworks. For my own references as much as anything, Magic Crystals are a lot of fun for the price. These things shriek LOUDLY and actually fly. On the downside, one came back down on my new car! No damage that I could see. It rained pretty hard most of the night, but fortunately around midnight it lightened up quite a bit. Our midnight finale' was Sky Quake, which I was a bit underwhelmed by. It was still a 500g power bundle though, and as it started going off, I thought, "Wow, I wonder which neighbors went to bed early tonight..." For a big piece like that, my favorite is still Loud and Rowdy.

Solo Theatre of War Campaign: the Aftermath

Map After First Battle
Originally uploaded by The Gonk

So, what exactly happens to these poor Deutschen Volk after losing this battle? We need to figure out the Battle Points for both the American and the German sides. This is done by a formula using the Army Morale Points (see discussion below) and the Victory Points won during this battle.

Victory Points are only scored for the Objectives held when the battle ended. Obviously, since the poor Germans had NO TROOPS LEFT when the battle ended, they get a big fat goose egg. The Americans, however, held a 10 point hill, a 7 point hill (both on the German right, by American companies that hardly moved from set up), and the hard won 26 point bocage. Left on the table were the 8 point rough hill in the German left flank area, the 8 point crossroads, and the 3 point hill the Shermans left to finish off the last PaK 40 battery.

Solo Theatre of War Campaign: The Battle of Le Petite Bocageville

The Battle Commences
Originally uploaded by The Gonk

With the forces laid out on the table, I now went ahead and rolled randomly for unit quality. There's no reason I couldn't have done it before, although populating stats for fourteen American units and eighteen German units in up to ten different battlegroups is a bit much-- better to do it once they are needed. The paratroopers got a veteran bonus and rolled up very nicely, even discounting the temporary hindrance of being out of supply. The Germans had a mix a green, regular and experienced infantry, although in general, they rolled fairly poorly for quality.

Solo Theatre of War Campaign: Eve of First Battle

The Upcoming Battle
Originally uploaded by The Gonk

So now we move from the campaign map to the tabletop. Since both battlegroups used the Attack action, the battle will be a standard Encounter fight, as opposed to something like a Flank Attack vs. Defend. A Retire action would have avoided the fight altogether.

Theatre of War includes rules for setting up the tabletop based on the campaign map and forces involved. The tabletop is divided equally into sixteen sections, in a four by four grid. Cards from the force sequence decks are drawn for the eight grid sections on each side's half of the table, which gets translated to terrain. Since this battle took place in a Heavy terrain square, with movement cost five, it risked some pretty dense terrain. It wound up with some open areas in the end, though. Here is the battlefiend I drew:

Solo Theatre of War Campaign

The Campaign Map
Originally uploaded by The Gonk

I'm finally getting enough WW2 stuff painted to play with. Ideally, I'll play mostly with my favorite rules system, Piquet. I've been reading through the Theatre of War campaign book, and decided to sit down and play a solo campaign using my new troops.

Originally, I started browsing maps around Utah beach, trying to find something that showed enough geography to provide movement info yet not enough writing on it to make it difficult to use. I finally decided I was making it way too hard on myself and just made a random map. This is one row taller than the default map size suggested in ToW. Each map square has a large number in the middle indicating the movement cost to move into that square. Square with cost 6 have a random edge that is impassible. Each square has a smaller number which is the victory points for that square.

Piquet move by move

Why I like Piquet and how it's played, over at Olicanalad's Games. If you were ever curious about the specifics of Piquet or what sets it apart from other rules, this is the post for you.

New Piquet Blogs

Nice to see that some new Piquet players have started blogs. Owner/author Brent Oman has started Wargames and Stuff, and author and great guy to drink with at Historicon Eric Burgess has started Din of Battle.

PKowboys!

I haven't got around to posting anything yet, but fortunately Mik has my back. We ran some PKowboys games last week and had a lot of fun. The buildings are from Whitewash City. I'd prefer something a little more substantial, but you really can't beat them for the price. Plus, once the lead starts flying, they feel just as good as anything else. Besides, my real (long term) goal is to do cowboys in 40mm, I think.

Trouble at Peterson's Mill

Land War in Asia has posted Trouble at Peterson's Mill, a game report for the very fun PKowboys from Piquet. I didn't realize that PKowboys had been out of print for as long as it has, but I met the author, Jeff Grossman, at Historicon, and it sounded like he had some ideas fermenting for a second edition-- you'll note he left a comment on the post stating the same thing. With any luck, I hope to be able to playtest these rules and contribute to getting a second edition out!

Wargaming in the 28mm

Just found Wargaming in the 28mm, a mainly Napoleonics blog which includes a Battle of Vimeiro scenario for my favorite rules in the world, Piquet's Field of Battle.