40th Anniversary Column Line and Square Game

The local Friday Night Hordes of the Thing Group wanted to try something else and thought Waterloo would be a good idea.  I volunteered to set it up with Column Line and Square and a few thousand French and British 25mm troops that I have.  To get in the mood, I have added the game report below to BLOG.  It was the last CLS game I have done.

My 40th anniversary "Column, Line., and Square game at Historicon, 2007

My game to celebrate my 40^th anniversary in the hobby went very well.  In 1967, I met Bob Cory in a hobby shop in Chicago.  He was telling people there about a big Napoleonic wargame his  group had done.  He had pictures.  All my life I had been playing with toy soldiers but had never seen anything like this. 

 He invited me to his house to see his figures and to learn how to play.  I got a copy of the rules  but left Chicago area for Boston a couple of months later.  So, I never got into a real game until I met  Dick Bryant in the fall of 1968.  I taught him to play and the rest is history :)

 At Historicon, I was put into the Showroom but on a table that had some light over it so that 

was ok. Still a pain, literally, carrying 15 boxes of figures and wooden table tops up those stairs.

We had 12 players, 6 per side. 8 have played much, 2 played only a little, and 2

not at all. Dick Bryant commanded the Allies and Richard Borg took the French.

Richard also was introduced to CLS by Bob Cory, about 2 years after me.  Each commander

 has played CLS for some 39 years. Richard starting as a college freshman, Dick as a 34 year old.  They are a bit older now!

I told the story of how I started playing and then served cake.

Here is the Troop Roster for both sides. About 2300 figures in total

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~abeattie/dbasum2005/hcongame/clstrooproster.htm

The game was on a 6 foot by 12 foot plain green table like a ping pong table. Limited terrain. Most from 35-40 years ago. The figures are 90% MiniFig with a few Scruby, Warrior and Hinchliffe mixed in. I like the toy soldier quality of the MiniFig. Half were from the 1970's and the rest from eBay in the past few years. I have about half again as many and hope to get them all on the table at home (maybe two tables like Fred did).

French start, this is one brigade of 4 on the table.

Allied set on

CLS gamers cannot keep impedimenta off the table :) Bottom, the allied left, is Austrian, middle, Prussian, top is Russia.

Close-up of Prussians in the center. 5 columns screened by 2 battalions of fusiliers. The grenadiers have a prolong gun. Lancers and horse artillery at the top. Foot gun at bottom.

Fuzzy pic of French Brigade: 3 Battalions of foot, screened by Leger Battalion.  Horse and foot guns, and Hussar regiment at bottom.

Middle game. Troops advancing on the cross roads, Austrian grenadiers arrive on right. Jaegers occupy house. Chasseur a Cheval regiment arrives at bottom left, to protect the hill.  View from French right.

Here is the whole Chasseur regiment -- 4 ½ squadrons of 10 figures per squadron.

Close up of the cross roads. The house with gables was made by Ted Haskill, who did the drawings in the Second Edition. The other house is card, both from 1970.

Dick brings on the British Rockets on the Allied left. I had just made this, and it was appearing in a game for the first time.  I had never  used or seen a Rocket in action in all my years of play, and so was looking forward to seeing it used in the hands of the Master.   

First shot is an exploding battery!! This is a picture of the battery after he threw snake eyes!  It came on right in front of the Chasseur a Cheval regiment  in picture above and might have done serious damage.  Dick took the  remains away burning his fingers in the process :)

Late in the game, the French are taking the cross roads.

The Allies were having some success on the Austrian side, a regiment of Cuirassiers cut through the French Chasseurs and broke through up on the hill. French support coming -- Chasseurs a Cheval of the Guard and Mamelukes and a infantry battalion in square.

In the end, the French got the Crossroads. There British reserves were closing in but darkness fell.  View from French left flank.

All in all a good game.  As always, we needed another hour for completion. I loved the look of the game. This is the biggest 25mm game I have ever done, or seen -- 4,000 figures.  I forgot to get the CE count for victory  but call it a minor French victory with an orderly withdrawal for the allies.

Paleontologists Ambushed by Bandits in the Gobi

Paleontologists Ambushed by Bandits in the Gobi

A Back of Beyond Game with "Contemptible Little Armies"

Our group recently did a game with "armies" from Chris  Peers' Back of Beyond Army List for Asia.  We played the Contemptable Little Army rules, with the Ambush scenario from the East Africa army lists.

These are the forces.  The rules call for a 2:1 ratio in favor of the attacker.  The attacker is the group moving into the ambush.

______________________________________

Units with Points

Bandits

Under TouStevWoo

1 infantry bolt action 50 points

1 infantry with single shot rifles 30

1 "regular" soldiers 70

2 (@15 figs) Red Spear/Big Sword each 40

1 Cavalry 70

1 sniper 20

1 HMG 72

Paleontologists

Under command of Rob Chapman Andrews (RCA)

2 armored cars 120

2 HMG cars  100

1 Unit  Paleontologists

  (6) rifles  84

  (2) with Lewis Guns 44

1 Chinese soldiers  80

1 laborers  20

2 snipers  50

2 HMG  144

642 points

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The Paleontologists and their supporters were placed on the table in their line of march.  The ambush rules say to come on one at a time, and that the ambushers can be 12" from edge of table where they come on, but this is to be a convention game so we wanted it to be a little more fair.  So Bandits had to be 2 feet from table edge.  The Paleontologists line was

Machine Gun truck, Chinese bodyguards, Americans with baggage, laborers,  and the other MG truck; on top (right flank) a HMG, armored car, sniper. On bottom the same

Along the board in front of the expedition were patches of bad going.  RCA sent out the armored cars to scout the patches.  Here one finds a contingent of bandits. 

In the center, a machine gun truck overran a sniper and then, itself, taken out by a heavy machine gun hidden in a rock formation. 

Close up of HMG with bandit leader

On the right flank, the other Armored car flushed out some more bandits, who fled around the car towards the main column.  The AC is completely scratch built by Nick Nascati.

Late arrivers attacked the column from its right flank.  Ex-white Russians and two groups of Big Sword groups. The expedition's body guard and laborers formed a line to protect the baggage.

  Two views

Close up of the Machine Gun truck (those familiar with our games will note this is the makeshift truck from Tanga).

The Big Swords attack and are shot to pieces by laborers!

The baggage in the center.

Then on the column's left flank, bandits began to attack.  Cavalry is behind the hill in lower right.

The cavalry attack and are shot down by the Americans.  A Lewis gun and Tommy gun is not that helpful when group is attacked 1 on 1.  Also "trench brooms" (Tommy guns) get no melee benefit against cavalry!  Cavalry do  get +2 vs foot so took a heavy toll of the explorers.

Expedition sniper hiding behind Old Glory Lanchester Armored Car.  How is the scale match?

All in all a good game, played in 2 ½ hours by 4 players.  I spent about ½ hour  previous setting up the game as I will do it at a local convention in January.

Taste of DBA 3 at Cold Wars, 2015

My morning presentation of DBA 3 went  very well.  There were a dozen attendees.  Most were people who had played DBA in the past and now wanted to catch up with Phil's new game.  There were a couple of pure newbies who had heard of DBA and wanted to know more about it.  The rest were current players of various version of the game who wanted to see what was new.  I went over various aspects of the new game.  Then I answered questions about the rules and the army lists.  Thanks to David Shepps for taking the picture.

I had some visual aids, example games, a blow up of my Quick Reference Sheet, and sample Figures from the book.

On Friday afternoon, I set up 4 example battles.  This instead of the duplicate format, so players could get more samples of armies.  The games included  Spanish & Tlaxcalan Army   vs   Aztec Army (this pair had 6 Hordes vs 6 Bows), Hindu with Rajput allies vs Tamil with Sinhalese allies ( 5 elephants on a side), Republican Romans vs Germans (this is the sample game in Sue's book), and Anglo-Saxon Army vs Vikings 850-1280 with Pre-feudal Scots allies (this is the from the Battle of  Brunanburh and shows good example of Shield Wall.)

Here is a good picture of the Battle of the Elephants.

We had an odd number of players at the start so I played  the Aztecs against the Conquistadors  game with a newbie.  After a few bounds, long time player Mike McVeigh stopped by and helped the Spanish.  Mike thought they had won when they destroyed the fourth horde but he learned they do not count for winning, but after I got a couple Spanish, they finished me off with 3 other elements, including the general who had pursued too far :( 

On Saturday afternoon, we did a matched pairs event.  Still mostly a learning experience so not too specific on match ups.  Here is a picture of the semi-final game  between Polybian Romans and Later Carthage.  Note the battlefield from Cigar Box. Next is a picture of the two winners who each got a copy of Sue's new book, donated by John Curry.

I was available most of the time for questions and demonstration play, promoting Sue's book and the rules.

All in all a very successful introduction of DBA 3.  I look forward to doing this again at Historicon.

There were a some comments on The Miniatures Page about my Demo

BW1959	09 Mar 2015 5:15 p.m. PST
Thanks for running the games Bob, I had a great time.
Rwphillipsstl	10 Mar 2015 7:05 a.m. PST
Extremely well done.
dapeters	11 Mar 2015 1:28 p.m. PST
Bob Thanks for taking the time Friday afternoon and showing me DBA.