Snakes & Ladders SYW Campaign, next moves.

 

Having won the last battle the Austrians get to draw 2 cards from the 'Fortune' deck - see above.

The Prussians have to remain in place having lost the battle but the Austrians roll a 3 and go down the Snake due to rain delaying the march .

The next Campaign day the Prussians rolled a 5 and went up the Ladder due to landing on a 'draw card' square and gain another card.The Austrians rolled a 5 as well but had to stop on the 'Battle' square .

They rolled a 6 and the will be the attacker in the next game 'High Ground' , which is being played as we speak ! ........

The Combat at St. Ulrich (Snakes & Ladders Campaign)

 

For the first battle of the campaign I am using the scenario 'The Combat of St. Ulrich' . The Austrians have stolen a march on the Prussians and a picked force of Grenadiers have captured the bridge over the Schwartz River . They have deployed the Grenadiers to protect the bridge with a unit of cavalry to the flank , with the gun on a hill on the other side of the river . The Prussians are advancing through the village of Mulheim in the to of the photo.

The Austrian command , the Grenadier Brigadier is unfortunately a 'ditherer' - hence the green counter , he will need encouraging to do things !

The Austrian Artillery - it didn't fire during the entire game !

The Prussian command the Brigadier is 'Dashing' hence the red counter, and the King of Prussia is overseeing the action .

The Prussians advanced through the village and their Dragoons formed into line and were charged by the Austrians so they counter-charged! 

After 2 rounds of combat the Prussians broke and routed off the table ! , the Austrians rallied back to reform.

Then to everyone's surprise the Austrians the Austrian rolled a 6 and with the encouragement of the C in C  and advanced two moves and fired into the advancing Prussian columns - who had not deployed - not expecting the Austrians to advance !

Oh dear ! the Prussians bumbled there ! 

The Prussians struggled to deploy under close range volleys from the Austrians .

One of the Line Battalions was driven back with but Frederick used the card to rally hits off them - so saving the situation .

However the Prussians couldn't turn the game around, the left flank Battalion broke and fled , the Prussian Artillery drove the Austrian left flank Grenadiers back but having lost 2 army points (Dragoons and the Line Battalion) the Prussians lost the game and had to retreat back through the village leaving the field to the Austrians . Well I wasn't expecting that !, a very quick game (only 3 moves) and a Austrian victory . The Campaign continues next blog .

Snakes and Ladders SYW Campaign .

I've found and downloaded a campaign system from the Honours of War Forum Home | Honours of War it uses a very clever 'snakes and ladders' campaign tracking system plus a set of 'Fortune Cards' which I will be using for a campaign using my 2D Wofun . Now in the past I have tried and miserably failed running various campaigns , so I will be interested to see if this system works , on the plus side it looks like it will play solo so watch out for the start of "The Silesian Campaign" !

The first day the Prussians take the lead and get a 'Fortune' card .

This will help the General to rally a unit in any forthcoming battle - very useful !

Day Two - the Austrians steal a march on the Prussians (up the ladder) , whilst the Prussians land on a 'Battle ' square and roll a 2 for the scenario - which is St. Urlich - so the Prussians will be attacking and the battle will be fought out on the tabletop .

 

2D SYW in action.

 

I was lucky enough to have my old friend 'R' call round the other day whilst he's up visiting family and so we tried out a small meeting engagement using the Wofun SYW  figures and the Osprey ' Honours of War' rules - he took command of the Prussians.

I won't go into details of the game which swung both ways as we each had a few 'dithering Brigadiers which disrupted our plans .

The closing stages of the battle as my Infantry recoil in disorder and are then threated by 'R's Hussars.

Here we see 'R' reorganising his Cavalry , sadly once again as the action grew hot I forgot to take photos - all I'll say is it was a good fun game - and I lost ! 

2D Austrians - Army in a box (well 2 boxes)

 

As mentioned in my last post here is my 2D Wofun Austrian SYW Army . To start with - the Infantry-8 Battalions , I want a similar sized force to the Prussians so I can do the 'Tabletop Teaser' type scenarios , again 5 artillery pieces , the guns themselves are printed MDF which glue together and can be a bit fiddly to get right - not to everyones taste and some people replace them with metal 28mm models.

The Grenz Border Infantry, I have 4 units each of 4 bases as the Austrians had a definite advantage with these troops.

The Cavalry , 2 units of Dragoons , 2 of Cuirassier and a combined Horse Grenadier unit.

2 units of Hussars , with a suitably flamboyant General .

Some of the General Staff .

How things fit in the boxes - bottom layer of 4 Infantry units and the Artillery 

A layer of foam and another 4 units with room for the Grenz or General figures to the right . The Cavalry fit in the other box in a similar fashion . As you can tell I'm a bit of a fan-boy when it comes to Wofun , the only thing I would caution anybody ordering from them is - keep your orders below £100-£120 to avoid Import Tax , they seem to turn around orders within the week which seeing they are coming from Romania is very good indeed , they are delivered by DPD and I've had no problems with any of my orders . I hope to blog some of the games I'm having using these figures using 'Honours of War' rules.

Schrodinger's (cat) Army in a Box.

I have a problem with storage in my Wargaming room - I only have so much and have tried to maximise it's usage by storing the boxes of figures under the wargaming table . This also leads to problems accessing the boxes and a lot of the collections tend not to get played with because I can't get to them easily. So I decided to down size an few of my collections that I don't use often . I have sold on my 28mm SYW O.S collection and replaced it with Wofun 2D figures - Here we see 'Old Fritz' studying my problems and sadly shaking his head.

Having got rid of 6 box files full of figure my Prussian Army using Wofun now fits into just 2 boxes - 12" ruler for scale.

The Infantry - 8 Battalions of Foot - each of 6 bases (each base 8 'figures' ),and 5 Guns and crews - roughly 400 'figures' 

The Cavalry - 7 Regiments of Horse each of 4 bases (Heavy Cavalry 6 'figures' to a base, Hussars 3 'figure' to a base) roughly 144 'figures'

Some of the Frei Korp .

Some of the Generals . I can understand that 2D flats are not everyones cup of tea - but I've been using 'flats' and 'semi flats' for years so it doesn't worry me . The great advantage is storage / accessibility I find I am using them much more frequently - And I didn't have to paint them !,catcat I have inked in the figure edges and filled in the gaps in the bases and added a bit of foliage on the Generals bases - next I will show off my Austrian Army - which again fits in just 2 boxes .

 

A game at 'A's

 

So this Sunday evening I went around to 'A's for a game of 'Flames of War' set in Tunisia - the Americans versus the Germans , using a starter box he had bought on line . Sadly I didn't take many photos as once the action grew hot I forgot !

Here we see my Lee tanks moving down the road to capture an objective . The boxed set 'Kasserine has two matched forces of plastic tanks and guns , a rulebook , dice and unit cards - a very good buy ! - for about £40 .

My Stuart light tanks scoot around the flank , 'A' was in a hurry to try these forces out so he hasn't got them painted yet . The rules are the latest 4th edition , much tidied up and a lot faster and easier to play than the old 2nd edition I last played with many years ago.

The German position with his 50mm AT guns covering the objective . We played the game in under two hours plus a bit of post game discussion , I was impressed by the 'everything in a box' FOW set and even better I won! - partially because of 'A' poor dice rolling and am looking forward to our next game.