Thursday 27 March 2014

The secret of great wargaming

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd been to the Wagames Holiday Centre with amongst others Henry Hyde and Charlie Wesencraft.  The game was regimental fire and fury refighting Gettysberg. I had several divisions and although I didn't know the rules , by the end of the second turn I had a good grasp if what was going on. I liked the d10 mechanics as the role of a natural 10 had many consequences such as leaving your troops out of ammo, or your commander being killed. The main drawback is that the results of fire are such that it mainly acts to disrupt your opponent so frustrating their plans. To kill a stand you need either to concentrate the fire of several regiments and batteries or charge several regiments into the same combat. The removal of the disruption is normally a matter of course so tends to be a temporary hindrance at best. What I did like about the rules was the way defensive fire went before offensive and have you the chance to stop that charge going in due to disruption.

Nevertheless I've ordered the rules from the company and intend to have a go at them with my new 15/18mm armies when their done. One idea I'm going to steal from Mark is the idea if generic stands with seperate command and the use of little labels on the stands with most of the stats needed on. This really sped up play and wasn't as obtrusive as I'd feared.

Now that I've played some ACW I'm on a painting drive and hope to have some Union brigades painted soon. I need to get some command figures, but will wait to see if my current eBay sales go before denting the paypal balance again.

As a backer of their new Russo-Finnish war I got a 10%discount from Baker Street and used it to pad out my VC force for Vietnam. 90 28mm Castings arrived the other day and they're up I the usual standard. I think that I'll probably have a unit of 15 and 28mm on the painting table at the same time for now and hope to crack through quite a lot, well, enough to beat last years painting stats anyway

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