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The Usual Result of a Decision to Focus

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Yes, it was time to focus on getting my 40mm Homecast French Revolution forces ready. Despite the bitter cold and damp I sallied forth to the woodshed and fired up the smelter. In a short time I had a selection of heads and bodies for the project along with a head of unusable castings due to the poor conditions, and a handful of goblins and wargs. Wait, what? Yup. Well, I mean I had the mould but hadn't used it and...well what harm could it do to cast them. Not like I was going to paint  them and then get a 25mm Medieval/Fantasy game going? Right? https://gatheringofhosts.blogspot.com/2020/01/fighting-for-hearth-and-home.html Yeah OK, not really a surprise then. Up Next??   Why are you asking me?!?  

Republican and Royalist

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Yesterday I took advantage of the annual 'January Thaw '  to cast up  enough figures to bring my two Revolutionary French units up to twelve figures each as well as a start on my first Emigre unit. Naturally, doing a test of the Emigre conversion using a PA Prussian grenadier and one of my own 1812 heads took precedence over finishing a unit!

As the Dust Settles

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This may sound over optimistic but after the last half decade of poking, prodding, experimenting and exploring, I think I may have just finally agreed with me and myself about what we want from the Square Brigadier .  Well, until I get a brand new idea perhaps. The rules are available  here (click)  . The armies march on and deploy. The game was a meeting engagement over random terrain with victory conditions being determined after laying it out.  ( Capture a road exit on the enemy's baseline while stopping him from grabbing one on your baseline. ) Each side had 4 "Brigades" totalling 14 units. Some dicing resulted in Blue having 4 cavalry, 8 infantry and 2 guns while Red had 2 cavalry 10 infantry and 2 guns. Anyway all of the old ideas have been tried in various combinations as well as every alternative or new idea that has come to me over the last 6 years and most had some merits and some faults but when push came to shove, every attempt to make the rules more d...

OK Enough Fun, Time To Get Back To Work

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Yesterday Jeff, ( http://armchaircommander.blogspot.com/ ) hosted a group of Nova Scotia wargamers for a 15mm  Nappy's Battle of Friedland game.  Hopefully he will be posting a Blog post including some of the great pics he posted on FB. ( Thanks for these pics Gary ) The Russian Right Wing commander trying to balance questionable command decisions with even more questionable die rolling. Luckily as many a Russian commander knows: "Quantity has a Quality of its own" and I errr..I mean..."he" eventually  crossed the streams and stormed the village on the hill with great loss despite the 5:1 odds.....(against my opponent ). I will admit to a tinge of nostalgia at the sight of a table, loaded with 15mm troops yet not crowded, BUT , given that I needed to don reading glasses and peer closely to tell one unit from another, I'm not tempted to rebuild my 'lost' 15mm armies. Actually, I don't need to, apart from the horde of 15mm figures Jeff has painted,...

Intermission

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Today I gave my brain a break and used my free time to get a few more units onto their bases and to do a bit more of touching up of the 4" grid. The Rebel brigade has two units deployed (representing a typical 1870's heavy skirmish line with supports with 2 units formed in column in support. I did run my brain over some rules ideas though, helped, as so often, by some of the thought stimulating comments on the last couple of posts. Thats one of the reasons I enjoy getting comments in addition to the confirmation that someone is indeed out their. I'm almost ready for another test game but Saturday Jeff is running another group 15mm Nappy's battle and my old Cossacks will be expecting me!

The Wheels Are Still Turning

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I was stoked for the first game but with each stand being a unit, there were too many units on the table for the mechanisms to flow well and keep up interest and excitement in the game so something had to change. #2: An old chestnut of a scenario and improvised basing but a brisk game.   After rejecting various options as too "gamey" and abstract or too tedious, I remembered that I had at one point contemplated a system where 2 stand units occupied two adjacent 3" grid squares giving an easy way to reflect formations and frontages without complex or confusing rules or  excessive empty space to confuse me mid-game or distort the look of the thing.  The result feels much more "old school" than the Square Brigadier ever did but with all the convenience of a simple gridded game. So far that is! Early days yet.

Of Form and Function

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"Form follows Function" and "Function follows Form", two duelling design maxims and like most such bitter fights, both sides of the debate are right to some degree. This weekend I belatedly realized that this debate was at the heart of my seesaw problems without it having been consciously considered in that light.   Worse than that, solving the issues was going to require deciding on priorities, making careful, informed, choices and sticking with them. Oh NO! "Sawmill Village" is an encounter scenario with victory resting on control of the crossroads town. Blue won the race to the town but wasn't aggressive enough to  take the whole thing before Red grabbed a foothold. One of the advantages of writing a blog is that I have a decade of posts not only recounting games and showing pictures but snatches of design discussions of varying merit. Somethings come and go, some things get invented and reinvented and too often forgotten, and somethings just keep c...