Hordes

Meeting engagement, an AOE game

My friend Allen and I played a game of Age of Eagles last Saturday. The goal for both armies was to destroy the other army and drive it from the field. Things started well for the Austrians. The light cavalry held the right flank for the first half of the game. On the left the Jager and Grenzer dominated the French advance and drove it back. The heavy cavalry helped drive off a persistent cavalry advance by the French just left of center. Things looked good for a complete collapse of the French right, but it was not to be. A unit of French lancers got around to the rear and wrecked havoc on the Austrian left. It went down hill from there. The Austrians advanced in the center to exploit the success on the left which disrupted their line. Unable to maneuver back into a coherent defense they were picked apart piecemeal by the French. The right soon caved to the advance of more fresh French cavalry.
I learn more with each game and someday I'll beat Allen. Though probably not anytime soon. It's all good though. It was a great game that went for almost 4 1/2 hours. Kudos to Allen for playing a superb game.

The Austrian line from the right.

The Austrian left flank.

The Austrian center.

The Austrian right flank.

Despite good Austrian gains, the French get into their rear area.

The Austrian light cavalry held the right for half the game.

The start of the downward spiral.

Th Austrian line unable to get back together was beaten piecemeal.

The final collapse on the Austrian right.

Regards, Bill

Price of Glory

Since I love DHC7B so much I thought I would indulge my interest in the Great War too. About a year ago I bought a bunch of Germans and British and the Price of Glory rules. POG is written by the same guys as DHC7B so I figured I couldn't go wrong. At Cold Wars I decided I would flesh out my Germans and British. And true to a gamers form I went a step further and bought another army, the Brigade Games US Marines and some of Great War Miniatures Us troops too. These are really beautifully sculpted figure. They mix together so well that after I set up the units for painting, I couldn't remember which were which. Yesterday I started painting the Marines. This is the Platoon Command Section.


US Marine Platoon Command Section

The LT and Staff Sergeant.
The LT.

The Staff Sergeant. I love this figure. He is loaded with unique equipment, such as the fighting knife and shotgun.

The heart of the Marine Corps, the rifleman.

I'm really looking forward to playing this game. It should be a blast. Well, back to the painting table...

Regards, Bill

Disposable Heroes/Coffin for Seven Brothers

Disposable Heroes is a skirmish level WWII game. I find it to be more fun than Flames of War. Probably because it isn't written for competitions. This game is designed with the gamer in mind. If you are playing to win, you may not enjoy them. On the other hand, if you are playing because you like to game these are for you. They abstract some things for ease of play and to keep things from bogging down. Unfortunately I don't get to play as often as I would like. But at least I get to play something regularly, that's the most important thing.

I spent the last two days working on getting my US and German platoons ready. I changed the way I marked the stands to make it possible to identify a figures squad at a glance (red, yellow, blue, white). The LT, Sergeants and Corporals all have a black hash mark through the color designator. I also redid the varnish finish because the first coat was too shiny. I painted up and based a PaK40 and my three new Sherman M4A3s. The infantry and support weapons are a mix of 25mm Bolt Action, Crusader and Artizan Design miniatures. The tanks are from Army Group North, 1/48 scale. All of it was purchased from Brigade Games (link to the left).


















Regards, Bill

Flames of War

Well, I found myself at the one place I said I wouldn't be. I played in a FOW tournament this past Saturday. All in all it wasn't so bad. It was three rounds with an Eastern Front mid-war theme. All the tables were set up to represent actual battle fields from the war. This made for some interesting tables. I played my Grenadier Company with the following line up (1735pts):

HQ w/ two panzerfausts and a pupchen
priority air support
3x full grenadier platoons w/panzerfausts
Assault platoon w/ one heavy squad
PaK40 platoon w/ 2 sections
Infantry gun platoon upgraded to 150mm
full Nebelwerfer platoon

My first game was on the winter table, the Encounter scenario. This was great for infantry, not so much for armor. My opponent was Lou and it was a really fun game. Lou hasn't played in a long while and that gave me an edge on him. He did kill off a platoon, so I ended up with a 5-2 win.

This is turn two. I killed one tank with my PaK40s one with my Nebelwerfers and two with air support. It went down hill from here. Of course Lou was a real trooper and laughed everything off.


My infantry advances across the river. Lou only had some anti-tank rifles in the woods and his CIC was there. It all got shot to hell and at the beginning of his next turn he was unable to take the company morale test, ending the game.
My second game, Fighting Withdrawal, was against Rich's Cossack company on the open steppes. It should have favored his cossacks but his dice completely abandoned him and unpinned, dug in and gone to ground grenadiers are a nightmare. These games are usually very close. Rich is a much better player than I am and when I win it is usually because of things beyond his control. This side of the table didn't see a lot of action.

Rich concentrated his cossacks on this side of the table. If he could have hit me with his Katushas he may have been able to pull it off. Rich has the worst luck with these guns. If it was only an occasional thing I'd say it was just the dice. This happens in EVERY game. He will roll ones and twos to range in and on the rare occasion he does range in he'll roll ones and twos to kill. It's really freaky. In any event these cossacks got slaughtered... glue everywhere kind of slaughtered. I won 6-1.

My last game was on a table completely covered with woods and forest. We used the "across the Volga" special rule. I played Allen, who is a better player than me too, and his Russian horde. This is just the right side of the table from my side. That's one platoon, with flamethrowers attached. It got ugly fast...

This is the left side of the table. His other platoon. They had flamethrowers too. I hate flamethrowers. I never had a chance. He came in on both sides at the same time. My guns were deployed wrong and offered no support and then there were burning bodies everywhere. I think Allen did me in after four turns. It's all kind of a flamey blur....
I bitched and moaned about not wanting to play, but it was actually a really fun day. These are a great group of guys to game with and I always have fun playing them. Everyone should be so lucky to have a group like this one.

Regards, Bill
PS Did I mention I hate flamethrowers?

Teugn-Hausen, an AOE scenario

Friday night, my friend Allen and I played another game of Age of Eagles. It was a scenario I made of the Battle of Teugn-Hausen. The objective for the French was to drive the Austrians from the woods in ten turns. They managed to do it in nine, but it was a very hard fought battle that went back and forth quite a bit. By turn nine the Austrians didn't have any fresh troops left and only had one unit at the edge of the woods. This unit wasn't going to stand up to the French onslaught and there was no help to be had for them. The Austrian Grenzer were a bright spot, they performed great. They managed to hold the French right in check for six turns, before they were spent. All in all another fun game with historical results. I really like these rules the more I play them.

The battle field, with the Austrians deployed.

The French advance on the Austrian right.


True to historical form an entire infantry division and the only cavalry brigade failed to start moving for three turns. This would have dire consequences later in the game.
The first of many assaults by the French. This was driven off quite handily, if I do say so myself.

The remnants of the 105th Ligne. My moral victory...

The French mass on the right. For the first few turns the French had room for maneuver, but things got crowded when the Austrians drove the assault back.

The Austrian troops from Hausen begin to arrive as the front line drives the French back yet again. It would be too late by then though.

A desperate move. The Hussars move into the woods to try and help drive off the French. Despite their efforts it would be to no avail.

The Austrian's last stand. I rolled an eight for the fight but Allen won the combat anyway.
The actual battle took place on 19 April 1809 and was the first major battle of the Danube campaign. By the end of the day the French had pushed the Austrians out of the woods but were too spent to follow up with a pursuit.
Austria had just invaded Bavaria in an effort to break Napoleon's hold on Europe. Arch Duke Charles, the overall army commander, was anything but enthusiastic about the start of a new war with France because he was still trying to reform the Austrian army. He had been getting resistance to his reforms from his brother, the Hapsburg monarch, and his cabinet. Popular thinking in Austria's military still adhered to the same philosophies used 60 years before during the Seven Years War. Napoleon had completely changed the face of warfare rendering this way of war obsolete. Arch Duke Charles was trying to "modernize" the army when war broke out.

Regards, Bill