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

More SGII

So, after looking at the last set of pictures I put up I decided to get some matte varnish. I picked up the Krylon matte varnish for $6 at Micheal's Craft Store. Thankfully, it is really a matte finish. The last can of stuff I bought said it was but it wasn't. I don't remember the name of it though. I got it at Walmart. (man I hate that place).

The gloss on the figures in the previous post is from the Army Painter dip. It finishes very glossy as you can see. It also provides an amazingly resilient protective coating. Putting some flock on the figures helped to finish them up.


The whole platoon with their Phalanx APCs and the Bulldog Commander vehicle.

The flocked bases and matte finish are a huge improvement.

These are the beginning of my Kra'Vak. They have a slight "Predator" look to them. More photos will follow. When you see these from the back you will see what I mean.
That's all for now.

Regards, Bill

Stargrunt II

Well, it's been a while since I posted. Not that I haven't been gaming, I've just been lazy.

Anyway, having gotten tired of GW changing things for the sake of change and making armies obsolete before I finished them I went looking for a new Sci-Fi game. I also have a beef with their business practices, but that's just me. It is a business after all. I tried Warmachine and liked it, but something just didn't do it for me. Oddly enough I found I really liked Hordes, the fantasy version of the game. I'll get around to posting pictures of that eventually.

I stumbled across Stargrunt II while surfing TMP looking for rules recommendations. I like skirmish games and these are that and more. SGII is platoon level and include rules for vehicles too. There are a number of forces provided with the rules, but they are written to allow a lot of freedom in developing your own forces, be they modern, near future, far future or Sci-Fi. Think Hammers Slammers, if your familiar with the David Drake books. SGII is very well supported by the author Jon. He has a company in the UK called Ground Zero Games and makes minis for this game and the other two rule sets he has (Full Thrust and Dirtside II). You can get a complete 15mm force of a mechanized platoon with lots of tanks for around $120. If you want something that is not listed in his store he'll put it together for you. That's how I got the Kra'Vak force. I put my order in on the weekend of the UK's largest convention and he still had it to me in eight days. Did I mention his rules are free? A link is on the left.

So this is the first platoon I painted. It is a New Anglian Confederation Marine platoon. I used a basic uniform scheme for them. Then I dipped them in the Army Painter dip. This stuff is great, all I did was the base colors and then dipped them. After they dried they were sealed too.

Platoon Commander, Platoon Sergeant and Communicator/EW

1st Squad

Power Armor Support Squad

1st Platoon and Power Armor squad

Next up for this project is a platoon of Kra'Vak. When they are done I'll start playing some solo games to get the rules down and then I'll try to get my gaming group to play. That shouldn't be to hard, they seem to like to play new and different games. I'm still working on this picture taking thing. Eventually I'll get it right.

Regards, Bill

The French try to escape, an AOE game

We played another game of AOE on Saturday. It was an unhistorical game where the French had to make their way of of the opposite table edge. The Austrians and British (Lee really needs to get some Russians) came in from the flanks and had to stop them. Victory points would be awarded to the French for each brigade removed from the table depending on its current state and if the road was open or not. The allies would receive points for each unit left on the table and closing the road. My Austrians performed great for a change. I was able to pressure the French along the whole left flank up until the last few turns when my cavalry was repelled by the infantry. It was a bad day all around for cavalry though. The one British brigade of cavalry that closed the road ended up getting slaughtered by a flank charge which left the road open again. Here are some pictures of the action on the Austrian side of the fight.



The French start their move along the road out of the trap.





The French form line in the face of the Austrian advance.





French cavalry charges the 13 Wallachisch-Illyrier Grenzer and IR47.





The Austrians put a serious hurting on the French cavalry and drove them off.



Grenadier Battalion Georgy, supported by IR2, pressures the French flank.

The gamed ended due to time constraints with the road being open, but the French unable to get anything off the road. So, my Austrians have their first victory. Unfortunately it required the help of the bloody Brits. Maybe next time I can do it on my own. I look forward to the opportunity.



Regards, Bill

Capture the cross roads. An AOE game.

The Napoleonic period is probably my favorite period. I am in the process of slowly painting an Austrian army. Very slowly. This was the first game of Age of Eagles for me and my friend Allan. The objective was to capture the cross roads. He did it quite easily.

This is the Austrian right. A lot of hard fighting went on here. It was about the only bright spot in the fight for the Austrians and it didn't really go all that well.

The left tries to flank the French. It failed miserably.

A look down the field of battle. Well placed French and poorly deployed Austrians. That's Lee watching the game.

The center just before it's final collapse. I fought back twice but to no avail. The French were just to good.

There was a lot of hard fighting through out the game. The Austrian right held up pretty well, but the center was pushed back a couple of times and couldn't fully recover. The try to out flank the French on the left was an unmitigated disaster. I fought a lot like the Austrians that day. Poorly deployed troops, a week, poorly executed plan, a complete lack of cooperation between the different arms of service. Allen totally mopped up the table with me. It was a great game and we had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to the next encounter.

Regards, Bill

In the beginning...

Well, the plan is to chronicle my war gaming exploits here. I will be posting pictures of my armies and the odd battle report.
I think I'm like most gamers out there, in that I can't seem to focus on just one or two periods. My interests range from the Dark Ages through WWII. I play a number of different systems. In some cases multiple rules for the same period.
I am far from being a competitive player. The last place you will find me is playing in a tournament. I would much rather play in a huge scenario and just have fun joking around with everyone, and I think that's what I like best about gaming, the camaraderie.
I'm a fair painter and a bad player, but I have fun anyway. Once I have this blog thing figured out I'll also post some links people may find useful.

Regards, Bill