RULES OF THE GAME: BUILDINGS AS BLOCKING TERRAIN

French Napoleonic battalion columns moving through lanes between buildings.

 

Greetings fellow shut-ins (soon-to-be-emerging)!  In this post, dear readers, we meander into a new subject area: "Rules of the Game." Although I've got complete rules sets in the content pages of this blog, in these posts I'll offer some single-subject items for your consideration: things that either are embedded in my rules somewhere or that I just happen to have used in my games, which should present novel approaches to conventional subjects.  In this post, I present another way to handle the often vexed issue of towns/buildings on the game table. Here it is, in summary:  

 

Instead of allowing units to occupy buildings, treat them as "null" terrain.  In other words, the footprint of each building is a forbidden terrain zone, like water features (ponds, lakes) in most rules: you cannot occupy or move through them.  Additionally, buildings also block line of sight and fire. In short, units fight and move between buildings, not in them.

 

BUILDINGS GROUPED TO CREATE AN IN-TOWN FIGHT

Buildings arranged with internal spaces and lanes: The Prussians are about to advance through the lanes after several turns of close quarters fighting in the town. The French are setting up on the far side of the town having just been repulsed.  The placement of the buildings in the middle of the table also made this key terrain. This arrangement allowed for doing the actual back and forth town fighting as opposed abstracting it by bouncing off of units in buildings. 

 

The key to using buildings in either of the ways mentioned in this post is how you spot them.  Different arrangements can produce different effects. In terms of grouping buildings to replicate a town,  you will need to think about how your units are based and the kinds of spaces needed to allow units to operate (or how you would like the spaces to limit how they would operate). In short, you need to ensure that your units can actually fit between the buildings. For towns, I generally want buildings with individually small footprints that collectively can create an overall layout.  It doesn't necessarily take many buildings or a large area to get a good effect. The above example is a set of buildings that were placed in the middle of the table in order to replicate in-town fighting, with the secondary effect of creating different lanes with different entry/exit points for getting in and out of the town.  The pictures are taken from the Somewhere in Saxony , 1813 Game Report--where  you can go if you want to get a more detailed description of the game flow. As usual, in this post you may clix pix for BIG PIX.

The French advance into the town first.

The Prussians line advancing to contest the town.

Hard to see, but this was a close-range firefight between a French Line and a Prussian Reserve infantry battalion in the town. Eventually, the French would get the worse of this and pull back.

View of the firefight from the Prussian side (seen just to the left of the building).

Both sides had supports behind the town and fed units in to the town fighting--which  replicates how how town fighting was actually managed.

 

BUILDINGS PLACED SINGLY TO SHAPE THE BATTLEFIELD

In this example, taken from the Battle of Dybbol, buildings are spotted singly down the line to replicate the influence of small towns that defined the Danish front line.  

They also defined the battlefield into "lanes" of action. Here you see a Prussian command straddling two lanes as it approaches the Danish line, which has solidified and incorporated the buildings as anchor points. 

Ultimately, the Prussians had to overcome the units at these anchor points in order to break through the Danish line and gain freedom of maneuver.  Alternately, the Danes prioritized maintaining these key points in order to maintain the integrity of their defense. In other words, despite the buildings being "null" they still produced the same effect as if they had been conventionally occupied (without any of the fuss of special building fighting rules). 

 

So, dear reader, I offer this approach for your consideration. I invite you keep an open mind and give it a try. It is a dead-simple thing to implement and can deliver a new dimension to game play. 

Excelsior!

CONTENT PAGE UPDATE: 19th CENT RULES NEW PLAYER REF SHEET

Hungarian Revolt playtest game using the multi-stand VnB 19thC variant.

 

This post, dear readers, is just a bit of housekeeping to announce that I've added material to the 19th Century Rules content page.  The new material is posted in the Volley and Bayonet 19th Century Variant section....

...Scroll below the VnB cover on that page to get to it. 

 

There are two versions of the VnB 19thC variant, one that uses single stand units and a one that uses multi-stand units. Although both versions could be played using the standard player reference, I've added a separate Player Ref Sheet for the Multi Stand Variant  . This is an updated version of the reference sheet that was used during the playtest of the multi-stand variant game (pictured in the opening image).  I had intended to post this reference sheet sooner--but something shiny flickered into my field of vision and distracted me (once again). 

 

Post Script: Without going too far into the rules (which are posted on the content page), I thought I'd add a summary point about the multi-stand variant that would be of assistance to anyone with a casual interest.  Volley and Bayonet is a single-stand system, and the "standard" variant of my 19th Century version conforms to this single stand model. As such, there are no formations although there are unit postures: "normal" and "stationary" for infantry and artillery (cavalry has no special postures in base VnB).  Stationary units gain in firepower and melee, but as the name suggests, they don't move. You show that they are stationary with a marker in the single stand version. In my multi-stand variant, which is battalion-level, each battalion or cavalry regiment is two stands. Thus, you can show unit posture with the formation: "Line" equates to VnB's "Stationary" and "Depth" equates to VnB's "Normal" (both terms are used in the rules and ref sheets: they mean the same thing). I should add that I used the term "Depth" as opposed to "Column" in order to convey that the unit posture is not actually massed or columnar (in the Napoleonic sense).  Cavalry don't go "Stationary," but they can be deployed in line or depth (with some nuances for each, depending on the type of cavalry).  This model also allows for the added use of single stand units representing infantry half battalions (quite common for jagers and frei corps to be employed as such) and cavalry in squadrons or half-regiments (also quite common).  Single stand infantry can still go into line (with a marker), but single stand cavalry are single posture (per the ref sheet).

 

Exclesior!

ONE YEAR ON: FIRST DAY OF SPRING, 2021

 

Spring in New Hampshire: Snow Still Lingers

 

Greetings, fellow shut ins!  Not being one who keeps track of such things, I was surprised to find that today was the first day of spring.  This brought up recollections of where we were last year at this time--with everything shutting down and people who were fortunate enough to have jobs that allowed them to do so to work from home (in my case, it was at this time that  the university where I work made the announcement that it would shut down the campus--and we were all scrambling to shift the academic program and all other functions online).  In early April last year, given a moment of pause after the initial shock and scramble of the shut down, I posted about the first signs of spring amidst the harder times that were still to come.  One year hence, the first signs of spring have returned, but the trajectory is quite different. The window for registering for my vaccine shot opens on Monday; the campus has opened up (partially) under the usual precautionary protocols, and I am able to work from my office on campus again (I've never been a fan of working from home on a sustained basis), and we're looking forward to being able to do a bit of regional travel again as things start opening up.  As I was wandering about thinking about then vs now, I decided to take a few pix to mark the moment.  I also ruminated on hobby life, then vs now, which I get to at the end of this post: so skip to that to avoid the other bits if that is the main interest. As usual, you can clix pix for BIG PIX in this post...

Close inspection of the rock ledge in the back yard (garden) reveals the first signs of green sprouting up (I look forward to the first bits of color). 

 

Walking all the way back through the woods...

...to the back boundary of the property, the first shoots of green are starting to emerge from the forest floor. 

 

 

Roxy--crossed over the Rainbow Bridge in October 2019

 

I didn't post about it then, but when we entered 2020 we were still very much feeling the loss of our faithful family companion, Roxy, who had passed away in late fall 2019 (she was a Plott Hound mix, also known generically as a coonhound--she was a rescue).  So the sense of emptiness that descended on the outside world with the lockdown was added to by the vacancy that we were still dealing with in our own little world.

 Rose, who arrived in June, accompanying me on this spring 2021 tour of the grounds. 

 

By June of 2020, still during the pandemic, we were finally ready to bring another dog into our lives, and we were able to have Rose--another hound rescue--come up from Virginia. She is definitely a consolation of the pandemic, and was the first sign of things moving in a more positive direction.  Rose is another mix, advertised as a "coon hound" (a Blue Tick), but to our eyes she is much more Foxhound than anything else, and since nobody really knows and we aren't concerned with establishing her bona-fides, this works for us.

 

 Followers of this blog may recall the "coast to coast" crabapple tree--which is far from blossoming at this point...

...but showing first signs of spring, if you look closely enough. 

 

Romanian Army, Russo-Turkish War Era

Bringing things back around to toy soldiers, it was at this time last year that I embarked on my "pandemic project" of the Romanian Russo-Turkish War era army. Which  I managed to actually get done May  (faster than I had thought I would).  

So to mark the anniversary of that project, I've taken the leap and done something I've been pondering--I ordered up the necessary figures and paints to embark on my second and last (hopefully) "pandemic project": the Russian Army of the Russo Turkish War. Since I had already done the Romanian cavalry,  I had a bit of a head start with that project.  With the Russians, I'm starting from zero, so this will be a bigger project. The other major difference between this pandemic project and the last is that this project should carry me through to the "end" of the pandemic (fingers crossed), as opposed to the Romanians, which were to keep me going "into" the pandemic (with no end in sight). Let's see if I can get this project wrapped up sometime in June when we should be taking the turn to regular face-to-face gaming again.  As usual, this project will involve modifying and repurposing figures(would you expect anything less from me?).  So, dear readers, watch for more work in progress posts in the upcoming weeks. 

 

Excelsior!

PAST TO PRESENT: IN WHICH WALLY SIMON AND BOB WILTROUT REVIEW "BATTLESHIP"

A breakthrough in naval gaming!

 

Greetings, fellow shut-ins!  In this post, we delve into the archives to share something from the July 1981 newsletter of the Potomac Wargamers (Potomac Wargamers' Review, oftentimes known as PW Review). In it, Wally Simon and Bob Wiltrout chime in with perspectives gained from playing Battleship.  Anyone who has ever perused the pages of that long running newsletter will be acquainted with the entertaining, ironic, style that often permeates--Yessir, if you like true naval wargaming....you've gotta like BATTLESHIP! 

 

Although the Potomac Wargamers were no longer active during my time living in Silver Spring, Maryland in the early 2000s, I had the pleasure of meeting and gaming with Wally (albeit too briefly) and Bob. In this piece, you get a feel for what it was like being at the table when Bob or Wally was in the room--let's just say that they kept you on your toes, particularly if, like me, you hosted games using your own rules (ouch!). In this piece, aside from the usual jibes taken at each other, along the way they take also take swipes at naval gamers, claims of "realism" in gaming, and a few other trends that were only emerging at that time. Regardless of your position on these topics, the piece is a diverting read and an informative window on another time in the hobby. As usual, you may clix pix for BIG PIX to expand the images for easier reading. If the below images aren't readable, you can instead access a pdf version. Enjoy...

Excelsior!