Barrage 2025 After Action Report

 The HAWKs staged Barrage XXIX (really, 29?) on 26 and 27 September, at the Havre de Grace Community Center.  Things suddenly got busy after that, so this has taken me longer to write up and post than I had hoped.  I have been finding that things have expanded to fill most of my available time in retirement, so I’m not sure how I used to find time to go to work and still get anything else done. But here we are … 

Since we became a 2 day convention a few years ago, we now set the hall up on Thursday night.  We generally have about 20 tables set up for gaming in the main room, and there’s also a side room that gets used for an Art de la Guerre tournament on Saturdays.  I believe there were about 50 scheduled events and we had about 190 attendees overall.  

I had the opportunity to play in one game on Friday, a session of an ancient naval game using the Thalassa rules and some 1/300 scale 3-d printed ships, hosted by Walt Leach and a couple of his friends.

A convention is always a nice opportunity to play some games I wouldn’t have time to prepare myself.

Both of my sons came up from the Washington D.C. area on Saturday and helped me run a 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War game with Charge!. Once we had it set up we had a little time to spare, so Norman set up a quick game of DBA using his most recently completed armies, and William and I played it out.

For the NQSYW game this year I dipped into my standard resource, C.S. Grant’s Scenarios for Wargames, and selected Scenario 15: Reinforcements in the Defense (On the Table), a scenario I have used many times before.

The attacking force was provided by the Pragmatic Coalition (forces belonging to myself, Norman, and William) and the defenders by the Northern Alliance (forces belonging to Chris Palmer and Duncan Adams). 

The defenders occupied a large hill, seen here in the far center of the photo, and the attackers need to clear it before reinforcements arrive. As is common in this scneario, both side’s cavalry ended up in a scuffle in the clear area on the near side of the hill (from the point of view of the photo above).

The Pragmatic assault eventually carried the hill, but not without ferocious casualties. 

Everyone agree that the Pragmatic Coalition would not be able to hold the hill against the counterattack from the Alliance reinforcements which had deployed:

I did get a chance to add my most recently completed unit to the Alliance defenders, seen here shortly before they broke:

A few musketeers of the North Polenburg Queen Jennifer Regiment have become intermingled with them in the swirl of the battle.  Overall, it was an unusual run of this scenario; the forces on the hill held out longer than expected, and my sons and I were discussing the possibility of doing a little mathemtical modeling to see how unusual that was, but we haven’t done it yet.

I had good luck with the flea market this year.  I sold almost everything in the three boxes of stuff I brought, and went home with a few books and a couple of small bags of Airfix figures to add to projects befopre actual and potential. 

Now it’s time to prepare for Cold Barrage in March …

Barrage XXVII (2023) After Action Report

 Barrage XXVII (27!!?) is now in the books.  Held in Havre de Grace, Maryland on 22 and 23 September, and hosted by the HAWKs (of which club I am fortunate to be a member), Barrage was attended by something over 200 people, and was originally scheduled to host about 60 miniatures games and events.

Last year I was required to be traveling for work on the Friday of Barrage, but this year I made it to both days.  What I didn’t do was to get organized enough to run a game, so I was there ready to fill in and make sure that other peoples’ games ran.  I also had a secondary objective of getting some space back in my basement by moving some things that did seems likely ever to be painted or played with to new homes.

After setting up my flea market sales Friday morning, I ended up in a Second Punic War game using 10mm figures and Simon Miller’s To the Strongest rules, run by veteran HAWKs gamemmaster Kurt Schlegel.

This was only my second game of To the Strongest, but I recently acquired a 6mm English Civil War project and have bought the related rules For King and Parliament. Unfortunately for the Romans under my command, the wily Carthaginians had outflanked us, so I spent my time attempting to hold off a swarm of Numidian and other Carthaginian allied cavalry, with no great success.

Later in the afternoon, I joined a 25mm 1904 German-Herero War game (Southwest Africa), using a lightly modified version of The Sword and the Flame run by veteran gamemmaster (and author of a book on wargaming the Herero wars) Roy Jones.

Despite being ambushed by the Herero, the Germans were able to push forward and capture the hill in time to win the game on points. (This was a scenario balanced by victory conditions; the Herero were not going to rout the Germans.) This turned out to be the only victory I was involved in for the weekend. TSATF remains a reliably good rules set, and is capable of absorbing all sorts of tweaks and customizations, so I wasn’t surprised that this was a good game.

Our region was hit with a tropical storm on Saturday, which may have depressed the turnout somewhat, but both of my sons were able to make it up from the Washington, DC area.

We all ended up in a 15mm game pitting a 6th century Byzantine army against the Sassanid Persians, run by Jesse Scarborough and using a set of home rules.  The rules worked well enough, but the Byzantines (whom I immediately espoused, of course) found the persian cataphracts hard to deal with, and being outflanked atthe beginning by the scenario wasn’t helping.  We had a good time before Norman and I went down to a sad defeat at the hands of William and his colleagues.  

Later in the afternoon, William and I were in a 25mm medeival skirmish game run by HAWKs gamemaster Greg Priebe and using the Feudal Patrol card-driven rules.  Unfortunately for me and William, skirmish games can sometimes enter a death spiral due to the (not unrealistic) level of randomization, and it was our turn to be on the wrong end of that.   

We ended up fleeing (those of us who hadn’t already) about two hours into the game. While we were playing this, Norman had been in a reprise of the To the Strongest game I’d played on Friday.

There were still a couple of games going on; I think the last start was around 5:00PM.  

William wanted a picture before we split and went our separate ways.

So, that was barrage from my foxhole.  In addition to playing the four games (#42-#45 in this year’s log), I must have priced my flea market stuff appropriately to sell, since I went with a project in three boxes (60mm medievals, fare well in your new home) and four document boxes of stuff, and brought home nothing of that except one bag of old Ral Partha Renaissance troops, a set of rules, and an unbuilt card model of a castle.  I picked up some terrain, a few 1/72 plastics for a future DBA early Byzantines and opponents set, and a couple of used board games.  Even with that, the balance went to “less stuff than I started with”, so it was a success.  Overall, it was a great convention, and I am looking forward to our Cold Wars replacement, “Cold Barrage”, now scheduled at the same location for 2 March 2024.

Barrage XXV, 23-24 September 2022

 It is hard to believe that the HAWKs reached Barrage 25 this year; it still seems like only yesterday when someone suggested at a club meeting that a game day would be a good idea.  We went to two days a couple of years ago, and this year we had over 200 attendees including club members.

Unfortunately for me, I had to miss the Friday events, as I was returning from a work trip to Utah over which I did not have schedule control, and didn’t walk in the door at home until 9:30PM on Friday.  I was signed up to run a Not Quite Seven Years War game on Saturday morning.  While I had spent the weekend before the trip organizing my flea market offerings, and ensuring that I knew where all of the Bronze Age gear that my son Norman was going to need was stowed, I did not have the NQSYW scenario materials pulled out.

Therefore, I got an early start on Saturday morning, pulled all the stuff up from the basement, and got it loaded.  It still wasn’t early enough to avoid a bridge closure due to a running event, but at least I knew that it was likely to be happening this year.  Carrying around a stack of boxes loaded with Charge! regiments in 40mm does leave me wondering these days whether I should be recreating the NQSYW in something a little more portable, such as 1/72 scale plastics …

Chris Palmer brought the North Polenburger army, so the scenario involved an attempt by the Northern Alliance, here represented primarily by North Polenburg, to hold a bridge long enough to allow an evacuation after nightfall.  The Pragmatic Coalition was represented by Schoeffen-Buschhagen, Wachovia, and the Imperial Free City of Wiegenburg, as usual. 

The North Polenburg 32nd Dragoons made an impressive display on their gray horses, as usual.

They fought well, although there was one moment when the lone Wachovian Hussar standard bearer fought off a pair of Dragoons and preserved the flag; a commendation is no doubt in order.

As the battle progressed, the Coalition left flank gradually pushed in the Alliance’s right, in a series of cavalry charges and countercharges so typical of the rules.  The Wiegenburg Regiment (center right) in their white coats (and leading their mascot into the action) suffered heavy casualties in a direct assault on the Alliance line defending the bridge and were eventually forced to withdraw.  A follow-on attack by the Schoeffen-Buschagen Adelmann Regiment, though, was more than the defenders could withstand, and the game ended with the Alliance forces being compelled to withdraw in disorder, seeking an alternative crossing location.

It was, as always, nice to have the NQSYW back on the table.  As I’ll discuss below, there are several reasons why that project is on the top of my mind right now.

Norman has been working steadily on expanding the Bronze Age 1/72 project since last year’s Barrage, and he staged an afternoon game of Egyptians versus a Sea Peoples alliance using his home rules (NURD: Norman’s Universal Rules Design) which looked like it went well.  He ended up coming up prepared to rebase a few of my Egyptian chariots on the spot, to ensure that the Egyptians had the numbers needed.

My flea marketeering went well.  I arrived with four boxes of stuff and returned home with two, plus  $370 in pocket, so I was pleased.  It’s no fault of Reaper Miniatures, but I sold off a lot of Bones 5 figures.  I have concluded that I am more interested in recreating (or perhaps just creating) the vision of fantasy miniatures I had in my youth, so I expect to be putting my effort into expanding my vintage 25mm collection instead of trying to keep up with the latest styles.  

Afterword:

I mentioned that there were a couple of reasons why the NQSYW was on my mind.  Back in August, right after Gen Con, my pre-ordered copy of Henry Hyde’s Wargaming Campaigns arrived.  As might be expected with Henry Hyde, horse and musket campaigning is front and center, so perhaps this will finally kick me over the edge into doing another NQSYW map-based campign.

Additionally, William, my second son and the originator of the Pragmatic Coalition’s Imperial Free City of Wiegenburg, has landed a job in the Washington DC area, and will be returning to this general area next week.  His appointment is for at least a year, so his brother and I have been considering some possible agendas for game days, especially since Norman’s basement, as seen  back in June is suitable for miniatures.

September Overview — Zorn and 1/72 Fantasy/Medievals

 

September turned out to be a busy month in several ways, and I thought that I would blog about some of it as it was happening.  That, of course, did not turn out to be the case.  

I’ll start off with a disucssion of painting.  Included above is everything I painted for the month.  There are three 8-figure stands of 1/72 scale medieval city militia, from Strelets and Ultima Ratio, a single 1/72 scale Strelets axeman done as a fantasy individual, 3 Ral Partha orc leaders or champions from the 2015 (already?) Iron Wind Chaos Wars revival Kickstarter, a new Reaper science fiction drone for my Stargrave crew, and a couple of small pieces of scatter terrain. That’s 31 figures/pieces in a 30 day month, a rate I haven’t hit since the Before Times. I will do what I can with October, but matching that seems unlikely.

We had Barrage 24 on September 24th/25th.  I was involved in five games, and had eight total for the month, so that was good too.  One of the Barrage highlights was an opportunity to play in a game run by local GM Matt Kirkhart, who has been building his own miniatures out of bits of stuff from the craft store for many years.  This year’s scenario was a recreation of the climactic battle from the 1982 Conan movie, run as a 4-player co-op game.

We managed to save the captive princess and Conan survived, though it looked like he wasn’t going to be as effective a fighter as his companions for a while…

It was going to get its own blog post, but in the interest of getting the information out there at all, I wanted to mention that I have run across several references to the Zorn palette recently.  Anders Zorn was a Swedish painter of the late 19th/early 20th century famous for doing many of his painting with four colors of oil paints, a bright white, a bright red, an ochre yellow, and a bluish black.  With some advice my son gleaned from Internet painting discussions somewhere, I emulated this with four Reaper hobby paints:

The only blue you get is a faded denim/slate blue from mixing white and black; green is an olive from the yellow and the black, and caucasian skin tones are red and yellow with just a dash of black.

You end up with a somewhat subdued color range which seems to me to work well with medieval sorts of fantasy figures.  In the group shot that opens this post, the two stands of spearmen at the left rear were all done in Zorn colors.  It was a fun and relaxing little exercise, and a Zorn color selection is going in my travel paint kit next trip.

There are lots of ideas on my mind right now.  Norman has been working on Bronze Age DBA armies, so I am trying to get some Nubians painted.  Adding several 1/72 stands has me thinking about rounding out the planned armies for my Portable Fantasy Campaign, especially with the prospect of running something with 1/72 figures at Huzzah next year, and the Ral Partha orcs were intended to fill out a nicely themed one manufacturer orc army to give Nic Wright’s Fantastic Battles rules a try.  The Stargrave campaign is settle down as we learn the peculiarities of the rules and of our crews’ particular abilities.  I was in a co-op Rangers of Shadowdeep game at Barrage, and I’d like to get the pieces together to start playing the introductory scenarios.  So there’s lots to do, and I’ll try to be better about posting some of it…

 

Barrage 2019 Report

The Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKs) ran our annual game day/convention, Barrage, this past weekend, 27 and 28 September.  This is the second year that we have extended Barrage to a second day, and the experiment seems to be working out.  Unofficially, it was looking like we had about 190 attendees, up about 30 over last year.  We wanted to make sure that there were enough games to keep everyone playing, so our event organizer encouraged us to offer something extra.  I signed up to run three games, two 54mm medieval skirmish games, and one 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War game.  My elder son, Norman, volunteered for two sessions of mass fantasy battles with his home rules using 1/72 scale plastic figures.

Norman’s fantasy game on Saturday

Since this is only the second year that we have had the extra day, I was unsurprised to find that attendance built a little slowly on Friday, so I cancelled my first medieval skirmish game and jumped in a guest GM’s modern microarmor game, with a NATO vs. Russians scenario.  (Norman ran his six-player game for two players about that time.) The tank scenario was a night action, so spotting was difficult and ranges short, giving it the flavor of a knife fight in a phone booth.  It was interesting, and not my usual cup of tea.  I was absorbed enough in the play that I forgot to take any pictures, but the GMs had pre-assembled the battlefield from hexagonal tiles in a traveling case, a very clever technique.

As the afternoon progressed, more attendees were arriving, so I was able to run the second scheduled session of my skirmish game with all six positions filled.  This was done using my home rules, “Medieval Mayhem”.  The whole project was originally built in 2003 for the HAWKs’ Battles for Beginners Contest, a showcase of things that one could do with a limited budget—one hundred 2003 dollars, equivalent to about $150 in 2019.  I ran games with it regularly for quite a while, but the figures hadn’t been on the table since Historicon in 2014.  I’ve added a few bits and pieces since then, and I have a few more left to do, so I’d like to get this back into the rotation for conventions.  The only difficulty in that is that the 54mm terrain is bulky, so I can’t really take it too far away unless I’m driving. I used my usual scenario for this game, involving a group of French soldiers attempting to prevent an English foraging party from returning to a besieged castle (which is off the table).   This was a bad day for the English; their longbowmen were generally ineffective, so only a single knight from the foragers made it off the table on the castle edge, which that player considered to be a personal victory, given the circumstances. I discussed the rules with Ross Macfarlane before the convention, and have edited a slightly updated 2019 version, which I’ll try to figure out how to post here.  Mostly, though, the rules are still the same as the prototype version we wrote on a napkin over dinner just before the convention in 2003.

Medieval Mayhem game in progress

 After a night’s rest, I loaded up the car (with assistance from Norman) with all of the Not Quite Seven Years War figures we needed for the game.  The scenario was a riff on a game I fought with second son William a couple of months ago, in which a relief army (provided in this case by Schoeffen-Buschhagen and Wachovia representing the Pragmatic Coalition) needs to seize a set of three objectives defending by the besieging army (provided by the the forces of the Western League) in order to raise a siege.  We used A Gentleman’s War for the rules, setting it up with one of the recommended multi-player techniques—using one activation deck per pair of players. I was kept busy shuttling from one end of the table to the other refereeing, so I don’t have a good grasp of the overall action, but none of the three Coalition columns took their objectives.  After two and a half hours of play, the attackers were pretty thoroughly depleted, and we called it a resounding League victory.  I was unsurprised to find that one wing and the center ended up in an overlapping battle, and the players concluded that they needed to be on one activation deck.  They took care of that without my intervention, showing that they had a firm grasp on the rules by then.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time, but I feel like I could do a little better on the rules explanation.  The melee system is the fussiest part of a fairly simple set of rules, with three steps necessary (determination of advantage, melee, casualty recovery and results).  None of them are especially difficult, but it did seem to be the cause of most of the refereeing, so perhaps more practice on the explanation would help.

Norman finished his second fantasy mass battle game before I was done with the NQSYW, so he was able to help me clean up quickly.  We had some extra incentive to do that, because we were both signed up to play the next game on the table: Matt Kirkhart’s Bridge of Khazad-Dum.  Matt makes amazing miniatures from bits of wood and craft foam, and has been coming to Barrage since 2009 or so.  He started off doing ancients with these figures (styled “crafties”), but has brought fantasy lately.  Last year his dungeon crawl feature the idol from the cover of the AD&D 1st edition Player’s Handbook, and this year he went full Tolkien with two Moria scenarios, Balin’s Tomb and The Bridge of Khazad Dum.  Unfortunately I missed seeing the first.

In The Bridge, the nine chararacters of the Fellowship were played by five players, and Matt played the opposition, making it a co-op game.  I had Merry and Legolas.  The Fellowship simply had to cross a hall and the eponymous bridge, which looked easy enough until goblins started swarming everywhere.  Things looked grim as Gandalf was felled early on by a lucky hit by a goblin arrow, leaving us with nothing which would actually wound the Balrog, which presently showed up.  As can be seen from the pictures, he was an impressive bit of crafting, standing nearly a foot tall.  As we retreated step by step across the hall, cowed by the menace of the Balrog, we were lucky that the Balrog couldn’t roll a good die...we just ended up being pushed back, and, in fact, nobody was wounded.  Eventually, eight of the Fellowship made it out the door, just as in the book...so clearly they must have told Galadriel a tale with a few, um, embellishments, to give us the story that we have today.

After that, it was all over for me except for the clean-up.  One wind-down game of Roman chariot racing was going on as we broke down our tables, but everything was well in hand when I pulled out at 9:30 or so.  I needed to unload when I got home, but left things in piles until this morning. Running two different games with big figures and big terrain really tested my loadmaster skills with respect to my Toyota Yaris...Norman remarked that I should consider writing a sequel to our earlier book, Big Battles for Little Hands, which I should title Big Battles for Little Cars.