HAWKs Armies for Kids Painting — That’s a Wrap

Seven HAWKs gathered yesterday to finish painting the figures for the 2026 Armies for Kids (AfK) giveaway. Historicon is now just two weeks away, so I suppose one might suggest that we cut it a little close, but even a simple paint job on American War of Independence figures has taken a bit longer than last year’s Spanish-American War figures.

We save the best for last; the final batch was a mass of American militia (mostly the old Accurate figures) painted in a very non-uniform way.  The project coordinators can now finish up the basing and load the figures and other gear into the boxes.  Next year’s AfK project is expected to be 1/72 American Civil War, so that should be a little easier to paint.

Historicon 2019 AAR

This year is the the 25th anniversary of the HAWKs, and Historicon has moved to a new venue, the Lancaster County Convention Center in downtown Lancaster.  With those two points in mind, when the call for HAWKs games for the convention went out a few months ago, I decided to sign up.  Unfortunately, right after making that decision, my employer decided they need me in Kentucky through the Friday of the convention.  That left me with space for one game, and I elected to run a Not Quite Seven Years War game.  This was probably not the most considered decision I have made. 

I got back from my trip, which itself fell right after all of the excitement surrounding Norman's wedding, on Friday afternoon, with all of the collecting and packing for my game still to do.

I had considered the scenario in advance, and elected to use one of the tried and true C.S. Grant situations from Scenarios for Wargames, #15, Reinforcements in Defence: On the Table.  In my usual translation of Grant scenarios to Charge, that gave a force of four foot regiments and a cavalry regiment to the attackers, and three infantry regiments and a cavalry regiment to the defenders.  What I hadn't stopped to consider in advance was that I only have six complete regiments of infantry around the house.  I decided to assemble the assorted companies of incomplete units to get the seventh, but it did involve "reflagging" some of the Schoeffen-Buschhagen troops as belonging to some unspecified minor power with similar uniforms. 

I was happy to find that all of the necessary scenery was near the surface, although my scenery storage boxes now definitely need a reorganization, as ad hoc searching through them the last several games have induced a good deal of entropy into the system.  By 10:00 Saturday morning I had everything gathered, and attached it all to a hand cart we got for Gencon the other year.  I had heard that parking was likely to be a problem, so I wanted to be ready to haul the game as needed.

Hand cart test loaded

I got up to Lancaster about 12:30, and ran into my first problem. Driving by myself, I couldn't get the GPS system to recognize the parking structures on the fly, and Lancaster is a twisty little maze of one-way streets, all the same.  So it took a while to find the entrance of one of the official structures.  It was about three and a half rather long blocks from the convention center, so I set out to scout without reloading the cart.  The convention had supposedly arranged dropoff zones and volunteers to watch your stuff, but when I first drove by the convention center the spaces were all full, and I didn't really want to leave even a friend to mind my stuff for an uncertain amount of time while I circled looking for parking.  Anyway, I arrived on foot and found that my QRS code to pick up my badge worked without issue.  I found the HAWKs in a dim, cavernous, and noisy hall, one of two dedicated to gaming.  Since my game wasn't until 7:00, I decided that I would do whatever shopping I was doing and then go collect my hand cart and gear.  I ended up with a couple of 1/72 plastic figure boxes (Silk Road caravan and Etruscans, the latter a potential Sea Peoples tribe for the Bronze Age), a Deep Cuts Studio road pack (for the new table, as a test), a resin rowboat for Ghost Archipelago, and a couple of books.  I had a look around the flea market as well, but, perhaps fortunately, nothing seemed to be immediately necessary or useful.

I can't resist new 1/72; the Airfix imprinting remains...

After that, I walked back to the car and loaded my cart.  As you can see from the pictures, the front wheels are small, so dragging it three blocks across city sidewalks was an adventure.  I dragged it up to the HAWKs space to await set up time.

Eventually, I got things set up.  As can be seen from the pictures, I used the dozen company movement stands to keep things moving along.  By Saturday night most people were starting to run down, so I had only three players of a possible six, so everyone had plenty to do.  The attackers got two players.  I had several situations arise where Charge!'s old school mechanics were troubling players, so I'm not sure that it was one of my better games, a bit disappointing after all the labor to haul it and set it up.

Coalition forces deploy to seize the hill

Anyway, this scenario is a tough one on the defenders, as they are pretty much guaranteed to lose everything initially on the table in the effort to buy time to use the reinforcements effectively.  The Pragmatic Coalition forces started right off with an attempt to charge the gun position at the end of the Alliance line with the Schoeffen-Buschhagen (S-B) hussars, which ended up in a complicated accidental melee with advancing Alliance dragoons.  The hussars attacking the gun were met with a withering blast of canister, and the gun position was secure for the moment.

S-B Hussars charge, bravely but futilely

Undeterred by this failure, the Coalition commander next sent in the Wachovian light infantry to seize the gun.  They succeeded, but were driven off in turn by the first reinforcements to arrive, more Alliance dragoons.  A complicate cavalry melee developed at the end of the alliance position (typical in most of the times I've used this scenario).  Meanwhile, Coalition infantry rolled forward, generally holding up well in the firefight with the Alliance infantry.

Cavalry melee develops as Alliance dragoons attempt to buy time

As the Alliance commander sounded the retreat at the hill, the cavalry melee broke up, and new Alliance infantry arrived on the scene.

Alliance reinforcements begin to deploy for battle

However, this had taken quite a while, and sunset was close.  (See below.)  As the armies made ready for a rough night on the field, a small party of Alliance dragoons had pressed forward to find that the survivors of the von Nordhafen regiment had retired.  The other leading Coalition regiment was near to breaking as well, and the issue the next day, when the infantry would have been nearly equal, was still in doubt.  Possibly the Coalition forces would have been able to use their superiority in artillery and cavalry to drive off the Alliance army, but vital time had already been lost...

Situation as night falls; hill remains contested

It turned out that the convention center had booked the main gaming halls for another event on Sunday, so we had to clear out by a hard deadline of midnight.  With the logistics involved in stowing 550 individually based figures for travel, I didn't want to press the issue, so we called the game around 10:30.  One or two more turns wouldn't have been decisive in any case, so the Alliance was deemed to have succeeded in their orders to hold until nightfall.  The next day here would make for an interesting scenario; perhaps I'll have a go at translating it into AGW for fun and play it soon.  

Also, I'm not a night owl, and it was a somewhat tense drive home, well beyond my usual bed time.  Duncan Adams helped me out by watching my cart while I got the car.  I wasn't thrilled by running out of the regularly inhabited zone of the downtown district at 11:30, but I got back to the convention center with the car, where I found that the designated parking was all blocked by non-Historicon people.  Nevertheless, we got things loaded up.  Rough roads on the way back were hard on the travel boxes; the cavalry, in particular, don't have enough steel area to "grab" the magnets of the boxes for their weight.  Happily nothing was damaged, but the appearance upon arriving home was alarming. 

Rough roads home from Lancaster

Overall, I'm cautious about the new venue.  It's much nicer than the decaying Host had been, but the difficulties around parking and unloading don't appear to be easy to address.  The center also had three of six escalators malfunctioning, and an elevator problem would have been serious, given that the spaces used were stacked on four levels.  If I go again next year, I'd prioritize running a more portable game, just for some extra margin with contingencies.

The calm after the storm: Some painting

I mentioned in my previous post that it has been a hectic time at work.  We finally ran the week-long exercise I'd been preparing last week, so I reached the weekend tired but calm.

I ended up taking up my brush and finishing two figures from my deep backlog:

Irregular friar and Marx merry man

 and the back:

Not my best side...

I checked my painting records, and it would appear that the last time I finished anything for this project was in 2012.  The last game to be put on the table was in 2014, at Historicon.

One of three games from Historicon 2014

The Historical games that year involved three narratively linked scenarios, starting with the one pictured above, about raiding for provisions.

I was considering the possibility of running Medieval Mayhem at Gencon next year.  The transport is right, albeit somewhat bulky, but would be reasonable if we chose to drive, and if the hotel situation allowed for hauling things to the table.

Anyway, with those guys done, it should be back to 25mm Due Bellorum figures next...

Historicon 2014 Report

The convention report is a time-honored HAWKs tradition, so here is my 2014 Historicon report. I'm pleased to report, by the way, that the blog entry software I use has recently been updated to correct a problem it had been having with uploading pictures, so I hope to be back to posting on a more regular basis.

This is the third year Historicon has been in Fredericksburg, and the convention center is apparently trying to work with us on improving some things. The most important innovation this year was temporary carpeting in the main gaming area. This reduced the noise level to something that wasn't immediately giving me a headache, so that's an improvement. On the other hand, they reduced the number of water stations and didn't seem to be keeping them filled, which was a slip from last year. Bathrooms continue to be a problem...

Getting to Fredericksburg is an adventure, and I don't mean that as a positivie comment. The convention center is just off I-95, which is the only practical divided highway route from the north. Construction between DC and Fredericksburg continues for the 3rd year, and the last 30 miles took me an hour an a half, from noon to 1:30 on a Thursday. If you can't get through during work hours on a week day, when can you?

Arriving as I did around 1:30, I planned to do my shopping first, check out the flea market, and then see if there was something interesting to play in the evening. My shopping list was pretty short, some bases, some boxes of 1/72 scale plastic figures, and an advance copy of Osprey's new medieval rules, Lion Rampant by Dan Mersey. I had hoped that these would be at the con; the Amazon release date is in late September. I'll have a read-through review later, and hope to try them out within a few weeks.

I had hoped to get into a game on Thursday night, but it turned out that the two games in the HAWKs room I wished to play both filled with non-HAWKs, so no fill-ins were necessary. Norman had arrived by then, so we took a walk around and then went and checked into our hotel.




While there were a lot of interesting looking games, my eye was caught by this particular SF game on our evening walkaround, since I hadn't seen a table with a monorail previously.

With an afternoon game on Friday, I was constrained to play something early and short in the morning.





I ended up in an Aerodrome game. Despite my kids having played regularly, and despite it having been a convention staple for years, I'd never played. I picked up the mechanics quickly. It's based on the old Ace of Aces book game, with which I have been familiar since it was new back when I was in college (and saber toothed tigers stalked us on the way to class...). Norman joined me for this game. Since we were assigned planes on opposite sides, he also shot me down once. I was shot down twice in rapid succession, so it seems that my predictive skills are going to require some work before my next try at this.

We picked up a cache of Zvezda Hundred Years War 1/72 figures in the morning flea market.

The first of the three games I ran was on Friday afternoon. I signed up to do three different Hundred Years War skirmish games using 54mm plastic figures and our Medieval Mayhem home rules.





This first game had only 4 of 6 possible players, and two of those were HAWKs fill-ins, so I was concerned. The scenario involved an English raiding party attempting to collect livestock from a village to provision a castle about to be attacked.





The raiders collected some of the necessary livestock, but were eventually fought off by the French, who were arriving on the field throughout the scenario.

Norman and I had both signed up for an evening game with a hypothetical Zulu War scenario. The rules to be used were Black Powder, which neither of us had tried. I think he was considering them as a possibility for a 19th century imagi-nations project he's doing.





He ended up commanding the main body of the British, and in the photo above had taken a defensive position.




Unfortunately, my troops, extending his line, crumpled under a fierce Zulu assault and we were rolled up. Sometimes you win, sometimes Zulus...

There wasn't enough time on Saturday to play anything before I needed to set up my second game.



This involved a follow-on to the first scenario, in which a group of raiders had to cross the board (or at least most of it) with a convoy of cattle and sheep. Again, the French were converging on the board, so that the longer the English took, the more opposition they faced.


Here a reluctant Britains cow slows down the proceedings...

This turned out to be a tense and well-balanced scenario, insofar as any skirmish game (with an inherently wide range of possible outcomes) can be balanced. The English wiped out one of the three French retinues, which game them an opening to get their farm animals off the board for a solid victory.

I had all six positions filled for this one, though it still included two HAWKs to fill in.

Since the game only ran a little over two hours, there was time to check the flea market one more time before resetting for the evneing game. I found someone getting rid of a large stockpile of Caesar 1/72 Bronze Age sets of various sorts, so I swept them up on speculation (and as requested by Norman).

Norman was running two Bronze Age games, and is seen here with the first one:





My third game had six of six players. The scenario involved a raiding party from the castle attempting to burn a siege tower and a stock of timbers and parts for a second siege engine.





The English raiders eventually managed to burn the tower, but didn't burn the extra supplies. With excessive losses on their part, this was declared a marginal French victory. I was happy to see these figures on the table; my records show they were last out for Cold Wars two years ago.

We stayed around on Sunday for one final game (and lunch with some other HAWKs) before heading home. I got into a WWII skirmish game with card-driven mechanics. It's under development by my friend Buck Surdu.





Unfortunately, my luck with cards appears to be no better than my luck with dice, and my German sentries (shown above) were shot down before their first activation. I had better luck with a pair of officers inside the building, but it was still a pretty firm British victory.

The drive home was slow, due to traffic, so I may reconsider Sunday gaming next year. Overall, though, it was still a good convention. One other bit of gaming news came out of it: The HAWKs are now planning a road trip to Huzzah in Maine next May, so I've volunteered to coordinate our events with the convention.

Historicon 2013 After Action Report

Historicon felt like it came as a surprise this year. When the HAWKs started planning, I had no idea of whether I'd actually be able to make it, or whether either of my sons would be able to make it, so I decided to go safe. I signed up to do three small sessions of Not Quite Seven Years War games, each intended for six players, figuring that I could handle six players by myself.

As the convention approached I realized that that was as far as I had gotten. So, a week before the show I pulled out my trusty copy of C.S. Grant's Scenarios for Wargames. A quick look through gave me the three scenarios that I needed for the convention, all trusted ones I had run previously: #1 Positional Defence (based loosely on Fontenoy), #15 Reinforcements in Defence: On the Table, and #32 Convoy -- Wagon Train. Past experience has suggested that the following translation factors work well for 40mm games on a 6x10 table with my bases:

Regular infantry : Units x 1.5 = Charge companies
Light Infantry: Units = Charge companies
Heavy cavalry: Units x 1.5 = Charge squadrons
Light cavalry: Units = Charge squadrons
Guns: Guns x 0.75 = Charge guns

Since I'm using existing NQSYW units, sometimes I'll round up or down depending. For example, the Fontenoy scenario needed two regiments of defending infantry, and one of those has a grenadier company. I let the attackers round their guns up to balance that, not that it ended up doing them any good, as we shall see.

With that bit of planning out of the way, I got ready for the convention on Wednesday by staging all of my transport boxes ready to load. I was out of the house by 10:00 on Thursday, started off on the 150 mile drive. I had hoped that would put me through Washington at slack traffic, but there was still a five or more mile backup south of the city for some construction. Nevertheless, I made it in a reasonable amount of time.

I spent Thursday afternoon having a look around at things. I was relying on Norman to prevent my from buying anything except bases on paint, so I was a little hesitant to brave the dealers area without him. I'll just say, with respect to shopping, that I did manage to buy almost nothing other than the utility stuff on my shopping list, with the exception being a couple of Parroom Station ten-legged Martian hounds for my pending Barsoom skirmish project. I also found a few old wargaming hardcover books in the flea market, but overall, I was restrained.





Norman arrived on Thursday evening. We weren't playing anything in particular, so we set up a quick Bronze Age encounter battle, so that he could practice his home rules before his official games on Saurday.





This ended up in a Hittite victory; it's probably time to paint some more Egyptian chariots.





I signed up for one game on Friday. Nancy Ott, a longtime HMGS-East gamer, runs a three-dimensionalized version of the old Ariel/Avalon Hill boardgame Mystic Wood. I sold a bunch of medieval 25s to her and her husband several years ago, some of which appear in this game, so it was an opportunity to visit with some of my old figures.





I didn't notice in the program that this was intended as a kid's game, but I didn't turn out to be stealing a place from any kid, and the boardgame was intended for general play. I think I had a copy at one time, before the great boardgame purges...Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I started wondering whether I could do the same sort of thing with some other period, say, Darkest Africa...The game finished up with plenty of time to spare for setting up my own Friday evening game.

Of the three scenarios, I chose to run The Wagon Train first, as being the one most likely to benefit from Norman's limited availabilty as an extra gamemaster.





I used one ravelin from my fortress set up to represent the convoy's goal. Norman randomized the raiders' arrival, and we looked it over to see if it seemed like a plausible game. Since it did, we carried on.

We ended up with six players. Oriented by the picture above, the convoy chose to take the road to the left of the picture. Most of the attackers arrived from the far right corner, except for the light troops, who arrived around the middle of the left side.




Overall, then, the convoy was fighting a rear guard action against the heavies to their left, but was stalled in forward progress against the lights who popped up right in front of them. After some extended maneuvering (16 turns in Charge!; most games last less than 8 in our experience), the raiders finally wore down the escort and charged the wagons just as the reserve cavalry was released from the fortress, about two turns too late to make a difference.



We cleaned up and headed back to the room for the night.

Norman was running his first game, a general Egyptian/Hittite battle first thing in the morning. I didn't have a ticket, but only four of the registered players showed up, so I was able to drop in and command a few of my own Egyptians.






The Caesar plastic miniatures attracted a fair amount of attention. 1/72 scale gaming is still pretty rare at the conventions. Given that modern techniques make paint adhesion easy enough, and given the nice scuplting and light wieght of boxes of the finished miniatures, I find this a little surprising. After an extended battle, the Egyptians eventually eked out an advantage over the Hittites for a victory.

Norman needed to reset after the game for a second, more complicated scenario, so I chose to run the Fontenoy game next, as it was the easiest to set up single-handed.




By that point in the convention I was getting tired, and the quantity of pictures was decreasing rapidly. I only had a few players, so I ended up filling out the game with spare HAWKs. We had run this scenario recently at home. Despite a strong numeric advantage, the attacking forces of the Pragmatic Coalition managed to be defeated by the defending Northern Alliance troops. Assaulting the central town was too costly, and an early unfortunate deployment left their artillery, vital to supporting an attack against towns and redoubts, out of action for several turns.

I reset the board and the troops for the third scenario. When I ran that one last year, the defenders definitely dawdled with their reinforcements. This time around, they didn't seem to, but the attacker's willingness to take casualties allowed them to overwhelm the hill position before infantry could reach it. Here's a shot of the Schoeffen-Buschhagen jaegers skirmishing up to the right hand end of the defender's position, held by a company of the North Polenburg Queen Jennifer Regiment.





I don't have a picture of the last game I played at the convention, but I closed out the weekend with a 1/6000 scale naval game run by fellow HAWK Duncan Adams, using home rules to resolve an Anglo-Italian WWII action. I was reminded that WWII naval was one of my earliest interests; I may have to dig out my own ships and do something...

One observation was that the ancients games were all heavily registered. I am thinking it's time to let the NQSYW rest for a little while (at conventions), and run something Sword and Shield, probably Dark Ages Saxons and Vikings.

It was a pretty good convention overall. I was involved in 7 games in 4 days, so that I am up to about 20 for the year, which isn't too bad. I didn't add much new stuff to my work queue, but did get things needed to move over stuff off the queue. I am inspired to be painting and preparing. What else can you ask for?

Historicon After Action Report

      I tried to keep my preparations for Historicon simple and flexible this year, which turned out to be a good idea, as Norman starting a job the same week as the convention could have been a problem. As it turned out, though, we would have had some difficulty packing everything if we had needed to put a third person in the Yaris for the trip. I signed up to run three games, all Not Quite Seven Years War scenarios, using approximately the same troops and scenery pool. I wasn't sure what the scenarios would be when I signed up, but I did, at least, already have the troops and scenery in hand. 

      As the convention approached, I realized that I had left the hotel reservations until too late. All of the near area hotels were booked, so I eventually (the week before the convention) resorted to Expedia and got a room at the Quality Inn, about two miles away. This didn't turn out to be too onerous, but I had better see about booking Cold Wars now if I want to be at the Host. I also realized around the beginning of July that I had better decided on what the scenarios would be. NQSYW and Charge work beautifully with C.S. Grant's scenario books, so I went through them looking for something suitable, not requiring new terrain to be built. I ended up settling on Scenario 10, The Important Bridge, from Scenarios for All Ages (the Red Book), and scenarios 15 and 12 (Reinforcements in Defence and Flank Attack) from Scenarios for Wargames (the Green Book). For reasons which will be clear later, I had some hesitation over the Flank Attack scenario, based on Frederick the Great's victory at Leuthen in the real Seven Years War. However, I was pleased to note that the scenarios all used very similar force levels, and therefore could be narratively linked into a short campaign even though I wasn't going to track the casualties across the games as we did with the St. Michel campaign at Cold Wars in 2010.

      Norman's new job came up while I was working scenarios and hotel arrangements. This, while generally very good news indeed, did cause him to need to cancel his two Bronze Age chariot games. We got him sent off to his new dwelling the Sunday before the convention. This left just me and William to pull our troops and scenery together before packing the car on Thursday morning.

William's Temple of the Golden Idol of Baga-Baga in a tray for transport

A peek inside the Temple

Since we had no particular schedule to keep, we finally pushed off from home around 10:30, with two last-minute errands to do on the way. I had hoped that the early afternoon would have been a reasonable time for traffic, but we found that traffic on 95 was at a standstill starting about 20 miles from Fredericksburg. We jumped off and tried Route 1 instead, but found that to be almost as bad. As a result, it was about 3:30 by the time we finally made it to the convention. After picking up badges and finding the HAWKs room, we did a sweep of the dealers' area. I picked up some new Eureka 28mm Dark Ages figures and a pack of new Sash and Saber 40mm Indian leaders for the F&IW. We then signed up for games for Friday. Game availability was somewhat limited. William also tried to sign for a Thursday evening game, but there wasn't anything available except Battletech by then. William's overall comment was that there were not enough ancients games on the schedule, so he intends to work on his 40mm Vikings before Cold Wars. 

      Since we couldn't find anything we wanted to play, and the table schedule for NQSYW the next day was available, we decided that we would set up a small NQSYW pickup game. By the time we were done setting up, we had three other players, so I dropped back into gamemaster mode rather than play myself. In keeping with the C.S. Grant theme, we used Scenario 41 from the Green Book, Chance Encounter (perhaps better known as "Sawmill Village"). Each side picked six units from a short list of possibilities. Interestingly, force composition turned out to be identical, with two squadrons of dragoons, two line infantry companies, a light infantry company, and a gun on each side. Schoeffen-Buschhagen and North Polenburg provided all forces, without the need to break out any allies. William took command of the S-Bs. Ultimately the S-Bs won the race to the town, at the cost of one of the dragoon squadrons, lost while delaying the enemy infantry. Once established in the buildings, the remaining N-Ps did not have sufficient strength to drive them out, and elected to withdraw in good order. While we have played Charge with the past few months, I was glad of an opportunity to remind myself of several of the fine points of the rules before running my "official" games.

Forces preparing to enter for our pick-up game

Cavalry melee at the north end of Graukopf

      I signed up for a 1:00 game on Friday, so I took time upon arrival to set up the scenery for my 7:00 game. Obviously this would not have been possible if the tables had needed to have been more tightly scheduled. With some help from William, the table was set fairly quickly, and I used the spare time to finish up my shopping agenda. I picked up three boxes of 1/72 scale plastic figures, mostly Vikings, to provide a Hordes of the Things fantasy army for Norman's proposed grand fantasy campaign in the Hyborian mode, which I've dubbed "Myboria". Our HotT armies are generally on double-depth bases for the infantry for a nicer appearance, so we generally need more figures than we would with the "stock" basing. 

30mm Austrians

     My 1:00 game was somebody else's retro-tricorne game, in this case actually using a 1971 set of rules called Tricorne to run a Seven Years War scenario with 30mm figures. Tricorne uses rosters to track casualties by the man, so it's probably not something I'd use at home, but we managed to have it running by the third or fourth turn without too much gamemaster intervention. I still needed to leave somewhat before it was done, to ensure that I had enough time to lay out all the troops for my own first scenario. 

      The first scenario, The Important Bridge, was deemed to be the start of the little narrative campaign. I had six players for this one, the only one of my games to actually fill during the weekend. Four forces, two from each side, converge on a bridge needed to enable (or prevent) further operations. A total of three infantry regiments, a cavalry regiment, two guns, and a few light troops are present on each side. I used this scenario once before, at Barrage in 2010, but I don't have detailed notes about the outcomes for comparison. In this running, overly bold use of the light infantry on both sides led to their quick demise. The detached Coalition force, composed almost entirely of Wachovians, forded the river downstream of the bridge and seized the walled chateau just ahead of the advancing North Polenburgers. After an extended cavalry melee on the Coalition side of the bridge, the Alliance's North Polenburg dragoons were compelled to withdraw across the bridge to rally. The Coalition cavalry pursued, and managed to force the bridge in the teeth of the advancing Alliance Stanzbach-Anwatsch infantry. This turned out to be the final straw for the Alliance forces, and they ceded the crossing to the Coalition. Norman turned up partway through the game, which was handy for me as I pressed him into service as an additional gamemaster.

Early in the battle; North Polenburg dragoons crossing the bridge, Alliance light forces advancing to the left of the river

      We had a successful trawl through the flea market on Saturday morning. I ended up with a small collection of painted 40mm stuff, including two cannons and three musketeers for my Renaissance project. Norman found a Bronze Age city/fortress wall, with two towers, a gate, and a breached section, which should enhance our chariot games. William got a real deal on a Playmobile pirate ship, which is large enough to to use with his Sash and Saber 40mm pirate collection. I also ended up picking up one last thing from the dealers, Dux Bellorum, a new set of Dark Ages rules from Osprey. It was a bit of a gamble, but I figured I already had a set of possible armies for it (since it stretches to cover the early Viking raids on the Saxon kingdoms), so it wouldn't tend to cause me to buy anything else new. (And if it inspires painting, that would be a bonus.) I hope to give it a try and post a review sometime soon. 

     I only had two actual players show up for my 1:00 scenario. I pressed William into playing, and enlisted an OSW blogger who stopped by for a look. This scenario involved the Alliance in a holding position on a ridge, waiting for the arrival of reinforcements. As it turned out, the Alliance players found the attacking Coalition cavalry sweeping around the ridge at the left end of their position, and blocked them with their own cavalry, more or less as I expected. Also as expected, this melee took several turns to work out. They decided to send in the lead reinforcing infantry regiment to back up the cavalry, which they agreed, in retrospect, might not have been the optimum decision. As is played out, this left the force on the ridge unsupported for at least a few turns too long, and when they collapsed and the assaulting Coalition infantry took the ridge, they were unable to muster an adequate counterattack. The game only ended up taking three hours, so we had two hours to sort the figures back out and reset the scenery for the third game. My sons then departed for their own 7:00 game, leaving me to run this one by myself.

Coalition forces massed for the attack in Scenario 2, Reinforcements in the Defence

     As I mentioned earlier, I'd had some hesitation over the choice of the third scenario. It is a surprise scenario, where one side discovers as the scenario opens that their objective is not what they thought it was, but turns out to be to simply survive. I ended up putting the one repeat player, who had won the previous battle, in the position of the greatest danger. He was a good sport about the whole business, but there was undoubtedly some consternation on the Coalition side when they discovered that all the troops visible on the set up table off to the side ended up appearing on turn one in a corner of the table that had been covered in gaming litter, such as spare Quick Reference Sheets, dice, and pencils. Norman and I have played this scenario at home, although I never got a battle report posted. It ended up in a solid victory for the attacking player. This time, though, almost all the luck was with the Alliance players. As mentioned in the separate report, they rolled the Coalition up like a carpet. I don't know that I would pull this one out for a convention again. There are too many ways a surprise can go wrong. My sons showed up after their game ended, just in time to help me pack the troops away all neat, orderly, and ready for their next deployment. We took the time to pack the car carefully into its travel load configuration before heading back to the hotel and collapsing into bed. 

     We didn't go back to the convention in the morning, having too much to do before the end of the day. As a result we headed north around 9:30, and William and I got home around noon, so the trip home was considerably easier than the trip down. We listened to the latest View from the Veranda podcast on the trip back. The topic of its discussion strayed to "the graying of the hobby". I'll just add the observation that each of my official games had two of the sub-25 crowd in them, none of whom appeared to have been press-ganged into accompanying a parent or otherwise coerced. For an advertised old school tricorne game, that doesn't strike me as being a harbinger of doom... 

    Now that the convention is over, I notice that most of my shopping was associated with my Dark Ages project. Once we figure out when Ross is coming down again, which will be an opportunity for the joint projects, I am thinking that next year's other convention games may be something other than NQSYW.

(Pictures added, 30 July; final version)

Disaster at Friedrichsburg--Coalition Army Routed

After forcing back the Alliance army in the second scenario, the third opened with the Coalition Army poised to sweep aside a thin covering force consisting of the understength survivors of the Stanzbach-Anwatsch infantry, a single squadron of Allied dragoons, and a couple of guns.

Coalition forces were informed that they were experiencing command difficulties, with the Wachovians restive after receiving heavy casualties in the earlier actions, which the Prince Palatine did not feel advanced his own agenda. "My quarrel is with Rosmark and North Polenburg", he remarked. A Fredonian regiment had arrived to augment the Coalition advance as well, requiring additional coordination.

Unfortunately for the Coalition, the Alliance commander had pulled off a coup; the missing regiments of the North Polenburgers were discovered at dawn, positioned in attack formation on the left flank of the Coalition army. Doubtless the Wachovian Hussars, seen above just before being ridden down by the North Polenburg dragoons, had been unable to scout adequately due to the need to reorganize after the previous encounters.

With untypical zeal, the North Polenburgers fell on the unprotected flank of the Coalition army, relentlessly rolling up the Coalition line regiment by regiment. The Coalition commanders desperately tried to reorient to provide an effective defence, but to no avail. With two thirds of the Coalition infantry shattered, the Schoeffen-Buschhagen Prince's Dragoon Guards charged the oncoming Polenburg horde, buying enough time to allow the shattered survivors of the Coalition army time to withdraw.

Lady Sarah's Robins, the Stanzbach-Anwatsch light infantry (seen above in fighting positions at the woods edge) received a special mention in dispatches. They seemed to be everywhere on the field, and maintained a galling fire against the flanks of the Coalition forces which contributed greatly to the ultimate Alliance victory.

Invasion of Stanzbach-Anwatsch continues....

After successfully crossing the border into Stanzbach-Anwatsch, the Pragmatic Coalition pressed forward toward their initial objective, Friedrichsburg. Encountering an S-A blocking force in a strong position on a ridgeline, the PC forces immediately launched an attack. Although North Polenburg troops in the area hastened to the sound of the guns, they were ultimately too late to prevent the Coalition troops from seizing the ridgeline. Unable to mount a successful counterattack, the surviving Alliance troops withdrew to reposition themselves for a more considered riposte...

Pragmatic Coalition forces cross into Stanzbach-Anwatsch

The first game in our three game NQSYW was played last night. The Historicon venue this year does not have the best acoustics, and I found that I spent most of my time scurrying around the table so that I could hear player questions, and both photography and my grasp of the big picture of the action suffered as a result.

I chose Scenario 10, The Important Bridge, from the Red Book, C.S. Grant's Scenarios for All Ages, as the first game. A Pragmatic Coalition force of three infantry regiments, a cavalry regiment, a (Wachovian) hussar squadron, a light infantry company and two guns attempted to sieze a bridge from a similarly sized opposing force, here represented by a Northern Alliance mix of troops from Stanzbach-Anwatsch and North Polenburg.

I am amused by how often these imagi-nation troops fight true to form, regardless of whether their commander knows their history or not. In the shot below, the dashing Wachovian Hussars have their moment of glory, charging into the rear of a mass of infantry from the N-P Hawks regiment, only to be charged in turn by the 32nd N-P dragoons. Their horses may be showy but their saberwork needs more practice, since they were defeated in the resulting melee. In fact, they had a perfect night, losing every melee in which they were involved. Unfortunately for the brave hussars, they had nowhere to go, and were caught by reserve infantry while rallying and reduced below strength.

Eventually, after ferocious casualties on both sides, the Pragmatic Coalition forced the bridge and broke the morale of the oposing commanders, who elected to withdraw. It is probably a good thing that I wasn't planning on actually linking these scenarios with carryover of casualties; there wouldn't be much left for the follow-on battles.

New orders received!

The colonels of the regiments observing the border of Stanzbach-Anwatsch gather to meet the courier from the Pragmatic Coalition headquarters. Irritated by the diplomatic vacillation of Stanzbach-Anwatsch, the high command has issued orders to invade. This in retaliation for S-As recent diplomatic defection and support of the Northern Alliance during the siege of Adelheim.

Action at Graukopf

Schoeffen-Buschhagen dragoons ride through Graukopf during a chance encounter with troops of the Northern Alliance today. After a sharp encounter, troops of the Pragmatic Coalition held the town as Alliance troops withdrew...

Historicon 2011 AAR-- Photo Gallery

These pictures ended up coming up in reverse chronological order, and I apologize for just leaving them that way.

We therefore start at the end, with a couple of shots of my team and our diorama from the Iron Paintbrush competition.  We were given the randomly selected design elements of Magenta, Stars, Snow, and "It hurts when I pee...", so we ended up with a rider having paused for a rest stop, in his magenta tunic and starred shield, having an unhappy encounter with a knife-wielding gremlin or goblin or some such...

Long time HAWK Buck Surdu was inducted into the HMGS Legion of Honor, and we had time before the Iron Paintbrush to attend the ceremony.

 The defenders of the siege's rear area driving off the advance guard of the relief force in Game 5...

Scenes from the sieges interspersed with a few interesting sights ...

Matt Kirkhart's amazing homebuilt ancient game; last year Cunaxa, this year Megiddo. The rules were a modified Morschauser, but, alas, I didn't have time to play.

The Northwest Frontier, in a version of history I don't seem to have encountered in school...

William's Lego pulp game for kids

William, in his first outing as a gamemaster

The Freedonian mortar; Geoff's had this for ten years, and I think this was the first time we've actually had a reason to put it on the table

Wachovians sortie

Digging a battery, overseen by a Stanzbach-Anwatsch engineer officer in a brown coat

View from the wall #1, far focus

View from the wall #2, near focus

Wiegenburgers man the ravelin...again and again

 Here's a little grouping of the plastic armies for kids give-away project.  We were given a huge box of old comic book American Revolution plastic figures last year, from the Wally Simon estate, with the intention of getting them into the hands of kids.  So the HAWKs painted them, grouped them into armies, and then staged games in which some lucky kids went home with rules, scenery, and two armies.

Norman in a game

Duncan's WWI 1914 table

Buck Surdu's frog game

 And the last group is from the wagon train game at the beginning of the convention ...

The Lost Gun

Complicated maneuvers are usually a bad idea in Charge

Wachovian escorts shake into line ahead of the wagons

The lost gun arrives on the table

The Stanzbach-Anwatsch infantry