GenCon 2012 Report

I attended GenCon this year on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; an easy 50 mile drive each day. I carpooled with my friend Craig. We gamed a lot in the past, but our schedules have prevented this for years; it was good to reconnect and catch up. It was the first time I've done more than just briefly walk through the Convention Center. It is quite impressive. My only real frame of reference is Origins, which I've attended many times. GenCon is much bigger. The vendor area is probably three times as large as the one at Origins. I walked through it each day and am still not sure that I saw everything. I did buy 8 Ospreys for $2.00 each and a very good copy of the Funken uniform book covering uniforms through history. It's in French, a language I neither speak nor read, but it has a lot of great illustrations.
There are many more folks in costume at GenCon, at times it seemed that as many as 30% of the people moving around were in costume.
I played the newly released Spartacus board game; fun game. A friend demoed the game at the con and received a copy for his effort. It will be a better game with friends as a big part of it is to hamper the other players by any means available, and we all behaved in the demo game and didn't treat anyone too poorly.
I also played a game of the new Bolt Action WW II skirmish rules. Not really my cup of tea, I'll stick to Command Decision, Battleground WW II, and Flames of War for this period.
The highlight for my gaming was a two part Borodino game using Volley and Bayonet, my favorite period and rules. Played French in both games, two victories!
On Saturday night, I played a game of Free Blades, the new fantasy rules by DGS games. It is a great system.  I will do a full review of Free Blades in a few days, but until then, I highly recommend them. I would have bought a copy, but the vendor area had closed, they only had one copy for sale at the game, and Craig bought it! I'll order a set this week. I will definitely be back next year, maybe running a few games.
Haven't posted in a long time, but I plan to be a little more involved in the blog world.

Book Recommendation; Blunders on the Danube

It's been a very busy month; I started a new job on March 5, and I've had pneumonia for the last week. The job is great and the pneumonia is better. A few days ago my copy of "Blunders on the Danube," by Peter Anderson arrived. Peter, aka Gonsolvo from the Blunders on the Danube blog, has done a good job with these scenarios and I very much recommend this for the Napoleonic gamer.

There are 23 scenarios, including one for the entire Wagram battle, and then three smaller scenarios that break the battle into smaller pieces. The size of the scenarios varies from a few divisions to Wagram.
I don't play Field of Battle, but it will be quite simple to convert the OB's to Volley and Bayonet.
One of the features I like about the scenario format is that each comes with two maps; one with only the terrain, and a second with the troop deployment. Nice touch.
I haven't decided which of the scenarios I will play first, but I will be painting more Austrians. I also recommend the Blunders on the Danube blog. It is a great resource.

A Generous Gift

I have worked at my current job for 11years; Friday will be my last day here at the County. I have taken another positon with more oportunity, and money. My staff took my wife and I to lunch last Friday and presented me with a gift card to the local gaming store. They only carry Warhammer and WH40K. I haven't played Warhammer since 1991, but I want to buy an army and paint it to remind me of my hard working staff. There is a local group that plays WH, my doctor is a member, so it appears the stars are aligning.

Battle of Mokre, Command Decision AAR

 We played a game of Command Decision-Test of Battle yesterday, the Battle of Mokre. The scenario is from Bob MacKenzie's excellant website. If you aren't familiar with it, please stop by and have a look. 

 http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bob_mackenzie/

There are many good scenarios and game pictures.

Jerry brought his camera with the new macro lens, so the quality of the pictures is much better than normal.

The Germans have launched a counter attack, just as the Soviets are reinforcing. Historically, the Soviets ambushed Kampfgruppe Collins as it entered the area. In our game, the Germans pushed their Panthers and Tiger II toward Mokre and engaged and destroyed the Soviet armor there. On the other end of the table, the Germans were unable to withstand the Soviet reinforcements. Their one StuG platoon was destroyed before help could arrive. At the end of the day, the Germans conceded.

A fun game; good scenario and good company. In two weeks I will run the Battle of Smolensk, 1812, at my home and our club game for March will be Flames of War.

The table, before the Germans deply

Kampfgruppe Collins

The Engineer Company attacks with flamethrowers!

T-34's lined up hub to hub in Mokre

Suddenly a stand of knights appears and charges the SU's

First Game of Flames of War

I played my first game of FoW this weekend and really enjoyed it. To be perfectly honest, I was not expecting to like this system at all. I have played Command Decision in it's different versions since it was first published in the late '80's and it is one of my favorite rule sets. It still is for the level of play it represents, the battalion commander.
FoW on the other hand is one level lower, the company commander. It is a fun system. If you haven't played this system, don't be narrow minded as I was, play it and have some fun. Richard provided the figures and terrain (and the coffee.) We played a meeting engagement between a mobile German force and and US paratroop force supported by arty and M-10's. I used the German mobility and zipped all over the place. In the end, I knocked out all of the US tank destroyers and most of an airborne platoon. Great fun, we will be playing more of this.

Richard has already purchased quite a collection, so I have offered to paint some infantry and vehicles as my contribution to this scale. All of my WW II collection is 20mm, plastic for the most part.

Kampfgruppe Mike

M-10's appear at the top of the photo, recon leads the way.

250/9's zip over to shoot at the US arty

End of the road for the M-10's

Recon on the flank!

Our next club game will be a Command Decision game. In March we will do a FoW game for the group.

More Austrians

 I have been painting Napoleonic Austrians. I plan to play the battle of Raab from 1809 and need to add some specific units. The first is a stand of Hungarian Insurrection infantry. In an army of white, these guys in their blue will break up the landscape. Each large, 3"x3" base in Volley and Bayonet is either a brigade or large regiment. I need three of these Insurrection brigades.
I added some landscaping to this base. The plowed field is one of my wife's blouses that she no longer wanted. I looked at it as I put it into the charity pile and decided it would look good on the tabletop as terrain. I'm working on larger plowed fields in my spare time. The stone wall was created with air dry clay. I still need to put the flag on this unit and ink their faces.

 Next is a stand of Hungarian Insurrection cavalry. This specific base is a one strength point "skirmish" stand. Normal cavalry stands in my armies have 6-8 figures on them. The skirmish bases have only three figures. I need to paint one more of these bases.

Finally there are three infantry skirmisher bases. In Volley and Bayonet, these 1.5"x1.5" bases represent detachments of light infantry or small units of other infantry. There are two jager bases and one landwehr detachment.

Time for more painting.

Christmas Day Attack Command Decision AAR

At the February gathering of the IU Conflict Simulations Club we played the Christmas Day Attack from the Command Decision Bastogne scenario booklet. It's a big game and needed more time than we had available, but we are concentrating on Command Decision so we can learn the latest version.This was the last attack on Bastogne before Patton's army relieved the city. Vehicles, figures, and terrain provided by Jeff, my ground cloth.

Bob, Richard and I played the Germans while Jeff, Big Mike, and Jim T were the US defenders.

Bob and I split a regiment of Volksgrenadiers and attacked the US right flank. We were supported by a company of Panzer IV's. Bob's battalion attacked Champs, while I moved through the woods toward Chateau de Rolle.




The US left is held by two batteries of artillery.

 Richard rolled panzergrenadiers and armor down the road in a bold flanking maneuver.


The German attacks go in...

 

 

 

 

 

Champs at the top, Chateau de Rolle below

The German attacks captured Champs, overran the artillery, and threatened Chateau de Rolle. The US reinforcements were sent to deal with Richard's attack and temporarily stopped him. He pulled back to organize for another attack.

After taking Champs, Bob turned his armor to support my attack.

US Reinforcements

US defenses behind Chateau de Rolle

German reinforcements rolled on. I was confident that one more turn of fighting would have give my control of Chateau de Rolle. Richard was ready to attack again supported by our reinforcements. We were celebrating our victory.

The US players were just as positive that they could hold against anything we could throw against them.

And of course, time ran out. A fun game. We are getting confident with the rules. If the US players had just given up, it would have been a perfect day.

Next month we will play the Mokre scenario from Bob Mackenzie's excellant website. It is a smaller game and we believe we can finish it.