Face to face with Gaming legends.

Greetings to my gentile readers. It is with much excitement that I report on my weekend at Little Wars 2018. The real purpose of my attendance was to assist the wife of one of our fallen but never forgotten comrades Mike Adams. As reported previously in this blog Mike passed much too early in this life. We (Mary Adams, Wendell, My wife Helen and myself) were engaged in selling Mike's massive collection of figures many that have been seen in reports of ancient games on these humble pages.
We did homage to Mike in the selling of many of his figures to other gamers who will keep them in the fight for many years to come. But for me the greatest pleasure was derived from meeting many of the 'Greats' in war gaming!
I met and spoke with the following heroes. Note that these are not listed in any particular order.
Howard Whitehouse
Todd Fisher
Herb Gunt
Kevin Cabai
Jim Roots
John Butler
Tony Adams
Erik Merchant
And of course many others that my feeble mind can not bring to the surface at this minute but that I will remember some night in the middle of my sleep!
What a wonderful weekend I had.
Many, many thanks to all of the people who purchased Mike's figures and books. May those colorful and brave warriors bring you glory and victory in your games!
Thanks again,
Greg

Our first Mike Adams Memorial game

Hello to my friends and guests.
This is my first posting since our long time friend and fellow gamer Mike Adams has passed away. We never realized how much Mike has been missed. This untimely loss has left a huge whole in our group that will take a long time to close.
So in memory of Mike we will from time to time play Ancient games in his memory. To this purpose we played the first game yesterday at Bill's house. The cast of characters was Bill and Wendel as the evil Persian empire and me as Alexander the Great. We have been gaming with Mike for over 35 years and thought it fitting for our first game to be just us, hoping that Mike was there in spirit.

So Bill put together a game using Tactica rules that he made some special changes to. Most of these changes were not explained to the poor Alexander player until they unfolded or were stumbled upon.

Here are some pictures of the initial set up.

After the set up was complete came the first surprise. Bill says - Greg roll a die. I do this and get a 5. Ok he says, remove to medium infantry units from your army. So I think to myself will these come in as reinforcements or what? After I grudgingly remove the two units Bill says now roll another die. This time a 4 is rolled. Ok says Bill now remove one cavalry unit. Good grief! The Macedonians are outnumbered as it is and now we are removing all of these needed troops. So again I comply and choose a cavalry unit to remove. Well this damned strange but hay I want to roll dice and kick butt.

The four pictures above show the first move from a couple of angles and each end. Both sides were being aggressive at this point. The Macedonians rushing to close into melee and the Persians trying to get into bow range.

As you can see from above the cavalry is heavily engaged on each flank. In the center the Macedonians start to take some heavy losses to the archers. On the other hand the Macedonians are succeeding in the fight on the left flank and holding their own on the right.

Above you can see that the cavalry on the Macedonian left is making inroads against the Persian right eventually taking out the cavalry and chariots clearing the way for a sweep and turning of the Persian right side. At the same time the Macedonians are still keeping the Persians at bay on their right flank.
But the middle keeps getting shellacked in the middle from those endless swarms of arrows. Time now for another of the unpleasant surprises. Bill has modeled four units of Persian heavy infantry to represent them as they should be. A row of heavy infantry in front with 2 rows or archers behind them. Very pretty. So the new rule he created is that they get to fire over their intervening troops to fire salvos of arrows at the enemy 24 shots for 6's per unit - four units times 24 is 96 dice a turn for 6's. Good grief Mike show some mercy here and flip a die or two!

Well the end is not pretty. Macedonian pike unis are fleeing the field having had enough of the stinging Persian arrows leaving in such numbers that victory was not possible for Alexander this day.
Win to the Persians and congratulations to Wendel and Bill.
In all fairness Bill did try to balance the game by weakening the Persian heavy infantry once the front rank was destroyed and there was a rule that if the Macedonians could kill Darius the Macedonians would win no matter the number of losses they suffered. Sadly this rule was not made clear until after we had called the game. Oh yes, I never did find out why I had to remove those troops.
Here are a couple of pictures of the troops.

 And the cast of players.

So anyway we all had a great time getting together and remembering the fallen as old warriors tend to do along with bemoaning the state of the world and how much better it would be if we ran things.
Mike I hope you enjoyed watching.Laughing at our crude attempts to match your humor and certainly matching your die rolls!
Good gaming,
Greg

The passing of a friend and fellow gamer

Mike Adams passed away this morning from complications of a surgery he recently underwent.
Mike was a great friend to many, myself included. His passion was 25/28mm Ancients. Specifically early to middle Roman armies and Greek and Macedonian armies.
Mike was always ready with a joke or quick comeback and had a heart that was larger than life for his friends. We have gamed in Mikes basement every summer for the past few years and have enjoyed every game.
Mike is survived by his wife who has wholeheartedly supported his hobby and passion. He also leaves behind a group of gaming friends and acquaintances far too large to name. He will be missed by many, especially by our little band of dice rollers who will never find another like Mike.
Mike, I hope that you are rolling 6's in Heaven and if you think about it, send a few our way.
Greg

Flames of War at Adepticon 2015

Well it has been some time since the last post but I have been busy with Bill putting together a Flames of War game and running it at Adepticon 2015.

I want to thank the wonderful people at Battlefront - Flames of War for all the support we received from them. Battlefront gave us Brumbars and motorcycle platoons for each player in addition to two issues of Miniature Wargames for each player. A very generous set of gifts for the gamers. In real terms each participant took home over $40.00 worth of prizes. On top of this Adepticon provided us with awards for the top two players from each team.

We decided to do Mid-War East Front but with a little twist. We wanted to have as many nationalities as we could cram into one place in history at one time! So there were Russians (of course), Germans (of course), Italians and Hungarians. Mid-War was chosen because in our minds everyone was a bit more equal in terms of experience, power and moral. It turned out to be a good mix and the players seemed to enjoy the variety.

The down side to all this is that we put together two huge armies which meant that there were a lot of figures to transport and move about. We had listed our event as a Flames of War alternative to tournament play and as a platform for learning the game itself. What we did not expect was that the most experienced player in the game had only 3 hours of play time under his belt. This meant that we could not depend on any of the players helping each other with the game mechanics. We had 12 players sign up but ended up with only 11 for the game.

Our terrain was based on two Cigar Box fleece material mats (which by the way are of fantastic quality and well worth the money) with other fields and roads made from teddy bear fur material. Topping this off were add on pieces like villages, trees and hedges.
Here are some pictures of the game.

As you can see there were plenty of figures and tanks to go around. Bill supplied all of the trees, hedges and the two villages. One was a bombed out village and the other was habitable. Bill outdid himself with the habitable village as seen below.

This is 15mm guys! Very nicely done!!!!

The players seemed to have had a fairly good time with the exception of one of the Italian players who had the very bad luck of being in the wrong place with the wrong equipment as he was severely underpowered and it probably would have taken a very experienced player to make his command enjoyable.
 Here are the players

All in all it was a very enjoyable time. Set up and take down went quickly. Adepticon provided us with more than enough space and our event was sold out. We will be back next year with a new game and surprises but we have learned some valuable information for the next go around. We will run a smaller game. Maybe not on the number of players but in the number of figures per player. We will also bring the opponents closer together sooner either through the set up or some mechanic to allow for faster movement until close to the enemy.
So as always, comments are always welcome and please please please help to support Adepticon 2016!!
A great convention. Free to get in if you are not playing and not too much more than any other convention if you are. My wish is that Little Wars would combine with them in the near future.
Good gaming!
Greg

I would like to extend a special welcome to Rebecca my newest follower. Rebecca is working on a paper for college and has chosen our humble hobby to be part of it. So everyone on their best behavior! Thanks Rebecca for taking the time to look at and understand what makes us such enthusiastic gamers.
Greg

New fans from China!

Hi all.
This is just a note to welcome all of my new fans from China. I seem to have generated a large following from that ancient and varied country so full of history and depth.
To all of my new fans, please drop a comment on what has drawn you to this blog and I will do my best to publish more information and games on those subjects. Looking forward to hearing from all of you!
Thanks for all the hits as they make the statistics look great.
Keep on gaming,
Greg

To The Strongest! by Simon Miller

Simon very graciously provided our gaming group with a play test set of rules for his new ancient and medieval rules, To The Strongest! We were able to play them this past Friday and Saturday to see how Simon's system works and if they would be replacing our old standby Tactica.

Well I have to say that the rules are very quickly picked up and with a bit of back and forth to the rules for each game, as is the case for all rules when you are learning them, we managed two enjoyable games with neither lasting more than 3 hours.
Each game played had a Persian and Carthaginian army. In the first game the Persian army was 33 points and Carthage had 27 points. Carthage (me) was completely destroyed by my sons Gregory and Eric, and their Persians.
In the second game, the Persians were again 33 points and Carthage now had 33 points also. In this game, Carthage (Jamie and I) Won out over the Persians (Bill and Wendel).
Unfortunately Mike could not make the game on Saturday and his input was sorely missed.

After reading through the rules three times and playing them twice, I must say the they are very good rules. They may not have every little detail and troop type but they are easily grasped and play quickly once you know the flow of play. Simon's system is clever and unique using playing cards instead of dice and a grid instead of rulers. Please see the attached photos of the first two turns of the Saturday game. This clearly shows a heavy grid traced out on my table with a dry erase marker. In the rules Simon suggests ways to mark your table that will not be permanent and will still make the essential boxes obvious. Simon will also be adding some free items on the web site in support of these rules like army lists and such. Please see his link below.

Now the part we missed. We did not use a very important part of the rules that involve Stratagems. We did this on purpose so we could concentrate on the movement and combat parts of the rules. Unfortunately, on reflection, we had left out a very major and important part of these rules.
These Stratagems allow players to place terrain and have a more strategic feel to the game over and above just moving about and bashing each other. We will be concentrating on these more after the holidays.

So to summarize:
Great rules - fast - easy to learn - clever - cover most if not all aspects of ancient and medieval armies - unique system that aids in speed of play - wonderful pictures of ancient armies and generals - excellent diagrams to aid in understanding and playing.
My only detraction is that I wish the rules had an index or page numbers in the table of contents. Simon has set up the rules so that you can use them on your lap top or tablet and can jump to the page with a topic you click on in the table of contents. This worked well during our Saturday game when we had a computer available but if I was playing where a computer was not available, it is a slightly cumbersome to use. Of course having said that, it would only be a few game plays before the system is mastered and reference to the rules would be minimal.
Here are our pictures From Saturday.

The game uses some markers to track missiles available for the bows slings and javelins, disruption/disorder ad coins to track the losses to each army.
Great fun Simon and Congratulations!!!!
The rules sell for 9.99 English Pounds and can be purchased here  http://bigredbatshop.co.uk/
Great gaming to all and please, purchase these fun and well thought out rules.
Greg

Finaly - We play the game!

Greetings to all who take the time to visit this site and I hope that you will enjoy this report on our game about the siege at Peking in 1900.

Our group of gamers gathered on more than one occasion to work out rules that would allow for a fair number of players yet not take forever to play a game. What transpired was that we found we needed two sets of rules. One set was rather long and detailed. These became a a set of rules suitable for a campaign game and were set aside for our first game.More on these later. The second set governed a straight up battle between the Legation Forces and the Chinese. This set was designed for a fast play and contained less detail about the siege itself. These were meant to depict the last assault by the Chinese forces in one day just prior to the relief of the Legations.

Our game was held on Friday May 24th. Assembled for the conflict were all the members of our regular group plus our special guests, the Mid-America Wargamers. In all we had 12 gamers present.

Here are some pictures of the game as we are about to start.

And here are our players. First the Legation commanders.

And next the Chinese.

Others present were Mike, our commentator and political whip, Wendell who assisted in running the game by manning the Hospital, my son Gregory who was the impartial observer and myself.

The rules we used are as follows:
Peking - How I spent my summer vacation.
The final days.








The table is divided into 4 combat zones. 

Zone 1 = SW                      Zone 3 = NE
Zone 2 = NW                     Zone 4 = SE






Turn sequence:
1. Legation Forces recovery phase.

2. Assign troops to combat zones. Chinese assign their forces first and then the Legation forces after the Chinese.

3. Fire combat

4. Assaults






Movement:
Movement is unlimited on the table for each side with the following restrictions.
Legation forces can move inside the Legation’s fortifications.
Chinese forces can move outside the Legation fortifications.








Recovery:
1 = dies from wounds.
2-4 = still recovering. Must stay in the British Legation compound.
5-6 = recovered and returns to duty.



Ranged Combat:


Legation forces roll 1 die for each figure in combat.
1-2 = 0 casualty point.
3-4 = 1 casualty points
5-6 = 2 casualty points

Effect of casualties in a single  combat.
1 - 12 = no effect
13 - 20 = drive off ¼ of attacking force
21 - 45 = drive off ½ of attacking force
46 - 60 = drive off ¾ of attacking force
60+ = drive off entire attacking force

Legation forces roll first and surviving Chinese roll their attack second.

Total up Chinese troops in each players command that are attacking.
Divide this number by 5 and round down.
This is how many dice the Chinese player will roll.
1-3 = miss
4-5 = wounded
6 = roll again - 6 - kills

Wounded Legation forces are sent to the Hospital in the British Legation. During the recovery phase, they may be recovered enough to return to their posts.











Artillery , Cannon , Guns and Machine guns.
Artillery and heavy weapons in the game are as follows.

Weapon Type    Dice    Special Rules
Krupp Gun    5   
Muzzle Loaded Smooth Bore    2   
1lb Quick Fire     4    Must roll each turn to see if ammunition is available. 1-2 = no ammunition is available
Colt / Maxim Machine Guns    6 / 3    6 dice against troops in the open and 3 dice against troops behind walls or barricades.
Nordenfeldt Machine gun    4    Must roll before firing to check for gun jams. 1-3 = jam and may not fire.
International Gun ‘Betsy’    4    Roll 2D6 each turn fired - 12 = breach explodes. Crew wounded



Assaults:

Total the number of attacking Chinese not driven off by the Legation troops fire. Divide this by 3 and round down. This is the number of dice rolled by the assaulting Chinese. They will always roll a minimum of 1 die.
Assault results:

1-2 = no casualty
3-4 = wounded
5-6 = killed

Boxers divide by 2 to calculate assault dice instead of 3 like Imperial Troops.

Boxers can not fire in the Ranged Combat phase and can only assault.



Turn one involved very little movement of the Chinese forces and they attempted to attack the Legations on all fronts. Casualties were caused and assaults were driven off. For the most part, this turn caused little consternation among the commanders of each side as everyone was learning the rules.

Turns two and three though saw an increasing alarm spread throughout the Legations. Casualties were mounting at an alarming rate and the Hospital staff had a knack of killing almost as many troops as they cured.
The Chinese also started to change from a general attack on all sectors to concentrating troops and guns into two or three sectors per turn.
Here you can see an attack on the Fu.

And here are some pictures during turns three and four.

Turn five saw a radical change in the game plans for the Legation forces. Faced with increasing casualties, both on the field and in the Hospital, they decided to abandon two sections of the defence and concentrate on retaining only the sector to the left of the canal when viewed from the wall. They hoped that this concentration of force would hold the Chinese at bay while relief was on its way.

On turn six the Legation forces fell back to the British Legation for the last stand.

The Legation forces were able to keep back the Chinese final assault but by the end of the game they had suffered horrific casualties.
Legation forces remaining in the British compound at the end of the game - 44 figures
Legation forces remaining in the Hospital at the end of the game - 62 figures
Legation forces KIA during the game - 116 figures
The game was a Legation victory as they did survive the Chinese onslaught but at a tremendous cost.

All had a fun time and the rules were a success as we finished playing this in under four hours.

Just a few statistics pertaining to the game.
Number of total figures in play - 720
Most of the terrain is foam core and blue foam.
Figures used are from: Foundry, Frontier, Falcon, Rafm and Old Glory.
Much of the fences and some walls are accumulated from various Christmas Village manufacturers.
Chinese style walls are made from foam core, wallpaper and corrugated cardboard.
Time involved in this project: 25 years. (well not continually, I do have a life you know)

As for the campaign game. This would involve a greater amount of detail.
During the siege, there were really only 5 or 6 major attempts to storm the perimeter. Most of the time the Chinese would expend tens of thousands of rounds of small arms ammunition in a continuous barrage towards the Legations. Most of these rounds fell harmlessly in and around the Legation perimeter causing more fear that actually inflicting and casualties although with this much fire, the odds are that someone or something will eventually get hit.
The campaign game would be based on the times that the Chinese actually tried to attack the Legation Perimeter. The rules involve some figures that were not used in this game. Namely about 50 figures of Chinese civilians and about 20 figures of Western women. These figures are used to assist in putting out fires and rebuilding barricades.
So in addition to the general attacks and gunfire, the campaign game will include starting fires, putting out fires, overrunning barricades, destroying barricades, rebuilding barricades and much more detail on troops recovering to return to the fight. In addition there will be rules for supplies and a series of cards based on actual events that can influence the game as these events did in 1900.

Well I do hope that everyone has enjoyed this little entertainment. It was very enjoyable for myself and I am very  pleased that the gamers were entertained and seemed to have as much fun playing as I had presenting this game.
Good gaming and as always all comments are welcome. I will also try my very best to respond to any questions on this project.
Greg

The Siege of the Legations - more progress

Greetings to all. It has been longer than I wanted it to be for this post but delays and life got in the way. So here we are and with this installment, the Legations in Peking are nearly completed. I am very fortunate that I have an area this large to use and am able to keep it set up for any length I choose.

These two views are looking South towards the Legations and the Tartar Wall. The first picture is from the East side and the second is from the West. In the first picture you can see Chinese  houses in the foreground and along the left edge of the table. In the center top of the picture is the Fu, an area owned by Prince Su Wang and was allowed to be used in the defense of the legations after Prince Su Wang departed. It was also one of the most contested areas of the Legation defense. Off to the top right of the first picture is a building I made to represent the Hanlin Academy.
In the second picture you are looking almost straight on to the Academy. You can also see a bit more of the Fu than in the first picture.

Here is a closer view of the Academy and the North section of the British Legation compound.

 This picture provides a bit more of an areal view.

Here we are looking from the South and above the Tartar Wall. Bottom left is the German Legation compound and to it's right is a Chinese temple. Across the street and North of the German Legation are the Spanish Legation, the Hotel Peking, the French Legation and the Japanese Legation. Then there is the South wall of the Fu.

 This shot is looking North but on the West side of the Legation area. Here you can clearly see the canal separating the defenders but it was not very deep and for a good part of the siege was dry and empty. In the center foreground is the American Legation. North of them are some shops and then the Russian Legation and next is the Southern wall of the British Legation.

Here we see a closeup of the British compound. At this time it has not been detailed but the main buildings are present. From left to right are the student quarters, the legation building and residence and then some stables and out houses. The distinctive entrance was created out of pieces of solid wood, I trimmed it with doll house moldings and added a decorative piece over the gates. The gates are made from some plastic material secured from a hobby shop specializing in doll house materials.

This scene shows the Southwest area of the Legations. To the right is the Tartar Wall and the ramp to its top. Then going to the left are the American Legation, the Russian Legation and the South wall of the British Legation. Across the canal can be seen the back of the German Legation, the Bank of Peking, the Spanish Legation, the French Legation and the Japanese Legation.

Here we see the same area but from the East looking West.

This picture shows the Fu. I have not completed this yet and I have more detail to add. As a note the globe like trees were acquired at Micheal's Crafts. They were originally intended to be place card holders for bridal showers. I have removed a small clip that was to be used to hold the name card.

Here is a picture of two of the 25 barricades I have made for the Legation forces to use. These were made from thin foam core with a brick pattern glued on. I found the pattern for free on line and scaled it down to this size. The barrels are again from the craft store and come in many sizes. These are the smallest size and work very well for 25mm games. I have stained them and then painted the iron bands in an appropriate color. The boxes are small solid wood cubes, again available at the craft store, and I drew lines on them to represent boards. These were also stained and sealed. All were glued to a piece of plastic and the covered with a gesso mixture and colored with acrylic paint.

So there we are for now. All questions and criticisms are welcome and I will try to answer them as soon as I am able but sometimes a week can go by due to my job. I still need to complete the Russian contingent and more detail work but all is moving well. By my next posting I hope to have all the troops on display.
thank you for taking the time and interest in this project.
Good gaming,
Greg