Morris' Wargaming Escapades

Small Pine Wood from Battlefield in a Box (BB510). Nice and moveable trees to make room for your troops in big battles or you can use the single bases as cover for skirmishes.

 I got 'Wargaming - An Introduction' last week and I've been blow away by the WWII rules contained in this book. This is the best simple-mediumish complexity rules for the period I've seen.  In just 25 pages you get rules, army lists for major combatants and scenarios. The morale rules are a work of genius and you get armor ratings for all the tanks and even rules for paradrops and bicycle infantry. My CRAZY PROJECT for these holidays is doing a conversion of the rules to play them with ASL maps and counters. PS. A common criticism I've seen online about Heavy Weapons (HMG, mortars and anti-tank weapons) being hard to kill fails to account for the fact that they are destroyed with just one hit, so the big save reflects the need to eliminate all the crew.

   I like the rules in the book Wargaming: Nineteenth Century Europe 1815-1878 so much that I'm thinking of backporting them some years earlier to use them also in the Napoleonic period. However, I would like to do it with the minimum fuss and changes that break the elegance of the original. So far I'm considering two key areas:   1 Cavalry is not to be so much dissuaded from charging. 2 Close-order infantry in column formation needs an extra oomph when defending against Cavalry. Often it was trivial to turn the column into what was effectively a square.   These are the two rule changes I have in mind at the moment for each area. Thoughts welcomed.    1. Infantry charged by Cavalry or Dragoons needs to pass a morale test for the sole purpose of using defensive fire (no base loss). If they fail, the only consequence is that there's no defensive fire, and therefore no morale test for the Cavalry for being shot at. This simulates the sheer terror and confusio...

Team for 'When Nightmares Come' X-Files setting: Mulder, Scully,  a SWAT element and a couple of conspiracy weirdos.   

This variant uses up to three average dice* to randomize movement distances for Neil Thomas' rules. *(dice with the faces numbered: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5) The advantages of doing this are that you cannot predict things mechanically ('in three turns I'll get the skirmishers to those woods'). Charges also become more thrilling as you are not 100% certain that you can make contact and reach that exposed flank this turn. For the Horse & Musket period the randomized movement is: Infantry and Artillery: Sum of two Average dice - 1 Skirmishers: Sum of two Average dice + 2 Cavalry: Sum of three Average dice + 1 Note that the most likely results still are 6", 9" and 12", but you get a whole range of possible results. *How to convert a normal die to an average die. Using white dice for example, take white paint and fill in the 2 center pips on the six, this now becomes a 4. Now take black paint or a marker and add two pips to the one side to make it into a 3. Now y...

 Classic dogfight match-up (Spitfire Vs ME-109E) in a game from the Battle over Britain series from Minden Games. Volume 5, Tally Ho! (2018) is the one with more scenarios and it includes the base rules, although I think a re-release is coming named Dogfight! The game models very well the differences between planes with minimal rules overhead. Gary Graber knows his stuff!  As it stands, it is a wonderfully fun and quick 2-player game (especially with the 7 or 13 games campaign).   Tally Ho comes with solitaire rules, but I find them somehow lacking. I am working on alternatives solo rules and this afternoon I had a chance to test them.  

Long Range Recon Patrol, by Mike Lambo. The elements that make it such a good reconnaissance solo game are:  It creates a thrilling narrative each time. There are many decisions to be made because the different dice results overlap several possible orders. It has several push-your-luck mechanisms: do we fast move in a jungle? Risk entering a village? Force a river crossing?