Little Wars Update: Maybe My Best Game Ever?

I hosted my Richard Sharpe Peninsula War (circa 1809 - 1812 for my game purposes) skirmish game at Little Wars thursday evening. The event was listed for 8 players, but I had some extra commands to use in the game so I ended up with ten players.

This game may well be one of the very best scenarios and players of all of the convention games that I have run going back to 1990. The players really took to the idea of role playing and they gave it their best effort. The result was a funny, Hollywood style of game that generated a number of surprises during the game. I want to thank all of the players in my game for such a fun time.

This is what I live for when I run a game at a convention.

"Sharpe! You are no gentleman. Humpf!"
-Colonel Henry Simmerson of the South Essex Regiment

The game was titled "Sharpe's Rescue" and it was loosely based on Bernard Cornwell's book, "Sharpe's Enemy". A band of renegade deserters from all armies has captured Sir Hamilton Fish and his wife Lady Jane Fish and they are being held for ransom. Lord Wellington has sent Richard Sharpe and his 95th Rifles Chosen Men on the mission to deliver the ransom and secure the safety of the hostages. The leader of the deserter band is none other than Obadiah Hakeswell, Sharpe's nemesis and mortal enemy.

"Sharpie, old boy. You are not a real officer. You were raised from the ranks."
Obadiah Hakeswell

Hakeswell was the leader of the renegade army of deserters, some of which were French and others were British. He wanted the ransom that the British were going to pay, but what he really wanted was Lady Jane Fish. He would double-cross anyone, including his own men, to save his skin and to get what he wanted.

Both the British and the French were on a mission to rescue the hostages and their combined numbers would overwhelm the Deserters. Hakeswell took the first opportunity to steal away from the convent where all of the fighting was taking place for he could see that his men were going to lose. So Hakeswell dashed out of the backdoor of the convent with the two hostages at gunpoint, but he ran into a battalion of French regulars who were attacking the convent. He bargained with the French to take Lord Fish as a prisoner while he and Lady Fish took off cross-country to escape.

Everything looked all tickety-boo for Hakeswell who was on the verge of escaping with his life and the forthcoming pleasures of Lady Fish. However, Sharpe had one last bullet in his rifle, he took careful aim, and gunned down Obadiah Hakeswell at 300 yards for the finale.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
Colonel Pierre Ducos
Napoleon's master spy and nemesis of Sharpe

Pierre Ducos was Napoleon's master spy and in charge of intelligence operations in Spain. His mission was to find and capture Major Hogan, one of Wellington's Exploring Officers. His colleague, Colonel d'Eclin of the French Guard Chasseurs a Cheval managed to capture Sharpe in a melee. Concurrently, Ducos was captured by Major Hogan. Ducos surrendered to Hogan on the condition that he be given his parole and sent on his way home. Ducos proposed the he and Sharpe be swapped as prisoners.

As you can see there was a lot of action and first class role playing going on during the game. The rules were simple and easy to learn, fitting on two sides of a letter sized piece of paper. I thought that the rules really helped propel the flow of the game.

My next game is the same scenario, Sharpe's Rescue, at 1PM Friday. I am also running a game on Saturday afternoon at 1PM, titled Sharpe's Bridge. Sharpe and his men will be sprinting towards the Coa River Bridge to escape the on-coming French, whose attack has taken the British by surprise. Will Sharpe and his Chosen Men escape across the bridge in time, or will that idiot Colonel Henry Simmerson of the South Essex Regiment panic and blow up the bridge and cutting off Sharpe from his bridge.

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Seven Years' War Association Convention Report - Part One

 

Jurgen Olk's famous SYW games set in India

I just returned from this weekend's trip to the annual Seven Years' War Association convention in South Bend, Indiana and while I am tired and in a daze right now, the show was a big success and I had a ton of fun.

It looks like the attendance was substantially higher this year compared to last year and kudos go out to the organizers (Jude Becker - organizer of the game events; and Ken Bunger - organizer of the dealer area and convention site logistics). Plus this year the show had "official staff" helpers recognizable by their cornflower blue tee-shirts (Sam, Paul and Brian) and I appreciate the help that they gave me in loading and unloading game terrain and figures from my car.

Here are several pictures of the convention hall where the war games were set up. The dealer tables were set up along the walls of the perimeter of the hall.

Many of the dealers were already set up by the time I arrived Thursday evening.

Thursday evening set up time

A view of my Trenton game, looking towards the front entry door.

I arrived at the site in the early evening and the sun was still out which made it easy to back up my car to the side door and unload equipment. There were already a number of games set up for play on friday and it looked like three or four games were already playing thursday evening. Over the past few years some of our games have shifted back from friday into thursday to accommodate early arrival convention goers. 

At the same time, there aren't as many games on Saturday night as there used to be about 10-15 years ago. Saturday Night was once considered to be "Prime Time" and featured the best of the best games. Now there might only be two or three games running after the dinner hour on Saturday. Hopefully future conventions will see more activity on Saturday night. This year I could not get a hotel room for saturday night because all of the hotel rooms in South Bend were sold out due to a Country and Western star doing a Saturday night concert at Notre Dame University's football stadium. As a result, i had to pack up my things and drive home rather than hanging around for the convention. (my own fault for waiting until the last minute to reserve a room).

Friday morning arrived and I hurried down to the game hall to play in Jurgen Olk's famous SYW in India 28mm games. This year's game, The Relief of Mangalore" was set during the American Revolution era. The British East India Company was tasked with lifting a siege of a British garrison at Mangalore. We tried our best but all four of us British players were receiving unkind behavior from our dice. There was a point during the game when it appeared that we were going to punch a hole through the enemy's ranks when all of a sudden it seemed as if every other British/Indian allies unit was routing away from the action. I had one of those instances where I faced a "roll anything but a one on a D10 die", to which I said, "I'm doomed". And indeed I was as a rolled a one. I could only laugh as total failure brings its own form of joy. 

Me, doing what comes naturally, routing. My command personality figure tries to stem the rout
of some European East India Company troops.

A gigantic cavalry scrum of exotic Indian natives

Fort Managolore is defended by French Sepoys.

More bad cavalry action from the British point of view 

One of my "almost highlights": my miserable peon levy coming to grips with French sepoys
but it didn't turn out well for them as the Dice Gods thought otherwise.

Me

Jurgen had various random event cards that each player took turns drawing a Fate Card from the deck. My card indicated that I had not paid my sepoys lately and so they would sit down and go on strike for D6 number of game turns. I rolled a "6" of course. So my Sepoys had to stand down for six turns, which actually turned out ok for me, for whilst my other troops were running away, my relaxing Sepoys were holding down the flank and saving us from total annihilation. The Dice Gods work in mysterious ways at times.

More coming up in Part Two

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SYW Convention Is This Week

 

The annual Seven Years War Association Convention will be held this week at the convention center in downtown South Bend, Indiana. Games start on Thursday afternoon and continue on through Friday and Saturday.

I will be running my Trenton game on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

I updated my terrain and tabletop layout yesterday, switching from a 12 x 5 feet table to my 15 x 6 feet table. This gave me considerably more space to work with and so I had to adjust my terrain placement accordingly.

Originally, I had the Trenton layout on the smaller 12 x 5 table and my Spanish Sharpe game on the 15 x 6 table. So I decided to swap the tables. This took me about 3 to 4 hours to remove the terrain from the Trenton table first, place the Trenton pieces on the Spanish terrain table; then once the Trenton table was cleared of everything, I had to move all of the Spanish terrain to the former Trenton table. Finally, with the former Spanish table cleared of terrain, I set up the Trenton game layout on the larger 15 x 6 feet table. This was grueling to say the least. And stupid too, but I wanted to see how Trenton looked on the larger table.

Here are the pictures of the new table layout. I decided to use some of the extra three feet of table length to put in a representative section of the Delaware River and set up the Washington Crossing the Delaware vignette.

UPDATE: I deleted a rather snarky comment that someone left in response to another reader's comment. I am sorry that I was not able to do so until today, having just returned from the convention a short while ago.

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Durham Boats for 28mm Figures

 

Durham Boats at the Washington's Crossing National Park in Pennsylvania.

We all have seen the iconic painting of Washington Crossing the Delaware River by Emanuel Leutze and nothing says the Battle of Trenton better than this picture. Therefore, I decided to make a vignette of, wait for it, Washington crossing the Delaware in one of those Durham boats.

Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutze

Close up view of one of the Durham boat painted by Der Alte Fritz.
Minden and Fife and Drum figures

Durham Boats have pointy ends at both ends of the vessel, which allows it to be moved in either direction whether one is traveling downstream with the current or upstream against the current. The boatmen would place the cargo in the middle of the boat (duh!) and stand fore and aft where they could either paddle with oars or push it against the current to go upstream.

I was able to find a 3D printing file of one of these boats available as a free download, and sent the file to  Akersminis to have them printed at roughly 1/56 scale to accommodate my AWI Fife and Drum Miniatures. The boats measure at about 8-inches. Alex Akers does a really fine job of printing files and turns your project around quickly and economically. I highly recommend his service. His contact information is:

akersminis@gmail.com and he also has a Facebook and Instagram page under the same name.

I was really happy with the way that this project printed. There were no air bubbles or defects of any kind on the model, as you can see in the photo below:

Durham Boats 3D printed by Akersminis
akersminis@gmail.com

Durham boats and some representative crew/passenger figures
from Fife and Drum Miniatures

I have updated this blog post with pictures of the Durham boats that I painted. I used some of the Minden Pioneer figures to hold the poles and oars for maneuvering. Fife and Drum figures are used for some of the passengers.

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A Nice Map of the Battle of Trenton

Map of the Battle of Trenton

I want to thank Ed D. for sending me a copy of this map showing the American attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton on December 26, 1776.

I like how it adds an element of 3D graphics to the map. It reminds me of the maps in the Amrican Heritage history books on the American Civil War. Somewhere, buried in the deep recesses of my memory, is the thought that the author of those maps might have also done one for the Battle of Trenton.

This map is also very helpful for my planning of the game table terrain, 

The one problem with depicting this battle on a six feet wide table is that I have to delete the action of Sullivan's division at the bottom of the map because there is no room for them in my 28mm set up. My home table is twelve feet long, but I have a 15 feet long canvas winter mat that I will be using in my convention games, so that gives me an extra three feet of space on either end of the table.

Painting Update

I finished my 12th regiment of Continentals and two regiments of the Hessians. The third regiment, the Knyphausen Fusiliers are on hold until I receive some new castings that I made and are currently at Griffin Moulds. They are making the moulds for the new figures and then spinning the castings for me.

The new Hessian fusilier figures include: standing firing, standing second rank at present arms, a standing drummer, a marching fusilier and a marching drummer. Since Hessian fusilier and grenadier officers wore tricorn hats, I can use my existing Fife and Drum Miniatures officer figures.

How I create an AWI regiment - 2nd New Hampshire

 

The 2nd New Hampshire regiment at Trenton 1776
Fife and Drum Miniatures

I recently finished my eleventh American regiment for Washington's army at Trenton in 1776. It is the 2nd New Hampshire regiment commanded by Colonel John Stark (he of fame at the Battle of Bunker Hill).

I eschew having my AWI regiments consist of all the same or similar poses in the regiment. Why? Because an irregular, casual regiment with a mix of uniform colors and types, plus a multitude of figure poses creates the right look for American Continental armies of the American Revolution.

Using my new off-the-painting-table 2nd New Hampshire I thought that I would show you how I mix up poses and uniform styles (conventional military jacket, hunting shirt, and civilian militia clothing) to create a unique and diverse looking wargame regiment for the AWI.

Continental Regulars poses

Fife and Drum Miniatures American Continentals figures in assorted poses
suitable for a firing line of figures.

The uniforms of almost every Continental army regiment would typically be a mix of soldiers wearing uniform coats of blue or brown color; a variety of colors for trousers/pants and vests/waistcoats. In fact, it was common for different companies in a regiment to have different uniforms. This could be due to what color of coats were available (if any at all) when the company was raised, or whether a company had just received new replacement uniforms for the coming year or they were wearing last year's uniform jacket. Trousers and waistcoats could be white, tan, khaki, brown, blue or something else. That being the case, why not paint some of the figures with brown coats and some with blue coats? The same holds true for trousers. So you could have two Continentals standing side by side wearing the same blue coat, but one of them wears white/grey trousers and waistcoat while the other wears brown trousers with his blue coat. Mix and match the colors to your heart's content.

Hunting Shirts

Hunting shirt clad Continentals on the left, and Morgan's Riflemen on the right.

The Fife and Drum Miniatures figure range has Continentals in both marching and firing line poses. These can be augmented with figures from the Morgan's Rifles set of figures. The former have tricorn hats and the latter wear round hats. Hunting shirts were worn early in the war before a system of uniforms and cloth colors was established. They might also be worn by troops along the frontier or in the Southern Colonies, where state governments did not have the funds to outfit their regiments in uniform coats.

My 2nd NH regiment has five figures wearing hunting shirts. I wanted to have a few of them, but not too many because I want the regiment to be predominantly clad in jackets.

Militia or Civilian Clothing

American militia figures in round hats, loading and firing muskets.

The two kneeling firing figures in the picture above are cast wearing a sleeveless waistcoat and long-sleeved shirts. I painted the shirt the same color as the vest as a "conversion with paint" to give it the appearance of a long-sleeved jacket. Note also the mix of light blue, one green and one brown jacket in the set

American militia wearing round hats, advancing.
Note the one figure wearing a brown coat versus the light blue coat of the other figures.

American militia in round hats, firing. There is also one figure wearing a tricorn hat.
Note that two figures have brown coats and three figures have light blue coats.

These figures are the same pose from the Armed Civilian pack of  figures.
They are cast wearing waistcoats and long-sleeved shirts. I simply painted the shirts the
same color as the waistcoat to give it the appearance of a jacket.

Putting It All Together 

After all of the figures are painted it then becomes a simple task of mixing up all of the different poses onto your figure bases. For the most part, no two figure poses are side by side in the pictures.

Blue uniform coast, hunting shirts and brown uniform coats in the same unit.

I wanted the majority of the figures to be wearing round hats rather than tricorn hats.

The final result is a rag tag looking American regiment that seems informal and has a diverse number of figure poses.

That's my style.

Hessian Fusilier Regt. von Lossberg is painted

 

Hessian Fusilier Regiment von Lossberg at Trenton 1776
Minden Miniatures Prussian fusilier figures.

The Trenton Project is coming alone nicely with the addition of the 40-figure Hessian fusilier regiment von Lossberg to the Hessian forces at Trenton. I had previously painted the Rall Grenadier Regiment and some Hessian Jagers. Next up are 30 figures for the Knyphausen Fusilier Regiment. This will fill out the Hessian army for my game scenario.

The Trenton game will be hosted at this year's Seven Years War Association Convention and at Historicon 2026.

Von Lossberg regiment marching through Trenton. Minden Miniatures Prussian fusilier
figures were used in lieu of not having Hessian fusiliers in the Fife and Drum figure range (yet).
The house is made by Diabolical Terrain and is 3D printed to your requested scale. The house
model was in a partial stage of painting at the time that I took this picture. It will get some white
dry brushing and some colored window sashes when it is completed. 

What is needed to finish the Trenton Project:

1. one more Hessian fusilier regiment of 30 figures

2. paint and base three more Diabolical Terrain houses

3. paint two more 24 to 30 figure American regiments

4. paint a new George Washington figure and base him in snow

Possible project extensions:

1. I may attempt to make some of my own road sections so that I can have more roads in the game

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