My Games for Fall In have been submitted

 

The town of Kennett Square, not too far from Brandywine Creek.

I have entered four games for the upcoming Fall In Convention in Lancaster, PA which will be held November 6 through 8, 2026. Click on the link to the convention's website for more information:

Fall In Convention

Two of my games will the larger size regimental level of fighting, while two games will be of the smaller grand skirmish variety. I didn't think that there would be enough players to fill out the larger game four times. The skirmish games are held in the evening in a more relaxed manner. Here is the tentative schedule for my games at Fall In (subject to approval by the convention director). All of the games will be held on a 15ft by 6ft table and feature the terrain that I have posted previously on my blog.

The British army marches towards the town of Kennett Square. American light troops 
will attempt to harass and delay the British march.

British light infantry deploy to drive out American marksmen from an Apple Orchard.

Friday November 6th

10 AM   Action at Kennett Square (7 players)

General Howe's British army has outflanked Washington's army once again during the 1777 Philadelphia Campaign. Washington has ordered Colonel Dan Morgan and his selected light troops to use hit and run tactics to delay and harass the British advance towards key town of Kennett Square. This will buy Washington's  Americans army the time needed to take up a stronger defensive position behind Brandywine Creek.

7PM       Captain Eward's Rescue - skirmish game (8 players)

Mrs. Loring and Peggy Shippen have been kidnapped by Ben Franklin and his gang of rebels. General William Howe wants the ladies rescued. Howe knows that when all else fails, he can trust in Captain Johan Ewald and his company of Hessian Jagers to do the job. Major Andre will support Ewald with some British Light Bobs. Meanwhile, General Benedict Arnold has dispatched Captain Nathan Hale to the scene to protect the hostages, umm, Ladies. AWI skirmish level game on a grand scale.

Saturday November 7th

10AM     Action at Kennett Square

Same game as described for the 10AM Friday game.

4PM       Captain Ewald's Gold - skirmish game (8 players)

The British payroll wagon is lost and  last seen at the Savage Swan Tavern. It's  lost a wheel and must be repaired. Moreover, it  is full of coins and gold bars that must not fall into the hands of the rebels. Captain Johan Ewald and his company of Hessian Jagers have been dispatched to rescue the payroll wagon and keep it out of the hands of the Americans. However, Daniel Morgan and his riflemen are also searching for the payroll wagon. Who will rescue the wagon, the Hessians or the Americans?

American artillery deploy on the other side of Brandywine Creek.

This year's convention theme is "Special Forces Operations" so the two skirmish games feature Captain Johan Ewald and his band of Hessian Jagers as they go on special missions. The other two games feature a fighting withdrawal by the American light troop brigade of Colonel William Maxwell prior to the Battle of Brandywine Creek.

Game registration has not opened yet. Ticket sales open on October 13th at 7PM (EST). I would recommend checking in on the Tabletop Events web site prior to 7PM in the event that the ticket sales are opened early (as happened with the room lottery).

American forces deploy behind Brandywine Creek

AWI American Riflemen

 

Colonell Daniel Morgan and his riflemen

Here are several pictures of Fife and Drum Miniatures' American Riflemen. They are dressed in the frontier style linen hunting shirt that became very popular in the Continental army because they were inexpensive and easy to acquire. Oftentimes British soldiers would see an American wearing a hunting shirt and assume that they were riflemen. It is sort of like Allied soldiers in WW2 France assuming that every German tank was a Tiger.

The hunting shirts were in a variety of colors, given that the linen material was easy to dye. In these pictures I have used the natural linen color, but I also use colors such as khaki, buff, blue, green and even black.

ccc

Militia men taking cover in the woods.

Dan Morgan directing the fighting of his light troops.

These are very useful figures that should have some representation in any wargame Continental army; or they can be used as armed settlers on the frontier in upstate New York, etc.

cccc

The First New Hampshire Regiment

 

Here is a picture of the 1st New Hampshire regiment of 1777 as it might have appeared during the Saratoga campaign in 1777. The commander of the regiment was Colonel Joseph Cilley. The uniform descriptions were provided by Charles Lefferts in his book, Uniforms of the 1775-1783 American, British, French and German Armies of the American Revolution.

When I paint an American unit of AWI soldiers I like to mix up the poses with a wide assortment of figures from both the Fife and Drum and the Minden Miniatures figure ranges. I don't want the regiment to have every figure in lock step with each other.

In the picture above looking at the stand on the far right we have the following figures:

Front Rank (right to left): Militia firing musket, Continental firing musket, Militia officer with a head conversion swap into a round hat, Militia firing musket, an I can't make out the last pose on the left.

Secon Rank (right to left): Militia at the ready, Militia advancing, Continental cocking his musket, Continental firing musket, and Militia loading his musket.

You can see that I mix in American Militia figures with my Continental regulars and simply paint them in the same uniform. I was doing head swaps from tricorn hat to round hat, but I have since added the round hat poses to the Fife and Drum figure range which renders the head swaps moot.

Here is another regiment of Continentals (the Delaware and Maryland brigade at Guilford Courthouse. These are mostly Fife and Drum Continentals with a kneeling firing MIlitia man and several other Militia figures sprinkled throughout.

WORK IN PROGRESS

I'm working on several command stands for my British forces, realizing that I had not used either of the personality figures of Howe and Cornwallis. Here is general Howe with his paramour.

General Howe and Mrs. Loring

bbb

Battle of Zorndorf: August 25, 1758

 

Karl Rochling painting of the Prussian king Frederick II grabbing the standard of one
of his regiments to encourage them to make another attack against the stubborn Russian army.

I nearly missed today's anniversary of the Battle of Zorndorf. This was Frederick's first encounter with the Russians and his very low opinion of them likely changed at the conclusion of the battle. It was pretty much a draw with both armies ending the day in the starting position of the opponent.

The sole monument commemorating the Battle of Zorndorf, now located in Poland.
There were no trees in front of the tower when it was built, but over the years it
became enshrouded by trees and brush.

Map from Wikipedia depicts the initial deployment of both armies with the Russians
in Red and the Prussians in Blue

Here are several pictures of the Zorndorf game that I played on my home pitch back in November 2017. Click on all of the pictures to enlarge the view.

The Battle of Zorndorf

My tabletop version of the Battle of Zorndorf that I fought in November 2027.

Battle of Zorndorf on my game table.

Russian General Fermor

A very large battery of Russian artillery complete with limbers and caissons.
Minden Miniatures all

Frederick the Great and his "A-Team" of generals
Minden Miniatures

I played Zorndorf as a solo game the first time that I ran it and I believe that the Prussians prevailed, albeit at a high price in terms of casualties. A second solo game produced a Russian victory as the Prussian attacks were cut to pieces by the mass of Russian artillery. I also ran the game at the Seven Years War Association convention and again at the Little Wars convention (I won ribbon that said "First Place" on it although I'm not sure what that means).

nnnn

My Regiment Bearn Uniform Still Fits!

 

Post-Historicon I picked up some kind of a virus. It was not the Death Lettuce virus that has been going around right now. My high level of exhaustion suggested that I was totally knackered from all of the hard work at the Historicon convention.

I say "hard work" because I do not have a partner to help me out. I do everything from hauling terrain from my car, to setting up the game table and running two 4-hour events each day. Usually by the end of the convention I am tired, my feet hurt from standing up too much while running my games, and I have to face a long two day drive home.

So I figured that the desire to sleep for a good part of the day was due to exhaustion.

My symptoms were extreme tiredness, no appetite, I couldn't taste food, fever and a one-time nausea event. I did not have any respiratory issues. It sounded like Covid to me and so I went to a local Acute Care walk-in facility to get tested for Covid and the test came back negative.

My regular doctor was out of town for a couple of weeks and her back up opined that it was probably some kind of virus, given that my Covid test seemed to rule that out. He gave me something for the nausea and my fever went away after two days of feeding it Advil. After that, my energy came back but my appetite wasn't there probably because I couldn't taste anything. After about ten days from start to finish I finally started to feel normal again. I took a second Covid test and it also came back negative.

The one good thing is that I lost eight pounds. I wanted to lose some weight anyway, but I would not recommend this form of a weight loss process.

With that in mind, I decided to try on my old reenactment uniform for the French regiment Bearne from the French and Indian War. Click on the link to You Tube (below) to see a short video of how this went.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oXpXezILPw

Game Room Remodeling

 

The newly redecorated War Game Room

The midwest US has been battered by a steady stream of rainstorms and fortunately I live in an area that  has been relatively untouched by flooding and power outages. About five years ago I invested in a whole house generator that is powered by the natural gas line that runs into the house. When the power goes out, the generator kicks in and all of the lights go back on.

However, there was one little glitch in that I don't have plastic window well covers over the basement windows. It hasn't been a problem until about a week ago when rainwater filled up the window well with water and then the water decided to enter my basement and deposit a one-inch deep layer of water that covered about half of my game room.

The window well was in one of the extra storage rooms that we have in the basement and pretty much everything in that room was wet and waterlogged. The stench from the wet cardboard was powerful and so I had to remove everything from the storage closet and haul it out to the street curb so that the city garbage truck could haul it away. I lost some war game books that I hadn't looked at in years so I really didn't consider it much of a loss. If you haven't used in the item in more than a year you should probably toss it out anyway.

A pile of wet stuff (carpet, lots of cardboard boxes, spare ceiling tiles and other stuff)
that I pulled from the basement and hauled to the curb for the garbage man to remove.

I had to remove about half of the carpet from the floor and throw it away. I considered replacing it with laminate flooring, but the estimates that I got from Lowe's and Home Depot were too expensive and so I decided that I could live with some bare cement floor for another year.

Having thrown a few things out, I explored the area beneath my game table and found a lot of boxes full of various types of war game junk. They were goners. If I don't need it or haven't used it in over a year then I am not keeping it around anymore.

Long story short: I cleaned out a lot of clutter from the war game room and felt pretty good about it.

I purchased a couple of area rugs on the cheap from Target and Wayfair stores and spread them out over what I now call "The Sitting Area". A nice leather club chair had been on order about a month ago and it arrived two days ago. Now I have a pair of club chairs that I can place on either side of a faux fireplace mantel and I have to say that the scene evokes a private gentlemen's club in some toney part of London {in my imagination at least}.

The leather club chair on the right is my latest acquisition for the War Game Room

Another view of the seating area in the room.

The drafting table was found at Target Stores. It is a good place to display various maps that I have.

I decided to to take down the second war game table in the room and play on one 6ft by 12ft table that I can expand to 15ft in length if needed. I can always set up the second table of 5ft by 12ft , but I like the openness of the room that is created by having only the one table set up all of the time.

I have set up an AWI game on the 6ft by 12ft table.

The inaugural war game in the new room will be an AWI battle taking place in the 1777 Philadelphia Campaign. The scenario involves Maxwell's Light Brigade in the American army conducting a rear guard action to delay the march and advance of General Howe's entire British and Hessian army. The American riflemen stand no chance of stopping the British, but their victory condition is to delay the British army for a to-be-determined number of game turns

The British Light Brigade forms the advance guard of the army and they quickly
draw fire from American skirmishers in the grove of trees on the right.

Brandywine Creek with the town of Kennet Square in the distance.

A colonial farmhouse

The town of Kennet Square. This is the objective of the British army.

American skirmishers in the grove attempt to spring an ambush on the British light troops.
but they are having none of that.

The bucolic stone bridge over Chadd's Ford at Brandywine Creek.
N.C Wyeth can be seen crossing the bridge.

ccc

Trenton Game Report

 

Washington crossing the Delaware River to attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton

Yesterday Earl K and Bill P. of our Fab Four wargame group convened at Schloss Fritz to play my Battle of Trenton. The fourth member of the Fab Four, Keith L., was a combat casualty and couldn't attend.

The Fab Four (minus one) playing the Battle of Trenton

Earl and Bill played the American side, as division commanders Sullivan and Greene, respectively, while I handled the command of the Hessians (boo, hiss!). The Trenton scenario accommodated 8 players at Historicon with each player commanding a brigade of three American regiments or a regiment of Hessians. For this game, I scaled the game down so that each player commanded a division of three brigades. My wargame "regiments" of 30 figures represented a "brigade" in this game rather than a regiment. Because the American forces were scaled down I reduced the three Hessian regiments down from 50 figures to 40 figures.

We used my Fife and Drum rules for the game and the players understood the rules by the end of the second turn. I have been using my Fife and Drum rules since about 1994 so they are battle tested and have stood the test of time. These rules are FREE to download at the Fife and Drum Minitures web store. Click on the link below to access and download the rules. There is also a file that includes "designer notes" that provide some additional background for how to play the rules.

Free AWI Rules

Here are some of the game pictures. I will let the captions tell the story. Click on all of the pictures to enlarge them for better viewing.

The quiet town of Trenton in the dawn hours of December 26, 1776
Things are about to heat up as the Americans form up for the attack.

Fermoy's American brigade forms up to attack the Hessian flank.

The Hessian Rall Grenadiers conducted a fighting retreat towards the safety
of the Bordontown Bridge. Alas, they didn't make it.

Glover's Continental brigade of Massachusetts troops fight their way into 
the town and attempt to cut off the Hessians' only avenue of retreat at 
the Bordontown Bridge.

Lord Sterling's Virginia troops attack down Queen Street which is defended
by two companies of the Rall Grenadiers . Meanwhile, two oblivious civilians
are shoveling snow (lower left).

South of the town, the von Knyphausen fussier regiment fends off the
attacking Continentals. Eventually they are surrounded and have no
choice but to surrender and lay down their weapons.

The Rall Grenadiers make a last stand in front of the Bordentown Road bridge.
They eventually routed and ran across the bridge and into the welcoming arms
of part of Glover's brigade where they surrender.

The Americans attacked at dawn, but contrary to history, Colonel Rall had called his troops to arms and so the Hessians were formed up in the town and ready to fight. The Americans outnumbered the Hessians nearly 3 to 1 and the outcome was never in doubt. The Hessians were required to fight it out for at least four game turns before they could make any attempt to retreat across the Bordentown Road Bridge to safety. The Hessians held off the Americans for eight turns before they capitulated.

The Hessian fusilier regiment von Lossberg defended the eastern side of the town but they were cut to pieces by the Americans. The Rall Grenadiers split up into two wings: the left wing defended the River Road and King Street while the right wing defended Queen Street. The von Knyphausen fusiliers deployed on the open fields to the south of the town and kept two brigades of Americans at bay until the last turn (turn 8) of the game. They were cut off and likely would have surrendered. The Rall Grenadiers performed a splendid fighting withdrawal from the center of the town to the Bordentown Roae Bridge. However, American troops had a big advantage in numbers over the Rall Grenadiers, who eventually routed.

All in all, it was a cracking good fight with the Hessians selling their lives dearly as they fought inside the town. You never know how fighting in built up areas is going to turn out in a wargame, but this one played out easily which made it all the more fun.

A big thank you goes out to the Fab Four inaugurating my new and improved game room. This time I swear that I will keep the game room neat and tidy.

Miss Bella (aka "Trouble on Four Legs") welcomes you to the newly updated game room.

The seating area of my game room.

With the 250th anniversary of American independence, I plan on hosting many more AWI games in the Man Cave. I might even revive the South Carolina Campaign to generate new battles in the South.