Big SYW Cavalry Battle - The Light Cavalry Phase

The garrison town of Gross Kammin

Last evening saw the long awaited start of my all-cavalry SYW game that I had talked about in the months prior to Historicon in July. As you might guess, Historicon game preparations took up most of my hobby related time. However, the conventions are over and now I can get back to doing some solo gaming on the home pitch.

Background to the game

The all-cavalry game is a contest with Prussia and Russia as the combatants. The Russians have been on a roll destroying villages in Pommerania and the Trans-Oder (the eastern bank) regions of Prussia. The most outrageous example is the burning and destruction of Kustrin during the Zorndorf campaign of 1758. Following Zorndorf, the Russians have been sending out hordes of the Cossack light cavalry, backed by some hussars, out into the Prussian hinterlands to capture stores, burn villages and effectively deny resources to the Kingdom of Prussia,

The Prussian high command sets its plan to bag the Cossacks.

Frederick has had enough of these Cossack depredations and so he has called on his light cavalry genius, Lt. General Joachim von Zieten, to devise a plan to lure the Russian cavalry into a trap and destroy it once and for all.

Phase One - the light cavalry game

The cavalry game will be broken down into several phases of action, with each phase building on the results of the previous phase. We start with the light cavalry game that features Russian hussars and Cossacks on a  raiding mission; and they are opposed by an assortment of Prussian light cavalry consisting of hussars and Bosniaken lancers,

Russian Order of Battle

Don Cossacks - 2 polks 12 x 2 = 24 figures

Chugevsky Cossacks - 2 polks 14 x 2 = 28 figures

Volga Cossacks - 1 polk = 10 figures

Horvath Hussars - 2 squadrons  2 x 12 = 24 figures

Gruzinski Hussars - 1 squadron = 12 figures

Total 62 Cossacks and 36 Hussars = 98 figures

Prussian Order of Battle

Zieten Hussars (H2) - 12 figures

Green Hussars (H1) - 12 figures

White Hussars (H4)  - 24 figures

Black Hussars (H5) - 36 figures

Red Hussars (H7) - 12 figures

Bosniaken Lancers - 12 figures

  Total 108 figures

As you can see, the two sides have relatively equal strengths in figures, however, the vast majority of the Russians are the irregular Cossacks whereas all of the Prussian light cavalry are regular line regiments of varying quality.

The Terrain Map

The map below shows a sketch of the layout of my game table. The center horizontal line indicates where the two tables meet. The top table is 5ft by 12ft and the bottom table is 6ft by 12ft. There is an aisle between the two tables. I'm sorry about the poor quality of the map but Adobe Acrobat won't let me do any editing to the map even though I paid for the service. Don't get me started.

The town of Gross Kammin is located in the lower righthand corner of the map. This is where the Prussians have their fortified encampment. There are three earthworks that guard all of the approaches to the town.

The Prussian town of Gross Kammin

Moving north onto the top table we see the town of Zicherwitz, a rich agricultural community that has a very small garrison of about a dozen men.

The Prussian village of Zicherwitz

Moving west from Zicherwitz, we travel across the great Kammin Heide which is a vast open lands area Continuing on that road we arrive at Sagwitz, which is basically a fortified farm building/house. The Prussians are building a field bakery outside of the farm building and this serves as the bait to entice the Russian mice to attack.

The farm house of Sagwitz. A Prussian field bakery is sited next to the walled farmhouse. 

And finally we travel down the south road to the small hamlet of Frobeldorf, which is known for the world famous Savage Swann inn and tavern. Here is a link to the back story about The Savage Swans on Belisarius' blog "Another Slight Diversion. The tavern is run by some fellow named Seamus Gunter von Donavan. Stop in and tip a mug with von Donavan the next time you travel through Frobeldorf.

Frobeldorf

Some unruly Cossacks are shown the door at the Savage Swan by some 
Prussian Black Hussars doing a side hustle as bouncers.

The Kammin Heide is the great expanse of wide open field that is perfect for a cavalry fight or a traditional linear warfare tussle.

The great Kammin Heide, where history will soon be made.

So there you have it. Your very own Baedeker's  Guide to Pommerania and Trans-Oder Silesia

We have introduced you to the forces in the respective Prussian and Russian armies, gone over the terrain and maps, and have set the stage for the great Cossack trap. With that, this blog post is starting to get a bit long so I think that we will wrap it up and put a bow around it and divide the light cavalry game into a two-part episode, coming within the next several days.

cc

A Return To The 18th Century

My 18th C diorama, somewhere in Prussia

 Historicon is now a thing of the past and so now I can start my New War Gaming Year. The idea is that the game project for the next Historicon/Little Wars convention starts at the conclusion of just ended Historicon. It is sort of like corporations opting to use a "financial year" rather than the "calendar year" to start measuring their annual revenue and income figures. For example, a company might decide that it wants to end its year on June 30th of each year. So their financial year starts on July 1st rather than January 1st. It is all a twelve month period no matter when you start it.

So War Game Project Year starts on August 1, 2024 this year and will end on July 31, 2025.

What kind of game or historical period should I focus on for next season's convention circuit? My initial thought was to do another 54mm showcase game featuring Hannibal of Carthage versus Republican Rome. After all, this project has 75% of the needed figures already painted and based and I can repurpose the Khartoum walls for those of a Roman or Carthaginian city. Thus a lot of the work for the project is already done. I can paint one more Roman legion, more cavalry for both sides, and build some Roman town buildings to enhance the look of the game.

Two Roman Republic era legions. 54mm Armies In Plastic figures

Were I to do a giant 54mm Hannibal game over three game tables I would want to arrange things so that there is action going on at all three tables at approximately the same time. Or, I might run two different game scenarios on the tables to attract more gamers. This year at both Little Wars and Historicon I noticed that the number of players signing up for the fourth game fell off from the attendance of the first three games. If a person has already played in my Hannibal game then it is unlikely that they would want to play in the same game again, unless I ran a different scenario on another day.

I could envision something like the Carthaginians laying siege to a Roman walled city on one or two tables while on the third table another Roman army is arriving to relieve the siege. Two different battles could be fought on the same tables in this manner. Think about it: we bring back walls, scaling ladders and lots of D6 dice. Add to that some siege equipment such as towers, battering rams, and rubber band catapults. I like the sound of that.

A provincial Roman city circa 2nd Punic War

For a brief nanosecond I gave thought to doing Napoleon in Spain or Waterloo with 54mm plastic figures. Mrs Fritz cuffed me across the back of my head when she heard me and said, "are you crazy!" Rather than answering that question in the affirmative I chose to nod my head up and down and say something like "of course Dear, you are right. What was I thinking?"

My mule thinks you're crazy. He doesn't like being around crazy people.

We are most certainly not amused.

On the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea to give the 3-table extravaganza in 54mm game format a rest for one year. After two years, the format is not the shiny new thing anymore. I don't want to turn it into a "been there, done that" format. I like gaming with 54mm figures but I don't want to over do it. Sometimes it is good to know when to switch things up and go in a different direction. Besides, I could return the following year with a 54mm Hannibal game and then it would seem fresh again.

I could present a 28mm game, on a smaller table or two, with lots of scratch built terrain models. The thing is, 28mm games and smaller don't have that pizzaz effect that 54mm figures provide the the first time that you see that game. One can't count on the 54mm figures to provide that "get" that will attract people to your convention game. A 28mm game needs to compensate for its smaller figures  with some visuals such as great looking terrain and well painted and based figures. A current example is some of the WW2 games put on by the Two Fat Lardies sector of the war game continuum. At Historicon this year I saw quite a few Normandy games with superb scenics - buildings, roads, you name it - and only a few figures. All of these games were sold out. That tells me something.

And you had better come up with an interesting scenario that is going to capture the imagination of the Public. One problem with running a Seven Years War game is that linear warfare is basically "line them up across from each other and fire away." That might have worked twenty years ago, maybe even ten years ago, but I don't think that it works for today's war gamers.

I think that smaller skirmish or grand skirmish style games are in the sweet spot of what convention goers are looking for. If I were to run a SYW skirmish game with my Croat Terror rules then that might fill the bill of what the public is looking for. Oh wait a minute, that didn't turn out very well for me three years ago. A French and Indian War game might have more appeal even though it is in the same time space of the mid 18th Century. With next year being the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution (ok, AWI for you foreigners) I might consider some kind of a Lexington and Concord scenario. Imagine, lots of individually mounted Fife and Drum Miniatures British soldiers marching down the length of the table as they try to make it back to safety in Boston. I would bet that there will be a lot of AWI games at Historicon next year. Darn it all, now you all have got me saying AWI instead of the American Revolutionary War. Sigh.... when in Rome, do like the Romans do.

OK, now quite a few of my readers right now are wondering what all of this has to do with the blog post title "A Return to the 18th Century?

Well it started out in the right direction, but then I got sidetracked more than a little bit.

A quiet Prussian farm village. Note the Prussian hussars lurking in the trees.

Cossacks!

That may be, but we will match them with our lancers.
Bosniaken lancers from Minden Miniatures

I'm still working through war gamers' burnout post-Historicon and I couldn't be bothered to lift a paint brush and paint figures or move little metal men around the table top. However, I do like to set up terrain on my game table and this is something that I never tire of. I decided to set up an 18th Century diorama on my two game tables in the basement.  I designed some small villages and placed these in the four corners of the overall pair of tables. The villages are populated with a fair number of civilians and over the next couple of weeks I might add some gubbins and other bric a brac to the diorama. The scene takes place somewhere in Prussian Silesia and one of the towns is a garrison town whose soldiers protect the area from those dastardly and barbaric Russians. Cossacks have been making raids on these towns and King Frederick II has had about enough of these raiders looting and burning his villages. There will be reprisals in the near future as a trap is being set to lure the Cossacks and other Russian cavalry into the territory where they will be set upon by a very large number of Prussian cavalrymen. This is the prelude to the larger all-cavalry SYW game that I was talking about a couple of months ago. 

More on this later.

Historicon Pix: The Other Games

 

Lee and his staff are looking at some of the other games at Historicon this year.
General Hood: "that's a great looking game over there on the right."
Longstreet: "come on Sam, would you stop it with all of the let's go around the right business!"
Lee: "Gentlemen, in the center we will find the best looking games. General Pickett, you must go and set up your game."
Pickett: "General Lee, I have no more games"

Part Two of my Historicon pictures focuses on games other than my Pickett's Charge game.

In most cases I do not know the name of the game judge, so I'm just posting the pictures for your viewing pleasure. There were a lot of nice looking games this year and I only wish that I had more time to go wandering through some of the other game areas.

A giant scratch built Circus Maximus for Roman chariot races.

Huge Medieval Korea game that is actually broken down into a series of smaller one on one
games. I believe that the game judge stated that he had nearly 80 players in his games over
the course of the convention. This has been a very popular game over the past three years.

Tournament style games were set up next to the Dealer Area

A nice looking WW2 Normandy game set up near my game table.

ACW game by Gettysburg Soldiers was set up in the dealer area as part
of their booth, to accommodate drop in players.

A number of role playing style games were set up in the hallways.

WW2 Pacific Theater navy game. I think that it was based on the old
"you sunk my battleship game."

Viking raid on Saxon England

Best Theme Game (in my opinion)

One of my favorite games was this What A Cowboy game featuring the Lardie rules. What makes this game special is that it was a game within a game. One part of the table was the Warner Brothers movie studio, complete with large sound stage buildings and a high water tower that had the Warner Bros. logo on it.

They had a director and camera crew roaming the western cowboy set on the Warner's studio back lot as they filmed their movie. Then they had the actual western cowboy game being played as a game with the What A Cowboy rules.

The Historicon convention "theme" for games was Hollywood At War so there were lots of games based on our favorite war movies such as Zulu, Ben Hur, The Longest Day, Apocalypse Now, etc. However, these guys got creative and literally set up their game as a Hollywood movie being filmed in progress, but played as a war game. Brilliant idea. This would get my vote for Best Theme Game, for sure.

The Warners' sound stages and studios

The movie set or is it the actual war game? You decide.

An overhead view of the entire layout.

Other Games 

Sharpe Practice game set in Napoleonc Spain, hosted by Lard America.

WW1 game

What A Tanker game set in North Africa WW2

What A Tanker Game

Best Terrain ( in my opinion)

Doug Fisher is a master when it comes to making war game terrain. His games always dazzle and this year I think that he outdid himself. The game was Toulon 1813 and the French navy is trying to escape their home harbour at Toulon in France. The British navy is attempting to stop them from escaping. The game won a PELA award and should be right up there in the running for either Best of Show or Best Terrain.

The Toulon harbor and coast line. Lots of miniature buildings and forts scattered
across this realistic looking terrain.

Close up view of Toulon. This model looks like a diorama that you might see in a museum.

One of many forts protecting the harbor.

Part of the harbor terrain. Nice work on the water effects.

The game was played on two tables. One table was largely the city and the harbor,
while the other table was the open sea where the action took place.

Vietnam Game

I watched this game being set up and my eyes immediately locked onto these superb building models. The river was also full of activity with lots of boats. This was a good looking game and probably it wa a lot of fun to play.

The Dealer Area

There

One of the four such aisles in the Dealer Area

The ever popular fill up a Chinese food container with as many MDF bases as you can fit into it.

Miniature Building Authority display at their booth.

I didn't catch the name of this dealer, but he was selling 3D printed terrain.

A view of various booths.

The ones that got away. I really really really really wanted to buy these.

A huge plastic container cargo vessel that is very impressive.

Miniature Building Authority Spanish buildings. I believe these are 3D
printed in a variety of scales and sizes.

Impressive looking pagoda

More buildings from Miniature Building Authority

These look like 3D printed models.

So there you have: Historicon 2024 was another success and the HMGS organization did a magnificent job of running the convention and doing a lot of behind the scenes work.