Despite not playing many games with actual people of late, I've been painting quite a bit and just thought recently that perhaps I ought to update this blog with some Skellies and Prussians.. but before that, a brief report of this weekends actual face to face game.. I have to say it was great to meet up with old gaming chums and roll some dice again. We even got in a summer stroll around the local graveyard, seeking out Rorkes' Drift defenders, and a nice shared tapas lunch at the 'local'!
On Sunday, I drove over to Scrivs 'wargaming annex', picking up James on the way. I had nothing to bring to the day, not having played any WW1 stuff for a very long time, and sold the few figures I had in the last millenium! The chaps have a combined excellent collection, of course, of figures and terrain, which were laid out for a game to try out the 'Bello Ludi' ruleset. None of us had played them we were interested to see what kind of a game they would give us. We were conscious that we've been playing wargames for 30-40 years and these rules are stated to be aimed at beginners, so we expected some abstractions. (Not a bad thing, just a thing).
The scenario pitted three German platoons (each platoon consisted of a CO and four 12 man sections, a mix of LMG and 'bombers') against a slightly less numerous French force holding a defensive position around a village and local wood - both pretty well bombed out (I believe James set this scenario in the Verdun area, but I'm afraid my WW1 knowledge isn't great)
The rules were certainly easy enough to pick up.. we came across some things that we thought we'd rather tweak.. toning down the effectiveness of VB gunners for example, and refining the rules around cover.. a brief reset and phase two played after our pub lunch tested these ideas satisfactorily. James had also picked up the cards which added a lot to the game, but we were firing off ideas for some much more WW1-specific cards which we thought could really add some period flavour.
I enjoyed the game. The rules worked okay.. I struggled to imagine the scenario where a WW1 tabletop miniatures game would be used for a 'team building' exercise as described by the rules authors intent.. I'd imagine 'shiny' classic toy soldiers, or something like SYW? I was also surprised that an introductory ruleset was dependent on a quirky order dice (even thought these worked very well) and a deck of unique cards, rather than sticking to D6 or similar, but that's just idle head scratching, and not a criticism. I can see me trying these out for some 1866 or 1870 games when I've got enough figures painted up!
Oh, and the Germans won in the end..despite some very stiff resistance against the odds.
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| French reserves move up |
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| a view across the Germans advance |
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| French machine guns pick their targets |
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| The woods are heavily defended |
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| late arrival of artillery supported the german assault |
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| Heroic action from the French bombers! |
