James Was Right

 Now there's a headline that you don't often see. He said there wasn't another night left in the game, and there wasn't. Even feeding in a new Union unit every turn couldn't fend off the Confederates for very long.

I do rather like Fire and Fury, but experience suggests that if the men in grey charge in column and keep charging then they will sweep all before them. The issue seems to be that Union brigades are all very brittle, whereas Confederate ones retain cohesion much longer. I've never read the rules for myself so I'm not really sure if that's a central feature of them, or just something specific to the scenarios which we have been playing.

There has been some slight forward movement in the set-up of the Square Bashing game, with attackers and defenders now deployed. However, whilst I had intended to fight this solo it has, in an unexpected development, been decided that it will be next Wednesday evening's game instead. This will allow James to 'spray his cloth'; not a euphemism.

The Bees Have Ceased To Be(e)

“What is a hobby anyway? Where is the line of demarcation between hobbies and ordinary normal pursuits? I have been unable to answer this question to my own satisfaction. At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant." 

                                                          

                                                       - Aldo Leopold

The bees having left us for higher planes access to the annexe has once again been possible. For no real reason at all my thoughts have turned to the first world war (*), and I have set up a Square Bashing scenario (**). I haven't yet run through the typically extensive Peter Pig pre-battle routine, so things will definitely change before the game starts.

Meanwhile, in the legendary wargames room, we have continued our exploration of the Slaveowners' Rebellion and the highly entertaining Fire and Fury rules.

It currently looks like a walkover for the Confederates, but James' wishes have been over-ruled and we are going to carry on playing next week.

* OK, it was the sight of things being gassed. 

** I can't remember if I've mentioned this before. but although the cover of the rulebook states that they are for the period 1900-1928, the OED dates the first use of the term itself to 1943.

Noisy, Fast, Massing In Hundreds

 “Surround yourself with bees even if they sting.” - Bhuwan Thapaliya

The wargaming annexe has been out of bounds for a while because of apian invaders. But their nemesis has arrived.

However, professional looking as this chap is, the effect of his actions seems only to have been to annoy the bees, and now the whole garden is out of bounds and I can't open the windows at the back of the house.

There has been some wargaming elsewhere though, with some Fire and Fury taking place in the legendary wargames room.

I rather like these rules, especially the mandatory manoeuvre roll for all brigades each turn. Good fun. 

Fire and Fury

 It's election day, but counting won't take place until tomorrow afternoon, meaning it will be another 48 hours or so before I write something here along the lines that the voters of West Chevin ward don't know what they're doing. In the meantime let's have a third wargaming post in a row, possibly a record for the blog.

Mark brought round some of his ACW figures. He is inevitably in the middle of rebasing them - he is the king of rebasing - but he had completed enough for a small game. It had been probably getting on for twenty years since I had played the period and I had never played the rules used, so it was all a pleasant change. Mark opted for Brigade level Fire and Fury, and I found them easy enough to pick up. I can't vouch for how well they reflect the period, firstly because I don't know much about it and secondly because Peter and I, as Union commanders, decided that a suicidal charge across open ground was the best tactic to pursue. In fairness to us we also tried a flanking march around the woods on our left, but you can judge how successful that was by the fact that I didn't take any photos of the forces engaged in it.

I did take one of the highwater mark of our assault in the centre, but the boys in blue were driven back by the rebels' musketry and that's as close as we came to taking the objective. Despite everything, I enjoyed it. I have to caveat that by repeating that it was a small game and we started with all units having the same quality, weapons and size in order to keep things simple. But I'd be up for a larger, more complex game; once, of course, that Mark has rebased everything.