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Thank you both for your thoughts.
The good news is I did it! First dice rolled with shaking hands and sure I made a few errors but this was the game:
Starting forces and first move:
Red gets the first move (decided by pulling a coloured blank dice out of a bag) and move the skirmishers up to be met by the blue mounted troops – this turns into a right ‘slug fest’ as cavalry is at -2 vs skirmishers…
Not sure where I’ve gone a bit wrong with my scaling but artillery can reach any part of the board (hence the hit on the blue artillery unit).By halfway through the game serious damage has been done to both sides with blue cavalry hitting the other red skirmish unit in the flank:
Amazingly, the dice where awful for both sides with many a tie or defenders winning and with 2/3 of the turns gone (15 is the standard in OHW) the sides are down to:
Three turns later it’s down to the dice with red having the advantage in the dice with the skirmishers -2:
A turn later the dice go to the red team with a pyrrhic victory to say the least.
The good news is that I stopped shaking after a couple of turns and the unit selection / three hit house rules worked fine even if tactics may not have been ‘period correct’.
I now need to:
1) Create a cheat sheet as flicking back and forward in the A4 sheets is a pain and the mind gets mixed up without double checking things.
2) Find my dice tray as the dice skid all over the table and board
3) Paint the green brighter – under the lights the blue units are a pain despite the yellow.
4) Look at ideas to hold the felt down – the hills slid a bit but the units where fine as it happens. Not convinced blue-tac would work as it may pull the felt apart…
So the result – my heart is still beating fast with the fun I’ve had but I’m going to have good news for my councellor later today
… normal mousemats cut better with scissors than knives, and a rotary cutter is best of all. Hold a guide straight edge firmly (or clamp) and run the cutter up and down two or three times.
Oddly enough I have had a long career in I.T. but never cut a mouse mat up
The rotary cutter sounds a good idea – I’ll check with the two ladies in my life (NO – wife and daughter) who are both crafters to see if they have one tucked away if I go that way. The mat is large enough to have a few goes even if I cut it down for SoBH as well.
I discarded the idea of flocking the board as I think that will lift with the felt but I may have some of the Krylon stone spray left from an old desert board I made that’s nice and gritty. A spray of that and then green / brown over the top may work and not cost.
Hey andrew, here is the file i made on publisher for the board. It’s not great, it took me about half hour of googling to find a half suitable image: https://ufile.io/3y9kc5nr It’s a publisher file.
Most kind – I’ll see if I have anything that opens it on my Mac. Sure my wife has the full Office on her PC but think Libre Office can handle it and I’ve a Linux notebook that has it on.
Other good news is the dentist saved my tooth – big and very pleasant surprise as he thought it was beyond saving
One thought I had on the way back was to flip the current board over to the hairy side and try that! It’s a simple option to try first.
@ Fred B – Welcome to the dark side. We have square corners (but no cake). I like the idea of flipping the blocks though I did not paint the bottoms and used a spray can to save time (grrr). Maybe I can create a spray puddle and use that. The guns do stick up from the top though and, being resin, may be fragile.
I do have enough counters to use two to denote the half but just looks messy – maybe a small blank counter will do.
Talking of the guns, I now have some large blanks to swap for the small skirmish ones and can then use them to replace the large blocks for the artillery if I can create a gun out of plastic to stick on the tops. I know it’s not truly needed but will let me match the sizes listed in the rules.
Well I went to have a grope of the fabric again with my daughter and Boyes let me have a strip without having to buy the full meter so I decided on the brown fleece (Alice makes her own clothes and said this is unlikely to fray).
Oddly enough, it looks rather pink at home compared to the shop but I’ll hunt up the spray cans again and give it some greens and browns when it stops raining.
The great news is the felt does not slip anymore and the blocks remain in place fine.
I also splashed out on a pot of bright green so I’ll do that change at some point.
Next up though is to replace the skirmish and artillery units with blocks the ‘correct’ size – I’ve not worked out how to make the guns to stick on the blank blocks I have – maybe I can cut four out of card / plastic by hand to match the current ones though a quick Google shows a circle (representing a cannonball) was used by NATO for field artillery.
I do know that I’ve nothing in my bits box that I could make them semi-realistic from (let alone even match the ones currently on the big blocks) and the local hardware shop has not restocked the brass / plastic rod box in years! 6mm figures are way oversized (as would be 3mm) so I am leaning to the circle TBH. For now though as the skirmishers and artillery will be the only blank topped unit I’m not fussed as they will not get mixed up with anything.
As for firing out of the square, a quick bit of research shows me it was done (not only in film) so I think the rule must be a game balancing one.
Alice is kindly arranging for some 1/2 wood counters to be made by Tash that matches the current ones for my birthday next month so that’s that problem solved as well.
Wonder if I can find a pencil case to hold everything (bar the dice tray) – it’s almost a pocket game!!!
Been a good end to a ‘b’ of a week
Turns out my wife has a circular cutter after all and it’s still sharp (my finger will grow back won’t it?!?) so I can look at cutting down the mouse mat for a different game later this year… SOBH is simple and I have a bit of scenery done so that’s a thought.
As for the storage issue – sorted about 5AM this morning. I looked in Boyes yesterday but the boxes felt on the small size (forgot the measurement and DID NOT write it down grrrr – I should know better) and the knitting needle boxes where more like tubes. I did find a very very nice fishing tackle box set with adjustable insides but at £13 it was way over what I would pay. A search on eBay showed nothing I fancied (but the choice is way OTT so I did give up) so I felt a bit down and got stuck thinking I need a trip to The Range or The Works in the big town.
Not feeling great over this led my to being up all night (curled up, napping and walking about) but I finally remembered I had a box that held some glue (I can put them elsewhere) that may work. Unfortunately my wife was asleep by the time I finally went to bed but I did remember to check when I got up and YES – it’s perfect:
It’s amazing the feeling of relief getting this sorted – I’ve been avoiding playing another game as I needed to get over this problem first so I will now do the QRS and start rolling dice again.
Been a horrible mind battle the last week – wanting to play but stuck on storage so not playing and getting anxious over the money and time I’ve spent being wasted as I had no storage and so the downward spiral reinforces itself.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be on the computer doing the QRS and dreaming of the next game
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Andrew, The Works doesn’t have anything suitable. The Range has lots of choice in both price and size. However, I can’t find anything now they’ve moved the shop around!
But The Works shops do have cheap books
Not to worry, I’ll save fuel and stick to the 1.5l RUB I found – I would just spend more money on bits I do not need at the mo. and putting the glue away has reminded me to sort out the box the box came out off – looks like a little sale coming up!
Im trying to get the QRS into the box as well as being able to read it so double sided printing gives my first draft as:
Poop – missed ‘arc’ after the 360 degree note! It does duplicate some bits now I read it but they are the bits I forget…
I’ve tweaked the rules for shooting vs artillery and skirmishers to cope with their size and to allow infantry to fire out of a square at reduced effect. The first tweak reflected is in the normal rules as a damage mod but the second bit is a total reverse of the normal rules…
I’m not sure about the artillery range – they can hit anywhere on the table no matter where they are sat!
Given how I am feeling today I will give a good try to get the second game tonight on the same battle field (random troop selection though) and see how the QRS helps me / needs changing.
Well I’ve just completed my second game (yes I know it’s 3AM).
The QRS has a few minor bits that need a tidy and I’m going to add a couple of bits esp a unit vs unit summary so I’m possibly giving up with the idea of it fitting in the box. It was worth doing though as it helped a great deal.
The game went like this:
Starting positions:
Part way through:
But after a long slog it ended up as a draw:
as the turn counter ran out. In practise, I think the blue would have won despite the artillery being well dug in on the hill top!
I have been thinking more about the campaign and just come across Henry Hyde’s Terrain Squares and I’m now thinking about mounting these on to 3 or 4 inch ply / MDF squares and making the battle map up based on the real campaign map. I would need to have a frame to hold them in place but it may be worth the cost to have this laser cut to fit standard bases. Main drawback is having enough to represent all the terrain and the space it will take compared to the felt.
Anyway – that’s not going to be for a few months – another draft of the QRS is next even if this ends up as a rewrite of the rules…
Funniest thing is that I have zero idea if this game ‘system’ represents the period but I’m enjoying it so do not mind
I’ve redone my fleece map as it’s sunny today and taken it up to exactly 1 ft square:
I still have easily enough material to make a rectangular one if I use the index card idea being discussed here.
Well I finally got the QRS v2 sheet done:
I also picked up a few small 1cm x 1cm white wood cubes off eBay (like these) that I will use to denote units that have moved. These will replace the large 20mm dice I have (some of the red ones can just be seen top right of this picture) as they dominate the units and look really out of place. Not sure if I will spray them blue / red as I’m happy with the white TBH.
Just to say this thread is an inspiration. Andrew, you rock
I suspect that by keeping up with this thread you’ve helped a lot of people who have read your words with gratitude knowing they’re not alone, even if they’ll never comment.
There’s a magic in your blocks that even the most exquisitely painted 28mm figures can never match. I hope you continue to enjoy this hobby of ourshttps://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/
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