[Jeff Glasco]

I would add Piquet: Blitzkrieg supplement, Piquet Field of Battle World War Two, and I think Great Battles of World War Two are at that scale. I have played Piqeut Field of Battle and commanded a division in a game (see: https://jdglasco.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/october-piquet-fob-ww2-game/). In that game the Germans were the entire 15th Panzer Division with 1 stand = 1 company. The British were an entire Armoured Brigade.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Excellent paint job on a 6mm. What sort of material do you use for your ground cover? It looks like several types of plant like stuff.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Norm,

Thanks for your kind comments. I’m sort of the reverse, I’m doing American Revolution till next Spring and then I hope to do some sort of 15mm Napoleonic project. What 10mm figures do you use? I also like them as they have a fair amount of detail.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Old Nick,

Thanks for your kind comments. I was a friend of Greg Novak, and we used to exchange order of battle information regarding the American Revolution. I sent him a lot of the material about the British and their allies that ended up in his order of battle books. I’m rebooting this campaign to play it with Piquet as those rules do a better job for solo games. There will be further order of battle revisons for that campaign as I am always finding new information and revising bits here and there.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Norm,

Thanks, I’m totally useless with a camera so I can’t really do the blog with nice pictures of well painted miniatures, so this seemed to be a way to post something useful on the blog.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

It sounds like you might be making some Blucher unit cards for the war in Spain, which is great news! Look in the Osprey MAA books on the Portuguese (three volumes) as they have some black and white primary source prints of Portuguese soldiers. You may be able to track down the originals, which might be in color.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

I think that Bob Jones has made an excellent point. I think my answer comes down to why the players are there to play the game. Some are more interested in the history and simulation aspects and they will avoid the rush to the brawl, which usually helps their side win. Others are there for the social aspects of gaming. They want to come an chat with friends and throw some dice; they really don’t care about the military situation. If they don’t rush to the front, they don’t get to roll their dice and only half of their evening’s goals have been reached (the other half being the social aspect). I think this has been made worse by groups having only a few hours of time for each game. When games were an eight hour deal, I could sit in reserve for four hours knowing that I my units would be heavily involved in the last four hours of the game. With only two or three hours of play time, I have to “get to the front” quickly or my units might not do a thing in the game. So I would argue that the rush to the brawl is more about why players come to the games than issues with rules or understanding of the historical period.

[Jeff Glasco]

Very interesting, especially the parts about the reasons you design games the way you do. Please keep posting them even after Blucher is published.

 

[Jeff Glasco]

Sparker,

That makes a lot of sense. Artillery in the Napoleonic era seems to have been split up (divisional and brigade guns) or massed to provide firepower at a certain point. I look forward to buying these rules when they come out.

Thanks,

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Sparker,

Thanks for posting this “leak”. Can you tell us how artillery is represented, all batteries or just horse and heavy batteries like Grande Armee?

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

If you want to do the entire battle, then I’d suggest either Fire and Fury or Volley & Bayonet. I’ve played large American Civil War battles, including some of  Gettysburg, with both rule sets, and they both worked fine. Both are well written and easy to learn as well.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

For me, it is Barry Lyndon. It sort of sums up all of the 18th Century for me (at least what I am interested in). Not much good in terms of the American Revolution, The Patriot is too inaccurate and just a crap film, and Revolution (from the 1970s) is just too boring. I am sure that there are some non-English language films about this period that I have missed. Filmmakers don’t see too interested in the 18th Century, but then it isn’t really the favorite era for historians either. I’m sort of the odd one out there who likes this period as a historian, most of my colleagues who do British History seem to favor later periods, especially topics about industrial/Victorian England and very modern topics.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

I agree with Not Connard Sage when he said, “It was very liberating getting away from all those ‘realistic’ 1980s rulesets.” How true that is. I started historical miniature wargaming in 1982, and it was all about ‘realistic’ rules back then. Only in the last few years have I been “liberated”, and I have backslid a few times and thought that I have to play those 1980s rules because they allow this tiny detail to be shown in the game, but now I’m free of that, and it has made wargaming a lot more enjoyable. One day it just dawned on me, rules really only need to represent the big reasons why battles turned out the way they did, the little stuff can get lost in the wash. I also don’t have to micro-manage every thing (actually I hated doing that with the older rules). So I do think a simpler set of rules can still get the big factors right and be a good simulation (if we can ever really simulate combat with toy soldiers).

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

I don’t know about the modern TOE, but when I was a Bradley platoon leader from 1986 to 1987 there were four BFVs and 32 men. The first BFV was the platoon commander’s and it contained the platoon leader, a gunner (NCO), a driver, and RTO, and usually an additional NCO (sometimes the third squad leader) for when the platoon leader dismounted (he would take over as gunner or commander). The second and third BFV’s had 9 men each (squad leader, gunner, driver, assistant squad leader and five dismount infantry). The fourth BFV had nine men as well, but it also included the platoon sergeant. We were often understrength, so the third squad leader usually rode with the platoon sergeant in the fourth BFV; the RTO would take over as gunner in the platoon leader’s BFV if he dismounted. While maneuvering, the 1st Squad and platoon leader’s BFVs formed one maneuver wing and the 2nd and 3rd Squad’s (with the platoon sergeant) formed the other maneuver wing). When dismounting, either the platoon leader or platoon sergeant dismounted with the infantry and the other stayed with the BFVs. Honestly, we usually just stayed mounted as we were often understrength (despite it being the Cold War/Reagan era and we were in Germany).

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

For big battles, I use Volley & Bayonet; simple but not simplistic and produces historical results. For battles where an infantry unit is a battalion, I use Piquet Cartouche 2 (which I helped with); lots of fun to play, good for solo, and seems like the period in History it is representing. For skirmish games, I like Two Hour Wargames’ Long Rifle rules; I think the Two Hour Wargame’s system is excellent. I have also played and enjoyed Might & Reason by Sam Mustafa, which I might use for a larger scale imagi-nation project someday.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Ivan,
I think that is a great idea as it allows you to do exactly what you want in your games and campaign. If you want to fight big battles, then make big countries, but if you want to fight a couple of brigades per side, them have smaller countries. If you want to base you forces on some historical armies then do so, and you don’t have to worry about those two armies never fighting in “real life”. I think it solves a lot of the problems wargamers face when trying to run a campaign. You don’t have to research the orders of battle as it is just made up. You don’t have to find exact maps of the region in the historical era, you just make them up, and you can fight what ever armies you and others have as it is just a made up game. I think this is a great way to go for a few battles or a bigger campaign.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Greenknight 14,

Thanks for your kind comments. My teaching grind has started again, but I’ll try to keep up the posts (along with painting some more wonderful Perry 28mm plastics).

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Very nicely painted.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Sparker,

Thanks, this looks like a welcoming and useful forum.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

I have played Volley & Bayonet and an American Civil War version of Fast Play Grande Armee with smaller bases. I started with 1.25″ square bases (see here for how they looked: http://jdglasco.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/the-volley-bayoneta-house-divided-campaign-project/). Once I played a game with the figures, I realized that the bases were too small for my tastes, so I’ve been slowly rebasing them to 1.5″ square bases with 8-10 infantry and 4-6 cavalry; all Adler 6mm figures (really 8mm by my measurements). I have also used 15mm figures on 2″ bases, again for the American Civil War (see http://jdglasco.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/volley-bayonet-basing-for-acw/ and http://jdglasco.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/october-game-1st-bull-run-with-volley-bayonet/). Overall the smaller bases are a bit spartan in terms of figures, but they do work. I have to provide all of the figures for the ACW games, so the need for lots of bases and not so much painting time on my part makes the smaller bases with fewer figures work.

Jeff

[Jeff Glasco]

Hi,

I’m Jeff, and I’ve been playing historical minature wargames since 1982 when I got a job at the local game store and the owner introduced me to historical miniature wargames. I also played a lot of board games (mostly Avalon Hill) from 1975 to 1990, but since then it’s been mostly historical miniatures. I’ve tried a lot of different rules, but now my favorites are the original Piquet, Volley & Bayonet, and a variety of rules from Two Hour Wargames. Most of my figures are 15mm or smaller, but the Perry plastic figure have made me a real fan of 25mm figures. As far as periods go, I’ll try anything, but my favorites are the American Revolution, Napoleonics, World War Two, and the American Civil War. I don’t do much in terms of non-historical gaming other than playing the Star Wars X-Wing game with my 14 year old son.

Otherwise, I’m a college/university professor and mostly teach World History, English, British, Irish, Scottish, and Atlantic World History in my regular face to face job liberal arts college job and historical theory, historical writing, and do the senior seminar in my extra job for an online university. I now live in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but I’ve lived in all around the United States, Mexico City, London, and when I was an infantry lieutenant I lived in what was then West Germany (yes that was a long time ago). With two jobs, a wife, two kids, a dog, and two cats, I’ve been a bit swamped with other aspects of life recently and not played many games so far in 2014, but I’ve enjoyed just being able to paint figures and not worry if I have the next game ready. You can read more about my gaming activities at my blog: http://jdglasco.wordpress.com/.

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