2025 Q1 Report: Something to show for it

 

"Our mission is to drop 112 tons of high-explosive and incendiary bombs
within a twenty-two mile radius of this building. We need a futile gesture
at this point in the war." 

So, here were are at the end of March. I was debating whether or not to keep posting quarterly progress reports, especially since I’m only pursuing one personal gaming challenge this year, but I came down on the side of keeping it going. It’s probably more for me than for the viewers at home, but I find it gives me some perspective (which, conversely, I’ve found very easy to lose if I don’t hold my self in some ways accountable). I tend to be academically inclined in my pursuits; I started to teach myself to play the guitar when I was about 14, and forty years later I’m still a much better guitar historian and technician than a guitarist.

This year, I’m going to change it up a bit. I’m going to report on a couple of new things, including tracking the number of games I’ve played, instead of leaving it to a single figure for the year. I’ll also be tracking some of the blog’s details. I’ll try to keep all of this short and sharp, and maybe somebody else will find it momentarily diverting as well. Or that might be asking too much. Still, if you’re not interested, you can just skip this one. Vote with your feet. Or leave a comment about how you only come here for the unboxings. Or whatever.

So, without further ado, here’s the new Quarterly Report format. This may be subject to change, depending on how well it works, or adding whatever I’ve forgotten to put in into the next one. IF there’s anything you’re dying to know, leave a note in the comments.

 

Games played

Since last year I’ve been buying a week-to-a-page diary at the beginning of the year and making a note of when I play a game session or complete a game on Rally the Troops. I haven’t been making as much use of Rally the Troops as I should. I tend to play a couple of turns a day, rather than sitting down for a remote session. If anyone wants to hit me up for a game and won’t mind it paying out over a week or so, send me an invitation through Rally the Troops (user name: jonboywalton).

Even with an enforced convalescence for a few weeks in late February and early March, I was disappointed to find I’d played less than thirty games over the last three months. To be fair, some of our Wednesday night games ran over two or three weeks – just recently it took us two weeks to play a single five-player round of Successors, Fourth Edition (Phalanx, 2021), to a sudden death victory by the usurper. We had at least a couple of games that spilled out over a couple of sessions, but technically they’re the dame game, just carried over, so these count as one each. Conversely, the Wednesday group played multiple games over successive weeks of, say Undaunted 2200: Calisto (Osprey Games, 2024); each of these I counted as a separate, discrete game.

In all, I played about 25 games over the last three months. Those were spread over about fourteen titles. I played a half-dozen games of Commands and Colors: Medieval – Crusades Expansion (GMT Games, 2024) in fairly quick succession prepping for the review. I managed a couple of games on Rally the Troops (thank you, TH and MC).

 

Collection development

I’ve been tossing up how to report on new additions to the collection. I was going to enumerate how many games I’ve bought I the last three months, but that gets difficult quickly. I paid for a couple of games last year, so do they count. Others I’ve bought or backed on crowdfunding in the recent quarter may not show up until well into the second half of the year.

First Quarter haul, in no particular order. I bought Operation Barkley as a filler with
Stalingrad Roads, to make up the threshold for split payments. I wasn't going to
get this one, even though I 'm a big fan of Maurice Suckling's games,
but I think I'm glad I did.

I’ve settled on counting what has shown up in the first three months. This brings the count down to nine games; nine games arrived this quarter (not so bad). I’ve paid for about another six games on top of those, including three titles from GMT which, at time of writing, have yet to reach Antipodean shores nearly three months after charging, and Carl Paradis’s Battle Commander, Volume 1 (Sound of Drums, 2025), which I backed on Gamefound. Come to think of it, there’s one more that just snuck in under the wire – 1811: Albuera, 2nd Edition (Tactical Workshop, ~2025), also on Gamefound, which was charged in the dying days of March; I’m an easy mark for a new Napoleonics system.

Most of the games that have arrived, I bought second-hand, though nearly half of these were still in their shrink-wrap, and a couple of others had been opened and fondled but remained unpunched.

 

Blog activity

My posting output has slowed down a little after a good month in January. This was partly due to the aforementioned illness, partly to trying to spread myself too thinly across a couple of posts and not completing any of them. I put up just sixteen posts over the last three months. This is a lot compared to some of the other wargaming blogs I follow, but if there’s one thing I’ve learnt it’s the secret to a contented life is not to compare yourself to others. I have a target I’s like to reach of around two posts a week. Thirteen is exactly one post a week. I’m pretty happy with what I put up – I try not to post anything half-baked – but I think I can do better quantitatively. I have before, and I’d like to get back to that. I’m going to aim for three posts every two weeks for the second quarter. We’ll see how I’ve done in three months’ time.

Of those thirteen posts, five were unboxings (Stripped Down for Parts), four were After Action Reports (State of Play), three were game reviews (I’m trying to lift my game here, so to speak). The remaining three were the kind of introspective, navel-gazey twaddle I sometimes bore my longsuffering readers with about the stuff around the actual games (By the Numbers), plus a self-indulgent look at my rise from obscurity to insignificance over last two years of A Fast Game, on its anniversary (31 January).

I’ve been winding back on the AARs lately. They’re not as much work as a review but they’re not nothing. Sometimes I can knock one out in the time it took to play the game, but more often it’ll take a couple of days to put together something coherent and informative. And it can be discouraging to put the work into something and get four or five views in the first six months. But at the same time I’ve had a couple of people tell me they’ve gone out an bought a game on the basis of a play report (I’ve never heard of anyone buying a game because I gave it a good review).

I played a LOT of C&C Medieval - Crusades in this Quarter.

Conversely, I went through a time of doing a lot of unboxings. Unboxings are the fast-food of the wargame-content ecosystem, both for creators and consumers. A recent discussion on Casus Belli FB group saw a groundswell of opposition (well, about fifteen or so respondents) to unboxings. It’s become a default for a lot of YouTubers because it’s very easy content to produce. Many won’t even edit the video.  I like to think I bring a little more to the party; I do some research on the game and try to have some useful commentary, rather than just guessing at what this bit does.

When I started doing unboxing posts, I was a lot fussier about which games I would give the treatment. After a while it was often whatever as new to me. Going forward, I’ll still do them, but I’ll try to stick to games that aren’t getting the coverage they deserve. And the just straight out really pretty ones.

I am on track to do twelve reviews this year, but I’m going to aim for fifteen. I’ve begun a review of Napoléon 1807 (Shakos, 2020), but it may not be the next one up. I’m very keen to talk about my latest arrival, Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing, 2025), but I need to get a few plays in first. That I probably will report on with an AAR.

Reviews are the hardest things to write, but that’s mostly because I only want to spend the kind of time with a game that a review requires (three to four games is a bare minimum), I really have to like it. I’d rather ignore a game than give it a negative review, because the game I don’t like is going to have a fan that may not try it if they read a negative review from some blogger from the Antipodes. Better they find it for themselves.

 

Extra-curricular activities

I’m making low progress on the War Room Ten Wargame Challenge, with two down and eight to go. Some of these I’m going to have to solo, I think, which is fine. The next off the rank should be Drop Zone and Imperial Bayonets: We Were Not Cowards - Sedan, 1870 (Conflict Simulations Ltd, 2020), though that may change. You can see the full list at the above link. I’ve written AARs for the first to games, Napoleon,1807 and the Agincourt scenario from the Men of Iron Tri-Pack (GMT Games, 2020)

I’ve finally got around to starting Eurowargames (Nuts! Publishing. 2024). It arrived in late January, I think, but I was in the middle of This is a collection of essays on the state and culture of wargaming in Europe from a couple of different perspectives. I’m only a couple of essays in, but so far each one has either contributed to my understanding of the field or made me question what I thought I knew. It’s a solid collection with some well-known contributors. I won’t be reviewing it here, because it’s not a wargame, but I suspect I’ll be referencing it from time to time.

I’ve alluded to some other game-related stuff I’ve been doing for a while now. Some of it has come to fruition (like Ray Weiss’s With the Hammer (Conflict Simulations Ltd, (2025), which came out in January. Some is still ongoing. If all goes well, I think I should be able to talk at more length about this by the next quarterly report.

 

What’s next?

At this point my intention is to keep plugging away doing what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, but woth the aim of more such. I’ve got four posts I’m currently working on (including another review) in various states of incompletion. So, I have the next two or three weeks’ worth of posts in mind. I also have two unboxings I’d like to do among the games that arrived this quarter (David Meyler & Mike Rinella's Monty's Gamble: Market Garden, Second Edition (Multi-Man Publishing, 2019) isn't a new game, but it definitely warrants a look). I’ve been trying to get pickier about what games I write up for an unboxing, but I think these two deserve some attention.

I’ve been backing away from AARs on the blog, but I may try to ramp that up again. AARs feel a little like filler content. I always want to talk about how the game functions more than how that session played out, and I have to remind myself to bring it back to the situation and keep the mechanics for the review (and then actually write the review). I'm committed to writing AARs of the other eight Ten Game Challenge games I've yet to play, so there's that. There are also a couple of games on their way that I'll probably be eager to talk about, ahead of a review.

I also want to spend more time actually playing games. A lot of normal game times didn’t get filled in the last three months because of sickness or someone was out of town. In those instances, I really don’t have an excuse not to get out a solo game, or spend the time pushing some counters around in a new game I haven’t tabled yet. Its not merely lethargy at play; as I said, I have been generally, vaguely unwell for the better part of two months, with periodic exhaustion being one of the symptoms. But there were times I chose to watch something instead of playing something.

 So, that about covers the first three months of 2025. I think writing this up has helped put some things into focus for myself. I feel like I should have dome more this quarter – more games, more posts- but I’m very happy with what I’ve played and produced. And there’s always Q2.

Stripped Down for Parts: Drop Zone: Southern France

 

Oh, happy day! This week saw the arrival of one of my most anticipated games of 2025. To be honest, I’ve been anticipating this one since 2019. It’s had a storied history leading up to its publication, but now it’s here and it was worth the wait.

Designer Dan Fournie’s Drop Zone: Southern France (Worthington Publishing, 2025) is a new game from Mike and Grant Wiley of Worthington Publishing. This game has had a long gestation (I wrote a potted history of its development here (number 12 on the list, at the end of the post), so I won’t go into that again now. I may revisit the story in a little more detail when I get to doing a review.

This isn’t Mr Fournie’s first game with Worthington. He contributed 414BC: Siege of Syracuse (Worthington Publishing, 2022 – review here) to Worthington’s Great Sieges series and founded a loose series of World War II games with 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing, 2020 – review here), and 1944: D-Day to the Rhine (Worthington Publishing, 2022), and that’s just the ones I own.

To be honest, I felt a little disappointed when I first saw a picture of the box cover online. It just seemed inadequate somehow. I’m not sure what I was hoping for, but this wasn’t it. I feel like a hypocrite for saying it, because I’ve been on record here and elsewhere saying a game shouldn’t be judged on its cover art. I think it feels more personal for me because I’ve been looking forward to this one for so long.

Now I have a copy in front of me, I like it a little more, but I feel like it’s a bit of a missed opportunity. I’m not sure what would have been a better cover, but I’m sure there’s something out there that would have been more compelling, and more acutely associated with Operation Rugby, the air-drop component of Dragoon (the cover art is a montage, and elements could have easily been drawn from the June D-Day action, or, even more likely, training jumps). It also doesn’t acknowledge the participation of glider-borne troops, who arguably suffered greater risks making it safely to the ground without the bonus pay given to the silk jockeys. This, of course, in no way detracts from the game itself, which I’ll get to in a moment. And when it’s all said and done, you don’t play the cover.

The box-back. No complaints about this.

Turning to the back of the box, we’re given a sample of the map and counter art, and the specialised dice that drive the game. The dice have symbols corresponding to unit types, and the Allied and Axis dice have different configurations as well as different colours, uniform grey for the Axis player, and (ironically) Prussian blue for the Allies. Anyone who has played either of Mr Fourie’s two 1944 games will be familiar with these.

The description on the box back briefly details the scope and historical context of the game. As with the early-morning airborne raids in Normandy six or so weeks earlier, the purpose of Rugby was for Allied troops to secure key road junctions to spoil a German armoured response to the amphibious landings taking place later that morning on France’s Mediterranean coastline, a few dozen miles away to the south. It was a bold plan, hampered by a dense fog on the drop morning, that had the effect of distributing the task force over a broader spread than was first intended.

The box description reveals the game action covers a 48-hour period, the crucial first two days of the First Airborne Task Force (1ABTF) in Southern France. The 1ABTF was an ad hoc force made up of American and British units, this allows what is essentially a two-sided game to be shared by three or four players.

The informational graphic key that is happily an industry standard these days informs us that the rules difficulty for Drop Zone is Low (2 out of 5), while the solitaire suitability is very high (5 out of 5; the game comes with a double-sided Player’s Aid Card outlining the rules and guidelines for solitaire play, but I’m getting ahead of myself). It stipulates the aforementioned 1-4 players, and that the recommended age for players is fourteen and up. As always with Worthington games, the play duration is set in terms of “Victory within 2 hours.” As I, and others, have pointed out in the past, Worthington is the most reliable of game companies for play duration (Legion Wargames probably comes a near second).

The Historical Summary booklet. Worth it's weight in gold to the history buff. 

The first thing to greet you upon lifting the box-top is the Historical Summary. Last year (the year the release was funded on Kickstarter) was the eightieth anniversary of both the Normandy landings – Operation Overlord – and Operation Dragoon. This is a subject that is close to the designer’s heart; Dan Fournie’s father, Corporal Arthur I. Fournie, fought in the 460^th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion during the operation.

The Historical Overview is broken into sections covering the planning and execution of Operation Dragoon, and an overview of the operations on the ground over the first two days (D-Day and D-Day+1), as well as appendices on the force structure of the Airborne Task Force, the Free French and Allied Special Forces, and the histories of the various units involved in the Operation. There is probably nothing here that a motivated researcher couldn’t find for themselves given the time and inclination, but to have it presented here in a 24-page booklet to dip into between games is a boon and rounds out the whole package nicely.

A Rulebook. Trust me, there are two of these in the box.

Worthington have been including two copies of rules in their games at least since the Martin Wallace-designed Lincoln (PSC/Worthington Publishing, 2018); I wish more companies would follow this example, at least in the case of lower-page-count rules. The rulebook is printed on good, low-gloss stock, and runs to twelve pages (though it is only numbers to ten; the cover and verso are oddly ignored in the pagination).

The rules are clear, concise (just ten pages, including scenario details) and helpfully illustrated. There are two scenarios, each running the full six turns. The first is the historical scenario, reflecting the conditions and dispositions of the Allied and Axis forces involved in those first two days of fighting. The second scenario increases the challenge for the Allies by incorporating the 11^th Panzer Division, the “Ghost Division,” which had been ordered to the area, but on August 15^th was still 160 kilometres from the drop zone. The Alternative scenario should make for an interesting “what-if” situation, and doubles the replayability of the game.

As I've mentioned, there is a dedicated solitaire-play mode for Drop Zone. This is alluded to in the rules, but the rules appear on a separate Player Aid Card, which we’ll get to in due course. The back page of the rulebook features a list of abbreviations featured in the game. A lot of rules layout folks would have made this the second or third section in the rulebook, right after the Components part. Whoever decided to put this on the last page deserves a special commendation;  Drop Zone is replete with abbreviations, and having the list there instead of another copy of the sequence of play has already saved me many minutes of page flicking and a ton of wear an tear on the booklet.

The play area for the game is a sturdy mounted board of the quality we’ve come to expect from Worthington. The map represents the area of the initial air drop in Provence, roughly a dozen miles inland from the landing beaches. The map and counters are all the work of José Ramón Faura, and in both cases, they are exemplary in their balance of appearance and utility. The map is really nice to look at, with the terrain features clearly defined against a pale tawny-green base for the clear hexes. There can be no doubt which areas are forested, but the hex-grid – larger than one might expect to accommodate the larger unit counters – are not lodt in the trees. The play area is eighteen by twenty-one hexes, which at first blush may seem small, but should accommodate the lower unit count and brief turn cycle, and add to the claustrophobic nature of the action over the two-day period.

Incorporated into the map-board are the Victory Point track – a pendulum track, but rather than keeping track of fluctuations in the score, the total points accrued by the Allied player is tallied at the end of turns three and six (if no sudden death victory has been awarded at the first tally) – and a Turn Track loaded with supporting details such as each players Assets drawn and each faction’s reinforcement points for that turn.

Much of the crucial game information has been applied directly to the map, but in ways that are no more obtrusive than the hex boundaries. Towns marked with a white number in a red box are D-Day objectives for the Allies. The values of the towns held by the Allied forces at the end of Turn Three (the close of the first day) are added up and this number will decide if that side reaches their sudden death victory requirement. If not, at the end of Turn Six (the close of D-Day+1), the tally of objectives with Yellow-boxed numbers held by the allies is added, and the tally of the red-boxed not in Allied hands is subtracted from the total to discern the final score and who will claim victory.

One more thing. It's worth noting that the board laid out nearly perfectly flat first time out of the box. It's a small thing, but it kind of made my day.

Companies of heroes: units of different stripes - American (green), British (khaki),
German (dark and uniform grey) and German garrison (immobile) units (pale grey).

Drop Zone’s counters are one inch (nearly 26mm) pre-rounded counters. These are well laid out and clearly readable. Infantry units have four movement points per turn (except for Garrison units, which are stuck where they are), while motorised units have six. The strength value is indicative of how many dice a given unit will roll in combat. Several nationalities are represented in the unit mix, including US, British and Free French formations, as well as the Germans.

Even more units, and the game markers and Asset tokens.

Along with the counters, there are a number of circular counters that fill various game needs. Two are the Turn and Victory Point markers (in blue, to stand out on their respective tracks), six draw tokens for the chit-pull activation each turn (there are two separate sets for the two scenarios for the German player) and twenty-six Asset markers. I don’t like to go too deeply into game mechanics in an unboxing, but this is worth noting. From turn 2, each player gets to draw Assets that they can use in that or subsequent turns to gain a situational advantage, such as air support or indirect artillery fire in an attack, Initiative tokens (for the Allies only) which can be played instead of drawing an initiative chit from the draw cup, to allow that faction (British or American) to  or (for the Axis player only) a Regroup token that allows the player two more Reinforcement Points for a given round. For a simple and relatively short game, there is an awful lot going on here.

The Terrain Effects Chart and Sequence of Play. The other side of this PAC
has a detailed Combat rundown.

The game comes with a single General Player’s Aid Card. This PAC includes a Terrain Effects Chart and detailed Sequence of Play on the front, with detailed Combat rules on the back. Personally, I would have liked to see a duplicate included, but it’s a minor beef, especially considering the number card sheets included in the game, each with its own functions. The Terrain rules won’t be difficult for anybody familiar with hex-and-counter wargames, and the sequence of play will become second nature after a couple of turns – this shouldn’t be a taxing game.

 The Historical Scenario Reinforcement cards (Allied (above) and Axis). Note the
spaces for the Asset tokens. Not all of these are available in both scenarios.

And the Alternative Scenario Reinforcement cards.

There are two reinforcement cards, one each for the Allied and Axis players, that each do double duty with the historical scenario details on the card’s front and the second scenario on the verso. The idea is to place the reinforcement units counters on the appropriate card, and bring them in to the game on the appropriate turn. It can feel tedious to have to sort through the counters setting up the game, but the benefits when actually playing can’t be overstated.

Para-drop set-up card.

The fourth PAC (to be honest, I’m not sure what order these are supposed to be in, but It was the fourth one I examined in any detail) has instructions for the Allied para-drop set-up, which incorporates a measure of randomness befitting something like dropping troops behind enemy lines. In the early morning of the 15^th, a thick fog carpeted the entire drop zone, making it difficult for pilots to pinpoint allocated drop points, let alone the sticks of troopers to have any hope of a cohesive entry into the warzone. Origin hexes are allocated on the board for each of the five paratrooper battalions, based on the operational plan. The Allied player can arrange the units on the PAC in their respective groupings and, in their turn, place them face-down (anonymous parachute-side up) on the board.

When placing the company-strength units that make up each battalion, the Allied player rolls two dice, one of which till prescribe the direction of that unit’s drift from the planned landing location, while the second die result will dictate the distance in hexes from that point (1-3 hexes away). These are placed one at a time, and if one para company would land on another based on the initial roll (a one-in-eighteen chance, so unlikely but not outside of the realms of possibility), a second direction roll is made (and presumably a third, until the unit lands on a clear space). This card will help to keep this part of the set-up moving briskly.

The verso of the Para-drop card, Alternative scenario VP and Turn Tracks.

As mentioned, the reverse of the Para-Drop setup card is an Alternative Victory Point Track and Alternative Turn Track for the Alternative game. This makes sense; the Alternative game adds strength in units to the Axis player, while the Allied units on the ground remain unchanged (the Allies to have increased access to air support through their asset draw to somewhat compensate for the imbalance). The Alternative turn track adjusts the parameters for each side’s potential victory, while the Alternative Turn Track offers adjusted details for drawing assets and allocating Reinforcement Points for each side.

The Solitaire rules fit on two sides of a PAC, but some sacrifices had to be
made in font size. Reading glasses required.. 

As befitting a modern wargame, Drop Zone has a solitaire mode of play. The solitaire rules for the game are offered on a single double-sided PAC. I think solitaire play will be enriched by the chit draw activation mechanic. I haven’t studied the solitaire guidelines in any detail yet; I’m hoping to get the game to the table in the coming week, and I’ll play the traditional two-handed game to get to know the ways of it before trying it out on a second player, but I will run through a couple of solo games using these rules before I engage in reviewing the game. I can report that, at first glance, the rules seem straight forward and common-sensical.

Hermetically sealed dice-sets, in an enclosed tray, for that belt-and-braces approach
to dice security.

For several years now, Worthington games have been coming with a counter tray for a while now. There are several configurations, depending on the game. This one comes with troughs for the counters and two cavities, one each for the two sets of dice – no fraternisation between the sets. The Allied dice are cast in a fetching blue, the Axis dice in a uniform grey. The game also includes two pipped six-siders, a red and a white.

The specialised dice will be familiar to those who have played either of Mr Fournie’s 1944 games. There are two or three types of symbols on each, and a hierarchy of units hit on the roll of a given symbol that I won’t go into here (I’ll talk about this in my first Drop Zone AAR – stay tuned). The dice are good rollers, though the blank faces seem to come up disproportionately often for me, but I think that more my dice mojo than any fault of the bones.

-----

So, that about covers Drop Zone: Southern France. I’ve enjoyed all of Dan Fournie’s games I've played – I would have likely enjoyed a lot more if I’d gone down the Great Battles of History rabbit hole. This game is now on the top of my to-be-played stack, so, I anticipate offering at least some initial thoughts in the next couple of weeks.

 

State of Play: Men or Iron Tri-Pack – Agincourt (The War Room Ten Game Challenge #2)

 

 

I’m pleased to announce that slow progress is being made on my Ten Game Challenge list. Some of the games on my list I have played before, while some are relatively new – or new to me – titles I’ve been keen to try out. Then there’s the other games, the ones that I’ve had sitting in the closet for years, untouched.

I ordered the Men of Iron Tri-Pack (GMT Games, 2020) on P500 and rejoiced in its arrival. I read through the rules, punched out the Men of Iron and Infidel counters, and made plans to get it to the table sometime soon.

Opening set-up.

Fast-track to 2025. I think Men of Iron was the third game I settled on for my Ten Wargame Challenge list (it’s the first on the list because I set it out in chronological order). I’ve thought about pulling it out before now, but there was always something more pressing to play instead. The value of a commitment like the Ten Game Challenge is it can bring the impetus you need to get over whatever is holding you back from a game. For me, I think what stopped me from getting MoI to the table before now was that I wanted to play it against another human player, but I wasn’t confident in my ability to make the game understandable to another player through play. For the folks who haven’t played the Men of Iron rules, the game doesn’t play out in turns. Rather, each side’s forces are divvied up into formations called “battles,” the moniker used in Europe at the time for a group of fighters under a single command, such as the men-at-arms, yeomen and peasantry fulfilling their oath of fealty to a lord, and the etymological antecedent of the modern term “battalion” (also an early example of the English-speakers’ predilection to make every available noun into a verb, i.e., “to do battle”).

I chose the Agincourt scenario for a couple of reasons. It’s familiar to anybody who has read or (more likely) seen a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Never underestimate the value of assumed foreknowledge in convincing a prospective player to try something new. It also has a small footprint, with little room for manoeuvre. The two sides have quite limited resources, and the play time, under normal circumstances, would run to about an hour.

Technically this was our second bite of the Men of Iron cherry. The week before I’d set up the scenario, but rather than play a full game, I thought it would be best to go through the sequence of play, step by step a few times just to get a feel for the flow of the game, for my own benefit as much as for T’s. This experience proved useful. T picked up the concepts of and continuous battle activation far more quickly than I’d expected – I’d struggled with it on my first read-through of the rules – and we got to see how movement, Fire and Shock attacks, and Disordered, Recovering, and Retiring unit rules all worked before having to worry about actual play. Mistakes were made, but as it was a test run, it didn’t matter. We learned by doing.

Ferocious fighting at the pickets.

This week was our first proper game, which we approached a little tardily – T had a work hold-up, and arrived late, truncating our available game time. Still, armed with our experience of the previous week, we approached the game in an appropriately competitive spirit.

As may have been predicted, T chose to play the French. The English begin the game, and I chose to lead with Edward, Duke of York’s battle, engaging his Longbow against Charles, Duc d’Orleans’ unmounted Men-at-Arms. This should have resulted in two units being Disordered (two hits, one miss by York’s longbowmen). After the initial Free Activation you have to roll for further activations. I rolled a 3 for Henry and got another volley of arrows off for another disordered unit, in this case the Dauphin’s personal guard (when a unit with an attached leader becomes disordered, the owning player must roll to see if the leader is lost; in this instance Charles survived). Pressing my luck paid off with a roll of 1 for Thomas de Comoys’ battle (de Comoys’ Activation rating is 3 and the roll had a +1 modifier for the previous successful continuation roll, so I needed a 2 or lower). Baron de Comoys’ longbowmen were less successful, with just one French unit disordered. A second activation for York failed, and so the initiative moved to the French.

T ‘s free activation was naturally spent on his beleaguered Orleans battle, which he brought forward, pairing two of his dismounted Men-at-Arms with each of mine. His Mounted Men-at-Arms he committed to the flanking forests. Observing this, I reminded myself of Napoleon’s axiom, “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.”

The first round of Shock combat was an indifferent affair. T could not roll a high enough number to dislodge or disorder my battle-hardened Britons and suffered two self-inflicted disorders and a retirement. He succeeded in his first activation roll, bringing forward his archers and crossbowmen under Rambures who, alas, were still out of range and with the poor movement in the mud (two points per hex for clear terrain) unable to clear a path for Jean I, Duc d’Alençon’s battle to reinforce the Dauphin’s depleted forces. A second successful activation roll saw Jean bring his battle up behind the line of French archers. The subsequent roll for Valéran de Raineval, Count Fauquembergue’s battle – the rear-most French battle – was a 9 and convincingly unsuccessful.

"Take it, brave York. Now, soldiers, march away:
And how thou pleasest, God, dispose the day!"

Initiative returned to the English, and I chose to activate de Comoys’ battle. Duc d’Alençon fell to de Comoys’ longbowmen and two of his units were disordered, while one of the Dauphin’s units was eliminated in melee. A successful roll activated Henry’s battle. Henry managed to eliminate a second of the Dauphin’s Men-at-Arms units, fatally wounding Charles in the process. The English were finally beginning to see some Flight Points accruing against the French. In Men of Iron, each side has a quotient of Flight Points, which accrue with each unit or leader eliminated. At each change of initiative (this is usually skippable for the first couple in the game) each side rolls a d10, and if the combined result of the die roll and the current number of accrued Flight Points exceeds the Flight Point quotient for that side, they immediately loose the game (their men collectively losing the will to press the fight). If both aides fail their check, the game is declared a draw.

York’s activation was successful, but his bowmen’s fire was not, amounting to nought. Still, in melee managed to disorder his antagonists. The course of battle had disordered Henry’s and de Comoys’ attached units, but the York’s men stood firm.

In the interests of keeping the game moving, I tried to activate de Comoys’ battle and failed, passing the initiative over to the French once more. Neither side failed their Flight check, so the game continued. In retrospect, this is the point at which the English lost the battle.

Final game-state. The English may have been able to come back from this,
but not with my die-rolls.

To my surprise, T used his free activation to manoeuvre his bow battle to bring some into range, while shifting others to allow egress of the Duc d’Alençon’s battle to support the Dauphin’s brittle line. It was the archers, though, that proved to be the fulcrum on which the battle pivoted. Two volleys were loosed against Henry’s men, the second disordering them and killing the King of England and Wales. Two more successful activations for the French saw some further melees, but ultimately nothing proved decisive, with no further eliminations of leaders or troops.

With Henry dead and his host in disorder, and the hour getting closer to around 11:00pm, we decided to call the game as a minor French victory. We reasoned that, with the loss of their king, the English army could feasibly make a fighting withdrawal in good order and let the disordered and disheartened French morn the loss of their Dauphin.

Casualties of war. For all the fighting, only two units, a duke a prince and a king lost.

State of Play: Commands & Colors: Napoleonics – Vimiero, 21 August 1808

  

The plan was this week to tackle my second Ten Game Challenge game (specifically We Are Coming, Ninevah (Nuts! Publishing, 2023) for my Monday night game with T, but a couple of things happened;  I read through the rules when I first received the game, but I hadn’t gone back to it since, and I’ve been unwell for a couple of weeks now, nothing too serious, but less able to concentrate on digesting the rules every time I picked them up for a refresh, and sickness delayed the game ‘til Thursday.

At the same time, a Facebook friend and content creator commented on another FB friend’s post about a Commands and Colors: Napoleonics (GMT Games, 2010) game; he was interested in the game, he said, but he balked at the overall cost of the seven (soon to be eight) boxes that make up the set, and asked how much gaming goodness he would get out of owning just the base set. I offered my rote answer, but I was still thinking about this when I decided to set up a C&C: Napoleonics game for my Monday night game with T. So, this one’s for you, Cardboard Commander (and everyone should check out CC's channel - he's doing some good work over there).

The Vimiero set-up map.

Vimiero is the third scenario in the C&C: Napoleonics base game, and a battle from the early days of the British military intervention on the Iberian Peninsula, under the temporary command of an already celebrated Lieutenant-General Arthur Wellesley. The first scenario, Rolica (First French position), is the ideal teaching scenario because of the low unit count, representation of all the basic unit types (Line and Light Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery), and a forgivingly short five Victory Banner target. It also encourages the French to try to concentrate on the Allied right, underpinned by the weaker Portuguese troops, and roll up the British line, disrupting their plans. When I’m introducing a new player to C&C: Napoleonics, I always start with this one.

Vimiero is more of a free-for-all. The two town-hexes of Vimiero are worth to Victory Banners for the French player who can take and hold them, but this is a big ask, and they’ll probably earn their sixth banner just clearing the Allied forces attempting to reach the town. The action is somewhat channelled by the Macciro River on the French Left and the patches of rough (impassable) terrain on the French right and Allied Left, inhibiting manoeuvre options. The scenario usually descends into a slugfest, with the winner being the player who can best manage their inevitably difficult hands. This isn’t a criticism; it can be its own kind of fun and makes for a close game and a very gratifying win.

The battle awaits (while the French commander checks his messages). 

T played the French and I took the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance forces. If we have a matching number of cards, I’ll deal off two hands and let T choose his, but in this case, the French begin with a five-card hand (and move first), where the Allies have a slight advantage with six cards. This advantage didn’t help me initially, as I began the game wanting to bring my Reserves off the rear-line the Center but had no Center manoeuvre cards for the first couple of turns.

One of the criticisms of the Commands & Colors series generally is that due to the random distribution of order cards and the limits of hand-size, the player doesn’t have the facility to do whatever they want to do to maximise the effectiveness of their forces. I’ve expressed a few opinions on this take a few different times here, so I’ll just say I think people who think this are missing the point. Constraint of options in a given turn forces you to consider other options. Commands and Colors is a tactical system portraying a dynamic situation, and the use of cards to limit availability of orders is an enforced fog-of-war mechanism. The hand of cards mimics a situation of limited intelligence – it prevents you from responding to everything your opponent does, some of the time.

Ferguson holds Ventosa (Allied Left). I feel a banner coming on.

Being an old hand at C&C: Napoleonics, I didn’t waste time bemoaning what I couldn’t do, but looked at what I could do. So, I started to bring my units up on my Left flank to better position them. One of the toughest things to do in Commands & Colors of any stripe – for me at least – is to exhibit the discipline to get my troops up off the baseline. The rear-most units are often the most versatile, or the hardest-hitting in battle, but if you’re just responding to the action at the front, these units tend to languish. T’s single Grenadier unit never received a single order to advance through the entire game. It’s often a little easier to bring Cavalry forward from the Reserve given their greater movement allowance, provided there’s a gap in the lines for them to pass through.

The action started on the French Right (Allied Left). Three of T’s first four orders were across the whole front; a Forward (two units in each sector), followed by a Probe (two units) Right Flank, then a Coordinated Advance (two ordered Center, one each flank, and a Recon in Force (one unit activated each sector), I could only respond with an Attack left flank (three units activated) on my second round to meet the onslaught, along with An Attack Right Flank for my first move, then Assault Right Flank (activations up to hand size – a bit of a waste as I only had five units in the sector), and a Probe Center (two units ordered) for my fourth play, nudging some infantry forward, including the famous 95^th Rifle Regiment (popularised by the Sharpe novels and movies). I’m always wary bringing these chaps out; in the seven or eight times I’ve played the Allies in Vimiero, I’ve only managed to score a hit maybe twice before the three-bock unit was wiped out. At the end of four rounds, the French sat on two banners, while the Allies had yet to score.

Some low-hanging fruit for the right attack.

T's next gambit was Fire and Hold; any unit capable of ranged fire (Infantry and Artillery) cold be ordered, and each would gain an extra die to their roll. Unlike other Commands & Colors games, strength is adjusted down with loss of blocks in Napoleonics. T’s two cannon units were at full strength but also at full reach (maximum range of four hexes from a target), so they each only rolled two dice, while two of the three infantry units in were reduced to one and two blocks respectively. They nibbled at my Line troops (two hits between them and the cannon) while his full-strength Line (attached to St Clair. On the French Left) managed only to push my cannon off the ridgeline before the town of Vimiero.  

The game see-sawed through the action, which always makes for a more intense experience. Toby took his first banner early in the game. He had scored three banners before I won my first two (off a Recon in Force order), which is always encouraging. The six-banner Victory target comes up quickly after the first units begin to fall. T made a big push (Assault Center, but the action was all focused on the Vimiero front to the French Left), and at just two banners short of victory might have won him the game had it come off, but a combination of poor rolls and a solid defence on my part, managing to push back his advancing troops in the Center.

At round ten, T played an order that, if the game had gone much longer than it did, may have opened up Vimiero for the taking. He played Short Supply on my Foot Artillery battery set up on the ridgeline on the Center/Right sector border. This was a perfect position for Artillery, as it allows the unit to be ordered on a Center or Right sector manoeuvre order, and up to then I have been able to use the cannon to good effect. Short Supply pushes a unit of the player’s choice back to the opponent’s baseline (though the opponent gets to choose the position it ends up at). The best I could do in response was a Recon In Force order to bring some fresh units forward, including the aggrieved Foot Artillery.

Shorted.

By the last round, the scores were 5-4 in my favour. In the past we have both won games by gaining two or even three banners on the final round, so it was still anyone’s game.

Throughout the game, we’d been chipping away at each other’s forces. Knocking a block or two of several Line units especially. When the right card comes along, it can bring a swift conclusion, but it’s not a guarantee. T’s last play was a Forward order (two units in each sector), which lead to four opportunities for ranged fire (not the French side’s strong suit), and some losses on my part but nothing critical. I retorted with an Assault Center order, which cost T his loitering, depleted Heavy Cavalry, and the game. We have a house rule that if the last turn has multiple combats, we play them all out, and if the final losses are even, we declare a minor victory for the triumphant side. That wasn’t the case here, but I think it helps keep a more sportsmanlike view of the game.

In the end, the whole battle took fourteen rounds to reach a conclusion. The game played out in a little over an hour (plus about twenty minutes to set up, and another ten to tear down afterwards), which makes the game perfect for a weeknight. The final result was a 6-4 win for the Allies.

Six banners. 'A close-run thing."

As with nearly every time we’ve played this scenario, the town of Vimiero was never really in danger. The fighting was brutal, and T’s tactics were on the mark. In the end it came down to a couple of lucky rolls on my part; before the last turn it was still anyone’s game. And if it had played to another round the results may have been different, with a closer result a neat certainty. It’s these knife-edge that keep Commands & Colors: Napoleonics fresh and challenging.

Going back to the inspiration for the play, it should be pointed out that GMT is once again out of stock of the core C&C: Napoleonics box, but it is possible to find copies in the stores. It's my understanding that for future releases, the base set will be combined with the into a Peninsula Box, with other national expansions also being combined into dual or larger releases in an effort to reduce the overall costs. Whichever way you tackle it, after going on fifteen years of regular play (and one replacement board), Commands & Colors: Napoleonics is, for my money, definitely worth the price of admission.