Numbers, Wargames and Arsing About : M44

Showing posts with label M44. Show all posts

Saturday, 30 January 2016

Secret project news......

Stuff is occurring!

Yes, I have made some progress and here is a clue.

I have wheeled out M44 again to help with the design process. I have invested a lot of time on research because I'm having to learn a lot of new stuff. It is a real battle but much of the information is conjectural. This makes it difficult in some ways but it is also hard for anyone to tell me I've got it wrong.

The game system is a very modified Firestorm variant using hexes rather than areas and packing in lots of new things. It is also a solo game and will therefore need careful balancing to make it a challenge to win.

There is an obvious clue in the map so no prizes for guessing where it is! I understand half term is mid February this year so I may have half a chance of publishing a play test version by the end of the month. Fingers crossed!

Saturday, 7 June 2014

Thoughts at D+1

When do events become history?

I find it hard to believe that it is 70 years since D-Day. When I was a child in the early sixties, playing with my Airfix men, D-Day was less than 20 years old. Memories of the war amongst family and neighbours were vivid and often painful. When I started work in the 1970s, my colleagues included many ex-servicemen who had fought in Normandy and across the globe. They were then younger then than I am now. Suddenly, time has passed to the extent that there are few remaining veterans. Perhaps this is the point that D-Day now becomes history, a poignant thought.

Firestorm Overlord from FoW

Still, I'm pleased that the wargaming community has plenty going on to commemorate the event.

Flames of War have contributed a new Firestorm module, Overlord, which is free and available from their website. At first sight, this looks great. There is also news that the second half of Firestorm Caen from earlier this year will be released at some stage covering Cherbourg and St Lo.

The M44 world has been particularly busy. I've already posted about Days of Wonder's massive D-Day landing expansion. As of yesterday we now have:

Brummbar's Battle Commander module for M44 which provides a way to play linked but variable scenarios from Juno Beach to Falaise.

Derek Whaley's 108 page M44 scenario compilation for the western front, including all the Normandy scenarios (except those subject to ongoing copyright). Phew!

On an Android note, I have been playing D-Day by Invertbit on the train. It is very similar to an old hex and counter game, reasonably historical and quite enjoyable.

My Father's day present arrived earlier today. Not to be touched until next weekend of course. It is Heroes of Normandie. I'm really looking forward to this to say the least. I opened the packed to check that it was OK (that's my excuse) and found these extra counters in the parcel. Nice!

Also, check out The Atlantic which has some great then and now style photos from Normandy. Well worth a look.

Sunday, 23 March 2014

Extra "Phwoar!"

Its that sort of day...

Yes, I have managed to celebrate Mother's Day a week early and spend most of the weekend working or doing homework. A difficult couple of days so this picture really cheered me up....

This was posted on the M44 forum and shows a close up of the D-Day map for Sword beach. The larger picture of all six maps that I posted doesn't show much detail and I was concerned about what we would actually get. This map reassures me big time that we have a real live workable scenario. My first questions is "does this look like my mental map of the battlefield?" and this does. The second question is "looking at the set up, do I have lots of historical options/problems to deal with?", the answer is again yes. I can see plenty of tension here between the drive on Caen and the reinforcement of the Orne bridgehead.

I'm really looking forward to this release. I have no hope of playing the full six maps, if I'm lucky I might get to play two or three maps, but will need to buy additional soldiers rather than additional base games. Maybe I also need some friends to play with!

Friday, 21 March 2014

Things that make you go "Phwoar!"

Invading Normandy again (but bigger)

We have not had new M44 kit for some time, the Equipment Pack being the last big ticket item in 2012. We now have a very special release to commemorate the 70th anniversary of D-Day itself and the 10th anniversary of M44.

We had the warning from DoW a couple of weeks ago with the familiar message that was originally broadcast on Radio Londres:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne

Blessent mon cœur

D’une langueur

Monotone.

This could only mean a D-Day release but what more could they actually do? The hints seemed to show maps covering the whole of the Normandy front with extra pictures of crowds of fat bald old people crammed into a games store playing a huge M44 game. Needless to say the forums were divided.....what did it mean? Was it to be more maps? More miniatures?

Well the answer came yesterday with the formal DoW announcement. Its six really big maps!

The base map for M44 is 13 hexes wide by 9 deep. You can play these in Overlord style with two maps side by side (26 by 9). A larger breakthrough map was was released giving 13 by 17 to enable battles in depth. Now what we have is a ginormous map set giving 78 wide by a generous 23 deep when set up together.

Forum intelligence estimates the size of the whole map at anywhere between 14 foot and three miles wide. Certainly, this qualifies for a Phwoar in anyone's money!

The great thing about this is that you can play single, double or triple etc etc map games. in M44 speak this map configuration must be at least a triple overthrough breaklord!

The scale looks good too as it appears to be regiment/brigade level. There's a whole fist full of gaming here for only what appears to be 30 of our English pounds. Great, can't wait til the release in June.

Saturday, 26 October 2013

Hold the line..

Putting you through now Sir! One of my favourite diversionary tactics is to order something through the post and then spend a lot of time thinking about it when it arrives. This is entirely regardless of whether it actually relates to anything currently sitting on my desk. In this current example I now have a large box sitting where the Shermans ought to be with lots of very nice counters in it. To be fair, I've had this for a while but my recent postal arrival has caused me to rummage like a TB stricken badger and fill the study with STUFF!

The reason for this is the publication of Highland Charge by Worthington Games. This is a supplement to Frederick's War which has also been recently published. These games form part of an eclectic range of games known generically as Hold The Line, although each game has subtle differences. They usually have a 13 by 9 hex map and all have pretty much the same set of simple rules, reminiscent of Memoir 44/CnC but without the cards.

I have therefore rummaged out my Hold the Line game to allow me to play with Highland Charge.

It is probably worth starting at the beginning and seeing where this series of games came from. Initially, Worthington published Clash for a Continent about the American Revolutionary War (is this what we call it now?) and the French and Indian Wars. This was followed by a really interesting game on the War of 1812 called For Honor and Glory. not only did this cover the land battles but also the naval combats on the great Lakes and offshore (I mean at sea as usually naval combat is offshore).

Clash for a Continent

These two games came with thin wooden counters, a little like the CnC blocks from GMT. Both games seemed to take off with miniatures players, with many examples of the games being converted to large scale hex grids on material and played with toy soldiers. I suspect people were attracted by the simplicity of the games and the multiple scenarios. This next shot shows Lundy's Lane from For Honor and Glory which, I think, proves the point.

Lundy's Lane scenario

Both of these games were released in 2005 and are now out of print. I don't think they will ever be reprinted in their original format.

In 2008 Worthington published Hold the Line, a tidied up version of Clash for a Continent featuring completely new scenarios and some fantastic big counters made in Germany.

These counters are card but so thick they sound like plastic when you shuffle them together!

I understand that the earlier Clash for a Continent/For Honor and Glory scenarios can be played equally well with this set, unfortunately Worthington have not made a PDF of the earlier scenarios available. This is great pity especially as people, like me, would be prepared to pay for them. You can, however, see the scenarios on the relevant Vassal module (of which I know nothing).

In 2010 Worthington took a slight diversion and released Napoleon's War: The 100 days. This looked at the four battles of the 1815 campaign in Belgium. These games used plastic troops rather than counters (like Memoir) and gave up the limited size map and terrain tiles for a series of bespoke printed maps. These looked really good....

Waterloo map with plastic figures

This was followed-up by release of two battle packs featuring new maps for four battles each (Alexandria, Jena, Auerstadt and Bussaco in Pack I with four battles from 1812 in Pack II). These used the plastic playing pieces from the 100 Days game. A second major release with plastic pieces was issued in 2011, Napoleon's War II: The Gates of Moscow covering Borodino, Aspern-Essling, Austerlitz and Marengo.

None of these games are badged as Hold the Line, but the basic rules and game play are very similar.

The latest releases are Frederick's War covering the Austrian Succession and the aforementioned Highland Charge. Frederick's War has some eight scenarios including the big ones such as Mollwitz and Kolin. This returns the series to the 13 by 9 map with terrain tiles and with counters. Smaller square counters this time, not half as nice as the earlier ones but still pretty good. This game features some rules changes to better fit with the larger scale of the battles.

Highland Charge is an expansion covering five scenarios from the '15, '19 and '45 uprisings (Sheriffmuir, Glen Shiel, Prestonpans, Falkirk and Culloden). Killikrankie is also available as a download from Worthington. Here is the counter artwork....

Nice. However, there are some issues with Highland Charge. Sean Chick, the designer, has flagged up some errata including missing counters (promised in the next expansion) and some rules clarifications. Although the rules are simple they are quite difficult to follow and I'm sure there must be a more simple way of expressing them

I don't have Frederick's War but I intend to play Highland Charge using my HTL map and tiles. The latest set of rules (Frederick's War) are required to play the game but these are available on Worthington's website.

If the above narrative is slightly confusing, here is a quick ludography (?) of the series.

2005: Clash for a Continent (ARW/FIW)
2005: For Honor and Glory (1812 land and naval)

2008: Hold the Line (HTL)
2008: French and Indian War expansion

2010: Napoleon's War: The 100 Days
2010: Napoleon's War: Battle Pack I
2010: Napoleon's War: Battle Pack II
2011: Napoleon's War: The Gates of Moscow

2013: Frederick's War
2013: Highland Charge expansion

Also, there are a couple of things not yet on the list:

Gettysburg 150: Due very soon, this covers the whole battle of Gettysburg;
The potential next release which will cover the Great Northern War and has just entered play testing.

If that's not enough, Sean Chick released a PDF (on BGG on the HTL page under the files section) covering 15 battles from the Austrian Succession including some of those in Frederick's War (in prototype form) and some, like Dettingen and Fontenoy, obviously not involving Frederick.

What I haven't covered here is the rules and that's what I'll go through next time and explain why this is causing me to rummage around in my drawers....

The pictures here were sourced from BGG and Worthington's website except for the obviously naff one taken on my phone.

Sunday, 15 September 2013

Serious wargame planning

that looks like playing with toys....

At least that's what my wife says. Anyway, work being very tough at the moment I have had little time to think, let alone progress any of my projects. So I took a little time out yesterday to ponder the battle board.

This is not yet complete but I have managed to do some more painting and its coming along nicely. Another couple of goes and all of the basic colours will be complete. I then need to think about whether I outline the hexes and whether I spay with varnish. Both could quite easily send me back to the drawing board.

First, I used some of my A&A miniatures (the older style 12-15mm size). They fit quite nicely into the hexes and overall I think look quite good. The board with two Panthers about to hold off a couple of Shermans and an M24 but with an airstrike coming in.

Here comes the Tempest, I believe the term is dakka dakka dakka...woosh bang might be a bit childish!

Close-up of a surprisingly nice Panther.

I'm seriously considering whether I can use Norm Smith's Into Battle rules using the minis and this hex grid.

Next up is to deploy the 6mm ACW armies. With a river/sea board edge this might be Shiloh. Rebs converging on the Yankees.

I quite like the visuals, it looks rather neat but a couple of things occur to me. First, the base colours are darker than the board (i.e. the darker green which will be the colour for all full land hexes). Second, its hard to tell the sides apart from a normal distance from the board. I may need to colour code the bases. I'm still planning to use Neil Thomas' 19th century rules for this in a heavily modified format.

I thoroughly enjoyed playing around, sorry, seriously planning. I was therefore delighted to see Mr P Aspic has also been blogging about his battle board. I was interested to learn that his hexes are 7" across. Mine are just short of 54mm side to side. Whilst I would love to have a bigger battle board this size has been scientifically selected. It will allow me to play any of the Command and Colours games, the hex grid sizes for which vary slightly. I therefore have a gully between each hex to allow for size differences. I also have a very SECRET plan for the board which will make use of the gaps between the hexes, although this is on the back of an envelope for now.

Sunday, 28 July 2013

Neil goes to the ACW

Using Neil Thomas' Wargaming C19th Europe for the ACW (1)

To return to my attempt to use Neil's European rules for the ACW, here is the next step.

I have a limited number of 6mm troops on 40 by 30mm bases. I plan to use these on a modified M44 board. As they are blocks, I will need to use markers for casualties.

My force pool is quite limited:

ACW Force Pool	CSA	USA
Infantry	10	10
Skirmishers	2	2
Cavalry	2	2
Smoothbore Artillery	2	1
Rifled Artillery	Nil	1
Generals	2	2

I will be using the Pitched Battle Scenario (scenario 1, page 51) from Neil's book so I need to modify the army selection table to fit my force pool.

Army Selection Table: Pitched Battle Scenario
Die Roll	Infantry	Skirmishers	Cavalry	Artillery	Generals
1	7	1	2	2	2
2	7	2	2	1	2
3	7	1	2	2	2
4	8	1	1	2	2
5	8	2	1	1	2
6	8	1	1	2	2

At the moment, I plan to use two generals for each army. When I consider the rules in more detail I intend to use the command rules, or at least a variant of them. For the artillery selection, where the USA player has 1 unit, they can use either the smoothbore or rifled piece.

Next step, lets do some army list things.

By the way, I found myself very pleased with the Bavarian blog piece, it went together really well with no formatting problems. I didn't expect to encounter any difficulties with this one but if I had any hair left it would all be gone by now!

Friday, 12 July 2013

And finally, something about wargaming

Converting Neil Thomas

One of my projects has been in gestation since 1998. I bought some Irregular 6mm ACW troops with the intention of playing a DBA type game on a small board (120 by 60 cms). I finished the troops a few years ago but am still working on the board. I have finally decided to make it into a M44 type board with hexes (that's another story) and I'm about half way through.

Some troops on an early version of the board: