Heretical Gaming is my blog about my gaming life, featuring small skirmishes and big battles from many historical periods (and some in the mythic past or the far future too). The focus is on battle reports using a wide variety of rules, with the occasional rules review, book review and odd musing about the gaming and history. Most of the battles use 6mm-sized figures and vehicles, but occasionally 15mm and 28mm figures appear too.

Monday 18 June 2012

Productive versus Unproductive

Last weekend was both productive and unproductive.  Productive in that I got quite a lot of troops based up, unproductive in that I had intended to set up and play a game or two.  I had enough time to play the games but I think the problem was that I was organised for painting and basing, not organised to set up and play within a few minutes.  And when it came to it, I just couldn't decide what to do!  So I just did some basing instead.

This week, I'm going to try something different and organize a couple of games well in advance, even though they are going to be played solo.  Today was thinking day: which games exactly, requiring which figures, rules, terrain, dice and other paraphanalia.

So, the games:  Three tabletop teasers from the Battlegames' Teaser Collection, including 'The Bridge Demolition', 'Pontoon' and 'The Bridge at Kronstadt'.

The rules: Polemos Napoleonic 'General de Division' rules, with 'regiments' replaced by 'brigades'. 

The models: The red forces will be Spanish, the blue forces French.  With that in mind, I need to sort out the following:

Spanish:
6 Regiments of Heavy Cavalry
6 Regiments of Light Cavalry
18 Battalions of Line Infantry
6 Battalions of Light Infantry
3 Batteries of Artillery
1 Troop of Engineers

French:
9 Regiments of Light Cavalry
9 Regiments of Dragoons and/or Heavy Cavalry
24 Battalions of Line Infantry
6 Battalions of Light Infantry
6 Battalions of Grenadiers
4 Batteries of Artillery
1Troop of Engineers with Pontoons

With the exception of the pontoons, which I have but aren't painted, I think I can field all of this already. 

Required Terrain:
Hills:10
Large Hills: 1
Large River: 1
River: 1
Stream: 1
Farms: 2
Towns: 2
Stately houses or similar: 2
Woods: 8
Hedges: 4
Walls: 2

I think I have most of this - or can easily improvize acceptable versions - except for the wide river.  I need to check the hills I have are sufficient, too - although I'm tempted just to use the old 'sheet over books and blocks' method.  I don't think the terrain is 'done' in a brilliant way but I'm not certain yet of 'the way ahead' so I'll wait until I am before doing anything radically different.

Paraphanalia:
Rules - yes
Orders of Battle - no
Counters to show 'shaken' levels (very important in the Polemos rules) - yes
Dice - yes
Camera - to put some pictures on here! - yes

So, things to do include making a pontoon terrain piece and a suitable wide river,  deciding whether to make more hills or not, making sure the camera is close at hand and getting all the troops ready to go.  We shall see if this works better!

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