20mm Napoleonics and Midgard

20mm Napoleonics, utilising HaT Miniatures for the most part. 20mm really does enable you to get the feel for larger battles on a 6'x4' table, which is an advantage over 28mm, which can only really represent a 'big skirmish' on this size of table. More 20mm figures are being painted en masse as we speak!, so hopefully we will see more in this scale over the coming months.

Some 'Elf and Safety for Midgard as the Elven Host make a rare appearance on our battlefield in support of their Saxon allies. Nevertheless, the Norse invaders proved too powerful in this engagement and achieved a 'narrow win'.

Napoleonics - Ultra Fast Play Rules

Another game utilising one of the members' ultra fast play concept Napoleonic wargame rules. A number of unique mechanisms enable players to fight large scale games in quick time. This comes with the benefit of getting a lot of toy soldiers onto an 8' x 6' table. The scenario used was first wargamed back in 1967! When it comes to wargame scenarios, 'why reinvent the wheel?', as they say.

Borodino, 1812

This was something of an hommage to one of the most epic encounters in military history - the battle of Borodino on 7th September 1812. In what became a gruesome slaughter fest, Napoleon obtained what could, at best, best be described as a Pyrrhic victory for his Grande Armee. 

The battle and 1812 campaign have remained in the public memory like few others, in part because of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Tolstoy's War and Peace, the 1967 Soviet film that utilised 12,000 Red Army soldiers as extras, the huge masterpiece Panorama of the battle; not to mention the occupation and burning of Moscow and Napoleon's catastrophic retreat in the winter of 1812.

In this refight of the actions in the South-Central part of the battle, around the Bagration Fleches and the village of Semyonovskaya, the French were making slow progress on their right flank, but were having difficulties on their left. Nevertheless the French juggernaut in the centre was probably about to overwhelm the Russians defending the fleches. That said, this game was grossly overly ambitious for an evening's game and we never had the chance to play it out to a conclusion.

Napoleonics - A Prussian and Russian Victory

An allied force of Russians and Prussians drove the French from a strong position on high ground. In reality the victory was achieved through the hard work of the Russian infantry, who successfully took the hill, whilst a regiment of Prussian Hussars routed two regiments of poorly deployed French Dragoons. The Prussian infantry, in contrast, just went on some parade ground manoeuvres, managing to avoid firing a single shot in anger.