Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Testgaming Maurice

Yes, the date I´ve been looking for so long had finally come. 
Saturday, 18th of August - high noon - high temperature and ... - high motivation.
This event had been an excellent ending of my holidays and I enjoyed the company of my friends very much.
Christopher (aka Axebreaker), Franz, Gerhard and I started our first test game on "Maurice".


Preparing the gaming table.


Parade on the armies - here the Austrians.
The one unit in the right middle had not been ready. 
So a prussian command had to complete it.


The French. 


A close up to the units of Christopher - Regiments de Berry, de RoyalRoussillon and an artillery stand on the left.


A superb looking unit - just have a look on the beautiful blog of Christopher:
christopher-bunkerhill.blogspot.com


A view over my Frenchies - the Commander belonging to the collection of Christopher.


The Austrians - part one - Hussar Regiment Nadásdy and Regiment Loudon.


The Austrians - part two - Regiment Wied (with the added Prussians), the CinC and the artillery.


The battlefield after setting the opponents.


It had been a lot of work to paint up the missing units for a first game.
As we wanted to play a bigger battle we also added some figures of the AWI. 
I hope you don´t mind recognizing some units of the AWI.


After winning the initiative Gerhard and I decided to play the glorious Austrians which had to be the attackers. 
The picture above shows Franz on the left and Christopher on the right playing the defending French forces.
The objective of victory was the watering place you can see in the centre of the picture.


Maurice is a game played with ActionCards. The attacker gets 8 cards to start (as he is the beginner) and the defender 5 cards.

The single turns in Maurice are beginning with a volley phase providing the units are in the responsible reach.

After the volley phase the active player (the player who has the actual turn) choses a force consisting of units of the same type, formation and within 2 BW of each other and can decide whether to march, to charge (if his units are in reach) or to rally with this chosen force. He can also start a bombardment with his artillery if he has chosen the artillery as force. He is also allowed to play an event card or to pass. Depending on his choice he then draws a certain number of new cards from the card desk.

For the chosen action the active player has to pay with a card from his hand. He can also spend more cards if he likes to modify the chosen action (+2 for firing units e.g.). But he must be aware that his counterpart can also play modifying cards as a reaction. This sometimes becomes a big surprise for the active player who surely will be confident of victory.

After the action of this turn has been played the former passive player becomes the active one and the next round starts with a volley phase (if the enemy is in reach). And so on...


During the first turns Gerhard and I decided to march with our infantry towards the French forces, stopping just a little outside the musket range of the French. 
Franz and Christopher had not been afraid of that and started to march to the frontline too.


Now it was time to start an artillery bombardment.

The smoke of firing was in the air and as it weighted the Austrian Generals had to notice that the bombardment had no effect.


After another unsuccessful bombardment Gerhard and I let our infantry start a movement against Franz´s and Christopher´s army.


Austria was not lucky on saturday. Maybe the heat (about 33°C) made them lazy or they had just to much drinks the day before - the hit rate was miserable.
Also the French generals had almost every time cards on their hands that cancelled our modifying cards or interrupted our actions.
A circumstance Gerhard and I could hardly believe.

The use of the heroic Hussars was not able to turn fortunes of war.


The French flank didn´t break and we ran out of cards while Christopher and Franz(mann) had a lot of choice modifying their actions.


 The victory had gone to the French for the Austrians decided to withdraw from battlefield.

Though not successful we will surely continue with Maurice.
In my opinion it was a great gaming day. 




And it didn´t end with the BBQ after our test game. Christopher gave us an intro into the rules of BlackPowder and so we played a second game in the evening. Again SYW but with the rules of BP.


  Christopher stayed over night and we both had been able to start another BP on sunday.

This time in my cellar - the temperatures had been over those of saturday.

It is always a great pleasure gaming with like-minded friends in good atmosphere, having some drinks (also non-alcoholic ones) and talking about history. 
Thanks to all of them. I hope we will repeat this event very soon.
Life could be so easy. :)

Cheers
Mike

















Starting with own figure range - SYW Austrians

Manufacturer:  "Dreispitz Miniatures"
Scale:  28mm


Hi all,

today I want to give a short overlook on the progress of my own figure range I want to release.

As I already told in a former post these figures aren´t sculpted by me. 
I won´t be able to do that.
The name of the sculptor is Ingo Gohlke and the figures are going to be casted by Ulrike and Jörg Schilling.
So they will be totally "Made in Germany".

The photos do not show the final result yet.
But please feel free to post your thoughts on these minis.
I would be very interested in your assessments.







I thought that the name "Dreispitz Miniatures" would be very suitable.
It´s similar to my blog´s name and matches the chosen period best.
I´m a great fan of the period the tricorne (=Dreispitz) had its great time.
Maybe I shouldn´t have been watching the movie "The crimson pirate" with Burt Lancaster so much often then I was a little boy.
I think this is one of the movies that shaped my favor for the 18th century the most.
Casting and gaming tin soldiers of the "Prince August" and "Nürnberger Meisterzinn" figures did its rest.

Cheers
Mike






Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Maurice - Before the battle

Hi,

here are some pics of the gaming table I also had to build for our test game on saturday.

I didn´t have a table yet. I always played at friends and was allowed to use their tables.

So it was time to build an own one.




The white strings you can see are to represent the zones for attachment.
At the ends of these strings I knotted two nails which can be sticked into holes I drilled into the sides of the table. 
So I won´t have to measure the zones every game.
I just will have to fix the strings with their nails and the table is ready for action.

I often thought about a way to avoid the measurement of the attachment zones with laying markers on the edges of the zone. 
I think this solution will work very well.

Cheers
Mike

Monday, August 13, 2012

Maurice - SYW - Austrian Command

Manufacturers:  
Fieldmarshal - FrontRank
Grenadier - unknown (maybe OldGlory?)
Croat - Crusader
Scale:  28mm


Hello,

today I want to post a CinC marker for my Austrian SYW that I finished today.

Every army needs his commander and I had to realize that I almost forgot to create a command base for our planned game on saturday.


The basing is not circular. 
I decided to use the basing mentioned in BritishGrenadier. 
This is the same as the basing for artillery (in BritishGrenadier): 6x7cm


This close up allows a better comparison to the next picture.
The picture is taken from John Mollo´s book "Armies of the seven years war".
FrontRank did a very good job in sculpting the figure of the Fieldmarshal. 
It has been a great pleasure to paint it.


I don´t know the manufacturer of this miniature showing an Hungarian Grenadier 
(Regiment Nikolaus Esterházy).
I think it could be OldGlory, but I´m not sure.
If someone of you should know the company please tell me.


The casualty shows a Croat of the Regiment Karlstädter-Likaner. 
I got some Crusader Croats this week.
These figures are intended for a unit of light troops.


And here a few more photos from the CinC.




Thanks for viewing.

Cheers

Mike




Friday, August 10, 2012

Neuf-Brisach - A short trip to a Vauban fortification

Hi,

Last week my wife, my daughter and I took a short trip to some friends in Lörrach, near the swiss border and also near to the Alsace. 

On our way home we stopped at Neuf-Brisach, a town that was planned by Vauban as a fortification. Here are some impressions of this fortification. Further information can also be found here, but there are a lot of more websites about this interesting town.

Vauban chose the area for building his MasterClass fortification.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuf-Brisach







This pictures shows our daughter standing in front of one of those impressive walls. 
Tatjana is 1,58m tall so you can imagine the height of the wall.










One day I´ll have to build something like a Vauban-fortification for my gaming board. :)

Cheers

Mike