Ancients No Brain Wargame

       The other day I came across some 10mm Old Glory Romans that I got some 20 years ago. I used  them with Chris Salander's H&M2.0 rules that I doctored for the period. They were in a large lot of Old Glory Napoleonics that someone kindly gave to me.
      My wife went out to dinner with some of her work friends last night, so I decided to use these old veterans for a quick No Brain Wargame.  I used average dice to decide how many squares of figures could move in a turn. I started photographing the action after the forces came together; once again I had no plans to write up this battle.

The blue legion (foreground) is hitting the red legions right flank.

In the upper center of the picture, two red units attack one blue unit. At this point in the battle, the red legion is spread out due to blue attacks.

One red unit has pushed forward of the red line, putting itself in extreme danger.

The blue legion hits the red unit in the flank.

The blue attack on the red unit is disappointing; two stands are forced to retreat. What's more, the flanking blue unit is hit in it's flank by another red unit. This attack did no damage to the blue unit.

The two red units are forced to retreat by the blue army; the red general decided to use his turn consolidating his units instead of pressing his attacks.

It turned out to be a wise move. From the left; the red infantry forces back the blue archers.  The red archers eliminate  the blue stand in front of them. The blue infantry destroys one stand of infantry; unfortunately the blue archers score no hits on the infantry to their front.

At this point the blue legion retreats.

This was one of those games that turned out to be more challenging than expected. I don't know if part of it was using figures that hadn't been used in a very long time. It did inspire me to dig out more of my Old Glory 10mm and has me thinking of putting them to use.

Wargaming the War of 1812

    Before I had access to the internet, for several years my main interest was the American War of 1812. Recently I read a biography of the American general, Jacob Brown. He was commander of the American army that invaded the Canadian side of the Niagara area in 1814. He was the most successful American general during the war, but is largely  forgotten today. Reading of the 1814 campaign has renewed my interest in the war.

    Right now my big decision is which figures will be used.

Some of the figures I'm thinking of using; 15mm Minifigs 1st generation British Napoleonics(for both sides), 15mm Heritage Napoleonics, 20mm Frying Pan and Blanket Amalgamated War of 1812 figures, and 40mm Homecast Prince August and Zinnbrigade figures.

Some of the figures I started painting for inspiration.

Two other options are using Old Glory 10mm or Historfigs N gauge Scrubys. These are some Old Glory Napoleonics that were painted for a different War of 1812 project that I was working on.

Old Glory British infantry painted as Americans for the above mentioned project.

A Zinnbride figure converted for use as a early American infantryman. I got the idea for this figure from Ross Macfarland's Battle of the Month blog. In one of his War of 1812 games, I saw such a converted figure and liked the pose.

Two Zinnbrigade conversions. The  painted Zinnbrigade figure was converted to a march attack  figure. The musket is simply a piece of garden wire. Besides deciding on figures, I'm thinking of different rules from the usual Battle Cry or C&C rules. My wife and I are going camping next week. I plan to bring several War of 1812 books to reread for inspiration. Hopefully at the end of the vacation I'll have a better idea of where this project is going.

15mm Legend of Sleepy Hollow Figures

Among Old Glory horror figures is "the Legend of Sleepy Hollow", which also happens to be my favorite short story. Besides the Headless Horseman and Ichobod Crane, there is a good collection of village folk, most in peaceful poses which would be great for civilian figures in a war-game.

School teacher Crane wooing Katrina Van Tassel

The Headless Horseman in the flesh (?)

Headless Horseman dismounted, after finishing a visit to Hollywood.  Someone should remember that the Headless Horseman was a Hessian. I can't find this uniform in any of my Osprey books.

Old Glory also has a nice little line of witches  to go along with their horror line.

For Halloween: Old Glory Vampires

As Halloween approaches, I thought to get in the spirit I would show some of vampires produced by Old Glory miniatures.

Heroscape Civil War battle with 10mm Old Glory Figures

When I first got back into wargaming and was looking for different ideas, I bought a lot of Old Glory 10mm figures. I must admit that I really like the strips of infantry. And when I bought Avalon Hill's Battle Cry game, it seemed that it might be a good match. And then Heroscape came along and it seemed perfect to use with Battle Cry.  However I've only combined them a couple of times. 

I haven't got a war-game in for a while so I decided to have a go at it. After all, for a solo war gamer Battle Cry is great as the scenarios are given with troop deployment, terrain and victory conditions spelled out for you. I decided to use Memoir of Battle by Bob Condrey for the rules. I couldn't find my rulebook for Battle Cry; however I did have an additional scenario supplement that came with the game. I used the Battle of McDowell, May 8,1862.

Part of the scenario for the Battle of Mc Dowell

The set up for the battle.  I still haven't figured out how to have woods that will work with the miniatures, so I just marked those hexes with chalk.