Projects Update and CCA/CCN

I finally managed to get the stickers affixed and blocks sealed on my Command and Colors: Ancients game. On Scott's recommendation, I purchased the small, five compartment Plano tackle boxes to use to store the game blocks. Sorting through the blocks and labels, I discovered that the block mix was incorrect. Rather than having a mix of Roman and Carthaginian large blocks for elephants, I only received the elephant-sized Carthaginian blocks. I considered repainting four of the brown blocks to gray but Scott suggested dropping GMT and e-mail and requesting replacements. I followed Scott's advice and GMT responded to my e-mail promptly and I had the replacement blocks in my mailbox within one week. Great service from GMT! Now, I am ready to host Roman vs Carthage games. While I will not likely buy the supplements, it will be useful to have the base game in hand. My plan is still to use the base CCA system and convert it over to 6mm miniatures' gaming.

We have been enjoying our CCA/CCN games and I'll be joining Kevin and Dylan Saturday afternoon for a few games of CCN. Kevin received the Spanish supplement a few weeks ago and we gave the Spanish their baptism during our gaming on JAN 7. The Spanish, although not as powerful as the French, have a powerful capability of launching a guerrilla attack at the most inopportune time. As for tactics, in the games we played, redoubts seem to fall much too easily. In my game against Scott, he hesitated not in launching an attack against emplaced guns without any preparatory softening up. In cases, the guns in the redoubts fell without any difficulty due to the attacker marching up to the redoubt and rolling hits against the defender. Perhaps, one idea to consider is to allow the defender to throw one half of his dice prior to the attacker's throw as a closing fire on the approach. If the defender is still able to battle back after the attacker's assault, the defender would then only throw one half of his dice. I would like to give that a try and see if that small change improves the game.

18mm Napoleonic Project:
Recent orders have arrived from Campaign Game Miniatures (CGM) in Spain and Old Glory. From CGM, I picked up sample units from CGM's Napoleonic line and Warmodelling. First off the painting table is one unit of CGM's Austrian line in helmet. Nice figures that are slightly more chunky than Old Glory and much more chunky than Battle Honours. The mounted officer is from AB.



Next off the painting table is one unit of Warmodelling's French in bicorne. The figures are larger than Old Glory and carry less crisp detail but will look fine on the gaming table. Actually, the figures in the picture below look quite good.



From Old Glory, I picked up sample bags of Blue Moon French in full dress. I painted three, 13 figure units and the figures are quite nice with good detailing and pleasing poses. For mounted officers, I used AB French.



Also won an auction for about a dozen AB Miniatures' LaSalle packs. These packs consisted of about an equal number of French and Peninsular British infantry, each having about 40 figures.

18mm SYW Project:
Painting on one battalion of Blue Moon's AWI Hessian fusiliers is complete and the battalion will be fielded as Prussian Fusilier Battalion #46. As noted in an earlier post, the Blue Moon figures match closely in size to Eureka's SYW Austrians but are slightly smaller than Eureka's Prussian fusiliers. Also crossing the painting table was one battalion of Prussian musketeers.







 10mm ACW Project: 
Having gamed many of the large battles of the war with each base equating to about 1,000 men, I am considering tackling the small actions using Regimental Fire and Fury (RFF). While I could fudge the recommended RFF basing to accommodate my brigade-level stands, I am contemplating rebasing the collection to (more or less) conform to the standard RFF basing. However, in the spirit of tinkering, under consideration is one RFF infantry base (0.875" x 1.125") equalling two 10mm bases. Each new base would hold two, five-figure strips and count as a reinforced line (i.e. two stands in depth). Thus, each 10mm base will be able to take two casualties before removal. The first casualty on each stand will require a small marker to denote the loss. For extended line, my thought is to use the skirmish figures I currently have mounted on each brigade stand and making a bunch of 'Extended line' markers to denote the correct frontage when the infantry is deployed in extended line. Artillery and cavalry will remain on the same size base as the infantry.

15mm Second War of Italian Independence Project: 
Two squadrons of Sardinian light horse and one gun with crew are finished. I spent Thursday evening creating flags for the Sardinian and Austrian infantry. Up to now, all of the foot battalions have carried no colors. Now I have enough flags to outfit each battalion with one color and will spent part of the weekend affixing flags. Although only the first battalion of each regiment carried a flag in the field, I am adding one color to each battalion.