It never fails. Whenever I jot down a list of war game projects it seems that very shortly thereafter I’m distracted from my list by some bright shiny game project! Such was the case late last week. I had recently picked up a copy of The Best of The Dragon. Sitting by the fire I picked up the copy and began to read. The first articles were nice pieces on Metamorphosis Alpha. A game we played when it came out; one that we played, but didn’t sink too much time into. As such the articles were a nice reminder of an old game. There were numerous articles on Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), but it was an article by Gary Gygax (On Dungeons & Dragons) that captured my attention. In a nutshell it was about the origins of original Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D) . No article covering the beginning of D&D can be written that doesn’t touch on the connection between Chainmail and D&D. It was the mention of Chainmail that was my distraction.

  As may be known, Chainmail is one of my obsessions. OK, maybe it isn’t all that bad. It is however one of my favorites and it is really easy to get lost in reading and planning war games using the rules. That is exactly what happened. A quick trip out to the game room; to return with my well read copy of 3rd edition (sadly, my copies of 1st & 2nd editions are still missing – missing since the move from California). The next next task was to grab my Kindle and load up the PDF version I have (I wish Wizards of the Coast would make that available again). Armed with two copies of the rules I began to read (two copies make it very easy to look at text on one page and refer to tables and such on another page). This reading reminded me that I had a retyped version of the Geneva Medieval Miniatures rules from the April 1970 issue of Panzerfaust. I originally retyped these back in the late 1970’s as my copy of the April 1970 issue was in very, very sad shape and I really liked the rules. The typed pages were forgotten for many years, but at some point in the late 1990’s I retyped them into a plain text document/file and added them to my archives. Again the file was forgotten until a year or so ago, when I was working on another post concerning Chainmail (not yet published, as it needs some more work). OK, so to get back on point, I rooted around and found my text file and began to reformat it. The goal being to save as a PDF that I could keep on my Kindle and use as a reference when studying the rules.

  Rules review more or less complete I started to think on what type of game I could set up, given my currently painted figures. About the only 25/28mm [suitable] figures I have make up my Norse army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WHF) – and yes, this army dates back to when the Norse were a real and supported army. Since these are mostly old Citadel Miniatures historical figures they will work just fine for a Viking themed game. I can add similarly themed figures to these from my miscellaneous Scruby and Bloodaxe figures. I do have some 54mm plastic knights and such. I even have a castle! Not sure I have enough figures in 54mm, but perhaps the man-to-man rules could be used for a small skirmish game. The other possibility that came to mind is that I have numerous painted 15mm figures. Mostly these are based for De Bellis Multitudinis (DBM) and for the most part are gathering dust. Perhaps a few tweaks for distance/range and these figures could be pressed into service? I will have to think about this, but it seems very do-able.

  Now that I know what I have handy in the way of miniatures it is time to seriously think about some scenarios. Of course I can always just ‘do’ a standard meeting engagement type scenario. Or just borrow from one of my (many) copies of WHF – there are always a few nice scenario suggestions to be found in these rules books. In any event, I’ll look to use balanced forces for the first few games and see where things go from there.

  My Chainmail adventure has caused my previous (unpublished) post to float to the surface and with my current level of energy I may be able to finish the article before too much longer. Perhaps as soon as I receive (should be in the mail on its way to me in the next couple of days) the last of the research materials I need to complete the article? We shall see how much new information I uncover.

  Look for more Chainmail related news in the coming days.

With our recent/current cold weather we have decided to have a winter themed sale.

Be sure to check the Specials page for details.

More news and pictures soon!

Wow. It has been almost 6 months since my last post. This has to be a new record for me. I bet some of you are wondering what has been going on here at HistoriFigs HQ…

Well, this has been a very slow year as far as casting and making soldiers goes. On the bright side, things have picked up a bit of late. With little work in the shop, out efforts were turned to other projects such as farm work and some consulting work. Those plus a crazy ‘day job’ work schedule kept me from most soldier and war game projects. Not the best excuses, but reality. This post will be a real hodgepodge of ‘stuff’ – too much missed time with posts, so perhaps a bit on the rambling side of things…

I’ve started working on the next batch of 20mm Napoleonic re-molds, some miscellaneous French Infantry are on the table now. After that I’m not sure what will come next; I’m open to suggestions and requests.

In other Napoleonic news, I’ve been casting some 25mm Bloodaxe Napoleonic figures – nothing is listed on the website at this time. Perhaps I’ll get a small listing (just a miscellaneous grouping really, not the full range) up after the first of the new year.

A new shipment of metal has arrived. The good news is that there has been no increase in metal prices this shipment. The bad news is that due to other rising costs we will need to re-evaluate both figure pricing and shipping rates. Look for new prices and rates in January.

Some new figures for the Adalen Miniatures line coming by the end of December. Mortar and Maxim Gun teams plus a few misc. figures. The greens are in house, and I should have those in pattern molds this coming (long) weekend.

We have also received a new shipment of mold blanks, so we will be looking at the next group of Scruby figures to be re-molded. Again, we are open to suggestions and requests. If you have a large-ish project you want to do, this might be a good time to recommend your favorite figures for re-molding.

In other news, Liam and I have been attending a lecture series (at UW Baraboo) covering Wisconsin history; from discovery to statehood. As a result, I’m motivated to finish up some long delayed N-gauge French & Indian War offerings. I’m going to shoot for having the batch done and posted by the end of January.

Lots of unfinished projects around here. Some are personal projects and some are HistoriFigs projects – I’ll try and focus on HistoriFigs projects this winter and see if we can get caught up and bring you some new and or improved figures and such.

Still much more to cover, but I’ll close for now and see if I can come up with a fun post for the Thanksgiving weekend.

Oh, one last thing; anyone interested in being an assistant  editor here on Table Top Talk ? If so, let me know…

As if I needed another war game project! I’ve started working on an updated version of Mike Frank’s Napoleonic Division rules. Funny thing is that I thought we had posted his original rules, but in checking I cannot find them (here or on the HistoriFigs site). Perhaps they were only posted on Bob’s Yahoo Group (sorry Bob, I am drawing a blank on the group name). So, I guess most of this will be all new for most of you.

I’m not sure when Mike first came up with these rules. I do know it was at least 10 years ago, perhaps more. In a nutshell: We use Scruby N-gauge Napoleonic figures mounted on stands. Each stand represents a full Division. Each player will command at least a Corps – usually more than 1. A single corps is made up of 1 or more Divisions and is commanded by a Corps Commander. The overall command for each army is the Commander in Chief (CiC). Each Division stand measures 4 1/2″ in width x 2″ in depth. Corps Commanders (and staff) are based on 2″ squares while the CiC is based with 2 1/2″ frontage x 2″ in depth. The time and distance scales are not identified; at this level, we can fudge a bit here and there and the game still works. More about the game mechanics in the next posting (where we will present the first of the re-writes).

Before going too much further; I should touch upon the reasoning behind the re-write. Firstly, the rules were never really complete as written. Mike knew how the game worked, and we rarely ever played the game unless Mike was running it so this wasn’t a big deal. Now that I want to use this game with a group of Middle and High School students we need a more completely written set of rules. That said, these rules will never be fully fleshed out. Meaning that they will not be as complete as a commercial set of rules. I do, however, intend to make them complete enough that you, or any war gamer with some experience can pick them up and play a game. My last reason for the re-write is that I wanted to streamline a few of the game mechanics (in some cases I think I’m succeeding. In others, well maybe not – we shall see).

We recently completed a play-test of the current draft of the rules. We made a ton of mistakes! That is what I get when I don’t write out an expanded Sequence of Play. I don’t think I need a flowchart, but an expanded or annotated Sequence of Play would keep me form forgetting things. For our game we decided to target a smaller table: 6′ x 4′ – the reason being that we will often times play at the local game store and the tables are smaller. That, and while I have a larger table at home, I’ve been drifting towards smaller table size for our games. Well, alight then, on to a short recap of the game (along with a couple of really bad photos – I forgot to reset the camera settings – so we got lower quality pictures than I would have liked).

The training game is a simple scenario. Pretty much a meeting engagement. Two armies meet on a more or less symmetrical battle field. Each has control of a town on t’s right flank. There are woods just outside of the town. There are two more towns, on the center line. One each on the right and left flanks. Leaving the center open. The armies are similar to each other; consisting of three Corps each. Each Corps is composed of three Infantry Divisions and one Cavalry Division. The French are commanded by Napoleon and the Russians by Bagration. The French Corps commanders are: Ney on the Right, Victor in the Center and Mortier on the Left. The Russian Corps Commanders are Gortchakov on the Right, Langeron in the Center and Vlastov on the Left. We decided on a 10 turn limit for this game.

before

The battle was fairly even through the first 5 turns – the Russians with a slight advantage, having captured the two open towns.

As the game progressed, the Russians dominated their Left. Once the town was captured it remained in Russian control the remainder of the game. The Russians, took a beating but dis not loose a single Division. While a full 50% of the French force was driven form the field in this sector.

In the center the story was a little different. Here the French had the upper hand. By the end of the game they were a bit scattered, but still holding strong having eliminated 1/2 of the Russian Center.

As we move to the Russian right; we had a strong Russian opening followed by a bitter fight for the open town. The French were able to dislodge the Russians from the town. However, the Russians fought a fierce battle to recapture the population center and in the end dominated the sector, leaving a single, French Cavalry Division on the field.

Had the game continued beyond the 10th turn; the French Center would have been able to re-group and turn on the Russian Right. This would have made for an interesting fight. Not sure how it would have gone, but I think the French would have had an advantage on the Russian Right.

after

At the end of our ten turns we scored the game; arriving at a Russian Victory (189 points for the Russians to the French 125 points – more on victory points next time).

I think we will have time for one more play through the rules before I need to switch gears and jump into the American Revolution (time to revisit the Bloodybacks rules) for the Middle/High School group.

More with, hopefully better pictures next time.