Innholdsfortegnelse for WSS 115 i Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy

The armies of the Antigonids and the opposing Alliance met near the town of Ipsus on the plains of central Phrygia. On one side were arrayed the unified armies of King Antigonus ‘the One-eyed’, and his son Demetrius ‘the Besieger’. Demetrius was bold and energetic, but his father Antigonus was over 80 years old and could no longer ride. It is likely he directed the army from a litter carried in the middle of the phalanx. The Antigonids had 70,000 infantry, 10,000 cavalry, and 75 war elephants. The opposing army of the Alliance combined Cassander’s Macedonians with Lysimachus’ Thracian mercenaries and Seleucus’ masses of freshly gathered elephants. The allies had 64,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry (mostly light cavalry), 150 war elephants, and 120 scythed chariots (not mentioned in other sources). Few…

I am not a fan of points-based games. I have difficulty with the concept of fairness having anything to do with the recreation of warfare. I have played competition games based on points systems, but for me the outcomes often feel a little bland and uninteresting. This just doesn’t create games that represent the battles and skirmishes one reads about. Often these are fought where one side is at a huge disadvantage but has no choice but to stand and fight. Therefore, I usually design scenarios that are asymmetrical. What I look to avoid is games that end up pitting phalanxes of tanks against each other. This just wasn’t what doctrine prescribed. However, how does one make for a satisfying game if one player is assigned to be the infantry…

Richmond, Virginia the Confederate capital had been the target of several campaigns throughout the Civil War from its earliest days. The Union armies were forced to withdraw every single time, sometimes in good order, sometimes with its tail between its legs. Despite the best efforts of the Confederate States Army, however, such defeats were never final. In 1864 the Union returned, with General Ulysses S. Grant who recognised the need to lay siege to both Petersburg and Richmond simultaneously in order to outflank and threaten their supply lines – neither city’s supply lines were threatened until the end of the war, which makes the sieges unusual. The Confederacy had started construction in 1863 of a ring of forts and defensive trenchworks with abatis. Richmond had 25 forts alone. In addition,…

The rules are primarily a skirmish game for 20+ models a side. To play, you’ll need the core rulebook, which is a ‘stepping stone’ to different eras and future supplements. This review takes into account the Shakos & Bayonets (S&B) supplement, which brings the game into the Napoleonic period with the various wars between 1805 and 1815. The lists include France and a few of her allies, plus of course her enemies – Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, Spain, Portugal, and Russia. There are some rules for the minor nations as well. Like the main rulebook, it is a thing of beauty – but while beauty alone might inspire, it does not necessarily make a good game. Good mechanics and writing does that. Also, the book does not cover the Revolutionary…

Plastic British and Canadian infantry Company: Warlord Games Size: 28 mm ‘foot to eye’ or 31 mm tall Era: World War II Price: £29.50 for 30 infantry www.warlordgames.com Warlord Games’ long-awaited late-war British (and Canadian) plastic set is here. The original British plastic set, now over a decade old, had separate arms for the weapons. The new set has seven bayoneted rifles per sprue, each one attached to arms; the weapons are notably larger, making them far more durable than the previous set. The boxed set contains five frames of plastic troops with bases and transfers. Heads are provided with steel helms (early and late) plus tam o’ shanter caps. Each frame has six torsos and a variety of weapons: rifles (as mentioned), three Stens, an LMG, a Webley pistol,…

The war and the scale of the battles shocked many – each battle seemed to be bigger and costlier in men and materiel. For example, Shiloh in 1862 had more casualties than the total casualties in every battle fought by the United States in the 80 years up to that point – and by the end of the war there would be nearly ten battles that were much larger than that. So how did technological innovation change the war and how can that be put onto our tabletop? TACTICS Tactics initially involved massed lines of troops firing volleys at the enemy – getting as many of your weapons to bear on the enemy as possible, or by outflanking and enfilading them. Troops were easier to control if they were shoulder…

The development of cavalry tactics during the American Civil War is a good example of innovation and adaptation around available resources and skills. This adaptive process is one of the driving factors that fills this period with such flavour, and it fundamentally shapes the way that our wargames unfold to tell the story of the war. The Northern and Southern cavalries adapted and innovated differently. For one side this pathway would be supported by innovation that enabled success. The other, starved of resources, was doomed to failure. At the outbreak of war in 1861, the US army included just five cavalry regiments, most of which were deployed in small detachments across the west. This body of men was not suitably trained or suited to the war in which they were…

In one of those photos, a group of Union soldiers were posing next to a large entrenched cannon, a Rodman gun; and it is on that photo that this new cover is based. As exposure times were long, photographic subjects had to remain still, so people were asked not to smile. I began by studying the composition of the diorama, which was to be centred on the Rodman gun and a group of soldiers in front of it posing for the photograph. Behind all this, and cutting the horizon line, would be the trench. Once the study was done and I knew what I had to place in the diorama, I commissioned my brother Álvaro Mateos to do the 3D modelling of the Rodman cannon. He, based on some original…

These are the techniques I use to make a simple single-storey 28mm adobe building, but they can be adapted to make much larger and more complex structures. The basis of these buildings is 5mm white foamcore board. I opt for the 5mm thickness because it gives the impression of the thickness of the mud walls typical of these buildings. I find having a plan helps get a sense of the building, ensures that everything fits, and minimizes wasted foamcore. I usu ally make 28mm buildings 60mm high for each floor, with the windows being 20mm from the ground. The doors are 35mm high and 20mm wide. One of the benefits of working with foamcore is you can peel the outer layer back exposing the foam and scribe in some brickwork…

The Japanese Navy launched another of its typically complicated operations, ‘Sho-1’, to oppose the landings by sending three forces to the battle. The Centre and Southern Forces were two sides of a pincer attack through the northern and southern approaches to Leyte; and the Northern Force, consisting of the remaining aircraft carriers, with freshly trained aircrews, would serve as a decoy to lure Admiral Halsey’s Third Fleet away from the Leyte invasion force. This sacrifice of Japan’s last carriers would allow the surface combatant-based Centre and Southern Forces to complete their missions. The complete picture of this epic Pacific clash is fascinating to study but beyond the reach of this article. There are examples of submarine attacks and reconnaissance, air strikes, PT boat attacks at night, battleships exchanging broadsides, desperate…

At the start of 1862, the Civil War had not been going well for the Federals in the East; success was needed elsewhere. In the department of Trans-Mississippi, the key to defeating, or at least hamstringing, the Confederacy was seen as controlling the Mississippi – or enough to prevent it being used as a transport to aid the rebel economy. At the junction of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri lay the city of New Madrid on the northern side of the river. The river itself went through a series of bends similar to an ‘S’ lying on its side, with the first bend considered to be particularly hazardous to negotiate due to a strong current and a series of sandbanks and low-lying islands. The islands were numbered starting with Island One…

The ruleset is very comprehensive: the first 85 pages cover the rules, including some optional additions, and the remaining 186 pages are fully packed with 300 army lists from 3000 BC to AD 1520. Your basic army (of 200 points) consists of 20-30 elements (units), each representing 500-1000 men. These are split up into three obligatory commands, one of them commanded by the C-in-C. Every unit has the same base width (UD, from the French Unité de Distance) with depths depending on type. The basing system is designed to be compatible with the DBx series of games – the number of figures in combination with the base depth will show you the troop type. For 15mm 200-point armies, the battlefield will measure a very practical 80 cm by 120 cm.…