Tag: One Hour Wargames

One Hour Wargames – SYW

The blog’s been a bit quiet lately, but I do have some updates on recent games and painting efforts.

Since my previous posts in October about trying the rules and scenarios in Neil Thomas’ ‘One Hour Wargames’, there have been some further games and even a mini-campaign.

I wanted to play a series of linked games so wrote some simple campaign rules to govern the movement of various forces on a map and deal with the outcomes of battles, etc. I decided to go with a trusty square grid map, partly for convenience when it came to movement and terrain effects, and partly so I could use MS Excel to create it and avoid having to fall back on non-existent artistic skills.

I set the campaign in Silesia in about 1757, but created the specific local area to suit what I wanted. The outline was for the Austrians to invade Prussian-held territory and recapture the key town of Werthenstahl. Each side had 2-3 forces initially, with the potential for more to arrive later on.

The campaign starting positions – the Austrians are about to cross the river, for which they’ll need to lay a pontoon bridge in the north if they want to capture Felshelm early on.

The pontoon is successfully laid with a decent dice roll and this will now release the Prussians to move. Their main priority will be to get Force A underway to support the observation forces before they’re overwhelmed.

Last pic – the action has been going on for several turns and there have been 8 battles so far, using a variety of scenarios from the book. The latest encounter has seen Austrian Force C beaten and forced to retire. This will generate some relief for the Prussians who have been on the receiving end of a few defeats of their own.

The Force Strength tracker in the bottom right corner shows the relative size of each force on the map. Where they are the same, I play a 6 vs 6 unit scenario, where there is a difference of 1 strength I play a 6 vs 4 unit scenario, and where there’s a difference of 2 strength, the weaker force must withdraw or, if trapped, face scenario 30 Last Stand! I try to match the scenario and terrain to the general situation on the map, in terms of who’s attacking/defending, whether there’s a river involved, etc.

The campaign has been fun and has encouraged me to try similar things, with very simple campaign rules, in the future.





Recent Games

Last weekend my mate Jase and I played 3 stand-alone games, resulting in one marginal win and two draws, illustrating how well-balanced the scenarios are (or how mutually crap we both are at winning).

We re-visited Scenario 4 – Take the High Ground a couple of times, and then had a go at one with unbalanced forces; Scenario 20 – Fighting Retreat. Both scenarios are well designed and provide for interesting games.

Mid-game in Take the High Ground:

The Austrians decide to run for it in turn 1 of Fighting Retreat:

These games were very enjoyable and hit the spot in terms of providing some quick, challenging entertainment while drinking quite a lot of beer. 🙂

One Hour Wargames – Now with Added Pikes

The other two games I played at the weekend saw a switch to the 17th century, with my Medetians and Fleurians fighting it out over a couple of scenarios. The pike and shot rules differ a bit from the horse and musket ones, with more melee and some changes to the troop types. Very interesting nonetheless.

Game 5 was scenario 18 – Counter Attack
Fleurie held the bridge against a major Medetian attack, while they hurried their own reinforcements forward. Inevitably a big scrap ensued when the Fleurians used the two flanking fords to get at their enemy’s flanks and eventually win the battle. This game was played on a slightly extended 2′ x 2.5′ board as I need to use specific terrain tiles to get the river to run across the middle of the battlefield.

 

 

 

Game 6 was from scenario 3 – Control the River

For this game I decided to up-scale a bit, going to a 3′ x 3′ board and increasing the unit sizes to 5″ wide. This meant much bigger regiments and (comparatively) lots of figures on the table. Infantry units had 80 figures and cavalry had 32. Naturally it played the same, it just looked more like a battle! 🙂

Both armies approached the river with the aim being to control both the east and west river crossings. Although initially both kept a central reserve to see where it might be needed, inevitably you get two separate fights with this scenario. Fortunately the movement rates are sufficient to re-deploy quite quickly and in the end it was the Medetian army that managed to crush one enemy flank and move along both sides of the river to overcome the remaining Fleurians at the other crossing.

This was good fun to play and, like the other games, an interesting challenge in trying to get the best from the different unit types. Sticking to historically inspired tactics does seem to be the most effective approach, which speaks well for the rules.

Pics from this final game:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will definitely be returning to this type of gaming, probably for a mini-campaign of linked games.

One Hour Wargames – Some Solo Games

I picked up a copy of Neil Thomas’ book a little while ago and the scenarios in particular looked interesting and worth a try. We used one in the recent first game of Sharp Practice 2, which worked well, and I fancied trying a few more. The rules included in the book are, obviously, designed to give simple games in under an hour. However, the design principles make a lot of sense and there are some clever touches. I thought I’d give them a go at the weekend, so dusted off some terrain boards and picked a few of my freshly painted SYW 6mm figures to give them their first outing.

I basically played these solo games ‘straight’, making the decisions for each side in turn, as I thought best at the time. The mechanisms are easy to learn and remember after the first couple of turns, and the tactical challenges made even small, simple games like these a lot of fun.

Games 1 & 2 (scenario 4 – Take the High Ground) Prussians vs Austrians on a 2’x2′ board

In the first game the Austrians pushed the Prussians off the hill and consolidated a decent line that was able to deal with the counter-attack. The cavalry pretty much took each other out along the road, and the Austrians secured a solid victory.

 

 

 

In the re-match the outcome was much the same although the Prussians put up a stiffer fight, only to be cleared off the hill again!

 

Games 3 & 4 (scenario 5, Bridgehead) Prussians vs Austrians again.

A more interesting scenario this one. Both sides receive reinforcements in the early turns – the Prussians (top) were coming on randomly from 3 potential arrival points while the Austrians were having to cross at the bridge to join the action and hold the crossing. Both sides need to clear the enemy from the north bank of the river.

I decided to make the board look a little less plain, with some additional terrain features that were just for show and could be moved a little if they got in the way.

The Austrians put up a good fight but the Prussians, coming from both directions, kept them penned in near the bridge. Prussian artillery fire and cavalry charges caused some damage and the Austrian Grenzers couldn’t make sufficient use of the wood to disrupt the Prussians. In the end it was a victory to the Prussians as they closed the vice and cleared the Austrians from the north bank.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game 4 also saw a Prussian victory, despite the sides being swapped round. The Austrian arrival point rolls (4 units coming on from the west behind the wood) allowed the Prussians to spread out to the east and gain room to operate. They managed to drive north and destroy the Austrians piecemeal. Again the Austrians had suffered from a bit of a traffic jam, and this prevented them from forming a more coherent line to maximise their firepower.

 

 

 

 

The green numbered markers next to units denote hits suffered (collect 15 and you’re dead). The one on the yellow background is my turn counter.

Even with just 6 units a side (some scenarios give one side fewer units than this) these scenarios still deliver a challenge and no two games are the same. I was keen to try out some of the other periods for which rules are provided, so in the next post there will some pics of a couple of further One Hour games, this time set in the era of Pike and Shot.