DDWG Chain of Command weekend

Today is day 2 of the DDWG Chain of Command weekend. At the end of a hard fought Day 1 the British had won a minor victory by achieving their objective. We had to break through the German defences and get at least a section off the German side of the table (at the top of the photo).

The White blobs are smoke laid by he British 2" mortars to block the Germans' line of sight. The red round poker chips are the British jump of points and the blue ones are the German jump off points.

The White poker chips in the centre of the picture covering the woods and fields mark the barrage laid down by German off table heavy mortars. These caused considerable damage to B platoon, pinning them for several phases and killing the Company Commander - lots of bad things happened as a result.

A Platoon was to the right of the road and came on as a our reserves once the Germans had committed troops to capture the right hand jump off point. They then continued to push troops into that flank whilst our 

C platoon pushed forward on a left flank Attack on the weaker German flank - most of whom couldn't see much due to our accurate deployment of smoke.

Today the table has moved such that the British advance will start amongst the fields and over the river bridge towards a German held village. 

We have been having a lot of fun with this set of rules.

God Save the King.

Exploring l'Arte de la Guerre

Last Sunday I played a new(ish) set of rules called l'Arte de la Guerre for ancient and medieval games. Figures are based as per FOG/DBM so I could also use my 10mm Warmaster Armies to play these rules.

However, for this first game I played using my 15mm Khwarizmian (some are over 20 years old!) against Paul's Sassanids.

The terrain system is quite straightforward and as I was to be the attacker  I had the chance of moving some pieces or removing them totally depending on a die roll. We drew deployment maps before setting out our troops. This is done by placing one corps (you split your army between three corps) at a time with the defender placing the first and then the attacker and so on.

To find out what would happen within this rule set my tactics were basic and simple: advance, shoot and charge. That was about it other than the rout after the first three! Well not with all troops. Charging the Sasssanid elephant is not really the sensible option in most rules but I managed a shot before I closed to attack and I managed to pin it for a second round of melee when I managed to kill it. Fortunately the elephant randomly rampaged through adjacent Sassanids rather than my cavalry.

It was a bloody and relatively quick game all to be lost or won hanging on one melee - the victor would win as we were both within two points of breaking our opponent. I came second! The game was great fun and can be played on a relatively small table so contact is quick. A second game is planned for a few weeks time but using 28mm figures.

Unfortunately I did not take any photos but the official web page is here  http://www.artdelaguerre.fr/en/index.php

There are some video guides on YouTube that give a good insight to the game  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGlPFIv4g8