Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Thursday 11 June 2020

Fighting Tomorrow - Vimeiro Set-Up

Another Zoom-powered game tomorrow, with Stryker and Goya - Vimeiro (21 Aug 1808). Commands & Colors scenario, as published, though our house rules are tweaked a fair amount.

These early Peninsular War battles are useful for Videoconference-type games, since they are quite small. No doubt more will be heard of this - big reminder to the umpire to make a point of taking plenty of photos!

Vimeiro, from behind the French left flank
Vimeiro battlefield, from behind the French left flank.

This is a strange place to fight a battle, the French right is cut off by something that looks rather like Glen Affric - lots of impassable hills - it is possible to tiptoe through the woods! The small village on the right edge of the picture is Ventosa - I wonder whether the inhabitants have ever got as far as Vimeiro town (top left)?

And the whole field again, this time from behind the French right.



11 comments:

  1. Looking forward to the action, Tony. Vimeiro may be the battle most fought over on my gaming table so I have a special affection for this one.

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    1. First time for me, Jon - that hilly section in the middle looks like a major nuisance!

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  2. Looks an interesting setup Tony. Plenty of terrain to cope with. I can see why Jonathan likes gaming it.

    Question regarding the grid referencing. In the last picture, how would you describe the hex containing the battery? M2 or L2?

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    1. Different system from the one you described this week - I use vertical (across the table) letter columns, with the even numbers kicking to the right and then back for the odds. Thus the battery is at L2, and the village is at L5 - this also means the M row only contains odd numbers. It may seem awkward, but I find it more intuitively logical than some of the alternatives!

      I am the umpire, and therefore can be completely relaxed about the game, but if I were Junot tonight I'd be reading the "jobs vacant" pages - I think he is about to get whupped.

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    2. Aha! Got it. Thanks. Might give that a go. Sometimes last weekend it was a bit difficult spotting which letter/column a hex was in.

      Just been refreshing my memory on Vimeiro. Without knowing the game VPs it does look a very tough task for Junot.

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  3. Very nice table setup. The C&C tiles have a great look about them. Best wishes for a great game - I would avoid the hilly section like the plague (if you can). Cheers Greg

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    1. Thanks Greg - looks like an interesting challenge for the attacking French - neither flank can help the other, or at least it will take so long to get there that it's probably not worth bothering! 6 Victory Points for the win, and there's some bonus VPs if the French capture the town of Vimeiro...

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  4. Very good stuff indeed Tony, one really has to admire the way that you have taken the bull by the horns and not let this horrid covid 19 situation stopped you from enjoying your hobby. Excellent.

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    1. Thanks Lee - I would like to think that our intentions are of the very best, at least!

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  5. Lovely looking table! I've run quite a few remote games now and I often forget to take photos ar critical moments as there is a lot going on.

    How do you find the players cope with the larger table? I've ended up mainly playing on 9x9 hex grids as the players get a bit lost on the larger ones. I've tried a bigger one but I end up moving the camera a lot. We've also started labelling every feature, which seems to help.

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    1. Hi Martin - I'm still finding my way around this, to be honest. The standard CCN-sized table seems to introduce no problems, but we've kept the size of the armies down a bit. The remote players have a choice of two views of table - one from each end - which helps, I think. Previous game we played there was a special map with reference codes for each hex, which was a help in the first few moves but we didn't really use it later on, so this probably won't be used much today. The house's normal red loss counters don't show up well, so we've switched to white for the Zoom games. No other problems really - remote players have their own map, and can keep their own unit rosters if they wish, obviously, though not used yet. Quite a lot of this stuff works better if we keep the turn sequence strictly correct, and the umpire answers any questions the players need to know. A couple of CCN game mechanisms have been change in ways which facilitate the remote games - no cards, for example - we use a dice-based activation system. First game we had was a very exciting one (as it happened), so that helped things to rock along nicely!

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