Sieges: The Siege of Toro (1811) - Part 1 (of several)

 Another solo practice game with Piquet's Vauban's Wars. I have a few days to work with this, so I took some trouble today to set everything up and play through the first couple of turns.

This time I've carried out (committed?) a few changes to the rules, to give a better fit with my idea of how sieges in the Peninsular War operated. I'm interested to see how these work out, and may say something about them as I go through this. Some are changes to the basics of the Piquet-style game - nothing too outrageous - some are behavioural things for the armies.

This siege did not trouble the writers of factual history, but it could have done if it had happened. Toro is a town on the River Douro. The fort is a classic hybrid for the Peninsula, with the medieval walls and towers of the town and with it's 10th Century citadel, Alfonso III's El Carrañaco. In an attempt to cope with the arrival of gunpowder warfare, the side of the town away from the river has been improved in the early 18th Century by the addition of two hornworks (named Pablo y Pedro locally), which offer platforms for fortress artillery (there is no space for guns on the walls themselves), and the whole section is protected by earth banks to shield the base of the old masonry wall.

The French commander is General Thiébault, better known as some-time governor of Burgos, and his energetic 2inC, General Valladière. The British besiegers are commanded by Sir Thomas Graham, and his chief engineer is Colonel Daniel Fogarty.

 

As I did last time, I set up a segment of the fortress on the edge of the table, with the remainder off the table on extensions (floating in mid-air!), to provide space for the garrison troops and also a little gratuitous scenic content. The old castle on the right is entirely scenic here, being the ancient citadel from the time of Alfonso III, but it doesn't get out to play very much, so I decided to give it an outing. Made by ECO, of Bavaria, in the 1970s. The smoke puffs are Boots' finest cotton wool, and these are not just for show; they indicate which guns have fired and have not been reloaded, and then when the Reload card comes up I count the puffs to assess powder consumption

 

 

To get things off to a brisk start, I used one of the options suggested in the rule book, and set the game up with the Second Parallel complete, but with no gun emplacements added to it. Here, a little way into the action, the British have brought some guns up into new emplacements, and it is apparent that everyone is banging away in fine style. At this point the two front lines are still some 700-800 paces apart, and cannon fire is not especially effective at this range. The French have heavy mortars mounted on a couple of the ancient towers, and they did some damage to British infantry sheltering in the 2nd Parallel

 

 

You can just see in these last few pictures that the French commander has turned up a Trench Raid card, and - having learned how useful these are in the previous test game - the elite infantry companies have been sent out to cause a nuisance...

 

 

Since this is supposed to take place at night (each turn represents about 3.5 days), I dimmed the lights to give a suitably murky view of the Trench Raid action. The smoke is a bit incongruous here - the mortar is not firing at the raiders, it is just marked as unloaded. In this case, the raiders were driven off with loss, which is a fine show for an unsupported mortar crew

 

 

The other Trench Raid on the same night, however, caused some damage to a 24-pdr gun, which was withdrawn for repair and solace

 

 

Much firing going on, but very little in the way of casualties or damage - that will improve as the guns advance into the 3rd Parallel, so Graham's way forward is to start work on this parallel, and do as much damage as possible to the enemy guns from his position in the 2nd Parallel

 

 

A couple of teams of Sappers set off to advance the zig zag saps - the brown felt saps provide good cover, as we are reminded by the little sets of gabions, but the Sappers themselves are really wishing that the British guns had been more successful in quietening the French artillery, long range or not

 

That's as far as I've got thus far - there was a brief outbreak of disease among the British troops - like desertion, disease generates losses which cannot be recovered, though the numbers are not high. Tomorrow I'm headed for the 3rd Parallel - things should get correspondingly nastier for the fortress gunners, but I have to say I really don't fancy the sapping job!

   

Sieges: Trial Solo Game - the Siege of San Juan el Timido

 

View from the fortress, with the British First Parallel in the distance

It took me about a day and a half elapsed to fight my test game to a result. I learned a lot, especially about Vauban's Wars, with which I made a rather daunting start, but which was flowing a lot better by the second day. Although I'd read the book a few times, there is a lot to learn. There is no substitute for just memorising the Combat and Defense values of each unit type - once you've mastered that, things get a lot easier, but for the first two turns I had to read the details of everything that happened, which is really heavy going. After that - after I'd seen most of the things which could happen - things picked up.

Vauban's Wars is Piquet-based, which means it's a very prescriptive, card-driven game, aspects which some people find unappealing, but it is a practical approach, especially for a solo game, and it generates a nice narrative as you go along (or, alternatively, the player(s) will build their own narrative to explain what happened).

My scenario involved an attack on the (fairly modern and tidy) fortress town of San Juan el Timido, somewhere near the Spanish-Portuguese border, in the year 1811. The French commander was the well-connected and irascible Corsican, Général de Division Léonardo, Comte Cindérella, supported by the very capable (though little seen) Général de Brigade Dandini. The fortress has 3 bastions on the table.

The attacking British force was commanded by Major General Sir Paladin Lassiter.

Lassiter's plan was to develop a 2nd Parallel covering the whole south side of the fortress, and then to construct two short 3rd Parallels with a gap in the centre - the intention being to effect a breach on the South-Eastern Bastion (the one on the right from the British viewpoint.

I'll start with a spoiler: the British had such rotten luck during the first 3 game turns (a turn is about half a week, if you are comfortable with such an idea) that any sensible general would have abandoned the siege and tried again another time. In a campaign context, this would have been a no-brainer, but such a proceeding would be of little use for my apprenticeship with the rules, so Lassiter was encouraged to stick with it. 

 

First priority for the French garrison was to shift their infantry into the town, and move the heavy field guns on the walls, on to some specially constructed platforms (or "doofers" in my house jargon)

 

 

Something of a minimalist town, I'm afraid, I had all sorts of plans to paint up the add-on extension board in the regulation baseboard colour, and lay out buildings, gardens and a monastery to double as a powder magazine, but the green paint had gone off, so minimalism it is. Sorry about that, but there was a war on. Here you see Dandini in the Rallying Point in the town, with 4 line battalions, a light howitzer and the second company of sappers

 

Having no cannons within range until such time as the emplacements in the Second Parallel were constructed, the earliest British efforts were concentrated on forward sapping, and a couple of heavy mortars lobbed a few shells into the town, to keep them on their toes. Trivial effect.

There was a strangely hushed period - the French fortress guns had a few shots at the sappers at work on the approaches, but they were a long way away, they were in good cover and sappers are a poor sort of target anyway. Both generals (being inexperienced!) were nervous about wasting powder, which turned out to be a mistaken approach - the supply of powder is more adequate than you would think, and on balance the rules make it more efficient to give plenty of fire. Since Cindérella was the better of the two commanders, he tended to win most of the initiative rolls (having a D12 against Lassiter's D10), but since the British were making such poor progress he often allowed them to go first, in the hope that the Opportunity Fire rules would give him something to fire at as they approached.

 

The British working on their forward saps (brown felt, as recommended by Gonsalvo!), still fairly safe from the artillery on the walls

 

 

The French turn up a "Trench Raid" card, and bring into action a battalion of elite troops they had placed specially in the fort. The first two such raids seemed very effective - two parties of sappers were sent scrambling back to the 1st Parallel. One of the two raids was very closely contested - the French grenadiers were armed with (in Piquet jargon) a D12+1 (blue), and the sappers had a D8 (red) - the "+1" bit on the blue die was enough to scare away the sappers - here's an exciting war photo of the dice action

 

 

The markers in the town indicate that we are on Turn 3 (about a week and a bit after the completion of the 1st Parallel), and the accumulated damage caused by mortar bombardment is 4pts, which is insignificant

 

 

At this point things took a turn for the worse for the British; encouraged by their success with Trench Raids, the French tried again. In the absence of protective infantry, the sappers were badly exposed, and this time the two attacks resulted in the elimination of two sapper companies (out of an army total of four companies!). This was not going to help much with getting the 2nd Parallel operational.

 

 

Here's a close up of one of the Trench Raid disasters for the British - wiped out. In itself, this is a nuisance, but should be recoverable, since the CinC can create new Sapper teams by converting infantry companies

 

Not so fast. On the same initiative, General Lassiter, who has to check his health and safety as part of the "Leadership" card, is laid low by a roll of 1 on a D20. Since there was no firing going on, so as you would notice, I have to assume that he fell off his horse, or was just taken ill. Whatever, the British now had no CinC, until the next Leadership card came their way, so there were quite a lot of things which they now couldn't do, such as winning initiative rolls, and recovering (rallying) losses - oh yes, and they couldn't replace the vanished sappers with infantrymen...

 

 

And so, being sort of stuck for the moment, the British brought forward most of their infantry, to protect against further Trench Raids. The French artillery - three 24pdr fortress guns plus two 12pdrs, started knocking lumps out of the British infantry, and the British morale was sinking fast

 

 

Eventually, the British 2nd Parallel was seen to shape up, emplacements were dug, big guns installed, and they started to fire on the French artillery, very inaccurately to begin with. 

 

 

Almost immediately after this, the weather became foggy for the next turn, so any serious fire was not possible. The British infantry also had a slow but steady stream of deserters

 

 

When the fog cleared, there was a new CinC (Lord Bakewell), replacement sapper units were created, and the British 24pdrs eliminated the central fortress gun and badly damaged one of the French 12 pdrs

 

 

In a sensible world, the British, who had no chance of making a decent attempt at a 3rd Parallel and were in any case running out of men and morale, should have abandoned the siege, but in the interests of gaining experience of the game I pressed on

 

 

At the end of Turn 6, some 3 weeks after the completion of the First Parallel, the British ran out of morale points, and they had lost. The starting position had been 26-14 to the Brits - at the end it was 0-8, as you see

 

 

In fact, they were doomed anyway, since one of the Unique Event cards turned up had scheduled the arrival of a relieving force for the French during Turn 8. The French knew about this, the Gamemaster (that's me) knew about it, but strangely the British commander had no inkling of it. The British spies had been very unproductive - right from Turn 1, when an attempt to sow insurrection in the town had failed and the spy was arrested and shot. A lack of intelligence, undoubtedly, in several senses, but also a bucketful of bad luck and dreadful dice!

 

The final state of the French - they had lost one fortress gun, destroyed, suffered damage to a heavy field gun (with white markers), and the one element of damage they had suffered to the match-winning elite battalion had been recovered at the first attempt by Cindérella. They had plenty of food and powder left, too

***** Late Edit *****

I had a couple of emails last night which mentioned the fact that my test siege game may have produced a result (technical knockout?), but didn't get to blowing holes in walls or any of that stuff that one normally associates with sieges. Agreed - the game only got as far as the 2nd Parallel, at which stage shooting at walls is still some way off. The test game was invaluable because it gave me a first serious workout of the rules; I've now seen most of the cards in the pack, and learned a lot about convenient ways of keeping track of the game without written notes and without covering the room in counters and Post-It stickers. One of the more alarming things about Piquet is the potential for clutter - I have a problem with clutter in any form, and it is not an essential part of this game, if you go about it carefully.

After a laboured first couple of turns, my enthusiasm picked up as I became more confident of carrying most of the rules in my head. The lack of wall-bashing is a big gap, however.

It says in the VW manual that you can, if you wish, shorten the game by starting with the Second Parallel built, to whatever degree of completeness you wish, and it offers suggested adjustments for Powder and Food Levels for this later start. Sounds good to me. I believe that the 2nd Parallel, as supplied at the start, probably needs a little careful design, to set the game up for the demolition stage. I'm keen to have a shot at this - it would be interesting to pinch some design ideas from real sieges (or bits of them). Anyway, good so far, and a further test game should appear here once my wife has recovered from the trauma of every scenery box I have being dragged out of the cupboards. I'll have a better idea what I'm doing next time.

For anyone who has read this far, my appreciative thanks. There are a couple of things which I haven't found in the rules yet - storm by escalade may be an example, though I'll no doubt receive a note pointing out that it's on p44. I'm still not altogether comfortable with all the digging being done by specialist sappers, but will think further on this. The game works nicely and, like all Piquet games, is intended to be tweaked as required.  My compliments to Eric and Peter and the other guys who worked hard and long to get VW published - a splendid effort.

*********************

 

Lassiter (in later life, as Governor of St Kitts)

FoB Giveaway - The Denouement

Since interest in my offer of my copy of Piquet's Field of Battle (2nd Edition) was limited to start with, and has fizzled out a couple of days ago, I've decided to default on the stated Terms & Conditions, and close now.

This was pretty much what I had expected - Piquet devotees will mostly have invested in the 3rd Edition already, so the enquiries I received were from people who were interested to have a look and see what it's all about.

Apart from a couple of comments which come under the general heading of "banter", I received four serious requests. As always, I had asked for some far-fetched or otherwise entertaining reason why each applicant deserved to receive the giveaway, which, as always, no doubt delighted me more than the contributors. I have to say, everyone did themselves proud; specially mentioned is Neil, who eloquently expressed the hopes and trepidations which a possible acquaintance with Piquet generated; however, the winner is the famous Chris Grice, author, celebrity, eco-warrior and all-round good egg, who produced a detailed and impassioned explanation of how he is having his house altered to allow greater scope for domestic wargaming, which would be helped enormously by the arrival of some rules which lend themselves to solo gaming.

A postal package will be arranged forthwith, if not fifthwith - thanks to everyone who took part or thought about doing so.

A Quick Visit to the 21st Century, plus a [Qualified] Give-Away

I try to keep an eye on what the 3D-Printing world is up to. I'm already very interested in the scenery possibilities, but figures, at least in scales which are relevant to me, have tended to be a bit lumpen thus far.

I've actually ordered some Napoleonic sample figures from JJG Print 3D - I understand that they have made my figures already, and have posted them - I even have a tracking number, though I have no idea who is the courier, so tracking is difficult. The figures themselves are not expensive, though for a small order the postage is fairly eye-watering - the manufacturer is based in Walcourt, Belgium - close to Charleroi... ["...that man does war honour..."] - very businesslike and polite thus far.

They produce Napoleonics in 10mm, 15mm, 18mm, 22mm and 28mm. I've ordered some 22mm, since that seems the best guess, and since it might just be that 22mm is what the size of figures I collect is called nowadays . We'll see. The figures come without bases - the plates on the website look like computer renderings rather than photos. I am not building up wild hopes here, but it's sensible to have a look at the market every now and then.

The extent of the range is a bit unclear - they have Spanish and French figures illustrated, but there are painted examples which I couldn't find in the pose listing. The sculpture is a little quirky - the drums are about half-size in scale, and the French light infantry gaiters look a bit weird. Anyway, all very interesting.

Topic 2 - Giveaway

I'm trying to cut down the amount of my various collections - not least to make room for my siege scenery, which is beginning to take on a life of its own. One thing that I would be happy to give away is the Second Edition of Piquet's Field of Battle - I am offering the rule book, which has been read (though played very little) but is in pristine condition, plus two packs of the official custom cards, imported from the US at considerable expense. I am getting rid of this lot because I have now bought the 3rd Edition. The existence of a later edition will probably cut down on demand for the one I'm aiming to pass on, but it may as well go to a good home. The 2nd Edition was largely boosted (by its fans) as the best game of its type, so it can hardly have become crap just because there is now an update. If you are interested, send me a comment (which I shall not publish) explaining why you want it and deserve it - I'm looking for a wholehearted effort here, chaps - I seek entertainment, amusement. I am not interested in the fact that your cat has died etc, or you've finished your join-the-dots puzzle book. Some Terms & Conditions:

* I'll keep this open until the start of Saturday 28th November - I shall judge applications in my usual subjective and totally unreasonable manner

* The successful applicant can have the rules and cards free of charge, of course, but, if you are outside the UK, I will probably require you to pay the postage (at cost).

* I'll only accept entries from people who follow my blog regularly, including those who do so by email.

I really can't be bothered trying to sell this on eBay. If you have never tried FoB, or if you have a fancy for a look at a Piquet game, it's an excellent rule set, and worth a go. It's especially good for solo gaming, in case that is an extra attraction. If you like what you see, and are interested in the upgrade, you can now purchase the 3rd Edition from Lancashire Games in the UK. At the time I bought this 2nd Edition, it came from Piquet in the US, and it was an expensive exercise - the postage was astounding.

Them was the days.

Vauban's Wars - more evidence

This may be old news (I hope it isn't fake news), but Eric Burgess's long awaited siege game rules, Vauban's Wars, are scheduled to be released first week in August. It is hard to sustain actual excitement for 9 years, or whatever it is, but I really am quite excited. I've been waiting for this since it was called Coehorn's Wars (before the takeover?).

Here's a completely unauthorised snapshot of the back cover (regard it as an advert, if you will), borrowed from the Piquet and Field of Battle Facebook page - final proof-check should be next week. I've been following the playtesting on the Piquet site and on Eric's and Gonsalvo's blogs, and it all looks good.

Field of Battle - Rules Try-Out

Today, Count Goya - having a rare day off-duty from running his mysterious empire - kindly visited Chateau Foy to help with a first attempt at playing with my new Piquet Field of Battle rules.

It all went pretty well, really - I have to say I've been doing a lot of homework in preparation. These days I find new rules quite daunting - especially a game as unusual in style and philosophy as FoB. We had a small trial action - about a dozen units a side on a very simple terrain.

Trying out rules requires a bit of mental adjustment - you have to forget about playing a game - and never mind at all about winning the thing - the trick is to try all sorts of suicidal cavalry charges against infantry lines and all that - to see what happens. That is the point of the exercise.

With hindsight, I'd have been better to follow Mark D's advice and start with a game where all the leaders and units were straight vanilla - as it was, I decided to follow the randomiser rules and create forces with units of varying quality, just to see how it went. This places a lot of reliance on the little stickers bearing the information for each unit, so it might have been a good idea also if I had made the labels big enough to read more easily(!), but no matter - it's all a learning process.

Simple, minimalist terrain featuring low-kudos cork table-mat hills. Small field (boards
plain side up - they really are hex-free on the reverse, you see).

1809 Spaniards vs French - usual stuff. The Spanish army was officially classified
as Abysmal, with Leadership ratings and Sequence Card deck to suit.

Smoke markers indicate units which cannot fire again until a Firepower card turns up

FoB Quick Reference Sheet - my edited version - with (optional) Ninky Nonk attached

A gizmo, but a useful one - an electric shuffling machine, which makes short (though
noisy) work of the task of shuffling the (sleeved) cards to the standard necessary to keep
the game working. As an aside, I note that this machine causes interference on
DAB radio - maybe we should have bought a more expensive one?

The game, it goes without saying, is intriguing, well thought out and, I believe, worthy of study. We were slow and halting today, as we had to discuss how the rules worked, and double-check just about everything (the rules manual is big and thorough, but it is not always easy to find the bit you are looking for among the numerous examples), so it was quite hard work, but we certainly knew a lot more about the game when we had finished. Familiarity will make it a lot more slick and straightforward, I am sure; my main problems today were to do with lack of facility in identifying and selecting the correct poly-dice (and stopping the damned things hiding in odd corners of the table), and with the fact that I'm really not used to a free-form (non-gridded) game these days - certainly not without a knowledgeable umpire to hold my hand. However you look at it, measuring everything is a bit of a pain in the wassname, and so much of the action today seemed to take place in odd angles between units, where the lack of space and the alignments never quite fitted comfortably with my limited understanding of how the rules work. Entirely my own problem, I appreciate. I would be very shame-faced to be starting thinking already about how the game might benefit from being placed on a gridded board, but it is hard not to!

I shall persevere, and I'm sure it will all seem more natural and feel smoother next time. We used a very basic terrain, so there's not a lot to look at here - the photos are really just to prove we got it on the table, and came out undismayed! I'm looking forward to trying again soon, but an early priority for me is to get a look at some more experienced players doing it properly, and I'm working on that, hoping to set something up.

My thanks to Goya for his company and help, and most especially to Darren for his commendable patience and sound guidance over the last few weeks.

Separate Topic - Nothing to do with anything: when I was checking out the Marston Moor battlefield a few months ago, it occurred to me that it would be rather droll to have the battlefield monument appearing on the tabletop for the miniature game. Doesn't seem so amusing now, I guess, but I was impressed enough with the idea to order a suitable specimen from a model railway supplier. In fact the item was out of stock, and the matter dragged on for long enough for me to become unsure whether I'd actually cancelled the order. Eventually I decided I had, and thought no more about it. Marston Moor came and went - twice, in fact, if you count the postponed attempt when we were snowed off. Long after everything was finished and put away and written up, I received an email this week to say that my monument was now in stock and had been posted, and it duly arrived this afternoon. It's quite a handsome item, I guess - it will have to appear in a battle somewhere or other soon, but in the meantime here is a picture, simply to commemorate the passing of a half-baked idea and the uncertainty of medium-term memory. Regard it as a memorial to all those good intentions that don't quite work out. I think it is probably generic enough to serve in a number of contexts and centuries, so no doubt we'll see it around.

Memorial to an unexceptional idea

Field of Battle - Nibbling Away

Things are a bit disrupted around here at present - as far as hobby stuff goes, the problem is time. It's not that I don't have any spare time, it's just that it's a bit unpredictable, and tends to become available in small amounts.

Thus for some weeks I haven't been doing any major painting work - it's all been short bursts of refurb work (which can produce finished figures quite quickly, if I do it right), poking at test figures for big batches to come, and reading in odd quiet moments.

I'm working away at getting up to speed on Field of Battle, the Piquet-produced game which has me quite excited at the moment. As with all new games, there is a lot to learn - philosophically as much as anything else - this game is unlike most of my previous wargaming experience. It has some similarities to the full Piquet rules - though it is not simply a "lite" version of Piquet.

I've been reading and studying the rules, and I now have a scenario book, which is very interesting indeed; I've invested in a couple of decks of the official cards, and I have finally sourced some sets of dice. Like Piquet (I think), Field of Battle requires the rolling of small numbers of dice - usually they are rolled singly or in twos - but they may be selected from a set (for each side) of one each of D4, D6, D8, D10, D12 and D20. Interesting challenge to get a completely satisfactory matched set - I had some problems finding D10s which were numbered 1-10 instead of 0-9. Managed it without too much hassle, so I'm all ready to get on with some trials now.

The intro to the rules recommends that the new reader should not be overcome by the length of the booklet, nor damage his health trying to memorise reams of tables. The recommended approach is to set up a smallish game (I'll make this a solo effort - about 10 units a side), and have a bash, taking note of how the cards work. The set-up requires a fair amount of work - it's necessary to determine the quality of the army, and of its leaders and units, make up an appropriate pack of cards for each army, and work out what "size" of die (D6, D8 etc) is to be used by each unit for combat and for defence.

This is not the place to attempt any kind of summary of how the game works, nor attempt any kind of critique - suffice to say that I am happily working away at getting up to speed, and I hope to play a solo trial game sometime in the next however-many weeks. This is not a blistering rate of progress, admittedly, but I am enjoying it. My thanks to Darren, for his kind help and guidance, and also to Brent Oman, the author and originator of the game, for his help and generosity in getting me off the ground.

In a perfect world, the next logical thing for me to do would be to attend someone else's game (as a spectator) to see how it swings and feels. I guess that is unlikely, but I'm open to invitations if anyone fancies it - especially in a warm country with liberal drink laws...

Rules - Field of Battle

Since 1970 or thereabouts I guess I've read many hundreds of sets of wargames rules - the number expands rapidly if I include boardgames. The proportion of these which I've actually played is really so small that often I wonder why I've wasted so much time on my researches - what is it I've been looking for? Typically I don't finish a first reading - my initial interest will suddenly be frozen out by my dislike of the morale rules, or the activation rules, or the potential requirement to rebase everything - or something. My hit rate for eventual buy-in is pathetic. For a while, a couple of years ago, I thought I was going to really go for Lasalle, but I managed to find enough areas of discomfort to avoid making a commitment. [Phew - that was a close call...]

At present I am supposed to be working on an update to my (slowly developing) ECW siege game (Leaguer - yes, all right, all right...) and the development of a hex-gridded game for my Napoleonics which allows for more tactical manoeuvre than the Commands & Colors games which have become the house standard. Over both of these I am feeling rather guilty, since I have had a splendid amount of help from Mark and Jay, respectively, and I am keen not to leave everything hanging - it seems, at best, a bit impolite. Problem with the siege game has been that the discussion (which has been excellent, by the way) has turned up a few more questions than answers of late, so some heavyweight re-thinking is needed. Problem with the detailed hex Napoleonic game (for smaller actions, you understand) is that my original idea of simply sticking extra activities into C&C just produced a mess of a game - the tactical additions were compromised by the join with C&C, and the beauties (and they are considerable) of C&C were wrecked by the fiddly additions. Thus I started again - the new game has a proportion of Neil Thomas in it, but develops some of Neil's ideas quite a bit. I'd reached the point with this where the next thing to do was some serious playtesting, to enable me to produce a good, robust, working draft. So that's where I am: playtesting to be arranged as soon as is practicable.

There's a lot going on, and it doesn't seem too helpful if I find myself reading yet more rules which are not on the plan, but that's what I've been doing. I have suddenly become very interested in Field of Battle, from Brent Oman's Piquet product family. I have been very interested in Piquet for years - I have the base rules and the Grognards supplement, and have read them numerous times. Always with the same result - I really like a lot of the ideas in there, but there are a good few things which are - well - too fussy for my taste. I am unlikely to become a regular user.

Field of Battle is a relative of Piquet, involves some of the same principles and philosophies, but is a more straightforward game - or at least it seems so to me. My interest was sparked by the blogged activities of Le Duc de Gobin and Sgt Steiner - excellent fellows both. I am grateful to M Le Duc for explaining the nature of the game (left to myself, I find Piquet's product range, and the overlaps within it, bewildering), and for guiding me through some of the basic ideas. I have now read the booklet twice, and will start a third reading next week. I have found nothing that turns me off. The game is card driven, and lends itself very well to solo play (a big plus for me), the unit basing is almost identical to the way my armies have been set up since 1972 [If you build it, they will come - though it might take a while...], it all makes the most excellent sense. It looks very like what I thought Lasalle might offer, when I had the hots for that. It also offers a tweakable base set of rules which will lend themselves to a wide range of horse-&-musket wars. I have now gone so far as to invest in a proper set of the cards from the publisher - the US postal rates make this more of a serious investment than I had anticipated - and I hope to receive these shortly when new stocks come in.

As interruptions go, this promises to be a worthwhile one. I am gently enthusiastic about this - not to replace my existing rule systems, but to provide a rewarding alternative. Let's see how it goes.

If it all turns to rat droppings, you may hear no more about it, but I'm not approaching it with that expectation.