Speaking of Kriegsspiel...

Full map view of the start of a scenario

Dispatch - April 21, 2019

I've spent the past couple of hours punching and clipping Joan of Arc's Victory 1429 and Harold Buchanan's Campaigns of 1777. I need to give my hands and wrist a break from the clipper.

I'm hoping to play both games in the next couple of weeks. Terri (my wife) seems interested in both. We've visited Brandywine, Saratoga, and Fort Ticonderoga in the past couple of years. The character of Joan appeals to her. She can relate to these games more than others in my collection.

Origins Loot

"On to Paris!" and "1866" from Compass Games, "By Shock, Shot and Faith" from Hexasim, and "Talavera" from The Gamers NBS series.

This should keep me busy for awhile...

Lock n Load Tactical: Bloody Valley

I'm on a quest to play more of my board games by playing them in Vassal. I'm hoping the Vassal allows me to play more by avoiding most of the setup overhead, and allowing me to play what I might be interested in at the moment, even if I have another game set up and taking up all of my table space.

Game setup positions

GenCon 2014

Anyone that knows me well will tell you that one thing I'm not fond of is large crowds of other humans. So it's a bit of a miracle that I've attended not just one, but two gaming conventions this year: Origins and GenCon.  Admittedly, GenCon is easy since its right here in Indianapolis, but it's also the larger by far of the two.

Unlike Origins I only spent a day at GenCon, but came away with several games and some pictures.

Come on in...

Hunting Bears - The Battle for Buchholz

This is a continuation of a series of posts using Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm to illustrate the use of the Military Decision Making Process in planning and conducting a battle in a wargame. At no time should anyone be under the illusion that I claim to have sufficient grasp of this that I could lead actual troops in so much as a barbecue. This is how I use these tools for gaming. The first post in this series is here. The second post is here.

In my first two post I examined terrain analysis via OCOKA and an abbreviated process for identifying enemy Courses of Action (COAs). This led to the development of a plan for the deployment of the forces I would have on hand at the beginning of the battle. As we saw in my second post, taking the time to do this planning upfront allow the elements of an US infantry battalion to render a Soviet Tank Regiment combat ineffective in about 30 minutes of fighting.

Remnants of a Soviet Tank Regiment at Holm-Seppensen

Hunting for Bears - The First Hour

This is a continuation of a series of posts using Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm to illustrate the use of the Military Decision Making Process in planning and conducting a battle in a wargame. At no time should anyone be under the illusion that I claim to have sufficient grasp of this that I could lead actual troops in so much as a barbecue. This is how I use these tools for gaming. The first post in this series is here.

At the end of my last post things were just about to kick off in the battle for Buccholz. Before we crank the track engines though, let's take a quick look at a couple more concepts useful for planning: Engagement Areas and Future Ops.

Planning map with Engagement Areas and future plans marked.

Planning for Hunting Bears

It's been a very busy few weeks this month! Today is the first day since returning from Origins that have had the time and energy to blog. When I can, I'll blog some about the fantastic time I had at Origins. Today, though, I want to apply some of what I learned at Origins, specifically from the wonderful Staff Wargaming sessions run by Dr. James Sterrett and Mark Graves (USA Retired).

Specifically, I'm going to apply the planning approach we used during these sessions to the first US campaign scenario from Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. I'm partial to doing this with Flashpoint Campaigns because it's really perfect for this sort of planning. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Jim Snyder and Rob Crandall of On Target Simulations at Origins and discussing the game with them as well as using it during the Staff Wargaming sessions. I'm going to run through the process of terrain analysis using OCOKA, develop several potential enemy Courses of Action (COAs) and then plan my defense based on those COAs. To begin with, lets get an overview of the battlefield.

An overview of the battlefield in Google Earth. The Soviets will be advancing from east of Buchholz toward the western edge of the map on the route to Bremen. Note that the game map stops on an east-west line just south of Schierhorn-Tostedt.

Arrived: Ghost Panzer

Thanks to the efforts of the good folks over at Grogheads, I'm returning to my long abandoned board gaming roots! It's been over 20 years since I bought a board game, and I honestly thought I never would again. Playing Lock n Load: Heroes of Stalingrad and Conflict of Heroes computer versions reawakened an interest in shuffling cardboard chits around paper maps.

Carefully removing Circle of Fire counters from the sprue and clipping them

I dipped my toe in first with Circle of Fire, a magazine game from Against the Odds magazine focused on the siege of Cholm in 1942.