Horse & Musket - Sedgemoor

Turn 1: Royalist infantry attempt to force their way across the Bussex Rhine to come to grips with Monmouth's rebels

I spent a good part of the day today working on Horse & Matchlock, "Volume 0" for the Horse & Musket series from Hollandspiele.

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.

Wars of Succession: The Best Marlborough Simulator Around

Eugene in Mantua at the end of 1701. He's already beat the pants off the French in two battles and taken Modena

I think Wars of Succession may be the best game AGEOD has ever produced, despite having some "fit and finish" issues. Granted, I'm biased toward the period, but this game takes the best of the new features introduced in Wars of Napoleon, discards what didn't work, and marries it to what did work in games like Thirty Years War  and Rise of Prussia.

The 1705 Moselle Campaign - Part I

Marlborough poised on the Moselle for an attack on Saarlouis, waiting on Allied reinforcements

A few weeks ago I responded to a question on Facebook concerning artillery organization during the 1705 Moselle Campaign during the War of Spanish Succession. After doing a little research from my ever-growing library of books on 18th Century war, I was intrigued enough to want to game out the campaign itself.

Playing Nine Years

A French army lays siege to Tournai

I'm not ready to do a full-blown walk-through of Nine Years yet because I'm still learning it. What I am prepared to say is that I'm enjoying this game immensely!

More Books

This weekend's haul from Half-Price Books. The one clipped off in the upper right is Chandler's The Military Maxims of Napoleon. I'm most interested/excited though in the book in the center, Conserving the Enlightenment, a scholarly work on the early French engineering corps.

The book on Marlborough is a little light, but it has some nice maps and seemed like something I could give someone as an introduction.

A Famous Victory - Blenheim: Battle is Joined

Warfare during this period certainly is a methodical affair. It takes Cutts from 12:30 until 2:00 PM to get his leading brigade across the Nebel and launch the first assault on Blenheim. Despite support from the battery next to the village and all three battalions of the famed French Navarre regiment holding the front edge of Blenheim, Rowe's men charge the barricades.  Their combined fire shatters the 1/Navarre, eliminating it. Return fire disrupts a British battalion.

A Famous Victory - Blenheim: Reset

Blenheim setup overview

After doing a lot more reading about Blenheim and getting in a couple of turns to familiarize myself with the rules, I've decided to reset the game and start over. This time I'm using a much closer to historical setup, based on the OOB and maps from Obscure Battles. Not only is the distribution of units more correct, the actual battalions and regiments are mostly in the correct locations. The OOBs from the game and web site don't entirely line up, but they're close.

A Famous Victory - Blenheim: Anglo-Allied Setup and First Turns

Now for the Anglo-allied setup. Again, this is a quasi-historical setup. The commands ("lines" in game terms) are composed of roughly the right mix of units, and are in roughly the right places - as far as anyone knows. For a future game I will probably use the positions as illustrated here for what may be a more historical setup.

A Famous Victory - Blenheim: French Setup

The Great Leaders series from now defunct gaming publisher Moments in History is a series of two games covering Marlborough's four great victories during the War of Spanish Succession, Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet. I'm about to start a the Blenheim scenario. In this scenario the Franco-Bavarian army sets up first. The above is an overview of the Franco-bavarian position. I've gone with a more-or-less historical setup, both because I prefer historical setups and to test out the game mechanics with a known deployment.

Board Gaming for the rest of 2016

Here's my table set up for the games I'll be playing for the rest of this year.

The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough

Currently reading. I'm developing a real fascination with the period of warfare ranging from about the end of the English Civil War through the Seven Years War, and the accompanying period of history.

I grabbed a used hardback, but for those interested in an electronic copy, there are several resources available.

For an excellent breakdown of one of the more famous battles during the period, Obscure Battles does their usual great job.