Piquet Field Of Battle 2: Prussians versus French 1813

Played a game using my Prussians and French using Piquet Field Of Battle against my son Steven (home from England for a few days).
He picked up the card and combat systems very easily leading the Prussians against my French.
His downfall came by exposing several Landwehr units who are classed as Raw (ie D4 defence dice) to my shooting thereby having his Army Morale Points go south rather quickly. However a unit of lowly Landwehr Light Cavalry did ride down a unit of French regular foot and a unit of Prussian Cannon survived charges by no less than the Old Guard Chasseurs A Cheval and Polish Lancers !!
Great fun with a slick set of rules.

Heroes Of The Blitzkrieg (Lock 'N Load) played

Played a scenario from Lock 'N Load 'Heroes Of The Blitzkrieg' game with my Dad.
A scenario set during 1939 during French offensive in Rhineland.
Nice little scenario with Germans dug-in in Bunkers and some decent French troops on the attack.
Several 'events' triggered by capturing Bunkers some of which were pro-French others not so !
My French came out winners after a hard fought contest.

Birthday Battlegroup Overlord games

Played two games of Battle Group Overlord on my Dads birthday with my son Steven as his opponent and me performing umpire duties.
Used a scenario entitled St Sylvain from the Kampfgruppe Normandy set (pre-cursor to Battlegroup series).
First game was played as per the scenario ie down table length and second used same table and forces but played across table width.
Only change I made to rules was to ignore the ammo limit rules for ordinance (mainly as I could not be bothered with bookkeeping !) this made for a fast and furious couple of games as Tanks hunted each other relentlessly.
I get the game idea behind the ammo limits but seem rather low and fiddly for a tactical level game and prefer the Panzer Grenadier system of Low Ammo being a random event (ie snake eye rolls) so used same in Battlegroup with any unit pulling a Low Ammo chit taking a -1 for shooting (as it turned out no such chits pulled).
My Dad won the first game as Steven realized that charging with Shermans is not a workable tactic especially when his Achilles failed to brew the single Tiger (2 x 2D6 rolls needing 7+ failed !!) which then went on to almost single-handedly destroy the British Armour force (6 Shermans 3 Fireflies and an Achilles) even getting help from a Bf109 with bombs ! meanwhile the British FAC failed to get any RAF flights on call.
Second game was a more cagey affair with the Germans this time suffering (my Dad lost the Tiger early on and 3 Stugs and 2 PzIV soon followed).
Second game saw a lot more Infantry action than first with a nasty town battle costing both sides but with Germans reaching their break level quickest.
Both sides got fighter bomber support in this one.

Fun games with an easily taught and playable set of rules that I have not used for awhile.

 The birthday boy.................

The Barr men (my brother joined us later) Warren, Douglas, Steven and yours truly

Catching up

Been a busy few days so behind on postings

Did manage to finish the Die Fighting II game with Prussians coming out on top mainly due to their Left Wing mounted Command annihilating Russians horse and then turning on the flank of adjacent Russian Infantry Brigade.
Quite a satisfying game as initial try with DFII, lots of decision points in the game especially with Command Dice Allocation and in particular that of the CinC.
Once things go against an army its status can degenerate very quickly in DF.

I then used exactly same forces and table (no time to re-arrange) for try out of 18th Century Principles Of War rules.
Really like sequence of play (reminiscent of old WRG 1645-1815 set) and the fact that hard for mounted to charge home against steady Infantry.
Rather more bookkeeping involved, as units use Strength Points, but use of small dice alleviated this.
Tactical movement system rather generous maybe for 18th Century troops but otherwise a fine and very playable set of rules.

Also played a game of Field Of Glory Renaissance at Stephens (he is big fan of these) with my Early Imperialists against a Later Swedish force.
This proved to be a very interesting game with a lot of bloodshed on both sides.