Перші тести першого сценарію Art of Napoleonics

 Нарешті добрався до тестування історичного сценарію для фішечної версії Art of Napoleonics.

Перший сценарій я обрав вже давно — ключовий епізод бою за Ельхінген в 1805. Підібрав мапу, порахував наряд сил — дивізію Луї Луазона та частину сил корпусу Йоганна Ріша. Але спочатку довго вирішував, де та як виготовити тестові фішки. В результаті надрукував їх в Riznoriz на 1,5-мм МДФ, а маркування зробив Володя Богма — фарбою через трафарет типу "офіцерська лінійка".

25 листопада цей день настав — перший тест. Причому навіть не соло, а проти опонента — Макс, 13 років, кілька разів грав у Art of Napoleonics з мініатюрами.

Головний підсумок — гра у фішечному варіанті та з обраними розмірами фішок цілком іграбельна! Але все по порядку.

Стартова розстановка (фотки клікабельні):

A New Perspective for Art of Napoleonics

Recently, in a conversation with Anton, I came up with the idea that acrylic counters can replace miniatures for my Art of Napoleonics and the game thus can be played remotely. But that's where the idea stalled.

Suddenly, after a couple of weeks, I got to know a publisher/seller of tabletop books in Ukraine. He looked at my rules on Art of Napoleonics and suggested that I rework them into a boxed wargame with counters, develop and test historical scenarios and try to release the game.

Eyes are afraid, but hands itching )

Oleg also suggests that I adapt my rules to the Cossack–Polish War 1648-1657. Because our history is a white spot in the games. So I'm looking for literature to immerse myself.

A review of Art of Tactic in English from 2011

 http://militaryminiatures-art-of-tactic.blogspot.com/2011/09/art-of-tactic-how-to-play.html

First AoT game after I returned to Bucha in Spring-2022

After I had returned to my hometown Bucha in April after the Russian occupation, I was extremely glad to see my wargaming collection intact. My friend-wargamers were glad too! Being caught up in this excitement, I promptly planned a lengthy remote AoT game with my friend Kyrylo from Dnipro.

My idea was to try an offensive with numerous Soviet infantry without much artillery or air support against an elite German group — when the Red Army tries to beat quality through quantity. To do this, we set up a game scenario loosely based on the battles around Bila Tserkva (Kyiv region) in the second half of July 1941 when the 1st Panzer Gruppe was repulsing the counter-attacks of the Soviet 26th Army.

The game was divided into two stages. The first stage: the offensive of the Red Army on the map with 6 large and 6 small mapboards.

New name for the game system

Our community has taken the Art of Tactic WWII system as a trophy after Russian aggression (and after Zvezda discontinued supporting the system).

Now we are choosing a new name for the game as some people don't want to try it because they think it's a Russian game although we changed a substantial part of the rules and added lots of non-zvezda units.

Our current favorite is Tabletop Tactics which may be shortened as TT or TTT.

Full name variant:

Tabletop Tactics: Hex-Based WWII Game

Huge AoT battle played offline in Bucha 2022/05/12-13

 Having found my Art of Tactic collection intact upon returning to Bucha, out of euphoria I invited to my home the only player who remained in the vicinity, Arlink, and we played a huge two-day offline battle. 25 turns, 12 Hot War mapboards, 40+ units for the British and 30+ for the Germans...  North African December of 1942 replayed in spring Bucha recovering from Russian occupation... That was epic.

I'm gonna publish a more detailed battle report later when I have time.

https://youtu.be/FYuzwa6xass

https://youtu.be/BuCmDorb8pE

It was loosely based on the Battle of El Agheila or Mersa Brega, 12-18 December 1942.

British troops were advancing on two roads, the coastal one (5th Royal Tank Regiment with reinforcements) and the desert one (5th Infantry Brigade).

The Germans were defending with one infantry regiment, one of whose battalions will arrive only on Turn 7. After Turn 13 move, reinforcements from the 15th Panzer Division were to arrive for a counterattack.

The positions of the Germans were divided into two zones, A and B. In each zone there are 7 key hexes, marked on the map with the appropriate letters. In El Agheila, a German ammunition depot is located in a hex with the letter B in a circle.

Баталія 2х1: британці наступають, Вермахт обороняється

На початку січня відіграли дистанційно (Telegram + Discord) цікаву партію — наступ британців на німецькі позиції в умовній Італії-1943.

Грали 2х1: за британців Андрій (Дніпро), за німців два Кирила (один із Дніпра, другий із Київської області).

Art of Napoleonics: La Grande Bataille

 On October 15-16, 2021 we played the largest Art of Napoleonics battle so far. Finally, I got around to publishing a battle report.

There were 5 players playing 2 vs 3 on my custom made hex mapboards. On Napoleon’s side there were the French (Alex aka General Lusignan) and the Saxons (my son Kolyan). The opposite team consisted of the Austrians (myself), Wurttembergers (my nephew Viktor, 12 y.o.), and Bavarians (my nephew Max, 11 y.o.),

2x1 game: "Breaking through Letychiv Fortified District, July 1941"

 Want to share some pics of a 2x1 remote AoT game we played in our community trying to approximately reproduce fighting for Letychiv Fortified District in July 1941. 

Two German battle groups were tasked with breaking through the Fortified District from two sides.

The Red Army has six bunkers and several but no mobile units from the start. On the 10th turn, an armored and cavalry group (incl. two T-34 platoons and Katyusha) arrived to reinforce the Red Army to counterattack.

We played with fog of war.

The game was really enthralling till the last turn. Red Air Force had a very successful first airstrike eliminating StuG and a company of Gebirgsjaeger, and when the reinforcements came, the Soviets destroyed all the tanks of the Wehrmacht Player 1 with a powerful concentration of fire. 

But then, amidst a heavily smoked battlefield (we played with the Strong Wind rule), Soviet tanks got scattered chasing German infantry in the open and couldn’t fight back crucial villages to win. So, in the end, the lack of experience resulted in the Soviet loss.

Some quotes on tactics in Napoleonic Wars

 Napoleon believed in speed, Wellington in terrain.

***

The Column, whether by company or division, was a maneuver formation, which wheeled and formed (hollow) square up to 3 times faster than a line (French regulations of 1791 gave respectively 30 sec. and 100 sec. for forming square). In emergency a masse or closed-column square could often be formed even faster to defend against cavalry, a maneuver favoured by the Austrians, Prussians and Russians from their experience against the nomadic horsemen of the steppe.

Unit cards for artillery tractors

 The cards are ready for artillery tractors.

Artillery tractors for AoT

 I have long wanted to add tracked artillery tractors to AoT to be able to tow howitzers to light woods.

Finally I’ve got them — RSO by Plastic Soldier, Comintern by Zebrano (both painted by Alex Pervookhin).

Now we are thinking about unit cards.

So far, the ideas are:

1) Transport type, but moving as a light tank.

2) Movement 2 hexes. That is, they will drive 4 hexes along the road, even with a gun towed, and only 1 hex per turn to light woods.

3) Comintern and RSO can also transport ammunition, with two times less capacity than trucks - 3 ammo per tractor.

4) Unit strength — 3 pieces.

5) Cost - 5 points for an empty one, 8 points if loaded with ammo.

2021 AoT units announced

The game publisher has announced new units for AoT to hit the shelves in 2021.

Here's the list:

• 6273 Soviet M3 Scout with MG
• 6277 Soviet M-72 motorcycle unit
• 6281 SU-122
• 6282 Marder III
• 6272 Volkssturm 1945 (postponed from 2020)
• 6174 British HQ
• 6278 American infantry
• 6279 American marines
• 6280 Valentine II

Americans? Interesting. Does it mean we'll have any Normandy starters sometime? But why the marines, they are for the Pacific...

My personal favorite is Marder III — the Germans really need an open-top SPG.

Assault on a fortified place with strong aviation support (played on May 2-4, 2020)

We've been playing not only via Telegram lately but offline as well.

I posted a report on BoardGameGeek about our recent game with my 15-year-old son where a fully motorized Wehrmacht battle group with strong air support (719 points in total) assaulted a fortified town on the map of the Battle of the Danube. The town was defended by Red Army troops for 423 points + fortifications for 153 points, incl. three pillboxes.

Panzer II B und C

In our AoT community, we took on the revision of Zvezda cards, because the official characteristics of many units we consider to be inadequate, and the price system even more so.

My favorite AoT unit, Panzer II, also got caught in the crossfire. My community colleagues unambiguously recognized the Zvezda model as a modification "B" with worthless armor and in no way agreed to leave it with the “2” defense value (as well as BT-5, by the way).
So we agreed to make two versions of the card — for Pz II B with defense 1 (cost 26 points) and for Pz II C which had additional armor plates with defense value 2 (29 points).

I immediately set on finding the C model. The option was found: my friend Alex made me a conversion from a Zvezda model. In fact, the only noticeable difference is the round hatch on the turret instead of the square one.

Start of AoT community in Ukraine?

We have built up an AoT community here in Ukraine: two players from Kyiv, one from Lviv, one from Dnipro, and one from Gomel, Belarus. We got used to playing remotely via Telegram: make 1-2 turns per day, no hassle, plenty of time to think over one's actions.

One of the last games was an encounter battle on a map with two villages. Me and my son played against Kyrylo from Dnipro. The game lasted 10 turns, and Wehrmacht achieved a decisive victory because the Red Army commander didn't inspect the map that closely and made a couple of crucial deployment mistakes.

It was fun, and we gonna use this map (slightly changed) for our next games.

Our first battle in North Africa

I've got desert maps from Hot War from my friend Alex recently, and on the 8th of January played our first battle Art-of-Tactic battle in the North African Theater of WWII.

This time, we played 2x2: me and my nephew Vitya (11 y.o.) played for the Germans while my son Nick (15 y.o.) and my other nephew Max (9 y.o.) were the Brits.

Our armies were more than 20 land units plus 3 aircraft for each side. The British side had more tanks (Lee platoon, Matilda II platoon, 2 Stuart platoons) while the Germans had only three armored platoons one of which was Sd.Kfz222 armored car. As compensation, the Germans had more artillery, and even the diminished to 2 guns German howitzer battery was very effective.

It was a meeting engagement scenario. Here are the starting positions:

Two win the game, one should score more victory points. Each player had an oil depot in the rear, capturing it gave 15 VPs. Also, each opponent's village hex costs 5 VPS.

The map and the order of battle dictated the flow of the game: evry side strived to capture the high ground in the center as it would allow directing aircraft and howitzers to the enemy's rear. 

Also, the road between the hills and the shrubbery became a real Schwerpunkt: Matilda and Pz IV clashed with one another there and had to fight 4 (!) rounds of close combat with no results, even though Germans helped its tanks with PaK-36 fire.

Another important factor was the use of aircraft. Both sides used it efficiently, and the German players made a mistake while anticipating air bombardment... The thing is, the British had Fairey Battle bomber that bombs two hexes at once. And the German player placed two armored units in line with a light anti-aircraft unit behind them hoping to shoot down the aircraft, BUT he forgot that the light AA gun can't shoot down heavy aircraft!.. As a result, Pz 38(t) and SdKfz222 were destroyed from the air in one turn. In its turn, Ju-87 destroyed the Lee platoon.

We played about 2.5 hours and managed to accomplish only 5 turns as much fighting and dice rolling accompanied each turn. The game was in a precarious balance. Each side had only one armored unit left after both Stuart platoons were destroyed—one by an anti-tank team+howitzers, second in close combat by German pioneers and Fallshirmjager (to much surprise of the British ;)

Having so few mobile units left with half of ammunition, it wasn't clear how the players could advance their attacks and gain victory points... But it was fun to play!

PS: I posted a short video from the start of this game on my YouTube channel.

Art of Napoleonics?

As my second war history hobbyhorse after WWII is Napoleonic Wars, right now I'm trying to develop my own rules for Napoleonic era based on AoT system to play on AoT maps.

The hex length in this case should be 100m, I think. And the maps become so small...

And here are my first Napoleonic units, 4 squadrons of Prussian cuirassiers, exploring the new battlefield:

Loss markers

One of the things I don’t like about the official AoT system is the absence of any loss markers. Crossing out the figures on unit cards doesn’t add clarity to the game: both a full-fledged company with 100% of personnel and a battered unit with only 1/5 unit look the same on the gaming table :(    I would also like to be able to see which units are pinned down. One commander’s glance at the battlefield — and the whole picture is clear!

I know that some players put dice next to the units to mark their strength, but this idea did not suit me—there is so little space on hexes, and the dice are too conspicuous.

To indicate losses and suppression, I'm using very simple markers—colored elastic hair ties (ponios):

They are easy to attach to unit flags and easy-to-see.

My colour system is the following:

– blue — 4 items are left in a unit

– yellow — 3 are left

– pink — 2 are left

– red — 1 is left

– black — the unit is pinned down

Here's how it looks in the game:

And here it is immediately clear that in this armored group each platoon has only one vehicle left:

Tournament unit cards

Intriguing news from the game publisher: many unit cards were revised, and it seems that for the better!
The updated cards are to be used at an official tournament this May.
Here are some of the new cards, more to follow.