January - South Auckland Club Day

So today is the club day for the South Auckland Wargames Club (one of the oldest clubs in Auckland).

Every year we do a big Napoleonic game using the WRG rules (Printed in 1979!) in honor of the club founder John Berry who passed away almost 8 years ago. The WRG rules were the first rules used at the club and John taught a very young pair of brothers Bryan and Glenn Osbourne war gaming. Many, Many years on the club is still going

As proof here's a picture of Brian holding his original copy of the rules with hand written corrections and highlighting. 

The Armies on the table for the day were a combined Bavarian and Russian Force vs a French, Wittemburg and Spanish.

The team for the day: From the top left - Yours truly, Glenn, Cavin, Kevin, Rob. Bottom row from the left - Steven, Jason, Bryan and Leo.

Bryan was in overall command of the Bavarian and Russian commanders consisting of Jason, Leo and Steven and Glenn was in overall command of the French, Spanish and Wittemburger commanders consisting of Rob, Kevin and Cavin.  I was in the back up roll of taking pics and videos.

Below is a quick battle plan: The Bavarian's were split into two forces the first under Leo's command, had to head to the Bridge and face off against the Spanish. The second lead by Steven had to hold off the french until the Russian allies could take over allowing him to turn his forces around and join the fight for the bridge.  Byran and Jason commanding the large Russian force were to take and hold the Center of the table against the large French army that was heading towards the bridge to help hold of the Bavarian's from crossing.

The Table you will see was rather bare. Due to a breakdown in communications the terrain didn't seem to make it to the club today :(. Still we made the best of what we had. There were so many figures terrain would have just got in the way.

  There was so much going on that keeping track to do a blow by blow account was impossible. I tried to keep track of the action around the bridge as it was what would result in a victory or defeat.

 All the figures (I believe) are very old Minifigs and were for the most part painted quite a while back by the lads. Suitably impressive in large numbers but individually very basic figs.

Here's a shot of the center of the table on turn 2 i believe - This is where the fighting was the heaviest. 

Around lunchtime Leo had to pop out for a while so i took over the Bavarian's for a couple of turns. I moved ever closer to the bridge with the infantry and forced a Spanish unit to flee off its position on the bridge with some super accurate artillery fire.

Heavy Discussions of the rules were frequent as the rules are only rolled out once a year.

A shot showing just how the fight was concentrated on the center and right sides of the table.

Some dice were lost in the making of this blog post - Kevin searches for some dice that made a break for freedom. 

Near the end of the day the Bavarian's finally got to the bridge and tried to cross the river at several fording points. Kevin's Spanish fought like demons and surprisingly forced the Bavarian's back. Stevens' Bavarian force which was looking like it would be wiped out held against overwhelming numbers of French that Rob sent his way. The center was a mass of fire fights and combats with the Byran's Russians forcing Glenn's French back.  On the far right flank Jason was unable to hold off Cavin's Whittemburger's which totally cut off the flank and forced Jason's remaining troops back into the center.  

Hoards of Russians in the table center!!

In the end the bridge was held by the Spanish and we called the game as it was rather late in the afternoon..

There's always one in every group!!!!

Another great annual gaming event and one that im sure John would of been proud of.

The day gave me a great opportunity to try out my camera in less than ideal conditions and get a few lessons from Rob on settings (much appreciated mate). Still a lot to learn and i would have benefited having a better flash and i definitely need to get some form of boom microphone if im going to record video out and about as the ones i did record with an intention of doing a quick YouTube video had too much background noise to be useful.

Till next time happy gaming.

Mark
:-)