War of the Spanish Succession Play-test

Having been rather disappointed with the rules we had been using for the War of the Spanish Succession I decided that I'd have a crack at developing my own set. 

So, Thursday night saw Drew and Bruce participating as guinea pigs, or test pilots if you prefer, in the first outing for the rules that have the development title of #CofCMUtheBPandF (bonus points for deciphering the code).

I set the table up with French and Dutch armies, as you can see in the images below with the French nearest the camera. Both sides had 16 units of horse, 12 units of foote, two heavy guns and a light gun. Both armies were organised into six brigades although both of differing configurations.

As usual, Drew took the French and Bruce the Dutch, I would provide interpretation and guidance as we went along.

As you probably guessed from the images, the rules are D10 based and card driven with each player getting to perform actions based upon the draw of the cards as well as boost his own units and negatively impact his opponents units. For this test both players had the same decks, although as we go along we shall develop national characteristics through the contents of the players decks.

We got about eight turns in over three and a half hours play, including breaks to fetch more beers and chit-chat, not too bad for a first game. The foot never got to grips as both players concentrated on orchestrating a large swirling cavalry melee on the Dutch left which the French eventually got the worst of.

Despite no overwhelming victory for any one side the mechanisms seemed to go quite well, but, I've added a few minor tweaks in time for next weeks game and we'll introduce a few more troop types and start classing some troops as veterans and some as raw.

All the figures are from my collection, painted by myself from the Baccus range. Drew did provide all of the casualty markers in the form of some great stacks of cannonballs from Pendraken.

More photos from the game, mostly courtesy of Drew.

War of the Spanish Succession Dutch(9)

The final part of the WSS collection to get some attention this week was the Dutch, and as they are already quite extensive it's been more a matter of finishing a few things off.

In the recent order from Baccus I got enough mounted and dismounted dragoons to finish off the fourth troops of the Van Schlippenberg Dragoon Regiment.

The Dutch artillery train also gets a boost with the addition of a pair of light guns along with a limbered heavy gun that can be used as part of the baggage train if desired. It's accompanied by a couple of train guard.

The Dutch also had another command stand painted, I was rather light on generals for all the units that are now part of this contingent.

Finally a couple more pieces for the baggage train, another wagon and a herd of brown and white Herefords to add to the Belted Galways and Holstein I already have in this collection. I still have about 18 of these left, we used to use sheep as disorder markers in our 28mm Napoleonic games, maybe cattle are more appropriate at 6mm.

On the painting table at the moment more WSS cavalry and some 28mm WWII British SAS.

War of the Spanish Succession French(4)

A small update on the French contingent. The last game saw us rather lacking in command stands so I made a bit of an effort to get a few more generals painted.

The first stand represents the French Commander in Chief, no doubt up to something martial in his marquee while two ADC look on and his groom holds his favourite chargers.

A divisional commander, made up of two figures from the generals pack and a mounted drummer from the dragoons pack.

Another divisional commander, this time one general then the ensign and mounted trumpeter from a cavalry command strip.

Another shortfall from the last game was that we had nowhere near enough makers, five cavalry casualties goes a small way towards addressing that.

War of the Spanish Succession English(1)

Having realised that painting red coats is not that much harder than painting grey coats I decided to add a contingent of English to my War of the Spanish Succession collection.

The first unit painted is Ingoldsby's Regiment (later Royal Irish and 18th Foot), in red coats with blue facings and stockings with grey waistcoats.

I also added a command stand, made up of a general from the Generals pack, standard bearer from a Dragoon pack and officer from the Cavalry pack.

Quite happy how these turned out, though it looks like a few muskets need straightening out.