This Hallowed Ground ACW Playtest

Last night I hosted a few of the fellas to run This Hallowed Ground from Jay's Wargaming Madness. I've been following Jay's blog for several years and am always amazed by the moving diorama style games his group puts on and his beautiful miniatures. When he put his rules up for download on his blog a few months ago I jumped all over them. With ACW being my passion, I'm always up for trying new rulesets. With Christmas quickly approaching, we had a small group, so I set up a simple game with each side fielding two brigades and a large artillery battery. I gave each regiment a special rule or two and was left with two pretty evenly matched armies. We set up the table to have the primary terrain feature a large wooded area in the middle of the field. All in all it proved to be a pretty simple set of rules I found to play well and seemed to mesh some attributes of some other well-known rulesets on the market.

Road Trip To Shiloh Military Park

For years it’s been a dream of mine to take a road trip to Southwest Tennessee to visit the Shiloh battlefield with my dad. Several years ago we got the opportunity to visit Gettysburg, so this was a nice addition to our travels. Highly recommended, Larry DeBerry from Shiloh Tours was an outstanding host and a wealth of information on our tour of the park. In addition to being a guide, Larry owns and operates his own museum that features a treasure trove of amazing displays any military history enthusiast would appreciate.

                                             

31st Indiana Infantry monument along the Sunken Road

View of the Peach Orchard from the W. Manse George Cabin

W. Manse George Cabin

Position of Brig. Gen. Daniel Ruggles Battery. The largest artillery battery ever amassed on the North American continent. On the afternoon of Day1 of the battle, 55 Confederate guns fired on Federal positions on the Sunken Road.

The Hornet's Nest (Sunken Road)

Looking East along the Sunken Road

The Shiloh Military Museum 

Another Day In The Desert - Fistful of Lead Moderns

A little over a year ago I got another wild hair to embark on a new project - moderns. So with some quick use of the interwebs, I was able to track down the minis I'd need at Empress Miniatures and Spectre Miniatures. I rounded up some of the buildings at Recruits in Lee's Summit, Missouri last fall and built the rest by hand over the last several months. For the rules we used the Baron's labor of love, Fistful of Lead (Wiley Games). If you haven't looked into this card-activation set of rules, I encourage you to for its simplicity and versatility in being suitable for everything from ancients to moderns. This would be our first time using FoL for moderns and with some minor tweaks the Baron has captured another genre his rules will cater to.

A little over a week ago we put said rules and toys to the test. Two SEAL teams and one team of U.S. contractors would attempt to extract a captured high-value asset from an abandoned coalition compound being used as a base of operations by insurgents. Three insurgent teams would attempt to stymie the mission. FoL uses a special 52-card deck (including jokers) to individually activate each model per turn. If a joker was drawn, one of several scenario events from air support for the U.S. teams to an IED detonation for the insurgents would take place. 10-sided and 12-sided die are used for combat and tasks. With the help of some poor rolling by the insurgents and some lopsided team qualities (to be refined), the good guys would conquer on this night.

A Blackhawk surveys the area of ops prior to insertion

As tow teams make their way to the compound, a third team approaches in a Humvee

A CIA agent surveys the neighborhood.

Insurgents begin to flock to the sound of gunfire.

After sustaining damage from an RPG, a team spills from the Humvee to take up positions around the compound.

A SEAL canine would do considerable damage to the insurgents. After being wounded, patched up by a SEAL medic, and wounded again, it would survive the mission.

After a contractor/CIA team breached the compound wall, insurgents were not able to hold back the assault. 

WW2 - Pacific At The Sgt's Bunker

It's been a long long time since I've taken the time to sit down and post, but had to share some pics of the Bolt Action game Scott L. hosted the other night. The objective of several U.S. Marine and Aussie Chindit units would be to penetrate into a Pacific island jungle and wreak havoc on the occupying Japanese forces. We have discovered and it is the prevailing opinion of the Basement Generals that a game of Bolt Action is best played with 2 - 4 players. Scott had an interesting idea of trisecting the table to have three one on one matches taking place side by side. It seemed to work well and we finished the games with time to spare. You can catch more of Scott's work over at Sergeant's Bunker. Nice job, Scott.

 The table is set

 A squad of Marines are past the seawall and into the jungle

 A pair of Japanese units lay in wait

 A Japanese mortar team would prove to be a pest to yours truly, but nothing more

Australian units moving beyond the seawall