Oxford Wargamers friendly competition

Oxford Wargamer's Round Robin Competition.

The Oxford club invited teams of four from three other clubs to take part in their annual “round robin” competition. Thames Valley sent a team.

The competition is organised for a fun day for all. Four teams, each of four players, play four games. One member from each team playing a different game, and then moving to another game in subsequent sessions. Thus everyone plays everything, and hopefully against different people.

All the games were written, or modified from extant rules by the Oxford club. The emphasis was on simplicity, so that four people could pick up the rules and play a game or two within a 1½ hour session.



Good games!

Oxford Wargamer's Round Robin Competition.

The Oxford club invited teams of four from three other clubs to take part in their annual “round robin” competition. Thames Valley sent a team.

The competition is organised for a fun day for all. Four teams, each of four players, play four games. One member from each team playing a different game, and then moving to another game in subsequent sessions. Thus everyone plays everything, and hopefully against different people.

All the games were written, or modified from extant rules by the Oxford club. The emphasis was on simplicity, so that four people could pick up the rules and play a game or two within a 1½ hour session.

Good games!

There was an ACW game for two sides using a familiar rule type for the period. The idea being to hold and take terrain features for points. The team with the most won. First and second places being determined by the person who inflicted most casualties on the enemy. It took a while to realise that the key to the game was to take ground, regardless of casualties, to ensure being first or second. I realised it too late!

The second game was all the players against the umpire (The Umpire Strikes Back?). The Umpire had a bunch of elephants to hurl across the field against a phalanx. The phalanx did no fighting but were targets for the elephants, each player being responsible for defending ¼ of the phalanx. To this end the players had four skirmish units to shoot the elephants to try to kill them or, at the least, to herd them into some else's part of the table. There was also skulduggery possible by trapping another player's skirmisher against an advancing elephant, leaving him nowhere to go.

The third game was a game for four separate player's. Fuzzy wuzzies attacking a square. Each player controlling a bunch of attackers as well as a side of the square. Points awarded for casualties or breaking the square. If you attacked your own side of the square you inflicted points on yourself whichever way the fight went! An initiative based game, hard to build a strategy as the player with initiative was able to move or rotate the square. Fun game.



The last game was a double blind game, where only the umpire knew where all the player's were. North American Indians spying out the opposition's camp (French Indian wars). A very good game with the umpire able to keep both sides, divided by a screen, sufficiently in the dark as to the action of the opposition. Two teams of two (the winer decided on points) had to sneak their Indian scouts across the table, observe the enemy camp for as long as possible, and then sneak back. The Enemy trying the same thing in the opposite direction. If you saw the enemy you were allowed to shoot arrows at him!

The Thames Valley team were able to hold first place for the first two sessions, but then took a disastrous dive during the third. Still we managed to fight back a bit in the fourth session to finish second overall.

I hope that I can go to this event again. A suggestion from the hosts was that each team bring a game with an umpire, sound good to me. Another suggestion was that maybe we could host a similar event in late Spring/early Summer.

Afghanistan game in 6mm

A game was played using the modern variant of Blitzkreig Commander in 6mm, set in modern Afghanistan.
Having played Blitzkrieg commander a couple of weeks ago Chris, Alan and Pete agreed to a try out the modern version, Cold War Commander, umpired by Steve.

The scenario was a modern Middle East one with a Battalion of US marines supported by air, artillery and a tank on a search and destroy mission. Alan and Pete took a command each. Chris played the insurgent side with hidden deployment to add a bit of an edge to the US players.

The game started with Pete clearing the first of a number of built up areas whilst Alan moved forward through open ground on the left to a tree line and a BUA beyond. Pete learnt the first of a few little tricks in the rules and hit a booby trap. Whilst his platoon survived he decided to move a little more carefully in future!

Alan meanwhile moved quickly taking a little sniper fire but getting his three stands into the tree line ready to move on to the BUA ahead. Without waiting for Pete to catch up on the left Alan advanced on the BUA and immediately prompted Chris to declare the first two of his hidden units. Catching the marines in the open with opportunity fire two stands were suppressed. Alan applied the excellent maxim of ‘if in doubt charge’! Sadly marines crossing open ground to assault superior numbers well dug in to buildings was doomed to failure and his stand was lost.

Alan pulled back to the tree line and engaged in a protracted fire fight with the well dug in insurgents. Artillery and an air strike failed to dislodge them. Pete had meanwhile cleared the first BUA and moving in to the second bumped more of Chris’ forces. The fire fight was inconclusive for a little until Pete and Alan between them managed to coordinate fire and kill some of Chris forces. Putting the heavily armoured and pretty impregnable M1 on a flank posed too much of a threat and Chris’ second trick of the evening was for his forces facing Pete to pull back out of sight and ‘hide’.

Having cleared the second BUA and with armour support the Marines were able to form a good firing line ready to assault the two final BUA. Chris now threw caution to the wind and declared all his remaining forces in them. A fire fight began but Pete and Alan pressed their advantage of air power, artillery and armour to slowly wear Chris insurgents down. With one stand off his break point and no hope of turning the tide Chris declared a win for the USMC. Overall a good game. CWC has simple mechanisms and plays fast with subtleties that give real complexity and uncertainty. Time to start painting up those T72 to give the marines a bit of heavy opposition!

Another Napoleonic game

We had another game using the General de Brigade rules but this time based on one of the scenarios from the book. The game started with the British advancing across the table in thick fog towards an as yet not seen French rearguard.

After about eight game turns the British right and French left began trading shots with the Cacadores running away like girls leaving the remainder of the brigade to fend for themselves and managed to just pass their morale test (it was a bad dice night for the British).

meanwhile the British pressed on with a very weak firefight on the extreme right (I guess the fog dampened their powder, or was it more poor dice rolling?).

At this point the French battery started up and, despite some poor dice, managed to cause some casualties on the British line who then failed to charge home right in front of the guns, with damp powder.

The second British brigade advanced out of the clearing fog at this point and the French began to withdraw. A charge by the Light Dragoons, which was met with a lacklustre counter charge by the French dragoons caused the latter to run away and the British, by sheer luck, managed to stop their cavalry from following up.

At this stage it was time to pack up and it was decided that the cinclusion was an honourable draw.