About six weeks ago I agreed to host a game at our Drumbeat South gathering at the Chehalis Veterans Museum. It’s a wonderful venue if you happen to be in central Washington heading up or down I-5 to or from Portland. Kind of tucked away, I highly recommend a visit. It’s also a great, affordable venue for a game gathering. NHMGS has taken to sponsoring an event there twice a year and I really like it. Roomy enough, affordable. Food close by. It’s a yes from me.

A few pics I didn’t take of the Chehalis Veterans Museum. It’s an easy venue to like and the meeting space upstairs is first rate for a regional gathering.

The game I’ll be running at the Vets Mu on August 15th is another Take Action game. I guess I know longer think of these as playtests because I’ve sort or adopted them as my rules of choice for semi-skirmishy horse and musket rules. If Chris was to throw up his hands and abandon them tomorrow, I think I’d still play them just because of the options it gives to the players. Simple, easy to run, fun stuff.

I’m running a game I’ll call Burning Hesselberg, and it is another game rooted in the 1777 and beyond “Forage Wars” in New Jersey. These little struggles to control supplies, led to wanton destruction that drove New Jersey firmly into the Patriot camp. The British failed to bring Washington’s forces to a decisive battle and the alienation of the locals led General Howe to pack up and head for Philadelphia via a long voyage into Chesapeake Bay.

My scenario is a five player game with three British players running eight units and some wagons. Their goal is to sack a farming village and saw mill that has supported Washington’s forces. They have an interesting mix of troops with quality British dragoons and Hessian jaegers, some Loyalist regulars and Loyalist not-very-good militia. Their job is to torch as many buildings as possible and forage some useful resources for the troops back in Brunswick. The Americans forces, comprised of a mixed force of Continentals and militia is to make their job that much more difficult.

There is stuff to do to get ready. I needed to paint some figures–that I have of course. There were mounted and dismounted British dragoons. I needed more Loyalist regulars. And then there was the matter of some more fairly ratty looking Continentals. Lots of time to accomplish this, except that I volunteered to play test the game on July 25th at Wizard’s Keep, cutting three weeks off my timeline. Even so, things seem to be coming together. I’ve even added a couple more buildings to my meager collection including an Etsy 3D print of a water powered saw mill, I’m calling Sylvester’s mill. Things should be ready for the WK game. The scenario is written and I’m excited to give it a try. I’ll be sure to include a post with photos to fill you in.

This is Sylvester’s

I will be giving the American War of Independence a bit of a rest to pick up something different. I wrote earlier about doing something with the Peloponnesian War. Yes, Greeks, hoplites, spears, those guys. At Enfilade I bought a pair Xyston 15mm DBA armies for Sparta and Thebes. Though I parted with my many DBA armies a few years ago, there is a part of me that’s interested in playing again, and these armies offer an entry point to something larger. But nothing is ever quite as simple as it should be. I need bases and I’m going to avoid painting symbology on those wee, small 15mm shields. The Xyston figures need spears. So all that stuff must be ordered, and I have now done that.

My hope is that I can go ahead and do the 15mm thing without a lot of difficulty and the DBA’s can come together quickly. Then I’d like to move on to something a little more intense and that is using these same DBA figures to play the Control to Catastrophe rules. This game is played on a gridded game board. Of course, I don’t have a gridded game board so I’ll have to come up with one. I think I have something I can use and create a board. Because I’m playing with 15mm figures mounted on DBA bases, I don’t need a big space.

It’s not clear how many more figures I’ll need to do both DBA and C to C, so I’ll have to figure it out. However, I do have enough to start, plus bases, plus spears, plus shield transfers-or at least I will have enough when it all arrives from Mr. Litko, Mr. Xyston, and Mr. Victrix.