Pursuit of VI Corps - 12 noon

The Lower Bridge. Map is Copyright of Henry Hyde

The Pursuit of VI Corps campaign continues; 

12 noon

The weather remains fine. Visibility is now at 176” (essentially this translates to 14½’ over the 6’ tables, so units on high ground can pretty much see all over the map, having regard for any line of sight obstructions.

Austrian Headquarters.

Klenau is in the process of moving his headquarters to the Large Farm (top right of map, covering the exit road). Assessment, the Lower Bridge appears lost and Froon’s troops are dispersed, possibly routing.

Up on the slopes and at the church behind the village, Austrian formations, though weakened are holding those positions. The French appear to be re-organising. 

We are in urgent need of Schwarzenberg’s 2nd Cavalry, disengaging from the slopes, crossing the ford and unifying our forces before he gets cut off.

Orders. No new orders.

French Headquarters.

Massena has moved his headquarters onto the upper slopes in front of the village and he now has an excellent view of the battlefield.

Assessment, the Austrians are on the backfoot, but the French forces immediately to hand are not in a position to pursue until they reorganise and Lasalle’s cavalry moves up from their success at the lower bridge, to support an assault at the church.

Orders. Molitor (3rd Infantry Division) - advance over the Lower Bridge and follow Lasalle up to church. Continue to advance until you can contact and engage the enemy. (This order will be received and acted upon at 2 PM).

Lull

There is an apparent lull across the battlefield as the French reorganise and neither side has the local initiative to act. 

Throughout the hour, artillery of both sides bombard as and where they can. Over on the slopes 14th Chasseur á Cheval have been particularly harangued by Schwarzenberg’s 1st Horse Artillery and are now unsteady.

Schwarzenberg has noted that in front him, the French infantry are disengaging and moving towards the village. He is in two minds about attacking Marulaz’s cavalry, who have remained to screen the departure of the infantry, but with the French now in control of the village he does not want to get drawn further south.

Resources - 

My other piece of webspace is called COMMANDERS, it has a variety of snippet based type pieces there. LINK

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html

The previous campaign turns (10 and 11 AM) can be found here - LINK

https://battlefieldswarriors.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-bridges-pursuit-of-vi-korps-10-am.html

Part story - Part Game …. Fighting Fantasy books.

A few eyes will light up at this title. A looong time ago (1982) there was a series of Fighting Fantasy books by the pens of Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. The first that I bought was The Forrest of Doom.

They were essentially paragraph-driven stories / role-playing games. You are on paragraph number 222 and it says something like 'Before you is a closed door and there is a passage to your left,  from where you can hear a noise that sounds like a hammer hitting an anvil - do you;

Want to go down the passage towards the noise - Turn to 74

Open the closed door and enter - Turn to 306'

You would then make your option and turn to that paragraph and the adventure continues.

Your interaction with the story comes from the character that you create at the outset. You roll dice and use the scores to determine your skill, stamina and luck. These values are used during 'play' as you fight monsters, pick locks, and find / use equipment / potions etc.

Anyway, I was in a local shop the other day and the first 12 books have been brought back into print. I picked up book 1 (of course) The Warlock of Firetop Mountain - this must be a nostalgic blast for many.

I am going to run with this as a bit of fun, but I will map my way around the place in an effort to have a serious go at this. When I used to play, I would madly dash through the paragraphs having no idea where I was relative to other locations that I had already visited … until I was slain!

Our opening words;

"At last your two-day hike is over. You unsheathe your sword, lay it on the ground and sigh with relief as you lower yourself down on the mossy rocks to sit for a moment's rest. You stretch, rub your eyes and finally look up to Firetop Mountain"

And so it begins!

I roll for my character traits and get extremely good rolls for Stamina and Luck, but not so much for skill. It appears that I might be a stupid but brave warrior perhaps!

Having regard for my traits, the Character that I have generated is ...

Gyrth, son of Godwin (I might have spent too much time with 1066 games recently :-) ).

I am to prove my warrior credentials by entering Warlock Mountain and dealing with all that Warlock Zagor can throw at me. You can see from my traits below, I am very brave and lucky, though perhaps a bit dim. Hopefully, by the sword I shall be up to the task!

Skill = 8

Stamina = 23

Luck = 12

A backpack with provisions (10 meals - which restores stamina)

A sword (surely this is a magnificent two-handed beast of a thing - we shall soon know!)

Leather Armour (hmmn - hopefully I will find something to add to this, perhaps the Warlock has an armoury …. but will I be lucky enough to find it!)

Shield (I feel a bit compelled to design a shield face or perhaps use a Victrix transfer!)

1 Potion of Skill ( you can choose one potion from a selection. I have taken this because my skill level is not great to start with). 

Well, here we go. I usually manage to last about an hour with these sort of things, whatever, this is going to be a lot of fun.

Dragon Ships & Iron Knights

 

Not so much out of the box, as hot off the printers press! I have just received a prototype copy of Dragon Ships & Iron Knights, to be published by Legion Games.

This boxed game contains the three battles of 1066, Gate Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.

The Heritage of the package is that I self produced Stamford Bridge and Hastings as a desk Top Published effort back in 2000 / 2001. In 2016, Revolution Games picked up the titles and published them as two separate games under the ‘Invasion 1066’ banner.

Legion Games are about to publish a game called ‘1066 Year of Destiny’ designed by Geoff Noble, which is a strategic covering of the tumultuous events of that year. Randy Lein at Legion Games wanted to publish a second game covering the tactical battles of 1066 to compliment Geoff’s strategic design.

The decision was taken to use my two games for the tactical side of things and that Geoff Noble would design the third battle of that year (Gate Fulford) using the same game engine, so that all three games could be presented in a single package and here we are!

I have taken possession of the prototype tactical game to do a thorough final proof read before publication and I must say the component quality is excellent and if you don’t mind me saying, it is just a lovely thing to see your own efforts given this sort of treatment.

The box is 1½” deep. We get three maps, one for each battle, each measuring 17” x 22” (so what are commonly termed half maps) and they are printed onto card. The hex sizes are 1” side to side to accommodate the big counters. 

Each of the battles gets its own rulebook printed on heavy paper with a nice sheen and in two column print format. The Stamford Bridge and Hasting booklets are 12 pages long and the Gate Fulford is set at 8 pages. All three booklets have the same standard rules presented in the first four and a half pages (i.e. the game engine is exactly the same across all three games), the rest of the booklets are exclusive to their relative game and include set-ups, special rules, historical and design notes.

The counters are lovely (by Ken Demyen as are the maps). You get two sheets of ¾” counters depicting units, leaders and rout markers. Some of the counters are shared across more than one battle.

Rounding out the package are three single sided, full colour, player aid sheets (again the work of Ken) on nice weighty card with a sheen to them. The first identifies all of the counter types and shows what the values on the units mean. The second has the charts for close combat, missile fire, reorganization and feigned cavalry attacks. There are also some illustrated examples on there such as charge arcs. The third card holds the terrain charts, movement allowances and the morale groupings that the system uses and again, there are a couple of illustrated examples on there.

So the next job now is to proof read and further play the games to stress test the charts and set-up information etc and make sure that they are right.

I will get some of that play test stuff out so that anyone interested can have a closer look at game parts and the system etc. 

I run a separate web space that is more snippet based than here. LINK;

https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html