Preparing For The Battle of Bushy Run

It's been awhile since my last post, so figured I'd do one about what I've been up to lately. Have a playtest next Friday of a Battle of Bushy Run scenario using One Hour Skirmish rules.

This will be the first day of the battle, while the British were still marching along the trail towards Fort Pitt with relief supplies. I may do the second/final day of the battle sometime in the future. Needed a few more trees for the scenario as the battle took place in the woodlands of present-day western Pennsylvania. Found a nice set trees on Amazon which sized up well for 28mm. Only thing needed was fixing them to bases. They come ready to be put into sleeves, but I chose to use exopy putty and base them individually on 60mm round bases.

My cheap Amazon airbrush actually worked (after thorough cleaning) to paint the trunks and bases.

This is how they came in a bag of 12. Next to them are some pack horses picked up from ebay - using several of them for the scenario.

As I also plan to run this game at our annual Boeing Museum of Flight game day next month, I wanted everything able to be set up and torn down quickly. This especially so since I have the afternoon period, and we have to be out of the museum NLT 5:00pm. The afternoon period runs from 1:30-4:30pm. Thankfully, the rules are fast play and should be done well within the time frame, I hope.

I dug out an old gaming table cloth - it's actually the very first one I ever used. It's from JoAnn's, and close to 20 years old. Haven't used it in a long time, so instead of using separate pieces for the road, I went ahead and spray painted the road/trail on the cloth directly. This will make set up and tear down of the table even quicker. I actually cut off about a foot from the long edge to make it 4'6" wide. One thing noted with the recent skirmish rules I've been using is the movement rate making it hard for troops to get where they need to be. For the scenario, the natives will be able to enter the table on the long edge lined with trees, as well as the short edge at the far end of where the British are marching towards. Basically an L-shaped ambush by the natives.

Plan to have a 4-player game, but can accomodate 6 players if needed. Currently there aren't many games scheduled for the afternoon period, and we usually have a good number of attendees. For troops, the natives will be in 6-man units, as well as Rangers and 60th Royal American light infantry. The main body of the British will be two 12-man units of Highlanders (one unit being grenadiers). The astute observer will note that the facings for the Highlanders should be blue (42nd) and green (77th), but reusing the figures from my Louisbourg game when they represented the 78th Fraser Highlanders with buff facings.

Anyway, just wanted to update the blog and let you all know what I've been working on. Until next time, best wishes and good health to you all.

One-Hour Skirmish Wargame - Operation Cobra

Well it's been quite awhile since posting, but just finished a very fun game using One-Hour Skirmish rules for the first time. Although it was the first time with the rules, I wanted to add vehicles to see how the rules worked. Glad I did, as it turned out nicely. There were two German players, and along with my buddy, two American players. We all had a unit of about 10 infantry, including an HMG team, an anti-tank team, and a tank. We allowed the HMG team to make one move per player phase as a house rule. I managed to take out a Panther and a Fallshirmjager HMG team early in the game thanks to lucky card draws. Although it was the first time with the rules, everyone already had the rules and were itching to play them. The rules are well-written, straight forward, and can be picked up quickly. We played about 7 or 8 turns rather quickly with Jokers being drawn. We ended the game as a stalemate with both sides having a few casualties, but not really making any kind of breakthrough. Here are a few pictures I managed to take during the game.

Panther moving up along with Fallshirmjager support.

My Sherman and the Panther dueling. We engaged each other in a couple of turns, with the Sherman finally being able to take out the Panther.

My buddy James' M-10 peaking out behind some ruins. He managed to keep the Panzer 4 opposite him at bay.

The Panzer 4 with a marker showing 3 accumulated damage points from earlier fire.

My Sherman moving past the burning Panther. The Fallshirmjagers had a panzerschreck and panzerfaust which failed to damage the Sherman during the game.

US 4th Armored Division infantry moving towards cover.

Heer on their left flank, supporting the Panzer 4.

Some 101st guys supporting the American left; they must've not gone to England with the rest of the division after D-Day.

Fallshirmjager in defensive positions. A panzerschreck poking out of the ruins.

4th Armored infantry occupying a ruined building.

Panzer 4 and supporting infantry.

Start of the game.

All in all a really nice return to gaming with a few friends. Hope to play the rules again with a Horse and Musket scenario. Thanks for stopping by and wishing you all the best.