Mons 1914

[Sean Clark]

A rather stylised table for Mons 1914. A found a very old scenario for Mons written for the 1st edition of Square Bashing and so have tried to convert it for 2nd edition.

There is a lot of fancy dressing in the table that has no in game effect other than to look nice.

The Condee canal actually runs along the grid line  not within a square as advised in the rules.

You may have notice I'm missing the actual bridges. I'll rectify that this evening. I've no idea whether this will work as a scenario. The British have 8 professional battalions against 18 regular German battalions.

This is a play test. I may expand the table to 5 or even 6 feet to give more width.



The rail crossing the Canal  north of Nimy is where Lt. Deese and Private Godfrey earned the first 2 VC's of the war defending the rail bridge.

Hopefully if this works out   I'll send it into the Mill.

[martin goddard]

I think that looks just fine Sean.
Ideal for the WWW weekend later in the year?
I reckon it is best at that size then it can be played quickly and thus maybe twice?


martin

[DorchesterBede]

Sean

About the time of the SB rewrite Stewart and I wrote a Mons scenario using the old SB scenario. We played it on a  6 x 4 table allowing the Germans ten turns to break through, I think we used the armies as per the old scenario feeding the Germans in over a number of turns, not sure if Stewart still has this adaption. We played it a number of times and it proved difficult for the Germans to break through. I'll ask Stewart the next time I see him.

Chris 

[Leman (Andy)]

This is a very interesting thread for me to follow, as most of the Mons scenarios I have looked at are enormous and difficult to replicate in 15mm (on my table). As regards terrain I think yours looks great and is definitely wargame playable friendly. Last night I had a look at a photo report on Youtube of Salute and, impressive as the tables were, I couldn't help but wonder if it has now become a military diorama show.

[Sean Clark]

Troops now laid out. I've changed the Canal as I remembered I'd made one for a 6mm game using Great War Spearhead.

I think itll be the aame scenario Chris. I found it in an old folder from the original Yahoo Group  written for 1st ed Square Bashing. It's based based on Mons 23rd August 1914. It's the extreme right wing of the British army. The French are way over on their right (top of picture). If you were in a hot-air balloon facing the bottom of the picture you'd see the Channel.

The small British army was the only volunteer army in Europe at the start of the war. They were professional soldiers. By Christmas, it had been all but destroyed.

It was here that the first two Victoria Crosses were won...at the rail bridge at Nimy to be precise (zoom in to see it.) Lt  Dease and Private Godfrey of the 4th Royal Fusiliers manned a machine gun on the bridge and held up the German army, giving time for the great retreat to begin and saving countless British lives  Dease was killed, but Godfrey survived, albeit was taken prisoner and spent the rest of the war as a POW  receiving his VC on release in 1918

I'm playing this game solo so that I can tweak the scenario where required before taking it to the club. My players are well educated on the First World War  , specializing in Mons...so no pressure!

Things I'm thinking about so far:

Use the Canal rules as written. Maybe tweak them just for this game if it is just too hard for the Germans to get anywhere.

The British are positioned historically, but have no reinforcements.

The Germans have quite a lot of reinforcements, including a flank attack. Not sure whether to have this arrive when the countdown reaches a certain point or to just roll for them as per normal.

I'm tempted to increase Square occupancy to allow an MG plus 3 other  units in a square, but to still only allow 3 units to count in an assault. This helps the Germans to begin with.

I've also changed a couple of templates to 6"x6"...notably Nimy, Jemapes and Obourg and a hill. This is all to simply fit it all on to the table and to show that Nimy, Jemapes and Obourg were smaller than Mons. In fact the intent is that the Mons template is just part of the town with the rest behind it off table.

@Andy...this is a very stylised and abstract game. I'm not entirely sure I should have Jemapes on the table. Maybe if I increase the width to 5'. The big game as per the rules uses 6', but 5' would probably do.

[Panzer21]

As regards terrain I think yours looks great and is definitely wargame playable friendly. Last night I had a look at a photo report on Youtube of Salute and, impressive as the tables were, I couldn't help but wonder if it has now become a military diorama show.

That's funny, I had a similar reaction myself. Without disparaging the creative ability, it did occur to me that in many of the games the toy soldiers seemed to be playing second fiddle to the terrain........
I suspect it's much easier to create eye-catching terrain than wargames figures. Unfortunately it has lead to an ever increasing number of battles fought next to mountains, coasts (with ships) or castles or my pet hate, desert games that look like Stalingrad due to the amount of buildings (what part of "desert" do people not understand?)

Giver me the games that Xavier and co play in France any day. Attractive terrain without it being OTT or too dominating.
Neil

[Sean Clark]

How odd! I thought exactly the same looking at a couple of videos from Salute. Particularly in the skirmish games where you don't have the wow factor of massed ranks of troops, the figures become lost in the spectacular (or just crowded) terrain. The figures may as well be cardboard chips or unpainted or just painted in a basic manner. Any more effort than that is lost to the casual observer who doesn't stop to seek out the figures.