Pre-Christmas Fun and Games

The last Monday Night Session before Christmas. Next week it's Christmas Eve, so I guessed everyone else will be busy on one thing or another. Possibly even me.

I put on an old ADG. Very old. I designed this when I was in my very early 20s. I took it to one of the first COWs. I wrote up an article for "Miniature Wargames", too, and it appeared in Issue 12. This would be about 1983, I would guess.

The game was one of a series of games I designed at that time about what soldiers do when not fighting battles, - i.e. most of the time. This one was called "Old Charlie". It was about fox hunting as a British Officer during the Napoleonic Wars, inspired by reading that The Iron Duke had a pack of foxhounds with him in Spain, and would hunt with them most days when he could. I think, as well, that this activity appears in one of the Brigadier Gerard stories by Arthur Conan-Doyle.

The aim is to ride after the pack of hounds, jumping fences and so on, generally impressing your colleagues with your prowess as a huntsman and skill as a horseman. Victory points are awarded fro being at the front at the end of each turn, and for jumping fences and other things as well.

It was designed as a 6-8 player game, with the aim that one of the challenges would be not riding in to each other. As it was we were thin on the ground, with only Phil & Steve, so they took two riders each.


I still have all the playing aids and so on from 37 years ago, as I've never "upgraded" them with PC generated out put. It's all there in my neatest of handwriting. The little green labels (only green card I could find at the time) show the fence or ground difficulty.


Here's the array of huntsmen. The cards have a short bio and their "Derring Do" and "Horsemanship" scores. The white "D" is a direction indicator for the hounds.


Off they go. The hounds head through a fence, with the riders in hot pursuit


One of Phil's riders refuses the fence to the left. Steve's white-coated German ADC attempts the fence, only to take a tumble the other side. Steve's other rider is out of the picture to the right, jumping fences.


Soon everyone is over the fence and shouting "View Halloo" and so on. The fox got killed at this point, and Phil's lead rider with the white plume - Sir Arthur Guinness - won that round.

I quickly reset the fences and we gave it another go.


The hounds set off to the left from the off.


Again Steve went off to the right, in search of points for jumping fences. He was moving at the gallop, and had to draw an event card. This caused him to be startled by a stray goat, but he succeeded in staying on his horse.


The hounds had swung back more centrally. One of Phil's chaps attempted to jump a fence, only to find an abandoned cart the other side. Meanwhile, Steve's German was making good ground. Sir Arthur was lagging behind a bit.


Phil came to grief in the cart. One of the other riders is heading off left, pursued by a wild boar. As the fox is caught, Steve is closest and wins the second hunt.

The mechanisms are simple, - it's basic attack v defence values. The first role is Derring Do against how the fence looks, the second is horsemanship against how it actually turns out. There isn't much more to it than that. Still, it looks okay. As you can see I bought pretty much every British staff officer from the Minifigs Napoleonic range to use in the game. The dogs were from Irregular. All my original fences and hedges have mostly dissolved into powder over time.

This really is a hark back to a very early time. I think it was the first game I put on solo at COW. Previously me and my chum Derek had collaborated. I couldn't find a post COW write up of the game. It was an ADG, after all, but I seem to recall Arthur Harman and Charles S Grant playing, but that might have been other games in other years.

It played well enough. I think there must have been something about how I used to lay out the fences. They all seemed to be a bit brutal, and several riders fell. And the table might have been too large, as we never got out of the second field. The lack of players reduced the need for people to gallop to get ahead, and a lot of the fence surprises in the box never came out.

Still, good to get it all out. Back in the box but probably not for nearly 40 years.

Comments

  1. Looks like a fun game - I'd be really interested in a copy if you ever manage to get it in a form you could make one. I've got a range of 54mm huntsmen and women in my Imperial Miniatures toy soldiers ranges and it would make a fun 54mm skirmish style game...

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    Replies
    1. It was in Miniature Wargames no 12, which has enough info to work it all out. I have half a mind to do a compendium of my smaller games at some point after I've published the big set piece rules.

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    2. I have the MW cds somewhere so will look it up - thanks.

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    3. You're welcome. If all is not clear, let me know.

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