VCOW February 2021 - Saturday Afternoon & Sunday Morning.

 After my game in the morning, I had two more sessions lined up Saturday afternoon, and one more game on Sunday morning.

The first session was the massively oversubscribed Portable Wargame session from Bob Cordery and his new on-line gaming buddy, historian Gary Sheffield.

There is a lot of buzz round "TPW", and they are Bob's best selling set of rules, which have spawned numerous offshoots. As they use a simple grid and few units on a small board they should be ideal for use across the internet, compared to my sprawling attempts to get a game using a table groaning with figures working.

Bob went back over the history of his writing of TPW, which was interesting as I had forgotten a lot of it (as, I think, Bob had, as he didn't credit the "Red Square" games by Richard Brooks which are a clear influence).

After that Bob went through the essentials of how to run an online wargame, which was interesting, as it showed how two different people can come to different conclusions on the same problem when working in isolation.

After that we played a quick game, umpired by Gary Sheffield using his version of Bob's rules (which did lead to a bit of confusion). We had six units a side, and three players, so it was squeezing a lot into a small scenario. I was part of the Bluvians, who had to march on from the top, and capture the farm in the middle, and hold the border, which is the farm and the two hills. The Grevians had the same orders and came on from the bottom.

It was a bruising encounter for both sides, but we came out winners in the end. The rules didn't work as I remembered them, but given the limitations Bob has imposed upon the design they provide a quick, workable system that gives good results. They are in a category of rules which covers some other simple systems, such as Neil Thomas' OHW, but provide a bit more depth.

After a break for afternoon tea (alas no Knuston cakes and biscuits) I then logged on to play a refight of Dettingen, run by John Armatys from Sheffield.

John and the Sheffield crew have been running online games for longer than anyone else I know during the pandemic (including me) and did a trial run of "Dicing With Death" for me in the summer. They have got increasingly slick, and John has worked out a way of playing his "Brown Bess Squared" musket era rules not only on a grid, but by using Powerpoint and pieces of Powerpoint graphics using the MapSyms font.

Tony & I were the French, north of the stream. This is the set up position, before John turned the colours on. I was in charge of the cavalry, Tony was the c-in-c (BTW there were people other than Tony at VCOW, it just turned out we'd signed up for the same things).

I didn't screen shot every  move, but I opened the game by storming across the battlefield, to try and turn the Pragmatic force's flank.

Initially this had mixed results.

However, in the end, I prevailed, although I was slowed down by my General being wounded, which stopped my Guard Cavalry unit moving for 3 turns. As it was, the allies got away across the stream, only losing all their artillery, cavalry and Austrian allies in the process.

This was a fast, fun, game. The Powerpoint worked very well, showing how John has developed a simple system for online games. Shame there's no figures on view, but for what we were doing it worked very well. An excellent game, with straightforward unfussy umpiring.

The last game of the weekend was Mark Flanagan's use of OHW to run a Peloponnesian War hoplite battle. The Athenians had landed to support their Gaton allies in a local dispute where the Spartans had backed the other side.

It was a fairly standard match up for a hoplite battle. The Gatons & Athenians are on the right. I was the Gatons, nearest the camera. I had some militia hoplites and slingers. I was faced by some cavalry.

To be brutally honest about OHW there is one tactic, pretty much, in the ancient rules. That is make your opponent move close enough to you so you can charge them first. If you can, get a unit on their flank as well, or get in a flank charge first, but basically that's it. The combat system is just rolling one d6, and you can't retreat out of close combat once it has initiated. It's an ideal system for solo games as you don't really care which side wins or loses.

Having said that, as I had 2 units against one (I think we got our deployment right. Having those slingers out in the middle isn't a game winning tactic, and it gave us a chance to get in an overlap) I succeeded in pulling the cavalry round and getting a two on one to roll them up quickly.

As it was, I wasn't quick enough breaking them. We should have held our main line back one turn. As it was everyone one of our main line Athenian units broke and ran in the same turn, pretty much exclusively because they got hit first. As I said, OHW isn't that subtle as a set of rules played straight, and the book is mainly worth it for the scenarios. It's a good starting point for development.

Still, a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning with some new and old friends.

VCOW isn't COW, but it's a winner and has a role post pandemic.