Multi-Prong Progress

I have taken a few days off and made progress on three wargame related activities.

DBN Work in Progress

DBN

I inventoried my  unpainted 15mm Napoleonics, separated out the figures needed for DBN, and started painting.  When first planning my DBN armies, I had focused on fielding every possible element for a French and Austrian army list.  Now I plan to select options that maximize reuse in Lasalle instead.  I am painting French Line, French Artillery, Austrian Jaegers and Grenzers,  and Confederation of the Rhine Cavalry.  I have more figures waiting for clean-up and priming.

DBA

To help him choose an army, Ryan and I played some more DBA, using available elements from my Spartan and Macedonian sets to simulate the Late Greek Thessalians fighting the Aitolians, a Psiloi heavy army. I wanted to try my hand at a light force. The Thessalians won both matches.

Round One

In the first game, the Aitolians ended up as the attackers, so Ryan placed minimal terrain on the board.  My Psiloi didn't have much bad going to use to its advantage, and Ryan protected his camp with Auxilia.  Despite my efforts to move around and flank him with the Light Horse and Auxilia, the Cavalry ended up killing off three Psiloi and the Light Horse element

Round Two

In the second bout, the Aitolians were defending, so I placed two steep hills (compulsory), a river placed 600 paces from a battlefield edge, and two woods as the terrain.  This gave me some additional options, but Ryan used Auxilia to secure two bad going terrain areas.  The river ended up as paltry, so it didn't have as much of an effect as hoped on the Thessalian's maneuverability.  The game took quite some time as both armies tried to gain advantage through maneuver.  The Light Horse spent much time moving, drawing off cavalry elements but otherwise not helping much.  My final strategy was to try to attack two cavalry and the Thessalian camp with the four Spear elements.  Before I could move the slow spear across the board, four Psiloi were individually picked off.

Ryan has decided on the Thessalians.  It met his requirement for a cavalry heavy force, and he wanted something within the theme of my collection.  We can play the Late Thessalians against the Macedonians, Spartans, and Galatians.  We have primed up some Essex hoplite figures that I already owned, so he will try his hand at painting tomorrow.  We also ordered Warmodeling (Fantassin) Thessalian cavalry elements and some more Essex Hoplites and Psiloi for his project.

BKC Inspiration

I just finished an excellent WW II history, An Army at Dawn, by Rick Atkinson.  The book covers the War in North Africa in 1942-1943, starting from the US and British joint amphibious landings to the fall of Tunis.  Having read little on the North Africa campaign, this book was a great primer.  It is the first of a trilogy, so I plan on picking up the next book which covers operations in Italy.

If I choose North Africa for my Blitzkrieg Commander II focus, I have some ideas now on the units and weapons that made the biggest difference for the Germans and the Americans.  The Germans will definitely have a Ju-88 Stuka for support.  I will mix up the American tank force to include Shermans and the weaker Stuarts.

I will do a lot more research this winter on the forces and also look at reuse for the US units for an Italian campaign.  The Afrika Korps paint jobs will not work for Italy considering that no Germans tanks left North Africa before the surrender.