The Knights Round Table

The Knights Round Table – October 2024

Greetings my lords and lady’s.

Chris Parker 2024

Well here it is the end of October. I was shocked this morning when I was having my morning “cuppa” and saw snow flakes outside. Yes it is around 40 degrees here in my new, undisclosed location near the MA/NH border. Cold came suddenly after a nice week of what we used to call “Indian Summer”.

I have been very busy getting ready for Carnage 27 at Killington Lodge in VT. I have written earlier that I am running four games this year. Two are using Day of Battle “5” and two are using D-Day to Berlin.

One of my DoB games is Naverette, set in Spain in AD 1367 I believe. It pits The Black Prince and a small English 100 Years War style army against the kingdom of Castile. of course I don’t have any dismounted 100YW troops in 28mm so I have frantically been painting several units of them. I paint using my patented speed painting 🙂 process and crank them out fairly fast. In the image below you will see three units of nine figures each. The bases and flags are not done yet but you will get the idea.

Enter “Day of Battle – Masters Edition”

I have been working on new version of Day of Battle. I have recently been bitten by two alternating bugs that are driving me to this. The first is a parasitic insect know as “Battle Masters“. Produced in the 80’s I think I. I barely remember it when I was running the Toy soldier. I stumbled across a few POV videos on YouTube and got the bug. I realize the game is simplistic but I saw something in it and have embraced parts of it. Last year (I think) I painted up 40mm LOTR Elves, Orcs and Dwarves and ran The Battle of Five Armies at a number of local conventions here in new England (Huzzah, Mayhem, Carnage and Havoc). I did modify the game to a grid based table but played the rules pretty much stock. All of the convention games went over very well. The eagles were a bit hit 🙂

I have left those LOTR rules alone but modified the combat system to match the DoB philosophy using the Weapon of Choice among other mechanics. I also changed the game to a grid based game.

The second bug came from Simon Millers excellent Ancients game “To The strongest“. I watched a number of replays again on YouTube and really like the card activation system. I realize that with some modifications the history of this mechanism goes as far back as Warmaster and Black Powder (same author, Rick Priestly).

I took the card idea and modified the playing deck portion. In “To The Strongest” only the Aces and numbered cards are used (some players have gone to a D10). Briefly if you want a unit to perform an action you play a card on it. Initially any card but the Ace, which has a value of 1 will allow the action to happen. You can then move to another unit or continue to command that unit however every card you play on a previously activated unit must be a higher value. If you fail, the unit and the Battle Line it is associated with is done.

I decided to go with a full deck of 54 cards as I do in DoB. With an Ace as 1, all other face cards are a 5. Numbered cards are their own values. This gives me a bell curve in the middle at 5 points. Finally the joker, always a favorite card in DoB is equal to the actual number needed for the action. This has played very well in my solo games.

EISENHOWER

Ok I have discovered just this week that Sam Mustafa has released a new operational level set of rules called Eisenhower. I will admit that when I saw this I was quite taken aback and you could have called me mister gloom. Sam is a prolific author and designer with a huge following (church if you will). He also amazes me at how fast he can design and produce his games. Truly a master. Perhaps he is the “Frank Chadwick” of the 2020’s. He has built this game on his pervious game, Rommel which is a Divisional level game. Eisenhower and D-Day to Berlin do share some common points. Both games are square based. Both games have battalion strength, battalion counters. Eisenhower uses Sam’s favorite “Ops” control system while DDTB uses a dice system for movement (sorry Russ 🙁 ). Stacking in a zone is 3 units for Eisenhower and 4 for DDTB. Zones are close to the same scale. Two square miles and three square miles. Combat is very different with units in Eisenhower able to take three hits before being lost while in DDTB units are shattered, returning at detachment strength and then lost on the taking of another hit. Artillery is entirely different between the two and on combat battalions in Eisenhower seem to be used.

I highly recommend having a look at Sam’s game. Operational – corps level miniatures are very rare in out hobby.

Chris