big hex wargames - part 2; Napoleon's Last Battles

And another vintage and great game. Napoleon's Last battles was designed by Kevin Zucker and published by SPI in the 1970's. I think it's a great game and still stands the test of time. It was a 'quad' game in that it was 4 individual games (each with less than 100 counters) which could be joined together to get a campaign game of the Waterloo campaign in 1815. 

In this picture is half of the overall campaign game map with my big version at the back and the originals at the bottom front. The two maps are Quatre Bras on the left and Lingy on the right. These two games make a great start to the campaign, with the French player having to make an important decison about where to send his 1st Corps. The other two game maps are Waterloo and Wavre and would add the same size map to the north (top) of these maps. 

And the counters for the game; 1/2 inch originals on the left and my home made versions on the right. All the home-made counters are scanned from the originals, printed and then mounted on 3mm foamboard which is very easy to cut. After scanning the counters, I added a coloured stripe at the bottom of the counter to indicate the corps or division. This helps to identify the units and their commanders for the command and control system in the campaign game. All this takes time, but the end result looks good on the table top. 

big hex boardgames - part 1; the Battle of the Bulge

No posts for a while. Simple answer really. A friend mentioned a couple of boardgames I liked, so painting was abandoned for a while in favour of pulling old and favorite boardgames from the shelves, setting them up and playing. 

But it also put me in mind of an ongoing project I have. I'm scanning the maps and counters of old classic games and then blowing up the maps and counters to double size. This means I can spread out a game on a 6 x 4 foot table and it can look quite impressive. Here are a couple of examples - photos of others will follow in due course.

First is Avalon Hill's classic Battle of the Bulge - the 1981 edition. My home made map is in the background and the orginal on top at the bottom. The original game has 16mm hexes and 1/2 inch counters. The big map is about 5 x 4 foot with double sized hexes.  

And the counters.  On the left are the original game's 1/2 inch counters and on the right my 1 inch counters. I took the strengths from the Battle of the Bulge 81 but took the counter artwork from another Bulge game; Bitter Woods, because each unit counter in that game has the divisional symbol on it. 

From the left and top to bottom are a German parachute infantry regiment, part of 2nd Panzer, part of Panzer Lehr and the panzer regiment of the 116th Panzer (the greyhounds). Column two contains 1st SS Panzer, a regiment of 12th SS, an infantry regiment from 352 division and a Werfer regiment. For the Allies in column 3 there is an artillery regiment, the 506th Parachute regiment from the 101st Airborne (the screaming eagles), CCA of 7th armoured and a regiment from 2nd Armoured. Last column has the British 33rd tank brigade and the 26th Infantry from the 1st infantry division (the big red one).