Saga Grande Melee

Just a month ago I competed in the 2025 Saga Grande Mélée that David K and our club has. This has been a very successful event in the past, and follows up on a great year for Saga at Boutique L'abyss with most months having 1-2 Saga nights.

This year there were 14 players, the results were as follows:

I was very pleased to have placed 6th!

Here are some of my photos:

Many thanks to David for putting on a great event.

Some of the Players:

I am the old guy!

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Pickett's Charge-Early's Countercharge December 1862

About a month ago myself and Graham got together to play a game of Pickett's Charge at my apartment. This was the first time I had played the ruleset in almost 5 years and it was Graham's first go. With the success of our GdA wargaming in the Napoleonic era, I felt it was time to get in more divisional wargaming, this time with the American Civil War.

I already had a fairly large Union army but had no CSA troops, but with the help of Old Guard Painters in the Ukraine and Gajo Games in Utah, I was able to field a small Confederate force for wargaming. I am hoping to put together a Pickett's Charge game for our club's first Lardy Day that is coming up in January. After quite a bit of research I decided that an interesting engagement to play out on the table was Early's Countercharge against Meade during the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862. 

I decided to make all the troops regulars, with both Commanders having 5 Staff Officers (ADCs). I played the attacker while Graham played the defending USA forces. Almost all the USA regiments were standard sized while the majority of the CSA regiments were small. 

I will not do a report but we were able to get in 8-9 turns before it became obvious that the Confederate attack had failed. Here are some photos from the game.

CSA to the left.

Summary

This was a very useful test of the scenario I hope to put on for Lardy Day.

Table Setup- The first thing that was obvious to me was that the rail tracks were out of scale for 15mm wargaming. I have redone these now and I hope they look better on the table. I also placed too many linear obstacles on the table making the CSA advance quite difficult. Otherwise the table seemed ok and with the game being fought along the short axis should bring the troops into combat fairly quickly.

Order of Battle-I think it better to go with just 4 Staff Officers for the Union with 5 for the Confederates. I also need to combine most of the CSA regiments to have more standard sized units on the table. I think it is OK to keep every one has regulars for what is essentially a demo game. I will deploy all the troops with the Union in line and the Confederates in column.

Anyway that is the plan, let us see if anyone signs up for the game.

Chain of Command x 4!

 

It seems I might be starting to lose interest in posting to my blog, this does not indicate though that I have lost interest in gaming. Three weeks ago in 5 days I had 4 games of CoC. By now I have completely forgotten the details and in one of the games I even forgot to take any photos. But this is what we have.

Game 1

This was the next game in myself and Graham's Too Many Rivers campaign. We played at Graham's house and this was my second go at Table 5, but turn 6. This was a must win game for me as if I lost and Graham's engineers arrived on table 6, this would give an automatic marginal victory to the British. I was fighting with a platoon missing a whole section and I had minimal support. I felt that the only thing I could do in this scenario (1940 Blitzkrieg) was to drop the British Force Morale so I went with the Bunker Buster with its mighty HE effect. The British have a tendency to stay in buildings and behind walls so the reduction of cover with HE would be useful. I can not remember exactly how the game went but here are some photos.

I do remember that my FM dropped to a point where I had to withdraw thus opening the door to a British victory in the campaign. Graham rolled a d6 and got a 5, a British Marginal Victory in the campaign. Well played Graham.

Game 2

This was an introductory game for one of our club members who had yet to play a WWII miniature game. Helge is primarily a painter now aside from being an important member of the club's Général d'armée and Saga squads. He does, however, have extensive experience in the Warhammer world as well as other fantasy games. He is an excellent player, I am not sure if I ever have beaten him in any game.

We played at his place as he does have an extensive collection of terrain and a very nice gaming room. I brought a 20mm British and German platoons with some supports and we played Attack and Defend scenario from the V2. It was quite a game and Helge had very little problem picking up the mechanics as well as the strategy of the game. I hope to see him again at the CoC table. No photos, I am afraid.

Game 3

The next day I went for a 28mm game at PY's, with whom I have been playing the longest in Montreal in respect to CoC. He also has an excellent gaming room and beautiful terrain and figures. He is in the middle of the Von Luck campaign with Graham so we decided to play whatever he had set up on the table. This was table 2, I believe, and I played the attacking Germans against a well entrenched British Airborne platoon. Again the Attack and Defend scenario from v2.

This was quite a good game and I came close to seizing one of the objectives but time and Force Morale ran out before I could do it. PY played a great game but he probably had 10 double phases to each of my one. This really stymied my advance. Of note is there was some debate about the Attack and Defend scenario design in the game the day before with Helge. There certainly no problems in this game and the scenario was put further to the test 2 days later at the Abyss.

Game 4

This was my last CoC game for the year and it was with Michel, another club member. He has extensive experience with WWII rulesets, I believe most recently with BattleGroup. He has been very open to trying CoC though and this was his third game. I set up the table and brought the figures to the Abyss, our local gaming club. As noted this was again the Attack and Defend scenario. Michel has had enough experience with CoC so we played full game including the Patrol Phase and Support selection.

This was again an excellent game with me playing the Attacking Brits against a German Grenadier platoon. We played along the short axis of the table to speed things up and this worked quite well.  Michel covered his right flank with barbed wire. I made the mistake of splitting my forces trying to attack on both flanks. This did not work out well for me and although I was able to weaken the Germans it was not enough and again a FM failure happened before I could seize the objective. Well played Michel, another challenging game.

Well it was great series of CoC games to end the WWII gaming season, on to 2026!

German Vehicles in 1/72

 

I have had my resin printer busy recently filling in some gaps for my WWII German vehicle collection. I have a Mar 3 Pro and am using water washable ABS resin which works like a charm. I have all switched over to Lychee Slicer which offers much improved pre processing STL files. I have yet to have a failure with it and the hollowing and placement of drain holes is really quite good.

Almost all these STL's are off Thingiverse except the Hetzer which is from RKX kickstarter. It is a bit of work to figure out the scale sometimes but I have found that this online Scale Converter is quite useful. 

37 U304(f) P107

SdKfz 222

SdKfz 221

Pak 40 auf S307(f)

15cmsFH13 Lorraine Schlepper(f)

Hetzer

SdKfz 232

SdKfz 231

I went and counted my German vehicles and have 47! Too many maybe but I think I am close to finished. Probably need 1 more EW PzIV and a Jagdpanzer. 

Thanks for looking.