Andrew Frantz

Forgot to take more pictures during, but I’m making the most of the time off by teaching myself some new game systems. This week was the Jours de Gloire rules by Fred Bey. Started off with one of my favorites, Jena. Surely botched some rules, but felt thematic and gave a surprisingly tense game!

On the third attempt, the British push into Fontenay!!

As casualties grow and all the supporting armour gets lost in the mist, the British call off their attack.

Vicious firefight ensues…

Will give it a look!

Hoping so! The solo bots that have appeared in the Lard Mags (playing against “SID”) are quite fun, too!

Just gives a little more friction than a standalone solo game. Started it with Scottish Corridor back in 2019, but didn’t take it far!

Thanks! Had started something similar pre-pandemic but hadn’t followed thru.

Trying to keep myself sane during shutdown with a Pint Sized Campaign for Chain of Command, with a twist. @herrbrush67.bsky.social & @andycrow.bsky.social will be acting as COs, choosing supports and issuing broad orders for each game and I’ll play the actions out. #spreadthelard

Thanks to a great shot from a Pak36 a perfectly-timed mortar barrage, and a string of three phases just when he needed, young Owen gets a second unit of the table to secure victory!

Some 1940 Chain of Command with the boy. Would help if I’d read the scenario (Blitzkrieg) correctly, but still hanging in there. #spreadthelard

Working on some Brickskrieg units with Owen

And I suppose you can be the one person in the world playing Big Chain of Command with an all Slovak force.

Didn’t you already have a Paul Hicks-sculpted platoon?

@northstarfigs.bsky.social any chance we’ll see another Silver Bayonet single figure sale this year?

Exhibit B

Suffice it to say, Owen had a great time playing games at Historicon!

Historicon bound!

First play of my most recent Kickstarter - WWII Commander Vol II Market-Garden from @compassgames! Only three turns in but really enjoying it. Nice operational feel without too much crunch!

And Chris just announced a summer sale!

That was the one I was referring to

Typical of Pen & Sword. I have 3 Great War books of their with the same soldier on the spine.

Totally get that! Plenty of fun little engagements out that way - and a great Sharp Practice scenario supplement for it, too!

And I mean that as no disrespect to Ed, who was an inspiration to me & countless other NPS folks, but you write for your target audience and the reading public was not the focus of those. The second volume of Wil Greene’s trilogy came out in April. Really enjoy those. Just so few books on Petersburg

That paperback has been promised for years (at least since 2021), so we’ll see. Took forever to get a reprint of “The Last Citadel” for the park. The Bearss book is informative, but is just reformatted versions of internal reports are wrote for the NPS. Definitely some more engaging ones out there.

You’ll be pleased to know that one of the other special programs I did last week was about the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery, whose fateful charged is immortalized on the wall of the Shed O’ War!

I was so caught up with the tour (folks arrived 30 min earlier and stayed 30 min after) I forgot to take some photos. Will send some along the next time I’m out there!

It also didn’t help that the effects of my handgrenaten were nil :)

I hadn’t taken into account that the heavy cover bonus is no longer a 50% increase for the defender but a 50% decrease for the attacker

It wasn’t casualties actually. I miscalculated the odds and it was an auto break caused by one side having 4 times as many dice as the other.