Tuesday 8 March 2011

The old and the new: Command&Colors: Napoleonics with vintage figures

I'm not really sure which blog to put this on, so I'm posting it here and on the Hinton Hunter.

This weekend saw a visit almost to the Kingdom of Fife, to join Tony of Prometheus in Aspic in test playing Richard Borg's new Command&Colors Napoleonics with vintage figures - Tony's Peninsular French against my Hinton Hunt and Der Kriegspieler Russians and Prussians.

An emergency visit to my local timber merchants on Thursday morning equipped me with around 40 120mm square sabots made from 4mm MDF (£6 the lot); with these and three trays of figure we were good to go.

Others have been playing C&C: Napoleonics with figures (see Conrad Kinch's recent excursion on Joy and Forgetfulness) but the combination of Tony's hex based set up, and the vintage figures we used, made for an interesting spectacle. We played three games - the Rolica first French position and second French position scenarios to a conclusion, all within one day including lunch out and an Indian takeaway. The Russians and Prussians stood in for the British in these scenarios, using French (rather than British) unit characteristics.

The game worked well, was easy to pick up, thoroughly enjoyable and somehow seemed appropriate to the figures. Along with Tony, I wouldn't want it to be the only Napoleonic rules I ever played, but it was thoroughly enjoyable and refreshing to get three games played right through in such a short time. Plenty of surprises to keep you on the toes, and of course Tony had done all the hard work of customising the dice and cards from the game.

Here are two slideshows, one for each of the scenarios (we played the second one twice.

Battle of Rolica: French first position



Battle of Rolica: French second position

5 comments:

MSFoy said...

Great to see the pictures - nice job.

Though it seems kind of odd to regard anything to do with CCN as vintage, there is something about the feel of the game which gets close to how wargames used to be a long time ago. Also the 50-year-old 20mm figures on the very formal sabots on the gridded terrain - albeit the wrong shape cells - seems to me to be rather less than a million miles from the spirit of Joe Morschauser.

I'm sure he would have approved, anyway.

Tony

Conrad Kinch said...

Looks like a good time was had by all. CCN is definately in the old school mould in that it is very simple, though I think a great deal of thought and hard work went into that simplicity.

One of the other advantages of the game is that it does allow players time to have a chat and a pint if they are so inclined. I look forward to further reports.

BigLee said...

Can't comment on the rules (not familar with them myself) but I loved the pictures. Always a sucker for some wargaming eye candy!

Anonymous said...

I think you'll find that the game is designed by Richard Borg, not Richard Berg.

Vintage Wargaming said...

typo corrected, thanks