Friday 29 March 2019

Blasthof Bridge

Or 90 minutes, 80 figures and 5 players.
You may recognise the name of the battle - it was the first of the scenarios in Charge!
For the game I assembled a selection of 54mm toys and four players to shove them around.
Tim C and Richard led the Elector's forces while John and Martin represented the Empire.
In brief, the Elector's forces had to deny the bridge to the enemy while trying to blow it up.
Above - the Electoral Army.  Below - The Imperialists.

The field of battle.  All 7x5 feet of it.  (photo by Martin Rapier)
 The Imperial cavalry set off at the trot...
...while the Elector's dragoons crept down the other flank.
 The armies formed up and a brisk exchange of fire followed.

The Imperial cuirassiers (right and below) had a think about crossing the stream but decided against it.  Wise fellows!

 In the centre, Imperial infantry saw off (just) the Elector's dragoons
Electoral artillery in action.  I'm not sure if the gun captain (right) is giving an order or expressing an opinion. (photo by Martin)
 Electoral artillery laying down a barrage of (pretty ineffectual) fire.
 Having trotted round behind their infantry, the cuirassiers splashed across the stream...

...and got stuck in to the dragoons.  The latter soon fled and the cuirassiers 
chased them - never to be seen for the remainder of the game.
Endgame.  The armies had fought themselves to a standstill. and an honourable draw was agreed.  The Elector's sappers, meanwhile, had tired of dodging gunfire while carrying barrels of gunpowder and skulked off to the pub...(photo by Martin)

My thanks again to all of the players, and especially to Martin for the use of his photos.
The toys are mostly plastic figures by BMC, ACTA, Armies in Plastic and Imex.  The senior officers on both sides are metal castings of unknown origin.  Many of the plastics came from Portland Little Wars.

10 comments:

tradgardmastare said...

I really like the look of the game and figures too.

Anthony Morton said...

Lovely looking game Tim! I also liked your WW2 game where you used Deetail infantry with Solido tanks. Do you think that's the way to go when doing WW2 and later, rather than using 1/32 tanks? Cheers, Anthony.

Tim Gow said...

Tradgardmastare
Thanks Alan.

Tim Gow said...

Anthony M
Very definitely! Have a look at the many photos of Little Cold Wars games if you need further convincing.

Archduke Piccolo said...

Great to see others using BMC figures. Crude though they are, they have a charm of their own, don't you reckon? But... where do you get the horse? As my own BMC forces are made up frankly as AWI, can you recommend, preferably plastic, suitable cavalry figures? I don't require many: 5-6 a side will do nicely.
Cheers,
Ion

Brian Carrick said...

Lovely figures, and very sensible of you to let someone else do all the hard work painting them!

Tim Gow said...

Archduke Piccolo
I rather like the BMC figures as they are cheap and not overburdened with detail. The latter fits in with my ‘shiny toy Solder’ approach to painting. The cavalry in the game were mostly by A Call To Arms - napoleonic with head swaps. The armoured cuirassiers are from the ACTA ECW range. Armies in Plastic also do C18 cavalry.

Tim Gow said...

Brian Carrick
Thanks Brian. I’d been a bit apprehensive about painting large numbers of C18 troops, so I was pleased to secure a couple of armies already painted!

Chris said...

For cavalry I bought the AWI troopers from Armies in Plastic, specifically to play Blasthof Bridge. They all wear tricorns, unfortunately, but they are a reasonable match for BMC figures in terms of style and shall we say muted detail; they paint up easily, are readily available, and are fairly inexpensive.

Chris Johnson

Tim Gow said...

Chris
The AIP cavalry are very useful - particularly if like me you take the view that one bloke in a 3-cornered hat looks pretty much like any other....