Liaoyang Game at the Club: Initial Set Up

 Originally I had planned to be at Historicon this weekend, as had most of my fellow club members.  Unfortunately, a certain virus had other ideas and that convention (along with many others) was rightfully cancelled.  With the easing of some restrictions the club decided to have a very limited game day on Saturday - albeit with all the new norms of face masks, hand sanitizers and social distancing.  While some of those measures can be awkward, they are needed to protect other people and with the right attitude really don't intrude on having a good time.  As you might guess, I ran my Liaoyang game and thought it went well.  There will be an episode of LWTV about the day so no details on the battle for now.

 The battle was fought on a 8x4 table using 6mm figures.  All units were at the regimental level, which during the Russo Japanese War a regiment had anywhere for 1,000 - 2,500 men.  It would be the equivalent of a brigade in ACW terms.

All of the unit stands fit into a 3D printed sabot base that has a label along the back for unit ID tags.  They also have a thin strip of ferrous paper along the labels so they tags can accept magnetic pins....

Here's a close up of the units in their sabot bases.  The ID tag is 10mm wide which has enough room for a printed label (attached with double sided tape and room for magnetic pins). 

Artillery units had limited ammo which I tracked with green and blue pins.  Shoot indirect artillery, remove a pin.  Fatigue (damage) is tracked with red pins. 

Overall, the basing method worked great and really streamlined play plus I think looks pretty sharp.  I will be adapting this method for just about all the games I play that require some form of unit status tracking.

The rules we used are were an adaption of Greg's ACW ruleset "Alter of Freedom" that have the working title "Alter of Empires".  I'm hoping to use them for both the Russo-Japanese War through WW1.

Overall, they worked well.  Indirect artillery fire needs some tweaking but these did seem to simulate the R-J war really well.

I will likely run this game gain - maybe even for a formal episode of LWTV or at a war game convention when they eventually return (I'm betting no sooner than summer of '21, by the way).  In addition to tweaking the rules, I would play the game on a 8x6 ft table - I had to squeeze the battle down a bit given space limitations and poor planning by me.  Still it was a really fun game and I really enjoyed seeing my R-J project make it to the club for an outing.

I do think it's time to move onto another project.  Maybe terrain for an upcoming episode........