INWarD 2026 after action report

We managed to play - with two years of delay, due to me not finishing the models - my Denmark Strait scenario, and the results are in. My wife commanded the RN and I the dastardly Germans.

Above, Prince of Wales starting the day with a fire on board, which was quickly put out (still better than four of ten guns not working properly).

The War of the League of Aspico, Episode 2 - King of Rome, Pope of the Hill

After their Nibeunese allies got beaten at the Battle of Piadda, there was pressure on Papal general Lodovico da Montelupo, to force decisive action. With peace looming, the League of Aspico needed a victory to bring to the bargaining table.

Opportunity presented itself when, encouraged by their Fransican allies' easy victory, the Republic of Fradice launched an attak on the Lomagna, without any clear strategic intention other than the good old 'pillage what you can, burn what you can't' method.

The two armies met at Monte Piombo on the common border. Montelupo was wise enough to send a scouting force of two gendarme units and occupy the ruling height. Otherwise, the deployment of the two armies mirrored each other: both had three gendarme, two pike block and one arquebusier unit.

The War of the League of Aspico, Episode 1

The army of the Kingdom of Fransica has crossed the Northern Alps to the Italian Peninsula. They formed an alliance with the Republic of Fradicine and are ready to start a war. 

Their opponents are the League of Aspico, comprising the northwestern Italian states under the Alliance of Nibeuno, and the Papal State to the south.

The Fransicans, with a well equipped army, advanced into Nibeunese territory. The opposing army had trouble paying their Swiss mercenaries, which meant a limited deployment. King Robert VIII (nicknamed Le Puant) had met the enemy at the border river of Piadda, and was determined to crush them once and for all.

The Battle of Kostas Channel

This was my way of celebrating International Naval Wargaming Day 2025 - a little late as I played the game on Sunday. Rules used were my own 'Block Galleys' set, available from the Rules page of the blog.

A small Holy Leauge squadron approaches the narrows between Postavtomatikos and Saronikos Isles on the Aegean Sea. They are past a great battle and low on ammunition. Their main goal is to allow the large lanterna to reach the safety of the opposite table corner.

At this moment everything seems calm around the islands...

The Last Knight Ep. 1. - Red Fox in the Sheep's Pen

This month I promised myself to play at least one game. Naval and sci-fi games are preferred because they require less prep work and fewer models!

On my Battle Campaigns blog I wrote a small summary for a sci-fi space battle campaign featuring the forces of rebellious Mars against the oppressive Earth Government. Thus the time has come to launch that campaign.

In this first scenario, the squadron conisisting of MSS Phoibos (Cmdr. Ian C. Nisom commanding), MSS Sub Rosa and MSS Walkyr, without fighter support, arrive at a junction point in dead space where they expect much EarthGov civilian traffic. Their goal is to hurt EarthGov shipping as much as they can, without risking their own skins.

The theme of the entire campaign is asymmetrical warfare: the Martian Sphere squadron does not get replenishments and any damage made against them is permanent. EarthGov forces are dispersed but get a lot more reinforcements during the campaign.

I use pre-made Lego ships which I built from scrap parts of multiple sets, including Star Wars ones.

I set up a simple entry/exit point system: the MS squadron enters the table first, and then each turn a new ship arrives until I exhausted my current stock. I just set my existing models in a row and picked them up in a sequence for their order of entry. There are no EarthGov capital ships in this scenario. 

The entry points are numbered one to six, starting from the bottom right corner and moving clockwise. I roll a d6 for each ship's entry point. A civilian vessel may exit the table safely by moving to the opposite entry point (so 3 to 6, 1 to 4, 2 to 5 etc.). An EarthGov Navy ship may exit via the opposite point or its point of entry. MS ships entered the table at point 6 so that's their extrication point as well.

Let's see how the scenario goes!

Battle of Pavia - 500th Anniversary Refight

Last afternoon (technically one day before the anniversary of the battle) we refought the Battle of Pavia, to commemorate its five hundreth anniversary, using my homemade unit blocks, makeshift terrain and a modified version of One Hour Wargames. My wife commanded the French and I the Imperialists.

You can view the locations and initial dispositions on the map above, we are at the early morning hours when the Imperial arquebusiers are already occupying Mirabello castle and the pike blocks had deployed on the near side of the walls of the Visconti park.

D6 Naval War: Battle of the White Sea

I've never before celebrated International Naval Wargaming Day. However, after our last move, I've still had the large-ish remainder of my 1/2000 scale scratchbuilt WW1 fleets hidden in my wardrobe, so I thought I could take some of them for an outing.

The Battle of Tun Gus Wood

I wrote a test scenario for my Ancients/Bronze Age/Tribal ruleset Gudugán Pudugán. The rules and the scenario are available from the separate sub-pages in the header of the blog. The scenario is more or less based on one from One Hour Wargames, with a bit of a Gudugán Pudugán specialty twist.

On the image above, we see both the armies of Karhutu (northern table edge) and Osomano (south) deployed, the Osomanoan cavalry making an advance in the center around Tun Gus Wood.

Takar Chalun's Mercenary Army

Takar Chalun* is a mercenary warlord, currently employed by the Cities of Bandar Tuk, serving with High General Leuha Taton's Army of the Eastern Approaches. His warband is small but effective; the War God Judha Puduganur had smiled on him many times, and he became wealthy and influential in the court of Rehemana. 

Rules Page update

I have added no less than three new rulesets to the 'Rules' page (available via the link or the header of this blog), which are free to download, use and distribute by the way, and are the results of more than ten years of gaming experimentation:

• Gudugan Pudugan, a fun little set which is only seven pages long, of pre-historical/ancient big battles and a flexible unit/army component system

• Victorious Eagle Warfare 2, an update on my go-to Napoleonics set, with better command options and explanations on unit behavior

• The Brave Lieutenant, a Pike and Shot period set which spent many months in the making, only to bin it altogether in the end and just adopt the useful parts of VEW2 with Renaissance spice.

Please do browse through them.

Fire in the Night

At midnight, a small Holy Alliance squadron creeps to the entrance of the Pirate Bay. 

A single vessel detaches and, using the stars, the wind and dead reckoning, steers the furthest away path from the batteries guarding the harbour.

Printable Ships in Action

Almost two years ago I wrote a post about a few Age of Sail warship sketches I made, and how they could be used as proxies for their more expensive alternatives. It took a while, but now I could put the thought to practice.

The doodles were printed in colour, pasted onto 2mm balsa pieces painted white, and mounted on blue circular bases, which are just coins topped with texture paste.

Some tokens representing forts, landing parties and boats were added for variability. I also found the perfect material for quick and easy islands - thick vegetable cardboard boxes from your local supermarket, their outer side is coloured green.

A squadron of three ships attempts to take an island fort - the defenders sally to meet the landing party.

Barbary galleys stage an attack on a West-bound convoy in the Ionian islands.

Using favourable wind, the Red squadron approaches the bay held by the Blue line.

Meeple Warfare! - Ambush near the Sanctuary

I've written a set of rules adequately named 'One Page Meeple Warfare'. It's bloody. It's short. All in all, a modern classic. You can reach it from the Rules page of this blog.

In this scenario, the Green Kingdom's warriors, six in number, are escorting a holy man and his two servants to a remote sanctuary. Looking for a chance to provoke an all-out war, the Red Barbarians launch a raiding party to capture or slay them. 

OOB:

Green Kingdom: 2x Battle infantry, 2x Archers, 2x Light infantry, 2x Peasant/Rabble, 1x Healer

Red Barbarians: 3x Cavalry, 4x Archers, 4x Light infantry

Age of Sail printable ships

While work and studies have taken a toll on my hobby time, I've been doing a few things at my leisure. I sort of got tired of making intricate ship models, and ideas about mass producing cheap alternatives came into my mind. 

One possible solution to do this is the good old Jenga block way. I tried it a long time ago with good results. I also did very much like Master Crook's exploits on the subject of simple and good looking warship models. 

However, I'm a lazy sod, even lazier than that, so I picked up MS paint and drew some ships that can be cut out and pasted on two sides of a piece of cardboard, plasticard sheet, wood or MDF, and some rudimentary bases to support them.

Now, the period I recently became interested in is the 17th century, so the shape and colouring of these ships might not be especially to everyone's liking, but for a simple game using multiple ships, they suffice. 

Here are the completed ships for everyone's access. The folder now includes two different two-decker hull types in two fleet colours, and one three-decker. There are also four blank templates for two-and three-deckers, and a sail template. The models are mirrored, and I suggest re-scaling the images for printing: my small two-deckers are going to be 35mm long, the larger ones 40mm, and the first rates are going to be 45mm. This way, eighteen two-decker ships fit on a single A4 page. 

When I was tiny, I remember making about a hundred or so folded paper ships, drawing ship-of-the-line features on them, and fighting a large battle; that is somewhat the goal with these. I often wonder how I could play with my ships and toy soldiers without a good set of rules, but my guess is youthful imagination can easily replace charts and pages long explanations and whatnot. Anyway, just for fun, and for people who absolutely hate dice, I came up with a card mechanic to decide naval combat in the age of sail as well, and here it is, to be used with my "Simple Age of Sail" rule set acccessible from the Rules page of this blog.

Homebrew Rule Test - The Battle of Raab

One thing that's kept me from playing with my figures more often is all the fuss required to prepare for a game, and then packing everything up again. All of this is solved when I play my battles in Roll20, using virtual tokens. All features, except for the trees and buildings, are made by me. The scenario I chose was the battle of Raab, which has a special interest for me. Most map and initial deployment are on the picture above; I shall publish the rules soon in a separate announcement.

The Battle of Tunova Atoll AAR

The Asansmati state has been conducting merchant raiding on the Klagimir shipping lines for a while now. The perpetrators did not know that the Klagimir war fleet has recently obtained two modern units, a dreadnought battleship and a battlecruiser. The Klagech declaration of war followed suit, and soon major operations took place, ending in the decisive battle off Tunova Atoll at the southern tip of the Asansmati archipelago.

Naval rules published

Just a quick note for my readers that the aforementioned naval wargaming rules are available on the blog page related to that subject.

A new ruleset added

I've just finished writing a new set of rules, and published it under the "Rules" page. Its title is "One and a Half Page Gunpowder Skirmish", and it delivers on the promise in the title. It is quite vague in some aspects, but my goal was to get rid of all the fuss a commercial rule set means when introducing players to a game. 

On that note, I'm fine tuning my dreadnought-era naval rule set as well, and I should be able to make it public in a little while. I have removed "Coal and Steel" from the Rules page, as it was one of my early developments, and this one is better in every aspect.

A Black and White Battle Report

The Veudeni fleet, after their previous humiliation, had settled on a decisive strike against the north-western Jackewlinese forces. Unfortunately for them, this group consisted of modern dreadnoughts, and three large Fricklander battlecruisers were also attached. The Veudeni selected an all or nothing tactic, and brought their large pre-dreadnought battle squadrons as well.

In the preliminary steps of the battle, the Jackewlinese scouting force, with three modern light cruisers [Novara-class] had managed to cripple one enemy scout cruiser and sink another; the Veudeni  advance guard retreated, while the Jackewlinese could continue harassing the enemy battle line, suffering little damage.

Veudeni OOB

Scout force - 3x light /protected cruisers

Main force

5x modern battleships

11x pre-dreadnought battleships

Jackewlinese OOB

Scout force - 3x light/protected cruisers

Main force

1x superdreadnought flagship

4x dreadnought battleships

5x pre-dreadnought battleships

Detachment

3x Fricklander battlecruisers

Test Naval Battle

I've come up with a set of rules to play out naval engagements. Previously I've been using Inter Arma d8 Naval (I think it's available in the Rules page), but the time has come to make something new.

Anyway, the Jackewlinese Royal Navy, after the previous tactical victory over the Veudeni Navy, became aware of more Veudeni troop movements and moved to intercept.

They had a pair of dreadnought battleships and three semi-dreadnoughts. The Veudeni fleet also consisted of a dreadnought battleship, a battlecruiser and three semi-dreadnoughts. Both fleets were therefore limited by the lower speed of the non-turbine driven ships.