I like the idea of using contemporary language within rules but I have two competing sets of terms: Napoleon’s “Valour and Discipline” and South American “Training and Discipline”. What to do? For Bolivar’s Very Bad Day should I replace the “Resolve” attribute of Tilly’s Very Bad Day with two attributes, one reflecting bravery and the other training? And what should I call them?
Gunpowder Warfare
Black powder guns from arquebus to flintlock musket. I have chosen to start this period with the discovery of the New World (1492) and end it with the Siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855).
Sub-categories: New World, Italian Wars, Eighty Years’ War, Thirty Wars’ War, War of Spanish Succession, Napoleonic Wars, Liberators, Liberal Wars, Carlist Wars, New Zealand Wars.
Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report
Adam and I play tested Bolivar’s Very Bad Day using my Tucuman Scenario. We wanted a small game to test my variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day for the South American Wars of Liberation.
Summary: Good little game with the Patriots strong in cavalry and the Royalists strong in infantry. My Patriot cavalry stripped off the weak Royalist cavalry and encircled the Royalist infantry columns. Then we had a hard grind with repeated cavalry charges against the staunch Royalist infantry. Eventually Adam accepted he couldn’t win and conceded.
Why I think hills are horrible in wargames rules
Sometimes I get obsessed by tiny little aspects of the hobby and just have to write about it. In detail. A lot of detail, after endless hours of research. This time I’m picking on hills. You see hills were a thing in the South American Wars of Liberation – my current favourite period. A lot the battles featured at least one big hill e.g. Battle of Maipo. This hilly tendency could be extreme e.g. the Battle of Vargas Swamp was fought predominately on the slopes of a single giant hill and half the table top is covered in hills. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day, is going to have to cope with a lot of hills.
Unfortunately, hills are horrible in wargames rules. I’ve not seen any set of wargaming rules that cope with them really well, sadly, not even my own Tilly’s Very Bad Day. Certainly not my beloved Crossfire where hills are tiny mesas. I could have left it there, but I felt an obsessive urge to prove my claim of “horrible” so I got out a bunch of my wargaming rules, read the section on hills, and used a standard set of questions to test how well the rules handled hills. Here is what I found. It is horrible but there glimmers of genius.
Tucuman – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
Feedback from the guys was that Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815), although a good game, was too big for regular play testing of Bolivar’s Very Bad Day. So they asked for a smaller scenario with less terrain. The Battle of Tucumán (24-25 September 1812) seems perfect for this. Although the deciding battle in the War of Argentine Independence, it was a small scale affair with, in game terms, only 11 units on each side. It also features the a wide range of troop types and troop quality. And it has Gauchos. This scenario is based on my write up of the historical battle and how to wargame the battle. Bolivar’s Very Bad Day is my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day.
Sipe Sipe – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report
Jamie and Adam came over to play test Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. I’d just finished the hill for Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815), so decided to give the associated Sipe Sipe Scenario a go. Because we were play testing the rules, we wouldn’t have enough time to complete the battle but we figured we’d give it a go anyway.
Summary: Draw because we ran out of time. But good play test of the scenario and rules. Lots on insights most notably, the jungle fighting felt wrong under the draft rules and there shouldn’t actually be jungle fighting at all in the scenario. Both rules and scenario need tweaks.
Sipe Sipe – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
I’ve been working on Battle of Sipe Sipe (29 Nov 1815) for a while now. So I thought I’d write a scenario for Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. This is a large game on a large table.
Battle of Vargas Swamp 25 July 1819
The Battle of Vargas Swamp (Batalla del Pantano de Vargas), fought on 25 July 1819, was the bloodiest battle of the 1819 campaign but set the scene for the liberation of New Granada. I cover the historical situation, the battle itself, the terrain and the two orders of battle.
Musing on Commander Special Attributes in Bolivar’s Very Bad Day
I like the way John Fletcher (2005, 2006, 2011, 2018abc) assigns special abilities to the generals of the South American Wars of Liberation. In Liberators QPR generals are classified on a five rating scale from abysmal, through poor, average, good to excellent. That is nice but then he goes further and gives some generals extra abilities e.g. improved initiative. It is these special attributes that I really like. So how would that work in Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day? This post is about the rules mechanism, the framework, and I’ll post separately about the actual generals of the South American Wars of Liberation.
Alternative Chacabuco – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Scenario
I need a scenario to play test Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, my Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day. John Fletcher’s Alternative Chacabuco (13 Feb 1817) is my go to scenario for trying out rules for this period. This is my conversion of John’s scenario to Bolivar’s Very Bad Day.
Battalion line, column, and square – Tactical formations during the Napoleonic Wars
Line, column, square … the tactical formations available to infantry of the Napoleonic Wars, South American Wars of Liberation, and Carlist Wars. Line is pretty straight forward but I thought I’d describe the others, in particular column. People think of columns as long and thin, and some were, but most columns of the Napoleonic Wars were usually stubby. I use the post 1808 French as the main example because the Spanish followed their lead, but the other nations were similar.
Musing on unit types in Bolivar’s Very Bad Day
Bolivar’s Very Bad Day sees a few changes to the unit types compared to Tilly’s Very Bad Day. This is to reflect the scale of the game, the period, and nature of warfare in the South American Wars of Liberation.
Alternative Chacabuco – A Bolivar’s Very Bad Day Battle Report 2
Chris and Adam played my variant of John Fletcher’s Alternative Chacabuco scenario, my go to for testing out rules. We were play testing incredible rough draft of Bolivar’s Very Bad Day, a Liberators variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day.
Summary: Really good fun game. Adam’s Patriots took the game but it was down to the wire. Adam lost Bernardo O’Higgins and his command stalled. Chris lost Field Marshal Del Pont and his command evaporated.
Steven’s miscellaneous Liberators units for 1812 and 1814
As I gear up for my 1815-1819 War in the North – Steven’s Wargaming Project, I had a look at my collection for the South American Wars of Liberation. I discovered a few units I haven’t shared elsewhere: 1812 Argentine Patriots; 1814 Venezuelan Royalists. These are not complete armies, just isolated units that I collected mainly because the figures looked cool.
Bolivar’s Very Bad Day – Is that the right name?
I’ve been musing on a variant of Tilly’s Very Bad Day for the South American Wars of Liberation for a while. Back in 2021 Jamie and I had a go at the then draft rules with Alternative Chacabuco. “Bolivar’s Very Bad Day” has always been the working name of the draft rules. This is partly to honour the Liberator Simón Bolívar and partly because I couldn’t think of anything else. With my War in the North Project rushing towards me, I thought I should get a bit more definitive about the name.
What do you think? Should I stick with “Bolivar’s Very Bad Day”? Make it official? Or go for something else?
1815-1819 War in the North – Steven’s Wargaming Project
Once again I’ve been chatting to John Fletcher of Grenadier Productions about the South American Wars of Liberation. These chats are always informative, but often a risky experience. In this case, I’ve decided to stop procrastinating and do a “War in the North” Project. The independence of the Viceroyalty of New Granda started in Gran Colombia and Venezuela and then drifted through Ecuador to Peru. Like my previous 1817-18 Chilean Project for the South American Wars of Liberation (with the follow on the the 1815 campaign in Upper Peru), my War in the North Project will have several phases to spread the expense and painting efforts. Each phase will focus on one or two key battles. This is, of course, a ridiculously large and overly ambitious project. Some would say megalomaniac.