The Battle of the Greasy Grass - Waddingtons Style

You are not seeing double - there is two copies of the above!

The blurb on the underside of the box

Way back in the very early 1970s, when I was taking my first tentative steps into the world of wargames, I used to play a board game produced by Waddingtons called ‘The Battle of the Little Big Horn’. It was an attractive looking game with a stylised board and containing real, painted figures. For some reason I never got a copy myself - presumably as I had discovered ‘Campaign’ by the same company and was far more interested in Napoleonics anyway. I was of the ‘Waterloo Airfix generation’ and proud of it!

The map board. One of the victory conditions requires the US exiting the board in the top left corner - good luck with that methinks!

Fast forward some forty odd years and with a fortuitous trawl through eBay (note to self: try to cut down on the idle browsing….) netted me two copies of the above game being sold as a job lot by a local seller for a price that was hard to turn down (£30 if you are interested).

The US Cavalry - the figures are a shade over 40mm or so

The opposition - a combination of the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. The chaps with feathered headdresses are the tribal chieftains.

The games are in pretty good order and more importantly are complete in terms of the figures included. Quite what I will do with two Custer figures is anyone’s guess but hey ho! Between the two I now have a dozen mounted braves, a dozen foot braves, a dozen dismounted US cavalry, four US foot officers and a pair of Custers. As you can see from the pictures, time has not been kind to the paint job but I reckon that even I could rework them into something more respectable. They certainly could not any worse!

The rules are quite simple, as are the victory conditions. One curiosity is that one edition of the game the rules are printed as part of the game storage section whilst in the other it is on a separate sheet of paper.

Version one of the rules - this is how I remember them from ‘back in the day’

The ‘newer’ version - if you enlarge this note the final paragraph

All joking aside I plan to repaint the figures - it will make a nice mini-project - and will use the game as is. Having said that there is also the possibility of using the figures for skirmish games in some fashion. It would also be remiss of me not to mention that I also acquired a copy of the book you see below - purely for research purposes naturally….

I may well have to watch Mr Flynn in ‘They Died with their Boots on’, again, purely in the interests of research. You will have probably guessed that my tongue is firmly in cheek with this latest bout of madness….

The Portable Son of the Morning Star anyone?

Gaming the Old West: A Personal History

A classic game and with figures!

The board, figures and rules.

Aside from watching the TV series the Virginian and the High Chaparral, as well the inevitable John Wayne films - the Spaghetti Westerns came much later - my earliest gaming experience of the Old West was via, you’ve guessed it, a board game. In this case it was The Battle of the Little Big Horn produced by Waddingtons. I can remember playing this game loads of times in the very early 1970s along with Campaign from the same publisher. I never really took this any further but the next step was a fairly big one when a gaming friend of mind acquired the original Old West Skirmish rules which introduced us to such exotic things as decimal dice. We gamed in 54mm and I have fond memories of painting and converting Timpo figures for use with the rules. All good fun but again, I never really pursued it with any degree of conviction.

When I moved to London in 1978 and started attending the Newham Wargames Club based at Eric Knowles’s shop in Manor Park, East London I took part in a number of games which were all highly entertaining and then a new set of rules came out that kind of took the edge off the genre for me. These were called Once Upon A Time in the West and seemed by comparison to be rather more complex than the original Old West Skirmish rules. This was the time when ever more complex rules seemed to be the way forwards but were inevitably at the cost of playability. As a result my interest withered on the vine somewhat although I did rather enjoy anything US Cavalry related - Pony Wars or B Troop Ain’t coming back were a club favourite and I am pleased that a new version has recently been released by Baccus, the 6mm people.

The latest version of Pony Wars in hardback

My recent and rather splendid acquisition of a complete 26 volume set of the Time Life series The Old West has certainly given me plenty of material to think about. There are now vast ranges of Old West figures depicting all manner of types from the period and in a variety of scales. Whilst it does not necessarily mean I shall be reaching for figure catalogues, a few figures for a skirmish style game would certainly not be a problem. 

Time to watch some old Westerns again methinks - perhaps the Cavalry trilogy along with Rio Bravo and of course, the Spaghetti sequence.

Purely for research of course….

A Piece of Gaming History

This post is one of pure, nostalgic self indugence so I offer no apologies if it appears to be a touch 'rose-tinted spectacles' in its content. Back in the very early 70's, when yours truly was a mere slip of a lad and such things as PCs, laptops, mobile phones and Nintendo Wiis were the stuff of science fiction, we amused ourselves with playing football and other outdoor pursuits when the weather permitted, or made airfix kits by the shed load and played boardgames when it was too inclement to venture out. Actually the first kit I ever made solo was a Revell Polikarpov I-16 but I suspect that is being a touch pedantic.......Boardgames were another matter all together and I can remember receiving for my 12th birthday a copy of the Waddingtons Boardgame called Campaign. Boy was I pleased! I can safely say that that game (which I still have incidently) and the surfeit of bagged Airfix kits and boxes of figures around at the time was probably the main catalyst in my lifelong addiction to wargaming. The game is a stylised and abstract strategic level game based loosely on the Napoleonic wars. It features 6 countries - France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, Russia and Italy, each of a capital city (of 9 squares) and 4 major cities. Although there were 6 countries on the map the game was for 2 to 4 players only and Italy was always neutral. Prussia only appeared in the 3 player version. Each Army consisted of 4 cavalry pieces, 4 infantry and a general. Movement was determined by a dice roll and generals could move in any direction, infantry only diagonally and cavalry moved 2 squares orthagonally. Unlike DBA you could move a piece as far as the dice roll would permit. Moving large formations required higher dice rolls so quite often they would sit still if the dice were unkind. Combat did not use the dice (other than for moving into contact with the enemy) and worked on the basis that if either an infantry or cavalry piece was contacted by two enemy pieces then it was removed from play. A General needed to beaten by three enemy pieces in contact. He was not removed from the game but was driven back to his capital city and all his army had to go with him. The General was also the only piece that could capture a city and a capital city. Capitals could only be taken after the nations four other cities had been captured. Tactically a square of 4 pieces was a good formation as each piece was supported (i.e. in contact with) and so had to be neutralised by an enemy piece before another piece could be removed. A further complication was that infantry could only attack diagonally whilst cavalry used orthogonal attacks. Alliances between countries could be made (and broken) and it was almost an unwritten rule in my gaming circle that if anyone player looked to have a potentially winning advantage then he was fair game for the opponents to ally and keep him firmly in his place! I must have played this game hundreds of time over the years and devised all manner of 'refinements' for it - terrain effects, squared maps based on actual battlefields, differing troop types and even artillery grand batteries. I own several copies of this game - the others acquired from boot sales and charity shops - and have often looked at it with the benefit of many years gaming experience and pondered how it could be made into a more adult version. It would not be a hard task to employ DBA type combat mechanisms with the game pieces (coloured red, white, blue and green) to make a hybrid board/wargame. It may not have the appeal of painted figures but it would still be a wargame and would be as cheap as chips - knocking up a gridded map to use with the pieces with the terrain drawn on with coloured felt pens is not beyond even the most hamfisted of artists - self included!

Campaign, Airfix and Charge! - I suspect that many gamers 'of a certain age' have had cause to appreciate (or blame!) some or all of those for their lifelong hobby!