DS LB available now from Wargames Vault

http://www.wargamevault.com/product/99109/Drums-and-Shakos-Large-Battle--Napoleonic-Divisional-Level-Rules

DSLB is now available in HC, SC and pdf+print bundle.The quality is very good. This is our most  complicated book, graphics-wise, so far. We hope to increase the art/layout quality in the next ones even if it so much work.

Off Topic (but delicious)

My low 'n' slow - oven baked - drunken spare ribs.

3-2-1 method with liquid smoke (too cold yesterday to use my outdoor smoker).
Literally falling off the bones.

Final "volley" of pics

Some more pics from last sunday playtest of "100 Dice", my introductory, hex-based new game.

Somewhere around 2nd turn, with the Austrian player (Massimo) attacking on the Prussian left flank. You start the game by deploying (sometimes secretly) your Main Force. The secondary Force will arrive later as reinforcements.

Turn 3. Diego has successfully repulsed the Austrian push on his right flank and is counterattacking with his heavy cavalry. See those blue cups? They contain 100 dice each, and players use those dice for any roll required by the game. When they finish, night falls.

A close up on the centre. Prussian guns are bombarding the Austrian centre.
On the right of the picture, you can see a wood hex without....trees. Trees are removed when Light Infantry (in this case Austrian Grenzer) occupy the hex (they are the only unit type that can enter woods). Light Infantry is on a single, 3x3 cm base.

More on last sunday playtest

Another couple of pics (close ups) from yesterday playtest of "100 Dice".

Massimo moving his troops on the left flank to stop an attack from Prussian Cuirassiers. Different levels of terrain are clearly visible, as are two swamp hexes in the centre of the pic. On the far right a wood (impassable to all but Light Infantry).

An even closer view of the central part of the battlefield. Smoke indicates that Artillery has bombarded and therefore cannot move in the ensuing activation phase. Prussian infantry is negotiating the swamp, while the Prussian CinC is watching closely....

Playtest Sunday

Yesterday Massimo and Diego came from Rome to help me in the playtesting of my new project.
I explained the rules from scratch and they played one game (battle) in about 2 hours.

 Above you can see Diego (left) and me with my papers. The battlefield is small (8x10 hexes, I want a very portable game) and there are many dice on the table.. While I'm waiting for some new 10mm Naps, we played with 15mm SYW. I'd like the System to be kinda of universal for horse & musket. Its provisional name is "100 DICE".

Pics, pics, pics!

Finally, I succeded in posting the pics from the SDS BIG Battle I organised on december 9.
Above the 11 players that came to Terni from Arezzo, Rome and Florence to play the One-Day-Battle. It was set in 1813 some time before Leipzig. We had three table 120x180 cm.: Centre, West and East. One CinC was present at the battle (Filippo from Florence, commanding the Allies), the other (Massimo from Rome, commanding the French) was in Rome, connected by sms and e-mail (and occasionally, voice). Below is the "clock" I used as a Master/Referee to keep track of the time and of the flow of Orders and communication between the Generals.

 As you can see from the above pic, we were playing the 6:00 AM turn, and there are messages set to arrive at 6:30 and at 7:00. Below the felts I used to represent up to a Brigade in different formations (deployed and in march). I said "up to" because the real amount of battalions/regiments was secret. The felts are numbered and I kept track of who's who..

 Below, the West table with Federico from Roma moving his troops. He played against Andrea from Florence and Antonio with their Russians. Federico's Bavarians performed very well.

 Below, the Central table. Here Marco and his Aid-de-Camp (his son Giovanni) battled against Diego, who commanded the Russo-Prussian Guard. Felts were removed after the troops were spotted and moved out of them.

 Below the East table were Narciso's Prussians met with Alessandro's left wing of the French Army. Felts were - of course - color coded (Black for the Prussians, Blue for the French, and Green for the Russians).

 That's me, writing a message to the French CinC in Rome from one of his Generals. Note how small is the paper with the order: this also was intentional, to avoid writing too many details.

And finally, Filippo (the Allied CinC) studying the map I sent in advance (and realizing it was slightly different from the reality). The experiment was quite a success, with a French minor Victory. The game started after 10 AM and ended about 5.30 PM. There are many improvement to make to get a perfect battle, but I think that it was a good start.

Something wrong with Blogger?

I wanted to upload some pics of the DSLB big battle and some other of the new game I'm working on, but when I choose "write a new post" the buttons for uploading pics do not work. Maybe something is wrong with the settings of my PC, but the result is......... no pics for the moment.
I'm sorry.
Hints?

2013

The first post of the year is just to wish you all a healthy, fruitful and happy New Year, and to announce that I started again to write some notes on my "Book of Ideas". Too little to say that I'll be back soon with something new, but it's better than the last 9 months, when I did not write a line.
I have at least 3 games stuck on the desktop, but I sincerely hope to be able to release something this year.

Thank you in advance for your support