PONTOON

On the eve of getting the first issue of Battlegames back from the printers, sub-editor Steve Gill (you'll see him in the photos) and I just couldn't resist trying out Brigadier C.S Grant's scenario 'Pontoon' which features in the magazine.
    We didn't have a great deal of time on our hands, so we played a cut-down version, basically halving the number of troops available to both sides and speeding up the pontoon building, the idea being to try and cram the 24 moves stipulated in the scenario into just 12. In the end, we played 8 moves, by which time it was clear that the defenders (Red) would be unable to prevent Blue successfully achieving a reinforced bridgehead and possible break-out. Some of our units were under-strength, explained away by this being in the middle of a campaign, but actually caused by the fact that when I bought someone's collection recently, many of the figures suffered from 'plastic fatigue' and had shattered in transit!
    We had great fun, using the original rules from Charles Grant's "The War Game". Some of you will find the table rather austere in appearance, and will be downright mystified at the concept of moving all those unbased Spencer-Smiths, but we wanted to honour the Grants, both senior and junior, by playing as 'pure' a game as we could muster.
    The process might seem to some to be laborious, but the fact is it's actually rather soothing. The repetitive movements required to move battalion or squadron induce a kind of Zen-like calm, and after an extremely stressful few weeks getting the magazine to print, I can tell you that this was very welcome indeed. Your eye quickly gets used to the stylised scenery in the same way as it accepts the stylised figures. i would imagine that if you are using more modern castings from Front Rank or Foundry, for example, you might want to increase the realism of the terrain accordingly so that the whole view achieves a common aesthetic.
    The rules themselves, we soon realised, have a number of significant gaps in them, but in true Old School style, we resolved them by the expedient of a dice roll when needed and gentlemanly discussion of what we would expect both from history and other rulesets covering the 18th century.
    You wouldn't want to play this sort of game every day, perhaps, but we really do recommend that you give it a try once in a while. A return to simplicity and elegance can re-energise you in the most surprising ways.
    The game was played using figures from the Editor's own collection. The buildings were scratch-built using balsa more than 20 years ago! The hills (or green cowpats as someone called them on The Wargames Directory recently!) are a mixture of TSS polystyrene and home-made from chipboard. The latter, it was agreed, worked well because their weight kept them in place much better.
    Yes, we used cannister cones, howitzer shell-burst circles and, of course, the dreaded bounce stick that features on the front cover of the magazine which, by the way, needs to be handled with care lest you accidentally flatten entire battalions with it! It also induced an amusing incident: as you can tell from the photos if you look closely, you will see that we started the game with the table rolled right up against the wall, but later, we moved it out a foot or so. Why? Because when I came to open fire with roundshot, the bounce stick wouldn't fit because of the end wall!
    Want to know more about the scenario? You can buy a sample copy of the magazine here.     
    You can view photos from the game here. Just click on the thumbnails to see a larger version.