Project Salute: Battle of Stäket 13.8.1719

Nordic Co-operation in military matters continued - invasion of Britain

Dalauppror with his warband of Swedish & British sell-swords are already notorious for their presentation games in Salute. As a committed Great Northern War armies collector I was allowed to join in on this crew and so started my "Project Salute"

Me, myself and the Maestro himself!

Read on to learn what this all meant!

Armies on Parade: Swedes and Finns for the Great Northern War

Charles XII and his brave "Karoliner"

More Maurice

Another GO for Lesnaya 1708

As we liked the Maurice system (By Sam Mustafa) quite a bit, I wanted to re-run Lesnaya with a slightly different team this time. Antti and me were playing the Swedes now and Jaakko, Stephan and Sebastian (latter two being guest players to our campaign) were running the Russians. Matti had also ventured to the club, but the game he thought would have been there wasn't. so he joined us.

Read on!

Testing Maurice by Sam Mustafa for GNW - report completed!

Battle of Lesnaya 9.10.1708

Our Great Northern War campaign continued with the Battle of Lesnaya. Marko and me were delighted for the opportunity to try out the Maurice -systed demoed and umpired by a soon to become a club member Antti H. Marko was the first of us in the club and had set up the battlefield...

Read on to learn how did it go and how we liked it!

GNW: Battle of Napue (Storkyro) 1714 @ Ropecon (Report is WIP)

Nopat -club proudly presented at Ropecon: Finland at War

Earlier in the spring I got an idea for celebrating Finland's 100th anniversary in Ropecon2017 by running (demo) games from the Finnish war history. We planned this and ended up by staging battles from four different centuries: 1600-1700-1800-1900. See the blog post for further info on this.

I chose to stage the Battle of Napue (or Storkyro) 1714, which was last battle of the Great Northen War (1700-1721) fought in Finland. The era called "Great wrath" in Finland - occupation and terror by Russians.
Game system: Black Powder by Warlord Games.
History of the this battle here

See the blog post for further info on how the battle went and plenty of pictures.

GNW: Battle of Holowcyn

King Charles leads the Charge!

Last Sunday we finally fought the battle of Holowcyn. Scenario was straight out of the BP supplement "Last Argument of the Kings" . We splitted the OOB to 50% to make our collections cut it. Several units were actually left out of the game, so we're not far from playing it with full OOB.

Pikeman's Lament @ Little Wars Club in Stockholm

Business and Pleasure

I had a business trip to Stockholm and used the opportunity to visit my gaming pals at Little Wars -club in Stockholm.

As Pikeman's Lament had just been published by Osprey, we played a Great Northern War battle. You can find battle report by the rules co-author Micke here. Once again I enjoyed a great game in a beautiful terrain!

Some further pics and some story telling below.

GNW: Battle of Klissow (Klesow) 1702

Lion of the North vs. August II the Strong

The Battle of Kliszów (Klissow) (Klezow) took place on July 8 (Julian calendar) / July 9 (Swedish calendar) / July 19, 1702 (Gregorian calendar) near Kliszów, Poland-Lithuania, during the Great Northern War.^[7] The numerically superior Polish-Saxon army of August II the Strong, operating from an advantageous defensive position, was defeated by a Swedish army half its size under the command of King Charles XII.<sup>[8]   
Source Wikipedia.

After beating Danes in Humlebaek and Russians in Narva Charles turned his attention towards his cousin
Augustus, King of Poland and Electorate of Saxony. Their first encounter was fought in Klissow.

Charles was so arrogant, that he hadn't even scouted the enemy forces and was surprised to find the well positioned
behind obstructive terrain and more superior in numbers than he had expected... this demanded decisive and innovative moves...

Read on to find out, whether history was repeated or...</sup>

UPDTED: Day 2. Visiting Little Wars in Stockholm - The Army Museum

The second day of Nopat-Club's "class trip" to Stockholm contained a visit to Sweden's Army Museum. An excellent museum and an obvious choice for a wargamer. After several hours in the museum we settled down to "fika" with our host for the day Micke aka Dalauppror and played a demo game of "La Belle Alliance aka Waterloo 1815" we have brought as a gift for The Little Wars.

Read on to see pictures from the museum and some comments on them.

GNW: Battle of Narva 1700 - Black Powder style

Another go for Narva...

Scenario written by Jaakko

GNW: Black Powder demo @ Porocon

Our Nopat & Taktiikka club run 4 demos in this new "CON" called Porocon (Reindeer con): Bolt Action, Flames of War, Infinity and our Black Powder. You might not be surprised to find out, that in our demo Swedish Karoliner under Charles XII fought Russians under Peter the Great...

GNW: Battle of Narva 1700 - report completed

Scenario was fine tuned after Tuesday's play testing (slightly easier for Swedes) and three regiment commanders were assigned to take command of the Swedish Karoliner. All of them had painted at least one unit for the army, this made me very happy. We were ready to the biggest Muskets & Tomahawks game so far played at the Nopat-club. Read on how did the battle unfold! 

GNW: Playtesting Battle of Narva Scenario

This is going to be a BIG BATTLE. At least the table is.  See the images from play testing below.

GNW: Getting ready for Narva and Poltava

Defensive Works for the Great Northern War 

(and other Black Powder -era games)

As a continuation for the already built earthwork defensive line I started modeling a redoubt and another defensive line, that will be suitable for snowy battlefield - like Narva.

GNW: Double trouble in Humblebek

Battle of Humblebek was fought as the kickstart for our Great Northern War Campaign. 

GNW Campaign Kick Off!

Gå På! Och helan går!

Tonight all of the commanders joining the Great Northern War Campaign gathered to our Nopat & Taktiikka Club and orders of war were handed out.

GNW: Battle of Humblebek 1700

Invasion!

Russia, Denmark and Saxony-Poland under Augustus the Strong have formed an alliance and declared a war against Sweden.

In May, 1700, Charles XII - then eighteen - responded to the challenge from his neighbors by landing troops a few miles north of Copenhagen, in Humblebek. Charles leads the invasion personally and storm the earthwork defenses with his livsgard (lifeguard) - hence securing a beach head for the rest of his forces to land. Without putting up more of a fight, Frederick of Denmark agrees to commit no future hostilities against his cousin.

How did Charles XII fare in this game of modified Musket & Tomahawks?

GNW: tools for the Great Northern War

Essentials for a Campaign?

Armies are being prepared (= painted), plans and schedules are being drafted (doodle) and Regiment Commander are equipping themselves with both strategic and  tactical resources...

Great book about Charles XII's army "Karoliner". In Swedish, but that's not a problem. Got the book from a fellow blogger Dalauppor, whom was so kind, that he actually went around and looked for this book in old book stores! Wow! Very much appreciated!

GNW: Six pikemen from Ebor Miniatures

Call for Arms!

Commanders for Sweden and it's enemies are now preparing for the Great Northern War -campaing! Troops are prepared every where. 

I just finished 6 pikemen for my Caroliner:

Miniatures by Ebor Miniatures, unfortunately not yet available from their website.

More images here: http://1drv.ms/1oggNzw 

Play testing: Great Northern War a la Muskets & Tomahaws

Hostilities started between Sweden & Russia!

Today we finally got the change to playtest the rule variant and army lists I've been working on - based on Muskets & Tomahawks by Studio Tomahawk. Read on to find out how they worked!