Oldmeldrum Wargames Group

12/03/2025

So, to follow up from our release last week of the "The German Campaign - Autumn 1813" we have decided to release the virtual campaign map for the wargaming community to download and use for free via Tabletop Simulator.

We had toyed with the idea of charging folks to access this file but decided we'd rather give a little back to the wargaming community and our supporters and hopefully allow more wargamers to run the campaign and enjoy our creation.

Please check out the Tabletop Simulator module here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3439139060

03/03/2025

As you may have seen we've played a number of Napoleonic Campaigns at the club over the last few years and have been toying with the idea of polshing these creations up and releasing them for dowload and play by the wider wargaming community like we do with our historical battle scenarios.

Well today is the day that we offer up our first campaign for your pleasure "The German Campaign - Autumn 1813" that culminated in the Battle of Leipzig (we thought we'd start small and ease ourselves into it......).

The club exclusively use "Blucher" (by Sam Mustafa) to recreate the tabetop battles those campaigns throw up (when you find a set of rules that tick all the boxes - why look elsewhere!?) so these offerings are very much geared towards that rules set (but can obviously be converted for use with other [lesser] rulessets should you wish.....)

In addition to the usual files that we provide for our historical battle scenarios (army rosters, unit cards etc.), we have created player briefing packs for each side which also include campaign specific player notes, detailed Orders of Battle (for each of the eight armies involved), area movement campaign maps and the unit blocks for use on the campaign maps.

These briefing packs are available for download via our clubs "Buy me a Coffee" page (alongside our historical scenarios).

To go along with these briefing packs we have created a set of campaign rules that provide the players the guidance / instruction on how to run / umpire the campaigns (these will be specific to each campaign that we create). These campaign rules are offered up free from our club website for download (and we'll also upload them onto the Official Sam Mustafa Publishing Group (a.k.a. the HONOUR Forum) files page.

The club would like to take the opportunity to thank Jim Owczarski for his support in reviewing and proof-reading the campaign rules - your guidance and continued support of our offerings (along with the rest of the Armchair Dragoon regulars) is VERY much appreciated!!

https://buymeacoffee.com/oldmeldrumWG/e/381507

https://buymeacoffee.com/oldmeldrumWG/e/381506

https://oldmeldrumwargamesgroup.com/blucher-napoleonic-campaigns/

20/02/2025

Hi folks,

It's been a few months since we last published a scenario; however we've now uploaded our next offering for use with "Blucher".

In an attempt to relieve the defenders of the Fortress of Badajoz, on the Spanish / Portuguese border, Maréchal Soult and the Armée du Midi engages an Anglo-Portuguese & Spanish force under the command of Marshal Beresford at Albuera.

In proportion to the numbers involved, the Battle of Albuera was the bloodiest of the whole Peninsular War.

https://buymeacoffee.com/oldmeldrumwg/e/376602

25/03/2024

As many of you will know, our club Chairman, Stuart Insch, passed away last week after a short battle with cancer.

Stuart and his family selected the Fraserburgh RNLI as their charity of choice for folks to support in memory of him.

Pauline and Lewis have set up a “Just Giving” page for folks to make a donation here - they and the club would appreciate anything you feel you could spare:

Weʼre raising money to Fraserburgh RNLI in memory of Stuart. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.

26/04/2023

Latest goings on from our recent club night.....

Hi folks, It’s been a few months since we last posted what we’ve been up to the site; however we’re going to try and do this more often as we go forward. This week Stuart, Dave &a…

01/09/2022

This week we continued our 1808 Peninsular Campaign - this saw the players complete the 3rd and 4th weeks of the Campaign (mid to end of May 1808) with some interesting developments!

French moves:
The French maintained their Siege of Zaragoza and reinforced their force with further troops from their own garrison at Burgos. They continue to lay siege to the City without making an attempt to capture the fortress by force. This siege will now drag on into June.

Further French reinforcements arrived at Bayonne and were moved across the foothills on the French side of the Pyrenees and then down the coast to Barcelona to join the French garrison there.

Murat and the main French Army of Spain, based in Madrid moved south to join up with a small French force that was moving west after their capture of Valencia and together advanced further westward in an attempt to bring the Spanish to battle (further description of this below in the Spanish section)

Spanish moves:
The Spanish transported their forces based in Minorca to reinforce their garrison at Tarragona. This combined force then marched toward Zaragoza in an attempt to lift the seige; however with the French reinforcements arriving this plan was abandoned and the Spanish fell back towards the coast.

The main Spanish Army of Extremadura fell back upon the fortress of Badajoz in the face of the French advance from Madrid. However reluctant to have this force trapped in Badajoz the commander fell back from the fortress and crossed the Portuguese border leaving behind a small garrison.

As the French pressed on, by-passing Badajoz, (this is something we will restrict allow from now on by imposing supply line rules), the Spanish fell further back and found themselves with the opportunity to fall upon the elements of Junot's Army of Portugal that had moved east of Lisbon in the first weeks of the war.

The Spanish forces of General Castaños (consisting of 13x infantry brigades, 4x cavalry brigades and supporting artillery - 87x Blucher points) attacked the French forces of General Junot (consisting of 7x infantry brigades, 2x cavalry brigades and supporting artillery - 106x Blucher points). Although the French were outnumbered by 2:1 the quality and experience of their troops soon showed and they routed the Spaniards after 4hrs on desperate fighting (5x Spanish Brigades lost to 0x French).

Further losses (25% of remaining force per our campaign after battle rules) meant that the Spanish force was in no fit state to fight another battle when they encountered the French force (under Marshal Murat) that had advanced from Madrid via Badajoz to Estramoz in Portugal. This force blocked off the only retreat route left to the Spanish who capitulated without further fighting.

The loss of this force will leave the Spanish short of much needed troops for the remainder of the campaign - a bitter blow so early for the Allies!

Anglo-Portuguese moves:
The Portuguese are on the verge of raising up against the French invader - growing tired of the French troops garrisoned in Lisbon. The news of the Spanish defeat at Corush has not dampened their spirits!

The British government have given assurances that should they rise up they will send troops to support them.......

This is being run using a set of club rules based upon the following:

OoB’s and general campaign setup “Le Vol de l’Aigle” by Didier Rouy:
(https://didier-rouy.webs.com/le-vol-de-l'aigle-iii)

Point-to-Point movement system from “Napoleon” by Columbia Games:
(https://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg...)

Maps produced by Malcolm McCallum:
(http://www.murat.ca/maps/bwiberia.jpg)

25/08/2022

So we kicked off an 1808 Peninsular Campaign this week.

This is being run using a set of club rules based upon a combination of the OoB’s and strategic situations as given in the fantastic Campaign system “Le Vol de l’Aigle” by Didier Rouy (https://didier-rouy.webs.com/le-vol-de-l'aigle-iii) and the point to point movement system from “Napoleon” by Columbia Games (https://columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=3201)

The club are also utilising the brilliant maps produced by Malcolm Mccallum and available for free download here (http://www.murat.ca/maps/bwiberia.jpg) for the point-to-point strategic moves.

The club have converted the OoB’s from “Le vol de l’Aigle” into Blücher rosters as the plan is then to run the engagements on the tabletop using Blücher (by Sam Mustafa).

The campaign runs from the start of the uprising (2nd May, 1808) to just before Napoleon arrived (1st November, 1808) to take command.

This is the second campaign the club have run using the system (previously ran the 1815 campaign using the map and blocks for the Napoleon boardgame by Columbia) and we are already well underway with working up the maps and OoB’s for both the 1809 and 1813 campaigns.

The plan is that once we finish this campaign we’ll release the campaign rules out for others to use for free and publish the “Scenario Packs” in the same way as we have done the single battle scenario created for Blücher.

Additionally we have spoken about opening up the higher commands for the coming campaigns to the wider wargaming community (similar to what Little Wars TV did with their Pyrrhic Campaign - but on a smaller budget!!) with the club members interpreting their orders and running the tabletop battles!

We’ll see - this may be too ambitious for a small club like ours!

Anyway we’ll try and post regularly to keep our followers up to speed with how the campaign progresses.

First 2x weeks have been completed so far and the French have started their siege of the Spanish at Zaragoza, a small Spanish for was caught while withdrawing from the vicinity of Madrid to seek safer territory in the south (this small game was run on the tabletop with the Spanish managing to withdraw but with the loss of 2x Brigades captured)

The main Spanish forces have moved upon the fortress towns of Badjoz and Cuidad Rodrigo in order to cut the lines of communication from Junot in Lisbon to the main French forces in Madrid.

The Spanish also abandoned Valencia to the French in order to preserve the forces for later battles rather than having them holed up in a siege.

The Portuguese are becoming restless and are expected to take up arms agains the French soon, no doubt the British will land forces to support an uprising if they do……..

17/03/2022

Folks, It's been a few months since our last update on the progress with the clubs Battle of Borodino scenario; however we can now announce that it has gone live for folks to buy over on our "Buy Me a Coffee" site. The scenario has been written specifically with the "Blücher" ruleset by Sam Mustafa in mind; however it can easily be used for any other ruleset with the relevant amendments....

Folks, It’s been a few months since our last update on the progress with the clubs Battle of Borodino scenario; however we can now announce that it has gone live for folks tp buy over on our …

06/12/2021

The guys over at “Project Wargames” recorded their play through of the clubs “Battle of Alexandria - 1801” scenario (designed for Blücher by Sam Mustafa)

They scratchbuilt the terrain (which has its own video on their YouTube page). We’d recommend subscribing to their page - some good content on there!

We fight the battle of Alexandria in 2mm with Blucher rules. This is a lightly edited video of our game. Blucher is a fast rules system that allows you to pl...

13/09/2021

Congratulations & thanks for the support!

As part of our decision to move access to our Blucher scenarios and printed maps across to the “Buy me a coffee” website we set our supporters an initial £750 target, at which point we&…

25/08/2021

The Oldmeldrum Wargames club have been meeting regularly again since the start of June. We’ve had a few different game since the table including: Blücher, Chain of Command, Rommel, Ruthless and, most recently, Wise Guys (our home brew Gangster spin-off off Ruthless / The Chicago Way). The club pulled together 5x different gangs to be used for our turf-war, using the Campaign module for The Chicago Way as the basis....

The Oldmeldrum Wargames club have been meeting regularly again since the start of June. We’ve had a few different game since the table including: Blücher, Chain of Command, Rommel, Ruthless and, mo…

17/06/2021

Folks, Its been a busy few months since you last heard from us but we just wanted to let you all know that the clubs ACW scenarios for Gettysburg & Antietam are now available over at our "buy us a coffee" page for purchase and download. The clubs "Chamberlain" rules modification for using "Blücher" to re-fight the battles f the American Civil War are available free from the club website (here): …...

Folks, Its been a busy few months since you last heard from us but we just wanted to let you all know that the clubs ACW scenarios for Gettysburg & Antietam are now available over at our & #8220…