In spite of news blackouts on the subject, THE LITTLE SOLDIER, Dennis Largess, proprietor, has indeed moved to its new location at 100 South Patrick Street, Alexandria. Patrick is Route 1, northbound (Henry is southbound); South Patrick is that portion south of King Street, To get there, you take the Route 1 North exit from the Beltway (just past the Woodrow Wilson Bridge). Go past Duke, Prince, then look for a parking space, There is an alley to a metered lot on the right just a few feet before King Street. Dennis' place is right beside a Travel Agency sign. The realtor has refused to approve the LITTLE SOLDIER sign, so look for a white door, usually open, on a flight of stairs going up to the place. The LITTLE SOLDIER has its old homey quality, plus some pinball machines to pay the rent and enough room in the back for actual miniatures games as well as the old familiar boardgames. To give you an idea of the doings, I staged a 50:1 reenactment of Luetzen on a 6 by 12' table a few weeks back, and a fantasy battle for the Fords of the ISON using Jim Arnold's rules is also scheduled. By far the most common, however, are WWII and WWIII micro-armor games on superb terrain boards, On October 5th, a Russian armored/mech force made a costly lodgement in a small West German town. On the 11th of October, I was on hand to watch an American counter- attack fail miserably. The rules are supposed to be based on classified US Army assessments, it seems to take about 3 M-60 tanks to deal with with one T-72, which is not the number one Russian tank. The T-72 is for export; the T-64, with "borrowed" Chobham armor, is not. I believe the tank assessment, but when the SA-Ps were knocking down F-4's with every shot and nobody seemed to be able to hit a Hine helicopter buzzing over American held tree-tops, I grew skeptical. Even more so when I found that a rolling barrage inflicted 100% casualties on a mech-infantry company in a woods. At any rate, the LITTLE SOLDIER is a boom to wargaming hereabouts - not that there isn't any in homes and rec centers. Jim Arnold seems to run games of all sorts at his home - I've been in on a Napoleonic 25mm game and a late Roman Empire one night campaign. W P Guthrie has engineered the occasional 30 Years War epic as well as a running series of boardgames, I've even hosted a couple of Pike and Shot matches at home. The Luetzen affair, at the LITTLE SOLDIER was not conclusively resolved, so perhaps I can say a few words about it without undue modesty. EDITOR'S NOTE: In the battle description that follows, Pat unfortunately neglects to describe the rules... in fact, the rules themselves are not even named!! They appear rather comprehensive from the content of the text.  Opening dispositions, to save time, were based on those made by Wallenstein and Gustavus. The Imperial position was anchored on Leutzen and protected by a sunken road built up in spots (which counted as a ditch for crossing), a breastwork for protection from fire, but was in most places, downhill from its sides for melee purposes. It was also smoothed down on the Imperial side so that, once seized, it would give the Swedes no protection. Each side got 3 turns at reduced movement to re-align in the fog. I was standing in for Gustavus Adolphus with the assistance of Larry Touhy, but, not being heroic by nature, I gave Larry the right wing with orders to attack. I have never been able to understand why Gustavus lined up his left wing cavalry facing the town. I had no intention of blundering around amidst town, ditches, and windmills, so I sent the crack Swedish troopers of the left wing's first line across between the infantry lines and ordered the infantry to oblique right. See map 2.  The field batteries limbered and swung in behind the first line, while the numerous battalion guns went ahead with the skirmishers. John and Justin Touhy initially stuck with Wallenstein's order of battle, pounding the approaching Swedes with their field artillery as we advanced. Larry crossed the ditch in fine style under cover of his "commanded musketeers" and battalion guns. His cavalry were "order horse" charging at the gallop against double order (close order) horse charging at the trot. This gave him more units and he carefully fed them in, pounding the Imperialists back from the road. However, Pappenheim arrived with 3 fresh cuirassier regiments, and Justin refused to roll anything but "sixes". The cavalry fight flowed back and forth for some time. As the Swedish right drove in skirmishers and gunners, and the Swedish field guns finally deployed with the battalion. guns, John, having realized that we were throwing most of our force against a third of his, launched a-ferocious counter-attack. Two small cavalry units, lancers and arquebusiers, crossed the ditch but came under fire from numerous skirmishers. Two strong regiments, cuirassiers and arquebusiers, came out of Leutzen and swung around the flank. Four infantry regiments shouldered pikes and stepped out across the ditch. An extra heavy cuirassier unit followed. Set Map 3. Being the nervous type, I presented a regiment of foot to the flank and drew up the remaining two cavalry unniis in a single line. My command figure may be seen facing his horse to the rear while threatening his troopers with a horse pistol. Naturally, I circled the baggage wagons. See Map 4. As the first 2 regiments dropped into the ditch in front of the massed Swedish guns, John's command figure riding in the middle of it all, was exposed to their fire. Thus Wallenstein was killed. The leading regiment, emerging from the ditch, was thrown into disorder by cannon fire. In the last turn, the Swedish left flank cavalry (actually Saxon horse militia) charged, routing one Imperial regiment and driving back the other. On the far right, Justin's tattered squadrons actually rolled part of the Swedish second line back over the ditch, but the brigade sent over (wisely, I might point out) from the left, fell on the two victorious Imperial units and set things right. As I said, not very conclusive, but a good time was had by all (and I think we had the best of it).. Back to PW Review December 1981 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1981 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com