Make for the Tower!

This week Ian and I had decided to grab a practice game of Dux Britaniarum before the club campaign kicks of next month.  I have play a few games, but Ian has only managed to play once before so he wanted some practice. 

We opted for the forces that we would be using in the campaign so I used my (much Romanised!) British and Ian brought his Scotti Raiders.  We rolled for a random raid and ended up doing a raid on a watchtower, where the dastardly raiders ambush a returning British patrol and try to abduct the noble leading it, while the Brits try and make for the safety of their watchtower.

You can just about see the watchtower in the top right, behind the woods!

In Dux B pretty much everything is random, including deployment.  I opted to take an all infantry force and started on the left hand side of the short board edge, while Ian got lucky with most of his force arriving in the vanguard, apart from one unit of cavalry and the skirmishers. His troops would arrive on the right hand side of the table, right at the bottom, so he would have a bit of chasing to do!

Smelly Scotti raiders.

Smelly British Levies

The Brit patrol starts running.

The game kicked off with a fairly predictable dash for safety by the British, closely pursued by the Scotti.  I managed to get a good head start, and with the rest of the Brits sallying forth from the tower to provide some flank protection to my fleeing patrol it was looking pretty good.

My troops made good time and at one point it looked like I might make it to safety without a single blow being struck, but alas the Scotti cavalry proved too fast.  Ian changed tactics and sent his cavalry up ahead to block the way to the tower, meaning I would either have to deal with the cavalry or turn and fight the advancing raiders.  In the end I opted to leave a few groups of troops behind to get in the way of the pursuing raider infantry and the rest of my force broke formation and ran for the tower. 

Making good time. Levies come out to provide support.

More running Scotti.

Making good time. Nottice the Levies at the back covering the way round the house.

Scotti cavalry ignore the Levies, intent on the patrol.

More chasing!

There was a brief scuffle at the tower while Ian tried to stop me with his cavalry. This resulted in one group of Levies being seen off but in the end I managed to see off both units of cavalry and get all of my nobles to the safety of the watchtower.  The two units I had left as a rearguard did not fair to well though, with both being almost wiped out.

The patrol turns and forms shieldwall, ready to receive the charge.

Sod this. Make for the tower lads.

Scotti cavalry try and block the way.

Still smelly, but now knackers from all the chasing.

Casualties. A costly game for the Brits.

In the end a British victory, but a costly one with 17 killed, against only 1 Raider. If this had been a campaign game it would have been a disaster, although I probably would have played it differently. Also in future I think I will put a compound round the watchtower itself and use that as the safe area, as there was a terrible logjam trying to get my troops through the tower door, which in the end is what caused most of the British casualties.

A good refresher of the rules, and an interesting game where the emphasis was on evasion and running rather than just fighting all the time.

Not a great omen for our impending campaign, and with only two British kingdoms, but 2 saxon, 2 pict and 2 Scotti players I reckon my kingdom (Strathclyde) is in for some trying times, but that also means I will get to play in a lot of games.

Legions of Battle

Crusader publishing recently had a bit of a sale so Dave and I both picked up a copy of their fantasy rules, Legions of Battle.  These are based on the Crusader rules, but have been even more streamlined and the turn sequence has been tweaked slightly.

There are also no army lists in the book, but a system to work out profiles and then assign them a points value.  The stat line is a fairly standard affair consisting of Combat Skill, Missile Skill, Might, Protection, Wounds etc etc.  You assign your profile to each stand, which is roughly a 40mm square and put the stands together to make units, with a unit being 4 or 6 stands.    This unit then operates as one entity until such time as they run out of wounds (wounds per stand multiplied by the number of stands) or you fail a morale test after coming of worse in close combat.  It was all pretty standard stuff and had a very Warhammery (is that a word?) feel to it, but perhaps being a bit faster to play.

Using the example profiles in the back of the book I knocked up two army lists. One for Dave’s chaos warriors and one for my Orcs and Goblins. These are both Warhammer Fantasy armies so I tried to match the profiles as closely as possible to their Warhammer equivalents.  Two army lists were put together for out trial game, leaving out all magic for our first outing so we could get an idea on what the core rules would be like.  In the end our armies ended up being 8000points each.

I ended up fielding:

2 units of Orcs (6 bases each)

1 unit of Goblins (6 bases)

1 unit of 6 Trolls

1 Orc Chariot

2 Goblin Bolt Thrower

1 Unit of Wolf Rider (4 bases)

1 Orc Hero

1 Goblin Hero.

Dave Fielded:

2 Units if Chaos warriors (4 bases)

1 Unit of Chaos Knights (4 bases)

1 Unit of Beastment (6 Bases)

1 unit of Marauders (6 Bases)

1 Unit of Chaos Hounds (4 bases)

1 Unit of Marauder Horse (4 bases)

We opted for a pitched battle and lined up our forces agains each other. Dave line up across the board with his heaviest troops in the centre and light troops on the flanks, and I did much the same apart from putting my 2 bolt throwers on a hill on my right flank

We got off to a quick start, with Dave charging my trolls with his Marauder Horse and Chaos Hounds. I in turn piled in with my Goblins and Wolf Riders, making for a very large combat on my right flank. Dave came off worse in this large melee and had to make break tests for his troops. In Legions of Battle the winner of any combat gets to test against their opponents T&L rating, adding the amount that he won the combat by to the scores. If he beats his opponents T&L rating then the units he is rolling for is routed and leaves the table.  Pretty brutal.  In the end both of Dave’s units failed their tests and were removed from the table.

Turn two and the two battle lines advanced towards each other. There was not a great deal of space available so not too much fancy stuff going on, as the two lines tried ot get into combat.  Dave’s chaos Knight charged into my Boar Riders, who counter charged but in the ensuing combat I received a lot of casualties while inflicting none in return and predictably Dave managed to roll higher than their T&L score causing the whole unit to flee the field.

Turn three and the two lines finally clashed, with Dave charging everything into combat, leaving the entirety of both sides engaged, with eth exception of my wolfriders.  In the ensuing combat Dave’s troops proved to just be to tough for my orcs and all of the combats were very one sided, with the exception of the Trolls, who managed to hold their ground. Every unit in eth Orc army was totally outclassed, pretty much wiping me clean of the board in own turn of combat.  Not a great result.

In the post game pondering we decided on a few things:

You need a big table as ther is no real advantage to deploying deep when you can get more attacks for going wide.

Combat resolution is a little bit to brutal.

The movement rates given to the troops on both sides were too high

The Combat Skill stat is too powerful. In a lot of cases Dave was hitting me on 2’s due to having a higher CS and the +1 to hit for charging, while I was hitting on 5’s or 4’s.

There is no explanation in the rulebook as to how a counter charge would work.

Our reaction to the game was muted. It felt a lot like Warhammer, but even simpler so if the game feels like Warhammer then why not just play Warhammer? WHFB is going to go the way of the Dodo very soon so I hope there will be some sort of community driven take up of the rules, in the same style of Epic. I think the game would better for not being used as a mechanism to drive sales of model soldiers. 

As for Legions of Battle?

We said we woiuld give it another try at some point in the future, but I suspect we will be in no hurry to do so.  We have decided to give Kings of War a try next to see that that is like.

Round 4 in the Underhive

Round 4 of our Necromunda campaign and four of us turned up:

Me with my Cawdor
Rory with his Redemptionists
Andy with his squats
Dave with his Goliath Mob.

We rolled for random deployment again and I ended up deployed between Andy and Rory, with Dave on the opposite table edge.  Andy got the first turn, with me second, then Rory and Dave going last.

Boxed in.

Andy had his first go and using vents deployed two of his gang on top of a nearby building, granting him an excellent field of fire over my position.  In my turn my gang all ran for cover, either trying to stay out of site to looking for good firing positions.  Rory opted to go for a headlong charge towards me, while Dave started to send his mob towards Andy's gang.  

Under fire right from the start!

Turn two and when it rolled round to Andy his two advance gangers opened fire, putting one of my men out of action and pinning the other. Not a good start!  In my turn I returned fire with little success, while also trying to take out a few of the approaching Redemptionists, but to no avail.  Rory continued his advance, with a few shots pinning some of my gang members, while Dave swarmed toward Andy.   

Andy hastily redeployed to meet the approaching Goliaths, thankfully leaving me in peace as I had enough to deal with.  I tried to thin out the redemptionist numbers but could only manage a measly two downed from the heavy flamer, with everything else missing.  Rory's return fire was decisive, with three of my gang going down to their return fire, which combined with earlier casualties left me a bit short of men.

They're coming!

Across the other side of the board Dave had got stuck into Andy's squats and downed a fair few. Enough to force a bottle test on Andy, which he duly failed leaving three on the board.  I was right behind him as my casualties were starting to mount so I decided to call it a night there and cut my losses, leaving Dave and Rory to fight for the spoils.   Dave resorted to a bull rush on Rory, which worked quite well as Rory decided he had had enough as well, leaving Dave the victor!

Another short game (very short for me and Andy) and to make matters worse I lost my Heavy with the heavy flamer who succumbed to his wounds.

There was some post game discussion and there was a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the games.  In the end we came to the conclusion that the table was not large enough to allow for much in the way of movement. In three of the four games so far I had barely managed to get of my baseline, with vents and tunnels also proving invaluable as it let you deploy quite forward and create a buffer for you to move into.  Also most of the scenarios are designed for 2 players and cannot really be played with any more than that but there does not seem to be an easy solution to that as part of the attraction of these games is the social aspect and they would be lost if we went to two player games only. 

Next campaign game we are going to try a bigger table to see if that helps any, but my gang is starting to really suffer so I don't think that I am much of a contender any more in the campaign.  I will keep at it though and see how it goes!  

Apologies for the terrible photos this week (they are always terrible I know but these ones are worse than usual), as I pretty much forgot to take very many. 

All Good Things...

Monday saw the conclusion of our Chain of Command campaign, "48 Hours in May", with the German assault on the French town of Mont Lambert.  I was joined by Andy and Alistair, while lined against us were Ian, Allan and Barry. 

We had decided to do the final assault as a Big Chain of Command game, with the remains of the six platoons involved in the campaign all on the table at once, plus any support.  The scenario was to be the Flank Attack from the main rulebook.

My Platoon had managed to get off rather lightly so far, with only a few casualties, whereas everyone else was down a squad or so.  The support totals worked out at 20 for us, and about 15 for the French.

The view down the table from eth German flank attack. French would deply on the left.

Another view down the table.

View from the German centre, oppoing the French.

After a quick look at the terrain we opted to separate the table into three separate quadrants, each with its own particular needs in terms of support. The western platoon would have to assault the village so we assigned a flamethrower squad, perfect for clearing buildings. The flank attack would have to cover the most ground so was assigned am armoured car and a heavy machine gun team, along with emplacement. The central platoon would have decent lines of site at the French position and so had a spotter for an off table mortar attached.  In addition to this we selected a minefield to help block the road for any French tanks, an adjutant to allow to deploy our senior commanders quickly to maximise command and a pre game barrage to disrupt the French deployment. In the end Andy took the right, I took the centre and Alistair took the flank attack.  Our plan was to close down the French positions and limit their movement, thus limiting their firepower and bunching them up for a good mortar barrage.

The patrol phase went very well, with us able to prevent the French from getting any jump off points in the village, giving us some breathing space for advancement.  We also mange to get some very good overlapping fields of fire on the French left flank which would prove a decisive factor later on in the game.

The scenario allowed the Germans to start and we our centre and flank deployed troops cautiously 

Early deployment and getting into position.

The pre game barrage really made a mess of the French early game deployment, with hardly any troops getting onto the table. The allowed Andy to run a German squad right up the table and shut down one of the French jump off points before it had even been used.  On our flank the Germans advance was stalled by the appearance of a single French squad in a cornfield, but this quickly turned into a one sided affair when the Germans started to bring their numbers and firepower to bare.

On the German right Andy had consolidated into the village, covering off all the French advances and trapping them behind a barn on the opposite side of the road.  In the centre I continued my advance, acting as an anchor to the flank attack and threatening a crossfire if any French decided to deploy against our flank attack.  

Mid game and our armoured car turned up!  Then got destroyed by a sneakily deployed anti tank gun, which was itself then destroyed by combined fire from the German centre and flank. Alistair managed to quickly overwhelm the French left, pushing them back towards the centre of the board, while Andy and I forced them to bunch up in a small area behind some hedges.  

As soon as they were suitably bunched up I started to call in my mortar barrage, which managed to cover most of the French centre.  At thus point we were running short on time, so we stopped to take stock of the game.  One French Platoon was pretty much broken, another was trapped under a mortar barrage, and a third was trying its best to break out of confinement across some open ground. The German casualties were minimal, with a strong position from which to assault the French, or sit back and let the mortars do their job.  The GM decided to call it in favour of the Germans, although we did not actually finish the game.   

French forces unsure of what to do.

The German flank attack gathers momentum.

Nicely bunched up ready fro the mortar barrage.

A very satisfying end to the campaign (from the German point of view anyway!), with another very interesting game.  I think our success during the patrol phase went a long way to putting the French on the back foot, and also the pre game barrage proved very valuable. Alistair did a large portion of the German heavy lifting, getting right in the teeth of the firefight, but he was up to the job as he was ably supported by an armoured car and a heavy machine gun.  Andy lucked out quite early and thanks to closing a French Jump Off point very early in the game did not have too hard a time of it.  My Germans in the centre did not really have that much to do. I provided the threat of flanking fire to any French that deployed to close to our flank attack and kept the French bottled up in the middle of the board.  As for the French they were very unlucky as the pre-game barrage really made a mess of their plans, but they came out and gave it a god go, especially Ian who was hampered by some terrible deployment options and some even worse dice rolling!

All in all a great campaign, well run by John and with everyone getting into the spirit of things.  A good narrative campaign makes all the difference to a game, with the consequences of success or failure in having a direct impact on locations and future assaults/defences. That added an extra level of interest and challenge to the outcomes of our games and I am already looking forward to our next campaign.  The fact the Chain of Command plays so well and it is very difficult to play any nasty bending of the rules also helps a lot!

Next week is round four of out Necromunda campaign.  You can never have too many campaigns going on!

That was the year that was

Time for the almost obligatory roundup of the year. Seems to be a blogger tradition so here goes...

Gaming wise I managed a few games, but not as many as I would have liked. I probably played about 40 this year, split between a few key rule sets.  We concluded our Mordheim campaign, started Necromunda and I discovered the excellent Chain of Command rules from Toofat Lardies.  I also played a few games of Lord of the Rings and a few games of X-Wing, as well as a few games of Dux B. I don't remember playing much more than that really.  Interestingly I have not played a single game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle this year that I can remember, which is a change for me as it was my staple game for many a year. 

In terms of painting I managed to paint a few models, although I dont think I managed as many as last year.  This year I painted approximately:

50 Germans for Chain of Command
2 WW2 German Vehicles
4 Mordor Trolls
11 Models for Necromunda
a few Rogue Trader Orcs
2 Mantic modular Terrain buildings
some sci fi scatter terrain.
Some more dark Age buildings
Dark Ages livestock and some carts.

I dont recall painting much more than that, which is a pretty disappointing year painting wise. I have also been rebasing  my Lord of the Rings collection so that the sabot bases they are on are all the same size. I also did some sabot bases for Dux B.

Purchase wise there has been a few, most of which are now painted. I bought my WW2 Germans for Chain of Command, plus I managed ot put together a large force of Orks from the Rogue Trader days of 40k.  I also purchased the beginnings of an Eldar army fro Epic and got some very nice 6mm scale buildings from Kickstarter.

My biggest Hobby outlay this year has been Kickstarter.  Aliens vs Predator still hasn't delivered, mainly due to making a game from a very lucrative IP licence owned by a large corporation. I have high hopes that this will deliver in the early part of next year. In addition to this I also bought in to the second edition of Kings of War, but only for the rulebook. There are a lot of things I like about this ruleset and a few I dont, but these can easily be tweaked and will give me a set of rules to use my WHFB collection with.  The other big kickstartet investment this year has been Forward base by Antenociti's workshop. It was very well run and I fully expect that this will deliver in March as promised.  I also bought into Zealot Miniatures dungeon terrain for a small amount as it will help flesh out the terrain for Mantic's Dungeon Siege kickstarter, a very nice looking dungeon delver that has a basic ruleset that I can hopefully enjoy with the kids. The last Kickstarter of the year was an impulse purchase of an art book by the excellent Gary Chalk of Lone Wolf fame.  All in all I am expecting some rather exciting parcels to arrive in the next 12 months!

This year I only managed to attend three shows, Carronade, Claymore and Targe. All three were great fun and I even managed to pick up a trophy at Targe this year!

I think moving house and a few other work related issues has had a big dent in hobby activities this year, with 2015 looking to be much the same, what with all the planned work going on to the house. I am still hopeful of a good years gaming ahead though.

Looking towards next year and what it holds there will be the continuing Necromunda Campaign, as well as the conclusion of our Chain of Command campaign. There will also be a Dux B campaign kicking of in March.   I am also hoping to play a lot more games set in Middle Earth next year, as that has been neglected recently, especially the War of the Rings ruleset.  I would really like to take Helms Deep to a wargames show as out club display next year but as always I dont know if I will have the time for it.

Isen Fords, the second

The last Monday night of the year and I suggested that a game of Lord of the Rings was in order.  I haven't played much of that recent;y and perhaps the release of the last Hobbit movies has put it in my head to have a game.

Rory, Dave and Kenny all volunteered to have a go and I opted to have a bash at the Isen Fords. Rory wanted to have another try at the second battle, this time as the good guys. This suited me as upon opening the box I discovered that Erkenbrand's horse was broken, and as he fights on foot in the second battle we could use him in that one.

We tossed a coin and Rory and Dave ended up as the forces of evil, while Kenny and I took on the roles of the brave defenders of the Westfold.

The scenario is very simple.  There is a force defending the fords, and there is a chance from turn three onwards that mounted reinforcements will arrive.  The forces of Isengard, comprising of Uruk Hai, Dunlendings and a Troll (controversial!!!) are to attack the ford, with a flanking force of warg riders arriving anytime after turn 4.  The victory conditions are very simple, the forces of Isengard have to clear the ford by reducing the Rohan to under 25% of their starting strength by the end of turn 10.  Anything else is a win for Rohan.

Things started fairly slowly, with a slow advance from the evil side, while the Rohan stayed still to maximise their shooting. Shooting was fairly ineffective, apart from Kenny managing to take out most of the Uruk Hai beserkers before they hit our line.  In this scenario the river Isen is low and may be crossed at half speed, so the forces of evil waded across. The troll had the fastest movement and so made it across first. At the ford itself my forlorn hope got a good doing over by the Dunlendings as their superior numbers started to count.

Turn 3 and my cavalry arrived on the field. Hooray!  I withdrew from the fords and formed a line with my Royal Guard at the centre and started fishing about trying to find a brave soul to distract the troll.

Turn 4 the Wargs arrived (boo!) but they had very limited impact as they wandered on to the field right into the path of my cavalry.

By now battle was well and truly joined, with mounting casualties on both sides. The Warg Riders were dealt with, having virtually no impact on the game and we continued to feed the troll with one brave warrior of Rohan every turn.

By turn seven the Isengard force was broken and started to disapear. Turn 8 and the Rohan force was broken and started to disappear, albeit very slowly thanks to some very lucky die rolls and Erkenbrand's high courage value.   It all came down to courage rolls in the end and I was very lucky, with 14 Rohan left on the board at the end of turn 10. A victory for the Rohan, but a very close one though!

 

A very enjoyable end to the years gaming, although the Rohan were very lucky.  They managed to win eight out of the ten priority rolls and most of the roll off (thanks Rory!).

I have not played much Lord of the Rings this year and it is one of the things that I intend to remedy in 2015. I suspect that the game will go the way of the Dodo after the last movie has faded from memory so there may be a shopping spree in January as well, to make sure I get the last few bits I am after.    no more gaming for the rest of the year as that is the club closed for Christmas, but there will be the obligatory round up of the years gaming activities to come in the next week or so.

Eldar prove to be a Pain

The penultimate game of 2014 saw round three of the clubs Necromunda campaign, with me having choice of scenario due to my victory in round two.

Participants for round three were:

Rory and his Redemptionists
Dave and his Goliaths
Ian and his Eschers
John and his Craftworld Eldar
My Cawdor gang.

The table just before we started.

Stuck in the corner. I never managed to advance much further than this!

As the club forum is currently down we did not have access to the campaign ladder that Rory had put up, and a lot of the scenarios were unsuitable for a 5 way game so we opted to play a gang fight.

We rolled randomly for deployment and I ended up sandwiched in a corner with John Eldar to my right and Ian's Eschers to my left. There was very little cover as well.  John wont the roll off for first turn and advanced towards my corner, with me going after him.  The game started well for me as I managed to down one of his Eldar and take another one out of action, while elsewhere on the board Dave decided that a headlong rush was a good tactic and tried it on Ian, with mixed success.  Rory was a bit isolated in his part of the board and started to advance towards the Eldar and Ian's Escher.

Turn two saw a couple of Eldar Guardians poke their head round the corner of a building and put two of my gangers down, while I incinerated one with a Melta Gun for his trouble.  Elsewhere on the table there was an almighty gunfight happening between Ian and Dave, with Dave starting to come off slightly worse, while Rory exchanged fire with some Eldar scouts.

Turn three and John's guardians put down another two of my gangers, at which point I decided I was on a hiding to nothing.  I had moved my gang about 3 inched in total, with basically no where to move unless I go through the Eldar, two of which had managed to put nearly half of my gang down in two rounds of shooting.  I called it a day at that and retired, slightly miffed at the whole affair.

bloomin' Eldar...grumble grumble

Dave was next to go, thanks to casualties, leaving Rory and Ian to contest the spoils, which Ian eventually won when Rory decided enough was enough.

Another miserable experience being completely outgunned by the Eldar, although a consolation was that I managed to actually kill one outright. Eldar are unable to replace casualties easily so that is a bonus for the future campaign for everyone.  I also managed to get a boatload if experience for fighting against a much more powerful gang and some advances. My gang is now starting to look like it has a close combat bias and would certainly do well in Mordheim!  Unfortunately this is Necromunda so I am not sure how much use these advances are going to be.

One thing about Necromunda is the amount of time and effort that it takes to put the table together, with 4 people all putting terrain together and laying out barricades etc. It makes for a very collaborative experience!

In other news our Chain of Command has moved on, with my German Platoon getting ready to make the assault on the French defended Baincthun bridge, after the other Platoon commanders fluffed their assaults (if you want something done!).  Unfortunately the French commander decided to give ground and withdrew. This would give him time to recover some men to his depleted platoon. This means that the way is clear for the German assault on Mont Lambert, which we are planning on playing in the new year as a big Cain of Command game. We should have enough models as there are already three Germans Platoons available for this and while there are only two French Platoons the casualties on the French side have been quite heavy so there should be enough models on their side as well.  Looking to concluding a fun campaign and trying a big Chain of Command game.