Second Field of Glory Game - Part 1

This past Saturday we got together at my friend Mike's house to play the second Field of Glory game in our Second Punic Wars campaign. One of the players had to leave before we finished so this will be post one in a two part series on the battle. For this game we also brought in a gun-for-hire, our friend Leo, to help out pushing the Carthaginiains. Leo will probably end up being a Roman player eventually but we were desparately short on Carthaginians so for his first game Leo was a turncoat. These photos were taken by Mike and are just a few of the many photos that he took. To see the rest of the gallery you can visit Mike's Picassa page.

This second battle is the battle of Ariminium, in Northern Italy. As you can see the Carthaginians have brought their Elephants over the Alps with them. Again they caught the Romans unaware and have attacked a small portion of the Roman army in hopes to destroy it quickly. If the battle looks familliar to those that read my entry from game one, that's because the situation and terrain dictated a similar defensive deployment. The battle took a while to develop as the Carthaginians deployed in a very compact deployment and used the early turns if the battle to deploy and re-deploy their assaulting troops into positions of their choosing.

These photos show the first early combats of the battle. On the right (also the Roman right flank of the battle) you can see the Numidian light cavalry skirmishing with the Roman Legionaires. The left photo shows a large skirmish battle in the woods on the Roman left flank. Early losses have forced the Carthaginians to withdraw one battle group of skirmishers and replace it with a fresh one. The Romans also swapped out one battle group of velites to allow it to recover its morale. When we return on Thursday night to finish the game many fine Roman and Carthaginian soldiers will meet their maker on this field of glory.

Pegasus Bridge

This past Saturday (June 6th) I played in a 20mm World War II game run at our club's game day. The scenario was the D-Day attack by the British Ox and Bucks glider airborne troops on the Pegasus bridge. The game was run by fellow Northern Conspiracy club member Mark Decouteau.

Mark chose to run the game using the Crossfire rule system. Our club played Crossfire fairly actively for a short period right after the rules were published, but since then they have not seen a lot of use. After playing in Mark's game and enjoying it thoroughly, I'm actually fairly surprised that we haven't played more Crossfire. After playing in Mark's game I have a renewed enthusiasm to host some Crossfire games of my own.

I'd like to compliment Mark on his scenario design and especially his terrain. Crossfire is very dependent on good terrain for the rule system to work well. Mark not only had a sufficient ammount of terrain, but his tabletop was quite beautiful as well, right down to the scratch-built gliders!