December 2013 Game Night

Last Friday evening our club had our monthly game night. We don't always get to do an event in December, but this year the dates lined up to allow us to get an event in between Christmas and New Years Day. I played in a 28mm Renaissance game hosted by my friend John (left). The game used rules I wrote about 15 years ago, Halberdier, which John has kept alive by using. I forgot how much fun they were. With encouragement from several people last Friday I may resurrect these rules for use. I had lost the files in a hard drive crash, but still have a hard copy version to start from.

The game was Teutonic Knights vs. Knights Templar with various assorted foot and dismounted figures: pikes, spears, longbows and dismounted knights. In the end the weight of the Teutonic Knight's mounted was too much for the Templar to hold up to and the victory went to the Teutonic side.

We had a very large turn out and there were three other excellent (and completely full) games run including Michael's Ships of Glory game. Michael participated in the kickstarter campaign for this game and contributed enough to get the starter box set and the very nice play mat shown in the photos. Everyone who played the game said that the rules are very enjoyable.

Kevin (standing left) ran a beautiful 15mm "Phoney War" 1939 France vs German game featuring Char 2B tanks and lovely terrain. The rules were "Panzer Blitz" and reference cards featured blown up "chits" which looked like they came from a board game but were actually made up by Kevin. These made looking up stats for forces quite easy.

 

Last but not least, new member pledge Greg ran a Carnage & Glory 9 Years War game using 28mm figures.  Our club loves Carnage & Glory and knows and appreciates how much work setting up and running a C&G game is. Thanks Greg!

Merry Christmas!

I know I've been woefully sparse in the updates department. End of the year work deadlines have me not spending much hobby time at home. Hopefully I'll get a few small projects out during holiday shut down at work. I do know that I have a couple games to go to next week which should provide good fodder for the blog.

May all of you have a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. May your figure collection grow and your unpainted lead pile shrink. May you have more fun gaming ahead for 2014 and your dice roll true.

The Battle of Tauromenion

Over the past few weeks we got together for two sessions to fight the second battle in our ongoing 28mm First Punic War campaign. Pictured to the left on the left is the Carthiginian commander and on the right the commander of Rome's forces. In the middle our arbiter, the benevolent and all powerful Mammers (aka Mars).

The game took two sessions to fight and in the end the casualties were so complete and devastating that even Phyros would have been appalled. In fact if this battle had actually taken place Phyros would have fought a series of Tauromenionian victories.  In the end Rome had a tenuous hold on the road to Tauromenion and it's garrison, which after the battle was as large as either field army. At the start of the battle the garrison was approximately 20% of the size of either army.

This was a fun game with beautiful troops and terrain. All who played had a good time. I was able to field part of the Carthiginian army with my recently painted troops thanks to my uncle providing the missing units. I look forward to the returns after the battle when Mammers sorts them out. Will there be more battles to fight? Will either army be able to field enough troops? Will Syracuse sweep both Rome and Carthage from Sicily? Only Mammers knows.

The Battle of Gloucester Point, October 17th, 1781 (2)

This past weekend I hosted another session of my Gloucester Point battle at the Carnage convention. This was a well played battle by both sides with the British suffering heavily due to good Franco-American musketry (dice) and tactics. Although the British did a good job of exhausting the smaller American and French commands, in the end the British ran out of steam with the largest American brigade still untouched by bayonet or musket ball.

Below on the left the capable British commanders, and on the right the victorious American and French players.

I was thrilled to see how easily all of the players were able to pick up the Volley & Bayonet rules, even with all of the wing scale additions. By the 3rd turn both sides were running their own maneuvers and combat will little input from me as GM.

I didn't shoot a lot of photos, but I was able to snap one of each of the other games hosted during the Saturday morning session by other members of the Northern Conspiracy. Left is Byron's Wandiwash game using V&B in 15mm, right is Ed's 6mm 30 years war game and below center is Charlie's 28mm Napoleonic game.

HUGE 28mm Napoleonics Game

This past Saturday our club got together to play a HUGE Napoleonic game using my friend Charlie's home brew rules "Napoleon's Rules of War". The game was a fictitious hypothetical invasion of mainland England in 1815 by Napoleon with Britain receiving help from Austria in defense....or how to use everyone's troops in one game.

Charlie painted about half of the troops you see here in the past couple years. The remainder were from the collections of 4 or 5 other members, including myself, painted up and based for Charlie's rules and for Volley & Bayonet wing scale. The above photo shows three tables, each representing interconnected portions of the battlefield. Transfer to and from the boards and victory conditions revolved around a cleaver system Charlie created for the game. This system was great fun, worked wonderfully and really added to the game. All of the photos below except the bottom right were from my table, where my Austrians attempted to press a weaker French force run by my opponents Randy (left) and Robert (right). Both played masterfully, and Robert's redeployment of their batteries really gave us fits. As time was called we were doing well, but their delaying tactics allowed their French brethren on the main table to press the attack with superior numbers assuring a minor French victory for the day.

There was so much to see the only way I could think to convey the scale of the battle was to take a panoramic video of the tables early in the day. It can be viewed below.

Another Shameless Plug

I'm selling off a Field of Glory Renaissance rule book and 3 army list books on Ebay here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321229601823?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

I just won't get to painting the armies for a long time considering my current progress and plans for ancient armies.

Thanks for looking,
AJ

10mm Modern Buildings

Apologies to my readers that follow this blog for the historical gaming content. These are two 10mm modern buildings that I designed and built using the assistance of my laser engraver. They could be used for modern era historical gaming, but as you can see by the drop ship in the photos that I'm using for scale, my intention for these is for science fiction gaming for the game Dropzone Commander.

The large blue tower is modeled loosely after Boston's John Hancock tower (although mine is significantly shorter) and the left one is a residential apartment building. Both will later be adorned with vegetation to emulate an abandoned city.

28mm 'German' Austrian Napoleonic Fusiliers - Green Regiment

Another unit of Napoleonic German Austrian Fusiliers again purchased from ppsbay_com and re-based for Napoleon's Rules of War. This unit came painted with the grey regimental facings, collars and cuffs which I re-painted to match green the regimental color of the righ-hand unit that I purchased and re-painted earlier that was shown in this previous blog post.

I think this completes my line regiments for now for my Austrians. All I have left are items that I plan to paint myself: Grenzers, Artillery, Officers and one unit of Hussars.

Hannibal at the Gates Play Test

Last Friday evening we got together at my uncle's house to play test some proposed rule modifications to his ancients rules, Hannibal at the Gates. Since we're currently playing a campaign with these rules we thought a separate non-campaign game to try them out would be appropriate. This was a game pitting the Carthaginians against a Gual force of warriors reinforced with some local Roman model legions. The core of the Carthaginians were their ponderous Hoplites facing off against the ponderous Gaul Warrior units....or as Ralph described it, "hot ponderous on ponderous action".

As a group we settled on liking almost all the proposed rule changes with only a slight adjustment to soldier units combat factors. The table also included a lot of terrain so we could test the new terrain effects on soldier units. Soldier units include peltasts, scutari and theurophoroi.

The game was fun and bloody. Phil was able to destroy a whole wing of elephants while inflicting some, but not enough return damage to the Gaul center. On the far flank Bob's cavalry command did well against Charlie and on the right I mostly demonstrated on my flank while Mike and Bob won their areas. When your team mates are rolling hot dice don't muck it up by adding in any more of your poor rolls than is absolutely required. That's my motto.

All in all it was a great time. Calling it a 'play test' doesn't do it justice. Really we played a great game with alternate rules in place to make sure they worked out, which for the most part they did beautifully.