Northern Conspiracy February 2019 Game Night

Last Friday the club got together for it's February game night. I played in Ralph's 30 Years War Nexus game which I play tested previously. I chose to be on the opposite side to see how the other half lived.

This was a great game and went down to the wire ending up in virtually a draw. The Spanish tercios are juggernauts as they should be and the Imperialists played them very well. Our plan to hold in the center and win on the flanks, eventually started to work, but a touch late as the Spanish tercios mostly had their way with our new model pike blocks. Lucky for us Bob and Mark brought their flanks into order just in time. Fun game and the rules seem to be coming along nicely.

Phil ran a well attended and raucous WWII air-to-air game which everyone seemed to have fun playing.

Ed M. and Kevin had a couple of jousts using Ed's jousting rules.

A big thanks to all three game hosts.

Nexus Play Test

This past Friday my uncle had us over for a play test of the latest version of his 30 Years War rules, Nexus. These were the original source for his Ancient's rules, Hannibal at the Gates. Now that the latter have reached their 2nd edition, some of the lessons learned have been brought back to Nexus. This play test was to give them all a ringing out.

I played opposite Charlie who had a nice combined arms force of Swedish-model infantry, light artillery and battle cavalry. My command was similarly comprised of all combined arms, but my European standard pike were outnumbered 2:1 and outclassed. My cavalry was also at a disadvantage. My guns however, were excellent. Covering my flank was Ed with a fine selection of troops including some elite cavalry and large Tercios of pike, so no worries there, I could focus on Charlie's threats.

I sent my aggressive Croat cavalry out..er...aggressively. Live by the sword, die by the sword. Unfortunately the latter was mostly true. They took out some of Charlie's auxiliary troops, but other than that mostly just blew themselves up on Charlie's battle cavalry. My superior guns were also mediocre in their effectiveness. No fault of the guns, blame the operator.

Stripped of all the chaff, it was time to press with my pike. With Charlie's superior firepower, getting stuck in was my only real option. Unfortunately in the one turn I had to approach his infantry, Charlie scored seven (7) hits on one round of fire. That pretty much ended it on our flank. Lucky for the Catholics, the opposite flank was going equally poorly for the Protestants, evening out my misfortune. As the game drew to a conclusion the battle lines were in a classic 'pinwheel of death' with the outcome to be decided.

I expect that you'll be seeing more Nexus game play here on the blog throughout the upcoming year.