The Battle of Shady Hill

The Hill Dwarf General stared at the huge skeletal catapult in the gap between the forest and hills.  
Scouts had spotted the Undead army and he knew they were arrayed for battle on the other side of the forest.  He knew his troops have to drive hard and fast to avoid being constantly pounded by the Vampire Lord's catapults.

The wooden rectangles were marking deployment areas.  Should have removed them before taking the pictures.  D'oh!

I packed up my Warband stuff and took it over to my friend Darby's house and we got in a game Saturday night.  He played the Undead and I played the Hill Dwarfs.  These were 500 pt armies.

Undead Army
Vampire Lord (Good)
Necromancer (Average)
Skeletal Crossbows
Skeletal Riders
Skeletal Warriors x 3
Undead Catapults

Hill Dwarf Army
General (Exceptional)
Spell Crafter (Average)
Handgunners
Warriors x 3
Noble Riders
Artillery

During terrain placement I of course placed hills because they do not hamper movement for Hill Dwarfs if you give them the "Hill Walkers" ability, which I did.  Darby placed forests to hamper my movement as a counter measure. Below is the placement of units before the battle began.  I have my Noble Riders [NR] and Handgunners [HG] on the left.  My goal was to run around the hill and hit the left flank with my riders and move the Handgunners up on the hill to fire down from the cover of trees.  Darby placed his skeletal riders [SC] on his right as a counter to my cavalry.  Darby placed his artillery in the middle of his army to have them immediately available to start pounding the Dwarfs during their approach.

After several turns the Hill Dwarfs have had some motivation issues and not made much progress in the advance.  The Noble Riders have made the flank and one unit of Warriors has made the hill on the right flank.  This has made them a prime target for the catapults and they have suffered some hits after reaching the top of the hill.

Fast forward several more turns and the bulk of both armies are engaged in a melee.  The Noble Riders and Skeletal Cavalry are locked in a stalemate on the left.  Darby managed to advance some Warriors on top of the forested hill making my Handgunners retreat and unable to take any shots.  In the middle 2 units of Warriors are engaged with the Skeletal Warriors and Vampire Lord.  The Necromancer and Skeletal Archers have both joined the large melee to provide flanking attacks on the Dwarfs.  On the right Warriors from both armies are locked in melee.  At this point both armies' artillery sit silently waiting for targets.

As the melees continued for several more turns both sides see progress.  On the left, the Noble Riders have routed and the Handgunners are engaged before they even get to fire a volley.  The Undead are winning on the left.  Both sides artillery moved into position to start a duel.  The Dwarf Artillery forced the Undead Catapults off the board, but not before they could route the Dwarf Spell Caster and put some wounds on the Dwarf Artillery.  With the right flank still in a deadlock the major change takes place in the center.  The second unit of Skeletal Warriors have been destroy and both the Vampire Lord and Necromancer are pushed back.  The Dwarf Warriors 1 was also routed, but rallied after running past their General.

Next turn the Hill Dwarfs' left looks really bleak as the Handgunners are hit in the rear by the Skeletal Cavalry.  Hill Dwarf sandwich anyone?

Luckily for the Handgunners they don't have to survive long because the next turn the Hill Dwarf General charges into the Vampire Lord and forces him off the table.  At this point the Undead have lost over half their army points and break off the engagement.

I have to say it was a fun game and look forward to playing it again.  I'll need to take another read through the rules to make sure I have everything correct this time, but overall, I thought this one went much smoother.  I have been pretty focused on Infinity here lately, but I'm already wanting to start another army for Warband.  :)

MilleniumCon 2016

This weekend I made my annual trip down to Austin to play some games at MilleniumCon.  This year was the 19th MilleniumCon.  It is a convention hosted by the Lone Star Historical Miniatures group which has chapters all over Texas.  I am a member of the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) chapter.  I chose not to try to run any games this time, but instead just to enjoy my time as a player.  A couple of my games ended up being cancelled, but I still managed to get in 4 games and observed a few others.

Here's some pictures of some of the games I got to play in...

"The Hunt for Moby Dick" - this was a pretty fun little game using Legos.  Each player had a small boat with crew to hunt down the Great White Whale.  There were plenty of things to consider like not colliding into other ships or the whale when plotting movement, having crew fall over-board, and  sharks in the water.

I was in charge of the black boat.

Thar she blows lads!

Several boats have managed to harpoon the whale and are on a "Nantucket Sleigh Ride"...

I still have all my crew, but at this point haven't damaged Moby Dick enough to have enough points to be anywhere close to in the lead.

Finally the whale gives in this his wounds.

Next up I played in a Napoleonic ship game hosted by the crew of Portsmouth Miniatures and Games.  The game used their own miniatures and also their own rules called "Bloody Broadsides".  I commanded a British 74 gun ship called the Leviathan.  Having a crew with a high morale, my guns were ready to do some damage so I was put in 3rd in our line.  We were going up against an allied fleet of French and Spanish ships.

The battle lines approach.  French and Spanish on the left and the British on the right.

Broadsides begin to be traded down the line.

The French and Spanish fleet have the misfortune of having their lead ship the Bucentaure completely explode as it tries to snake their line behind the British line.  So the French and Spanish try to reform line while changing direction.  This is costly as the British hold a disciplined battle line and continue the pound the other fleet.  For my ship, HMS Leviathan this was a difficult time because all the changes in direction left me as the prime target for several turning French ships.  My crew, hull and rigging were taking a beating!!

The French and Spanish are trying to change direction and reform a line.

The British line stays disciplined... maybe too disciplined?

 Here is the bright moment in the Spanish & French fleet's battle action.  The British have been a little too cocky and tightened up their lines to try to focus their fire on the disorganized mass of Spanish and French ships.  So when the lead Spanish ship (San Justo) decides to collide with the lead British ship (Brittanica) it triggers a rough series of collisions fowling several ships at the front of the British line.

It takes several turns for the Spanish ship and 3 British ships to get unfowled, but it's not enough for the French and Spanish to gain any advantage.  The game resulted in a minor British victory (and a Major Morale victory).

The final picture has points were tallied to determine the victor.

My next game was a wargame currently in development over at GMT called "The Last Hundred Yards".  I've had a long time fondness for the old wargames with the cardboard chits.  It is how my Dad and I got into wargaming so there's always a sense of nostalgia for me playing these games.  The game was being run by the games designer, Mike Denson.  So while I was playing the game I got to hear about his approach to the design of the game and what he hoped to accomplish.  We didn't get to finish the game, because there was a lot of rules to cover, but I found it to be a pretty fun system.  I'll be signing up to help this get published on their P500 program.

Start of the first turn, so most of the unit are still concealed so a marker is covering the stats.

Thanks to my partner laying down a great smoke screen with his mortars, I was able to make a run at the German position with my infantry.  My assault did not go so well, so most of my troops are disordered (the red band on the chits on the right of the map.)

The last game I played was the "Battle of Plevna" from the Russo-Turkish wars of 1877-1878.  This was fought in 10mm using the Big Bloody Battles rules.  I'd been wanting to try out this rule set for a while, so was glad to see it offered.  Unfortunately, I got a little to engrossed in the game and only realized much later that I only took one picture!  Heh... oops.

Me and another guy named Bob played the Russian & Romanian forces, while the 3rd guy played the Turks.  This was a tough siege because the Russians were very inept and not as well equipped as the Turks.  Luckily we only needed to capture and hold two forts to win.  Our strategy was to hit the flanks and use the forces in the middle to keep the Turks stretched out.  In the end it worked out and we managed to win, but I can't begin to describe how much of a massacre it ended up being for the Russians in the middle.  The plan worked but the costs were high!  It's times like this that I'm glad it's all pretend and my decisions don't affect real lives!

Anyway, that was my weekend.  I got away from it pretty cheap too.  There really wasn't anything in the vendor area that grabbed my interest, so I only picked up a few Dust figures in the flea market.  I had a lot of fun but was glad to get home today.

Rod

Patrol Angis - An AAR and Thoughts on the Game

I have gotten several games of Patrol Angis played through now.  4 solo games and 1 with my buddy Darby using the miniatures from the starter set I bought a while back.  First I'll let you have a look at the game I played this evening.

Scenario:  The Prydian Forces (Red/White) are planning to break through a defensive position setup by the League of Yordan (Green/Yellow).

League of Yordan starting positions...

The Prydian Assault.

For the first turn of the scenario, I gave the Prydian forces the initiative.  They did a normal die roll to determine the number of activation tokens to be issued out to the two sides.  The Prydian forces move up one of their assault rifle teams and hit the enemy team on the hill.  The fire is devastating, killing over half the enemy team.  They fail morale and lost their activation token.  A good start for the Prydians!

The League of Yordan troops send in the Duxis battlesuits and hit the assault rifle team pretty hard.  This takes up their one activation for the turn.  The Prydians had put 2 activations on their support weapon team, so they moved up and on the second activation hit the Duxis battlesuits managing to put down the suit with the howitzer.  Things are looking even better!

During the 2nd turn, using a their jump jets the Prydian close assault team gets in a close as they can to hit the support weapon team on the hill.  Sadly their fire is pretty ineffective (only 1 casualty) due to having to snap-shot on the run.

The 3rd turn is a hard swing in favor of the League.  They have too much fire power.  Especially with the Espaten team on the far hill.  The large mounted lasers rip the assault team to shreds leaving only 1 survivor.

The remaining Duxis have also been doing some cleanup work on their end.  Finishing off the Prydian support weapons team and the assault rifle team.

The Prydian leader calls for the retreat.

Meanwhile, the poor soldier left on the hill offers the enemy a chance of surrender...

Patrol Angis Thoughts...

I have to say I really like this game.  It definitely holds to it's claim of being a One-Hour Wargame.  The action is fast and brutal.  Cover is very important for survival, but it basically comes down to the fact that if you can shoot someone, they can shoot you back.  So if you don't like taking heavy casualties, this game will be tough  for you!

Another thing that's pretty important in this game is winning initiative.  Not only do you get an extra activation.  But you get to pick all the casualties that a both sides take during that turn.  As in the case of the first round when the Prydian support unit managed a total of 5 wounds on the 3 Duxis battlesuits.  Each Duxis has a total of 5 damage points it can take before being destroyed.  If the Yordan player had the initiative, they could have distributed the 5 wounds between the 3 Duxis figures and kept them all in action.  Instead the Prydian player had initiative and was able to put them all on one Duxis, and also picked the one with the indirect fire weapon (that ignores cover bonuses)!

There's quite a bit of flexibility in how you can create your forces.  It certainly lends itself to a space opera feel.  One thing I have noticed with the starter though, is that it's pretty easy for this game to get imbalanced.  5 games so far and the Prydians have lost every game.  I think I can even it up pretty soon with a few tweaks once I get some new troops painted up.  But the warning here is if you don't have friends that like a gentlemanly game, it could be very frustrating.

I'm looking forward to tweaking my armies and getting some more games in.  I also picked up the new vehicle rules so I'm sure there will be some more heavy hitters appearing on the battlefield as well.

Have a good week friends!

Rod