A busy week - Sudan, Great North Wars and Napoleonic's

As the title says three games squeezed in this of various types.

Firstly the warm-up games continued for the upcoming Khartoum game, this time with the proposed forces we'll be using.

Lancers try to rescue a jammed gattling

The British struggled a little to hold back the Mahdist tide but checking the rules later we'd misremembered how scrub worked and been too generous on hiding behind it, which would have given the Brits more distance shooting.   

Camel Corps are surrounded

Later in the week I made the trip over to The Forest for a game of Beneath the Lilly Banners with our favoured Great North War setting. The scenario involved an Ottoman force trying to capture a fort and prevent some supplies getting through.    

Ottoman Azabs

It was the first time we'd used Tribal Horse, Tribal Foot and massed Russian Dragoons. The Tribal Horse proved annoying and highly manoeuvrable, the Tribal Foot shoot OK but can nt stand up to close order troops in combat and the Dragoons were a little disappointing against the Ottoman lancers but may need more practice.     

Ottomans close in on the fort, which would later fall

The final game as A Napoleonic one using Lasalle with the French attacking a similarly sized British force who were not all active at the start of the game. It was an 1814 French vs Russian game reset for the Peninsula campaigns. 

The French were able to capture about half the table and destroy one British infatry brigade, however they lost a brigade of their own and most of the heavy cavalry. We called it a winning draw for the British. 

Swiss vs Scots - the final unit in the brigade lost

It was out first use of the British - the infatry is excellent with about 33% more firepower than standard units but crucially the ability to recover casualties at the same rate as the Russians. So they are hard to outshoot and attacking them, whilst risky, is the best bet.      

French attack into heavy fire

So a busy week of gaming - the trouble is holding 3 - 4 sets of rules in your head means sometimes you get muddled! I'm putting my mistake on the Sudan game terrain rules down to that, not old age!

  

5 Parsecs - journey into the wilderness

I played the latest two episodes of my ongoing 5 Parsecs From Home as a linked scenario as the two seemed to fit quite nicely together. 

Game 1 (Turn 15) - into the wilderness

New Patron MeetSpace VR had hired the crew to recover some tech from a crashed shuttle. The aim of the first mission was to secure the site, recover the tech and call for extraction. The area was in a deserted zone of the penal moon of Travoris but it was known to be home to a group of Precursor (space elves) Exiles. 

The crash site

The game started with the crew at the crash site and needing to beat-off the Precursors. They are a shooty faction with a good combat skill and lots of ranged weapons, so the crew soon came under heavy fire.  

Precursors (space elves) mover forward

After an extended fire-fight the Precursors had been pushed back but three of the crew were downed - two stunned and one wounded. The stuns are removed after the battle and wound turned-out only to be minor, so quickly fixed in the med bay.         

The crew holds the perimeter

Three down but the site is secured

Game 2 (Turn 16) - Dust Off 

Although the Precursors has been pushed back, the crash-site was too hot for a safe extraction as they would surely be back. So the crew decided to hike a couple of clicks to a safer spot. Little did they know that a group of Void Rippers was in the area - aggressive and territorial, they quickly moved to attack the party. 

Void Rippers on the scent

Fast moving and tough they swarmed towards the crew making good use of the cover. Their tough hides deflected lots of shots so most of the swarm made it into close combat.   

Void Rippers attack 

Luckily the crew are well equipped with good armour and close combat weapons. After a brief struggle the attackers had be temporarily withdraw allowing the extraction to go ahead before they renewed their assault. No wounds but lots of dented armour.    

A desperate struggle

Dust Off

  

Sudan warmup

Our next campaign is going to be some colonial action - the Khartoum relief expedition in 1885. Players will split into two teams each controlling one of the relief columns and the Mahdists opposing the other. We'll be using our preferred set - The Men Who Would Be Kings (TMWWBK) from Osprey. As we've not played for a while we're beginning with a couple of practice games. 

This weeks game was single fairly large with about 50 points a side. The scenario involves the British searching 6 areas on the table while most of the Mahdists start off-table in Ambush.

British Camel Corps advance 

It was a game of two flanks. On the British left they were ambushed on the start line, facing overwhelming attacks and some accurate Mahdist artillery fire. They lost two units of Camel Corps and made limited progress, but did kill lots of the enemy.

Beja in ambush

Camel Corps supported by foot

On the right the British cavalry routed their Beja opponents and managed to seize two of the 6 objectives.  

Beja cavalry

By the close of play it was 10 victory points each with the British doing well on their right but under threat on the left. 

Ansar try to surround the British left 

   

     

Armada - naval fun & games

This weekend I visited South Oxford Wargames Group's annual Armada tournament - three rounds of play and lunch provided for £20. Armada is a based on Warlord Games Black Seas Napoleonic rules, but streamlined and reset into a fantasy world. We played 200 points which gives you 4 - 5 ships and the list had to contain at least 4.

The rules would be easy to convert back as one of the factions is men using the Black Seas models and TBH that's attractive to me as the Armada version plays really quickly with 200 points doable in 90mins and a big focus on scenarios not just forming lines and shooting at long range.

As with last year I used Salamanders, a fiery lizard based faction (yea I know they should be amphibians but its not my IP!). They are focused on shooting and have decently fast ships. I went to one very large (XL) one fully loaded for 50% of my points, 2 quick ones to grab objectives and 2 support vessels. 

My XL pounds a giant narwhale

My opponents were Trident Realm (converted sea creatures), Orcs (waah), and Men (Napoleonic naval).   

Stern raking the whale - its demise followed soon after

I mustered 2 draws and a loss, with the draws being marginal wins for scoring as I sunk more of the enemy than I lost.  

Orcs move forward

My XL moves to attack the enemy

The final game was interesting as we finished in about an hour so I was able top pick my opponents brains about Black Seas as he played that a fair bit. It was that which convinced me that Armada, minus the magic, would be a fun game to try and would work fine with my 1200th Langton stuff.    

 

So I'll be checking what I have and starting to make some lists. 

Games night II - Sun King and Pillage

This week we had a second game of Twilight of the Sun King also we tried some new Dark Ages skirmish rules - Pillage from Victrix. I also ended-up playing Pillage the next day with some players who'd done Sun King the evening before, so we had two bites at that. 

Twilight of the Sun King

Different forces this week with the Russians fighting the Swedes. The forces were also more balanced being taken from the rules army list generator.

20mm Russian Dragoons 

Russian infantry and guns

I was nt playing this game but it looked like the more numerous Russians were mostly attacking.   

 

Russian infantry attacks

Swedish horse gain and edge of their left flank

The cavalry did kill a few of each other with the Swedes having a slight advantage. The centre was a stalemate although lots of units had damage so a few more turns and it could have looked different.  

 

Tussle in the centre

Pillage

The rules are quite simple and old fashioned in many ways - no command friction, WYSIWYG on figures armament and no troop quality just weapon type vs armour for most things. So they are quick to pick-up and you can mostly play from the QRS with limited reference to the book. Our second game was largish (600 points) but that was only 24 models a side and so not a big model count either.    

The simplicity does mean that armies are pretty similar to each other with currently only the Vikings (Berserker) and Saxons (Huscarl) having any special troops to add flavour. I imagine they will build on this though with supplements. There are also army lists for various British western European factions - interestingly the points cost is partly about effectiveness and partly about rarity in the army. For example Javelins are free in the Irish list but armour is very costly whereases horses are cheaper for the Normans than the Saxons.     

 

There are rules covering shield walls and spearman supporting others so that adds some tactical options. One thing from both games though is that shooting if pretty deadly, especially at targets in the open. They suggest a 25% cap on missile armed troops but even at lower levels they tended to dominate tactics in our two games

Finally there are lots of rules to support scenario generation with loot, fire, civilians, buildings and boats all covered. Straight fights could be pretty short / simple but scenarios are where the fun is to be had.  

So definitely worth a look and a nice simple set supporting scenarios. My only quibble would be the price at £35. The rules are compact so it could easily have been a £10 Osprey book but they have added a generic history section, some "how to wargame" bits and sections on painting / terrain making. Is that a well meaning attempt to help the beginner or padding....you decide!