Napoleonic French Lancers (28mm)

As I occasionally do some solo Napoleonic's I decided a few months ago to bring my French cavalry up to full strength by adding a third unit of lights. Not having any Lancers they seemed the obvious choice.

Impressed by the performance of the famous Polish Lancers, Napoleon converted several regiments of dragoons. These are depicted as the 1st Regiment with scarlet facings.        

The figures are from Warlord games. They are a simple set with only a few parts, so gluing was not much of a chore. The only disappointment is that you do not have enough upright lances to equip the whole regiment, so I had to settle for some at an "easy" pose.  

    

Christmas Jim, but not as we know it

Usually Christmas is a time to get a few games played and have some festive nibbles. Sadly this year anything in-person was impossible so we had to switch to online.

Firstly we did some Star Saga remotely - its a classic scifi dungeon crawler game with 2 players vs the umpire. In this scenario we infiltrated a secret lab and uncovered experiments that created psychotic super soldiers.

The second was an online replacement for the usual all-day game we'd fight over the holidays. For this one we went to the Sudan and used a DBA variant called Hordes of the Dervishes. We fought on a double-sized table so had to use two cameras to capture the action. 

 http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~warden/BlogFreeDownloads/FreeHordesofDervishes.pdf

Players eye view

We fought through four real battles from the Mahdist wars - Shaykan, Tami, El Teb, and Omdurman. It was 2 games a side and the Mahdists reversed history by winning Omdurman.

Shaykan - Hick's is surrounded

Mahdists entrenched at El Teb

Tami from above

For those who may wish to refight them, here are the scenarios we used. 

    

Halpi's Rift - game 3

 For the third battle of the mini-campaign we were transported to a heavenly plane and home of the Angelic forces of Basilea. The Salamanders were replaced by Good Undead under the necromancer Jarvis. In this plane all of the channelled spells buff your own side rather than hurting the enemy. We played Control, where you score points for parts of the table you hold.

The Undead went for their customary strong centre, the high Unit Strength right of Wights / Skeletons, and a fast right of Werewolves. They planned to push across the table and challenge all sectors.  

I went with three distinct battle groups. The centre was Guards and a legion of Succubi Lavare backed by the Well of Soul - this would not attack but would seek to delay the Undead's main thrust. The left was Molochs and the right was the Succubi / Horsemen. Both the flanks would attack, aiming to give me a 4-3 win or better.   

On my left the Werewolves moved forward with early shooting wavering one of them, thus opening up the way for me to attack with the Molochs and start to win the unit trading on that side.

On the right I pushed forward through the cover and launched a strong attack against the units there. again I was able to win the trade and begin to dominate that flank as well.

Centrally I was lucky that powerful Undead units were cautious in their advance as they feared a trap. They then began to bleed away units to start to deal with the losses on the flanks. And so it was a depleted Undead line that finally hit my centre in turn 5.

As expected I was not able to hold them for more than a couple of turns, but that was enough to stop them from influencing the outcome of the battle. I actually sneaked a unit across the lines for a 5-2 win, so better than the 4-3 I was playing for.

The Undead are a slow army and in this case it cost them, although they could have arrived in turn 4 had they not delayed in the centre. Faster movement and more chaff would have made this a\ tougher day for the Abyss.

Halpi's Rift - Kings of War battle

Its been almost a month since my last post but I've not been idle. We've been playing some ACW online using a gridded systems, its just not very visual so I've not been posting about it. In parallel I've been playing a short KOW campaign involving fighting across across various plans of existance.

The second game was in the Abyssal plane - a hot and fiery place where some of the terrain reduces your morale. This scenario (Push) involved trying to get a series of loot tokens over the half way line whilst stopping the enemy doing the same.

The Lizardmen setup with a strong infantry centre, mostly pike armed Ceremonial Guards. The left was hard-hitting Tyrant large infantry and the right was the fast-moving Scorchwings. A tough army but a slow one. The Loot was scattered along the line.

I went with a faster moving army that included Succubi, Horsemen, and a several flying units.  I stacked the right with all hard hitting units whilst looking to refuse the left. The demon prince Bael was deployed wide-left to delay the Lizardmen's advance.   

I looked to exploit my speed by attacking rapidly on the strong right while moving-up in the centre to constrict the space.  

This worked well and by turn 2 I was able to pick my charges across the line, causing heavy damage to the Lizardmen in an alpha-strike move that shattered their left.  

Over on the own left Bael was able to delay and generally frustrate the flanking attack, buying time for the centre to be attacked by my own flankers.  

By the end of turn 4 I was 5-2 up on tokens and it was clear that there was no way back for the Lizardmen. So they withdrew to fight another day. 

So that was a second victory for the Abyss and quite a heavy defeat for the Lizardmen, who's slowness was an issue in this game. There are rumours though that the wizard Jarvis may be approaching at the head of an Ophidian undead army to reinforce them. 

  

Roman Empires online - Year 1 / Season 3

 Over the last two weeks we've been able to complete the autumn campaign season. A decent outcome for the empire with victories against the Gauls (Roy), Stracuse (Mike), and Carthage (Nigel). Draws were achieved against Spain (me) and the Seleucids (John).

I'm still stuck at Questor while most are now promoted to Aedile, with my irregular appearance as an ally perhaps holding me back a little.

Next week we're switching things up, having proved the technology works, and moving to the ACW for some Ironclad battles

  

   

28mm Ottomans - done at last

This I've completed a project begun right at the start of lockdown to paint a 28mm Ottoman army large enough for decent 3-a-side against the Polish / Germans. The last unit is my second regiment of Tufecki - regional troops of decent quality due to being in constant action.

This final unit now takes me to 12 foot regiments for the Ottomans plus the ability to add about a further 6 from my Arab collection and some German mercenary units. The mounted will all be from my Arabs and I can muster another 12 cavalry regiments.  Capping it off are 7 batteries of artillery.

Finished is never really finished so I may add one more iconic unit to the army on the cavalry side and that's the Deli light horse. 

 

Lutzen - 388 years on

 As Monday was the anniversary of Lutzen 1632 Nigel had a solo game Imperialists v Swedes. Some pictures of forces including one of the great man himself Gustav Aldophus, here very much alive although he was killed at Lutzen.