A Song of Fords and Shallows

 Mostly eye candy today with some thoughts on "A Song of Drums and Shakos".  It's just a reskin of Andrea Sfiligoi's "Song of..." series, but I'm really glad to have added it to my library.  Having the background and points lists for each army really makes it a snap for a Nappy neophyte like myself to throw a game down and get to rolling.

Here we see a veteran unit of French trying to hold a crossroads following defeat at Tres Verdes.  The Redcoats are in full pursuit, and if this French unit can do enough damage to a squad of British dragoons before they cross the table, they can save a lot of lives.  Unfortunately for the, the British have an equal number of green infantry on the way as well.  The British infantry hope to do enough damage or at least distract the French enough to allow the dragoons to slip past.

The French commander opts to split his forces.  He positions three men in the woods between the two fords with the bulk of his men inside the small hedged farm field.  Here you can see the larger unit of British as they advance in two waves.

Having disrupted the French a bit, it's time for the British Dragoons to begin their race northward...

Refusing to be distracted, the French quickly put down the first two mounted enemy...

To win, the British need to get four horses off the road on the north side of the table.  Here you can see that two of them are off, with a third just about to cross the finish line.

All that remains is for the British squadron leader to make his escape...

To find out how this fight ends, check out the full battle play over on "The Joy of Wargaming"!

Oooo, what a bait and switch.  Have I no shame?  Apparently not.

Song of Drums and Shakos - First Runthrough

 It works!

I was afraid it wouldn't.  My experiments with Flying Lead weren't a lot of fun.  They power of modern weapons meant that the games bogged down into two static lines blazing away at each other with little motion or forward progress.

Needs more flags

Fortunately, the Napoleonics version of the game requires two full actions - on the same turn! - to reload a firearm.  That means that my first game included a lot more maneuver and a lot more charging into the bayonets of the enemy than my abortive attempts at modern wargaming.

Note also, this is my first foray into proper Napoleonics.  Though I have dabbled with the French Counter-Revolution to get my feet wet, this remains my first real game of proper Napoleonics with Brits versus French on the road from Tres Verdes.  It was a grand adventure that really came down to the last turn, and I'm looking forward to re-fighting the scenario with a few tweaks to make it even more interesting.

Game Time - King of the Hill

With the new and improved 15mm fantasy table largely completed, it's time to break out the miniatures!  With a little help from my lovely assistant, we threw together a small force of seven human defenders trying to keep an ogre and his goblins out of town.  The ogre wanted to get his shaman into the cemetery to perform some blasphemous rite, and the humans wanted to stop them.  The game was a simple 300pt battle using the excellent Song of Blades and Heroes rules.

The basic flow of the fight.

The local lord took his retainers out to investigate a diversion, but returned in time to find the ogre chief and his minions just sneaking into town.

Returning to town

Although badly outnumbered, the humans had the advantage of better motivation and leadership.  They seized the initiative and never really let go.  They quickly raced up and took hold of the cemetery, which denied the goblins a key advantage.  Had they grabbed it first, their shaman would have made for a powerful piece of artillery during the fight.

The ogre made the tactical blunder of sending his troops in piecemeal instead of waiting and slowly marshalling his forces.  His vanguard was meant to slow down the humans, but just wound up getting destroyed by a combination of flanking fire followed by a hammerblow of melee.

By the time the big man himself could get into the action it was too late to do anything except get swarmed.  Four on one isn't a fight anyone is likely to win in SoBH.

And brought low by the weaker but better coordinated humans.  His goblin champ never got within smelling distance of the fight.  None of the goblins on the wings could muster the gumption to move into town, which meant the ogre basically traded away his one advantage.  He should have left them lumped together and used marching orders to get them all stuck in and swarming the humans.  A valuable lesson for the next game of SoBH.