Lake Sambee Post Mortem

Sometimes the best way to fight...is not to fight at all. 

Today we're talking about some painful lessons learned from a game of 2 x 2 Napoleonics.  It has taken me an embarrassingly long time to get a handle on how to work this ruleset.

In the Battle of Lake Sambee, an overwhelming force of Albans are invading the Tenebran Nation, looking to return the city of Grandepoint to the Alban fold.  Or to return the Grandepoint silver mines to Alban control.  Tomato, tomahto.  

Here's the general run of things.  As you can see, the Albans brought a large force up between the lake in the center a small farm on the north.  The Tenebrans, led by a very skilled general, took command of a large hill whose flanks were secured by heavy woods to the north, and swamps and light woods to the south.  A very defensible position.

Undaunted, the Albans used cannons to secure the farm on their left flank, and tasked a smaller blocking force in the south to secure their right.

Thanks in large part to my n00bishness, the Alban attack failed spectacularly.

The Alban right fell apart so quickly it put pressure on the center to make a move on the hill before they were really prepared.  That main attack had to break off units to reinforce the right, costing them even more momentum.

In retrospect, the Albans should have brought all their artillery - six to the Tenebran two - forward to long range and pounded away at that hill for as many turns as it took to scramble the lines, and then sent in the horses.  They had time, but pushed forward too fast.  Or, since the win conditions relate to the number of stands destroyed, they should have hung back and used everything they could to destroy that Tenebran southern flanking force before turning their attention to the hill.

Or perhaps the Alban artillery should have gone full Grande Battery, set up at 8-inch range, and just pounded that hill into rubble. Turns out a Napoleonic approach to Napoleonic wargames is a winner! Who knew? Part of it is on the nature of things. 

This comes up in later episodes, but is worth a blog post. After determining the terrain, setting up the physical space and the units, and getting everything ready to go...sometimes its obvious the smart play for one general is to refuse battle. The Albans should have backed off and waited a few days to come at the Tenebrans from a position of - if not advantage, at least less of a disadvantage. Particularly so, given that this is part of a much larger campaign where no general can afford to make a 'throw away' attack.

Calling it quits without firing a shot would mean all the set up was for naught!  Like so many generals before me, I had to learn the hard way that a poorly conceived attack is a far larger waste.  And that is a hard lesson learned on my part.

But we're getting there.  Always learning, and always improving, that's part of the Joy of Wargaming.

If you want to watch the whole battle, you can find it here:

Vendee Defiant, a Battle Report

 This skirmish set somewhere in the middle of the French bocage flips the script from the first.

The Vendeeans, specifically the Pere Corbeaux and his three sturdy sons, all veterans of the American War of Independence and glad to return to La Belle Vendee to escape such revolutionary escapades, find themselves the first line of defense for their little village.

La Famille Corbeaux takes up position for an ambush

Pere Corbeaux is Rank 4, and each of his sons Rank 3.  The Blues are represented by a Rank 4 leader with six mooks of Rank 2.  In game terms its an even match at 115 to 116 points.

An unsuspecting patrol makes its way forward

In scenario terms its a blood bath.  Les Corbeaux had a scout take up sniper position among the rocks to the left of the road, and settled quickly into the woods and behind the stone field wall in the upper right corner.

The Blues split into two teams to take out
the brothers piecemeal and it didn't work.

Things soon devolved into a scrum in the 
rough forest copse at the end of the town fields.

Once again the Vendeeans turned back the revolutionary guards.  Once again they paid a high price, with Pere Corbeaux succumbing to his wounds.

War In The 15mm Vendee

Some shots of a recent battle between Vendeeans and the Parisian boys in Blue using Osprey's En Garde!

The local National Guard - professional REMFs
meet the local boys, untrained but scrappy.

The action starts just as the National Guard attempts to close
down the local church.  The locals come out of their homes
to see what all the fuss is about.

The blue markers show who fired a musket and needs to
reload.  The cordon collapses around the Blues.

Split up, ill-led, and outnumbered, the training and muskets of
the Blues makes little difference.

Cut down to a man, they'll have to be avenged by 
the Parisians.

The gems are the method I've used to play a very non-solo game alone.  Since I can't fool myself as to ploys, I draw one bead from a bag for every Rank in the fight.  Red means attack, green means defend.  No need to out-think myself.  I can just post-hoc rationalize whatever results the laws of randomness give me.

The Vendee is a little outside the date range given in the rulebook.  It doesn't make any difference for a small scale game like this.  You've got one shot black powder weapons and then close to melee.  On any table with sufficient terrain, and the bocage definitely counts, it works just fine with no changes.

You can watch the full battle played out in real time, right here:

Adventures of the Blackraven

The first game of the Adventures of the Blackraven has come and gone.

In this project, I used the campaign tables from Five Parsecs from Home to generate the quartet of space faring ne'er-do-wells plying the shipping and smuggling routes way out on the fringes.  Once I had personalities and rough characteristics done, I shifted over to Void Pirates  built out a 55 point crew from there.

From right to left we've got:

• Cobalt-15, a sentient warbot AWOL from the Unity military forces
• Marian, his technician assistnt, a Reclaimer tech who helped him escape with the Blackraven, and who just wants to find her true love
•  Rusty, an escaped slave from the rust mines who takes any off-book odd-job to keep his belly full.  He is the team's melee specialist.
• Lt. Dayne, an arrogant military brat and shooting specialist who is thoroughly unlikable, but too good as his job for Cobalt to turn down.

The preliminary fun presents Cobalt and Co. strong-armed by a Unity agent into finding the most important alien baby in the universe.  He hits up the Tortugastra, a little space station out on the Fringe, to meet a contact, and discovers that a mercenary unit out of the Pelagic system has beat him to the literal punch.  After some heated words, a fight breaks out in the quiet morning halls.

After a furious fight in the halls, curiously absent of security forces most likely due to the Pelagics buying them off, Cobalt-15 managed to put all of the mercs on the floor with only Rusty taking it on the chin.  The former slave/miner took a bad wound and will be lame and gumpy for the next scenario.  On the upshot, Cobalt got the info he needed and the next mission will determine whether he gets closer to finding the important magic alien baby...

And whether or not he should turn the magic alien baby over to the Unity once he does.

Expect a live-play video to go live over at the Joy of Wargaming on July 21st!  We're up to 40 subscribers already, which has been very gratifying - thanks to all of you who have jumped on board over the last few weeks.  It's been a lot of fun.

Another Half-Hour One Hour Wargame Live Play

"Live Play" the man says in the title to describe a battle fought on the table two weeks ago.  Whatever.  I didn't land on the post-definitional world, the post-definitional world landed on me.

Here's another battle report you can view from the comfort of your own bunker:

In more boring news, I cleaned up the link rot on the left-hand column.  Removed a few busted links and dumped in a few new hot ones. 

Check out 15mm Through Space and Time for some richly painted figures in the One True Scale to Rule Them All.  Or hit Picts From the Front for some world-class kitbashing in 15mm, including mechas made from old plastic sprues.

Rogue Planet: Le Beast Bu'ger

The daughter gave in to my strong-arm tactics and ice-cream based bribery to join me in a miniature wargame miniature campaign.  We are using Rogue Planet, a lesser known title that features an action-reaction initiative system with a lot of quirky combat and movement subsystems.

For this mini-campaign, we sat down and whipped up the crew of the  X-Falcon, a medium sized freight hauler with a rag-tag crew that skirts the laws of customs an custom to deliver anything anywhere for not just any price.

Unless they are short on fuel and short on cash, in which case they go trawling the local comm-subnet for easy scores.

Uncle Zisky, Dixer the mechanic, Captain D'Claire, her faithful bodyguard, and the medbot.

Sometimes the easy scores aren't so easy.  Like capturing the rare and endangered Beast Bu-ger, which might contain the secret to cure a raging Crown Virus that is plaguing the planet Primus Prime.

The beast

Hired by a local research lab, they head out to a local wilderness park where the beast was recently spotted.  Only to find that their hated rival captain, Drax, has arrived with his crew.  They parked at a nearby agro-coop-complex and have the same idea.  After a few shouted insults, Capt. D'Claire learns that Drax has been hired by a cook at the local wet market, who wants to serve Bu'ger Burgers as a finer than usual experience.

Not on our watch, buster.

For the game itself, I set out four hidden markers, which moved a random distance in a random direction before each turn.  The first one had a 33% chance of containing Le Beast, the second a 50% chance, then 66% and finally a 100% chance for the last, if Le Beast hid that long.

Drax's crew got to the first counter, and their big guy, Mephist Two Fleas, immediately got jumped by Le Beast.  Their medic Boxy McGee tossed a sleep grenade, to no effect.

So it was up to Mephis to take on Le Beast in single combat. 

Sensing her easy score getting away, D'Claire sent her crew in close, and followed up by charging her hated rival in the nearest woods.  While Drax's crew hustled the unconscious beast into their waiting car, Drax slowed down D'Claire in single combat.

D'Claire's crew tried to intercept Drax's, and got into good position by the end of the turn.  If they could win initiative, they could pound those jerks into space-cow fodder.  They rolled a 1 to Drax's 6 and that was all there was to it.  Those numbers are also the number of actions your side gets that turn, so Drax was able to act with impunity.

Drat!

At the first chance he got, Drax ran like a chicken, tumbled into his convertible speeder, and made off with D'Claire's prize.

Hungry for revenge, D'Claire has vowed to mount a "rescue operation" in order to rescue her prize money from Drax before he meets with his buyer.

Stay tuned...

Barbarian King: A Yuge Win!

Broke out this classic print-and-play solo wargame for a little playing with myself in a way that won't make me blind or lower my T, and holy cats was it a blast!  My daughter is my good luck charm, as she rolls like a beast.

 

If you've never played, this is one of the best solo adventure games ever produced.  It's a bit of a rogue-like in analog form, and thanks to the reliance on sheer dumb luck it is a hard game to win.  You start at the northern end of the map and have seven weeks to get your hands on 500gp and get back to the north.  You've got to juggle food, money, and not get lost.  Thanks to the way the terrain effects work, each type of terrain has 36 different possible encounters, with sub-tables that blow the possibilities up into the hundreds.  You can get lost, starve, find followers, get mugged, explore ruins, catch a mount, and all sorts of fun stuff.

 

A couple of settlements offer a chance to appeal to powerful allies for help, though this can be risky as these potential allies are just as likely to threw you in a dungeon.  In a dozen plays I've never come close to winning.

This time around, we made our way for a town that chased us out, then down to Huldra Castle where the Baron gave us 50gp and an escort to get the heck out of his countryside.  That's all it says, and in the best game fashion, it's up to you to decide what that means.  We decided that it was the Baron's daughter who took a shine to our brooding barbarian and the Baron paid us off and gave us the boot in a polite, yet firm manner.

We decided to head north and see if one of the temples would be more amenable.  Along the way we met a swordsman who helped us kill a dragon - and lost his life in the fracas. 

He will long be remembered in the annals of our rulership, as the 200gp we found in the dragon's horde put us halfway to victory, and gave us the precious Eye of the Dragon.

Here's where our luck really turned for the better.  The priests at the Temple of Zhor are fickle.  You roll 2d6 for their reaction, and need something like a 9 or better to gain favor.  However, if you roll and 8 - and you have the Eye of the Dragon - which we did and we did, the High Priest showers you with aid.  They gave us 300gp for it, and we thought we had it made in the shade.  All we had to do was move four hexes north, get across that river, and we were home free and ready to pay off the mercs and ascend to our throne!

And then we got lost.  And lost.  AND LOST.  We spent two weeks on the south bank of the river searching for a way to cross.  Luckily our hunting forays were successful, because we had enough food to share with a priest who happened along.  He showed us a secret ford the next day.  No joke, that's how the dice came up.  Two weeks of being lost, meeting a priest and befriending him, then crossing the river the next day.  It's the kind of dice-birthed serendipity you just can't make up, but that make up the best tales.

 

So, with 500+gp in our belts, we crossed the river, made our way to town...and then couldn't find out where to read the victory conditions.  It's pretty vague as to whether you win by crossing the river or getting to the nearest town or what.  We figured getting across the river was enough. Any of the Usurpers Guards that met us would be more than happy to take our 500gp and escort us back to him for some well-paid justice.

 

Dang, it feels good to finally notch a victory on this game.  And all it took was world-wide plague of Korean Death Fars.  Take that, CoronaChan!

En Garde! Meeting Engagement

Confession time: My social media presence has largely shifted over to the dreaded tweet machine and my fiction writing blog.  Funnily enough, I ran into Chicago Wizard over there, too!  Like minds gravitate toward each other and all that.  Due to the usual vagaries of modern political discourse, my tweets auto drlete on the regular.  Lots of weirdos out there mistake off the cuff banter for uron clad professions of deep faith.  The downside to that is the live-tweeting of wargames leads to an ephemeral record of games played.

Here now is a more permanent record of a game of En Garde! played with my now seven year old in which the King's Guards bump into a contigent of Richelieu's guards s on the way to Paris.  Both proud forces refuse to yield to the other and soon swords are flashing and blood spilled upon the dusty roads of rural France.

Cardinal's men to the left in red, King's to the right in blue

The basic victory conditions were to get across the bridge to the north the firstest with the mostest.

 

The two sides spot each other.

 

The King's guards split up, sending three men around to the right, while the Cardinal's men did the same.  They also sent a man around the back of the church to come up behind any lingerers.

The first set of duels at the crossroads sprung another King's Man toward the bridge, just visible at the top of the photo.  The duel in the center has begun with the King's man, a mook, fighting defensively against a superior foe who had put both his actions into attack.

First blood sees the Cardinal's leader (with the yellow fringe) putting down his foe.

 

The fighting rages at the Church with three King's Men falling, but buying time for their comrades to proceed with all due haste toward the bridge.

Here we see that far right flanker sneaking across a ford at the bottom of the photo.  He still has a ways to go, and the difference in this game was the King's Captain, whose leadership gave his side initiative in each game turn.  In En Garde! the difference in figure quality is huge - the Cardinal had better fighters, but that initiative boost made a huge difference in this game, as it allowed the King's Guards to get the jump and win the foot race.

Here the Captain remains behind, triple-teamed and alone, to ensure that a few of his men can cross the bridge before any of the Cardinal's men do.

Here we see the first two figures to escape, including that far flanker who did nothing but sprint the whole time, before the first of the Cardinal's Guards could get off table.

 

Based on a quick twitter poll, the game was a marginal victory for those loyal to the King. It was a close run affair, but a lot of fun.

Long Distance Wargaming

The One (Acutally Four) Box (Actually Boxes) to Rule Them All has been blooded.

Check out the Castalia House blog, the best dang fantasy and science fiction blog on this or any other internet, today for a full review of how you - yes, you! - can play miniature wargames across twelve time zones and still capture the tactile joy of miniature wargaming.  All you need is a little patience, a love of painting, and basic human decency, and distance no longer has to prevent you from playing your favorite game with your favorite people.

Check it out right here!

Wargaming Wednesday Returns!

In an outreach effort dedicated to reaching out (hence the name) to more non-wargamers, I've resumed posting about wargames at the Castalia House blog.  Each Wednesday, the publisher's blog features a post related to wargames called, not surprisingly, Wargames Wednesday.  I share duties with a number of other smart and erudite wargamer types who focus more on the hex-and-counter style wargames.  This week, I detailed a quick rundown of A Song of Blades and Heroes, and next week will see a write-up of my first stumbling attempts at playing the novel and quirky sci-fi game Rogue Planet.

Over the last month, the blog ran a series of posts detailing Avalon Hill's Battle of the Bulge that is well worth a read for wargamers of all stripes.  Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, is a link to all five parts of this in-depth analysis of a classic wargame:

Avalon Hill’s The Battle of the Bulge (1981) – Part I
Avalon Hill’s The Battle of the Bulge (1981) – Part II
Avalon Hill’s The Battle of the Bulge (1981) – Part III
Avalon Hill’s The Battle of the Bulge (1981) – Part IV
Avalon Hill’s The Battle of the Bulge (1981) – Part V

If you like that, stick around - the team there regularly produces the best news and analysis of today's fantasy and sci-fi culture available today.

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.

Wargaming Report: One Page Rules

For the first time in quite a while, a two-hour window of opportunity presented itself.  The boy wasn't interested in a little light gaming, but his 11 year old sister was.  After a few minutes reviewing Osprey's trusty Black Ops rules, her eyes started to glaze over, so we shifted gears and ripped a copy of Warstuff from the One Page Rules website.

It took us about five minutes to bang out two different 150 point forces, ten minutes to go over the rules, and then we enjoyed a pair of thirty minute games.  She used the armored Prang, and I had a larger force of less capable Octos.

Click for more detail.  The melee near the yellow garage door
didn't go well for the weaker Octo.

Warstuff is pretty much as simple as a wargame can get and still be considered a wargame.  It's a one-stat plus skills system with that one stat used for shooting, fighting, and resisting wounds.  The skills can influence that stat for different parts of the game, and the skill set is limited enough to be learned within the first turn of the game.

Our forces were evenly matched, and thrown together with little thought, but it made for nice, light game.  This is just the sort of game that I've been looking for, given that my normal mode of play is essentially solo-play with the added sandbag of helping my young opponent understand the rudiments of strategy and tactics.  Much as I'd love something deeper and more complex, you really do need an opponent who can help you remember the fiddly bits and rule exceptions that more rigorous rulesets demand.

The melee to the front of the ad went a little better.  The
brave leader hiding behind the sign failed the first rout check
in this game, and the Octos fled at the first check.

The one downside from my perspective is that most of the rules on the site are heavily tied to the Warhammer 40k universe.  While I know enough about the background to kludge something together after a while, for a quick dirty fight this basic system worked better for us.  For my money (he said, jokingly, referring to a set of free rule systems), a purely generic ruleset would be a step in the right direction.  Warstuff, designed for toys and army men and any little bits and pieces you have lying around the toybox, is the only generic set on the site, and is easier to play straight off the printer.

In the final analysis, my daughter enjoyed the game enough to want to sit down and draw up some proper forces, and we're comfortable enough to run 300 point battles, which should give us enough the ability to play with up to 10 figures on a side, and to experiment with a wider skillset than Leader, Shooter, Armor.