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.

Fantasy Campaigning Dun Rite

Using a Reaper Bones wood sprite figure as an evil personification of the deep woods and wilds are inimical to human life?  That's unpossible!

That's what happens in this latest episode of "The Joy of Wargaming" wherein four intrepid heroes wade into the wilds to put paid to a bunch of forces of night.  Including the little bugger shown above.  This is the second in a series of seven games of Nightwatch, a great little solo game that smacks of 'tower defense' style video games.  It works well, and the complexity and challenge really ramp up with each successive game.  Highly recommended.

Not a big fan of Reaper figures - the Bones were cheap, but the ones I got didn't take paint well, are squishy on the table, and the sculpts are mediocre at best.  Phasing those out when my next Alternative Armies shipment arrives, and replacing them with some proper metal alloy beasts. They look better, feel better, and play better.

Rogue Stars Eye Candy

 What can I say? I'm a sucker for a good infiltration mission.  Here, the crew of a tramp freighter have snuck into Starport Moai to re-clone a couple of forcibly infected crewmembers.  This looks like a job for Gold Cross.  Not even an mRNA scrambler shot of nano-trackers can survive the cooking up of a full-blown clone.

Here, the crew of the Blackraven have to sneak two crew-members from the front door, into the Gold Cross franchise, and make their getaway before the alarm is sounded.

Spoiler alert: They don't make it.

The guy watching the camera feeds (lower left, above) was not fooled by Marion's hack for quite long enough.  Once the jig was up, he managed to race back to the main office and alert the guards, who promptly set out to stop the crew from making good their escape.

Here's one more shot, in the moments before the storm broke.  In the end, the alarm was raised too late.  Not early enough to leave the crew unscathed, but too late to stop them.  The sole injury was a wounded arm, and Lt. Dayne losing his favorite blast rifle.  All in all, not a bad trade to keep the crew healthy and untrackable.

You can watch the full action here:

It's a Riot!

 Matt Hartley's Riot!  Revolting People from Watt Tyler to Watts is an interesting wargame.  It's a truly fourth-generational game in which mobs of outgunned citizens try to effect change against a far better armed, but outnumbered, army of the ruling class.

Enjoy some eye candy while I pontificate.  Alert readers will notice that I've put a grid over the tops of these buildings.  In Riot! the mobs can loot and burn structures, but each counter only affects one square inch at a time.  Mine are a little less regular than the rules stipulate, but they'll work just fine.

Definitely a beer-and-pretzels game, it uses a simple AI to maneuver the rioters about, and the player tries to limit the damage with his small number of security forces.  The first check on the player is an AP roll of 1d6, each pip of which allows one unit to move or attack.  That makes it harder to split your forces because it limits how many stands you'll be able to use from turn to turn.

Combat is a simple 2d6 roll off for each matched pair of bases, with a few modifiers for supporting units or flank attacks on the mob or for weapons hot.  It's quick and dirty, and the cops don't have nearly the advantage one might expect.

It turns out the better tactic for cops is to simply stand off and try to herd the mobs away from their targets.  You can exert some control over the AI - or at least influence outcomes - by staying close to a mob, but not directly engaging unless you really have to.

Which leads to a very fluid game, and from all I've seen on TV these days, pretty well mimics the ebb and flow of protests in the streets.

More to the point, the game is a lot of fun, and can provide some insights into a warfare of a very different sort.