AWI at the club

In an earlier post I showed a front shots of a beautifully painted pair of American War of Independence Armies brought along by a member who had stopped coming to the former club but attracted to our new club whcih is much more based around historic wargaming.

Simon has brought the armies back to the club several times since, very much by popular demand and one night I got to play with these brilliant figures. Mac and I took the Americans facing off against an advancing line of British. The rules were 'British Grenadier', a variant of the 'General de Brigade' Napoleonic rules. Here are a few pics:

My riflemen on the left flank close in to give some fire to some Hessian mercenaries

American general's issue orders

Some American dragoons move off in front of a battery on our far left flank. A militia unit hold a blockhouse

On the right Mac commands the American line which lets loose at the  British advancing with bayonet

Skirnishers let the Britsh have a few rounds before retiring

Withering fire keeps most of the British at bay and one one unit charges homw but fails to dislodge the Yanks

Having run off some Indians my riflemen continue to snipe at the Hessians

The battle climaxed with American dragoons charging the Hessians, they were driven off, but with the  American line on the right driving back a regiment of Highlanders and holding off everything else we thought we came off the best

More Mayhem in Middle Earth

I was keen to get in another go at Lord of the Rings Battle Strategy game, and I was keen to try out a points based army in the style of the 'Legends of Middle Earth' book, I'd picked up (I understand GW have superseded this book with another set for everyone to purchase, which you need to buy to enter an 'official' tournament, but as a historic gamer rather than an die-hard Games Workshop junky, I'm quite happy to ignore GW's marketing stratagems and play with older rules.) Ben wanted to get out his dwarves again and wanted to try a really big 1,000 point game. Of my various options Moria Goblins looked the easiest to get to 1.000 points and most appropriate for taking on Dwarves. Even so over 100 Goblins only came to 500 points, so I took a Red Dragon (albeit a Ral Partha not official GW model) and a Troll to get to the points total. Ben augmented his dwarves with Saruman the White and an Eagle. We rolled up an 'Ill-met by Moonlight' scenario, and so we had two forces stumbling into each other at night in a boggy area.

I took the first pic 3 or 4 moves in as my goblins surged forwards and started to get to grips with the Dwarves. My dragon caught Ben's Eagle and managed to wound him, but he managed to escape.

My Troll and Goblin leader rushed the Dwarven King and tried to kill him but his bodyguard held us off.

Saruman the White fired a couple of Sorcerous Blasts across the marshy ground.

My goblin archers eventually managed to swamp his Crossbowmen who had been badly outshooting them, and my dragon managed to escape from being held up by dwarves charging him one at a time, tasty snacks but for quite so many points he should be killing something more valuable.

Meanwhile both my Troll and Goblin captain's had gone down fighting without scratching the Dwarf King.

On my left my warg-riders came to grief being shot down before they could get anywhere, with Ben's eagle picking off a couple. Elsewhere, apart from the Dwarven archers, my goblins were starting to suffer the attrition of fighting a much better armoured opponent, and numbers were being whittled down without making much of a dent in the Dwarvish line. My dragon gave Saruman and some unfortunate dwarves standing next to him a bit of a fright with a fiery blast and may have finished him in the next turn, but we had unfortunately run out of time.

With so many figures on the table we were still a long way off the 'break point' of 50% casualties in either army. Personally next time I'd go for a smaller points value. In my view, however, I could see the Dwarves heading for victory. Ben had used the restricted front of the marsh well. This meant I couldn't outflank him to 'swamp' his figures in the way that had proved effective in the previous game and forcing the goblins just to attack in waves, which were getting hacked down without doing much to the dwarves. Good game, though.

Couple of bargains from the corner shop

Having been checking out the price of a few toy cars to use a scenery etc. on eBay, I was somewhat dismayed to see once a couple of quid was added for postage there weren't really any great bargains.

Then I walked into my local newsagent to pick up a pint of milk and I saw these two beauties marked down to I think a fiver each from memory. They're from a 007 range and scale beautifully with 28mm figures (I've put one each in shot). I've got lots of 28mm Call of Cthulthu figures which is what attracted me to the vintage black Citroen, but thought it would be good for anything from 1920s through to 1950s. I was so pleased with this I went back for the red one, which I thought would be good for an 'Underworld' based Vampires versus Werewolves game that I have some unpainted figures around somewhere for.

First outing for the Lord of the Rings army - Mirrormere

So having been distracted from getting our Lord of the Rings toys on the table for over a year, I dropped the suggestion to Ben, and me, Steve and Ben, partly through the medium of this blog assessed our forces. Using the clubs blog Ben suggested we go for a Dwarves versus Goblin scenario to get Steve's Balrog on the table.  We attempted to co-ordinate efforts for the scenario on the forum too, but mercifully Ben stepped in on the night with a fully thought out idea for the game.

He wanted to do a 'Mirrormere' type game, when Balin met his death. He was actually shot by an arrow, but we thought we'd throw a Balrog into the mix.

Dwarves had to get back to the gates of Moria (foreground). Goblin ambushers swoop in from three directions

I'll leave the telling of the tale to Steve and Ben who wrote up proceedings on the club forum:

So after much toing and froing on the forum and by text the lord of the rings game staggered into life . Using a combination of mine , petes and bens and with scenery by the above and simon the game looked good ( loved the dwarves ! ) and played very well too . Ben took the dwarves and to get balin lord of moria out of an ambush . Both sides started with some troops on the table and recieved reinforcements as the game progressed . Thanks to ben for his early dice rolling which meant dwarves and goblins were causing equal casualties . He then began to stage a bit of a come back to make it really interesting but still had the decency to feed balin to the balrog at the end . Seems there are lots of figures owned by club members for this games system and look forward to trying out other scenarios and armies

Balin, himself (sorry all attempts to rotate this pic have failed)

If think the decision to feed the Balrog was rather taken out of my hands after you had eaten the rest of his body guard  It was the best game of LOTR I have played though  . I think between us all there must be a good 600 - 700 figures. :  

Oh and the final kill count was: 
42 Goblins 
1 Troll 
1 Embarrassed although uninjured Balrog. 

to 30 Dwarves and Balin

Balrog 'Durin's Bane', rises out of the depths of Moria

Dwarves thinned out Balin's bodyguard with some accurate archery and managed to swamp these  unfortunate stragglers

Balin himself did a better job of holding the Goblins at bay

The Balrog makes a bee-line for Balin

Despite making a break for it with half his bodyguard Balin is encircled

Alerted to the cries of help a force of dwarves emerges from the gates of Moria to try to rescue the ambushed king

Dwarf bowmen take down a troll, while Balin's bodyguard valiantly hurl themselves one at a time at the Balrog to stop the creature reaching their king

My goblin archers turn to try and slow down the relief force pouring out of Moria

Finally the Balrog is free from blocking kamikaze dwarf bodyguards...

...and wins the initiative so can turn on Balin

...

Balin gets lucky on the first combat roll...

....nevertheless, Simon thought he'd get Balin's tomb ready!

Over of the far side of the table Dwarf rangers have done a good job holding off  a mob of goblins commanded by Simon, but finally he gets some good rolls and they start going down like nine-pins...

...With the remenants of Balin's bodyguard each swamped by hordes of goblins, the Balrog moves in for the kill as  no less than 3 other goblins hem Balin in...

The Moria relief force starts to turn the battle against the blocking force of Goblins

The goblins rush some more archers to block the relief force

More Goblins go done the relief force has nearly broken through

Unbelieveable! The Balrog rolls a one and Balin wins the combat driving back his assailants!

But this time the Balrog quickly takes back the initiative and Balin, with the creature to his back, is swamped on all sides by half a dozen goblins...

...Finally Balin falls to the fiery Balrog!

Although slaughtered goblins lie everywhere they have done enough to hold off the Moria relief force

The dwarf rangers are also overwhelmed

Balin put to rest in his tomb

First game of Saga (and other games on at the club)

I'v been itching for a while to have a go at 'Saga' the Dark Age 'skirmish' rules (or as I prefer to call them 'small group action rules' - which all 'skirmish' rules seem to be these days as opposed to distinguish the man-to-man skirmishes I remember from my youth as in Donald Featherstone's 'Skirmish Wargaming' , the spriit of which is only preserved in the 'Desperado' game we play). These rules are not about the set piece battles but the Viking raids, and also the 'blood feuds' which so dominated much of Dark Age history, when the fate of a Kingdom as much hung on a bunch of blood thirsty King or Lord's men committing murder and atrocity, as massed armies meeting on the battlefield.

Ginge kindly offered to teach me the rules. He had a band of Vikings. I took along some choice figures from my Anglo-Saxon armies. I could have fielded 'Anglo-Saxons' or 'Anglo-Danish', but chose the latter. We kept it small to learn the rules - just 4 points (ie. 4 units) a side.

I choose two Huscarles units (Hearthguard), some Ceorls (Warriors) and some Geburs (levies). Ginge a Hird unit (Hearthguard), small Beserkers (Hearthguard) and two Bondi (Warrior) units. I realised straight away we set up that choosing the Gebur (Levies) could be a major liability straight away. Levies don't get one of the all important 'Saga' Dice, and with just 4 units each my Levies would have to do their darnest to take out a Viking unit pretty sharpish before it came to close combat.

The Vikings didn't mess about and on the first turn rushed their Beresekers and Hirdmen two moves forward taking a 'Fatigue' point to do so.

I moved my Coerls up as a 'blocking force', with one unit of Huscarles and my 'Big Guy' (an Earldorman I think) behind, another Huscarle unit on their flank and the Geburs spending a fatigue point to rush into cover on my right flank.

On my right flank I was desperate to get as many shots in with my Geburs before a rampaging band of Bondi hit me, but Ginge used one of his Saga dice to cancel out a whole fllight of arrows. Damn! With just the odd man taken out by arrows his Bond were at my Gebur archers across the wall.

In the centre his 'Big Man' led the Berserkers in against my Coerls. Beserkers are really nasty. Hearthguard get two hits per figure, but Berserkers get DOUBLE that. Ouch!! With his Big Man attacking too my 8 Coerls were completely wiped out!

...But there was more than a silver lining as it turned out. Berserkers may dish it out but don't have the armour protection of normal 'Hearthguard', so in striking back I scored lots of hits on his Berserkers and slaughtered all four of the screaming lunatics!

Crimean game on one of the other tables - see our clubs website for some sumptious close-ups

Another one of the Crimean game

The Coerl;s wiping out the Berserkers was even better this meant that his 'Big Man' who had led the charging Berserkers in was standing there on his own, knackered out from a charge and combat (two fatigue counters). My Huscarles were momentarily disturbed my seeing the Coerl unit slaughtered (one fatigue counter) but shook it off easily with one of my Saga dice and refreshed (presumably from a quick quaff of ale before the fight) both my Huscarles and the Ealdormen strolled in on the exhausted Viking leader and laid about him with axes!

While this was going on my other Huscarl (Hearthguard) unit charged into a unit of Bondi (Warriors) before they could get at my Gebur Levy Archers.

My Warlord and Huscarles made short work of the Viking warlord, which left me thinking the game was virtually in the bag, but then disaster - 7 Viking Bondi warriors stuck at my 4 Huscarles and all scored hits, my defensive dice could not save them-they were brutally wiped cut down....

....from there things went from bad to worse. With the Geburs not getting a Saga Die, I was finding it difficult to do much two units down and with just a Huscarl unit and my warlord generating Saga dice. The rest of the Viking force attacked my huscarles and the Bondi rampaged on into my archers. I fortunately didn't take any pictures of the sorry end to this saga..

Nevertheless I found Saga an interesting and engaging game. The key is clearly in mastering how to use your 'Battleboard' to make the most of your army, and I could see particularly using some 'combination punches' with different Saga abilities was the key to getting an edge,

Here's a few more pics of other games at the clubs...

Another of the games being played that night ...Uncharted Seas...a Fantasy Naval  Game

Close up of one of the Uncharted Seas Ships...very tempting!

A final shot of the Crimean game

I've