Hammfest 2024 - GdC Battle of Friedland (pt 3/end)

 

 The Russians have been surprised by the timely arrival of the Corsican Ogre. What looked like defeat in detail for the French has turned into a bit of a pell mell dash for the safety of the far side of the river. While this initial picture makes things look well in hand for the Russians, it's a bit more nuanced. The crossing goes through the town of Friedland, which restricts the speed and capacity of movement. There's going to be bunch up and the French will have time to engage. Furthermore, despite there being fixed movement, units moving anything other than mostly forward, do move slower so that it's possible to have them be caught. 

The Russians are down to 2 cavalry units (1 fresh) versus at least 3 fresh french ones in a unified cavalry corp. Once the Russian infantry are forced into square it's a safe bet that formation is doomed. Morale is brittle so there are real risks to sacrificing units.

To the Russians benefit, their cannon emplacements across the river have been doing great work. To avoid cannon fire entirely would delay the pursuit, so the French have been forced to weather the storm. If I recall correctly the Russian artillery dice were a bit hot.

We know see the rush hour traffic building up at the bridge. French are in close contact with the Russian rearguard.

Not great, but probably manageable. Doctorow's reserve corp is doing exactly what they need to be doing.

Ah crap. The continued fallback of General Peter (RU) on the right and general attrition of cannons there has freed up the French under General Kevin again. 

The pressure is developing for a move across the river into the rear guard flank. Stress!

 

Command ranges and low rolls for pips to move troops I think stymied the french a bit. The hot russian cannons didn't do them any favours. It's possible they failed a morale check and fell back for a turn (about 30 minutes real time). 

That breather essentially cinched the rest of the game.

The forces consolidate back towards their lines. I believe we called this one a minor or marginal win for the Russians. Mostly as Napoleon failed to deliver a punishing blow to the Russians when given an opening.

 

 

Another fun game of GdC. While we keep thinking the rules are in their final shape there is some contemplation of having units that go to 0 strength not leave the table. This would mean

1/. they would continue to be traffic problems. 

2/.they would require commands to evacuate (so command of the corp doesn't improve as you lose troops, which is kinda a thing that happens right now....I'm not pip starved when I have no troops to command!)

3/. Exist on the table to continue to use as a punching bag for the enemy to incur further moral losses and tests (so it's more likely for the whole corp to go poof. Currently it can be hard to attrition the corps enough and force enough tests to make that happen).

2+3/. They are a liability to have around and thus make a more interesting set of decisions for the players.

UPDATE: Play testing has shown that keeping troops on the table is less fun. There's a proposal to requires some PiPs to make them disappear, so that they are still a (more limited) liability, but won't be a continual fun draining hassle.

Hammfest 2024 GdC - Battle of Friedland 1807 pt 2

In our first instalment we saw the Russians aggressively move on the 'isolated' French corp and attempt to destroy them in detail (on the Russian Left). The Russian Right demonstrated in front of the French Left while slowly moving back behind the river (because general Peter is wise). Our cliff hanger moment sees the arrival of some French on the Russian Left.....the cavalry (also infantry) riding to the rescue of the beleaguered french corp under General Seth. 

 

 Indeed there are so many french it's going to take some turns for them to march on . We dickered a bit about the teleporting french and just how close to the Russians they could arrive. The Russians felt it was unsporting to have them be within one move (i.e. move into contact on arrival). This was acceded to. 

The main challenge we see is the Russians are grossly outnumbered now, and have a long CIRCUITOUS route to return (the ford is the town in the bottom left, and the river to the left is otherwise unfordable. Thankfully the Russians have some covering artillery from the safe side. My scant command of grenadiers and some cavalry moved up the middle to support General James. We have a classic Napoleonics traffic management problem, under enemy pressure, and needing to choose who to sacrifice. Don't run men, there's plenty of bridge space for you all (cough cough).

Hammfest 2024 GdC - Battle of Friedland 1807 (part 1)

 The main event on Saturday for Hammfest 2024 was a General du Corp (fast play corp scale convention rulseset) game of Friedland. Historically Friedland sees a Russian force under Bennigsen spotting an isolated French force (under Lannes) and deciding to beat it up. Sluggish command sees a slow/poorly developed attack which is well held off by the french while the Corsican Ogre marches to relieve Lannes. Then a great smackdown of the Russians ensues as they have (the opposite of) cleverly placed their forces with their backs to a river. 

 

James, Peter and I played the Russians and decided to attempt the historical attack...but better. With 20/20 hindsight (and warning at the start of the game) we knew that a kickass level of French were going to show up. We were hopeful we could break the French corp quickly. The Russians had a number of static artillery batteries stuck on the East sides of the Alle river....perfect to offer us good covering fire when we decided to conduct a fighting withdraw. As we would. Seth, Ron and Kevin (and eventually Doug himself with the Imperial Guard were our perfidious opponents.

Hammfest 2024 - don't roll sixes

Some eye candy pictures of one of the side games at Hammfest this year. 

Doug has hosted a weekend of gaming in Surrey, BC each August for many years. As is the norm our big Saturday game was a General du Corp (multi corp, divisions as moving element) game. Usually there are some other smaller games on the Friday and Sunday as well (and later Saturday if we are still full of energy). This year I got a chance to play 'don't roll sixes'. I believe it was first trailed at enfilade in May, and comes as a big of an evolution of hussar rampant (inspired by dragon rampant) and Doug's frequent claims that he can't roll 6's to save his life. Thus.......6's are bad news in this game. 

 

 

 

We were encourage to bring a squad or two (12 or 6) of dark ages minis. I was planning on showing up with hobgoblins but my painting schedule fell apart. Luckily there were heaps to go around. A raid on a small village opposed by the defenders makes an easy set up. 

 

NetEpic Armeggedon learning game. Marines vs Guard

 On Friday I finally got a chance to try Epic warhammer (technically the netepic rules, which are living rule updates of the epic armeggedon ruleset with is....4th edition of epic?). I have wanted to play this for a long time, and owned the rules at one point, but couldn't quite understand how to set up and win a game. Turns out I'm not an idiot, it wasn't really in the base rulebook and came out later with a tournament back. 

Graham hosted an intro game for Nick, Peter and myself. I took one side and Nick and Paul took the other side. Each sides was two 1000 pt forces, so it worked out well. A 'normal' game is 3 or 4k, and Graham intentionally omitted the more advance things (like indirect fire, and airplanes, teleportation, etc).

I had space marines (blood angels in red and ultramarines in blue). In hindsight my troops were a bit mobility challenged as the infantry blobs had smaller stomp walkers(dreadnoughts) that couldn't go as fast as their transports. Definitely a frustration for me during the game. Opposing force was imperial guard which get lots and lots of tanks, big tanks, and mechanized infantry. And super long range  tank killers. 

 

 

It's a bit hard to describe a play by play as it runs with alternating activations. You often only play to the end of turn 3 and the victory conditions give a clear winner. Victory points are based around control of objectives (placed by both sides in the beginning), as well as breaking your opponents most potent/expensive unit, and racing to seize the objective on the opponents baseline.

 

 

My tanks (landraiders) were able to rush forward and seriously mess up Petes mech infantry advance (note to self, always debuss the infantry). Unfortunately Pete's highly effective and long range tank killer unit then proceeded to remove 2 of my 4 tanks. My rolling was pretty abysmal, so even 3+ and 4+ saves weren't doing much for me. In that I had good company as Nick and Pete suffered from bad rolls most of the game as well. 

 

Nick was able to aggressively rush some of my high mobility, short range land speeders (skimmer units) and almost destroy them. This pretty much removed any chance I had at scooping his objectives in the back field. 

I suspect I eked out the win largely based on my objective placement and close attention to controlling them. I played flames of war for a while and it's all objectives so perhaps I was a bit more attuned to the principles. I remember in May running an adeptus titanicus game where the losing side pretty much forgot to contest an objective....it was a bit surprising but probably shouldn't be. If you aren't used to living and dying (winning and losing) base on objectives and are more attuned to blasting your opponent off the table and can see how it could happen.

AAR: Fields of Glory Carthage vs Rome, the revenge

 A couple of weeks later Nate and I managed a rematch. It turns out there are some FOG version 3 army lists with much more flexibility to army construction. I think one of the challenges for me with Carthage was all the mandatory units and our low point value games (due to time constraints). I ended up ejecting the light cavalry, took larger hoplite units, and manage to find space for some medium foot. I also ungraded my elephants thinking they'd last longer (i.e. not go poof after losing one base....which isn't true, but skill rerolls definitely help avoiding combat losses). 

Some eye candy to see the painted armies. Clicking on the photos should bring up larger shots....

In a totally non partisan way the Carthaginians are obviously WAY better looking. Too bad looks don't add to combat performance (the opposite if anything).

AAR: Fields of Glory Carthage Vs Rome

Some more eye candy from a game
I had in July with Nate at the local game store. We both managed to have some time off midday for a quick game, so played on the lower end of the points scale. Nate always harangues me to field my elephants to they hit the table......to my detriment. They are such a glass cannon....a bad roll can really have them go poof with achieving little. 

 

Overall we agreed my strategy/tactics were superior but my dice were abysmal and it was a clear defeat before our time ran out. Carthage (me) managed to have a flanking force that arrived. My match ups were....mostly equal and better in a spot or two. Amazingly my kill rolls (do your bases actually go poof) were TERRIBLE (worst we have ever seen) and my army was rapidly whittled away. Once it starts you are on the back foot.

 

The flanking light cavalry raced in to sack the Romans camp (proxied by a library card). This, in theory, should have made it easier to break the Roman force and sweep them from the field. 

 

 

 

2024 Enfilade - eye candy post

 Enfilade lost it's venue in early 2024 (redevelopment of the hotel into condos) and they managed to find an alternative venue in Tacoma. The main game room was pretty snug, and as a result very loud. Vendors were in the hallway just outside which hopefully didn't affect their sales too much. The bring and buy was surprisingly full.....hard to know if it was because of a different room configuration or actual greater volumes. 

2024 Enfilade - Last ride of the Dust Devil Boys

 Friday traffic was awful and I got to the convention late, so my signed up game had filled. I ended up hoping into the game my friend James ran. Each player made a cowboy (points to buy equipment and ability upgrades). My cowboy, The Book Man, had a thoroughbred horse, charm, and mad horse skillz. Order of play was by a deck of cards with facecards giving some minor bonus. 

 

 

The outlaws have made their last big score and are racing towards Mexico with the largest posse every assembled coming after them. Resistance is futile, they have to escape, but only glory lives forever so their job is to get the most renown (individually). 

I forget some of the names, but 'Kissing Kate', Lord Byron <something>, and Rusty Red (?) I think made appearances.

 

GdC Battle of Occana - Enfilade 2025 Napoleonics Game

 At enfilade this year my friends managed to host games in all slots so snared a table all weekend. It made setup breakdown and storage a lot easier. Saturday midday we ran Ocana with Guard du Corp rules (a convention ruleset made by Doug and Seth). 

Ocana is a rare battle where the Spanish fight the French in large numbers with no support. The Spanish have taken strategic initiative and are advancing on Madrid from North and South. The French don't notice the Southern approach at first and a mere 35 miles from Madrid there are some initial encounters that have the Spanish counter march and daddle. Soon the French have raced reinforcements to counter this thrust. 

The day before the battle sees a huge cavalry action where the Spanish come off poorly. This is important as the right wing of the Spanish army is a VERY brittle cavalry formation facing enthused and strong French cavalry. The line of defensive was well chosen as on the right was a gullied river that blocked the Spanish from advancing on the Left wing. 

 

Star Wars Reinforcement; Probe Droids, Speeder Bikes, Zero G Troopers

 A bit late for May the Fourth, but I hadn't even been working on these for that reason. So....serendipity. Probe droids and the bikers are some found stls printed out. I had a couple of rounds of resizing to try and make them match my other figs (it's hard to size sitting folks and comparing them to slightly hunched rifle firing ones). 

The zero - G troops are some old sculpts from Ground Zero Games. I *think* NAC but could be mistaken. They are definitely the previous generation of sculpt and have languished in my pile o lead for a LONG time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Space 1889: Kraag Warriors unboxing

Hopefully I don't scare off any potential readers with the term unboxing. I must say that I find the genre (notably on youtube) to be enormously boring and uninteresting. When I popped open this box I could feel the vintage leaking from the plastic wrap and disappearing into the sky so I thought I should take some photos.

Space 1889 is, of course, the colonial/victorian adventures on mars where everybody wants 'liftwood' that only grows there to allow for playing naval vessels. I played in a RPG campaign that was fun, and there are a lot of wargaming aspects that predate the rpg. 

The martians come in 3 flavors (which I suspect match the general racist categorizing that happened around egypt/sudan at that period of history): canal martians (civilized), hill martians (nomads) and mountain martians (feral/slavers/flyers). These are the latter, and live in fortified vertically oriented mountains fastnesses that they raid for slaves from. Easy fodder for villains. The Belgians are also the canonical bad guys resulting from their rapacious activities in Congo that are duplicated on mars. 

 

 The castings are quite clean with respect to mold lines. There is an alright amount of variation. One thing I quite like is all of them are duplicated in flying and non flying poses. Even better, they come with stout flying base equipment (metal bases! precut wire!)

Perhaps the most nostalgic part of this was the booklet that came enclosed. It gave information about martians in general and mountain martians in particular. And then it gave painting directions! They even describe various techniques like washes and glazes without formally calling them that. How retro. How useful in the age pre internet.

These figs are still available through RAFM, a Canadian company. I suspect RAFM has a bit of a twilight existence, but they still have some old minis with charm (including 15mm traveller stuff, and 25mm fantasy). They had a bit of a resurgence a decade or two ago with some sort of modern rule set.

My interest in 1889 was piqued by some photos and reading some war game reports. It's already slipped to the backburner again, but hopefully these charming figs will see some paint before too much time passes.