Maurice Scenario and morning gaming ......

Well managed to get a morning game of Maurice in ..... Which was nice.

Steedo came over and we squeeze in a scenario based on the Battle of Bladensburg from Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames (number 26 if you are interested). It took longer than an hour to!

We doubled the forces from the book. So Steedo took 6 regular foot and 2 artillery as the defender and I took 5 regular horse and 7 regular foot.

Initial deployment below.

Morts makes a sweeping rush on his left flank ......the cadance national advantage gets the troops into link as well.

With the use of find a way the cavalry are through the wood and it looks like it is all over .....

First blood to the attacking Swedes - Steedo is thinking can we get another game in. But his army morale only drops by 1 point......

Steedo does juggling with his line and causes damage to the middle unit in the force. Morts thinks not a problem.....

Steedo's plan comes off (Ooo err) - middle unit destroyed and now there are 2 forces for Morts to have to move ..... And 3 points off army morale .... Still 9 to go shouldn't be a problem....

Time to unleash the horse on the infantry and artillery on the hill!

Steedo's national advantage "Steady Lads" nicely muffs up the attack! Here I think Maurice has a nice way of dealing with horse vs foot .... The horse can't get anymore damage on the foot except by charging - but Steedo's volley phase will put pay to any thoughts of a glorious cavalry charge through the artillery park! By the end of the game that single infantry unit emptied the saddles of 2 Swedish cavalry regiments......

Coupled with this was Steedo isolating the last 2 foot units on the Swedish left ..... Army morale down to 3 ....... It's all going wrong!

The Swedish general (well me) legs it over to activate the other half of the army! Quickly getting the cavalry across!

Take them in the flank ..... The dice gods were not with me! The horse repulsed! Run away - which is the correct tactic against those nasty infantry volleys!

Of course as Steedo moved to counter my horse his flank was exposed for my foot to exploit!

It was almost if there was a combined arms attack plan ......

By this time we had whittled each other down to 1 army morale point each ... "The death of a Hero" card was very helpful!

The next kill would clinch it!

Unfortunately it wasn't to be Steedo's day ..... But it was a damn close run thing!

Victory to Morts and the Swedes - but the cost was high! 2 units of horse and 3 units of foot broken and army morale down to 1. Steedo was very unlucky - only 4 units destroyed, and heavily outnumbered from the start. A great game very tense, very pleased I won this one.

Maurice is a really nice game with tactical choices to be made all the time .... Not having the right cards is frustrating but adds to the challenge. The habit of getting focused on our part of the battlefield or one unit .... Knowing when to pass to collect cards and knowing when to let units be destroyed.....

Like so many things I want to get an imagi-nations campaign up and running for this. But when with my short attention span!

Morning gaming is very civilised - tea, coffee and millionaire shortbread. A recommended activity.

Morts

Halloween - so some skeletons!

First bit of painting in months - some table standard skellies for Frostgrave and because there are 12 of them also Lion Rampant or the soon to be released Dragon Rampant. In fact for any game I choose.

There are a mix of makes in this lot - Black Tree Design, Citadel (a pre slotta and plastics) and Eureka (Hopitle style).

I wanted to get these done and while painting remember that I don't really like painting skellies - I think they should be easier than they actually are, so these aren't the best painted figures in the collection ...... Anyway they are done now.

Morts

A couple of games of Risk and things I have bought!

Well we managed to get together on Thursday and played 2 games of Risk Legacy - we started the campaign back in August. I managed to win the first game and name a continent, go me!

The next two games did not go well for me first Steedo and then Snake-eyes taking my capital to win the games. They also named continents - the game does play to the ego (the rest of us named cities!

Already thinking of new names 😀.

The initial games are all about placement of the capital - I was unlucky enough to place last and 2nd to last in the two games we played. In the first game this put me in the position to try a stop DK (in Australia) having a free run at Asia or Steedo at Europe (from North America) or Snake-eyes Africa from South America ..... I went for Japan. Which stopped DK in Asia but not Steedo who took Snake-eyes' capital in the first turn and conquered North America .......

The second game of the evening invoked Steedo and myself stopping DK with the Bear Clan but allowing Snake-eyes to again conquer North America and take my capital in Iceland .... Placing a capital at the end is a real disadvantage. The Imperial faction is the most successful, and the Bear faction has the most upgrades, but because of that it needs slapping down (sorry DK). 

Unfortunately DK the most experienced Risk player is yet to win (apparently he is always picked on.....).

Then I bought these .....

Money years ago DK and I tried out the quick start rules for this and to be blunt played them once and that was it.

But I have been looking at various rule sets recently (and a copy was cheap on eBay) so I thought I give these a try out (I reckon I can break even if I don't like them). Having read the rules they seem fairly simple with some interesting tactical decisions to be made during the game. I plan a quick solo bash using my HotT based Lord of the Rings armies and just record casualties (probably like DK and I did 6 years ago ... With the quick start rules). 

I am planning to rebase the LOTR stuff so I can use them for the skirmish game - see the movement tray posts. 

Morts

All quiet on the blogging front.......

Well it has been very quiet on the gaming front recently, hence the quietness on the blog - nothing done since the DBA3 play through, not even fixing damaged figures/elements front the ham fisted DK's attempt at running a combined arms Macedonian army ...... 

Until Thursday night when DK and I managed to get a round to Steedo's for a chat and a game of Arctic Scavengers! I do like this game but I am rubbish at it DK won again - building lots and managing to dig lots, so he won the masons and gearheads bonus cards. Steedo won the Pharma card .... I won Nothing! So the new strategy not to dig as much really didn't pay off. So after two games I still don't have a winning strategy..... I think that by reading the rules (background fluff) DK has a distinct advantage .....

Friday night saw a game of skittles - team came second ... Steedo's fault 😜

Any I was trawling the web and found Mantics - Warpath Kickstarter 

These are interesting for 2 reasons - you get 2 rules sets, one a massed battles set and another set called Firefight - which are in line with Warhammer 40k. Now unusually I watched a Beasts of War video on the rules for massed battle with one of the games' designers and I have to say the game that was described sounded really good fun and tactical. The mechanics involve alternate activation of units, so you can soften up you opponents before sending in close combat troops or by charging you can force unactivated opposition unit to use up the activation for a turn. I have to say I was impressed by the description of the rules. 

I am tempted by the Kickstarter... But I might wait until they are generally available.....

DBA3 - First play through

DK came over for a quick game of DBA3. It was our first game of this version of the rules. We have played a number of games of DBA2.2 in the past and have had DBA3 for a while, but with life getting in the way and other games on the table we hadn't got around to playing it.

Anyway we had Camillian Romans versus Pyrrhic. Due to the extra details in the rule book I had to have Thracians standing in for unassimilated Italian Allies Ax3. 

The Romans were defending (on the left below) with the light troops on the right flank due to a difficult hill and ploughed fields (I liked the way you didn't know if this would be good or bad going until the first die roll). DK lined up the Pyrrhic forces opposite, putting his elephant and Kn General on his right - hoping for quick kills against my general and cavalry. 

The Romans advance! Trying to get the Ps to the Elephant. 

Clash of the cavalry ..... 

Amazingly DK rolled some truly awful dice .... Pyrrhic Cv flee, general recoils and the Elephant dies!

Whenever the elephant comes to battle it dies ... So much the the anicents super weapon. Having said that the scythed chariot is another useless element in our experience.

The Pyrrhic centre advances to steamroll the Romans. 

A minor skirmish develops on the Roman right. 

Pyrrhos goes for kill - unfortunately for DK his dice rolling isn't getting any better and DK's general is dead!

The Romans only need to kill one more elements for the win - but the phalanx is grinding up the centre. 

Now the push of pikes. 

The Roman cavalry move in for the kill on the remaining Greek cavalry. 

The phalanx takes out another part of the legion but the last of the Pyrrhic cavalry is wiped out and a win to the Romans. 

I enjoy this and not just because I won. The solid flank support made the spears tougher. The movement was quicker and the game flowed well. The phalanx grinding up the legion apparently follows current thinking of the period as I understand it. 

The key to victory was of course DK's terrible dice rolling - something which does happen very often and the loss of the General - 2pips to do anything!

Before the next game I will have to read the explanation with diagram pages in the rules ... It might make us stop having to check the rules so often 😃

Only have 2 armies to paint - Carthaginian and Celtic ...and everything else ......

Morts

Mini Beer Fest!

Last night Steedo and I invited Keeno around to try aload of real ales (some a bit strong to drink alone) and con Keeno into playing a few games .... The game part was a failure as we played 2 games of coup at around midnight after too many beers ...... We first at 2am!

Anyway a good time was had drinking beers .... We were scoring from 1-5 with Steedo using 0.5s, Keeno going to 1 decimal place and I was only using integers. We need to refine the system, I'm thinking just ordering the beers is the way forward. I also think that it is difficult to score a 5 as the context of a beer can change its flavour - an ice cold larger after good walk on a hot day for example. 

So anyway here are the scores (in the order they were drunk);

Cornish Knocker 11

Waterloo (beer of the brave 8%) 6

Leffe Nectar 4.5 - personally I thought this was too sweet, it reminded me of special brew which is not a good thing! Yuk!

Ruby Rooster (Lidl) 6

King Goblin 12 - 6.6% dangerously drinkable. 

Bitburger 10.5 - the only larger in the mix. 

Tim Taylor's Landlord 11.3 

Barngates Amberside 10

Porthleven 10.5

Marston IPA 9 - the average!

Derail ale 10.9 -

Swordfish 8.3

McEwans Champion 4.8 (7.3%) 

So King Goblin was the winner - you couldn't drink a lot of it mind you. Tim Taylor and Cornish Knocker were the session beer winners.  

Avoid Leffe Nectar and McEwans (not) Champion!

Next time we will try a game in amongst the beer scoring.

Morts

Frostgrave - first play

Well DK, Steedo and myself got together for a stand alone play through of Frostgrave. We all took wizards from different schools. DK an elementist, Steedo a Chronomancer and I was a Necromancer. 

The part of Frostgrave we were playing in is shown below - well with me terrain it is more of a Arrid-grave .....anyway!

Wish I had put some roads in .... It would have defined the layout better.

Anyway we picked spells and rolled to set up - each starting in a corner. DK did a pre game Animal Familiar and got wolf - Steedo failed to cast Secret Treasure. 

As my board is 4 by 3 foot there was an approx 6" band down each side - this caused problems from the start as Steedo put a "warning shot" across DK's war and in this terrian free band - resulting in a retaliatory strike. Some good rolling from DK meant that Steedo lost 2 soldiers and his apprentice by the end of turn 2!

My Amazon based warband creep across the table towards treasure while DK and Steedo kill each other!

Steedo when on the offensive and killed DK's wizard rolling an 20 with a +8 Elemental bolt!

Vengenance was his!

Unfortunately it did leave his wizard perilously exposed! So DK surrounded him with soldiers and kicked the life out of him! (The moment just prior to this is below!)

So two wizards and one apprentice down (and a number of soldiers). My warband had by this time got 3 treasures and my wizard off the board. Below is the end game with Steedo's treasure hunter about to kill one of my archers in the background, while my apprentice steps through the arch to kill DK's apprentice with a bone dart spell!

We called the game there!

We enjoyed the game - there were some issues with set up but that was my error by not defining the playing area with roads. Also as a stand alone learning game DK and Steedo put their wizards in danger and also attacked each other with vigour!

We didn't use any spells which required a will defence - just didn't come up.

The plan is to start a campaign once we can get Orc's Drift finished. 

Morts