First Game in New Home!

Well, not all the minis and terrain are unpacked, so it still looks a bit sparse, but I'm ready to try it!

(It's been a long week.)

The Ga Pa mission (please excuse the lack of Swedish accent) is the simplest in the book - two full sides at either edge of table, go at it, and start rolling for final turn once there are five or fewer units remaining. We have twelve, so this may take a while... Also, it's about four in the morning as I write this intro.

Roll for officer qualities. Von Blacke of Talabecland is to the manor, but not the manner, born and thus gives his men no leadership bonus, whilst his opponent Ensign Schotte of Middenheim is blessed with invulnerability to lucky blows. Curious to start with certain rules negated for them, but while I could just pick something more interesting I can already determine who's attacker and defender in this scenario!

The Talabec (Red and Yellow sides) are spread across their table edge, with each "regiment" of pike and shot near a piece of terrain, and their dragoons in the center to support whoever needs it.

The Middenheimers (Blue and White) have their infantry to the left, and dragoons to the right ready to sweep round the hill and try to hold up that flank while their infantry overwhelms the other.

I'm afraid the tiny Wofuns make the photos a little incomprehensible. My apologies, today's report is mostly for my own practice and comprehension and the closest this gets to eye candy will be like those teensy mini M&Ms in the cylinders.

Turn 1: "Eastern" flanks move forward. (Right for the Talabec, Left for Middenheim). Dragoons on both sides fail activations on rolls of 4.

Turn 2: No one except the red Talabec pike manage to activate, moving to the edge of the forest.

Turns 3-4: The Talabec shot make it into the forest and their left flank makes it into the village, while one dragoon unit ranges ahead to spoil the Middenheimers, who have advanced into and past their own forest on one flank and round the hill on the other.

Turn 5: The Middenheimers are in range to shoot at the isolated dragoons with shot and their own dragoons. The dragoons take four casualties but their survivors pass two morale tests, then hold off the enemy pike. After this the other Middenheim dragoons roll a double one to activate and end up charging across the table towards the town.

Surviving dragoons in peril.

Both sides needed three sixes to cause a casualty.

Dragoons careen towards uncertain doom.

Turn 6: The Middenlander infantry emerge from the fallen trees, and the fleeing Talabec dragoon (singular) fails a rally check and is thus eliminated.

Turn 7: The Middenheim dragoons continue to retreat, but the rest of the blue-and-whites move to the center of the board. The Talabec cement their hold on the village and their own forest.

Turn 8: The Talabec turn aggressive, closing in on the Middenheim flanks as they in turn move towards the Talabec center. Three blue musketeers are killed by a first volley from the trees.

As the western sun streams thru the window and warms the photographer...

Turn 9: A fierce but inconclusive pike fight between Yellow and White.

Turns 10-11: Blue shot and Red pike are eliminated.

Yellow officer desperately duels his opposing number...

To no avail (the side with more 5+'s wins).

Turn 12: Yellow pike (containing the officer) is forced to retreat after shooting casualties, but cannot do so since it's blocked by shot of its own side. This means it rolls a morale check (4+) and if it fails (with a three in this case) loses that number of figures (worst case scenario!).

Turn 13: Sensing victory, the blues and whites push on. Though the officer-led pikes rally, and the shot move out of their way, their next casualties force them not to retreat but to disintegrate altogether. Everyone on the Talabec side checks morale, though only one unit retreats a quarter of its distance. In response, the Talabec dragoons return the favor against the Middenheim officer, forcing him back into his own shot.

In Turn 14, the Middenheim officer unit fails to rally and loses another three figures...!

We still have six units left, so the game isn't over! (you roll for last turn only once there are five units remaining on the board.)

In Turn 15, the Middenheim unit breaks, eliminating their officer, but the Talabec dragoons get shot up some more, down to one man. The Talabec shot in the village roll a double 1 for their activation and retreat six inches towards the board edge.

In Turns 16-18, two units (one from each side) are taken off the board, but the game still goes on. At this point the two Talabec shot units are being pushed closer to the edge by the Middenheim shot and dragoons.

Dragoons trying to sneak up on shot under cover of a wall.

Turn 19: Final turn! Unfortunately, the dragoons fail their roll to charge, and then the opposing shot in the far corner fail their rally check.

"We're done here!"

They're not quite off the board, but while it's a tie (and both officers routed from the board), I think the Middenheimers got the better of the exchange. Had this been a campaign, I'd have ended it in Turn 13 with a Middenheim victory but more survivors on both sides.

Von Blacke rolls an 8 for his fate (Wounded but Rescued), while his opponent Schotte rolls a 9 (captured honourably). 

This was a long report - longer than it looks since it took me most of the day to play (lots of breaks). Notes of interest:

• Automatic end of turn on a failed activation isn't actually all that bad because it makes the turns go by faster. There are few enough units in an army that you work through them quickly, and if I hadn't been writing a report, the game would have been over in a couple hours, tops. With more familiarity with the rules, this can be a fast game.
• The more casualties, the more difficult it is to rally. Once a 12-strong unit has fewer figures than its morale score, it can't pass since it has to subtract its casualties from the roll.
• The 6/12 combat dice allows even an understrength unit to have an effect on the game.
• Pikes and dragoons generally stand off against each other, because pikes are better when charged, and dragoons can avoid combat with Evade and Skirmish activations.
• But it's always possible to brick a roll and thus lose that "good" move.
• I have good dice - I rolled a lot of sixes today!

Thanks for your patience with this post; hope it wasn't too confusing! Back to the grindstone...

Prepping for Pikeman's Lament

So, finished my move.

Kfira is still unhappy, spending most of her time under the couch. The other two are curious, if wary.

As a Facebook friend put it, "WTF, Mom?!"

Many of the books are still packed; the walls feel a bit bare with not enough shelves. Most of the minis are too, or at any rate I haven't found them all yet.

Here's the new game room:

Left of door.

Forward of door.

Rest of room.

The lights and fan don't work, so I brought my own.

Now that I can shut the door and thus keep Lex and Kiki off the table, and have plenty of room despite boxes up against the walls, I'm ready for my first proper game in my new home. 

Or am I?

Let's try Pikeman's Lament again. What with a normal-sized table and a little terrain of the right scale, I considered running a small game with the Pike and Shotte ECW. Can't find them though.

So I'll use the 18mm Wofuns. I could only find three of my boxes, though at least they had full-size forces, if limited ones.

Middenheim force:

• Blue Pike
• Blue Shot
• Blue Dragoons
• White Pike
• White Shot
• White Dragoons

Talabec force:

• Red Pike
• Red Shot
• Red Dragoons
• Yellow Pike
• Yellow Shot
• Yellow Dragoons

I tossed the 18mm paper terrain. Hmm.

Also don't have officers, or at any rate only one color (yellow) of distinctive officer types. I could leave them out for this test, but I'm undecided. They seem to bring a lot of character to the game.

But here's the cool thing about having a separate room.

I can leave the table set up overnight, or even longer! Plenty of time to scrounge some terrain and hunt down the rest of the figures.

In the meantime, I go back to work this week. It's early-voting time, so the schedule will be weird on a  few days, and almost no programming to worry about. Except chess club. I've thought about running Featherstone's classic Close Wars or a Featherstone-style skirmish wargame for the kids using 54mm Armies in Plastic Revolutionary-era figures and the distinctive Bold Frontiers trees. The latter, with written orders for individual figures, would be more DnD-ish. And of course, this is appropriate for America 250. Unfortunately, chess club will be a bit cramped for now as we are doing it in the public space rather than the auditorium until the primaries are over. We'll see.

Wish me luck, and thanks for following me thru all the latest challenges. Hope your gaming goes as well!

Too Busy to Finish a Game

 ... yeah, this is a partial battle report.

As I slowly but steadily pack away my minis and terrain, I've left a few out to experiment with. I just finished reading Osprey's Auldearn 1645 and Steel Lobsters, so have been itching to try The Pikeman's Lament. A handful of the Wofun 30-Years-War pack on my 2x2 DBA mat seemed in order.

My hairy DBA mat. This is why I need a second bedroom.

I had a fun time selecting units from what figures came easiest to hand; one side got lots of firepower, with units of pike, shot, commanded shot and two of dragoons. The other got no firepower at all - two Aggressive Gallopers and some Scots mercenaries - one unit of pike and one of Fierce Forlorn Hope. A hill, a paper house, a tiny wall and a bit of disposable wooded terrain completed the table.

I ran through a few turns. Only the units on the left got anywhere, but I did get to try a number of mechanisms, from Shoot, Move and Attack to the Duel and Skirmish rules.

Gallopers advance.

After a little fire, preparing to charge.

The fighting and movement was all between the horse on one side and the pike, commanded shot and dragoons on the other. I attempted to charge the Dragoons and Shot, but their ability to skirmish (meaning they could respond with a half-move and shoot) kept this in check. So I charged the Pike instead. Despite their forming up, making them a little tougher, the cav won the fight two casualties to one but still had to retreat afterward.

I also tried a duel between Officers. It was inconclusive.

Cramped and distracted, I stopped at this point without going through the whole battle. I did enough to get a feel for the rhythm of the game, though, and was less frustrated than with the time I tried to run The Men Who Would Be Kings.

I tossed the paper scenery and put away the minis. I get the keys to my new apartment tomorrow, and the move is Monday. After which I'll have a gameroom I can leave a table setup in. Wish me luck...

Lutzen 1813

Had a fine game today at the War Office. I recently read Helion's Lutzen and Bautzen: A Wargamer's Guide, so was interested to find that Milton Soong was testing a scenario for Field of Battle 3rd edition.

Prussians in foreground, French in background.

10mm figures, four bases to a battalion.

Milton plans to run this at Hurricon next month, so was interested to know not just how we liked the rules but whether we could get thru the scenario in four hours. With Mike and me commanding the Prussians and John the French (Jacob from last post turned up partway through to help him), we began with a "scripted" advance onto the field - Lutzen was a surprise attack on the French.

Field of Battle is a card-driven system, using dice steps from D4-D12 for rolls which are always opposed. However, while this does give the "inactive" player something to do, it's still a UGO-IGO setup. On the other hand, a single turn can have many back-and-forths between the sides.

In each "phase", the players roll initiative on a D10. Winner chooses to go first or second in this bound, and both sides draw the dice-difference in cards. Once both sides have spent all their cards, they roll init again. This means that players can have anywhere from one to nine cards during a bound, and a few can be held over for later use. Once all the cards in the deck are gone, the next turn begins. So a single turn can (and did) last a long time - it took us four hours, Milton's time limit for a table at Hurricon. While that doesn't sound good, we actually got a lot of playing on both sides during that turn!

Each side also has a supply of objective counters, in our case coins:

The stone-on-a-base is used to mark hit points
or "UIs." When a unit takes more than three,
it is eliminated.

These are traded between players when objectives are taken, or given to the GM when casualties are taken, and returned when casualties are rallied off. Run out of the ones in your bag, and morale failures suddenly become more critical and can end the game at a stroke.

It should be noted that my partner, who claims to be constitutionally unlucky, rolled over a dozen ones in the course of the game, and rarely rolled better than half the number possible on the dice. I made up for it, mostly.

Mike had the only artillery. As the objective villages were on my (right) side of the table, he asked me not to envelop them until he was in position to enfilade the French left flank. I forgot this and in my first move, got far too close to the enemy (long range for musketry is six inches):

At this scale, the house represents the Built-Up Area
of Gross Gorschen, defended by one French battalion.

The French were either grenadiers or veterans, not sure which, so their standard die for combat was D12+2. Most of mine were Landwehr, at D4 or D6. This is boosted by cover, First Fire, etc, and reduced by supporting units, terrain, etc. Firing can be done at any time by the active player, but reloading requires an "infantry fire" card - play it and you can fire, reload and immediately fire again if desired.

By a combination of a great die roll on my part and a poor one on John's, his garrison broke and fled the village after a single volley.

If, for example, I have a D10 for firing, boosted to D12 by first fire, reduced to D10 by cover, and boosted again to D12 by point blank range, and I roll, say, a 10 whilst John rolls a 3, I have beaten him by seven. If a second battalion fires and beats John by two, this loss is increased to nine.

For each three difference (Delta for short, as in spaceflight's Δv) the loser loses one Unit Integrity or hit point. Four lost and the unit is eliminated, two and it routs. If the winner's roll was an even number, something else nice happens, such as a free formation change or (in the case of combat) the loser is disordered. Two UI - or "rocks" as Milton put it because he represented them with tiny boulders placed behind the unit - and they must retreat, even from a nice bastion of a village.

I couldn't get into the town because I hadn't gotten enough 8" move "segments", but it was now ready for me to seize next turn.

As both of us have fired but neither has
yet reloaded, this is indicated by cotton.
Each unit has a "rock" to indicate UI loss.

It was still our turn and we had three "move" cards in the deck, so I did eventually move a battalion into the BUI and started concentrating my second brigade on the other.

This failed pretty miserably.

The advance, once a move card or extra move "segment"
permits deployment into line.

The road between the Gorschens is bloodily contested,
both sides losing units and the French light infantry
finally driven off.

But my dice rolls in Klein Gorschen weren't as lucky
as those in Gross Gorschen. Even outnumbering my
opponent two to one wasn't getting me into the village.
And we can see French reinforcements in the distance!

Meanwhile, Mike was slowly advancing, thanks to poor opposed rolls. Even when there is no combat, the opponent always rolls a standard number for you to beat, usually on a D8. Depending on the difference, you can move one, two or three times. Infantry move 8" and cavalry 12". Despite his slow progress, on our third move card he received reinforcements, a cavalry brigade including horse artillery.

While he threatened the French infantry on his flank with these, he was unable to use his guns on the squares, so still little progress was made. At least the French musketry were reduced by a die type due to the square formation, as only one or two faces of the square would be firing at a target. As the turn wound on, the French also got cavalry for reinforcements, so despite more firing than melee the fighting on this flank didn't go far.

John and Jacob take instruction from the GM. The
center is visible, with French advancing while Mike's
Prussians approach the third objective BUI.

Mike got thrown back and so did I.

Having driven off my center from the road between
the Gorschens, Jacob was able to spin round and hit my
attackers in the flank (center right of this picture).

"Run away...!"

But more centrally on the table, I held the objective securely, especially since with the start of the second turn we had a fourth move card which got us another brigade of reinforcements. Rather than reinforce failure on our right, I sent it to support the captured objective and prevent the enemy from retaking it.

John had obtained French reinforcements on his right (our left) and with fairly even forces both in numbers and composition, he and Mike were stymied. Their side was almost too crowded at the point of approach to move. Infantry were in square so that cavalry couldn't deal with them, but the cavalry were in the way of guns, who in turn were menaced if they did get into position - the classic rock/paper/scissors of Napoleonics.

While John strongly holds the central objective (top right),
he can't move off it into the center of the picture because
of my reinforcements (center right) supporting my objective.
In turn, I can't menace him, because out of view to upper right
are his reinforcements eager to retake my objective.

This felt very much like a standoff, but we ended the game at this point. Since it was a playtest for Hurricon, and game tables have four-hour slots, the plan was to see how much game we could get through in a four-hour block, and we were well into the fifth hour.

However...!

While Mike and I had had some spectacular defeats (in part due to his ability to throw ones in a tight spot), having entire battalions deleted at a blow, the French had been worn away much more steadily. John and Jacob had lost fewer battalions, but had more with one or more casualty markers, and for each they had paid with a token.

Remember that we each had a bag of coin-tokens, giving these up when taking casualties or trading them for objectives. At this point John revealed that his bag was empty. Ours still had six tokens left. Had I not seized the center objective, the French would still have two tokens and the Prussians four. While it isn't a certain recipe for failure, if you lose a morale check without tokens to give up, the game is over.

So my one spot of good luck at the start of the game had allowed the Prussians to weather their steady run of bad luck. Pruessens Gloria!

In real life, the French, surprised by a morning attack, were pushed back across the entire "table" before managing to gather a counter attack. In a full-length game of three or more full turns, this would have been achieved - in our case sometime during the second turn, as the French side, now bereft of tokens, would have broken at some point.

We thus managed to fight to a decision in five hours. This doesn't sound good for a convention demo game limited to four hours, but then we only had three players for half of it, and there are six player slots. Milton also commented that one of the expected players would be familiar with the game and could be a co-GM at need.

John felt - justifiably, I feel - that the IgoUgo method was problematic in the game, as a side could only provide dice targets while the other was turning cards. As a surprise attack, the Prussians had automatically gotten initiative. While we were turning over initiative regularly (as after a run of cards the other side got its chance), Prussia had gone second in one round then first in the next, thus getting two rounds together without response. A game where we activated alternate units rather than alternate sides might have been preferable. The cards allow you to activate every unit with the appropriate ability - move all units, fire all infantry, rally off all casualties - though you must still pass an opposed roll with each unit to do so.

Milton pointed out that a "normal" encounter battle would have likely been much more even; the French were likely to lose this historical scenario in any case.

All in all, a successful playtest, and all of us enjoyed it enough to try again sometime. I would like to see how a more generic encounter battle comes out. As I've been delving into ECW and Jacob's personal interest is in Middle Ages, the rules do cover pike-and-shot as well. 

In other news, I have not yet finalized my new apartment, but have packed up most of my stuff and also traded in some of my old 40K boxes for $120 in store credit. Combined with the store discount, that could get me even a large starter box at a reasonable price - if I actually get around to doing something with one. I also moved most of my wargames to the War Office and my boardgames and RPGs to work.

Lastly, I actually finished painting a handful of figures (with the speedpaint pens). Go me!

Til next time...