The Action of La Florida, December 13, 1562

Today, in a bit of a change for the annual club Regatta, we played Mark Ritchie's Fighting Instructions instead of the usual Limeys and Slimeys. To be fair, this is because it's part of Mark's 1562 campaign set in our home state of Florida and using his rules - and Limeys and Slimeys can be swingy, especially in boarding combat wherein either you win big or lose big.

That said, we had some of our own amazing incidents...

7.5x12 foot table - a bit smaller and more cramped than
at Das Krieg Haus 1, but there is stuff still to unpack, and 
either move or sell, that will free it up.

Closeup of a brig, though all ships were assumed to have three masts.

The scenario.

The French are Huguenot while the pirates are Dutch, so it seemed fair for me (the pirates) to ally with their fellow Protestants and share any treasure won.

A typical ship card. Note that
"hits" are fewer than in L&S,
so this ship has only six crew,
five hull points and seven sail points.

At bottom left are the sailing points - with wind on a given quarter, you get that many moves in a turn, each of three inches. so a small ship with six move points and the wind on its aft quarter could move 18". One of these moves can be spent to "back," or not move, while 60-degree turns can be taken with increasing point expenditure. Minimal turns are free. So, for example, the above craft could move 15" and make a 60-degree turn, or 9" and a 120-degree turn, but could not turn 180 degrees because it does not have seven points to spend.

The game is semi-simultaneous, with each move "segment" taken at the same time and then firing altogether. Wind is highly variable, and can put you in irons unexpectedly, in which case you can make a single 60 degree move that turn in order to continue moving next turn. Otherwise, you drift 3". Ships without steerage way also drift, though with the gulf stream rather than the wind.

One of my pirate brigs, with a carronade two centuries ahead of its time!
Figures in our sea games are always cosmetic.

My ships did not come onto the board until about turn four, which set the stage for my participation - mostly on the edges and out of the way. While I could come on in any corner of the board I liked, one was too far away, one would have gotten in the way of the French, and one occupied by the Spanish.

A couple turns in. The Spanish (upper right) must shepherd
their treasure ship to the other short edge of the board. The
French (left) set out to block them. My pirates are not yet
on the board, just out of the way of the moves. (incidentally,
gun range is 60".)

Two of my ships, with the Pirate Queen (perhaps a
young Grainne O'Malley?) in the larger.

Huguenot flagship. 

Spanish about to take the long way round.

Opening fire - my bowchasers
vs. John's broadside.

The squadrons close.

I get a couple reinforcements.

I had one bit of luck - rolled a 12 for damage on a hull hit to the enemy's next-largest ship. This is a critical, and I ended up doing 2d6 hull point damage. You'll have noticed that few ships have more than a dozen HP, and after a few turns of fire have lost some. I rolled boxcars.

The ship didn't sink outright or explode, but its crew were now too busy pumping to fight. They struck, giving us half their victory points (full if we ever got around to boarding, which didn't seem likely).

I attempt to grapple and board.

It should be noted that at this point, the pirate ship to center left has one hull point remaining. My intent was to abandon it, board and seize the white ship it is hitting here.

One - I fail the grapple roll.

Two, a shot into my hull sinks my command ship outright.

"But the quarter that we gave them,
We sank them in the sea..."

The oncoming Don flagship. Behind it can be seen a
merchantman proxying for the ship I knocked out earlier.

Crossing of the ways. We didn't have period French flags...
Anyone know what the Huguenots' looked like?

So by this point I'd lost two ships, but they were back on the board
as reinforcements - behind the Spanish at this point.

The Spanish and French were heavily engaged in a messy
melee in the center of the board while two of my small ships
(upper right) were basically running away while the ones at
the bottom right are trying to catch up with the battle.

While both sides had equal honours in terms of damage, the Spaniards were cut off from their objective and increasingly too badly damaged to escape. So we halted early and agreed the French had won. I had not actually seen much action other than losing two ships by fairly bad luck, but my lucky shot early in the game had stopped up the Spanish strategy by a) getting in the way and b) losing a shield for their treasure galleon, which we hadn't actually taken yet but sure as hell wasn't getting away.

I spent much of the game in irons and just firing pot shots, but the Regatta is more about socializing than winning. We had a couple new members, Mike and Milton. Milton has just retired from California and edited a couple old colonial-wargaming journals, so that is an extra vote in addition to mine and Jeff's. The catch is that he plays The Men Who Would Be Kings rather than The Sword and the Flame, but I have long wanted to try the former and, as I mentioned in the previous post, am thinking about its relative The Pikeman's Lament. So I look forward to the opportunity.

Will not be gaming next week as I'm at work, but might get in some Battlefleet Gothic after Christmas. I also dropped by the game store to supply some hill-painting. Picked up green and brown speedpaint, and a nice broad scenery brush. May try that tomorrow.

Last but not least, part one of Oriskany Jim's Christmas Carnage:

Second Battle of Not-Yet-Melbourne

In the eleventh week of our 16th-century campaign, the GM is a little frustrated that we're not all paying attention to the strategic moves. This has led to fewer battles. Sunday's was the first at which members of all three factions (Spanish, native, and pirate/non-Spanish-European) were present.

The field of battle - a bit inland, but with plenty of cover.

The rules this time were Tactical Combat rather than Firelock; I'm not sure why, as the latter is specifically designed for the period. They worked well enough, though.

The opposing sides:

These represent about three times their number of actual troops. The Spanish differ by having six horsemen and two guns; the natives had a handful of pirates on hand with a three-pounder of their own. There are about 75 apiece, plus leaders and some war dogs.

Deployment; Spanish at bottom behind the watercourse.

This was a setpiece battle; just set up and go at it until one side or both cried uncle.

My artillery position in the center - 3-pounder right, 6-pounder
and a wall gun to left, war dogs and handler behind.

Cautious advance, pot-shotting Indians with arquebus and crossbow.

To the left, natives advancing on Tom, my partner.

Massive melee between Tom and Jim; like in Warhammer,
if you want to kill someone, best to get into close combat!

War dogs are particularly effective, but a fire-and-forget unit.

While both sides took heavy and mostly equal casualties on the left, my guns exchanged counter-battery fire against the pirate gun on the right. Ultimately, my heavier cannon managed to dismount his three-pounder before my right flank foot (out of mind as the Indians facing me were concentrating more on my guns) managed to advance and charge. I had one horseman double-move (24 hexes!) to charge the gun crew, though, and with the help of advancing infantry killed most of the crew.

The horseman can be seen at lower left before
his death ride; the gun is at the crossroads at top.

After nine turns, honors were about even; we'd both taken about two-thirds casualties. Tom's severe loss in CC was balanced by my canister fire, particularly when Jim's advance was enfiladed by my bigger gun. After some nail-biting - the natives had a fair chance of taking the guns by the 12-turn limit after which one force could retreat if it chose - we agreed that both sides would withdraw.

The dead pools:

Elsewhere in the space, Oriskany Jim and a couple others were playing a "colonial space" game set in the 2600s:

While added to our wall art was a lovely, and big, hand-drawn map of Iwo Jima:

I was inspired by the game to finally get around to "assembling" the same rubber scatter terrain:

Messier than I expected!

Thanks for reading; see you next time.

Black Powder! (Not That One)

Fellow South Florida Miniatures Gamer Mark Ritchie - who wrote Tactical Combat as played here and here - has Ancients and black-powder rules too - Pilum and Firelock respectively. Last Sunday he ran me and "Oriskany Jim" Johnson through a late-16th-century encounter. The club has been very busy lately, with games almost every Saturday, but I've been working every Saturday for over a month and jumped at the chance for a Sunday game. Unfortunately that meant there were only four of us there. Mark GM'ed the game.

Ron and I played an Imperial/Hungarian force:

Jim got the Poles, including their famous winged lancers:

We played the battle of Byczna, January 24, 1588, part of a civil war between Swedish- and Imperial-backed claimants to the Polish throne. The game is low-scale - each base represents a company of fifty to eighty men.

The battlefield, from the Imperial side. Brown for roads,
blue for rivers, the colorful patches round the village
are cropfields. There is a low hill at center-bottom.

The goal was for at least one Imperial base to hold the road for 15 turns, or alternately to eliminate twenty opposing bases. Both had a mix of pike, shot, pistoliers and lancers or hussars (lots of these); the Imperials also had two guns. A hex is 50 yards, and musket range three hexes. There are also rules for caracole - cavalry move-and-fire - and limicon, which I hadn't heard of before but is roughly the same thing for infantry.

We set up first in the southeast (from my perspective) quadrant, and our options were dire. It wasn't obvious which way Jim would come, as he could set up anywhere about 15 hexes from our line. Ron took the guns and half our army to the left, setting up on the hill east of the village. I set up my infantry across the road, wary of an assault from the northeast, with my cavalry in reserve to go either direction as needed.

Jim, of course, then set up his entire army on our left flank. My troops would have some humping to do...

The Imperial forces, badly strung out; to rear of picture
the Poles. Clumping of troops is deliberate, as orders
are best issued to groups.

My half, now facing the wrong direction, but with
cavalry positioned to support.

Ron's side. Each unit had 6 or 8 hit points, with loss
denoted by colored pipe cleaners; here the guns start
with only four HP apiece. Tags denote leaders.

Jim's cavalry races forward.

Not all units could be moved; each commander generated 1d6 orders, which could be transferred to other commanders. This is where the clumping comes in; a single order can be issued to several units at once provided they are contiguous. There is an action economy, and there were times our side rolled poorly enough to have to seriously think about what moves we could make.

Our side fires. In addition to HP loss, units can be
shaken or routed, denoted by colored caps.

There is more to firing and combat than just the fighting; units must take morale checks when they take casualties or when fired on by cannon (even if it does no damage). On one failure, the unit is shaken and takes a yellow marker; on two it is broken, takes a red marker, and retreats a random number of hexes. If broken in close combat, it is eliminated outright. Like in Warhammer Fantasy, close combat would make the real difference here, and units could overrun and enter combat with another unit.

The combat result table links number of attacks plus assorted bonuses to a 2D6 score that can cause up to three hits on the opposing base (though both sides may attack). Hits may be saved; those that aren't require morale checks, which ultimately resolve the combat. It's possible to be eliminated by hits alone, but more likely to eventually fail a check and either retreat or, with two failures in CC, be eliminated that way.

Turn 1: Jim threw a unit of fast horse archers at us, then swept across our left flank while his infantry followed more sedately. I hastily moved my flank towards the enemy, but at the rate they were going, the infantry wouldn't make it in time to participate. Roads do allow extra movement provided half the unit's move is on that road, and luckily I was mostly deployed near it.

Turn 2: The hussars charged Ron's hill. We lost two pike units, a gun, musketeers, and horse, while a second horsed unit broke and fled. Five units lost already - close combat in this game is a quick way to die. The other gun managed to hold off the winged lancers, and in our turn, we variously rallied shaken units and advanced. Our counter-attack was weak and did little to push the Polish army away from our flank.

The winged lancer charge goes in. Units can also support, so
it's good to gang up on each other. After the forward lancer
eliminates the gun, for example, the rear one handles the pikes - 
which don't help against the longer lances of the cavalry.

The first gun captured, lancers go after the second.

Reiters attempt to rescue it.

Turn 3: The hussars continued to chew through our flank, but I passed eight (!) morale checks (which, like Warhammer, are roll-under). I exchanged dice during combat but then started rolling high on morale checks and lost a few units any way. I charged on my own "northern" flank, to little effect. My infantry, some of them very good landsknechts, were too far away to help.

Turn 4: More of the same. My infantry finally got close enough to fire shot at Jim's also-slowly-slogging infantry while his cavalry continued to rampage through what remained of Ron's end. Partway through, we lost our twentieth base and the game was over - Jim had lost four, two of them on the last turn. I'd taken a lesson from his tactics and made sure to gang up on his units to force more morale checks. If we'd continued, my infantry close-combat types were now close enough to do some serious damage, but his cavalry would have swept behind me and finished the job.

Lancers tear the crap out of Imperial reiters, though in the
distance you can see my own attack going in. The yellow-
capped bases are in trouble; one loss in CC and they'll be gone.

Melee on the road - from the darker colors of chenille
and the yellow caps, I'm finally achieving something.

A fun and exciting game, but unfortunately lost in the deployment phase. Tactics have never been my strong suit, despite far too much reading on the topic. Maybe that's why I like 18th-century, when they were mostly stolid. Pike and shot isn't my thing either, and the revelation that lances could basically ignore the whole point of pikes was devastating. Jim's winged lancers lived up to their reputation.

A few more close-ups of Mark's nicely-painted figures:

Infantry in trouble. This arquebus base has 1 of 8 hp left.

Jim's view of same combat.

Poles hold off the Imperial charge.

Poles closing the trap. Dice denote order "pips" available
to commanders; the CinC can distribute these to others.

I neglected to bring some of my 18mm Wofuns to test on the hexes; I'd be happy to play again using horse-and-musket tactics with these rules. We'll see. Jim again took video for Sitrep Podcast but it won't be published until August, I'll post a link then. Happy gaming, all.