Slow Blogging

Sometimes I do get some gaming in, but I'm unmotivated to write it up. Work has been tiring and depressing lately, and often when I get home or have a day off, I waste it (well, unless excessive reading doesn't count). A couple weeks ago I spent a Sunday at Das Krieg Haus - possibly for the last time, as the club is moving to a smaller space which will at least be closer to home for me. I got in a game and a half and have let the photos age long enough; let's see if I can muster up enough memory to do them justice.

The first is a Crimean War scenario taken from Wargames Illustrated issue 18, in which a British brigade held off a Russian division for some time among broken terrain. I was asked if Charge! would work for it, but given the figures available (we would need 32 to a battalion) and the genericness of the units, I doubted it. So we went with The Sword and the Flame instead, which has the great advantage of familiarity.

On the right, the British position, as the Russians are
set up on the far side of the river.

Regiments of twenty-four plus a gun each.

Stolid Russian columns

A handful of Russian cavalry

I got a Rifle regiment to command.

The Russian players started by sending their minimal cavalry up our left, keeping my partner busy whilst the infantry crossed the river. With 20" musketry (24" for my rifles) we could only respond with cannon for some time.

Laborious crossing.

Here's where things really went wrong for us:

The two British regiments, on separate hills, were too far apart to support each other. When the Russians went for my partner in overwhelming force, there wasn't much I could do to help. I moved a bit down the hill as they got closer, but one of the columns moved aside to hold me off and my vaunted rifle fire didn't do enough damage even with close range cannon fire to assist. If I'd vacated the hill, I'd have been caught between by a Russian column.

The Russian objective was to take only one hill; for a fairer game it might have been both. Our opponents concentrated entirely on my partner while I took potshots at the rearguard.

Here a column comes at me in "the old style", but my
dice failed me and I didn't do enough damage to make
them take a morale check.

The British take the charge, despite high Russian casualties.

Closeup CC.

Russians hold the hill...

... Thanks largely to my immobility on the next one.

"Oriskany Jim" has been demoing his own space game, Darkstar, at the club for awhile, and this is the first time I got to try it with me and another Jennifer, versus Jim and Mark. It appears to be effectively WWII in the 26th century, as the sides are generally the same:

A typical ship plan, in plastic
for wet-erase marking.

Damage is straightforward; the blank squares are pure armor, but once two of them are destroyed, further hits on that row or column start taking out critical systems.

The game is played on a hex-grid, and marked up like
a WWII battle-map to track movement.

Actual physics are adhered to, in movement at any rate - movement points are dedicated to slowing, speeding up, or making turns, so momentum is important and can, for example, carry you into an opponent's line of fire if you aren't careful.

Velocity is thus tracked; individual
ships move according to an initiative roll.

I command the American destroyer, which has two
banks of torpedoes (the right triangles at its bow).

This ship has taken a lot of
damage from head-on, and
deep enough to hit the bridge!

I left early owing to another event I wanted to make, but the game was enjoyable enough and fairly easy to play with its designers right at hand.

So that's one day's gaming ... two weeks ago. Besides that, I've read as usual - currently some Charles Darwin, and Christopher Duffy's classic study of Frederick's army. I would like to get back to Charge!, but still have Kill Team stuff on my table. See you next time.

New stuff

 Ordered this book after hearing about it on the VWC group:

A good and lively book; I'm just past Dettingen. The author makes the characters and maneuvers surprisingly comprehensible, even though there's a lot of people and places to track. He points out specifically that there are four important Charleses alone. But the clarity is surprising, despite sparse maps. The major battles are at least given several pages each - which you don't always see in large-scale histories. There were three or four major theatres, and with all the German and Italian city-states there is fodder for Imagi-nation campaigning. Very enjoyable - recommended.

This morning I also received a shipment from a fellow on Facebook who was selling his old TSATF supplements. Now I have:

An extra, less worn copy of the rules.

The "big battles" variant, 800 Fighting Englishmen.

Varying action decks (taking the place of playing cards for 
turn and casualty determination; and "special event" decks
for adding variant elements to scenarios (reinforcements, delays, etc).

Two dozen scenarios.

Sample scenario and map.

Unexpected: Card QRS sheets and unit cards.
No need to copy them from the book now!

A bit more reading material - variant rules, tactical tips,
a French North Africa variant, and my favorite - 
material from the Major General's club that,
to my recollection, isn't on the site!

So while I may not be gaming this weekend, rest assured I won't be idle!

The local club has also had a massive donation of minis, terrain and books, so I will really have to get over there one of these weekends to have a look (and help organize). Hope you too are enjoying yourselves. Til next time -

TSATF, Fastoso variant

My fellow South Florida Miniatures Gamer Jeff, AKA Sgt. Guinness, just kindly introduced me to a variant of my favorite ruleset, The Sword and the Flame. It's by Mark Fastoso, as shown in a number of scenario books he wrote back in the day which I shall have to hunt down.

TSATF is based on 20-man infantry units, 12 cavalry, four gunners. Infantry and cavalry are commonly split in half as well.

Turns out even smaller sizes can work. Fastoso's co-author Roy Jones posted the rule changes in threads on The Miniatures Page such as this one:

Infantry: 8 men

Cavalry: 6 men

Artillery: 2-3 men (artillery fire in TSATF is based on the number of crew).

Stragglers: D6 roll - 1-2:one, 3-4:two, 5:three, 6:none.

Why is this important? Because of my oddly-proportioned Great Game collection from Wofun. Most of the units range from 15-20 infantry, 8-10 cavalry, and there aren't so many of these units that you can build a large game. The Indian Army selection, for example, have what would be three TSATF units and one and a half cavalry units, while the Russians only have one (1) infantry unit. Granted, this is plus Cossacks, Central Asians, etc, but still.

Then I took a closer look. Turns out the late Larry Brom chose his unit sies randomly, possibly based on the box sizes of the miniatures he was using. And given the popularity of half-units in the game, it's not all that farfetched that even smaller numbers could work.

I'm also considering Bob Cordery's classic Bundok and Bayonet. It is a larger-scale game, with five men to a company but still twenty to the battalion. (So my units would still be undersized.) It looks good, but I haven't had a chance to try it yet, and TSATF is more familiar. We'll see. I may try both.

Of course, there is the obvious but costlier solution of just buying more. Unlike Paperboys, though, I don't think this lot are available in print.

Two companies of Bengal infantry.

Five (!) companies of Afghan regulars.

A mere eight Bengal Lancers to a unit (I have two of these).
 Would four- or five-man squadrons work? I'd have to reduce
 stragglers even more... though some players leave them out.

I'll try it! After I run Leuthen with Wofuns and Paperboys, that is. Plastic Seven Years War 10mms will be out soonish, and that would be an excuse to buy more of the colonials...

The famous church in 18mm scale paper.
Easier to build than it looks!

Sergeants Three

We played a Gunga Din scenario at Das Krieg Haus last week. I haven't seen the film since university, but it was the GM, Devon's, favorite, and he even had miniatures of the stars for us to play. It's been a long while since I've gotten in a game of The Sword and the Flame. The blocky but attractive setting:

Some of the simpler building were made by Devon's grandfather,
a nice keepsake!

One of the objectives - fallen telegraph poles which I had to raise
to request reinforcements.

In the film, starring Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks and Victor McLaglen, Kipling's "Sergeants Three" find themselves holding off a swarm of Thuggee cultists. (I asked if there was a miniature of Indiana Jones about, and there was!) I got McLaglen, AKA Sergeant McChesney. Each sergeant had ten Indian troops, Guides I think, and a bhisti. The bhistis allowed a roll against a D8 for wounded troops. 1-3 dead, 4-6 no result, 7-8 recovered. I'm sad to say nearly all our attempts got the wounded men inadvertently killed, to the point that at moments of crisis we were actively hoping for it so that we wouldn't have to carry them out of reach of the enemy! (In TSATF, Colonial troops take morale checks when wounded men are killed by natives, but two men assisting one wounded man aren't available for the firing line.)

The combat result table was simplified; in particular, British
shooting is better. Normally the best is 7 or less on a D20.

A typical result. Devon uses squares of red felt to denote the 
resting places of casualties - a handy way to make it look more
like a battlefield without cluttering the table with figures.

That's Ballantine's squad above, patrolling the town while mine fixes the telegraph lines and Cutter secures a supply building. Thuggee appeared in random buildings to pester us. The theory was that this would be like a zombie film, with enemies increasing in number as ours sank, but in practice we were lucky enough to not have more than we could handle for most of the game.

My squad were attractively painted with fur trim on the coats.

They succeeded, with random rolls, at raising the
telegraph poles and calling for reinforcement.

Despite the bad guys raining fire on me and eventually killing
both McChesney and my bhisti.

My survivors went off to help Ballantine, but ended up having to 
hide in cover until our relief under Higginbotham turned up.

Some of the opposition.

I love this figure and its enormous sword!

Cutter beseiged on the Residency roof.

While casualty-burdened good guys limp down the street.

Did I mention I was surrounded?

Higginbotham arrives, and my leaderless squad hastens to
join him.

Cutter, meanwhile, assisted by dynamite, has done enormous damage.

Ballentine and Cutter escape the board ahead of hordes of unhappy cultists.

End game - (most of) the Indian Army chaps have escaped,
leaving a lot of frustrated or dead Thuggee.

This was basically like the smaller-skirmish version The Sword in Africa - with only four players (one for each squad) and a GM trying to kill us. I was surprised that it went so well on such a small scale, but Devon removed all unnecessary mechanisms and ran the game at a fair clip. We all enjoyed ourselves, and there were, appropriately, plenty of cinematic moments. I don't think any of the bhistis survived, though, nor were they much help! A fine and atmospheric game.