Belated Birthday Gaming Day....at a PUB!!!

 I decided to hold a Gaming Day for my birthday this year. Due to circumstances I wasn't able to run it on my actual birthday, so on the following Saturday a group of friends gathered. Once I had worked out who I wanted to invite, I realised that it would be too crowded in my gaming room at home, so I booked a space in a nearby pub, the Dog House. 

It's a Victorian pub, originally built for the railway, and downstairs they have a coffee shop that never reopened after Covid, so they hire it out for functions. A perfect location, just a few minutes from home, plenty of space for our gaming needs, private loos, a good sized car park and beer and food just upstairs!

                                      

                                      

After setting up, I started with a bite of lunch (and a cold cider), soon joined by Kirstie, Colin, Ian, Paul, Ross and Henry. I'd also invited Will and Mark, but Mark wouldn't make it and Will was working and would join us in the evening.

We started with a Pulp gunfight on the Canadian/US border involving gangsters, smugglers, cops and Mounties, all searching for a missing shipment of moonshine. It was a chaotic free for all, which quickly dissolved into a series of gun fights, it often seemed most of the players had forgotten their personal objectives (if they had read them at all!).

The quiet before the storm. In the centre of the table is the missing convoy of hooch.

A closer view of the (alledged) objectives.

First kill! Ian's Mounties put down one of Ross's moonshine smugglers.

 

On the other side of the table, Henry's smugglers decide to get in first and open up on Colin's patrol of Mounties.

After a frenzied exchange of gunfire their corner of the table was littered with dead and wounded.

Ross's smugglers were not content with exchanging shots with Ian's Mounties, but starts on Kirstie's Chicago cops as well!

As Ian's patrol move in on the trucks, they are startles to see a frozen severed arm lying in the road! In the meantime, one of Colin's patrol rushes up and climbs into the cab of rearmost vehicle.

A the Chicago cops and gangsters blast away at each other over the car, they notice that the driver is still seated in the vehicle, but missing his head!

As the Mounties start up the engine on the lorry, the noise obviously disturbs the sleep of a local resident, who unsurprisingly is somewhat put out! He takes a swipe at the nearest sumggler.

Unaware of the presence of sasquach, the Mounties clear the road behind...

....and start to back the truck up.

Sasquatch charges towards the closest of the noisy contraptions, taking shots from the Mounties as he does so. But the bullets seem to have no effect, except to annoy the creature even more!

Having taken out the last of the cops, Paul's gangsters hurriedly pile into the vehicles and franticly try to start the engines.

Just as Sasquatch closes in, the engines roar into life and the gangsters pull away, but their progess is slowed by the deep snow.

Ignoring the ruckus just across the border, Colin's Mountie safely exits the table.

As the other lorry moves towards the table edge, Henry's last smuggler runs to the back of the truck and pulls himself in. Realising they have a stowaway, two of Paul's men climb out of the cab, onto the roof of the truck, then swing down through the open back door and attack the startled smuggler. 

At this point Sasquatch catches up with the vehicle and, hanging onto the swinging door with one hand, reaches inside and grabs one of the gangsters.

A lucky die roll allows the gangster to evade Sasquatch's attack, just as the truck zooms off the table, leaving the irate monster clutching a torn jacket.

The final situation, with a lot of bodies left lying in the snow, the spreading blood staining the white to red.

At this point Henry plaintively asked why Paul's men were battering his smuggler, when according to the scenario notes their gangs were allies! Oops, Paul hadn't noticed that!

The final result was an overwhelming Victory to Tony "No Nose" Calzonne of Chicago (Paul) have escaped with a truck load of hootch and kept his boss alive.

Second place went to Sgt Smiths RCMP patrol (Colin), they secured a load of illicit booze, but failed to nab their target "Lumberjack" Watson.(who had been killed by Ian's Mounties, but he didn't any VPs for that!).

Everyone else was into minus numbers of VPs, as no one had achieved any of their personal objectives and had lost several of their characters, in fact all of them in the case of the Chicago PD (Kirstie).

Great fun and a lot of laughs.

As we only had an hour to go until we were eating, Ian produced a board game to fill the time.

It's Colt Express and rather silly Wild West game of robbing a train. Very cinematic, with outlaws climbing onto the roof and running alond the train, punching and shooting each other, whilst trying to avoid the marshal. A perfect time filler and once again a lot of laughs all round.

Ross and Henry had to leave at this point, swapping with Will who came straight from work, and Broni and Towse who were joining us to eat. After eating (I had a rather nice pizza, but others assured me that the burgers and the lasagne were of equal quality) we finished off with Will's board game, Aliens: Another Glorious day in the Corps.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos.

Everything finished off around 10pm, when Broni came back to collect me and allt he boxes of gaming kit, as well as acting as taxi for Paul to get his train on time.

Thanks to everyone to took part, it was a really great day and a lot of fun.

Painting in June

 I feel like I've been busy in June, but not much painting to show for it. But I did get quite a lot of rebasing done, which took up a lot of the time.

I finally finished the grand rebasing of my 28mm Late Roman and Foes collection, with some Frankish cavalry.

And some Roman horse archers. I painted up the last 3 miniatures for these that had been festering in the PILE OF SHAME since I bought them over a decade ago!

I also re-based and touched up a load of 12mm plastics for my GNW winter campaign, these are the Russians and...

...these are the Swedes. I have a load more infantry done for both sides, but I will need to paint some more cavalry.

Proper painting now, a Sasquatch which is a repainted Heroclix model.

A Deathgrasp, from the Zombicide Undead or Alive set.

The Plymouth Hound, from the same set.

The Great Northern War Round 2

 Colin and I had another go at using Midgard Heroic Battles for the early 18th century Great Northern War. This time we pitted the Swedes against a different enemy, the Danes! Unlike the Russians, the Danish army was very much a western style fire-power based army, more like the armies that were fighting in the War of Spanish Succession. As this engagement was set later in the GNW (around 1712/3) the Swedish foot were not of the same quality as our previous game, more that a decade of fighting and the loss of the army in Russia resulted in a reliance of conscripts to make up the numbers.

Again Colin took the Swedes, so I had the fun of coming to terms with a completely different army.

Just a few pictures this time.

Neither side's infantry seemed in a hurry to get into contact, so both armies advanced at a leisurely pace, bombarding their opposition with artillery. 

No so the cavalry, who charges and counter charged with relish! On paper the Danes had better quality horse that the Russian's dragoons, but the Dice Gods disagreed and 2 units of Danish cavalry disolved in the first turn of combat!

The Swedish gunners were far more accurate in this game than previously, meaning that two of my infantry units were at half strength by the time we came to blows.

A Swedish brigade faces up to a Danish brigade over the ownership of a hill on the flank of the action.

In the centre an over-enthusiastic Danish battalion charges the Swedish line and wonders where the rest of the brigade is!

Despite the cavalry losses, the Danes gained the upper hand in the infantry engagements and by the end of Turn Four the Swedish Reputation had dropped to just 1 point.

Just to show how things can change so fast with Midgard, Turn Five saw a collapse of the Danish army on all fronts, ending the turn with the Swedes on -2 Rep to the Dane -5! A very narrow victory to Sweden in the end.

Once again we had a lot of fun playing these rules. Because I was the attacker, I didn't get the opportunity to make the most of the Danish superior shooting. Instead, I needed to get some charges in first to boost my reputation. I think this period will benefit from using scenarios that involve battlefield objectives.

The Great Northern War with Midgard?

 Inspired by Keith McGlyn's posts on the Midgard FB group, I picked up a back copy of March's Wargames Illustrated, which published an article on expanding Midgard Heroic Battles to refight the early 18th Century.

As I had picked up shed loads of basically painted figures for the Great Northern War some time back, I thought I'd put together two forces and give it a go. The armies had been created from 12mm plastic miniatures from the Risk Boardgame, which are not very detailed, so the simple paintjob suits them fine.

So here are a few pictures from the game. I played the Russians and Colin had the nutty Swedes (this was a pre-Poltava battle).

The two armies face off, the Swedes are at the top of the picture.

 Out on the flank, the Swedish cavalry rushed forward. the Russian dragoons, knowing they were out-classed, decided to concentrate on the end of the Swedish line and charged.

While the Swedish infantry advanced the Russians just held their ground, bombarding the oncoming Swedes with their artillery.

The first melee, and as I was charging I got to reroll any melee dice rolling 1s for hits. I rolled three 1s, and here is the results of my reroll!!

Not unexpectantly, the Swedish horse were victorious, but I did succeed in killing the Colonel (level 1 Hero) leading one of the counter-charges. Quite historical, Swedish Officers heroically leading from the front to victory, but paying the price.

The melee continued in the next round, with a unit of Russian dragoons being destroyed in one fight, but the Russians winning in the other, pushing their attackers back (the advantage of concentrating on the end of the Swedish line was I had a lot of supporting units around me, whilst the Swedes were unsupported).

The unengaged Swedish horse were unable to come to their comrades aid, because I had thrown some infantry forward to pin the cavalry in front of them.

In the meantime the Swedish foot kept advancing and the Russians stood waiting for them.

Things were getting messy on the flank. The Russians dealt with the outnumbered Swedish cavalry, allowing then to turn onto the flank of the Swedish line.  The cavalry charge the annoying foot, routing one unit, but taking heavy losses and leaving themselves vulnerable to a flank charge by fresh Russian dragoons.

The Swedish infantry now paused just out of musket range and redressed their lines to allow straggling units to catch up. The Russian still held their ground.

In the next turn the Swedes charged all across the frontage!

The melee had mixed results, one Russian unit was routed outright and most were pushed back, although the Russians did have a couple of successes.

The fighting continued, with the Swedes definitely having the upper hand....

...except on the flank where the last Swedish cavalry unit was dying bravely, now surrounded by enemies.

At the end of turn 4 it looked like a clear win to the Swedes. The Russian Reputation was down to 1, while the Swedes still had 4.

Turn 5 was so eventful, that I neglected to take any pictures! At the end of the Swedish phase the Rep was Swedes 4, Russians -1. then in the Russian phase desperate charges regained Rep points and three Swedish units routed! Combined with two half-strength Russian infantry units somehow forcing draws in their fights, this meant we finished the game with the Russians snatching a close win by Rep 1 to Rep -2!

A fun game and it certainly had the "feel" of an early 18th century game. We were both happy and keen to try it again. it just shows the flexibility of these rules. It will be interesting to try an army like the Danes, so see if firepower based armies work work the rules.

Torpedoes and Tides - Things Did Not Go Well!

 Colin came over to try another go at Torpedoes and Tides from Ganesha Games. Real World had got in the way, so it had been a couple of months since our initial games.

We decided to replay the convoy game we'd played before, swapping sides so that Colin was the attacking RN, whilst I played the Germans. We rolled for a moonless night, which drastically reduced the range of LOS. Colin decided to take advantage of the darkness and deployed as close to my convoy as the rules allowed. This would make things very "interesting".

Turn One

Rather uneventful, the British moved rushed one blind forward then the next blind rolled a double fail for activation, passing the turn to the Germans. The rest of the British blinds just made their compulsory move straight ahead. The German convoy took advantage of this and all the vessels remained on blinds and successfully took two moves towards their exit side.

Turn Two

The over enthusiastic first British blind revealed itself to be a MTB and moved forward, getting close enough to reveal both of the leading two German blinds as a pair of Kriegfischkutters. Moving this close allowed both German vessels to have a snapshot at the MTB, which suffered a suppression. Colin then revealed his furthest blind to be another MTB which failed it's activation, so the British just chugged forward.

The Germans kept moving towards their exit point and safety, both KFK peppering the MTB as the went by, inflicting more damage. The Verpostenboot also came off blind and fired on the other MTB, but missed.

Turn Three
The Brits revealed a MGB, which cut between the German escorts, firing and damaging one of the KFK as it went past. The closest MTB now had problems, it was too close to launch torpedoes....

...and also too close to manoeuvre in time, colliding with the KFK. Damaging both vessels, which, with the effects of previous gunfire was enough to wreck the MTB, which promptly caught fire.

The following British Blind (the other MGB) had been relying on the MTB to get out of the way, so now also crashed into the sinking boat! The last MTB swung around behind the Germans to try and line up with a shot on the rear freighter, but didn't have enough time (only rolled 2 activations, it takes 2 activations to launch torpedoes and one activation had already been needed to get into position).

Now it was the German's turn to run out of manoeuvre room, as the KFK crashed into the Brit MTB and the Vortostenboot ran into the back of the KFK!! But during all the confusion the first German freighter moved off the table to safety.

Turn Four

Again the surviving MTB only rolled 2 activations and had to move to line up on it's target. As it couldn't launch torpedoes, it shot up the Vorpostenboot, scoring a wheelhouse hit!

Both British MGBs now found themselves without anywhere to go, so collided with the freighter and Vorpostenboot respectively. Everyone suffered damage, except for the freighter (well probably a couple of scratches on the paintwork!). The MGBs poured fire into the unfortunate KFK, which burst into flames.

In the German phase the escorts inflicted a bit of damage on the attacking British boats, but more importan6tly, the freighter escaped off the table edge.

 An outright win to the Germans, 7VP to the British 1! It felt more like an episode of the Keystone Kops than a naval fight, with more Damage points inflicted by collisions than shooting!

The main lesson from the game, KEEP YOUR DISTANCE!!