More Great Northern War with Blucher

 Colin got over earlier today,so we could have another bash a the Great Northern War using Blucher rules. I had expanded the size of my Swedish and Danish armies, so both sides now had 3 infantry commands and 2 of cavalry.

The pre-game mini campaign finished with a fairly typical deployment. We each had 4 commands starting on the table facing each other and one command entering as reinforcements. The reinforcements could make things interesting, I had a cavalry command following up on my left flank and Colin had an infantry command reinforcing his left flank. Unfortunately they were going to enter to the rear of my right flank!

It was an interesting, hard fought game and a lot of fun. We each started off with half our forcing facing each other across a stream. With neither side wanting to risk a crossing under fire, they spent most of the game looking at each other.

My cavalry reinforcements turned up early and with their support I was able to disperse the Danish right flank and swing around onto the flank of the Danish centre. They had punched a hole through the Swedish centre but were unable to exploit it before being over run. The Danish reinforcements were late in arriving and a Swedish regiment, holed up in a small village, prevented most of the units from rushing forward to catch the Swedes in a pincer manoeuvre.

The Danes belatedly attacked across the stream, but lost the cavalry fight, which took their army morale to breaking point!

Here is a few pictures from the later part of the battle.

The Swedes Left Command starts to flank the Danish Centre.

The Danish Left starts to cross the stream.

But the infantry are held by the Swedish Guard.

The beginning of the end, the Danish Centre starts to collapse, leaving a forlorn-looking infantry regiment rather isolated.

The Swedes start to win their bloody melee in the stream.

The final situation on the Swedish right as the Danish army breaks. You can see the first units of the Danish reinforcements moving up, but too late to take part in the battle.

Great fun to play. It was much closer than it seems from the final pictures. The Danes had lost 8 units routed/destroyed to the Swedes 4, but I had 4 more units who just needed 1 hit to rout them. It could easily have swung the other way.

I have been playing around with the (limited) unit traits in Blucher, as well as the commander's abilities, to give a National flavour to the opposing forces, which seem reasonably balanced to me. In our previous game the Swedes had been given a right royal kicking by the Danes!

A Sellswords and Spellslingers Dungeon

 After several attempts to find a date we could both make, Ross managed to come over a continue our  Sellswords and Spellslingers campaign, following the adventures of our motley band of heroes, Steinarr the Cleric, Dallin the Warrior, Renir the Wizard, Lars the Warrior, Aoife the Elf Ranger and Mephiso the Wizard. 

We are using Corey Burger's Scenario Generator and expanded Event Deck (both put out earlier in the year via Andrea's Patreon site). As we were entering abandoned (or was it?) underground catacombs, we are also using Corey's provision dungeon rules. Well done Corey!

It started off so badly, Ross activated Mephiso first, tried to cast a Light spell onto Lars' shield (this would have counted as a permanent torch) but rolled a 1 on a d20, losing all his magic for the duration of the game! Then, when I activated one of my fails drew a Mana Flux card and I rolled low, so spells were more difficult to cast (for the one magic user who could still cast spells!).

The first room we entered had 6 skeletons, which the party finished off, but only after a couple of us suffering wounds. We also drew a Hidden Treasure card, which put a chest in our current room and 2 other random rooms, one of which contained treasure. Of course, the chest in our room was a dummy!

As the other treasure chests were in nearby rooms, we decided to ignore the right-hand side of the dungeon and concentrate on finding the genuine chest. 

The second room we entered turned out to be the lair of the Necromancer himself! The undead wizard, a horde of skeletons and 2 Skeleton Knights! Somehow we managed to take them all out without any of the party dying and we had found the actual treasure chest, plus Renir snatched a wand he noticed on the Necromancer's body. Mind you everyone was wounded and two of us were just 1 hit away from being out of the fight!

We decided to cut our losses, grab the chest and get out of there, we could return and check out the other rooms another time. At this point Renir redeemed himself. So far he had either failed to cast a spell, or else missed with his magic dart attack. Now he rolled 4 activations and proceeded to successfully cast his Heal spell 4 times! That got the party back on their feet, which was just as well. Not only were there still a lot of undead who had entered as wandering monsters, a bugbear with a big axe had entered the dungeon, between us and the exit.

Here are some photos of the game.

The intial set-up (I love my Tenfold Dungeon kits!), the PCs have entered in the bottom right corner.

Everything is looking quiet.....

....so far, at least!

What a surprise, skeletons!

And more enter a nearby room.

Yet more!!

It's getting crowded in here!

And now they are coming up behind us.

Oh Goody! The Necromancer and his undead minions.

Less minions now.

And the undead lord bites the dust!

How will get past this lot?

Well that's one way of doing it Steinarr, not the way I would have chosen but that's up to you!

Steinarr, duck!

Get him, Dallin!

Lars, stop bleeding on me!

Eventually we all got out in one piece. If Renir hadn't got his Heal spell working when he did, we would have been dragging a couple of the PCs out by their heels, that Bugbear was vicious! Great fun to play and once the party have healed up, we will be back to check out the rest of the dungeon. Of course some other nasty things might have made themselves at home by then.

Renir's wand turned out to be a Wand of Magic Dart, the spell he already can't hit a barn door with!

Return to Gothic Horror with Fear and Faith

 I had Kirstie and Ian around on Friday, so I threw together a quick 3-player scenario using Ganesha Games' Fear and Faith rules in my Gothic Horror setting. I realised that i had not put my scarecrows/pumpkin heads on the table since I bought them on Ebay over a year ago, so I thought it high time to get them bloodied.

Three factions, A Vampire, a Warlock and a Witch. Each have a bride/daughter/sister trapped in a demon plane and need to carry out a ritual to release them. Unfortunately, when they reach the site of the portal, they discover the other parties are also there and fisticuffs ensue.

The table layout. The ritual must be carried out at the altar stone in the centre of the table (2 actions and pass a successful Q roll). First one of the three standing stones must be activated (1 action Q test) to generate the magical energy required and direct it to the ritual caster. Once "switched on" the energy could be diverted to another caster in the same way.

The Witch and her artificial animations (ME). Only her magic can harm the vampire and her minions have a high Q score, so will be difficult to command. On the positive side, they are hard to kill.

The Warlock and his followers (IAN). The Warlock has magic, his henchman is a vampire hunter with wooden stakes and holy water vials, plus one of this minions is a huntsman with a crossbow and a supply of wooden bolts, so lots of ways to kill a vampire here. The other minions are average quality thugs for hire, so nothing special.

The Vampire and his enthralled Cossack guards (KIRSTIE). The Vampire is the most powerful character in the game, but his Cossacks are just average sword fodder.

The warlock's followers rush forwards, one of them reaching one of the standing stones.

Another gets to a second stone, just ahead of a cossack.

Another cossack gets to the third standing stone.

I on the other hand roll appalling dice and by the third turn I still have not even got all ny artificial creatures off the starting edge!

Kirstie rolls much better dice and while my forses are dithering, activates a standing stone.

Shooting is not so good however, two attempts to shoot the Warlock minion by the central standing stone miss by miles!

One the other side of the table, having switched on the energy for the Warlock, the musketeer moves up to get a shot at the one creature I have been able to get moving.

The Warlock rushed into the centre of the table, but then, feeling a bit exposed decided to move back and let his minions do the fighting.

The Vampire hunter charges one of the cossacks, joined by the thug with the pitchfork.

The second cossack charges in to help his colleague. A frantic melee ensues, with both cossacks being knocked to the ground, by scambling back on their feet before the coup de grace could be delivered.

The musketeer hits my pumpkin head. It's a kill, but because it wasn't an aimed headshot, the creature is only knocked down.

The Vampire moves forward to survey the carnage.

Finally a turn with reasonable dice rolls and two of my creatures charge the musketeer befor he can reload.

The next turn goes badly for Ian, one of his minions is killed by a cossack....

...while another is killed by my creatures.

Allowing another pumpkin head to move up and redirect the energy to my witch.

I had my Witch in the centre of my forces, where she could influence the most creatures and try to get them going. Unfortunately I hadn't noticed this cossack who had crept forward and took a long range shot at the Witch. It shouldn't have been too much to worry about, there were lots of minuses for the shooter.

But Kirstie rolled a 6 and I rolled a 1!!! The only result that could have killed the Witch, so I was out of the game. The huntsman took a shot at the Vampire with his crossbow, but missed.

While the huntsman was reloading and seeing that the Warlock and Vampire Hunter were busy elsewhere, the Vampire took a chance and rushed up to the altar stone. It was down to who activated first, if Ian gained the initiative there was a chance for the huntsman to reload and shoot, as well as the Warlock moving up and casting a spell. But Kirstie won the initiative and the Vampire easily passed the rolls required to  cast the ritual and open the appropriate portal.

A win for the Vampire and a definite big loss for the Witch! The Warlock lives to try again when the start are next in alignment for the ritual, so he will be back in a few years!

A lot of laughs were had, some beer was drunk and we all had a great evening.

Trying Blucher for The Great Northern War

 First a bit of background:

Around Lockdown I picked up  a bucketload of plastic 10mm-ish 18th century miniatures. I think these were originally were made for a verson of the boardgame Risk. I had intended to incorperate them in my 10mm WSS armies, but the plastics are more 12mm and tower over my metal armies (mainly Pendraken).

So I put then aside for a bit, then I decided to make up some GNW armies. This would take minimal painting as these plastic had already been basically painted as Swedish and Russian forces, I would just need to repaint a few units for Danes and add cuff turnbacks to the rest. I now have nearly half done, to make up basic Swedish and Danish armies for the later part of the war, around 1711/12.

I am already using Black Powder for my WSS armies and wanted to do something different, when I came across a Blucher varient for the WSS, which I thought would be fine for the Great Northern War, as they overlapped in time for most of their duration. I had already played a few games of Blucher (by Sam A Mustafa) and enjoyed them, I found the 18th century variant, Eugene, somewhere online (sorry I am not sure where).

One with the game:

After a couple of false starts I finally got Colin around to give the rules a go. Due to time constraints, and being Colin's first time with the rules, we skipped the pre-game mini campaign (usually one of the best bits IMHO) and straight on with a meeting engagement.

Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures of the initial deployment (and I really need to finish basing some of the units). I deployed my Swedes with cavalry on the left and infantry on the right and centre. Colin mixed his columns up, so unintentionally deploy in mirror image to me! My cavalry advanced as did Colin's centre, our other infantry flank advanced a bit, then both just took a break and watched the action for a while.

The view of the infantry battle. The Danish centre is closing on the Swedes, but taking casualties from muskets and accurate artillery fire. The Danish guns had attempted to soften up the Swedish unit on the right as they advanced, but failed. In fact I think the Danish artillery only caused 1 Morale Point all game.

Away from the infantry the cavalry clash...

....indecisively at first, both sides having units bounce back and forth (as cavalry melees tend to go!).

Now the Danish infantry charge, but are thrown back. A counter charge by one of the Swedish brigades routs the Danes in front of them.

On the far flank the two side exchange musketry at long range.

Some unbelievably good dice for the Swedish cavalry break two units of Danes, making a hole in their line....

...which the Swedes exploit and the Danish cavalry starts to melt away. Colin managed to retire one unit on the point of routing off table (units voluntarily retired off table do not count towards losses for the army morale).

Swedish cavalry now wheel across to threated the flank of the Danish centre.

Too late, the Danish right wing launch an attack.

But the centre crumbles as the Swedish infantry attack and the cavalry charge into their flanks.

The view from the Danish side of the table, "Why are my men facing the wrong way?"

An over view of the final situation, an outstanding victory for the Swedes. A lot of laughs in this game, and we will be doing again soon!