AWI - The Battle of Roark Farm

We fought a wonderful game of Muskets and Tomahawks the other day, and I actually got a few good photos of the action to show.

The Americans consisted of -

Regular Officer.
14 Regulars.
14 Regulars.
16 Provincial Militia.
6 Riflemen.

They had the mission Raid, with the side plot Rancour (The Officer was to send one of the units to their death). We decided it would be better if I, as the British player, did not know which unit The Americans had selected to be destroyed.

The British Consisted of -

Regular Officer with the Authoritarian Trait.
12 Regulars.
Ranger Officer with rifle.
6 Rangers with rifles.
10 Light Infantry.
8 Light infantry.

They had the Defence mission and A Hateful heart side plot.

We decided that the game would be the Americans trying to burn down a farm (most likely the actual home of the British Regular Officer too) that the British were about to occupy as it sat on high ground and would provide an excellent vantage point over the surrounding area.

The British had two units on the board, accompanied by their officers, The Regulars and the Rangers. I elected to deploy the Regulars as if they had just marched up the road into the main farm building area they were about to occupy, the rangers had pushed through towards the big farmhouse, obviously scouting slightly further ahead.

Suddenly the area ahead was full of American troops...The first card drawn in the activation sequence was the American forward boys card. So with a shout the game started with the American Officer ordering his men forward...Very apt.

The Americans head to the buildings

The Rangers march up to the farm house

The British regulars stroll up the road to the farm.

Ready for the off.

Rangers hunker behind a wall and engage

the enemy formations

The Regulars face off.

The start of the second round.

The face off continues

The rangers are looking to be outnumbered

The British try a different approach, but are shot

 down due to a bad leadership decision.

Fortunately the Lights appear to reinforce the flank,

gunning down the riflemen. 

The first building starts to catch light though.

The other Light section arrived and reinforced the crumbled left flank. 

The Ranger Captain plinks the odd shot off annoying the regulars in the center still.

See his smoke by the Farmhouse.

The barn burns.  The regulars turn their attentions to the Lights.

Who flee into the cover of the woods

The Lights in the centre keep the Militia pinned down in the middle of the board.

It was at this point an event happened. It caused the turn to end. At this point the British rolled a double 1 and the game officially finished. 

It was a Minor Victory for the British, but at a great cost in manpower.

They had kept the majority of the farm safe ready for their main forces to use it as a camp and observation point of the surrounding area.

Interestingly, the American Officer had decided that the Provincial Militia were fated to die in this game. Clearly not a fan of their particular state. Sadly the British had failed to help the American out here, killing about two of the fellows only.

We played an extra round after this, just to see if the event had changed anything in particular, It had not. the result was the same, albeit with a few more casualtys on the British forces. The Militia just failing to totally get the farm house on fire, though it was very scorched. (they needed one more action to set it ablaze....)

Dark age figure scale picture in 28mm

Here is a picture of some of the different figure sizes available for the dark age lines now. Maybe someone will find it useful -

Manufacturers are from left to right -

Gripping beast plastic on a GW base (to allow compare to the Bretonian on same base size)

Games Workshop plastic Bretonian (old one piece pose) on GW base.

Gripping Beast Plastic on Renedra base

Gripping Beast metal on Renedra base

Conquest games plastic on Renedra base

Westwind metal on Renedra base (with GB head grafted on)

Crusader metal on Renedra base

Artizan metal on Renedra base

Activity unabated

Well the cold front is just hanging back making the garage still bearable at the moment down here in Kent.

Still getting Saga games in with my friend David on Monday nights, so the die are still a rolling, which is great. Very good warm up for the Wyvern Wargames Saga tournament we are going up to at the end of February too. Had a great time there last year, so am looking forward to this a lot. We also get to make a pit stop at Gripping Beast HQ, so I expect an empty wallet may be heading my way .... and if I don't clear it there, I have a trip to the Cavalier show  on the Sunday to totally finish me off. A whole weekend of gaming goodness, lord knows how I snuck that past the wife.

In other news I also announce a day of Saga Goodness myself and my good friends of the Friday Night Fire Fight Club are putting on in Canterbury on Saturday the 26th of April 2014.

More details of this can be found here -

http://studiotomahawk.freeforums.org/canturbury-kent-saturday-26th-april-2014-t4415.html

With this in mind I have been beavering away making some rocky ground markers for the terrain on the day.

Simple idea - a flat marker board or cloth goes down with moveable rock pieces to show what it is.

Easy in use and to build - here is what I have so far - also on show are two of the markers for one of the missions (Holy Icon) I am making too.

A good start, few more bits required though.

While I am at it, here is a shot of the rest of the painting bench. An army slowly being worked up there for Saga (if you ignore the Vikings lurking in the middle, and the 8 scot levy javelin men, and the 4 conquest platic flems I am making). Guess what it is....

Finally, a picture of two old plastic GW Bretonian bowmen. I said I would show someone on a forum how I painted mine, to make them more generic looking for many games, so here they are. Very nice figures for silly cheap costs these, hard to not recommend them really.

 Cheers, John.

2014....

Well it has been a while since I posted on the blog here.

What have I been up too? Mostly playing Saga, and Dark Heresy roleplaying, with a little 7th Sea CCG on the side.

A fair bit of Saga is under the belt, including some very interesting test games of some of the next release, but mostly getting ready for the Wyvern Games Saga tournament in February. Still trying to decide on which army to use, Franks are highly tempting at the moment, but then so are many others....Hopefully this coming monday will see me enlightened some more. Can not believe I have been playing this game for 2 years now, and am still enjoying it as much as when I first started.

I also got to watch a game of DBMM over christmas, which was quite interesting. Certainly a Cerebral game though, with lots of thought required to play it. (something I may just have to look at more, as I do like that sort of thing)

Painting wise, I am working on a few things, mostly Saga. I was kindly given some old Arab figures, (1980's figures I believe) so am working up Saga forces from them (this is for one of the forces for the next Saga release, old news I am sure as I was helping on the demo of it at Salute last year with one of the early versions of an Arab faction board).

I am also near completion on my Urban War Viridian force, with just  couple of figures to go. I got very lucky at a show with this and picked up a sauran rider very cheaply that I am working on atm, and a couple of final pieces I found at a reasonable price on Ebay, which when done will round it out nicely.

I will be going along to the Cavalier show in February by the way, so if anyone reads this and fancies meeting up for a hello, let me know.

For now, Cheers, and thanks for reading.

400 point AWI Musket and Tomahawk Game

We have been getting a few games in lately of Muskets and Tomahawks. (well three)

We managed to do a practice and then demo game to a friend the other week, and got a great bash in today. We ran all three games at 400 points, and played the same scenario for each. The one where you must eliminate 2/3 of the opponents forces to achieve a victory, both players having the same objective.

This is a report of todays battle, from mainly my perspective as the English player.

I fielded, at exactly 400pts -

Officer (Regular)
10 Regulars
10 Light Infantry (Elites)
8 Light infantry (Elites)
Ranger Officer
6 Rangers

My officer had to kill the French Chasseur with the Moustache in melee (their Sergeant) as a side plot

The Americans had -

Officer (Regular)
14 Regulars
8 Minute men
8 Minute men
6 Rifle men
6 Indians
6 Chasseur (French allies)

The Americans did not want to kill the English Regular Officer, as he was a friend as a side plot.

We played on a 6x4 Table.

The battle of Fry's farm.

We join the action at the end of turn one for the pictures, but you can get the layout of the table from them. 

You can also see my regulars which are fleeing on my right flank, and the American regulars which fled in the center. Not a day to be a Regular today, morale was certainly low for both units. 

Here we see the Rangers poised on the left flank to take on some Indians, and the big English light unit which had blown a big hole in the American regulars. This is where it started to go hideously wrong for the English.

The rangers charged at the Indians, throwing ineffectual axes on the way in. They then proceeded to get butchered down to 1 man for no kills on the Indians. The Indians then got two activations. They Shot the running ranger and moved close to the Ranger Captain. He then got to charge them, and died although he did finally mange to kill one of the Indians. 

Atmospheric shot from the British Captains view. He was trying to hit a Rifleman to make them break. 

"I see that scum Frenchy, but why are they not shooting at me?"

This duel in the center between the Lights and the Minutemen was only going to end one way. The Minute men fled later on . Those pesky Indians on the left flank though pushed the lights back countless times an out of position from this point onwards.

Back on the Right flank, the English regulars kept getting slowly whittled down, while mostly missing themselves. The French help their Riflemen mates to take more English regulars down, before turning their attention to the center 8 man Light infantry section.

The English tried a neat ploy here, but the cards let them down. They advanced the 5 Lights in the center to charge range of the American Regulars rather than reloading. Sadly the Regulars went one card before the Lights. And shot 3 down, pushing the last 3 back.

The Lights did eventually manage to get the Charge on the Regulars. If you look at the next picture you can see the result. Yes, I lost two men to the one American regular, and fled.

Just before the end of the turn, I managed to make the Riflemen flee, as seen in the next picture. Sadly not before my Regulars had been reduced to just 2 men. This reached my loss point of the game. so at turn end, I was six men short of killing enough Americans.

Final result was a Major Victory to the Americans, who achieved their mission and their side plot.

Another great and close game.

Our other two previous games both ended in draws, with both teams reaching break point in the same turn and none achieving any side plots. 

Cheers, John.

Latest Saga terrain items.

Well these are specifically for Saga, although as usual I have kept them pretty generic so they are usable in many games. I apologise for the normal poor quality of the photos compared to others fine efforts, but they seem to show it off well enough.

I have included a conquest games plastic figure for some sense of scales. Hello to Bob, the epic Flemish mercenary.

First we have an update to my field, I have shown this before, but now we have the addition of some haystacks to dress it a little. They were from some childs playset, and fit nicely.
I always leave the scatter objects fully removable so they can be moved around at will, and are more for the visual than actual game play (this is as in Saga, for something like Empire of the Dead they would be as situated of course during the game).

Next up we have my new and improved rocky ground. Again we have moveable rock pieces, for the ease of game play in various systems. First picture is rocks on, second picture the rocks are on the side to show what I am babbling about.

Next we have my newest addition, a swamp. Nice and simple one this. The wet land is just blue paint, washed over with green, then a gloss varnish to give it the wet look. It came out rather well.

Finally, a shot of some trees on my generic wood area bases. The trees I was given yesterday, so the bases have just been textured and await painting when dry. Also included are my three Baggage pieces as they where about when I took the picture.

Most of the bases for these are cork tile. cut to shape with scissors, sanded smooth then textured with pumice stone mix. Flock was added in stages with pva glue, to avoid any chance of warping. Once everything has dried, they become very solid.

As I keep the items on top removable, it also means they can be used as more forest bases too in games where heavy woodland is appropriate.

If Baldrick was an architect.......

Now I had a thought, one of those "cunning plan" moments. Even better, I have actually carried it out.

I play a LOT of SAGA. Most of my terrain set up is geared around this, but I still try to keep it generic enough that I can use it in the myriad of other games I do play.

I had two small buildings I picked up at Salute last year (2012) and a larger one I created myself as I could not find a larger one to compliment the two small ones at an appropiate price (cheap cheap cheap). I bought these mostly for use with Saga, but they work well as small barns/huts/etc etc in other systems. I did want to put a base on them though as they are resin, (and wood blocks for the homemade) just to help preserve them.

This is where the Baldrick moment comes in ----

As you can see I cunningly made the bases at exactly VS from all the building edges. Saga players will hopefully know then what this Lazy Boys visual aid is for (and that it saves a lot of faffing with measurements on occassion), but for other systems they are just a base. Win Win for me I think.

Cheers, John.