A Napoleonic bash - General D'Armee

Last Saturday Scrivs hosted a pretty spectacular 100 days game of General D'Armee.. all of the 28mm figures and terrain were from his collection and he acted as GM/host for the day, taking Tom and I through the game as neither of us had played before.

I took charge of the British, facing Tom's French.

You can see a good account of the game on Scrivs blog .

My movement was limited to pushing out skirmishers and swinging out the right wing of my infantry (both forces held their cavalry in reserve off table).

Tom advanced his French in columns, bring up a battery on to a central hill. Lucky for me, some crucial failures to retain command caused Toms left Brigade to halt and delay their advance to contact, giving me a chance to fire and eventually drive off that battery.

In the centre, Tom spotted a weak spot and pushed hard against the Hanoverians who held on grimly, seeing off repeated assaults and replenishing their line with fresh troops. Meanwhile, my guns kept up a steady barrage on the advancing columns.

On my left the French made steady progress, whilst Toms most rearward battery failed to score any real hits (apart from on themselves!)

Sensing a chance to break through as a couple of British units on the right softened up, Tom's cavalry arrived. I anticipated that and brought my own dragoons on to see if they could counter that threat.

By this point, our time was up.. both Tom and I having to take our leave, so we called it a 'winning draw' for the French (although of course, like any good gamer, I could argue that it could have gone either way!)

All in all, good fun and spectacular game. The rules emphasise command friction and choices, and although there were a few more lookups / modifiers than we're used to these days, it didn't feel like one of those old rulesets from the gold old card cover days :-)

Do I regret selling my Prussian army? maybe.

The armies deployed

British right wing advance

British centre and left wing

The French advance

French columns close on the British left

British guns did sharp work all day

Infantry close and exchange fire on the British right

View from the French left

View of the French right

A view across the table as the forces closed

The British centre under some pressure

The Hanoverians give a good account

Clash on the left

Across the table the smoke thickens

British dragoons arrive to counter the arrival of French cavalry

As we left the day, French bruised but still pushing

A Greek Tale

Today I took myself out of self-imposed isolation and joined the chums for a cracking game round at Tom's.

James had devised a scenario, one of a series that will depict the saga of Basil and the Argianauts. No doubt, more of this will appear at James' own blog soon. We were using his Midgard rules. It's a been a little while since I played and most of the rules I remembered had changed! (they are in play test).

I won't provide a blow-by-blow. Scrivs and I took charge of the good king Minossos and his allies, a tad peeved by a raiding bunch of Greeks who had stolen our stuff and were now trying to scarper. They were led by James and his son, whilst Tom gamely looked on, taking pictures and offering tactical advice*. We held two passes through some otherwise impassable terrain. Our small force looked terrifying as the mighty bronze Talos looked over the field and clouds of screeching harpies flew toward the approaching Greeks.

It was nip and tuck stuff. The mighty bronze Talos fell at the first combat, brought down by no less than Hercules himself, but the Greeks suffered losses too as they pressed into the Cyclops and Cretans. Eventually the last Cretan hero fell and the greeks made off back to their ships, and on to the next theft/adventure!

Good fun and a great looking game.. the figures belonged mostly to James and me, with a few supporting characters from Tom's collection. (It was great to get my hoplites out on the table again, a right old mix of Foundry, Lancashire games, Victrix and a few unknown)

*Mostly, but not always, 'Charge them in the face'

Talos looking imposing as the Greeks approach the northern pass

Hercules, Herakles..

Hot Harpy action

Cyclops hurl rocks

Hercules about to get deleted by Minossos for rudely killing Talos

Harpies descend

The cyclops start to lose ground..

Basil surprises the Harpies from the rear

Greeks pressing in on both passes 

Nekkid spartiates

The final attempts to hold back the Greeks

Writhing Fumes.. a Frostgrave solo game

Jingzel sat in the shelter of a ruined archway breathing hard..'By Ozziak's balls!' he swore, 'That was hard!'.

Jingzel was the sole survivor of his band.. every single one of them.. including his apprentice, Dax.. had fallen to those Vapour snakes.. there were so many of them.. and they just kept coming. Dax had undoubtedly saved his life, casting Curse and Blinding Light spells with ease, whilst his own magic failed him. Maybe it was panic. Yet somehow, he alone had made it past those damned serpents, and the two constructs guarding the door.  He recalled the two thugs he'd only hired last week, going down to the endless snake attacks and groaned as he remembered the treasure they'd dropped.. nothing he could do now. 

Nothing but return to the camp before dark, raise another band and carry on!

Writhing Fumes scenario from the Perilous Dark book

Jingzel and his band 

Wulfred leads a group of thugs into yet another Vapour snake

A zombie raised by Jingzel fights alongside Helga in the alleyway

Wulfred leads the way

The party approach the doorway, Dax blinding the constructs

Helga, having lost the zombie, accompanies a raised Imp

Jingzel failing to cast spells, looking for an exit

Certain death awaits the party

A rare moment of triumph when Ragnuld hits a construct hard with one shot

Some Frostgrave stuff

As the UK passed 'Freedom Day' and I've watched the numbers rising, my nervousness about playing face to face games has lead me to call a pause to that for a couple of weeks, see how things go. I know I'm being overly cautious, what with both vaccines etc, but y'know, sometimes you just have to listen to your gut don't you?

Anyway, Over recent evenings I've been adding to my Frostgrave 'stuff'. Some of this has been old fashioned Blue Peter bodging.. expanding the scenery bits using all sorts of scrap MDF and foam, PVA and hot glue. To supplement the buildings I'd made previously, I now have  a box of 'scatter' items.. all on 80x80 or 80x40mm bases. 

I've also added a few 3D prints to the 'monster roster'. These are all various finds on Thingiverse and printed off on my Ender3.. they are not resin prints, so don't fare well on close inspection, but on the table, I think they look okay!

I haven't played Frostgrave in aaages, but I think I'll get a solo game underway to scratch that particular frozen itch!

A few pics (with standard henchman for scale)..

A Snow Troll

Bear

A Large construct (failed print being repaired with green stuff)

Spiders!!

Ice Toads

Wraith

Some 'scatter' scenery bases (80x40mm)

'Wall' spell marker

From the last game I played (a solo game back in December)..

A group of thugs venture into a quiet street

High ground.. great spot for zapping baddies below

A  rather unwelcome worm

Setback at Champ-de-Deuil.. a 1940 Chain of Command Game

This morning Tom and I had another 'warm up' game of Chain of Command before we start off our 'Fighting Withdrawal' campaign.

Having set up the table last night to save a little time, we both used forces from that campaign (TFL Summer Special 2016) and opted for the 'Patrol' scenario from the main rulebook. A roll of 1 meant that I would get 1 point of support for my Germans, I picked a medical orderly as I sighed and looked over my newly painted PzII sitting in the box... Tom would get a few more support points and a Vickers was to prove a very effective choice.

Unlike our last outing, the Germans got off to a better start.. random starting positions put me in the village (Champs-de-Deuil) whilst Tom would have a bit of a slog across the fields (or so I thought). Force morale rolls were not so great.. I started on 8 against the BEF  on 10.

Although I had a notion to play an aggressive game on this outing, the temptation to sit in the village was just too great and for a little while that was okay, as a sole BEF section limped forward, taking sporadic fire in between covering smoke. However, as this was happening, a senior leader had established a strong firing line in the woods and was steadily chipping away at the German section in the orchard.. a couple of junior officer hits and poor 'bad things happen' rolls, meant that my wobbly force morale was waning.

Too late I decided to get some more troops on the table to see if I could remove the advanced British infantry and get some fire into the woods.

We'd  decided ahead of time to try to wrap up after 3 hours (before it got too hot!) and the loss of an LMG team and another force morale point decided it for me.. it was unlikely that I was going to take 10 morale points off Tom and hang on to what I had.. so a retreat was called, much to the relief of the unenthusiastic Germans.

Interesting in that the Germans had a lot of manpower on the table, and some really solid positions too.. but morale was the decider.

We've put some effort over recent months into building up the terrain for these games and it was pleasing to see it coming together

The Patrol phase ended with the Germans holding good positions in the village

The BEF should have to cross some fairly open ground to reach the village

One section pushed forward, taking fire from the Germans in the windows of the 'Long House'

One German section took up positions in the Orchard

The British firing line in the woods kept up effective fire all morning

A medical orderly rushes to tend to a wounded junior officer

smoke from the 2" mortar screened the infantry advance

The German 50mm mortar poured ineffective HE fire into the British in the woods

An overview of the table

Too little too late, a German section pushes out of the edge of the village

Jean-Claude's wheelbarrow takes another smoke round from the BEF mortars

The overwhelming British fire starts to tell..

Another late dash as the fourth section reluctantly enters the village

But as lunch time approached, it was a little too much for the Germans, who fell back to their start line