The Battle of Ironicum AD 265

Having completed some more figures, I thought that it was time for a little play and see where I was. This would also be a good refresher on the rules. So I indulged myself and played this out over three evenings.

Carolianus Silex on his white horse leads a charge into the Gothic lines!

Behold my very deluxe, ultra posh playing aids!

As I was planning out the armies I realized that the commander for my all metal A&A army was a plastic Victrix figure, whereas the heroes for my plastic Wargames Atlantic Goths and Romans are all metal! I thought this was very ironic.

Prefectus Cohortis Carolianus Silex with staff (Warlord Games slave girls)

Legatus Duplicitous with staff (Warlord Games slave girls)

Cohortes Equitata IX Britannarium (the metal A&A army) led by Prefectus Cohortis Carolianus Silex came in at 476 points, and 12 Reputation. 

the white drapery rings are my really posh Mighty Deed counters

6 centuries of infantry

4 turmae of cavalry

an attached vexillation of Palmyran archers

Legatus Duplicitous with his army of plastic Romans and Goths came in at 484 points, and 12 Reputation. 

Warlord Auxilia in first line. Wargames Atlantic Late Romans in the second line.

Gothic cavalry wing led by a Pulp Figures Saxon noble

Warlord Scorpions

Two heroes to lead the center. 

Opening moves. Carolianus (on the left) advances in echelon with his left and refuses his right because he read it in a scroll somewhere. The Palmyran archers advance on the right to begin shooting up the enemy.

Cavalry wings come to blows and begin murdering each other. Both cavalry commanders are killed early on.

IXth Cohort crashes into the Goths pushing them back all along the line

The cavalry fight doesn't go well. Carolianus joins in, throwing all his Mighty Deeds into a final charge, but doesn't destroy the mounted warband in front of him.

Fortunately the infantry win all their melees. These Goths are reduced to one stamina and fail their Command Test, they break. -2 Reputation

Centurion Primus crushes the warband facing him, and kills the hero leading them. -4 Reputation 

In the Shooting Phase Ozempyc, Centurion of the Palmyran Archers uses a Mighty Deed to roll 6 extra dice and destroys the oncoming century of Auxilia. -3 Reputation

At the end of the turn Duplicitous' army of rebels is reduced to negative five Reputation. Carolianus is still at 10, despite losing three turmae of cavalry and two heroes.

End Game. The Goth infantry lose heart before their cavalry can outflank Carolianus

End Game from the other side of the field

There was lots of consulting the rules. Got a bunch of stuff wrong. I've come to the realization that tooling up Level 1 and 2 heroes with a bunch of Traits that you forget about might be a waste of points. The big stuff like Today We Fight to Win and On My Command, Unleash Hell shouldn't be held onto too long or you lose the chance to use them.

Definitely an indulgent, solo pleasure. But I enjoyed the visuals.

More Romans and Goths for Midgard

Somewhere on the Danube frontier, ca. AD 275

It's taken a couple of weeks but I've completed three units for my 3rd century Project for Midgard. I'd meant to paint them in two batches, but got carried away.

First up is a small skirmish unit armed with bows. It took a lot of trial and error to get the fellow drawing the arrow. 

But it is nice you can build a variety of loading, aiming and loosing poses.

Then a unit of warriors. Because you need a lot of warriors for a proper migrating horde of Goths.

I've included an archer in the back to remind players that they have a shooting capability as well. Gothic archery caused a lot of grief for the Romans according to Simon McDowell.

The chief has a bigger shield, from the Roman sprue, because I gave the Roman Signifer a small, round shield from the Gothic sprue. The shield transfer is from Relic Miniatures as well. The rest of  them have painted shields.

I also did a second cohort of legionaries. I suppose they could be auxilia as well, the distinction had pretty much disappeared by this time. But if you look close there are some markings saying "Legio V."

I'm enjoying being able to make the figures less ranked up with the big single stand units. Especially with the Goths. Barbarian troops always look a bit wrong with the neat ranks and files the you get with any conventional basing. This looks much more dynamic.

Note Signifer with small buckler. I had to hand paint the design to match the transfers on the scuta.

While I was flocking them, I added some more flock to the first cohort to eradicate the golf green look that the static grass had given them.

 

The plastic Roman army now has 4 units of warriors (2 Wargames Atlantic and 2 Warlord Auxiliaries) and a unit of artillery (Warlord). The Goths have 6 warriors, 2 skirmishers, and 4 cavalry, plus 7 heroes.

LAUNCH ALL THE TORPEDOES!!! A Big Game of "Snorkers! (Good Oh!)"

I wanted to try and push the boat out a bit with Snorkers (Good Oh!) and see if I could run a bigger, multiplayer game and try some battleships. The book has a scenario for the 1st and 2nd Naval Battles of Guadalcanal fought over two nights between 12 and 15 November 1942. 

For the Second battle, the Americans, all their cruisers having holes in them from the First battle, sent a force of two battleships with every available destroyer to intercept another Japanese attempt to bring some big ships down to shell Henderson field.

The Orders of Battle aren't exact. Historically the US put out a scratch collection of four different destroyers. Essentially anyone fully fueled, undamaged, and ready to sail. The Japanese should have a couple of light crusiers, and the Americans only four destroyers, but both fleets are matched at 668 points. (New points values for ships can be found here.) Although the IJN have a significant Force Morale advantage: 54 to 44.

Top row is the USN force: two battleships (USS Washington and South Dakota) and six Fletcher class destroyers divided into two squadrons. The battleships will operate as independant units.

Middle row: the Kongo class Fast Battleship/Battlecruiser Krishima, two Furutaka class Cruisers Chikuma and Maya, a squadron of three Kagero class destroyers.

Bottom row, two squadrons of 4 destroyers each. One squadron is all Fubukis, and the other has a Kagero and three Fubukis.

The battle is at night, using dummy markers for initial moves. The Japanese players need to get their Bombardment Group consisting of the Krishima, Maya, and Chikuma off the opposite corner to shell Henderson Field.

DesRon 1 detects the Krishima and opens fire, a torpedo hit causes some flooding and significant hull damage.

The IJN heavy cruisers in the back make some long range torpedo attacks sinking two of the destroyers. The third has been reduced to a floating wreck by gunfire.

USS South Dakota moves up and blasts the Krishima with an effective broadside. The Japanese battleship is crippled with multiple flooding markers and three fire markers, and is now just a burning hulk.

IJN Destroyer squadron wheels around the fiery holocaust and launches all of their torpedoes at the South Dakota. She takes three devastating torpedo hits and goes under.

Meanwhile the IJN heavy cruisers are trying to sneak around the American flank through the fog bank. DesRon 2 moves up and launches all 20 torpedoes at the rear ship, since the lead ship is effectively hidden.

The IJNS Maya is blown out of the water by the first spread! The Americans could have saved themselves some ammunition.

The Washington has moved up and take the IJN destoyers under fire. But DDs are a very small target for 16" guns and the Americans divide their fore, aft and secondary batteries between three different targets instead of concentrating on one. The Japanese commander then deftly brings another destroyer squadron wheeling around the burning Krishima and launches every thing he's got. 35 Long Lances slice through the dark waters. They needed everyone of them. The Washington isn't finished off until the final spread got a hit.

And that, as they say, was that. 

A Pyrrhic Victory. 

But for who?

The Japanese certainly score on points; two battleships and four destoyers sunk, the USN Force Morale reduced to 4. The IJN suffering a battleship and a cruiser sunk, so their Force Morale is still at 30.

But the IJN Bombardment Group was crippled. Losing two capital ships that can't be replaced is not a Good Thing. And the objective was to get those ships off the table.

The Japanese destroyer commanders can race back to Rabaul for some sake and boosting, very happy with a good night's work sinking two American battleships and four destroyers with no significant wounds to their destroyer squadrons. The two surviving American destoyers will need a lot of therapy and Admiral Halsey is probably screaming into his phone. The Americans are temporarily vulnerable, but would the Japanese have the resources to exploit it?

The Japanese players certainly used their technical advantages, exploiting the range of the Long Lance. Compared to previous games most of the gunnery and torpedo launches were at longer ranges this time. They also "flooded the zone," taking an aggressive "use it or lose it attitude" and going after the American battleships with devastating salvoes of torpedoes, trusting that eventually enough would hit, and hoping they would survive to reload if necessary. We calculated that we launched over 100 torpedoes during the game!

Of course with fewer targets to concentrate on, the Japanese could afford to swamp the Americans, whereas the American responses to the IJN destroyers were too diffuese to make an effect.

When the Americans did launch torpedoes they were pleased to roll quite well for hits and rolled only 1 dud out of 30 or so launched.