B'rryt's Privateers

The last chords of The Ballad of the Young Prince died away and St'n R'gyrs waited for the applause to settle down. It was a good crowd tonight at Maeb's Beetle Buffet. Farmers mixing amiably with the Crusader soldiers garrisoned in the area. He'd noticed that the Crusader rhyflers were singing along to the old Royalist ballad just as heartily as the locals. The bar was doing a brisk trade. Young dynas were taking eager rhyflers upstairs to spend their pay on something other than beer and fried grubs, He took a pull of his beer before stepping back to the front of the stage and without strumming a chord he grabbed the microphone and bellowed the opening lines:

Oh the year was 1378

Then his band joined in with the counterpoint 

I wish I was in Spirebok now

Used some soft cap heads from the Coftyran and Crusader sprues to give some variety

And he responded

A letter of marque came from the king
to the scummiest vessel I ever did see

Then the crowd exploded! Joyously singing and shouting and waving their glasses to belt out the chorus

Damn them all! I was told

We'd sail the seas for Maebwysh gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no teeearrrs!

Now I'm a broken quar on a Huvifak pier

The laaaast of B'rryt's Privateers

Squad leader. You can tell he's in charge because he's pointing

With the crowd whooping and joining in every chorus he sang the sad and sorry tale of the Snegl, a slack rigged, wallowing privateer fitted out by the Ergydwir sea caerten, Elcid B'rryt, who recruited a crew of fisherbucks and lobster hunters, hoping to make easy money preying on Maebwysh shipping during the centuries long feud between the two cities.

Then at length we stood two cable away

I wish I was in Spirebok now

Our cracked four pounders made an awful din

but with one fat ball the Maebwysh stove us in.

Damn them all! I was told

We'd sail the seas for Maebwysh gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no teeearrrs!

Now I'm a broken quar on a Huvifak pier

The laaaast of B'rryt's Privateers

He's the Captain, because he's wearing a sword and pointing.

The Snegl shook and pitched on her side

How I wish I was in Spirebok now

B'rryt was smashed like a bowl of eggs

And the main truck carried off both me legs.

Damn them all! I was told

We'd sail the seas for Maebwysh gold

We'd fire no guns, shed no teeearrrs!

Now I'm a broken quar on a Huvifak pier

The laaaast of B'rryt's Privateers

You can hear Canadian folk singing legend, Stan Rogers sing the song here.

You can get the back ground for Ergydwr and Maebwysh here. It's especially silly.

Here they are, Quar army number 8 I believe. And I suppose they could be an addition to number 3, the Partisans. But I immediately took a shine to the roll necked woolly jumpers on the Ergydwr troops that made me think of tough fisher folk used to making a living on the harsh open oceans. I've painted mine much more irregularly than the examples on the store and in the video. I'm viewing mine as more like a maritime militia or partisans even, so I eschewed the helmets and went with all caps.

Alwyd is a big continent surrounded by large expanses of ocean. Ergydwr is on one of the northern islands, nominally part of Easky. I'm guessing the weather is harsh, the waves are large, and no quar wants to be out on the Great Deeps when the storms of Cythwyn come. There are many songs in St'n R'gyrs repertoire about shipwrecks for good reason.

Their trench raiders have big nasty bill hooks, so I decided to add some metal falxes I had in the Bitz Box to a few. These are obviously tools used to cut open the dangerous but tasty and lucrative giant lobsters or other sea creatures that they hunt when not fighting the Maebwysh.

They're rather lightly armed. Just magazine fed rifles and some light machine guns. Plus the brutal choppers for hand to hand. These figures were quite nice to assemble. The LMG gunners had their arms and weapons already attached. The rhyfle arms were printed as one piece, left and right arms alread attached to the rhyfle, so you just had to glue them at the shoulders and add the head. Their packs are already on the body. Which is a bit awkward. I might have made one a Squirrel Handler. I suppose if I'd been thinking I could have cut a pack off and added a squirrel pack.

A bottle in a hand would have been especially thematic, but I'm out of bottle hands. Oh well.

A Shadow From the Past

I got an email through the Hotlead website trying to contact "the author of Blood & Chivalry." They're planning a Hastings refight and think B&C would be the perfect rules for it. But they had questions.

Fortunately the questions were mostly "did we do this right?" to which my answer was uniformly yes. There was one bit of confusion caused by an unfortunate omission in a Morale results table.

One issue that basically boiled down to I was naive and assumed that everyone would do things that way. Of course I've learned a lot about rule writing since then.

Digging out my old copy to look up answers I found the first version published by my friend Don in 1992. I think the entire print run was done on DND office equipment. The layout was pretty basic.

1992 version of the rules

Interior of 1992 edition

Interior of 1992 edition. Don was pretty chuffed with his top down figure graphic

A little later I got a chance to redo it. New name, layout by a graphic artist, who did the drawings inside too. Distribution through his connection with Old Glory. A shiny and expensive 4/1 cover (outside cover full colour print, inside black and white). I insisted on the more expensive spiral binding because I think it's nicer for players to use that way. Should've gone with perfect or staple binding in hindsight.

Looking back at it though, I'm pretty pleased with the product. 

Interior 2001 

Lots of diagrams and pictures

A map! I should revisit the scenarios again.

I do like that the pages are white, instead of the soft taupe or fuzzy background graphics behind the text that is the current fashion, but which often make it a bugger to read.

Unfortunately a Quick Reference Sheet was forgotten. The inside covers are taken up by ads for the short lived La Gloire magazine (Old Glory's attempt to revive a US wargaming magazine and sell their miniatures like White Dwarf was doing) that my publisher also edited, and I helped with, and a Dark Ages Scenario and Army List book that never got published. Womp womp...

My correspondent would have really liked the Dark Age supplement. Fortunately for him I still had my long hand notes buried at the bottom of my filing cabinet.

I've sent him my files for Blood & Chivalry 2, which I recall was pretty much done, I just couldn't find anyone to do the layout and publish it. I suppose 15 years  further along I could probably fiind some layout software and post it on Wargames Vault or Drive Through RPG.

Learning to Skedaddle!

I decided to try some more things and set up a bigger game with 2 squads plus some Specialist Support options and leaders.

Points add up very fast when you're being greedy.

2 squads plus officer, Cook, Messenger Squirrel Handler, a Master-Yawdryl, and a couple of scatter guns adds up to 750+ points. 

I was going to use the Tollyn-Maeryn as the other side, because I wanted to try their rhyfle grenades,  but they're all green troops and very cheap. I could only muster around 360 points.

So I got the Crusaders out again. Added a couple of H11a LMG teams, a Cook, an officer, and did some non-canonical upgrades to make a Bomber Squad. Because I still dream of doing some reskinned First World War battles with a platoon divided into rifle, bomber, Lewis gun, and rifle grenade sections.
 

During Saturday's game, everyone was doing Reaction Fire when shot at (giving the active player a further -2 skill modifier). This time I tried Skedaddling, which gives a -4 modifier. If the shooter misses you check what they rolled and that might mean the attacker gets to decide where the target takes cover.

An LMG fired at a group, who all Skeddadled. 1 rhyfler was hit, but for the others the Crusaders rolled low enough (but still higher than their Skill Target number) that the target rhyflers ended up dispersed in all directions, out of Command Radius, prone and Gobsmacked. Which effectively ended their advance. It would take them about 8 Actions to regroup.

The Scatter Gun is another interesting weapon. The Bomber Squad across the road spent a lot of effort trying to keep it from firing at full effect. It managed one volley, which knocked most of the Squad down!

BLAM! Scatter gun in foreground blasts across the road.

Several casualties together was a a prime use for the Cook, who can do Tend Wounded to everyone within 2". And his Medic skill means he gets a +1 to his Tend Wounded roll as well. It's nice that there is a difference between Cooks and Medics since most of my armies have both.

The Cook, on his delivery bike, raced down the road, dodging fire from a rhylfer by the red roofed hut. 

Crusaders advance into the village

Crusaders advancing on the right

It was a big, confusing, slow moving exercise. Definitely must reign in my megalomania and keep games to under 600 points. Although with multiple players on a side, each player could run around 300 points and they all get the same activations. It might get tiresome though if one player has done his initial 3 actions and is now waiting for his team mate to stop the table talk and focus and do his, so they can find out if they have a fourth and fifith.

But it gave me some good questions that I got answered on the Quar Discord. There were definitely a few things we were doing wrong on Saturday night.

However, this increases my enthusiasm for my small band of sweater wearing Ergydir in their fisherquar caps and the chance to get my small handful of partisans on the table. Just maybe I don't have to build every force up to a company battlegroup?

Nah. Don't be daft.

Clash of Rhyflers

Clash of Rhyflers (or CoR) is the official squad level Quar skirmish rules from Zombiesmith. You can download the basic version for free here. You can also purchase the full rules (inlcuding heavy weapons, tractors, and cavalry) as either a PDF or hardcover from Zombiesmith or Wargames Atlantic.

I thought rather than constantly reinventing the wheel I really should just give in and try it. And if I like it, then just buy the hardcover book. Plastic cavalry is out now, so I'll be making an order by the fall, so...

So I set up a table of typical rural Alwyd using a mix of the Sarissa Precision buildings Big Pat gave me and some 3d prints. The windmill is from TTCombat (but they don't seem to be available anymore).

Opposing forces were a basic squad for of Crusaders and Coftyrans. Each squad had one rhyfler upgraded to a marksquar. I think both sides weighed in around 290ish points. Pasha Dan took the Coftyrans and Wierdy-Beardy ran the Crusaders.

3' x 3.5' table Coftyran squad in foreground divided into rhyfle group and Cryfen LMG group

Each squad could set up within 12" of their road exit

Crusader squad in foreground in it's 3 fireteams. Their set up is within 12" of the road on their right corner.

Cryfen LMG group moves around the windmill on the Coftyran right

Yawdryl brings rhyfle group forward on the left. Rhyfler besdie the blue house is going to have a very bad day, getting hit multiple times.

Crusaders advancing

"Buck down!" Coftyran Designated Marksquar gets first hit

Milwer and fireteam moving into the village

Yawdryl advancing on Crusader right

Cryfen LMG group getting into the fight

Lots of fire going up and down the street. Couple of Coftyrans are seriously wounded by the grain field. Cryfen LMG is shooting up Crusaders trying to take up position by the well

Long firefight with Coftyrans behind the blue house. Coftyran rhyfler keeps getting knocked down and gobsmacked, then knocked down again as soon as he's recovered. The Yawdryl is going to try "Tend Wounded" on his two companions and roll two '1s'.

Cryfen LMG group advances to put more fire on the Crusaders down the street

Blue chit indicates seriously wounded, can't fight and needs to be carried off table. Casualty figures indicate Dead. Wierdy-Beardy kept rolling '1' on his Tend Wounded actions.

We did just over two full turns (a turn equals a run through the Activation Deck). But Wierdy-Beardy eventually had every quar down and no one left to activate. He had 4 dead, 2 seriously wounded and the remaining 4 were OOA (Out of Action, requiring a Tend Wound action to determine if they can just get back in the fight, are Gobsmacked and need an action to recover, are wounded and limited to 1 action per round, seriously wounded, or dead). Pasha Dan had 4 Seriously wounded, 1 wounded and 5 still active including his Cryfen LMG and both NCOs.

I probably got some things wrong. Must check if a figure can "Tend Wounds" on themselves and if a figure can interrupt and do a snap shot if someone crosses their line of sight. I was allowing that, which caused Wierdy-Beardy a few casualties as his rhyflers tried dashing across the street covered by the Cryfen. 

But fun was had. Pasha Dan downloaded the rules as soon as he got home and stayed up to 0330 reading them. 

I'm going to leave the table set up and try some other squads and a few specialists this week.