Rant and Roar

The rhyflers lining the rails on the cruiser looked in wide eyed alarm at the forbidding rocky coastline lashed by a heavy surf. It was a cold, forlorn place, far removed from the mangrove swamps and jungles they were used to.

Lukey spat a stream of tobacco juice into the sea. "Pashang beratna! Inna no gloamy warm here na? What for imma bossquar king send Gloamyquar here, ke pensa?"

Yawdryl Laf'ynt ignored him and looked at the rest. "Oi-ya gloamy-beratna. Alle inna skiffs, sa sa ke?"

With grunts and grumbles they shouldered their packs and clambered down the nets into the waiting launches.

Ryta was pegging out the wash. It was a fine day with a brisk breeze coming up the valley from the sea. Then she heard the bells.

Tymi came pounding up the path to her cottage. "Granny Ryta! Granny Ryta! It's the Rising Out!"

Tymi was bouncing with excitement. The bells usually called for aid if a barn was on fire or a fishing boat was foundering on the rocks, which were exciting enough. The Rising Out summoned all able bodied quar to gather underarms. "It's the Rising Out, Granny!"

Ryta carefully set her basket down. "Alright, alright,  young Tym. Now, you get the snegls further up the hillside. And I'll go to the bells." Tymi looked dejected as she went inside to get her Anaryan made submachine gun out of the umbrella stand.

Table from Gloam-Hynn edge

Table from Partisan edge

Ryta joined the rest in the lee of a cliff face. She and her life long friend Jyn't exchanged grim nods while the Old Syrnol divided the 14 quar into the fireteams that they had naturally grouped themselves into. He, Aelf, Ned, and Ryta conferred over a plan. No one knew if he really had been a Syrnol,  but he had come home from the Wars with a sword and enough cash to buy a big ocean going lobster boat and hired a crew. He was happy to organize things that needed organizing, like the annual village fete, and preside over the raucous council meetings, which used to end in punch-ups before his firm hand took the Chairquar's gavel. So for the most part, the quar of the valley were happy to leave him to it, as long as he didn't try organizing too much.

L-R: youth, Byrt, Jyn't (pink coat), Ryta 

Byrt, the poacher, with his long Harlech would head up the hill with a fine view down to the beaches. Ryta and Jyn't with one of OS' crew would cover the foot of the hill and hold the left flank. Byrt nodded, and slurpped noisily from a mug of his homebrew. 

"Now then, Byrt, make sure you ain't glass eyed. We need youse pottin' incomers" Ryta chided.

Byrt laughed. "Cinnae hit 'm if'n I kin see straight,  kin I?"

Aelf and his lads

Aelf and Ned with some young lads each would go right, either side of the biggest farm house. The Old Syrnol and two youth would be in the center.

The Old Syrnol 

Ned with his team

 

Yawdryl Laf'ynt leads his quar forward

Trackers with Sarf-Cyn. Eager to try these. Although I've learned I need to print the revised army lists. The rules for them have changed

Spending pluck on group moves and sprinting while behind cover, the partisans move into position. Byrt is prone on top of the big hill.

"Shysh! Wha's dat, me buckos?" Ned and his team spot Sarf-Cyn scuttling along the flank. 

"Away wi' ye!" Granny Jyn't takes up position behind the huvi pen and sends a lot of heavy suppressive fire down range. Her Anaryan made KEEGY rhyfle is basically a Ryshi; a heavy shoulder cannon that reduces cover. The leading Gloamers keep getting hit. They recover, only to be knocked down again.

The LMG starts chattering away to shoot the Sarf-Cyn down. 

"An' keep away from our huvis ye ancestorless brigands!" 

Gloamer advance is getting stuck around the small house

Lots of fire up and down the defile!

Patrolling past the big farmhouse just before he's knocked OOA with a shot from Byrt 

Aelf and the LMG gunner keep the center pinned down forcing the Gloamers to spend most of their actions on Tend Wounds

Granny Ryta has moved up to help Jyn't. Which is good because Jyn't's KEEGY jams and then she is rendered OOA. Ryta exacts a terrible revenge on the Gloamers 

A Gloamer (by the door) tries outflanking Ryta and is shot by Byrt.

"Stop bleeding sonny, you're nicked!" Learned you can't melee or dispatch OOA enemy. So they're made prisoner. Ned tries Tend Wound and rolls a '1'! Dead.

Byrt in his sniper perch

Aelf and the LMG secure the farmyard and put fire on the Trackers

Trackers move up, adding some fire to help the center

A lot of Gloamers are OOA

The Old Syrnol has charged forward, but gets knocked down by a shot from the Trackers 

With 2 cards left in turn 2 I called it. The Gloamers had 2 unwounded figures not OOA and they were too scattered to perform any Tend Wounds. I let the upright and walking wounded do Tend Wounds and retreat. Quar, being essentially decent folk, would cease fire and let the enemy carry their wounded away. Three Gloamers were unwounded, carrying one seriously wounded, and helping three wounded get back to the launches. The Partisans performed Tend Wound on those that were left. The Gloamers left behind three dead and three prisoners of war (one seriously wounded). For the Partisans one OOA recovered, the Old Syrnol had a minor wound, and Jyn't was seriously wounded.

For the Partisans I just pick 'n' mixed from the different army lists depending on what weapon they were carrying. Both sides came just a squint over 400 points which is a nice size to play with. The Gloamers could have used a musician though, who could do Tend Wound on everyone within 3" or something. Or the cook, who does the same but with a +1. They got most of their pluck from successful Tend Wound results, just to have the figure knocked OOA on the following Partisan card.

***********************************

Jyn't came too, her head in Ryta's lap while Aelf cleaned her head with some strong alcohol. "Ach! Don't fuss so!"

Ryta brushed her snout. "Stay calm chook. You've given us all a fright. An' why'd you have to take them all on by yerself, anyway?"

Jyn't settled back enjoying the care. "Ach! Someone had to dinnae they? Ouch! It stings! What's that? Your homebrew you're usin' on me is it?"

The Old Syrnol directed his crewquar to gather the dropped weapons and the dead, while a couple of lads directed some prisoners, carrying a wounded comrade, to the village hall. One of the escort started singing one of the songs they sung while hauling a catch out on the Deeps:

We'll rant and we'll roar like true Ergydwrans
We'll rant and we'll roar on deck and below
Until we strikes bottom inside the two sunkers
When straight through the channel to Toslow we'll go

Recognizing the tune, if perhaps the lyrics were different, the Gloamers joined in:

I'm a son of a sea cook, I'm a cook and a trader
I can dance, I can sing, I can reef the main boom
I can handle a jigger, I cuts a fine figure
Whenever I gets in a boat's standing room

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.