One Weekend Two Games

Two very different games this weekend. 

Romans on the right. Palmyrans on the left. Both starting with 11 Reputation

Saturday Evening, Game 28

Pasha Dan messaged me on Thursday to see if my Romans wanted to face a Palmyran army in a game of Midgard. I tweaked my army list a bit to make it more shooty, and hard hitting, since I'd be facing a nasty combination of cataphracts and archery.

Palmyran center. Their one unit of heavy infantry is just to the left.

Cataphracts

So many cataphracts. That's Zenobia following along behind on her camel.

Weirdy-Beardy was on my side with my 3rd century army. Electical Pete and Handyman Huw ran the Palmyrans with Pasha Dan giving colour commentary from the sidelines. I failed the roll and had to set up first. I decided to keep my cavalry all together on the left wing and anchored my right on some low hills and brush. I put more centuries of infantry in the front line, only keeping two back in the second. My eastern archers were depoyed as four units of skirmishers across the front to increase my shooting.

Carolianus Silex in the center

The Palmyrans faced my cavalry and center with a mix of horse archers, massed archers and skirmishing archers, and one unit of heavy foot. Five units of cataphracts ("knights" armour 4, hit on 4+ in their first combat) with the general braved the rough ground on my right to try and ride down my infantry.

Archers fail to evade! But they used up that unit's 4+ initial attack.

My cavalry had a good day, getting in several good charges and eliminating the opposing light horse before smashing the sole unit of heavy infantry. My cavalry leader was wounded by Palmyran arrows, but held onto his Today We Fight to Win Mighty Deed until that final charge so that the Roman cavalry rolled over the Palmyran heavy foot.

Meanwhile, Weirdy-Beardy has been getting pushed back by the tide of iron horse, and things were getting tense. My Prefect, Carolianus Silex and Centurion Primus both put in local counter attacks, using Today We Fight to Win. Weirdy-Beardy charged into the opposing General's squadron who rolled three 1's on the Risk to Heroes, a Roman spear thrust obviously finding a fatal chink in his armour and putting him in the dust. That coupled with losing a unit of Cataphracts caused the Palmyran Reputation to be at 0 by the end of the turn.

Both sides are hurting. If not for this Risk to Heroes roll, I'd have probably broken first.

Sunday Evening, Game 29

Big Pat has been busy painting all of the 1/2400 scale WW1 Starter Squadron Packs from Dobbie's Hobbies that he got at Hotlead. 

He's got enough done that he was ready to try a small game of the fast playing Dread Not! rules.

Russian pre-dreadnought coastal battleship 

Turkish pre-dreadnought 

Turkish dreadnought (formerly the SMS Goben)

Russian torpedo boats

Russian battleship, the Rurik I think

The set up is interesting.  Pat had to deploy first and a die roll determined how far from the center of the table and in which direction. 

I then rolled for my bearing and got to set up on the Turkish starboard quarter! Presumably our fleets were steaming around blindly when the weather cleared and we sighted each other at very close quarters!

Of course battleships have a maximum range of only 20", so we were probably several kilometers apart.

Opening moves. My cruisers (left) are moving behind the Turks, while my torpedo boats move in for an attack. My battleship squadron (foreground) is steering to try and bring their broadsides against the Turkish battleships. 

Firing is general. My torpedo attacks roll very well, sinking a cruiser and a pre-dreadnought.

The Turkish dreadnought Sultan is still crossing my T (my battleship is in foreground)

End of game. Torpedoes and guns sink the Sultan, but my cruisers (left of frame) are both torn apart by Turkish torpedo salvos.

That took an hour to play. Of course if my deployment roll had put me further away there would have been a few additional turns of maneuvering.

This was quite a small game for these rules I think. Gunnery is to simply add up firepower brought to bear by all ships engaging, compare with target armour to get odds, and roll on an old fashioned Combat Results Table. 

Damage is mostly ticking off boxes until you sink. Not nearly as detailed as Snorkers, but Snorkers isn't trying to do fleets actions. 

This Old Black House

At Hotlead I bought a box of lovely poured resin Hudson & Allen early and high medieval buildings from an estate sale. 

As purchased there's a couple of smaller buildings not pictured 

The three stone "dark ages/highland" buildings were what I really wanted because I've always fancied doing some Picts to fight my 3rd century Romans, especially now that there are a couple of plastic options to build a Pictish warband with. The Medieval buildings were a nice extra and worth paying a few more dollarbucks for the lot.

As you can see my friend had painted them rather unimaginatively without much in the way of shading or depth or highlights. As you can see above, the roofs on two of the Pictish houses were a solid dark green, the same green he painted the grassy bits on the integral bases with. And the third with the sand roof is just well.... ummm. Let's just leave it at that.

So everything got a nice coat of burnt umber ink and then I started drybrushing. Couple of shades of grey on the stone. Couple of shades of green on the sod roofs and the grassy bits of the bases.

After fretting over how to paint the sod roofs I said "Sod it!" and decided to just use the same flock that I would put on the ground.

 This took a couple of nights to accomplish. And then after shaking off the excess I went over the bare patches, which were sculpted to look like old roof in need of refurbishment, with watered down burnt umber.

With out any Picts yet, some of my Romans are checking the village out.

And the Quar like them too. I think these will be nice for any Quar living in the rugged mountainous regions of Alwyd.

Operation Getting To Know You

At Hotlead we've always thought of ourselves as the friendly convention. I gladly make the effort to help people connect after each show. So last Hotlead, a fellow approached me. He's moving to Stratford when he retires after working in the US for 30-plus years. He's coming up to visit family in June and could we get together? He'd like to meet some of the local gaming scene since he'll have to rebuild a hobby life when he moves.

We email back and forth, compare calendars, and settle on Sunday afternoon to get together for a little bit of dice rolling and meeting some of the guys. I send out an invite and gather some of the gang. Don't want it too big, but not too small either. A happy throng would be welcoming. Fortunately Sunday was cold and rainy anyway, so a good day to spend the afternoon inside wargaming.

Two brand new heros in combat? Oh dear, this will be interesting.

Then I'm overthinking; what to put on? Snorkers? Midgard? Something else? There's a time limit so it can't be too involved. Fantasy or historical? How does Ed feel about fantasy? Of course I didn't know if two of the guys were available until the day before which affected the chosen game as well.

I eventually settled on Midgard and sorted out my 3rd century Romans. Over lunch I learn that Ed is a big Roman history nerd. (Yay!) I also learn that he's a big Tolkien fan and has all the expansion sets for the War of the Ring boardgame that I've played a couple of times with the Mad Padre. (More Yay!)

So we had a furiously bloody and swift game. I helped Ed, and our Gothic feoderati overthrew the cavalry of Cohortes IX Britannarium. Who really have never done very well. I must think about how they are used and maybe buff up their leadership.

Big Pat on our other flank was meanwhile hammering the opposing infantry. My Gothic foot warriors had a big opening in front of us and wheeled to start taking the Roman infantry in the flank.

Big hole where the Roman cavalry used to be

Duplicitous leading his cohorts to crash into the enemy line.

Duplicitous won 6-0 this, my eighteenth game of the year, so his march on Rome continues.

Big fun was had. Dice were rolled. Some beers were drunk. Chins were wagged. Freindships were begun. 

Yay! New friends!