February 2024 Report

Greetings and welcome to another catch up.

Our first game of the month was a return to our loosely connected cartel campaign. In this game two cartel syndicates met at a deserted jungle airstrip to exchange dollars for white powder.

Unbeknown to the syndicates the airstrip isn’t quite so deserted as they thought and US DEA agents have convinced local police and army units to form a joint task force to stop the transaction.

All was going well, truck was reversing to pick up the powder, money was being counted, when the look out spotted the Federales emerging from the jungle down the airstrip aways and the firing started.

The first casualty was one of the soldados, which was rather fortunate because he had the underslung grenade launcher 😮

It then became a firefight of two halves, the Federales and one gang shooting it out at long range on one side of the airstrip and the other gang up close and personal with the army near the barn.

During the shooting the plane was damaged beyond repair so no taking to the sky’s for the bad guys.

The life of a DEA agent can be a dangerous one and Kate Macer fell in the line of duty.

As the fight went on the soldados realised that concentration of fire was the key and managed to drive the army unit back into the jungle although the RPG guy featured above literally couldn’t hit a barn door 😂

The Federales didn’t fare much better losing agent Matt Weston and two officers including the sergeant which rather screwed their morale throws.

The cartel weren’t without their losses but they didn’t lose the contraband or the money so time to say adios to the jungle rendezvous.

Our next game was eastern renaissance, Ottoman Turk v Poles; lots of Sipahi’s and Winged Hussars.

Essentially an encounter game the Hussars had a good run to start with.

This unit had a fine old time bursting through a unit of Azabs (of course), then a unit of Voyniks (a bit more impressive) and then riding down the guns.

The Sipahis had an equally fine time killing Haiduks.

The Hussars were however being worn down.

Ultimately it was the Ottoman Tartars that tipped the game, roaming free they were able to gradually wear down the Hussars and the Ottomans hadn’t even committed their Janissaries.

Next was a return to the WAS in Italy a place we hadn’t visited for some time.

We made a conscious effort to get away from ‘let’s have at it’ with this one. Both sides had a written scenario detailing where commands could be deployed but not how, cavalry brigades arriving by road and needing orders, possibilities for flank marches, clues about where roads might go if they investigated; so some decisions to be made.

The GalloSpan army (French & Spanish) had two brigades of horse marching on (and basically that’s all they really did 😏), the rest of their forces they deployed by nationality; the Spanish foot deployed to the right of a T junction, national foot to the front and a brigade of Walloon Guards & Irish in support to the rear, the French foot deployed to the left of the junction and the brigade of French horse deployed astride a road out on the left flank beyond a stream leading to who knows where – they had the option to scout up the road in force which could have been fun but they didn’t.

The Austro Piedmontese had the option for a flank march on their right with Romer’s cavalry and took it (more of this later), elsewhere they deployed their Austrian foot brigade out on the right beyond the stream leaving the ground to their left on the other side of the stream clear for the arriving Piedmontese cavalry; the three brigades of Piedmontese infantry lined the road to the left of the arriving cavalry partly obscured by a line of Poplars.

The first action was on the Piedmontese left where two of their brigades advance rather awkwardly against the solid Spanish line coming toward them – by awkward I mean the Piedmontese deployed their battalions two by two and one brigade behind the other which although fine for depth did mean that the solid Spanish line (all very historical) inevitably overlapped the end of the Piedmontese and at some point was bringing more muskets to bare.

Further up the road the Piedmontese took on the 2nd Spanish line brigade in a fire fight which lasted most of the battle and left both brigades shattered.

The arrival of Romer’s cavalry was a bit of a high point for the Austro Piedmontese although on reflection the player had planned for it a bit late in the day – design note; if the French player had sent his cavalry off down the road then both brigades would have been lost fighting off table somewhere, if there had been no opposition then the French would have arrived in the enemy rear but late in the day.

Although the French were in the right place for the flank march they didn’t know one was coming and so were still caught on the hop and ultimately lost the fight although a desperate charge by their brigadier commanding a lone regiment did delay things slightly.

Back on the Piedmontese left the Italians finally forced their way through the Spanish line and advanced on the Spanish reserves who received orders to advance and although it looks pretty above the tired Italians were no match for the Walloons & Irish and the attack came to a grinding halt.

Following their long march and a delay in reading their orders the Spanish cavalry hooked up with a supporting French brigade and advanced against the Piedmontese cavalry who despite some heroic charges were hopelessly outnumbered and yielded the field.

Romer was by now in the rear of the GalloSpan line and the one uncommitted French brigade scrambled to redeploy to face his admittedly damaged brigade.

Unfortunately we ran out of time in what had been a hard fought battle. Summing up, the GalloSpan right was secure and the Walloons & Irish were poised to crush the weakened Italians, further along the opposing Piedmontes and Spanish had fought each other to a stand still, the right centre of the Piedmontese line was desperately vulnerable, the cavalry were done and even a battery of guns wasn’t going to stop two brigades of horse and a brigade of infantry.

Over on the Piedmontese far right the Austrian foot brigade was advancing in a disorderly manner but had achieved nothing of any note and although their horse had turned the GalloSpan flank it’s ability to exploit the opportunity was in question. The players were still arguing (good naturedly) about who won when they left 😂.

Next up was an away game of ACW using ‘Rebels and Patriots’

Rebels hold a small town against attacking Union brigades.

The opening moves favoured the Rebels, they held the town and a walled field outside of it which served them well and it took time for superior Union numbers to tell in the firefights and in the cold steel encounters within the town.

I’m not a fan of the Osprey blue book rules, the extreme randomness, bizarre shooting angles and event tables just aren’t my thing but that said we had a fun time, so silver linings.

Final game of the month was good old Carlist wars.

British Legion hold a town and outlying defensive works and await relief as numerically superior Carlists close in.

As is almost inevitable in these kind of games the the play split into two different games within a game, one was the assault on the town and one the fight to delay the column.

Frankly the fight for the town was the more fun game (so glad I was playing it 😀). Two brigades of Carlist troops threw themselves against the walls and despite losses and a tremendous stand by the British Marines finally broke in and took the town.

The commander of the relief force was on a hiding to nothing; there was only one road over one bridge of an unfordable river, roving Carlist cavalry were randomly appearing on both sides of the river (how is a very good question) and a strong brigade of Carlist infantry were easily able to march from the baseline to their end of the river because there was no discernible opposition.

Don’t get me wrong the game was full of action; fighting in the streets, rockets, cavalry charges on hastily deploying infantry lines, assault columns trying to burst through defences. All great stuff but the result was inevitable.

We discussed the game at length once the town had finally fallen and the column was stuck and agreed the basic game was fine but only one bridge over an impassable river was an impossible ask. Better to have two bridges, one upstream and one downstream or no bridges and just a water barrier with the usual slowness and disorder. Sometimes the obvious isn’t obvious when setting a game up.

Away from the fighting a few things got finished, some more built up areas for the 10mm Iran Iraq.

Palm trees done.

Wars of Religion stradiots

Wars of Religion Spanish lancers

Italian Wars Escopeteros

Well that’s it for the month. Hammerhead coming up so maybe some bargains to be had there! Until next month, play nice 😀