May 2024 Report

A busy calendar this month, plenty of games and two shows – both reported on in earlier blogs, Partizan and GamesExpo, so without further ado….

First up was an away day set in 80’s Africa, Mercenaries v African state regulars using a set of home grown rules. All a bit Hollywood from a certain era (the 80’s!) and with plenty of decent modern rules sets around I was left thinking, why?

Next, the now regular appearance of the WWII Pacific fleets using Victory at Sea, this time we used the night fighting rules – interesting

Chief difference from the more normal daylight game was the need to be closer in to be able to shoot and radar became oh so important!

Next was our trial run of the Partizan demo, Gabene.

The game saw plenty of elephant on elephant action and both cavalry wings were fairly ineffective, unlike the history.

We did however get plenty of infantry action and gained some insights for amendments for the show which turned out right and gave us one of our best show games for quite some time. Time well spent 🙂

Next was a Sci Fi skirmish game using a slightly amended version of Black Ops.

The scenario worked well. Imperial troopers enter a desert outpost looking for something that is in fact a lure for a trap. Trap was duly sprung and all hell let loose 😁

The Imperials got what they came for (a droid containing secret plans – the old plots are the best 😄) and shot up an awful lot of revolutionaries but then had the disappointment of finding out it was useless. The revolutionaries completely failed their objectives.

This worked pretty well with the attendees and I might well run a continuing adventures game, a bit like the western gunfight games, in the future.

Following on from Partizan, Gerard bought along his TYW collection to trial ‘Tilly’s Very Bad Day’ and, spoiler alert, Tilly had a very, very bad day 😃

I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan of the take where one big base represents a large formation, in this case an infantry brigade, and an assigned number representing ‘cohesion’ is gradually worn down.

Criticisms apart, we did get a lot of stuff on the table in a way that looked like those C17th woodcuts of the battles and played through to a definite conclusion in a reasonable amount of time in what was our first time with the rules proper.

General consensus was that with a little local finessing and understanding of some of the finer points of the rules we’ve got something with which to do the likes of Breitenfeld and Lutzen in a day. Result.

Next was our second game in the search for the Cid, or, what rules will work for the period?

At the moment we’re still trialling Swordpoint, which has it’s positive points but suffers, like so many sets, from the curse lowest common denominator whereby the rules are trying to cater for all within a very wide age range and we want to make it more unique.

As a game it played ok and a result of sorts was obtained. More work required.

Next was a big and beautiful game set Italy during the War of the Austrian Succession in which an Austro Piedmontese army defended a bridge over the River Po which the attacking GalloSpan army needed to capture in tact.

The attacking GalloSpan army was commanded by two players each with their commands, one French, one Spanish, separated by the central road leading to the bridge. The Spanish, on the right, had a single cavalry brigade out on the wing facing off to some Austrian dragoons, while their two infantry brigades, one of native Spanish and one of Walloon Guards & Irish faced off to the Piedmontese lining the walls opposite. The French, on the left had a dragoon brigade out on the wing facing a Piedmontese cavalry brigade and then two strong foot brigades also facing the stone walls.

The opening moves saw the infantry steadily march forward under fire from Austrian heavy guns over the river inflicting minor casualties and more significant casualties from two Austrian medium batteries protecting the entrance to the bridge. Fun fact; for reasons that were never explained the Walloon Guards marched straight down the road in column, between the rows of poplar trees, in the face of the guns! As it turned out it kind of worked, their superior morale kept them going, they moved faster on the road and once clear of the poplars were still able to deploy into line and give a decent volley. Who knew?!

On the French left their dragoons tried to clear their opponents away and turn the flank – there was also vague talk about seeing if the cavalry could swim the river but this came to nothing. Initially the French were successful which surprised everyone! but as regiments routed, rallied and returned to the fray on both sides the combat merely exhausted both sides and achieved nothing.

In the centre(s) the GalloSpans finally got into range and volleys all along the line rang out and both sides settled in to regimental firefights. Ultimately the Peidmontese started to give way and gaps appeared in their lines as individual battalions withdrew. The hero’s of the day were the Guards & Irish who led the way and took the most **** but overran the Austrian batteries and saw off the supporting infantry.

As the battle raged and started to come apart for the Piedmontese they tried to blow the bridge – the Piedmontese player had been allowed to place engineers on the bridge and upon being personally ordered to by the commander, roll to blow the bridge. The funny part of this to the observer was that, a) at no time did the GalloSpan players query what the guys on the bridge were and b) never asked why the Piedmontese player was making random die rolls and grimacing disappointedly 😂

With the powder for the bridge clearly wet and his brigades starting to falter the Piedmontese commander called it a day and retreated from the other side of the river with his reserves leaving the main army to it’s fate.

Final game was another away game this time an ACW affair, a refight of 1st Manassas using the Bloody Big Battles rules.

A strange set of rules these. Quite a idiosyncratic play sequence which took some getting used to but once we were in the flow then it zipped along fairly well.

I don’t think it had any real affinity with the ACW being more a generic C19th set of rules but that said we got a game more or less done and with a bit more time could have got a proper result.

And that was the month done. Not much got done on the painting side, too much time spent organising games and chasing up on exploding elephants ☹ Until the next time, play fair, play well.