Battle Report - Ronin - Sohei Monks vs Oda Clan Samurai

So another couple of battle reports from wargaming on Wednesdays, this time we tried out Ronin the Samurai game from the Osprey line of games. This is a pretty cool skirmish game, as part of doing a melee fight you have to choose a number of black (attack) and white (defense) chits, so there is a bit of choice in how you approach a fight.

I had a group of Sohei warrior monks with lots of Naginata, a pair of bow men, 1 gunner, and a senior sohei with a big club. On the other side were some Samurai from the Oda clan, with 1 Hatomoto with a yari, 2 Samurai 1 Yari 1 Katana, and a bunch of Ashigaru with Nage-yari and 2 gunners. Oda Nobunaga lead a bunch of campaigns against the monks so this is a bit of a classic match up.

Game 1

The first game we did was a capture the bridge scenario, whoever had the most soldiers on the small bridge would be the winner, so it was a battle for an important crossing.

 Both sides set up and advanced towards the bridge, having some ranged troops take cover behind a few barrels.

I advanced my monks up a bit slower, and tried 2 send to around to kill the gunners, I was a bit concerned about these guys as they can be dangerous, a few bow shots were fired but to no affect due to the good armor of the Samurai forces.

Then I abandoned the flanking idea and head for the bridge, the Ashigaru gunners fired off their shots and managed to get a light wound on my Senior Sohei, not good.

Next turn we had a big melee at the foot of the bridge, as both sides battled for control. My guys were a bit out numbered but I had an extra rank 3 guy so hoped that would carry the day.

Things went poorly for my commander and he took a stun (the blood), and then his light wound was increased to grievous. Finally they wore him down.

Then I had the bright idea of firing my gun into the battle to even the odds, the way it works in this game is that if you miss your target you have to roll against another random guy in the fight. I tried to kill the ashigaru up front but missed, so then rolled and found I now had to roll against my monk, this time I got double 6s so that guy was shoot dead. Not quit what I was looking for really.

At this point we pretty much decided it was now a Samurai bridge so on to game 2.

This game was 24-0 for the Samurai I believe or something high like that.

Game 2

For game 2 we decided to just try the Skirmish scenario from the book, so victory points would be the rank of the models killed, plus 1 for winning a duel, plus the Samurai could gain point by taking heads from my monk, and loose points if a model is killed by a enemy of lesser rank. Additionally we had 2 secondary objectives, mine was to kill 75% of the Samurai and get revenge for the last battle, and theirs was to control the table and capture the entire village area.

We rolled for weather and time of day this time and found that this battle would take place at dawn in the rain, so sight distance would be greatly reduced, and guns could only fire once ever as their powder was now wet.

I decided to spread out again, and the Samurai mostly massed south of the River. I was now hoping to trap them on the ford so they couldn't overwhelm me with numbers, and maybe get a few to drown.

This worked a bit but not as much as I had hoped, in the back ground you can see a few monks going after the Ashigaru gunners. I had a bit more luck with the bowmen in this game, and they got a light wound and a stun on one of the Ashigaru who then took cover behind the village.

The Samurai commander challenged my Senior Sohei to a great duel, which he won winning the Samurai a point, he then took his head earning them another point! Seems that my commander needs to spead less time on prayers and more time training.

in the mean time my monks in the back were getting a few kills, then this guy hear took on 2 ashigaru at once. This forced a morale check for the Samurai but they passed (the Sohei are all fearless so they aren't concerned with losses).

Meanwhile things on the other side of the river were going not great, although my bow armed initiate was able to stand against a Samurai and an Ashigaru and even killed the lowly foot soldier. The battle was pretty even at this point, I was 2 away from my 75% goal I believe.

We ended up with another battle on the bridge, which I heroically lost again.

Finally the Samurai commander went over to kill my plucky Initiate, and have some stern words with that Samurai, while the guys on the bridge killed the last Monk. This left the Samurai in control of 1 quater and me with none (due to everyone being dead), so a another victory for them. I think this battle was in the range of 29-14 or some such so a good bit closer.

So I found this game to be pretty fun, there are 3 skirmish games that can be sued for this now Ronin, the Lord of the Rings game, and the Samurai expansion for SAGA we did. Not sure which is best but they all have their good points.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - Flames of War - Late War East Front

So we went for another bit of Wednesday gaming, this time playing some Flames of War. I finally got to try out my Kampfgruppe Bake force that I had painted a good while back. Basically it's a heavy tank company with a mix of Panthers and Tigers. Here is my list:

Bake has rerolls on shooting, 2+ storm trooper moves for a platoon he joins, is Fearless Veteran, and allows one platoon to make a recon move. I faced a Russian tank company with 21 T34-85, 4 heavy tank destroyers, and 2 heavy anti-tank guns.

In the first game we rolled for a mission and got encounter.

My Tiger Ace skill ended up being 'Every Shot Counts', so they would all get to re roll misses. I had them hull down behind a hill, and all the Panthers way down on the other side of the forest. 1 T34 platoon taking cover behind a ruined church, and the tank destroyers behind a tree line. All of the Panthers made a recon move to get up closer and then I won the roll to go first which was pretty lucky.

I basically had the T34s trapped between Panthers and a few just barely in range of the Tigers from time to time so they wore down that platoon very fast. Then got rid of most of the tank destroyers before any reserves could re-enforce that objective, which is right behind the church. So a quick win for Bake. The Hen and Chicks rule the Russians had really prevented them from having much of a chance to damage the Veteran Russian tanks, and I was able to make good use of storm troops to limit return fire and force them to move which makes things very hard.

As that was such a quick game we decided to do another and got No Retreat, the Russian force is always attack so they would have to be the attacker. I started with both tank platoons again with the Tigers deployed behind a hill again and the Panthers in ambush.

This time my Tiger commander got Top ace so there would be 2 skills, I rolled ace again and got to pick the first skill, I choose Rapid Fire as they didn't plan to move allot so would be Rate of Fire 3, and then rolled Schnell for the commander, so they would be Storm Troopering on a 2+.

The Tigers hide behind the hill, and Bake takes up a position in the town, within 16" of the forward objective to contest if needed. My plan was to try and limit return fire as much as I could again and try to destroy the Russians at long range where they couldn't threaten my vulnerable flanks.

This worked out very well and the Russians were worn down slowly with no losses to my cats. The big Russian guns were AT 16, but as they were ROF 1 with Hen and Chicks and I kept allot tanks in cover their success was limited. Twice they got a hit on my tanks but then rolled a 1 for fire power resulting just in a bail!

Things continued like that for awhile, but the Russians lost to many tanks before they could get close so ended up with another loss. I completely forgot to roll for my weak token reserves, but they would have just died and not been able to do anything so safe to just assume the Russians killed both platoons, but with no Tank losses it made no difference really.

I found the Bake force to be pretty fun, it's cool to have a mix of Panthers and Tigers as you get to play with all the big cool tanks. I think this was pretty much an ideal opponent for them thou and it's would be allot harder facing off against some other armies, like good Infantry or the really mobile American tanks for instance.

Thanks;
Mike

Infinity - Operation Icestorm - Other Fusiliers

Got the other 2 fusiliers finished off over the weekend. Had a little bit of trouble with the girl ones gun holding arm falling off. The shoulder is pretty skinny so here is not allot of surface to glue. But hopefully it doesn't happen any more.

They are pretty nice, starting to be allot of details on the newer infinity stuff thou which is making them harder to paint. I actually tried these guys out in a game on Friday even thou they are not all painted, the sniper guy did the best so I guess he is next up!

Thanks;
Mike

Infinity - Operation Icestorm - Fusilier 1

Didn't get much moving done today due to the rain, so I did a bit of painting instead. I finished off the first of the basic guys for the PanOceania side of the starter.

There is the guy alone, and here he is on the display tray with the other guys in rough positions.

Let me know what you think, I am considering going back and adding some light green highlights to the darker green areas.

Thanks;
Mike

Battle Report - DBMM Tournament/League Round Two

So today I played game 2 of our DBMM tournament at my place with Serge, 350 army points. I had my post mongol Samurai army, and he had some kind of Byzantine, I want to say komnenian but I am not certain. I was the defending army and Serge ended up deploying and going first.

Some of these pictures are a bit blurry so apologies for that.

So for the terrain we had a gentle hill, a smaller rough hill, a woods, and a small village. None of it really had much of an impact on the battle except this rough hill which protected my flank a bit. In the picture which is a bit small I have my army on the left, big block of cave on the far side a few superior bow, and a long line of blades with some pike in the middle of it. On the Byzantine side we had some blade and spears on the far side against my Cav, then some bow inferior accross from my bow, and then some knights and Cav against my pike and blades, and a big block of light horse on the flank to try and turn it.

In the first turn we more or less just marched the giant lines towards each other, with a bit of shuffling for flank on the far end.

In general I rolled very high for Pips and the Byzantines got really low numbers, so my irregular army was able to move around a bit more and his regular army was pinned down a bit, normally you would expect more the reverse.

So our lines began to come into contact, my superior bows quickly started to knock out the inferior bows, and my cav started to get in some fights with his foot and vice versa.

Mean while the light hose worked on enveloping my open flank.

On the left flank my bows and blades were clearing out the enemy bows and a few blades, and my double based cavalry was slowly grinding down the blades and spears due to having higher factors some times and allot of good luck.

On the other side I took out a knight and a few cavalry, but there was a key turn when I lost something like 4 or 5 blades in one shot. This made me very nervous. But with a bit of good rolling and bad pip dice (determines how many troops you get to move) for the Byzantines I was able to hold out long enough for his foot command to break. That combined with the 4 mounted I was able to kill was just enough losses to break the Byzantine army.

I had lost about 20% of my forces and no Generals so it was a 21-4 victory for me.

Was the first game I tried at my new place, the folding tables from Canadian tire I had slide around allot on the hard wood floor and were very annoying. So I will for sure have to find some way to lock the two together and stop the sliding for next time! But was a fun game.

Thanks;
Mike

Infinity - Operation Icestorm - Work in Progress

So started working on my Operation Icestorm project this week. On Monday I got the display tray / bases thing I was talking about in the mail, so this possibly explains why I couldn't find it over the weekend!

Basically it's 23 MDF bases laser cut and etched, with a display tray they all fit into. Kind of like a simple version of the really fancy Flames of War ones you see at tournaments sometimes. I thought that would be cool to do as a bit of a variety from the normal sand / grass type of thing. I got it from customeeple (I got the science lab one).

So there is that guy, nothing super fancy but I am hoping it will work out as a neat thing. Now I just need to do the miniatures and the glue them on, Plan is to do them on temp bases and cut off after painting same as what I ended up doing for the champion. Not really sure how well they will glue onto the bases thou so a bit of a risk. All of the Kung Fu guys I pinned, but the Infinity models are made from a much harder metal so it's allot harder to do that, we shall see.

So far I have the Fusileirs mostly glued together (the regular soldiers basically). The 2 males ones are great and 0 issues there, the girl is super skinny and thus really annoying to glue together so I had to give up after just getting the leg on. I have had a bit of issues with this with the female Infinity models in general, they are all super thin for some reason, and allot are on 1 leg one of mine has almost cracked off at the ankle and I have another with head falling off syndrome.

Is enough to make you miss all the 1 piece historical stuff.

Thanks;
Mike

Martial Arts Champion

Well I didn't get much done this week as I was buying a bunch of new furniture from Ikea on Saturday and then working on putting it all together on Sunday. But I did get in the missing base for my last martial arts guy so I finished that guy off.

I also went to play a few games of Infinity at Fandom on Friday, didn't take enough pictures for a battle report but here is a couple of random shots anyway.

I played 3 games and lost all of them badly ouch! But fun none the less.

While I was there I picked up the new Operation Icestorm set so I guess that might have to be my next painting project. I ordered a display tray and set of bases for this online, I am pretty sure it came but I can't hardly remember and now I can't seem to find it! So not sure what is up with that.

It even comes with a set of card board terrain and a gaming mat which I think is pretty neat.

Also moving all my stuff over to the new apartment is really making me question why I have so many war gaming books. Especially the flames of war ones, that stuff is crazy.

Thanks;
Mike

Infinity - Yaogat Strike Infantry

So another small update, as discussed yesterday a pair of Yaogat. One with just a combi-rifle and one that also has the shoulder mounted panzerfaust (the missile thing).

Bit of a quick job so nothing crazy going on here. I was pleasantly surprised that all the arm stuff with the missile launcher thing was one piece, I had allot of trouble with a similar type of thing on another one of these guys. These are older infinity models so they are not as good looking as some of the newer stuff, their legs look really thin for instance.

Thanks;
Mike

15mm - WW2 German SS Infantry Section + Sniper

Well finished of the SS section today. Since we are getting on towards fall I thought I would paint them in the Autumn camo pattern (Oak Leaf), plus I thought that would look cool. It is really hard to do in 15mm I would say since they are so small. I used the SS painting set from BF and used their guide, the base color is maybe a bit dark but I think it worked out decently overall. For the basing I used the baccus basing to start but instead of their grass I used the arid grass from GF9 and then a bit of their autumn flock. Which I think looks pretty cool.

Naturally as soon as I took the picture I realized I forgot to go back and finish the officers map, so will have to go back and fix that.

So anyway let me know what you all think of this little group of guys.

Kind of liking these micro projects so very tempting to do some more, wonder if I still have some American Paratroopers kicking around (probably yes). Well the next thing is another infinity miniature or 2 for Friday. Plan is to paint 2 Yaogat infinity to get the min for a fire team.

Starting to move over to my new apartment now as well, first priority may be to find a couple of the plastic folding tables so I can have some games run!

Thanks;
Mike