Cold Wars! 2015 - Day 2

So on to Day 2 of Cold Wars. The main even of this day for me is the SAGA tournament, this time around I decided to take my new Milites Christi (Knightly Orders) warband as discussed previously. Every player got a leather pouch with some plastic ancient coins (quite cool actually), that we could use to bid on various things throughout. Like trying to go first ect..

Game 1: Capture the Hoard

So game one was a scenario in which we had to battle in an attempt to get some treasure tokens off the board. You get 3 victory points for getting one off, 2 for holding one, and 1 for having the most slaughtering points. My plan was to advance with my 2 units of foot warriors to take the coins, and use my mounted units to counter attack anyone trying to make off with them. Mt crossbows would take the hill and provide covering fire of sorts.

The Normans seemed to be coming up with a similar plan, but they had 2 units of Archers, and never moved their foot as much.

Their plan seems to have been to use the strong archery abilities on the Norman board to weaken my units early. But I was able to mitigate this by using Armor of Faith to get more defense when they attacked, and took some time building up Piety to strengthen some of my core abilities.

I managed to pick up one token but had taken a couple of losses, nothing serious.

The action really started on turn 3 or 4, my forward unit of warriors got pounded by a bit unit of mounted warriors, leaving only 2 men. But then I countered with my own Knights unit and wiped them out.

Next turn I continued to pull back my treasure, and advanced my crossbows, to more readily cover the unclaimed ones. Then I moved up the bishop and a unit of Knights, to bait the Normans scary Knight unit into attacking these guys instead of focusing on my treasure hunting. I ask allot of the clergy at times.

Not sure he is in full support of Operation Sacrifice the Bishop

This worked beautifully and some orders were 'wasted'. But I lost the Bishop and I think the Knights also. In the last turn the Normans had picked up the far treasure and were likely ahead on slaughter points so I just had to make them drop it. Since my plan had saved the crossbow men from a sure death the filled the would be richer Normans with arrows until all were dead.

Finally my Knight Commander decided it was time to challenge the opposing Norman commander to a duel to show him who's boss. (no effect on the Scenario so I tossed him in just for fun at the very end). I believe I got lucky and killed him but I am not real sure anymore. Anyway it was a 2-1 victory for me as I was still holding a treasure token, but had lost heavily on slaughtering points. I got to keep the 3 gold coins thou!

Game 2: Hold the Treasure

Now for an example of a game where everything doesn't go my way. This time I was facing a crusader warband.

In the second game the task was to defend the treasure (modified Homeland Scenario). We each had to bid how many points we thought we could defend with and the person with the least would be attacked by the other guys full army. I figure defending is easier as the attacked must push out every unit so I bid for. This was my first mistake as I should have said 5, (opponent bid 6), but I was afraid they would also bid 5 and wanted to defend.

I decided to put a unit of foot in each terrain item and then a unit of Knights to defend my commander and counter attack. I put the crossbows on the right which was also a mistake, they would have been better off in the center where they could shoot perhaps but hindsight is 20/20 on that one.

My opponent was advancing slowly to unlock all the abilities of the crusader board, but also was taking forever to do every turn so I got a bit bored if I am honest. We actually did time out. I took a mid game shot of Grorges game while I waited it out.

Vikings take it to the Norse Gaels

Then we get to mistake number two. I got ancy and decided to charge the big unit of mercenary Knights on my turn (they are weaker then). I should have just waited it out and continued on my piety but oh well, traded 2 Knights for 2 Warriors in the end.

Eventually we started to get somewhere. Then the Crusaders used an attack everywhere ability to launch a big attack.

A few assaults on the house killed off my warriors there, and one the other side some mounted Knights pushed me out of the forest. Meanwhile my crossbow guys tried to fend of some other knights. In this scenario we had to roll for a random effect due to Lokis mischief every turn. I got one the brought back my 2 dead Knights so that seemed ok.

Then my crazy Teutonic guys attacked the Heathen Knights again!

Loki made this picture fuzzy - not my fault

We traded a couple of guys again I think my Knights were slightly better off. finally of all things a punch of peasants trued to kill my Knight Commander, the nerve of some people. They actually made a creditable attack, but my Commander is not about to be killed by a bunch of stinky peasants so I rolled 7 5+ saves out of 8 and they gain no effect. Haha I thought how about them apples.

Of course while this was happening some crusader crossbows snuck up to my crossbows hill top retreat and killed them all leaving me with no one in the terrain. Time was called at this point so I just got my turn. I made a third big mistake here and tried to sneak my foot guys around into the hill. I thought you were only forced to charge if you are with in very short, but turns out it's short for a second move. So I was forced to charge the Knights in the forest without any abilities and lost. Could have just sent my Knights to the hill if I had realized. But that's war so ended up with a loss.

Game 3: Clash

The final game was a close to normal clash of the warlords scenario. So two warlords just had to kill each other, nothing to it. Once again I was facing off against the Crusaders.

I guess the Crusaders decided to chase my guys back home to Germany. The 2 close terrain items counted as rough ground, and the big ruin in the middle counted as a large building.

In the first half of the game not much happened, we moved into position and I prayed, while the crusader unlocked abilities. The crusader crossbows moved into the ruins and had a good old fashioned crossbow fight with my crossbows, and surprisingly were loosing despite being in a building.

Then I decided it was time for some action and I needed to kill some peasants. So I charged in with my Knights and used the 'Repent Sinners' ability to kill a whole bunch of them, leaving just a couple. The crossbows in the building tried to kill the Bishop with a round of fire, but he is the kind of guy that fights 8 Knights alone so they were not successful. Of course my 2 Knights died, and half of the next unit which I brought up to attack the crusader mounted. I charged into the building with my own crossbows and killed off all the Crusader crossbowmen, proving once and for all that Trutonic cross bows are best.

Sadly this sparked off a blood feud for control of the ruins. The Crusader Mounted and the Archers (very night Robin Hood looking guys, an old GW kit apparently) killed out my cross bows and took over. Then I sent in my men at arms to kill those guys and so forth. Many dead people and all that.

Looks like our Bishop is into again!

After seizing the all important ruined columns I now had an opportunity to beat up the Crusader Warlord, so I sent my Knight commander around who the charged in with my Men at Arms. Sadly there was a Knight just with in range to take hits for his boss so I ended up one hit away from killing him. I made a desperate attempt with the other foot but no dice.

The Crusaders counter attacked on there turn with the Ascalon ability to boost their warlord up to 10 attack dice, so my Knight Commander finally achieved a Glorious Death.

So once again a real fun game a tournament. Not super successful but allot of fun. I think I could have won round two if not for some mistakes but oh well. I didn't stick around to see who won the prizes (Tom had great support this year!), as I wanted to had to the bar and have a beer with the Kingston/Ottawa guys. Never pass up an opportunity to give Ed a hard time. Looking forward to the next Saga tournament!


As before here are a bunch of random pictures of the con:

Excellent Terrain from Muskets and Tomahawks Tournament

Same

I have to get into this game, really regret not getting the book now!

SAS raid a long table

Tod's Blucher Game, looked very nice

Will have to give it a try after all

So there you have it, another great convention. Things really picked up on the second day. The tournament events really seem to be picking up lately, the tournament room was full again, despite the biggest one (Flames of War), being moved to a different spot. They had a real impressive with like 8-10 tables of people playing an Ancients game called L'Art de Guerre, no interest in it myself but was impressed they had so many players. I have been moving away from the big battle scale games towards playing more skirmish like games like Saga and maybe Muskets and Tomahawks.

At the dealers area I picked up a bunch of stuff. Starter armies from Gripping Beast for Pagan Rus, and Rus Princes for a game a cangames, allot with some Teutonic Knights on foot for me to paint as the Livonian Order. Sadly they were sold out of the Men-At-Arms Foot set. Then I got a Beothuck Warband from the excellent Footsore Miniatures. They are also supposed to send me a Brad Pit from Fury!, foot and in cupola. So that should be fun. I will update my painting score next painting post, but this is sure to destroy it.

Thanks;
Mike

Cold Wars! 2015 - Day 1

So back again from Cold Wars, had a great time. Thought it would be a good idea to put up a blog post of what I got up to down there. Basically there are 2 main days of the convention Friday and Saturday, so I figure I will do 1 post for each day and put up maybe some brief reports of the games I got into, and also just some random pictures of games, I took while walking around, that looked cool or interesting for whatever reason.


WW2 Naval - General Quarters 3

The first game I got into was a WW2 Naval game, I don't recall the exact name for it, but the general idea was that I was to take some Japanese destroyers and try to slip off the table before some American destroyers could destroy to many. To complicate things it was a night battle, and the American vessels all had radar. So it was to be me and a fellow named Kenny vs Chris and another chap.

We had a force of 5 destroyers in a group of 3 and a group of 2. So we decided to hedge our bets, and have the group of 2 commanded by Kenny run straight at them to create a distraction, while I made a B line for the table edge at maximum speed. Now the Japanese destroyers were pretty fast capable of 35 Knots, so I should have been moving 17.5 inches at the start. Unfortunately I misunderstood or was just stupid and ended up moving just 17.5 cm for 3 turns basically.

The main form of combat is taking shot with large caliber guns, or launching Torpedoes. I decided to try a long shot with some torpedoes early on to see how it worked in this game, and since the Japanese had very long ranged torpedoes. I managed to get a nice hit in which is what this picture was off. (Sadly I just remembered to take 2 photos).

 
Here is a wider shot. The discs hide what direction you launch torpedoes in. So our force of 2 advanced straight out and got pounded pretty good, they eventually both sank, but crippled one of the Americans and we got a few hits on some of the others here and there. Unfortunately my mistake had cost us the whole point of this endeavor and I didn't get far enough along for it to be super useful. The Americans chased back over to my ships and started hammering them, Chris got off a niec shot with some Torpedoes doing allot of damage. In the end I didn't loose any before I got off, but the last in the line was crippled and all had taken fair damage. So basically 3-1 for the Americans. Frustratingly I ended up not much more then 18" from the endge so if not for my mistake it may have been possible to slip off, but who knows.

Painting Class

After that we attended a class at the painting university on Skin Tones. Basically on how to make good use of the painting Triads (1 dark shade, 1 mid shade, 1 highlight), how to mix colors to get the needed tones, and where to apply highlights. Got some good tips and advice (use make up websites to find out where to apply highlights and shading). So was a good class.

Great Swamp Fight - Muskets and Tomahawks

Finally on Friday night I played in the game I had pre-registered for, which was a muskets and tomahawks battle. People have been talking about this game for about a year, seems to be popular in Kingston, and the terrain at the tournament last year was really cool. So I figured it was about time to give it a go.

This battle was a part of King Phillips War in the late 17th century. This was part of the on going struggles between the settlers and the Native Peoples. On December 16th, 1675 a force of colonials guided by Indian allies attacked an Indian fort deep in a frozen swamp, in what became know as the Great Swamp Fight. I took control of a colonial force with a few regulars in red coats, a bunch of irregulars and then some angry milita with club and pitch forks. The basic idea is that cards are drawn from a deck and when a troop type comes up they all get to do 1 action, reload, move, shoot, charge ect..

The Indians where all asleep except a few guards so we got the jump on them. Our task is to kill as many as we can and burn down the village. First turn had us trying to squeeze through a break in the palisade, while our allies the praying Indians charged right in.

The basic idea seems to be that colonials have lots of powerful muskets so can shoot up the Natives, but the Natives move faster and if they get into a melee bad things happen to the colonials. On the plus side the Natives have bad morale so don't like to take casualties.

For some reason the guys controlling the Natives insisted on charging our Indian allies with there defenseless villagers, so with the Game Master shaking his head these were killed. Starting to wonder if I am being tricked into a massacre.

Seems I was being deficient in taking pictures again. But we kept up the pressure closing in. When all the Indians in the huts finally woke up and charged out we had a bit of problems and lost a few units to some melees. But then the god of the cards decided that on turn 3 all of the colonial cards would be drawn before the Natives so we got to shoot them all up and prevented any effective counter attacks. So in the end we broke their force and burned out a hut. I lost all my Regulars and a few Irregulars, and we also lost almost all of our Indian allies, but still a solid win.

I really liked this game so am looking forward to trying it out again, I figure I can just use my Beothucks that I had done for Saga last year. I need to get a model to use as Demasduit (Mary March), and maybe a game in the Exlopits River with Captain Buchan could be arranged.

Finally here are some random pictures of interesting games:

Very nice set up for Song of Drums and Tomahawks

Search for King Solomon's Mines

Thanks;
Mike

Painting - Blitz!

So lots of painting in the last week or so. I had to finish off some M113s for our Arab Israeli War game, and a few more Knights for Cold Wars, and I have been busy for a few weeks actually on a secret project to re-base some of my 15mm Samurai Stuff for a Pike and Shotte game at Cangames.

M113:

So first up I have a platoon of M113 Armored Personal Carriers to carry around my Jordanian Infantry in style. Had to get these done to make the 900 point size for the last day of the campaign. This is the plastic Jordanian kit from BF, but I don't think anything is different about it other then 4 guys to stick out of the hatch. They were super easy to put together and the parts fit almost perfect, and easy to paint so very happy with that kit.

So there are those guys, happy with how they came out. Luckily I had written down the colors used to paint my last batch of tanks so I could go back and look it up!

Vallejo:
Black
Khaki Grey
Desert Yellow
Dark Sand
Reflective Green

Liquitex:
Transparent Raw Umber Ink
Black Ink

GW:
Leadbbelcher
Chaos Black Spray

Teutonic Knights:

Next up I have the last for knights from my Fireforge box. Gives me the option to not use the Bishop if I so desire, plus it's good to actually finish off the full kit finally! I ran out of the Desert Yellow I was painting the bases when it came time to do the rims, so I just painted them black for now. Pretty standard now but here they are:

I did half and half on the lances and melee weapons this time so I would have 6 of each. Running out of helmets that don't have fancy attachments now so I had to use some bigger ones, but that is ok.

Games Workshop:
Leadbelcher
Mithril Silver
Chaos Black Spray

Vallejo:
Black
Dark Grey
Natural Grey
Deck Tan
White
German Camo Beige
Ivory
Woodgrain
Dark Sand
Chocolate Brown
Japan Uniform WW2
Smoke
Orange Brown
Flat Earth
Desert Yellow

Foundry:
Flesh Shade
Flesh
Light Flesh

Decals from Battle Flag

And there is a shot of the full box of 12 completed and all ready to crush my enemies at Cold Wars (or so I hope).

Finally just for fun here is a shot of my full milites christi force so far, 12 mounted Brother Knights, 8 foot Knights acting as Warriors, 8 Brother Sergeants with Spears, 8 Brother Sergeants with Crossbows, a Knight Commander, and a Bishop of War. Looks like a bad time to not be a Christian!

Samurai Re-Basing:

So the last project I have been working is re-baseing some of my Samurai from DBMM over to something I think is better for Pike and Shotte/ Hail Ceasar in 15mm. Since each unit is now 1 base instead of 4 it's easier to move them around, they look better (I hope), and fewer figures are needed to make a unit.

This has really re-invigorated my taste for painting 15mm Samurai stuff, and I ahve a TON of them unpainted so that is really good. So far I have just been working through my Useugi Clan forces, and have 3 units of Ashigaru with Spear, 3 Skirmishing Ashigaru with Ranged Weapons, and 1 unit of Samurai Cavalry.

So there is a group shot and a single shot. The bsaing is 100mm x 25mm. So far I have painted 2 Nage-Yari (pike) previously, is now 3. For the basing I have just used the Baccus basing set which I find to be excellent and a few different kinds of flock and small rocks. On the Skirmish bases I have put farious different items of supplies and such from Museum Miniatures. Really happy with how this one is going.

Pledge Status 2015:
Bought: 32 
Painted: 40
Total: +8

So at +8 for now but I am about to buy a bunch of stuff at Cold Wars.

Thanks;
Mike

Weekend of Battle - Saga and Fate of a Nation Thoughts

So had a busy weekend playing wargames this time around. Played some SAGA with Duncan on Saturday, and then we had the last day of the Arab Israeli War campaign at the club.

Duncan has already put some battle reports up on his blog so instead of repeating the same thing I am just going to through up some pictures of the battles and give some general thoughts on things. Here are some links to the relevant blogs with the reports:

SAGA:

http://intermittentre.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/saga-saracens-vs-milites-christi.html

Fate of a Nation:

http://intermittentre.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/fate-of-nation-final-round.html

SAGA:

So the main goal of the SAGA day was for me to try out my army that I am going to use at the tournament next weeked at Cold Wars, and also to test out the custom scenario that the guy running it has created. Basically you have 3 treasure tokens in the middle of the board and the players have to go get them and take them off the edge. However this is complicated by it being quite order intensive to move them as you generate allot of fatigue.

Initial Setup

I wanted to give the Bishop of War a try to see if that option was worth doing, so I took a warlord, Bishop, 2 units of 4 knights each, and 3 units of 8 warriors 1 with crossbows. In the first game I attacked early with the Knights and thought I could try and cut back on the Saracens ability to move off with the treasure, while my foot guys came up and got the treasure.

The Bishop and his Knights bring some pain to the  Arabs in the Holy Land

This plan did not work out very well, the way the Knights battle board works it is better to build up piety for a few turns so you can make better attacks with your good troops in the late game. But I did quite like the Bishop, his Warlord lite ability is useful to have. Basically you can activate the Bishop once per turn for free and he can take a unit along, and they can charge together. He also has a cheap SAGA ability to gain 3 attacks and become respectable in combat. I still think he is likely to be a bit fragile, but the resilience rule usually seems to discourage him being attacked. So I do think the Bishop is a fun unit to have around.

Not so many Knights left now!

The other big winner for me was the Crossbow unit which was surprising. The Normans can also have a unit with crossbows, but I have found them to be kind of crap and generally not worth having. The Knightly Order cross bow unit thou is much better, there is a SAGA ability that gives and number of attack or defense dice equal to you piety level +1, which can be used to shoot. So generally you will end up at 3 or 4 extra dice before long, this doubles the effectiveness of the cross bows in shooting. So instead of killing 1-2 models you are getting 2-3, which is huge. The knights are allowed to get more also, you are just limited to now having more crossbows then mounted knights. So I think another good way of running this army would be to have 3 units of 4 Knights, and to big units of 12 warriors 1 with crossbows. I am working on getting this set up painted now so I will have a few options.

In the end I lost this first game, Duncan had 2 Treasure tokens for 4 points, and I had 1 and more kills for 3 points. The second we played was 'Clash of Warlords', I did a bit better there and managed a win so 1 for 1 so far hah.

So basically I am finding the Knights to be a fun and interesting army to use, am hoping to do better this time around then I did at Fall in with the Beothucks!

Fate of a Nation:

So the other big thing was the Arab Israeli game. I had a bit of a wurh to paint up some M113s (will post later), but managed to finish them and have 1 900 point force. I was quite looking forward  to trying this out again with the new book so everything was re-balanced. The Jordanians in particular were given quite a boost.

Initial Set Up

We rolled for a mission and got Pincer, since the Jordanians are Always Defend this meant the Israelis would have to attack. I was a bit worried at first, as we had 2 3 platoons armies in our combined Egyptian-Jordanian force and could only deploy 3, that we would get broken on company morale very easily. But in retrospect a big platoon of 10 T55s is not so easy to get rid of!

In the end the opposite happened and the Israelis were broken. It seems that the key yo success with the T55s Egyptian force is to keep them stationary, as long as they sit still they are a powerful and dangerous force, but as soon as they have to move, there chance to hit goes way down as they have both Hen and Chicks and Rate of Fire one. This means that they need a 6 to hit the Israelis in the open at short range, and can't hit at all if they are concealed or at long range. So the Israelis have to play a high stakes game of cat and mouse, ducking into and out of cover, and trying to mass on 1 platoon at a time.

Round 2 Start

In the second round we decided to try Free For All, so everyone would get to use all their stuff, and there wouldn't be such a huge advantage for the defender as there was no defender. My plan was to come around the hill at the bottom of this picture and kill everything around the objective to the north of the back building, while my infantry in the fast APCs snuck around to capture it.

Carnage

This kind of worked, but with so many big tanks on the table, stuff was dieing all over the place. This time we felt the pain of Air Support and took a couple of good hits from the Israeli Air Force, meanwhile our Egyptian MiG was no where to be seen. I found the Jordanians much more fun to use this time around, with the handicap of Hen and Chicks removed I was free to maneuver around and actually play the game which makes all the difference.

I think the only mistake they made when redoing the book was not also removing Hen and chicks from the Egyptians. They can make all the excuses they want about play balance, and using it to make them cheap so they get tons of tanks. But the fact is that this rule is not fun for either side (no fun if you can't move, no fun to fight a huge hoard of tanks), so this is a rule that makes the game less fun to play and therefore is bad.

I was quite happy with how things work between Jordan and Israel thou, I got 7 tanks with good armor, and some infantry, and they got 4 tanks with weak armor and 2 with good armor, and better training. So I think this is pretty balanced and some real games can happen. I really liked this period so I will eventually be expanding up my Jordanians to 1500 points, and may get some Israelis as well who knows. I still have to paint the infantry, and then have a second mechanized platoon to do so I could maybe try out that army as well.

I will post another painting report later this week when my painting Blitz is over.

Thanks;
Mike