Meanwhile, in Isengard - 2

Here are three more “waaag riders”, as the late Sir Christoper Lee so wonderfully puts it, for my Isengard army.  The two chaps on the right are metal castings, from the now OOP Games Workshop Warg Attack boxed set.  The archer on the left is a plastic figure.

The mounted archers give this army a skirmish cavalry capability to go against the Riders of Rohan.  In Dux Brittanorum/Rohirrim or Dragon Rampant, I can rate them as skirmish cavalry with the evade option.

 

Desperate and smelly hard riding fellows.

Pretty tough troops, but they aren’t able to go everywhere (poster in NYW by street artist William Puck).

 

These fellows got used in a recent monster game of Dragon Rampant .   Stephen hosted with his big gaming table, allowing us to put five armies a side.   My Isengard force went to another player who narrowly drove off a samurai war band.   I fielded a Rohan-based force at the other end of the table.  At 24 points per war band, I spent most of them on two 6 figure units of Elite Riders, one of them with bows.   I took three foot units, a  12 figure Light Archer unit and two 6 figure units of Scouts, using my elven warrior nymphs in an unlikely role as allies of humans.    Scouts are basically Bidowers in Lion Rampant.  At full strength they shoot with 12 dice, they can flit through woods and bad terrain, and they can Skirmish/Evade.   God help them if they get caught in melee, but they can do a lot damage before the enemy can come to grips.

 

Towards the end of the battle things got pretty funky.  In the centre of the last photo you can see an actual dragon, trying to catch the nymphs in the woods with his flaming breath.  The chaps with green dots on their heads are hapless orcs, who walked into a wall of arrow fire and got badly shredded.   A bone-lich rides a boney steed centre left and tries to keep the dragon alive.   This sort of scene shows the range and kookiness of fantasy battles with DR.  Of the eight fellows in the game, only two had played Dragon Rampant before, and everyone felt it was an easy game to learn and a fun game to play. 

 

 

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 56; Mounted Figures: 8; Buildings: 2; Terrain Features: 4

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

OP THUNDERING DICE PART 1: My Bidower Blues

There was some epic wargaming this weekend when I travelled three hours west to Stratford, where James (Rabbitman) Manto and I staged the second of our Wargames Sleepovers, also known as OP THUNDERIN|G DICE (T-shirts to come).

James tells the story thrillingly here. I thought I would tell the story in several parts, as time permits.  While we gamed from Saturday morning through Sunday afternoon, I'll start the story on Saturday night, when we gathered in James' basement.   I've been making the pilgrimage to this basement for at least fifteen years, off and on, as the vagaries of time and distance permit.  It has hardly changed a whit, and the while the cast of characters has changed somewhat, the ones that remain are as dear as brothers.

 

Mike, Patrick and James gather over a game of Lion Rampant.  My orcs bottom left.  Click, as Kinch says, to embiggen.

The game was Lion Rampant, which suited me just fine, as it has become a staple of my little gaming group in Barrie, and I like it more and more each outing.  It was a splendid chance to see James' stellar medievals collection.  Mike and I got the evil dudes.  Fulk the Bastard (with his pet vulture on his arm and his dreaded Black Company) had hired some orc mercenaries from the hills) while James took the eco-friendly and bad-guy unfriendly Forest Guys, suspiciously resembling a Welsh warband.  Patrick marched in from a nearby CityState with a medieval Italian host.   Historically accurate we were not.

 

Fulk's bastards and some Ork spearmen (classed as Foot Sergeants) advance on the innocent village, intent on putting it to fire and, of course, the sword.

 

 

 

My leader, Gothmog, leads the cream of his Wolf Boy cavalry to ride down the pathetic and lightly armed human archers.  He doesn't realize what he's doing, poor monster.

 

It all starts going wrong.  James has a wicked combination of six figure bidower archers, who generate (as far as we could tell, this was right) 12 dice of shooting death as long as they are above half strength, can skirmish (move and shoot with -1 off the firing dice) and are hard to hit.  Those fellows, backed up by the javelin armed light infantry in the woods, see off my Ork beserkers (Fierce Foot) who broke and ran under the arrow storm.  The berserkers can be seen dead top right, poor things.  My Orc heavy foot (Expert Foot Sergeants) advance, but the lights retreat into the woods, where they fight at an advantage.  This is how fighting Wood Elves must feel.

 

Speaking of Elves, a mysterious group of dangerous young ladies hung around in the woods - Galadriel's Grrrlz, maybe?  They took no part in the fighting, but they copped a lot of attitude, and no-one dared go near them.

 

 

Orcs up to mischief.  One of James' splendid medieval houses goes up in smoke, having been put to fire and, of course, the sword.  This was the evil high water mark.   Note more detested bidower archers behind the house to the rear.

 

 

My Expert Orc Sergeants prove that experts are just over-priced help who don't know how to really do anything.  They are being shredded by javelins and, of course, by bidower archers.  They will shortly break and run.

 

 

Having swept my right wing away, James puts his whole line into motion.   You can see the ruins of my (shockingly underpainted) WolfBoys on the right.   Gothmog led the remnants in a death ride which at least had the satisfaction of catching two units of the hated bidowers who failed their evasion rolls and got torn up, before javelins from the chaps in the woods at centre took Gothmog down.   He died, choking out words of hate - I think it was "Curse you, nasty tricksy shootsy army of James" or some such, but no one was really listening.

 

On the right wing, Mikey B had the advantage of sweeping his side of the table.  The Italians seemed to melt, one unit after another, under the Fury of the Bastard, but as the remnants of Mike's army savoured their victory, James was redeploying towards them.  Fulk recalled his pet vulture to his arm and rode off, vowing to raise another army, but ruing the money he had spent on Orks.

 

Final verdict - great game.   I need to develop some way of countering light shooty troops, seeing as my ork force is pretty heavy foot.   I do have some Isengard tracker types, the ones seen in the SPJ TT film, who might fit the bill.     If Lion Rampant is this much fun, I predict I will enjoy Dragon Rampant all the more when I finally give it a try.

 

Thank you James for a great weekend, even if I hate your nasty shooty bidowers.

 

 

Blessings to your die rolls!

 

MP+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaming Roundup - Lions and Eagles

I haven’t had a chance to blog this yet, but last Thursday at the games club I finally got a chance to try Lion Rampant.   After Bruce and Charles had finished their first game, between two Dark Ages forces, Charles graciously gave me the chance to play a re-set with his Islemen army. 

I was impressed at how quick and decisive the game is   Combats between units are short, sharp and decisive, and units which are beaten in combat have a tendency to disintegrate shortly thereafter.   At the same time, the unit activiations are unpredictable and can be pleasantly frustrating.  My wild and crazy foot were perfectly positioned to charge a weakened unit, but sat at the bottom of the hill and soaked up arrows for several turns.  Ugh.   

Fortunately I held back my two strong units of armoured foot, along with my hotheaded leader, until the endgame and wiped the table with them.  Here Bruce’s archers stand nervously around, waiting for a buzz saw of bearded psychos in armour and axes to descend on them.   

I quite like LR and look forward to trying its fantasy cousin, Dragon Rampant.

On Sunday I made the hour long drive south to Toronto to play one of Glenn Pearce’s epic 6mm Napoleonic games.   The last time I was there in the summer we did Ligny, and since then Glenn and his chosen men have been slowly studying the Waterloo Campaign.  This time it was the latter half of Plancenoit.  When the scenario starts, the French hold the town and Lobau’s corps is extended  in line, hoping to slow down the Prussians.  I was assigned the Prussian right under Bulow and had all sorts of advantages including a cavalry brigade (Beier) that was free to right around the left flank of the French.  You can see them on the top right, getting ready to charge into the back of Bony’s brigade while Loebell’s infantry brigade pins Bony from the front.   At the left centre, my other good brigade of infantry, under Lettow, marches forward for a firefight with Thevenet’s brigade.

I was very fortunate on my left.  Before this photo was taken, Lettow’s brigade staggered Thevenet’s with very lucky musketry, and then charged home, Lettow leading from the front.  I won the melee, dissolving Thevenet’s brigade, but losing Lettow for a turn to a slight wound.  That meant his brigade milled about in confusion, and blocked the follow on brigades from exploiting the hole in the line.

On the right, Beier’s brigade of cavalry charges Bony’s brigade.   In these rules, are assumed to take the most advantageous formation.  So, Bony’s brigade have the advantage in fighting the cavalry and see of Beier, destroying one of his three units of Uhlans.  I was a little frustrated that the French infantry was not considered to be in square and thus suffer the fire of Loebell’s troops.  However, I was delighted to learn that they were considered to be turned about, so Loebell was able to charge them in the rear and shatter them   

 

Chris, as the French player, now had nothing to stop Bulow except for some Young Guard skirmishers, whom he gamely pushed forward.   But that was pretty much the game.  With Lettow’s brigade back under command and reformed, and reinforcements coming up behind, I was in good shape to crack the French line wide open.

 

 

On my left there was lots of stuff going on in Plancenoit, but I didn’t have time to really follow it.   

 

 

Glenn’s rules will be published by Baccus under the title of Ruse de Guerre, and will be marketed as American Revolution to War of 1812.  Glenn and his chums think they work well enough for Napoleonic battles.   For my part I would probably use Blucher for a battle this size,  but I can see the use of a group sticking to one set of rules to give them a common gaming language.   It was certainly grand to play in a large battle at a small scale, and to get a sense of the strategic problems Napoleon faced in trying to halt the Prussians at Plancenot.