Happy Samhain / All Hallows Eve / Halloween

Happy Samhain to All! Now most people know this as Halloween and presume that it is some American festival, and of course nothing could be further from the truth. As a young lad growing up in Cork we always celebrated 31st October. This was not a trick or treating event, but an evening spent playing various games like trying to take a bite out of an apple on a string, or dunking apples, watching bonfires, and eating Irish stew and especially the sweet bread called barmbrak (Irish: bairín breac), and see if you were lucky enough to find a ring or a coin in the cake (and not a rag or a stick). 

Samhain was one of the four main pre-Christian festivals and usually fire was a key symbol. Some of these have survived through to the modern day especially in Cork and the wilds of West Cork, so that on 23rd June we also lit large bonfires and celebrated St.John's Eve (or
Lughnasa as the old festival was called). 

So the Irish stew with a glass of Guinness is on the table and the barmbrack is in the oven. I hope a great evening is had by all who read this blog.

First test game of Dux Britanniarum

After reading many positive reviews of Dux Britanniarum, and having had great games with Sharp Practice, I got the full set of the game along with printed cards a few weeks ago.  I had already tried out the other "Dux" (Dux Bellorum) a while back, which itself was very good for larger stand alone battles.

I don't need to repeat in detail the high production values, but it's all there and the cards are a nice touch.  The rule mechanics seem straight forward, as is usual with the Lardies rules stable, while the addition of a separate Fate Deck of cards really makes for a dynamic game.

We decided to start with a test game, which was also the first encounter of the campaign. As others have mentioned, the campaign system is the real draw of the rules. This first encounter was a Saxon raid on a Romano-British village. As part of the campaign system the Saxon Lord has to build up wealth (or "Filthy Lucre") through a series of village and cattle raids, as well as raids on wagon trains and Churches. With a sufficient amount of victories he is able advance his social position and eventually bribe his warriors to declare him Warlord. Only via this process can he gain the fighting units and social prestige that will eventually allow him to conquer his first province and hopefully set him on the road to conquer a small kingdom.

The Kingdom coming under attack was the North British one of Rheged, and the raid was on the province of Caer Brogwm (just south of Hadrian's Wall in what now would be Cumbria). The Saxons were attacking from Coriosopitum in the old Kingdom of Bernaccia (current Northumberland) which had recently fallen to the Saxons.

The task for the Saxons, pretty much like a modern bank robbery, was to get in, find the stash of gold in the village and get out quickly. The objective of the British was to stop, catch or hinder them in every way possible (basically try to wipe them out).
 

The Saxons were led by a new Lord, Aethelfrith (pictured at the very top with his champion), who was on his first raid, supported by two other nobles, Eadric and Theobold. As you see, in the rules there is a character generation procedure before the campaign begins. This is a nice touch, and gets you closer to "owning" your force (the characteristics that you have to roll for will also effect how they perform in the battles and campaign).

In this particular raid, the Saxons managed to get a four turn head start before the British turned up. This was enough to get the second-in-command and a band of warriors into the village to start searching for the gold (Eadric above cajoling his warriors to find the loot).

The British when they did arrived turned up in the middle edge of the table, half way between the village and the escape route for the raiding Saxons. They then proceeded to slam into the back of one unit of Saxon Elite Warriors (see the picture above), who lost a few casualties, but more importantly took a lot of shock points, indeed many more than they had men, and so triggered what was an automatic rout (called "Losing your Amphora") from which there could be no rally (the remains of the unit rout below).

To stall the British further I sent a combined unit of two Warrior bands, with the attached Saxon Lord and his Champion (this gives multiples of points in Close Combat). To this was added an "Aggressive Charge" Fate card which added more advantages, though the British played a Shield wall Braced Fate Card as well, plus the British in Shield wall will always ignore the first kill inflicted on them. Now the Fate Deck cards, plus some good dice, can be key to any encounter and are at the heart of the combat mechanism. Each side get 5 cards at the start of the game, and can use the cards or hoard as needed. Each of the cards confers a certain tactical advantage in combat (or evading it). In some instances you can play multiple cards in one Close Combat, but each noble can only pick up one card at the end his activation, so you have to be careful how you use them.

Anyway, in this instance the Saxons manage to rout one unit, though the second held. In the next few rounds of combat though, the British Shield wall wore the Saxons down and they finally routed.

During this period of fighting the other Saxon warband was searching through the village and finally after 5 loot tests to find the gold came up trumps and started the long journey back off the table while trying to avoid the British (you can't fight and carry bags of gold at the same time).

Now the other thing that was happening was that the Saxon army morale was slowly counting down. With each routed unit the rest of the force has to take a morale test, the result of which will reduce army morale. Once army morale gets to Zero then the whole force abandons the table. Each starts the game with a morale of 5, and then with some dice rolls during the start phase this can be pushed up to a maximum of 9. Lose a raid, and in the next campaign games your force starts on a -1 to morale, encouraging the player to be a bit cautious.

In this case, the rout of one Saxon unit dropped army morale below zero, and the Saxons fled the field pursued by the British. They had taken moderate casualties which meant that it would take 2 campaigning months for the force to recover. The British as winner got to keep the gold and some more from the Saxons, and could replenish their losses faster, thus giving them a free hand in the next campaign month. If the Saxons had won, they could have had an unopposed raid the following month to increase wealth, and with that perhaps increased the lord's status and even hired extra units for the next raid or battle. I think this gives you an idea of how good the campaign system is, and how it informs the table top game.

I really can't recommend the rules highly enough. All the figures and buildings were from Gripping Beast, apart from Aethelfrith himself, who is a really well sculpted figure from Musketeer Miniatures.

The Perfect Captain - Spanish Fury 2 or Pistolado test game

Unfortunately that small little detail - life - occasionally gets in the way of blogging. September has indeed been a tad spartan on blog front, so I thought I'd throw up a few images of the nicely painted toys we used in a game this afternoon at the club in Prague. This was a test game for an updated set of rules Spanish Fury-Pistolado from The Perfect Captain team.

At first site this is a nice looking set of rules dealing with the late 16th Century conflicts of the 80 Years War (wars of Dutch Independence) and the French Wars of Religion (but could be used for any 16th Century conflict). Like all the Perfect Captain rule sets, these can be downloaded for free from here: Spanish Fury Rules

The production values of the various unit cards, counters and scenarios are very high, and it's really just down to the quality of your printer how well they will look. The rules are laid out in the usual Question-Answer format of all the Perfect Captain rule sets (such as Red Actions for example). Frankly I don't like this and it led to a lot of head scratching as we tried to figure out the rules during the test game. Though written for 80 Years war, we decided that they would make a good base for adapting to the 30 years war.

In regard to the mechanisms, once we got through the maze that is the rule set, these turned out to be quite straightforward. All actions are simultaneous, and questions of who goes first in contested sectors is solved by comparing the initiative levels of given commanders and a roll of dice.

Firing is by size of units cross referenced with the size of the target, with standard modifiers.  Changing formation/ crossing obstacles requires a "Marshaling test" which essentially is to see if the action can be completed or not, and if it causes any disruption. This is quite good and is a fair representation of the difficulties in moving blocks of Pike and Shot. Disruption which is represented by different levels of Cohesion, can also be caused when taking casualties, or if the army morale declines. Decline in levels of cohesion will effect how a unit fires or performs in close combat. This focus on morale and cohesion seems correct. My only quibble is that Artillery seems to be too powerful. Perhaps we didn't understand the rules correctly, but the artillery seemd to be highly effective in disrupting units, which I believe was only tue in a few instances during this period (such as Swedish artillery in one or two battles).

Basic to the rules is that both sides' brigades must have written orders at all times. Changing orders is tricky as well, as they take time to arrive, and depending on the quality or character of the officer in charge, they may decide to ignore or change their orders. Commanders can also doubt there existing orders and try to change them as well in certain circumstances. This to me nicely represents the friction of Renaissance battle.

The test battle was a basic Imperials versus Bohemians (with some Swedes thrown in), and took the form of a frontal slog, both sides having assault orders. As said after an hour the game was moving along smoothly. The Cavalry charging/counter charging mechanism was standard and worked well, and the melee results relaistic. What I particulalry liked about the melee and firing rules were that the chance of dice had a lower effect on the outcome if there was a clear imbalance of force; many casualties and disruption to cohesion points were automatic to a certain level if your regiment  was large enough. So "double 1" anomalies were few and far between, and the results realistic to my mind.

The next task for us now is to create some more 30 year war unit specific cards, and the bigger job of stripping down the current ruleset and to re-arrange it in a more convential format.

The figures were all from my friend Petr, and were a mix of Perry, Foundry, and Warlord Games, all the flags were hand painted, many on cloth.

Death of Seamus Heaney

It was with much regret this afternoon that I heard of the death of one of Ireland's greatest poets Seamus Heaney. Of course he did not belong to Ireland, but was part of the broader stream of European poetry over the last 50 years since his seminal first collection "Death of a Naturalist", though many of the motifs he used were taken from his rural childhood.

I had the good fortune to meet him briefly in Prague 3 years ago after a poetry recital at Strahov Monastery (organised by the Irish Embassy here). Considering his immense stature in world literature, he was a very modest, unassuming and down to earth gentleman.  He will surely be missed

Below a few lines from one of my favourite poems from "Death of a Naturalist"

Lovers on Aran

The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,

Came dazzling around, into the rocks,
Came glinting, sifting from the Americas 

To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush

to throw wide arms of rock around a tide
That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

Did sea define the land or land the sea?

Each drew new meaning from the waves' collision.
Sea broke on land to full identity.

Opa "Guilford Courthouse" style...

Normally the Prague Wargamers take a break over the summer holidays. Many families in the Czech Republic have country cottages to which they go to during the weekends to  escape the heat in Prague (summers are short but very hot in Bohemia). So from start of June to September wargaming stops. One exception is my friend Petr, who always organizes a game and BBQ. In this instance last week we gamed a stripped down version of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse (or rather a game inspired by it)

 The British, with a smaller but higher quality force were faced by the Americans with a few lines of militia behind fences, in front of a second line of Continentals. To win the day, the British would have to punch through the militia and strike at the Continental main force behind.

 Militia (we can say North Carolina) in the first line awaiting the British attack.

 The British line infantry advancing to attack.

 British skirmish line in front duelling with American skirmishers and militia.

The rules we used were the first edition of British Grenadier. We do have the second edition, but forgot it on the day. We believe the game played more-or-less the same anyway, Disruption Points being one of the key game mechanics.

The game played out in a remarkably similar fashion to the actual battle. The British pushed aside the Militia in the centre, but were badly shaken on the right flank as disruption points mounted up, and then were charged by Continental dragoons.

American guns about to be overrun by British grenadiers.

The British open up the American Centre (a militia unit has just routed and disintegrated).

 

The American centre is forced wider open. At this point the American army was effectively split in two. What followed was the slow and grinding reduction of the American second line
  

British Cavalry flows through the gap and catches first two American infantry units in the flank, followed by a regiment of American dragoons. The American right flank is routed from the field for the cost of one British battalion (which charged forward unwisely only to be also caught in the flank by American cavalry).

 The British right flank in trouble. Already pushed back and close to routing.

At this stage we called the battle, and decided it was a marginal British victory. The American Centre and right flanks were gone.  They were fighting on gallantly on the left flank, and had forced the British brigade there to retreat (and captured the British guns). However, the British brigade which had stormed and wiped out the American centre were now turning on the American right flank, and had mostly fresh elite troops (including Grenadiers), so it was just a case of when the last American flank would collapse.

 The pile of American lead casualties.

The British casualties.

The game played well, and was a tactical victory for the British, though considering the number of British casualties suffered, this would have been a strategic victory for the Americans. As in the actual war, it was the attrition on British units (as successfully advocated by the American General Morgan), and not battles won, that decided the war in America's favour.

New sculpts and releases over at Orinoco Miniatures

Just to let you know that you can find news of many new releases in the pipeline over at my  Orinoco Miniatures Blog.

This includes new Spanish and Gran Colombian Infantry, along with a new range of flags (see image above).

I hope you like them :-)