Fort and entrenchments plus defenders are from Simon who developed the rules and umpired. The besiegers, Martin and Steven, supplied their own troops. I provided the explosion markers.
The rules were based on the SPI boardgame about the siege of Lille.
The following photos were taken with my phone which I am slowly getting the hang of.
The Allies in position to start encroaching on the fortress.
The brave defenders.
End of the first week.
I managed to delay the work on one sap,
but must start rationing my ammunition.
End of week two - the saps are getting bigger.
Week three and the parallels commence.
One of the fortress' bastions and the ravelin have taken a bit of damage.
End of week four and the besiegers are now in a position to bring some of their guns forward.
My infantry safe behind the fortress walls.
Week five and things are looking serious.
We are now within mortar range, not that there is much ammo.
As it was it was silenced on its debut
(which explains why it is facing the wrong way)
Week six - we can't quite see the whites of their eyes yet...
The enemy mortar.
Neither mortar seemed much good at getting hits.
In fact much of my defensive strategy relied on the enemy missing.
Week seven.
Week eight.
The attackers manning the entrenchments.
The defenders behind the walls.
Week nine.
Week ten.
It is now or never.
We mass our fire against the enemy building their forward saps.
This one is blown away.
And the other one as well.
I am down to seven rounds of ammo for my siege guns and three rounds for my mortar.
Week eleven and all my troops are to the forward defences.
An attack is imminent.
But it never came...
My guns were down to their last round, but the enemy's artillery was exhausted.
This is as close as they got.
The fortress survives.
A great storyboard Mark. I take it that each turn was measured as a week. Is the fortess scratchbuilt or a proprietary item? Either way, very impressive. An interesting variation would be the possibility of a relieving force.
ReplyDeleteCheers.
Thanks. Yes, each turn was a week. Simon scratchbuilt the whole thing. It's magnificent and it was a great honour to be its defender in its first appearance on the table top.
DeleteI think there was some aspect of a relieving force,or lack thereof, that provided the attackers with extra ammunition, but locked up in the fortress we didn't have too much intelligence about it :-)
I should probably clarify that the fortress walls come from Battlefield Accessories but the glacis and all of the saps, batteries and parallels are scratchbuilt, (though using 400 Renedra gabions and 100 scratchbuilt fascines). there are also 500 28mm figures on the table, ignoring the 20 cannon! Everything about seige warfare wargaming meets Stalins dictum.- "quantity has a quality all of its own".
DeleteThanks for a great write up.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great game and allowing me to defend your fortress.
DeleteWhat a glorious spectacle!
ReplyDeleteThanks. I can just take credit for this post plus the explosion markers (which indicated positions were under fire). Oh, and the victory! :-)
DeleteInteresting to play a siege. Quite different than the usual miniature wargames. Pretty cool! 😀
ReplyDeleteYes and a good way to get a lot of figures on the table along with some different terrain.
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