Nikephorian Byzantines versus Scythians

Last night at the club, my Byzantines faced Andrew's Skythians.  It would be interesting.  Only challenge was my mind was still caught up with Basic Impetus and it was only Andrew's third game with Second Edition, but at least he had read the rules and that corrected numerous errors on my part.

 Standard deployment.  

The Scythian horse archers are either 3 or 4 strong and that is what the counters denote.
(Thanks Dave for lending me the camp, I'd left my sheep at home.)

 Turn 1 and action is immediate, with arrows flying everywhere.

 Turn 2 and the casualties start to mount (or I guess dismount in terms of the cavalry units).

Note my cavalry is perfectly ready to charge.

 It only gets better when the enemy commander is downgraded to poor.

 Turn 3.

I was one step ahead of myself, now my cavalry is ready to charge!

(The enemy needed to come a bit closer)

Turn 4.

The perfect charge was a fiasco, but we came good in the subsequent fighting.

My cavalry command ultimately broke, but it took out the main Scythian command, 

including killing its now doubly poor commander.

Two things to check:  

1. Does use of the Die Hard tactical card negate the need to do a Cohesion Test?

2. For a Unit with VBU=3 what is the Worn and Exhausted levels? (I assume 2 and 1, but the chart has 2 and 2 ...)

A look in the Impetus 2 Rules thread found this answer: A unit of VBU 3 is exhausted when it takes one loss. http://impetus.darkbb.com/t1261-worn-or-exhausted?highlight=VBU+3+worn

Semovente 47/32

I've always wanted a model of one of these since I read a an article in Military Modelling magazine back in the 1970s.  It was how to scratchbuild one in 1/76th scale.  Sensibly I never attempted it.

"Ciao mamma!"

  But of course in 15mm just don't get one, 

you get two.

I find the early war armour much more interesting than the late war, modern stuff.

Kasserine Pass 1943 - Take Two

Simon and I previously played this scenario in late May.  The Axis won easily, but I was assured this is not normally the case.  In today's game I took the US forces.  As you will see they are cursed!

 The Axis attack the central pass.  

They can make a flanking attack, but it didn't do them any good.

 At the same time the Axis attacked the main pass (the eastern part of the battlefield).

 The Axis maintain their attack on the main pass.

 The central pass is holding well.

 The view from the Axis side as they press their attacks.

 The forgotten 16th RCT of the 1st Division, The Big Red One.

 Again the Axis of attack on the central pass is repulsed,

however they have started to infiltrate around the flank of the US position.

On the US third turn we fail to roll the full complement of ops points

(any result but a one will provide an ops point)

On the fourth US turn we get the same miserable result.

Lack of ops points means reduced movement and availability of combat tactics.

 Those miserable rolls contributed to the Axis capture of the main pass.

 The central pass is now under extreme pressure.

 With both of these passes now lost, the US must try and regroup to protect their supply lines.

 The US infantry start to move up on the central pass for a counterattack.

Another poor US attempt to get ops points. 

 There has actually been a US counterattack,

but it is really just trying to get in some kind of position 

to support the infantry attack on the central pass.

 Which was repulsed.

The US penultimate turn is miserable.

(Note there are eight turns in total)

 The Axis have been able to reinforce their hold on the central pass.

Another US attack, while promising, just lacked troops and ops points to be of any value.

The attacking US force is isolated,

this means it needs more ops points in order to make an attack.

And the last US roll...

Hopeless!

When I got home I sat down and calculated the army points for each side and they are about equal.

The Axis can use both their artillery units, while the US is split between their two combat elements.  This meant that Axis attacks went in with significant weight and if successful were deadly.  The US lacked that firepower, especially towards the end after they had taken some losses.

World in Flames - 1

In a bit of serendipity when I visited Tactics on Wednesday I saw a hand written sign on the noticeboard saying players wanted for World in Flames, giving the location as my suburb and saying to ask at the counter.  While browsing through the store I gave this some thought.  WiF was a game I played and enjoyed many times twenty years or more ago (actually must be closer to thirty years). It is also a big commitment in time.  Then there is the issue of getting to know new players etc...

WiF won and I asked at the counter, but got off on the wrong foot over Flames of War or something.  Thankfully that was quickly sorted and we got on the same wavelength.  Better still the guy I was talking to was the organiser and I was able to talk intelligibly enough about the game that I was invited to play Russia and join them next Thursday.  "You mean tomorrow?" "Yes."

So now I am playing WiF as Russia/China in a five player game using the latest edition and lots of the optional rules.  A bit of a learning curve, but it is all quickly coming back to me.  Major changes seem to be the 2d10 combat system and oil.

 China is not a lot of fun.  

This is after our second impulse and we have pulled back to shorten the line, abandoning a resource hex.  The weather is fine and we were expecting a massive Japanese attack.

 Troops are being massed on the Iran border.

We are also massing on the border with Romania.

Poland is about to collapse and we seized the eastern part and the Baltic States, 

purely to protect them from the Nazis of course.

Unfortunately these actions adversely affected US opinion.

Great game and it's only just starting.  My only criticism is that initial actions seem to be very well defined, optimum play.  There is also a bit of fiddliness in trying to max out the best combat outcome (nothing new in that though).  It always seems with WW2 games of this nature that actions always happen sooner than they did historically (the benefit of hindsight can't be downplayed without a lot of restrictions and that would just produce a recreation of the war, not a delightful game of "what ifs?").  I did read to today that WiF doesn't really start until after the fall of France.  As the Russian player I hope that is a long way off.

The game host is blogging the game in the Facebook WiF group.  A link to the first post is here (although only of use if you are a Facebook user and a member of the group):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1574341082623164/permalink/2536864069704189/

Nikephorian Byzantine versus 100 Years War English Take Two

This is a repeat of last week's game, but I took a predominantly infantry army this time, including my new troops.

 Deployment.

 End of Turn 1.

You would be correct in thinking no one has moved.

 Turn 2.
After brief discussion of the stalemate, 

I shuffle to the right.

 Turn 3 and the English are coming out to meet me.

 Turn 4 and it is taking a while to get into range.

 Turn 5 and at long range the English longbow will out shoot me unless I can do something.

 Turn 6 and my attempts to inflict some bow casualties on my opponent has not been very successful.

Luckily the English shooting was equally as poor.

But Turn 7 and my shooting comes good, very good.

 Bird's eye of Turn 7.

 One of my light cavalry units has got right around behind the enemy.

But are they too late?

 Turn 8 and there has been a largely ineffective clash of arms.

 My new unit is bloodied against the English elite Men-at-Arms and their general.

 Turn 9 and the climax of the battle.

Turn 10 after I seized the initiative and my light cavalry ran through the English rear.

It pays to throw sixes, especially a double six when you want initiative.

More Byzantine Reinforcements

The first of three new legions I am adding to my Byzantine Army, from a packet of Old Glory spearmen and archers.

The only embuggerance with these figures was that they came without hands cast to receive spears.  The spears I made easy enough from fencing wire, but drilling out the hands was a bit of a challenge (most noticeable on the guys holding their spear vertical).  Mark Woods recommended filing a groove into the fists that are to receive the spear and I did that with a few and it certainly gives a better result (I only got the advice when I was almost finished mucking about with them).

Now to get them to battle!

Markers, Labels, Counters...

James of the ANF brought this wonderful post to my attention:
 http://notjustoldschool.blogspot.com/2018/09/west-country-quatre-bras-wargame.html

It's a wonderful example of wargame as diorama as I hope this image from that posts shows:

But there was one particular aspect that caught my eye: the label trays (look bottom left hand corner).  I was impressed that they blended in so well, but also that they were quiet significant in size and complexity.  I don't know the rules they use, but that was not the issue.

One of the blemishes I have with my prefered Napoleonic rules is that at times the figures and terrain get swamped by counters.  The following image from one of my most recent games shows my current level of evolution of with labels.  I am still mainly using counters from the first edition of the rules, with only the casualty markers having been replaced.

I came to Napoleon's Battles around the same time as Fire and Fury and admired the later for its use of miniatures to represent status etc of units.  So that has always been an objective.  Sadly painting up the casualty figures etc has been secondary to painting up units.  So it goes.

At the time I was also playing WRG Ancients and recall a talk by Phil Barker in which he described positioning the elements of a unit to show its status.  In part that was an aspect of Napoleon's Battles (and probably most if not all Napoleonic rules): moving figures about to show line, column or square formation.  This generally works well, but sometimes has footprint issues and position creep (advancing by change of formation).

With my adoption of Impetus and now Rommel, unit labels and associated casualty chits entered a new phase.  I also had a laminator!

So, colour ink permitting, I have and can produce a variety of chits.  Of course glossy reflective surfaces can produce some interesting photographic experiences.

However, the ultimate goal remains using figures to represent status.  A benefit of which is if they are left cluttering up the table they should at least blend in: the challenge of practical/functional versus attractive.

For Napoleon's Battles the following is required:
- unit id and stats
- status
- casualties

Status includes routed/disorder and no move/half move; specific to artillery limbered and possibly "moved" (if using 4th Edition optional rule); and specific to cavalry react.

Here is my first attempt at a disorder marker:

The blue saddle cloth was the inspiration as blue is the historic colour of the disorder marker. 

Getting back to James, the above figure, after a bit of modification to remove the rider who had lost an arm, was a gift from James.  Better still, at the club recently I picked twenty old Minifig horses that will do nicely for markers.  They are being mounted on 20mm washers and that has me thinking I can use different shaped bases (round, square, triangle and rectangle spring to mind) and possibly different colours on the edges to help further distinguish the role of the marker.

To finish up here is my response to James:

Not sure about the game aids.  I agonize over labels and fret over counters.  I have to say how you do it with Shako looks good (as is also the case with Fire and Fury, although the later has labels and I think Shako needs them too for big games when all the players don't know the units).

I have a project to make FnF type markers for Napoleon's Battles.  I need to give some thought to more appropriate markers for Impetus as well.  At least I've made some progress with Rommel.

The problem is always making sure to move any counters with the unit and to still allow units to form up when they do have counters/labels.

Then there is the problem of getting the other player(s) to follow suit...