Ambush!

Mark and Jamie came over on Sunday and we had a first go at the Infamy Infamy game that I plan to run at Steel Lard. I'm using a scenario originally presented by C S Grant in an issue of Military Modelling magazine article in the late 1970s!

The idea was to come up with something that would meet two design objectives. It should:

• be faster to run than The Iron Hand of Mars, which was great fun but not ideally suited to the typical Lardy Day time-slot, and
• focus the players' minds on completing their mission rather than just fighting until one side or the other runs out of Force Morale.

In this case the pacing is driven by in-game time pressure. One side is escorting a valuable cargo and if they don't make good time, they will find that their only path to safety is across a ford that's no longer passable due to heavy rains.

The Dubrisians must march from the near table edge
to the ford in the distance. The ambushers will emerge
from the left of the road.

In this first playtest Jamie took on the role of the Roman-like Dubrisians. They were tasked with escorting Princess Zenobii and her dowry to her betrothed, the emperor Osbosis of Dubris.  (I've kept as much as possible of Grant's original background events, names and places.)

The princess's cataphract guard led the march

Mark was in charge of the fierce hill-men determined to capture the princess and the wagonload of gold and jewels accompanying her.

I'm going over to multi-based figures rather than sabot bases for Infamy Infamy. With so much close combat in the game, it's a real faff to cope with loose models when two or more units are in close proximity. Dice holders with yellow dice allowed us to track the units' strength points, avoiding the need to remove casualties.

Before the ambush - a Dubrisian watchtower
overlooks events from the other side of the river

Mark had chosen to put some of his ambushing forces in an area of low, broken ground beside the road. This entailed some risk that the ambush could be detected prematurely but the dice gods were kind to him for once.

A horde of fierce warriors dashed out of the rocky area and slammed into the flank of the Princess's cataphracts. Despite their heavy armour, the latter were soon pushed back, retreating through the narrow gap between the road and the river.

The Dubrisian legionaries deployed to the side of the road.

Mark is intimately familiar with the idea that sometimes the dice gods spit in your eye. On this occasion he managed to get his massed warriors into a position where they could co-ordinate an attack. The timely play of an Infamy card gave his men a sudden burst of movement just where it mattered. A subsequent conventional activation would see them crash into the enemy legionaries.

Mark's warriors would normally get 2D6 inches of movement but in rough going they'd drop the lower-scoring die. I'd just suggested that with about 3cm to cover they were bound to get into contact when Jamie piped up with "He could roll two ones!"

Needless to say that's exactly what Mark then did. His warriors were agonisingly short of contact giving the legionaries a potential chance to respond violently to the charge!

The fighting continued for some time. In fact we all lost track of how long the game had gone on; an indication of a fascinating scenario but not ideal for my play testing requirements!

The Dubrisians had sent some allied light cavalry forward to examine the ford and they soon announced that it was now passable only by wading - the vehicles would have to be abandoned. 

Cavalry commander Andred Vertegree picked up the princess and attempted to carry her to the ford...

 ... but unfortunately they were caught by the pursuing hill men and Jamie was forced to concede defeat.

I was pleased with how the game went but it was still a bit slow. Since Sunday I've come up with a couple of mechanisms to speed up the start of the game. We should now be able to start in media res with the slow march of the convoy having taken place beforehand. 

One more playtest is probably called for but I reckon I've got a game that will nicely fit the Lardy Day template.

Transiting the ford

A spurt of post-Ebor-Lard creativity has seen me design a new Infamy Infamy scenario for Steel Lard. 

Based on a C. S. Grant scenario from  47-year old copy of Military Modelling magazine, it involves the escort of a princess and her dowry to meet her husband-to-be. I'm calling it "Ambush" or "The Princess Bride (Not That One)" so you can imagine that things will not go according to plan for the escort.

One of the things I wanted to build into the game was time pressure. This is to be achieved by the river, which has to be crossed by Blue, the escort, rising as a result of recent rains. If they don't cross the only available ford in time, the princess will be unable to join her intended. This will probably have fatal consequences for the commanders of her escort.

I decided that the ford should become progressively harder to cross as the waters rose. In fact I identified four stages to the process. I won't reveal the details at present but it then occurred to me that it might be fun to swap in different models as a visual indicator of the situation.

A quick Google of Roman-era fords revealed several images of irregular stone paving sloping down into the water.

Wanting to create modular pieces I could slot in in sequence, I decided to use some old cork and melamine drink coasters as bases. I chamfered the corners and added earth texture, where required, using quick-drying Polyfilla coloured with cheap acrylic paint.

The result is four stages of flooding:

Stage 1 - we can see the stone surface of the ford on both banks
and in the centre of the river

Stage 2 - the centre of the ford is now fully submerged

Stage 3 - a log is floating downstream
as a tribesman wades across

Stage 4 - fully flooded and clearly dangerous!

Another addition required by the scenario is the Princess's cataphract escort. I've had these Warlord Sarmatians for years since I saw them going cheap at the Penkridge tabletop sale. I've now rebased them on one of Simon Miller's "Bat Bases".

I've decided to adopt 12cm wide bases for all of my Infamy Infamy units; they were far less fiddly in use at Ebor Lard than were the sabot based miniatures. They'll also do nicely for To The Strongest, Basic Impetus or in future Midgard.

Keep an eye out here for further developments towards the Ambush.

Playtesting continues

On Sunday I managed to get together a team of play testers to try out my Ebor Lard scenario. The result was the clear realisation that I need to revisit the overall approach!

I don't want to go into detail at this stage but Mark, Phil, Ron and Gus proved that my chosen mechanisms worked well simulating the process of getting lost in the trackless forests of Germania. We also demonstrated, though, that the process is too long-winded for a game at a Lardy Day. A thoroughly revised approach is called for.

Florius Gracilis and his hunting party lead legionaries
through the forest

Revolting Batavians

Confusion in the forest:
It's far from clear who's fighting whom

The result of the game was a large amount of manoeuvring and negotiating; fascinating but again probably not suited to the Lardy Day experience. In particular, I'm expecting to cater for players at least some of whom want to experience Infamy Infamy for the first time. I'm going to rewrite the scenario to something far more conventional and straightforward.

-o0o-

On Wednesday, Dex and I went down to Patriot Games in Sheffield. We wanted to discuss some Steel Lard administrative matters with the staff but it also gave us the chance to get in another game of Infamy Infamy. 

Because it's easy to transport, I brought along the latest revision of the Battle of Cirta scenario that I ran a week or so ago. I tweaked the rules for the effect of surprise on the defenders' ability to deploy onto the table. The result was that King Adherbal never made it onto the table and his royal guard arrived only after the battle was already lost.

Dex's commander leads his horse through the enemy
camp. The orange stars mark burned-out tents.

The Royal Guard arrive too late

The result was a glorious victory for Dex. He's now going away to consider whether Infamy can be adapted to early medieval Ireland!

Numidian Infamy!

The son and heir came over on Sunday and we had another practice game of Infamy Infamy. Rather than setting up the Iron Hand of Mars terrain with its enormous number of trees, I decided we'd have another go at a scenario based on the Numidian Civil War of 118 BCE.

I played Adherbal, one of the rival Numidian kings. I had one unit of spearmen (Warriors in Infamy Infamy terms) and a few skirmishers and cavalry but all of my troops had to dice to emerge from their tents and might start the game with unfortunate amounts of Shock as a result of the surprise attack.

Jamie took on the role of fictional Jugurthine commander Arabio leading a mixed force of javelin-armed fort and cavalry skirmishers. 

Jugurthine cavalry chase off some of Adherbal's skirmishers

We used the Numidians I based some years ago for To The Strongest. They're on 12cm wide unit bases with so, with no figure removal possible, we used blue micro dice to mark losses. 

The game was fun, with lots of darting attacks but it pointed out a problem with the Infamy Infamy rules in this particular historical setting. With forces made up almost entirely of skirmishing troops, it was almost impossible for either side to lose Force Morale. This was because:

• You don't test for morale loss if Skirmish troops are forced to withdraw (only if they're completely wiped out),
• You don't test for morale loss if Warriors withdraw due to being shot at (rather than in melée) , and
• The wounding or death of Supra numerum Leaders (predominant on both sides) is ignored in the game.

In the end we called it a day with the attackers well on top but unable to force a result. We were nevertheless happy to have improved our familiarity with the rules.

I'm in two minds as to whether to pursue this scenario further. I could see it making an attractive participation game for an event like Hammerhead but I'd want to:

• Model the camp properly, perhaps with a rampart of thorn bushes defining the boundary of the broken ground,
• Model the walls of Cirta at the city end of the table,
• Think more clearly about the mechanisms around deploying surprised units onto the table,
• Revise the Loss of Force Morale table to capture the factors likely to cause a Numidian army to break, and
• Add more "character" Leaders to both sides.

I want to get to the point where my familiarity with Infamy Infamy is such that I can immediately see how I could use the rules to run a variety of small unit actions. I'm there with Sharp Practice but the varied nature of ancient armies makes this a bit more challenging.

Filling the Forest Floor

I have The Iron Hand of Mars, my scenario for Ebor Lard written (in two versions pending playtesting next weekend) so I'm working on improving the appearance of the game. Lardy Days always feature some fantastic terrain and I don't want to be left too far behind.

The entire table represents a portion of the dense German forest. There's no chance I could put down enough trees to represent that accurately, and if I did there'd be no room to deploy the units appearing in the game.

With spread-out singly based trees, there's a danger that the table resembles savannah with individual trees sprouting out of level grassland. I want some low-lying terrain pieces that tie together the trees into a coherent primeval forest.

I'm putting together a bag of "forest floor scatter" that will be strewn across the table but I've also taken the opportunity to make some generic small terrain pieces.

They're based on irregularly shaped "rafts" from my 3D printer. For some reason I find that I can only guarantee proper print-bed adhesion by selecting the Raft option when slicing stl files so I generate quite a few of these.

The ground surface is Bond It Dark Oak wood filler, the rocks are rocks and the vegetation is two grades of static grass over an initial layer of fine flock.

Revolting Batavians!

I've also been experimenting with a technique I picked up from a model railway magazine. This tree is made from a cheap, Chinese-made tree armature. I soaked it in hot water to get of the original fluorescent green foliage and then painted it with Modpodge before applying two shades of static grass using my applicator. 

After I'd left it to dry, the coverage of the original plastic wasn't complete so I sprayed the whole thing with WSS layering adhesive before applying a third lot of static grass. Finally a whizz of hairspray to try and lock it all in place. We'll just have to wait and see if this will have the longevity to withstand transporting and storage between games.

Infamous Events

The "learn Infamy Infamy in short order so I can run it at Ebor Lard" plan continues to make progress. On Saturday Jamie and Phil came over and we played a scenario I'd designed specifically as a learning exercise.

The idea for The Summer of 69 came from an episode from a podcast called The History of Cologne. Episode 7 on the Batavian Revolt depicted a time when the city (then called Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium) was at the heart of a region overrun by raiding Germanic tribes and revolting foederati. With Colonia's strong walls attracting refugees and a drought causing food shortages, it made sense to run a foraging mission into German territory across the Rhine.

The set up was randomised using the tables in the rules. Below we see the area of battle before the game began. Note (far right) a single tree knocked over - the only casualty of leaving the game set up from the night before with a cat in the kitchen!

I think the Geek Villain Rocky Grass mat works quite well for summer-parched Europe.

Needing three areas of habitation for the scenario, I made a new A-frame hut to supplement to two Jamie could provide. Materials were foam core, cardboard, wooden coffee-stirrers, and Milliput for the thatch.

Jamie entered from the west (left above) with his legionaries in column of march.

German slingers emerged on their left and were opposed by the Romans' own in the form of some Balearic allies.

Who were in turn attacked by German warriors.

The Roman commander was forced to split his legionaries to respond to attacks from two directions.

Eventually, we came to a fierce action near the centre of the battlefield.

With time moving on, with plenty of rules interpretation questions under our belt, and with the Romans outnumbered in the main fight, Jamie decided to concede the day. 

With some Roman-allied Gallic light cavalry in his rear and with one undamaged legionary Group to his front, Phil was relieved. He later said that he thought Jamie could still have won from that position.

-o0o-

On Tuesday evening, I decided to build on my familiarity with the rules by solo-gaming a small Numidian Civil War action. I knocked up a scenario based on a passage in Sallust. 

Following the death of King Micipsa, Numidia was divided between his sons Hiempsal and Adherbal and his far-more energetic nephew Jugurtha. 

Jugurtha quickly arranged for Hiempsal to be murdered and then took up arms against Adherbal. Armies led by the two men met near the city of Cirta (modern day Constantine in Algeria) but it was too late to form up for battle so both made camp. In the early hours of the morning Jugurtha's army attached the unprepared enemy and Adherbal only just escaped to be besieged in the city.

This was a fun exercise with both forces consisting almost entirely of skirmish cavalry and javelin-armed foot skirmishers.

I won't go into details here of what was a confused affair but suffice to say it was great fun. With a little adjustment (I should have imposed greater penalties for surprise on Adherbal's units) I think it could make a fun Saturday Afternoon Wargame.

My next step will probably be to set up a solo, alpha test of The Iron Hand of Mars scenario before introducing it to my Saturday Afternoon play-testers.

A bit of Infamy

With Ebor Lard coming up in little over a month, I'm well into a programme of preparation for my Infamy Infamy game The Iron Hand of Mars. The scenario is written, I have sufficient terrain (though more is in development), and I have 75% of the figures painted and based.

The plan now demands that I properly master the Infamy Infamy rules (I've previously only played in other people's games) and playtest the scenario. Rich Clarke did a series of play-though videos on YouTube when the game first came out and following these step-by-step is proving very helpful.

The coming weekend sees the next stage as Jamie, Matt, and Phil will hopefully be joining me for a practice scenario I'm calling The Summer of 69AD. Set during the civil wars following the death of Nero, the outline is as follows:

After the assassination of the tyrant Nero a year ago, first Servius Sulpicius Galba and then Marcus Salvius Otho wore the purple. Now Aulus Vitellius, commander of the Rhine Legions has seized Rome and been declared Emperor by the Senate. This year will surely go down in history as The Year of the Three Emperors!

With the legions away securing Vitellius’s position, the situation of the Roman cities and forts along the Rhine is precarious. Several have already been sacked by rebellious Gauls and Germans. Marauding barbarian warbands and, it is said, rebelling Batavian auxiliaries haunt the countryside.

Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (modern-day Cologne) is in a particularly difficult position. Its strong defensive walls have attracted soldiers and civilians from across eastern Gaul but drought is making it hard to feed these additional mouths. Having largely exhausted the resources of the surrounding farmland, foraging expeditions must now be mounted into the forests across the Rhine.

I'm going to use smallish forces and leave out some elements of the rules. A straightforward foraging scenario should enable us to master the basics of the system.

I need three areas of habitation and Jamie will hopefully be bringing along a couple of suitable buildings from his Saga collection. I have another in production thanks to foam core, cardboard, coffee stirrers, Milliput and an off-cut of MDF...

Beware the Calends of September

In a moment of madness I offered to run at Ebor Lard (first weekend of September) the Infamy Infamy game I'd originally intended to have ready for Steel Lard (in November).

One Roman force - I need two!

While the basic game design is fairly well laid-out in my head, I still have to complete at least two items of terrain and at least three units of Romans. I also have to properly learn the rules and adapt them to fit my somewhat peculiar scenario. Oh, and playtest, playtest, playtest!

And I have to do all this in eight weeks, the first of which I'll be spending on holiday in Scotland. Wish me luck!

Batavian Auxiliaries

Further into the woods

Production on terrain for The Iron Hand of Mars continues apace. One of the locations in the game is an abandoned Roman marching fort, now overgrown. It was left behind in 9AD when the legions of Varus set out to over-winter back on the Roman side of the Rhine.

Standard procedure would have called for its destruction before the homeward march. That it remains intact serves as a chilling indicator that Varus's men thought themselves in friendly territory. They expected to return the following Spring and reoccupy the place. Instead they were ambushed and slaughtered by the German tribes under Arminius.

By the time Marcus Didius Falco arrived in the forest, the defensive ditch was clogged with brambles and the interior of the fort was a dense thicket of saplings.

Obviously I wouldn't have room to represent a whole multi-legion fort on the table so just a corner of the rampart appears on the table edge.

The base is 2mm MDF rescued from the packaging of a framed picture bought on line. The rampart was built from layers of foamcore and all but the ditch received a coating of brown wood filler for texture.

The brambles are rubberised horsehair (an advantage of being married to a traditional upholsterer) glued in place with matt Modpodge over the black-sprayed ditch. A light airbrushing in burnt umber then gave a suitably bramble-like colour.

The rampart got my usual layering of static grass over fine flock. I deliberately let some areas remain as bare earth. This is not a manicured lawn.

Finally I added some vegetation inside the fort. The silver birches are cheap Chinese-made trees tarted up by painting the trunks and dipping the tops in fine flock after a good coat of Modpodge. A few 2mm clumps in mixed colours and clump foliage bushes complete the picture.

In the book, Lindsey Davies indicates a more substantial structure with a rotting wooden palisade. Given the constraints of table space I decided to go with a simpler (and perhaps more believable?) structure for my abandoned fort.

Into the woods

The plans for an Infamy Infamy game inspired by events from Lindsey Davis's novel The Iron Hand of Mars continue apace. First up I've completed the construction of my German force.

Using a mixture of Wargame Factory and Victrix models we have five units of warriors (one of them oathsworn veterans), one of fanatics, one of rebelling former foederati, and one of slingers.

The former foederati represent a group of Batavians led by their former commander Julius Civilis.

I've gone for a preponderance of blue clothing and shields for these guys and given them rather more helmets than the general run of tribesmen. I see them as holding on to remnants of any former Roman army-supplied clothing and/or equipment.

Most of the German warriors are much less well-equipped. They lack helmets and fight with spears and javelins rather than swords.

At least one group of oathsworn warriors is needed. I've distinguished them by means of a more swords and more helmets. In The Iron Hand of Mars they'll represent the relatives of the prophetess Veleda.

Finally for now I've done a key piece of terrain in the form a sacred tree...

This will be the centrepiece of a sacred grove. The tree is sculpted from Milliput on a skeleton made from copper wire and a wine cork! A severed head from the Victrix Gallic cavalry set adds a nice detail.

I'm going to need more trees for the game so I've got a production line underway.