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.

French transport, 1940

Given a bit of spare time yesterday, I dug out an old toy and converted it into some transport for my 1940 French in 20mm scale.

I started with an old Lesney die-cast Scammel recovery vehicle with a broken towing arm. Some carved balsa wood and glued-on tissue paper gave it a canvas-covered rear platform. I think it looks like a reasonable approximation to a French artillery tractor, perhaps something from the Laffly company?

As you can see, there are two. The one on the left, above, I made about twenty years ago by a similar method. The colour matching isn't perfect but I'd think canvas tilts in particular would vary in colour.

I've no plans to use these at the moment but it's nice to know the second toy is no longer sitting in a box waiting for me to do something with it.

Sorry, which dice?

Just over a year ago I had a go at using The Pikeman's Lament to recreate a typical action from the Russo-Turkish War of 1711. This was a first attempt at using my 6mm Great Northern War collection with the Osprey renaissance large skirmish rules.

I used some of my home-printed dice holders to keep track of casualties but it was a bit of a pain keeping track of them and making sure the right one stayed with the right unit.

With a bit of time on my hands I thought I'd have a go at designing something that would keep the die with the unit.

I designed a sabot that's 1mm thick and 3mm larger than my standard 30x60mm base in all directions. I then added a 1mm high wall around the edge and a 2mm high socket for a D6.

Adding a unit of Cossacks and a 7.5mm D6 we end up with...

I'm thinking that maybe a white D6 could be used to indicate strength points from 6 down to 1. A Green die could be used for strength 12 down to 7 for these Russian infantry of Sweden's Regiment, replacing it with a white die when they reached half strength...

I can also use other colours to distinguish between unit qualities. Perhaps these Tartars are "Elite" with their blue die...

And in this case two 30mm squares fit fine as well.

The next step was to paint the bases and add a bit of flock...

I'm happy with these; tempting me to have another go at The Pikeman's Lament (or of course they'd also work for Lion Rampant).

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.

Ebor Lard Report part two

I was so busy during the day at Ebor Lard that I had virtually no opportunity to observe the other games in progress.  However, here are the pictures I took:

Joe Bilton's "Montcornet"
28mm Chain of Command II

More of Montcornet

Charley Walker's "The Full Nelson"

Jeremy Short's "The Sword in the Stone"
28mm Dux Britannarium

Ian Hemmingway's "What a Scaver"
28mm What A Cowboy variant

Simon Walker's "The Hills are Alive..."
28mm Sharp Practice

John Savage's "Escape to Dhuran Duran"
29mm Sharp Practice

Ken Welsh's "Never Greater Slaughter"

28mm Midgard Heroic Battles

Ebor Lard Report part one

Having fallen down some steps and sprained my ankle the previous weekend, Ebor Lard suddenly became a logistical challenge. Fortunately I was flooded with offers of transport. Thanks to all who offered and to Andrew Snowdon in particular for ferrying me to and from the evening meal.

I ran my Infamy Infamy game The Iron Hand of Mars in morning and afternoon sessions.

I was pleased with how the table looked when set up. The large, painted divider-thingie made a brief appearance to demarcate the area scouted by the Romans at the start of the game but was then banished under the table.

The Romans on the march

The morning session began with the Romans deploying from one corner of the table and needing to march across to near the opposite corner. Above we see them well on the way.

Batavian skirmishers emerge from the woods

German tribesmen hit some of Justinus's legionary 
recruits in the rear

The morning crew: Ned (Civilis), Dave (Gracilis),
Richard (Albrecht) and Michael (Falco)

In the afternoon session I reset the game with a couple of tweaks to make it play faster. I'd already decided to move the Roman camp to the middle of one side of the table when John Savage suggested that, with everyone affected alike by the terrain, I could treat the forest as open ground for movement purposes.

The afternoon crew: Andrew (Albrecht), Michael (Civilis),
Bob (Falco), and Chris (Gracilis)

The changes did indeed see the sides come to blows quicker with, at the end, one or two Groups from each side routed.

In this version Fabius Gracilis was lost in the forest with his routing troops. I'd like to think he came to a sticky end. Either way he won't be pursuing a career in the Senate.

The fighting was inconclusive in the time available but it was punishing enough that Julius Civilis announced his intention to retire from actively opposing Rome. The dream of a united Europe led by Gauls and Germans will have to wait a few centuries!

That will do for now. In part two I'll post some pics of the other games.

Quantifying Lard part two

The post analysing player choices at Steel Lard excited some discussion here and on a couple of social media platforms. This prompted me to revisit the analysis.

Rather than mess around comparing the popularity of each offering with the "average popularity" of games in each year, I've now just expressed each by what proportion of the first or second place choices it received each year. 

The choice of rule system table is pretty much unchanged (though I've lumped all of the Chain of Command variants into one:

System	Average Pref 1 or 2
GDA2	0.182
Pickett’s Charge	0.175
CoC (all variants)	0.163
Kiss Me Hardy/The Full Nelson	0.15
Sharp Practice	0.126
When the Last Sword is Drawn	0.091
Algernon Pulls It Off	0.091
Dux Britanniarum	0.091
What A Cowboy	0.084
What A Tanker	0.070
If the Lord Spares Us	0.045
Kriegspiel	0.045
O Group	0.036

Again, I'll not cover the relative popularity of individual game-runners (though I can reveal that your host has achieved solid mid-table mediocrity). 

Operating from memory of the games offered, I can reveal the following scores with respect to figure scale:

Scale	Average Pref 1 or 2
Naval Games	0.150
28mm	0.128
15mm	0.109
Aerial Games	0.091
10mm	0.070

That bigger toys are popular perhaps says something about the average age of the community?

And, probably somewhat arbitrarily, here's an attempt to quantify "scale of game" for the land-based games. 

Scale of Action	Average Pref 1 or 2
Large Skirmish	0.129
Battle	0.110
Small Skirmish	0.098
Strategic	0.045

Here I've used "Small Skirmish" to mean those maybe-a-dozen-aside games like What A Cowboy or When the Last Sword is Drawn, "Large Skirmish" for those fifty-odd aside games like Dux Brit, Sharp Practice or CoC, and "Battle" for larger actions. Oh and I treated the one Kriegspiel game as "Strategic".