Steel Lard 2024 Report - part one, the games

Another Steel Lard has gone by and I'm pretty satisfied with how it went. We gathered on Saturday morning at Patriot games and set up the games. John Savage was running his very pretty Vietnam War scenario Up Country using the new second edition of Chain of Command.

The second edition isn't available yet but John's been involved in the play-testing. As such, John's game was by far the most popular with punters keen to try out the new rules. The fact that John's games are always gorgeous didn't hurt.

Also in the play-test team and presenting a CoC2 game was Dex McHenry. Dex kindly stepped up to run his game Squarepegged Valentines after another game runner dropped out. The game featured Kiwi-crewed Valentine tanks in the jungle against the Japanese in 1944; well outside their designed environment and after they'd been withdrawn from service elsewhere!

Dex plays all of his games in 15mm scale, which is perfect for Chain of Command as the model scale matches the ground scale of the rules.

Another WWII game was Alex Sotheran's Crossing the Vire. This was also in 15mm scale but using the battalion-level O Group rules. Crossing the Vire was our only all-day game. The Lardy Day audience seems to prefer to get in two different games during the day but I know I've really enjoyed playing an all-day CoC game and Alex's players seem to have had a great time with this game.

Our final twentieth century game was Ian Garbutt's offering using a modified version of What a Tanker! 

Called, after a plaintive radio message from a US tank commander during the battle, It's a Shit Show, the game saw American Shermans blundering into a German defensive position including not one, not two but three King Tigers!

Jamie played in this one in the morning and really enjoyed it. Played with 10mm scale models, the game featured some innovative and successful fog-of-war mechanisms that kept the US commanders on their toes at all times.

Jamie also played in Phil Crebbin's Keep the Last Bullet for Yourself. This was a What a Cowboy variant in an H P Lovecraft-inspired setting. Sorry, only one picture of this one but it was popular with the players.

Ken Welsh provided another episode in his series of French and Indian War Sharp Practice games. War on the Run saw Rogers' Rangers clashing with French-allied native Americans along the La Chute river. Contrary to historical precedent one of the British players managed to get Robert Rogers killed in action.

Ken's games are always very pretty but unfortunately I only managed to get any pictures during the inter-game pause when there were no miniatures on the table. Still nice though!

Finally there were my two offerings. Two because we had a game runner drop out through illness in the last few hours before the day. I dusted off a planned reserve scenario using my American Civil War figures and the Sharp Practice rules. Fortunately Matt Slade and Ian Hemmingway were scheduled to play in the morning and afternoon sessions respectively and were able to take on most of the umpiring responsibility.

It wasn't the prettiest game but it did feature an interesting plot twist. The single group of "Union Cavalry" that appeared part way through eventually turned out to be a party of senior Confederate officers. In fact this was something of a disguised scenario. Although it was based on and advertised as Port Gibson, Mississippi on 1st May 1863, in fact much of the situation was derived from Chancellorsville the following day and a thousand miles to the Northeast. 

In the morning session, Matt's Union troops managed to wound one of the "cavalry",  an action that I subsequently revealed was leading to the death-from-wounds of General Thomas J "Stonewall" Jackson. 

In reality Jackson was shot by Confederate infantry and succumbed a couple of weeks later. In our second game he survived unscathed.

Finally there was my own Siege of Puebla 1863 game using the Sharp Practice rules.

I was mostly too busy to document what went on but I did get this pic of players Mark, Daniel, Terry and Stewart...

I designed the game such that a scenario that could potentially be quite static was made more mobile by means of the night fighting rules (see my previous posts) and giving the player-leaders interesting character traits and objectives. These seemed to work quite well in both run-throughs.

Another innovation in this game was that the achievements of the players in the morning session would influence the set-up in the afternoon.

The morning French players managed to detonate their mine under the walls of the penitentiary...

... and to capture half of the building and the nearby public gardens. In the afternoon game the French attackers were allowed to position deployment points in both of these blocks.

In addition, any buildings destroyed by French shelling in the morning remained in that state during the afternoon. This gave us a realistic progressive destruction of the city as fighting continued.

In the morning game I had two complete SP novices so I had to be more involved with Puebla and leave Matt Slade to run the Port Gibson game. This meant that I got a decent idea of the progress of the scenario. Despite heavy losses the Mexicans managed to hold on to all but two front line blocks.

The morning session was a great illustration of how Sharp Practice excels as a narrative game. Mark was suffficiently enthused after his first ever game that he's put Sharp Practice on his shopping list.

In the afternoon Michael, Grayde, Barry and Andrew took over. They would play the same characters with the same personal objectives and force levels (as if the morning hadn't happened) but with the damaged buildings and deployment zones based on the morning session.  The morning French players' progress allowed their afternoon successors to start with deployment points in the public gardens and one half of the penitentiary.

The afternoon game flowed better because there was a higher proportion of experienced Sharp Practice players. This led to my spending more time spread between the two games.

The French managed to capture the penitentiary after several fierce bouts of fisticuffs. 

Character development worked particularly well with Lâcharde, the Legendary Hero of France, being knocked unconscious and, who knows, maybe losing his reputation. Captain Balourd of the Turcos rose to the challenge and seems to have overcome his crisis of confidence. Meanwhile Victor Vectra of the Puebla militia managed to recover his father's Toledo-steel sword from a ruined house on the enemy siege lines.

In the end, though, the superior quality of the French soldiers told and by the time we reached a suitable stopping point the Mexicans were down to a single point of Force Morale; Vive la France!

Part two will follow shortly with a report on the Wee Derek Awards and the evening's merry making.