Crisis Point 2025 - Saturday Report

The past weekend saw a gathering of wargamers at Dungworth Village Hall near Sheffield for the latest Crisis Point weekend. It turned out to be a classic example of the wargames community pulling together to produce a really enjoyable experience despite the fog of war doing its best to mess things up for us.

At 10:30 on Friday evening we were expecting to have two 20mm scale games set during the 1990s Civil War in Andreivia. I would be running my Arc of Fire scenario Attack in the Northern Hills and Mark Kniveton would be giving us A Hilltop Village, another Andreivian scenario using the Force on Force rules.

By 10:31 Mark had got in touch to report that his grown-up son had been injured in a hit-and-run incident in Barnsley and was in hospital. Obviously Mark would not be able to be with us on Saturday and we were suddenly down a game!

Fortunately a quick exchange of texts with Andy Taylor and Neil McCusker recruited these two fine gentlemen to dust off an idea that had been parked since the the great Covid-Crisis-Point-Cancellation of 2020. They would run a game set in 1760s Andreivia using the Maurice card-driven rules. This was of course a tremendous load off my mind as the event organiser!

I'd been able to set up my game on Friday afternoon so Saturday morning just needed a quick briefing to the players as they arrived followed by re-allocation of players to games to fit the new situation while Andy and Neil set up their game on the table-tennis table I'd originally earmarked for Mark.

My game used two tables. The western one had two Andreivian-Armenian-controlled villages connected by a road zig-zagging up the valley. 

Hamadzaktun (foreground) and Khndzori Arahet (rear), both held by the Armenians

The eastern table represented another valley with one village occupied by the Armenians and another (Melas Gora) under Andreivian Government control.

Menak (left) under Andreivian-Armenian control and
Andreivian Government-held Melas Gora (right) 

The valleys were connected by the Maghali Pass.

This was a terrain piece I threw together out of polystyrene packaging material in the week or so before Crisis Point. I have no plans to keep it as I can't see myself using it again but I wonder if there's some owner-of-a-wargames-venue in, say, Staffordshire who might find a use for it?

With six players of varying levels of familiarity with the rules, I was too busy to do much in the way of documenting events but here are a few pics:

Russian airborne troops supported by a T-80
advance on Hamadzaktun

An Armenian T-55 advances to engage the
Russians

Armenian militia in Khndzori Arahet

Russian grenade launcher team deploys to
cover the advance

An Armenian militia mortar team

An Armenian sharpshooter team deploys into some rough ground

That T-55 again

The battle for Menak between Armenian militia
and Russian Naval Infantry was fierce.

Melas Gora was well defended by Andreivian
Government paratroops

A Russian MiG-27 on a ground-attack
mission. The camouflage is good innit?

By the end of the game the Russians
hadn't managed to destroy either of
the Armenian artillery pieces bombarding 
the International Airport

We had planned that the game could continue into Sunday if we needed it to but in the event we were happy that the Russian attacks had made as much progress as they were going to without significant reinforcement.

The Andreivian Government had three victory points as a result of holding Melas Gora but their hopes that ATV News would get pictures of Russian atrocities were scuppered when the reporters' car was peppered with Russian bullets early in the game. The Russians gained a single victory point for taking Hamadzaktun and might have got another for Menak in another hour or two but they didn't get close to taking out the Armenian artillery. The Armenian guns had continued to fire throughout the game and as a result the Armenian players reached their target of five victory points. I'm therefore calling it a victory for the Andreivian-Armenians.

Elsewhere Andy and Neil had set up their Maurice game. Unfortunately I only got a couple of photos on Saturday.

Forces of the British Honourable Black Sea Company 
advance by columns

Saturday saw the Ottoman Turks and their Andreivian allies defeat the British after a long battle that seemed to provide plenty of entertainment to the players.

With both games finished on Saturday afternoon I had the unusual opportunity of tidying away my toys completely. In previous years I've still been packing away after six pm on the Sunday! We didn't have anyone stopping over in the village so I could have a relaxing evening albeit one spent making sure I could set up another game for Sunday.