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

A New Lardy Day

I spent Saturday at a second gaming event/sauna in seven days. West Mid-Lards is a new Lardy Day organised by John Cooper (aka Maraviglia on BlueSky) in Bedworth, Warwickshire.

The venue was a town-centre games shop called Venator Tabletop Gaming. They seem to specialise in Games Workshop and collectible card gaming so, as a historical gamer, there was nothing for me to buy except for the several cans of Diet Coke needed to keep hydrated. If there'd been some modelling materials on sale I'd definitely have picked some up if only to support the shop.

With doors opening to game-runners at 10 and to the public at 11, I had time to get Running For Bull Run set up and chat with mates Ken Welsh and Mike Wilkins before getting down to serious play. Sorry, I didn't get any pics of the other games.

I was delighted to learn that the first game's players would include Chris Clarke and his son James, both regulars at Steel Lard. Chris had already played as the Union side in Sheffield so I decided he should try represent the forces of Fate this time. A quick poll of the other players saw James joining his Dad while Chris Collett and Pete Hartman represented the Union officers.

This was a very tight game. The Union officers did a good job of organising a defensive line that quickly saw off the Black Horse Cavalry. 

The Fate players managed to flood the battlefield end of the turnpike with small units of routing Union men who were then charged by the aggressive Louisiana Tiger Rifles. Although the Tigers lost some men, their opponents were wiped out on two occasions. Union casualties were mounting up and with them the Fate players' Victory Points. 

Unfortunately for the Tigers though, Mr Clarke sr developed a sudden inability to roll high. At a key moment their movement distance was just three inches. This left them smack in front of the forming Union line of battle.

Dice rolling seemed to be no problem for their opponents and the draw of the cards was also on their side. Two unanswered volleys saw the Tigers wiped out with their Leader (Sgt Warren Peace) also joining the casualty pile.

With the Fate Card deck exhausted, the game ended in a narrow win to the Union by 27 points to 25.

I took a stroll to the nearby Greggs for lunch - a corned beef bake and a doughnut. Bedworth reminded me somewhat of Worksop; not an obvious tourist destination. However, Nicholas Chamberlaine's Almshouses are quite picturesque.

The second game started with far less experienced players; Pete had played before and Ben had played the related Infamy Infamy but for Luke this was a first. Pete had to leave early so I allocated him and Luke to the Union side and concentrated on making sure Luke had enough of a handle on the rules to go solo when Pete left.

This was an interesting game; Ben, as Fate, seemed reluctant to deploy routing Union soldiers onto the table and this reduced the effect of the Black Horse Cavalry - there just weren't that many wavering units for them to terrify.

The Union commanders on the other hand seemed to like the idea of getting formed Union forces over the bridge and off to safety. This was something no previously players had considered and their logic was probably reasonable. Eventually I persuaded Luke to stick around and have a go at shooting some Confederates and he did have some success.

The vagaries of the Fate Deck meant that the spectating members of Congress were only noticed to be in the area late in the game. For a moment or two it looked like the Confederates might capture them but in the end a timely movement roll of 11 on two dice saw Luke withdraw them safely behind his developing rearguard.

In the end, though, the Union officers were unable to get close enough to the battlefield-end of the table to rally the Late-arriving routers. The second game was won by Ben's Forces of Fate by 25 points to 17.

Pete, Ben and Luke

The response to the game, both as a visual spectacle and as a gaming experience was overwhelmingly positive and I was delighted that the players seemed to have a good time.

Several people asked me how many times I'd run Running From Bull Run. These, it turns out, were its seventh and eighth public outings (on top of three development/test games). 

We're now getting to the point where the game's been to most of the events I attend. Only Ebor Lard remains and I've already agreed to run Infamy Infamy there. The figures and terrain will continue to see action but I think this particular game may be taken out of the repertoire for a while.

West Mid-Lards was an informal affair and lacked some of the features we've come to expect of Lardy Days (fixed time-table, prearranged allocations of players, after-event drinks and curry) but it was none-the-worse for that. A strong start for an event that could well become a fixture in the gaming calendar.

Gangs of Rome - Episode 1, Wagons Roll!

Yesterday I finally managed to kick off the Gangs of Rome campaign. Gus, Graham, Jamie and Ron were able to visit Stately Counterpane Manor for what will hopefully be the first of six episodes (seven if you include episode 0, which was more of a learning/teaching exercise).

Jamie and Ron were already established as Green gang members so Gus and Graham were signed up to represent the Blues.

Each of the two street gangs has a list of six objectives that will need to be fulfilled over the course of the six-game campaign. The two lists are not the same and each side chooses a mission for each episode. Thus, at the start of the campaign even I as the umpire have no idea what each scenario will entail.

In this case the Blue gang of Tarquinius Caerulius elected to "dispose of a body". This saw them having to get a body to one of two manhole covers and chuck it into the cloaca maxima (Rome's main sewer). To add complications, they had to do this while no-one was in line of sight! At the start of the game the body was in a raeda, a four-wheeled, ox-drawn carriage.

Meanwhile the Green gang of Spurius Verdius had to escort a wagon-load of wine to the gates of the Spurius townhouse.  

With both sides driving wheeled vehicles this had to be a night-time scenario as they are banned from the city during the day. I created a new Action for the driver of each wagon. Drive would allow a wagon to be moved four inches. A given vehicle could only be subject to a Drive Action once per turn. Obviously the Fail State for the Drive Action is "The vehicle doesn't move, Activation ends here."

Junius encourages the oxen forward

My creative input to the process is in deciding on the detail of the objectives, such that conflict is at least reasonable if not actually required! In this case the Greens had to cross the table diagonally and the Blues had to get to a location near the centre of the table so a clash was likely.

And a clash there soon was. The action opened with Maximinus (of the Blue gang) shooting an arrow at Plinius. He missed and to add insult to injury his bowstring broke! Almost immediately further injury was added as his target closed the range and beat him unconscious.  First blood to the Greens!

Maximinus (top right) shoots at Plinius (off camera)

Things continued well for the Greens as Laetius shot Januarius and took him too out of the fight.

The Blues, given a choice of two manholes down which they might dispose of their incriminating cargo, elected to move to the one nearer the centre of the table rather than the one nearer their opponents' deployment area. In retrospect this was the wrong choice but with limited intelligence as to the Green gang's mission this was definitely forgivable. They reached the manhole but with both Greens and vigiles milling about, there was never a quiet moment to ditch the body.

The raeda has just crossed the manhole
but the vigiles are nosing around

The German slave siblings Clovis and Arminius fought fiercely for the Greens, Arminius mostly against the vigiles and Clovis against a series of Blues.  In the end Clovis was stabbed by Pomponius and breathed his last just outside the temple of Minerva. 

Pomponius (in the purple tunic) prepares to stab
bare-chested Clovis as Musca and Titus look on

Arminius holds his own against the vigiles

In the meantime Junius of the Greens had got the wine most of the way to the Spurius mansion.

For a while it looked like Balbus might have a go at interfering with the delivery of the wine as he lurked behind one of Spurius Viridius's ornamental trees,

but in the end, with the law on the scene, he decided to withdraw.

In the event, with time moving on we decided that the Greens were close enough to the mansion to claim victory and that the Blues, who had finally decided to try the other, now deserted, manhole would be able to dispose of the corpse.  

Both sides were therefore awarded three points for achieving their main objectives. In addition, both sides had put out of action two of the opposing side (one of them permanently). They each therefore received a further two points. The campaign score is therefore now as follows:

Blue Gang - started with six VP, spent one to make sure we were playing a nighttime scenario, gained five this time around, new total = 10 Victory Points.

Green Gang - started with one VP, spent none, gained five this time, new total = 6 Victory Points.

Several gang members came away with injuries. For the Blues, Maximinius has a sprained ankle and will be unable to benefit from his personal ability for episodes 2 and 3, while Januarius has a head wound and won't benefit from any re-rolls for the rest of the campaign. 

For the Greens, Plinius has severe lacerations and will be limited to three Actions per activation for the rest of the campaign whereas the unfortunate Clovis has gone to feast with his ancestors. Doubtless his brother Arminius will be out for revenge next time!

-o0o-

I was slightly disappointed with some aspects of how the game went. The rules for using vigiles in a night-time scenario are unclear to me. I need to do some more reading of the rules and perhaps ask a few questions on the dedicated Facebook group. Whatever, I'm confident that we can come up with an acceptable solution, even if it means house-ruling the situation.

Thanks are due to those who contributed to the planning stage and to playing the scenario. Watch out for the next episode soon!

 

Gangs of Rome - the Patrons

With Episode 1 of our Gangs of Rome campaign coming up this weekend, I knew that sooner or later I'd need miniatures to represent the patrons of our two gangs. The way the campaign is organised, there's always the possibility that one side or the other may have to deploy their patron on the table during an episode.

What luck, then, that issue 462 of Wargames Illustrated, out this week, provides just the minis I need! As a promo for a gladiatorial combat game called Blood on the Sands, WI this month includes a cut-down version of the rules and a sprue of suitable figures from Wargames Atlantic. 

The sprue provides the parts to build two gladiators (a murillo and a thraex) as well as these two:

They're intended to represent a pair of lanistae (owners/trainers of gladiators) and as that pretty neatly reflects the day job of our two gang-patrons, it was a no-brainer to pick up a copy.

They've had a fairly rushed paint job because I wanted them ready for the weekend. The basing is designed to work in either the arena or on the streets of the city.

-o0o-

Because a rule of the campaign is that player characters don't appear if their player is unavailable, I needed a few more gang members. A quick rebase of the servi castrensi from my Polybian Roman army gave me some useful additions:

Secundinus the Assassin

Plinius, who thinks the blood
of a snake can cure poison

Titus, who prefers camel meat
to pork or chicken

Maximinus, who only uses
arrows with barbed heads

Iovianus, born half a world away

and Balbus, who once killed
his landlord with the leg of a chair

Gangs of Rome - The Campaign

Chatting with a few fellow gamers after the installation of the new Lord Mayor of Sheffield (congratulations Andy), I was reminded that people are keen to do some more Gangs of Rome.  This prompted me to finalise the structure of our campaign. 

I wanted something that be low-maintenance, time-limited and capable to progressing when enough of us could get together to play, rather than needing all participants every time a new episode took place. Ideally, players who aren't able to get to Sheffield to sit around the table should also be able to contribute. This is what I came up with.

Spurius Verdius and Tarquinius Caerulius are competing big-wigs in Rome at the time of Emperor Vespasian. They are deadly rivals whose followers contend to control the neighbourhoods where their territories overlap. This contention is often violent in nature, at least until the Vigiles Urbani turn up to restore order!

Our campaign will consist of a maximum of six episodes (in addition to The Brawl scenario that some of us played last Christmas, which counts as Episode Zero). Each gang has a list of six missions they must complete over the course of the campaign. Each mission may be selected once. Note that these lists are not the same for both gangs. The Gang with the highest total of Victory Points after six episodes is victorious in the campaign.

Each player in the campaign is associated with either the Spurius Verdius (Green) Gang or the Tarquinius Caerulius (Blue) Gang. In addition, each player has a personal character that only they will play. If that player is not present, their character will be replaced by another, either the personal character of another player or a non-player character to be run by the rest the gang’s players.

Choosing a Scenario

Before each episode of the campaign, the umpire will ask the players of each gang to agree which of their six listed missions they wish to carry out.

At that point, Victory Points earned in previous games may be spent to influence events:

Victory Points spent in this way are lost to the Gang’s running total.

The umpire will work out the details of the scenario taking account of the missions chosen by the two Gangs. Where the chosen missions clash, for example if one side has chosen a mission that can only take place at night but the other has chosen a daytime scenario, priority will be given to the side that has spent most Victory Points to influence events in this episode.

Status Quo Ante

Following The Brawl, the Blue Gang have six Victory Points while the Greens have only a single point! The Greens are going to have to work hard to catch up.

Operations near Morris, Mississippi

Word recently reached Stately Counterpane Manor that our good friend Ron had been rather poorly but was now keen to get back into the social whirl. So knowing his predilection for the American Civil War I volunteered to put on a Sharp Practice game.

The scenario was loosely based on operations by the Union's Mississippi Marine Brigade in 1864. In August of that year a Mississippi Ram Fleet flotilla was operating along its namesake river with orders to intercept civilian river traffic:

During the operation, the quartermaster boat Fairchild, lagging behind the fleet, came under fire from near the riverside village of Austin. The fleet returned and dispatched mounted and infantry elements of the Mississippi Marine Brigade to deal with the enemy forces. The result was a rather poorly handled engagement near Beaver Dam Lake that involved the marines accidentally trapping a Confederate cavalry force between their infantry and mounted elements!

I used the outline of the Austin engagement to create a smaller game more suited to Sharp Practice. Ron had five Groups of Confederate cavalry, three of them mounted and two operating on foot as skirmishers. The skirmishers had been given all of the force's available long arms and so were treated as armed with muskets. The horsemen had pistols and operated using the Sam Colt's Equalisers rule. The Confederate plan was that they could ambush any Union troops sent to capture the (actually recently withdrawn) artillery that had fired on the flotilla.

The field of battle from the south - the Duck River is mostly off-table to the left but you
can see the hill from which Confederate artillery yesterday bombarded the ram fleet.

And Union troops there were, mostly entering from the northern end of the field. Mark commanded two groups of MMB infantry with a single group of skirmishers attached. The latter were armed with breech-loading carbines, which yet again proved their worth in this game. 

Also available on the Union side were two groups of cavalry but these would arrive at the southern end of the table with their time and place of arrival somewhat randomised.

The Confederates had two usable Deployment Points and a third, dummy one on the riverside hill. At the start of the game Ron chose to deploy two-thirds of his cavalry in the woods to the left of the advancing Union boys.

The Union advance - Confederate cavalry start to appear in 
further clump of trees

I'm afraid this was a mistake by Ron; there was little room to manoeuvre and the presence of fencing along the road would make a powerful charge difficult.

However, the Union forces were commanded by Mark and he can always be relied upon to get the wrong end of a random event. Major Wilbur Warnefield slipped and fell and would spend an inordinate amount of time getting up and dusting off his uniform!

This did, however, allow time for Captain Falke's Union cavalry to complete their ride around to the southern end of the field

Ron also took advantage of Warnefield's delay by deploying two groups of dismounted cavalry, causing some casualties to the Union line.

On the Union left the dismounted skirmishers advanced up the road to oppose Ron's horsemen...

and then took up a position behind the snake-rail fence.

Meanwhile Falke's cavalry advanced. Mark was keen to keep his options open - should he charge the enemy skirmishers in the open or engage the cavalry in the rather cramped space alongside the road?  In the end, the opportunity to put in a proper cavalry charge won out and blue-clad riders began accelerating towards the Confederate skirmish line.

The result was slaughter. Both Confederate groups were routed and out of the battle. Confederate Force Morale dropped from ten to six in an instant!

Another random event saw the cavalry discovering that the ground was rougher than they thought (perhaps slick with Rebel blood?) so I had a chance to deploy one of my specially designed markers.

At this point, as Mark carefully marshalled his dice, we realised that the Union line was firing in an uncontrolled manner.

It would continue to do so for several turns, the men firing mechanically into their own powder smoke despite the presence of their own cavalry to their front. I'm sure some harsh words were exchanged once the cavalry managed to extricate themselves from the position.

On the left, Ron finally managed to manoeuvre his cavalry into position to charge the Union skirmishers but, attacking a defended obstacle and rolling spectacularly poorly, they were forced back with significant losses.

At this point, despite the late arrival of more Confederate cavalry under Sergeant Wilkins...

...with just two points of Force Morale left, Ron ordered a general withdrawal and the Union had won the day!

It was great to get the ACW collection on the table for a game other than Running from Bull Run, lovely to catch up with Ron and Mark, and pleasing that a scenario planned in relative haste worked so smoothly. We must do this more often!