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

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