Attack of the Killer Carroccio

Tags

"Communal Italian", DBA 3.0, DBA III/72, DBA III/76, Papal Italian

Kingo opened up the FBC last weekend for barbies and gaming. I thought have some DBA 3.0 games on a ‘standard’ 60cm board to see what that was like, among other things. I took along my Communal Italians, to explore the new classification of their carroccio wagon standard as a type of Blades element. As their enemy I took my Papal Italians, because both they and the Communal Italians have Horde elements and I wanted to see how they fought with their reduced Tactical Factor. I played the Communals in both games, using the carroccio as a Litter general, as per the draft DBA 3.0 army lists.

In my first game I played against Alex. I was the defender. The first thing I noticed was that deployment on a 60cm board was very cramped, with only the middle 28cm available for heavy foot and knights. A canny defender could make life very unpleasant for an attacker with their terrain placement. Anyway I just went for a small number of terrain pieces and the dice allocated it pretty evenly.

The Communal and Papal forces squeezed into their deployment areas

I had the first bound so I made a general advance, pointing my carroccio at a column of Roman militia Hd and skirmishing archer Ps that Alex had placed on his flank.

My battle line contacts a token force

Alex was able to put together an attack on my carroccio with the Hd in front and the Ps closing the door. The carroccio swept the Hd aside after a rather miraculous ‘stick’. My spearmen made contact with Alex’s and began to beat them. Meanwhile my knights were too close to Alex’s archers, and one was doubled. My contadini infantry were put to work on the Ps that Alex had on my flank. In the next turn I pulled my surviving knight back, and because I could see the opportunity for a double overlap which would end the game, I ignored the threat to my flank and moved my spearmen forward. That gamble paid off and the game was over at 4-1.

The end of the game

Alex was very unlucky with his PiPs, which allowed me to take a few liberties with getting in there and disrupting his army. I greatly enjoyed my carroccio rampage, but it would have been toast if Alex’s knight general had had the PiPs to disengage from the spearmen I had fighting him. Litters don’t get psiloi support but they are still quick killed by knights.

After my sausages I had a game with Kingo. With a defiant look he included a BUA in his terrain placement. I don’t know what I did to deserve that. Sadly the terrain generator put all the terrain in one half of the board and the BUA was in a tight spot. If the terrain had been more open I would have taken great pleasure in taking it with my carroccio – unless of course he garrisoned it with a knight. If he’d done that it would have been 4-3 with quick kills both ways. An Sp in the BUA would have been 6-7 with a quick kill against the Sp only. Anyway all I did was attack from the other side of the table so the BUA wasn’t relevant. The game was over pretty quickly. When we first made contact there was a bit of an issue with lining up. We decided that if the Psiloi, which didn’t have room to shift sideways because of the Horde, would just fall off the formation, but that would have been a big issue if it was providing rear support.

The lining up issue involved the psiloi at the lower centre

Once again I strayed too close to the crossbowmen, this time with my contadini infantry, and both of them were destroyed. Kingo’s Hd resisted attacks from my Sp so I wasn’t able to get overlaps going against his Sp. One of my Sp was destroyed and Kingo’s general whipped through the gap and closed the door on another, which was then destroyed.

The end of the second game

My main problem in that game was that I forgot to deploy my carroccio! When I noticed I put it behind my battle line and it never caught up. I was rash in not spending time to sort myself out.

Anyway, these are the lessons I learned:

• Although Hd are weaker than they were in 2.2 they can still survive long enough to be annoying.
• Making Litters a subtype of Blades can have very silly consequences from a historical point of view, eg, an escalade by a wagon pulled by a team of oxen would have been worthy of Baron Munchausen.
• DBA 2.2 had a number of special rules for War Wagons to allow for their deeper bases. These have not been applied to Litters, so, eg, they turn to face flank attacks. The rules seem to say that the attacker would move back to allow for that, but they don’t say what would happen if there isn’t room due to other elements or terrain.
• Deployment is very constrained, especially on a 60cm board.

Kingo’s commission finished, and another year over

Tags

Achaeans, DBA III/24; DBA I/26, Middle Anglo Saxon

A few weeks ago I finished the Mycenaean army I was painting for Kingo. It took a bit longer than I expected because of family stuff. It’s a big army due to all the choices you have. Hopefully the army list changes with DBA 3.0 won’t mean my painting has been in vain!

The chariotry and dismounted heroic charioteers

The infantry - lots of options here

I also found time to paint the two optional horde elements for my Middle Anglo Saxons. They will be pretty useless in DBA 3.0 but I can use them as levies in Dux Bellorum (although I think the DB levies are intended to be on a 15mm base). The figures were too good to not paint, anyway – the guys in coolie hats are from Khurasan Miniatures, while the rest are from Magister Militum.

Two mobs of Saxon levies

I’m waiting for the weather to cool down before I do more work on my ‘clearing the desk’ project -  having too many projects on the go at once was getting me down a bit. Anyway the next stage will be to finish my Middle Anglo Saxons, and then work on my Fairey Firefly and the KV-85s I started a while ago.

Looking back on my post from the beginning of the year, I had been planning to paint my Thracians, Skythians, Middle Anglo Saxons, Bretons, and a few morphs for DBA; and explore other games. I actually managed to get a model and three half models made. and four DBA armies and a couple of morphs painted, but I painted Kingo’s Mycenaeans and my Early/Later Hebrews instead of the Thracians and Bretons. The Thracians are fairly high on my list of things to do next, but a lack of figures means that the closest I’ll be getting to Bretons in the short term will be this rather nice cider I’m having as I write this.

A picture of my cider - filched from another blog

Another week’s painting

Tags

Achaean, Achaian, DBA I/26

I put the detailing wash on the Achaean spear and pike elements the other night, so I’m about half way through the army now. To finish the spear and pike I’ll drybrush the textured bases with a light dusty colour and put some static grass patches on, but I’ll do that all at once for the whole army.

Spearmen and Nestor's Pylians nearly finished

In the meantime I’m getting on with the dismounted charioteers and Myrmidons. The Myrmidons had surprisingly crude arms. For some of them I found it hard to tell where the sleeves ended, in fact some seem to have a long sleeve on their sword arm and a short one on their shield arm.

Progress on the heroic charioteers and Myrmidons (in the foreground)

Magister Militum figures are usually very nicely done (eg, the spear and pike men), but I noticed when I painted my Lydians that some looked to have been converted from other figures, because the pose was identical to other figures, but for somewhat crude sword arms (one even had the stump of his spear tucked under his arm). So I suspect that these are conversions too. Once they’re painted and on the table they should look fine though.

By sheer coincidence while I was doing the painting I listened to this very appropriate Guardian Podcast featuring Alice Oswald’s ‘mini Illiad’ . I’ve read other Alice Oswald poems before and liked them, so perhaps I’ll get a copy. It would certainly make a change in style, if not theme, from the little collection of WWII first person accounts I’ve picked up recently from the local remaindered book store.

On my modelling desk

Tags

"DBA I/6", Achaian, DBA I/26, Dux Bellorum, Early Bedouin, Fairey Firefly I

I was thinking that I hadn’t got a lot done lately, but when I took the photos for this post I realised I actually have, just not a lot on any individual projects. This was partly by design, because I’ve been wanting to finish a few things that I’ve started, rather than my usual trick of nearly finishing one project when I start another!

The Terrain Project I started ages agois now complete (for DBA at least). I made some rivers earlier this year with a hardboard backing, but that was too thick for my liking, so I finally made use of some Heki water effect sheeting I bought in 2002. The sheeting is just clear plastic with a lumpy ‘water’ effect. It doesn’t seem to be in production now but there are similar ones out there. I cut the sheeting into wavy strips and glued it onto plastic card that I had painted with green near the banks merging to blue in the centre. A bit of my base mix along the banks and a bit of flock and that was that! The waterway is the same stuff. The marsh is vinyl flooring with flock and static grass.

New river, waterway, hills, and marsh

For desert terrain I made an oasis by cutting a hole in a bit of vinyl flooring with sand glued on, and gluing on a piece of acetate that I had painted in sand, merging to light blue. The palm trees are cake decorations. The rough terrain is Army Painter cork rocks glued onto plastic card, and the dunes are polyfilla on a commercial MDF base, which is way too thick!

New dunes, rough, and oasis

My Frog/Novo Fairey Firefly has also had a bit of attention lately. I rescribed all the raised panel lines, and cut out the observers’ cockpit ready for a new Falcon Clear-Vax one (the kit cockpit glazing is irredeemable). I’ve also begun making new interiors for the cockpits as they will be more visible now. This is especially true of the pilot’s cockpit, as the Falcon one will only fit if it is posed open!

Progress on the Firefly

For Dux Bellorum I’ve painted a couple of elements of Magister Militum Goths as Mounted Skirmishers. These are the only 15mm javelin-armed dark ages cavalry I’ve seen.

Magister Militum Goths - used as Dark Ages mounted skirmishers

For DBA I’ve painted a few elements in order to morph my list I/6c Bedouins into their forefathers in I/6b. They will be enemies for my Early Hebrews, but when version 3.0 comes along they may have to undergo some changes.

A few more Desert Wastrels

But what’s taking most of my time lately is my first (perhaps my only) commission – painting a DBA Achaian army (I/26a), for which I hope to be paid in Napoleonic ships! So far I’ve painted 32 heroically naked spearmen and pikemen. One of the spearmen’s shields is missing (perhaps I never had it in the first place) so I’ve made a replacement out of ‘Green Stuff’

Progress on the Achaeans

A very ordinary pair

Tags

"DBA I/6", DBA I/27, Early Bedouin, Early Hebrew

Michael was up for a game of DBA on Friday, so I decided to take the opportunity to use my Early Hebrew army, which I had yet to use. I’ve recently painted a couple of elements to be able to field my Early Bedouins as an earlier sublist, to be an opponent for them. And I’ve recently completed my project to remake my terrain, including new desert terrain pieces. So Early Bedouins vs Early Hebrews seemed to tick a lot of boxes.

It wasn’t until I was going through selecting the figures to take along that I realised what an ordinary lot the two armies are. Between them they have 12 auxillia, 9 psiloi, 2 warband and an element of camelry! I hadn’t seen that much light and medium foot on the table since I played Spanish vs
Numidians once, and at least there was plenty of cavalry in that game.

In the first game, we diced for who would be who, and I ended up taking the Bedouins, and being the attacker.

Setup for the first game - Bedouins on the left

In his swaps, Michael ended up putting his warband in front of my general. This worried him and he spent a few turns trying to reorganise his lines. This allowed me to close in while he was in a pretty narrow formation. I thought that with all the low factors, combat would be quick and bloody, but it lasted a few turns. We were both trying to bring more elements up to turn each other’s flanks, but in the end it was a straight slog in the centre and I won by 4-2 or 4-3. My general was in peril a couple of times. I’d forgotten how lousy camelry are against foot. In DBA 3.0 they may end up with the DBMM factors, brought about by Phil Barker re-reading his Herodotus, of +2 vs mounted, +3 vs foot. This would have helped them in these games, but if they meet a mounted army they had better hope they roll really low for aggression so they can hide in sand dunes and their oasis. I may be in the market for an onager-pulled straddle cart for the general!

In the second game the Bedouins were the attackers again, so I didn’t get to use my new desert terrain after all. We both set up in long lines, with a couple of elements on hills on our respective left flanks.

The Bedouins advance

Michael was moving up with a group on his right. I decided to nullify this threats by pivoting my line army on my left, which was held by a couple of psiloi on a steep hill. This created lots of problems for us while we tried to jockey for position. I didn’t want to pivot back again, and I was concentrating on extending my line to my right by shuffling psiloi along, so in the end it was Michael who wheeled and charged in. In the first round of combat I must have rolled four sixes. That wasn’t enough to destroy any of Michael’s troops but it did mean that he did most of the recoiling, and overlaps and favourable matchups came to nothing. The reason I was trying to extend my line was that Michael’s general was toward his left flank, and I wanted to drive off his support. Michael had lined up his general opposite my double ranked warband, but I figured they would be in with a chance if I got some overlaps going, especially as my general was next to them. I began work on that in my next round, more recoils but no kills. In Michael’s next round I destroyed one of his psiloi. And in my next round my Simeonites and Ephraimites lived up to their reputation as being “mighty men of valour” by taking out the Bedouin general.

When I’m playing the Bedouins again against a foot army I’ll definitely be holding my general back, his good movement rate would help him to act in support of the foot rather than trying to do any actual combat himself. The draft DBA 3.0 list for the Bedouins has quite major changes regarding the dates of the sublists, but the list of enemies has yet to be revised, so I don’t know how much I’ll be using my newly painted elements.

Lessons relearned?

Tags

DBA I/43, DBA I/48, Scythians, Thracians

It’s been such a long time since my last game of DBA but last Friday I had a couple of games at the Fairfield Bowling Club. Kingo had been holding off playing any more DBA 2.2 but with the delay in DBA 3.0 rules he relented. He also came to the idea (which I’m inclined to agree with) that 2.2 and 3.0 are going to be so different that the two will coexist as separate games.

I finally got to use the Scythians I painted a while ago, and Kingo fielded his Thracians. Kingo was the defender in both games we played (I think one of the aggression rolls was a 6-1!). Kingo went for a lot of terrain, which is understandable as the Thracians are good in the rough.

In the first game I chose a cavalry general and the “infantry heavy” option (with infantry borrowed from my Lydian army), with a whole two elements of psiloi and an auxillia. I chose to attack along the river toward a more open area of the battlefield. However I then set up my camp and the bulk of my army on the more ‘busy’ side.

Setup for the first game

Once I had extracted my army from where I had deployed I had a happy time killing Thracian auxillia that had strayed into the open. But after I’d got three of them the happy time was over. A combination of a flank attack from across the river (which was paltry) and attacks from auxillia with their toes in the bad going put paid to four of my elements. Fate might have made me lose in some other way, but for this game I blame my camp placement and deployment on the wrong side of the river for my loss.

In the second game I decided to try a monotype approach – twelve light horse – and to attack from the good going into the bad, across the river. This time I rolled a ’5′ when I got to the river, meaning it slowed crossing.

The Scythians reach the river

There was a bit of a skirmish on one flank where a group of my units and the Thracian light horse traded blows, losing an element each. In the centre I successfully infiltrated an element through to take Kingo’s camp. But my troops got caught too near the hill and I lost a few more elements. My choice of army was quixotic of me. I just wanted to see how twelve light horse would go – and the answer is: not well. I think even a very good DBA player would have trouble with that, so I need to paint those Scythian foot! Also this game underlined the idea that if there’s a river that’s not paltry across the table, you may as well just call the game a draw and move on.

With the very low combat factors the games were over pretty quickly once combat began. Light horse may seem fast, but because I was disorganised I had to spend a lot of PIPs to get anywhere with them, so obviously I need a bit of practice with the army. It’s been such a while since I’ve played DBA that I had to relearn a few of the lessons I’ve learned over the years about taking care over deployment, staying clear of terrain you don’t want, and not scattering your elements. I think Kingo enjoyed himself so who knows, maybe it will be less than three months before my next game?

Going Commando

Tags

Crossfire, WWII games

As part of the Talk Like a Pirate Week events at the NWA, Michael Stringer put on a Crossfire scenario of the Vaagso Raid – Commandos being portrayed as pirates by German propaganda. The Vaagso Raid (Operation Archery), on 27 December 1941, was a large scale attack on a town on the coast of Norway, about half way between Trondheim and Bergen.

Michael put together a nice table layout using Paper Terrain buildings and a nice Christmassy collection of snow covered trees on a foam hills.

Michael's atmospheric table layout

Matt and I took charge of the British, while Michael and a friend of Matt’s (did I mention I was terrible with names?) played the Germans.

A German bunker was the first challenge, but we managed to clear that pretty quickly. In the town a machine gun nest in one of the buildings fought very bravely and really got in the way, preventing my sappers from moving on to some choice targets at the other end of town. Eventually they succumbed to some stellar shooting by one of Matt’s units.

The British begin moving through the town. The MG nest was in the building on the bottom left of the picture.

Resistance from the other Germans was patchy, with the Gebirgsjager platoon that was in Vaagso on Christmas leave from the Eastern Front (true story!) holding out well, while the another platoon folded fairly quickly. Real time ran out at that point, but we already had a marginal victory. My sappers had already destroyed the buildings at the end of the town that we held. The remaining German platoon had taken refuge in the strip of houses next to the sea, and our naval gunfire support had come online, so they wouldn’t have held out for long. There was a fair bit of game time left, so we would probably have achieved all of our objectives if we’d played on.

The game played out pretty much as history did. In real life the Commandos eliminated the German garrison, destroyed the key buildings, and left with a number of German and Quisling prisoners, as well as a copy of the German naval code. Hitler withdrew 30,000 troops from the Eastern front to bolster the Norwegian defences against a full scale invasion that never came.

The Germans don’t get to do much in this scenario except try to stop the British from winning. Michael is going to make that a little bit tougher for the British, if he runs this scenario again, by making time run faster.

The Paper Terrain buildings looked good. I might do something to the windows if I get some, perhaps using acetate like the Superquick people do, as the blue windows are the most obvious papery thing about the buildings.

Jolly Jack Tars

Tags

Kiss Me Hardy, Signal Close Action, Trafalgar

As well as gaming with Andrew’s Napoleonics, the players at the Fairfield club have become very nautical lately and I had a chance to join in. I played Trafalgar a few weeks ago, and Signal Close Action Fast Play on another night.

In the Trafalgar game, I was looking after two British ships, Kingo had a couple of ships too, and we faced Geoff and Greg. Most of my fighting was against Geoff and I was doing fairly well, but one of my ships was forced to sail off the edge of the world in the last turn to avoid collision with one of Geoff’s. The Langton rules allow the entire battle to be moved further onto the table if the action is crowded onto one side, which is a good idea.

In the SCAFP game I walked in just as Kingo’s Spanish squadron was suffering from a friendly fire incident. If you give your ships a fire order then they must do so, even if the enemy are nowhere to be seen, and you’re in line abreast formation. Which is either a pretty bad rule – all the guns are under local control so the gunner wouldn’t pull the lanyard if the only ship in front of them is, say, your flagship. Anyway, said flagship was only lightly damaged and Kingo kindly allowed me to take her over. After a minor course adjustment I brought her into position directly behind a French (enemy) frigate at close range. A close range stern raking broadside from my 112 gunner took the frigate to within an inch of being sunk outright, and she struck.

Close range stern rake from my borrowed 112 gunner.

I didn’t play any further part of the action as I struggled to turn my ship around. Kingo successfully boarded one French ship but both of his ships suffered rudder damage (once from a bow rake, which would taken some fancy shooting in real life!) and they began running downwind with their prize. In another friendly fire incident the French sank the frigate that had struck (pour encourager les autres?) which allowed me to quip ‘You’ve sunk your battleship!’ The game ended when Kingo declared that he had no ships left that could manouevre or fight.

The one thing I didn’t like about both games is pretty fundamental, and that’s the turn sequence. Both games use an ‘I go you go’ system so you end up with a situation like this: Two ships start off sailing parallel to each other. Ship A’s turn comes up so it turns and sails across Ship B’s bow and gives her a bow rake. Ship B’s turn comes up so she sails across Ship A’s stern and gives her a stern rake. etc. You get these swirling dogfights, where in reality if the ships were sailing at about the same speed, they would remain parallel or collide. In Trafalgar there is a slight penalty to shooting when you do this, but the advantages given to raking outweigh it. So sailing in parallel will not happen in either set of rules unless you get your opponent to agree to not crossing your stern if you move first. Fixing that would not be impossible. Perhaps something like the Wings of War secret card draw system might work. Alternatively there could be ‘no go’ areas in front of ships that have not yet moved, and behind ships that have moved to represent the sea space they will or have just occupied.

Another aspect of the games which could do with toning down is the skill rolls. Both use skill rolls to do things like tacking, but it’s too easy to fail – for example in Trafalgar an unrated ship only has a 41.67% chance of tacking or hoisting their sails, otherwise it’s roll on the foremast damage table. Tacking was complicated but not that hard! Kingo’s entire squadron was dismasted after a run of bad luck last Friday. This should probably be toned down to only suffering damage on a fumble, otherwise suffering speed penalties, say, as the sheets are hauled in slower than they should be.

To see if there is a better way I forked out the princely sum of £7.00 on Kiss Me Hardy, the Too Fat Lardies’ take on Napoleonic naval action. On the face of it, KMH looks like it may have some advantages. It’s still I go you go, but the order in which everyone goes is random (it’s card based) as is the order in which everyone fires. So you might be able to move to rake someone, but without a fire card that’s all you can do. Tacking is more realistic, a failure leaves you head to wind and going nowhere (your sails are loose and your crew are struggling to sheet them home), rather than being taken aback (which would be a fumble – you’ve turned into the wind without loosening your sheets). Radically, ships turn in against circular templates instead of pivoting on their rear corners, and small ships are handier than larger ones, using a smaller turning circle if they wish. I’ll try to have a game soon with these rules.

Dresden, 1813

Tags

Fast Play Grande Armee

I’ve had a chance to do more gaming with other people’s figures lately. A refight of the 1813 Battle of Dresden, and trying out two Napoleonic naval games: Trafalgar and the Rod Langton Signal Close Action Fast Play rules.

Dresden was another of Andrew’s Fast Play Grande Armee spectaculars, and it was held in quite the most luxurious wargaming environment I’ve played in at Peter’s house. As you can see from this photo, taken at setup, there wasn’t a lot of empty space on the table.

The Battle of Dresden. French in the foreground.

There were seven of us playing, and I was on the French side. Historically, when the Allies found they were facing Napoleon they vacillated to the extent that there was a three hour lull in the fighting. Napoleon took the initiative and trashed isolated corps in the Allied army while rest stood by.

The Allied players decided not to follow history and engaged us in a battle of attrition. The battlefield was split into four by unfordable rivers with only a few bridges. We had next to no room for manoeuvre so it was pretty difficult for us to deploy troops where they were needed. As a way of clearing a bit of deployment space I moved all the Guard Cavalry up onto my right flank. Their two horse batteries were damaging the Austrians enough that they sacrificed a cavalry brigade trying to charge them. They got one but the other was still there plugging away at another Austrian cavalry brigade which was holding the bridge, and was down to 4 strength points out of 7 when the game ended.

It’s a pity we ran out of time because things were getting interesting. We’d managed to reinforce our left so that seemed to be doing fairly well. The Allies’ superior numbers were beginning to tell in the centre, but as they advanced they were leaving a gap behind them that my Guard Cavalry were standing ready to exploit. They would have had a field day in amongst the remnants of the severely weakened Austrian Corps, or more usefully (but less fun) joined the main battle. But Allied reinforcements were also due to be arriving on the extreme right so the Guards would have had to watch their backs!

15mm elephant comparison

Tags

Museum Miniatures, Outpost Wargame Services, War Elephants, Xyston Miniatures

Scale differences are more obvious when you’re looking at large objects than you are when you’re looking at smaller things. And in the world of ancient wargaming, nothing is larger than an elephant. Various people around the globe (Hesperiana and Master of None) have posted comparison pictures of their elephants so while I was sorting my unpainted lead out the other day, I thought I’d contribute to that process.

Lousy picture of the Xyston, Museum, and Outpost ellies.

What you have here is the “ANC20102 – Indian Elephant with 3 Crew” from Xyston, “IE10 Indian - Elephant Howdah Mahout, Archer Javelin” from Museum Miniatures, and “KHMC1 – Khmer C in C on Elephant” from Outpost Wargame Services”. They are standing on 40mm bases.

According to Wikipedia, a  large bull elephant is 3.2m high at the shoulder. 15mm figures vary from about 1:100 to 1:120 which makes the Xyston elephant at the top end of that range, and the Outpost one toward the bottom. The Museum one is a little small by that reckoning, but their Indian horses are tiny, so if you had a purely Museum army the small elephant wouldn’t be noticeable.

I’m pleased I took this picture because I thought that the Outpost elephant was too small, when it’s actually smallish but probably OK. Reading the DBA army lists the Khmer fought the T’ang Chinese, and they fought the Abbassid Arabs and Central Asian Turks. I feel a ‘morph’ coming on – maybe in 2015!