THURSDAY NIGHT: SAMURAI BATTLES.

 

I decided to try out Samurai Battles, which I acquired at the tail end of last year.

The game, from Zvezda, comes in two versions. One with rules similar to Art of Tactic, the other Commands and Colors rules , by Richard Borg.

 

I gave away the Zvezda rules and plastic 20mm figures and used 15mm figures. These were based for DBR, for those interested, but had no effect for game purposes.

 

I decided to play the first, introductory, scenario. This had equal forces.

A shot of the set up from my perspective.

 Each side had ten units: 1 x Cavalry; 2 x Samurai; 2x Ashigaru Bows; 1 x Ashigaru Arquebus and 3 x Ashigaru spearmen, as this side on view of the set shows. Each side also had one mounted and two foot generals.

 The game will be familiar to players of Richard Borg's games. It is probably closer to Battle Cry, but also uses rules from C&C. There are two main changes. As well as the usual play deck, there is a second deck of Dragon Cards. They can effect both your and the enemy's units and are paid for by the second new innovation: Honor & Fortune tokens. Each Dragon card costs H&F tokens to play.

The scenario determines how many H&F tokens each side starts with (5 for this one). They can also be obtained by not drawing a Dragon card and during close combat, when an H&F symbol is rolled. However, when a unit suffers a retreat result, it costs H&F tokens for each hex retreated. This element of resource management adds a new level of complexity to the game and gives a bit of period flavour as it forces players to keep on attacking or lose honour.

The game itself was quite tense as Rick and I got our head around the rules and the new mechanics. It was the first to five banners and I won 5-3. The last pic shows the end state of the game.

MY GAMING WEEK: IN HER MAJESTY'S NAME AND C&C NAPOLEONICS.

I have had a break from blogging for a month or so, for a number of reasons. I am back and looking to post on a reasonably reasonable basis.

This past week has seen me playing a new game and an old favourite. On Wednesday, we had a game of In Her Majesty's Name. This was an all in game just to try out the rules. David set up the scenario, using some of the terrain that he has constructed. The scenario was simple, capture the scientist in the engine house in Kew Gardens and get him off the table!

              The engine house that David constructed with the Airfix beam engine inside.

It ended up being a race between my Scotland Yard company and Derek and David's companies. We managed to give the shooting and combat rules a good test. There were a lot of extreme rolls on the go: about a dozen each of 1s an 10s, which were automatic failures and passes respectively. I was deemed to have won the race, but the result was not the purpose of this game. Here are a few photos from the game.

  On Thursday, Rick & I played a Commands & Colors Napoleonic scenario, using the terrain from the La Platavilla Don Featherstone tribute game from last year. I took the British. I had to set up my forces before Rick deployed the French. This simulated the morning mist screening the French advance. The river was fordable, but was in spate and infantry units ran the risk of losing hits if they crossed the river.

                                                                Starting deployments.
When the French deployment was revealed (Rick had deployed the French, taken a photo, then took then off the table) I found that I had fallen for the ruse and had deployed to defend the bridge, rather than anticipate cavalry attacks over the river.

The game became a race to redistibute my forces to meet the cavalry threat before they got across the river. Here are some photos of the game.

There was an air of inevitability about the French cavalry attack. They brushed aside the only British cavalry unit before falling on the flank. The French attacked across the bridge to keep my forces in place. The cards even added to the narrative: for the first four moves I had no centre section cards. This modeled the confusion that would have been felt in the British centre. In the end, i managed to form a defence with a few units, but ultimately lost seven blocks to nil. A decisive victory for the French.

 

A very enjoyable week of gaming.

CARRONADE 2014

Last Saturday I made the annual pilgrimage to Carronade, the show put on by the Falkirk and District Wargames Club. I made the trip with David and his son Matthew. As we had booked a table at the flea market style bring and buy, we set off just before 7am, arriving at the venue just on 9.30am.

 

We had managed to get a table for the first and third hours. We would have had liked to get two consecutive hours as per last year. However, an administrative mix up meant that we didn't. Here is a shot of our table, just at the start of the sale.

I didn't get much time to go round the tables during the day. Here are a few photos that I managed to take.

 Leuchars, as usual, came up with an innovative participation game: Operation Chastise; The Dambusters Raid. The players take the roles of key crew members and attempt to drop their bomb on target.

 Oldmeldrum Wargames Group put on a demonstration game of Voltri 1796 using a set of fast play Napoleonic rules being developed by Alistair Massey from the club. That might come as a surprise to those who know Alistair!

 Two shots of Bannockburn 2014 by Dunfermline Wargames Club.They were using Commands and Colors rules. This appealed as It is something that we have done. Our experience is that the rules need too much tweaking and invention to cover the medieval period. Didn't have time to stop to find out how they found it.

 The Wings of War Aerodrome: UK Wing put on a WW1 game in the morning and in the Afternoon a WW2 game set in the Battle of Britain..

                                                      Falkirk put on ACW Piquet.

Dunfermline Wargaming And Roleplaying Fellowship put on a Bolt Action game set in Normandy..

                  Dingwall Wargames Club public participation game Tuffnall's Bridge.

Old Contemptables. Senguko era Japanese Warfare using a version of the Black Powder rules..

 

Here are a selection of the other tables on view. It was a question of shoot first, no time to ask questions. 

  

Once Upon A Time In The Low Countries. Durham Wargames Club. D'erlon's attack at Waterloo in 54mm.

 

All in all it was a busy but good day. We had lunch in between our selling stints, so it was not till after two that I managed to get round the tables. I met and talked to a lot of old and new friends, which is one of my main reasons for going to these shows. I managed to sell all but five of the items I took to sell. That will be good news for my mum's care home, as I always donate at least 20% of what I make. Most of the rest went to fund my purchases from Crooked Dice http://www.crooked-dice.co.uk/wp/product-category/02-heroes-and-allies/, S &A Scenicshttp://scenics.co.uk/index.php?option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&Itemid=141#!/~/category/id=3196110&offset=0&sort=normal, Caliver Books http://www.caliverbooks.com/ and  Commando Miniatureshttp://www.commandominiatures.com/photo-recon.html.

 

 On the way home on the Motorway, I managed my first glimpse of The Kelpies roadside sculpture http://www.thehelix.co.uk/thekelpies.