This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway

The Battle of Mandua Pass (Week 1 South)

No extensive photo report this time I'm afraid, since my camera is still MIA and the battery on the cameraphone died immediately after taking this initial battlefield layout.  As you can see, the first two bodies of the Royalist army heading up the road, with the third just faintly visible in the shadows off table. The Baron's ambushing force was alert and ready, but their deployment was determined randomly.  Once in play, there were no real decision points for the Baron, every action they took was an absolutely obvious response to the situation.

The Queens forces started by trying a fast push up the road, moving all three bodies and bringing the third body onto the table.  The lead body reached the front of the large hill before the Baron's force moved up to threaten them.  I then decided, rather impetuously, to go for a quick cavalry charge against the opposing infantry - the lead body included one unit of knights (AC4, REP4, Shock) and two of the Queen's Crimson Guard (AC4, REP4, Elite) making it a decent cavalry force.  But although they scored several hits, the infantry stood firm so all three cavalry units were forced to retire, taking an extra hit each.  When the juggernaut of the heavy infantry rolled up into the now spent horsemen, they routed.

The Royalists brought up the second body of troops to rendezvous with the men-at-arms from the first, and this newly combined unit continued up the road to threaten the Baron's heavy infantry.  Meanwhile the archers and one surviving Crimson Guard unit faced off against the two units of the Baron's Knights who had taken a position atop the big round hill.  The knights charged, the Guardsmen countercharged and the archers stood and loosed their volley.  This time the Royalist forces held, but only just, with the horsemen locked in combat and the archers managing to repel the knights albeit at the cost of several hits.

Meanwhile the Baron's heavy infantry were unimpressed by the Royalist foot and the two bodies met in a bloody melee along the main road.  This time the Royalist infantry not only held, but actually started to push the enemy back, routing one enemy unit and forcing the others to give ground.  They pressed their attack, expanding their battleline as rear ranks wrapped around the enemy flanks and everything was looking promising...

..right up until they rolled a double six for the post-melee reaction check.  The units in the centre, their REP boosted by being surrounded by friendly units, held, but the less secure flanks who had also taken a couple of hits reducing their REP, were ignominiously routed.

Things were looking grim for the Queen.  The scenario stated that for victory, 60% of the force needed to pass through the forest.  For a sixteen unit army that equated to 10 (9.6 rounded up) units and at this point of the game, they only had 11 left.

Not for much longer.  The Baron's knights continued their melee with the Crimson guard on the side of the big round hill.  The knights no longer had their Shock bonus, whereas the Guard still gained the Elite bonus.  But the knights' heavier armour made it that much harder to score a hit on them, whereas the number of hits the Guard accumulated made their rout almost inevitable.  The Royalists had ten units left.

Finally the other unit of the Baron's Knights charged back at the bowmen who had repulsed them.  The bowmen, having taken two hits in the previous melee, rolled another double six on their "Receive Charge" Reaction Check and routed.

The Royal Host, caught unprepared along the road, were utterly smashed to pieces by the Baron's forces (6 units routed to 1).  Incandescent with fury, the Queen rode for the town of Pritsum Wells to regroup and reequip.

There you have it.  Another exciting battle courtesy of Rally Round The King and the first reverse for the Royalists.  The rules had a big impact on this game, particularly the inability of units in RRTK to manoeuvre in the face of the enemy.  On a couple of occasions I had damaged units that I would have liked to pull out and protect from further casualties, however in RRTK a unit facing an enemy within charge distance can only move forward or halt.  I feel this is more realistic - once a unit is commited to the battle line the general should pretty much lose any fine control over them. 

With hindsight, going for the quick kill at the start was a mistake.  I think a better tactic would be to try to form a decent battle line around the area of the Royalist starting position between the two small hills.  I'm still not sure they'd be able to perfect their position before the Baron's forces reached them, but at least the forces would be more concentrated and better able to bring up reinforcements from the third trailing body.

So at the start of Week 2 of the Novembre Civil War, the dispositions look like this.

  Both the Archbishop and the Queen have been pushed back towards their home bases by their enemy's allies.  But in the Midlands a jubilant Viscount Silcropton is tipping the balance in the Royalist's favour.

We're nearly a week behind schedule but I'm hoping to make this up with games on Saturday and Monday, starting with a return to the Grim North.

But we've got such a long way to go

Queen Una of Novembre consulted with the captain of her elite Crimson Guard "So you're saying we're lost."


The Guard Captain's cheeks bore the regimental colours "Erm yes, your majesty."


"In my own kingdom.  At the head of my own army.  Tell me Captain, how are we supposed to put that outrageous buffoon Trente in his place is we are unable to navigate from one of our cities to the next?  While we blindly bimble around the forests of Mandua, the reverend traitor could already be preaching sedition from the palace steps in the capital!"


The Captain momentarily considered trying to enlighten his monarch of the difficulties involved in mobilising a large body of men and horses from across a quarter of the kingdom.  The Royal Host had assembled expeditiously, but with no immediate enemy to fight had begun to fray visibly at the edges.  When the decision was made to relocate the Host to Mandua, it quickly degenerated to the point of becoming little more than a disorganised rabble.


On further reflection, the Captain decided that the queen was probably not in the mood for a lesson in the arts of war.


"Majesty, we have reports back from the scouts.  They say that this road we are on leads to the main Royal Highway to Mandua.  Once we pass through yonder forest ahead, our journey will be all but over."


"We hope your trust in these scouts is justly rewarded." the Queen retorted.  "If not, we shall see about dishing out some just rewards of our own."


The scouts were in fact correct about the forest ahead.  What they missed, in their excitement to return with this good news, was the small but not insignificant band of armed men waiting in the nearby hollow.  Baron Primestowe, pious supporter of the Church of the Nine and keen huntsman, had set out in search of Royal Game.  His small force would ordinarily be no match for the Royal Host.  But with the Host disordered and scattered along the road and the Baron's forces positioned to cut off its line of march, things weren't quite so clear cut.


There you have the setup for the Week 1 Southern battle in the Novembre Civil War.  It's based on scenario 22 "Making the Best of a Bad Job" from "Scenarios for All Ages".  In it the "Blue" (i.e. Royalist) forces are split "evenly" between three bodies of troops scattered along the road.  I intend to do this randomly, which means the Royalists will struggle to put together organised bodies of similar troops.  This greatly offsets the 16 unit to 10 advantage they have over the Baron.  It's going to be very interesting.

So although I haven't had time to fight the battle, the table is all setup for it to be played tomorrow night.   If I then manage the first two battles of Week 2 on Saturday and next Monday, that will only leave me one game behind schedule.

So with my day job now effectively being as a full time carer for my parents, days can vary from being frantically busy, to being long periods "on standby" inbetween preparing meals and medication and any other minor chores.  Fortunately things are settling down at the moment into the latter state of affairs, so I've been able to tidy up and re-organise the little corner that I've appropriated as a painting station.  In the process, the Black Pyramid Tea Wars figures have jumped the painting queue and today I primed them and started painting them, completing the Officer, the Sniper and one Trooper.  They were pleasantly easy to paint, with easy to pick out straps and packs.  The plan, as I've mentioned previously, was to present them as a "Victorian SAS" based on the iconic images from the end of the Iranian Embassy Siege.  Army Painter "Angel Green" has provided the base colour, then black for the boots, belts, gasmasks and guns.  Flesh for the hands (I toyed with the idea of giving them black gloves, but a little skin looks better I think) Sand for the facings (collars and cuffs and puggeree - to reflect the SAS's signature sand coloured berets), gold for the helmet spike and some detailing on the gun and silver dots for the gasmask eyeholes and drybrushed over the gun.  That's it, just five colours painted over the basecoat (six if you count a bit of Thalo Green for tidying up mistakes)  The paint job is so simple to do I should easily be able to get the rest of the ten man unit completed and Quickshaded by the end of tomorrow.

Until now I'd shied away from any gasmasked figures in my VSF collection.  I know it's a valid part of the steampunk "look", coming from the gothy end of the scene.  But it never really fit into my personal vision of Victorian Science Fiction, which is more of a "Boys Own Adventure" sort of thing.  Bring in gasmasks and you sort of imply the use of poison gas on the battlefield.  That may be a legitimate element too, as it had been proposed several times throughout the nineteenth century, and there's at least one report I've read of the British deploying poison gas in the Maori wars, with little effect.  But gas for me is like having too many machine guns - it brings in the baggage of WWI and a very un-splendid tone to the procedings.

But working on these Special Aether Service figures really brought home how adding a gasmask to  the familiar figure of the British soldier turns him from being good old Tommy Atkins to a faceless stormtrooper of a dystopian empire.  If I was playing a more anti-establishment VSF setting, say heroic airship pirates against the class system,  gasmasked tommies would make excellent bad guys.  If I ever pursue the "Very Victorian Civil War" idea further, I'll definitely want to be picking up some more Tea Wars figures with gasmask heads as troops loyal to one of the less savoury factions.

Also while doing a bit of research as inspiration for these Victorian SAS I stumbled across another uniform option for Home Service British figures.  Volunteer regiments. including the Artists' Rifles (who would later be reformed as the start of the post-war SAS) wore a natty grey uniform, another candidate for a super-fast Army Painter job.  So that's another option to add to the list, along with Riflemen in green, of ways to make British units distinct from eachother.

Finally I'm going to make an extra effort this week to get some more steam tanks done and ready for the next GASLIGHT game.  I have an ever-growing backlog of vehicles in varying states of completion and yet we wind up using the same old vehicles for every game.  The "Prussian Armoured Pullman" from Scheltrum is about 50% painted, a couple more coats, some neatening up and detailing and it'll be ready.  The two new Black Pyramid landships are also headed for German service, while the Armored Traction Engine (with extra bits from Ramshackle) will join the Fenians along with two "American" steam wagons from Scheltrum - though those can wait until I have sufficient Fenian infantry painted.  This means the two GW Leman Russ tanks will eventually go to the British.

But that's a lot of resin and plastic and as I've found, the best way to get things done is to get something done, anything, each day.  As long as you make some progress each day, eventually you'll get to your objective.  So as long as I can get the Armoured Pullman ready by the end of the week, along with the SAS a few more individual figures, then I'll be happy.

Keep running up that road, keep running up that hill

The Battle of Sunchester Hill (Week1, Midlands)

It was a fine day when the Earl of Suchmercove (pronounced “summercove”) met Viscount Silcropton on the road by Sunchester. When each realised that the other was at the head of a sizeable body of men and horses, they grew wary of eachother. It soon became clear that each had received word of Archbishop Trente's planned progress south and each had set out to meet the Pilgrimage of Hope on the road. Suchmercove had come to offer what support and assistance in the task of bringing the errant queen to heel. Silcropton on the other hand had come to bar the Archbishop's path and send him back north.

With this realisation, the two noblemen saluted eachother, then each wheeled his horse around and cantered back to his own body of troops, shouting deployment orders.

The scenario is #40 Dominant Hill from the original “Scenarios for Wargames”. I decided to play Viscount Silcropton (Royalist) and handled The Earl of Suchmercove's deployment and tactics semi-randomly based on the Mythic Game-Master Emulator from Word Mill Press. Essentially in Mythic you ask a question and the dice determine whether the answer is yes or no. Instead of Mythic's percentile tables I just used a d6 with 1-3 being “no”, 4-6 being “yes” and allowing a single plus or minus one modifier for conditions that I thought were highly likely/unlikely.

Instead of the scenario's original “pick 7 units from this list” for each side, I decided to give each side all of the units listed except for the guns, which made for two identical sides of 3 units of Knights, five units of foot knights/men at arms, two units of archers. I'd also decided to use the usual DBA victory condition of first unit to lose 4 unit casualties.

So after I'd planned the Viscount's deployment, I rolled for the Earl's and determined that he would have both his knights and his archers at the top of the small hill, while his men-at-arms would advance along the roadway. I then spent 2-3 game turns deploying both sides' forces from the roads where the scenario had them starting. The Earl's men reached their deployment positions first, but declined to move before the Viscount had finished bringing up his forces (a Mythic-style decision)

Thus the field looked like this – Royalists on the right mainly in red, The Earl of Suchmercove in yellow on the left.

Viscount Silcropton took the initiative by leading his troops in an advance across the board. For some reason the Earl held back, merely bringing down his knights from the hilltop to allow the archers behind to fire over their heads. But the Royalists were still well out of bow range. The Earl ordered his men at arms forward to threaten the royalist archers, who responded with a hail of arrows, softening up two of the units. The following turn Silcropton led higis knhts forward to catch two of the advancing men at arms, inflicting heavy casualties. The two units of men at arms took heavy casualties, then routed from the shock of impact. The knights pursued their routing enemies, bringing on unit into contact with the men at arms' second rank of units. The second rank unit didn't wait to be hit but fled before the approaching heavy horsemen.

Thus in one action the Royalists had scored three out of the four kills required for victory.

On their right, the Royalist men at arms had advanced to threaten the Earl's knights (Note: I made a mistake in the sequencing of this turn. In Rally Round the King you resolve the actions of your bodies of troops in strict order right-to-left. For this turn, I carried out the Royalist actions left-to-right. So strictly speaking, this action and the consequences should have happened first).

The Earl of Suchmercove's knights were then spooked into charging the threatening men at arms before the archers could have a chance to soften them up with bowfire, forming a near symmetry with the dust-up in the south. Things didn't go quite as well for the Earl though – One unit of horse was forced to retired up the hill, while two units of Royalist men at arms were routed.

At this point both sides were fairly even, with the edge just going to the Royalist side. But the Royalist knights were a bit scattered, while the Earl's knights were in two distinct bodies, meaning that the War Rating of each leader would now become a limiting factor in the troops they could control.

In the end, the next turn resolved the battle simply. The Viscount rallied his knights in the centre to attack the Earl's knights, who counter-charged. There was a moment of slightly sticky “who's in contact” questioning of the sort that used to make Dbx really, really not fun. I took advantage of playing solo and handwaved a little so both met on a more or less even basis. The dice gods favoured Silcropton, and one of the two enemy units was forced to retire.

Finally the Silcropton archers piled further volleys into one of the two remaning enemy men at arms units, causing two hits. A failed “Received Fire” reaction test gave the Earl's men a “retire” result, however they had already taken a number of hits equal to their Reputation, turning that result from at Retire into a Rout

The Earl of Suchmercove wheeled his charger around in the heart of the grand melee. Even in all that confusion he was aware that his flanks had both folded and his personal retinue were dangerously exposed in the centre, with Royalist troops folding in on both flanks. Swearing, he savagely spurred his steed back towards the hillside at a gallop, his men streaming after him in an undignified rout. That dandified fop Silcropton may own the field today, but there would be other days, and revenge would be sweet indeed.

 Another fun game taking just a couple of hours to setup and play.  I'd increased the armour class of the knights in this scenario from 4 to 6, which made them pretty hard to kill.

I'm quite badly behind schedule on these games, meaning I'm going to have to try to fit in four games by next Monday to get things back on track.  Tight, but eminently doable with 2 Hour Wargames' rules, which still live up to their name.

Bravely ran away, away

The Battle of Middleburn (Week 1, North)

Buoyed with (over)confidence that the blessings of the Nine were with them, the Church forces advanced boldly towards the Royalist blockade. They arrived piecemeal, starting with the advance guard consisting of two units of crossbowmen. A turn later, the two units of elite Temple Guards that had been screening the column's flanks reached the field. The main body of the Archbishop's "Pilgrimage" - three units of knights and four more units of Temple Guardsmen, were a half hour behind on the road.

Instead of waiting to form up or take a defensive position, the commander of the advance guard decided to boldly advance head on to try to engage the Royalists before the rest of the Church forces arrived. (This was determined by a roll on a table in the scenario) These crossbowmen had the dubious honour of firing the first shots of the Civil War, driving one unit of archers back from the edge of the hill to the south.

The Duke decided to match boldness with boldness and personally led his knights out to sweep the crossbowmen from the field. This they did, but not before taking significant casualties from bowfire on the charge in.

The Temple Guard units both raced in from either flank, but were too late to support the doomed crossbowmen, who streamed from the field in total rout. The northern flank unit drew the attention of the Duke, who charged them. This proved to be one charge too many for the tired and weakened knights, and the Elite Temple Guardsmen wielding their Rods of Might were more than a match for them. The Duke's unit were routed, and the Duke himself wounded and forced to retire to the nearby farmhouse where he was treated for the rest of the battle.

The Elite Temple Guards victory was short lived, as the second unit of knights then swept in from the flank and totally overran them with barely a pause. The southern flank guard unit decided discretion was the better part of valour, and retired south to the hills where it threatened the archers' flanks.

As the main body of the Archbishop's "Pilgrimage of Hope" arrived, consisting of three units of knights and four units of Temple Guards (... oh and probably some priests and pilgrims and possibly a donkey - it's not a proper pilgrimage if there isn't a donkey) things weren't looking bad for the Royalists. The scenario setup had determined that they would lose the scenario if they took three units lost, and by extrapolating out I'd decided that the Church forces would similarly break when they'd taken five units lost. So far the Church had lost three units to the Royalists' one. But on the other hand, the Royalists had lost their Leader unit, which was one of their army's heavy hitters, and the other unit of knights was severely weakened.

The scenario called for a roll to determine the Main Body's tactics when it arrived, and true to form the result was "bold advance without waiting to deploy, cavalry on the flank". I interpreted this as a pell-mell rush down the field towards the pass, in two bodies - knights and Temple Guards. This move brought the knights into the field of fire from the Royalist archers on the southern hill who having fended off the southern flank guards, duly blackened the sky and rained arrows down on the knights. The lead unit of knights responded to the fire by racing ahead to try to get to safety, which split them off from the main body of knights.

Pushing onwards the lead unit of knights ignored the men at arms stationed along the edge of the nearby woods and instead pushed past the farm towards the pass. There, they were met by the remaining unit of Royalist knights, who had rallied there after their earlier action and now stood as the only thing between the Archbishop and the road south.

The tired and battered Royalist knights lost their nerve and fell back in the face of the rebel knights. Rallying momentarily, they knew to a man that the next time the Archbishop's knights charged, they would not be able to hold and the battle would be lost. Meanwhile the remaining body of knights moved up to rejoin the breakaway unit, and the main force of Temple Guards advanced to threaten the Royalist men-at-arms.

And here the battle turned. The rearguard unit of the knights took a murderous fire from the archers on the hill, battering them until the few survivors quit the field in terror. Meanwhile the other unit of archers loosed a volley at the southern flank Temple Guard unit, who had been loitering nearby for some turns. In response the Elite Temple Guard inexplicably turned heels and ran away.

Archbishop Trente was furious. Riding at the head of his knights, he could see the gates to the pass South before him and felt victory within his grasp. But the shouts and screams behind him told the tale of his epic "Pilgrimage of Hope" collapsing into chaos. Biting off a curse, he snapped his horses reins around, turned and ordered the army to retire to West Eastcliffe.

#####

There you have it, the opening battle in the Novembre Civil War campaign, and what a nailbiter it was. This was my first time playing Rally Round The King, and after some initial befuddlement it quickly fell into place like all the best rulesets seem to do. It helps if you're used to the way THW rulesets normally work, though interestingly this game seems less interrupt-driven than most others. I'm playing this relatively fast and loose - not calculating detailed points values or army lists, and pretty much assigning troop stats and the like on the fly. Even the map and the whole setting of Novembre was created out of whole cloth yesterday in about an hour. Instead of spending too much time in preparation and background work, as an experiment I'm trying to just get stuck in and play, and letting the background fluff evolve naturally out of the games. For example, we now know that the Duke of Medwinde will be walking with a limp for the next few battles from the great wound he took at the Battle of Middleburn.

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot!

Well, no gunpowder, but plenty of the other stuff.

Behold the kingdom of Novembre!

Novembre was a stable prosperous island nation with good relations with its nearest neighbours. It is divided into three main regions: the Northern Marches, the Midlands and the Southern Plains. The current capital is Unaville, founded named by the late King after his daughter. Unfortunately the king had no male heir and so Queen Una is the current ruler. She has so far refused to take a husband, leaving the kingdom without an heir. This state of affairs also contradicts one of the primary edicts of the Church of the Nine, Novembre's state religion. This puts Archbishop Trente, head of the church, in the position of Una's most prominent critic and opponent.

Things reached a crisis point last year, when the Archbishop made the long journey from his mountaintop abbey at Heaven's Gate to the capitol, where he hoped to plead with the Queen to bow to convention and choose a spouse. The two did meet, but tempers flared and all diplomacy failed. The Queen issued an edict pronouncing Archbishop Trente a traitor to the crown, while the Archbishop spent his entire journey home preaching at every church and temple, loudly condemning the "Red Witch of the South" in what became popularly known as The Trail of Lamentations.

Summer passed into a winter of discontent, as the kingdom's divisions continued to simmer under the surface. But when spring arrived, nobles up and down the kingdom found themselves rallying to one side or the other. Archbishop Trente led the so called "Pilgrimage of Hope" south, with the aim of once more confronting the Queen. This time however, the so-called pilgrimage consisted of a body of well armed temple troops backed by local levies.

When Trente found his path blocked at Middleburn by a body of men led by the Duke of Medwinde, it set the scene for the first battle of the Novembre Civil War.

So if you haven't already worked this out, this is the setup for my planned solo medieval campaign for Solo Wargaming Appreciation Month. The challenge was to do some big solitaire game, above and beyond your normal gaming efforts. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, inspiration struck when I found a box containing my old fantasy/medieval human army, plenty of elements for a couple of DBA sized armies with some variations.

Here's how things are going to play out. Each real-time week I'm going to fight a minimum of one battle from each of the three regions (North, Midlands, South). Starting out in the central town, the winning side pushes the opponent back one space up the road. If a force is defeated in its home space (i.e. the end of the line) then the cause is lost in that region, which declares for the other side. The battles themselves are going to be semi-randomly picked scenarios from the three Charles S Grant scenario books ("Scenarios for Wargamers", "Programmed Scenarios" and "Scenarios for All Ages")

There's one minor change from the original plan. DBx was always notorious for not doing a good job of handling medieval battles, so I'm going to try out "Rally Round the King" from 2Hr Wargames. I've long been a big fan of 2HW's various skirmish rulesets, but this is the first time I'll be trying one of their big battle rules.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a battlefield to lay out. November, and the war, starts tomorrow!