En Garde, Royal Fencing Competition

 The ever indefatigable Russell wanted to end 1607 in our long running En Garde campaign with a bang, so we had a double session of duelling, with massive rewards available for the winner.

The details of the competition are listed above. The rewards are pretty generous, bearing in mind that my monthly pay as a Major in a decent regiment is only 30 crowns a month. It wasn't a knockout competition but one based on multiple rounds an accumulation of points per round, but divided into an average as it wasn't possible to balance the number of bouts.

I played quite a few duels when En Garde came out back in the late 70s, and did a quick refresher crash course and a briefing for the participants. tbh, it is probably the worst swordfighting game I have ever come across, although at the time it seemed quite innovative.

The horror of the five text pages and three large tables of duelling rules seemed to put people off, and we only have five participants for the contest, although there was a good display of silly hats on offer. We all had to fight three or four rounds, depending.

My En Garde character, Major Eduard du Moulin, was pretty good at sword fighting. I was strong, had a good constitution and also had plenty of practice at fighting with a Rapier in the two (three?) years of the campaign. A quick comparison of stats revealed I had nearly three times as many hit points as some of the others, oh dear...

After much joshing and jollity, we eventually got to fight our first round, me vs Tim. I can't say it went particularly well, I easily defeated Tim, but the step by step action resolution took an age to resolve and wasn't hugely enjoyable for either the participants or the viewers. The scoring table for the competition is above, but I'm afraid there isn't much else to see in a paper based combat system.

We all agreed that the combat system was lousy, and that we were very unlikely to finish even over two nights. Fortunately John rode to the rescue by suggesting an alternate system....

Tim Price's 'Battle Cards', which we used to run lightsaber duels at a number of shows some years ago. The rules in their entirety are reproduced above, and combat is resolved using a deck of seven cards per player. The actions are surprisingly similar to En Garde, being parries, various strengths of attack and a 'rest' card. You need to read the rule section on the 'rest' card very carefully as we made a mistake with it to start with, you will always have the rest card in your hand, as you pick it up again when it is played.

Basically each player picks a card and reveals it, cross referencing the relevant action. This worked much better, it was visually entertaining as we could reveal the cards on screen and it was also fiendishly challenging making the card selections from an ever depleting deck. A very clever game.

Things rattled along very quickly after that, although it still took two evenings to fight the whole tournament. We even had time to do some gambling on the results of each round, which was also very entertaining as the odds fluctuated depending on the standings of the participants at that point in time.

I had a flutter on my most dangerous rival, Lt Colonel Tartiflette, as I figured if I was going to lose I may as well make some money on the way.

The final result, and despite losing appallingly badly in my last bout, I did eventually come out on top (just). The rewards are amazing, appointed Kings Champion for a year, a bonus of 3 social points per month for one year, 1000 crowns cash prize, a monthly pension of 25 crowns, free membership of a club of your choice, a free night out and a one level bump in social level. That puts my Major on Social Level 10, the equivalent of minor nobility, which will come in very handy with my career progression plans.

Sadly it means that dear Judith (SL9) is somewhat beneath my current station and a new paramour will need to be sought out. Having reached the end of 1607 however, we are taking a break from En Garde for a year or two, instead have Twilight 2000 or Cosmos 68 lined up for future retro RPG games. 

I'll have to file away all the En Garde stuff for future use, as there is an awful lot to keep track of. That has been loads of fun for the last couple of years though, even if it hasn't been very photogenic for the blog.

2mm Prussians and extra bits

 Along with the Swedes and Russians, I also got some 2mm Prussians and some extra bits to supplement what I already have. Partly with an eye to doing some more Dominion scenarios I currently haven't got the right kit for, and partly some longer term flexibility.

Quite a bit more stuff in this batch than the Russians and Swedes!

Prussian infantry, like the Swedes and Russians, in 7YW uniforms. These are 2 rank deep strips, and due to the vagaries of the pack size, I ended up with nine bases although I prefer even numbers. Two strips per base, and basic uniforms are dark blue jackets and white trousers, although the two Guards units have ochre trousers.

As with the others, I did the faces and hats, which make a surprising difference.

National colour strip for these is dark blue. As with the Russians, the flags are an utter nightmare, every unit is different. The two Guards regiments have the right flags, the others are just random base colours and contrasts. Using the Posca paint pens for the contrast worked OK, and as before, I did the Royal coats of arms with micron liner pens.

Just like the others, two bases of Heavy Cavalry and two of Lights. The heavies are all done as cuirassiers in buff uniforms with breastplates (a very useful addition along with the Russian cuirassiers) and the lights in jaunty Hussar style uniforms. They also have my standard range of horse colours denoting heaviness.

First lot of extras are four more of the excellent 'Tercio' bases, a single piece casting of a central pike block and sleeves of shot. I've got a couple of these already, but they are perfect for Spanish and Imperial seventeenth century infantry formations. Some of the Dominion scenarios require more Tercios than I currently have.

The figures were drybrushed a random variety of colours, tending towards the earthy. There are a couple of officers cast in the front rank so I did them in a contrast. The pikes were drybrushed wood and given and ink wash then I picked out the tips. there are also a pair of large standards on the front of the pikes. 

I didn't do contrasting trousers but I did paint the forward facing faces and all the hats. I love these castings, they are just great.

I have four bases of 'skirmishers' already, and I find generic skirmisher bases very, very useful to denote all kinds of things about units. These are eight extra bases of skirmishers, each with two of the 2mm skirmisher strips. I think my other ones must be 'dismounted dragoon' strips as these figures are clearly cast in a range of kneeling positions and it is very hard indeed to tell which way they are facing.

I did six of the bases in dark green (a popular colour for jagers in the eighteenth century) and two in dark blue (Chasseurs maybe?) and put faces on them to make it easier to tell their direction. All my generic strips have a plain white rear edge too.

I had a few spare cavalry strips lying around, so I made up four bases of skirmishing cavalry, or at least in extended order. These could be used for anything a bit out of the ordinary, Cossacks? Mounted arequebusiers? Anyway, they don't look like the more regular cavalry in two ranks so I'm sure they will be handy.

I did them in a range of uniform and horse colours. Don't look too closely but a couple of the horse strips don't have any riders, presumably from dragoons or something. In 2mm it really is very hard to tell.

Three bases of wagons. I already have bases of covered wagons and pontoon trains, but these are open backed so a bit of a contrast and you can never have too much transport!

And finally three command bases. Again I already have various command bases, but if you look really carefully you will see the officers are in Prussian, Swedish and Russian uniforms. Yes, I did these at the same time as the three armies but forgot to take pictures of them at the time. Well here they are now. 

And that is it for the new figures. Although they aren't painted as well as my old stuff, they will do and I'm pleased with them. 2mm is very much about impression rather than microscopic accuracy and I expect they will spend most of their time standing in for other stuff in any case. 

I got some more 2mm scenics as well, but I'll cover those in a sperate post.

Brietenfeld 1631 revisited

 I wasn't hugely happy with my earlier refight of Brietenfeld with Dominion of Pike and Shot. It just didn't feel quite right as the Swedish infantry were far too brittle, and I'd also been quite lazy in the table setup. So I thought I'd do it again with a couple of minor changes, similar to those I did for the Jacobite Rebellion.

Battlefield from the south, I've put the rivers on this time. Brietenfeld itself is the town to the bottom left, the road to Leipzig runs north/south through the middle. Tillys army is at the bottom, two units of disciplined cuirassiers and two deep infantry formations ('Tercios'). I've doubled up the element count for this, so normal units have four bases and the big Tercios have two tercio bases. 

As Gustavus Adolphus outnumbered the Imperials 40,000 to 30,00 AND had his troops deployed in shallower formations, I was tempted to give the Swedes an extra unit, but instead I made the Swedish infantry both disciplined and elite to represent their revolutionary combined arms formations. I almost just used the Great Northern War rules instead, which essentially give +1 for being Swedish.

So Gustavus has two Swedish infantry (Elite and Disciplined) which I modelled as a mix of shot and pike stands in a chequerboard, two heavy cavalry and the poor old Saxons who are just a standard pike and shot infantry unit.

I used Alan Saunders mods for mixed Pike and Shot units with the added bonus to the Swedes that their infantry were disciplined.

The opening bombardment. After the changes in units, the matchups mean that Tillys cavalry is (still) superior to the Swedes, Tillys cavalry and infantry are superior to the Saxons, but the Swedish infantry are superior to anything. So Tilly positions his guns to try and encourage a Swedish cavalry charge, while the Swedes have nothing to gain by firing at all. They don't want to hit the enemy cavalry, and if they force an infantry to retreat, it is just replaced by an identical one.

irl Tilly bombarded the centre, and must have had a good reason to do so, so I'm minded to have a look at some of the other variants and see if I can do something about that. I think I prefer the option in the WW1 set that a bombardment hit makes the target Unreliable.

The Swedish bombardment misses, but Tilly hits and prompts a Swedish cavalry charge which results in mutual annihilation! The Swedes push their reserve infantry into the gap and Tilly puts his reserve Tercio in.

Just so he knows where he is, Gustavus uses his rally and recovers the cavalry which go into reserve. I'm using my new 2mm tent lines to mark each camp, and there is a wagon with each camp too, which changes facing once a rally is used up. I found it hard to remember otherwise, and it gets the toys on the table.

Over on the right Tillys cuirassiers attack the Saxons. Their volleys miss and the cuirassiers send them in flight. The Swedes only have cavalry in reserve so they move to plug the gap.

The Swedish infantry attack the centre and rout the Tercio opposite. Under the standard scenario, this is an even matchup, but with the changes, the Swedes have an advantage (Tercio hits on 6, Swedes on 5+), which is as it should be.

Tilly responds with another cavalry attack on the right, which routs the Swedish cavalry. Tilly also attempted to rally his Tercio but failed. The Swedish reserve cavalry moves into the gap.

Gustavus tries an outflanking attack into the open centre and fails! Even with their advantage, they aren't supermen.

And Pappenheims cuirassiers rout the last Swedish cavalry. Those boys have earned their spurs today.

As the cavalry move to outflank them, the Swedish centre tries another outflanking attack and fails again! Perhaps these fancy new infantry tactics aren't all they are made out to be...

But finally, the Imperial cavalry fail in their own outflanking attack, while the Swedes finally send Tilly packing. A very close run thing for Gustavus, he obviously needs to work on his cavalry tactics...

I was very pleased with how that went, it felt much more like how I'd imagined this particular battle to be, but still felt like a decent contest.

I thought I'd give it another run to see if the outcome was due to outrageous dice....

There didn't seem to be any great need to change the initial bombardment plan. I do like the look of my bigger units too.

After a few turns pounding, things weren't looking too good for Tilly. Just two units left, while the Swedes had only lost one cavalry unit. Even the Saxons were still there!

However once again Pappenheim showed what he was made of and finally sent the Saxons packing.

The Swedes had to commit their last infantry reserve to fill the gap while their cavalry outflanking attack foundered against the deep formation of the Tercio in the centre. Both sides used their rallies and failed to recover any units. 

In an astonishing turn of events, the Imperial cuirassiers routed the Swedish infantry on the right, and then the Tercio routed the Swedish infantry in the centre! All that was left was the cavalry on the flanks. Both sides had one unit left, so fought on...

And given their first strike, unsurprisingly, Tilly came out on top and the Swedes were defeated. Well, that was a result! I really enjoyed both those games and it is nice to see I haven't unbalanced the scenario too much in the Swedish favour.

I really can't help thinking that the Thirty Years War needs a specific treatment (as does the ECW) outside the general Pike and Shot rules, more in the manner of some of the other supplements. I know how hard it is to write these simple rules as you have so few variables to work with, so for now I'm happy to tinker in a scenario basis. I will play some games with the later sets of rules  though and see if there are any backwards compatible ideas. 

Herring Wars - Operation Kamerad

 Tim has been running a hypothetical late nineteenth/early twentieth century conflict between Denmark and Norway for some years now, "The Herring Wars". This is mainly an excuse to drag out lovely 1/1200th scale models of pre dreadnoughts, armoured cruisers etc but for various reasons I've missed every single session!

The rules themselves are fairly simple, but combat is resolved using Fred Jane type ship silhouettes as seen below.

If the ship is large and nearby, use a big template, small and far away, use a small template. They go into the custom shooting box. Instead of dropping darts on them as Fred Jane did however...

The actual firing is resolved by using Britains 25pdrs firing matchsticks at the targets. Here are the deadly guns lined up waiting for action. Of all the Britains various spring loaded guns, we've found over the years that the 25pdr is invariably the most accurate and powerful.

This time we were up at Tapton and making use of the very handy gridded floor in the main Masonic Lodge room. The original orders for each contingent had been written by various 'Admirals' scattered around the globe, I was cast as German , and Admiral von Holtzendorff (Micheal over in the US) had ordered me to locate and shadow a Russian squadron believed to be transiting the area. The first few moves were adjudicated hidden using these huge playing cards (easily A4 sized), and each square represents around 2 nautical miles.

A pair of Norwegian (?) armoured cruisers, delightful metal models from Navis (?) in Germany. Even the turrets rotate... hideously expensive models and we were under strict orders about when and where we were allowed to walk on the floor. Russell commanded the Norwegians.

We were aware that the Danes and Norwegians were out there, but what they were up to was anyones guess. My orders were to avoid an engagement unless attacked, I was basically to show the flag and shadow the Russians across the table.

Three Danish torpedo boats. Stacking too many ships in a square risked a collision, less of a problem with small ships, but you certainly didn't want to stack too many battleships or cruisers. Major turns required a dice roll, easy for small ships, harder for big ones and modified by damage sustained.

John commanded the Danes.

The main Danish battle squadron, a battleship and a pair of cruisers. We rolled each turn for visibility (the Skagerrac is notorious for fog banks etc) ands ships within a few squares were revealed. There were a number of dummies too. These guys are sailing a bit close to the wind in terms of collision risk.

My squadron eventually revealed itself as we approached an interesting (and slow moving set of cards). KMS Strassburg, (a Konigsberg class light cruiser) and a pair of torpedo boats. We'd been ordered to stay in one square to ease signalling, but we did seem a bit packed in. 

Fortunately in the distance was our target, a big old Russian battleship and a cruiser. They were wisely spread out, as the BB needed a 3+ to make a turn. Jerry was commanding the Russians The big surprise was that also in attendance was HMS Weymouth, a Royal Navy cruiser (commanded by Diego).

I had orders for a pre arranged signal to send to the Russians and a flurry of signal lamps ensued as we all attempted to hail each other and inform everyone of our identity and intentions. The poor weather and lack of skill of our signallers repeatedly interfered with our efforts, and only fragmentary messages were received. It was apparent no-one was shooting at anyone else so we all sailed eastwards in amiable company.

Further east a Danish airship had spotted some Norwegian fishing boats. Or are they Japanese torpedo boats?

There suddenly seemed to be an awful lot of warships in close proximity, but repeatedly bad weather hampered sighting attempts. There were sounds of gunfire as a squadron of Danish torpedo boats found one of the Norwegian fishing fleets and started to sink it! I'm fairly sure that is piracy on the high seas.

The Royal Navy (HMS Sussex?) investigates the Danish battleship. There seemed to be quite a few RN ships floating around. This particular encounter passed peacefully.

In the face of the Danish aggression, the other Norwegian fishing fleet scattered. The Royal Navy went tearing off to see what the Scandinavians were up to. 

In the south the Danes broke off their attacks after a number of TBDs became fouled in fishing nets. We and the Russians turned south and started to look for survivors, being a bit careful after a couple of dodgy turning rolls. We finally seemed to have established satisfactory communications and sailed along in convoy.

One of the nice things about Tapton are the great lunches! Meat pie, chips, mushy peas, gravy and Hendersons, washed down with a pint. Mmmmm.

Back in the hell of the Skagerrac, a major action developed between the Danes and Norwegians. Danish Torpedo Boats engaged Norwegian cruisers and came off rather worst (the big red golf tees).

Even the Danish battleship got into action, but in all the excitement I'm afraid I forgot to take enough pictures!

Having seen the Russians safely across the Skagerrac and into the Baltic, my squadron headed north towards the sound of the gunfire.

But by then both the Danes and Norwegians had broken off the action, neither apparently wanted to risk significant damage to their major surface units. You can see the damaged TBDs retreating past the fishing boats, and the rest of the Danes pulling back further north shadowed by the Royal Navy.

As the fighting had obviously finished, we called it a day at that point and did a round robin washup of what our various orders and aims had been. The Russians and Germans had managed their transit of the sea without major incident, the Norwegians claimed a winning draw based on how many ships/fishing boats they had sunk, but had clearly come off the worst in the encounter. The Royal Navy had however signally failed to keep the peace.

That was lots of fun and I found it quite inspiring. I don't do huge amounts of naval gaming but I thought the rules might work quite well with my Russo-Japanese War stuff, although I'd have to come up with some sort of dice system to resolve hits on the various sizes of target. 

 

2mm Swedes and Russians

 After having many Pike & Shot and Horse & Musket games of Dominion, I was inspired to expand my 2mm collection a bit. Although tbh when they are on the table the 'figures' are largely interchangeable as they are so small, it is nice to know you at last have some of the correct troops with the right flags, uniforms etc.

This was also my first order to Irregular since the 2mm/6mm business was hived off, and I was pleasantly surprised that the order was fulfilled quickly and with nothing missing. I've got plenty of figures with pikes, so I wanted to get some more of the line musket infantry types more suitable for the seventeenth century.

First up some smallish contingents of Swedes and Russians. I didn't get masses of them as I can always make the numbers up from other base types.

The casting were pretty decent, some of the them had the familiar Irregular heavy flash on the base underside but most were pretty clean. Perhaps 20% (?) of the strips had significant flash lines on the upperside too, so possibly just one duff mould section. They are easy enough to clean up on this scale, although you have to be careful not to accidentally file off the flags.

For 2mm I usually put them on their final bases before undercoating them, it makes them much easier to handle. I undercoated them matt black them misted them with white to raise the highlights.

First up eight bases of Swedish musket infantry. Each base has two of the three rank deep strips with flags. My 2mm Horse and Musket stuff is mainly painted up for the WSS, but as Sweden didn't take part, I did them for the 7YW. They have mid blue jackets and yellow trousers, and I added faces and hats, which really makes a difference. Doing the faces is a sort of mixture of dabbing and drybrushing, but it  is well worth the effort. If you do paint the faces though, you have to do the headgear as the flesh paint goes everywhere, but a simple black drybrush (carefully) does the trick. When I was younger with better eyesight I even painted the muskets, bayonets and hands, but that is beyond me now.

I did each base with one regimental flag (essentially white with the royal coat of arms in the middle and a tiny dot for the regimental distinction) and one national flag - the Swedish blue flag with a yellow cross. In a sign of ageing I really struggled with the flags and they were a right dogs dinner. In the end my micron lining pens and Posca paint pens came to the rescue, and I ended up doing the colour detail bits with the paint pens and edging them with micron liner pen.

Back when I started with 2mm I was able to hand paint union flags on the British infantry stands, but sadly no more.

It is a bit hard to see but I put the national colours on the rear base edge. It helps with troop identification and to keep them pointing the right way! Yellow was already taken for Imperial troops and Blue for Prussia so I did the Swedes half yellow and half blue.

They are flocked which I think looks much better than painted bases. Woodland Scenics Blended Turf which is quite fine. 

I also did four cavalry bases, two heavy and two light, each being a pair of the eight figure close order strips or six figure open order strips.

For the SYW Swedish heavy cavalry uniforms were pretty boring, just blue and yellow, but they had at least one Regiment of Hussars in black, so I did one of the light cavalry bases in black uniforms and the other light blue.

The horses are a range of shades of brown, light shades for the light cavalry, one unit of heavies even has a whole rank of black horses. Looking back at my old figures, I have even painted some white socks, noses etc on some of the horses so I might go back and redo that.

The cavalry guidons I just did in red and blue for the heavies and yellow and green for the lights. No idea if that is right, and I have a strong suspicion those colours were inspired by the horse colours in 'Totopoly'!

Ten bases of Russian infantry, more than the Swedes as there are a lot of Russians. Two of them are Guards. I had vague ideas about using some of these guys for Napoleonics, but no chance with these. Although they have green jackets, they also have bright red trousers, very un-Napoleonic! No real problem as I have tons of 6mm Napoleonics. I later found out that the red trousers were a short lived innovation of Catherine the Great which was rapidly reversed. Oh well, I can't be bothered to repaint them now.

Much the same process as the Swedes, but different colours this time. Quite a bright green on the jackets so they stand out. With their red trousers these guys could be ACW Zouaves! These troops are also three rank blocks.

I used the jacket green for the national colour on the bases (again, hard to see, sorry). The flags were a nightmare though, every single Regiment was different and there isn't even any consistency as to whether they have vertical or diagonal crosses. I went with a similar scheme to the Swedes with one regimental and one 'national' flag per base, which sort of repeat the contrast colours across them.

For these flags I just block painted the base colour and then dabbed on the contrasts with paint pens. The two Guards Regiments have the right flag colours, but the others are a bit of a random collection of colours which look nice together. I drew the Imperial eagle symbols with a micron pen, and en masse they don't look too bad. 

Similar to the Swedish cavalry, two bases  of heavies and two of lights. A lot of the heavies in this period seem to be cuirassiers in buff uniforms with breastplates, so I did them buff and dabbed on gunmetal for the breastplates. I need more cuirassiers for some of the Dominion scenarios, so these will do nicely.

Russian hussars in this period were very jazzy however, so I did a Regiment of 'yellows' (Hungarian I think) and one of 'reds' (Moldovan?). They do look pretty smart and pop more than the boring Swedes.

Like the Swedes the heavies got a higher proportion of dark brown and black horses with red and blue guidons, the lights had lighter browns and red and yellow guidons.

Pretty pleased with those although volume-wise they are about the same size as my Bavarian and Dutch 'armies' for the WSS. I do the bases in pairs as I still have in my head basing for Twilight of the Sun King. Two bases per brigade means you can do line formation, supported line, square and march column just by aligning the two bases differently, and having two strips per bases means each strip represents roughly a battalion or cavalry regiment.

I do have a slight hankering to do 'big base' 2mm with lots of strips on a base representing a large brigade or a division, but the smaller strips are so much more flexible, if a bit fiddly without a sabot base. I put magnetic strip on all of them so I can use my steel covered sabot bases.