Friday, 24 October 2025

More Hebridean Piracy

Our club has gone Viking ship crazy at the moment, with lots of them being painted for the game Fjord Serpents. So this kind of influenced my decision as to what Galleys & Galleons game to host last night. Hebridean birlinns are kind of a successor to the classic Viking vessel, so with three of us scheduled to play I went with my three-player scenario in which two Hebridean lairds attempt to get as much loot as possible from three passing merchant ships.

I played the merchants, Caesar took the red-sailed birlinns of Angus Redshanks and Daniel the blue-sailed vessels of the Laird of Skye.

The wind was behind the merchant vessels, which allowed Angus Redshanks to come in from their beam and left Daniel having to use sweeps to intercept them.


An opening shot from one of teh merchants did nothing to deter Redshanks' vessels.


Constant weather changes frustrated Daniel's approach; as he turned onto a faster intercept course, the wind moved with him. Maybe the other laird had employed wizardry.



One of the red-sailed ships swooped in and grappled a merchant.


Soon another merchant was grappled. Both ships put up a surprisingly decent fight ...


... but the first one quickly surrendered and Angus began the process of looting it.


The third merchant ship evaded the ships of Angus Redshanks, but now had to run through the Laird of Skye's line. 


It was grappled (top left of the picture) but before the boarders could swarm over the gunwales the merchant crew cut the grapples and sailed off, making their escape. Once more, ill-fortune dogged poor Daniel. Meanwhile Caesar was whittling down the crew of the second merchant ship.


It struck. 

One of the red-sailed ships made a run through it past Daniel's vessels, and he failed to stop it.


Caesar quickly subdued and looted the second merchant ship, which gave him six pieces of cargo. The other three had escaped on the third ship. One of Daniel's ships pursued a Redshanks ship with a single piece of cargo. There was much exchange of small-arms.



Daniel managed to board ...


... and the Redshanks vessels struck.

So the game ended with six pieces of cargo captured. Caesar got five of them, whilst Daniel got one. The merchants escaped with three.

To be fair Daniel was extremely unlucky with wind-changes, activation rolls and even the initiative order once or twice. It was just one of those games.

Still, it was a fun three-player game; always a difficult setup to cater for.

Thursday, 23 October 2025

Heat - 1961 Championship - 2

We played the second of our three Heat championship races the other day. This time it was the USA track. Here's the starting grid setup, in order of  the total points. Catherine's yellow car was right at the back, and I was just in front in 4th place.


Windy weather meant that we couldn't slipstream on the long back-straight, but there were a couple of advantageous track effects in play that would help offset this.


Both Catherine and I started well, and as we came into a pair of tight bends Catherine slipped into the lead.


Coming out of the bends I managed to get an epic lead after I accidentally went round a corner far too fast but had enough heat cards to pay for it. Unfortunately this meant I'd used up all of my heat cards, which wasn't something I'd planned to do. 


On the next bend I misjudged it again and spun out. This allowed everyone else to catch up but also put a lot more stress into my deck, making my car's movement even more unpredictable. I slipped into fourth place whilst the red bot car, who had been well in the rear on the first lap, now took the lead. Catherine was in last place at this stage.


And yet after we passed through the bends, Catherine managed to push ahead and picke dup a photo-finish second-place over black


I was pushed into fifth place. I'd just made up for spinning out on the earlier corner, and was heading for a deft passage of the final corner when having to play stress cards caught up with me and I got an unlucky one in four bad draw caused me to spin out. There's no way of recovering from that on the last corner, and I ended up using all of the heat I'd carefully saved up for my final burst to the finish-line*.


Anyway, the standings are:

1 - Red (bot) - 13 points
2= - Black (bot)- 10 points
2= - Green (bot) - 10 points
4 - Yellow - 7 points
5= - Silver (bot) - 5 points
5= - Blue - 5 points

Looks like I'm set to finish last, whilst Catherine could top the table if Red does badly in the next race and she can pull off a win. The next race is the very fast Italy course.

*My intent for a finish is to take the final corner in second gear with at least two heat cards available to do an acceleration up to fourth and a boost to cross the finish-line. It rarely works out that way.


Sunday, 19 October 2025

Dark Ages DBA

After my game of DBA the other week I got to thinking that not only had I not played it in a while, but that it had been a long time since my various Dark Ages armies had seen the light of day.

Yesterday I got them out and had a few games.

First onto the table were my old favourites, the Sub-Roman British against some early Scots-Irish. This is basically cavalry and spears against chariots and auxilia. Against the odds the Irish defended, and set up in some marshy woodland on the coast.


Irish chariots.


British cavalry.


The Irish brought in some auxilia by sea to threaten the British camp. The British had left some pedyts to cover against this possibility and they basically spent the game in a stand-off.


The remaining pedyts spent most of the game watching Irish auxilia in a marsh.


The British did what the British do best; a cavalry charge. with hindsight doing this without bringing up at least a couple of supporting pedyts was a foolish thing. 


The British were thrown back.


And now the Irish responded. Although they were lurking in a marsh the Irish could bring up their fast-moving warriors to support the chariots and that open British flank was quickly exploited.


Amazingly the British cavalry element not only fought off the opposition, but destroyed it, giving the British the first kill of the battle.


Low PIPs meant they couldn't exploit the advantage and the Irish carried on feeding in auxilia and surrounding the British cavalry.



The British held off the attacks and got a stab at killing teh Irish general. They failed. I also sent in some cavalry against chariots that had recoiled into a marsh. In HOTT this chariot would be vulnerable and easy to kill, but in DBA it simply flees if it loses. I found that out when I double-checked the combat results.


A nice shot of the Irish general not dying.


The British general was surrounded and killed.


Some British cavalry broke through and sacked the Irish camp which, it turns out, still wasn't enough for a win.


The Irish got things together and destroyed more British horse, giving them the win.


It was a relatively close game. The Irish lost two chariots and their camp, whilst the British lost two cavalry (one the general) and a light horse. The Irish won 4g-3. The British foot did nothing.


For the second game the Saxons defended against a Pictish attack. The Saxons are nearly all warband, whilst the Picts are a core of fast pike-armed troops supported by light cavalry and psiloi.


Saxon warband in two ranks.


The Picts faced the Saxon foot with their own and put their horse on the flank to try an outflank the Saxon advance.


The Saxons charged with their main line and sent off their right flank to hold up the cavalry.


A brisk skirmish against the Saxon right flank saw the Picts hurled back.


The two infantry lines clashed. The solid Saxon warbands had the advantage here, but the deep Pictish pike-blocks were still dangerous opponents.


Indeed the first casualty was a Saxon warband. The lines shoved back and forth.


But soon the Saxon ferocity began to tell, and the Pictish line crumbled.


And collapsed. Their horse couldn't get over to the fight in time to stave off disaster.


The Saxons won 4-1. This was a second game lost because an army didn't coordinate their cavalry and their infantry. Make a note of that, kids.

The third game saw the Saxons defending against another attack, this time from teh Welsh. The Welsh are another warband army, but their warband are light and fast. They also have more psiloi and a cavalry general.


Although the attacker the Welsh adopted a defensive posture, using a hill and a hamlet to bolster their line.


The Saxons actually have a slight edge in a straight fight because their solid warband in draws against the Welsh equivalents. The Saxons charged ...


... and the Welsh were mostly pushed back. There's one exception in the foreground.


Indeed that was the flank where a Welsh warband destroyed a Saxon counterpart. This gave the Welsh a free element to use. And their advantage was that their warband are more mobile.


So as the Saxon centre drove the Welsh back through the hamlet, their right flank was now very vulnerable. And the Welsh general was leading his cavalry followers in an attack on the Saxon left.


As you'd expect, things were breaking up a fair bit as the various warband fights shoved back and forth.


The Welsh general in action. There's tidy!


The Saxon right was eliminated, but they were scoring kills in the centre.


The Saxon general was doing well, shoving back the opposition with great ferocity.


But the Welsh general got a kill ...


... as did some warband in the centre ...



... and over on the Welsh right their skirmishing archers prevailed over their Saxon opposite numbers.


The Saxon army saw a total collapse - the Welsh won 6-2!


The games were good fun, even if (having not played DBA for a while) I had to look lots of stuff up. It's very different from HOTT in many way.


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