Dinosaurs On The Dneiper

In the immediate aftermath of the fatal battle of Poltava in 1709, Swedish troops were routed and scattered across the Ukrainian countryside. One company evaded the Russians hunting them, and found themselves in a remote and forbidding landscape. They entered a valley through what appeared to be an ancient ruined gateway and, exhausted, camped for the night.

Near dawn the musketeers on guard heard movement in the undergrowth around them ...

A terrible lizard rushed the camp!

And another!

The guards shouted and raised the alarm, and the other Swedish troops tumbled out of their tents and prepared for battle.

One monster appeared on the hill above the camp, but a band of cavalry charged it and slew it.

But another rushed into the centre of the camp and devoured some infantry before being driven back.

Other reptiles appeared on the hill, and the two groups of cavalry on that side of the camp bravely charged again and again.

The Swedish company was now fully formed up, and was holding their own.

One reptile tore through a section of the camp, utterly destroying it.

On the other side, what appeared to be the leader of the giant lizard pack appeared, ripping through one of the groups of cavalry and wiping them out.

The monsters closed in on the camp again.

One advanced on some infantry sheltering in the ruins of the gateway.

They fired a volley at it, and it fell back reeling.

A charge by pikemen led by the company commander finished off the giant reptile.

The pack-leader scattered the other group of cavalry, which fell back to reform.

It then turned on the surviving camp guards who were forced to fight with sword and bayonet, having not had time to unleash a volley of musketry.

Amazingly they survived, and as they reformed, the company commander ordered all of his pikemen into the attack, coming in on both flanks of the monster. They failed to wound it, but it was enough; the surviving monsters withdrew back into the valley, leaving the Swedes to count their casualties and see to their ransacked camp.

This was a game of 'Dragon Rampant', using 24pt warbands. The scenario was actually the Beating Up Quarters one from 'The Pikeman's Lament' though.

The warbands were as follows:

Swedes
2 x Heavy Foot, 2 x Heavy Missiles with Weighty Projectiles and Enchanted Shooting Weapons 2 x Heavy Riders
Leader could order one automatic Attack each turn

Dinosaurs Of The Lost Valley
1 x Greater Warbeast with Fear, 4 x Lesser Warbeasts
Leader could reroll one Attack dice per combat

The Swede's Enchanted Shooting represents their first volley.

The playing area was 2' x 2' and I changed all distances from inches to centimetres.

I played with a few changes to the rules:

(i) I used the unit spacing rules from 'The Pikeman's Lament'.

(ii) I used my own rules for Enchanted Weapons. I allow the unit to automatically have them, but each time they are used the unit must roll a D6 and needs a score or 6 to keep them. (Blessed Weapons are kept on a 5 or 6). This allows the unit to always get at least one use of them, rather than how it works in the original rules where there's only a 1 in 6 chance of them being used, but they are deadly for the whole game if you do get them.

(iii) I also used the Wild Charge rules from 'The Pikeman's Lament', where a unit which fails to charge is allowed to make an activation roll to move in the normal part of their turn.

(iv) In terms of the scenario, I allowed any unit that was in contact with a camp to ignore Wild Charge. The scenario requires a unit to move into contact with a section of camp, and then make an activation roll in the next turn to try and destroy it. This is tough if the units have Wild Charge, as they never get a chance to destroy things. I guess if they can use Wild Charges to destroy the enemy force altogether then the camp is theirs to ransack as they wish, but that didn't seem as interesting.

This game was one of those random ideas that came to me when I was daydreaming at work. But I enjoyed it so much I think I'm going to have another go.

The Great Northern War Randomised

In the previous post I said that I'd randomised the forces I used, but didn't explain how. In this post I'll tell you how.

I created a series of 12pt forces for both the Russians and the Swedes. Half of them emphasised cavalry, and half emphasised infantry. I then divided the forces into two tables for each side, and a player rolled a dice on each table to see what they got. They are weighted so that a force will generally be a 50/50 mix of horse and foot, but all-horse and all-foot forces are possible (as you saw in the game).

So, each side makes one roll on Table One and one roll on Table Two.

Swedes - Table One

1-2 - 1 x Raw Shot, 1 x Raw Pike, 1 x Regimental Gun
3-4 - 3 x Raw Shot
5-6 - 3 x Gallopers

Swedes - Table Two

1-2 - 3 x Gallopers
3-4 - 2 x Elite Gallopers
5-6 - 2 x Raw Shot, 1 x Raw Pike

All Shot can form Close Order
All Swedish Shot and Pike have a Priest attached, giving them +1 Courage
Roll a D6 if the force contains Gallopers. On a 4+ all of the Gallopers are Aggressive.

Russians - Table One

1-2 - 4 x Raw Shot
3-4 - 2 x Raw Shot, 1 x Forlorn Hope
5-6 - 2 x Galloper, 1 x Dragoon

Russians - Table Two

1-2 - 3 x Gallopers
3-4 - 2 x Dragoons, 1 x Galloper
5-6 - 3 x Raw Shot, 1 x Raw Pike

All Shot can form Close Order
Roll a D6. On a 5+, replace a 4pt unit with a Regimental Gun. You must replace Dragoons if you have them. If there are no 4pt units, replace two 3pt units with a Regimental Gun, and give two units (your choice) Priests.

For terrain I divided the table up into 1' squares and diced for each one.

On a 1-4 it has no terrain.
On a 5 it has either a small piece of rough going that provides no cover, enclosures of some kind, or a hill.
On a 6 it has a larger area of rough going (including woods) or impassable terrain.

The terrain to be placed is fairly arbitrary. Basically what you place for a roll of '6' should be nastier than what's placed for a roll of '5'. For a denser table treat a roll of '4' as a roll of '5'.

Roll a D6. On a 1-2 there is a river. Die 50/50 to see if it either runs lengthwise or straight across the table. Then dice to see where it starts along one edge. It will go in a straight line to the opposite edge. Roll again. On a  1-4 it is passable along its length (counting as rough) but has a single ford or bridge. On a 5-6 it cannot be crossed, but has two fords or bridges. randomly determine the positions of the fords/bridges.

Note that some scenarios require certain terrain to be placed. Randomly determined terrain can be moved or removed as required (for example if you roll the river crossing scenario, you may wish to remove a randomly generated river.). The actual edges for scenario purposes (North, South, East, West) should be determined after the terrain has been set, preferably randomly unless the scenario dictates that action happens across or along the table.

Obviously adjust these rolls as you see fit. The army generators have only seen action once, but I've used versions of the terrain generator for a while, and they generally give interesting battlefields.

Cattle Rustling

Caesar and I played 'The Pikeman's Lament' last night, using my Great Northern War figures. Virtually everything about the game was at least partly randomised; I generated some tables with possible unit types, another for terrain and, after determining forces we randomly determined a scenario as well. I'll put the force determination table in another post, partially because I might want to use them again and, at the moment, they are scribbled on a piece of paper.

We played on a 3' x 3' board and halved distances - this was to keep everything in line with the units' footprints. Caesar's cloth is 4' x 4', so a large river and some rocky hills were used to mark the edges of the actual play area.

I took the Swedes, and ended up with a force consisting of three Raw Shot and three Gallopers. They ended up as the attacker in a mission that saw them having to transport rustled cattle (the yellow counters) from one side of the table to the other.

Caesar's Russians started with a small blocking force on table, and the rest of his troops coming on from the sides along the Swedes' escape route. It was entirely made up of infantry - on table he had his officer leading a unit of Raw Shot and some Raw Pike. Off-table were four more units of Raw Shot and a fearsome Forlorn Hope (representing some grenadiers).

Units driving cattle are limited in speed and can't initiate charges, so the job was given to my shot units, who are already slow and wouldn't be charging anyway. They plodded forward, and opened fire on the Russian pikes to little effect.

Caesar got his blocking force into a reasonable position to slow my troops, but then failed his activation roll to start bringing the rest of his troops onto the table. I swung my cavalry flanks around to strike at the Russians in the centre and clear a path for my shot to escape.

Russian reinforcements began to appear. Unfortunately the grenadiers appeared just long enough disappear when a random even saw them ordered elsewhere.

The Swedish cavalry charged, taking on the Russian leader's shot unit. It took casualties and fell back in good order. But the cavalry's follow-up saw both units break. This was bad for me, since I was relying on my cavalry to screen my shot, but worse for Caesar who now found his force leaderless.

His pike now came under attack as well but pike are made of sterner stuff than shot in these rules, and they held out for a couple of turns.

They were under considerable pressure from the majority of the Swedish force, though, and eventually broke.

The Swedes took a few turns to reorganise themselves and disentangle their units so they could continue their move across the table. This was, in part, due to their ageing leader having a desperate desire to close with the nearest enemy units and try to bring them to combat despite what his advisers said (I rolled the 'advance on nearest enemy' random event twice, although in one case it actually had me move pretty much in the direction I wanted to go anyway).

The Russians were making heavy weather of moving up to intercept the Swedes. This was due in part to a terrible set of morale rolls caused by the loss of the pike unit, which saw a couple of groups of shot waver and hesitate for a turn.

And things got worse for the Russians - the Swedes got reinforcements! This fresh cavalry unit never got into the fight, but certainly did a lot to dampen the Russian's enthusiasm for a continued pursuit.

All credit to Caesar; with everything going pear-shaped for his force, he kept up the pursuit for as long as he could. The Swedes were angling away from them, and moving their surviving horse to act as a screen.

Even their officer felt he'd had enough for one day and was looking forward to a beef stew.

A hero rose from the Russian ranks and began urging his fellows soldiers forward.

But it wasn't enough. The Swedish officer decided that going home without giving his companions chance to fire their muskets was a bit unfair, so he halted and allowed them one volley at their pursuers. The Russians took a few hits and decided to run.

At that point Caesar decided that call off the pursuit. He was down to two shot units, one a bit shaky already, and stood next to no chance of catching the Swedes or indeed completing any of his side-missions, both of which involved destroying Swedish units.

This game was stupidly fun - maybe more so for me than for Caesar - with the random elements of the system really coming to the fore. To be honest an all-infantry blocking force was always going to have a hard time, but there we identified a number of ways it could have stopped the Swedes had their morale and ability to respond to orders been better. Possibly including the company's officer as part of the initial on-table blocking force might not have been the best of plans either, as his loss really didn't help the Russian's plans at all.

Burlesque Update #8

So I'm currently back to my normal Thursday evening wargaming, and that means you've been getting regular game reports instead of updates on my burlesque shenanigans. However I promised one last post with some proper photos take during the actual shows. And here they are. All pictures are by Stuart Bucknell Photography.

Firstly some shots of the group performance.

And then, what you've all been waiting for - Isadora Persano in all her solo glory!

 

What of the future? Well, I have applied for a couple of  the regular shows up in Sydney; they are both well-known for giving novice performers a chance on stage, and in fact I took part in both of them last year when our school did our first group performance. In addition I will be performing my act at a couple of local events - a variety evening as part of a local arts festival in September, and also a fundraiser for a local community space in just over a week. In addition I have the beginnings of  second solo act - I know how I want it to look, have found some suitable music and have got or started planning the various costume elements. It seems likely that there will be another mentoring course, and I will develop it as part of that, hopefully for performance around October or November this year.

Until then, I return you to your regularly scheduled gaming content.

Night Of The Ceidonians

Geoff and I played HOTT last night. He took the generic medieval Ceidonians, with their slightly ahistorical steam-tank. In the first game I took Sundiata's Malians. I'll let the pictures tell the story. Basically I lost after Sundiata charged into the enemy at the head of his light cavalry, then got surrounded.

In the second game I took the Tuatha De Danaan, hoping two heroes would succeed where one failed in the previous game.

They didn't - Geoff destroyed me with no loss. I switched my warband from one flank to the other, where they were destroyed by the Ceidonian archers, who then rolled up my flank whilst the tank pinned my army to the front.

So, a good night for Geoff and the Ceidonians, and a bad night for everyone else.