The Gentleman's Gentlemen

So with the unit of Whelps I posted the other day I have completed a four unit regiment for Turnip 28; enough to play a decent game. 

Here's the whole regiment lined up - one unit of Chaff, two of Brutes and one of Whelps, plus three Snobs. All have black-powder weapons except the Whelps which have melee weapons.

The Chaff (skirmishers) and one unit of Brutes (elite infantry)

The Whelps (light cavalry), and more Brutes

The Snobs. In the centre is The Gentleman, to the right is The Captain and to the left The Milliner.

The Whelps

Chaff

Two units of Brutes

Another shot of the Snobs

I'm still not sure what to do with the bases. I may go for my usual flock and stones look, but I'm not sure if it has quite the right mud and gloom feel for Turnip 28. But I don't want to do anything too complicated, because I'm lazy. 

Anyway, I have started work on a Lump (behemoth) which I can use for this regiment but which will be designed for use with another regiment that's in the planning stage. 

A Yokai/Kobold Scuffle

I tried another game of Fantastic Scuffles yesterday, and went for two extremely different warbands.

The first used my Yokai figures and used three characters - the Tengu (skilled sword-fighting flier), the Oni (big strong giant) and the Jorogumo (seductive magical spider-woman). This was a chance to try out the spell-casting rules.

Against them I ran my Kobolds. They had one character (their leader) and then three groups of minions, most with swords, some with two-handed axes and two with bows.

The Yokai had to destroy an altar in the middle of the table. The Kobold leader had a grudge against the Oni and had to slay him. That would probably require some teamwork.

A party flees the table if all of its characters are killed (I got that wrong in an earlier game). he Kobolds have one character and he's not really up to much. So the Yokai decided to go for a quick win and send their fast-flying Tengu to perform a surgical strike on the Kobold's kaptain. Om the way he got hit by a couple o arrows from the Kobold archers.

He attacked the Kaptain and, amazingly, failed to even wound him.

The Oni ran towards the altar as his strength was useful for toppling it. He took a couple of arrows as well. Early on the archers performed really well.

Other kobolds came to the aid of their leader ...

... and they took down the Tengu!

So not a great start for the Yokai. The other kobolds spread out to cover the altar and gangup on the Oni. The Jorogumo wisely stayed out of the way; her skills were about confusion, charm and deception and she would come in useful once battle was joined.

She confused the first two kobolds to try and attack the Oni, preventing them from getting coordinated.

The Oni hadn't quite reached the altar and found himself under attack from several kobolds. He took some wounds but killed one of his attackers.

This caused some of the others to fall back.

The axe-men rushed in.

So did some of the swordsmen. The Oni killed one with a counter-strike. This forced a moral test on the others, some of whom fled. As they fled the Oni got in free hacks ...

... and killed two more of them. 

The Kobolds were now scattered and had lost over half of their melee troops. The Oni and Jorogumo moved up to the altar; the latter could provide help in toppling it.

The Kobold kaptain was rushing into the fight; their win would depend on him killing the Oni and it looked like he'd have to do it single-handed.

Another kobold attacked the Jorogumo and wounded her.

The archers had a pop at the Oni, but their earlier luck deserted them.

The Kobold kaptain moved into the Oni's rear.

And charged, scoring a hit.

Keeping their eyes on the prize the Oni toppled the altar. The Yokai now just had to leave the board to get the full points for their mission.

This now left the Oni free to squish the annoying Kobold leader.

He swung and missed. And with his opportunity attack in response the wily kobold got in a telling blow to the vitals and downed the Oni.

This now left the Jorogumo alone, but all she had to do was escape. She fled across the shallow pond and stream; going the other way would take her past the Kobold kaptain. A couple of arrows flew past her. Neither hit.

She used her magic to scare off a few of her pursuers.

A kobold chased her across the stream and wounded her.

She made a run for it, but the Kobold Kaptain was on fire now and chased her down.

So this was a fairly decisive win  for the Kobolds, who got the points for their objective and for killing three enemy characters. The Yokai got a few pints for toppling teh altar, but would have got more if one of them had escaped.

Possibly waiting around to topple the altar when the Kobold Kaptain attacked was a bad move by the Oni, who only had to kill the Kaptain for the Yokai to win by default.

The game generated a few questions to do with use of magic as well as timing of morale tests when a figure is killed, but overall everything worked OK and made sense. Both warbands were interesting to play, and came with their own benefits and challenges.

Whelps

The final unit for my Turnip 28 regiment The Gentleman's Gentlemen. These are Whelps, which are basically light cavalry. They're based on Perry Russian/Prussian multi-part plastic Napoleonic cavalry that I bought last year. I've not painted cavalry figures this big before and found them a little intimidating, but they came out OK in the end.

 I'll get some pictures of the whole force tomorrow.

More Fantastic Scuffles

I roped June into a game of Fantastic Scuffles last night, and she was very patient as I looked up stuff I had no idea about or things that simply didn't seem very clear. That's the fun of playtesting!

Anyway, she took the Elves and, strangely, got the same mission as Catherine had got the previous day - deliver a message from one corner of the board to the other. I went with a force of Dwarves, with a couple of axemen, an axe-armed leader and a mechanical rock-thrower. They rolled the ambush mission; they had to kill the enemy leader and got to start deployed pretty much anywhere on the board.

Since all of the terrain ended up along one edge, and June chose that as her entry point I ended up deploying close to her force. So most of the fight took place in one corner.

I moved the rock-thrower in front of the Elf force and lobbed a rock at one of the archers. It missed. It was the only one I threw all game.

The rest of my force was hiding in the woods (to avoid the Elves' archery), but Temu Elrond went in after them. He really is rather good in this game, being a hero and having both magic armour and a magic sword. I mean he costs a lot of points, but they're well invested.

The situation at the end of the first turn. June had charged into melee early, leaving her archers nothing to do. Two of her swordsmen were having a crack at the rock-thrower, whilst the one with the message was looking to make a run for the opposite corner. In the woods the Dwarf and Elf leaders were fighting whilst the Dwarf axemen tried to help.

Temu Elrond hacked away at everyone around him, leaving the Dwarves looking pretty sorry.

Meanwhile June had the messenger make a break for it. This is a slightly risky strategy as if you split up minion groups it limits which figures can actually activate.

But the Dwarves wouldn't be chasing anyone - Temu Elrond finished off the two axemen and then the Dwarf leader.

With little they could do the Elf archers climbed onto a rock, just to force me to look up the rules for climbing onto a rock.

The rock-thrower squished the two Elf swordsmen fighting it. A quick turn and it could lob a rock at the fleeing Elf messenger.

But not when Temu Elrond is hacking and slashing at you.

A big win for the Elves, who wiped out the Dwarves and got the message off the table.

I found by the end of the game that we were tracking the factors and modifiers pretty quickly, but we were still having to look up stuff. And the game generated a nice pile of questions and comments that I will be passing back to Nic.