Turnip 28

Last night June introduced me to Turnip 28, a delightfully named skirmish game set in a Napoleonic post-apocalypse. The premise, such as it is, is that there's been an apocalypse after Napoleon was defeated at Austerlitz. I'm not sure what it was, but now there's a blight across the land driven by a disgusting turnip-like vegetable. Everything is generally grim, mutated and post-apocalypsy.

Look, the premise doesn't matter. Basically it's an excuse to do weird-arse things with mutated Napoleonics or, indeed, any figures you can lay your hands on. It's figure agnostic; there are no Official Miniatures. Just hack stuff around how you like. There are a few basic unit types and then the option of Cults, which are not unlike sponsors in Gaslands, each one granting your force some kind of special bonus (and sometimes access to unique units). 

It's a skirmish game in the vein of Saga or Lion Rampant in that you run a number of units with individually based figures. Units have from 3-12 figures, and there are individually based leader figures as well. Leaders, called Snobs, are used to scale the game. You decide on how many Snobs each player will field. One Snob is the overall leader (the Toff) whilst the others are underlings (Toadies). Toffs bring two units to the table. Each Toady brings an additional unit.

In our game we had a Toff and two Toadies each, for a total of four units. All units are effectively equal in points or, in terms of the setting, equally rubbish. We didn't use cults. It's not a requirement.

June provided all of the figures, and very nice they are too. One was a pirate-themes group based on heavily hacked around Napoleonics. The other were marsh-dwellers using GW Moria Goblins from their LOTR range. Here we are set up. I had the pirates and June had the goblins. There are five objective markers on the board. We were to play for four turns and whoever controlled the most markers at the end would win. Easy.

Here's two of my units. There are six unit types in the game: Fodder (large foot units of 12 ineffective figures), Brutes (small foot units of 6 more competent fighters), Chaff (4 skirmisher figures), Whelps (4 cavalry figures), Bastards (3 heavy cavalry figures) and Stump Guns (immobile and potentially explosive artillery). These units are Brutes. Each unit can be armed with either black-powder weapons (effective, but can only shoot once per turn), missile weapons (less effective but able to shoot multiple times) or melee weapons (great if you can get up close and personal). Obviously certain unit types are best with certain weapons; the cavalry types were made for melee weapons, for example. My brutes here are armed with black-powder weapons (left) and melee weapons (right).

A unit of Fodder, with black-powder weapons. A lot of the conversions are made up of sea-shells from the local beach.

June's marsh-dweller were mostly armed with melee weapons, but she had two units of Chaff with regular missile weapons.

In the crows-nest on top of a hermit crab is one of my Toadies, currently commanding a Stump Gun. The cannon and boat are scratchbuilt. Did I say that June is disgustingly talented?

Some shooting.

Players take turn activating their Snobs. A Snob can then either act themselves or command a unit within their command radius to do something. Units can Volley (effective fire), Move and Fire (obvious), March (move faster) or Charge (move fast in a straight line towards an enemy). Before you act you roll a D6. On a '1' the incompetents blunder and don't do the order anywhere near as well.

Once each Snob has activated you get to activate units that they didn't give an order to. So out of command units always act later in the turn and, if they blunder, suffer a special penalty based on the scenario. More on this later.

June had grabbed the objective in the cover in the centre of the table with some Fodder. My Fodder had shot at them and they had run away. June sent in her Brutes. My melee Brutes charged them and came up short.

June's Brutes charged me. Charging is good as it gives you initiative in the fight; you get to strike first and the opponent only rolls for their survivors. In addition a charged unit has to take a morale test before the fight happens so may simply run away. My Brutes stood their ground and were mostly cut down, falling back afterwards.

One of Junes Toadies was feeling a little vulnerable (being the closest target for my cannon), and decided to run away, taking a shortcut through some dangerous terrain. Most terrain is dangerous. You roll a D6 for any figure entering it and on a '1' the figure dies.

Guess what happened. Go on.

Yup. The terrain ate the Toady.

More fighting. June's Brutes had been shot down but now her Fodder was after me. I got it eventually but all I was doing was killing units; June still held three objectives to my two.

My Fodder advanced to harass June's surviving Chaff unit. I think at this point it was the only unit she had left.

Toff Off! If the Toffs of each force come within a certain range of each other one of them can challenge the  other to a duel. Unlike Lion Rampant the challenge is always accepted. They then fight a melee until one of them dies.

I challenged June's Toff ...

... and emerged victorious.

June's Fodder was now out of command and on its next move blundered, activating the scenario-specific blunder. In this case the unit would lose 1D3 figures to cannibalism. June rolled a 3, and the Fodder unit ate itself.

So we were into the last turn. June had a unit of Chaff and a single Toady left. They hid in the cover. All I had to do was a rapid advance across teh board to grab one of her objectives.

My Fodder marched, but the extra move you get is random and they came up 1" short.

On the other side of the board my Brutes were in the same position. They blundered and barely moved at all.

So June won the fight, a victory that comforted the marsh-dwellers as they cowered inside the ruins.

This was a lot of fun to play. Aside from the daft setting the rules offer some interesting choices; you have to decide the best time for each unit to act but because of a requirement that shooting and charges are almost always made against the closest enemy, you have to be careful with positioning. 

Thanks to June for letting me play with her lovely toys and teaching me the game. I'd read the rules but, as I said above, there are subtleties to it that aren't necessarily apparent from a simple reading.

I confess I'm quite keen on putting together some forces for this game.