Mud, Turnips And Fog

Last night June and I played another game of Turnip 28. Again we mostly used her figures, but I did import my one completed unit of chaff (skirmishers).

We played a scenario where the two forces blunder into each other in lifting fog, so start deployed adjacent along the diagonal of the table. There are five objective markers scattered through the zone, and victory goes to the side that controls the majority of them at the end of four turns.

June used her pirate-themed mob, consisting of a cannon, some fodder and brutes armed with black-powder weapons, and a unit of melee brutes.

I used her goblins, with a unit of melee-weapon fodder and brutes. I also used a lump (a new unit type, equivalent to the HOTT behemoth) and my own unit of chaff armed with black-powder weapons.

Here's the murky initial setup.

Turnip 28 is a fairly back and forth game so it's quite hard to remember exactly what happened. My first move was to charge June's melee brutes with the lump. The lump wouldn't get into focus. Sorry.

Lumps are horribly destructive but become more vulnerable the more they fight.

Here's my chaff. I painted them last year, but this was their first outing. I'll do some better pictures of them in another post. They were on a flank, faced by June's cannon (which was immobile, but holding an objective).

The chaff exchanging fire with June's fodder. The fodder couldn't hit a thing, whilst the chaff competently picked off a couple of pirates.

With June's fodder weakened I sent in my sword-armed fodder to cut them up.

June's fodder retreated into the dangerous terrain behind them. In Turnip 28 the terrain can eat figures. And did.

Other stuff happened elsewhere. This was the position at the end of the first turn. In the foregound my melee brutes were engaged with June's black-powder brutes.

The sneaky pirates moved around my unit to grab the objective there and threaten my snob (leader figure)

The lump. Still out of focus but still fighting. The two figures next to it are all that was left of June's melee brutes.

My chaff engaging the cannon. I think we killed one of teh crew. It returned fire and took out two of the chaff with a lucky shot. Chaff are quite hard to hit with shooting, but vulnerable if you do hit them.

Disaster! June's brutes bashed one of my snobs on the head with a musket. He did wound one with his pistol though. But it left me down a leader, which made my units harder to activate (and more vulnerable to command blunders).

My fodder formed up to defend one of the objectives. It's great fun beating each other up but objectives are what matters. Although you can also win by killing all of the enemy leaders too.

The lump held another objective in the centre.

June declared a charge on the lump which, thanks to a blunder earlier, now had a lot of accumulated panic. It ran off, and June took the objective.

June also declared a charge on my fodder, who also had lots of accumulated panic. Forgetting that their full strength status meant they were unlikely to run (they count as Fearless if they have 8 or more figures), we had them retreat. But they came back and still held the objective, despite having five panic tokens. 

 A bold, but calculated, move. If both sides control an objective it becomes contested and neither side gets it. I denied June the objective near her cannon by moving the chaff right up to it. I took the risk that their ability to avoid shooting attacks would protect them from the cannon's grape-shot.

It did.

June grabbed an objective.

But my fodder held one in the centre ..

... and the remains of my brutes grabbed on on the right.

In the end I controlled three of the five objectives and June controlled one. So the goblins and their allies won this one.

The game was full of wild swings of fortune and silliness, and was everything we hoped it would be. There's some interesting positional tactics to be taken into account; how you attack or position units can influence how the enemy retreats, and cause them all kinds of pain if you do it right.

We only forgot key rules a couple of times. We'll get better with more play.