Earthsea Lists for HOTT

This a a slight reworking of a piece from the original Stronghold.

Earthsea is a fictional archipelago created by Ursula Le Guin as the setting for a number of novels and short stories published between 1964 and 2001. The most famous of these 'A Wizard of Earthsea' is the basis of these lists, developed by Alan Huyton. It's based very much on the first book, and is fairly rudimentary, but provides a useful basis on which to draw more compete lists. The archipelago is made up of many islands and people, and warfare between them in some for is almost inevitable; it would make the basis of an interesting campaign, with small, conventional armies, lots of naval movement and a smattering of wizards and other fantasy elements*.


Earthsea 

1 x Hero or Magician @ 4AP (Sparrowhawk)
1 x Magician @ 4AP (Ogion the Silent)
1 x Dragon @ 4AP (Tamed by Sparrowhawk as he knows its true name)
5 x Spears @ 2AP (Gontish spearmen)
1 x Flyer @ 2AP (Hawks tamed by Sparrowhawk)

For figures, any medieval types will do, although Le Guin appears to have not considered the cultures of the islands to be entirely European in nature. The spearmen are rustic peasants and could be classed as a Horde if desired, although the general is likely to be one of the Spears. Other possibilities include Viking type warriors (Blades) or pirates (Warband or Shooters) but these would tend to be enemies of Sparrowhawk and Ogion, so you might prefer to substitute renegade wizards. For example:

Enemies of Roke

1 x Magician @ 4AP (Jasper)
1 x Cleric @ 3AP (Acolyte)
1 x God @ 4AP (The Shadow)
5 x Warband @ 2AP (Pirates)
3 x Hordes @ 1AP (Undead sailors)

Update: There's an excellent map of Earthsea HERE.

*Many years ago - as in 'When I Was Still At School' - I actually drew up a five player Diplomacy variant map for Earthsea. I wish I still had it, as it would be perfect for HOTT.

HOTT On Barsoom

Last night the Gong Garage Gamers mostly played HOTT, using my 15mm Barsoom army collection - a chance to try various combinations of Blades and Airboats, with a few extras thrown in.

One of those 'extras' is, of course, the Green Martians, which is a mixture of Knights and Shooters:

Geoff (looking particularly sinister in this picture) Used them against Caesar, who took the Red Martian city-state of Gathol.

Some lone Red Martian thoat-riders took on most of the Green Martian horde. The result was inevitable.

Meanwhile I used the illusionary Bowmen of Lothar against the army of Helium, led by John Carter himself.

This is the only Barsoomian army to feature a Magician.

John Carter led from the rear.

On the other table Geoff's Green Martians surrounded the Gatholian general andkilled him.

Lothar's army is assisted by eight-legged Martian lions - Banths. They ended up being neatly sliced and diced by the Heliumitic foot-soldiers

Geoff and Caesar set up another game - Caesar took the mosty-aerial Black Pirates whilst Geoff had the Red Martians of Lothar, with their disintegration-ray and cannibals.

More of the fight between Helium and Lothar.

And on the other table we had an epic air-battle ...

... whilst the Lotharian Hordes tried to outflank the Black Pirate foot-soldiers.

The Bowmen of Lothar battled the warriors of Helium, but couldn't resist them. Helium scored a decisive win.

More aerial action from the other table.

A Black Pirate Airboat attacked Phor Tak and his disintegration-ray.

Peter and Dave set up Gathol against the primitive Red Martian state of Manator. This was the only picture I took of the game, and I can't remember who won.

Over on the other side of the room, Ralph and Bryan played Flames of War. I think French and Germans were in use, in the desert somewhere.

The Black Pirates eventually triumphed in a very close game - both Jahar and the Pirates were one element away from breaking.

The final game of the night - I used Jahar whilst Caesar took Helium.

Again, we had an exciting air battle.

A Jaharian warship tried to sneak up on John Carter.

And a Heliumitic vessel threatened the Jaharian line.

Undocumented, John Carter dealt with Jahar's navy, and went Horde-hunting.

This, despite the potentially deadly attentions of Phor Tak's disintegration-ray.

He survived, and Helium picked up another victory, destroying Jahar's aerial navy and some of the supporting Blades.

This was a great night of HOTT, with all seven armies getting at least one outing.

Longstreet In 6mm

Caesar and I played Longstreet this week, using my 6mm ACW figures. These are conveniently mounted on 20mm square bases, so fit in with the rules perfectly. despite the effective halving of the necessary game area, we used a decent-sized table and, whilst the terrain density could have been a little higher, got a game with a bit more available space.

We played the Crossroads scenario, and Caesar defended with the Union. He tried to be clever and use Memoir '44 card holders. After they fell over, revealing his cards, he abandoned that idea.

My brave boys in butternut marched up to the attack. With Caesar digging in I decided not to muck about and get stuck in as quickly as possible.

He dug in before I could attack. I attacked anyway, bcause that's what you do in ACW games. I threw my eager recruits into the centre, where the church was an objective.

On the flank our cavalry units fought each other in a melee, but we realised that as veterans they were better in defence, so that bold cavalry charges weren't worth the effort. Both dismounted and shot at each other for the rest of the game.

I kept up the attack in the centre ...

... but Caesar counter-attacked.

Essentially the battle went like this - I attacked boldly at the start, stalled and then got shot to pieces. I made a few minor assaults after that, but was rapidly approaching the point where all of my units were too weak to make any more attacks. I was getting closer and closer to my breakpoint. Caesar wasn't, despite some good shooting on my part. However I did get his army to the point where it was worth rolling dice to see if he was defeated - and did it. So despite the Confederates being in a very poor position, with fewer troops, it was the Union who conceded. We can only assume that their commander thought that there were a few more Confederate brigades hidden in reserve (this was 1862) and lost his nerve at the last moment.

This was the battlefield at the end. The Confederates had taken lots of casualties, but hadn't lost any units. The Union had lost a veteran infantry unit (pretty much taken out by long range artillery fire over several turns) and an artillery battery (also taken out by artillery fire).

We found that we had the rules pretty well sorted this time, with few things we had to look up. We were also less prone to playing fun cards like Confusion just because we had them, often using them to activate movement or firing phases instead and that benefited the whole army. As the attacker I found that the choice between having a movement phase or charging into melee was a tricky one; you really need to get your troops into position in a fairly coordinated way, then launch your assault in one go.

A great game, and I was quite pleased with how the 6mm figures looked too. They go back a long way ...

What's Been Happening?

Astute observers will have noticed a drop in the number of posts recently. This has been unavoidable. Life has recently conspired to make gaming time - either play or preparation - a limited resource and, aside from my regular Thursday evening sessions, I've done nothing game-related for more than a fortnight now.

Much of this has been down to work where an unexpected serious illness (and all such things tend to be unexpected) has left me carrying our IT support desk pretty much on my own. Whilst I'm not working too much in the way of extra hours, I am under a lot more stress and pressure and am, quite frankly, mentally exhausted at  the end of each day. Games, of any kind, are too much effort.

In addition I have been busy with one of my other hobbies - photography. Those that know me will know that I have delusions of grandeur when it comes to taking pictures, and in the last week or so I have  taken part in a couple of exhibitions locally. So what little time and mental effort I have had has been devoted to choosing and framing pictures. This last weekend saw two exhibition opening nights, plus a couple of sessions of gallery-sitting as well. All very busy and full of junk food and socialising. A bit like a wargames show, but with less body odour.

Things aren't going to calm down for a couple of weeks yet, although I desperately want to find some time to devote to games. Until then, here's a few of the pictures I have been exhibiting this weekend.

QVB

Tracks

Angel In My Armour
Actress In My Role

Cork Oaks

Hallowe'en Longstreet

Wargaming on Hallowe'en? Well, I dressed up ...

Of course, it was felt that the outfit wasn't suitable for a game of Longstreet*. But there we go. I made the effort. Ralph did wear his Union hat.

Anyway, we played the encounter battle from the book, with two brigades a side, heroes, general personalities and sharpshooters. The figures were 28mm plastics, mostly from Ralph and Bryan.

The house in the middle was an objective, and was defensible. It became a focus of the battle. Both armies seemed to hold their right and try a flanking move with their left.

This was also our first game with cavalry. Caesar used some to charge the Union artillery. They won a narrow victory.

Then sneaked off down the side of the table.

The Union got into the objective first, and Confederate attacks focused on taking it. You'll notice that it's changed from being a house to being a section of walls. It was more practical that way.

The unit you can see preparing to assault eventually drove out the Union defenders just as we ran out of time.

There was plenty of fight still left in both sides, though, so we called a draw.

The objective was an addition to the scenario and, to be honest, created too much of a focus, slowing the game down a fair bit. A more standard encounter battle would have give a more fluid and faster-moving game. Still there was, as ever, some entertaining card play, including some cavalry which refused to advance and an infantry column that wouldn't stop. We're starting to get a handle on the rules too.

*Bear in mind that when I suggested I might 'dress up' this week, I could have turned up looking like this. Or some variant thereof ...