A great day at Battleground wargames show

On Saturday we (independent wargames group) attended Battleground wargames convention to put on two demonstration games for the public, my dad and myself showcased a 10mm Colonial game set in the Sudan campaign 1885 and Robbie and Colin a 28mm ACW Refight of the battle of Wilsons Creek. The show seemed to be well attended with it been particularly busy in the morning part of the show, and both our games seemed to attract positive feedback from the public. We managed to fight our game to a conclusion with the Mahdist Army falling just short of taking the town with the Eygptian force who due to some new found courage held the town long enough for the British relief column to arrive, in true British form of very late in the day! I am going to follow this post with some pictures of Robbie and Colin's game, while below is a report of our Sudan game.

The Table at the start of the morning, myself as the Mahdist player had to take the town from the Eygptian garrison before the British arrived to relieve it. The Bitish entered the table in three columns at the opposite end of the table with my remaining Mahdists troops in hidden deployment ready to stop or at least delay the advance

The Eygptian infantry brigade tasked will holding the town on the banks of the Nile 

The first of the Mahdist attackers make an appearance under cover from the artillery

Britsh cavalry brigade cover the right flank of the relief column

The grand sight of the British relief column mounted on camels 

The Mahdist White flag Warriors break from the cover of the sand dunes 

Baggara cavalry and camel riders arrive on the right flank of the green flag dervish infantry 

The Dervish infantry appear from behind the hill and throw themselves at the Gordon highlanders who although shaken defeat the Fuzzies 

The British cavalry column are outflanked by the second Mahdist cavalry brigade and are left in a dangerous position as the commander fails to get his orders through

The battle well under way heading towards dinner time

The river boat lends its rifle howitzer with a constant bombardment on the attacking Mahdists force

Painted just in time for the show, a unit of Bashi Bazooks who more than held there own in the later stages of the game

The Mahdist troops of the black flag throw themselves at the defending Eygptian regulars who refuse to give ground

The main Mahdists assault of the white flag hits the defensive perimeter on the right flank of the town but the the Eygptian defenders fight hard to keep the attack at bay 

The Mahdist attack falters on the left hand side of the town as the Egyptians are victorious in the melee

The British cavalry brigade was broken in the cavalry engagement and flee from the table, although my dad claimed they were heading in the wrong direction as the result of been lost in a sand storm!

Still high on adrenalin from defeating the British cavalry the personal body guard of the Mahdi seek one more glorious charge before their doom which is duely met with the martini Henry rifle armed mounted camel infantry battalion.

Finally the warriors of the  White flag break through the lines of the stubborn Egyptian defenders and although they break into the grounds of the town they cannot drive the few remaining defenders from it to claim the town as their own

The Egyptians flee from the defence of the right hand side of the town but the Mahdist black flag brigade had suffered massive casualties and was on the verge of been broken

The Mahdist cavalry retreat in the face of the now relentless British advance as the relief column finally gathers pace after dispersing the remains of the dervish green flag contingent

The navel battalion retreat shaken and disordered from the defensive perimeter but still stubbornly refuse to flee as the Bashi Bazooks repel the attacks on the town buildings breaking the attacking Mahdists resistance

Finally the first of the British relief column arrive on the out skirts of the besieged town in the form of the famed Blackwatch Highlanders as the Mahdist attack is finally abandoned 

With the arrival of the British the Mahdist force was in no condition to continue the fight having taking far to many casualties in the attack on the town. The Eygptian garrison who despite been broken right at the end of the day had held the town just long enough for the British to arrive and drive the remaining Mahdist troops from the battlefield. No doubt the British General will claim the credit for victory and all the headlines in the newspapers back home as another glorious victory for Queen Victoria and the British empire completely over looking the bravery of the Eygptian defenders!

The final position 

It was a really enjoyable game to take part in and I hope everyone who viewed our game enjoyed/liked what they saw, the show seemed well attended and all though I was unable to view all the other games in detail there certainly seemed some good games with plenty of variation on show. The trade was good and I picked up what is now customary X wing minatures ship and I also took the plunge and bought the walking dead minatures game (not another board game!), a far cry from wargaming in the Sudan I know but hey 😄 I like the to show so why not. Thanks to Leon of Pendraken who allowed us to put the demonstration game on at the show, hopefully we will be returning next year.

All ready to go for Battleground 2016

Tomorrow sees our final show of the year, at Middlesbourgh with the Battleground wargames convention. This year see's the Independent wargames group put on two display games, myself and my dad will be fighting a 10mm colonial (Sudan campaign1885) Blackpowder game and Robbie and Colin will be refighting the battle of Wilson's Creek 1861, in a ACW Blackpowder game in 28mm . It's a great local show with plentry of trade and games on display, so Hopefully the show will be a sucess. If your attending drop by our game and say hello 😄

Macedonians back on the table top

After a few months of been stored away in  boxes I really fancied giving my Macedonian army a run out. Now this army has a kind of love hate relationship with me as I absolutely love the look of it, all those pike Phalanxs how can you not but my gaming record using it is appalling, try as I might,changing tactics, adjusting the personnel of the divisions, changing dice,I just can't buy a win or a dominant performance, Usually resulting in my army ending up a very disjointed..well mess to be brutally honest. Granted this army certainly isn't the luckiest army in my collection and when using Hail Caesar like its counter part Blackpowder when the chips are down it can be pretty brutal on you. So after another poor outing last weekend against my dads Indian army, it's back to the drawing board to rethink my strategy from scratch. I think I am a little to reliant on my skirmish screen, these troops tend to end up been a hinderance to my army and not the opponents so I think sacrificing some of these units and having some more Phalanxes should be the way to go, i think another division of heavy infantry phalanxes would give those Indians some food for thought, or more target practice if they decide to give up moving when they get to Bow range! Anyhow I sneaked a draw in our game, to be fair my dad didn't have the greatest nights dice rolling and for once those heavy chariots flunked big style, none more so than when 11 attack dice saw my dad hit twice (which I saved) when they had charged my Hypastists in the flank, and ended up losing the melee ! Still it was a fun evening and a enjoyable game to play, here are a few pictures of the game...

Macedonian camp

Indian archers and supporting elephants

The start of the slow advance over the table

The usually Hard hitting heavy Indian chariots 

The Macedonian general takes the lead of the static Phalanxes, blocked by those reluctant skirmishes who are not really interested in closing with The enemy 

Thessalian and Thracian cavalry clash with the Indian medium cavalry division

Heavy chariots flank the vulnerable Phalanxs who are engaged to the front 

The Macedonian pike prove to much to handle for the Indian heavy chariots

The phalanxes fall back to reform after somehow surviving the flank charge

The aftermath of tne battle 

Hasta la vista baby.....

Over the last couple of weeks I have been purchasing some terrain pieces to extend my Terminator game. I got the ruined buildings made from MDF from a company on eBay for a very reasonable price of £13 and a couple of toy trucks for a wallet busting £1 each from the pound shop! The buildings still need finishing as I've only painted them grey at the moment as I wanted to have a game with them and the trucks  I have painted to look rusty along with the skip. I have set about painting the figures aswell, with 3 resistance soldiers finished including Kyle Reese and 6 terminators done.

The terrain board definetly looking better with the addition of the ruined buildings

Terminators with plasma guns and endoskelton crawlers

My bargain basement truck adds to the effect of terrain and also acts as a useful source of cover for the humans.

Also having purchased the full Rulebook the game definetly plays a lot better. When I first play tested the game I had originally felt that the game was unbalanced and almost impossible to win with the humans but with the advanced rules and a few mistakes I was making with the basic rules ironed out the game was much more enjoyable and balanced. 

Terminators advance through the ruined city streets

Kyle Reece ambushes the passing terminators from the top floor of a building

The resistance fighters finding cover in the streets 

Relentlessly the terminators advance foward

With the board set up I managed to grab a 500point game with my partner on Sunday evening. Using the new rules definetly added to the game and by the end I had managed to win with the humans,hurray! Although some quite shocking dice throwing from Catherine (4 times she rolled a 1 on a d20, the only result which destroys you!) definetly contributed to this. I have ordered a few more minitures for the game although I have a feeling I'm going to be wait while for these as they were out of stock. In the mean time I have plenty more terminators and humans to paint,.....

ECW Baroque Battle report

The Battlefield after deployment

Our last game saw us turn our hand to 1664 for a English Civil War (ECW) game using the excellent Baroque war games rules based on the Impetus system. My dad has recently rebased his 15mm ECW armies for these rules from pike and shotte and i have to say how wonderful they looked. I really like the look of units having all their figures on one base and in in particular the Pike and musket units looked really effective, well worth the time and effort my dad had put in rebasing them! On this occasion I took command of the Parliamentarian force totalling around 900 points which included two commands of cavalry and two commands of foot with more than half the force been C class troops although one of my cavalry commands was the elite ironsides with the motivated rule. My dads Royalist army was very similar although he had a couple less pike units although most of the Royalist army were B class troops.

The Hard hitting Ironsides are ordered to sweep away the royalist left flank, easy then???? 

The pike and musket units move to within point blank range of each other looking to weaken their foe before initialising the charge

Royalist gallopers over come the close range pistol fire to quickly sweep away the roundhead reiter cavalry command with ease.

The Roundhead pike advance towards the the royalist centre, an area which was to see heavy fighting throughout the course of the battle

The ironsides struggle to break the royalist cavalry despite having the impetus and become involved a long tussle which was to last for most of the game. Eventually the Royalist cavalry broke my ironside command who once they had lost their commander became somewhat isolated and vunrerable.

The Royalist right flank infantry command starts to falter under a strong counter attack from the roundhead pike who are 'egged 'on by there agitators/preachers (they proved to be good motivators during this game as the doubles i rolled were high)

The centre of the battlefield sees both armies pouring close range fire into each other before roundhead pikes charge into the stubborn royalist lines with mixed results as units from both sides were routed

The royalists infantry command collapse on the left flank as the parliamentarians get the better of the close combat, although the fight had continued over a number of moves as the Royalist morale just about held on.

After sweeping the roundhead cavalry away the Royalist gallopers turned onto the flank of the parliamentarians centre and late in the game they managed to flank a unit of musketeers which could not find it in themselves (unsurprisingly) to stand up to the charge, with this unit broken the parliamentarian army had passed its break point.

The final battlefield position shows how destructive the game had been. 

Although the game had ended in defeat it had been a cracking affair. The Baroque rules have really grown on me and i have definitely developed a better understanding of how they work. The main reason for defeat was the loss of both cavalry commands, especially the Ironsides who i had pinned my hopes on smashing the Royalist cavalry. My  Reiter cavalry command (which was made of  C Class troops) who i hoped would at least hold the Superior Royalist cavalry at bay for a few turns were chased from the battlefield very early and cheaply allowing my dad to turn my flank on my infantry in the centre. Some cunning use of 'destiny'dice had kept my dads cavalry in the fight on three occasions against my Ironsides as on each occasion without the re roll of their discipline test the units would have routed, which would have allowed me to turn on the royalist flank, I on the other hand rolled one roll of destiny'and got a worse result than the first! I think i had just about edged the fight with our infantry with my sole Veteran pike and musket unit proving to be very reliable (it with stood been charged in the rear by a unit of rampaging gallopers,actually winning the melee) with the iron officer trait proving very handy on occasions, and at the games end when my army broke my Dad was not to far himself from reaching his army break point. 

The Spoils of War! The roundhead baggage camp about to be overrun as the Parliament army breaks and flees the field

Derby wargames show 2016

At the weekend I had a very enjoyable day out  to Donnington park for the Derby Wargames show with my dad. Once we arrived after a small detour when we exited the roundabout at the wrong exit ( we both obviously blamed each other as you do )we joined a largish que, however This detour and extra minutes to our journey was a small twist of fate as the gentleman behind us in the que to enter the complex eyed my dads ECW troops he was going to sell at the flee market and quickly snapped them up, so it turned out not to bad! Once inside we grabbed a table on the flea market and quickly sold off our remaining items which was a bonus as it allowed us more time to get around the show. As for the show its self it seemed to be pretty busy. I had a good luck around all the trade stands to see if anything caught my eye and there was certainly plenty of trade. First up I bought the new osprey rule book they who would be kings as I was interested to see how the colonial games could be played at a smaller scale. I couldn't go to a show and not buy at least a couple of ships for my X wing game so  I opted for an A wing and a Z-95 Headhunter. Unfortunately I was unable to find anything for the warlord games terminator game apart from the core set which was a shame as I was hoping to add some figures to it and to get my hands on the full rule book. When I explained that I wanted the rule book seperate at the warlord games stand I was told that they don't carry the stock but they could order it for me there and then,which I thought ok that's not to bad. When I said that the book was £15 at the moment on the Internet the man serving at the stand said he for a one off would give me the core set which included the full rules and a Carl Reece model as an extra for the £15 rather than the £30 they were selling it for, with out hesitation I shook the mans hand handed him the money and left feeling very happy with myself, so a big shout out to Warlord games staff who were really friendly and helpful. I also picked up some more Mahdists packets which I preordered from Pendraken and some more explosion markers for destroyed tanks.(every year I keep meaning to get a packet of these and always forget ) finally I also picked up some rumble scenery to use with the terminator games from a cool little stall selling sci if terrain. All in all I was pretty happy and I still had a rare sight of ten pound notes in my wallet which doesn't happen to often! Finally I though the games were of a good standard, I would have liked to have studied them in abit more depth but time was short so I did by best to see as many as possible, I even thought the standard of the participation games was very good, including the small skirmish games, it seemed like alot of effort had been put into the terrain and set up areas. I think I will give the best game to Like a stone wall group for there battle of Hastings which I really would have liked to play and a very close second was the Rorkes drift game by the Boondock Sayntes which was very well done. My dad went for the Battle of Rain by Wesbury wargames for the best display game followed again by the Rorkes drift game. All in all a very good show, even though we walked out into torrential rain which literally soaked us to the bone making the car journey home a tad uncomfortable, although at least we didnt take any detours on the way back....

My purchases (minus the pendraken Mahdists)