Game with John B

John came over for a game on Thursday night. Its a good while since we have played and it was great to get back going again. Hopefully the first of many encounters in the near future.

We have a long history of gaming together. Napoleonics would probably Johns first period but I would guess ACW comes a close second. He has a collection of figures that defies belief. Alot of his collection came from me when I would spend months painting figures, game a couple of times with them before my 'butterfly' tendency took over and I needed to fund the next project. His largest collection is 28mm Napoleonics, of which he has thousands, all of which are professionally painted.

Anyway when John said he was free for a game there was only one period I could chose and so somewhere in Northern Virginia my Rebs prepared to defend their homes from the Yankee invaders. This farm was one of Johns objectives, here defended by a much depleted unit of Lousiana Zouaves and two batterys of artillery. Unfortunately for John he struggled to get anywhere near it.

Here we see what we christened the 'Bloody Angle' (clever eh?). My veteran boys held this position, very nearly to the last man. Just in the background can be seen the 'rocky little round hill' that was Johns main objective.
On my right flank this unit of raw Rebs held this wood against repeated attack, despite the odds stacked against them. I promoted the officer in the field and this particular unit, depicted as a unit that has just taken some hard pounding will now be classed as trained/average troops from now on!

Here John contemplates his next move, eyes fixed on the farm that may as well of been on the moon!

A dramatic shot of Johns Zouaves (veterans) in a protracted firefight with my veteran Rebs lining the fence. John was unlucky with his rolls for Action Points for 3 successive turns and just couldn't get enough points to push home the attack. If he had, he may have gone onto take the rocky little hill.

Here we have the rocky little hill, lined with Reb guns that for the majority of the game were low on ammunition. I just couldn't afford a turn of not shooting to replenish the caissons. In Civil War Battles, artillery can seem quite ineffective at long range, but any hits take their toll when it comes to the morale effects.

This is Johns flank division tasked with taking the hill. His artillery, shooting at long range throughout the game struggled to make any impact.

It all ended with a good win for the Rebs, which meant a win for me! How unusual! I like to think I was gracious in victory.

John, on the other hand blamed the orange Peter Pig dice. But then who care what a loser thinks! Only joking John.

A good game that was accompanied by some period music throughout (Glory and Ken Burns Civil War soundtrack in the main). John was gracious in defeat and took his poor dice rolling very well. It was nice to see someone else roll so many ones.

I'm just back from Warfare in Reading where I played in Peter Pigs demo WW1 game using PBI and true to form I lost. Picked up lots of bits as well as my preorder from PP. Some lovely 'vignette' pieces from Donnington Miniatures medieval range, actually designed for their beautiful Hundred Years war range but eminently suitable for WotR. It was nice to see Bloody Barons being played on the Lance and Longbow stand. I didn't get the name of the chap running it but we had a nice chat about the game and proposed ammendments. He was fighting out the Battle of Barnet which looked lovely and has spurred me on to get my Towton game up and running.

More soon.......