After Show report (WMMMS)

Had a great day down at the West Midlands Militairy Modelling Show in Wolverhampton today. I took my 'Towton' game down which uses the Bloody Barons scenario. Drew some nice comments from Martin and Stewart at Peter Pig and some kind members of the public. However my first effort at engaging someone who appeared to be interested fell flat. When asked if he played Bloody Barons, his reply of 'Hate them' caught me off guard. He was clearly unimpressed with my 600 odd 15mm figures on a 5x3 table. At next years show he is putting on Towton with 1400 28mm figures on a 12x6 table, using Poleaxed by the Lance and Longbow society. Clearly a superior form of wargaming!

John B, Tom B, Ben and Jon fought out my version of the battle and a good time with many laughs was had by all. Some very poor dice rolling led to John swapping to the brand new green Peter Pig dice which saw a change in fortunes for the Yorkists as they did very well with Edward and Norfolks command against the Lancastrians, but less well with Fauconberg. Tom B did well with the Lancastrians in the centre under Somerset and pushed onto the hill held by York (helped by Ben charging off the hill into him!). Young Jon showed excellent dice rolling skills in making numerous saves agaisnt the odds using Nevilles command.

Running a demo game does help stop the spending, as I had little time to trawl the stands. The Osprey on Philadelphia 1777 was a good buy at £5. A few of the new American Light infantry from Peter Pig to add to my preorder plus the new green dice meant I spent less than £30. Not too bad I think!

In the rush to get to the show I forgot the camera but will trawl the web as I know several picutres were taken and I will be playing the game out at home at some point so will put some pictures up then.

More soon....

Hedgeley Moor

The Battle of Hedgeley Moor took place in April 1464 and was one of the smaller battles of the Wars of the Roses, with just over 6000 men slugging it out. It followed a long period of peace following the Towton campaign. Lord Montagu was sent north by Edward IV to make contact with Scottish supporters at Newcastle. At Hedgeley Moor he met a rebel force under the Duke of Somerset. Morale was low in the Lancastrian camp. It was an untried force that had only just come togethr from stragglers and those recentley pardoned by the King. As Montagu advanced, Lord Roos withdrew from the field with his men. The rest of the Lancastrians stood for a while but as contact was made, their cnetre also buckled and ran leaving Sir Ralph Percy standing. He was on home soil and saw a heroic last stand with Percy being cut down. The Yorkists continued on their way unopposed until a firther clash less than a month later at Hexham.

John B came over to Chez Sean for a game on Wednesday. It was our first game of Bloody Barons together. Having played other RFCM games, the mechanisms soon became familiar and we had a right Royal ding dong. John in the guise of Montague really played a blinder and true to history swept away the Lancastrian forces under Roos and Somerset. Although Percy survived by the end of the battle he was cut off from any line of retreat and in reality would in all probablitiy have been captured.



Montagu behind his command at the sentre of the Yorkist line.

The Yorkists prepare for slaughter on the moor.

Facing the rather nervous Lancastrians with Roos closest to the camera.

Percy's command facing Lord Scrope on the Yorkist right.

John chose the yellow dice this time after having bad memories of the orange dice during a game of CWB. Not sure how this happened after one particular roll of about 10 dice. Had to take a picture though. Its evil magic I tell you. We need to find a witch to burn!

A shaky picture of Montagus command looking pretty confident.

The end. Percy is to the right of the wood with Monatgu about to fall on his rear. It looks bad for old Percy. Bottom right shows the Yorkist command under the Bishop of Exeter who swept Roos and most of Somersets command from the field.

We had a good game and a good laugh with some nice digestives to accompany the tea.

Last night we replayed the battle with young Jon, young Ben and Matt from the club with John B swapping sides. John played a blinder again and reversed history attacking forcefully with Percy and holding the line with Roos (commanded by Ben). Roos' command did eventually succumb but the rest of the Yorkist forces took a real battering.

We did find one frustrating aspect of the rules. Matt had a unit of Household fighting one of Johns retinue. John had the better of it after a couple of drawn combats, eventually whittling the Household down to 1 base which happened to be the Captain, which always saves on a 2+. Johns unit had 7 bases left, but the lone captain fought on for 3 turns, which seemed a little unrealistic. In this battle the figure scale was roughly 1:15, with one base of figures representing 40-45 men. So in effect we had 40-45 men holding off around 300. The rules say nothing about such situations and indeed there are factors for 1-2 base units. Admittedly saving rolls were passed, but with luck (ie not failing the 2+ save) this could have gone on for some time. We felt that after a turn of fighting, weight of numbers would crush the few men left in this situation.

There are two remedies as I see. When it comes to morale tests for 2 bases, you could increase the morale factor to 3D6 instead of the 1D6 it is now. The justification is that things are really bas at this point! At one base, morale is immaterial as if they pass their save they cant lose the combat which is then classed as draw.

Secondly (which I think we shall implement), if a a unit is reduced to one base, it is removed, being classed as having being swept away. A captain base is allowed one turn of fighting, so may take an enemy base with him, but at the conclusion he is also cut down. Justification for this can be found elsewhere in the rules where gun crew are destroyed on being contacted. Also a single base unit is not allowed to start a fight. I think this makes alot of sense as it seemed a tad silly having a lone base holding up a massive horde on is own.

As a counter point a bit further over a levy unit despite losing a combat three turns in succesion and having to roll 7-8 dice each time, managed to survive its morale tests very much against the odds. I have no problem with this, as the unit was being whittled down, but was clearly made of stern stuff and was determined to see the thing through! Of course on getting down to 1 base, we advocate removing.

Lisa is now away skiing for a week, and though I am at work all week, I shall be making use of the free time to paint lots of AWI.

More soon!

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.......