Saturday 13 September 2014

Turn 7

Boom Boom Boom! Yes there have finally been some shots! More of that later. The turn sequence was drawn at random and to the right are the results.

A couple of players may be making a few repairs this turn. Very simply IF you have been hit. Some shots were fired but no damage done. So like I said IF you were hit I will email you and let you know what damage you have suffered and what you can repair with how many "damage repair parties" each party you assign will have a 5 or 6 chance on D6 of repairing 1 specified item. For example if you have taken 3 hits (2 to the hull and 1 to a mast) and you have 6 Repair crews you may assign two to each damage or you may assign 6 to a single mast hit. OR any other combination you desire (No fractions) ... whole numbers only... so you can't say 4.5 repair crews to repair hull box 1 and 1 repair crew to hull box 2 and 1/2 a repair crew to fix the mast. ! That's just trying to confuse me and it will work Oh so easily!
I have my step ladder back now.
So the usual overview of the game.

Mathyoo is doing his own thing and may be making a break for freedom...
And he may not!

The Main Spanish Fleet.

Millsy is out of Arc to fire on HMS Badger and
out of range to hit anything else so he hold his fire.
 

As ray had not sent me a turn in. He let loose a
 "Ragged" uncoordinated Broadside at Milsy!
As such his shooting was ineffective.
 

From the other side of the table the British line did slightly better.


HMS Agamemnon fires a broadside at San Francis
 

Seb fires a broadside at HMS Challenge.

HMS Challenge again with no orders this turn manages a
ragged and un co-ordinated broad side at SS Pina Colada!

HMS Pachyderm is out of range so just watches the action.
Also on the Left hand side of the board two more Spanish are now out of the harbour and out of range of any shore batteries!
I will email anyone that has taken damage. IF YOU DO NOT RECIEVE an email from me the damage has been inconsequential. As Mentioned above at least one Broadside failed to get any hits on target!

Once again thanks for playing and if you need any more photos I will send them out to you on MONDAY! Dead line for next turn orders will be 20th September at 9am. My thanks to you all.

All the best Clint

Thursday 11 September 2014

Setting up Sunday's game.

Another Post. so early what's going on! Well that I just don't know. here however are a few scenery bits and bobs for my upcoming game at the Reject "Shed of War" more of that later. Here I have 5 generic explosion markers as well as 10 craters. (I cropped the picture so you'll have to take my word!) They are from frontline wargaming and are very simple to paint. I did look on google for explosions then went and did my own thing anyway so this is not what explosions actually look like. I did my own thing just because I wanted them to look like this and not like the explosions on google. But if you get some feel free to make them more realistic. As for the Craters just brown and drybrushed with a lighter shade of brown and then an even lighter one! Not a lot m,ore to say about them at all.


The Main reason for the post today is that I will be playing a game in Posties Shed of war using my 10mm Spanish Civil War figures when I arrived the table was NAKID! As you can see which gives a different view of the shed of war to any I had seen before. So I set up a 6 foot by 8 foot board!

When I left though I had all the terrain set up and Postie had positioned his first few figures. So I thought it was worth a look at what the table would look like prior to the game starting and the hordes mucking the game up erhm I mean carefully considering actions and reaction in a wargames environment! (Yeah mucking it UP!)
The left hand side of the Picture is North West and the Right is south east. The Nationalist will be on the left and the Republicans will be on the right.

Ray, Lee and John will have the job of defending the road and farms on the Republican side right side of the picture. While Postie (everyone said he had to be a Fascist so I put him in charge of the right wing Nationalists), Surgit and Smiffy will be attacking from the left! Postie has already started setting up his starting positions and allocated where his "subordinates" will be. Ray has yet to do this but will do so either this anytime between now and Sunday morning. I have left him a brief note on a scrap of paper and while this is not sufficient to warrant a detailed objective I will (eventually) email him more instructions. (Maybe Saturday Morning at 3am hee hee..... can't give him too long to plan!)

Final thought

Seb has kindly volunteered to take over "San Francis" in the PBB game and will do so with immediate effect! So can you all kindly get your turns in (those yet to do so) by 9am GMT on Saturday. That way I can post an update on Saturday morning!

All the best folks take care and roll some dice... but roll high! "Anything but a One!"

Cheers Clint

 

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Club day on Sunday

Initial game set up.
And I had booked in a game of "Donnybrook" . Having not played it before I was not sure how long a game would take. Yes That caught me out It was far quicker than I thought.
I set the board up thinking initially that we might get two games in. Yeah right! We ended up with 5 games. A big thanks to Matt and Tim for playing and helping me sort out the rules and a game. Tim took the British while Matt was the French.

GAME 1


First turn
The British were pounding the French Fort with artillery so the French had sent a sallying raiding force to drive of the gunners. (The Artillery in this game were only an objective and not a fighting force.)

We were all just finding our feet in the first turn and we learnt very quickly that close order infantry in cover are actually really good even for the infamous dice rolling of Tim!

Dice rolling aside, the rules we found were really bloody. Matt lost 1/2 a unit of infantry in the first round of shooting.  Which meant when they fired back they were only able to take out 1/4 of Tim's closest troops. Which left neither unit on morale checks.




2nd Turn. Where are all the French?
The Turn over card was flipped and lo and behold. Tim's Grenadiers shot again. The Rest on Matts Drilled line infantry were then killed to a man! Matts cavalry got a turn and they charged Tim's Indians. The cavalry do not move as fast as I would hope in a game like this so they only just made it. But only with the first few figures and not the whole line. Melee is fought but the results were inconclusive.











Third Turn and the French Infantry are all gone!
 On the last turn before the Indians and cavalry have the chance to conclude matters, Tim has both his grenadiers and his line infantry units fire which wipe out Matts elite line in a single turn. The turn over card is flipped and as matt is now below 50% of starting figures both units and characters. The game ends and the French fort can continue to be bombarded.








Game 2

The scenario was that the French (Matt) had to raid the town and as such I gave them an extra point in their force compared to Tim. Thus 4 French to 3 British. Matt decided to take a cannon this time to try out the cannon optional rules. (So he claimed)!

Initial set up

First few turns were all about getting into position.
The cannon fired managed to get 8 d8 hits
but only caused 1 casualty, but scared the bejezuss out of all the players.
But the Game ended pretty quickly with Matt's cavalry only getting one move the entire game.
 

 Game 3.

With 1 victory a piece Tim was now the attacker. His mission was to gather livestock. Matt took another cannon (he seems to like them) and a couple of line infantry squads. Tim had only grenadiers and line infantry. (No Indians or cavalry this time on either side)

Matt's cannon has trouble getting in arc of fire. but infantry from both sides open fire.
The random event cards did bring on a brief downpour and musketry was halted for the
next turn!
 

Tim rolls better dice and our first morale check of the day.
Matt's infantry are forced to pull back. Well the Two of them still alive
in that unit!

The British finally are in position to bring fire on the cannon.
The cannon does get to fire back,
but realistically too little and far to late.

Another British victory.

 Game 4.

Matt refereed and I got a game against Tim's British. A straight forward encounter battle. Tim took cavalry for the first time as well as Indians. As it was my first try I kept it simple with just 1 cavalry and the rest line infantry.

Initial sett-up

Tim looses his cavalry to my line infantry on the right. He then sets about
picking off my centre. Only fair as I wipe out his Indians as well.

My cavalry don't get a chance to move so I detach the character. And then my centre infantry
are totally destroyed now leaving my officer exposed!

But with Tim's flanks both gone (the Indians and Cavalry)
I am able to bring my infantry to bear on his centre.
He soon looses sufficient troops to fall below 50% starting figures and therefore looses the game.
 
The Last game (game 5) I forgot to take any pictures as I was up against it from the start. Tim took charge and I lost horribly to Matt. (You rotter Matt!). The game consisted of Matt firing his cannon and wiping out my Grenadiers in two turns before they got in range to shoot back. Drat. So that was my right wing dangling in the wind. An event card stole my left flank unit as it was needed elsewhere. So I only had my centre left and was aware that a single casualty would put me over 50% casualties so I tried t get some cover. It kind of worked as another event banished Matts cavalry from the field of play and I was lucky enough to bring fire unanswered on Matt's centre. But eventually matt killed one of my figures and I was forced to concede.
 
Overall a very good day. 5 games 3 French victories, 2 British victories and on a personal level I won 1 and lost 1 so not too bad. Could be a lot worse.
 
The best part though is it looks like Tim will get a small force as well. Given that it was two army forces it's a little hard to draw definitive conclusions on the rules. Yes we got a few things wrong but when don't we? But I will continue to build these forces up some more and maybe start a town militia or outlaw band.
 
Thanks for reading today maybe another quick post tomorrow as well. All the best Cheers Clint
 
 
 

Monday 8 September 2014

Donnybrook British.

 Well as I had a game (or 2) on Sunday I had to get some more British figures painted. To that end I managed to get 4 more Grenadiers painted. These were not used! An extra sergeant who was used and my players want even more sergeants now having tried the game!
 I also managed to get 6 cavalry (not shown) and 3 mounted characters. Two officers,shown, as well as a trumpeter. The two officers were not used but the cavalry and trumpeter were used. Generally speaking we found that the move of cavalry was not sufficiently large enough to warrant their use! But perhaps in future games I wonder if that will change.

I will do an after action report of some of the games we played on Sunday in a couple of days time. Generally speaking and allowing for looking things up in the rules we played about 1 game every hour, or 5 games in all. Therefore I will not detail all the games.


The final shows all the British troops I have managed to complete BEFORE we played on Sunday.

Thanks for looking today and I will be getting things ready for a game at the Rejects shed of war this week so I may not get so very much painting done this week as one would like. Paintmonkey has got some figures to paint though so I may get them started.....

Anyway that's it for today. Thanks for looking and I will hope to see you all soon.

Cheers Clint