Hail Caesar Action - been a while

 Yesterday a wandered over to Bren's shed to play a dark ages battle. Bren was fielding an Anglo-Saxon army and me and Stig the Picts. Stig arrived late so we started with out him, and more importantly his troops. So I was outnumbered about 4-3 at the start. In HC Picts are OK but all my troops were only as good as Bren's worse troops and he hada division's worth of better troops.

The battlefield. Hedges across the centre, a crossable river and a couple of roads. All of these were to be vitally important

I set up 2 divisions of Pict warriors on one side of the road and one on the far side. I had some javelin armed light cavalry on the road. I looked a little light on the left

Bren was tooled up on both flanks and stationed all his good troops in the centre. My last battle consisted of me rolling 1s for 5 hours and getting pummelled. Would this continue

Yip. THis was the 1st of 5 double 1s I rolled in the 1st 3 turns. Luckily in HC double 1 is a fantastic command roll so I got to move quickly and got to the hedge line and river 1st. THe plan was to hold there and let Bren feed his men into the meat grinder

He duly obliged in the centre and my Picts broke a unit of Huscarls in the 1st battle and forced his other elite units to retreat.

He tried crossing the river on my right and pretty much had the same fate. I had terrible break rolls all game and get pushed back a lot but I had spectacular melee dice and chopped him up enough that he couldn't exploit any retreat that I needed to make.

Bren also didn't occupy the road and my light cavalry had free reign here, peppering the troops either side. This basically kept his elite troops at bay and breaking up his charges. Meanwhile Stig failed to activate his division, when he finally arrived, then they activated and advanced, and then they blundered and retreated again. 

Finally they got forward to support my very thin line

Then his "mum" phoned and told him he had to go home and take his toys with him. So Stig's useless division was replaced with fewer units from the casulaties box. I advanced and forced Bren back from the road. 

At this point Bren's army was pretty much shattered and mine mainly intact so we called it. 1st time Bren has been beaten with the Saxons, and 1st time my Picts have actually fought as Picts. They won.

We got the rules wrong, to Bren's advantage, and we will play again.

Overall a good game and good to get back to winning ways.

Siege of Vienna Polish Army

 I've been painting a 10mm Polish army for the Siege of Vienna for several years now. Well I painted some a few years ago and painted the rest last week.

Cossacks

More Cossacks

Winged Hussars

Some More Winged Hussars

Artillery

Command

Dragoons

I'm sure I have pictures of the other units but can't find them. So you will have to make do the whole army

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The army with infantry in the centre and cavalry on the wings

Mixed cav on one wing

Infantry in the centre, Polish infantry is pretty rubbish and tended to hold the centre while the cavalry went off and had fun

The other flank

The figures are based for Kings of War with 4 bases being a regiment. However I can easily scale up and make 2 bases a regiment to give me an army twice the size.

Now I have to paint the Ottomans, I have none painted so give me few weeks

Spanish Civil War Action

 Last weekend I wandered down to Stig's for a game of Spanish Civil War using Rapid Fire rules. They are a nice set of simple rules that work well and are well written. It was Stigs 1st ever SCW game. I like SCW and the whole interwar period because I really hate super tanks, but fairly rubbish tanks are cool. In SCW the Nationalists maxed out with Panzer 1 and the Republicans with T26 tanks. 

The battle was a fairly simple one, I was an International Brigade with some AT and a couple of T26 tanks as support. I had to hold a town. As Republicans they were poorly trained and so had a -1 morale. Stig was the Nationalist Morrocan Falange, better trained and supported by AT, mortar and 5 Panzer 1. We both had 2 artillery barrages.

THe layout. I'm in the town with support on the hills to either side. Stig's Nationalists are advancing through the fields

Town guys, all classed as hard cover

Left flank, 4 sections, 1 MMG and command section

Stig's evil fascists, red flowers

General advance behind a smoke screen

3 Panzer 1s attack the right flank. The SCW is the home of the molotov cocktail. So we had a rule that all units had molotov cocktails and they classed as anti tank rifles with a 1 inch range. So to attack they would need to pass the hero test and then hit

1 unitpassed, chucked it's bombs and blew up a tank, they retreated and my flank was secure. That single action made the whole battle - great fun

The advance continues and casualties were high

We both reached our army break point. The Republicans did so first, with a poor morale but passed. I then spent 2 turns failing to cause the single hit i needed to make stig reach his break point. Many hits failed to cause damage. Eventually I caused the hit and Stig failed his break test and I won, but it was a close run thing.

It was a great battle and the rules worked perfectly. They will scale up well to bigger battles with multiple players

ImagiNation 7 Years War Scots Army

 I have posted a couple of times already my work on a 10mm imagiNation Scots army for 7YW. I love imagiNation armies and would like to have more. I even prefer fighting imaginary comapigns using real armies, see my Italian Wars stuff. All the figures are Pendraken

The premise for the Scots army is that they never undertook the Darian adventure and so were not bankrupted. They also didn't accept William of Orange as the king and the Stuarts are the monarchs of Scotland. After the civil war the English were more interested in colonial expansion and there exists an uneasy peace between the Scots and English. The Auld Alliance still exists and the French are supporting the Scots. At the outbreak of the 7YW the Scots sided with the French and Austrians against the Prussians

I've finished the last units

This is the Lowland Brigade

4 battalions

The final highland horde regiment, large, fast moving, inferior unit with no firearms

They are the Chisholms

The whole army, about division strength

The Highland horde (5 regiment brigade), a highland brigade (4 battalions) to the rear and the light brigade (3 battalions of border reivers - actually Rogers Rangers but hey)

The other wing. A 3 battalion highland regiment at the rear, the Scots Hussars light cavalry, the 4 battalion Life Guards and the 4 battalion lowland brigade

 With 4 field guns it is a nice army. Now to get them on the field

Battle of Hochkirch

 Managed to get in 2 days of gaming this weekend, and they were brilliant. Yesterday I went off to Matt's to refight the Battle of Hochkirch. Frederick has been caught strung out in camp by a much larger Austrian Force. I was the Austrians and had to capture the Prussians before they could escape. THe Prussians had to hold their defensive positions to allow their troops to make an escape.

As usual it's a massive table and used all of our infantry. I'm on the edge and Matt in the centre. He has his advance guard camped on the wrong side of the river against 2 massive brigades

At the other end of the table I again have very large brigades against is brigade behind earthworks in the centre

I have reinforcements due to arrive on his flank

Matt's main redoubt next to the village of Hochkirch. I have more reinforcements coming to his rear

I open my advance to the right to kick out the vanguard from my side of the river

I start to advance to the left

I double move and almost immediately kick out the vanguard, capturing the guns

My intital advance on the main redoubt is rebuffed but I'm heavily engaged in woods tot he right of Hochkirch

My artillery has pounded the redoubt and the Prussians are ripe for picking

I make my move. My reinforcements hace arrived to the rear but Matt is waiting, more of that later.

Lots of bad command rolls has stalled my attack to the right and my reinforcements have arrived beyond the river

Massed cavalry battle, I get the worst of it

But to the left another cavalry / infantry skirmish sees me get the better of it

I'm at the redoubt as Matt bugs out

I own the redoubt and will soon own it and Hochkirch

Here I come

But it's too late and Matt has sufficient space to bug out.

Brilliant days fighting and a well bakanced game. As always in wargaming we review what happened and the battle fought very well but there are 3 things that in hindsight we could have done better when designing the battle. We made the rivers too slow to cross and that stalled my attack to the right. The Austrians din't have quite enough space to rout before they were off the table and this chewed up my brigades. The prussians had loads of space and so whilst Matt had more units routing they recovered. Next time allow Austrians to recover on table edge. Finally when the location of reinforcements is known it is too easy to automatically set forces to oppose them on arrival, which happend with 2 of my sets of reinforcements. in future we will randomise thier appearence along the relvant talbe edge.

None of these things impacted the game play significantly  but we always like to tinker don't we. We are running out of battles and on 2 more major battles to go. They we wil swap sides and I'll be the Prussians.

Can't wait