Just a Little Progress

I finished off some 6mm Imagi-Nation "Ottoman" musketeers this evening after what seems like ages. They really have been in the queue for a long time. I do feel good about getting a bunch of long-standing projects off the pile lately though.

Nothing fancy. Eight stands - it's enough for two units in Maurice. The minis are Baccus and the banners are aluminum foil, mounted on 1.25" square steel bases. I think I'm finally done painting these little buggers from "The East," but I do have a bag of "Reason" infantry still to come, as well as some campsite stuff. One of these days...

The Battle of Emil's Farm, A Maurice AAR

Ziggy and I had not played a game of anything since mid May, primarily because other things kept coming up for one or the other of us. He'd been wanting to try out Firestorm Armada but since his stuff hasn't made it in yet, I got to select another game and chose Maurice. We had not played it in a while and I've gotten many more units painted up since our last outing not to mention that I picked up the full rules and card deck.

There was a LOT of rust for both of us - we had both completely forgotten how to deploy and manage forces so the battle was a comical whirling mess managed by two incompetent generals. Apparently the generals got their ranks as a function of their births rather than deeds. The two sides aren't strictly "Ottomans" and "Austrians" - they are imagi-nations based on the East versus West wars during the Age of Reason. I was inspired to put these two armies together by the movie "The Adventures of Baron Von Munchhausen."

My forces, the army of Muktar the Handsome. I was defending - the gold coin on the hill represents the objective. Anyone who has played Maurice can see that I botched the shit out of my deployment, particularly the cavalry, by having them separated so widely.

 My right flank

The center, including the Grand Battery - tooled up with National Advantages

And the tragically deployed left wing. Both cavalry units on this side are Elites

Emil's farm, in Bulgaria.

A battalion of the King's musketeers marches up the road to the farm

The Turk's forces amble forward aimlessly.

A previously unspotted area of soft ground is made known in front of the King's cavalry.

The Grand Battery sends a volley towards the European infantry.

Al'Adin's troop heads up the road to threaten the farm.

A light rain started which in essence killed off our artillery. Bah! My basket of eggs is being dropped! The Minister of Meteorology will hear about this!

My troops on the right continued forward through the rain-slicked tall grass and charged into the green-clad soldiers now occupying the farm. The fighting was quick and brutal.

We each lost a battalion in short order.

As we tried to get our troops rallied, the weather cleared (!) Another regiment of Very Reasonable Infantry crossed the center of the battlefield to flank and outnumber my troops on the right. The battalion with the two green disruption markers were Guards and given a couple of bombardments from the Grand Battery while they marched.

Before long, Prince Albert realized the shadows were growing long and time was growing short. His army needed to make a move against the hilltop objective. My best Sipahis atop the hill spurred their mounts and smashed into the European cavalry below.

The initial charge was solid but there was a lot more Very Reasonable Cavalry behind the forward detachment who in turn smashed into more of my horsemen.

The Sipahis see off their opponents in a memorable clash of cavalry!

But moments later the Sultan loses a unit of cavalry. Tragedy!

But things aren't so bad, the Grand Battery doesn't get opportunities like this very often! They unload on a troop of Very Reasonable Cavalry and eliminate it.

Prince Albert sends his horsemen once more into the fight. Two of the cannons are destroyed but the Sipahis by the hill hold their ground brilliantly!

The sun set and the forces of Prince Albert pulled back. Muktar's forces had managed to retain control of the battlefield. It was a tightly contested affair with ups and downs all around, but this day fortune was with the Turk.

Maurice is really a good game. It is so different from the other games we play and is a great change of pace. We both had questionable deployments, mine moreso, but that was due to lack of table-time. Units must be rather close together to be able to commanded together and my cavalry was spread out all over the place. Pushing the farm and forcing an engagement far from the objective worked very well, even though my troops took a beating. It burned a lot of time and distracted Ziggy from his objective. In the end, it saved the game for me. The risk was that if he'd manage to wipe out my forces on that flank, he could have broken my army and gotten a victory. I did what was necessary to mitigate that.

I look forward to putting Maurice on the table again, it's a good one for sure!

Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there - be great to your kids.

Some Recently Painteds

I put my nose to the grindstone and knocked out eight more cavalry stands from Maurice and two cannons this week. I haven't had a lot of painting time and these little blighters took all of it. That gives me 5 cavalry, 5 infantry and four artillery for my "European Army of Reason" for Maurice which, without "Elite" upgrades comes to 70 points. Add a couple of upgrades and they should be good to go. I think I have enough infantry figures to put together one additional unit and I do have two more cannons too.

Like my other Maurie guys, nothing too fancy, just a "quick" block coloring. I find that if they are all they same, they look great from three feet away on a game table.

We're a week out from Memorial Day weekend! I'm looking forward to it - I'm going to try to go fishing with my dad and kids next Saturday morning, get in a game of StarDust maybe in the evening and on Sunday it's Check Your 6 Jet Age  until I can't stand it any longer.

Have a good weekend!

Recently Painted

I finished up a few things this weekend. I'm trying to be good and put a dent in the lead pile before I start on something new (the WW2 micro armor that showed up Thursday).

First up are some 6mm "Turks" for Maurice.

They're on an old pizza box I use for spray-painting. The models are Baccus SYW (I think) Ottoman Levant Musketeers. Nothing fancy, and since they're technically an Imagi-nation army, I'm not all all concerned with the correctness of their uniforms. In fact, my primary concern with the "Easterners" is that they be colorful and very mish-mash. The banners are made from aluminum foil.

Next up is the battleship for my Dystopian Wars Blazing Sun fleet.

She turned out nicely. I don't have a lot more to go on this project! Three gunships, five corvettes and five escorts. I may not do all the escorts since they rarely get used and I never use more than two in a game. Time will tell.

In the queue I've got eight stands of "European" cavalry and two cannons for Maurice. That will hopefully give me enough for two 100-point armies, though I may need to double-check the math. Once they're done, my second batch if WW2 micro armor will probably have arrived and I'll have a long run of painting Canadians and Germans for that project. The only thing I still need to pay for is infantry - I've gotten the tanks and ordered the other stuff (guns, jeeps, prime movers, etc.). If anyone has any good sources for discounted GHQ minis, please leave a note!

Ah, Maurice!

Zig and I finally got around to putting Maurice on the tabletop Saturday afternoon. The whole project has been months in the making. I've been interested in it since Kaptain Kobold started featuring it on his blog. Of course, just being interested isn't usually enough for me to move on a project. It wasn't until I re-watched The Adventures of Baron Munchausen for the umpteenth time some time over the summer that I decided that the armies of Reason and the East needed to be put together and made to fight in miniature.

Being a first time for each of us, and being quite a bit different from the usual fare, the first few turns were pretty tentative but we caught on quickly enough.

We set up 24BW apart. I used the Eastern Empire troops. The two armies are nearly identical - My guys have six infantry, two cavalry and two artillery. Zig's Europeans are composed of five infantry, three cavalry and two artillery.

My forward infantry regiments meander forward. I left the pink guys behind as a reserve for some reason. As it turned out, they did play a crucial role later on.

A few turns on. I'd managed to sucker Zig's main cavalry force out to my right with my own horsemen, then reversed course back to the inside. His cavalry got stuck in a terrible spot and would play no further part in the game. Heheh. One of my regiments has been his by some long-ranged cannon fire.

I used a card whose name I can't remember to push my cavalry forward through the woods without taking a disruption marker, threatening Zig's right side. I forgot that units in different terrain cannot be activated together as a force. Curses! The two cavalry regiments were going to have to act independently now.

With little to lose, I had my forward horsemen head towards the enemy cannons as quickly as possible. The cannons fired as the riders approached, but it was for naught as the artillery battery was destroyed.

Meanwhile, Zig's infantry had been maneuvering forward and was now close enough to pepper my troops with musket fire. The cavalry unit took the brunt of the fire and was broken in no time.

Moments later, my Brave Sons of the East charged forward into combat with the invaders. I didn't take any pictures of the affair, but I had a unit get wiped out. My other unit did will for itself but was forced to retreat from the combat which caused further trouble because it had to move through a friendly unit, adding a disruption to each unit. (see the gold and red marked units)

Zig's forces charge back at mine after a very good volley. My combat rolls were shit as you can see (two ones) and I had another two units get wiped out. I'd lost four now - one more and it was curtains for me!

Zig tries to figure out how many musket balls his troops can fire into my last infantry unit in the combat zone.

Like a tide crashing against stone, my soldiers hold! Zig was furious.

My "reserve" regiments move forward to threaten Ziggy's flanks. He had to act quickly or suffer a tragic turn of events.

A few dice rolls later, combined with an inattentive photographer, and we have a result! Each of us lost a regiment but I'd lost my fifth and that was the end of the game.

Another turn and my cannons could have blasted his nearest regiment into oblivion. Oh well... next time.

What a good game! For a "first play" the game ran very well and there were notably few rules mistakes or troubles. Now that we both have a better grip on things, the next go 'round should be even better. Obviously we could do for some larger armies. Those will be forthcoming. I'm currently out of 1.25" bases and need to order some. I do have models though - two more regiments of Ottomans and I can pretty well double the size of the European army with the unpainteds I have for them. What we've got now is perfectly fine for learning Maurice though. I need to work on flags for the European infantry. They look just a bit too plain out there right now.

Recently Painted - 6mm Ottomans

The Ottomans I picked up as a second army for Maurice got pushed to the back burner for a little while but they've gotten some more attention during the week and I finished up the first 16 bases of infantry. It should be noted that there was no attempt at historical accuracy with the uniforms, since they'll be an Imagi-Nation anyway. I was torn between putting one or two strips of minis on each base and settled on one-per, primarily so I'd have a bigger army when I'm done.

The Miniatures are 6mm Janissaries from Irregular and are mounted on 1.25" square bases. I've got loads more cavalry and infantry in the queue and hope to have some of the cavalry (8 stands) finished this weekend.

I also put some hedges and walls together since my 6mm scenery selection is mostly woods and buildings for Modern Spearhead.

 No comments about them looking like garden gnomes with their red hats! I am keenly aware that indeed they DO like a horde of angry gnomes.

 I snipped these strips apart and arranged them more like skirmishers.

Kitty litter walls. They turned out OK. They are very light and won't stand up to any amount of abuse but they were easy to make and get the job done.

Green dish-scrubber hedges. These came out better than I expected. I made seven hedge pieces and three walls.