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.

Hot off the Press - Wee Panzergrenadiers

I knocked out a second group of 30 6mm German infantry models yesterday and got lot of them (60+) based through the evening (during commercial breaks, etc.) At this point, the Germans are complete, so I've got a handful of Canadian infantry to crank out now.

 17 stands!

 HQ elements

Mortars

 HMG stands

And I did some gun crews and attached them to the ATG and IG I did last week. I hope the bad picture doesn't melt your eyeballs.

Expanding the Planethead - SL:PO AAR

Saturday afternoon at Rapier Mike hosted a game of Strike Legion: Planetary Ops. A group of five of us played in the game - I was paired with Mark and we controlled the Commonwealth defenders, trying to halt the advance of the TOG forces led by Mike, James and Bill.

Our initial plan was to move our tanks forward to occupy the crystal forests and gain some cover. The mechanized infantry would hold back, occupying cover areas closer to our edge of the board. The nasty wasty TOGs were advancing across the battlefield length-wise and needed to exit stands off our edge.

The TOG tanks streak forward. Grav tanks in march formation don't slow down for nothin'. Houston, we have a problem.

A traffic jam develops as six zillion TOG tanks coalesce above and in the canyon. Our defenders are still trying to reach their positions.

A close up of some of our grav tanks (NOT HOVER! NEVER HOVER!) before Mike and Co. ruin their paint jobs.

Our front line begins to get into position.

Sumnabitch TOGs make it to the center crystals before we do. We're golden on the left though.

We start trading shots. You can see that we came to the decision of "oh fuck it" in the center since the TOGs outnumbered us 3 to 1 in the crystals. I maintain that our situation on the right was solid and although outnumbered on the left, we had a surprise in store for the filthy Imperials.

As of turn 5, we'd lost three stands and inflicted no casualties.

The brown horde's heavy tanks (the unbased Falcons) in position to blow through a gap in our front line.

But then our own heavy tanks show up and smash into the flank of the evil oppressors!

And my shlubs on the right side finally account for a stand of Imperials!

But we get hammered in the center as our reserve tanks fill in the gap and are then crushed.

We wrapped the game shortly thereafter. Mark and I threw in the towel - the writing was on the wall and there was no way the defenders were going to be able to make a dent in the attack. We'd lost 12 stands and the attackers had only lost 3. They outnumbered us to begin with and had stronger units. Perhaps a better starting position for the defenders or an impassible chasm with a couple of bridges would have made the battle more manageable for the Commonwealth. Either way, it was a fun afternoon and I do like the SL:PO game system. The only change I'd like to see is simultaneous damage resolution. At a game this scale - each unit being a battalion - the I shoot-you-shoot mechanic is questionable. Bitching aside, we got run off the battlefield and will be ready to reverse their gains next time!

Rapier 2015

Well, I'm back from Jacksonville and I had a blast! The Rapier game con was terrific and I'm really glad I went. I got to play some good games with good people and made a few new friends. I'll do AARs for some of the games later in the week, but for now I'll just post some pictures of the action.

On Friday afternoon, Junior and I got into a SmallWorld tournament. This was our table for round 1.

78 points put me into round 2. Junior had a lowly 59 and had to bow out.

The "winners" table - round 2. I ended up 4th - the lady on the far left won with a very strong 90 points. Game 2 was played using the "Underworld" variant. We all had a good time an I liked the group, although the bald fellow at the top of the picture was quite the foulmouth.

A pretty cool regatta with lovely models.

Friday night gaming - Mike broke out Starfire and we blew up spaceships for a couple hours.

Saturday morning - I played a game of Blue Sky / Red Sun. I really enjoyed this. WW2 airplanes. I handled a Japanese group, dive-bombing the USS Yorktown at Midway. I think this was my favorite game of the weekend.

 One of three entirely way-too-large Waterloo tables. Impressive in 25mm!

 Another angle

French cavalry commanded by brother Mike.

 Advancing Prussians led by Mark.

 Another heavily laden Waterloo table. 

Gorgeous British cavalry.

Mark (far) pushing lead towards Mikey's Frenchies. The game was interesting but far too ambitious and the rule system (Column Line Square) seemed terrifically complex for new players. At 1:00, many of the players had to bail in order to eat lunch before the 2:00pm session began. The Prussians were well on their way to victory when we left.

Oh.... Mark's Hussars swooped upon a French gun position a gave it a proper duffing. A highlight of the battle to be sure!

A group of 6 was playing All Quiet on the Martian Front. The American Land Ironclad was quite a spectacle! Apparently 5 lbs (2.25 kg) of resin and metal!

Across the room, I played Strike Legion: Planetary Ops with Mike, Mark, Bill and James. It was very warm up there on the 6th floor and tempers were short. Despite Bill and James falling asleep during the game, the stuffy room and testiness of the awake players resulted in a true classic. The noise, heat and B.O. stench added a lot of atmosphere not often found in war gaming. I think that SLPO game won't soon be forgotten.

I didn't win any of the raffle prizes although James did well. I did pick up a few goodies - I'll post pics later. A wonderful con and I hope I can get back next year.