So that was TAGCon 2011

Last weekend and we were off down south to Timaru for TAGCon (Timaru Armchair Generals Convention) for 2011. I took a group of College boys, and 3 ex students, as well as son Nick, and good colleague Andrew. Andrew, Nick and I played in the DBA event (Book 1 armies) on the Saturday.

I was using a borrowed Early Archaemenid army (1/60C), and made my worst ever showing I have to admit. Here is Keith's report on his battles, and the final results. Just a few random shots of the day.

My light horse attacking Keith's camp in my first game.. didn't work.. damn it!!!

Brian's Lydian knight General, complete with dogs.. love them!!

This was Brian's camp element.

The DBA crew hard at work ...

The boys all played in the 40K competition. Again just a few random shots. This was Elliot's Guard Psycher unit..

... and his Vostroyans advancing... there sure were a lot of them, and nicely painted!!!

Alex bringing a touch of class to what otherwise might have been an unseemly brawl? No wait, that's the Armoured Corps' job!!

Hordes of Orcs.. my Orcs in fact, being used by Toby.. looking good!!

Some Vostroyan Rough Riders in the distance..

And someone else's Orcs.. highly mechanised... just doesn't seem Orcy really, "all dem weels"!!!!!

It was a great weekend. Thanks to the Timaru Armchair Generals for organising a great event, and my special thanks to Dave B for the loan army (even if the B**y thing wouldn't fight for me.. waddaya mean it was the bad general?).

'March to the sound of the guns'

I have just finished reading this most extraordinary novel, written by Ray Grover, former head of New Zealand's National Archives.

Grover has brought together the results of 20 years of research from war diaries and other personal accounts to create a remarkable novel which is a story of New Zealanders at war 1914-1918. Grover paints a picture of ordinary New Zealanders at war, one that lacks nothing from the perspectives of either historicity nor readability. Grover demonstrates an understanding of the nature of the conflict that would do Paddy Griffith and John Terraine proud. Yet he has also written a very good novel that has a fascinating and unusual structure and is very readable.

Published by Longacre Press in 2008, perhaps the most telling comment might be:

‘…it staggered me … I can think of no other novel that captures individual New Zealanders in war as skilfully.’
Christopher Pugsley, Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst
Author of Gallipoli: the New Zealand Story

This is highly recommended.

Dwarves and Humans at it again: more 'Kings of War' action.

"Kings of War" game number four, with the forces now scaled to 1550 points as we dug deep into our reserves of figures. The theory: the game gets more and more interesting as you scale the forces towards the suggested 2000 points.

Andy fielded his Humans, while Adrian and I commanded the Dwarves, in a 'Kill' scenario. We agreed to play for twelve turns (six turns each), having previously played games to the other option of a two hour time limit.

Andy deployed with an infantry centre, including five units of archers. We deployed the Dwarves with a solid centre of Ironclad infantry supported by two cannons. We refused the left, holding the flank with an Ironguard Regiment supported by an Organ gun. The right was held by a full regiment of Shieldbreakers supported by an Ironwatch troop, and a Berserkers Half regiment.

Just one turn of fire on the right flank Ironwatch troop (from two units of Human archers) saw them break and flee from the field. Hmm.. this might be tougher than we thought.

Andy pushed around the flanks with his cavalry. Two units of knights supported by some pistollier light cavalry approached the Dwarf right flank, while ...

.... a single unit of knights moved to threaten the Dwarf left.

The Dwarven Shieldbreakers holding the right flank moved into the forest on that flank, hopeful that this would make them a bigger bite than the knights could swallow.

Meanwhile on the Dwarven left the Ironwatch troop fled the field after a very uneven fire fight with two units of Human archers.

The forest on the Dwarven left was witness to a two turn swirling melee, as axes and lances raised and fell, thrust and parried. Eventually however the accummulated casualties took their toll on Dwarven morale, and the Shieldbreakers 'broke'.

Not to be outdone, the supporting unit of Berserkers charged into the fray and, supported by the Dwarven King,  forced a waver result on the knights.

The Human centre was looking shakey, with both units of swordsmen having fled the field after a prolonged bombardment from the Dwarven artillery. The archers no doubt felt just a little exposed as the Dwarf Ironclad regiments now advanced against them.

Meanwhile on the Dwarf right, the second unit of knights now entered the fray, attacking the Berserkers in the flank. This definitely was not pretty from the Dwarf side of the table, although for Andy this was one of those glorious moments: 32 attacks on a Dwarf unit with a defence of 3 (less one for the Knights' 'Crushing Strength'. Yep, that hurt!!

Meanwhile on the Human right, the third unit of knights attacked the Dwarf left flank held by a regiment of Ironguard. It was the last turn of the game, and the knights bounced off, inflicting very few casualties.

The game ended in a draw. The Dwarfs were in a position to exploit the shattered human centre, while the Humans must have felt that they were onto something here with their knights in a position to hammer the Dwarven flanks. The game continues to be easy to play (although with plenty of tactical challenges). We have the rules pretty much sorted now, so the game mechanics present no real difficulties.

The scale to 1550 points made quite a difference. The additional points allowed for reserves exactly as you would expect.

I'm not sure that we were as keen on the six move turn limit as on the other option of a two hour game window. The battle was hanging in the balance. I'm not suggesting that games should be fought to 'last man standing'. Rather, the game probably needed another couple of player turns each to allow one side or the other to establish its dominance on the battlefield that day.

Of course the rules don't need to be taken as so prescriptive that players MUST abide by the six turn, or two hour, play limit. Regardless, the game was an enormous amount of fun, with it's interesting tactical moments, and its cinematic moments.

And that's what matters really, isn't it?

A great blog and a darned good read

For quite a while now I have used iGoogle as my means of managing the huge array of information that interests me. This includes both professional and hobby information. Amongst the gadgets I have on iGoogle is GoogleReader, which allows me to manage the various blogs that potentially interest me, and amongst those is one that I consider to be truly outstanding: Mr Farrow's DBA Blog.

Now here's a guy who enjoys his hobby, actively engages his two children in the hobby, and writes some fantastic and engaging after action reports. This blog covers their adventures within the traditional DBA ancients period.

But they also use the various extensions to DBA to play games that cover that whole 1500 to 1900 period, and the AARs in these periods are just as engaging. Here is a typical image from an AAR (this one from the Franco Prussian War era):

So if you want some inspiration, or just a darned good read, try Mr Farrow's Blogs.

Reflections on HotT ..

My fame and fortune in the local HotT tournament scene has been earned with my Spider army (Nick G has posted an excellent AAR of our game in last Sunday's tournament here). As Nick comments, it was the only game I lost out of 5, and it was a pretty thorough thrashing I have to say.

The army composition I used was:

1 x Behemoth general
1 x Hero
1 x God
2 x lurkers
10 x Hordes

I have always considered Horde armies to be weaker than most, but now I'm not so sure. The basic approach has been to surround my strongest elements (the Behemoth and Hero) with plenty of Hordes, hoping that the opposing army becomes bogged down in the horde of Hordes, while the two biggies do the business. I generally don't count on the God; if he turns up that's a bonus, but I try to plan the battle in my head on the assumption that he doesn't.

I had traditionally considered Hordes to be weaker elements, but I guess that with a CF of 2, they are strong enough to hold out, and deployed 2 deep, near the baseline, they do indeed tend to wear the opponent down. The opposition's 'mental fatigue' isn't helped by the constant redeployment of lost Hordes as well. This redeployment means that I try to keep my 'battle line' close to my own base line, so that those Hordes brought back onto the table at least have a running (or scuttling, in this case) chance of getting back into the battle.

So, having mentally gone into two tournaments now with the view that the spiders were the tournament 'easy beats', I have had to change my mind. Maybe Hordes aren't too bad a bet after all.

As I think Joseph Stalin once said (correct me if I'm wrong) "Quantity has a quality of its own."

After all, the rules are titled 'HORDES of the things'!!!

A HotT Winter's day 11-Postscript 1

A word of warning.. in today's tournament, in my 3rd game, against Nick G, my spider God (Spiderman - well who else??? really, I mean!!!) turned up to play, only to turn around and leave again within a couple of moves. I was not amused...

 ... so a jolly good talking to was in order. Spiderman was given a very clear description of his antecedents, and a warning about the consequences of any future repetition of this behaviour.

He failed to turn up at all in the following game (perhaps in a fit of pique), but then made a jolly good showing in the final game. Clearly he'd taken the time to think about what I'd said!!


Thanks to Nick G for the photo.

A HotT Winter's day 11

A change of pace in my 'gaming, with this year's 'A HotT Winter's Day' tournament. This year there were 6 of us playing, so the format was simply everyone plays everyone else once for 5 games each, and a total of 25 games over the day. No individual game write-ups this time, but a selection of photos from some of the games that took place over the day.

This yeea, for a change, we allowed players to change armies during the day. It was all about getting some pretty cool armies onto the table, and having fun, and judging from some of the shouts and jeers (who'd have thought 6 'gamers could make so much noise), there was plenty of fun to be had as those dramatic 'cinematic moments' unfolded.

The armies were:

Nick S - Mythical Indian
Nick G - Victorian Sci Fi
Gordon - Dwarf, then Zulu
Stan - Conquistador
Kevin - Easterling
Robin - Spiders



Spiders vs Conquistadors:

Spiders vs Dwarfs: The spiders had just disposed of the Dwarf general.

Indians vs British VSF:

Spiders vs British VSF (this was the game I lost during the day.. Nick G gave me a 'damned good thrashing'!!):

British VSF vs Zulu:

Spiders vs Easterlings: The spider behemoth general making beady eyes at the Easterling Paladin .. nom nom nom.. eventually he made a meal of the Paladin.

Spiders vs Indians:

The Indian magician general looked ot be introuble but managed to extract himself and have his revenge by driving off the spider behemoth general, and then bespelling the spider hero (on the right). Sadly for Nick S, his God showed up, then left on the very next move, while the Spider God turned up, and proceeded to chomp his was through the Indian riders.

Many thanks to everyone who played.