Soviet Hordes defeated ...

It was a last minute affair (other commitments have kept me from the games table for a few weeks, but a small window of opportunity had arisen to squeak in a game this Saturday evening) and it was to have been a Volley and Bayonet Marlburian game. However after a good long yarn and a whiskey or two, we suddenly found too little time left in the evening for the Marlburian affair, so we settled for  a short HotT game. It was a chance to give the new Soviet HotT army a try, and we chose to oppose them with the VSF army under Carruthers' able command, fielding the two new fangled fliers that had just arrived from the Admiralty.

I commanded the VSF while Adrian commanded the Soviets.

The Soviet army consisted of:

4 x shooters (sub machine gunners - one was the general)
4 x Hordes (Riflemen)
2 x T34 Behemoth (in other configurations these could easily be used as knights)
1 x God (an artillery bombardment)

Carruthers was fielding:

1 x Behemoth (steam robot)
2 x fliers
2 x artillery
2 x blade (one was Carruthers himself as general)
3 x shooters

Carruthers sent his fliers around his right flank to attack the enemy left and hold it up, while trying to manoeuvre his unwieldy line forward.

The Soviets advanced hurriedly on their own right and a fight began for the wooded ground that was anchoring the British left.

The Soviet behemoths advanced towards the British centre, but one was blown away by the British artillery (a 1 vs a 6 will do that..).

While the battles for the wings continued, the lone Soviet behemoth decided to have a go itself in support of the Soviet sub machine gunners who were attacked the British right. Throughout this mid phase of the game the British fliers were marooned away from the action as I threw 4 x 1s and a 2 out of 5 consecutive PIP die rolls.. mutter mutter.. Carruthers wasn't happy.

The Soviets finally came forward with the behemoth supported by the sole remaining sub machine gun unit on its right. The British artillery should have been a goner but.. another 1 vs 6 ..

The Soviets were successfully maintaining the pressure on their own right, but casualties were mounting, and successive desperate Soviet calls to the artillery Gods had gone unanswered.

Finally the Gods responded, just as the British steam robot clanked and hissed into action and attacked the last remaining Soviet behemoth, supported by one of the British fliers.

The first attack failed, but the second went in supported by the second flier and the last of the Soviet spirit was extinguished.

Maybe these new fangled flying machines aren't so bad after all.

Carruthers gathers wondrous flying machines ...

Carruthers has been writing repeatedly to their Lordships at Horseguards begging for reinforcements as he attempts to subjugate  unknown worlds and gather empire for Her Majesty. Their Lordships have despatched two of the newest flying contraptions to Carruthers, in the hope that this might keep him quiet for some time.

A small addition to the British Victorian Science Fiction HotT army, and just off the painting table (and yet to be based) are these flyers. The come from the Spartan games Uncharted Seas range.

Still to come is a Skyboat from the same range that will do duty as an airboat in Her Majesty's Royal Naval Air Service!! Top hole, eh what???

You can read more of Carruthers' earlier adventures here.

A "belle" of beauties looked on ...

It was 1861, and a "belle" of southern ladies had gathered on the highest hill hoping to gain some fleeting glimpse of their handsome young beaus as they strode gloriously into battle, intent upon giving those impudent northerners a darned goood thrashing.

The northern army under MacDowell had marched south with the intention of taking Richmond, and Beauregard had moved his forces north to counter the thrust. Beauregard's advanced guard had marched up the valley towards the town of Hillsborough, with second division on their right as flank guard. The left flank guard seemed to have been left far behind in the enthusiasm of the advance. As they moved along the heights, sending a brigade into Hillsborough, lines of blue could be seen advancing in the distance.

The right flank guard moved up intot he woods adjacent to Hillsborough, but the Union commander had been watching the grey advance with interest, and had sent two of his divisions on his left towards the same cluster of woods. Musket shots began to ring out through the trees, and a veil of gun smoke wafted through the branches, creating a sense of confusion before battle had even been joined. In this confusion a brigade of grey on the extreme right of Beauregard's army began streaming backwards. Even worse, an entire battalion of Beauregard's valuable bronze 'napoleons' fell to the Union forces, the ultimate dishonour for any gunner.

In the meantime the Confederate centre held fast with it's own flank now resting firmly on Hillsborough.

Sensing the opportunity, Beauregard had sent his main force on a longer march around to his left, and three brigades now appeared to threaten the Union right.

But MacDowell had seen the threat and one of his divisions was sent into the woods on his own right to hold the flank.

The grey tide advanced rapidly ... there was fighting to be done.

The Confederate divisions moved up quickly and a vicious firefight began on the Union right. The Confederate infantry quickly gained the ascendancy, sending several Union brigades streaming from the field. The ladies on the hill clapped their approval, and there were delicate mutterings of "My, did you see that? Why I do believe that was the 3rd Virginia."

Seeing his right flank disintegrating, Macdowell ordered one of his victorious left flank divisions across to prop up his right, but this would take time.

As the right steadied, MacDowell pushed on towards the Confederate centre, and Beauregard withdrew his centre forces, leaving a garrison to hold Hillsborough. Meanwhile the Southern ladies had long since abandoned their own positions on their hill as a cool evening breeeze began to cut across the battlefield.

After 8 hours of furious fighting night shed its veil of darkness across the battlefield, and the forces of both armies fell exhausted in the positions they had fought so hard over during the day. MacDowell's forces were certainly in no condition to take Richmond.

What would the 'morrow bring?

This American Civil War battle was a fictional scenario fought by Adrian, Andy, Andrew and me using Frank Chadwick's 'Volley and Bayonet' rules (2nd Edition). We were using my 15mm armies (mostly Freicorps figures). The buildings were scratch built by Adrian.

The battle was a typical 1861 battle, many of the troops were, in VnB terms, poorly trained, morale 4, with a scattering of morale 5 troops across each army.

An Epic Titan joins the ranks ...

A few months ago Adrian gave me an Epic scale Titan (a Warlord Titan). It came from the Old Space Marine set which, if I understand it correctly, was the first edition of Epic (feel free to correct me there). I have a couple of Scout Titans (yet to be assembled), but I'm not  a 'power gamer' so hadn't really planned for a beastie like this. Of course once you have one, two things happen:

1. You can't help painting it, and
2. You realise that one may just not be enough.

Anyway, I sat down last week to paint the beast (all a part of my painting catch up strategy). I chose to use the same colour scheme I used for my WH40K Space Marines, I thought it was suitably 'gothic': a combination of papal purple, and bronze/brass. Here is the finished result.

Certainly Titans are very emblematic of the 40K universe.. I have no idea how effective these things actually are in Epic (I haven't re-read the rules, nor played a game, for several months), but they certainly look the part, and for larger games I almost feel that it's obligatory to have a Titan on the table top.

Epic reinforcements

I'm slowly catching up on the rather large backlog of painting projects. A few weeks ago it was the DBA Minoans, now it's the majority of the long unpainted Epic Space Marine forces. Tonight, a unit of Whirlwinds, another of Land Speeders, and two each of Terminators and Devastators finally left the recruiting depots and hit the table and took the limelight with a photo oppoprtunity.

The remainder of the Epic Space Marine forces are a mix of Chapters, but these reinforcements are all Blood Angels.. no reason other than that I like the colour red on the table top, it is easy to see with my slightly dodgy eye sight.

They were all undercoated black, then given a base coat of Scab red, a highlight of Blood Red, a Badab Black wagh, and then highlighted with a red/yellow mix, before detials were picked out.

There's still a little to go, a Titan and two Warhound Scout Titans, and a Thunderhawk. We'll get there. Now.. where was I? Oh yes, there are some rather cool flyers for the British VSF HotT army waiting for some attention. Stay watching.

Mantic's 'Warpath' rules.

Last night we played a trial game of Mantic's new science fiction game Warpath. We have played a few games of their new fantasy rules set 'Kings of War', and found that we really like them, so we were keen to try their science fiction equivalent.

The big appeal for us is the simplicity of the rules. We have tried the Games Workshop Fantasy and 40K rules (and have certainly played quite abit of 40K), and the thing we most struggle with is what for us is unnecessary complexity. Now don't get me wrong, this isn't an attack on GW rules. I know thousands play and enjoy them, and good on them. The issue for us is that we are peripatetic in our wargaming tastes, so we might play one rules system for half a dozen games, and then move on to something else that appeals to our interests. The rules book/army book structure of the GW rules systems means that to play the game you must be familiar with the rules book, your own army book, and other army books too, if the game is to play well. This works well if this is your game of choice and you play it regularly, but frankly we just can't remember enough of them from one series of games to the next to make playing the games enjoyable. We found that with Kings of War,  after three games, we were playing the games quickly and confidently, and they were good games. So because Warpath is based on similar principles to KoW, it was inevitable that we would try Warpath too.

The game played reasonably easily, although busy work lives for us all meant that we hadn't really read them thoroughly enough before we played. Consequently we made several mistakes in turn sequence. However despite this it was very easy to make our way around the rules. The fact that there are only two 'races' or army lists available at the moment meant that we used GW figures as 'proxies', so my GW orcs were Marauders and Adrian's Eldar were Forgefathers (odd, I know).
 
We felt that there was a potential balance issue with one of the Forgefathers fire based units in particular, but we also fell into the trap of trying to play the game as if it were 40K, and it's not. This meant that units lasted differently, with a Marauder unit disappearing after one turn of fire, having taken heavy casualties and then failing its nerve test, while other units lasted the whole game. We also noted that vehicles last differently on the table - personally I liked this aspect of the game, although we felt that there was plenty of potential for unlikely vehicle play with vehicles chasing each other to get flank and rear shots.

Finally as we dissected the game afterwards, we definitely felt that, because the game is unit based, it would play very well with Epic scale figures, not that that it helpful because we all like the Epic rules. But the basing system used in Epic certainly lends itself to the rules.

Anyway, there are some initial thoughts. here are a few photos of the game.. it looked pretty much like any 40K game because of the figures we used, so I haven't overdone it.

Sheldon's latest offering..Ypres 1914

The victors always write the history, and never more so than the history of the First World War. The legacy of the history has perhaps been almost as traumatic as the legacy of the war itself with so much written to be little more than self-serving justification.

The ‘revisionist’ movement of historians perhaps began with the early writings of John Terraine and the late Paddy Griffiths, both of them more interested in looking at the primary sources than in repeating the ‘perceived wisdom’ that had preceded their own writings. And so it is with perhaps some of the most recent material that is now being published.

The most recent to hit my bookshelves is “The German Army at Ypres 1914” by Jack Sheldon (Pen and Sword 2010, ISBN 978 1 84884 1130). Sheldon’s most recent offering is perhaps the history that should have been written so many years ago, using many primary German sources for what may well be the first time. So much German archive material was lost in the allied bombing of 1944/45, but Sheldon has delved into the untouched Bavarian archives, and a great deal more, to piece together a work that is not only analytical and critical, but also,  by using a great deal of letter and diary material, offers a deeply personal and moving insight into the trials and agonies of the German soldier in those months of 1914.

Sheldon can hardly be tarred with the brush of German apologist, offering as he does a critical and at times justifiably scathing analysis of the performance of the German High Command, documenting failings at many levels. The one thing he is never critical of however is the willingness of young German men to go forward, to do their duty as they saw it. In this they have everything in common with the young men of every nation, and in seeing them in this light they are less demonized and more humanized than they have perhaps been presented in any preceding history.

Much of the revisionist writing over recent decades has focused on debunking many of the myths that have been perpetuated in those first five decades after the war. Sheldon admirably continues this tradition, and one of the more delightful pieces comes with his debunking of the ‘Myth of Langemark’ which held that German soldiers marched forward singing ‘Deutchsland Deutchsland” to the accompaniment of regimental bands. In a footnote to the peuniultimate chapter ‘Endgame at Langemark’   Sheldon wryly notes:

“So we are invited to believe that on a battlefield, under heavy fire and when they are desperately needed at the front, a band of men stopped for some time to listen to a folksong, some dance music and military marches before joining in for a jolly old sing song round a miraculously surviving piano in the mud of a blasted village. Hmm.” (Page 313) 

 

I grinned as I read this. I am something of a revisionist of the history of the First World War myself, but I hasten to add never an apologist. As with his earlier book ‘The German Army on the Somme 1914-1916’, Sheldon has made an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the events of the battles and the men involved, and of the deep human tragedy that is warfare in general. 

Thanks!!

I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in the First World war.