Death in a Tight Splace Redux

Myself and Adam got together to yesterday to replay Adam's excellent scenario Death in a Tight Space. On our last outing, I played the defender. Yesterday, we reversed roles: Adam decided to go with the Norse-Gaels as the attacker and I decided to use the Vikings as the heroic defenders. We played from the Age of Vikings source book for SAGA2.

Vikings:

Ragnar Lothbrok

3 points of Hearthguard

1 point of Berserkers

Mercenary unit of Jarl Sigvaldi's Jomsvikings

Norse-Gaels:

Warlord

4 points of Warriors (half Dane-Axes)

2 Points of Levy

Unusually, I had a bit of time to think about the game before I played so I had actually generated a plan. As laid out the last time the Attackers have the Endless Warbands rule and the game was to last 10 Rounds (nightfall we could say). Victory was based on Slaughtering Points. With this in mind, I felt that I had to try to not engage the attackers for at least 4 rounds to prevent having to face multiple endless warbands. At the same time, I planned to position my Berserkers so they could take out the largest group of warriors while screaming Valhalla. Best laid plans of course, as I think the Berserkers ended up attacking in Round 3 and being wiped out without accomplishing their mission. I then had to play a game of cat and mouse taking out the Norse-Gaels when an opportunity presented itself while trying to survive until nightfall. The below photos will illustrate what happened.

Here is a view of the starting position, Vikings to the right. It was 25 Vikings vs  57 Norse-Gaels. I went with two 6 figure units of Hearthguards and two 4 figure units of Berserkers and Jomsvikings. Ragnar generated 2 SAGA dice for a total of 6. The Norse-Gaels had two units of 12 Levy, three units of 12, 10 and 10 Warriors as well as a Warlord for 6 SAGA dice.

A scary prospect.

I missed a few photos here but in a early clash I lost 3 Hearthguard but was able to kill a unit of Warriors.  I had already sacrificed my Berserkers without taking them out.

Ragnar advances with 3 Hearthguard to take out the these two units of Norse-Gael warriors . The game ended on turn 9 with the Vikings having 43 Slaughtering Points while the Norse-Gaels had 20, a clear victory for the defenders.

I enjoyed the game and believe I put together a pretty good warband for this heroic stand. It went quite smoothly although I am not sure if I played the Jomsviking's Fury correctly. Adam kindly let me play the Fury as a Activation/Reaction which I am not sure is right.

Coming up

I really have nothing up next on the painting table so have been trying to decide what to do. I am thinking about a Christian Warband for the SAGA Age of the Crusades. But I decided to add a unit of Shieldmaidens to my Swords for Hire reserve. I had been searching about for a while and I found these this morning and although plastic they were purchased within minutes. This is exactly for what I was looking. No dumpy Viking females for me.

Update on Jarl Sigvaldi

• Sigvald gains a Fury Token automatically at the beginning of the controlling player's activation (there are multiple other ways to gain tokens as well)
• Sigvald burns his Fury Tokens only at the beginning of the controlling player's activation and the effects last through the opposing player's turn.
• Sigvald only switches sides if he loses a melee when he has no Fury Tokens in hand.

This actually sounds like quite a mess if you read the series of posts, but from what I understand a FAQ is near and should clear things up.

A Question of Scale 2

Almost 10 years ago I put together a post called A Question of Scale in which I lamented the difficulty of assessing the size of buildings before buying them. At the time I was looking at 15mm buildings for my 28mm Napoleonic large battles. What I found was that what was advertised had absolutely nothing to do with actual size.

Over the last several years, as well documented in this blog, I have gone heavily into WWII skirmish gaming. A big requirement of this is buildings, especially in Western Europe. With my scale I have a choice of two scales which should be fairly close 1/72 and 20mm (1/76). I generally have 20 mm figures with the occasional 1/72 thrown in.

I initially bought the Italeri 1/72 scale buildings which are made of hard plastic and are quite nice. Limited selection though with 3 Houses, 1 Railroad Station and 1 Church. These buildings are on the large side and the Railroad Station and Church are I think out of scale while one of the Houses is really trashy. The Country House with Porch and the Country House are quite nice and scale well with the 4ground 20mm World at War MDF collection. I have to say though that as you will see below their Café Grondeé is really out of scale with the buildings in the Farm Complex Selection. The 4ground Farm Complex is at least 1/72 scale if not larger.

I then went and bought the PlastCraft Games 15-20mm EWAR Collection. These buildings are PVC and are certainly 20mm in scale, certainly smaller then 4ground or Italeri but usable on the same table especially if the the 4ground and Italeri are used as isolated buildings and the Plastcraft are used in a town. They were quite difficult to assemble though and a little barren, I did try to do them up but somewhat unsuccessfully as you can see here.

I recently bought the Empires of War MDF Normandy collection labeled as 20mm. As you can see below these are pretty small and I think probably should be labeled as 15mm but the larger buildings are OK with the Plastcraft. My final purchase was some Sarissa Precision World War 20mm buildings  and I have to say they are nice. Not a big collection but I suspect true 20mm and fit well with the Plastcraft, the 4ground Café Grondée and the larger Empire at War buildings.

But enough talking let's have a look. I set up the MDF buildings only as there is only so much table space.

An unadorned Sarissa House-with a bit of work it came out as the below building on your right.

Sarissa Precision- I am really pleased with these buildings

Empire at War collection, they come painted which is nice. They are a little flimsy but definitely well priced

The 4ground collection, the Café Grondée, is definitely smaller then the other 2 buildings and a little more flimsy.

More 4ground

4ground again

LtR:2 Empire at War, a 4ground, Sarissa Precision and the Café Grondée

LtR: The smallest Empire of War, the 4ground Farmhouse, the Sarissa Chateau and the Café Grondé. I think you can see here that the 4ground Farm complex buildings are a little big!

Anyway, I would be happy to hear about what else is out there in is this popular scale. I really like the Sarissa buildings. I think I would pick them over the others, but the choice is limited. I think I will get rid of the 3 of the Italeri buildings I do not like. The 4ground are quite expensive so I will keep them. The Empire of War buildings are OK especially the larger ones and are quite good value. Plastcraft good size but I found tough to assemble.

Huzzah 2018

Yesterday, I spent the day at the annual gaming convention put on by the Maine Historical Wargaming Convention in Portland, Maine. I believe this is the biggest gaming event in the northeast and appeared to be well attended. Clearly a lot of work was put into the event and there was some very nice layouts. There were quite a few vendors but maybe less then the last time I was there 2 years ago.

I was late to register, I actually thought I would be working the weekend, but as it happened I was not. Unfortunately most of the TFL games that I would be interested in playing were already full and I was limited in my attendance to just one day of this 3 day event. I was able to register for a Big CoC game Saturday morning and a regular CoC game Saturday evening. 

I got up early, it is about a 90 minute drive from where I live and arrived just in time to find out the morning game was cancelled! I was not able to find an alternate game to play so watched a Sharp Practice game set during the Great Northern War. The gamesmaster Greg Symko did a great job of explaining the ruleset and was able to play it to conclusion in under 2 hours with 6 players and I think around 7-8 leaders per side. An accomplishment for sure.

In the afternoon, I was able to get in on a WWI skirmish game, using the Operation Squad ruleset on a very impressive terrain with Greyscale figures. Fun game, although I found the ruleset somewhat challenging, again the gamemasters did a great job moving things along.

I finally got to play a CoC game put on by Tom Ballou set during the Battle of Hürtgen Forrest. Again a great job was done on terrific terrain using a blend of CoC and At a Sharp End. I really enjoyed playing and got a chance to re-connect with Tom who first introduced me to CoC some years ago.

Anyway some photos to follow. There was a couple of other TFL games, one a Sharp Practice game set in the Napoleonic War by my friend Mike and another CoC game by Dick Bryant set during Normandy. Unfortunately no photos were taken.

Great Northern War with Sharp Practice 

The Bolt Action League of Maine had an absolutely fantastic group of 28mm tables set up for scheduled and pickup games. Not my cup of tea, but it is no wonder BA is so popular here.

An ACW game using Fire and Fury

Another ACW game using The Devil to Pay ruleset

Some Test of Honour tables. I probably would have liked to give this a try if there were openings

Operation Squad WWI game in greyscale, really amazing terrain and figures

An great looking Age of Sigmar game

Chain of Command: When Trumpets Fade, I wish I had taken more photos but I was pretty engrossed in the game

For Sale: Litko Plywood, Flex Steel and Flex Magnet Bases

PRICE REDUCTION BY $50

More clean out, really getting the spring cleaning done. Have no use for these anymore.

From Litko:

175 count 40x40mm 1.5 mm thick plywood-cost $29.99 per 100 count

150 count 40x20mm 1.5 mm thick plywood-$18.99 per 100 count

040 count 40x50mm 1.5 mm thick plywood-$34.99 per 100 count

165 count 40x40mm HD Magnets-cost $19.99 per 100 count

220 count 40x20mm Flex Steel-cost $11.99 per 100 count

Cost to replace $150

So $35, Free Shipping per USPS PP, Paypal only.

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