Caesar's Camp: La Ferme de Caubert

 

Myself and Graham got together at the Abyss before Xmas for our fourth turn in our Caesar's Camp campaign. This was the second go with our platoons from our third game, so we both had some missing men.

German Defenders-217th Infanterie Regiment (FM10)

2nd Wave Infantry Platoon #3

2 SL's

3 squads of 10 men, lead by a JL's, one squad with a MG08/15-missing 6 men

Supports 12

2 barbed wire

2 minefield

Flamethrower Team

Entrenchment

Infantry Squad

Scottish Attackers-The Cameron Highlanders (FM8)

British EW Infantry Platoon (D Company)

2 Senior Leaders

2" Mortar Team

3 sections of 11 men, lead by Junior Leaders-missing 1 man

Supports 16

Vickers MMG

2" Mortar Team

Sniper

Char B1 bis

Hotchkiss H39

Scenario

This is the Attack and Defend scenario from the main rulebook.  The victory conditions were going to be difficult with the Scots having to capture 2 of the buildings in the German position or reduce their FM to 0. Clearly the latter was going to be easier and I should note that if I brought in AFV's they would be restricted to the road. I had expected that Graham would go with a Bunker Buster, but I guessed wrong!

Game

JOP's, no real advantage to either side but I would have liked to get a little further up on my left flank. The Germans are defending the village to the right of the photo and the Scots were attacking from the left of the table.

Advancing Scots to the right flank as Graham had made my left flank impermeable to attack.

Graham put 2 barbed wire on the road which really shut down any advance of my 2 French tanks, once I moved my troops to their right flank I was able to place the Char bis on the road. It did a pretty good job of showering HE on the buildings.

Graham basically put his men in the stone houses, I felt the Char could deal with this, so I started to lay down smoke and of course at a critical moment a turn end came up so I lost all my cover. I think this was going to be OK as my advancing troops were mostly out of LOS. But then catastrophe, that I should have been able to predict. The Germans ambushed my advancing section with their Flamethrower team, essentially dropping them to 3 figures, my FM fell precipitously and I made the decision to withdraw. Unfortunately some of my men ended up being captured as they were more than 12" from a JOP. A German victory!

The Butcher's Bill

Germans Platoon #3 (6 dead, 1 missing next game)

4 figures lost

CO 0

MO -1

Outlook Cheerful

The Camerons Platoon1/D Company (3 dead, 2 missing next game)

7 figures lost, 5 captured

CO -2

MO-5

Outlook Concerned

CoC Demo

After our game we had a demo game of CoC with 3 new players, all members of our club. From left to right is Dan, Graham (who was checking on my tutorial mistakes), Michele and William. We played on the same table with the same scenario but Dan brought his Italians so we made them defending against the Canadian attackers. I think we all had a good time and I found that the 3 new players picked upon the game quite quickly. I only had to play the Patrol Phase once as we got a satisfactory result. We did not finish the game and did not use any vehicles but we got in all the mechanics including combat. It went quite well and I am pretty confident that they will all want to play again.

Dan's beautifully painted Italians

Myself and Graham will pick up our campaign after Xmas. I am going to have to figure out a way to deal with his ambushing Flamethrower Team!

New Troops for GdA2

About a year ago I decided to add to my Napoleonic collection of AB figures. Some of us in the  Montreal Historical Wargaming Club became interested in the 1813 campaign put out by David Brown for Général d'Armee. With GdA2 coming out, I was hoping to get everything in place for it's launch. I have no real interest painting 18mm figures, so I engaged 2 painters who I have used in the past. I was starting from scratch for both the required Russian and Prussian armies.

For the cavalry and generals, I had decided to go with Old Guard Painting in the Ukraine. As you can imagine there were going to be some difficulties with getting work done in the Ukraine but after a back and forth with Vladimir, I decided to go ahead. The painters with Old Guard do a superb job and of all the painting companies, I have worked with they are the most accurate by far in respect to uniformology with no input required by myself. Quite a bit more expensive than the Asian painters but well worth it.

For the infantry, I went with Fernando in Sri Lanka, they have a very good price and had painted a Union ACW army for me some time ago. This was going to be a lot more work for me as they need a lot of direction and back and forth requires a lot of my time. I felt though that the Russian and Prussian uniforms are pretty simple and that would probably work. I am not a button counter and to be honest at 18mm for wargaming purposes, things do not have to be exact. In respect to Russian infantry there are minimal uniform distinctions between different units, so that would be easy enough. For the Prussians, the main difference is the colour of the collars and cuffs for different units so I asked them to paint them all white. My plan was to add the specific colours myself. So this required a bit of work on my behalf.

It took about 3 months to get 750 infantry figures done in Sri Lanka, which is pretty good. The mounted figures took much longer, maybe almost 11 months to get 140 figures done. I am not really sure how Vladimir was able to do with the power outages and the war. But he did get it done. I based all the figures myself as well as adding the flags (I really miss Flag Dude). 

Here are a few photos, I did not bother to photograph individual units as there are over 900 figures. I am quite happy with how things came out.

Russians

Prussians

The Orders of Battle can be seen in the left side bar. My friend Graham has been also been painting up a Prussian AB army, which I believe is slight bigger than my own, so we should be all set for the 1813 campaign when GdA2 is released. Hopefully we will see the start sometime in January/February. Now I just need to find some Austrians in case they show up in the final scenario.....................

Carnevale-Acquisition

 

Finally I have caught up, with a report from a week ago when myself and Antoine got together at my place for our second game of Carnevale. We decided again to play a scenario from the main rule book, called Acquisition. We both had 75 Ducat factions.

Strigoi

Blood Crone

Common Strigoi

Romani

Strigoi Priest

Nosferatu

Thrall

The Guild

Capodecina 

Recruiter 

Barber 

Pilferer 

2 Citizens

I did not take a lot of photos, but here are 3.

Terrain overview, I started in the lower right with Antoine starting in the upper left.

Most of the action centred on this bridge as well as the adjacent canal

This was an interesting melee.

It was another fun game, Antoine definitely had to coach me along again but maybe a little less. The Agendas certainly add a nice element to the game. I liked also that we could capture objectives and move away with them to try to protect them from the opposing faction. There is still a lot to learn, especially all the spell combinations. My faction seemed to have some synergy and I was lucky to win the game 5-3 points. Hopefully our next game might not be too far into the future.

Dracula's America

 

A little over a week ago myself, Luis and Korrigan gathered at Luis's place for my second game of Dracula's America. This would be the first time my figures would see the table so I was looking forward to the game with some anticipation.

I believe we each played with a base Posse of 7 figures; Luis played the Skinwalker Tribes, Korrigan the Dark Confederacy and myself the Twilight Order. We all had interesting add-ons either through the Summon ability or Hired Guns. I am not sure what exactly everyone had but Luis was able to change a couple of his figures into monsters, Korrigan had a Shade which was able to summon Revenants and I had a Seraphim.

Luis had set up a very nice Western table with plenty of buildings, no swamp this time. This made it quite a bit easier for me to play the game as movement was much less complicated and I could focus more on the base mechanics of the game. I appreciated Luis doing this.

A lot happened during the game so I can really not put together an accurate report but here are some photos.

Overview of the terrain, I started in the foreground while Korrigan started on the left with Luis on the right.

I deployed my Posse in 2 groups.

My Hired Gun was useless, as an Eldritch Investigator.

The approaching Dark Confederacy

Luis's Skinwalkers who actually appear to be Mexicans!

I found this multiple combat quite different in how it is played, there were a lot of somewhat unusual mechanics, like the ability to shoot into it by uninvolved characters. I also never was sure who were the involved figures. Maybe a little complicated for a simplistic set of rules. But I suspect it was me.

I am not sure how many turns we played and the game ended a little earlier than planned so there was no winner. I can say that the game was quite good in that I have a much better grasp of the rules than I had going into the game.

The ruleset is cool and I like the background, the game is quite different than what I have played in the past except for maybe SAGA. This is definitely not a simulation but a game, I suppose that should be self evident as it is Alternate History. I came to appreciate that the mechanics were quite simple and at times one could say simplistic in their application. This is quite novel for me, as certainly most games I play are simulations of historical battles and thus have realistic mechanisms. Certainly, Dracula's America is not that. I have always looked at SAGA as a game as well but with some replication of Dark Age tactics. It is interesting that I have picked up 2 games in the past couple of months that are pure games, but I can say that I enjoy playing them both. My next post will be on my second game of Carnevale, indeed another game but with quite a bit more depth and complexity.

Thanks for hosting the game Luis and the pizza and to Korrigan for joining in.

What a Cowboy- High Noon

Last Sunday myself and Graham got together at the Abyss for a game of What a Cowboy. As this was only Graham's only second game I decided to go with the High Noon scenario from the rulebook as well as 4 characters per side with 2 gunslingers and 2 shootists each. Each side had a character with a Shotgun and a Winchester. I also find it a little simpler to not have a lot of buildings (not that I have any), so the game was set up in the desert. There was lot of cover though as well as the ability to get in an elevated position.

Well, unfortunately it was a very lopsided game. Graham had the worst dice throwing I have seen in sometime. That is just how it goes sometimes. Not withstanding, the game did go very smoothly with really nothing but very brief pauses to check something in the rulebook. It really is quite a well written rulebook, and a fun game. I am confident that Graham will play again.

Fire and Fury: Battle of Kernstown

I had another Fire and Fury ACW game a week ago. We gathered at Graham's house for a full day of gaming, there was myself and Steve playing for the Union while Jean-Jacques and Graham were the  Rebels. The scenario was based on the first Battle of Kernstown, and was focused on Tyler's attack on the fortified position held by the Confederates. 

As usual, Graham had set up an excellent table. The game was played with what I believe were mostly 15mm Blue Moon figures and it was quite a display.

The Union approach is in the foreground with Tyler's brigade in road formation trying to get into battle line. You can see J-J getting his rebels ready behind the stone wall.

The Union supports

The CSA move in some cannon to confront the Union troops coming from their left

The Union approach

The confederates hold firm, the remnants of Tyler's brigade break to their right

The Union supports finally get through the woods.

Well myself and Steve lost, as Tylers brigade was essentially wiped out before I could break the CSA. We played about 8-9 turns of 12, but it was clear that the Union would not make their victory conditions.

I quite enjoyed this game and became more appreciative of the ruleset. I will compare it to Pickett's Charge. There was a couple of idiosyncrasies in my first game in respect to unit size but these were not so obvious in this game. Once you get a handle on the two sided QRS, the game runs pretty smoothly. I have asked Graham if it would be ok if I port the OB and scenario to Pickett's Charge and run a game for comparison. Thanks to Graham for hosting supper and Steve for driving from Ottawa and Jean-Jacques for coming from Sorel-Tracy.