Cor blog me!: Colonial

Showing posts with label Colonial. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 08, 2025

A Trio of Terrain Projects

We begin this year with photos of a few terrain projects I have been working on.

The first of these is an "Afghan fort" style building in 15mm which I must have acquired more than two decades ago. I cannot remember who made it, but I doubt it is still in production. It sat in the same box as my adobe buildings all this time, until my renewed interest in the Indian Mutiny made me dig it out again. I decided that it needed to sit on an elevation, and made a low hillock out of cork coasters, including steps which wound its way up. I then textured the hillock, and painted it to match the arid mat which I would use the piece with.

Hopefully it will see some action soon.

The second of these are some cardstock buildings from Paper Terrain, which I bought and built last year when I was planning an Epic scale ACW project. The cardstock isn't really thick, but when based on a stiff base, they look durable enough.

A couple of the buildings were a little trickier to assemble, but they do add interest to the tabletop.

The final one of these is the East Gate of Moria terrain piece. The inspiration for this was Midgard heroic Battles, which I couldn't resist buying. I already own many dwarves and Moria goblins, so naturally my thought turned to the war between these two races as described by Tolkien in the appendix to The Lord of the Rings. The final battle of Azanulbizar took place outside the East Gate of Moria, where Azog slew Nain in single combat, and was in turn slain by Dain Ironfoot. The account of the battle seemed to be exactly the kind of battle Midgard is written for.

I decided to make terrain piece depicting the East Gate of Moria, consisting of an elevation, a gate, and maybe a mountainside. It turned out FG already has a resin dwarven gate/arch, so I was spared the effort of making one. I made the base using corrugated boards, then textured, painted, and added vegetation to it to match the mat we would use it for. Finally, I printed a picture of a dwarven-style gate I found on google and blu-tac'ed it to the arch.

FG and I tried the rules earlier this week, and we plan to run it for the gang later this month, so stay tuned for the battle report.

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Games Expo 2024

After making contact with another wargaming group during a convention in October, we were invited to put up a game for their own convention in December. Martin and I decided to attend and reprise the Indian Mutiny game FG and I ran in the previous convention, since we already had the scenario and charts ready.

Once again we managed to run two sessions, and although the British came closer than ever to winning, victory continues to elude them!

The convention featured other games, including an A Song of Ice & Fire tournament, many boardgames, and a few RPGs, but the centre-piece of the convention was a giant Bolt Action Bastogne game which ran for some eight hours.

Martin and I made more new friends, and no doubt more gaming will come from these meetings.

Monday, October 28, 2024

The Men Who Would be Kings at Campus Game Fest 2024

Other than my usual home RPG group and my wargaming group, I have been gaming off and on with a public gaming group at a community centre these past few years. The group plays mainly RPGs and boardgames, and some Battletech Alpha Strike; I run the occasional one-shot RPG there, and play the occasional boardgame.

This year, the group was invited to take part in a games convention at a school, and I was invited to put up a historical wargame there.

This was when I realised that, while I do have many paired armies, most of them are sci-fi or fantasy, and the historical armies that I do own both sides of are not painted by me, but cobbled together from various ebay purchases. The only armies which look presentable are my Indian Mutiny forces, which were mostly painted by a single painting service.

Now while I do enjoy The Relief of Luckpore, I thought that a grid-based wargame would not be a good representation of most historical miniature wargame, so I went through to my library and decided on Dan Mersey's The Men Who Would be Kings, which I helped playtest with these same figures in 2015.

I modified the command rules a little to allow for five players - two on the British side and three on the Mutineer side - with three units each. I picked out a scenario from Colonial Conflicts: The Indian Mutiny, adjusted the set-up to fit, and with the help of a few friends tested the scenario, made some adjustments, and we were ready.

The set-up

Civilians in the village

The British train

We were scheduled for 4pm to 9pm, and I imagined that gave enough time to run two or maybe three games, each with five players on each side and FG and I umpiring. As it turned out the crowd were mostly there for the e-games and card games, and we didn't draw much attention apart from the other miniature wargamers who were there. One of them played the mutineers against me, and beat me resoundingly with incredible dice rolls.

We then had a student of the school walk by and he decided to take a swing at playing the British. He had better luck than me, and almost made it to the mutineer lines before his luck ran out.

The situation at the end of the second game

Over all the amount of gaming we did out of the session was probably not worth the effort of preparing the charts and cards and traveling down, but I did make friends with some historical wargamers and we might be getting some gaming in in the future, so that made the whole evening worthwhile.

Thursday, August 01, 2024

Relief of Luckpore and Alpha Strike

Martin was back in town last weekend and six of us managed to get together for a couple of games, beers, pastries, and dinner.

The Luckpore game was a little lopsided, with the British side having too much of an advantage. This is likely due to us playing it as a once-off game instead of in the context of a campaign, where the British become saddled with Fatigue and low ammunition as the campaign progresses. I will need to make some tweaks to the game to make the contest more interesting for both sides. I have ordered a few packs of Essex Mughal musketeers to paint as matchlock men for an Indian prince, so we will visit these rules again once they are done.

For the second game we played a game of Alpha Strike. Now that we are more familiar with the rules, play is faster and more relaxed.

For the game in August I hope to run a game of Peter Pig's Conquerors and Kings, and maybe a game of Deth Wizards.

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Sepoys and Xenos

We had another double bill session on Sunday, with the first game being The Relief of Luckpore. I was too busy running the game and having too much fun to take photos, but fortunately my friends did.

We played a standard scenario, with the mutineers blocking the Grand Trunk Road by occupying a village on one side of the road, while I commanded a bunch of badmash hidden behind a hill on the other side.

The British players approached the problem methodically, by first driving off the badmash, and then moving their artillery to occupy the hill, and then proceeding to bombard the village. The mutineers outnumbered the British, but with only one commander, they could not shift their forces to face the threat in time, and were soon routed.

Throughout the game we felt hampered by the command limitations imposed by the rules, which is probably realistic, and tells me that to be successful one probably has to be proactive in moving troops and applying constant pressure on the enemy. I hope to return to the rules again soon.

For the second game we played an 'Aliens'-themed scenario using the Xenos Rampant rules. The Colonial Marines had to evacuate all civilians from a settlement that has been invaded by xenos, and had 12 activations to do so before it would be nuked from orbit. I placed nine buildings on the table, and randomly decided what was found inside each building by using cards to represent civilians, aliens, and "empty"; in addition, one card represented the alien queen.

The Marines players (who played the British in our first game) once again approached the problem methodically, moving their heavy weapon to cover the main avenue of approach, and then moving their squads in mutually supporting positions.

Nevertheless, the aliens were too powerful in melee, with the Queen being almost invulnerable. The Marines lost more than half their strength, and the Queen was killed only when she charged the heavy weapon. The Marines retreated with two units of civilians and three activations to spare, but left three buildings unexplored - one of which turned out to contain civilians - and gaining a narrow victory.

Although I was a playtester for a few of the Rampant series of rules, this was the first time I played a full game against other players. The game was quick because we had only two troop types on each side, and the aliens had no ranged attack capability. The card placement mechanic gave the game an unpredictability that made it exciting for both sides.

The next wargaming session is scheduled for March, when we plan to play a Kings of War game. We are also planning to play Space Hulk, and a home-mod version of Gaslands featuring Orks and kitbashed Ork Trukks in the future. Stay tuned.

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Relief of Luckpore - Campaign and Battle Wargames Rules for the 1857 Indian Rebellion

Every so often a set of wargame rules comes out of the left field and gets me all excited about a period. This time it is Relief of Luckpore by Real Time Wargames.

Now regular readers may remember the name of the company - the first posts on this blog were about a Franco-Prussian War campaign we played using their rules for that conflict. I also own their rules for Wars of the Roses, the Shenandoah campaign, and the Sudan campaign.

I already own a sizeable army for the Indian Mutiny, but as I haven't found a set of rules that I really enjoyed to use with them, the figures have sat at the bottom of my stack of boxes of figures until this week. What drew me to the rules are the grid-based system and a relatively simple movement and combat system.

I do have a little quibble with the rules though, specifically in the rating for Sikh and Gurkha troops, as well as some ambiguity over how skirmishers are deployed, and close combat resolution.

I also liked the terrain generation rules, which is what I used to set up the solo test game table (substituting walls for ditches/trenches). As you can see it provided a rather believable terrain which gamers of the Mutiny period will find familiar. The mat has 15cm grids, which is a little small for my 15mm figures on 40mm wide bases, but it is still serviceable.

Like their Sudan rules, the game aims to provide different experiences for both sides. The mutineer player will almost certainly have a numerical advantage, but will also have troops of lower quality, as well as limited command initiative.

The British have high-quality troops, more "command points" per turn, but their troops accumulate Fatigue as they act, which will make them less effective as the battle progresses.

The victory conditions for both sides are also different. There is no "break point" for the British - they give up when the player decides he cannot win. The mutineer commander has a chance of leaving the field whenever a unit is routed. Both sides thus have very different strategies: the mutineers need to wear the British down until they become ineffective and give up, while the British need to break the morale of the mutineers by routing as many units as they can before that happens.

The rules are fun enough for me to want to refurbish my army and perhaps add a few more bases. It is also suitable for multi-player games, and I hope to run a game for the gang in the near future.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Men Who Would Be Kings

My free copy of TMWWBK arrived in my mailbox last week. As with the other books in the series, the pages are filled with nice artwork and miniatures.

This is the fourth free Osprey book I received play-testing for Dan Mersey, and the fifth Osprey wargame I had the privilege to contribute to.

Colonials aren't exactly my period, although I do have both sides of the Indian Mutiny in 15mm. However, after watching The Siege of Jadotville earlier this month, I am wondering if the rules can be used for a "bush war" type of conflict...

Sunday, March 15, 2015

The Men Who Would Be Kings Playtest 2

Dan has already announced his next set of rules for Osprey, so I need no longer keep the title of the rules secret. The playtesters recently received an updated draft of the rules, and I played a small action this afternoon to test out the effect of hard cover.

I set up three units of British infantry against two units of sepoys defending a breached wall and a building behind it.

The British advanced two units to within close range and began delivering volley fire while keeping themselves at long range of the sepoys' obsolete rifles (technology, yeah!). The hard cover however gave the sepoys a fighting chance as they managed to force one British unit to retreat before they were forced to abandon the wall.

The third British unit then began to advance into the breach, weathering the fire from the sepoys still holding the building. Eventually they made it into contact, but still the mutineers were hard to evict until a second unit was thrown into the melee.

Into the breach!

In terms of points the British were more than twice the value of the sepoys, so this little action illustrated the effectiveness of a double-layered defence.

Sunday, February 01, 2015

Colonial Rules Playtest

I am playtesting another set of rules for Dan, this time for colonial warfare. The rules are primarily meant for individually-based figures, but since all I have for the colonial period are my 15mm Indian Mutiny figures based on elements, I used them for the test game.

I set up a simple encounter battle, where a British/EIC relief force on their way to... some besieged garrison finds their way blocked by a force of sepoys and badmash.

The set-up

The British bring their gun to bear and commence counter-battery fire, while the infantry close in. The cavalry executes a deep flank around the hill to the right. The mutineers counter the move by moving two units to the flank.

A fierce fire-fight ensues. Casualties mount on both sides.

The rebel gun is taken out! The mutineers push their right flank forward. What's taking the cavalry so long?

The cavalry finally reach the rebel flank, but the mutineers are ready for them!

The cavalry is destroyed in a quick melee, and the badmash engage the British left in hand-to-hand combat...

... and are driven back! But the mutineer left flank now turns around and begin to threaten the weakened British centre.

The British fall back and form a new line of defence anchored by their gun; a whiff of grapeshot should save the day: 8 dice, needing 4+ to hit...

Really?

In the end the British were overwhelmed by the mutineers and wiped out. There are not yet any "army morale" rules in the current draft, so it was a fight to the last man. What the game did show is that the force ratio recommended in the rules is about right. I probably should have reduced the shooting skills of the sepoys a bit more, although with the good die-rolls they were making I doubt it would have made a difference.

I think the problem here was that I was over-confident with the British, while I played the mutineers more cautiously; the British should have engaged the mutineers at long range, capitalising on their superior artillery drills and longer rifle ranges (compared to the obsolete ones used by the mutineers, which were the spark that started the whole mutiny). The cavalry was too weak to take on infantry on its own, and should have been held back for pursuit, riding down individual units of mutineers that are suffering from morale penalty.

I think I should give this scenario another go another day.