Category: AAR

Dux Dalmor – AAR and some thoughts

On By NuadaIn AAR, Dux Dalmor, FantasyLeave a comment

Last night we played Dux to get a sense of the rules and how we wanted to adjust things for our upcoming campaign.

I had hurriedly painted some Warlord Celts and GW Warriors of Rohan. I still haven’t flocked any of my troops, so I painted the Celt’s bases brown as the white (my first time priming troops white instead of black) was too much. The Celts aren’t finished, and need a wash, but here is how they were last night:

My unfinished Celts and some Rohan Warriors

I just received my order from Cigar Box Battle Mats. I’m very happy with them, but strangely, the green mat photographs as brown at night. In any event, instead of doing the standard player-positioned terrain, I threw some of my more fantasy oriented terrain on the table. The table was set up as follows. The scenario was a raid on a church, in this case a holy site represented by the fallen standing stones, circled in red below:

The town and objective, circled in red. The Iron Band entered from the far left, while the local forces entered on the lower right.

Nate took the forces of the Iron Band, while Matt took the Rovians. The Rovians, in my world, are a group that’s very much a mix of Etruscan and Masilian culture, so these are the peasant remnants of a once proud culture. The Iron Band are a medieval mercenary band that is fairly professional but overstretched and using whatever forces it can.

We started the battle with some speeches, drinking, and a duel between champions. I really enjoy the Dux Britanniarum rules for this. Makes it feel much more primal. The dueling rules are interesting, but are a real game of luck. As we move into the campaign, we’ll start giving the champions more skills or saves to make it more interesting and make it more of a decision to engage in combat or not.

The two champions fight it out. The Iron Band Axeman wins!

As the raid started, Nate had two free turns to get towards the shrine, but the stream slowed him down. His missile cavalry shot ahead and managed to get a kill right away as Matt’s Rovians entered and rushed pell-mell towards the shrine. Then, the horsemen got caught flat-footed as a group of Rovians ran (rolling 5s and 6s for movement) right at them, with the result being the horsemen fleeing off the table. Matt then anchored that group of warriors near an old ruin and moved the remainder of his force to guard the shrine.

The Iron Band moved its Scarecrows (levies) up to the shrine, but ended up facing off against the Rovian Elites. The bulk of the Iron Band moved ahead, seemingly ignoring the shrine.

Matt was trying to deny access to the shrine, so Nate massed his troops on his right getting ready to charge. Meanwhile, the Scarecrows, facing off against a much, much more powerful foe and already suffering shock from the arrows fired at them, charged. And won! They accrued a huge amount of shock, but managed to kill 3 of the elite facing them, causing both forces to recoil.

The Scarecrows (levies) attack the Rovian elites

Nate then charged across the stream, accepting a dice penalty but rolling extremely well. Matt’s saves were terrible, and his force was massacred and thrown back.

In the centre, the Iron Band elite troops (Rohirrim here) pushed forward with their leader and champion and again delivered a crushing blow.

Matt followed up, chasing the Scarecrows and the rather ineffective archers but the game was pretty much over as Nate prepared to move his troops around to finish off the opposition so we called it.

I’m trying to learn how to get a slide by slide view of this, so here’s the first attempt. Just click to the next slide to see how the action progressed. The next AAR should have some fancier transitions/graphics.

 

Overall, a very fun game, but it does have some issues. The raid turned into a battle. After the Rovians anchored themselves on the objective, Nate simply viewed this as a fight, not a raid, and proceeded to wipe out opposition. His intent was to continue to wipe out the enemy so no one could contest his retreat. There was no feeling or impetus to be quick about it once he had achieved superiority.

So how to fix it? We talked for some time about different ideas and came up with the following:

As we are doing simultaneous raiding, unlike in the normal rules, the raider does not know the number of foes they are facing. So, every round after the “free” rounds that the raider has, the defender rolls a die for each unit. On a 1 on the first round, the unit shows up. On a 2 on the second round, the unit shows up, etc. These dice rolls are done in secret. This means that the raider does not know when the bulk of the defenders will show up, nor how many may be coming. The defender can also bluff on this, using troops more or less aggressively to convince the raider as to their force composition.

Adding to that, we are going to establish the maximum amount of loot in a given objective. The defender will hold that number secret. The raider can double the time on the objective in an attempt to double the take, but it may be possible that there is no more loot, and the effort is wasted. This brings the greed aspect into the game, as the raider may be tempted to wait a little too long as the defenders come onto the table.

All in all, a good evening with good friends. Nate has decided to take on the province of Gron Gard, while Matt is taking the more central Rikdal. There will be more to follow!

Wednesday War – What A Tanker AAR and Review

On By NuadaIn AAR, Review, WAT, WW2Leave a comment
Lucius and I tried our hand with TFL’s “What A Tanker” ruleset.

The rules looked good and fun, so we grabbed some 15mm armour, threw some basic terrain down and worked our way through two fights.

For the first one, we thought we’d be smart and use cm instead of inches to make best use of the table area. This was a mistake. It was really hard to move into or out of cover.

Nonetheless, I took a troop of Shermans (1 Firefly and 3 Mark Vs) and Lucius threw 2 Pz IVs and 1 Panther up against me.

Ready for action

The Firefly charged bravely out from cover to shoot the Panther… but didn’t get enough movement. The Panther responded, moved into the clear and brewed up the Firefly.

Big Cat charges forward and kills my Firefly…

Oh. My Sherman on the left moved up and missed, while the Pz IV on my right flank found a gap in the trees and brewed up one of my Shermans. Uh oh. My last Sherman on the right bravely raced (or rather crawled in cm) up past its burning compatriot and destroyed the Pz IV that had menaced my right. My remaining tank on my left engaged in a duel with the Panther, damages its optics, as my other Sherman lines up a long shot at the Pz IV on my left and blows it up too. Things are looking much better, but that Panther’s gun… misses. The cat is torched and my troop is victorious!

A swingy fight for sure, but fast and fun.

The second fight had the same forces but distances in inches. My Shermans engaged and hit both Pz IVs right away, but did effectively nothing. The Panther moved up to take cover beside a building and brewed up one of Shermans. My Firefly tries to return the favour and badly damages the Pz IV on my right flank. I move my forces to the left, trying to limit the angle the Panther has on me and concentrate fire on my right flank. The other German tanks move up as my tanks miss and another Sherman goes up.

Crap. My two remaining tanks pour 3 more rounds into the damaged tank, which forces it to withdraw a little but it stays in the fight with one activation die.  The Panther moves up, shooting at the Sherman that is more exposed, but doesn’t knock it out over several shots. Meanwhile, the Pz IV on my left races up the flank. The Pz IV on my right takes even more hits (total of 9 hits from a Firefly and Sherman V) but somehow I can’t seem to roll high enough to do anything to it. The Pz IV on my left rounds the corner.

Uh… guys?

My Firefly traverses left and closes but I am unable to shoot for 2 turns (the way the dice work). My damaged Sherman keeps its glacis towards the Panther and puts two shots into the Pz IV, forcing it back up to the table edge. The Panther and the 2 Pz IVs hit the exposed Sherman, bringing it down to 0 activation dice, which we decide means that the crew has had enough and bailed. Game over. The dice were against me for sure, but the tank fight was fast again.

How did we find the rules? They were clearly laid out but the activation  system left us both in position but unable to fire. It would be frustrating if you only had one tank, but playing with 2 tanks solves the problem somewhat. So not a campaign game or likely to supplant Chain of Command’s armour rules, but a fun pick-up game to be sure.

Lucius is a former armoured officer, and he says the speed and deadly nature of the fight is realistic. But… being restricted in what you can do – rolling all of your dice to move but not being able to fire when you have acquired and aimed is silly. Perhaps an alternate activation system is needed if this is to be a more serious game.

Chain of Command’s strength is that you have to spend your activation resources wisely, in this game it’s a crap shoot. An alternative would be rolling dice to determine how many actions you have and then deciding how to spend them. A simple solution could be a 2d6 system with a tank’s rating. Roll over the tank’s rating (lower rating is better). If you roll under you can do 1 action of your choice. Meet the rating, 2 actions. 3 or more over the rating, you have 3 actions. So you could acquire, aim, and fire in a round. Or move and reload. Or simply beat your crew into slewing the turret the right way. This would allow experienced crews a real advantage. While inexperienced T-34s are dangerous, they would not be able to react quickly to threats. A tank would start with a rating of 6 if a veteran, 7 if trained, 8 or 9 if conscript or with a smaller crew (early war French tanks I’m looking at you)!

Thoughts?

AAR: Stukas vs the RAF

On By NuadaIn AAR, Wings of Glory WW2, WW2Leave a comment

So this week L and I played two quick games of Wings of Glory. I recently acquired two early war Stukas and some Hurricanes. So down a long, long table the Stukas went, unescorted to try things out against the Hurricanes.

The Hurricanes started their sweep slowly and were damaged pretty heavily by the Stukas, which surprised me. The Hurricanes did get behind the Stukas, who were weaving.

Not a good place to be

They managed to luckily down one Stuka. I say luckily, because the damage done was abnormally high.

The RAF coming to meet the Hun

Feeling confident that I could do it with more planes in the sky, I put my 2 ME 109s up as an escort and decided to play down the long side of the table against 2 Hurricanes and 2 Spits. That was a baaaaad idea.

The much faster Spits broke from the Hurricanes and began a long slow turn towards my force. I sent my 109s to meet them and managed to get a good amount of hits. Now, if you did not know, in the game, hits are represented by damage markers drawn by lot. “A” damage through to “D” damage. The cannons on the 109 are pretty deadly, dealing mostly “C” damage and the number of markers that L was drawing was making me smile (I later learned that he had drawn a lot of zeros).

The Stukas trucked on towards their goal, as the Spits and the 109s tangled. The Spits are so much more maneuverable though, and managed to get free and head towards the Stukas. My 109s broke in two directions, my thought being that one of my 109s could get behind the Spits, while the remaining 109 could get the Stukas through the weaker Hurricanes. Sadly no pictures of this, I was desperately trying to figure a way out of the mess that was rapidly developing in front of me.

Plans do not survive contact with the enemy, and soon one of the Spits was tailing the 109 heading towards the Hurricanes. That 109 soon caught fire as it tried to shake the Brit (my habit of drawing the highest damage markers possible continued for the entire fight). My Stukas survived the first pass of the Hurricanes, but the first damage marker I drew was engine damage for one of them. Now I was in real trouble. I had my Stukas weave to keep their rear gun arcs open as my non-flaming 109 slammed rounds into the Hurricanes as they turned tightly to get behind my bombers.

My flaming 109 went down, and then the slow Stuka. I took a little solace in blasting away one of the Hurricanes and sending it down. One Spit was smoking, one was lightly damaged, and the remaining Hurricane was limping but in the fight. I conceded the fight.

Overall, a fun enjoyable set of games. I know a bit more about how to handle Stukas, and I think the next time they fly, we’ll try some dive bombing rules (and make the opposition a little lighter)!

A KMH Naval After Action Review

On By NuadaIn AAR, KMH, NapoleonicLeave a comment

My friend and I tried out TFL’s Kiss Me Hardy naval wargame rules. We tried one quick action, and as a professional mariner myself, I was blown away. The rules were far less fiddly than Wooden Ships and Iron Men but damage still impacted gunnery and speed. The weather gauge was critical. My opponent got caught in irons when attempting to tack instead of wearing ship and I passed under his stern and ended it. These rules are fast paced and really make you feel like a ship’s captain.

Our second battle (sans pictures unfortunately) involved a battered French 74 running from a Royal Navy 74. Relief forces entered the table at random locations.

French Forces:
Swiftsure 74
Formidable 74

Royal Navy:
HMS Leviathan 74
HMS Conqueror 74

Monsieur,

I must regretfully report the loss of our 74 gun 3rd Rate Swiftsure and the damaging of my own Formidable for the damaging of HMS Leviathan, which will need to be laid up in ordinary for a season.

On the night of the 18th, a front passed through our area, scattering the Royal Navy. The 74 gun Swiftsure attempted to sail for the Irish Sea in keeping with your direction. On the night of the 19th, the westernmost semaphore tower reported recognition lights being shown off the point. Swiftsure then communicated that she was unable to beat upwind to accomplish her mission due to the presence of a large British force.

The decision was then made for Formidable to escort Swiftsure into Brest, two 3rd rates providing a potent force. A screening force of frigates was dispatched to the northeast to distract the British.

At 1330 on the 20th we had sighted not only Swiftsure but also a British 74 in close pursuit. Astern and leeward of us another enemy 74 was working her way to windward. I made the decision to close and assist Swiftsure believing that 2 independant engagements to not be in our favour.

We made good 8 knots and closed Swiftsure, who was wearing to pepper her pursuer, Leviathan. Swiftsure‘s gunnery did her credit, but the British had the weather gauge and were able to close and batter her mercilessly.

I must needs give you notice that the obusier de vaisseau performed terribly in the action. At a critical junction, the entire starboard quarterdeck battery simply exploded, giving the British a great advantage, allowing Leviathan to cross under Swiftsure‘s stern and do most horrendous damage and set her alight.

I was 8 cables to leeward of the action, but my excellent gunners did great execution with my heavy guns and allowed Swiftsure a moment to pass ahead of the tenacious Leviathan and dismount many of her guns.

I continued to close, being momentarily distracted by the loss of mizzen top, which was shot away by the trailing 74, HMS Conqueror. I assessed her too far to make a difference and put my helm up to close HMS Leviathan. I poured two broadsides into her, as she wore and attempted to pass under my stern. Swiftsure was close aboard my port quarter and I lacked sufficient headway to tack, having lost my flying jib. I wore to port and passed down Swiftsure‘s port side as HMS Leviatan, seeing she was overmatched, disengaged. Our parting shots had my own obusiers explode, doing more damage to me than the guns of the enemy! Swiftsure also had another gun explosion, worsening the fire, which had now spread to her orlop.

The fire aboard our consort was so thick that I was unable to see HMS Conqueror turn abeam Swiftsure at 3 cables and pour heavy fire into her. The report of the guns was clear though, so I passed down Swiftsure‘s disengaged side and made to close HMS Conqueror. Swiftsure, however, was not aware of my location, the smoke from her blaze was so strong. She therefore turned hard towards me and we collided. My mizzenmast was carried away, and I took on such an amount of water aft that I could not open my lower gunports. Swiftsure lost her foremast and lost the battle to contain the conflaguration. She struck as I disengaged.

The obusiers must need to be removed from our ships, being no true answer to carronades.

Vive La Republique!

NOTE: The gun explosions were so devastating that we needed to come up with an excuse. The obusiers made perfect sense. HMS Leviathan being windward and having a better crew made a huge difference in the battle, as did the inadvertent collision at the end or else I may have been able to finish HMS Conqueror, despite the damage I had taken from my own guns!

Overall, a great rule set and one which will see more action on here – with pictures next time I promise!