Well this may not be a Dark Age battle but we decided to still use Dux Bellorum rules to re-fight a battle close to its anniversary. In this case the Shield Wall v Warrior classification still seemed appropriate.

With apologies to Mike Brady:

“Cause there’s four days in September

Romans don’t remember

There isn’t any doubting

The Germans did the shouting

Teutobourger Wald  is such a part of our renown

Cause in those woods is where we put them down”.

For those heathens or overseas blog readers that may not understand the reference, or the greatest football game of all, please see:

The time is 9AD and for twenty years, the Romans were the “bully boys” conquering and laying waste to the Rhineland province.

When the province appeared to be under total Roman control, a catastrophe erupted that claimed the lives of three Roman legions and laid Rome’s imperial ambitions for Germania into the dust.

“Remember, everything is right until it’s wrong”.

Ernest Hemingway (the Garden of Eden).

In late September, a mere 2008 years ago, while marching to suppress a distant tribal rebellion, the Romans under Publius Quinctilius Varus were attacked in a four-day battle with the Rhineland tribes. Taken completely by surprise the Romans were ambushed in dense woods.

                                           Arminius                                             Varus

Despite the defeat being a heavy blow to Rome’s military pride the fact that it took four days to totally destroy the fleeing Legions is a tribute to their individual bravery and fighting ability.

My luck had finally run out as I was playing the Romans. With Pila in hand and a steely resolve I was determined to beat the odds and become victorious in those “Four days in September” (just like the tiger of old).

Photo showing the narrow paths and dense forest as it is today (courtesy of wikipedia).

The game began with the Romans completely on the table marching towards the other side.

The Romans march into the trap.

The Germans wait in ambush.

The Germans were just out of site on the Northern side at the foot of the difficult slope of Kalkriese. South of the Roman force was a tributary of the Elba, more forest and the Grande Palude marsh.

Map of the battle courtesy of wikipedia.

The Germans attack but fail to reach the Roman line in the first turn.

A lucky dice roll gives the Roman lead cohort a  double move and promptly charges the nearest Germans.

Brave Roman archers follow suit and push back the German skirmishers.

Trying to buy time Varus charges and breaks a German warband on contact but at some considerable loss to his bodyguard (60% losses).

With his blood lust up Varus charges the flank of a second German Warband but despite having nearly three times as many dice did not inflict a casualty and was pushed back and destroyed.

With the Romans now leaderless, their retreat cut-off, and another German tribe blocking any forward movement they were determined to sell their lives dearly.

One by one the Roman units were eliminated.

The last Roman units succumb.

The game was excellent fun and the re-fight ended as expected. The staying power of the Roman shield wall still proved a hard nut to crack despite not being able to add their leadership tokens following the death of Varus.

The Zulu force

Having played a few games of “The Men Who Would Be Kings” I decided to get out my Zulu War armies and my magnifying glass as I haven’t used these for a few decades and was not sure how the old eyesight would cope with 5mm figures again. With a quick re-base and flocking and they came up quite well. I will do the rest of the British and the few remaining Zulus when I have ordered some more mini dice and frames from “Minibits”.

The scenario was a simple re-working of the “It’s awfully quiet out there”  scenario in the book. I didn’t worry about points and just used what figures I had enough dice and frames for.

The Zulu inDuna and the British Leaders are Heroes that count as a six strength unit, plus whatever characteristics they dice up at the start of the game.

Zulu King

Zulu Impi (armed body of men)

Four Zulu  Impis form into an iButho (Regiment) and their inDuna (Colonel)

The entire Zulu ambushing force

The British force

Artillery crewed by the Royal Navy

“Voortrekker” Supply Wagons

Frontier Light Horse (mounted infantry)

Australian Irregular Light lancers

British Leader

The objective was for the British to travel across the table to the safety of a “friendly” Kraal for the evening, without loosing supply wagons or artillery. The safe arrival of three of the five “scoring units”(wagons and artillery)” is a British victory less is a Zulu one.

“Friendly” Kraal.

The Zulus must set up an iButho behind the ridge line on either side of the valley. Where is their choice.

The Battlefield.

We played two games taking turns with each army. The British, which had considerably more points, won both games. The British firepower meant that very few of the Zulu attacks were able to be coordinated.

In the first game the Zulus were not able to concentrate and so were defeated piecemeal. In the second some attempt to form a proper battle line before combat was attempted and as a result the British lost a general, a wagon (scoring unit) and a mounted infantry unit. All two little and too late.

Photos for game 1

Photos for Game 2

A great game system that will benefit more from greater playing experience. The 5mm scale used gave a great panoramic effect to the game visuals.

Prior to designing the layout for my Viking/Dark Age village I wanted to see if I could come up with a “quick and dirty” way of building some wattle pens for the animal “loot”.

It took a lot of searching and some chats with my learned colleagues John G and Steve N until I could come up with an idea that was both quick to make and looked good.

Step 1: Drill some 3.5mm holes randomly on the size m.d.f. you want for your enclosure. As this was a trial I just used a small m.d.f. rectangular coaster from Spotlight.

Step 2: Push through the hole a bamboo skewer to the height you want the fence and cut-off.  I just used side-cutters to give a rough-cut look. Glue them with superglue.

I bought a role of hessian on special at a craft shop to use as the wattle weaving.

Step 3: Cut-off a strip of hessian the length you need for the enclosure. Remember the width you cut-off will be the wattle wall height.

Step 4: When the uprights glue has dried, superglue the enclosure up-rights alternatively on the inside and outside, and wind the strip of hessian in and out in a weave and press onto the poles.

Step 5: I had trouble getting the two ends to stick to the end pole so used some fuse wire to twitch them onto the post.

And there you have your finished wattle enclosure complete with 28mm Pegasus farm animals.

Another option, that would be a bit sturdier, would be to use aluminum fly screen. In this case you would need to twitch the screen to each post. I prefer the look of the hessian as it has a more irregular look.

Now that I have the technique I will work out various size enclosures for the different size animals I have.

Also, I think in the replica Jorvik village at York the communal “conveniences” were also surrounded by a wattle fence – can’t remember, and any way mine will be!!!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

It is a period of civil war. Rebel
scout ships, searching  for a new hidden
base, have found a likely asteroid from
which to hide from the Galactic Empire.

During routine patrols, the Empire spies managed
to identify the location of the Rebel’s
new base, the “rock”, an
armored space station located
within striking distance of the Death Star.

Trying to hold off the Empire’s attack,
until Rebel reinforcements arrive
the “rock”, only just completed,
stands alone trying to restore
freedom to the galaxy….

It has been sometime since we have journeyed into space on Wednesday nights and with Andrew MIA the two Dave’s decided to have a game of X-Wing.

Briefing:

Somewhere in a galaxy far far away a Rebel base has just been discovered on a large meteor (I have the model so why not use it).

As the local Imperial leader you have intelligence (hmm…. I am often prone to overstatement) that the base is about to become operational and will pose a threat to the sector.

The Imperial mission is to destroy the base before Rebel reinforcements arrive, the Rebels is to ensure the survival of the base.

The Imperial player has 100points of ships available for the mission, and an intercepted message informs them that about half of their number is on their way to defend the base.

In trying to sort out the points cost of the base I thought of using this:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/642673.page

But then I saw the quote underneath – “There are three kinds of people in the world those who understand maths and those who don’t”, which described me quite accurately, so I gave up and dreamed up these stats for 50 points using a very sophisticated method of “pick a number and see if it works”:

Initiative = 1, Hit points = 4, Shields = 8, Attack = 4L, 5M, 6S (shoots all round and automatically fires at all ships in range within the turn). After the first game we also gave it one defense dice which evened the contest up a bit.

The game will determine if this is balanced or not.

The objective, time permitting, was to reverse roles and have the rebels attack the Imperial base and determine the winner over both games.

The First Game

The first game began with the Imperials going straight for the “rock”. The rebel fleet, in this case Han Solo and Chewbacca with the Millennium Falcon, arrived on the second turn but took three more turns to come in range.

The “rock” was suffering heavy casualities but was also doing significant damage in return.

Eventually the weight of number told and the “rock” exploded and the Imperial “bad guys” won a narrow victory.

The Second Game

Both Dave’s felt that only a little more tweeking was required to give the “rock” a better chance of survival. We decided against extra shields, cards, or hit points and opted for a single defense die. In addition we had the rebel fleet arrive from the long end rather than the short table ends so that it would get into the fight sooner. In the end this didn’t make much difference as the shorter distance was off-set by rolling abysmally with the arrival dice (from turn 2 needed a score of six with +1 being added each turn).

The Imperials used much the same tactics and again caused some early concerns as the number of shields were gradually being whittled away.

With the Millennium Falcon’s final arrive this caused the need for some of the Imperial ships to  defend themselves and thus  transfer their fire to the more immediate threat.

In the end it was a narrow victory to the Rebels as the Falcon moved in between the Imperials and the “Rock” to limit the fire it was receiving.

Two fun games that helped us work out the stats for the “rock” if we use it in future games.

“The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan.”
― Carl von Clausewitz

And so it was, I had worked out the perfect game scenario, written the briefings, prepared the table and the figures and then everything went awry. First one of the protagonists couldn’t make it and then our married son left the place in chaos whilst leaving to move into a house of his own (pleased about that……. no REALLY pleased about that!!!!).

Did I mention that I was really please to finally be an “empty nester”. Ahh waht to do with those two spare bedrooms?

So a quick change of venue (thanks Andrew) and grabbing the army that I still had not unpacked from last weeks game and we were on our way.

Another game of LADLG this time my Classical Indians taking on Andrew’s Conquest Arabs. Right from the start the auguries were favouring Porus. When I rolled bad dice Andrew rolled even worse, and when I rolled well Andrew still rolled poorly. The Indian intial shooting proved deadly and combat dice were even better.

The Indian right flank moving forward to take the hill.

The Arab centre

The Arab right just before crunch time.

The Indian right just before the Arab collapse

The fight in the centre – note the damage markers on the Arab units!!!

Indian nobility do what they were born for.

The end is nigh!!

The Arabs under pressure all along the line.

Note that in the photo above there are only four green markers (one step loss) and one yellow marker (two step loss) on the Indian side. This means there were only six occasions where the Arab dice bettered the Indians for the whole game!!!

The final break through.

What can I say, wasn’t Napoleon heard saying,  “give me a lucky general over a good one any day”?

Maybe this isn’t such a bad system after all.