Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Invasion of 1910

We played a game of Black Powder for the first time and the results were satisfactory.  Oh, did I mention we were playing with... 54mm figures!?



The forces were my British and German imperial troops, each with six units infantry, three units cavalry, and two units artillery. The artillery pieces were Britains 4.7" naval guns.  The scenario was the German guns were dug in at two redoubts.  The British needed to capture just one of the redoubts for victory.  The German cavalry was required to start the game off table.

Truth be told I forgot to take pictures of the game, but everything was still in its final positions the next day so I took pics of the end game.



Long and short is that the British took a very long time to get their assault on the northern gun position ready. Meanwhile the "keep 'em honest" attack on the southern redoubt took heavy casualties, and was entirely driven off by the late arrival of the German uhlans (whom I forgot to try and activate to bring onto the board two turns in a row!). 

However, as the uhlans tried to continue across the field to assist the northern redoubt, one unit blundered off table, and a second was broken whilst trying to follow up a successful attack with a sweeping advance.  This caused the entire German cavalry brigade to break and withdrawal. Subsequently, the gun in the southern redoubt was destroyed by British artillery fire.



Things got hot around the northern redoubt but German small arms fire was ineffective (i.e., my dice went ice cold and couldn't hit ANYTHING). The British capitalized and the cavalry finally closed for melee, causing the complete breaking of the German left (and infantry brigade) which meant that the German army began a general retreat.





Sticky-tac'ing the figs to wood trays worked like a charm, by the way. 



Apologies the plastic toy redoubts are not painted or flocked. The scenario was a last minute decision.






This ended the game and although the British had "won the field" and assault on either redoubt had failed to materialize. Count this one as a costly victory for the lads in khaki? 


Monday, October 3, 2016

Early Imperialists/German Medieval Army

Lighting array in the basement being much more photo-friendly, I decided to document some completed armies that had not been photographed yet.  First up is these 'Early Imperialist' themed German medieval troops: mounted knights, some townsmen infantry, Bohemian archers, and some Hussite crossbowmen.  






The shield motifs are just itty bitty designed printed in color on paper which I cut out and glued on. Then I did my best to use paint to blend the paper to the rest of the shield.  With a "two-foot rule" they look good. If you stare at them you can see the cut line sometimes...


The Old Glory set IDs are ME-24 (German Knights with lances), ME-36 (Dismounted German Knights), DIF-20 (Hussite Crossbowmen), DIF-25 (Bohemian Infantry Archers) and DIF-26 (Bohemian Town Militia).




The German knights do not come with lances. I drilled out the hands and made my own lances from brass rod.















Now that its done I realize the personal appeal was the crests on the knights helmets.  These Germans line up roughly with the early-mid 1200s.  The Hussite crossbowmen are lets say 1420-1435. Neither of these are the best match for my medieval Battle of Crecy-era French which is square in between at the 1340s.  This is all fine from a Lion Rampant mash-up medieval game standpoint, but makes envisioning something larger and grander like a Hail Caesar! game a little harder to wrap one's brain around.  If I could do it again I would have built a Hundred Years War-era Flanders army instead...