TurnipDay III

The monthly meetup of Turnip28 devotees was yesterday. Six players played nine games over a few hours. Taylor brought a complete set of terrain. I brought a new millwheel piece for the "Wheel of Fortune" scenario.

Kings of War in Keizer

On Saturday I played 3 games of Kings of War in a one-day tournament at Shiv Games in Keizer, Oregon. I used my Renaissance figures as a Kingdoms of Men army, with a few tweaks from last time at Wildwood.  I still lost all three games, but didn't feel particularly bad about any of the losses. I was doing well against an Abyssal army in the first game, routing an expensive chaos dragon, but the scenario goal involved an objective marker that moved around on its own randomly and by the second turn I basically knew it was already completely out of reach.

The second game was against the Order of the Brothermark, which is another human faction with very good cavalry. This felt a bit like a mirror-match, and I was unsure how to proceed. I should have thrown everything at the horde of elite knights (the strongest unit) and just gone from there - instead I muddled around.

The third game was against Ogres and that one went very well at first, with beginnings of a double envelopment starting to form up (my cavalry flanking on both sides and pikes coming up the middle), but some combat results fell one point short and the Ogres were able to counterstrike and start bashing things with combat results going their way right on the mark (so scoring the exact score to route a pike regiment on the first combat).

 

 

Stradiots

Twenty more stradiot cavalry (Old Glory models) for Italian Wars renaissance games.

These are likely to show up at my next Kings of War tournament attendance.

Here they are with the other ten stradiots I previously painted, as well as the Romanians I painted last year.

A Simple Turnip28

Ran a Turnip28 teaching game for Andrew whom I had not seen in almost a year, due his job change and a change in my schedule.  So a game and a visit was a double win! We played "The Long March" with vanilla, no-Cults regiments, just to give him a handle on the basic rules and flavor.

Yesterday was a TurnipDay

Another good Turnip28 Day.  Total of six players, so we placed terrain on three tables and then did round robin rotations so that everyone played at each table once and always played a different opponent.  Everyone had lots of great models and many scenarios and cults were tried out.  Many donuts were eaten.

"Into the Breach" scenario

"Long March" scenario with the pike mercenaries cult

 

That "catch-the-pig" scenario.

Another game of "Into the Breach"

Medieval Tower on a Hill

I recently finished this medieval-esque tower on a hill/rocky crag.  It could probably be used for late-antiquity all the way up through renaissance. The hill part is two pieces of packing foam glued together and the tower is formboard with cardboard shingles. There's some work-in-progress photos below to give an idea of the steps.

Clash at Cabluff

A Royalist army and a Parliamentarian army (with Scottish allies) met in arms at Cabluff, in the north of England.  The first game of the new year, using Kings of War Historical.  Unit profiles were taken straight from the 'Conquistadors' list, because that list has (a) Arquebusiers, which have the better effectiveness than handgunners, and (b) a cavalry-with-pistols profiles called Conquistadors. Accordingly, all pikes were Heavy Pikemen regiments, all cavalry were Conquistador regiments, and all shotte units were Arquebusiers.   Each side had the same number and types of units (3 pikes, 4 muskets, 4 cavalry) plus two cannon each and three mounted generals each. 

The scenario was the "Loot' scenario, whereby there are three obejctive tokens in along the center line of the table.  A unit ending its turn atop a token picks it up and carries it around. If that unit is destroyed in melee the victor can pick it up.  At the end of the game, the player with the most tokens wins.

Both sides deployed to try cavalry flanking strategies.  The Royalists deployed all of its cavalry on its right flank while the Parliament-Scots deployed two regiments on each flank. 

Both sides essentially succeeded in taking their respective right flanks, resulting in the complete route of the Royalist left and center.  But all the objective tokens were towards the Royalist right, so the it was to them that the victory ultimately went. 

The 'Conquistadors' list worked fine for English Civil War, allowing each of the pike-shotte-horse-artillery components to have their moment of great effectiveness. 

Would really like to add some dismounted cavalry to act as a sort of forlorn hope/sword-and-buckler type units to add a little more variety.  A great start to the new year of gaming!