FK&P AAR: Disaster at Skirmett's Orchards

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Here’s a battle report from the playtest of the final scenario in my newly-published Siege of Norchester scenario pack for the English Civil War rules, For King & Parliament.

As the title of this post suggests, this was an absolute disaster for my Parliamentarians!

“Went the day well, my dear?”

“No it bl**dy didn’t!”

The day started very well. Above is a view from behind the Royalist lines, with the village of Skirmett in the centre of the table. My plan was to win on the wings then envelop the Cavaliers in a “horns of the buffalo” manoeuvre.

Northern Donkey Wallopers to the Front!

On my left wing, I had a brigade of Borders horse: poorly-mounted, but out-numbering the opposition. The lancers on the far left were quite nasty in a first clash, so I was pretty happy that I could get an advantage here.

The centre and right

I was a bit more concerned about my right wing, where the Roundheads had quite a few units of Swedish-style horse versus my monolithic Dutch-style troops, but my infantry were nearby and could always pore fire into the flanks of any rampaging Royalist cavalry before they got too close.

Back on the left wing, the two lines of cavalry smashed in to each other: complete disaster!

I may have gone a little over the top on the disorder markers!

Let me explain. I got my tactics just right and ended up with three cavalry units facing just the one of his. Not only that, but I was uphill charging downhill. Yes, I had both my CinC and the Brigade Commander with the central unit, but officers casualties are quite rare, yes?

Wrong!

In the first clash I lost both my CinC and the Brigade Commander: both killed outright!

This was particularly painful as in FK&P not only are officers really useful for, er, officering but, representing the cult of personality around so many ECW commanders, your CinC is worth a great many Victory Medals. Combined, I lost just about a third of all my Medals with the death of just two men! This obviously meant that even if things went 50/50 from now on, I would lose the game in short order.

Anyway, we decided to play on for a bit…

Even Stevens on the Right

Another cavalry clash on the right, with my troopers getting an initial advantage.

The Centre standing Firm

Unfortunately that advantage didn’t last. Lady Luck again deciding that she was for the King!

Centre cavalry unit couldn’t even last long enough for the infantry to intervene!

Which meant that when my already battered left flank finally gave way, I was out of Victory Medals and on the stage coach to Losertown!

The Left Crumbles

So a very quick battle mainly due to the surprising death of my CinC and a cavalry brigade commander. Still an enjoyable game and, looking for the silver lining, the speed of my defeat gave us time for another game…

FK&P AAR: Napshill Downs

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Regular visitors will be aware that last Friday saw the release of my second scenario pack for the For King & Parliament English Civil War ruleset: The Siege of Norchester.

The pack contains twelve free-standing, fictional scenarios in a loose chronological order. It tells the story of the investment of the fictional, Royalist-held city of Norchester. It begins with the Parliamentarians gradually pushing the Royalist foraging parties back into the city itself, then looks at the Royalist attempts to delay the construction of encircling works. There’s an assault on the outskirts of Norchester and then a Royalist attempt to get a messenger through to the King to ask for aid. Finally, there’s the arrival of a Royalist relief force, the fall of Norchester and the attempted escape of the main Cavalier protagonists. The same officers and units are used throughout the campaign, and it is hoped that the players will come to adopt and recognise them as their own or the enemy.

The pack is designed to give players who don't have enough time to write their own scenarios a number of games that they can play with little or no preparation. All you have to do is print out the game and player briefings, set up the table according to the map, break out the figures and cards, and start the first turn. You don't even need to print the pack out in full: just the pages you need for the scenario you're going to play. The games can be played either as a series of linked games or as a collection of one-off battles. To emphasise: each scenario is free standing and they do not have to be played in any particular order…but it is anticipated that players will play them in order as a campaign, keeping a running total of each sides’ score as they go along. The pack provides a Campaign Record Sheet as an easy way of doing so.

Finally, although specifically designed for FK&P, with a little work the scenarios can be adapted for any set of English Civil War/Renaissance rules: the basic elements of why, where and with what each side is fighting being largely common to all systems.

Napshill Downs

An important part of the preparation for launch is to playtest all the scenarios in the pack, and below you will find a gallery of images from the playtest of scenario #11: Napshill Downs.

As one of the later scenarios, the background is that Norchester has already fallen so some of the Royalist erstwhile defenders are trying to make their escape from the region in order to continue the fight against the Parliamentarian traitors elsewhere. The Roundhead force (which I was commanding) is tasked with bottling them up and destroying them.

This was one of those games that went wrong for me just about right from the beginning when I completely cocked up my opening moves! Read on to share my pain!

The Attack on Marlowe

Meanwhile, blogger Zanoni has started playing through my previous ECW scenario pack: Marlowe to Maidenhythe, which is now available in both digital and physical form.

His first AAR, covering scenario #1 The Attack on Marlowe has lots of pictures of his beautifully painted collection of ECW figures. Recommended as a feast of eye candy!

Click here to see the report on his excellent Troop Time! blog.

TFL Painting Challenge: First November Update

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Half way through the month and I’m only just getting around to an update: shows how busy I am with real world work…well, that and getting Norchester published.

And there’s only about six weeks to go before the end of this year’s Challenge: so those of you sitting on vast numbers of entries need to get them to me before December 31 to make sure your scores are recorded. We have 24 people who’ve sent in entries this year: two newbies and then fourteen under their last year score and only eight over their last year score.

But there’s still plenty of time for the fourteen to make up the difference: so here are this week’s entries to encourage you to pick up a brush and start painting.

Salute 2021

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Yesterday saw a return to the annual pilgrimage to the Salute show, one if not the largest wargaming show in the UK.

Previous years have been characterised by long queues to get in, dim lighting and, in the morning at least, an event so crowded that it was hard to even get to see a trade stand let alone buy anything.

Well this year it was very different. No queues at all by the time we arrived half an hour after the event opened at 10.30am, the same dim lighting, but a distinct absence of any crowds. The show was busy, but good busy: plenty of room to move around.

There was also less to see: there were several noticeable gaps where trade stands should have been, and as many empty demonstration tables where people hadn’t turned up to run their game. This was presumably all down to COVID, and is a real shame, particularly as the venue was operating a strict vaxed/lateral flow policy before you could come in.

The theme of this year’s show was the Battle of Britain, and one of the good things to see was the Hurricane and Spitfire aircraft on show…complete with pilots sitting in chairs drinking tea and flirting with WAAFs!

Nothing to do with the show, but quite amusing, was the fact that Excel was also hosting a Star Trek convention, meaning that the small number of military reenactors present was utterly dwarfed by the vast numbers of Trekkers in the venue dressed up in their uniforms…including daughter #2 who took full advantage of me going to Excel to tag along and take us to the Trek event as well.

And very expensive that proved too.

I don’t know how much Rifleman Harris charges for his autograph, but I suspect that it’s much less than I paid for daughter #2 to get a signed photo from two of the cast of Deep Space 9. It was certainly more than I spent on figures!

So a smaller, less busy Salute this year, which actually was no bad thing. Not many of the demo games warranted a mention, with the obvious exception of the O Group game featuring some wonderful terrain representing Stalingrad sloping down to the Volga. Looked fantastic and I would love to play IABSM on the set up!

Siege of Norchester Scenario Pack Now Available

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Simon Miller and I have just published the digital edition of my second scenario pack for For King & Parliament: The Siege of Norchester.

Buy The Siege of Norchester here

Hopefully you'll have seen (and had your appetites whetted!) by some of the many playtest battle reports posted here (the last post before this one being an example) but for those who haven't, here's the marketing blurb:

The Siege of Norchester is a supplement for TtS! For King & Parliament that contains twelve free-standing, fictional scenarios in a loose chronological order.

The pack is designed to give players who don't have enough time to write their own scenarios a number of games that they can play with little or no preparation. All you have to do is print out the game and player briefings, set up the table according to the map, break out the figures and cards, and start the first turn. You don't even need to print the pack out in full: just the pages you need for the scenario you're going to play.

The Siege of Norchester tells the story of the investment of the fictional, Royalist-held city of Norchester. It starts with the Parliamentarians gradually pushing the Royalist foraging parties back into the city itself, then looks at the Royalist attempts to delay the construction of encircling works. There’s an assault on the outskirts of Norchester and then a Royalist attempt to get a messenger through to the King to ask for aid. Finally, there’s the arrival of a Royalist relief force, the fall of Norchester and the attempted escape of the main Cavalier protagonists.    The same officers and units are used throughout the campaign, and it is hoped that the players will come to adopt and recognise them as their own or the enemy.

action from scenario #2: munces wood

The games can be played either as a series of linked games or as a collection of one-off battles. To emphasise: each scenario is free standing and they do not have to be played in any particular order…but it is anticipated that players will play them in order as a campaign, keeping a running total of each sides’ score as they go along. The pack provides a Campaign Record Sheet as an easy way of doing so.

Finally, although specifically designed for FK&P, with a little work the scenarios can be adapted for any set of English Civil War/Renaissance rules: the basic elements of why, where and with what each side is fighting being largely common to all systems.

So whether you’re for the King or for Parliament, The Siege of Norchester gives you everything you need for many hours of joyful gaming!

Buy The Siege of Norchester here

FK&P AAR: Ramshackle Road

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Another game of For King & Parliament using a scenario from my forthcoming Siege of Norchester scenario pack. This time it’s an encounter at Ramshackle Road, where the Royalist raiders are pinned against a river!

Although I did definitely lose the battle, the game was actually closer than the report above suggests. The appearance of the Royalist horse on my flank was a nasty shock, and I didn’t cope with it very well!

A great game, despite the result!

Massive Re-Base!

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My 19th Century Austrians have been languishing unused for some time: like years! This is partly to do with being occupied with other periods, but also because they are based in a slightly weird fashion.

Let me explain. In my twenties I wrote a set of home-brewed rules that combined Johnny Reb and Trevor Halsall’s set, Rules for Wargames: Sebastopol, Sadowa & Sedan. They were never intended for publication: just for home use. The basing system involved company-sized bases in line, with the correct number of figures at 1:20 ratio. As Austrians, at that time, had 140-man companies (paper strength), this meant I had battalions of six 7-man, strip bases. Looked good on the table, but very inflexible when it came to using other rule sets.

Now, many years on, I have decided to re-base the European armies from my 19th century collection to give me the flexibility I need to play the rules that my set of wargaming friends are playing. It’s a big job, but actually quite satisfying as the armies were based quite crudely: certainly more crudely than I can manage now.

My chosen basing is to mount each infantry or cavalry unit on the equivalent of four 40mm x 30mm bases. The infantry will be mounted on six bases: two 40x30 and four 20x30, with eight and four figures respectively. The cavalry will be mounted on four 40x30 bases, with three figures per base. Infantry skirmishers will go two figures on a 40x30 base, and guns/limbers and officers mounted individually.

First up, as mentioned above, are the Austrians: 172 infantry, 40 horsemen and 13 guns/limbers.

Bases were all from Warbases: excellent service as usual.

I even managed to squeeze an extra infantry unit out of my collection: judicious re-painting of cuffs and collars on spares and extra skirmishers, and adding a flagpole and flag to one infantryman figure.

Next up: the Prussians!

Cossack Moloitsy

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Regular visitors will know that I am building a Zaporozhian Cossack army for use with the eastern theatre version of For King & Parliament.

I’ve painted up the ‘regular’ Registered Cossack element of the army, and the tabor wagon armed wagon train, so now it was time to start on the Moloitsy: the mass of pretty rubbish musket and spear armed infantry that made up the majority of any Cossack force.

As the figures I’m using (from the Wargames Company’s By Fire & Sword range) come in sotnias of twelve men, and I’m using bib bases of twenty-four men, I’ve decided to paint the troops in twelves: effectively two sotnias per base.

This does, of course, mean that I’m going to have to come up with ten colour schemes for my five units rather than just five, so it’s lucky the GW Contrast Paint range is quite large!

I’m loving the banners that come with these figures: there do seem to be loads of different designs. Again, not sure if I’ll be able to do all ten sotnias with a different banner, but there won’t be much duplication.

So that’s two down and three to go!

IABSM AAR: 83rd Naval Brigade in the Caucasus 1942

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Another superb 6mm I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum! after action report from Mark Luther.

This time Soviet Naval Infantry take on a German recce force in the north Caucasus in August 1942. The Germans were closing in on the port of Novorossiysk from the north and the Soviets had set up blocking positions before Verkhnebakanskiy. This represents the 83rd Naval Infantry Brigade's fallback spot. They were facing the 125th Infantry Division with some StuGs and armored cars.

Click on the picture below to see all…

FK&P AAR: Laundry Day

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Another day, another Norchester playtest!

The Royalist raiders, headed by Sir Arthur d’Artois area heading for the rear of the Parliamentarian lines, determined to take some of the pressure of their colleagues under siege in Norchester.

The Roundheads, however, have been tipped off and are expecting them: they have a force drawn up in front of the rear of their camp and are prepared to do battle!

Another cracking game, with the scenario passed as playtested.

The battle swung this way and that, but always with me having the edge, right up to the last moment. To indicate how close it was, my opponent had only one Victory Medal left himself i.e. if I’d broken one more unit or taken that camp, then victory would have been mine.

The final turn began with me on four Victory Medals: all of which I lost on the right as my troops finally gave way: about as close to victory as you can get without actually winning!

On to the next scenario now: Ramshackle Road…

Action from Marlowe to Maidenhythe

Most of you should know that Norchester will be my second scenario pack for For King & Parliament, with the first being Marlowe to Maidenhythe.

Always great to see my scenarios being used: here’s a link to the Blunders on the Danube blog where there’s a great report of the first scenario from M2M: the Attack on Marlowe

Blunders on the Danube/M2M AAR

TFL Painting Challenge: Another October Update

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Morning all, and here’s another Painting Challenge update.

Lots of entries, but all from the usual suspects. Quite a few of you must be sitting on piles of painted figures to be photographed and sent in!

Do visit the individual galleries, but here’s a selection to whet your whistles!

I’ll update the Scorecard at the weekend.

Registered Cossacks

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Regular visitors will know that I am currently building a 17th Century Zaporozhian Cossack army using By Fire & Sword miniatures.

I’ve already built the Tabor (war wagons) so next task was to paint up the Registered Cossack element: the nearest Cossack equivalent to regular soldiers. The Registered Cossacks began life in 1572 and served as a significant element of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth’s army until the 18th Century.

I’ve only painted two bases of Registered Cossacks, as most of a Cossack force should be lesser quality Moloitsy. Here they are:

I’m learning more about the Zaporozhian Cossacks as I go along. These weren’t the “born in the saddle” elite light cavalry of the Don Cossack type, but infantry based chaps from the Dneiper River area of the Ukraine. First recorded in the early 1500s, they seem to have fought just about everyone in the area: either separately or as part of a Polish army.

They specialised in raiding into other people’s territory, especially that of the Ottoman empire. One legend has it that the Sultan Mehmed IV asked them to stop their raids by sending the following letter:

As the Sultan; son of Muhammad; brother of the sun and moon; grandson and viceroy of God; ruler of the kingdoms of Macedonia, Babylon, Jerusalem, Upper and Lower Egypt; emperor of emperors; sovereign of sovereigns; extraordinary knight, never defeated; steadfast guardian of the tomb of Jesus Christ; trustee chosen by God Himself; the hope and comfort of Muslims; confounder and great defender of Christians – I command you, the Zaporogian Cossacks, to submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks.

Needless to say, this didn’t go down too well with our Cossack friends, who replied with a letter so rude that I have been forecd to use asterisks for some of it!

Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

O sultan, Turkish devil and damned devil's kith and kin, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are thou, that canst not slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou shalt not, thou son of a whore, make subjects of Christian sons. We have no fear of your army; by land and by sea we will battle with thee. F*ck thy mother.

Thou Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-f*cker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, pig of Armenia, Podolian thief, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow. Screw thine own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding pigs for the Christians. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year with the Lord. The day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

This momentous event was commemorated in a huge painting by Russian artist Ilya Repin:

Some excellent ideas there for invective to throw at my opponents once the army takes to the tabletop!

FK&P AAR: Happy Valley

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Another playtest of a scenario for my next scenario pack: Happy Valley.

Quick summary of the situation: Royalists are besieged in Norchester and have called for aid; the vanguard of a relief force is intercepted in the aforementioned Happy Valley; a battle ensues.

Do click on the images in the gallery below: there’s more description of what’s happening on most of them.

Although it might not seem so from the descriptions above, this was a very close game: I was down to three Victory Medals by the end, so one more unit lost for me would have lost me the battle.

Another great game of For King & Parliament!

IABSM AAR: Grudziadz

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Another great 6mm IABSM after action report from Mark Luther, this time featuring scenario eight from the September War Part One scenario pack (available from this website).

Played at Gigabites Cafe, Marietta, September 2021, the game involves the Germans attacking Grudziadz, a town in the Polish corridor in September 1939. The Germans thrust was from East Prussia i.e. they were actually attacking from the east.

Click on the picture below to see all:

SELWG 2021

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IMG-20211017-WA0000.jpeg

On Your Marks…

The new venue for SELWG

I had a rare Sunday free, so thought I’d pop along to the first post-lockdown SELWG show.

The last time I’d been to SELWG, it had been at Crystal Palace and, to be honest, all I remember is the smell of chlorine from the pool and a nightmare journey there and back.

The refreshed show is actually in north London (presumably there are plans to re-name it NELWG) at the Lee Valley Track & Field stadium. The show was set up literally in the middle of the running track: somewhat ironic considering the inverse relationship between enjoying wargames and taking part in athletics!

The place is easy to find and, for me, now easy to get to. The site has a large, free car park right outside: such a refreshing change from the huge fees at Excel (Salute) or the nightmare that is Rivermead (Warfare). The only negative is that it didn’t have any charging points: very annoying in this modern age.

The show itself was very good, although it did feel a bit small: but this may be down to the fact that I’m used to the very big shows. That said, there were plenty of demo games (including a good 50 yards of Lard!) and a fair selection of traders. Interestingly, although there were plenty of 28mm figure manufacturers there, I couldn’t see any 15mm manufacturers, so ended up only buying some brushes and some basing materials. A cheap day!

It would have been a more expensive day as, unusually for me, I found something on the Bring & Buy that I wanted to, er, buy…but it was £100 and I never carry cash any more (I had a single £10 note on me!) and there was no cash point on site, the nearest being a 500 yard trip in either direction. Note to organisers: equip the B&B with a credit card machine or make sure there’s a cashpoint. So no nicely-painted 15mm WW1 German army for me :(

On the plus side, however, I did play in an excellent game of Infamy! in the morning. I played the Carthaginians up against some Republican Romans. It was a cracking game. The Roman skirmishers causing me all sorts of problems whilst I manoeuvred into a position from which my elephant could go in backed by my Libyan spearmen as my Spanish types hit the enemy from the flank. In the end, the sheer flexibility and staying power of the Romans meant that they could recover from the nellie’s charge quickly enough to ride the assault of my spearmen, and the Spanish just didn’t quite have the combat power to save the day. A cracking game, though, and thanks to Big Rich and my opponent, Chris, for making it so good.

So, all in all, a good day. Charging points and a cash machine for next time please, and get the food truck on site earlier than 1 o’clock: I like to have elevenses!

Here’s a final pic of a rather nice Mexican Revolution game:

TFL Painting Challenge: 1st October Update

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Quite a slow month so far, but still plenty of entries flooding in.

As always, please do check out the individual galleries, accessible from the NavBar, above, but here’s a taster to keep you going:

The Cossack Tabor Rolls Up

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Tabor Commander

Finally finished the first four bases of Cossack Tabor: the war wagons that can serve either as fortifications or as a moving fort.

These figures are the first of the By Fire & Sword miniatures: a Polish figure manufacturer specialising in 17th Century eastern European wars. Friend Bevan is collecting Poles, so I went for the Zaporozhian Cossacks.

I thought these were going to be a bit like the Cossacks you see in Taras Bulba (i.e. masses of light cavalry) but actually these particular Cossacks had rubbish cavalry (substituting Tartars when they needed horse) and were specialists in infantry fighting from behind lines of war wagons. Ah well, you live and learn!

What with lockdown, lorry drivers, Brexit and an imminent second edition, By Fire & Sword miniatures are quite hard to get hold of in the UK. I started my collection by cleaning out the Entoyment Hobby & Wargames Centre online store. Entoyment are an excellent supplier who not only offered a slight discount but also posted my figures to me the very next day after I’d ordered them. Highly, highly recommended.

I don’t usually bother with an unboxing photo, but the By Fire & Sword packaging for their Cossack Tabor box set is absolutely lovely. Here’s a little gallery of the original outside packaging, the inside box, and what the box looks like when you open it. Lovely: really got me enthused to get painting.

The Build

The wagons come in several bits: the wagon body, an under-wagon frame that holds the wheels and provides the tongue/shaft, the horses (about half with saddle and rider, half with just a yoke), a few small cannon to mount at the corner of a wagon, and the wagon crew.

Putting the wagons together is fairly easy, although I did find that I had to drill out every wheel’s socket with a pin drill before being able to fix them. A pain, and certainly much more difficult than most wagon wheel attaching.

I chose not to attach the crews onto the wagons before painting, although I did attach all the riders to their mounts.

The Paint

Painting was fairly easy: I used GW Contrast Paints as usual but restricted myself to dark reds, dark greens and two 0r three blues for the Cossack crews.

This is how they turned out:

Overall I’m very happy with these, and looking forward to getting them onto the tabletop. I’ll be using them with an adaption of For King & Parliament, using a single base as the Tabor as a Fortification, and double bases as the Tabor as moving, deep war-wagons

Next up are the Registered Cossack infantry…

IABSM AAR: Alt Langsow

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Here’s another great battle report from Mark Luther. The game was I Ain’t Been Shot Mum in 6mm played at the Gigabyte Cafe in September.

This was a pretty basic Soviet attack on the defensive line NE of Seelow , 16 April, 1945. Elements of the 26th Fallschirmjaeger Regiment were dug in forward/east of Alt Langsow and the 301st Rifle Division and 220th Tank Brigade were ordered to overrun them and head to Neu Langsow.

Click on the picture below to see all:

TFL Painting Challenge: Last September Update

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Lots of entries this post as people rush to get in before the end of the month.

Please do make sure that you visit the individual galleries (navigate there in the bar, above), but here’s a taster: