RDF Pathfinder IFVs

Finally got round to painting these up. The camo pattern is ripped og from Shedman's Pax Arcadians but I wanted an army in light brown/desert pattern and it fitted the bill.

 

Battle of Kirbekan - BFE v2 AAR Sept 2013

So with version 2 of BFE out we've been racking up the games. After a plea for Sudan scenarios on TMP I was pointed in the direction of Stuart Asquith's fine scenario book Warfare in Egypt and the Sudan. The first copy that arrived sadly was misprinted but Dave sent me a new one as soon as I told him and I was soon reading avidly.

For the regular Monday night game I selected the Battle of Kirbekan (Feb 1885 Sudan) but with an added gunboat since I knew the Dervish were unlikely to obligingly sit on the ridge. I gave the Dervish some artillery and cavalry to compensate since at the level we were playing the scenario suggested there would not be many.

Dave Manley took command of the gunboat along with Marines, Naval company and Gardner gun. I took the centre with a gun, 1 Egyptian company and 1 of the Staffs companies whilst Dave Pike had the other Staffs, 1 Scots, a gun and the cavalry. The Sudanese were played by Paul , Chris and Rodger.

British deploy more or less as per scenario (other than the gunboat of course) whilst the sneaky Dervish hide behind the ridge.

The gunboat (from Peter Pig) prepares to move up and flank the Dervish.

After a few opening salvos the British advance in the centre to enable a better view for the artillery.

Dave Pike matches the advance on my right tying up the Dervish Cavalry. Dave Manley's naval troops bring fire upon the Dervish right.

Dave Pike's position looks tight as the dervish fear coming over the hill.

So Dave decides to go get them... and that's where it all went wrong.

I deploy into line to protect the artillery as Paul's Dervish decide to move up the hill whilst Chris in the centre is racked with indecision.

Dave Pike's troop seem to have vanished apart from the Staffs in line and about to get hammered in the flank. I break off to go try and support them. It's not looking great and we are close to break point.

Meantime Dave Manley's crew do fine work rolling up Paul's flank and we inch closer to the Dervish break point.

But it's not enough and Dave Pike's last company gets massacred giving the Dervish victory. Sadly the official photographer was lost in the rush to get back on board the gunboat so there are no pictures of the final moments of the battle.

Another good game and we do seem to be getting the hang of these rules now.

HOTT Berkeley 2013

The Berkeley Vale annual HOTT Tournament was held on 14th & 15th September this year (2013) in  change from the usual first weekend in September due to a venue clash. I'd been worried too many might not make it but as it happened numbers were higher than 2012.

 

Below are some of the pictures I took and a bit of narrative.

 

We hold the event in the Skittle Alley at the Tudor Arms pub in Slimbridge. A nice pub with good and beer,  plus they offer accomodation for our overnighters as we are a 2 day event.

 



The Skittle Alley far end after just having set up the tables, each table is marked for a 15mm game and a 28mm game (more on this further down).



Other end of the skittle alley with the Coventry gang and Sharrock family warming up with a quick game of something.

The skittle alley is a great venue for our number as there's room to spread out and as per abow some areas to sit and relax. Not shown is the little alcove that's my 'office' where I set up the PC and printer to do all the admin to generate the pairings for each round. I use a Norwegian Swiss Chess program that allows you to set up tournaments as you like with different scoring and can prevent inter-club  games in the first few rounds if needed.

Round 1 gets under way. In the foreground is the pool army table. The tournament sustains both 15mm and 28mm scale by requiring people to bring two armies, one 'standing' and one 'pool' and they can be any combination of scale. The theory being enough people will bring enough of both scales to allow fair number of both armies so that all can be accomodated. In a round one player is elected by the pairing software to use their standing army and the other picks one from the pool to match the scale; they can use their own standing army instead if it happens to match scale and they want to.

This weekend we seemed to have a more 28mm games than normal but the alley was large enough to accomodate the games.

The Wolf Lords prepare to take on Skeletons.

Talking of wolves, the Sisterhood pack of Amy and Gemma Malcolm decided to join forces on day one. Amy ponders the move whilst Gemma (sporting suitable wolf scarf/headgear) salivates pondering her next victim (all will be explained later).

James Ewins asks Tony if he'd look after the kids later...

Richard Crawley's beautiful Dwarven Stronghold that doubles as a dice tower too.

More movement on the Wolf Lords vs skeletons game

Mike Shepherd seeks inspiration on how to beat the Moria Goblins.

Colin Evans ponders... again.

A traditional HOTT match as my Dwarves take on Tony Horobin and the Elves for control of the gold mine. I used 4 Blades (one a general), 3 shooters, 2 artillery and a Hero. Tony had 4 knights, a mage, 5 shooters (1 the general) and a flyer.

The eagle heads off to threaten my flank whilst both forces move forwards.

The cream of Elven chivalry line up opposite my artillery.

Oops. After that it went downhill very quickly for the Elves as Tony came out of the woods to force the issue...but shot at in woods get +2, and if you are shooting too it makes it messy for the shooters in the open at 5vs3 before the dice and then add in the artillery support... The dastradly Elven Mage did do for he Dwarven Hero but it was not enough.

My 2nd game vs Alan Millicheap and the Skeletons (6 Warbands, 2 Shooters, Anti-Paladin and Hero). The terrin made it awkward for my mainly good going troops but I banked on getting the Blades out of the rough quickly.

I moved to dog-leg position as I tried to protect my flank from the Hero and shooter support.

Alan tries to graddually shot my Hero backwards as his Warbands advance on my Blade line. As it happens I managing to break up the warband line with my artillery, and every time Alan wanted to charge all his broken up groups he got a '1' for pips so eventualy he went for gold and crashed in piecemeal but lucked out and his Warbands where toasted.

Some more shots of other games.

Steve Harris takes on Tim.

Mile begs the rest of the room to get him out of there whilst Dad James plays Keith's Pumpkins.

The Dwarven mine was keenly contested as this time the Fairy Folk decided to have a go at it (my pool table army of a Mid Summer Night's Dream - Oberon and Titania as mages, King of Athen spear general, Queen of the Amazons spear, Lysander and Demetrious plus brides as Warband, various wedding guests as Horde, Puck as lurker and Bottom (donkey) as Beast). Owen Webber was my opponent.

  Demetrius, Lysander and Bottom attack my flank and kick in the Dwarven shooters.

Oberon and Titania and faeries support the heads of state and the wedding party smash through my shooters. I ssend the hero and blade to support the remaining shooter in the rough.

The faeries are shot down as I try to slow the inexorable match on my Stronghold. Fortunately lack of pips prevents Puck from deploying and then it's too late.

The artillery belch once more and Titania is splashed to the four winds!! I back-peddle out of the rough. Owen sends inthe spears but it's against my blade general so a destroy is unlikely. Oberon is held off by the artillery and then he too finally understands the importance of the new form of warfare that is firearms....

Had to have a picture of Zardoz for TMP!!

After that I had camera issues or no time to take pics with admin to do.

The Saturday evening is devoted to board games or any other game people fancy running. We played some condotierre that Colin won and then I teamed up with Gemma to take on Benedict and Amy in a Pump Alley game. We lost the game according to strict scenario rules but as I explained to Gemma, we won the body count and that's all that reall matters! Thanks to Richard Crawley for organising that, great fun.

We then played the classic Werewolves of Miller's Hollow that I ran. Wasn't it funny that all 3 wolves were adjecent to each other and 2 were Malcolm and daughter Amy, the third being Alan Millicheap. Poor other daughter Gemma never stood a chance in round 1.  Much hilarity ensued the the wolves won the game. We played a second game in the village of Miller's Creek, Miller's Hollow having no villagers left.... This time Dad Gordon was a wolf again but other daughter Gemma was a wolf instead. Honest, I never fixed it. Hapilly forhte villagers they won and the vile werewolves were destroyed.

I did get one last picture: The eEnd of the final day as the packing up begins.

 

We had 23 players on the Saturday with 2 playing as a team, but on the sunday they asked to play seperately and we had 3 extra players and 2 had to drop out (1 for the day and the other at lunch), but the great thing about the software is it can cope and rather than give a Bye I have one of the players from the first game to finish have a game with the odd one out player. So a total of 25 players of the weekend wasn't too bad.

 

I had a blast running ti this year, each year I get more laissez-faire about it and it still runs so smoothly thanks to the generosity and good nature of the participants. I'd like to make a special thanks to Dreamholme Scenics for knocking up the lovely Tree-House memento, Jimmy Walton for the stunningly painted raffle prize ofsome Viking figures and to all the others who donated too.

 

Thanks to my opponents for the great games and I hope to see them all again next year on the 6th & 7th September 2014.

 

For the record the results were:

Best 15mm Army - Steve Harris with Wolf Lords

Best 28mm Army - Keith McGlynn with Pirates

Most Expedient Player (most General kills and or Stronghold captures) - Josh Jones

Best Placed Sisterhood (we have random prize every year) - Amy and Gemma Malcolm

Err.... and after 13 years I finally mananged to win my own tournament. Oops

Position	First Name	Last Name	Primary Total	Secondary Total
1	Steve	Price	21	85
2	Pete	Duckworth	18	74
3	Gordon	Malcolm	18	71
4	Benedict	Sharrock	18	66
5	Steve	Harris	15	78
6	Martin	Golay	15	70
7	Gemma	Malcolm	13	69
8	Keith	McGlynn	13	56
9	Josh	Jones	13	50
10	Tim	Sharrock	13	48
11	Alan	Millicheap	12	75
12	James	Ewins	12	56
13	Tony	Green	10	58
14	Owen	Webber	10	41
15	Nigel	Jones	10	13
16	Jamie	Crawley	9	46
17	Richard	Crawley	9	33
18	Tony	Horobin	8	65
19	Colin	Evans	8	53
20	Mark	Fry	6	36
21	Mark and	Ian	6	30
22	Amy	Malcolm	6	30
23	The Walkleys		4	27
24	Alan	McGlynn	3	22
25	Mike	Shepherd	0	18

 

 





BFE AAR - Maiwand

For Monday 1st July weekly game we decided to try out our new BFE  v2.0 rules. Truth be told we'd effectively been using them for a while since we'd had the latest updates via the yahoo group but it's nice to feel you are playing them 'proper'.

 

We elected to play Maiwand from the 2nd Afghan war, the only trouble being I had no figures for Afghans. I did however have a recent purchase of Indian Mutiny stuff so I rebased that and with some suspension of disbelief I added in some of my Sudan figures and we gave it a go.

 

The scenario was from the yahoo BFE scenarios files section by Nick Stern.

 

We had 4 player and I acted as umpire, Dave and Shaun took the role of the Britsh Imperial force whilst Alan and Rodger were the Afghans. Below is the British column all pristine...

 

We assumed that as the scenario did not specify then the rules for native artillery applied and they were to start on table. Needless to say the Afghan players then deployed them in a Grande Batterie. The British realise this wouldbe lethat so quickly manouevred out of column

The Grande Afghan Batterie gets some infatrny support from reserves as the artillery wipe out a British cavalry unit on turn 2.

The 'Ghazi' swordsmen race up the smaller ravine tooutflank the British.

Afghan forces start to arrive en masse. The artillery continue to pour fire into the British.

Finaly the British sort out their line but have managed to block their own artillery.

Regular Afghan cavalry charge fowrad toward the British guns.

Their hope is to exploit what could be a massive gap at the join of the British lines.... Oh no, the other Afghan general takes pity on the British player who is a BFE novice and the gap is closed. Meanwhile The British now manage to return fire and start causing casualties to the Afghan regular infantry.

The Afghans pile in and it all gets messy as the stout British lines rebuff the Afghan assaults. Sadly it's all too little too late and the British hit their break when the Afghan artillery account for the last required unit.

A fun scenario but the British are on to a loser. They can merely hope to hold for longer than their historical counterparts. Today they failed.

V2.0 of the rules worked well and with 8 kills per units and all hits a kill it gets very bloddy very quickly, no time to retire units out of the way if they are looking peaky, just hope the enemy breaks first and get on with it.

Out of Luck in Reno.... 6mm FWC

We had 2 FWC games at the clun on Monday 10th June, a fun little variation of a book scenario designed by Gordon.

 

Both played 'Out of luck in Reno', 1250 AP of Junkers defending, plus 250 AP fixed defences, vs 2500AP of Contractors attacking. Junkers have run out of fuel and must dig-in all vehicles (if any) around their base - a rocky hilltop village. This village (Reno) may have fixed defences and is in the middle of the table. Run game as per All-Round Defence, but:

1) Junkers may deploy ambushes.
2) Contractors have partial air superiority every round.

Gordon's reverse terrain rules caused some confusion for me over LOS but as it affected both sides' long range fire it more likely delayed the result rather that actively make a significant difference. Reverese terrain means the entiretable is soft cover other than hills (unless covered) and open terrain templates. This makes fewer points games last a tad longer and gives both sides a chance to actually do something.

KiwiDave ponders where to deploy his Marine Corps.

 

 

Graham and I attacked from opposite ends. I had the Krondal Legio whilst Graham had Euro-Fed French.

 

 

Grahams French move forward using the classical line formation so loved by French armies of old... if it ain't broke...

 

 Dave struck early and ambushed me to take down 3 units for the loss of 1 (IFVs helped me out), his other ambusher got isolated.

 

 

Dave used and infantry walker to up more of my troops but then it was toasted by Graham as it sauntered around the hill. Graham moved into closer range and poured fire into a bunker... When he was not failing Command Rolls that is.

 

 

I used stout recon units to spot and call in artilley which suppressed sentry guns.  In a not often seen FWC moment I manouevred my towed guns into position and unleashed hell upon marines and sentry guns. Adding insult to injury I asked him to move them for me :-)

 

 

 

 

Graham continued to batter the poor bunker and Dave tried to move troops in to it to replace those lost.

 

 

 

I eventually got some infantry up to the perimeter fence and started to move through (recce createda nice gap). Dave finally failed his break on turn 8 (he'd hit it some time before).

 

 

Lessons

1) 12 turns for 2500 vs 1250 plus 250 defences are too many. 8 would be better to encourage movement, 3000+ vs 1500 could manage 12 turns.
2) Snipers are useless vs Marines. They generaly roll 2 dice less for suppression, even the officers roll 1 less so you need 2 snipers or claim rear/flank and under 1/2 range to get extra dice...

 

The other game saw Mark defend against Mike and Gordon, his report can ve found on the BKC forums in the FWC threads.