Conan's Ultimate Sacrifice

The forth Conan game , this one was hard for our heroes as the risk of being mobbed by the picts and tentacles was great.

 Shevatas tells a story of a hero great and true , stupid maybe

The Heroes advance on the village

lightning bolts blasting away

But more enemies approch

Conan knows no fear

Shevatas clutches the young damesal from the tenticles that are wrapping around her body

But it is too late for Conan

Conan pays the Ultimate sacrifice and his body is torn to shreds

Conan to the rescue..... Not !

Played the pict rescue the princess scenario , this was a hard fight for Conan and his companions and the AI for the overlord was particularly brutal , so here you go and have a look at what happened

It all went pear shaped from here on in

Conan rushes in and kills a pict warrior and then into the hut to confront Zogar Sag but fluffs his dice and stands there thinking is my axe broken , while the overlord gathers the picts to retaliate

Conan's friends join him in despatching Zogar which did take 2 turns and search for treasure so the picts assemble in greater numbers and no princess. I randomly picked a numbered token for each hut entered and if numbered token turned up an "8" then she was found.

Using an explosive orb dispatching a group of hyena's and with some lucky die rolls a lot of the picts are dispatched

Conan and friends are now suffering and wounds are mounting , this is looking bad

Hadrathus decides to teleport away from the snake into a nearby building , he finds an orb but has no gems left to use it , the overlord throws a group of picts into the building and Hadrathus meets an untimely end , meanwhile Conan defeats the snake and the rest of the picts only to see more coming

With no gems left Conan and Shevatas share the wounds caused by the picts

and beat a hasty retreat leaving the princess to her fate

Aftermath

What i realised from playing this scenario is that although Conan is very powerful he can run out of gems realy fast and that give the overlord a chance to damage the heros in the following turn by just mobbing them , the squishy wizard though powerful needs to be protected

Anyway off to paint some more figures for the next game

Conan to the rescue.... Maybe

The setup for tomorrow's game , Conan and friends have been invited to rescue the princess

Shevatas "Do you think this is a good idea Conan ?"

Valeria" Do you want to live forever ?"

Conan "Got to do what is right!"

Let Battle Commence



Conan scouts while the others hunt for treasure , the princess is chained to the pillars



The skeleton hoards arrive



and so does a rather large snake



Which proved a little difficult to dispatch



but Conan prevailed , he put the maximum number of dice and together with some accurate shooting from the others dropped the snake's 8 points



with the princess saved and everyone a little wounded an escape was effected but most of the treasure found was used in defeating the snake.

never mind the princesses father is sure to be generous

Conan finds his sword

My Conan kickstarter arrived at the end of the week so I painted up a few miniatures and designed a scenario , Conan had just escaped from slavery and was heading out through the wilderness , he spots a cave from the hillside , thinking it would be better to spend the night under cover he heads across the valley. Conan is spotted by a pack of hyena's who are looking for food , Battle commences.

I created an AI to control the overlord and give me an indication of what might happen
i gave the overlord a 5 resource recovery and 11 gems to match what Conan had

Table Setup

Conan spots the hyena pack lurking in the rocks

Conan dispatches a few hyena's with ease but more head in his direction

Conan explores the cave , Finds a tomb of an unknown warrior , i decided he needed 3 successes to search the for treasure

Conan finds a great sword but the hyena pack begin to assemble close to the cave opening laying in ambush

Conan beats off the last of the hyena's but not before suffering a few wounds  , he has now suffered a total of 5 of his 11 points and barely makes it out alive , the last hyena was particularly aggressive , Conan did manage to escape with the sword.

The Enemy AI

Aftermath

Well i have loads of figures to paint and with the rest of the kickstarter stuff arriving next year i hope i will manage to paint it all in time though i cant say my lead pile has increased as the figures are all plastic.

This turned out to be a good fun solo game and still giving me the player the problems of resource management , i just adjusted the move points to inches , Those Hyena's are fast ! and did give Conan some headaches.

SNAFU at Huj

Well this was a turn up for the books , i decided to give a WW1 battle a go with my new freshly prepared solo war-game rules , the Battle of Huj was primarily a British cavalry charge but i decided to add a few extra elements to the game , i gave the British an extra machine gun unit  , an aircraft and a tank with some supporting infantry.

for the turks i up rated their morale and made the terrain harder for the British to cross

well it all went very wrong for the British early on as orders were not received , units attacked un supported and at one point looked like a resounding defeat for them. But in true British style the managed to get their act together and take the Turkish positions.

So on with the pictures , figures are all 10mm pendraken

Setup

The Turks are dug-in on the ridge in the centre of the picture , the British have assembled their forces behind the right most ridge.. the whistle blows and there off.... Not

Turn 1

Well at least the machine gun helps wake the turks up and one of the cavalry has finished its breakfast

Turn 2

The tank splutters into action puts a heavy foot on the gas and hurtles off towards the enemy

both cavalry units decide to have a second breakfast

Turn 3

With breakfast over the cavalry move off and the tank breaks down

the turks go to see if they can help but the machine guns dissuade them

Turn 4

The tank is still broken down , and the cavalry discuss breakfast , surely they are not hungry still

Turn 5

The tank thinks it had better get a tow home and the cavalry finally get their act together

Turn 6

and here comes Biggles

Turn 7

Charge! well one of the cavalry units did

Turn 8

Everyone decides to sit down and have lunch.. a waste of a turn nothing happened

Turn 9

A little fire from everyone but only slight casualties.. well the turks did find a few more bullets and drove the cavalry off

Turn 10

The Glory charge , the light brigade has nothing on this and biggles goes for some tea just at the wrong moment

Turn 11

The cavalry went straight through and took out a unit if guns supported by some infantry

Turn 12

And oh look we fixed the tank , rode down the turks

Aftermath , a good and fun enjoyable game that had me pulling my hair out at times as the units refused to follow orders.

Battle of Front Royal

Front Royal , I fount this little scenario in an old copy of johnny reb and thought well lets see how my rules work for it , I have added parts to the rules for the latter part of the 19th century and have tweeked them as well during this playtest.

So on to the battle

Battle of Front Royal

Table layout and starting positions

Turn 1

The union hold the farm and pull a unit back to start to blow the bridge , the other unit of union advances towards the other bridge

The rebs advance towards the farm

Turn 3

Reinforcements arrive for the rebs , sporadic fire from the farm and the small union unit arrives at the northernmost bridge

Turn 4

Well this is where it went wrong for the rebs , the cavalry just stood there and looked at the enemy refusing to move and took some heavy fire from the union unit right in front of it.

The other unit of union withdraws from the farm

Turn 5

Finally the reb cavalry got it act together and charged , the unit of union routed and suffered some heavy casualties. the other union unit retires across the bridge.

Turn 6

The northern bridge blows , well that is about as good as it got for the union . the rebel tigers shot the union unit in the back making it run , unfortunately I ran out of table as they would be off the table.

Aftermath

so even though the union suffered 50% casualties they did manage to blow one of the bridges

The rules seam to work well and will need some more play-testing for different settings , periods and levels of battle.

The Fate of Marengo

Marengo and Fate join hands

I have been developing my ideas of using the Fate rpg system in some of my games. What i wanted was a system that allowed units to have character and perform like they would in real life , i have tried other sets of rules most of which are very good and give a good game but they didnt scratch my itch so i decided to write my own.

My Criteria was this:-
I wanted a grand tactical game with unit formations.

Units would have to have attached assets like battalion guns , squadrons of cavalry , swarms of skirmishers all of which would need to interact with other units on the table.

Units should not be uniform and should not look all the same.

a command and control system that gave the commanders problems controlling their army and also showed the differences between what was essentially a 18th century system verses a 19th century system.

a system that would help the combined arms interaction of units win over those units which did not use it.

a system that could be easily played solo and with little table clutter.

so i put pen to paper or more likely fingers to keyboard and had a little run through of the battle of Marengo

Effectively the Austrians had a river crossing with their troops arriving piecemeal throughout the day while the french defended and had to call up reinforcements. so here is the report and see what you think. All the are 6mm baccus based on 30mm squares

Table Setup
Marengo Army list

Opening Positions

Turn 1

More Austrians arrive , a few units on both sides suffer minor casualties

Turn 2

French reinforcements start to arrive , more minor casualties

Turn 3

The Austrians manage to break through across the bridge with the french morale getting weaker

Another view from the side just before the Austrian breakout

Turn 4

More reinforcements on both sides arrive , Austrian cavalry on the left force the french brigade back

Turn 5

The Austrians push forward , the french have almost broken , a few French units retire

Turn 6

at this point the French are almost finished , their reinforcements arrived too late to stem the Austrian advance.

Aftermath

So what went wrong for the french and what went right for the Austrians , well the superiority in gun numbers helped the austrians, the poor french communication at the beginning of the game helped them as well , there was the odd lucky die rolls on both sides that could have swung the battle either way , the use of combined arms for the Austrians helped weaken the french where it mattered.

On the whole a fun game that lasted a few hours , as this was a first go with the rules and solo as well i dont think it turned out that bad.