A Hill to Die On - Live Free or Die AAR

With Thursday and Friday done, I arrived once again at the Valley Forge Casino for a day's worth of gaming.

The morning game was a refight of the Battle of Brandywine, ran by the Little Wars TV crew. I'm a huge fan of their on-going, fantastically produced battle reports on Youtube, and I jumped at the opportunity to get into one of their games as soon as the convention registration opened. 

I was especially excited because it was an opportunity to play their new set of rules for the American War of Independence, Live Free or Die. 

Before the game began, the British Commanders (myself and Walt) were presented with a couple choices. We had the chance to rest our troops before engaging, which would cost us a couple turns but give us the ability to remove morale hits (DMZs) at the end of a turn. We could also send a flanking force to try and cut the Americans off on another table which was centered on the small town of Dilworth.

We decided to rest our troops (which gave us 10 turns to complete the objective) and send a small brigade of two Guards regiments to outflank the American position. 

Walt controlled the majority of the troops with Cornwallis' and Medow's Brigades, while I had Agnew's and von Donop's brigades. 

The American players (Zach and Ray) had loaded most of their troops on their right to block the road under Zach, while Ray's troops were positioned to block my own. 

The British advanced towards the Americans who, apart from some slight shuffling, held their ground. 

With the Americans angled on the hill, it took several turns of marching before my troops could get into firing range. 

Zach and Walt, on the other hand, clashed immediately, with Walt's troops fixing bayonets and charging up the hill. 

Ray's position on the hill meant that my regiments had to cross multiple obstacles to reach him. Doing so gave my units a DMZ per obstacle crossed. 

I planned to give Ray's troops a round of firing before charging in. 

Live Free or Die is also a shoot-then-move ruleset, and units that don't plan to move can "volley fire," doubling the amount of shots they get. 

The British got the worse of the exchange of volleys, with multiple stands lost and units forced back down the hill (which meant I would have to cross the obstacles once again!).

Meanwhile, the Americans must have gotten word that some force of British was moving on a flank march, because their entire right flank suddenly about-faced and started marching back towards Dilworth.

With his flank in the air, Ray decided against retreating his own troops and instead planted his flag and stood his ground. 

Walt, on the other hand, was chasing after the treating Americans. 

The fighting was fierce between the remaining British, Hessian, and American troops, and ownership of the hill was fluid. Both sides were gathering DMZs like they were on sale.

Walt's path was open, so he split his advancing troops into two forces; one was sent after the retreating Americans, while the other was gathering to push into Ray's flanks. 

Despite being outnumbered, Ray's soldiers stood firm in the face of the Hessian Grenadiers, and sent the whole brigade fleeing backwards when I failed multiple morale checks. 

Despite multiple pushes, I couldn't seem to get my regiments to form a cohesive attack on Ray's position. 

By this time in the game, most of the left side of the table had been completely emptied. 

And the Americans were gathering at Dilworth. 

Now flanked by Walt's troops, Ray wasn't going to do down without a fight, using his skirmishers and last, tattered regiments in a curved line.

However, a combined charge by British regiments saw the last American troops on the hill routed. 

The game ended with Walt's flanking troops advancing on the Dilworth table, but too far away to keep the Americans from consolidating their position. 

The game ended with a somewhat historical result; the British ended up taking the American positions but were unable to stop the Americans from retreating in relatively good order. It had been a much bloodier refight, though, with both sides taking far more casualties than in the original battle.

Given another chance, I probably wouldn't have bothered with letting the British troops rest for two turns in exchange for access to the "Redress Ranks" phase. The cost of losing the extra game time wasn't worth the benefit of removing DMZs, since you have to be outside of 12" of enemy units to do so. That was on me - I convinced Walt to delay the advance rather that immediately step off. A couple more turns may have made all the difference!

This was a fantastic game and one of the best convention games I've participated in. The miniatures and terrain looked fantastic, and I'm absolutely planning to use Live Free or Die as my go-to AWI rules. It looks like I'll have some orders with Pendraken in the next year.

Historicon 2021: Inner (and Outer) Daemons - Warmaster Revolutions AAR

After my first two games on Thursday, I was ready for a full day of gaming with the Warmaster tournament. My Daemons were fully painted and raring to go.

We had six players; definitely less than previous years, but with no conventions and some attendee issues over mask requirements, I wasn't surprised. 

My first game was against John and his Bretonnians. It was my first time facing the Arthurian/French-inspired, knight heavy faction in Warmaster. Like Nippon (which I have faced before), the Bretonnians have a special army rule that affect their breakpoint. Only their heavy mounted knights actually count. Chaff units like Peasants and Squires don't count against the army's breakpoint; both for and against. 

This meant that John's breakpoint was only 5 compared to my army's 9. But I had to get through his heavily-armored mounted knights to force him to break.

The scenario was Take and Hold. Both sides had two objectives to place at the start of the game. One was closer to their backline, and the other closer to the center of the table. To control an objective, a side needed to been the only one with a unit within 5cm. Units like flyers could contest objectives, but not control them. 

Since this was my first outing with the Daemons, I was far more cautious then I should have been, especially against an army that outmatched with the amount of cavalry it could bring. Even with the restrictions to commands in the Revolution version of Warmaster, cavalry is still arguably the kind of the battlefield. 

John used his Squires to disrupt my Chariot brigade, which left it vulnerable to his own brigade of Knights and Grail Knights. This shattered my right flank. While I was able to wipe out his Peasant brigade, that kept one of my infantry brigades from moving further up. 

Eventually John was able to grind enough of my units beneath the hooves of his cavalry and broke my army in turn 6. Adding up the objectives we controlled (and a bonus to John for breaking my army), it was a 2-5 loss for the Daemons. 

My second game was against Liddick and his new army, Lizardmen. Their main gimmick is that their Slann "general" can't actually command any units. However it can give a bonus to Skink character's Command stat and can relay spells through Slann Shamans with an unlimited range!

I didn't manage to catch the name of the second scenario, but it involved placing two objectives in the centerline of the table. Starting on turn 3 the objectives activated, and when a side controlled both objectives by being on top of them at the start of their turn the game would end and bonus points would be scored.

I tried compensating for my lack of aggression in the previous game by being too aggressive during this match. Both cavalry brigades ended up worse for wear; my Chariots couldn't handle the Cold One Riders and the mixed brigade tried attacking Kroxigors in terrain. Not an ideal matchup!

With my Daemon Chariots and Cavalry spent, Liddick marched his infantry out into the open and onto the objectives, and the Daemons couldn't push them off. It was another loss for the Daemons, 565 victory points to 945 victory points. 

My final matchup was against Kal, who was commanding a ragtag Dogs of War force. Finally, a familiar enemy!

The final scenario was Battle for the Tower, with both sides fighting to control the central (Chessex dice) tower. 

After a couple turns of failed command rolls and a potentially devastating blunder (which put my Chariot brigade in range of Kal's Ogres and Dwarfs), I thought that the game was all but over. 

Things turned around somewhat when the Chariots did better than expected and managed to mangle the Ogres without losing too many stands. My other cavalry brigade ended up mostly pinned up on the massive block of Pikemen, but reduced their numbers greatly. And they even took out a Giant!

What really saved me was finally getting the Daemonic Hordes into Kal's Crossbowmen and Handgunners. The unarmored, ranged troops were easy targets for the hordes of Bloodletters, Plaguebearers, Horrors, and Daemonettes, which pushed Kal over the breaking point. I had also managed to drop a couple units of Hordes to control the Tower. In their last games, the Daemons managed a 5-0 win. 

So, how were the Daemons? They're definitely an aggressive army. I felt the hurt that I had no ranged units or artillery to interfere with approaching enemy brigades. And I'd probably try to drop the Daemon Swarms, since they only got in the way of the Hordes on the attack. But having Command 8 Wizards, and three Wizard characters, is definitely nice.

The toughest part of the army is dealing with the Daemonic Instability rule. It's a 2/3 chance that something bad is going to happen to any Daemon unit that has lost a stand; either charging uncontrollably, becoming confused, or losing another stand (or disappearing entirely!). The only offset is that the "Summon Daemons" spell in a 4+ to cast and the army can take three Wizards. Without those two conditions, the entire faction might be unplayable. 

Still, I was happy to be able to play Warmaster at a convention again. And now I can get working on a new army!

Red Eagles on a Rampage - Chain of Command AAR

My second game at Historicon was Chain of Command, which I haven't had the opportunity to play in a couple years.  

This scenario was set in 1941, after Operation Crusader. A platoon of the 6th Rajputana Rifles, Fourth Indian Division was ordered to seize the town of Shahm Alkhinzir to prevent it from being used by fleeing Axis forces. However, a detachment of 15. Panzer-Division was ready to keep the Allied forces out of the town. 

The Allied players had to either break the defending Germans or exit two units through the short edge that the Germans were defending. The Axis players (which I was one off) had to hold out and either break the attacking Indians or spend two full Chain of Command dice to end the game. The Allied players could spend a full CoC die to reduce the Axis CoC dice total by three pips. 

Since we were playing lengthwise (a personal pet-peeve in infantry-focused games), the Patrol Phase didn't see much maneuvering. The Indian players had their Patrol Markers locked out a good distance from the town, which didn't give them many options with their Jump Off Points. 

In contrast, the Germans were able to get their JOPs in the town where they would be defended by the light cover provided by the buildings. 

The Indians commenced their attack with a couple squads deploying from their JOPs. The only real cover on the approach was the wadi that ran parallel to the road, which the Indians used to push a Bren team up as the platoon's riflemen slowly advanced.

In response, the Germans deployed a squad in one of the town's outer buildings. Since this was a Schutzen platoon, that meant each squad had two light machine guns, which could spit out a never-ending stream of lead. 

A second squad deployed behind an impassible ridge, out of sight of the advancing Indians.

One of the assets the Indians had was an armored car, armed with a machine gun. To counter this, the Germans had a single anti-tank rifle team.

However, instead of keeping the armored car on the table to potentially pin down the Germans, the Indian players instead elected to gun its engines and blast it through the town, before any of the German units could respond. This gave the Indians one of their two necessary units off the short table edge for their victory condition. 

The Allied players were making excellent use of their smoke markers from their 2cm mortar team. The smoke didn't block line of sight, but it did make it harder for anyone shooting through the 3" puffs to hit anything. 

However, the Germans got lucky and managed to fill up a Chain of Command die. Rather than keep it and hope to roll more 6s to end the game, we instead used it to end the first turn (finally!). This cleared the smoke from the table and removed all of the "tactical" movement markers from the Indian squads. 

While they were reduced from the long first turn, this gave the German Schutzen squads a chance to bring their machine guns to bear!

With most of their smoke gone, the Indians outside the wadi were caught in the Germans' crossfire, sending a cascade of morale hits. 

What had started to look like a tenuous hold on the town by the Germans became a decent defensive position again as the Indians were forced to retreat. 

By that point we had reached the time limit and the game ended in a draw, edging towards a German victory. While the armored car had gotten through the German line, the rest of the Indian platoon wasn't in a position to press the attack to any sort of conclusive result.  

I'm glad that I enjoyed this game of Chain of Command more than my previous one (especially since I didn't have a head-splitting migraine to ruin the experience. I'll have to see if I can get more people to play CoC in my area. 

Foes East and West - To the Strongest! AAR

After a two hour trek from the barren, pine-filled lands of South Jersey, I arrived at the Valley Forge Casino result for my first in-person convention in almost two years: Fall In Historicon!

I unfortunately missed my chance to head down to Barrage in Maryland this year, so I made sure I had plenty of time (and money) to spend at Historicon. I had originally planned to play in nine games over four days, but I ended up cutting my attendance a little short and played seven games over three days. Not bad!

My first game was early on Thursday, and featured eight-players sitting around a massive table. 

I was one of four Egyptian commanders, tasked with winning glory for the young Ramses II. Arrayed against us on either side of the Nile were armies of Libyans and Canaanites. 

Both sides had armies of mostly the same troops - light chariots, medium infantry, and skirmishers. The Egyptians had more formed infantry compared to the Libyans and Canaanites. 

The game was using To the Strongest! for its rules, which is why I had decided to sign up. I haven't had a bad game of To the Strongest yet, and this was a chance to try a different flavor of Ancients. 

The other two Egyptian commanders had their hands full dealing with plenty of Libyans. The game broke down into two separate engagements as the Egyptians had lots of targets on either side of the Nile. 

My poor performance as a cavalry command in To the Strongest (and by extension, For King & Parliament) seemed to continue through this game, with my chariots clashing with their Canaanite opposites and losing. 

As the chariots fought on the flanks, the Egyptians and Canaanite lines clashed together. 

And without much of a fuss, my chariots were routed, giving free the Canaanite free rein over the Egyptian rear. 

The Canaanite commander was in a prime spot to hit the Egyptian camp, which would further deplete our quickly diminishing supply of Victory Medals. 

The lone unit of Egyptian Archers were able to keep the chariots off the camp for a turn. 

However, that didn't matter when a unit of Egyptian infantry was harried into a rout by Canaanite skirmishers, which placed us over the medal limit and sent the whole Egyptian force into retreat!

I didn't stick around to see how the other side was doing, but I couldn't imagine that having their backs exposed to the Canaanites while also trying to deal with the Libyans was going to end well. Looks like Ramses II was going to need to find a different target to demonstrate his military prowess. 

This was a great first game and really got me excited for the rest of the convention. And as ever, To the Strongest remains my preferred set of generic Ancients & Medieval rules.

Painting Update - Warmaster

I'll be heading out to Historicon tomorrow, so here's a quick look at the last two parts of my Daemons of Chaos army for the Warmaster tournament. 

The second cavalry brigade for the Deamons is a mix between Chariots and Cavalry. While I could have taken Daemon Hounds to support the last couple Chariot units, I decided to use Cavalry instead, since they get 4 base attacks and a 5+ save in combat. 

And to round out the army, here's another brigade of three required Daemon Hordes and another Daemon Swarm to take any incoming ranged attacks.

So that's it! 18 units, with a Breakpoint of 9. We'll see how the Daemonic Instability rules and the Summon Daemons spell work against each other. 

Get ready for plenty of Historicon posts over the next weeks!