Egypt Game

>> Thursday 30 July 2009

Egypt - Nikolas Lloyd

The game was a raid on ancient Egypt by Mycenaean warriors, that went horribly wrong.

The genesis of the game started with the buildings. Lloyd started making them and got a bit carried away. After the summer, he had enough stone temples and ruins to cover a table, but no Egyptian figures. However, another club member, Peter, had painted up a load of "Tomb Warriors" by Citadel Miniatures, and so the possibility arose of a game between Lloyd's Trojan War figures, and Peter's band of walking undead.



Homer in The Odyssey writes of a raid by King Menelaos of Sparta against Egypt, arriving by sea in search of loot near the coast. Homer doesn't mention whether the defenders were uncommonly skeletal.


The game was designed for three players. Two ships arrive at the game's start, each with one contingent of treasure-hunting warriors, and these were in competition with each other for the most loot. The third player (Lloyd) controlled the defending undead, and acted as a referee, also controlling the actions of the local townsfolk and wounded Egyptian soldiers.



The red ship was commanded by two boy players, who were quickly distracted by the goings on in the local town, the corner of which was represented on the board.


They went over to the town, and had fun chasing the townsfolk and trying to loot. They made off with two laden camels, and two prize white bulls, and one captured old man. The most valuable thing they found in a house was a young woman, whom
they shot dead in their enthusiastic blood lust. They are young, and they will learn.

The blue ship's men soon found a wounded Egyptian, who might have warned them usefully of the presence of the undead who had taken over the temple area, but before he could make himself understood, they threw javelins at him and finished him off. Soon, inevitably, the undead appeared, and in quite large numbers.


The undead on the blue ship's side of the table outnumbered the blue contingent's scattered men, and though many skeletons were smashed in the fighting, many Mycenaeans fell. The commanders of the red ship contingent rejoiced to see their rivals in such a pickle, and carried on looting the town, missing out on the great treasures to be found in the temples.


After a while, the outnumbered contingent broke and ran for its ship, but lost so many men in the rout that when it got there, it had not enough men to launch the ship off the beach, and it was losing more all the while to attacks by pursuing undead. Only now did the other raiders see the danger, as a fearsomely powerful undead leader approached the beached ships, with a mass of panicking Achaeans before him. The boy commanders then ordered their men back to the ship, but
still they bothered to load on captured animals and pots of olive oil. There was a desperate fight by a line of defenders who held off the attacking undead for just long enough for the ship to be launched on the fifth attempt. All the time, men were falling with arrows in them. One man benefited from the failed attempts to launch the ship, as it gave him time to run back to the ship from the far corner of the
board.


The leader of the blue ship got himself safely aboard the red ship, and couple of his men managed to escape from the overwhelmed blue ship, and swim across to the blue ship before it launched. The beach was left littered with the dead and dying, and the game ended with one ship's escaping, manned by many wounded men. The cost of the raid was far greater than the gains.
Had the two contingents fought as one from the outset, they would have been easily capable of defeating the skeleton defenders, and perhaps making it to the temples in the far corners of the table, where the great treasures were to be found. There too was the sarcophagus of the undead leader, inside the temple of Anubis, and destroying the mummy inside would have freed the place from the undead curse. Still, you live and you learn. Or you die and you don't.


An enjoyable game, that went right down to the wire.

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Orc Siege

>> Wednesday 29 July 2009

Orc Siege - Nikolas Lloyd

In this game, orcs attacked a fort defended by Vikings. The orcs had three mangonels, launching stones into the fort from a distance. The defenders of the fort prepared a sally to destroy these siege engines, but also had to cope with an onrush of fanatical orcs, trying to storm the fort with ladders and fury.



The orcs rushed to the wall and set up their ladders, but all attempts to force a way in proved hopeless as the defenders proved stalwart. A second band of Vikings appeared on the table top, having come out of an off-table side entrance of the fort.

This second band threatened to sweep away the orcs on the ladders, and so the orcs broke off their ladder-related shenanigans to meet this threat. A handful of orcs managed to prevent the sally attempt from the main gate.

A second band of orcs advanced and blocked the route to the mangonels at the far end of the table. These almost annihilated the leading contingent of Vikings, which fought on despite its losses.



Both sides then pulled back, it being obvious that neither stood any chance of achieving its objective.


The game was fought using rules written by Richard Bradley, a club regular, and figures belonging to him and Ian Logan (Vikings), and Lawrence Coxon and Nikolas Lloyd (orcs). The fort and the big horsehair trees belong to Lawrence.

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First game of Field of Glory

>> Tuesday 28 July 2009

18th July 2009
Well, finally played our first game today. Despite having taken down Mid-Republican Roman and Carthaginians my opponent, Lawrence, had just bought a rather lovely Seleucid army on eBay which had arrived this morning so we decided to christen it! So, Later Seleucid v. Mid-Rep Roman it was. We just went for the Starter Armies as it was our first outing for the rules. Ian was to be rules-meister and Richard observer, commentator and Seleucid advisor.


To broaden my frontage and try to counter his superiority in Cavalry and LH and the Elephants. I deployed my Triarii on either side of my central legionary mass. Latin allies to right. My Cavalry to left facing all his horse and Elephants. I pushed forward as fast as I could with my Velites driving back his skirmish line.





The Allies moved to engage his medium foot on the one flank while the one Roman Cavalry BG drove off his LH archers. They went too far forward and had to carry on to avoid a threat from the Elephants who then bore down on and charged my allied Cav.



The Allied foot in the meantime engaged his Off.Sp MF, both with Troop Commanders in the front line. I rolled VERY bad, 6 dice, 1,1,2,2,3,3. TC gave me 2 re-rolls - 1,1 Sad

Passed the Cohesion test though and lived to fight again. Held them next turn but lost another base, as did he. Then in the third turn, lost another and my general. In the center the legions plodded on and were about to charge into the pike. On my left one Cavalry BG ended up engaging both his BGs with the LH threatening the flanks while my Allied Cav spent three turns battling the Elephants to no avail either way...


And then we ran out of time!

We'd had quite a few rule discussions on the way and had my wife not been sat in the car waiting we may have managed one turn of legion v phalanx to see if things would swing the Roman way.

Discussions were mainly...

1. LI Bow in single line of 8 facing the legions. End base faces on BG, next 2 another, next 2 another. We think they only get to throw two dice as the end base is on its own so doesn't get one and the overlap on the other side only adds one base so they stay on 1 dice. It seemed funny that just because of how my BGs lined up 2 of the 6 bases firing were discounted?

After consulting the FoG Forums we realised that 8 base firing units should really operate in 2 ranks.

2. The battle of my allied cav v the Elephants. We only had one base each in contact and in three turns nothing really happened. It seemed strange that Cavalry were little affected by the big beasts? Maybe it was just our rolling...?

And we totally missed the Cavalry disrupted when in base width of elephants rule!

We enjoyed it anyway and will play again.

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Greetings and Salutations

>> Friday 24 July 2009

Greetings to all our readers!

I am the guy responsible for a lot of the 'Other periods' club rules. I hope you find them useful and fun!- several of them should be available to download soon!
Please understand they are just club sets and may need some explanation in places- if so please feel free to contact me via this site and i will be pleased to help!

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Westphalian 15mm game

>> Wednesday 22 July 2009



Greetings! I'm new to this blog lark but must thank Andy for all he has done to make it look so swish. The new website looks ace.
This is a simple video I made to teach myself the microsoft in-built editing software really. I hope you enjoy it.
Highlight of the battle was Jerome Napoleon's mad charge through enemy lines at the head of his bodyguard...scared the willies out of Paddy and was nice to turn the tables on those sneaky little Prussian units that do the same thing to me every week!!
cheers
Rubbs

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