2019-05-20: God of Battles, Undead vs Dwarves

Some might say I am a bit of a masochist, as I keep inviting Ulolkish  to play his Dwarves against my Undead, but we still had some house rules playtesting to do, and it feels appropriate to keep testing with the same two armies.

This time we tested this:

Pushbacks

When a melee has been fought (both sides having attacked), the unit inflicting the most casualties is the winner of that combat.

When two Formed Units (or a Formed Unit and a Tenacious Loose Unit) are fighting, instead of being locked in place until one is destroyed, use the following:

The winner decides if if he wants to Push Back the loser. I he does not decide to do so, the units remain in place. If the winner decides to Push Back, the loser is moved 4 inches directly backwards, and the winner is moved forward and placed in contact with the winner.

and:

Necromancer

When the top card of the Power Deck is flipped to attempt Raising a skeleton, if the card flipped is not of a value sufficient to raise the type of skeleton the Necromancer wishes, the Necromancer may play additional cards from his Power Hand, as if powering a Miracle.

The combined Power Value MUST equal or surpass the points cost of the target unit – for instance, you must have a combined value of at least 12 to raise an Undead Knight, although an unmodified flipped ‘10’ is enough for raising any kind of Undead model. (This part we introduced in our last game, and we have decided to keep it.)

Raise Dead

As we do not feel the Necromancer's innate ability, even with the above augmentation, to raise 1 Skeleton whenever one or more enemies are slain is providing a proper necromantic feel, we now introduce a new Necromancer Miracle:

Raise Dead
Target: Friendly eligible Undead Unit (see Effect)
Cost: 10
Effect: Raise 1 Guardian of Midnight, OR 1 Undead Knight, OR up to2 Skeleton Warriors, OR up to 3 Skeleton Archers, OR up to 4 Skeletons (Horde) and add them to a unit of the appropriate type which has suffered casualties (it may not exceed its original size).
Duration: Instant


The Necromancer may choose this Miracle to be part of his Miracle Hand, but by doing so he forfeits his right to discard one of the Miracle Cards he then draws to complete his hand. If it is not chosen in advance, it is shuffled with the rest of the Miracle Cards, and may be drawn at random like the rest of the Miracles.

The first turn saw steady advance by both armies. My Chariot and Guardians of Midnight were kept behind the flanks for now.

Turn 2, the battle lines closed in. My Skeleton Warriors took position on the hill on the left, while the Dwarven Miners passed my line.

On Turn 3, battle was joined, and the Miners surfaced in contact with my Baggage Train. My Chariot sped towards the enemy Camp.

On my extreme right my Skeleton Horde was getting hammered, and Argonor was Raising Dead like a madman to keep the unit on the battlefield.

On Turn 4 a Skeleton Horde with a Blacksoul charged the Dwarven Archers. The red dice hit on 3+, the white on 4+. This kind of dice result is not even a rare occurrence when I play wargames.

The Miners sacked my Baggage, and my Chariot moved into contact with the enemy Camp.

All over the front, my Skeletons were crumbling in droves, and my Necromancer had all but depleted his Divine Goodwill (Sacrifice Cards).

Only 4 points lost out of the 52 on the table, but almost all my units were closed to being wiped out by now.

At least, I had inflicted some casualties, and even had raised some Skeletons from the slain foes...

We did not complete Turn 5 - just for show I sacked the Dwarven Camp, but there was not much doubt that my army would break, this turn or the next, and that I could hardly hope to do any significant damage to the enemy Main Force with my decimated units. Thus, we noted this down as another Dwarven victory, and sat down to evaluate the House Rules tested.

We felt that the pushback rule needs a Morale Test for a unit to avoid pushing on when winning a combat. The test should be taken at ML -2 or -3 to make it possible even for Unbreakable units to get 'drawn out' and exposed to flank attacks and the likes. This will be tested the next time we play.

The Raise Dead Miracle worked very well. It did not upset balance, because there is a trade-off to be paid in Sacrifice Cards, and thus in effectiveness when it comes to using other Miracles and dispelling enemy Miracles.

We kind of felt that not being able to discard a Miracle to see if the Necromancer can get a more interesting one is too restrictive, and I gave it a lot of thought how to change it, without making the Necromancer too powerful.

What we agreed to try is a 5 points Rod of Resurrection working the same way as the Raise Dead Miracle, still being powered by Sacrifice Cards, but usable as many times during the Necromancer's Activation as he can pay the 10 Sacrifice pips.

With this, the Necromancer will draw Miracle Cards as normal before the game, and being able to discard one he does not want. I may even get my cold prying hands on one of the destructive Miracles some time...

2019-05-04: GoB Undead vs Dwarves AAR

Initial deployment.

Saturday, Ulolkish and I played God of Battles - still our go-to fantasy battle game.

Friday, Ulolkish announced his intention to arrive mid-morning, which made me give up on getting the Oseberg tents ready for the table Saturday (and also the big tent for my Necromancer), but both will be ready for Tuesday evening and a scrap with Kevin's Orcs!

The game was 40 pts., and we agreed on a break level of 26 pts.

• We agreed that hills and woods would Slow movement, and that the rocks were impassable (duh!).
• The giant skeleton was fielded as a unit of Guardians of Midnight (6 wounds).
• We were testing some house rules regarding push-backs between Formed Units; as it were they did not work quite to our satisfaction, and we shall try a modified version next time.
• We also tested an alternative rule regarding the Necromancer's ability to raise skeletons (an option to add Power Cards from the Necromancer's hand to the flipped card); it worked nicely, but the ability is still quite underwhelming, according to Ulolkish, who was on the 'wrong' end of it. We agreed that I shall come up with a 'Raise Dead' Miracle to add to the Lords of Undeath Miracle Deck, but in a way to not offset balance. More about this at a later time.

The Dwarves were the aggressors, and having fewer units, they maintained the Initiative for most of the game.

On Turn 1, both armies advanced steadily.

On Turn 2, the Undead phalanx reached a hill and slowed down.

Turn 3 saw the Undead left take up position on the hill, while the Dwarves were outflanking the phalanx. The Giant Guardian moved to protect the left flank.

Turn 4: The Giant Guardian was beaten back badly by the Dwarves.

On Turn 5 I made my first tactical error: Moving the Skeleton Warriors down to meet the Dwarves; I should have rotated on the spot to maintain the higher ground!

Turn 5 also saw some fighting at the center, and the Undead Phalanx began to look a bit tattered...

On Turn 6, things began to go badly wrong in earnest. My army was crumbling rapidly, and the Dwarves were too stubborn to die. Another tactical error on my part was to move the warriors on the right too far forward, exposing their flank to attack, but at this point it didn't matter a whole lot anyway.

The dwarves had reached my Camp. It was now only a matter of time before they would succeed and break my army, though.

On Turn 7, another two of my units were destroyed. The Dwarves were beaten back by my Camp Followers this time.

Only a little fighting occurred on Turn 8 (and I forgot to snap a photo of the final positions). My Camp was sacked, and my army broke.

Conclusion:
I did not manage to remove a single point from the Dwarf army, and I am a bit bewildered, as to how to get on even terms with them.

I may have to add some Skeleton Archers to my army; I can think of two ways to employ them:

1. As part of the main battle line, advancing before the close combat units in a kind of manipular/checkerboard formation, then withdrawing between the fighting units, but stil able to shoot between them. I.e. a kind of skirmishing rôle.
2. As  independent scouts/skirmishers on one or both flanks, perhaps in cooperation with Ghouls. They can then pester enemy units going for my main phalanx, even threaten their flanks, and ultimately go for the enemy Camp & Baggage if unopposed.

Fielding the Undead Knights may also be an option, as they are fast and a relatively strong unit for charging enemies in the flank, but they soak up an awful lot of points, and thus weaken on of the few advantages held by the Undeads, namely their ability to field many cheap units to put in the way of the enemy advance.

As mentioned earlier, we have decided to augment the Necromancer's raise dead abilities, and next time we shall be testing a new Miracle to see, if we can give the Unded a little more staying power and even out the odds a bit, I just do not want to tweak too much, before I have tried more options with the army - but even Ulolkish seems to think that the dead are too easily dispatched, so we shall see... 

As we had not played for quite some time, we spent an awful lot of time flipping through the rules - If from now on we manage to play at least once a month, gaming time should shorten considerably (we spent almost six hours on this game, without any breaks for snacks or drinks). I did not suffer a lot of fatigue from the experience, even though I am suffering from a bad cold, and this goes a long way to explain why I prefer God of Battles over other fantasy battle systems I have encountered: It flows easily, you don't have downtime while your opponent moves his entire army (GoB has alternate unit activation), and the turns kinda flow together, so it really feels like one long game with short alternating turns instead of a series of very long turns.

Galleys & Galleons: First Game, Part 2

After the erratic broadside (see part 1 of this AAR), the man'o'War moved on.

The Pirate Frigate came about and closed on the Britons, firing wildly in the process, again without scoring a hit, but again taking Damage from Shallow Waters.

The Xebec did not get sufficient Actions for firing its guns.

I tried another Full Broadside, but my Master Gunners could not hit a barn from ten feet away...

...and then moved along. I would soon have to start thinking about some maneuvering...

The Frigate rammed my ship - neither of them took any damage from the impact.

The Xebec missed again...

Then a couple of Boarding Actions were carried out, resulting in the Frigate surrendering. As Bed-time was drawing close, we called that the Xebec would flee from the scene, thus ending the game.

Thoughts after the first game:

Wind and maneuvering:

Works really well. I think I am going to make some house rules regarding reducing and adding sails, though, as I don't really like the 'sails popping back up by themselves' situation (and I want ships to be able to come to a halt without turning into 'In Irons'). I'll probably use tokens on the ship roster to mark reduced sails, requiring 1 Action for each token to be added/removed - more about it at a later occasion.

Combat:

The Man'o'War with its C5 proved impossible to damage. I am not sure that I like the way this works; chance of hitting a target should not be influenced by the target's abilities, but rather be a target number depending on range and size of the target. Then, of course, we get another problem, namely that all vessels, independent of size, have only three hit points, and a large vessel like the Man'o'War will then be crippled far too easily... I need to play more games to see if things even out, but in this game, Lea had twice as many points as me, and she did not manage to inflict a single hit on my ship. Of course, she did half the damage to her ship herself, by sailing too close to an island, but still...

Galleys & Galleons: First Game, Part 1

Instead of cleaning more plastic Greeks when getting up this afternoon from sleeping after night watch, I set up a table for playing Galleys & Galleons with Lea (it was raining for the first time in over a month, so tennis was out of the question).

Lea took command of a small Pirate fleet, while I commanded a British Man'o'War trying to clear the archipelago of scum and villainy.

The first couple of turns of course consisted of a lot of maneuvering.

The largest Pirate vessel came too close to one of the islands, and took Damage.

My ship got in range, and opened up on the Pirate Xebec, and scored a single hit...

,,,then altered its course slightly.

The Pirate Frigate turned 'In Irons', and fired its bow chasers, but missed.

The Xebec raced closer and fired at the Man'o'War, but also missed.

I took the opportunity to fire a Full Broadside at the Xebec, but completely missed.

And this concludes the first part of this AAR, as I have to get ready for going to work later this evening. I may manage to get the next part done during the night, if things are calm at work.

2018-05-06, Black Powder: Testing the Rules

Sunday afternoon I was visiting one of my oldest friends and gaming buddies, Michael, with my entire family, and I was bringing my 1/72 Bavarians, some terrain, and the Black Powder rules for a test run.

Archduke Michael had dusted off his Austrians and we set up two roughly equal forces (we do not tend to fuss about with points values).

I had prepared army lists with troop types and profiles for both sides, so we could get stuck in fairly quickly.

We played on my new 3x3 mat, using cm. instead of inches, each battalion 8 figures (1 rank = line, 2 ranks = attack column, 2 files = march column), cavalry regiments only 4 figures (normally, I would use 8 figures, 2 bases, for the possibility of using different formations, but for some reason I never got around to paint the second half of the Bavarian cavalry regiments, so Michael just mirrored that).

Our initial setup. The Kaiser's line infantry came on in massive columns, with the light infantry and light dragoons spread out on their left flank, while the Electorate's finest were deployed more thinly, with light infantry in skirmish formation up front screening the line infantry advance, and the cavalry (Cuirassiers and Chevaulegers) placed on the right, ready to advance on the enemy position.

Archduke Michael opened the ball with a blunder, sending half of his line infantry and artillery marching off towards Vienna.

This unforeseen turn of events of course made the Austrians a bit reluctant to advance - the remaining line infantry brigade was rearranged to make up for the loss of the entire right flank...

...whereas the Bavarians sounded general advance, the center forming into line for more firepower.

The Austrian commander desperately sent off one aide-de-camp after another to order the German infantry brigade back onto the field, but with little effect. The Bavarians closed in on the weakened Austrian position which started some spread fire.

The Bavarian cavalry brigade thundered forward to the sound of picket fire from the skirmishing light infantry.

The Austrian light infantry formed squares, which halted the attack. Luckily for the Austrians, one of the aide-de-camps had found the stray infantry brigade, and it now reappeared behind their right flank.

The Bavarians kept closing in on the enemy position, while the Austrians built up a massive infantry column on their right flank.

Two Bavarian battalions charged one of the Austrain squares...

...and broke it.

In response, the Austrian light dragoons closed in, but the Bavarian attack columns quickly reformed into square.

The light Austrians formed attack column and retired a few yards.

The massive Austrian  attack column charged the skirmishing light infantry, which evaded (I did not do this entirely correctly, but pulled them a bit to the side - they should have moved directly backwards, but this is what test games are for). The Hungarian infantry in the center also advanced to point blank range of the Bavarian line.

The Bavarian line steadied itself and delivered a full strength volley. Not enough to shake the Hungarians, though! The light infantry formed into attack column to be able to support the line against the expected attack.

The Bavarians on the left flank charged the Austrian massed infantry and took some beating, but held their ground.

We had now reached dinner time (we were barbecuing tenderloin and some mushrooms, potatoes, and cabbage), and decided to call it a day.

One or two turns more would probably have seen some decisive action - I fear my leftmost infantry would have been annihilated, but hoped to be able to break the enemy center, and bring up the regiment lingering in the field at centre left to prevent the massed Austrians in turning my line.

As we left the battle, it may have swung either way.

We both liked the ease of the game flow, and we agreed that a lot of the situations arising 'felt right'.

I did not discuss this, but one aspect I find less enticing is the emphasis on decisive charges. I think it is too easy to just bunch up a heavy mass of attack columns and drive forward - if you get 3 moves you can move from well out of reach of muskets and only suffer closing fire - but I have to play more games to fully get the impression of how it affects the game.

Shall we play Black Powder again. Yes. Will it be our first choice of  Napoleonic rules? Maybe - for me it depends heavily on what else I come across, and how this holds up against other sets. I am definitely set on playing nappies on a regular basis, again. It was my first and foremost wargaming love, and there is not much I enjoy more than a gaming table filled with soldiers in neat rows and colourful uniforms!

Chivalry: Test of the Jousting Rules

Back in April, Ulolkish/Duregar and I playtested the draft for my Chivalry jousting rules, and we used a mock-up 'jousting field', divided into two build-up areas and a presenting area (the middle-section).

We played through a full 'Round', consisting of three 'Passes', and in the third Pass. my marginally more experienced knight brought down his opponent, horse and all.

The losing knight was badly injured, and I may have to adjust the rules to avoid too many participants in a Tournée being forced to forfeit due to injuries.

I have not had time to do further work on the Chivalry project since April, as Blood Eagle has taken up most of my hobby time, and I need to figure out how and where to get iron/steel bases made to match two 25mm washers, but with straight side edges.