RPGaDay 2017 #6

Question #6

You can game every day for a week. Describe what you’d do!

Well… it depends…

This seems like a question that’s meant to inspire you to dream a little – like wow wouldn’t this be cool if we could game every day for a week?! But I’m in a position that I potentially COULD game every day for a week. Heck for the last few years we’ve played a game every day for the month of September!? Often when there are school breaks and the kids don’t have activities we DO play games all week long…

So… How do I answer this question? What would I do different? What am I going to do NEXT time we have a week off and want to do some gaming? It really would depend on who is going to be available for this week. Would I have one group of people that will be available EVERY DAY for that week? Are we talking gaming ALL DAY for every day of the week? How much preparation time do I have…?

I guess if I could get the right people together, and they could play all day, every day for a whole week I’d love to run an entire complete, marathon-session, RPG campaign from character creation to ultimate epic conclusion. Or possibly an extended miniature campaign – like the ones I’ve done over a weekend, but extend it to an entire week!

Which campaign? Well, that would really depend on what people could make it!

I guess if we were dreaming and assuming if there was anything I organized the right people would be available to play... well I always thought the idea of a D&D Birthright campaign sounded interesting. I wouldn't use any of the actual D&D Birthright stuff, but just the idea that the players take on the roles of nobility with land and armies at their disposal... and have to defend their lands against neighbouring nobles that desire to take it by guile or force... or bring disparate, feuding nobles together to fight against a greater enemy...? It'd be fun to incorporate some miniature battles into it either Lion Rampant/Dragon Rampant or DBA/Hordes of the Things (depending on the scale of action). 

Another campaign I'd LOVE to run over an extended weekend (or a week) would be a HUGE Song of Shadows and Dust campaign -with, like, 12 players. Each would have their own faction and their own home turf - I would have a huge map of their city and the different neighbourhoods and districts. Each district would have a different benefit to the controlling player. There would be more neighbourhoods than players, so to start they could fight over new neighbourhoods and once they were all snapped up they would have to try and expand into other's turf while simultaneously trying to defend their own. I'd also like to works some chariot racing into it using Faustus Furius.

Another idea I had was to have a campaign on two different levels (this wouldn't be a one week sort of thing, but rather run over a number of months). On one level I would have a group of players locally that would be playing a medieval-ish fantasy campaign as a minor noble and their retinue that has just come into power, surrounded by potentially hostile neighbours. On the other level I could have other players - playing by email, perhaps, that represent the aforementioned hostile neighbours. So on one level it would run like some of the other play-by-email miniature campaigns I've ran in the past (like the one I ran... oh... eight years ago!?) except in the midst of this war there would be an actual role-playing group of adventurers trying to do... well... whatever it is they are trying to do. Oooh - maybe if they players actually decided to travel to the lands to negotiate with the leaders of the other factions I could organize Skype session with them! 

Game Plan 2012 – Second Quarter

Well with the Dark Age DBA Campaign and the Analogue Hobbies Spring Thaw Painting Challenge all over with it’s time to take a look ahead and see what I’m planning for the rest of the year…

According to the original 2012 Game Plan I was planning to run a Hordes of the Things campaign in June and the Battle of Queenston Heights in October. I’d also planned to play a number of Board Games, of which I have managed to play NONE!?

Currently I am still planning to run a Hordes of the Things campaign in June some time, but it will likely be a smaller affair with a few select individuals – that I may actually PLAY with! All previous campaigns I’ve only ran the show and acted as referee. I figure if I invite a very small group of people I can trust not to argue about rules and stuff I wouldn’t have to feel the need to maintain that position of “un

As for the Battle of Queenston Heights… Well… We’ll see where we’re at in June after the HOTT campaign and see where we want to go.

Board Games…? Pffft! I have no idea when I’m ever going to get around to those… I just can’t seem to find the time! Weekends and evenings just seem to be too busy with other regularly scheduled activities.

Other Recent Ideas, Plans, and Distractions…

Vimy!?

I had thought I might try and dig out the Vimy Stuff and get the terrain fixed up to run a game on the 9 April 2012 – it’s Easter Monday – as it was on 9 April 1917 when the Canadians attacked Vimy Ridge… But that’s less than three weeks away and there’s a LOT of work to be done to fix up the terrain… so unless there was a great outcry of interest for this… Anyone…? Anyone…?

Ongoing DBA/HOTT campaign

John, I think, had suggested a regular ongoing HOTT or DBA campaign – which I would be all over – but again, finding the right people, and having them all be able to play at the same time on a regular weekly… or biweekly… or monthly(!?) basis…

Savage Worlds Campaigns

Adult Dragonlance - this is what I had been running through the fall and winter on (Savage) Saturday Nights and had been going pretty good for a while… but we haven’t played in over a month… partly due to preparation for the Dark Age DBA campaign… partly due to other s being away or busy with other things. I’ve been losing steam on this…

Kids Dragonlance - A campaign I’ve been running for my kids and a couple other homeschooled kids. There have been some interruptions to this campaign as well… we did get back at it a couple weeks ago, but missed last week as I was dreadfully ill… I bought all those darn Dragonlance books – I’m darn well going to run the campaign to the bitter end for at least ONE of the groups!

If I had any sense at all I’d just get back on the horse and get the Saturday night one going again – running the two campaigns simultaneously would ease my game prep workload as for I only have to prepare once and get two games out of it…

Kids Greek Myth!! My kids are super stoked about Greek Myth right now… and Foundry has conveniently released a line of Greek Mythology figures… of which I’ve ordered a few (well… MOST…). I’ve also been working on some Greek Hoplite armies for DBA as well as some individual figures for Savage Worlds Skirmishin’… so I’ve been thinking about starting a SECOND campaign for them to play in… just not sure when… and with whom… Perhaps it will be just for the kids, or perhaps we will recruit some new players…

Adult Mythos/WW2 Ghostbusters meet Gangbusters…!!! Christian brought my attention to Achtung Cthulhu! - which, I’m not about to run out and buy… and if I did (or someone else bought it FOR me…) I’d really only use it as fluff reference for a Savage Worlds campaign… but it did get me thinking about relaunching a reloaded version of our Cthulhu Campaign or the Weird War Two Campaign… I’ve been thinking about the Cthulhu campaign quite a bit for a while now – instead of even attempting any sort of classic horror campaign (as there has been nothing horrific about the campaign so far - since nobody seems to be able to take any of the Saturday night games remotely seriously!?) I thought I’d relaunch it as a Two-Fisted, Guns-blazing Gangbusters-meets-Ghostbusters, Over-the-Top Pulp Comedy Adventure campaign…

I’d actually picked up the Call of Cthulhu’s Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign book and even picked up some mountaineer and polar explorer figures and some Gebirgsjagers ages ago and was planning pretty much the same thing (as Acthung Cthulhu) - making one of the rival explorer groups NAZIS!? Shortly after that the campaign would catch up with and cross over with the Weird War Two campaign... which would become a whole lot weirder...

Of course that doesn't take place until The late 1930s... and we left off the campaign in 1922.... I'd plotted out a timeline of all the Cthulhu Adventures I own through the 20s and 30s.... and there were many...

So many games to play… so little time…

PAINTING

Well what to get painting then…? a few of the things weighing heavily on my mind at the moment…
Greek Myth – when they arrive…
DBA Hoplite armies! Acouple of them to run a campaign!
DBA Egyptians (just bought some during the recent Foundry sale…)
DBA Nubians? (don’t actually have any… but they’d be a good historical opponent for the Egyptians and relatively small and quick and easy to paint up…)
Space Ships – I don’t know… I just feel like painting some…
20mm WW2 Germans (Heer and SS), Canadians, Paras?
28mm WW2! Because a lot of it is so close to completion… and the whole Weird War Two thing…
28mm Great War!? Since I finished the Russian Infantry Brigade and recently played an Ever Contemptible Victorious Little Black Powder Armies (of DOOM!) game… and had a lot of fun!
Finish up some stuff to sell off…

Hmmmm… the 1812 stuff didn’t even get on that list… maybe I should can the idea of Queenston Heights for this year and plan for a Greek Hoplite/City State campaign for the fall!

SELLING STUFF

I’ve been thinking (for a looooong time) it’s time to start getting rid of some stuff… Some of it I’ll never use.. some of it I might… but I’d rather have something else and I have limited space…
HOTT Elves and Orcs
15mm WW2 8th Army, DAK, Early War Germans
Isengard HOTT army?
Rohan HOTT army?

Dark Age DBA Campaign… Some thoughts…

Lessons learned, etc….

As Christian has mentioned in the comments of one of the other posts I think this was the most successful of the campaigns I’ve run so far. This was a combination of the players involved plus some minor tweaking/evolution of the campaign rules over time. There are a few changes I’d make if running it again (or other campaigns) – and I very much hope to do so! (on a fairly regular basis!)

Gary commented was that he wasn’t killed by his enemy, but by the sea – and that it would have been more honourable to die in battle. An odd comment from a guy that spend half of his first battle hiding in a swamp… but he makes a very good point. I don’t th ink I want to completely remove that, but think I would change the sea losses to a d3 instead of a d6.

I might also make SOME sea routes “safe” mark them in black like overland routes and they wouldn’t have to be diced for in the spring or fall. I’m thinking mostly of the two routes into Roskilde. I’ve effectively done that with the route from Oslo to Nidaros – I doubt very much that there would have been a regularly used overland route between those two areas and that most travel would have been by boat following along the coast.

I’d definitely want to add some more travel lanes. I wanted to keep this as much like the wagon wheel schematic campaign diagram with isolated capitals (capitals that could not be reached without first attacking at least one of the players other cities first. I didn’t want to make too many cities TOO accessible – cities with three or four (or more!) ways leading into them. But as I don’t really have a center city that all can get to I think I’ve created some bottlenecks…


I’d definitely add one from Shetland to York, and probably from Oslo to Ribe and/or Cambridge. I might also consider Lind Duchail to Nottinghanam and/orLoch Garmon to Exeter? Would Lind Duchaill to Deganwy put too many routes into that area?

Of course adding in the West Franks and East Franks would change a lot of this…

I had considered at one point doing Sea Zones – where a move from one city to another within the same Sea Zone would be considered one move and not require dicing for loss at sea, moving from a city in one Sea Zone to a city in another Seas Zone would count as two moves and would require dicing for loss at sea… but there’s so many capitals that are on the ocean I couldn’t figure out a way to effectively isolating them…

This has gotten me pretty stoked about the idea of painting up a few Greek Hoplite armies for a Greek City-State War/Peloponesian War campaign (well, and the fact that my kids are nuts about Ancient/Mythic Greece right now… and I HAVE figures for two Hoplite armies and have already started them… and the fact that Jackson already has a Spartan army!). I think one of the advantages to such a campaign is that all the participants would have more or less the same army, removing the trump card army of the Normans. A feudal Japan campaign as Phil suggested in the comments on the previous post could also be similar (and a bit more dynamic – as there would be a few more troop types to play around with – yet everyone still has a pretty level playing field).

The one thing I worry about in adding East and West Franks to this map is the addition of two Knight-heavy armies… It would be idea if they would quarrel among themselves, but if you get two friends running them they could end up destroying everyone.

An interesting idea from the simple rules laid out in the DBA3.0 draft that could easily be added to this system and remove the two friends back to back issue is adding a bunch of cards with the names of all the countries on them which are dealt out at the beginning of each year. If you are dealt a card with the name of a player that you currently share a border with (i.e. have a direct travel route from one of your cities to one of their cities) you MUST declare war on them and attack them in the spring.

There was a problem with forcing players to attack other players and letting other players know about out in a previous campaign – other players could potentially take advantage of that knowledge and attack a neighbor that they knew would be busy attacking their other neighbor. This could easily be circumvented by doing it during the declaration phase AFTER all the players had secretly written down who they want to declare war on and simply add the card drawn to their declarations – or even deal it out before declarations are made but do it secretly so players can decide NOT to invade BOTH neighbors (if they’d originally been planning on invading the opposite neighbor indicated on the card). Does that make sense…?

Oh I forgot to mention elsewhere - the one change we made to the 3.0 rules was to add a caveat to the rules involving placement of terrain - that when dicing for a quarter to put a terrain piece in if the result indicated a quarter in which there was already a piece of terrain, the defender may roll again, but most accept the outcome of the second roll. I think this worked very well. Some of the earlier games of 3.0 ended up with some very lop-sided terrain. I don't think there was anything really terrible in any of the fields of battle generated by our tweak. Also we added that bad-going much be diced for first - because it was conceivable that if you had all gentle hills plus one piece of bad-going - if the bad-going was diced for last I could possible be placed in a quarter in which there was no room and therefore be discarded which could leave a table without any bad-going at all!

Anyway… just a few ideas…? I’m sure I’ll think of other things in the following weeks and months.…

Anybody else have any ideas…? Please leave a comment!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I have no idea. I need to take a break from the late nights of painting minis and get going on some other projects (comics, painting pictures, etc…). I have a bunch of Greeks and West Franks and space ships and 20mm WW2 Soviets all polluting my work station already… hard to say which will see paint first…

Dark Age DBA Campaign - Year Three

Carrying on from Year Two…

(and if you haven’t read the Year One’s report, you probably should do that too…)

YEAR THREE

Declarations of War
IN this third and final year of our saga The Norse, Scots, Irish and Welsh all declared war on Wessex! Wessex and the Normans declared war on the Welsh… Mercia declared war on no one. And the Danes declared war on Norway!?

Deployment
The Danes started the year with their grand army of three elements (just enough to spend a whole year besieging cities up north) mustered in Aarhus. The Welsh rallied to the flag in Caer Gurricon. The Scots started in Dumbarton. The Irish wandered south to Loch Gurricon. The Army of Wessex started in their capitol of Winchester. The Norse remained in Burghead. And the Normans started off on the coast at Dieppa.


SPRING

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


It was no surprise that the Danes sailed for Oslo and laid siege to it. They had no trouble getting there but the defenders proved resilient and the Danes numbers slowly melted away (mostly due to men deserting to run off with the local ladies and start up new farms of their own…).

The Welsh Marched on London but found no the Army of Wessex there, but the Horsemen of the Normans, freshly across the channel! The Mercians marched into their old town of Nottigham to send a contingent to aid their overlords and the Irish Sailed across the sea to Deganwy and marched further inland to Caer Gurricon to also aid in the attack on Wessex. A token contingent of the Army of Wessex marched out of Winchester for London to aid the Normans who were now fighting their battles for them.

The Norse spent the spring in Burghead keeping an ear to the steady north wind for any news of trouble back in Oslo…

The Battle of London


Once again setting up in the living room – where there’s comfy chairs for all…


Once again Keira was enlisted as Dice rolling assistant, as she had proven so lucky for the Norse…


The Normans Galloped up to the Welsh line… and stopped…


Perhaps they were waiting for the contingent from Wessex that arrived.

(The Irish arrived too!)


As the Wessex and Irish contingent rushed to the front line, some Norman knights galloped around the Welsh flank.


As the Knights on the flank began to roll it up, the main line of Norman Knights charged the main Welsh line.


The results were to be expected- punching a hole right through the center of the Wlesh line. Well… except for that one Warband destroying the Knights that charged against them…


Having made such a hole the Normans turned out and stared making their way toward the flanks rolling up the line from the center!?


The battle was over in a jiffy…

The Welsh lost four Warband and a Psiloi, The Normans two Knights. The Normans netted 3 Victory Points. London remained part of Wessex.

This being the second Welsh loss in a row, Mercia was able to shrug off the shackles of vassaldom and once again became a free independent state of their own…


SUMMER



The Welsh were obliged to retire to Caer Gurricon and the Irish were bumped back to Deganwy. The Mercians remained in (Welsh!) Nottingham and the Scotts held in York but sent a contingent to aid in the defense of Wales.

The Army of Wessex passed through London on their way to Caer Gurricon, picking up a contingent of Normans to aid them in the Invasion of Wales.

The Danes continued their siege of Oslo… and continued to see their army shrink away as the days got long and hot…


The Battle of Caer Gurricon


Setting up a peaceful stretch of the Welsh countryside.

Finally a game downstairs!


Cory even got out some of his camp followers – including his wooly Highland cattle.


And here the whining began in earnest… “OooOOOoooh.. Those hills look so steeeeeeep… Do we really have to go up them….? Can’t you come down?”


The Welsh mountain stronghold looked strangely similar to a Dwarven stronghold…?


I think on the very first bound the Norman contingent arrived – the Cavalry come to save the day…


The view from the Welsh side.


The the Army of Wessex begins it’s advance…


Shortly after the Scots and then the Mercians arrived! The board started looking rather crowded!


A glorious battle…

Can you tell I'm getting tired of this...


Groups of Saxon spear stood at the bottom of the hill and just outside the forest to encourage the Welsh to stay within or upon while the rest went off to fight the Newly arrived Mercians. Meanwhile the Scots and the Normans had a little cavalry battle on the flank.


What a mess…


It looked really cool though…

My mind was shutting down at this point… Luckily I wrote down that the Welsh (and friends) won. Wessex lost an element of Spear and an element of Psiloi, while the Normans lost two Knights and their bow. The only losses on the defending side was an Element of Scottish Cavalry. The Welsh scored a victory point, as did the Mercians, and the Scots scored TWO! Pretty good for an allied contingent of three stands!

AUTUMN



The Norse, worried the Danes might take Oslo this season, sailed back and tried to relieve the siege. They sailed through some rough seas along the way and lost two elements of Blade in the process.

The Irish marched through Caer Gurricon to London hot on the heels of the Retiring Army of Wessex. At London they found the remains ofhte Norman army waiting there for them, while the Army of Wessex continued on to Winchester.

The Scots marched south to Cambridge and laid siege to the Wessex garrison


The Second Battle of London


The remains of the Norman army lines up to defend London.

I was barely even taking pictures at this point… The Irish charged and managed to overwhelm the Normans by sheer numbers. The Normans were swept away before the green tide and London was captured by the Irish! (Two victory points to the Irish!)


The Relief of Oslo


By the time the Norse arrived at Oslo the Danes were down to a single element of Blade…


Seriously… he gave battle… You never know…

The Danes were wiped out again and Oslo remained in the possession of the Norse.


So here’s how it all looked at the end of times…

Cory - Wessex (Orange) Capital: Winchester, Other Cities: Exeter, Canterbury, Cambridge
12VP for cities + 3 VP for battles = 15 total Victory Points

Jackson - Mercia (Yellow) Capital: Lincoln? Other Cities: York
6VP for cities + 1 VP for battles = 7 total Victory Points

Rick- Norway (White) Capital: Nidaros, Other Cities: Oslo, Shetlands, Burghead
12VP for cities + 4VP for tributaries cities + 7 VP for battles = 23 total Victory Points

Gary - Denmark (Purple) Capital: Roskilde, Other Cities: Aarhus
6VP for cities + 0 VP for battles = 6 total Victory Points

Rowan - Normandy (Grey) Capital: Rouen, Other Cities: Cherbourg, Dieppa, Ribe
12VP for cities + 4VP for tributaries cities + 7 VP for battles = 23 total Victory Points

John - Ireland (Green) Capital: Duiblinn, Other Cities: Lind Duachaill, Loch Garman, London,
12VP for cities + 2 VP for battles = 14 total Victory Points

Terry - Scotland (Blue) Capital: Scone, Other Cities: Dumbarton
6VP for cities + 2 VP for battles = 8 total Victory Points

Christian - Wales (Red) Capital: Dinefur, Other Cities: Deganwy, Caer Guricon, Nottingham
12VP for cities + 6 VP for battles = 18 total Victory Points

So Rowan and Rick were exactly tied at 23 Victory Points!

Thanks to all that participated. I need to go to bed now…

Dark Age DBA Campaign Year Two

Carrying on from Year One…

(Seriously, if you haven’t read the previous year’s report, you probably should…)

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)

There was considerably more negotiation before the beginning of Year Two – pairs and groups sneaking off to different corners of the house to try and make deals and plans….


Christian (Wales) and Cory (Wessex) try to strike some bargain…


Rick (Norse) presumably giving his vassal Terry (Scots) instructions for the year…

There were others all over… but they were in dark corners of the house and the pics didn’t turn out… so…

YEAR TWO

Declarations of War
There was a tad more beligerance this second year. Weesex declared war on Mercia!? Persumably to invade and free them from the shackles of Welsh oppression…? The Scots also declared War on Mercia… as did the Norse… In return Mercia declared war on The Scots and... Normandy? So Mercia ended up at war with Wessex, Scotland, Norway, and Normandy… half the map.

The Danes and the Normans declared war on each other, but the Normans also declared war on... the Irish!? (just in case, I guess...)

The Welsh declared war on Scotland and the Irish declared war on no one, once again… Though technically, due to the Norman’s bizarre declaration, they were technically “at war” with Normandy!?

SPRING


In the Spring The Mercian Army rallied to the flag at Cambridge and the Army of Wessex gathered at London. They planned to march to each other’s territories, but WEssex was apparently more efficient in their preparations for this years campaign and marched into Cambridge before the Mercians were ready to move.

The Scots overwintered in their capital of Scone and there they stayed throughout the spring, presumably rebuilding after the sacking by their new overlords… The Norse overwintered in Burghead to get a quick start on things in the spring, and marched to Dumbarton as early as it was possible to do so.

The Welsh Gathered in Nottingham to begin their campaigning this year, but only marched as far as York in the Spring.

Oh, I think I forgot to mention that the Irish lost six elements of their army in their retreat to winter quarters at the end of Year One… so they were busy rebuilding their army at Lind Duachaill… which may account for their lack of aggression this year…


The Danes were quick to march on Ribe in the spring. They moved swiftly (which was easy enough, due to their lack of numbers…) and caught the Normans before they were ready to march (as the Normans had, indeed, planned on sailing for Roskilde this spring).

The Second “Battle” of Ribe


The Danes “attacking” with three elements (as all that remained of the entire army – after the battles ans sieges of the previous year – was entirely wiped out in a terrible storm at sea during their return to winter quarters…) decided to hide in the woods…


Rowan obligingly brought the fight to the “attacker” (that’s the spirit).

Technically he could have sat at his edge of the table and said “go on, attack!” for an hour (or until I got bored) and declared victory for the defender (due to the attacker failing to actually attack).


Since the bulk of the army was hiding in the woods Rowan decided to go sack their camp. As the Danes only had three elements, sacking the camp (counting as a loss) would end the game. This eventually sucked the Danes out of the woods and the force was entirely wiped out… again…

After this the Danes sued for peace and declared the Normans their overlord and the shattered remains of their army retired to Roskilde to begin rebuilding anew…

The Normans scored two more victory points (they lost an archer, The Danes lost their General and an element of Balde).


The Battle of Cambridge


The opposing English armies line up opposite each other.


Jackson (Mercia) left, and Cory (Wessex) right. John (Ireland) is on the couch drinking beer and heckling as any decent Irishman should!


The lines meet and chaos ensues.


The battle, I recall, was pretty quick and rather one-sided. The Mercians lost an element each of Spear, Blade and Psiloi, The Army of Wessex ended the battle relatively unscathed. The Mercians simply had no fight in them. Probably demoralized from being beaten by the dirty little Welshmen and having to accept their harsh overlordship… Can you blame them?


SUMMER


In the summer, having accepted the Danes as their tributary, the Normans sailed for England landing at Wessex-controlled Cambridge! The Welsh tired of waiting around for the Scots or Norse to invade marched on Dumbarton and found, not the Scots, but their overlords the Norse there, preparing to march south to England. There they did battle…

The Scots had actually snuck past Dumbarton and sailed for Deganwy and laying siege to it! The Welsh sat in their hilltop fortress and rained insults and rocks down on the Scots throughout the summer to which the Scots had little to reply – lacking wit and proper siege equipment…. The Siege dragged on into the fall.

The Irish, just to keep everyone guessing about whom they might come to the aid of, marched south to Loch Garman… would they sail across in the Autumn to lift the Siege of Deganwy…?

The Mercians fled to Lincoln and kiept on going right up to York. Into the vacuum they left the Armyof Wessex marched, laying siege to Lincoln. The Welsh garrison proved a little harder to winkle out than the Mercians did on their own the prevous year. This siege also dragged on well into the fall.


The Battle of Dumbarton


Rick (Norse Vikings – setting up on the left) recruited Keira to roll dice for him, having proved herself “lucky” in his previous battles against the Scots… Christian (Welsh) sets up his forces opposite. Jackson (Mercia – and Ricks’ son, and Christian’s vassal) and Terry (Scotland – Rick’s vassal) anxiously look on…


As it was the only battle of the season everyone gathered in the living room. Despite the large gaming table in the basement with plenty of room to stans around – no battles were fought there until the third year? The first battles of the first year were fought upstairs in the dinign room and living room – because everyone thought it would be easier to go back and forth between the two and catch all the action – rather than having to go round the corner, up the stairs, through the kitchen and back to see what’s going on… and after that most battles took place upstairs…


The Welsh and Scots meet – battering at each other like the wild savages that they are…


Things go poorly for the Vikings at the outset – the Welsh Smash through the center of their line slaying all before them. The Norse had some success of their own a little to the right of the Welsh devastation.


The Vikings on the hill charge down at the Welsh, who were too damn tired form walking all the way from York to go marching up another damn hill to fight some blasted Vikings sitting on the very top!


The momentum from their charge scattered all before them and set the Welsh to route!

Dumbarton was held and the Welsh scarpered back to York…


AUTUMN


I think this is actually a picture taken after everyone retreated to winter quarters….

Very little took place in the Autumn of Year Two. Wessex and the Scots continued their respective sieges without success, both armies had to return home less a few of their comrades.

The Welsh continued their retreat all the way to Nottignham (having found York already occupied by the terrified Mercians!). The Norse chose not to pursue the Welsh into Mercia…? I’m guessing Rick just didn’t want to beat down his already broken son and take away the last city he had – other than his capital… which was currently under siege… Jackson would have had to face the Vikings at York or retreated to Lincoln to attempt to relieve the siege…

The Irish getting bored of Loch Garman (and drank the local pubs dry) marched to Duiblinn hoping a fresh view of the sea and fully stocked alehouses would lift their spirits.

The Normans marched south to Canterbury, perhaps preparing for their return to Normandy.

Year Two ended with The Mercians still tributary to the Welsh (though they were feeling like they might get a chance to lift that mantle, should the Welsh be defeated again…), The Scots were still Tributaries of the Norse, and the Danes now Tributaries of the Normans. The Norse held onto their toehold in Burghead but were unable to spread their influence. The Welsh held on to Nottigham and Wessex now owned Cambridge, leaving only York and Lincoln under control of the Mercians. The Normans controlled Ribe and the Danes, once again, had no army to speak of…

At the end of Year Two we actually though we might get in a fourth year… but it was not to be… By the end of Year Three everyone had had about as much excitement as they could handle in one day… Stay tuned for the report of that final and most turbulent year!