The White Cloaks: Battle of Lake Clove

 The Templar War Otter "Luxemborg" has been running from two Basque War sepents for several hours, drawing them upriver to their base.  Finally the trap is sprung-  a smoke screen conceals the 2 other war otters that emerge and run at the enemy, prepared to ram and board them.

 Luck is with the Templar, they score hits, dismount the enemies ballista and boarding action commences.

 The Luxemborg drops boarding ramps and the men go in.

 On the Command deck, the Luxemborg's ballista has missed with every precious exploding fireball bolt they had, except the last one...

...which scores a hit on the enemy command deck and starts a fire.

 The Templars take the forecastle, despite some losses.  The enemy commander, Lord Jose Matamoros, demands single combat with Sir Hiffin, who obliges.  The feign and parry for several rounds until Sir Hiffin lands a devastating impalement through Sir Matamoros cheek, leaving him reeling.  Sir Hiffin follows with a crippling blow to his weapon hand, ending the fight and Matamoros strikes his colors and surrenders the ship.
Out in the river the Doorman and Dezevin have also taken their prize after a desperate boarding action that went either way for a while.

This is a homegrown fantasy RPG setting using GURPS (old versions) for the roleplaying and single combats and 28mm figures from Old Glory, Crusader, Black Tree, some old lines I forget like Grenadier/copplestone.  Naval rules are homemade.  Ships were made from foam core shortly before the game so sadly I didn't get a chance to paint them.

The White Cloaks, Part 3

Some new flags for AWI

Found these on ebay from a pleasant seller called "the gaming room".  Reasonably priced and good quality.

The first ones I have put to use are the Queens Rangers.   Did the QR have flags or use them in battle?   I don't really know or care-  I have the figures so they needed flags!

When there's no more room in the closet, the lead shall walk the Earth.

The Nerdcave is complete.  Finally a place to work, shelves to hold all (almost all!) the minis and a table for gaming and projects.

Longstreet Lite test game

Downloaded the lite version from the website plus 2 decks of cards.  Dug out some old 15mm ACW my dad painted many moons ago (ps- if anyone recognizes the manufacturer please let me know.  I think they are minifigs from the 1980s but not sure)

Sample game is a basic meeting engagement at a farm.  Rebs to the left, Yanks to the right.

The first thing I had to come to grips with was having to use precious cards you just knew you would want later in the game just to get the troops moving.

Yanks move a gun and an infantry unit up the hill on the right flank.

After routing a unit of yanks out of the woods on the left flank these rebs turn the zouaves flank.



Finally coming into musket range.  The rebs threw a "swampy ground" card in front of the yanks on the right to keep them from closing into melee.

The rebs come off the loser in the musket exchamge.  At this point they reached the break point of 9 bases lost.  I had misunderstood how to play this and thought I was supposed to meet or exceed but you actually start dicing when you get within 6 of it, but I don't have enough bases to play that way.

I figured I would give the rebs their turn since I didn't know if the game should end AT the brealpoint or after it was exceeded.  With their fire the rebs knocked out 3 yankee bases to a total of 10, so by my on the spot rule changes the rebs squeaked out a win.

Somehow even when I play solo I get the feeling I lost...

Lessons learned:  I think I am better off having fewer but larger units.  4 base units just didn't throw out much firepower.  I don't think I ever had to use morale cards to lower the loses.  Having more units made it very hard to get the troops into combat range.  You only get 6 cards a turn which means you can only fire/move six units that turn but that would deprive you of any action modifiers and leave you completely vulnerable to lucky enemy casualty rolls as well as burn through your deck very fast.  It is more realistic to think you will fire/move 3 units a turn.
All in all it seems a promising game with a lot of tactical decisions to make during each phase.

Battle of Jackson Heights (A Combatpainter saga)

A WW2 action.  US Airborne supported by armor attacking through hedgerows into Grench town defended by Germans.  28mm scale.  Used Disposable Heroes rules with some home grown modifications.

I had these Force on Force Fog of War cards I wanted to make use of so we added them to the game, modifying them to match the WW2 setting and DH rules.
They turned out to be a better deal for the Americans, as they got an extra tank show up as reinforcement and the Germans had their Panther bug out halfway through the game.  The Americans had to make their way into the edge of the town defenses by turn 6 which they just barely managed to do but they had destroyed most of the German force in the process.

Another 28mm AWI game