ACW mayhem

Well, Mexican Dave knew this post was coming, on Saturday the pair of us decided to revisit our ACW ruleset, Peter Pigs Civil War Battles. So I made up the army list, checked that the neccessary troops were packed up and trucked it all along to the Angus wargames club.

Dave's luck was on its usual form on Saturday, anyone whos played a Piggy ruleset before knows that there's always an attacker and a defender and while both armies will be equal at the start of the game, the rules can be very cruel to the defender. Dave's pre-battle dice rolls as the defender saw him trying to keep a few units on the table and losing stands from each one. Trying a different approach and trying not to lose any more stands saw most of what he had left being shunted of the table to his re-inforcement area.

Anything close to the edge of the table was what Dave tried turn after turn to get onto the table, we had roughly a foot of table either side that wasnt in play. At the end of each turn saw Dave desperatly trying to roll a 9 on 2d6 for each missing regiment or gun and failing. Even my friendly advice didnt help "try bringing them on via the road, it adds +2 to your roll" saw Dave fail roll after roll. He was even rolling miserably on the countdown rolls (In Piggy games, there's a countdown to the end of the battle) he kept rolling 1s, the defender is usually wanting to make the battle as short as possible as it gives the attacker fewer turns to take objectives. The countdown for this game started at 21, so had he rolled a few 6s, the game could have been over in 4 turns. What made matters worse was Dave had managed to roll 2 good division generals and a brilliant Corps general, while I had saddled myself with a right bunch of numptys, those units that you can see trailing quite far behind my front line, just kept trailing further and further behind for the whole game, due to my numpty generals not being able to communicate with them, so I was really fighting with about half my army.

Long story short this was the situation when Dave finally raised the white flag, all those rebs at the top of the piccy, just ignore them, theyre dead, and there were a couple of my units closing in from the bottom. Result was, well we didnt bother calculating it, all the objectives were claimed by the Yankee invader, with very few casualties. But the Gallant Gennelmun of the Sowth were indeed heard to declare that "The South WILL rise again!"

Oh dear, another distraction.

Those wonderful guys at Pendraken finally sent this months order out, a brigade of British Imperialist troops and a brigade of Johnny Turks.

Following a discussion with Mexican Dave, who's going to be giving the Nik Harwood treatment to his Persian army, I decided to depart from my normal methods of painting before basing. But when I was doing it I did dig my heels in and just couldnt bring myself to do it with the Artillery chappies, those are the ones in the piccy stuck down onto card strips.

I think I'm gonna have fun with this period and ruleset, can anyone say "Lawrence" ????

The Germans are done

Well Dave, looks like we'll have to have that Force on Force game sometime soon, I got fed up with you faffing about with those Russian pygmies and painted up the German patrol.

1st Battalion of Austrians complete

Based for Napmaster, a Warmaster variant, as the Austrian field battalions were considerably bigger than most countries, in this variant the Fusilier battalions are 4 bases big rather than the normal 3.

A long way to go yet before these see the table, another 4 of these "German" battalions then 3 Hungarian ones. The main difference between them is the "German" units have white trousers and a helmet, the Hungarians have blue or grey trousers and wear a shako.

The main decision I have to make now is do I actually want to do different colour cuffs and facings on each unit (as they should be) or do I do them all the same? Doing them the same makes sense in that theres less sorting out post game, but it does feel like cheating a bit.

Gruntz finally released

Well I'm hyped, just bought the final release version of these rules, Mexican Dave has as well and he's so impressed that he bought some figures to use with them. No mean feat when Dave is on an austerity drive to NOT buy any figures. But what am I blathering about, well the easiest way to find out is to look here http://www.gruntz.biz/ lots of nice eye-candy, battle reports with lots of piccies. But what makes these rather special is the price, its around about the £5.50 mark, that varies with the USD exchange rate.

The Brits are done

Well me and Mexican Dave have decided to try out Force on Force, but being a pair of cheapskates (and the fact that I already had bunch of figures) we decided to try it out using the WW2 scenarios from the PDF version. Dave promptly dissapeared in the wilds of Kirriemuir with 60 or 70 Germans leaving me to get on with the Brits for the scenario "Watching Jerry" and here they are.

As mentioned in an earlier post I have succumbed to the "need more" syndrome and bought another box of these guys, well you cant field a Brit force without PIATs or Vickers can you?

Not a good start to the month

I stupidly followed an interesting link on TMP, and yes, it's led me into yet another new period. It does look very different to what I normally play however but who can resist the thought of having massed cavalry, heavy machine guns and tanks all on the same battlefield? Yep its WW1, but before you switch off totally, theres no blasted fields of shell shattered mud and very few trenches involved. The rules are If The Lord Spares Us by Too Fat Lardies and its the gallant British Empire vs the foul JohnnyTurk, think Lawrence of Arabia for some inspiration. Buying and having a quick read through of these has led to another drain on my wallet this month in the shape of 2 Pendraken starter armies, a mere 270 figures though.

Pendraken despite Leon saying there were no new Napoleonic Austrian releases this month did in fact have some, although to be fair these are Hungarian regiments, so another 125 figures bought.

And with the WW2 purchases mentioned earlier thats a grand total of 467 bought so far this month, just as well that the taxman chose this month to stop raping my pension and give me a chunk of change back.