Planet Wargaming

We tried out the Warmaster ECW modifications from the Pictor’s Studio site last night. The game was an encounter with around 1500 points a side to try out the rules.

There aren’t a huge number of changes from the basic Warmaster as with ECW you are effectively playing two Empire armies without magic. What did strike us though was how long it took the two armies to get into contact without the presence of magic and flying creatures for initial attacks. Admittedly my command and control die rolling was terrible and I never did get my Preacher to move his brigade out from behind the safety of their enclosure!

Having not played Warmaster for a while I had forgotten a couple of important things:

1) Cavalry that is on the other side of the battlefield can suddenly appear at your rear
2) If your general dies, you lose the game.

Unfortunately, I left my cavalry brigade exposed and was completely destroyed by the Royalist cavalry. Game over!

The rules felt like the played well, even though we never really got to grips with infantry combat. We did make one change, which was to reduce cannon to one stand. Artillery was not that effective in ECW and a two stand unit will let you destroy stands with a few lucky rolls, especially as they ignore armour saves. A one stand cannon will simply let you drive back and split up brigades, but they will need support to destroy stands and this feels more like ECW style artillery.

The only other observation is that, like all Warmaster variants, it suffers from the inherent Warmaster problem that cavalry is too powerful. Because there are no manoeuvre or formation change penalties in the rules, the cavalry zips around the field, flowing between obstacles with ease. If you had to order a manoeuvre to change direction, it would be harder for them to sweep from one side of the field to the other without a lot of successful orders.

We will definitely try them again. The regiments made up of 12 figures (2 x 2 stands) looked good and I think with a few tweaks they will provide a good ECW set.

Played another new set of rules at the club last night. I’m slowly working my way through all the rulesets I’ve owned for years but never had chance to play!

This time it was Stragrunt II, the SF set from Ground Zero Games. The rules are beautifully produced, good quality printing on glossy paper, very well laid out and come with 2 sheets of colour card counters all for £9.99 (if I remember correctly). I’ve always considered these rules a good model of how to write clear, understandable wargames rules.

The game was a Star Wars skirmish with rebel troopers trying to flee back to their freighters with a force of storm troopers and two at-ats following them. The mission of the rebels was to destroy the at-ats and save the freighters. The Imperial troops just had to get an at-at off the table.

The figures were micro-machines 20mm star wars figures, with ERTL snap-together at-at walkers. They looked very good and Andrew apparently picked them up for 10p each in a discount shop.

None of us had played the rules before and were slightly unsure whether we would finish the game or not in the three hours we had. In the event, we didn’t need to worry as the system is very quick and once you get used to the firing calculations you can run the game with just the playsheet.

I played the rebels I the first game. The rebels setup first with hidden counters (including dummies) and I manage to take down both at-ats to win the game. The second one was merely disabled by a lucky short from a ground blaster, but the first one exploded after being hit by a guided missing killing 5 out of its eight crew.

That game only took forty minutes and so we swapped side and I took the forces of evil. I decided to deploy my at-ats close to the majority of the rebel forces on the basis that it gave me a chance to use the at-ats as supporting fire (Nick had deployed them in the open in the first game, making them easy targets). This game was much closer and more realistic (rebel troops killing storm troopers and then running away whilst none of the at-ats or storm troopers could manage to kill them!). But, in the end, I managed to eliminate both the guided missile units and walked an at-at off the table to win again.

We will definitely be using Stargrunt II again and I’m now keen to paint up the NAC and Neu_Swabian platoons I bought at SELWG last year.

I have two more game this week as a friend is coming to stay, so expect reports on those…

Been busy and then ill for the last week, so managed to miss the game at the club on Monday. I haven’t done much painting either: just a couple of colours on the GB Arthurians that are waiting to join the WHAB army.

I did get a game at the club two weeks ago though and managed to play my second game of The Sword and the Flame. I’d previously played a very short try out Boxer Rebellion game which showed me enough of the rules to intrigue me and make me want to try them again.

I have used the supplementary rules: The Sword in Africa a couple of times and they provide an interesting change from Chris Peers’ In the Heart of Africa rules which are our usual favourites for this period. On the whole though, I much prefer In the Heart of Africa and doubt I’ll return to TSIA again.

For this game I adapted the demo scenario in the rulebook which has British mounting a punitive expedition against Pathans to math the figures I have. So, a brave column of Belgian Askaris backed by a Gardner machine gun set up off the valley scouting the area for Zanzibari savers who had been hassling local trade routes.

I treated the Belgians as British and the Zanzibari’s as Pathans.

The game played pretty well, with the Belgians advancing rather boldly up the valley towards the settlement until the Zanzibari’s appeared from nowhere and started to mow down their troops with long range rifle fire.

Nick, who was playing the Belgians, was very unlucky with his dice throws and failed to hit anyone with 12 dice from his machine gun on the first throw. After that he did a little better and wiped out one unit of the Zanzibari’s to a man.

The rules use cards for activation and present the usual intriguing problems of planning this move AND the next in case your opponent gets to move that nearest unit first.

I think they are better suited to formed colonial troops against natives e.g. the Sudan campaign rather than skirmishes in Darkest Africa, but I will definitely be trying them again. Probably with Boxers once we have enough painted up to oppose the Imperialist invaders…