A busy week at work and in my graduate program found me facing multiple choices for what to do for the "48 Hour Pass" of the weekend.
For better or worse, I decided to run down to the Del-Val Gamers games day in Springfield for a morning game, then head up the Turnpike Extension to the wilds of Luzerne County for a game with the PAWM crew in the evening.
Two games, two different clubs, one day.
Cliff B. running a Frostgrave game.
And something more up my alley....Pete B. (left) running a 15mm Marlburian game
And so, I joined the French army and took the left wing under Villars, while my good friend Bobby V. took the right wing. Lee and Mike were our opponents with the Allied Army.
Pete runs "Volley and Bayonet" games, with a stand equaling a regiment of horse or foot and a gun representing several guns. Big Hand, Small Map, as one of my Command and General Staff College instructors would have called it. Love it.
My left wing of cavalry managed a very respectable grinding draw against several regiments of good quality Dutch and Austrian cavalry. My second line of infantry made sure that they stayed firmly in place and did not trip over their shoes, nor hurt themselves with any scissors or any other pointy objects. Likewise, my artillery did very minimal damage to anyone, but they were obliged to dirty the barrels of their guns by occasionally launching the odd cannonball in the general direction of the enemy, chiefly some irritatingly efficient Danes, who kept trying to provoke my men. Cheesy buggers!
And then there was my first line of infantry, who actually did manage to get into close range. They managed to savage a couple of Lee's regiments, but eventually two of my regiments were badly handled by both musketry and cannons.
At the end, we held one objective, one was unoccupied, and the third was held by those dastardly Danes. Bobby had more of a time on the right. He was roundly spanked by Mike's cavalry, but his Bavarians died gloriously to a man fighting the Red Menace of the Hanoverians and English.
Pete called it a draw after seven turns. A great and fun time.
I then went home for a quick lunch and nap, then drove up to Mike S.'s place in Kingston for Round 2
Jim B., gazing over the battlefield wondering what evil Mike S. has in store for us.
The PAWM crew loves simple rules and evil GMs. Well, we had both, along with a maddening scenario to boot Saturday night.
Mark C. uses a simplified version of Neil Thomas' Ancient and Medieval Rules for a bash up between Vikings and Angles and Saxons. Where the Jutes got off to, no one was sure, but we're pretty sure it wasn't to help the Vikes.
The Northumbrian Vikings RFC was represented by myself, Jim B., and Aethelred the OFM, aka John.
The dastardly Angles, Saxons and (sometimes) Jutes, were played by Mark C. and Darrell S., fresh off IL status.
"Odin loves all His Vikings!
All the little Vikings in the world
Be you Norse, or Swede or Dane
Odin loves you all the same
Odin loves all the Vikings in the world..."
(with apologies to the Irish Christian Brothers...)
Well, Odin may love his Vikings, but sure the Dice Gods didn't give a split skull for us. More of that anon. Our scenario was to go across the table and kill people and break things. Oh, and loot the church.
BUT....Evil GM Mike decided that we wouldn't know what our terrain would be until after we set up our troops... and you can probably guess about how well that went. <sigh>
Oh well, we're Vikings. We have big axes and nothing else to do on a Saturday night...
Evil Mike sets out terrain as Darrell looks on and realizes it's pretty good to be an Angle or a Saxon and maybe even a Jute...but NOT a Viking.
Mark saying how good it is to have an "Angle" on dem Vikings... like maybe a warband, some archers (who kept shooting me in the ASS!) and some crappy, but rather annoying, javelin tossing light cavalry.
And three hours later...you can see the results of my lousy dice rolling and Jim's lousy dice rolling and John's lousy dice rolling...
About the only thing that didn't happen was we didn't shoot Aethelred the OFM in the back with a javelin or hit him on the head with an axe, mostly because we couldn't hit the Other Guys, it was pretty much assured we couldn't manage to assassinate John.
That being said, it was game with Vikings, meatball subs for supper, and a lot of good conversation. Defintiely worth the drive. Got me thinking about making up a couple of Greek armies for these rules with plastic figures from Victrix. Mike's Vikes are from Victrix and I was suitably impressed.
But not Mike's cat Carson. Carson was not impressed with the Pink Hairless Monkeys playing on his tabletop and not sharing the little cubes. He did allow us to pet him, though. Just a bit...
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