FoL: Robin Hood

Back in January, Bruce hosted Richard and me in a Fistful of Lead Robin Hood game. Bruce's terrain has reached pretty epic proportions and we spent some time admiring his handiwork (the buildings are also finished and furnished inside...).

The basics of the game are that the Sheriff has discovered the blacksmith is in league with Robin Hood and, thus, the Sheriff has decided to run the smithy down (requires lighting three fires--the red game tokens). Robin Hood must prevent this. 

 

I had the Sheriff and three mounted men at arms and our plan was to make for the smithy and get it cooking. Unfortunately, Little John was defending it along with one archer. The rest of the hoods were coming to their aid.

On my left, Richard commanded 6 shoot7 and stabby foot guys who would block Robin Hood and his band of Merry Property Thieves.

 

Richard's troops did a bang-up job. Not so much my guys as we could neither lay a glove on Little John nor get the thatch and wood to kindle. Truly terrible rolling.

Richard tangled with Robin Hood in front of the church.

And laid him low! That was the turning point for the Team Sheriff and now it was a foot-race between Richard breaking the Merry Men's morale and Little John causing the sheriff to flee.

Richard even had the time to send a stabby guy up to deal with the annoying sniper!

Below, we see pretty close to the end game: the Merry Men are decidedly un-merry but Little John had KO'ed the Sheriff and is methodically beating the hell out of the rest of my guys (a complete slaughter).

Too late to matter, I finally got some hot dice and pasted Little John a good one (or two). The Sheriff must have been sold some defective flint and tinder or something because nothing would bleeding burn for me.

And this was Richard winning the game for the forces of capital... errr... evil... errr... whatever. The Merry Men fled to steal the rightful property of the rich another day and the Sheriff's forces (presumably) burned the smithy.

A very fun game and a visual delight to play out.

15mm mounted

Today, I have a job lot of plastic 15mm mounted. These are from the Joan of Arc board game.

There were four of these Genghis Khan horse archers. I also ended up with five armoured knights.

I was really surprised how bad the sculpts were (especially the horses) until I primed and drybrushed them and realized that they are undead riding skeleton horses. Which explains the poorly define musculature on the horses!

Up next: Probably some HO scale buildings and some 15mm goblins.

15mm knights, billmen, and arquebusiers

 This week, I finished another 30 of the 15mm medieval figures from the Joan of Arc game. First up are 10 knights, nine with axes and one with a warhammer.

These scale pretty well with the various Battlelore heavies that I have. They also match alright with the Splintered Light fellows, although the Splintered Light benefit from a bit of extra height on their base.

I also painted up a unit of 10 arquebusiers. These were fun enough to paint and had nice detail.

  

And finally, I knocked of another unit of 10 billmen in the same livery.

Up next: A bunch more 15mm medieval figures and some more buildings. 

15mm Billmen and Archers

I was looking around for figures to expand my 15mm armies and ran across some extras someone was selling from a kickstarter game called Joan of Arc. Beautiful figures from an apparently unplayable game. Anyhow, I worked my way through some of the 15mm archers and billmen.

The billmen are nice and usefully posed. Like most plastic game pieces, the thin bill shafts were quite bent. I straightened them in hot water but some have bent back

The archers are also nice and very easy to paint. I didn't end up with many of these so I filled out the ranks with some horn guys.

The light washed out some of the detail in the picture below.

Overall, a good match for my existing 15mm plastics.

Up next: Maybe some 25mm Star Wars and 15mm fantasy?

Ronin and Tribal

I dropped in on Bruce Tuesday night for some samurai gaming. hH had made some new foam-core and paper terrain to go along with the minis he painted.

First up, we tried Ronin from Osprey. This is a skirmish game with 5-12 minis per side. The objective was to control the bridge. Set up offered some opportunity for fun, with the attacker influencing defending figure positions (can't recall exact details).

Basic game is initiative, move/shoot, melee, and morale/administrivia. The combat mechanics offer some interesting ideas (shifting initiative, some pre-planning of attacks and defense through action selection, the opportunity to trade number of attacks for more effective attacks).

Combat is fixed combat factors (different calculation for attacker and defender) plus die rolls with difference equating to damage. The mods on the QRS were initially fiddly but, after a few rounds, they were memorized so that issue dropped away.

Our game saw the defenders picked apart and things coming down to a fight between two samurai on the bridge. It was pretty dramatic!

Then we switched systems to Tribal where two teams compete to gain the most honour points. You get honour for combat, kills, and victory point captures. This creates a meta-game that drives tabletop strategy.

Typical turn sequence is initiative then alternating moves with combat resolved as contact happens. The interesting mechanic is that it is all done with playing cards. Each unit is assigned a card at the beginning from a randomly drawn hand. If the unit combats that turn, the assigned card is the first card played in combat (so you need to think about where contact is going to be that turn).

Assuming the unit survives the first card comparison, then players can play cards from randomly drawn combat hands (black is attack and red and defence) with card value determining winner (no dice in combat).

This sounds clunky but creates an interesting microgame of hard decisions in combat that was quite engaging (especially as units got ground down and there were fewer cards to choose from).

Overall, I enjoyed Tribal more than Ronin, but both were fun and fine games. I think we tied in Tribal when we tallied honour points at the end (again, recollection is shaky--it was fun though).

A Cthulhu New Year!

I spent the holidays moving a bunch of half finished figures to completion. This included two RAFM Cthulhu figures I got from Chen (there are three more underway).

First up was this pink fellow. I really struggle to find a suitably otherworldly paint scheme. I went with pink because this figure looked rather fleshy. I choose green for the thing below as it looks amphibian.

I also finished off nine 15mm mounted figures from an old Battlelore 1st Edition box that I picked up last Boxing Day!

I did the foot troops earlier this year but struggled with the cavalry (fiddly and not that interesting). I think there are five more heroes somewhere on my paint table that need attention but that is likely all of the 15mm fantasy that I need.

Up next: Some 54mm AWI.

Lion Rampant: Find the lost noble

Bruce hosted another game of Lion Rampant. The scenario saw the troops in the foreground searching the terrain features for a lost noble (die roll for success with escalating chances). Once found, the noble had to be spirited off of the board. The other side (background) had to stop this foolishness.

The early game saw lots of moving and searching. Good activation rolls on my part and a tough terrain set up for Bruce was much appreciated. My bleeding knights kept failing their activations, though!

Eventually, the lost noble was found hiding in some trees by my crossbow unit (on left of photo above). This looks like an easy win for me as I just had to get him off the board (two moves to side or four moves to rear).

Bruce then challenged and killed my general. And this must have rattled the troops because I could not activate anything for several turns. Bruce took the opportunity to ride down my foot sergeants (jerk!).

Then the chase was on. I fell back, hoping to draw his forces onto the two units of knights that never really got going and triggering an impetuous charge. This tactic did in fact work, which was good because my crossbow unit was unable to retreat effectively.

Eventually things turned around and I managed to get both of knight units in positions where they just kept charging his pursuers and my crossbow guys got away with the noble. An ugly, ugly 7-5 win for the good guys.

We played a second game with the same units but objectives reversed. Bruce found the noble on his first try and got him of the board before my guys could even sight his units (a 5-0 win!). Overall, a fun scenario.

15mm Westerros for Dragon Rampant

A few years ago, I painted my 15mm Battleore figures to make armies for Dragon Rampant. I've been playing it a bit again and thus I picked up a few more figures.

These fellows are from a couple of Battle of Westerros expansions and seem suitable for a Borderlands kind of army.  I have a few more batched (mounted and foot) that I am working on.

I tried to match the painting and basing with the stuff I did a few years ago. They more of less fit in with the Battlelore stuff (centre figure below).

Up next: Probably more of these guys!

Crusader Rex v 1.4

Two weeks ago, Bruce and I played the newest version of Crusader Rex with an eye to using it as a campaign engine for miniature games. Overall, an okay game but the version 2 rules forced some dispersion on the troops and made storming fortresses tough to win (which both augur against battles).

Bruce hauled out the versions 1.4 rules this past week and we tried again. The major differences were a change in victory conditions, easier storming of forts, and higher levels of troop support. The early game saw the Saracens grab the mid-board (which may have been a strategic error--it was only my second game).

Not a lot changed in the mid-game, but I didn't inflict many casualties which was bad for green as the game swings towards the Franks as it progresses.

Bruce attacked in the south and ran into my insanely hot dice. Poor guy!

Dice also thwarted some pretty nice spoiling moves he made as I positioned for an attack on Jerusalem. We did generate five battle (I think) that are gameable.

In the end, it was out of reach for the Franks in the last year as we called it as a very marginal victory for the Saracens. Overall, I like the v.1.4 rules better (except maybe the lower victory value of for Jerusalem--a higher value motivates behaviour more in keeping with the politics).

Overall, a good game with bad strategy being saved with hot dice (story of my life!).

Crusader Rex

Bruce hosted a game of Crusader Rex on Tuesday. I'd never played so picked the Saracens (green) to try. The first part of the game seems to favour them while the Crusaders must build their strength.

I decided to get while the getting was good and invested Antioch in the north...

...and Jerusalem in the south and bagged both.

By the end of the first year I had a lot of control but my troops were pretty beaten up. It took me awhile to get the hand of reinforcements and building troops.

Bruce took advantage of that and nearly bagged Egypt (Cairo?). Then his crusaders started showing up and he pushed in to the north.

Fortunately for me, he ran out of time. A big part of winning turn don a slight mistake he made early on (compounded by some unpredictable card play effects) that cost him several blocks in Egypt. But I'd rather be lucky than good anyhow!