Once more unto the breach.... Maldon (again)

 Only a few of us turned up for our pre Christmas meet up as everyone else had other things on. John produced the 'Battle of Maldon', which we've done several times before but works well as it is pretty simple but thought provoking and can take a fair number of players as teams.

A brief reminder. Saxons on the left, Danes on the right, Maldon up in the top left and a stream running  down the middle. The stream is fordable at a combat penalty. Either side wins if they wipe out the enemy, but sudden death victory happens if the Danes take Maldon or the Danish King is killed. 

Both sides have a core of infantry (move 1, cv 1) but the Danes have a pair of Berserkers (cv 2)  while the Saxons have a pair of cavalry (move 2, cv 1). Both sides have a Leader (can stack, +1 cv). So the Danes have an advantage in combat power, but the Saxons an advantage in mobility. 

I was the Saxons and Tim and Jim the Danes. You can only activate two units a turn so the Danes did the obvious thing of sending their berserkers forwards with the king as individually they have a 3:1 combat advantage over a standard Saxon.

Rather than fighting a losing defensive battle, I tried an indirect approach and attacked with the cavalry (and King) in the north. This caused a degree of confusion in the Danish ranks and a couple of infantry units lumbered north to stop me. 

My cavalry rode around riding down the second line Danes. 

And eventually they all ended up huddled around the bridge! I'd killed half the Danish army and lost only one unit so far. I'd still not managed to kill a berserker yet though. 

The concentration around the bridge didn't look very inviting but I went for it anyway. 

And was rewarded with another kill! The Danish King barely escaped with his life. 

Sadly that was the Saxons high point, I didn't have a tactical answer to the berserkers and the Saxons king went down in one charge too many. 

And after that, the few remaining Danes just marched around in a clump wiping out each Saxons unit in turn. The last Saxons tried a desparate charge against the Danish King, but it was defeated and Maldon fell. 

What a great little game, it is different every time. Although my initial strategy worked OK, it all went a bit pear shaped later on. There must be some way of manouvering to force the Danes to attack across the river as it is the only way to negate their combat advantage. Picking off their weaker units only gets you so far, and fighting at poor odds in the hope of good fortune isn't really an optimum strategy! 

Many thanks to John for putting that on. 

Zama with Command and Colours

 At the 2025 SWS Christmas games day I took along Zama. We haven't figured out a way to play CnC satisfactorily as a remote multi player game (yes, I know you can do it two player), so f2f sessions are the rare occasions we can do it.

I'd been slowly working my way through the standard rules scenarios in chronological order and had got to Cannae, but tbh I'd done Cannae loads of times (although not with CnC) and didn't fancy it again.  I've never used all my elephants in one go though, so flicked to the back of the book to Zama, which features lots of elephants.

The basic setup. The others had grabbed all the big tables so we only had two pub tables to set up on and had to drop the five extension hexes, so this is is  a 12 x 9 setup instead of 12/13 x 9. No terrain features at least and we didn't particularly miss the end hexes.

Scipios Army was at the height of its powers with innovative formations and tactics, recently reinforced by the Numidians who had changed sides. Hannibal was on the back foot, having weak cavalry and and lots of hastily trained recruits in his army. He did however have lots of (poorly trained) elephants and made these the key to his battle plan.

Tim was Hannibal while John and Jerry took the Romans. This was the culminating battle of the Punic Wars and Carthage's defeat here led to its destruction.

 

The Carthaginian hordes, mix of 20mm plastics from Hat, Italieri and even Airfix! Hannibal is a Newline personality figure. 

Serried ranks of Romans. These guys are all HaT with some metal Newline commanders. 

Hannibals right, a lone unit of medium cavalry, some African veterans, some slingers a couple of units of warband. The latter not wearing any clothes, naturally.

Hannibals left, some light infantry javelinmen, a couple of units of light cavalry, some more African medium infantry and two units of Auxilia. There are a lot of Spanish figures in evidence as the Numidians are fighting for the Romans now, so nearly everyone here are various types of Spaniard.

And the centre we have three more Auxilia (some Spanish, some Carthaginian city infantry), a pair of veteran heavy infantry and no less than three units of elephants. As I have six elephant figures, I doubled up the elephants. Auxilia and medium infantry also have double elements whereas the heavy infantry have triple elements.

Hannibal and the other leader (Hasdrubal?) are each with one of the veteran infantry.

The Roman left. Two medium cavalry, two Auxilia plus two medium Legionaries and a heavy Legionary (triple base of  Triarii). There is a leader with the cavalry. 

Roman right. A couple of Velites, an Auxilia, a medium Legionary and another heavy Legionary. There is also a great mass of Light Cavalry (Numidians) led by King Massinisa. The Romans have massive cavalry superiority, hence Hannibal relying on his elephants.

Roman centre. Two more medium Legions and another heavy plus a couple of Velites. Scipio himself is with the centre Legion.

The action started with some skirmishing and the inevitable cavalry battle as the Numidians charged the Carthaginian left. For some reason this almost always happens in the CnC games, the most mobile units get thrown away early on, whereas more canny players keep their cavalry in reserve to roll up weakened enemy units.

The Carthaginians took the view that the elephants were a case of use it or lose it, so rolled forwards. Also, the last place you want to be is standing behind a 'friendly' elephant...

Over on the Roman right, the Numidians had defeated the Spanish cavalry, but were now weakened and parked next to a lot of angry Spanish infantrymen.

The Romans didn't respond to the elephant phalanx and the the Nellies crashed into contact. 

A series of bloody encounters and hilarious rampaging elephants inflicted hits all over the place. irl the poorly trained elephants fell into confusion and rampaged wildly and much the same happened here.

After all that, the few remaining elephants fell back and the Roman line was bloodied but not broken. An awful lot of vulnerable units left there though.... the Romans were well ahead on points now, 4:0, 8 points being needed to win.

The Numidians paid the price for riding into the middle of the Carthaginian army and were annihilated except for one battered unit which fell back to the baseline. Massinissa survived though and retired to join the main Roman line. 

The Carthaginians played a sequence of command cards which suddenly saw their mass of Auxilia and heavy infantry marching forwards, linking up with the last elephant. You'd almost think they planned that. 

The Romans were distracted by the prospect of some easy points, Scipio went charging off after the retreating elephants.

And the Roman cavalry charged the Carthaginian cavalry. The Carthos were defeated but the somewhat battered Romans now found themselves next to a lot of surprised and rather cross looking Gallic warriors, as well as some heavily armed and armoured Carthaginian infantry.

Scratch the Roman medium cavalry as the Warband routed them and set off in pursuit.

The Carthaginian infantry was now suddenly very close to the Roman centre. Scipio reordered his line but didnt bring up any reserves.

And with a carefully hoarded 'double time' card, the Carthaginians crashed into the Roman line!

As the Roman front line was already weakened, it could only really go one way. Hannibal and Scipio ended up facing off against each other, but Scipios Legion was carrying three hits while Hannibals heavy Carthaginian infantry had none. The score was 6:7 (six-seven! six-seven!) at this point.

And unsurprisingly the Roman centre collapsed, to give a the victory to Hannibal. At least Scipio survived to fight another day.

That was really good fun, and a nail biting finish as I thought the Carthaginians were doomed halfway through. I do think we've been playing too much Dominion though, as CnC Ancients seemed mind bendingly complex in comparison and we had to keep stopping to look things up! I guess it does have a lot of troop types and special rules for many of them. Anyway, it is always a good standby and gives an enjoyable game for reasonable numbers of players and I'd forgotten what good fun it is to play. 

The Last of Langton Miniatures - some very small buildings

 I've been vaguely looking for some Ancient buildings to use as scenery, camps etc and in particular some sections of wall as there are some CnC scenarios which require it. Having looked at my regular building suppliers (Hovels, Timecast etc) it was a pretty poor showing. Leven used to have some suitable candidates but since the range was sold, the full Ancient range aren't currently available.

Anyway, SWS regular Tim C mentioned that Langton Miniatures were shutting shop at the end of November last year, which prompted me to have a look at their building ranges.

And I ended up with these.

A nice selection of city walls of various configurations. Now, these are 1/1200th scale, but are so (relatively) huge that I can use them with my 20mm figures if needs be - perhaps they are based on the walls of Troy or something.

Anyway, I got a mix of wall sections, gates, towers etc. 

The towers and gates are just lovely, very crisp resin with excellent detail.

I rather messed up on the walls though. I was trying to visualise how they would look both on my Hexon and as DBA/HoTT camps and ended up making a mistake with the lengths. I got two very long sections and ended up discovering they were really, really long, so I attempted to cut one up into shorter bits and foiund that the resin really wasn't receptive to cutting. By scoring it with a razor saw I did manage to snap one bit off quite cleanly, but as the battlements came off with it, I gave up at that point.

I manage to glue the battlements back on, and you can see the big cut on the rear of one of the wall section where I gave up.

Despite my cack-handendess, these are also very nice mouldings with a well defined stone pattern on them.

I really, really wanted a temple to use as secenery or a camp and ended up with this. It is an exquisite model, but ridiculously small for what I wanted to use it for. Really I need a cartoon version with a small footprint but exaggerated high sides, perhaps I could make one out of wood or something.

I painted it up anyway, and did in very pale, almost white, marble as the Greeks favourited very light and unveined marble for their structures (they thought veins indicated weakness in the stone). The Acropolis is blindingly white in the sun, even after thousands of years coupled with decades of Athens traffic pollution.

The model itself is in two pieces (separate roof) so is hollow inside - you can just see through the pillars to the other side. You can also see how small it is. Against 20mm figures it would look like Spinal Taps subscale Stonehenge. 

I also got  a few Roman houses of various types. These are also exquisite models and absolutely tiny.

They were a joy to paint, just a shame they are so small!

As I was painting some tiny buildings, I also did a few of these forts. Mark donated me a large bag of them, I think they are surplus some sort of board game? Anyway, I thought they would do for marching forts, watch posts etc. 

I did everything in various shades of tan, sand, cream etc thinking sandstone, limestone, render etc I've still got  loads of the forts left so I might do some grey ones of those. The temple roof and house tiles were done in brick red.

The walls will certainly be useful but the buildings look pretty useless, although they would make useful scenery for naval games. Having made up all those Galley counters I've never actually used them, and they might also make useful scenery for WW1 naval games in the Med - the forts could be Turkish gun posts in the Dardanelles. So a bit of a mixed bag, and of course as they are now OOP, I cant correct my mistake with the walls by buying more sections the correct length. Lesson to self, don't rush to buy things just because they wont be available any longer! 

SWS Christmas Games Day 2025

 It is fairly traditional at Xmas for Sheffield Wargames Society to have a games day in the break. Now that we play remote games on club night and f2f games at Tapton, we don't get down to the club very much so it is nice to pitch up and see the old gang at least once a year.

Many of the regulars like to set up big games which take much of the day to play.

Like this huge 28mm ACW game. 

Reb cavalry galloping along.

Or this big 15mm Napoleonic game.

Austrians vs French and some liquid refreshment to aid the brain cells!

There were also some smaller things in play, like the new edition of Kingmaker (much faster to play evidently) - Jerry was involved in the development and play testing.

And this naval game on a rather nice mat.

And an intriguing Ancients set played with top down counters on a square grid.

Great Plains, so Carthaginians and Romans.

Funnily enough I'd brought Zama, so more Punic Wars. I'll do that as a separate report, as you don't often get to play with six elephants.

We also had a few run throughs of the show version of 633 Squadron on Johns portable boards. This is the 1/300th scale Mosquito.

A bit less cumbersome than my mountains! Here is the Nazi base at the end of the fjiord complete with power station and waterfall as featured in the film.

Tim was first up.

Lovely aircraft cards, which sadly get shot down progressively. The Squadron Leaders plane goes at the front.

For my run I used the base of 1/600th scale Mosquitos in line astern, which I think look pretty good. In the book the planes flew up the fjiord at 20 second intervals to allow a safe interval for the bombs (fused at 12 seconds).

We also played a boardgame and by 6pm that was quite enough for me and time for home. Great to see everyone and nice to be back at the physical club again.