Cutlass! - 4 Way Prisoner Hunt.

Easter Sunday and a simple low key affair. Four warring factions looking to bag themselves a bunch of prisoners who hold valuable information. But with Four factions and only three Prisoners some one is bound to lose.

The three Prisoners are chained up in the cente compound, the four gangs are tasked with entering the complex unchaining the prisoners and exiting the table. This Cutlass! encounter pits Arab against, Pirate, Marine and Atlantian.......

The view from the Marine Forces end of the table.

The view from the Atlantian side of the Table, no doors but plenty of windows.

Our poor unfortunate prisoners awaiting rescue. They can not be killed and will need to be escorted from the table.

The Pirates are the first to the complex rushing forward, after an initial swift advance a couple of poor command rolls leaves them with limited actions and a large door that simply would not budge.

Meanwhile the Atlantians move cautiously forward and content themselves by taking pot shots at the Pirates battering at the door.

The Royal Marines make steady progress through the undergrowth, quietly advancing whilst the others are distracted by each others moves.

The Arabs advance towards the main gate, swordsmen first followed by the musketmen.

The Arabs are first through the gate rushing towards the shackled prisoners.

Midway through the game and all sides have reached the complex walls, the Arabs are in the courtyard, whilst the Marines and Pirates struggle to clamber through doors and windows.

The Arabs grab themselves a prisoner and drag him to the main entrance, the first Pirate to enter the building is dispatched by one of the Arab Swordmen.

As the Arabs flood the main gate both Atlantians and Marines fire into their flanks looking to grab a prisoner as they leave the compound.

Meanwhile in the courtyard things are hotting up the Marines have grabbed a prisoner and are heading back to their entry point, meanwhile Pirate and Arab fight for the remaining detainee.

The Atlantians are set upon by the Arab defenders hacking him down.

With Blunderbus and Musket fire echoing through the adobe compound the Atlantian Officer to shot down as the Arabs grab the third prisoner and push him through the open door.

A cracking evenings gaming it could have gone to any one player, but in the end the Arabs won the day grabbing two prisoners to the Marines one. The Pirates and Atlantians were left with nothing.... 

apart from a number of casualties...

Cutlass! and it's unique reaction rule mechanism keeps the game flowing and gives every player the chance to take the initiative which is important for a 4 player game of this nature.

Definately a must for those less serious club nights....

Pistols at Dawn - A Cutlass! Scenario

After a few weeks of slowly plugging away at the Smugglers and Marines time to give them some table time and a refresh of the rules before considering how a rolling campaign campaign might look.

A very small scenario with a party of smugglers who have rowed up river and are looking to retrive their landed goods from a barn at the far side of town. The Government forces need to stop them.

I priced up each of the figures and armed them with what they were cast with, that provided me with $493 worth of privateers and $466 worth of Marines pretty even or so I thought.

The Smugglers split in to two groups looking to make there way through the town. Armed with Cutlass and Axes I should have guessed that they might be quite tasty in Hand to Hand.

The Marines step out into the street looking to block their path - A cornish stand off.

After the occasional pistol and musket shot one of the Marines looks to take advantage of a spooked smuggler and moves on the first group of tax dodgers. A poor idea on my part as a poor authority roll on the next turn allows the smugglers to surround the brave yet foolish trooper.

Meanwhile in the main street the Captain of the guard is confronted by to members of the gang has they attempt to rush forward to support the lone trooper. 

With the bulk of the patrol now drawn into an uneven brawl a number of the Marines are cut down, their muskets no defence against slashing Cutlasses and one Mariner who armed with nothing but a long spear dispatches two of the government men - Those exploding dice can be deadly.

The customs men are forced to withdraw.

The morale of this encounter - don't be cocky just because you have a flash uniform and play to your strengths, Marines are far better at standing back and shooting at their enemy rather than wading in with the bayonet it will only end badly.

After a few turns the rules turned at to be far more tactical in their nature than the original read through suggested, do you hold back on activations or use them all at once?

Attacking players from the side gives you an advantage but you in turn need to protect your flanks.

Once you are in combat your activations are soon used up reducing the ability to bring reinforcements in.  

Plenty to think about in the next outing - Now to read the campaign element.

Black Scorpion - Pirates & Smugglers of the Devon coast.

Another batch of Pirates and Smugglers complete from the chaps at Black Scorpion for use within their Cutlass! rules.

Cast in resin I was a little concerned at first, but they take paint well and contained very little flash, it will be interesting to see how they stand up to wear and tear on the table top as they are a touch on the light side.

I figured these fine fellows would be ideal for smuggling games in the coming months.

With the annual Devon holiday booked this year, there is an added interest this time around rather than the usual holiday hangout of Tea Shops and Seaside amusements. A chance to slip away to walk the Smuggler beaches from the 1700's that should make the kids happy. :-)

Reading up on the period there is a vivid picture of the Smuggling activity in area in the letters of  Philip Taylor, who was Collector of Customs at Weymouth from 1716.

During the winter of 1717-18 he wrote: "the running of great quantities of goods having of late very much increased" - the government tried to push through a bill for the prevention of smuggling. It fell down in the House of Lords and, as a result, reported Philip Taylor the following April, "the smuggling trade is prodigiously increased and they and all persons concerned with them are become more insolent than ever and dares any power to oppose them, which will very soon have a very bad influence on trade. Besides, as these smugglers are generally the dissatisfied part of the country, their riding in troops of thirty or forty armed men on the least appearance of an opportunity will be dangerous to the peace of the country as well as troublesome to the Government." The smugglers even had the audacity to claim - and they used the failure of the smuggling bill as their evidence, that they were now "tolerated in smuggling by the King, Lords and Commons."

The bill, - which, among other things, forbade the importation of cargoes in vessels of under fifty tons - finally became law twelve months later, but by then Taylor was writing in colourful style:

"The smuggling traders in these parts are grown to such a head that they bid defiance to all law and government. They come very often in gangs of sixty to one hundred men to the shore in disguise armed with swords, pistols, blunderbusses, carbines and quarterstaffs; and not only carry off the goods they land in defiance of officers, but beat, knock down and abuse whoever they meet in their way; so that travelling by night near the coast, and the peace of the country, are become very precarious; and if an effectual law be not speedily passed, nothing but a military force can support the officers in the discharge of duties."

Philip Taylor was not exaggerating when he reported that "the tumultuous and riotous proceedings of the smugglers is not anything abated but daily growing upon us". He went on: "Most of the smuggling trade in this country is now carried on by people in such great numbers, armed and disguised, that the officers, if they meet them, can't possibly oppose them therein, nor do otherwise than search for the goods in suspected places, which by means of the country's favouring the smugglers, very often proves ineffectual and expensive to the officers." But if they did get caught and sentenced, they could be hung!

Brandy and wine made up the bulk of the contraband cargoes landed in Dorset between 1716 and the mid-1730s, but many other commodities appear in the lists from time to time, including rum, coffee, tea, salt, pepper, cocoa beans, vinegar, cloth, silk handkerchiefs, tobacco, playing cards, foreign

paper and logwood sounds like an order to the guy's at Anisty is in order.

At Abbotsbury a young Customs officer, Joseph Hardy, was repeatedly ordered by Philip Taylor to retrieve the goods, but when he did so, he was obstructed by a gang of locals and immediately lost them again. Taylor commented sarcastically: "They [Hardy and Whitteridge] being both the most original fools I ever met with or heard of, in the scuffle of taking the goods away I can't find any blow was struck on either side and (it appears) that the heroical officers were directly frighted out of their goods."

Taylor recognised, though, that just about every person in Abbotsbury was an employee of the smugglers and concluded that the only way to settle the matter was to call in the army, who had been ordered to help the fight against smuggling when requested.

Accordingly he sent a message to Lieutenant Carr, commanding officer of Lord Irwin's Regiment of Horse quartered at Dorchester, and on November 16, Quartermaster William Thomson left the county town with Joseph Hardy and eighteen troops. On arriving at Abbotsbury, they found "a great mob of people gathering themselves about them" and Hardy summoned the parish constable and tithingman and asked them to help keep the peace. At the sight of the troops, Bradford the bailiff changed his attitude rather suddenly, handed over the keys and allowed Hardy to recapture the goods in the face of a vociferous but otherwise peaceful crowd.

Now there must be a scenario or two in that account.

Dick Turpin

All work and no play at the moment but a trip up north gave me the opportunity to mix in a little bit of historical fact with what's on the paint table.

Recently the paint table has been filled with Marines and Gentlemen, so why not throw an outlaw into the mix?

I give you Dick Turpin. 

Another find casting from Black Scorpion.

Our Dick wasn’t from York, was not dashing and did not even own a horse called Black Bess.

His grave in York is hidden in a back street alongside a housing estate and is pretty unremarkable. You really would not know it was here unless you were looking for it.

I was probably the only visitor recently apart from what looks like the markings of a drunk after a Friday night. The York sight seeing bus passes by his burial site but does not stop.

Turpin was tried and executed in York, most of his Highwayman crimes were commited in Essex. Whilst on the run he fled to Yorkshire. Where he continued he criminal adventures stealing horses under the guise of John Palmer.

He was unmasked whilst holed upon in York when he wrote to his brother asking for help.  His brother refused to pay the sixpence due on the letter and it was returned to the local post office – where Turpin’s old schoolmaster recognised his handwriting.

Unmasked he was caught and sentenced to death - All for the price of a stamp.

At his hanging at Tyburn, it is said that Turpin hired five professional mourners to follow him up the scaffold and he put on a show for the large crowd. His body was dug up by a labourer and taken to the garden of a surgeon, who paid for corpses for illegal medical dissection.  But the people of York people discovered what had happened and marched on the surgeon’s house and Turpin was laid to rest for good. 

The man very different from the myth a rather unimpressive criminal, much like his final resting place. 

But thanks to the Author Harrison Ainsworth and his 1834 novel Rookwood - Turpin became a legend after his death. Ainsworth inventing Black Bess and his ride to York.

Let's see if he can live up to the legend on the table top.

Until next time....

Saturday Paint Table - Gentlemen and Revenue Men.

Limited paint table action this week, but I did manage to finish off a couple of characters for Cutlass!.

With the Marines finished recently, I figured these two characters would be great for potential heroes or officer types.

My daughter has stepped in to suggest that my photgraphy is not the best and has offered up the following alternative pics. Secretly I have to admit the images are far sharper than my own, but she is relucant to become the full time PR manager for the blog :-)

I also finished off a couple of Revenue Men, the perfect opponents for Dick Turpin who is primed and waiting to join the fray.

Until next time.

Black Scorpion Miniatures - Royal Marines

Over recent months I have picked up at the occasional show the odd pack of Black Scorpion's Pirate range. Sculpted by Adam Clarke they are some of the finest looking miniatures around, cast in resin they were a touch lighter than what I was used to, but they took the paint well.

Was I distracted by the glass show case or loose change in my pocket who knows.

Black Scorpion's range contains figures for Pirates, Privateers and Royal Navy together with Pirate Dwarves, Elves and Orcs & Goblins, these more fantastical ranges are of little interest to me not when I can have them facing off against the Guardians of Atlantis and Mantics new Trident range.....

Nautical nonsense :-)

I knew they would come in handy for some Black Powder type skirmish gaming just not sure where.

Customers Men breaking up Smugglers and Wrecker gangs in Cornwall?

Scouting Parties in the Caribbean?

Taking on Highwaymen in the English Countryside?

Fighting off raids from Atlantis.

 

A pleasure to paint and something a little different from the Deserts of Egypt.

Slowly the lead mountain starts to shrink.

Cutlass! A rule review and yet more Atlantis Ramblings.

I really should be painting Frenchmen, but as usual something shiny has come along, having painted up the recent Atlantians the opportunity for a game has come up on Sunday so for once lets get the freshly painted toys on the table whilst interest is at it's peak.

I have spent the week reading up on the Cutlass! rule set and giving some of the mechanics a run through and first impressions are they look a real blast.

Gav Thorpe has done a fantastic job some fresh rule mechanics and a comprehensive campaign system all in all the rules have a very polished finish to them.

The rules well laid out even if they are a little heavy on Pics of lovely looking figures and terrain and artwork of pirate maps which add no real value to the rules themselves.... but do give you plenty of inspiration if it was needed.

The rules are aimed at a land based fantasy pirate skirmish game, with your classic Human, Dwarves and Orcs together with other regular fantasy factions. But as usual I already have some new ideas to tweak this. 

The rule concepts take me back to some of my early gaming with the likes of Necromunda where you build your faction up over time adding recruits, extra items and a hideaway.

One of the things which drew me to these rules was the variable turn structure, I used to play a lot of Two Hour Wargames Rules, where characters can interupt an opponents go, but this got rather confusing when trying to field a large number of figures and decide who went before who, Gav appears to have nailed it with his rule structure.

Each leader rolls for their Authority at the beginning of the game and this provides them with the total number of actions or orders they can bark at their men in a given turn. They can provide them with orders such as move, shoot, Hand to Hand or special actions such as reload. If you have an authority of 5 your can spend one action telling 5 men to all shoot. However the next action/order you give is only for 4 men etc, etc. until you run out of actions.

However as you attempt an action your opponent has a chance to react which if successful takes the turn from you and hands the initiative to them, from what I have experienced so far this means you have to think about the order in which you carry out your actions so if you mess up, suddenly you are on the back foot this balances the risk vs reward with any actions.

Each character has a number of stats which are represented by a quality dice meaning a low quality character might roll a D4, a more experienced chacter might be rolling a D8. These rolls however are open ended so if a player scores the highest possible result (a 6 on a D6 for example) they roll again and add the next score on to the total result, you keep going with this until you fail to achieve the highest result, in my first play test a D4 Character took down a far more experienced character by rolling 3 x 4D4. 

Combat is slick and has some nice features which give you a feel of true swashbuckling on the high seas.

With the first outing this sunday, I am very much looking frward to giving these a proper run through.

Meanwhile I started to note down the potential back story to future encounters in Atlantis. The one line from the Warlords film struck me with plenty of possibilities "They steal some rifles the Atlantians have acquired from a ship they plundered".

How many ships have they attacked over the years?

A few hours on the Interweb and suddenly their are plenty of potential ideas and ships crews that have simply disappeared... or dragged below the surface?

1794  HMS Ardent lost with all hands 500 crew – It is presumed that she caught fire and blew up. A part of Ardent's quarter deck with some gunlocks deeply embedded in it was found floating in the area as was splinter netting driven into planking. No trace was ever found of her 500 crew.

1799 HMS Lutine – Sank off Vlieland in heavy weather. She was carrying a large cargo of gold, most which remains unsalvaged. 269 people were lost.

1800 USS Insurgent departed Baltimore 22 July and after a brief stop at Hampton Roads sailed for her station 8 August 1800. Never heard from again, the frigate and her crew were presumed lost as a result of the severe storm.

The possibilities are endless.

I just now need to resist the draw to paint pirates rather than those half finished Frenchmen.

Warlords of Atlantis Part 2 - An unmade Prequel.

Guy's thanks for your kind words nice to be back home and as I am under strict instructions from the household nurses who won't let me lift a finger.... At least until the novelty wears off in a day or so.

Time to make the most use of the extra hobby time.

These Antediluvian Miniatures were a joy to paint, perfect for this small projects based on the unmade prequel to the 1978 movie Warlords of Atlantis which see's 18th Century Pirates/Naval types pitted against the Atlantians....

Using Black Scorpian's Cutlass! Rules....

(I seriously need to drop the meds.....)

 

Aquarium terrain is perfect background for adventures amongst the seven cities of Atlantis.

As luck would have it I may even have some suitable opponents to try out the rules with...
I knew I would find a use for these eventually.

 

Happy gaming.

Smugglers and Wreckers.

The blog and hobby generally has really fallen behind in recent weeks, what with a couple of holidays and trying to play catch up at work to make up for the "rest". 

Devon was rather wet.

What did I expect for August in the UK?

However looking for things to pass the time I wandered into a couple book shops who had a number of small booklets on the Smugglers and Wreckers of North Devon. Perfect as I had been looking at the Black Scorpion range for several weeks thinking about how I could find a use for them.

 

During the 17th and 18th centuries smuggling or Free Trading was commonplace in the West Country and considered to be a very profitable way of life!

Smugglers were known to have used Lee, Ilfracombe, Heddon’s Mouth, Watermouth Cove and Morte. Some of the smuggling operations were clearly considerable; in 1785 a 96 gallon cask of rum  was found at Watermouth Cove and in 1801 224 gallons of gin and 164 gallons of brandy were found on the foreshore near Ilfracombe. 

Wrecking was another popular activity, as goods were washed ashore from a wrecked ship were regarded as common property. The wreckers of Mortehoe were notorious and feared by sailors it was said a sailor would rather drown than come ashore at near the men of Morte.
Any ship in trouble brought locals to the shore and in no time the ship would be destroyed and its cargo carried away. It was illegal to claim salvage from a wrecked ship if anyone was found alive on it. Therefore the wreckers would dispose of any survivors!
One of Mortehoe's most notorious wreckers was Elizabeth Berry, who it is thought used her pitchfork to drown sailors." (she was arrested for plundering the William and Jane in 1850 and given 21 days hard labour).

It seems that everyone was involved; in 1783 all the Ilfracombe pilot boats were suspected of smuggling and one, the Cornwall, was seized and cut up into three parts. An Ilfracombe Collector from 1804-1824, Thomas Rudd, was father in law to a known smuggler, Cooke, who was never caught. In 1825 the richest man in Combe Martin, John Dovell, was prosecuted for handling smuggled goods.

The most infamous smuggler in north Devon was Thomas Benson, who in 1747 became MP for Barnstaple. The following year he was granted a lease on Lundy Island and entered into contract with the Government to carry convicts abroad. 

However, he landed them on Lundy instead to run his smuggling operation. He became over confident and was fined for smuggling and stripped of his office. He didn’t pay and his lands in Bideford were seized. To recover his losses he persuaded the Captain of the Nightingale to fire it for the insurance, but the plan was discovered and he fled to Portugal. 

Now they sound like some cracking scenario's to me....
Just the tonic to kick start the hobby again....