The Battle of Bairen,1097 at Partizan

It seems that everybody else who went to Partizan has already updated their blogs, but pressure of work and a trip to London last weekend have left me rather tardy.

James, Martin, Tom and myself put on a rather huge game of Midgard to refight the Battle of Bairen  1097 using the extensive El Cid collections that we have been working on these past twenty years or so.

I'll not write a full report, it's been far too long for me to recall all the details, but what follows is a selection of photographs from the action.

Moorish boats offshore prepare to raid arrows on the flank of the Aragonese forces

A rather spectacular shot of the initial deployments

James fashioned the sea and shore from a sheet of perspex

The Aragonese Jinetes launch themselves at the massed Moorish camels

The one where Martin points at Toms cock, so Tom does too.

They have calmed down a bit now

After an initial missile duel, eventually the battle lines close to contact

The Moorish camels supported by the boats swiftly gain the upper hand on their left flank

Forces start to clash in the center

King Pedro leads his Caballeros in the charge, but is swiftly cut down in single combat

The Aragonese left force the Moorish right almost back onto their camp

With King Pedro dead  and the Moorish camels raiding their camp the forces of El Cid and Aragon collapsed, El Cid cut his way out through the Moorish camp and would live to fight another day.

The game played really well, it's by far the biggest game of Midgard we have ever played by, I reckon, a factor or about three, but the rules scaled up really well.

We were well chuffed to win the McFarlane Shield for the best demo game. Not bad considering some of these figures were painted 20 years ago.

Hope you enjoyed, I'd suggest that if you are thirsty for more check out James', Tom's and Martin's blog posts:

Partizan Round-Up and El Cid Vignettes

El Cid: the Battle of Bairen, 1097 CE

El Cid at Partizan 2021 (1)

El Cid at Partizan 2021 (2)

Partizan.. an actual show.. in real life! (El Cid battle of Bairen 1097)

Battle of Barnet 1471

Quite the milestone yesterday when I had my first game out of my family bubble. Victoria and I have played a few games of Star Wars: Legion* while in lockdown, but yesterday I ventured over to Toms' in Sherwood to join him and James for a game as part of the #WorldWarRoses event, playing a Battle of Barnet game.

Almost all of my medievals are still in transit from Wisconsin, so I was only able to contribute a single unit of bowmen, but fortunately Tom, James and Martin have got rather a lot of their own stuff done.

We played using James's own Midgard rules that, although it was my first game with them, work very well for the period. James commanded the Yorkists while Tom took the Lancatrians, this rusty general was entrusted with Gloucesters command on the right flank of the Yorkist army. The deployments were managed by twitter poll and we then rolled a +/- dice and the whole Yorkist army wandered two base widths to the right in the fog.

The command rolls were affected by the fog, with units needing to pass on a 4+ rather than a 3+ but we were soon into action In the centre Edward and Warwick were soon battering away at each other, both commanders eventually surrounded by the bodies of their dead Men at Arms. 

On my right my Billmen soon saw off Oxfords archers but my Men at Arms made heavy going against his Billmen, suffering many setbacks until finally my own Billmen were able to support the fight and turn the tables, although Gloucester was gravely wounded he survived the day and took Oxfords surrender, a pretty ransom shall be collected!

A great days gaming with some good old friends!

*It was nice to be on the winning side for a change ;)

What I did on my holidays - The Other Partizan 2019

Victoria and I had originally planned to visit the UK back in May, but with one thing and another the fates conspired to mess that up and we could not make it. But, we booked again in August and with great serendipity our fortnight in the UK coincided with 'The Other Partizan' at the Newark Showground.

Chum Martin picked Victoria and I up on the Sunday and drove us over to Newark for the event. The cost of entry was refreshing after the expensive shows I attend in the US, just £5.00 each to get in, including this years show figure, Karl Marx.

I knew that as I'd not seen a lot of my UK gaming buddies for a couple of years that I would be spending a lot of the day catching up I had pre-ordered most of the stuff I intended to purchase, so in preparation picked up one of the great cotton tote bags that they are producing for the show to hold my stash.

First chat of the day was with Mr Partizan himself, Laurence, then it was off to look at some games. Simon had his great Mancetter game on, as ever the table was groaning under the weight of all the figures and Simon had on a natty shirt, some things don't change.

Mancetta 61CE

  Pretty much right next to Simon was Steve with his lovely Chatterton’s Hill American Revolution game, you'll note Steve is wearing one of the natty shirts that Martin did for us at Salute 2015.

Chatterton’s Hill

Chatterton’s Hill

Chatterton’s Hill

While chatting to Steve, the other Steve and Aly showed up, as did Matt and his new wife Kozue who I'd not met before along with James. It was turning out a busy day! I also had a chance to talk to Wayne and Dan.

Mindful that I'd been here an hour already and had some orders to pick up I popped over to see Rich of Too Fat Lardies to pick up my hard copy of Blitzkrieg 1940. Rich was running a great looking game pitting Dutch defenders against FallschirmJager, who appeared to be having rather a tough time of it. Rich was sporting a very fetching snowflake badge!

Netherlands 1940

Rich Clark

Old mate Mick from our WAB days has also been playing Chain of Command a lot so it was great to catch up with him, not seen him in many years.

I also popped over to see the nice chaps at Warbases to pick up my order, Victoria also had an order to pick up and I suspect presents for me have been stashed away. On the way we bumped into Bob, Janice and James which was a nice surprise as I had not expected to see them.

All this chatting is thirsty work so we took a break in the cafe with Steve, Matt, Kozue and James, also taking the opportunity to say Hi to Jasmin and John.

Some very old gaming friends (well we are now all old) were running a Peleliu 1944 game using I Ain't Been Shot Mum which looked great. I spent a lot of time watching the game chatting to Tim, Barry and Dave.

Peleliu 1944

Dave Wilson

 Then over to the Northstar stand to pick up another order, mainly the lovely new WWII Senegalese, and had a good chat with James, also bumping into Jeremy, Rich and Tony from the Marauders. We stayed here quite a while so also got to chat with Trev and Stephen.

It's all rather a blur but I think I bumped into top chum Tom around this time too also Richard and Sammi.

Rather lovely Gaslands mat from Cigar box.

 I circled back to First Corps to see Simon and Mick pick up another pre-order and rand into my chauffeur Martin coming the other way.

Chauffeur and minder Martin!

 Penultimate stop of the day was at Great Escape Games where I had a chat with Mark and picked up on of the few things I had not pre-ordered, a copy of Seven Days to the River Rhine along with some counters, had a nice chat with Mark and Stuart.

James had also finished his family duties so we got a chance to catch up and exchange the ritual gify of Fornum & Mason Turkish Delight.

James arrived rather late

It was about time for a wrap and I remembered that I needed to pick up some more Renedra bases, whoops, out of readies and they don't take credit cards, had to borrow a tenner off Victoria!

So on to the loot:

• Tote bag
• Karl Marx
• Seven Days to the River Rhine
• Warsaw Pact Tokens
• NATO Tokens
• Blitzkreig 1940
• 12 Crusader Miniatures WWII Germans
• 56 Crusader Miniatures WWII Senegalese
• 1 Crusader Miniatures 25mm AT gun
• 4 First Corps German tank commanders
• 6 First Corps Soviet tank commanders
• 5 First Corps Soviet tank riders
• 1 First Corps T-70
• 8 First Corps Soviet casualties
• 8 First Corps German casualties
• Warbases workshop
• Warbases lean-tos
• Warbases railings (gate short)
• Warbases 5-bar gates
• 4 Warbases horses
• 4 Warbases dogs

I do miss my UK gaming buddies and the UK Wargames shows. I think the US would benefit from more events like Partizan, but I doubt it would support the traders.

Apologies if I forgot to name check everybody, writing this after getting back to the US and the jet-lag is making it all a blur...

Sharp Practice at Rockcon

A couple of weeks ago I ran my 'Brisk Action at Hawkes Farm' Sharp Practice game at Rockcon, just down the road in Illinois.

I'd got a full sign up of six players with three Union commanders called Mike - that made things easy - and Scott, Terry and Brian leading the Confederates.

I'd divided the two sides into three forces each comprising a couple of commanders plus two to four units each. Each force was given a minor and a major objective to add a little extra role-play to the game.

Confederates

Red 1: Captain James Turnbull (Leader, Status III) leading three groups of eight infantry with rifled muskets.
Red 2: Sergeant Jake Woodward (Leader, Status I) leading a group of six skirmishers with rifled muskets

Major Objective: Lieutenant Carter is a cad and a bounder, without making it too obvious he should not survive this battle.
Minor Objective: You and Lieutenant Carter vie for the affections of Molly Golightly, if you were to suffer a minor wound, she would be sure to favour you.

Red 3: First Lieutenant Daniel Carter (Leader, Status II) leading two groups of eight infantry with rifled muskets
Red 4: Sergeant Elijah Barnes (Leader, Status I) leading a group of six skirmishers with rifled muskets, one of them is a ‘Cracker’

Major Objective: The cracker must enter the farmhouse at Hawkes Farm and pick the lock on the desk drawer and retrieve the cash (Task value 16)
Minor Objective: The cracker must survive the game.

Red 5: First Lieutenant Nathaniel Eppendorf (Leader, Status II) leading two groups of eight cavalry with mixed weapons
Red 6: Second Lieutenant Jonah Fish (Leader, Status I) leading a group of six skirmishers with rifled muskets.

Major Objective: Beat an enemy group or formation by at least ‘Defeated by 2’ with a mounted charge

Minor Objective: Perform a mounted charge

Union

Blue 1: Captain Horatio Jones (Leader, Status III) leading three groups of eight infantry with rifled muskets.
Blue 2: Sergeant Jebediah Hawkins (Leader, Status I) assisting

Major Objective: The colonel does not hold you in the esteem that you believe you should be, you need to burn the farm house and barn to the ground. Your men are equipped with tinder boxes and supplies to do this.

Minor Objective: If you are going to lose the game it would look better for you if you were incapacitated, if you lose the game and have been wounded this is a minor objective, not if you win.

Blue 3: First Lieutenant Francis Kennedy (Leader, Status II) leading two groups of eight infantry with rifled muskets
Blue 4: Second Lieutenant Pearson Blake (Leader, Status II) leading two groups of six skirmishers with rifled muskets

Major Objective: Chicken dinner tonight, secure three bases of chickens from Hawkes Farm

Minor Objective: Any chicken shall do, get at least one base of chickens from Hawkes Farm

Blue 5: First Lieutenant Gary Keller (Leader, Status II) leading two groups of eight cavalry with breech loading carbines.
Blue 6: Second Lieutenant Jonah Fish (Leader, Status I) assisting.

Major Objective: Cause any group or formation of Confederate horse to break and run either by fire or steel.
Minor Objective: Escort any civilians to safety.

All my players entered into the swing of things and although only two had played Sharp Practice before the game went rather smoothly.

A brisk action did indeed take place at Hawkes Farm, Union troops occupied the farmyard, snaffling many chickens and Lieutenant Carters troopers ransacked the farmhouse stealing the cash.

In a sharp firefight in the centre the Confederate troops were getting advantage over Captain Jones troops who were rather outnumbered in that area, but the Union troops really dominated on the flanks.

Effective carbine fire saw the Confederate horse dismount and skedaddle for the cover of the orchard on that flank . While Union forces were pouring carbine and skirmisher fire into both flanks against the troops that had been overwhelming Captain Jones.

After about three hours it was time to wrap up the game, the Union forces had the slight edge in Force Morale while one of the Confederate commanders, Lieutenant Carter had achieved his major objective. On the Union side Captains Kennedy and Keller had achieved minor objectives.

I called a draw!

Everybody seemed to enjoy it and hopefully we shall have more recruits to Sharp Practice.

I do seem to have taken a lot of photos of the cavalry, here is one more of the infantry for you to enjoy.