Happy New Year. . . I get to start it with Covid.

 

Yup. I have The Covid. A mild case; one night of fever and two days - so far - of a sore throat and occasional cough - which I am attributing to being vaxxed and boosted. And quarantine. Hopefully the symptoms remain mild.

 

Now on to the gaming content. No predictions or goals or New Year resolutions as to how many minis I plan to paint this year. Sorry - just don't need the extra pressure at this time.

 

The last game I played was at The Baron's, of course: Flower of Chivalry published by The Canadian Wargames Group. Typical medieval mayhem so the photos will be hard to make sense of - the video can be accessed via this POST. I commanded the left flank battle of our side, which I failed to hold, and our side eventually lost.

 

 

It has been YEARS since I played FoC and it showed. But I was reminded what an intriguing set of rules it is, and its Battle Lust mechanism can give a basic "advance and bash" period some real flavor and nuance. So I found a used copy of the rules online with the thought I might adapt them to the earlier Norman Conquest, only to find the earlier armies/troop types already catered for in the rules. There is also a conversion guide for rules and troop types to the DBA, Tactica and WRG rules, which might also provide an indication to the age of rules, but is a bonus in that I like to base minis so they can be used for DBA (3.0 of course) too. Win win win!

 

See ya. . . after I kick Covid, of course.

Sixty-Two Special leads to The Big Move

 

Here are our boys all saddled up for The Big Move.  

My last post in June suggested there were some game reports coming. What happened? Well, the Summer of COVID 2020 for us was followed by this most recent Summer of The Big Move 2021.

Big Move. . . what happened? 2 days after my last post I found myself unexpectedly and ostensibly “retired.” Yeah. What would our response Move be? After some hard deliberation, we decided our best Move might be to take advantage of the red-hot real estate market in the Twin Cities and sell our house in preparation for a Move back "home" to Kansas City. It's what we intended for the end of our current Five-Year Plan to Retirement. . . we would just Move up the date, without the actual retirement part.

 

So, between mid-June and late August, we prepped our home in the Twin Cities for sale, sold it

 

. . . bought a new home, then packed our entire household and put it on a truck for Overland Park, Kansas

 

 . . . and finally, moved into that new home - with our boys, of course.  

 

It was truly a Big Move, and despite the reason for it I am profoundly grateful that it worked out as well as it did. 

Because this is primarily a blog about gaming, I have intentionally understated the intensity and trauma of the overall experience. I'll just acknowledge and thank my wife, family and friends for their help and support and do my best to continue to cultivate a grateful spirit. 

 

"Moving in" turns into "settling in," and while that is happening there may not be much personal gaming news to post. All my stuff is still in boxes. However, I am back in the home town of The Baron, Wiley Games and the Basement Generals, so will be doing some gaming. For instance, I've already participated in this Star Wars bounty-hunting game of Fistful of Lead: Galactic Heroes. And if you want to hear me "drone on and on until I start foaming at the mouth and falling over backward" about terrain, you can check out this episode of BS-ingwith the Baron, which I did just before leaving Minnesota, from a room that was mostly filled with packed boxes awaiting loading.

 

Bruce and I did get that game of DBA 3.0 Big Battle in before the Move. Bruce brought 2 armies that looked terribly mismatched on initial review: II/33 Polybian Roman and I/36b Italian Hill Tribes/Sardinian. The Sardinians are all Psiloi and Auxilia except for a possible Chariot General; I "won" the Sardinians and prayed to the terrain gods. Terrain can be the great equalizer in DBA if your opponent cooperates.

 

I defended (of course) and chose Difficult Hills and Woods, which mostly ended up on the right side of the table, so that is where I set up to fight. Bruce wanted to fight in 3 neat Roman lines, but I wanted a messy scrum in the terrain so maneuvered to set up good positions with a refused line on the left to hold the flank.

The Roman Cavalry general took the bait and led his Auxilia into the woods and was killed after some initial success. His Auxilia had a little more success, but not enough, and the command was eventually demoralized.

At which point the Romans withdrew to form a defensive "square" and the Sardinians solidified their terrain wall. The Romans weren't going to fight in the woods and the Sardinians were not coming out, so we had a draw, advantage Sardinians because of the demoralized Roman command. A very interesting positional battle from my point of view. Thanks, Bruce, and stay well!

Corona quashed my DBA. . .

In the grand scheme of things, this can't even be considered a hardship, but it is one more example of the change in daily life that response to the virus requires. My regular DBA 3.0 opponent (and friend) is 70+ years of age and took himself out of group/face-to-face gaming a couple weeks before the country started to embrace "social distancing." I was totally supportive; you may remember that I lost my mother to the "regular flu" a couple years ago. Just not worth taking any chances. . .

So what to do until we get "back to normal?" I might play around with De Bellis Solitarius, but I'm more likely to use the home time to catch up on completing the bases on some of the 54mm French and Indian War units I based over the last 2 years. . . like the French La Sarre troops I just finished.

One great aspect of the Muskets and Mohawks rules I play with is that they are designed to be played solitaire. It is not just an afterthought, but an integral part of the rules!

Last month's DBA 3.0 game was a Big Battle pike-fest, pitting two triple-sized II/16 Asiatic Early Successor armies against each other: II/16a Antigonus (me) and II/16d Eumenes (Bruce). Historical enemies, to boot. Both pike-heavy forces, the main difference was that Bruce/Eumenes had more elephants, and I/Antigonus had some light horse and 3 Pike Generals (Eumenes' Generals were Knights). Terrain ended up on the flanks with little impact on the game.

 Eumenes:

 Antigonos:

As the Pike blocks advanced, I sent my right-flank Light Horse out to skirmish, and fed Elephants and Pike toward my left flank to defend against Eumenes mounted push.

When the Pikes embraced the Antigonid Pike Generals provided a slight edge in the initial combats. Turned out Bruce had also PIP-starved the Elephants on Eumenes left flank by assigning them the low PIP dice, depriving it of a potent weapon. These two factors kept the Antigonids ahead of the attrition race and eventually led to the Antigonid victory.

 

Eumenes "himself" fought off the Antigonid PIkes for a couple of bounds before being finally overwhelmed.
 

Be safe!

Super Bowl Champs and some DBA

My team finally won the Super Bowl. Still doesn't seem real. . . and I am honestly still basking in it. I was in 6th grade when my family moved to the Kansas City, MO (NOT Kansas) area, the year after the Chiefs won Super Bowl IV against the Minnesota Vikings. The Vikings were "our" team then, since we had lived in Minneapolis for a couple years previously - Kindergarten and 1st Grade for me - so we were pulling for the Vikes in IV. I stayed in KC until my mid-thirties, long enough to become a fully-vested member of the Chiefs Nation, before heading back to Minnesota for work. Fifty years is a long time to wait just to have your team in the Super Bowl, let alone win it, in the midst of family and friends, in the burbs of Kansas City, whooping and crying. Congrats, Chiefs! What a fun win!

A couple weeks before, Bruce and I met for our monthly game of DBA 3.0. Bruce provided 2 28mm Classical "Greek" armies: II/22 Alexandrian Macedonian and II/5c Later Hoplite Greek Theban. We played Big Battle format; each army x 3 for 36 elements per army. After dicing I got the Thebans, defending. Not much terrain; a Woods, some gentle hills and ploughed fields, mostly on the flanks. Pretty Classical.

The Macs were Pikes supported by Knights, Cavalry, Auxilia and Psiloi. . .

The Thebans were basically the same, with Spears instead of Pikes, and no Knights. . .

 
So, it would be a contest of double-depth Pikes against 2 lines of Spears. The Theban army is interesting in that it has a Spear General and an element of double-depth Spears (8Sp), both of which get a +1 in combat in Good Going against Pikes. Number of elements times 3, remember, we're playing Big Battle. Moving into close combat and thereby getting to choose the order of combats could be critical when engaging the Pikes.  

The Macedonian mounted threatened my left flank, so I refused and expanded it with my own mounted. Our Auxilia skirmished in the hills on my right flank.

Then I spotted a potential "Gaugamela Moment" on my left flank. . .

. . . and due to very favorable dice roll the Mac General went down fighting!

The loss of the General slowed down the threat on this flank while the Spears in the center pushed into the Pikes and we both fed Cavalry into the skirmish on the opposite flank. 

  
First contact in the center went slightly in the Spears favor, and the subsequent elimination of a couple of Pikes elements, despite the loss of a couple of Spears, led to increased Theban momentum as a couple of holes in the line were exploited. The second line of Spears moved up where needed to plug their own holes. Combats on both flanks also favored the Thebans.

And suddenly, due to their small sizes, both Macedonian flanks were demoralized, and despite the fact that the center large command had taken losses but was still intact, per the rules the demoralization of two commands breaks the army.

Thanks for another fun game, Bruce!

See ya!