Saturday Gamenight

On our last SNS gamenight, our clubmembers organized two games. Out in the main lobby of GAJO's store, I set up a game on one of the 6 x 4 tables. It was a French & Indian War skirmish using the Warhammer Historical rules, Legends of the High Seas. LOTHS is basically a pirate skirmish rules game, but it covers the basic black powder period so I thought I'd try a different theme to it. In the scenario, a force of French-led warriors is raiding the frontier while the settlers must defend their homesteads with the help of a squad of British soldiers and frontiersmen. The actual object of the battle was for both sides to keep possession of Mrs. Jones, a settler with wide reputation for her cooking skills. She had to be protected at all costs!

The French and indian forces deployed randomly off table edges after the colonials had set up. As luck would have it, most of the native units deployed close to the cabin where Mrs. Jones was holed up with the militia. The British soldiers were located by a barnyard in the center of the table while the best unit on the table, named the "Albany Rangers" were positioned on a hill some distance away!

Seen above, the French Captain in charge of the raid led a Canadian militia section across the fields to try to pin down the British soldiers and keep them from reinforcing the settlers in the cabin (upper left corner). Unfortunately for Dennis, his men were gunned down by the Redcoats and long range fire from the Rangers who were coming off the hill off picture to the right. Eventually the French Captain and a couple of his men faced off in the barn against the British officer and his men. In a classic sword and bayonet duel, the French officer and his men went down fighting.

My poor roll for deployment landed my band of warriors led by Thunder Badger into a swampy marsh. I could see there were plenty of warriors attacking the cabin so I decided to try to get past the marsh and hold off the Albany Rangers before they could help the colonial militia. Unfortunately the wetlands really slowed me down. At least there was some vegetation as cover.


As my band of braves emerged from the marsh the rangers were taking aim from the edge of the woods at the bottom of the hill. A lively firefight began. In the meantime, the warriors attacking the cabin were being pinned down in a stream gully . Dave's militia were picking off some of their attackers from loopholes made in the cabin walls. Terry and Jeff (visitor for that game) were organizing for a rush from the stream embankment. With the failure of the French Captain and the Canadian militia, for some reason the British Captain and a couple of his men pulled away from the farm  - perhaps a "strategic regrouping"?

Crazy Squirrel and Red Hawk led their warriors from the stream embankment for a rush to the cabin. The militia seen outside the cabin are assumed to be inside at the loopholes. After a couple of volleys some warriors fell, but others quickly surrounded the cabin and hand-to-hand combat began. Some warriors set fire to the empty barn, the militia outside of the cabin at the fence were dispatched, and a warrior pulled Mrs. Jones out of the cabin! Belatedly, the British Captain began heading back to the cabin. Unfortunately, Thunder Badger's warriors attempted to engage the rangers in hand-to-hand, and Norm rolled better than I did. Thunder Badger and two of his warriors survived to escape back through the marsh. At least they kept the rangers from reinforcing the cabin fight! The French and Indians won the day with the capture of Mrs. Jones.  

Everyone said they enjoyed the skirmish. I think we were all surprised at how the LOTHS could be applied to other-than-pirate scenarios. We'll be playing these rules again. Quick to learn, and easy to modify. The figures are all painted by GAJO. I'm slowly building up enough forces to do a more tactically  oriented game using the rules This Very Ground by Iron Ivan.

The other game was going on at the same time in the back room on the larger table.

Gary, Lynn, and Paul were playing a large game of Flames of War set in Normandy 1944. I have to apologize to the guys, most of the pictures I took of that game turned out poorly. Here we see Paul's panzer forces advancing through hedges and fields. I love the sunflower field that Chris created (originally made for the Kursk game). It's created in sections so that as vehicles drive through the sections are removed as flattened.  I don't know how the game went. I suppose if people want accounts of the games I don't play in to be posted, they'll just have to email me a report! I'll try to do better at photographing the other games though.

Next month we'll be playing Field of Glory ancients and Johnny Reb III American Civil War. Should be fun! We've also decided that we're not playing enough FOW games... so we've created an Auxiliary gaming night starting next month.