Ambush in the Welsh Borders

After the Napoleonic battle last week I quickly packed up for a game the following day. Loosely based on a recent scenario in WSS I setup a Dark age encounter. The Normans have pushed their control across most of the British isles building fortified buildings and castles as they go. In 1069 they are on the welsh border their occupation as much about intimidation as the collection of tax. The local Norman Lord has been on a 2 day march to collect Taxes from the local population. But the Welsh are not happy and a raiding party has been sent to take back the extorted money. Using Lion Rampant both sides have about points.

The Normans have the choice to split their force between those entering along the white arrow carrying the stash and a force left behind in the fortified house. The Welsh will randomly arrive from the two green corners. The Norman’s must escort the loot to the keep.

A unit of mounted knights and spearmen await the arrival of the escorting party who can be seen way off in the distance

The Lady of the castle awaits her lord and presumably some new sparkly jewellery ?

Welsh lightly armed spearmen rush in to block the road

The welsh have some light cavalry armed with (unlimited) javelins 😀

The escorting party begins to move along the road but more welsh appear from their right

More welsh light cavalry begin to harass the group so a unit of knights are sent to chase them off

Closer to the castle, knights charge across the stream to try and engage more welsh cavalry

By the church more javelins are used to stall the advance of the escort

The welsh also try to charge the castle but are blocked at the gate in a stand off

A cavalry skirmish at one of the river crossings

Infantry are now in place to block the road

Having chased off the welsh light horsemen the Norman knights are weakened and tired the Welsh commander takes the opportunity to charge in a try and finish them off

The other knights swing around the back of the welsh ! Ouch 

A stand off at the gate neither side wishing to charge in

The Norman bodyguard drive forward to open the road

They butcher the lightly armed welsh who will only stand on a roll of double six ….yeah 😀 they stand

The Normans charge to clear the gate way but are beaten back to they resume shouting at each other instead

Finally the Normans think the path is open enough to start moving the loot (which is carried on the pack horse) but the Norman archers are at risk from the welsh bodyguard.

To protect them the Norman Lord charges in…..

But he is then charged himself by the welsh lord 

…and cut down, luckily for the Normans despite the loss of their Lord the Norman force remains in the field

The Norman bodyguard is now clearing the way, although they are being closely chased by the welsh bodyguard

Things are now tight and the last welsh unit moves to block the road

But they are then charged in the back from the castle and cleared out the way. The Norma’s are now desperate to get to safety but are in danger of being cut off by the welsh cavalry

The Norman’s rush for the gates passing the loot over only to then be cut down from behind

A final volley of javelins from the welsh and although they hit home the Normans pass their final activation to get the loot to safety. A very tight win for the Normans as they only have two units on the table at the end, the archers and the unit who stayed for much of the battle within the stockade.

Phew a wonderfully close game that was great fun, each activation became key towards the end. FairPlay to the Normans they didn’t give up and squeezed a victory right at the end.

A few new purchases this week, and some painting but the only thing completed are these rubble piles from eBay shown here with a 15mm Stug for scale.

A trip back to Edinburgh for my Fathers funeral, we took the opportunity to stop in the lovely town of Jedburgh where we visited the small Mary Queen of Scots Museum in a house she once stayed in.

Some interesting history and some nice paintings as part of the audio tour.

Worth a trip if you are passing and it is free 👍

Thanks as always hopefully another game soon

Matt 😀

Napoleonic battle : Russians vs French

After a brief hiatus we managed to get the Napoleonics back on the table this week pitching Martin’s Russians against my French for a second battle. The Russian commander had been busily painting fresh troops and Uhlan lancers, whilst the French had slightly more heavy cavalry, which meant I left out the Hussars from the previous encounter (did anybody notice they were actually British ?) anyway this means the Russians now outnumber the French so our scenario (not historical) made the Russians the attackers. We would be using V&F again but unfortunately we had both forgotten most of it so there was quite a bit of rulebook referral (by the end and after some searching the internet for FaQ’s I think we have it sorted out, mainly). 

The battlefield, split by a couple of smaller streams, these are crossable but will hinder movement and  as difficult terrain when fighting takes place in them ? In our scenario the French have stolen a march and already pushed two brigades forward towards the two crossings. The Russians have the option of bringing everything on along their baseline, anything in reserve May or may not enter along the road in the distance. In the end they didn’t arrive but the Russians had pretty much put everything on the table for a frontal assault. The French have predetermined their arrival points but these will remain unknown to the Russians.

The Russians sweep onto the battlefield and promptly play a delaying ‘fate’ card on the french Ouch ! No reserves for the french this turn the battle could be over very quickly

Quaking in thier boots the French shake into line to cover the bridge and open up with their sole cannon

On the opposite high ground the Russian cavalry makes the mistake of arriving in March column and they pay a price from the enemy artillery, this stalls their advance as they try to reform and rally one regiment.

By the other bridge the French unlimber their horse artillery but it fails to hit any of the vast numbers of Russian infantry advancing towards them !

The Russians are advancing all along the front

And soon start to push across the stream

Phew………French the French reserves all arrive next turn, Dragoons in the foreground

Two more infantry brigades in the centre supported by Heavy Cavalry and artillery, looks like we will be having a fight after all !

The Russian cavalry advances down to the stream but halts before making any charge across

Russian grenadiers are already pushing across the stream into the light woods, the Horse artillery is able to pull away in time opening up the Grenadiers for a devastating charge from the french heavy cavalry. What ! The order fails to get through and I roll a 1 the heavy cavalry brigade stands still NOOOOOOOOO

Russian Uhlans get across the river but they also fail to get any orders and stand still !

We agreed the stone bridge being narrow would only allow movement in March column, the caused the Russians some headaches as they are a bit inflexible unable to move and reform in the same turn.

The French dragoons decide to get on with it and charge across the stream, they force some of the enemy back but are then thrown back them selves

Russian attack columns moving across the wooden bridge

The french second line is rushing to deploy but the Russians must no face the french artillery set up in the centre

Whilst the cavalry tussle the Russian columns have charged into the french in front of the village, they break the first Regiment of infantry but then are forced to form square when the french Chasseurs threaten their flank

At the far right of the battlefield the french are formed into square against the Uhlans

Rather than wait to be assault the french  surge forward towards the stream, at last the french heavies are moving but now they don’t have a target to charge

The Dragoons finally force away across the stream and outnumbering the Russians now they are able to break the French cavalry brigade

Around the Stone bridge the Russians have thrown everything in to the assault the french defence holds just with some lucky Valour rolls especially the light infantry agains the grenadiers in the woods. Nice to see the new wound markers working 👍

The Russian flank is turned !

As a ruleset V&F is designed to be brutal and after several very close combats rounds and loads of hand to hand fighting especially in the centre the French suddenly got the better of it the Russian ‘valour’ failing with two brigades effectively wiped out. This came as a bit of a shock to both commanders ! I should say the French Curassiers did manage to get a charge against the enemy to ‘blood’ them wiping out a Russian infantry regiment

A final shot of the combat around the stone bridge, the Russians are definitely getting the better of it here and the french wouldn’t  be able to hold much longer. But the rest of the Russian army is broken and pulling back, so they will have to disengage when the orders come through.

Once again a splendid run out for the Napoleonics. Really fun, the French were on the ropes from the start and looked very wobbly early on. The thin blue line held remarkably well and proved tougher than expected. The Russian valour crumbled very quickly with a couple of unfortunate rolls, but fun all the same. The rules work well although I don’t think they are written in the rule sheets terribly well, they certainly gave us a decisive battle. We now can’t really fit any more troops onto my indoor table, although I have a frightening number of unpainted french. We are looking forward to a game on a slightly larger table in the summer.

Perhaps I need to get the British vs French on the table for the next Napoleonic battle ?

Thanks as always for checking in….battles stacking up as today we dropped back to the dark ages for a nail biting encounter in the welsh borders !

Matt 

More 15mm Painting

On the back of completing the 15mm Sicilian/Iberian terrain I pushed on to complete some other ‘European’ buildings which I had ordered ages ago and had sat in the box. Wanting the terrain to match in I had ordered some more Hovels Battleground buildings. I really like the slightly rough casting of the resin which gives them a more natural look than mdf. You can buy them painted but I wanted to match them in as best as I could.

A small three building block

Damaged shops

Even more damaged shops, I actually bought two of these

A small rural church , which also comes with a spire

After painting I fixed them onto small pavement sections as this makes them easier to quickly place on the table and set up a shot of the complete village. The houses on the right are from a different manufacturer but no idea where I got them from.

Whilst setting up the above I was playing about with stuff and discovered the Sicilian buildings are fortuitously the same size for the roof sections from the hovels buildings. So I have ordered some extra roofs which are in the post, this will give me the option for another 6 smaller buildings as above which blend in really well.

I have also completed some very quick and simple paint jobs on a stack of German Tanks which came from the boxed set I picked up a while ago. 

I kept the scheme very simple so they can play across a number of theatres and just about blend in with my existing Germans

Oh and a couple of Matilda’s for the Western Desert. Think I might have weathered these a little too much ?

Finally the sky cleared for a couple of hours the weather having been particularly grim for quite a while.

On a final note and I know a couple of people had asked, my Father passed away last week having lasted less than three weeks in the home. To be honest this was fine and expected as he had deteriorated in the last week or so. Whilst we are all sad we are celebrating his 90 year life which included two wives, seven sons and twelve grandchildren. I will be more than happy to reach 80 and still have my marbles !

That’s it for now the Napoleonics are setup on the table and ready for action when the Russians arrive 😀

Thanks as always Matt