World Cup Battles

While watching the World Cup, I joked that England and Norway had a 1,000 year rivalry. Which gave me an idea - England and Norway using Dominion of the Spear!

Battle of Stamford Bridge (1066)

I decided to fight Stamford Bridge from the 2nd expansion for DotS. I played on a virtual board but I rolled real dice.

Here is a summary snapshot of the battle. I distinguish the sides based on their jersey colors (white for England and Red for Norway).

1. Harold's huscarls attack in the center. The Viking spears hold them off, but at great cost.
2. Harald advances in the center, but his huscarls get beaten by the Saxon fyrd. On the left, the Saxon select fyrd drives off Viking spears.
3.  Then the select fyrd drives off more spears.
4. The select fyrd then flanks the Viking archers. They flee the field. 

Harald and the Vikings are defeated (much like Saturday's soccer match).

Battle of Rocroi (1643)

I then noticed that Spain and France are playing next. This also calls for a battle. I chose Rocroi from the Dominion of Pike and Shot expansion.

Here is the summary snapshot (France is blue and Spain is red).

1. The Spanish lancers and French cuirassiers fight to a standoff,
2. French cuirassiers charge a Spanish tercio (left). The charge fails miserably. Meanwhile, the Spanish tercio (center) drives off French pikes.
3. The center tercio defeats more pikes.

The French army is in rout. Spain wins!

Up Next?

Next, I'm doing a Falkland Islands (England vs. Argentina) scenario adapting Dominion of Rice and Napalm.

After that, I have visions of notable battles.

• England vs. France - Agincourt
• England vs. Spain - Spanish Armada using a naval variant of the Dominion series.
• Argentina vs. Spain - something from the liberation wars
• Argentina vs. France - at first, I think this was nothing. But then I found this.

Rev War Skirmish Project

I have begun to make progress on my skirmish project.

Background

The project began in January. I made some new counters and even did a big battle scenario as a prelude.

Then the whole project stalled. My printer ran out of ink. By the time I ordered more, the tablet connected to the printer died. And by the time I got a new tablet, I moved on to other things.

Recent Progress

As I mentioned last week, I saw that there is a new edition of Long Rifle in the works. That got me interested again and I began to take positive steps forward.

First, I updated my counters. Here are the counters for the British.

I moved from 1/2" square to 3/4" by 1/2" rectangles, with more figures per counter. The idea is that each counter represents a small detachment of troops. Once again, I went with an impressionistic style rather than realistic. It just makes the counters easier to see on the tabletop.

I also made armies for the Continentals (blue), Loyalists (green), backwoodsmen (brown), and natives (dark red).

I also made some wagons and downloaded some buildings from Junior General. The buildings will sit upright instead of being top down.

My printer is still disconnected, but I sent the file to Office Depot for printing. I also ordered bases from Litko.

Rules

As you can probably tell from the counters, I opted to do a small unit skirmish rather than a man-to-man skirmish. Each counter represents a unit. My main character will command 4-6 units.

I'm still up in the air about rules, but I'll probably just use Dominion of with tweaks. I'd like to use some One Hour Wargame scenarios, so I'll need to figure how to make them work.

The Campaign

I am elevating the main character of this campaign, Batty Numppo, to 2nd Lieutenant. He will command a mixed bag of troops - mostly militia and backwoodsmen with a few natives.

Following up on January's prelude, I'm assuming that Lt. Col. Preboast is besieging Savannah. Batty will conduct a series of raids against British supply lines and against Tories in the interior.

Stay tuned for more updates.

The Goblin Cave

My Keep on the Borderlands Campaign

The continuing adventures of Aldric the fighter, Corvin the mystic, Rook the rogue, and Lothariel the elven pathfinder

After their previous victory, our heroes return to the Caves of Chaos. This time, they explore the goblin cave.

Encounters:

• Giant rats - L bit. A hits. R takes out 2. bandage L but she is weakened.
• Rock trap - A and L hit. Use 2 more bandages.
• Goblin urchins - A hit. Rest wipe them out.
• Goblin guards - A and R hit. L hits then gets hit. A hits. C casts Fear; 1 runs. R hits then takes out last one. L recovers.
• Goblin king and guards - L hit. A hit. C hits. A and R hit. King flees!

Once again, a successful excursion!

Note:

• There was a chance to meet an ogre, but the encounter did not come up. Whew! But they will need to fight the ogre at some point.

Round and Round

I recently saw a post on Lead Adventure Forum for a 3rd edition of Two Hour Wargames' Long Rifle.

This sparked an interest in my sidelined Revolutionary War skirmish project.

A Library Hunt

Back then, I perused Long Rifle 2nd edition. I decided to take another look at it. But I could not find it in my Wargames Vault library! I could have sworn that I purchased it. Oh well, guess I'll buy it now. But it is a bit more than I like to spend. I ended up buying Black Powder Battles and Muskets and Mohawks, two predecessors to Long Rifle.

Then I remembered where I read LR; it's on Kindle Unlimited!

Should I Get 3e?

I am tempted to order 3e, which is probably not a good idea considering my history with Two Hour Wargames. Here is my typical process:

1. That looks interesting. I'm going to buy it.
2. Ugh. I really don't like the TWH combat system. Oh well, I can use the campaign system.
3. Hmm, the campaign is a bit more complicated than I like. I'll streamline it a bit.
4. Put the rules aside and wait several months
5. Get interested in the topic again.
6. Pull out the rules.
7. Return to step 2.

Star Cup 4

I previously mentioned resurrecting my Star League sci-fi grav ball league.

I did a little digging on my old blog and found some of the results. I was able to reconstruct the division winners and most of the Star Cup winners.

I could not find the results from Star Cup 4. So I decided to replay it with my new rules.

Setting Up

I don't have the ratings from that season, so I just generated them randomly.

• The Blitz have an average offense and strong defense and goalie. (1-2-2 rating)
• The Fury have a strong offense and goalie but average defense (2-1-2 rating)

Star Cup is a 3-game series. With the better season record, the Blitz are home for games 1 and 3.

 Game 1

The Fury score early then dominate possession. The Blitz make a run late in the 1st half but cannot get off a shot.

The 2nd half sees more Fury dominance. Midway, they score another goal. The Blitz score late but their comeback runs out of time.

Fury 2 - Blitz 1

Game 2

More Fury dominance, but they cannot get the ball past the Blitz keeper. The Blitz get a late run, but no luck.

The game goes into overtime. In Star League, overtime is sudden death. First goal wins. The Blitz make a run, but their shot goes wide. Then the Fury get a shot. Rebound. The next shot misses. Another rebound. Then goal!

Fury 1 - Blitz 0

Box Scores

Roaring 20's Baseball - Part 3

Encouraged by my experiments with grav ball, I started prepping a new league. Then I stopped and told myself to finish baseball first!

So here are the games for the final week.

Highlights:

• The Philadelphia A's meet the New York Yankees with the American League title on the line. The Yanks need 1 win while Philly have to sweep to force a playoff game.
• In the first game, the A's leap out to a 4-0 lead. Babe Ruth hits a homer to cut the lead by 2 runs. Bing Miller adds to the A's lead and then Rube Walberg closes the door. The A's win 5-2.
• In the second game, the A's have a 3-2 lead. Then Babe Ruth hits a 3-run homer. The A's get another run but it's not enough. The Yankees win the game (5-4) and the pennant.
• Similarly, the Pittsburgh Pirates have a 2-game lead over the New York Giants. The Giants need to sweep to force a playoff.
• In the first game, the teams are tied 3-3. In the bottom of the 9th, Pittsburgh's Pie Traynor comes to the plate with men on base. He knocks in the winning run. The Pirates clinch the National League pennant.

Final Standings:

The Yankees and Pirates win their leagues and will meet in the Championship Series.

Battle of Fort Charlotte

Time for this year's Independence Day battle.

Background

Stymied at Fort New Richmond (Baton Rouge, LA), Bernardo de Galvez decides to cut off the supply lines to the British garrison.

He sails his force to Fort Charlotte (Mobile, AL)

 

Opposing Forces

• Spanish - Galvez (white) - 3 Spanish line infantry, 2 batteries of artillery, 1 unit of unreliable militia
• British - Capt. Elias Durnford (red) - 2 line infantry, 2 militia (1 mounted), 1 artillery

The Battle

Galvez begins the battle with a bombardment in the center. It is ineffectual. The British mounted militia drive off the Spanish militia (left).

The bombardment continues in the center. Meanwhile, a British sortie wipes out some artillery (left).

The bombardment succeeds!

Militia takes up the defense in the center.

Oops, I should have removed the wall.

Spanish infantry drives off the mounted militia (left).

But the British militia and line crush the Spanish center and right.

Fort Charlotte remains in British hands. 😡

But Wait

We have received word from Galvez. He made a second attempt that succeeded!

Here is his map of the siege. Numbers indicate turns.

I actually played this scenario twice. The first time was actually on my PowerPoint battle board. Galvez actually won this one. But I wanted to play the scenario using physical counters, so I did it again. That's the initial report in this post.