Monday, September 7, 2015

Wargaming Again

So, its been since April that I put anything on the blog.  In the meantime, we moved from Kansas City, Missouri to Fort Collins, Colorado.  I am retired now, and we had decided a long time ago to move back to Colorado.

 I miss the guys I gamed with in Kansas City.  They are a great bunch, and I had many good times.

Since coming to Fort Collins, I have gamed with my brother, playing Arc of Fire.  I enjoyed it very much, and will paint figures for it.  I played a game of Desperado at the local game store (Gryphon Games) and that was fun also.

This weekend, my friend Brad Thorton came up and we played the first game ever with my 40mm figures painted for the ImagiNations of the Grand Duchy of Waldo and the Ruskin Palatinate.  We were using the rules All the King's Men, from the website of the same name.

http://www.allthekingsmentoysoldiers.com/

The rules were written for their 54mm figures, I hope they will excuse us for playing with the diminutive 40mm figures.

The rules are easy to play.  The units are 12 for infantry, 6 for skirmishers or cavalry.  I have no cavalry at this time, so we had equal forces:

1 grenadier unit
3 line units
1 skirmisher unit
1 gun

We ended up playing 2 games, it moves quickly.  Its a card based game, where you take two of the suits out of the deck.  Each side is then moving on either red or black cards.  Each unit starts the turn with a green marker.  When a unit is moved, it degrades to a yellow marker, and if it moves again in the turn, it goes to red.  Green units firing have successes on 4/5 and 6, yellow on 5 and 6, and red on 6.  Units can and do get activated multiple times in a turn.  At the beginning of the next turn, all the units go back to green markers.

Firing is an opposed roll, with the firing unit needing more successes than the defending unit to cause casualties.  Taking fire casualties also causes a drop in color for the unit.

Melee is an opposed roll, but both sides take all the casualties caused by the other.  The attacker, no matter what his color going in, rolls as green in melee.  At the end of the melee, both units are automatically red, no matter what color they started.

The first game was a straight up battle.


Brad was on the far side with the Grand Duchy of Waldo, I am the closer army with the Ruskin Palatinate.  This battle ended up with a definite win for the Grand Duchy of Waldo.  I used my grenadiers to charge a unit, but then a fresh unit on the other side charged them and destroyed them.  I had previously lost my skirmishers and one other unit.  If you lose half your units the game is lost.

The second battle was a little more challenging.  a river crossed the table, with a bridge in the middle.  There were two fords by the woods along the river, causing you to lose speed for the ford and the woods.  Each side's skirmishers started on the table a foot from the bridge.  I managed to put my skirmishers on the bridge, and push two units across a ford.  I caught Brad in a crossfire and defeated his units in detail.




It was a fun day, and I liked the rules.  They are a free download at the All the King's Men website.  They have more tactical decisions than you might imagine for a free set of rules, and worth a look.

1 comment:

  1. Good to see the homecast lads in action. Glad to hear you are getting settled.

    ReplyDelete