Blink Blink Gone

Yep, Blink once, blink twice and the week disappeared. Kinda like what happened to all my Calvary in our game of pike and shotte at the club on Saturday.

Feeling lazy tonight so I’ll use Bryan’s  little write up on the game. Which I’ll post below.

Other things happening, well I decided to go back to my old blog format, the new one I tried was just too much overload. Also got a couple of games of Small Worlds in, which is a great fun little game, easy to play and its a non-brain draining game.

Looking forward to getting some more games in since the last month was just a blur of holidays and family life.

Pike and Shotte

 

(Bryan’s report) As per the last couple of meetings, we had another large Pike & Shotte game for the October meeting. Going into this game the Parliamentarians had won the first game (two months ago), the Royalists (thanks to Cavan) had won the second game (last month), so the coming game would be the decider.

This time we had myself (Bryan), Glenn and Cavan upholding the Royalist cause, against Rob, Kevin and Mark for Parliament.

Pretty typical deployment all along the 16ft table, however the Parliamentarians did try something sneaky on their right flank and massed the bulk of their cavalry (9 regiments) there with Rob. Opposite this was myself with Prince Rupert and (initially) only four Royalist cavalry regiments, so I was worried, but Rupert wasn’t!

Cavan held our Royalist centre, mainly opposed by Mark (yes, he had made a rare appearance and even played some of this game before being distracted by another game!). Glenn was on our other flank with a mixed force, opposite to Kevin with his Scots infantry (Kevin’s Scots cavalry had all gone to Rob to bolster that big cavalry deployment mentioned earlier).

So the Parliamentarians got the first turn, and Rob was super aggressive with his 9 cavalry regiments, most getting 3 moves on superb order dice rolling by the Parliamentarian maestro that he is. I think his plan was to overwhelm Rupert’s 4 cavalry regiments, before the Prince could bring up his two reserve cavalry regiments to assist. Things were looking grim for the Royalists. Then Prince Rupert (or was it his poodle) pulled a blinder! First fight – two cavalry regiments on two – Rupert wins, Parliament rolls low and both are destroyed. Next fight, similar thing happens, next fight, same again, and again! At the end Rupert (who now had 6 cavalry regiments) had destroyed all 9 Parliamentarian cavalry regiments for the loss of only one Royalist cavalry regiment. And that loss was caused my Mark’s pikemen coming across to assist Rob! A total massacre for the Parliamentarian right flank, leaving their centre exposed to (nearly) the full force of Rupert’s Cavaliers!

In the centre Cavan was grinding it out against Mark, mainly infantry action around a village, with Cavan coming out slightly ahead in the end. On the other flank Glenn and Kevin were thrashing it out, but the lack of cavalry for Kevin was probably not helping him. In the end Glenn seemed to have that flank, so with Rob broken and Kevin nearly broken the game concluded as a major Royalist victory!

Another awesome game on the big table, and thanks to all players especially Rob who took his defeat (and bad luck) with a smile which truly made for an enjoyable game (at least for Rupert – he is redeemed!).

Grant and John came for a visit and played a 28mm game of Impetus – an Ancient/Medieval ruleset, with miniatures on large bases which looked really interesting.

Early finish, once the Parliamentarians capitulated, so Mark suggested a beer, like we used to, so we all retired to the Two Fat Cows (or Blondies or whatever it’s now called), and Rob being the loser he was, very kindly paid – what a sportsman he is!

Rambling Fridays

Another week passes and it’s Friday night again. The start of my two week holiday, and that means it needs to be another beer tasting. Speaking of which, one if the lads at my office has gotten himself right into brewing his own beers and now makes a pretty nice drop. I had a little taste and it’s an awesome drop, could easily be bought of the shelf if you didn't know. There was a little review done on it, that's up on YouTube for those interested in beer and brewing https://www.youtube.com

For my beer of the evening,I've gone back to one I tried a few months back. A nice rich dark porter. A perfect full smack in the chops beer , it's  packed full of flavours , great to start my holiday on.

Gaming wise I managed to chip away at more of my Pike and Shotte models, with my painting enthusiasm waning a bit as I get side tracked on my holiday and photography stuff. I’m hanging out to see what the new Canon 7D mark II camera body is like when it gets announced later this month. More dead man markers more cavalry riders and more infantry slowly but surely getting painted.

Also this week has been spent working on all sorts of things, including quite a bit of digging through some of my old photos. I revisited the trip to Melbourne and the Point Cook Air show from back in march this year. It’s funny how several months past and you go back and look at the photos and see completely different things. I pulled out a couple that only needed cropping which I overlook previously.

Melbourne - Point Cook Air Show 2014

Melbourne - Point Cook Air Show 2014

Melbourne - Point Cook Air Show 2014

Melbourne - Point Cook Air Show 2014

Early Parliament Army list.

With some more games of Pike and Shotte planned for the next club meeting and the rest of my models turning up. I can now field a full 1000 point army. After re-reading the rules some more I corrected a few mistakes from my first list..e.g. the way I was using generals and come up with this list.

To save on having to buying one extra unit, I'm going to use my Dragoon unit as two separate units. Since you get 12 foot and 12 mounted models in the one box, I'm forcing the mounted to stay mounted and the foot to stay on foot. That way I get good use out of all the models and I don't think it will make a difference to my game play... especially the way I play.

Air Brush Grove

I got into the grove this evening with the air brush and went a little crazy. Put three layers on onto two units of horse for P&S (Pike and Shotte) and then base colours the riders. 

I also tried a few splatter effects to try and do some spotted horse. ... Not so good.

Then a base coat on my 70mm infantry canon for Bolt action. Then decided to base my T34/85 tank. Planning on using some chipping techniques on it so started with a dark red brown for the base.

Used up the extra browns on my canons for P&S

Parliamentary Pike and Shotte

Another hit of plastic crack turned up today at the door, my last two boxes of Cavalry for Pike and Shotte, so I’ll be able to field my 1000 point army at the next club meeting. In the mean time I've been slowly chipping away at the mass painting.

I decide to use the dead and wounded models on bases and add numbers for the number of causality's, so I only need one on the table per unit. It should look good and be more workable than having lots of dead models behind the units. Also saves getting more dead guys.








So my list works out like below. Not sure about the number of Generals, need to recheck the rules but that wont change the list to much either way.

Two down ...too many to go.

Almost finished the second cavalry unit tonight. They are still rather shiny thanks to the ink layer, but that will dull down when I matt varnish them. So tempting to spend more time on them as they are nice models . But I have another 200 or so models to go for this army, so plan on sticking with my speed painting methods. 

The sound of canons.

So Saturday bought about the huge Pike and Shotte battle at the South Auckland Gaming club. My very first game of Pike and Shotte. The original idea was to do the Battle of Marston Moore, but with the numbers and points, we ended up just basing our army lists on that battle, as we needed to swap the Scots over to the Royalist's side to balance out the points.

Glen, Bryan and Kevin were running the Royalists while Arthur and I were running the Parliamentary side. At 2500 points per side we had a couple of thousand models on the 8 x 16 foot table. To save time once the terrain was set down both sides drew up there deployment plan for there respective sides, then we all deployed at the same time.

Kevin's praying for his Scots before the game even starts.

I deployed my troops down the right hand flank while Arthur took his larger force and covered the center and left flank. The large hill was just inside my deployment zone, so I managed to get all three of my medium canon's deployed directly in place so they could started bombardment of the Royalists from turn one. Bryan's massive cavalry force deployed opposite to me, but was bunched up due to the river cutting off the end corner of his side. The Scots deployed on the center of the table while Glen setup opposite Arthur's main force.

Turn one and the Parliamentary force rushes forward, my canons roaring and dealing out some damage. Mean while over the next few turns I manage to either disrupt some of Bryan's cavalry or he managed to fail all of his command orders, so they stood still for a full three turns.

Arthur advances his troops along the river bank while the canons on either side shoot it out.

Arthur's cavalry goes down the middle followed up by his infantry.  

Parliamentary forces advance

As we are all new to Pike and Shotte, there aren't to many models with paint on them yet, most of my stuff has a base coat and first colour down, but even that has a long way to go before it's finished.

My Crassiers lead the charge down the right flank. (painted models always win of course)

The rest of my infantry move up behinds cover and get into shooting positions while Arthur's cavalry charge down the middle to get stuck in and cause some chaos.

Glen ponders how to deal with those charging Ironside Cavalry

As I'm waging war against Bryan's Cavalry down the other end of the table, Arthur is sneaking troops down the far left flank.

 The Cavalry finally clash and Glen finds out hove nasty those Ironside Cavalry are as things start to die.

With Brian stalling his Royalists I move up my infantry beside my Cavalry and get ready for some hard work as I'm out numbered by several units.

Brian finally gets his army moving and digs in behind a rock wall as we start a good old shoot out.

At the other end of the table Glen and Arthur are getting stuck into each other..

Well actually Arthur is destroying Glen's Royalists.

My Cavalry and infantry get bottle necked as they all try and clamber into fighting positions as I start going through Bryan's cavalry units.

After some good clashes of our cavalry units and a few withdrawals on my side I've managed to cause heavy damage on Bryan's Royalists, with only losing three units in total myself.

Glen and Bryan contemplating the collapse and defeat of the Scots along the river bank. 

This was the beginning of the end for the Royalist.

Not long after that my canons inflict the final blow to Bryan's Crassiers and break his army on the right flank. Arthur also finishes up Glen's resistance as well.

A convincing win for the Parliamentarians. 

I lost one Pike, one Musket and one horse unit in total, and Arthur had lost about the same, so it was a full on victory for sure for us.

My Carassiers worked really well for me, the mortar I had was mostly missing and my Dragoons never saw combat at all. My canon's were awesome, and take the prize of breaking Bryans army, so I'm looking forward to trying out some heavy canons in the next game. Overall I was happy with my list, I've already noted a few changes for next time and worked out a 1000 point list.

It was great fun, (always helped by winning of course) and a really good way to learn the game with such a big battle there were plenty of different interactions and a good cross section of the rules covered during the game. We made some mistakes on rules as you do and adjusted as we went keeping it fair when we worked out what we were doing wrong. I really liked the game system, and it will be even more fun once we start taking advantage of some of the other more advanced rules and tactics.

Now back to the painting table to get more paint on plastic for next months battles.