How big are the Warlord against Pendraken?

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Good to see the figures on the table, hopefully the game will inspire getting them finished  

I've been 'given' half the remaining confederates to paint about 6 sprues, each of 10 strips of infantry, a gun and an officer - which is probably less than 1/6th the total box. There are a lot of figures!

QuoteHow big are the Warlord against Pendraken?

Much taller - I will try a take a picture later.  I'd say they are not remotely the same scale - I have read that the Kallistra ACW match-up OK. 

Warmaster - Dogs of War vs Ogres - 9th August

A couple of weeks ago we got together for a 2v2 game of Warmaster XL - Mark's Dogs of War vs my Ogres

A couple of shots of DoW lined up before we started - mainly Kallistra figures





A couple of turns in 



The DoW on this flank have advance steadily - some missed command rolls kept their knights in reserve - but perhaps no bad thing! On the other hand my command rolls were awful and really struggled to get forward. My giant went wild, but ended up charging the enemy! My Rhinox riders had been ensorcelled to be slow and scared - for some reason I turned them in front of the enemy pike - probably to attempt to get in a flank - but they didn't!



On the other flank - a stand-off. DoW hold the hill. Ogres (about half the numbers) hold the wood. 



A couple of turns later - lots of death in the centre. The Knights have charged through - but find Ogre a bit tough. The left hand one grind in combat, the right hand knights get flanked and destroyed. 



The other flank - this is at least an hour of playing time later - not sure either player has made any moves!

The right flank was a big win for DoW - I felt I never got going where I wanted to. Perhaps I should have just sat back on defended as command rolls weren't going for me? But a bit too much shooting against me to do that. 

A fun game - even though a defeat. 

Good looking game     

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A fun game - even though a defeat.

   

Thanks Paul. Dave's table and terrain, Mark's DoW army and my Ogres. All of which come together rather well!

Looks awesome

Not that is a brilliant game to behold !

thanks both

Ahh, I do like a good looking game of Warmaster.

And that's a very good looking game of Warmaster.

/sighs nostalgically.

Cheers - Warmaster can give a good game - we have gone to a home brew variant, which simplifies combat and uses double sized units, which really removes a lot of the fiddly nonsense from the original rules. It also removes a lot of the super powered cavalry charges by standardising frontages. 

Eisenhower - Operation Epsom

I've recently played a couple of games of Sam Mustafa's new rules Eisenhower. These rules take the Rommel rules up a level, so each base is now a battalion, giving you around a couple of Corps / an Army on the table!

It shares a lot of mechanisms with Rommel (grids, ops, limited unit types) but simplifies a number of things, combat resolution is much simpler, and the complex Ops Board is replaced with a small number of cards per side. Overall we like it, it gives a good game. 

On to Operation Epsom



This is 1 activation into turn 1. The table is aligned so the camera is looking SE, with Caen off table to the left, the various hedges represent Bocage in game terms, and historically are a mix of small villages, bocage, copses etc. Basically good terrain for infantry. There are several rivers represented these are all fordable. 

British forces are nearest the camera, with 15th Scottish division (on the left) having being able to cross the first river line un-opposed. The rest of the British are crammed into their deployment zone (my troops just fitted in the space given to them). They are 43rd infantry Div, 11th Armoured and 49th Infantry, in reserve are 3rd Canadian Div, they are classed as Veteran in this scenario, and I have left them in reserve to exploit a break through). So lots of infantry for the British, with some Tank support, including some Infantry Support Tanks with 15th Div. 

Facing them are the remaining components of 8 Panzer Divisions!! For the scenario 3 are deployed as individual divisions (1st, 9th and 10th SS), with the remaining ones combined into 2 KampfGruppe (Bayerlin and Meyer) for activation purposes. 9th and 10th SS are off table in reserve and will arrive on the second night. The Germans have a lot of armour, about half of which is classified as Superior (the Tigers and Panthers), and quite a bit of their infantry is in half-tracks. 

A scenario setup rule is that at least 25% of each German formation must deploy in the back 3 rows of the table. This could really slow down their deployment, but they have a couple of factors that can help them, firstly when activated any unit that is at least 1 box away from the enemy can do a transit move that lets them move 4 boxes (rather than the normal 1 or 2) as long as they stay at least 1 box away from the enemy. In this scenario one of the cards the Germans hold is KampfGruppe which allows units from different formations to be activated together. So whilst there is a clump of Germans in the back field, they can deploy forward pretty quickly. 

The British cards give them 2 air strikes, and artillery barrage, and the ability to re-use their artillery dice once (all of these are once per turn). 

On the first turn the air force was grounded (I've not worked out the exact percentages but the air strikes have around 85% chance of turning up - 1d6 vs 1d6+2 with draws in the British favour). But if you roll a one and your opponent rolls a 6 it's never good news!

The initial German defence is spread quite thin, but all are Prepared - this means the defender gets to 'shoot' first in combat meaning they can damage the attackers before the attackers roll their dice, which will likely reduce the effectiveness of the attack. 

The objectives are the red tokens - the attacker places two of these, the defender one. In the night phase of each turn, any the attacker holds can be repositioned 1 square by the defender - reflecting the need for the attack to push on. 



End of day 1. 

Each side gets a number of Operations dice and 1-3 of these are assigned to formations at the start  of the day, allowing you to activate some formations multiple times. Both sides get 2 dice per active formation, the attacker discards any that are rolled as 1s, the defender any that roll 1s or 2s. Generally giving the attacker more mobility. 

15th Scottish have made limited progress into open ground - they probably should have had an extra activation.

43rd Div have assaulted across the river, causing some damage to the defenders, the hexagon tokens are hit markers, the brown side is 1 hit taking a unit to worn which reduces its too hit roll by 1. The coloured side is 2 hits, taking a unit to Exhausted, this only reduces their to hit chance when attacking, but if they take another hit the unit is Eliminated. 

11th AD in the centre where the focus of my attack, and have made decent progress, but suffered a lot of hits. Over on the right 49th Div cleared the bocage of defenders and captured the objective. 

The Germans have taken a lot of hits, but have got their on table reserves into the line. 

Operation Epsom Day 2 and 3

I was too involved in the game to take photos of day 2 (oops!)

Day 2 was very attritional with British attacks continuing, but struggling to make much head way against concentrated German defence. The Germans moved the two captured objectives back in the night phase of Day 1, and then defended them with Prepared Superior Armour - this gave them 3 attack dice per superior armour, vs 1 for attacking infantry or 2 for attacking Armour. And the Germans were rolling first - so the attackers were beaten back.

Each side gets a number of stockpile counters (4 for the attacker, 2 for the defender) one of the most useful things for these is you can reinforce your Exhausted units, moving them to worn. Which both sides did on both the first and second nights - but the Germans have now used up all their stockpiles.

This turn ended with the Germans holding 3 objectives, so leading 4 - 2 on VPs.

End of day 3 / start of day 4


On the left 15th Scottish supported by Infantry Support Tanks were successful in capturing the objective in the bocage, and driving forwards. But in the night phase the Germans had moved 10th SS out of reserve on this flank, and an initial attack just by 1 superior armour with artillery had done enough to drive their flanking troops back. The next turn 10th SS were reinforced, and that night phase the objective moved to where they are massed. The British have this unit with attackers on 2 sides, but I think it will still be tough to break them. As they are on the edge of the table, which is a German edge, I can't even cut them off to cause them loss by isolation. 

In the centre the Germans withdrew from the river to reinforce around the objective, 1st SS Panzer has suffered heavy casualties with having lost 4 units out of 6. But KG Bayerlin is still very strong in the centre. But many of its units are Exhausted (including the 2 Tiger battalions at the rear (their markers hiding from the camera). So the next turn will probably see a lot of losses to them - especially as the redeployment has meant they are no longer prepared. 

On the right 11th AD are struggling to make much headway - they have a thrust between the defenders, but I'm not sure if they have the remaining strength to exploit this. Behind them 3rd Canadian Div is traffic jammed, and is struggling to get into the action.

On the far right 49th Div is facing some strong opposition with KG Meyer reinforced by the newly arrived 9th SS. Given that the objectives have moved more to the centre, this may be a holding flank. 

At this stage it is 6-3 to the Germans on VPs, but they are behind 1-8 on units lost.

This is where we ran out of time. But one of the advantages of a gridded game, is that it is fairly easy to accurately record the game state, so it can be cleared away, but can then be reinstated next week!

One thing I'm not sure of is the number of turns, the scenario says 4-5 days, but within the rules, where this scenario is used as an example it says 5-7 days. I know as the attacker, who is behind on VPs but ahead on attrition, I'd like longer!

Overhead shot, to show the front line (red) and all the markers on the units

Looks lots of fun Forbes.

QuoteLooks lots of fun Forbes.

Yep, these are good enjoyable rules. In the two games I've played you get very engaged in the game and what is happening. The rules are well presented and straight forward, so there is little need to keep checking things. 


In our first game, on reading the rules the day after, we found we only got two rules half-wrong - which is  pretty amazing for a first game!