Fred’s 2022 Painting and Gaming Diary

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Do look good

[mmcv]

Nice mix, looking good

[toxicpixie]

It's odd, isn't it, how colour choices break things in your brain?!

Seeing captured 109's in RAF schemes, or captured Spits in Luftwaffle schemes is a brain bending moment!

And landsknecte with Ogres is very Warhammer so feels fine, but marching alongside the Terrasque is wierd, for sure.

But why shouldn't the clerics/wizards/geomancers summon fantasy-Godzilla, and your kingdom even reference that in their heraldry and uniform?

[fred.]

Thanks mmcv and Kermit    

It's odd, isn't it, how colour choices break things in your brain?!

Seeing captured 109's in RAF schemes, or captured Spits in Luftwaffle schemes is a brain bending moment!

And landsknecte with Ogres is very Warhammer so feels fine, but marching alongside the Terrasque is wierd, for sure.

But why shouldn't the clerics/wizards/geomancers summon fantasy-Godzilla, and your kingdom even reference that in their heraldry and uniform?

Indeed why shouldn't they. I think it is interesting that for Fantasy and Sci Fi we have our own internal constraints and feel of what is right or what is allowable. I think with some of the GW models they have such a strong place in their system's mythos that moving them out of that is often jarring as too many people see them for their intended role. Some of the Ancient Greek monsters seem much more portable between settings perhaps as they have been used and re-used so many times over history. 

[fred.]

Sharp Practise 2 - First Game

One of my gaming buds had bought Sharp Practise so we want to play a game of it! I'd been tempted by the Peninsular range when it launched, and had painted up a few units for Rebels and Patriots (the horse and musket variant of Lion Rampant). These units where close to what is needed for SP2, so we were able to get a game sorted fairly quickly.

The main difference on unit size is that R&P uses 12s, whereas SP2 uses multiples of 8, but 3x8 and 2x12 are both 24 so it wasn't a big problem. Also SP2 needs more leaders than R&P which did mean a bit of re-basing and shuffling around.

Generally 1 pack of Pendraken figures gets you a unit in SP2 - although for cavalry you do need a couple more figures.

On to the game.

British forces (me) had 12 riflemen with a Level 3 leader, and a Level 1 sergeant, and a 16 man line infantry unit with a level 2 leader.
The dastardly French had a 24 man line infantry unit, with a Level 3 leader, and a Level 1 sergeant, who they choose to deploy as 2 x 12 men. And a 16 man Dragoon unit with a Level 2 leader

The French choose the far side of the table as I had setup the terrain. Deployment points were randomly assigned to thirds of the table by the scenario. The French in the middle, the British on the right.

Activation in SP2 is card based, with each leader having an activation card, along with 4 command cards, which can be used for a variety of things, which included 2 to activate a unit directly, and 4 to give a bonus activation to a leader. There is an end-of turn card too, with command cards being able to be used to activate any units that haven't activated at this time.

The French activated first and started deploying their infantry in line behind the villa. The British Rifles deployed - as trained skirmishers, and being equipped with rifles (rather than muskets) they get a lot of special rules. The first is they get to deploy 12" from the DP, rather than 6" for other infantry.

The French Dragoons deployed to the right of their DP (as cavalry they are able to deploy further)

The rifles made advantage of their bonus movement as skirmishers and their 1 Command Card bonus movement to move 3d6" into the village and take up firing positions. The French lines struggled forward.
The British Line infantry deployed to the right flank.
The Dragoons moved rapidly to the right

The first volley from the Rifles caused a lot of damage to the slowly advance French line troops, including wounding their Leader

The French Dragoons had moved pretty quickly to the right hand side, and then were able to charge through the wood, to attack the British Line. This seemed a little odd, but we let it play through, for a future check of the rules. After working through the long table of dice adds and subtractions we ended up as a fairly even fight. With fairly even results - the French lost by 1 casualty and had to withdraw back to the other side of the wood. 



The Rifles moved around the village and shot up the Dragoons milling around in the open. Adding a lot of shock but few casualties. 

Throughout the game the rifles took good advantage of their extra movement, and made good use of the Sharp Practice special ability, which lets them reload for two command cards (given they have rifles which take two actions to reload, this was really useful). 

The second French line unit made much better progress up to the tree line, than the first one, which continually rolled low for movement. 

The British concentrated their fire on the Dragoons, driving them back, and putting on a lot of shock if not that many more casualties (this was down to dice rolls as I stopped getting sixes). 

This kept giving the French rolls on the 'When Bad Things Happen' table which caused a steady reduction in morale. 

The second French infantry unit got into firing position but at long range vs the Rifles in cover they were pretty ineffectual. And the return fire from both British units really started to cut them down. 



In the end a decisive British victory from a morale perspective, with the British being at 10, only having lost 1, and the French down to 0. 

Overall
Probably mixed feelings.
There are a lot of rules to SP2 - so not sure we got everything right - but I think we played most key things as written. 
The French player didn't make great use of command cards. Then again as the British player I mainly used them for 'Sharp Practice' The command cards have a lot of uses, so I think it will take practice to become familiar with these and use them at the right time

Movement is quite slow - at 1d6 per activation - knowing when to use options to improve this is important. Early game a Level 3 leader can get his men to run, which generates 1 shock, but he has enough command initiatives to rally this straight off. 
The sergeant with my Rifles did nothing all game - he would have been more useful with the line infantry, where he could have rallied some shock off. Not sure if this was just happenstance for this game or not.

Rifles armed skirmishers are very good - but they are very expensive points wise, twice the cost of line infantry unit, and smaller too. But their mobility and range offsets them being outnumbered. They are very good in R&P too - perhaps better than in SP2. 

[Ithoriel]

A nice, interesting AAR. Thanks.

I do NOT need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I probably don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I possibly don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I quite fancy another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint

 

[fred.]

A nice, interesting AAR. Thanks.

I do NOT need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I probably don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I possibly don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I quite fancy another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint

 

Thanks!


I know what you mean - I've avoided painting & collecting Naps for 30+ years - yet these figures called out to me. And I've really enjoyed painting them - but I can't really see me painting armies for this period. But skirmish forces give you the freedom to paint up all sorts of different units. You won't use them on the same table, but does avoid the need to paint up dozens of battalions of line infantry!

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

A nice, interesting AAR. Thanks.

I do NOT need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I probably don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I possibly don't need another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint
I quite fancy another period/ set of rules/ pile of figures to paint

 

Oh yes you do......

[Raider4]

I know what you mean - I've avoided painting & collecting Naps for 30+ years - yet these figures called out to me. And I've really enjoyed painting them - but I can't really see me painting armies for this period. But skirmish forces give you the freedom to paint up all sorts of different units. You won't use them on the same table, but does avoid the need to paint up dozens of battalions of line infantry!

Aye, no interest in Naps from me for ~20 years, but now I suddenly find myself being attracted (thank you, C.S.Forester) just as the new Valour & Fortitude rules appear.


Your game looks very good.

[steve_holmes_11]

I'd be interested to see more write ups like this.

I've read through the Sharpe Practice rules: 
Interesting, and very similar to Chain of Command from the same publisher.
Struggling to really visualise play, I found 4 (maybe more) videoed play throughs with rules explained.
This really helps to understand what's going on.

I did leave the videos with the impression that it's all about the skirmish troops.
In each case, small agile companies of skirmishers danced around bigger units of formed troops and nibbled them to death like gunpowder piranhas.
The formed troops never quite seemed able to muster the facing and commands to deliver the crashing volley they needed.

This left me a bit reticent to buy and paint 2 more armies, when the games might prove rather samey.

[fred.]

Your game looks very good.

Thanks Raider

I'd be interested to see more write ups like this.

I've read through the Sharpe Practice rules:
Interesting, and very similar to Chain of Command from the same publisher.
Struggling to really visualise play, I found 4 (maybe more) videoed play throughs with rules explained.
This really helps to understand what's going on.

I did leave the videos with the impression that it's all about the skirmish troops.
In each case, small agile companies of skirmishers danced around bigger units of formed troops and nibbled them to death like gunpowder piranhas.
The formed troops never quite seemed able to muster the facing and commands to deliver the crashing volley they needed.

This left me a bit reticent to buy and paint 2 more armies, when the games might prove rather samey.

Thanks Steve. I too struggled to find a good video explaining the game - but the ones I did see helped me think about things I had read. Many of the Lardie games have common elements. The big difference to CoC is the cards vs the dice for activation, with CoC giving the player a bit more choice. But the command cards do change this (and in this way they are similar to If the Lord Spares Us). But command initiatives are common between SP and CoC. 


Will be interesting to see how other games go, skirmishers seem to be good from this first one. But they are low on numbers so a couple of good volleys will cause them problems. It is worth noting that in Rebels and Patriots 95th Rifles were very strong too. 

[fred.]

Full Spectrum Dominance

Played a new set of rules this week - FSD - which is still in beta. But even for a beta it is very polished and well presented set of rules - there is clearly a lot of graphic design talent within the team producing the rules. 

We played with The Tech vs the Enlisted using the 'Until the Last Bit' scenario, where there are three comms towers across the middle of the table, that need capturing and controlling - the middle one can be destroyed to end the game early. There are also 4 other one-time objectives.

For the Tech we used Epic Tau models, and for the Enlisted, the Imperial Guard - and those proxies probably give a good flavour of the two lists. Using typical 60pt forces. First impression is that you don't get many models on the table! As a first game we focused on units and only went with 2 or 3 characters or support options each. We used 1DU = 10cm, which is slightly longer than the recommended  1DU = 3" for 6mm models on 1" bases - but makes the maths much easier!

The activation mechanic is key to the game - you get 8d6 which you use to both activate units, and to operate their special abilities (mostly more powerful shooting). This activation mechanism is similar to Saga - but without the need for special dice!

Some units have a Command ability which lets them activate other units that are close by. The Enlisted have a special army rule that lets them do this in a cascading format - which we missed, as well as thinking the command range was shorter - so we definitely short-changed the Enlisted here.



The three buildings with the blue domed roofs are the main objectives, the blue beads are the secondary ones. This is around the end of turn 1, both sides have deployed their unit and moved them up into cover - neither side trying to get an objective yet.

Troops deploy in Waves - in this scenario it is 30 pts (50%) on turn 1, then a further 10pts each turn. So you can see that half a force isn't that many troops - certainly not compared with Epic. Unit cards can be seen at the back, where they have dice these are marked against a special ability.


In turn 2 I managed to control the right hand tower, which gain me 1 victory card, and then as I held the most objectives s (1-0) I got a second victory card. Victory cards are interesting (in a good way) in FSD most have two options, a hold the card and get 3-5 VPs, and a second option that lets you do something rule-breaking in the game, but then you only get 0-2 VPs. This is a good mechanism.

I also lost one of my stronger Mechs in this turn when it advanced to the middle objective and took out a tank with its Power Fist - but then was counter charged by infantry who through some lucky dice rolls killed it. On further reading of the rules the infantry should have had a better chance as they were effectively in Close Combat range, so this was probably a much more likely result than we first thought.

Turn 3 so a lot of shooting from both sides - we found that infantry in hard cover at long range, are well protected from other infantry fire. But the high powered shooting of major units can blast them out pretty effectively.  A Soft Target special rule has been introduced to counter this - but I've not seen which units get this. I managed to grab the right hand tower - which gave me a victory card for claiming it, and another for having the most objectives. At this point I was up 4-0 on victory cards.



This is around turn 4 - in the foreground is my Gun Platform - this was a very tough unit, with strong shooting too (this unit has been seriously nerfed in the next version of the rules) Just on the left hand edge of the photo is my Thales Fighter which was very strong offensively - as it can roll 6d8 for its rocket attacks or 4d8 for shooting with ignore cover.

In the centre the main objective tower was contested - and even though my infantry were in the open the Enlisted couldn't bring enough firepower to bear on them to kill them (they also had very good armour  as droids - a d10 IIRC).

At this point I used one of my Victory cards to cancel the activation of the Enlisted's general - this character can activate a lot of units, and gets to roll 4 activation dice - so this really brought the enlisted's turn to a bit of a grinding halt. Given where I was with victory cards it seemed worth the 2 VPs.

The Enlisted managed to capture the left hand tower after bringing a tank round and killing off my droids on that flank and capturing a secondary objective. But on the left the Tech were dominant, capturing the town (getting a secondary objective as part of this), and killing a couple of tanks - this let them put lots of pressure on the central objective that remained contested.

At this point the unit count was very much in the Tech's favour, so we called the game at the end of turn 5, as it was getting late.

Overall FSD is a very interesting game - as a player you certainly need to think and plan - the start of each turn tended to take a while as we looked at our activation dice and worked out where they would be useful, and which we might want to re-roll. There is an AD pool of 12, but you only get 8 new each turn - trying to save a few on cards over turns is important, but limits what you can do in that turn - an interesting decision point.

The Enlisted felt a lot weaker than the Tech - the Tech seemed to roll a lot of d10s, the Tech lots of d6s and d8s. We did make a mess of the Enlisted's special rule around command - which would have freed up AD for them.

We weren't sure about the way the scenario awarded VPs - as it seemed that getting extra cards for controlling the most objectives each turn, quickly snowballed - but perhaps there is a need to contest objectives to prevent the opponent from doing this - we did get the objective control rules wrong to start with - as we thought infantry need an action to control an objective, but that is only the case for vehicles and mechs.

The core shooting and save mechanic is straight forward and makes sense straight away.

Certainly interested in playing again - gives a much more thinky and tactical game than Epic - but on the flip side you get far fewer models on the table - this was probably 10% (at most) of each of the armies we have.

A unit builder would be good to be able to build forces for the existing Epic armies we have (Marines, Squats and Tyranids) Tau, IG and Orks probably map to the 3 factions that already exist.

[fred.]

Sharp Practice - second game

Got the Napoleonic figures out again this week - with a new French victim, sorry player!

Used the same forces as the first game, the British with 2 groups of 95th Rifles, and 2 groups of Line Infantry - a compact but powerful force. The French had 4 groups of line infantry, which were split into 2 formations, and 2 groups of Dragoons. Both sides had the same leaders, 1 each of level 3, 2 and 1.

They scenario was one where the French had to sweep up the table to capture some livestock to replenish their provisions. The British had to disrupt them. The British deployment was delayed - each time their senior leader's card was drawn 2d6 were rolled, and once a cumulative total of 14 was reached then British leaders could start to deploy off their cards. 


The French deploy getting all 3 of their leader cards drawn and as their were no British on the table, they get a 6" bonus deployment distance. 


The French continue to sweep forward (well other than on the right). They had 4 command cards available to were able to conduct a second activation in the centre with their senior leader. I was fortunate with the delayed advance mechanism with my senior leader card coming out in both the first turns, and rolling double 6 on the first pull. So my line infantry have deployed on to the table. 



Things started to happen in this turn. The French secured the goats in the right hand farm, and in the main village, with the infantry their deploying to the front of the village. The Dragoons moved past the goats by the church going for the chickens by the wood - but didn't quite get there. 

The 95th Rifles detachment deployed - initially behind the wood, then moving to the gap to engage the Dragoons - causing a few casualties - but enough to make their commander pull them back. The British infantry eventually made it to the front of the wood, after a number of very poor movement rolls. They took a volley from the French which wasn't as effective as it could have been.



The 95th were able to get another round of shooting off agains the Dragoons, who moved into the wood to get out of LoS. A random event was generated which saw the 95th obscured by the smoke from their own firing.  The British in the wood and the French in the village exchanged more fire, but to low effect. The other French infantry moved up to the village. 



The 95th made use of their extra movement (and possibly a command card) to redeploy round the wood. The Dragoons came back out of the wood to capture the chickens...

In the centre casualties were accumulating on the French, but due to the hard cover weren't taking much shock, they weren't getting their commander's card drawn so weren't shooting back too much. The second French infantry unit moved around the village. 



I took a bold move with the 95th to move to the side of the village, right near the French to further shoot up the Dragoons in the open - this was effective causing casualties and shock forcing them to fall back (although they were happy enough with this as they pulled back with their chickens!)



The 95th continued their bold endeavours and charged the depleted French in the village - and smashed them! The couple of survivors retreated back away. This had quite an impact on french force morale. 

The second French infantry unit was faffing about moving back over the wall. whilst the Dragoons snagged the goats, and continued to fall back. 



The British advance, the French retreat with their loot. The shack in the farm caught fire from the French musketry (another random event)



The British continue to advance, routing the last Frenchman from the central force. The French captain was able to join the other unit, as they continue to fall back. The Dragoons had fallen back off table. 

The French had recovered 3 lots of provisions - and need to roll equal or under this number to have captured sufficient for their needs - naturally they choose this moment to roll a 6! French force morale was down to 2, the British where still at their starting 10.

A very different scenario - to start with it was all going the French way, with good deployment and rapid movement to secure the provisions. But the British shooting was just far more effective than the French. The British have the Sharp Practice special rule which lets a unit reload for two command cards - this is great for the Rifles who would normally take 2 actions to reload. This keeps up their rate of fire, which is more effective than that of musket armed infantry. 

The Rifles are expensive - twice the cost of Line Infantry, and for 2 fewer men. But they are so effective with a suite of special rules. I've got some more British troops painted - but am waiting on bases - so hopefully in the next game can try something different - and now have enough French to hopefully mix up their forces a bit too. 

[paulr]

    

[fred.]

Thanks Paul