wargamesdiary   A diary of war games and board games

Using the To the Strongest rules Mike and Phil introduced Darryl to the To the Strongest Rules.  Gondor against Mordor and the Southrons with Phil playing as Gondor.  This was to be the first battle in our Harondor mini-campaign.  Harondor a debatable and desert land.

First of all we set out the terrain using the rules.  We thought we had placed quite a bit but when the cards were drawn almost all the terrain was removed so the armies faced across an open plain as the Sun rose in the harsh arid lands of South Harondor.  The Prince of Ithilien hoped to force the enemy back as they headed up the old Harad Road North to Pelargir.

The battle began with the Gondor army advancing forwards rapidly to take the Middle ground.  The Knights to the left flank, infantry centre and the Prince’s infantry and Guard cavalry to the right.   The right flank infantry failed to advance.  In response the Far Harad infantry advanced towards the Knights and the Trolls (Elephants) down the centre.  The Harad cavalry opposite the Gondor right advanced and harried them with horse archers with little success.

On the Gondor left however events unfolded rapidly badly as the Javelinmen brought down Findegil the Commander and disordered his Knights.  He was led from the field gravely wounded unlikely to ever be able to ride again.  The Knights in disorder and without a commander would find it difficult to make much progress from now on.

In the centre the trolls struck the Large Units hard and heavily disordered them.  They proved impossible to injure and the infantry struggled just to avoid destruction.

Eventually the Gondor Knights were slowly pushed back but continued to hold the left flank.  In the centre one Troll was slain and rampaged towards the Marshall of Umbar with little effect.  The others proved indestructible and the Gondor centre was buckling with a couple of units on 2 disorder.  On the Gondor right flank the Prince had by now advanced his forces and was pushing the Harad cavalry back.  The Serpent Guard lost a unit and the Black Serpent himself had to flee and join the second unit as the infantry pushed forwards.  The Harad counterattack though was deadly and a whole large unit of infantry was destroyed.  The Knights held their own and pushed back the skirmishing cavalry to the baseline but were disordered in the process.

At this point seeing that the day was lost and before his centre collapsed the Prince of Ithilien withdrew his forces and victory was awarded to the forces of Mordor and Harad.  Well done Mike and Darryl.

The Trolls proved especially effective. This was helped when Phil drew an ace when trying to activate his division as they closed thus failing to shoot at a crucial moment.  The deep units with extra bow proved very resistant but the extra bow was not so effective when compared with a separate unit of formed archers of course.  The fact that they could never seem to hit a Troll and then when they did they always saved caused problems for Gondor.  This was compounded by a bad start down the left flank with the early loss of their commander there.

Spent some time researching for a battle using the To the Strongest Rules to be fought in Harondor.  Thus it will be Gondor against the Southrons.  Hopefully will get to fight it in the next few weeks.

Link to the page here.

This clash of arms game tracks the life and times of grognards as they hopefully rise through the ranks during the 20 years of Napoleon’s wars in Europe.  Mike, Phil, Bruce and Darryl played.

We started in 1805 as Chef de Brigade just as the wars in Austria began and went straight into the campaign.  Bruce heroically challenged the Austrian duellist champion, a true giant of a man and expert fencer to a duel.  Unfortunately he was gravely wounded and missed the forthcoming battles.  Phil and Mike fought at the front lines whilst Darryl was placed in charge of supplies at the rear.  Mike took a bad wound.

Next Bruce and Mike recovered whilst Phil contracted lung fever and watched his already poor health fall further.  Later Phil was the only one to take a wife, the daughter of a wealthy and influential French Aristocrat.  The others chose to take mistresses except Mike who had little success with the fair sex unless of course he paid for which he contracted the Pox.

Darryl went carousing gloriously but then lost face when he overhead a fat merchant insulting the Emperor and simply slinkedaway.

Darryl by now had certainly earned the reputation of a cad and a bounder Chef Blackadder being his name but he was strong and healthy plus an expert duelist after some lessons.  Also wherever he went he caught the notice of Napoleon and was successful in his military endeavours.

Phil in contrast caught the eye of Napoleons female relatives but had bad luck with his health.  Plus he suffered an unlucky wound in the build up to the next campaign missing out on the ensuing action, catching more lung fever and falling from his horse.  However thanks to his marriage he soon became the wealthiest Grognard.

Mike concentrated on military matters and was always in the thick of the action though he too fled from the fat merchant.  Bruce though continued to be promoted to positions such as the Staff and the Reserve always gaining glory and experience wherever he went, being in the right place at the right time to capture Napoleon’s notice without fail.  His expolits duelling the famous Austrian Champion preceeding him in fame and honour and then his success at the capitulation of Danzig being especially a highlight.  Darryl of course excelled at the peace negotiants at Tilsit and generally avoided any risk whatsoever.  Phil missed out on the Christmas Party being wounded.

Finally the heroes gathered for the final campaign of the session.  Phil took part in a famous duel as a second and challenged the cheating opponent’s second to a duel. Unfortunately it turned out to be Darryl himself just returned from fencing lessons and in excellent health.  He made short work of Phil who also earnt Napoleon’s displeasure for his troubles.  Fortunately it was just a scratch.  As this was a peaceful turn not much happened and all the players managed to be promoted to the rank of Major with Darryl of course being the Senior Grognard at the end.  Both Darryl and Bruce looked well on the way to reaching the rank of Colonel whilst Mike wa not far behind.  Phil too was close but his ailing health would require him to spend yet another year at the health spa with his wife away from Paris thus slowing his progress again.

Another successful game of this narrative campaign in the Napoleonic era.

Game data from Mike:

Most played game on a Sat night for 2015 was Imperial Assault – 6 playings.

A whole load of games had 3 outings – Libertalia, Thunderbirds, K2 and Love Letter to name a few.

Most played miniatures game was Sword and Spear with 4 appearances.

Blog Data:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

There were 132 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 257 MB. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was April 16th with 220 views. The most popular post that day was barbarica conspiratio ; The Great Conspiracy 367AD.

Phil, Alex and Mike carried on their Rebellion against Darryl’s imperials.  They chose the Homecoming mission.  This involved helping Luke Skwalker get into his garage.  The heroes raced through the Trandoshans and the Nexus.  The stormtroopers retreated towards the terminal.  Phil and Luke raced towards the terminal.  Opening the doors on the fourth turn using the terminal revealed the defenders hidden inside the garage.  Mike and Alex took out the defenders whilst Phil kept Vader distracted and opened crates.  Luke ran into the garage.  A rebel victory followed and the players used their credits to buy a targeting computer for Alex and to pay off Darryl’s nasty Imperial Influence card.  

Phil, Mike, Bruce, Darryl and Alex gathered for Christmas games night. First off we played Shadows over Camelot. The first Traitor /cooperative game that we had not played since 2011. The Knights were doing reasonably well though the grail quest was proving impossible when Phil drew a card that placed two more siege engines in one go outside camelot. Rather than risk another draw Darryl decided to place a penultimate one so he could complete his quest. This then left a traitorous Alex simply to add one more to make twelve and claim victory.

Determined to do better we played again and this time decided to complete the grail quest first then launcelot’s armour and excalibur! Soon the players completed the twelve swords and claimed victory leaving a cursing bruce to slink off traitorously away.

We then played some good card games based on timeline which were quite fun.

On Saturday 14th November we played Pandemic, Thunderbirds and Hobbit Love Letter.

Darryl, Phil, Mike and Bruce played Pandemic.  I think we lost one and won one game of that thus saving the world from the plague.  I think we were okay on easy mode but when we added more Epidemic Cards we soon got overwhelmed.

Then we played Thunderbirds.  We played this last week too and it is a very good game.  We managed to save the World by doing lots of Space Missions and thwarting Hood’s evil plans.  Next time we will try a harder difficulty setting as so far we have tried the Introductory difficulty.  It took us a game or two to find our direction and in our great tradition we will doubtless lose on the harder settings now every time.

We finally played The Hobbit Card Game based on Love Letter.  We have played the batman one not so long ago.  This is a good game with lots of twists and turns.  Darryl won that.

The weeks before we have played some other good games.  We managed to get my new Dungeon Saga game from Mantic Games out.  Alex played too.  We had run the first two scenarios before so we ran the third one where the four adventurer’s meet up.  It was a close thing as the Wizard and the Barbarian were close to being defeated but the Heroes managed to break the Wards on the Final Door just in time whilst the Dwarf and the Elf kept the Undead busy.  I would like to play this one again, especially if I get time to use my 3D terrain.

We also played the Witcher Board game.  I think this was fairly good to play.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the challenge.  Alex seemed to be struggling with Dandelion but actually accumulated lots of VPs by the end.  Mike was steaming ahead with Geralt himself.  Phil thought he was doing quite well with the Dwarf, taking an early lead but actually came last as Mike claimed a well earned victory.

We also played Cthulhu Flux again.

Darryl and Phil played C and C N.  Phil had a copy since launch but had never played.  Darryl was imperiously victorious the first two games.  The second was memorable for the massacre of the Portuguese in the narrow gully.  But with some advice and luck Phil managed to rescue the situation in the final game.  This time Phil was on the attack again but with the French and his Heavy Cavalry just sneaked the final flag before it was too late.  Very enjoyable days gaming indeed.

Mike and Phil’s Rebels took on Alex and Bruce’s Tie Fighters.  Initially the 8 rebels took out 3 tie fighters and looked ready to take out the required six of eightenemy first.  However bruce’s ace pilot soon levelled the score and with three more rebels taken out with just one more tie fighter the Empire claimed victory!

We got half way through.  Orks and Space Marines had 1VP each but Eldar were looking strong.  Chaos Marines were a little behind but had a good home defence force in place and Space Marines would need to move back to defend their home from the Orks next turn.