Cry Havoc!

Many of us (of a certain age... and I'm guessing most readers of this blog are of a certain age...) will remember Cry Havoc from Standard Games which came out in 1981.

I played quite a bit of this when I was at Uni, avoiding lectures.  It's a great medieval skirmish game... very simple and ideal for creating your own scenarios.  It was followed by Siege, which I never played but always thought sounded intriguing, and then Samurai, Crusader and Viking versions.

Back in April Footsore Miniatures launched a Kickstarter to launch a rebooted version which arrived yesterday.  They very deliberately kept all the components the same, but with reworked artwork (very much in the original style) and with better production values.   Steve Beckett, the graphic designer, has previously worked on the Beano and the Dandy... if only there was a Sir Dan the Desperate character!! 

I imagine it must have been tempting to add in the usual Kickstarter extras, especially for a company the make miniatures which could have been added in.  I think they made a very conscious decision to stick to the original game and lean heavily into the nostalgia market.  It definitely worked... the project was funded very quickly and, unusually for a KS it was turned round and delivered 2 months from funding!  Of course it would be very easy to use your own figures in place of the counters.  It does also mean that if you own the originals they're all pretty compatible.

It looks great... there are 3 booklets included.  The rulebook and Scenario booklets are only 16 pages long each and there is a 12 page Historical info booklet.  The counters are double sided with live and dead characters ranging from Knights to Peasants and some sundries like carts etc for certain scenarios.  The maps are also simple but very effective.  It comes with the originals plus 2 new maps.

Looking forward to trying this out.  And it'll be interesting to see if they release updated versions of the other games in the original series.  They've hinted this might be on the cards so fingers crossed...

Teutoburg Wald #3... the Angrivarii Boundary

 So far we've played through 2 out of 3 of the Command and Colours Ancients Teutoburg scenarios which have all gone the Germans way, as you'd expect.  This time round we skipped on a few years and gave Germanicus a chance to exact his revenge against the Angrivarii and Arminius.

This time the Germans are on the defensive behind a wall of ramparts but the Romans have arrived in strength (somewhere around 60 000 troops against an unknown number of Germanic tribes)... historically it didn't go well for Arminius but could we re-write history?

The C&C map has the Germans holding a line of ramparts with a wood on their right flank.  I was tempted to leave the safety of the defences and charge along the line into the Romans but given my initial hand of order cards I had a chance to distract my opponent Anthony by pushing through the woods... I hoped this would at least allow me to keep his attention away from a general assault along the Roman line and sure enough it worked.  Thanks to some lucky dice rolls my warbands actually chewed up the Roman left flank quite spectacularly and, more importantly, left the main Roman forces standing around while he tried to shore up the flank.  Would it have been better to ignore the flank attack and push on in the centre... maybe... put it would have allowed me to run riot on the flank so I'm not sure the Romans had much choice.  

As usual all the figures are from Anthony's lovely 54mm collection

The battle was pretty much entirely decided on my right flank.  As always with C&C it can hinge on which order cards you receive and here I was pretty lucky.  Although I mainly had cards allowing me to act on the left and centre sectors, I kept getting a card each turn which allowed me to keep the attack on the right going... it could easily have stalled in which case I might have been tempted to go for an all or nothing attack along the line, but the Gods were with me and I always received a useful card in the nick of time!

I did have one other important ally in the game when Leonard, Chieftain of the Chattii Catii tribe arrived to boost morale!

yep... billions of pounds spent on developing AI technology and I'm using to
enhance cat photos (but he's so cute!!!)

I'm a Millionaire!!

I missed the actual date, but at some point in the last few weeks my blog stats tipped over the 1 million views threshold!  Admittedly a fair number of these are probably bots but that's fine.... I know there are real people out there who read and comment on my ramblings and that's much appreciated.

I started the blog back in 2012 when blogs were the new cool kid on the block.  It was really more of a diary of games I was playing for myself than anything else, but it has connected me with lots of gamers across the world and led to me finding a regular real-life gaming home with Eric the Shed and his motley collection of gamers.  Ive also acquired at least 1 weird stalker but thats another story!!

My posts come in fits and starts but thank you to all the lovely people (and lovely bots) who stop by and have a look and comment.

108 Outlaws

Recently my son was off at the UK Games Expo in Birmingham and came back with a selection of interesting boardgames.

Last night we dug one of these out and gave it a go.  It's 108 Outlaws from Origame and is a very abstracted card game based loosely on the Chinese story 'Outlaws of the Marsh', better known to folk of a certain age as The Water Margin...

I have pretty good memories of watching this with my dad and remember him being particularly amused when we watched it in a bar on a Spanish holiday... a Japanese tv version of a Chinese story, dubbed into German, with Spanish subtitles!

The deck consists of (not surprisingly) 108 Outlaws consisting of Earthly Fiends and more powerful Heavenly Stars, because these outlaws are actually reincarnated Demons.  Each card has different roles (infantry, cavalry, reconnaissance etc) and unique powers and the aim is to score victory points at the end of the game (which happens when one player has 12 cards in play).  

The Heavenly stars cards score victory points and these can also be earned by undertaking a campaign, essentially matching symbols on the Campaign card to those on your cards in play.

It sounds a bit complicated but is actually very simple and easy to pick up.  All the info is on the cards, albeit in some very abstracted symbols, and the whole game only takes about 30-40 minutes to play.  If you're smart (like my son) its possible to engine-build sequences of actions to enable multiple actions each turn.

It's a neat little game and would be ideal for travelling.

Teutoburg Wald round 2

 A few weeks ago Anthony and I played out the opening Command and Colours scenario in Arminius' battels with the Romans in xxxx (report here)

Last week we decided to move on to Arminius's assault on the encamped Romans (spoiler... it shouldn't end well for the Romans!)  The Romans have built a fortification of sorts and can either fight it out or try and break free, gaining VPs for units that escape off the table.  Anthony (or possibly Antoninus) tried this first, but his cavalry came to a sticky end, jumped by several

warbands as it break out.  It did cause quite a bit of damage on the way though. (I think we forgot... again... about evading or the cavalry might have been able to retreat back into the camp)

The Germans advanced around the flanks of the camp and the heaviest fighting took place on the edges with the centre remaining pretty static... always a risk in C&C depending on how the command cards fall out.  After a bit if tussling over the palisade the barbarians were able to break into the camp and force the Romans back.  There was a bonus target of supplies in the camp centre, worth 2 VPs and I found myself getting drawn into a fight for this before I realised that there were easier targets elsewhere in the camp and the warbands began hunting down the remaining Romans.  

On paper it looked like a convincing win for the Germans but actually most of my remaining units were pretty beat up and wouldn't have lasted much longer so it could have been much closer.  Next up will be the Romans' Revenge... might not enjoy that one so much!!!!

Warlord Epic - Romans v Carthaginians

Haven't posted for a few weeks due to work and general business.  Here in London we're currently sweltering in a mini-heatwave which is particularly unpleasant to those of us used to cooler Scottish climates... it's definitely 'taps aff' weather, as they say in Glasgow!

A couple of weeks ago I had a game of Hail Caesar with Andrew, using his newly acquired HC Epic Scale Romans and Carthaginian armies.  These were a real bargain and he has masses of them.  We played a relatively small game and there was a lot left packed away in storage boxes (he even got those thrown in with the deal!!).  Epic scale equates to about 13.5mm or a small 15mm size figure and en masse they looked great.

The Romans definitely looked outnumbered on the table but had the advantage of better commanders, a hefty piece of artillery,  and more flexibility in manoeuvering and redeploying their legionnaries.  And they had their secret weapon... flaming pigs!  The Cathaginians on the other hand had the advantage of numbers... their units are larger and can soak up more damage.  And of course we had elephants...

Oink!!

The game was a close run affair... both sides were struggling with mounting casualties but the Carthaginians were better able to absorb these and continue fighting.  Sadly neither the elephants or the pigs actually got stuck in to the fighting (I think the elephants may have provided some support but there was no trampling involved).  The figures looked....erm... epic.  A really fun game and a rematch is definitely on the cards

Samurai at the British Museum

 I finally managed to make it to the Samurai exhibition which has been on for a while at the British Museum.  I have a bad habit of failing to remember when exhibitions are due to close and end up missing them (The recent Hiroshige exhibition at the BM was a case in point)... the other day I checked the details of this on thinking it had ages to run and discovered it closes at the beginning of May!  So I sneaked off work for the afternoon and popped along, nabbing one of the few remaining tickets. 

It's a great exhibition charting the rise and changing nature of the Samurai, from the early middle ages (in European terms) through the late 19thC decline of the Class and the opening up of Japan to the West.  The end of the exhibition looks at the impact and depiction of Samurai largely from the end of WW2 both in Japan and in other countries.  From a wargamey perspective there's a lot to see with numerous suits of armour, swords and other weapons etc.  I'm always reminded when I see 'proper' Japanese armour that the colourful variants that you often see on the table are less common and a lot of it is black or very dark shades... certainly from a distance it would be hard to make out the fine detail.

To be honest while I always enjoy looking at militaria, it was the art and more mundane objects that I really enjoyed... lots of embroidered or printed scrolls, ceramics, small items like tobacco pouches etc.  These were really interesting and well presented.  The last section on Samurai in more recent art and media was also fascinating.  

So here's a selection of photos from the exhibition.  There are also a few from the Assyrian galleries at the BM.  Although this is a period I know very little about, I'm always drawn to it whenever I visit the museum.  I've just ordered a (hopefully) accessible introduction to this period to try and educate myself 

(Google decided to upload the photos in reverse order and I can't be bothered re-doing it, so these are going from the most modern to the oldest historical periods!)

No idea... but I love it!

The ultimate samurai!

Illustrations from fighting in China

The Perry expedition arrives on Japan

Tobacco pouches

Lovely painting of a cat

Good example of kintsuge which coincidentally my wife had been doing the week before at a ceramics workshop

A rather OTT hand cannon

And the Assyrian photos...

Lovely Assyrian hunting dog