Dominion of the Spear

 

I seem try out a lot of rules that I only play very occasionally thanks to my rules-magpie friends (yes Anthony... I'm looking at you!!)  At Eric the Shed's the rules tend to be more consistent and we mostly use the Black Powder/Pike and Shotte/Hail Caesar trilogy as a regular set of rules which has the huge advantage of being able to get the game underway with a varying group of players straight away as we're all familiar with them (although there are enough minor variations between each of these to cause regular confusion)  But it's nice to try out rules I might not otherwise have come across

This week Anthony and I played Dominon of the Spear (technically we played Dominion of the  Claymore, Tomahawk and Talwar which is one of the variants as we were fighting out a series of Jacobite battles).  I'd seen these being mentioned quite a bit recently online but knew nothing about them. Dominion of the Spear ranges from Ancients to Medieval and there are numerous supplements all the way up to 1900 CE

They're an interesting concept with units based in a grid facing each other.  There's no movement and no terrain.  And games last about 15 minutes.  My immediate thought was "oh... this will be... erm... interesting" and I was initially a little underwhelmed but actually the concept is much more nuanced and thoughtful.

Combat is a straight d6 roll-off with the loser being removed.  Different troops need different scores, so for example my Elite Highlanders succeeded on a 3+, while the Govt Line Infantry needed a 5+.  But the Line troops have the advantage of fighting first... in other cases the combat may be simultaneous and there's a very real possibility of both units wiping each other out!  Reserve troops have to be moved in immediately so there is a bit of thinking about which troops you use to plug a gap, and there are some simple rules for flanking.  The terrain rules are abstracted and factored into the rating of the troops: so, for example, a unit may be given a defensive bonus to reflect woods or hedges, or an Elite rating to represent a tactical advantage, eg. my Highlanders in the Prestonpans scenario were all Elite to reflect the surprise and confusion in the Government ranks.  

And that's about it.  Each variant of the original rules adds in a few period specific rules to reflect the setting, and there a few things we didn't try out (Ambushes and troop deployment) as we were playing a series of linked battles in a mini-campaign.  And this is where I think the rules have a real strength... because each battle is very short, it's possible to play through a campaign in an evening or to use the rules as a way of quickly resolving battles in a map-based campaign.  Each rule book comes with a host of army lists for battles and mini-campaigns with the suggestion that the 1st player to win 2 battles in succession wins the campaign.  It would be very easy to tweak this to suit though, and the rules are ideal for solo play

In our campaign we started out with Prestonpans which reversed history with a Government win.  We then moved on to Inverurie: a Jacobite victory with Jacobite line troops against government highlanders and finally Falkirkmuir which was another Jacobite win, giving me the overall victory.  Had we continued we'd have fought out the battles of Littleferry and Culloden.

The figures are Anthony's lovely 54mm miniatures... lots of conversions and amazing paint jobs and a very shiny 'toy soldier' aesthetic!

Ogre revisited

Squeezed in an unusual daytime, mid-week game this week.  Usually my gaming is pretty much all confined to evenings (the joys of working for a living!) but I was visiting a friend who's been poorly and, as well as a catch up and setting the world to rights, we decided to try a quick and relatively undemanding game.

I bought Ogre probably around 1978-80.. definitely when I was still at school.  I think this came from shop on Glasgow's Great Western Rd... Games Gallery?  This version comes in a plastic wallet and not in a ziploc bag so I reckon it's a very early edition... it's Microgames #1 which I believe pre-dates the Steve Jackson Games versions. We played it to death when I was at school but it hasn't been played in over 40 years, so would it stand the test of time?

We went with the standard scenario which pits a Mk III Ogre against an assortment of armour and infantry.  My memory of the game is that the Ogre can be stopped but it's a tough ask, and that certainly proved to be the case.  In my defence my dice rolling was pretty poor but the Ogre pretty much wiped out everything in its path.  I made a rookie error and deployed my infantry too far forward which meant some of them were bypassed (I'd imagine they were pleased as at least they survived!).  Andrew's Ogre steamrollered it's way down the map and ran over my Command Post, winning the game easily.

The game certainly brought back fond memories and I think it still holds up pretty well.  I recently picked up GEV and it would to try this at some point and see how it integrates and maybe try some of the other Ogre scenarios

Battle Ravens

 

This week Anthony offered me a game of Battle Ravens which I've played once or twice before, but not for years (it came out in 2019 so probably around then).  The game, by Dan Mersey, is a clever take on Shieldwall battles which involves no movement with forces lined up toe to toe.

Each player has a pool of 20 tokens which are allocated to 6 squares, each containing a number of stands of figures.  These can be used to either attack, defend, or move a stand to a neighbouring square.  Each player also has 4 Thralls, who can be used to allow a re-roll, and a hand of 5 cards which allow some special tactics.  And that's pretty much it!  It sounds very simple but requires a lot of thought in deciding where to assign the tokens and how to use them.

The Vikings and Saxons... nose to nose

The other challenge is that if you manage to defeat all the stands in an opposing square then your opponent loses 3 of their precious tokens and a Thrall and this quickly makes things increasingly tough.  Interestingly the units that win and break through are also then out of the game... I guess they're assumed to be busy pillaging and slaughtering!  

The lack of manoeuvrability and control feels very Dark Ages and there's a lot of thought required about where the tokens go and how to use them.

For our game we didn't use the card stands which are supplied. But Anthony's lovely 54mm Vikings and Saxons which looked really impressive.

Dont call me Scarface!

 Last week our regular gaming evening g was down to 3 players so we were treated to a game of Scarface 1920, which was produced in 2023 by Redzen Games.

I've played this once before but this was at least a year ago so I was very hazy on the rules.  Luckily YouTube is a handy resource for playthroughs and I'd partially got up to speed before we played.  It's a worker placement style game with rival families vying for control of (I assume) Chicago which is divided up into districts.  Each district can host a number of businesses (casinos, brothels, speakeasies and nightclubs) and can switch hands or be raided by the police.

As usual with these games, the components are lovely with a range of Thugs and Boss miniatures for each family, as well as high quality cards etc.

It's a fun game which, despite having lots of options and ways to play, is actually quite intuitive once you get going.  The only real goal is to have the most money, but of course there are numerous ways to achieve this, and building the right 'engine' is key.   To be fair my opponents were taking it pretty easy with me and didn't ruthlessly wipe me out straight away!  As expected I came last despite controlling a couple of districts... there were definitely opportunities raise my income that I'd missed .   Definitely one to play again.

Abaddon hope all ye who enter here...

Apologies... that's a terrible pun...

A different game this week courtesy of my friend Anthony and one of never heard of before...Abaddon by Richard Borg.

Borg, of course, needs no introduction... Battle Cry, Memoir 44, Battle of Britain, Commands & Colours, Battlelore and many more classics all came from him (incidentally I recently discovered my 1st ed. set of Battlelore in the loft... I was sure I'd sold it years ago!!)  Boardgamegeek lists 136 games and expansions (including the classic Bob the Builder Build it and Win It card game!!) that he's had a hand in.  Anthony and I were both of the view that the format of most of Memoir44/C&C etc is an ideal structure, especially for quick evening games that are tactically reasonably challenging, but which are simple enough to pick up.

This weeks game, Abaddon is a kind of grimdark/battletechy version of Memoir 44... sort of.  I'd never heard of it, and it certainly doesn't seem to have taken off in the way that some of the other Borg games have.  Each player has a force of Mechs, ranging from lighter Recon mechs, to big stompy ones, as well as some infantry.  The models are fine and the bases conveniently have stats printed on the for movement, dice type and armour as well as slots which hold damage counters.

Like Memoir 44 etc, the game uses special dice with symbols on them... unlike the other Borg games however, these aren't used for damage but are rolled to see who activates each turn.  There are also cards but, again, their role is slightly different to the usual order cards.  These are Weapon System cards which are needed to attack/defend or to give special attacks etc.  These need to be carefully managed though as they aren't automatically replenished.  You can opt not to use them but and just rely on armour instead.

We played the easiest intro scenario and straight away I took a gamble on using one of my precious cards... in this case a rather deadly Doomsday Bolt which, while it requires a 'Command' result to come up on the dice and then only has a 1 in 6 chance of success, immediately destroyed one of Anthony's mechs!!  We then had a couple of turns of manoeuvre before I was able to combine fire onto another enemy mech (I think they are referred to as Links in the game) and destroyed it.  To be fair my card hand was pretty good and definitely gave me more options than Anthony's

It's a nice game and its curious that it didn't take off.  We're planning to try one of the more advanced scenarios at some point so it'll be interesting to see what that adds to the game.