Kings of War - English Civil War

 Today I tried out Mantic Games Kings of War for a small English Civil War battle. Here are a few shots of the game.

 Prince Ruperts Bluecoats take a lot of punishment and break.

 The Royalist horse break their opposite numbers but tear off in pursuit leaving the battle far behind.

 Within close musket range the firefight heats up.

 Parliamentarian cannon on the high ground.

 Sir Alan Apsleys foot regiment negotiating a hill.

This Parliamentarian unit wavers under fire from two Royalist regiments.

A good game which had some flavour of the period and certainly felt right.

A Black Powder battle with 18th Century imaginary armies

 Today I had a game of Black Powder with my very old 15mm 18th century collection.

 This was an early "imaginations" project dating from about 1988. It featured the armies of the Grand Duchy of Normagnia and the Electorate of Falzstadt. They are mainly uniformed in white and red respectively.

 The armies consist mainly of Warrior Miniatures with some Peter Laing models too.

 I used a figure ratio of 1:100 and some simple homemade rules.

 Grand Duke Louis and his adolescent son Jean-Luc, a much smaller Peter Laing model.

 Mercenary foot fighting for Falzstadt.

 An Airfix Captain Cook from the Bark Endeavour kit that I made as a boy commands one of the guns. He's the chap in brown strides.

The cavalry clash as the game hots up.

I didn't take any more photos but it was a very good game indeed.

Charge! - English Civil War

I had a quick ECW battle today but instead of using Warhammer ECW rules I used Charge.

 Parliamentarian soldiers. The toys are a mix of Foundry, Essex,QT, Hinchcliffe and Irregular.

 A Royalist foot regiment.

 A cavalry clash is imminent.

 Hampdens Greencoats ?.

 A view down the battlefield, Royalists on the left.

 A Royalist regiment look on as the horsemen clash.

 A fierce melee ensues.

 Cromwell getting his ear bent by a puritan preacher.

 Surprisingly the larger Royalist cavalry unit are defeated and the survivors fall back.

 The victorious roundheads rally in place.

 The infantry lines are closing up now.

 A small unit of firelocks attack a Royalist gun crew!.

 But are seen off by a blast.

 The infantry firefight continues.

 The Parliamentarian cavalry threaten the Royalist flank.

 The Royalist Green regiment are defeated, the enemy cannon close by did not help them.

 In the middle of all this our son John came home from school in a stretched limo, just for having good attendance, he had a nice time though.

 The cavalry charge the gun and put the crew to the sword.

 Another Royalist regiment is defeated.

Great game!, fast and furious, I used my amendments to suit the smaller table and rolled dice to see if pikemen or musketeers were hit. The amendments are on Pauly Waulys Wargames Blog (see link) which is entirely devoted to 18th century battles using "Charge!, or how to play war games" by Lawford and Young.

CWC 1973 - Saturday nights game

After a series of good command rolls the Egyptian battlegroup rolled forward but in subsequent turns they failed to manoeuvre and spent the rest of the battle shooting from static positions.

In contrast the Israeli command checks were mostly passed and that made all the difference to the outcome. The IDF CO had a command rating of 10, the HQs 9, while the Egyptians CO was 9 and the HQs 8, not a lot of difference on paper but a big difference when the dice fly.

 The Israeli infantry hurtles forward and occupies the village.

 Israeli bazooka fire is very successful against the BMPs.

 The Egyptian T-55 unit comes under fire from the IDF tanks.

Egyptian air strike suppresses the Israeli carriers but fails to do much damage.

 Friendly fire from the Egyptian BM-21 unit makes the situation even worse.

 The tank battle in the centre sees many Egyptian T62s ko'd

 An Israeli air strike finishes off the BMPs.

 The T-55 unit is done for too.

 Israeli artillery impacts.

 Boom!.

 Some close ups of the toys.

 Irregular Miniatures trucks.

 BRDMs with SAGGER missiles had an early success but failed to act afterwards.

 Israeli M113 carriers.

 Israeli command tank passes a burning BMP.

As a game it was okay, but it didn't inspire me much. Previous games had seen the Israelis totally outmanouevre and outgun the Egyptians so I did tweak the command rules by using the "Black Powder" form whereby only one command roll is made per unit and all units in range and LOS get to shoot once. I thought that this would balance the game much more but it was still a walkover for the IDF.

I'll give it another go sometime and maybe make the command ratings equal.