In preparation for a big game in the War Room on the Friday night before we played a 7 Years War battle testing out Noel's house rules and using some of his fantastic 28mm British and French figures. The aim of the game was to get the players familiar with the period and rules for the bigger game. Some pictures of the action.
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For our Friday gaming session we played a more unusual period. The Williamite Wars. This was a conflict between Jacobites (supporters of the Scottish Catholic King James VII of Scotland) and Williamites (supporters of the Dutch Protestant Prince William of Orange) over who would be King of England, Scotland and Ireland. Noel has some beautiful 28mm figures which we were going to use on the night.
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We divided the players into Jacobites and Williamites. The Williamite mission was to capture a ford over the river sweeping away the Jacobites. The Jacobites deployed first and made good progress on their right flank but were unable to penetrate further to capture the ford by the end of the evening. A great game was had by all and a different period of history to play.
Napoleonic naval warfare has always fascinated me and I have finally got around to painting and rigging the fabulous models I have bought from Langton miniatures. For the first two outings we used Langton's fast play version of Signal Close Action. There are a great set of rules to get everyone into the period. It was the British against the Franco-Spanish navy.
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Every player has a squadron of 3 ships usually one 1st/2nd rate with 2 third rates although one of the Franco-Spanish squadron was composed of all large 80 gun third rates. The crew quality varied from Average to Elite for the British and for the Franco-Spanish from Poor to Good. The British generally having smaller ships compared to Franco-Spanish who had in their fleet the largest warship of its time the Santisima Trinidad with her 130 guns!
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It is fair to say on both occasions the players had a great game although in many cases learning the hard way why getting the Weather Gauge was so important. The British were victors on both occasions by co-ordinating the squadrons better and bring decisive force to bear on the more isolated Franco-Spanish squadrons.
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Mark and Simon put on a great 15mm WW2 game based on the early Desert War. Here is how the game went and for me as the Desert Rats player the war was over..... The Deutche Afrika Corp have identified a lightly guarded fuel dump in the Libyan desert. They send forward a battle group of seven panzer III, three panzer IV and two panzer II with infantry in half tracks, armoured cars and two PAK 40 anti-tank guns. The British have a platoon of men, some light armoured cars and two 2 pounder anti-tank guns all dug into the town and around the fuel dump.
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Richard kindly put on a great Vietnam game that has spurred me on to start painting my 20mm Vietnam collection. I brought down some of my home made jungle pieces and a few hooches that I had to add a bit of flavour and some Flames of war Paddy field. The game was one of the scenarios from Charlie Don't Surf scenario book Surf's Up. It was a search and destroy mission by the US forces centred on on a Vietnamese village.
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