Rebels and Patriots - first game

I have lots of Rampant AARs to post, but I will start with the latest - my first game of Rebels and Patriots - as this new set of rules is the most topical.

I chose the 'First Clash At Lament Ridge' scenario for my first game of RAP using my recently acquired American War of Independence companies. We diced for choice of sides. I won and chose the British. My opponent Chris took the Continentals.

I had already drawn up two army lists optimising use of the figures I have. The British had a small elite force of mostly Veteran units, while the Revolutionaries had a lot of ordinary Line Infantry and a unit of Skirmishers. The companies totaled 27 points each rather than the default 24 but as this increase was only marginal we stuck to the 4' square battle area.

Lobsters
Veteran Shock Infantry (Grenadiers) 8
Veteran Line Infantry 6
Veteran Light Infantry, Small 7
Medium Artillery 6
TOTAL 27

Yankee Doodles
Line Infantry 4
Line Infantry 4
Line Infantry 4
Line Infantry 4
Line Infantry, Large 5
Skirmishers, Sharpshooters (Riflemen) 6
TOTAL 27

It was a classic match-up of quality vs quantity. In most wargames I put my money on quality, but after reading another RAP AAR I had an inkling that quality came at a price that might not be rewarded.

We threw for Officer Traits. Mine was Wheezy while Chris got Musketry. There was no rough ground so I wasn't affected. Chris used his re-roll in due course to inflict yet more casualties on me.

In comparison with other Rampant games, RAP is the same but different. Activation is simpler, but I got confused between the factors affecting the score to hit and the factors increasing the hits needed to cause a casualty. I've since brought these factors into my homemade QRS.

First turn and the British are racing for the hill, Grenadiers on the left and Line Infantry with Officer on the right. My gun plays on the third American unit from the left.

My Grenadiers manfully marched to within 3" of the objective, and then halted in the shelter of the hill in true Wellingtonian fashion. Although this protected them it was probably a mistake.

The large American unit veers away from my gun so I shoot up Chris' Rifleman, his most valuable unit, instead.

Disaster! My Line Infantry unit is decimated by fire from multiple opponents and my Officer is wounded and forced to withdraw from the field. More anon. Quality indeed proves no match for quantity.

The Line Infantry are almost wiped out. Although my Grenadiers were doing their job, they were not contributing to the demands of linear warfare. By keeping them out of the conflict, I had effectively reduced my army.

With the Line Infantry routed and the Grenadiers isolated and with threatened flanks, I took them out of Close Order and occupied the objective more directly. This was also a mistake. By this stage it was unlikely that the Revolutionaries could have held the objective longer than me before the scenario ended.

My Light Infantry do some damage to the unit opposite them which keeps that unit at bay. At least somebody knows what they are doing.

The Grenadiers were also decimated and forced to retreat. But they are still under fire from American units to their right and rout.

I committed the Light Infantry, again a waste of time, but the scenario ended so they were saved from destruction. It was now time to count the Honour points.

I got +3 Honour for controlling the objective for the most turns. Chris got +1 Honour for causing 33% casualties and +2 Honour for taking less than 33% casualties. To that extent the game was a draw. However, I got +1 Honour for the Honourable wound which made me the winner!

The question is...why did victory look and feel so much like defeat?

Rebels and Patriots arrives

Taking stock - some samples from my collection
of American War of Independence figures. The
Continentals (left) are Warlord, the British (right)
are Perry. I'm not entirely sure how well they
match up in terms of historical uniform
development but probably as well as the
average Hollywood film!

My copy of Rebels and Patriots arrived last Thursday. It was highly anticipated and I'm genuinely excited!

The biggest innovation is probably variable-length charge moves,  which should add an additional touch of drama. Otherwise they generally follow the usual tried and trusted Rampant game mechanisms. Those chasing more detail should read David Sullivan's excellent review on the I Live With Cats blog.

I've already accumulated a couple of ready-made 28mm armies for it, and my first step was to look at the army lists and check to see if I have enough stuff for a standard-sized game (24 points a side).

The armies in question are American War of Independence British and Continentals.

The AWI British list suggests 3 Line Infantry, 1 Light Infantry and 1 Shock Infantry (e.g. Grenadiers). The Continental Army list suggests 3 Line Infantry, 1 Timid Line Infantry (Riflemen) 1 Skirmishers and 1 Aggressive Light Cavalry. The lists are useful indicators of appropriate troop types but by no means mandatory.

Infantry units are basically 12 figures but for +/- 1 point they can grow to 18 or shrink to 6. If I was designing an army list competitively I’d regard small units as risky and large units as extremely good value, but I’m not in that situation and I welcome this flexibility as it will allow me to optimise use of the figures I happen to have. Indeed, I think this is an extremely cunning design move to accommodate gamers with existing armies.

For the British I have:

3 Line Infantry @ 4
1 Shock Infantry @ 6
1 Light Infantry Small @ 5
1 Light Artillery @ 4

For the Continentals I have:

1 Line Infantry Large @ 5
2 Line Infantry @ 4
1 Line Infantry Small @ 3 (less 1 figure)
2 Skirmishers @ 2

I’m thus short on Continentals and will have to borrow some other figures (or upgrade them to Veterans) until I can get some more recruits. I need to add my usual 2p coin bases to the figures and prepare two or three boxes for storage/transport but otherwise I'm good to go.

I also have some 28mm American Civil War armies on order, but I'll have to wait till they arrive to see what I can make from them.

The 28mm 1798 armies continue to accumulate but won't necessarily be complete until next year.

'Rebels and Patriots' for 1798?

The latest and last set of Rampant rules - Rebels and Patriots - is due out in January 2019 and will fill the gap in the Rampant range between The Pikeman’s Lament and The Men Who Would Be Kings. The rules have been written by Michael Leck and Daniel Mersey.

Osprey wanted the rules to be focused on North America for commercial reasons, but they should be perfectly applicable beyond. One possibility amongst many hundreds is the Irish Rebellion of 1798 in which I have had a long-standing interest, especially since watching the TV mini-series The Year of the French which was shown in the 80s. I go back a long way!

At one point I started collecting 15mm figures for this conflict with the intention of using the Maurice rules, but it would have meant doing another mass army and the rules weren't really suited to pitching a predominantly pike army against musketmen.

So I was quite excited by the prospect of a Rampant set for the horse-and-musket period which would once again allow me to satisfy an historical interest with a relatively small game. I had assumed/hoped that R&P would have some type of 'charging infantry' that would accomodate Irish pikemen but from what I can tell the 'Natives' type in R&P is essentially a shooting type.

At first this put me off and I was wondering about creating a custom unit type or maybe using The Pikeman's Lament instead. However, it is possible to increase Aggression and make Natives Poor Shooters. This would represent a small number of firearms mixed in with the pike in addition to the firearms otherwise fielded by skirmishers, so I think I should be OK after all.

Trent Miniatures (currently available from North Star) do a good range of 28mm figures specifically for this conflict, so I've already begun to use my £5-a-month Wargames Illustrated credit to (slowly) accumulate forces.

Croppy Boys: Trent Miniatures 28mm Irish insurgent pikemen.

Twilight of the Sun King and some thoughts on generic armies

Promising but not perfect

The Twilight of the Sun King (TotSK) rules cover the period from 1680-1721. They were originally written by Steven Thomas of Balagan fame but authorship subsequently passed through other hands. I'd been meaning to try them for ages but never got round to it. So I already had an interest when the new, third, version was published by the Pike & Shot Society.

It's a high level game, there are historical scenarios, and, uniquely, it combines different forms of combat into a single unit reaction test. The game has, I believe, great promise but I'm not intending to play it just yet.

My Marlburian armies are currently 'between basing' and my 1690 armies turned out to be too small. For grand tactical games with historical scenarios, this has really concentrated my mind on the desirability of having reasonably generic armies that can be used for a range of historical battles (and rules). Time to look again at 2mm, possibly on 25mm square bases?

The other stop factor is the large number of problems with the rules. The TotSK Yahoo Group is awash with queries and an errata (currently 5 pages long!) is in preparation. Sadly this new version of the rules was obviously not adequately tested or proofed. On the plus side, however, there is a lot of interest in and support for the rules from people who want them to work.

There are two lessons for rule-writers here: get them tested by different groups of people who approach the rules in isolation and get them proof-read by someone like me!

10mm Seven Years War progress 2

Old Fritz

The first step after PVAing the figures to the combination MDF and steel bases was to texture the bases. I used a cocktail stick to apply PVA not only to the MDF surface but also onto the figure bases and around the figures' ankles. This is essential to hide the figure bases. I then poured over a mixture of bird sand and model railway ballast, shook it off, and repeated the application. (For 15mm figures I build up the bases with filler and then apply PVA. For 6mm figures I use bird sand without the ballast.)
As the figures for this project are packed very closely together, it wasn't possible to get right to the centre of the bases. This doesn't matter as this area will end up dark brown representing deep shadow.

With the figures so tightly packed, the ArmyPainter spray undercoat (Leather Brown) also didn't get between the figures too well so I had to  go over them with a generous wash of matching AP bottle paint.

A unit of Prussian Musketeers based, textured and undercoated.

I thought I'd have to add some coat colours before rendering the figures distinguishable and thus usable on the table, but I've now added temporary labels to tell the armies apart and to keep the appropriate bases in each unit together. I'm very glad I've never dropped these or muddled them up as it would have been a very tedious job to distinguish, for example,  Prussian, Austrian and Hungarian line infantry.

The unit duly identified from the rear.

For the benefit of those who haven't seen earlier postings, these are 10mm Pendraken figures for use with Maurice or maybe Might & Reason.

Might & Reason: Mollwitz

 The Austrian defence viewed from the Prussian end:
infantry to the left and cavalry to the right.

My club comrade Chris put on and umpired an introductory game of Sam Mustafa's Might & Reason. The game was an abridged version of the Battle of Mollwitz (1741) scenario. The real battle was fought between Prussia and Austria during the early part of the War of the Austrian Succession. The Prussians had to dislodge an Austrian scratch force sitting on their supply line. The game featured Chris's balsa block armies which were enhanced by authentic flags and worked very well. My fellow club member, Kim, was given command of the Austrians, a difficult assignment, while I got the Prussian killing-machine and an exceptionally lucky run of high dice throws.

Basing 10mm Seven Years War figures for Maurice

Pendraken Prussian Fusiliers. The ensigns occupy two
touching corners so the flags are at the centre of the unit.

Maurice uses square bases and Base Widths for measurement, so I decided on 25 mm bases so I could use inches in games. Four bases comprise a unit (except for artillery which are single bases).

I'm putting the infantry 8-up (two ranks of four) which means they are packed tight sideways with the figures presenting a continuous line when the bases are pushed together. IMO this density is more historically accurate than spreading the figures out.

The figures are also closely packed front-to-back and this will support my plan to paint only the 'outsides' of the figures leaving the 'insides' in shadow. If I ever get round to doing the American War of Independence in 10 mm, I would probably mount the figures more loosely, i. e. 6-up (except the Hessians).

The bases are made from Pendraken Minibits laser-cut MDF glued with UHU Power to Precision Wargames Supplies steel bases. They are designed to be stored and transported in TUFF boxes lined with magnetic sheet. The figures are applied with PVA glue after trimming off the casting sprues.

Galleys & Galleons: Name that ship

People get very involved when, in multi-player games, they have a ship each, and I thought it would be a good idea to boost this personal identification by following other gamers in giving each ship a specific name.

So here are the names I've selected. Many of the ships are interchangeable in their affiliation. The Frigate and the Indiaman is actually the same model. Some of the names are historical or modern, i.e. stolen. Others are made-up.

Galleys & Galleons: Wreckage markers

I needed some wreckage markers for Galleys & Galleons. Wreckage and survivors are included with the Peter Pig manned rowing boats. PP also do some empty rowing boats. These would be a liability in combat and would have been towed behind rather than stored on deck. I didn't have any use for them so I threw them into the wreckage to add to the sense of chaos.

The PP bits were stuck onto 40mm MDF squares. Filler was used to level the surface around the markers. You can now get perfectly adequate filler in big tubs from a 'pound' shop.

Galleys & Galleons: Gun boats

It's handy to have a few smaller, cheaper ships for making up points, so I decided to create some gun boats by cannibalising Peter Pig rowing boats. I didn't have any contemporary illustrations to work from but I've seen pictures of later gunboats and used those for inspiration.

The starting point: light gun and rowing boats from the Peter Pig Pieces of Eight range.

Galleys & Galleons: Blockade running

The sloop sets out to run the
Barbary blockade

I fought another couple of Galleys & Galleons playtest games, this time using the Blockade Runner scenario from the draft rules. The forces were a Sloop - the blockade runner - versus three Xebecs and a Jacht.

Readers may note that my Peter Pig ships now have a little more paint on them than the last time they were photographed. The xebecs, of course, come ready painted.

Galleys & Galleons: Waterlining the Pirateology xebecs

'Waterlining' the three Pirateology xebecs was an unavoidable challenge but not one I was looking forward to.

Owing to the relatively delicate and finished nature of the model, I could hardly put it in a vice, but had to handhold it. Luckily it was possible to rest the model on its stern and this provided a reasonably stable anchor point.

I made a nick in the bow with a pair of GW clippers and then attacked the model with a fretsaw. The hull is partially hollow, but there's a lot of thick plastic to get through.

Galleys & Galleons: The Pirateology xebec

I recently bought three Pirateology xebecs as the basis of a Barbary Pirate fleet for Galleys & Galleons. Sold as a 'Barbary Galley', the ship is nicely modelled and although no scale is stated, it seems perfectly compatible with the Peter Pig 1/450 Pirate ship range. I thought it might be helpful to take some close-ups with a Peter Pig ship for comparison.

Galleys & Galleons: first games

Nic Wright's forthcoming Galleys & Galleons rules are certainly raising a lot of interest and just before Christmas my friend Ian and I finally got round to a couple of playtest games ourselves.

I can only apologise for the photos. The ships are wearing just their undercoats and look like ghost ships, and the photos were taken very inexpertly in the heat of battle. But, hey, it's a playtest. (Ghost ships are actually covered in the rules in a fantasy supplement at the end.)

The seascape in our first game was a little overcrowded with islands and shallows. They were cunningly placed by my piratical opponent, forcing me into a very awkward starting position. Eager to teach the pirates a lesson they would not forget, my ships sped ahead leaving the boats behind. All measurements are made using the coffee stirrers.

Galleys & Galleons: the fleets assemble

My first batch of ships for Galleys & Galleons is now based and primed. The ships are to some extent interchangeable but these photos represent my first thoughts.

The Merchants. From back to front: Peter Pig Large Merchantman, Fluyt, and Small Merchantman. The Dhow (foreground) is a 1/300 Grumpy model with the original crew removed, and Peter Pig crew and guns substituted. I also replaced the supplied but rather vulnerable mast with a stout dressmaking pin. This made it harder to superglue the sail on, but I'd rather cope with a detached sail than a wonky or broken mast.

Galleys & Galleons: making sea bases

I decided to try a new method for basing my 1/450 Peter Pig pirate ships for Galleys & Galleons - aluminium 'turkey' foil. It's said this should be used shiny side up. I'm not sure why but I followed suit. Rather than just crumpling it, I rubbed it over the side of a ribbed tin can. I then varied the angle a little and re-rubbed parts to create a more irregular wave effect.

Galleys & Galleons

Nic Wright's Irregular Wars: Conflict at the World's End reinforced my interest in games which require only small armies and a compact playing area, and can be finished in 1-2 hours. I was thinking about other, similarly compact, land war options, when Nic's new pirate naval game - Galleys & Galleons - impinged on my consciousness. This is currently at the play-testing stage and I have enrolled as a volunteer.

The game involves very modest forces, can be played in a quite restricted area, and promises to be fast and furious. It satisfies all the criteria for a modest, compact and fast game, but what initially attracted me to it were the photos on Nic's blog of his superbly painted 1/450 pirate ships made by Peter Pig .

Maurice trial with counters

As expected, my trial Seven Years War game of Sam Mustafa's 18th Century Maurice rules confirmed that they are dramatic, exciting and fun. It was also a trial of my MDF counters, so figure manufacturers may wish to look away now! 

Each side had a team of two players whilst I acted as a less than perfect teacher and umpire, having read but not played through the rules before. But the players were quick to pick them up and play was smooth despite necessary checks for confirmation and detail.  This was a tribute to their clarity and user-friendliness, and a great deal of cunning design beneath their apparent simplicity.

As this was an exploratory game to try out the main mechanisms of the rules I restricted the armies to Trained Regulars, put down just a couple of woods for the terrain and dispensed with Scouting. No advanced rules were used. Otherwise play proceeded as normal, or, at least, as close to normal as I could discern from my limited understanding and experience.

I advised both sides to deploy historically. The Austrians were in defence with 6 infantry units, 4 cavalry and 3 artillery. Splitting the artillery was against my advice! As this was only a training game I didn't provide an objective, but I added it later in case the Prussians showed lack of aggression. I didn't really need to worry on that score.

Counters, blocks or 2mm?

Painting all the armies I'd like to have for all the rules I'd like to play is too demanding on time and space, if not pocket, and I find myself thinking more and more about counters, wooden blocks or Irregular Miniatures' 2mm strips.

I began with making some counters for Maurice (pictured above). Counters are very cheap and straightforward. I adapted some top-downs from the Junior General website and printed the designs onto labels which were then cut with a scalpel and applied to smart laser-cut MDF bases from Pendraken.