World War 1 Naval

 Today, Ian, Nigel and myself had a go at gaming with Nigel's 1/2400 WW1 ships and his own rules for the period. We set up a 4' x 12ft' table with the objective being for my German fleet to reach the safety of the harbour at the far eastern side of the board whilst Ian had to try and stop me. Knowing nothing about WW1 naval warfare I was happy to have help from Nigel with my deployment.

At the front you can see my deployment with the first part of Ian's British fleet in the distance moving parallel to mine. 

A close up of the main part of the German fleet. Nigel has done a great job painting and basing these in a really effective way.  

A view down the table showing how far I needed to travel to escape. 

On the left you can see that Ian has his first extra ships. 

Another close up as some of my smaller ships move out to try and cover the escape of my larger ships. 

We then fired smoke to cover their advance. Sadly shortly after this, with my first batch of torpedoes having been launched time defeated us all once again. 

So we all had a very enjoyable day full of the usual gaming banter and ideas for future projects. As for Nigel's rules, they worked well despite me finding some of the maths involved a little perplexing at times. This was a first play test and we all came up with some ideas to help tweak and improve them. Ian and Nigel are playing them again next week. 

More 15mm Medieval Mayhem

 Ian and I fought it out again today using Hail Caesar rules and our 15mm English and French armies. We used a scenario I found online tweaked a bit to make the terrain a little more symmetrical and the game fairer. Each force could deploy 2 divisions on the table with the rest of their force arriving on a turn decided by the throw of a d3. Ian added a further tweak that the defender could mark 3 areas of rough terrain on the map and then could deploy these areas after the attackers had deployed. A quick dice throw decided that I was the defender with Ian playing the role of attacker. 

Two divisions each deploy, my English on the left and Ian's French on the right. 

Turn 1 and the English reserves arrive, hurrah! 

Marching through the village of L'Athers, the Duke of York took up his position on the right of the English line. 

In a change from my usual army selection I used two units of mounted knights today.

 To my surprise reduced from three mounted units of knights to just the one. 

The English line takes shape. 

Turn two and the French reserve arrive with a rapid advance on the far end of their line. 

I sent my knights forward on the right flank to intimidate the French Infantry.

On my left flank there was a hill held by Richard de Vere and his men. Ian attacked the hill with first his French Sergeants then some Scottish  spear and peasants , my units of bill and bow held out against all these but it was a hard fought victory. 

Despite this success on my left flank, Sir Thomas Erpingham in command of my centre division blundered his whole division command and the whole division moved back two moves. My order dice throws were awful today often frustrating my plans. 

On the right flank my knights managed to charge a unit of French Crossbow men and destroy them, otherwise it was developing into a bit of a stand off. Thankfully Erpingham finally got his troops moving again to return to their central position. Once again, time defeated us with the battle at a well balanced point we called it a draw but we both fully enjoyed our afternoon of gaming. Hail Caesar always gives a great game.