Back to Billhooks

 Today we played a 4 player game of 'Never Mind the Billhooks' as our last game before Xmas. We hadn't played Billhooks in quite a while so it was fun to return to this game. With the Hail Caesar 'Wars of the Roses' supplement due any day it will be interesting to both play and compare the two systems. 

Today's scenario was quite simple. It was a basic encounter battle with a twist. The twist was created by writing a few cards with objectives on them then each side had to pick one. To win, you needed to defeat the enemy and achieve your objective. Simple fun at 150 points and two players per side. 

Lancastrians (Nigel and myself) on the left and Yorkists (Ian and Charlie) on the right. 

Nigel and I had to try and gain control of the central crossroads whilst Ian and Charlie had to try and get their commander off the opposite side of the table (as well as win a battle of course). 

A few Yorkists bowmen get ready to give battle.

My Lancastrian cavalry, who proved to be as brittle as ever. 

The Yorkists advance.

End of turn 2 and troops are moving into missile range.

My light cavalry charge some Yorkist skirmishers and due to some shockingly poor dice throwing get beaten.  

So my knights get into position to show the light cavalry how it is done.

Lord Clifford's archers throw 11 dice needing '6's to hit and get five!

The Lancastrian artillery exploding as usual.

The battle was a very close fought affair despite some interesting differences in troop choices. Ian and his Yorkists had more men at arms, bowmen and skirmishers but no artillery. My mounted Knights and their Light Cavalry support were next to useless although they did survive the battle...just. The Yorkists lost a couple of units quite quickly which narrowed their missile advantage but their two units of Men at Arms seemed to be turning the battle their way. Nigel on the Lancastrian right was doing very well and I just managed to hold my position on the left. 

As the game was coming to a close (the Yorkists ran out of Morale tokens in turn 6) Ian rushed his commander forward (leaving his badly mauled troops behind) and off the table to claim his objective. The Lancastrians won the battle but were not in possession of the crossroads as these were actually surrounded by the few remaining Yorkist units.

This 4 player game was great fun and could have gone either way. We were a bit rusty on a few of the rules but fudged our way through and really enjoyed ourselves.  

Trying 'RAMINSEAS', another set of ancient naval rules.

 After last week's disappointing game of Ancient Naval Warfare we tried another set of rules today. American gamer Tim Wineland got in touch with me after reading my blog last week and he very kindly offered to share his self written set of Ancient Naval rules' Raminseas'. Thankfully this is only a few pages long and after a quick read through Ian and I opted to choose a small equal number of ships (in two squadrons) and play a simple first game scenario of just trying to destroy each other to get used to the game mechanics. 

At the Recon wargames show on Saturday I purchased two 3D printed island harbours and managed to get them painted up quite quickly. They didn't actually get used today but looked good on the table. 

A simple deployment set up. The dice indicate and record how many 'Action Points' (AP) a ship has left. Various movement rates, and actions such as ramming or grappling cost varying amounts of AP so spend them wisely.

Movement is quite easy. The blue and green markers depict tokens for each sides squadrons  and the numbers the order in which they were drawn. This denotes then the order of play for each squadron (as we played it, not 100% sure we got this bit right?). 

Ian gets in the first strike by ramming me. 

Note here we switched Ian's colour of dice representing AP to red to help differentiate whose ships were whose. 

Pretty soon ships were engaged in melee all over the board. 

The different colours of counters represent different types of damage which a canny general can use AP to 'Repair'.

Ships can also catch fire for which we used cotton wool. 

The dice were very much on my side today as my fleet destroyed 3 of Ian's ships and were in the process of battering his two remaining ships when he graciously conceded the game. 

Ian and I both agreed that these rules gave us a much more enjoyable game even though we were using less ships. Each ship does trail quite a few counters and dice behind it but we will look at a way of simplifying this. Being a first game we came across a few situations that we need a bit of guidance on so a series of questions have been sent across the pond to Tim who will hopefully let us know how best to proceed in our next game. Our idea is to create a 'ship list' for the various Greek, Persian and Macedonian fleets to match our little 1/1200 scale models and our wargames armies in case we tempt ourselves into a campaign where the Naval aspect of war can play a part. 

Our thanks to Tim for sharing his rules with us, they are great fun and they will see much use in our future games. 

Trying 'Poseidon's Warriors'

 Over the last few weeks Ian and I have been painting up our 1/1200 ancient fleets. Our models are from Navwar (who are happily still in business) and are mainly from the Hellenistic era. These are super little models that paint up very well. For rules we opted to give 'Poseidon's Warriors' from Osprey a try. 

For our first test game we chose a couple of matching squadrons and set to. One side had to try and destroy a small galley carrying a messenger trying to get into the estuary the other side had to try and protect the messenger. 

Visually we were very pleased with how the game looked. The sea coloured gaming mat we bought on the bring and buy for just £20 from the Phalanx show at St Helens. I have made a couple of sandbanks and some semi-submerged rocks as hazards but do intend to make some more themed terrain pieces. 

Initially the rules seemed to work well. Players alternate moving a squadron at a time which certainly made us think about our moves. 

However, once we got into melee the game suddenly seemed over simplified to us. As these two squadrons ram each other, all hits are automatic and none of the ships have a save so, only having one point of hull damage each, all 6 ships were sunk! 

To be fair to the rules, as one looks at some of the larger ships with their varying points of hull damage and number of rams, marines and artillery etc...the rules seemed like they would be more entertaining. Sadly for us, our Hellenistic Battle packs that we bought from Navwar contain mainly smaller ships. Also, as our main interest lies in the Greek, Persian and early Macedonian era we need rules to suit the smaller ships. 

Some of my Quinquiremes sail off in search of bigger ships or new rules. 

So for a quick second game, we upped the number of ships and both took a larger flagship. This was just a simple attack each other scenario to further test the rules.  We enjoyed the greater capabilities of our larger ships but the morale rules seemed very simple and both fleets fled the battle upon losing a quarter of their number. 

Overall, although we enjoyed our afternoon of gaming we decided that there were two ways forward. We could work with the basics of 'Poseidon's Warrior's' and develop them to suit our needs, perhaps writing our own armylists and upping the abilities of the smaller ships of our chosen era, or, we could try another set of rules. We shall give it some thought.