Naval Gaming at South Bay Game Club

For the past few months I have been participating in age of sail games run by Bob at the South Bay Game Club.  These were squadron level games with each person commanding three to six ships.  Attendance had been low over the winter months and the games usually had me playing against Bob in two of the three games.   I ended up losing one of the three and winning the other two.  For the March meeting I ran the Battle of Cheetos (Chios) using modified Corvus rules from the Society of Ancinets.   Cheetos are corn chips and when Manny's son heard saw the bag of chips and heard the name of the battle that is what he called it.   Manny commanded the Pergamon fleet, Bob commanded the Rhodian fleet, and Craig commanded the Macedonian fleet with my assistance.  I used the scenario from the GMT board game War Galley, but scaled them at one to one instead of one to three as in the scenario with the Lembis being scaled at one to two and a half.  The Macedonians were also given the one twelve that I had, the Astro Thanatou. 

The Pergamon fleet had thirty-six ships, mostly fives with three threes.   Rhodes had forty-two ships with thirty-three fives and the rest threes.   The Macedonian fleet had three tens, one nine, four eights, three sevens, three sixes, eighteen fives, eighteen fours, three threes, and sixty lembis representing the 150 present at the battle along with the twelve.  The Rhodian fleet was well trained while the others were average.

Both sides were allowed to deploy as they wished, up to six inches in from the table edge with the only restriction being that Pergamon was on the allied left flank and Rhodes was on the allied right flank.

The first two turns saw the fleets approach each other.  On turn three the allies moved first and decided to attempt bow to bow rams against the Macedonians.  This did not turn out well.  Only four Macedonian ships were wrecked, while twelve of the thirty-six Pergamon ships were wrecked.   Under the game rules this would have been an immediate rout for the Pergamon fleet with a third of the fleet lost except that the Pergamon admiral's ship had not been involved and counted as two ships for a total of thirty-seven.  On my flank the two fleets only approached.   On the fourth turn there were some bow to bow ramming attempts by the Rhodian fleet.   These were not as destructive as the earlier attacks by the Pergamon fleet.  On my half of the turn the lembis passed through the gaps between my larger ships and attempted to shear the oars of the opposing fleet.  Ten of the attempts were successful with only a few failures.  On turn five Craig was able to sink an additional Pergamon ship winning the battle.   At this point victory went to the Macedonians as the Pergamon ships that were not crippled fled.   Only part of the Rhodian fleet was able to escape as almost half of their ships had been crippled by oar shears and many others were wrecks.

We used a 30 inch (75cm) by eight foot (2.4m) table.

 Bob, wearing red cap, Manny, and Craig 

 End of Allies' first turn.  Macedonian fleet on the left.

 End of second turn. 

 The Pergamon fleet attacks

 Contact.

 end of turn three

turn five.  My lembis have passed through attempting oar shears on the first line during turn four.   On turn five we moved first and the lembis attempted oar shears on the Rhodian second line, often having two of them ganging up on one Rhodian ship. Ships with a square blue marker behind them have been crippled. Those with the larger rectangular markers are wrecks.  The ships have been removed.  I did capture one ship with a boarding action.  

South Bay Game Club June Meeting

Even though the May meeting was held two weeks previously and Kublacon was the week before, the turnout tor the June meeting was good.   Five games were run: Mike Simpson ran a Dragon Rampant game set in Wales, Kent Reuber ran an English Civil War battle using Regiment of Foote, Ix ran a WWI naval battle between Russia and Germany at Libau,  Chuck Staedler ran a Sky's the Limit air game set in 1944, and I ran a fictional Second Punic War Battle set about the time of Trebia using Scutarii.

The Romans had a full consular army versus an almost equal point army from Carthage.   Hannibal  had his morale modifier increased from one to two and would win ties for initiative.  The armies were as follows:

ROME
UNIT	ATT	DEF	MOVE	MIS	MORALE	POINTS	NUMBER	TOTAL
GENERALS	+1	X	14	X	+ OR - 1 OR 0	X	1+4	X
VELITES	3	5	6,8	2"	10	7	10	70
HASTATI	3+2	6	6	X	10	9	10	90
PRINCIPES	3+2	6	6	X	10	9	10	90
TRIARII	4	6	6	X	10	9	10	90
CAVALRY	3	6	12,14	2"	10	10	6	60
								400
CARTHAGE
UNIT	ATT	DEF	MOVE	MIS	MORALE	POINTS	NUMBER	TOTAL
HANNIBAL	+1	X	14	X	+ OR - 2,1,OR 0	5	1	10
GENERALS	+1	X	14	X	+ OR - 1 OR 0	X	4	X
SLINGERS	2	5	6,8	2"	11	8	1	8
LT. INF.	3	5	6,8	2"	11	8	7	56
AFRICAN INF.	4	6	6	X	11	10	8	80
SPANISH INF.	3	5	6	X	11	8	4	32
GALLIC INF.	3	5	6	X	10	6	10	60
NUMIDIAN	3	5	12,14	2"	11	9	4	36
SPANISH HORSE	3	6	12,14	2"	11	10	3	30
GALLIC HORSE	3	6	12,14	2"	10	9	5	45
ELEPHANT	4	6	8	X	10	11	4	44
								401

The Roman army had 2000 cavalry and 18,000 infantry.   The Carthaginians had 15,000 infantry, 4000 cavalry, and 20 elephants.  The battlefield was 6 feet wide by 5 feet deep on two 2.5 by 8 foot tables.



 

Greg (on the left) was Hannibal, Gary (on the right) was Mago,

Alan (in front) and Robert (to the rear) were the Roman commanders.

The turn sequence is dicing for initiative with the higher score deciding which side would move for that turn,  the side moving first makes any morale checks followed by their movement and missile fire, then a melee phase, then the second side makes any morale checks followed by movement and missile fire then a melee phase.   Moving units may conduct missile fire at any point during their movement if they have missile weapons.  The defending side can return fire if they are shot at or charged.

Prior to the battle both sides placed terrain features.   For a 400 point game each side could place up to four features.   The Romans placed three hills and Carthage placed two small woods (one on each flank) and two hills. Terrain features may be placed anywhere on the table except for the opposing side's deployment area.   After the terrain pieces were placed, both sides diced for them, with the higher score determining whether they would stay or be removed.  Tie scores go the side that placed the terrain feature.   The Carthaginians added one to their die roll for having twice as many scouting points.  One of the Roman hills was removed and the Roman players were able to remove the woods on the left flank of the Carthaginian army.

Initial deployment

The Roman army deployed in their standard formation with the legions in the center and chose to deploy their cavalry equally on both flanks.   Hannibal (Greg) chose to have two-thirds of his cavalry make a flank attack on his right.  All the elephants were deployed on the right flank with most of the remaining cavalry on the left flank.  The light infantry formed a skirmish screen and the heavy infantry was deployed with gaps between the units.

Carthage won the initiative for the first turn and the Romans won the initiative for all the other turns.  The Carthaginian plan was to let the Romans advance far enough forward so that flanking cavalry would arrive behind their lines.

By the third turn the two armies were engaged in combat.  On the Roman right the three cavalry units engaged the two of the Spanish horse and one Numidian cavalry unit.  The Carthaginians eventually were able to break the Roman horse, but their cavalry was exhausted by that time.   On the other flank the elephants and one Numidian cavalry unit broke the Roman horse leaving the left flank of the Roman infantry exposed.

Elephants on Carthaginian right make contact with a unit of Roman cavalry



The armies approach each other and the Roman cavalry on the right engage the Carthaginian horse

 Roman cavalry on their left flank flee from the elephants, while some of the elephants decide to quit the field.

The two armies engage in combat.  The three cavalry units on the Roman right exchange blows with their opponents.  The velites and the Carthaginian light infantry have fallen back to the rear of the main battle lines.  The small numbered markers are used to keep track of damage to each unit and accumulate throughout the battle.

Half of the elephants had left the field by the time the rest of the Carthaginian cavalry arrived on the field.   Some of the Carthaginian horse headed for the Roman camp while the rest were blocked from engaging the flank and rear of the Roman army by fleeing infantry from the Roman left flank.  With nothing else to do several units of cavalry proceeded to chase down the fleeing Romans and drive them from the field.

Carthaginian flanking cavalry arrive

 

In the center the Roman infantry was slowly cutting its way through the opposing Carthaginian infantry.

 



Gauls in the Carthaginian center recoil along with some of the Spanish to their left.

 

Rush hour on the Via Apia as Roman left flank infantry flees

Hannibal had managed to rally some wavering Gauls and urge them to continue fighting.  Just as it looked like the Romans would break through and escape their camp was captured.  Roman morale collapsed and victory went to the Carthaginians.  Losses for the Carthaginians were just over 1000 infantry and a few cavalry.  About half the Roman army was slain and the rest captured.

6mm figures.  Roman army by Rapier.  Carthage is a mix of Baccus, H&R, and Irregular.

April South Bay Game Club Meeting

There were four games being played at the April meeting.   The airplane guys were running a scenario where a damaged B27 was trying to make it back to safety.   This one finished early when the B27 got shot down.


Mike was running a Dragon Rampant game set in the age of Arthur.


Nick ran a French intervention in Mexico game.  Lunch break.



The one that I participated in was a Too The Strongest Game with Carthagenians vs. Romans.   To the Strongest uses an activation system for moving units with a one in ten chance of not activating a unit, but also allowing a second attempt to activate if a general is available.   Activation sytems are common in a number of ancient rules where you have to either equal and exceed or equal and be less than a certain score.   While it introduces a certain amount of fog of war, it makes it difficult to simulate the Gallic charges that Caesar describes in his book on the conquest of Gaul.   There is one set I know of where there is a one in six chance of not activating a unit.   So imagine 60,000 Gauls charging and each turn 10,000 of them decide to halt and maybe block the guys behind them  Fortunately that was not the case in this game.  We used a new rule that guys who had gone to England said had been introduced where for the first activation attempt one card was drawn for all the units in a command for the first activation of a turn.   The rules also allow a general to draw a second card for units he is with or near to activate them if the first fails.   This went a long way towards reducing the change of a complete failure to about 1%.

The rules use a deck of 80 numbered cards for activations, combat, etc.   These actually play faster than dice, but the odds of drawing a card change each time compared to rolling a 10 sided die.   There are a lot of games that I have played that use 10, 12, 8 and 4 sided dice in addition to plain old 6 sided and even average dice.   An extreme example of card draw changing the odds happened during the game.  The first ten cards I drew on one turn were all six or higher.    This changed the odds of getting a six or higher for the next draw, which I needed for a hit, to about 43% instead of 50%.  This was an extreme case though as most of the turns the card draw tended to even out.

I was the commander for Carthage with Lawrence as my right wing commander and Chuck as my left wing commander.   Bill McHugh commanded the Romans with Kent as his right wing commander and Robert as his left wing commander.  The Romans card draw gave them the first move for each turn.  The Roman army was about half a full consular army with three units of heavy cavalry, four velites, five each of Hastati and Princepes, and five units of Triarii.   Our army had two units of heavy Spanish infantry, four units of heavy African infantry, two deep units of Gauls,  four units of light javelins, one unit of slingers, two units of elephants, two units of light cavalry,  and five units of heavy cavalry.   Points were 150 each.  I chose to weight our left wing more heavily than the right.  Chris was the game master and supplied the armies from his collection of 15mm figures.   The squares were 4 inches/100 mm across.

Our plan was to have the two cavalry wings encircle the Roman army with the elephants taking out the cavalry and draw the Roman infantry into the center/   Chris had made the Roman cavalry used to elephants so that part of our plan wasn't going to turn out as expected.  

The first turn saw the Romans make a normal move forward.   Our wings made march moves.   On the second turn the Romans started moving infantry to support the wings.   I then attempted to advance our infantry center to aid the wings with mixed luck on the activations.   Our wings engaged the Romans with the right wing not fairing too well and the left getting held up.   The Roman infantry center became disjointed with the middle advancing to engage our infantry and the flanking infantry engaging our cavalry.   This allowed me to attack the ends of the Roman center with multiple units.

Eventually I was able to help our right wing and keep it from being overwhelmed, destroy the Roman center and eliminate the Roman infantry on our left.   Chuck was able to take out the Roman cavalry opposing him and move units towards the center so that they would help defeat what was left of the Roman infantry.

The loss of a unit in the game does not trigger any morale checks by units next to it, but does count towards overall command and army morale.   A command becoming ineffective once it exceeds 50% casualties, which happened to our right wing command.   Our initial plan had succeeded though not quite in the way it was initially intended to.  In addition to losing both elephant units we also lost some cavalry and one of the Spanish heavy infantry while destroying the Roman army.   Sadly our losses made those of Pyrrhus look mild in comparison. 

The game was fast paced and fun to play.  It lasted about three hours.  We still had plenty of time for a second game before the club meeting was over,  Robert had already left before the game was done and several of the other players had errands to run so we called it a day.  Thanks to Lawrence for taking the pictures.

 Our army

 Lawrence' wing 

Another view of Lawrence' wing

 The center, shortly before the destruction of the Roman infantry.

 

 

South Bay Game Club meeting March 11, 2017

Participated in a Napoleonic naval game at the South Bay Game Club yesterday.   In addition to the naval game there were several others.   The French and Spanish ships were trying to leave a port and join the rest of the fleet at sea.   The British squadrons were attempting to prevent this.   Bob Bergman ran the game and went with a humorous them.  I was Admiral Rowan Atkinson commanding HMS Black Adder with HMS Baldric and HMS Bean in my squadron.  Unfortunately I do not recall the names of the other three British ships in Chip's squadron or those of the French and Spanish.   The French ships were named for New Orleans Mardi Gras and the Spanish translated to cowboy names.   The game lasted about four hours and finally ended when one of my ships fired its initial port broadside into the Spanish admiral's ship.   I scored four hits on six dice and a critical.   Thomas Foss, who commanded the Spanish squadron then rolled a 12 on the critical hit table  followed by another 12, on a 12 sided die, resulting in his flagship exploding. We dud award Thomas 1 point for his admiral being able to leave the table %D.   Greg commanded the French squadron.

In addition to the games there were quite a few books, buildings and miniatures that were being given away or sold.

 Pancho Villa train robbery

 

Ice planet Hoth game

 table for pig wars being set up.  the tiles represent underground passages between the various features on the table top.  I should have taken another picture of the game later in the day as there were quite a bit more of the passages on the table by then and features on the table..

 World War II bomber raid

 Sharp Practice game

The naval game just prior to the wind shifting.   Two ships from Chip's squadron are engaging the French towards the back.  Two of my ships are on the left engaging two of the Spanish ships.  The group of four ships in the center right are as follows: Spanish flagship at front with other Spanish ship to the rear.   Chip's third ship on right and mine in the middle.  The wind shifted counter-clockwise putting my two ships in irons, but fortunately a tacking card came up shortly after allowing me to move before the Spanish could.   The red markers indicate that a broadside had been fired.  When a broadside was fired a ship was given two of them for that side and required two cards being drawn that allowed reloading to take place.

Pharsalus Round Two

I ran Pharsalus for the second time at the South Bay Game Club meeting on April 9.  In addition to Pharsalus there were five other games being offered that day plus an additional two that had been cancelled at the last minute.   These were a naval game and a companion air combat game covering the same battle with the possibility of planes from the air combat game appearing in the naval game, a 54mm ACW game, a wooden soldier game, and  a Cthulu game,.

Alan and Robert commanded Caesar's army while Bill McHugh commanded Pompey's.  For both this game and the previous one the players on Caesar's side chose to move first on the first turn.  The opposing armies deployed 24 inches (1200 paces) apart.   Caesar's troops advanced to within 12 inches of the opposing army.   In both games Pompey's army chose to advance for their half of the first turn, closing to within 6 inches of Caesar's army.

In all there are about 4000 figures in the game.  Most are from Rapier, a few are from Baccus and the rest are Heroics and Ros.  The game took about three hours to play.   We broke for lunch near noon.   Alex Fabros was celebrating his 80th birthday and had cooked hamburgers for all to enjoy.  Alan, Bill and Bob each received a tee shirt for participating in the game and I gave a spare one to Alex.

This time Pharsalus had a different outcome.   Both sides caused so much damage to each other that the result was ruled a draw.   This is something that had never happened in any previous Scutarii game.   Partway through the battle the center of Pompey's legions broke due to a couple of units being destroyed in combat., but the remainder held.   Scutarii allows the Romans to deploy in multiple lines and replace units in the front line that are damaged with fresh units, but in this case the damage had happened so quickly that the two units were not replaced. Several more units from the Pompey's center would also break later.  

On the cavalry wing the Caesarian players hesitated to commit the infantry to support the cavalry.  This eventually led to the cavalry wing and the additional infantry routing.   On the flank by the river Caesar's infantry eventually broke.   This left Pompey victorious on both wings, but not strong enough to finish off Caesars infantry in the center, while Caesar's troops were also too battered to attempt engaging what was left of Pompey's army.   I didn't make an exact count, but about 60% of Pompey's legions had broken, while Caesar had lost about 40% of his legions.

The armies were as follows:

CAESAR
UNIT	ATTACK	DEFENSE	MISSILE	MOVE	MORALE	POINTS	UNITS	POINTS
CAESAR	ADD 2	X	X	14	+/-2,1, OR 0	5	1	20
GENERALS	ADD 1	X	X	14	+/- 1 OR 0	free	6	0
LEGION	3+2	6	X	6	11	10	55	550
UPGRADE 10TH	4+2	6	X	6	11	+1	(8)	(8)
CAVALRY	3	6	(2")	12 OR 14	11	11	4	44
								623
POMPEY
UNIT	ATTACK	DEFENSE	MISSILE	MOVE	MORALE	POINTS	UNITS	POINTS
POMPEY	ADD 1	X	X	14	+/- 1 OR 0	FREE	1	0
GENERALS	ADD 1	X	X	14	+/- 1 OR 0	free	6	0
LEGION	3+2	6	X	6	10	9	57	513
CAVALRY	3	6	(2")	12 or14	10	10	11	110
LIGHT INFANTRY	2	4	6"	6 OR 8	10	6	4	48
								661

All of Caesar's army has been rated as veterans with morale of 11.   In addition the 10th legion has been rated as elite with a higher combat factor.   Each legion unit in Caesar's army represents about 384 men in six ranks.   The number of cavalry has been increased from 1000 to 2000 by including the 1000 additional infantry incorporated with them.   Extra points have been paid for Caesar to allow him to win tie die rolls for initiative, to have the initiative for the first turn, and for a higher combat and morale bonus. 

 Caesar gives Pompey 110 cohorts of heavy infantry.   He also states that 22 cohorts were guarding the camp and another location.   He does not state whether the 22 cohorts are part of the 110 or are in addition.   I chose to treat them as part of the 110 due to legions of this period having 10 cohorts and 22 cohorts would not fit this organization.   Another source for the battle also notes that Pompey had his men form up 10 ranks deep.   As such each of Pompey's legion units represent 640 men.   Although Pompey's men were of different quality, in order to prevent confusion and to reflect the greater depth, all the legion units were rated as average.  For both games Pompey's side was given the option of having 14 cavalry units, but having half of them rated at a reduced combat factor of 2 and morale of  9 or choosing to have 11 units representing units formed in 10 ranks instead of 8 and rated as average.  For both games the choice was eleven average units.
round one

 Initial deployment

 End of first turn.  Pompey's cavalry engage Caesar's while Caesar sends additional troops to aid his cavalry.

 The legions engage.

 about half way into the game.  Part of Pompey's center breaks

 The fighting on the cavalry wing

 What is left of Pompey's center attempts to plug the gaps.

 Caesar's cavalry wing begins to break.

 The large hole in the middle of Pompey's line from Pompey's perspective.

 Caesar's infantry mops up what is left of Pompey's infantry in the center.

 Caesar's cavalry wing breaks and Pompey's cavalry begins to envelope Caesar's infantry.

Just prior to Caesar's left wing breaking.  Pompey's routers are at the bottom.