Camping It Up

I finished these in August but forgot to post about them.  You might have spotted that the Mamluk army I posted about a couple of months ago didn't have any baggage.  What I bought at the time was a set of tents - Mongolian yurt, Arab desert tent and Chinese tent:

And a set of dioramas - pig roasting, market sellers and campfire

My aim was a flexible set of bases that can be combined to form baggage for my Mamluks and my forthcoming (don't hold your breath) Mongol and Yuan Chinese armies.  They will suit of course a variety of other nomadic, Arab or East Asian armies, and combining two of the dioramas without a tent could be baggage for pretty much anything.

All of the tents and dioramas came from Baueda.  The exception were the market figures which came out of one of Andy's boxes of bits a few years ago!

Roll for the Galaxy - 6 September 2017

Just two of us for games this week, so a chance to Roll for the Galaxy as a two-player game.  The constraint to just two possible phases is relieved by the roll of an additional white dice which has the potential to bring another phase into play.

In the first game, David went for Stuart's tactic last week of cheap and fast building but it wasn't enough to beat James' fewer but more valuable tiles.  19 points for David, 29 for James.

In the second game, James developed a range of Consumption (Blue) worlds and developments which established a strong economy and a big score of 52 against David's 38.  However, only at the end did James notice that his Reassign benefit only worked for a subset of his workers not all of them, so he had been a bit free and easy with his dice in the last few turns.  David graciously judged it still a win for James but not with quite such a margin ;-)

Roll for the Galaxy - 30 August 2017

First games night of the new term and a chance to catch up as well as play a couple of games of Roll for the Galaxy.  David ran away with the first game with plenty of conspicuous consumption - something like 43 points with Stuart on 34 and James 33.  In the second game, Stuart played a fast and cheap building strategy to minimise the benefit of the development tiles that James and David were paying high costs for.  James and Stuart drew on 25 points but James' extra workers gave him the win in the tie-breaker.   

Artificium & Ra - 29 June 2017

Another play of Artificium, a clever resource chaining card game.  David scored 62, Andy and James both 54.  The rules claim that "if two or more players have the same number of victory points the game is tied and all tying players win!" which suggest Andy and James were the joint winners, but we generously allowed David his victory.

We played Ra - for the first time in quite a long while.  Lots of fun and winding up as usual.  Andy just squeaked a win by a single point.  Final scores Andy 50, James 49 and David 31.

Mamluk Egyptian DBA Army

I finally finished the Mamluk Egyptian DBA Army that Adrian bought me a couple of birthdays ago.  They are opponents for the Knights of Malta among others.  The original pack was a V2 army so I bought a number of additional figures to address the changes and flexibility required by the new V3 army list.

The Cavalry General is accompanied by four compulsory and two optional Mamluk cavalry units:

Other mounted are Turkmen and Bedouin light horse:

And the infantry comprises (from left) Psiloi archers and naffatun throwing incendiaries (which I converted from Assyrian slingers), Auxilia javelinmen and Warband ghazis (armed with swords and kite shields), an element of mutatawwi'a horde, and two halqa Bowmen.

Ready for battle!

Clash of Clans - 15 June 2017

Andy and I met this week to fight for the first time with the Samurai armies that Adrian painted for us.  The leaders of our clans first met on the battlefield to discuss peace terms but then decided to roll their aggression dice instead.

As defender, Andy (top of photo) laid our the terrain and James (bottom) decided to attack over the difficult hill and hold the banks of the river within reach of the initial deployment.

Unfortunately, when testing the river, James rolled a 6 (one of few he rolled ;-) which meant the river slowed progress and could only be crossed by single elements or columns.
 

A series of 2 PIP dice from James and sixes from Andy, meant James couldn't safely get across the river and Andy pressed up on his right flank and repositioned to hold the difficult hill on the left.

Soon Andy burst across the river in numbers and pushed James off the bank, taking casualties.

On the other flank, James started attacking Andy's Auxilia in the difficult hill - which we accidentally allowed to fight as Blades but they still started taking losses.

Both clans had lost two elements each but James left flank was in disarray and under a lot of threat from Andy.  So James managed to get in and around one of Andy's blades and his general for a couple of 50/50 rolls that would either win it - or leave him even more vulnerable.  Sadly for Andy it paid off, with rolls of 5/2 and 5/1 killing off Andy's 3rd and 4th elements, and giving James' Hojo clan the win.

A slow game as we're still not acquainted fully with the V3 DBA rules but a lot of fun.  Key learning points were:
 - a difficult river isn't a particular class of Going that means elements use their Bad Going speed, everything moves at 1 BW per turn
 - we forgot about command distance which is important when Generals are in terrain or troops behind hills
 - and Andy's Auxilia who played as Blades made us wonder when we would ever use the 4 Auxilia option over Blades, since the latter are so much better, and none of the Samurai historical enemies have Knights.  We decided we'd just agree to both use them or both not in future civil wars!

Phalanxx - 8 June 2017

Another play of this interesting game.  Andy was building up his army strength to play a particular card but unfortunately (or fortunately for us) there wasn't enough game time for him to attack - which is necessary for the end game bonuses.  So David and James pulled away in the final scoring, with David just inching ahead.

Final scores: David 60, James 57, Andy 37.