Here are more great shots of Michael Curtis and Friends’ Arras Counter-Attack demo game planned for Salute this year.
This was the second run-through of the weekend, with a slight change to the British start position to see whether that would speed up the “action” part of the game.
Click on the picture below to see all.
I’ve been playing the Ancients rules To The Strongest for some months now, and really enjoying it as a fun, fast-play, grid-based game that gets plenty of figures onto the table and avoids most arguments about whether one unit is 33mm or 35mm from another etc. Looking for some army lists (free to download), I noticed that BigRedBat also do an English Civil War variant to TTS called For King and Parliament. I’ve never really played Pike & Shot before, but this sounded like a good way to start, so I bought a copy and started working out what figures I would need.
Conveniently, there’s a sample scenario with OBs in the back of the rulebook covering the Battle of Montgomery, 1644, so I used that as the basis for the start of my collection. As those of you who visit this website regularly know, the Christmas holiday provided time to paint enough troops to field the Parliamentarian side of the battle, so when John offered to bring round his collection, we were ready to give FK&P a go.
Setting up the battle is simple. Royalists are up on a ridge. They outnumber the Roundheads with two cavalry brigades and two infantry brigades. Parliamentarian infantry, one brigade, is on a hill opposite, with a cavalry brigade next to them. Off table is another brigade of cavalry which is currently out foraging.
view from the roundhead right
As I was badly outnumbered in the centre, my plan was to win on my left flank, hopefully helped by my returning foragers, and then roll up his line from the left before he could beat me in the center and on the right.
I had the first turn, and therefore concentrated my efforts on my cavalry: my infantry remaining still. One regiment of cavalry swept forward and charged one of their opposite number. Unlike TTS, multiple combat cards are regular in FK&P with, in this instance, five going down. Result: three hits, not enough saves, enemy cavalry destroyed. This was a good start, but the same thing happened to me on the Royalist go, so after one turn we were honours-even and no sign of the foragers.
Fortunately his infantry were obviously still having their hair done (Royalist fops!) so hadn’t moved towards me.
Second turn, same sort of result as the first, but disastrously my Commanding General had (somewhat foolishly) joined the cavalry charge and was killed in the melee. This cost me a serious number of victory coins as, in FK&P, losing officers is really painful, and that’s in addition to losing their command abilities. Worse, this time some of his infantry were on the move. Things were looking a bit grim.
Third turn, however, my foragers arrived and tipped the balance on the left. Now here’s the real fun of FK&P compared to TTS: if you charge on the flank you don’t get a measly one extra attack card: you get double what you’ve earned for a frontal attack!
Here’s two shots of my returning foragers hitting the right flank of his cavalry:
And here’s all the lovely attack cards I got to play!
Note that despite the huge numbers of cards played, a couple of cavalry units did survive being hit in the flank…but not when they were hit again and again.
End result: a cavalry victory…but would it be enough bearing in mind what was happening in the centre?
No more Royalist cavalry to fight!
By now the advancing Royalist infantry had cleared away my Forlorn Hopes and had just engaged my main battle line. By this time, I was suffering from a bad loss of victory coins: one more lost unit and that was it! You can see the cavalry melee just finishing in the background, so I wasn’t getting any help from them yet, and the only high point was that the Royalist infantry (pike heavy, so at an advantage in combat) were attacking piecemeal as they hadn’t been able to co-ordinate their attack.
Royalists coming up the hill
But wait, I hear you cry, what’s that other unit in the distance, by the bridge. well that, my friends, is the Derbyshire Horse: an untried regiment that had passed its first test and already seen off a partially blown enemy cavalry regiment.
The Derbyshire’s charged forward gloriously and, just as my left hand infantry battalia was about to crumble, smashed into the open flank of the enemy infantry assaulting them.
Huzzah for the Derbyshires
The enemy infantry were smashed from the field, relieving John of the last of his victory coins: Parliament was victorious!
A very successful game that literally came down to the last action. Had the Derbyshire’s not done as they did, I would likely have lost that last one unit: the red-clad infantry battalia was on its last legs.
John and I both agreed that For King & Parliament gives a great game and will be fighting other battles of the English Civil War soon. For me, as well, it’s back to the painting table to add some more units to my forces, so the old credit card is about to take a hammering!
My only regret: I have a horrible feeling that I shall be missing all the attack cards next time I play TTS!
Robert Avery
Michael Curtis and friends are putting on a demo game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum at Salute this year. The scenario chosen is the Arras counterattack of May 1940.
Demo games need a lot of preparation, and a good few run throughs before they are ready for public consumption. Click on the pic below to see this one:
Those of you who regularly visit this site will know that we had a different Arras battle report last Tuesday. Here’s the link so that you can compare the two.
A nice little pictorial battle report from Joe McGinn featuring a game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum and the British counter-attack at Arras in May 1940.
Click on the picture below to see all:
Here’s a rather nice battle report from Alex Sotheran covering a game played just before Christmas last year, and taken from Alex’s excellent blog Storm of Steel.
The action is once again set in Malaya in late 1941, and covers an action very similar to the encounter at Slim River.
Click on the picture below to see all:
Here’s another great I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum AAR from Desmondo Darkin: Krickenbeck.
This time it’s a late war game, with German Volkstrum defending a narrow river crossing against overwhelming British numbers.
Click on the picture below to see how the game turned out…
Second weekend of the year and I’ve managed to get in an afternoon of “To The Strongest”.
Bevan and I managed two games. The first was a grinding clash between two quite similar armies: I played the Akkadians, Bevan took an Athenian Hoplite force. Each side had a core of a number of deep blocks of close-formed infantry (Spearmen for the Akkadians, slightly superior Hoplites for the Athenians); but the Akkadians had their veteran four-onager heavy chariots plus Royal Bodyguard axe- and bowmen versus a mix of low quality cavalry and lights for the Greeks.
As mentioned, the game was a truly grinding clash. The Akkadian chariots, out on their right wing, threatened to curl around the Athenian left flank, but began the game seemingly unable to move. This meant that the Greeks could come forward and join a general line-against-line engagement that slowly started to bow the Akkadian battle line backwards.
But somehow the Akkadians held on. The Royal Bodyguard axemen did stirring work, the line began to straighten slightly, and then the heavy chariots finally got going and smashed in from the right. In the end, this was a colossal victory for the Akkadians, who didn’t lose a single unit and managed to capture the Greek camp. Here are some pictures:
For the second game, I took the Ancient Britons, with Bevan playing the Sassanid Persians.
The Brits had a huge chunk of (somewhat unwieldy) warriors in the centre of the field, and large numbers of light chariots/cavalry and infantry on each wing…so many lights, in fact, that (much to Bevan’s surprise) his all-horse Sassanids were matched in terms of scouting points.
Looking at the set up, I was confident of victory: there was no way his incredibly small force was going to beat the Ancient British steamroller!
Unfortunately, Bevan and the Persians begged to differ, and what followed was the dissection of my army with surgical precision. First my lights were stripped away unit by unit as I struggled to get my warriors moving, and then enough of those warriors that did move were beaten for me to lose (given that I’d lost a lot of coins through my lights). It was a superb demonstration of how to use a horse archer and cataphract based army.
Fortunately I did manage to kill at least one of his units, so technically the afternoon as a whole was to my advantage, but the way my Brits were annihilated didn’t make it feel so!
Here are some more pictures:
Here a nice little after action report from Alex Sotheran, taken from both the IABSM Facebook group and Alex’s Storm of Steel blog.
The game was Alex’s first using I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum!, and involved a solo game set on the Malay peninsular at the time of the Japanese invasion in December 1941. Although knocked together by Alex himself, the scenario resembles #02: Ban Sadao from the Fall of the Lion Gate scenario pack.
Click on the picture below to see how Alex got on:
Nice little battle report from Desmondo Darkin taken from the IABSM Facebook Group.
This was an early war game based on the “Arkforce” that was left to defend a perimeter near Le Havre in June 1940.
Click on the picture below to see all…
Here’s the final episode from Just Jack’s incredible “On the Northern Shoulder of Kursk” series of battle reports.
Here the Germans launch a last-ditch attempt to take the 1st May Collective Farm is the face of the usual determined Soviet defence.
This is another truly epic report (146 photographs plus plenty of text) so well worth a look. Click on the picture below to see all:
Check out Just Jack’s blog by clicking here.
Off to friend Bevan’s house for an afternoon of To The Strongest. Playing at 130 points a side (the standard for the World Championships) you can easily get three games into one afternoon session.
My first game was commanding a longbow-heavy English HYW army against an impressively painted Viking army.
The Vikings rushed forward as fast as they could, eager to get into hand-to-hand with my massed archers. I was equally eager to stop them doing so, so with my Knights and Billmen protecting my left flank, I sat back in the centre and sent flight after flight of arrows into the advancing hordes.
This tactic worked quite nicely, so by the time his men actually got up to my battle line, many of his units had already taken one or two hits (three would remove them from the table). That’s when John discovered that my archers were all veterans with extra two-handed cutting weapons: just right for finishing off already-pin-cushioned Viking units! A victory for me.
The next game promised to be very interesting: it was time for a bit of civil war as I used the same army as in game one but now faced another English HYW army.
Our forces were thus very similar, except for the fact that Steve, my opponent, had two longbow and one dismounted knight units in each of his foot brigades rather than the three longbow units that I had. Steve’s army make up was thus actually more historically accurate than mine, with the added difference that his longbowmen were all standard types, giving him a slightly bigger headcount.
I decided to adopt the same basic tactics as last time i.e. my archers would shoot from distance whilst the heavies protected my left flank. Steve adopted a similar deployment, so I thought it was all going to be about who had the best luck with the cards (TTS has playing card based game mechanics).
In the end, however, that’s not how it worked out. In the centre, Steve advanced his melee foot units towards my line, giving me the opportunity to target each one individually with my longbows. This generally resulted in them disappearing from the table, meaning that when the rest of our troops did clash, I only had to win a third of the combats to win the game (the heavies just faced each other, manoeuvring for some kind of positional advantage, throughout). A second victory.
I fancied a change for my final game, so volunteered to take the Vikings, this time facing Peter and his Ancient Britons. This, again, was two quite similar armies, with the only real difference between them being the British light chariots/horse.
And it was indeed the light chariots/horse that made a difference. I made a terrible mistake early on in the game by leaving my right flank floating. This allowed Peter to get a couple of units of light horse in on my flanks, disordering a couple of my Hyrd units. This allowed his warriors to hit them at a distinct advantage, my right flank crumpled, and my opponent neatly rolled me up on the right and in the centre! Another nice tactic that Peter used was to refuse his own right flank, meaning that any units I had there (one third of my army) spent the entire game chasing after contact with the any enemy units. The end result was a fairly catastrophic loss!
So all in all a great afternoon’s gaming. Thanks to Bevan, John, Steve and Peter.
Another of Mark Luther’s great After Action Reports: this time a game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum in 6mm set in Normandy 1944.
No words, but some cracking images. Click on the picture below to see all.
Here’s another great I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum! after action report from the pen of Tim Whitworth and picked up from the IABSM Facebook Group.
This time, Tim and friends play one of the scenarios from the pen of Mike Whitaker that can be found in the various Lardy Specials. I can’t remember which one it is, so you’ll have to get them all to find out!
This encounter is set around the Gothic line in 1944. A British company attack supported by Sherman tanks and artillery against Germans dug in and determined to fight for the last inch of their territory. Click on the picture below to see all:
And why not compare the action here to Mike’s original report, which can be found by clicking here.
Here’s a battle report from a game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum played last weekend against John and Dave.
Unusually for us, the scenario was late war, eastern front: with the Soviets rushing forwards to secure a gap in a ridge that the Germans were also seeking to block.
It was a very close run thing, with a fair degree of carnage on both sides. Click on the picture below to see all…
A quick AAR from Julian Whippy and friends taken from the IABSM Facebook Group.
The game features a huge 12’ by 8’ table, and a German assault on stubborn British infantry.
Click on the picture below to see all:
Another quite frankly amazing After Action Report from Just Jack, taken from his excellent BlackHawkHet blog.
Here, Jack is playing the fifth of his series of battles set on the northern shoulder of the battle of Kursk.
Click on the picture below to see all: highly recommended.
A largely photographic battle report created from a mash-up of posts from Desmondo Darkin and Iain Fuller on the IABSM Facebook Group. The game is adapted from the Chain of Command “Operation Martlet” pint-sized camapign book.
They are playing a version of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum that uses dice, not cards, to control initiative: a mash-up, if you like, of CoC and IABSM. Seems to have given them a great game.
Click on the pic below to see all:
It’s always nice when you hear about someone returning to I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum after a bit of a break and having a thoroughly good game…so here’s a quick AAR from Rob Goodfellow of the Tamworth Games Club.
Here Rob and friends play through the second sample scenario from the IABSM v3 rulebook: South of Cherbourg. Click on the picture below to see all.
Even better, Rob tells me that they are now thinking of playing through the Blenneville or Bust! scenario pack: so I’m sure we can expect plenty more AARs in the near future!
Here is another stupendous After Action Report from Just Jack, taken (with permission) from his excellent BlackHawkHet blog.
I say “stupendous” because not only is it a really good read, but it’s huge as well: 144 photos, all individually captioned with an account of the action that’s shown. It’s so huge that it actually broke my attempt to get a post every day in November: I managed one every day right up to Monday 25th and then ran into this monster!
It also didn’t help that Squarespace was playing up: I had to type out about one caption in every five as the cut-and-paste just wasn’t working. Thanks for the bleeding finger tips, Squarespace!
Anyhow, enough of my moaning. It’s a great read: click on the picture below to do so…
Micahel Curtis and friends are preparing to run a demo game of I Ain’t Been Shot, Mum at Salute next year, based on the Arras counterattack.
To put on a successful demo takes an awful lot of work, including many playtests. Click on the picture below for a very nice looking report of their latest one:
Vis Lardica is a website devoted to wargaming and military history, with a special emphasis on the company-sized rulesets produced by the TooFatLardies: I Ain't Been Shot Mum (WW2); Charlie Don't Surf (Vietnam); and Quadrant 13 (science fiction)
Welcome to Vis Lardica, a not-for-profit website mostly dedicated to the company-sized wargaming rules produced by the TooFatLardies, but encompassing my other gaming interests as well.
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