A couple more games of Liber Militum Tercios

We played the games, I took the photos, but I never got around to posting the battle reports of the last two games. Sorry! Anyway here's a quick run-down, with what I remember.

The fourth game was, predictably, the fourth scenario in the book, "Question of Honour". This was quite similar to the third game in style being played short-end to short-end, but had symmetric objectives. Each side had a vanguard and a rear guard. I'd added a few extra Pike and Shot units into the forces for this one.

Deployment: Royalist on the left, Parliament on the right.

The plan was that at the top of the table the cavalry would clash and the lower half of the table the infantry would fight.

However once the cavalry got close together the Royalist cavalry actually changed direction and headed towards the centre of the table where the Parliament infantry were starting to cause some real damage. This left the the Parliament cavalry a bit at a loss as their target had vanished.

Royalist cavalry arrive in the centre where the infantry is struggling.

Parliament cavalry chase after them.

However the Royalist cavalry does not really make the difference in the centre and a lot of units are destroyed in the melee. Troops are spotted around the battlefield, it's very bloody. But in the end the Parliament troops are victorious, but not my much. Only a "Fair" Victory for them, but their first one nonetheless.

At the end the armies are both in disarray.

Plenty of casualties on both sides. Royalist left, Parliament right.

The fifth game was, again predictably, the fifth scenario, "Capture the Hills". In this one there are between one and three hills in the middle of the table (we rolled for one) and the deployment is on the diagonal. Victory goes to the forces with control of the hills, with some interesting ways of calculating the victory points for that. I'd added some mounted arquebusiers to Parliament, a musketeers unit to the Royalist forces and more artillery for both.

Parliament got to choose sides and used that choice well to choose the far superior side. I was stuck with my Royalists with loads of terrain bottle-necking my troops and blocking my artillery fire.

I didn't realise until the game started that the rocks in front of my artillery in the foreground blocked line of sight.
Of course I couldn't move them as limbers have not arrived from Heroics and Ros yet!

A narrow gap between the town and rocks.
The Parliament forces had loads of walls to hide behind.

On the left flank our cavalry forces clashed, but his was larger than mine and soon he had my cavalry on the run. But that didn't matter, at least I'd diverted his cavalry from the hill, that was the only objective.

Cavalry clashes. Some of my infantry marches through the wood.

I marched quickly up the hill to gain the advantage. The Parliament infantry stood behind the walls and shot at me. I had to cycle units to the front, have the front ones fall back to recover and repeat. My infantry was taking heavy damage but holding.

I have plenty of units on the hill.

Brendan timed his attack on the hill with perfection. With a roar, the Parliament troops climbed over their walls and up the hills. They were fresh, but my troops were heavily damaged. Units started to rout but still I held on, not allowing him onto the hill.

Eventually though the Parliament forces were too much and the hill falls. Though again only a "Fair" victory to the Parliament forces. They'd taken hardly any losses. The Royalists on the other hand had taken a hammering, but today it was that hill that mattered, not the blood of Englishmen.

As we play more and more the rules get more fluid and we enjoy it even more. The next scenario is the last in the main book, but there are another six in the expansion, and of course they all have good replay value.

Blücher French Shako Dice Cup

So right back when I started playing Blücher I found this blog post. I was impressed and wanted to make a Shako dice cup of my own, but with so many minis to paint and terrain to make I never got around to it.

When I got my 3d printer a few weeks ago I thought I might be able to make a cup easily. I found some 28mm French Foot Artillery minatures on thingiverse which I could see had nicely detailed Shakos and thought that could be the basis for my new cup.

It wasn't so easy. I had to modify the STL mesh itself with Blender, adjusting the position of vertices and wiring up new edges and faces before being able to cut out the centre and split it into two parts for printing. Quite a bit of work, but a great learning experience.

It sat for a while unpainted as other projects again took priority, but last night I completed it. I'm really pleased with it even though it was a lot more work than I had expected.

STL files are here.

6mm ECW - Liber Militum Tercios game number three

Another Sunday Afternoon another Liber Militum Tercios game against Brendan.

On our third game the rules really are flowing well. We're not having to look things up hardly at all and have no real problems working out what should happen. We're also still enjoying the battles massively and looking forward to more.

This was the third scenario in the main book, "Stubborn Defence" and was the first with lop-sided objectives. The defender had to kill the attacker's units whereas the attacker had to break through the defensive lines and get units into the defender's side of the table.

Add to that half of the defender's troops would be up front and already with a point of Wear (damage) and the rest would be far in the rear and acting more as reserves.

This time I'd added into the armies some more cavalry. Haselrigge's Lobsters (Cuirassiers) and some standard Horse for the Parliament army and some Veteran Cavaliers in the form of Prince Rupert's Horse for the Royalists. I'd also just finished painting a massive quantity of hedges and walls from Battlescale and some 3D printed buildings using STL files from Eskice Miniatures. We couldn't get anywhere near all the hedges and walls we got with our order using the Tercios terrain rules, so you see just a small selection.

I was again to take the Royalists and Brendan chose to be the defender. Here is the initial setup. Attacking Royalist forces far left; Parliament Vanguard in the middle; Parliament Reserves far right. All Cavalry ended up at the bottom of that picture, the cavalry fighting would mostly be over those hedges at the bottom, middle.

Royalist Horse. Rupert to the rear.

The New Model Army troops in the Parliament Vanguard could not line up behind the hedge
 due to the position of the deployment area, so had to be in front.

Parliament Reserves

Royalist Infantry

The first turn saw the Royalist forces run forward and the Parliament vanguard stand their ground (mostly). Parliament reserves moved quickly forward.

Royalists and Parliament both advance. 
Dragoons find a nice wall to hide behind in range of the Parliament Pike.

The second turn the advance continues, still no real combat takes place.

Both side's cavalry advance almost into contact, and pistols are fired over the hedges. 

On the other flank the foot advances and shots are fired.

Learning from previous games about the ineffectiveness of shooting in turn three we got in and started some melee. Both sides saw successes and losses on both flanks. Neither side seemed to have an advantage, though the royalist lost a unit of Pike and Shot in the centre. But the victors in that battle were not much better off.

It was mayhem over the hedges for the cavalry.
Rupert took heavy damage but survived.

In the centre the lead Royalist Pike and Shot was routed,
but the second one quickly filled it's place.

On the other flank, Pike and Shot units from each side fell back in disarray.

Turn four was good for the Royalist attackers. The dragoons remembering the objective advanced into a gap in the Parliament lines. The cavalry fight across the hedges continued.

Royalist dragoons see a gap and advance into it. Royalist Pike and Shot rally.

Hedge fighting continues.
One parliament unit routs making a gap for Royalist Horse to exploit.

A gap opens up in the centre as well.

Turn five saw some excitement. The Royalist CinC, saw he could get to the dragoons and so with those ran across the centre line to score objective points, whilst doing so he ran over the Parliament CinC killing him! No points for that, but it didn't make the Parliament forces happy!

On the hedges the Parliament horse commander used a special trait to confuse the orders of one of the Royalist horse units. This resulted in them charging Hasselrigge's Lobsters across the hedges... this should have been a disaster, but the Lobsters retreated from the combat leaving another huge hole in the Parliament lines!

Turn six saw the Royalist troops take advantage of all these holes and advanced plenty of troops across the line to give a "Clear Victory".

Heavily damaged and disordered most of the Royalist horse
crosses the all-important centre-line.

In the centre the Royalist Pike and Shot creep over the line.
The dragoons turn around having crossed the line with the intention of giving support if needed.

Again a brilliant game. Enjoyed by both sides.

More next week!

6mm ECW - Another Liber Militum Tercios game

We had our second game of Liber Militum Tercios today.

We added in all the commander rules this time, with Traits and Virtues and also some extra rules with dragoons and New Model Army regiments. These all worked well. Total points each side was 925, so just under the "medium" game size.

The scenario was the second in the book "Determination" with the objectives being to get more of your troops onto the opponent's side of the battlefield than they get onto yours.

I won choice of side, a key thing I think in this setup. I set my Royalist troops up in a long line, whereas Brendan's Parliamentary troops were a little more clumped up.

Royalist to the right, Parliament to the left. The crack in the centre is the centreline.

Parliament deployment

Royalist deployment

We both decided that we needed to move fast towards the centre, so apart from the artillery every unit had a Run order on it in the first turn. I advanced straight forward. Brendan swung two of his P&S units round my left flank and the New Model Army units down the middle. His Dragoons moved as far as they could, but a lake and my cavalry blocked his way.  Also had some artillery lined up to deal with those.

In the second turn I advanced a bit further taking the village and shooting started. I charged my cavalry in and it bounced really rather badly! Brendan's cavalry still held back. My dragoons sneaked around to his rear.

My dragoons sneaked around his rear.

Lots of shooting in the centre.

My cavalry bounced off some pike and ran away even though they'd not taken much damage.

In the third turn Brendan's two units on the flank ignored the dragoons and marched towards the objective, my side of the table. A sensible move as there are no points for casualties in this battle!

In the centre we did a lot of shooting the front one of his New Model Army battalia took heavy losses, but stood their ground.

Brendan charged my cavalry with his, I countercharged and won, but didn't break his horse.

The dragoons and the flanking forced passed like "ships in the night", ignoring each other completely.

In the centre there is an ineffectual firefight, though Brendan's front unit takes a lot of damage.
You can see the order markers face down ready for the next turn.

In the fourth turn things didn't change much. We shot ineffectually at each other and Brendan brought his flanking force around the wood.

The green dice show Wear (damage) big units tend to be able to take 4, small ones 3.

The fifth turn was the key. This is the first turn when victory could be assured. A five point advantage would win it for me at this point with a major victory. I saw that I could just step several of my units over the centre-line something that Brendan could not do. So I did just that.

We did more shooting, but nothing died, again! I had 13 points over the line, Brendan just had 6. That was enough for a Decisive Victory for me.

It was odd not having any units actually be destroyed, but we did both enjoy the game and it played fluidly. The full commander rules made a lot of sense, though I did keep on having to remind Brendan to use them and I kept forgetting myself. They gave some flavour with my CinC able to reveal enemy orders and add an extra dice to the unit he was attached to in melee. Brendan had his CinC adding a similar dice to his artillery shooting.

I do like how artillery does a very small amount of damage fairly reliably and tends to disorder units most of the time as well.

Overall I'm very pleased with these rules. I'm not sure what units to add in next. We'll be carrying on working through the scenarios one-by-one, the next one is the first Attack/Defence scenario with lopsided objectives. I'm really looking forward to this one!

Dragoons, The New Model Army and 3D Printing

I've had quite a busy week.

After last weekend's game of Liber Militum Tercios I decided I needed to get some movement trays made for my ECW minis. I decided that to make them I'd need a 3D Printer. After some investigation I ordered a Monoprice Select Mini V2 printer. This would take a while to arrive so I decided in the mean time to get some extra units painted.

I decided to paint some more pike and shot, this time in the form of the New Model Army, red coats and helmets on the pikemen, the feathers cut off the Heroics and Ros minis.

I also painted up a couple of units of dragoons, one for each side. I couldn't decide whether to put the horse holders on the bases or not. In the end I decided for my current project I would. This may change if I play For King and Parliament, where the horse holders can be left behind, but for Liber Militum Tercios it does not matter. I also don't need mounted dragoons yet!

Both these photos show examples of my 3D printed movement trays. They have space for a small dice to keep track of wear (damage) and have the centres of each side marked accurately for Liber Militum Tercios. Everything is magnetised with magnetic sheet so switching units around is a doddle but nothing falls out!

With the movement trays such a success I even went ahead and started 3D printing the actual bases. These have cut-outs for the Heroics and Ros bases and the acrylic sealant I always use works as glue and filler around them. These have again been a wonderful success and very quick to print!

First game of Liber Militum Tercios

This afternoon saw our first game of Liber Militum Tercios using the English Civil War armies in my last blog post. Brendan took the Parliament forces and I had the Royalist army.

There are 6 points-based pickup-game-style scenarios in the main rule book and 6 more in the "Kingdoms" expansion. We chose to play the first scenario from the main rule book which is a standard face-to-face battle.

Objectives would be kill points with the C-in-C worth 3 points, Pike and Shot units 2 points and Artillery and Horse units 1 point each. On turn 5 and beyond there would be comparisons of these points for each side with the game ending in victory for a sliding scale of points advantage. The end of turn 8 always would finish the game, whether victory for one side or a draw. This is simpler than it sounds and really works. I was very impressed with this mechanic!

Anyway, being a fairly standard face-to-face battle we had some initial terrain to set up and then deployed our troops along our deployment zones.

The Royalist lines

The Parliament lines

Whole battlefield

The first couple of turns were the usual jockeying for position that goes on in most wargames. I sent my cavalry wide down my right flank and advanced along the front. Brendan took the village with one of his pike and shot blocks and advanced between there and the wood on his right. The field and village would be key to this battle.

At this point some fairly ineffective musket fire began. Each side trying to soften up the opponent. 

Brendan did charge his cavalry home against a pike block, but bounced and left his cavalry open to a further charge by one of my Royalist cavalry units. This did not go well for either of us, though it was my cavalry that had to retreat.

In the next turn he ran his cavalry to the rear for safety only to find my other cavalry unit waiting for them. 

The musketry fire continued in the centre as the infantry tried to soften each other up and some of the units started to look not as fresh as they had done.

I charged my cavalry home behind his lines and failed to destroy them again, they just ran away again. Was anything going to rout in this game?

Then in the following turn my cavalry realised they were round the back of one of the pike and shot blocks. One that had been successfully softened up by muskets. They charged home and forced it to retreat, but there wasn't room (more on that later) and the unit was destroyed.

This had left one of my pike and shot units stuck out in the middle and the Parliament unit in the village spotted it had an open flank and charged it. Several rounds of "Bad War" ensued, with multiple drawn pike combats resulting in more and more pike combats. Eventually with Wear stacked up on both sides Brendan beat me and my unit was destroyed. His didn't look too healthy though and wasn't going to last much longer. 

His cavalry under heavy Wear decided foolishly to attack my cavalry and lost, finally being destroyed, but in the following turn I had to run my cavalry away to ensure I'd not lose them as well to the artillery.

This final 8th turn had his weary pike and shot unit attacking again this time against my unit in the field with help with his other still fresh unit. between them they destroyed it, but I destroyed the first of those units with the remaining one of mine.

It was carnage in those last few turns, absolute carnage.

This is the final state of the battlefield...

I had lost two pike and shot units, as had Brendan, but he'd also lost his cavalry unit. This gave me a one point advantage and got me a very, very minor victory.

We had a only a couple of issues with the rules. The main one with the retreating and disengaging rules, which it says "is an involuntary move toward the rear of the unit". We couldn't decide whether this meant exactly in a straight line to the rear or whether a pivot or slide to avoid obstructions like friendly troops would be allowed. We allowed the pivot the first time, but on the second it seemed a bit daft so said we'd rule it had to be direct from then on. Obstructions only block if the centre-point would pass through them anyway, so perhaps not an issue. I'd be interested what other players rule for this. 

(Edit: Looking again at the rulebook the "Overlaps and Angle Correction" rule might make this work more fairly)

(Edit again: I found a fan version of the game in Spanish here. This adds in the word "directly" to the retreat and disengage rules which makes the answer clear, no pivot or slide. It also extends the Angle Correction on Overlaps rule to allow sliding to the side, which makes things fairer. I will definitely be using both of these changes)

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed the game. It flowed nicely with the alternating actions and the wide flanking movements of the cavalry. The command system worked well with once out of command and damaged orders not be a sure thing at all. We didn't use the Command Traits and Virtues in this game, but will do in future ones.

We're looking forward to trying out more units and some more of the many pick-up game scenarios that are in the books. Maybe also building towards a historical scenario at some point as well. I have quite a few of those from other rule systems that would convert well.

I'm also in the process of making movement trays for the troops. I'm pleased I based them up on smaller bases as it gives me more flexibility with rules systems, but formation changes don't happen in these rules. Movement trays will make the game less fiddly but more importantly will protect the pikes!

Normally I'd get them made from MDF by one of the commercial enterprises, but with the lock-down still in effect I know they will be slow with orders and probably a bit unenthusiastic about a custom one at that. However I am stuck at home, still working, though I do have a bit of time on my hands.

This happy coincidence has finally given me the reason to purchase my first 3D printer! Yikes! It should be with me in a couple of weeks!