Rebels and Patriots: Baby Duck Ridge

Bruce popped around last week to try out Rebels and Patriots (part of the Lions Rampant series from Osprey). I pulled out my newly rebased War of 1812 troops and pointed out an encounter battle.

The armies were pretty similar except the Brits had light infantry and cannon while the Yanks had some light cavalry. My Indian Allies are still en route so we didn't have any on the table. Note in the picture below that Bruce is working his cavalry around to the right.

I rushed out to try and gain some early victory points by being the only side with units within 3" of Baby Duck Ridge (specifically the tiny wagon in top of the centre hill hex). Bruce took the time to develop a proper attack.

My plan was to sweep the hill with my cannon which worked, to a degree. The rules differ from other Lions Rampant offerings by allowing you to troll for each of your units. I wonder if the game would be more interesting if initiative passed back and forth with each activation failure?

We had some early melees and managed to work out the fighting mechanics. The key mechanic seems to be morale tests at the end of combat which can add disorder (which affect activation and combat). Three disorders and your unit is gone. And, if you roll low enough, you can pick up extra disorder, even while rallying!

About this point I was sure I was I trouble. The cavalry showed up to turn my flank but had some morale problems when I hit them with a volley and advanced to the rear.

However, Bruce managed to crest the hill in force and start to concentrate fire on my units. My cannon weren't super effective.

Right after this picture was taken, I had a series of morale failures (terrible, terrible rolls) and half my force routed. We called the game shortly afterwards.

Overall, these rules seemed to work well. There was some chrome (around officers and honour points and snake eyes and box car rolls) that I didn't narrate but that gave the game colour. The mechanics all seem to work and the morale mechanic was very nice. I'm going to try to bring a four-player game out to the club in mid-August.

A few more adventurers

A few more figures I finished before heading off on vacation.

These are the last two figures from a small commission I took on.

They are WizKids elves painted (more or less) to the box art that was supplied.

Overall, they turned out okay. They look gritty enough to have levelled up a few times!

Ireland and Gaming

So the family took holiday to Ireland. We didn't see much gaming related (although I did stop in a few game shops in Cork including on really cool, old model shop), but there were some things that touched on gaming.

For example, I was surprised to find Guinness Hitler during a tour of the brewery in Dublin (seems off brand, somehow).

There was also this cool mural in Dundalk.

We took a tour of the town of Carlingford. The ruins of King John's castle were close for renovation.

The town had lots of other medieval buildings though, including this merchant's manor house.

On the west and south coasts, we saw a few castles, including (below) Blarney castle.

I managed to get out to the club despite my rather messed up clock this week. Terry hosted me in game of Imperial Settlers.

Chen and Brandon played some Kings of War. Chen brought out his dwarf war dogs, which were very nice models.

Terry slaughtered me at Imperial Settlers (total rout).

And I left before the KoW game really got going.

I spent yesterday finishing up some Ware of 1812 rebasing after finding a tub of static grass in a box.

These foot include some Canadian irregulars (above) and militia (below).

I also found enough for three units of British regulars. I plan to run a test game with Bruce this coming week before bringing this out of the club.

I'm present rebasing a few US cavalry and I had to order some Indian allies from Irregular as I think I sold my plastics with my AWI figures and the good Italeri set is OOP.

Few commission D&D pieces

A fellow asked me to paint four D&D miniatures for him. I managed to finish two before heading out on holidays.

First up is a human fighter with a flaming sword. Grey primer, block paint (with a bit of wet-on-wet) followed by a wash and seal.

The sword looks better in person than it does in the picture (camera struggles with red tones, it seems).

Second dude is a human fighter in fancy mail.

Same technique minus the wet-on-wet. Good details so the wash really popped it.

I also took the chance to base one of my own figures (RAFM Cthulhu) that I had painted awhile back but lost track of before completion.

The WizKids figures are really nice to work with. I have two elf warriors presently underway and I hope to finish them up in the coming week.

After than, I need to finish my 1812 rebasing (just need to get some static grass on).

28mm library pieces

No gaming for me this week and the family is taking a short vacation. But I did manage to complete some terrain just before we left.

This is a library set from Mantic Games and contains 14 pieces. It is cast in brown plastic but I primed it white to do a wash.

This pack was pretty decent. It also more of less matches with the WizKids bookshelves that I previously purchased.

Overall, not a bad addition to my skirmish terrain.