8/12/2010

Rumble in the jungle. A Colonial skirmish AAR

Last Sunday my friends told me not to bring my figures and rules as we were going to try Triumph and Tragedy, a ruleset for the WWI with a scenario that my wargames buddy Antonio had adapted for a colonial skirmish.

Antonio brought the ruleset and all his just painted Foundry's Darkest Africa figures sculpted by Copplestone, and Paco put the place, terrain and coffee; so I only had to sit on a side and push some figures while drinking strong coffee. A perfect no brainer Sunday evening with friends :)

The story so far: the daughter of a rich chieftain was about to get married, and the she was waiting for her future husband in a hut set in the middle of the jungle, together with all her dowry: a huge lot of ivory, gold and jewels.
The evil and greedy White Men heard of that treasure and quickly went trough the jungle to snatch it. But the best man (Tarzan no less) also heard of this crime and rose the braves of the area and headed for the hut as well, to intercept and punish those coward White Raiders.

So the game started as a race towards the hut to get the treasure. Antonio played with the black people and Tarzan, Paco with the Villainous Muzungu with a group of Avaricious White Hunters and a second group of Timorous Askaris, whereas I was Renè the Renegade with his Desperate Deserters (groan).

Paco on the right top corner, me on the lower right

Close up of the natives dashing into the jungle

Renè the Renegade managed to reach first to the hut and seize the treasure, but the porter was hit by an arrow and drop it to the ground. While Renè waited for another porter to pick it up, the natives circle them and Paco's forces on both flanks, while exchanged arrows for bullets with the white men in the centre.

-Perhaps it's time to fall back, chaps.

In the picture below we can see the first charge of the game. Here we discovered that the White Men armed with rifles didn't have much chances in melee against enemies armed with lance and shield.

After this, everything went very fast and the White Men were forced to fall back several times.
Now we can see how a group of Fanatic Warmaidens finished the poor Muzungu in an real "Fan" style.

Renè finally managed to escape with his followers while Paco's men were slaughtered by the wedding guests. Tarzan shot me a couple of arrows but without any effect and then I run out from the board.

Triumph and Tragedy is simple and fast (I learnt it in less than ten minutes) but I feel there are better rulesets to play Colonial skirmishes. Natives should move faster through the woods and White Men should be much more stronger than Natives IMHO.
The thing I like most of the game was its activation by cards for each unit, where you have to put their orders hidden, and then all the players
reveal them one by one at the same time and in the order they desire. This gave strategy and tension to the game.

8/01/2010

Warlands WIP

About a month ago I played a short test game of Warlands and I liked it. As I already owned many 15 mm. miniatures and vehicles, I decided to play it in that scale. Now, here are some pics of my basic force that I just finished painting.
I hope to play more seriously next weekend, and possibly publish a battle report of it.

All the pictures are clickable.

Sharp, cutie and cheap models from Old Crow. The extra weapons are from Laserburn miniatures
Old, metal and very heavy vehicles from the HOF range of 15mm.co.uk. The commander is a Laserburn miniature
Five bikes from the Laserburn range
Group shot