MicroBattle Across the Ages

I designed my latest incarnation of MicroBattle to be usable for any period, much like the Portable Wargame or the Command & Colors series. I decided to test it by playing games from the (to borrow Joseph Morschauser's terminology) shock, musket, and modern periods. I already covered the musket period so let's try the rest. Each test will use small armies (typically 4 units).

Shock - Badon Hill

This scenario was inspired by Neil Thomas's version in his Ancient & Medieval Wargaming.

As the Britons (red) make their stand on Badon Hill, Arthur and his knights charge to the rescue!

Note - I need to do something to make the cork hills stand out on the cork battlefield. 

A Saxon warband gains the crest of the hill but then is cut down.

 Then 2 more Saxon warbands fall. The remaining warband breaks and flees.

I think the rules worked fine for this shock era scenario. 

Interestingly, I wanted to allow for preliminary bow fire so I assumed that the infantry had integral archers, who fired at a disadvantage. As it turns out, the Saxons advanced to contact so rapidly that archery was essentially irrelevant.

Modern - Pushna Valley

Initially, I planned a World War I battle, but changed my mind after perusing Donald Featherstone's War Game Campaigns. It features a very inspirational account of a miniature action set in India in 1936, as the British launch a punitive expedition against recalcitrant tribesmen. My version is very loosely based on the original, with imagi-nation forces filling the roles of British and Indians.

Kulakian forces (gray) invade Bajnup. A land dreadnought, 2 walkers, and some infantry enter Pushna Valley in order to destroy a Bajnup fort (top). Bajnup riflemen swarm from the hills.
Note - I gave my hills a brown wash so they stand out against the battlefield.

Engaging the fort. The dreadnought takes severe damage due to Bajnup artillery and infantry in the hills with petrol bombs.

Ultimately, one of the walkers smashes through the fort's gates and wipes out the defenders.

Interesting and fun, even though a bit unbalanced in favor of Kulakia. They really should have been primarily infantry with a walker in support. However, I just painted the vehicles and wanted to get all of them in action. I compensated by assuming that the Bajnup infantry had rockets and petrol bombs, so they could at least engage the vehicles.

I added a new wrinkle to my MicroBattle rules, taken from Phil Dutre. He outlines a Lucky General rule, which allows said general to re-roll a die. However, upon using it, the luck passes to the other side. It turned out to be fairly important in this game. One of the walkers seemed to be destroyed, but as luck (and a good re-roll) would have it, it managed to escape. Later, the Bajnups tried their luck against the same walker, but the Fates did not smile on them.

Assessment
For me, MicroBattle works, regardless of era. It succeeds for me because it really is just a general framework. Period details can easily play into advantages and disadvantages. For example, in a modern battle with vehicles, we can easily account for the difference between a vehicle's armor and the weight of the attacking gun by applying advantage or disadvantage to the defender's Defense roll. It doesn't really require any charts; I was making the assessments on the fly.

I'm sure I'll continue to tweak MB but I like the track I'm on.

In Other News
I received my order of 2mm figures for my Elzwehn project but decided they were too tiny (with the exception of some sci-fi vehicles, which I featured in the Pushna Valley battle. I'll be getting some tanks and machine gunners from PicoArmor after all.

I have a new generic army - the grays!

They started off as an all-black, evil fantasy army. I changed them to gray with gunmetal helmets so they can do double duty as a modern German-ish army. They can still work as a fantasy bad guy army (sans land dreadnought and walkers, of course).