Battle of Peirama

With this test battle, I experimented with a series of possible tweaks to MicroBattle.

Set-Up

I created random scenario, terrain, and force composition generators using a D6 roll for each.

The resulted in a force of infantry with cavalry support trying to escape from pursuing infantry.

Note - this scenario is inspired by Scenario # 13 from One Hour Wargames.

Terrain set-up is shown below. Note that I am using my mini, 5 x 7 square board.

Some Game Notes

These are some of the changes I made to MicroBattle for this experiment.

• While the board is gridded into 1 inch squares, all measurements are made in half squares. This effectively increases the size of the units and the board.
• Previous versions of MicroBattle allowed a unit to pivot freely within its square. With my movements modifications, a unit now effectively spans two spaces. Thus, I had to come up with some rules for turning. Essentially, I allowed a unit to use an activation to pivot 90 degrees.
• For activation, I rolled a D6 per unit, with the following results:
• 1 = no actions
• 2-3 = 1 action
• 4-5 = 2 actions
• 6 = 3 actions
• I did not use the S&S mechanic of giving the enemy actions for failed activations. Instead, I just rolled them as above.
• Both units rolled in melee, with any advantages or disadvantages applied as modifiers. High roll won the melee. The loser then rolled defense as per the current MicroBattle rules.
• A unit with damage (which I am calling Disorder), makes all Resolution Tests at a disadvantage.
• Light infantry damaged by heavy infantry in melee may attempt to retreat instead of suffering Disorder.
• A unit can use an activation to try to recovery from Disorder. It requires a successful Res Test.

The Backstory

A force of Gothic warriors (blue army) has raided a Roman settlement and is trying to escape with its booty. A lone unit of Roman archers blocks the path while more Roman infantry are in pursuit. 

The Goths need to get half their army to safety (off the far side of the board).

A couple of turns in. Most of the raiders have moved well onto the board. One heavy infantry unit dawdles and gets overtaken by the Romans. The Goth cavalry (right) make a break for it.

Note - The topmost warband rolled poor activations, allowing the Romans to catch up.

Roman heavy and light infantry swarm the dawdling warriors (top). The Roman archers are getting pushed off the hill.

Note - initially, I was using the standard MicroBattle melee rules, but I kept having stalemated fights. Inspired by Sellswords and Spellslingers, I tried the system outlined above. This created more interesting melees and sped up the game.

The Goths overrun the archers, drive back their pursuers, and then head for safety.

Note - It was during this fight that I instituted the rule allowing lights to try to retreat rather than suffer Disorder. It just seemed weird to me that lights would just stand and let themselves get pummeled. This has bothered me for some time but I never knew how to handle it. I came up with the rule on the spot and applied it. In this case, the lights got caught, but I can foresee times when the lights get away. Seems more plausible to me.

But the Roman light infantry catch up to the Goth warband, attack, and miraculously destroy it!

Note - This melee highlighted the benefit of the new rules. The Goth warband had a disadvantage in melee because it was disordered. It could have improved its odds by stopping to rally. I choose for the disordered warband to run for it instead, leaving it vulnerable. Still, the lights got lucky to win the melee.

I like how the new rules created a decision point. Do I use an action on movement or rallying? By moving, I left the unit disordered. However, if I stopped, the pursuing heavy infantry may have caught up. Decisions, decisions!

But the Goth lights barely manage to escape.

Technically, a narrow victory for the Goths, but the Romans are pleased to have destroyed both warbands of heavy infantry.

Thoughts on the Game

I was making adjustments on the fly, but I ended up with the rules changes described above. Overall, I think they worked well, and I will continue dabbling with them.

Battle of Taplaea

My original plan was to follow up my Micro Marathon battle with Micro Plataea. I had even jotted down some notes using Lost Battles. When I found time to do a battle this morning, I did not feel like pulling out my notes. I decided to do a fictitious battle instead.

The mighty empire of the Sherpians (blue) has invaded the independent city-states of the Kreeg peninsula. The Kreegs (red) form an allied army and march out to meet the invaders on the plain of Taplaea.

The initial Kreeg line forms between some woods and a vineyard.

But the archery of the Sherpian infantry forces the Kreegs to advance. One phalanx of infantry is decimated by bowshot.

The left phalanx smashes into the Sherpian Eternals but are in turn surrounded by cavalry.

The middle phalanx comes to help and drives off the light cavalry.

The left phalanx rolls over the Eternals but is in turn overrun by the Sherpian heavy cavalry.

The remaining Sherpians converge on the remaining phalanxes.

The right phalanx gets scattered by bowshot.

The remaining Kreegs retreat from the field.

The Sherpians can now advance deeper into the Kreeg homeland.

Notes

• I am planning to run this as a 5 game campaign. So now the Sherpians are up 1-0.

Micro Marathon

I've been on a LARP kick recently but that hobby will have to go on hiatus for a while, as South Florida is battening down the hatches against the coronavirus. My company, for example, has now gone to full-time telecommuting for the time being. Given that I am a high-risk individual, I am social distancing, which means no more LARP. Well, that gives me more time for miniatures at least.

I saw a post on the Wargames Website featuring an Athens vs. Sparta battle. It whet my appetite for some ancients battles. I decided to dig out my MicroBattle rules. They are very simple rules for big battles in small spaces. They may not be the pinnacle of historical accuracy, but they give me short, fun games.

I decided to play out some historical battles using my rules. I pulled out Philip Sabin's Lost Battles and started with the first battle - Marathon. I modified his scenario for my smaller armies.

The Persian Empire (blue) has invaded Greece. The Greek city-states (red) have allied to drive out the invader. The Greeks field 5 units of hoplites (Heavy Infantry) while the Persians have 5 units of bow-armed massed infantry (classified as Missile Infantry) and a unit of Heavy Cavalry. I had to borrow some infantry from my all-black army of evil to fill out the Persians.

The armies line up on the plain.

The Greek left wing advances. Persian cavalry sets up a flank attack.

The Greeks advance. The Persian horse attacks the hoplites. They cause some casualties but the infantry holds.

The battle lines clash.

The Greeks rout Persian infantry in the center and on their left.

After an extended melee, the hoplites on the left drive off the cavalry.

The victorious center unit of hoplites hits the flank of the Persian bows. The Persian unit breaks.

This puts the Persians over 50% losses. The Persian army loses heart and routs from the field. Despite suffering some heavy casualties (3 of 5 units suffered serious casualties), the Greek infantry refused to leave the field. A hard won victory!

Galleys Before the Doldrums

I'm in the gaming doldrums now, and pretty much haven't done a thing on the game front for a couple of weeks. Instead, I have been coalescing some LARP ideas.

A couple of weeks ago, I did run a short naval scenario as part of my Orlan War campaign. The game was regrettably short but I do have a few pictures.

Battle of Orlan Point
Heavily pressed by Azurian effort, Guleslan is trying to sneak reinforcements into Orlan. A single galley escorts 3 merchant caravels to a landing spot near Orlan Point.

Two Azurian galleys (left) intercept the Guleslanian convoy.

The Guleslan galley Red Victory unleashes a round from its cannon, damaging one of the enemy. Red  Victory follows up with a boarding action.

The melee is swift and the Azurian vessel strikes. Red Victory chases after the other enemy galley. Meanwhile, the caravels make a break for it.

Seeing that the situation is hopeless, the Azurian galley flees. allowing the Guleslanian convoy to proceed unharmed. Red Victory has lived up to its name!

Notes

• For this scenario, I used some home-brew fast-play rules. Unfortunately, they were too fast-play. The game probably lasted 10 minutes.
• I can address the issue 1 of 2 ways - increase the number of ships or reduce the damage inflicted per turn. I haven't decided which approach to use, and have since been distracted by other projects (as noted above)

And now for something completely different

Although I have been playing tiny air combat in a 1930s-style setting, I really want to do dogfights IN SPAAAAAAAAACE. I had been looking at some and placed an order. They have arrived, but I have not yet got around to painting.

From Irregular Miniatures. These are actually alien land vehicles but I plan to use them as rocket ships. Heavy "bombers", light "bombers", and fighters.

Monday Knight Productions heavy fighters and light fighters.

Also from MKP, Entomolian heavy and light fighters.

Finally, a MKP star bomber. Really it is too big for use as a bomber in my games (I want to keep things within the 1 inch squares). I think I can use it as a target.

The Orlan War

An Armoria Campaign - Part I

In the ancient days of Armoria, two major powers developed - Azuria and Guleslan. They vied for domination of the islands scattered across the Armorian Sea. When Guleslan attempted to seize the island of Orlan, Azuria sent an expedition to challenge the occupation

Battle of Bruhauhau Bay
As Guleslan besieged the capital city of Oropolis, the Azurian navy sailed into Bruhauhau Bay in an attempt to break the siege. Taken unawares, Guleslan was not able to muster its entire fleet.

Game Note: I played this as a galley battle, although I did not have any galley miniatures. I used my Age of Sail counters as stand-ins.

The Azurian fleet (top) enters the sludgy waters of the bay (I need a new sea mat). The Guleslanians sally out.

An initial barrage manages to sink a Guleslanian galley.

A damaged Azurian escapes from battle while 3 more gang up on the second Guleslanian ship.

Vastly outnumbered, it strikes. The remaining Guleslan galley flees.

The Guleslanian army raises the siege and retreats into the interior. Azuria lands and marches into Oropolis. The Orlanians hail the Azurians as saviors, little knowing that they actually swapped one conqueror for another.

The Azurian army spreads out across the island, taking control over the Orlanian towns.

Battle of Orton
The Azurian conquest left them scattered across the island. Guleslan tries to take advantage with a surprise attack against the Azurian held town of Orton. Azuria learns of the attack and prepares a surprise.

The Guleslan force (heavy cavalry, archers, and 2 heavy infantry) march down the road toward Orton.

The Guleslan heavy infantry assaults the town, defended by heavy infantry and assisted with archers.
The Azurian reinforcements on the hill are surprisingly reluctant to advance. Only 1 heavy cavalry attacks, but it wipes out the Guleslan cavalry.

It then catches a heavy infantry unit in the flank and chases it from the field.

It then takes on the Guleslan archers. Meanwhile, Guleslan breaks into the town and puts the garrison to the sword.

The Azurian archers climb the city walls and from the top pour arrows into the Guleslan infantry. The infantry cannot withstand the volleys and breaks. Finally, the Azurian cavalry overruns the enemy archers.

Orton remains in Azurian hands.

Campaign Notes

• The first battle was just a straight up fight, with randomly determined forces. All ships were considered large galleys.
• The second battle was scenario 28 - Botched Relief from One Hour Wargames. Azuria was only allowed to activate one unit from the relief at a time. Fortunately for them, the activated cavalry was remarkably successful and the relief was a success.
• Azuria now has 1 land victory. They just need one more to win the war.
• MicroBattle gives very quick games. The two scenarios took about 45 minutes total to play.

Micro Battles

As mentioned previously, I started messing around with a micro-battle game on a 5 x 7 square grid with 4 or so units per side. I've been experimenting with the concept.

Experiment 1
I had already created simple army lists for a selection of ancient or medieval armies. My initial experiment featured Greeks (blue) vs. Persians (red/brown).

The Greek army consisted of 4 units of hoplites while the Persians had 2 units of Cavalry (brown), a unit of archers (red with blue standard) and auxiliaries (red with white).

The micro-battlefield showing the initial Persian advance

The Persian horse and archers drove away the Greek left. The White Phalanx held out long enough for the Red Phalanx to come to support. However, the combined Persian assaults finally broke the Whites. Finding themselves alone, the Reds retired.

Analysis
I used an opposed die roll, a la DBA. However, losers did not automatically retreat. Instead, they took a hit. A unit could roll a save to slough off the hit. Doubling the opponent forced a retreat and provided the possibility of 2 hits, which would destroy a unit.

The rules worked OK. There was none of the back-and-forth pushing that I find rather annoying in DBA. Instead, units got locked into ongoing melee until one side broke. That's what I wanted to achieve.

However, I found the mechanism to be annoying (reminding me why I no longer care for DBA). It's not opposed die rolls so much as it is having to determine if a unit scored double its opponent. There were numerous times where it was obvious who won a round but not so obvious if the roll doubled the opponent. I would then have to tote up the modifiers for both sides and then divide. I have engineering and business degrees so I am capable of doing the math. It's just that doing the division slows down the game. I prefer to be able to tell at a glance what happened without stopping for calculations. So this system seems to have a tragic flaw.

Experiment 2
This time I pitted Alexander's Macedonians (red) vs. Darius's Persians (blue).

I based this battle on Neil Thomas's replay of Issus in Ancient & Medieval Wargaming.

Alexander's Companions (left) routed the opposing light horse and then lent a hand to the phalanx crushing the Kardakes.

Soon, a lone Persian unit was fending off the entire Macedonian army. It did not last long.

Analysis
For this experiment I changed the combat rules. They are now more akin to Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame in that a unit in combat rolls 1D6 needed a 5 or more (modified by unit type) to hit. I used a different procedure for resolving hits, however. When a unit is hit, it rolls to save with the target roll depending on unit type (e.g. heavy infantry saves easier than light). A roll of 1 on a save also necessitates a retreat.

While 2 hits would destroy a unit, I also included an option to rally, thus removing a hit. This proved crucial in the scenario I played as the Companions took a hit in their initial combat but were able to slough it off.

Overall, the rules worked much smoother than my first experiment. I had much less math to contend with and I could generally tell upon rolling if a hit was scored. Units tended to get locked into battle until it was resolved one way or the other, which I liked. I did not roll up any retreats; I may need to rethink how those work (this calls for more experiments!). Overall, the feel seemed right.

The game was short, only 17 minutes. This is not a bad thing as I can play more battles in a single sitting.

Finally, I created a compact game set, using an old miniatures box I had lying around. The box measures about 5.5" x 8.5" and easily fits all needed components.

Another Virtual Experiment

After my enjoyable experiences with virtual skirmishes and a dungeon crawl, I decided to try my hand at a large-scale battle (and in my terms, large scale is using One Hour Wargame scenarios and army lists).

My first mission was to build the virtual board. Once again, I did it in PowerPoint and created a 6 x 8 grid. Initially, I was going to use Google Earth images for the terrain. I planned to use Junior General top-down paper minis so I thought that realistic terrain would clash with drawn miniatures. I opted instead for more of a toy soldier terrain with images of items that I currently use for my games. The ground is a picture of olive green felt. I made woods from a picture of a Scott's scrub brush. Using Paint, I cut out an irregular shape. Similarly, I cut out a shape from a picture of greenish cork board for the hills. Finally, a picture of blue acetate became a river. Here is the set up for my test battle.

As mentioned, my initial plan was to use Junior General top-down miniatures. However, I had issues scaling them down to a size that fit my squares. They turned out looking like black blob, and I could not distinguish colors to tell one side from the other. Eventually, I opted for basic geometric shapes from PowerPoint.

Below are the 2 armies on the board, ready for a battle in medieval Francesia. (Note that this is not a particular scenario. I just plopped some terrain and troops on the board then went at it.) The Redgravian army (yellow and red) consists of 4 units of heavy infantry, a warband, and a cavalry unit. The Imperials (gray and blue) muster 4 heavy infantry and 2 archers.

The units are functional but not as attractive as I'd like. I saw some pictures online where someone created a virtual battle using photos of actual figures. I may do that with my troops.

As the battle progressed, I used virtual tokens to indicate the action. Blood spatters indicated hits, crossed swords showed units in melee, and white dotted arrows represented archery volleys.

 The battle broke down into 2 distinct combats.

• On the right, 2 Imperial units held the hill against an onslaught of Redgravians
• On the left, the Redgravians advanced between 2 woods towards a lone hill

 The Imperials held the hill on the right but the Redgravians broke through on the left.

The victorious Imperial infantry advanced to the left to aid its beleaguered comrades

But ultimately they were whittled down by the combined attacks of 2 Redgravian units.

I reached 15 turns at this point so I called the battle in favor of the Redgravians.

Thoughts

• The virtual tabletop has a definite advantage in set up. It is far less effort than setting up actual miniatures.
• Additionally, I can leave the battle set up over multiple days. This allows me to play a turn here and there as time permits.
• Moving the pieces is actually more difficult in my virtual tabletop. Actually, moving is not a problem but it is a paint to rotate the units. Because I used shapes, I have to go to the image menu and select rotate to change directions. I think it may not be a problem if I use pictures.
• I love the look of the battlefield but the units are lacking. I'm thinking of photographing actual miniatures.
• I am slightly dissatisfied with my grid. A 6 x 8 grid works great for my skirmishes, but I much prefer my portable wargame's 6 x 9 grid for larger battles. I break it into 3 sectors of 3 squares each then randomly allocate units to a sector.
• Nevertheless, the experiment has promise and will continue.

Decline of the Empire

A while back I picked up a copy of Solitaire Caesar and I have been playing it at a glacial pace ever since. Today, I completed the last three turns and ended my first game.

The last time I posted about it, Rome had fallen in the 700s and the empire had been split. Since then, Rome was retaken but Hispania and Gaul fell to the barbarians by 1100. In the 1100s, major incursions by the Persians and Arabs overran much of the eastern empire. I decided to consolidate my holdings and withdraw from Asia. This put sea between the empire and the barbarians, which would make it harder for them to invade. By 1300, the empire looked like this:

The Empire ca 1300

You can see that Rome remained in Imperial hands, but the legions were withdrawn to protect the east. An invasion from the north finally overran Rome, but the imperial navy managed to stave off attacks from Asia. The final result looked like this:

Game End - ca 1500

I ended the game with 173 victory points, which is considered "historical" and just shy of "good." I can't say that my strategy was very good for most of the game (though I think my consolidation to Greece helped preserve the empire in the end). Luck played a major role; early on the barbarian invasions were relatively small but later in the game the empire got hammered by large incursions.

Looking back at my notes, the empire reached its peak around 500 AD when it held off the Germanic invaders and managed to hold the entirety of the historical Roman Empire, aside from Britain. It lost a couple of provinces until the Berbers penetrated Italy and sacked Rome. From then, the empire slowly lost territory until the end of the game.

Rome Has Fallen!

My office is closed for the new year holiday so I have been catching up on some of my games. Today, I decided to play a quick turn of Solitaire Caesar. The last time I played was over Thanksgiving, and my empire was doing quite well. This turn (the 700s) disaster struck. A horde of Berbers rushed out of the desert, sacked Carthage, crossed into Italy and ravaged the peninsula. Meanwhile, horsemen from the steppes thrust into Greece.

Here is how the "empire" looks now.

The Empire ca 800 AD

Actually, it is now split into two empires: a truncated western empire that holds Hispania and Gaul while the Eastern Empire holds much of the Mideast (and it managed to recapture Egypt this turn).

How long will the empires hold out?