Peninsular War scenario and Midgard Heroic Battles

For our session in February we once more played two games.

The first game was another scenario from Michael Hopper, this time the battle of Monesterio. The game featured Nabil's newly-painted Spanish army, and the participation of two players from the wargames group we made contact with last year. The scenario required the French players to move their siege artillery train across the table, while the Spanish had to prevent that from happening.

The rules were once more our grid-based rules adapted from To the Last Gaiter Button, and once again the grid-based nature of the rules caused some confusion at first for the new players, but once they got the concept things moved quickly.

The Spanish forces advance towards the French. The artillery train can be seen in the corner.

The Spanish forces were handled boldly: the two infantry divisions advanced down two axes, while the cavalry went down the flank to cut off the French route of advance.

Nabil's Spanish see their first action!

The French sent their lone unit of cavalry on the Spanish right to threaten their flank, and for a while effectively held up a whole division of infantry. But they were too conservative with their infantry deployment, and failed to create a perimeter around their siege artillery train, which became exposed and were captured by the Spanish.

For our second game we played the Battle of Azanulbizar using Midgard Heroic Battles. I had planned on using my LOTR figures with the rules, and which better battle to recreate with them than the battle that saw single combat between dwarf and orc leaders?

We played the Last Stand scenario, with Azog and his goblins deployed before an East Gate of Moria terrain piece. I commanded the goblin left flank, and decided to push my forces out to prevent the dwarves from getting too close.

The goblin left flank

Nabil, playing Azog and commanding the right flank, allowed the dwarves to get into melee too quickly, where their superiority in armour soon told. Azog threw his bodyguard into the fray, and then promptly fled down the hill through a gap in the dwarven line; however, it was too late - the goblins lost the last of their Reputation token, and lost the game.

Dwarves surround the last unit of goblins.

Despite this being my second game, I think I managed to get most of the rules right, forgetting only the Brittle rule for the goblins. The game was quick and fun, and at the scale we played fit the niche of a second game very well.

For our session in March I am planning to run a game of Here's the Ruckus!, once more using LOTR figures. I know I had earlier dismissed the rules, but when I was looking for a set of medieval skirmish rules that had climbing, jumping, and falling rules, I took a second look at them and managed to "get" them, and so decided to give them a spin. Stay tuned for more!