Saga Tournament Enfilade 2015

I was in the Saga Tournament at Enfilade this year. Then I won it. As awesome as that sounds there is some background to it.

This year's tournament was split up into 3 "phases". 2 on Friday and one Saturday morning. A player scores points by achieving scenario objectives and kills. You join a phase, play 3 games, generate your score. Pretty simple.

I played in Saturday morning's Phase 3. Had the most opponents.

We were allowed to bring an unlimited list but only one faction. 6 points on the table obviously. I brought some pretty vanilla Vikings:
Warlord
Bard
3x12 Hirdmen (hearthguard) - single unit
1x8 Bondi (warrior)
1x8 Bondi (warrior)
...and depending on situation alternating...
1x4 Val'Serkers (berserkers)
or
1x12 Old Men With Bows (levy)

Legendary Old Men With Bows! Staying at the stead and taking care of business while the Val'Serkers and Hirdmen head out to make war.

Unfortunately my Old Men With Bows saw no action in my 3 games. I would have traded them in if my opponent had cavalry or Anglo-Danes. This did prove my undoing in my last game against Franks and their cavalry in reserves which we'll get to.

My first opponent was Jesse from here in Portland. We've played each other many times so we have a good measure of our abilities and factions. The scenario was Homeland, Vikings (me) vs. Crusaders (Jesse) and Jesse was stuck with defending with just 4 points of Crusaders. 

I, immediately, launched my Viking Hirdmen x12 into his larger house full of crossbowmen. I screened my Hirdmen with Bondi as the Crusaders had a reaction force of a Warlord and Hearthguard outside. The resulting fight was brutal but I had some good Saga dice lined up on my board and a lot of killing happened.

After the first few engagments and right before I took the house and killed the Crusader Warlord.

I won it by victory and objective points.

My second game was against Ambrelle and her Vikings, Battle of the Fords rules.

Bondi first, then send the Hirdmen across!

This game went the full 6 rounds and I squeaked by with a Warlord kill and objective points (figures across the river). My second win of the day. 

My third opponent was against a Frank faction, "Castle" scenario invented by Sven Lugar (tournament organizer). 

I was attacking again and sent my Viking Hirdmen up the left to take the castle with a Bondi escort. I held back the Val'Serkers and Bondi escort. Part of the scenario rules is the defender gets a reserve unit from off board at round 3. This proved to be my undoing (and when I should have put my Old Men With Bows off the bench ... sorry guys).

When the Frank reserve came it hit hard and fast. Fortunately my left nearly took the castle but it was not enough in the end as time ran out (around round 4 of 6). Franks won it by a few points.

Record 2-1, total score was 68 points. Pat Lowager and his Byzantines - who I ended up never playing - scored 69 points. I was pretty dang happy with the second place win when Sven explained to me that Pat, being the sportsman that he is, forfeited 1st place as one of his opponents was disqualified giving him the win. His forfeiture gave me the 1st place.

I graciously accept it and will be sure to pass on the sportsmanship to others displayed by my opponents and Pat... what a guy! Skol to him.

Enfilade 2015 - the loot!

Just got back this afternoon from Enfilade in Olympia. Had fun and met some new people.

I'll get into more detail later but I'm just going to post pictures of the loots I picked up - a very successful Viking Raid.

2 packs of Battle Honors Finnish MMG in summer uniform from a vendor selling them 50% off.

Some rock outcrops with snow terrain, 90% of a 1/42 Panzer, x20 3" wood discs (bases) from the Bring and Buy.

Resin barn, latex roads, resin thatch roof (a second so real cheap) all from Monday Knight Games.

A BAG of resin brick and field stone walls. 15mm or 25mm, vendor.... actually a trade for 24 of my Viking/Rus figs I had in the Bring and Buy.

A ram and his ewes in 25mm - vendor.

l-r: crows/ravens, 2 horse carcass, boar and sows, dog, big-ass kitteh.

25mm gate to a fort, Bring and Buy. Mounted figure is mine and for scale.

A drinking horn I won from the Saga Tournament.

Why I Quit Game of Thrones *SPOILERS*

Yep, quit it. Yep, after Sansa got raped after her marriage to Ramsay Bolton and Reek watched.

Is this why? Not really, it's just the final straw for me. I have many reasons and this looked like a good time to jump off the wagon. Read more if you care to learn why.

I was first introduced to the books 11-12 years ago by a player in one of my long-term Dungeons and Dragons games. He thought I'd like it as it's a mix of historical and fantasy and really gritty. I read the first 3 books in the next few consecutive years and quit about 90% through the third book - A Storm of Swords. I gave up because I was not enjoying the story. It seemed like home work keeping up with the sheer amount of characters and the murder/rape/conniving/incest/pedophilia/back-stabbing THAT CONSTANTLY HAPPENS BY EVERYONE was getting tedious. I felt it stunted the story. I was skipping whole pages just to find I missed nothing.

I quit reading Anne Rice because of the constant homo-eroticism.

I quite Stephen King because of his tropes.

I quit a lot of stuff because it was too much, hit my limit.

Some things I have a limit on. I'm not against it, I just don't want buckets of it dumped on me. I'm sure there are a lot of things that I like buckets of but others cannot take more than a pint. That's fine, I want to live in a world like that.

The show Game of Thrones started and I loved it. They cut some of the characters which was fine as that was one of my issues with the books - too many names. They cut some of the story too, at this point there are some major divergences as to what characters are doing what. Sure, gotta' clean it up for TV. A lot of the murder/incest/pedo/back-stabbing was cut but you know what did not get cut? Raping people. Seems to me there's even more rape in the TV show than the books. I don't know, I did not study that.

In comparison, fair or not, The Walking Dead comic book has some sexual deviation and crime in it and some raping. The TV show? Not so much. Even when rape was a major plot-point in the comic it got taken out of the TV show and turned into "might have if he hadn't got killed first".

Game of Thrones is tedious, overtly heavy, and now boring to me. Just like the books. I thought it'd be different but I was wrong.

Pike and Shotte - English Civil War II

Got in another game of Warlord's Pike and Shotte last Friday night at Spencer's house. Again, I was Parliament while Spencer was Royalists. We played "attack and defend" with Spencer being the Defender and I was the Attacker. Our forces were even and the terrain was thick to the flanks and open in the middle.

Only our second game so we were still working on using rules correctly.

Spencer Royalists:
1x Battalion of muskets and pikes
1x Battalion of musket and pikes with a medium cannon
1x Battalion of medium mounted
1x Battalion of medium mounted

Gabe Parliamentary:
1x Battalion of muskets and pikes
1x Battalion of musket and pikes with a medium cannon
1x Battalion of medium mounted
1x Battalion of medium mounted

From my position at deployment I had a small hamlet on my left, some beet fields on my right with some cottages and a hill just beyond that, and open field in the center. I deployed a battalion with a gun in that center. I deployed another battalion in the hamlet marching in column as I wanted them to cover ground, get to center and deploy behind some hedges in the hamlet with muskets and pikes aimed to center in hopes to create a flank as Royalists moved forward.

My cavalry deployed in the far flanks with the plan to move forward and screen my foot battalions so they could concentrate on the Royalist foot.

Spencer's Royalists did pretty much the same deployment on his side.

I decided, in this game, that I would give battalion-level orders until things got into stabbing range. I actually stuck with that 90% of the time and it worked. My thought being that I want my battalions to be at full strength at all times, even if slowed by inaction.  This worked great for my foot on my right. It just worked out for my foot on my left marching into the hamlet in columns. In the end it worked out as my left battalion, though late to the fight, did show up and were fresh and spry!

My left cavalry immediately moved into the hamlet first though as opposing cavalry was bearing down. I wanted those foot to be free of cavalry harassment. Royalist cavalry charged in and luck was not on their side as they got wiped out (some bad die rolls, not much to do with me other than average rolls and position). That was only one Royalist cavalry unit, there was still another.

My left foot battalion, as mentioned above, was pretty slow - must've been the brambles (or failed command rolls).

On my right my cavalry moved forward and repelled a Royalist charge with little damage actually done to either side. They then took the hill. My right foot battalion marched forward to the inside foot of the hill, which with the cavalry on it became a good anchor. This did bring them all into range of Royalist musket and cannon.

...and the Royalists gave us some jib for that. We took much musket and cannon shot from them but, as the game dictates, it's all about the grand melee in the end. Much fire was exchanged on both sides though culminating on a good die roll for me and a bad one for Spencer which destroyed one of his musket units sending them off the field. I was at an advantage.

A few moments later my left foot battalion finally took a modified position as the Royalist cavalry on my left broke and took flight

Note my cannon lower left and Spencer;s cannon upper right.

Spencer's dice weren't working well for him. He could not get enough commands out to get his foot or cavalry to really move forward to make much of a push. Further, more bad rolls forced some of his units to actually pull back from the front line as you can see in the picture above. The game would easily have changed if his cavalry on my right (his least beat up unit... if beat up at all?) were able to activate but the Fog of War just took over for him.

End of the game the bad dice rolls came my way. I wanted to end the game with a push of my fresh pikes but was only able to push my right foot pikes forward enough to get shot at. My left did even less and my cavalry kind of stood around. We got some shots off though and doled out a few casualties.

Spencer pushed his pike forward and smashed them into my right muskets but it was too late. At the end of his turn one more of his battalions folded and left the field leaving him with half of his starting battalions and me the field for the day.

Now, for some meta:
Spencer and I agree that the actual book for Pike and Shotte could use some editing. Both of us are some-what intelligent creatures, Spencer more so than I are good at figuring out game rules. The structure of the book can be confusing if you are looking for specific things. I guess it's a "train into it" situation but that hampers a lot of newbs getting into a game.

Once you do figure out how things go the rules themselves are fine. It's just kind of a quagmire physically getting through them in the book when you are learning.

Thanks for reading. I'll be seeing some of you at Enfilade this weekend!

Getting Ready for Enfilade

Got the big Enfilade Con coming up in less than 2 weeks on Memorial Day weekend. I've never been to a wargaming con and this will be my first. I've been to plenty of other cons (OryCon, comic cons of various sizes, one NorWesCon)... (...and I'll throw in all the SCA events I've gone to during my 9 year SCA career).

Being my first, and being a "newb" to historical war gaming, I plan to only schedule a few events and the rest of the time I want to observe and soak it all in. I do want to try out new games as I'm exploring what I like and don't like in this genre.

My only scheduled events I am partaking of:

1) Saga Tournament
I hope to be in Phase I to get it done. Not that I want to get it done with but I want to play my part Friday afternoon. I plan to run a Vanilla Viking faction as Sven, running this thing, added the "kill rule" meaning kills count for points. Viking factions are good at doing that and it's what I started with when I first picked up Saga. Also, since I have a jillion fully painted Vikings ready to go; no painting needed!

2) Forcing the Columbia
Sven is running this one Saturday evening. All Quiet on the Martian Front rules, HG Wells War of the Worlds flavor war game. Martians launch their attack on Washington state via what was Portland, OR and into Vancouver. Humans defend at Vancouver. This sounds awesome.

I'm from Vancouver and live in Portland. This game sounds awesome. Other than these 2 events I'm open all weekend.

I plan to bring some stuff to the Bring and Buy and hope to make some pocket change and shop with that. Regardless, I will be buying stuff whether I sell at the BnB or not.What am I looking for? Not really sure yet, I have to look at my current interests.

World War II Finnish  - so anything related to that. Most of what I want for my Finns I already have or have sourced but if I can find a StuG or some bicycle Finns? That'd be awesome.

Scottish Covenanters - Pike and Shotte ECW being my current historical interest I'd like to find some of these.

English HYW (Agincourt) foot/men at arms/billmen for my future Lion Rampant playing. Heck, maybe some English long bowmen too.

Terrain - I'm going through a terrain phase right now. This will be another blog post but, in a nutshell, I'm being obsessive about terrain. So much good looking terrain out there and my experience and skill level in making such things is not where I want to be right now. Terrain and a "winter" game mat are on my list of stuff I want.

Speaking of Lion Rampant, some of the things I'd like to do at Enfilade, other than shop, is watch and/or even play a pick up game of Lion Rampant. I've read the rules thoroughly but I need to stumble through a game to "get it", as I do the rest of my life.

Other than all that I plan to wander and watch.

I also plan to take part in some camaraderie!! I'm a pretty social guy and I like to have a lot of friends and hang with them. Getting into historical war gaming has exposed me to a whole new peer group and the folks I've met so far are pretty dang cool. Like, "These are My People" cool. I want to party a little bit Saturday night after the Martian game. Not like my old days "party" but still let loose and relax a bit into the wee-hours.

**Note: All pictures in this post I pulled from google searching. I take zero credit for any of them.