C&C ECW reloaded

I’ve been on a bit of an ECW tip lately and have been experimenting with a number of published and unpublished rules. The main thing to come from all this dabbling was the realisation that nothing matched up to Msr Foy’s excellent C&C ECW set. The built in card mechanic suffices as a crude A.I, the game itself doesn’t overly tax my noggin’ and of course there’s hexes…lots of lovely hexes!

Now my original C&C cards are still, I suspect, in La Maziere Aux Bons Hommes, and the only ECW forces I own these days are my 2mm ones, so a degree of work was required to get things up and running. After a four week wait for a new 2ft x 1.5ft game mat and a whole heap of printing…I’m finally there.

Elenderil over at “Small But Perfectly Formed” kindly let me nick a map and set up of his from a 2mm game he ran back in 2018. I’ve twisted it through 90 degrees to better fit with the hexes and altered some of the forces to accommodate the C&C model - otherwise everything else remains broadly the same.

The situation:

It’s 1643 and a Royalist force is making its way out of Wales in order to reinforce the King at Oxford. At a river crossing into the Midlands they find their way blocked by a small Parliamentary army.

Objectives:

The Royalists will earn 3 Victory Banners for each bridge hex they occupy, plus 1 Victory Banner after that for each turn they remain in occupation of it. The Parliamentarians will earn 1 Victory Banner for each Royalist unit they destroy. The game ends automatically with a win for the side that is the first to score 5 Victory Banners.

Parliament’s forces set up first and are controlled directly by the C&C cards, the Royalists set up second and are controlled by me. The Roundheads may deploy anywhere within the first three hex rows, the cavaliers within the first two.

Put yer specs on! 

The battlefield seen from the Royalist left flank.

Elenderil’s original map of Bridgetown

Both factions are allowed four command cards in their hand at any one time.

Terrain: The river may only be crossed via the bridges.

Forces: 

Parliament

3 x artillery - trained

2 x horse (Dutch tactics) - trained

2 x horse (Dutch tactics) - raw

1 x dragoons - trained

2 x foot - raw

2 x foot - trained

1 x C in C

3 x leaders

Royalist

3 x artillery - trained

1 x horse - veteran

4 x foot - trained

2 x foot (small units) - trained

5 x horse (small units) - trained

1 x C in C

4 x leaders

Told you you’d need your specs. Parliament’s left flank deployment with artillery covering any approach down the road.

Parliament centre. The numbered flags indicate which of two units behind the map occupy the building hexes since the unit bases won’t fit between the houses! I’ll use this system for woods as well.

Parliament right flank, with two horse regiments in reserve over the river and a series of enclosures bordering the road.

Game rule tweaks:

No plan survives contact with the enemy: I will initially choose two of the cards from my four hand allowance to support my overall strategy, thereinafter I will make the best use of fresh cards that are drawn from the deck. 

The element of surprise: The Parliamentary player will have his command cards dealt blind and left face down. 1 card will be revealed from his hand each turn and acted upon. Once used and discarded it’s replacement will also be concealed. The status of Parliamentary units (raw in this case) will only be revealed when a unit becomes involved in combat. Status will be determined by die roll - a process that will cease in this particular game once two foot and two horse units have been marked up.

Size doesn’t matter: Small units lose 1 combat dice and have one less hit capacity than a regular sized unit. For example, a normal sized foot regiment can absorb three hits before destruction, a small foot unit only two. Correspondingly, large units can absorb 1 extra hit before destruction, though none are listed as such in this scenario. Note a unit may always roll 1 fire combat dice.

Range reduction: Given the scale of the units, muskets may only be fired into an adjacent hex, not two hexes as per the regular rules, this effectively reduces foot to a melee capability only but veteran units gain +1 combat dice anyway, perhaps reflecting firing by salvee.

Preemptive fire: Trotter (Dutch tactics) cavalry being charged by galloper (Swedish tactics) cavalry may fire at their attackers before they enter into melee - however the attacking unit may not start from an adjacent hex. The trotters (not Del and Rodney) may roll 1 combat dice whose results will impact the charging gallopers before the melee they are instigating takes place. If preemptive fire is utilised then the trotters must deduct 1 die from their usual melee battle back allowance. Note a flag result from preemptive fire will cause the gallopers to pull up short and not enter melee even if a leader is attached to the unit.

Foot and commanded shot may adopt a similar tactic unless raw.

A unit may only use preemptive fire once per turn. 

Since I now have the luxury of leaving this pocket handkerchief sized battlefield out for as long as I want I’ll cover the Royalist deployment and the battle itself in the next post. Hopefully the brief delay will allow you to make a quick visit to Specsavers. Lol.

TTFN

New directions

Bugger me it’s been a year since I started this blog…

Man that went quick.

If you look back at the first few posts it’s pretty clear that a lot has changed for me gaming wise in that short space of time and a few months ago I embarked on a brief reappraisal of what I wanted from the hobby - and what was really possible in my more modern space restrictive environment. 

The long and the short of it has been a move towards pocket sized armies and limited board sizes. The WOTR troops have gone, along with the Wofun flats, 6mm ECW, the Viking and Saxon armies and all of the ship models that were going to be part of my early Elizabethan naval gaming.

Sometimes the enthusiasm wanes never to be rekindled (Viking, Saxon & WOTR), sometimes you can’t find the the right rules, minis or scale, (Wofun & Elizabethan naval) and sometimes you discover that some types or periods of warfare are just not that rewarding to try and recreate, (I’m looking at you cogs). 

Reluctantly I’ve come to the conclusion that for me the days of large armies big tables and deep pockets have probably gone - though thankfully there still seems to be fun to be had!

Branching out into smaller scales and completely new genre’s like VSF has rekindled my enthusiasm and made new projects do-able again. Happily this blogs little band of cognoscenti have been willing to tolerate the drift…so far. 

So, along with 2mm ECW and the ongoing VSF campaign I’ve decided to double down by testing the patience of the blogs readership yet further.

There’ll likely be some 15mm VBCW and dreadnaughty naval stuff coming up in the new year but the projects actually in the pipeline at the moment include these guys…

Igg, Ogg…and Dave, with the Paleo Diet rules 

Roll a 1 and you might get assimilated.

Plus some Star Trek shenanigans - using the old Space Hulk rules.

They all tick the pocket sized, campaign friendly boxes, have established rules …and more importantly are now in the pipeline at Broom towers.

You have been warned, lol.

As a quick bye the bye, I’ve also developed a hankering for this solo card game…

Spearpoint 43 - now with added Russianfrontyness.

so if anyone already has it, or has any views on it - I’d be keen to hear them.

TTFN

No retreat, no surrender!

Sorry miss but the dog ate my homework… 

Actually Margot or Kiki sat on my iPad and deleted the batrep for this battle by accident (well they said it was an accident - but we did run out of cat treats in the week so it could have been passive aggressive payback for that I suppose?). 

Anywhoo I still have the pictures I took of the affair so without much of the usual blow by blow fluff here’s a pictorial explanation of what happened to the brave defenders of Victoria’s realm. Consider it a sort of Broom Battle Picture Library.

Sergeant Hobbes and the wounded Corporal Figgis had escaped the emerging Prussian soldiers (see last vsf post) and had made it to the bridge over the Lud, just east of Peveril. On their approach shouts from across the river alerted them to a rash of freshly dug mounds and an instruction to “get a ruddy move on”.

Unseen but closing fast was a large force of Martians intent on crossing the bridge in order to get at any “food on the hoof” in the nearby town. 

To avoid the pathogens that had wiped out their initial reconnaissance force the Martians had begun herding captive humans into machines that extracted and sterilized their blood. Though a coldly efficient solution whose industrial scale could help sustain the larger invasion force, it faced a completely unanticipated problem in a now vengefully non compliant civilian population - typified by the proud badge wearing members of the “take one with you” movement who would ingest lethal toxins or immolate themselves on the alien energy barriers rather than provide sustenance. 

Suffice it to say there were a lot of Martians now on British soil and most of them were bloody hungry.

Hobbes, Figgis and the rest of the section survivors head toward the bridge, chivvied on by soldiers defending the far river bank. Can you guess what the square markers in each hex represent? Note also the wisps of smoke rising from behind the hill.

On the other side of the river they encounter a scratch force of defenders tasked with buying time for the  civilians in Peveril to be evacuated.

Concealed in the tree line on the riverbank is a 6 pounder and crew covering the approaches to the bridge. The crew have erected their ceramic / asbestos shield in the hope of lasting longer than 20 minutes* against a heat ray wielding Tripod.

Troopers from the 23rd Lancers with lance bourne sticky bombs wait nervously in the tree line for the onslaught to begin.

And here they come!

Remember boys…aim low!

Alien hover / disability scooters…whatever next?

Smoke on the horizon…but lunch awaits just over the bridge.

Spang! The 6 pounder opens up and scores a direct hit on the nearest Tripod. Momentarily dazed the alien machine fires back…with deadly black smoke. Good job the gunners were wearing their gas masks! Around the tripods feet the Martian Infantry swarm forward to suppress the defenders gunfire.

Hobbes spreads his men out into a firing line as the Martian scooters swoosh towards the river bank.

Yup you guessed it. Those squares were mines triggered by a turn end numbered card draw. Mine number 9 goes off too late to catch the “speeding” mobility scooters. Lucky buggers!

But they were not so lucky this time…gotcha!

The Martians had retuned their small arms from the cinematic but useless “pew pew” setting to nundanket’s suggested “zhush”, pinning the brave defenders in place until… what’s that coming over the hill is it a monster?** No it’s a Wobbler! The Bazalgette armoured steam Walker (to be precise) finally makes its combat debut! 

In the nick of time the clanking swaying behemoth stomped its way to the bridge…and broke down.

Casualties begin to mount as the new “zhush” setting on the Martian weapons take their toll. Tragically Corporal Figgis is reduced to ash as he tries to collect a gambling debt from a wounded colleague. Oh yes some artillery bods died too, when their masks stopped working (they’re only guaranteed for 5 minutes in a toxic environment you know).

The two colossi traded shots, the canon on the wobbler scoring solid hits, but the heat ray from the Tripod failing to hurt the brave British artillery men behind their asbestos lined armour. With both armies nearing their “bottle out” casualty levels things quickly came to a head.

The starboard Gatling didn’t jam…but it did turn these purple monsters into something resembling jam, so there’s that.

Charge! The lancers take advantage of the wobblers appearance to splash across the river and hit the  nearest Tripod where it hurts. That’s in the legs by the way. I don’t think the Martians have genitals. No need if you do your reproduction by budding I suppose. Shame that. They’re missing out.

The lancers cut their way through the supporting Martian Infantry and speared the nearest Tripods legs with two sticky bombs. As they wheeled to make their escape they pulled the friction detonator chord and moments later…Kaboom!

Tragically one of the Lancers fell to yet more “zhush” fire but as the Tripod toppled the Martians found they’d had a different kind of belly full to the one they’d been expecting…a belly full of British steel. Resolve broken the beastly aliens began to withdraw. What? Oh bloody hell, go on then…HUZZAH!

The Martians had fancied themselves the natural conquerors of our solar system, but in their hubris they had stirred to life a far more powerful foe than they could ever have imagined, for the most naturally warlike species, the species with the greatest capacity for destruction had always been mankind.

* 20 minute lifespan from deployment to engagement. Apologies to messrs Elton and Curtiss.

** With yet more apologies, but this time to The Automatic.

Broomtown or bust

Just thought I’d post a couple of pictures from my recent play testing of Elenderil’s new rules. It didn’t really require the scenery to be out but I thought I’d do a quick review of things at the same time.

As you can see the roads need lining with foliage and the edges of almost everything need to be darker green to match the mat. The river needs toning down too while I’m at it. I’ll be creating some hedged enclosures next and cutting up the duplicate mouse mat to make the contoured hills. You can’t see them in the pictures but there are a couple of Broomtown residents dotted around the place as well. Lol.

TTFN

2 mill ville

First off - an apology. I’ve become aware that a number of my comments are failing to register on other folks blogs, I’m not sure why this should exactly so my strategy, (since I’m notoriously tech averse) is to wait the bugger out in the hopes that it gives in and fixes itself - like my broken toe did the one time.  

Anywhoo… despite being in the doldrums I thought I’d post a quick update on the 2mm front as a sort of progress report. The old black dogs been hanging around for the last few weeks but despite that I’ve ploughed through half a dozen Cogs, finished the 2mm armies, tinkered with a couple of my own rule sets, play tested Twilight of the Divine Right…mmmm… and set too on the terrain I need.

I’ve a lot of buildings to complete and that’s before I get on to castles and fortifications. I thought this scale’d be easy and quick…lol.

The buildings are from Brigade and are lovely despite my cacky painting.

The rivers are blue masking tape on plastic card, with a heavily pva’d garnish of fringe foliage. I’ve done enough sections to cover twists and turns over a 3ft length which should be enough. The woods and the roads are on the way.

I shall be cutting up a new 3mm thick mousepad game mat (sacrilege) to make contoured hills in the same colour and texture as the base game mat. I hope that’ll look okay. 

Unternehmen Maulwurf

Say what you like about zee chermans but you’ve got to admit their language always makes a military plan sound super sexy. 

<<Ahem>>

Where was I? 

Oh yes Maulwurf, the second game in my mini VSF thingy.

Having calculated when the Martians would be landing, Bismarck had persuaded the Kaiser to give the go ahead for Maulwurf Tag, assuring him that this was the moment the British would be most vulnerable. 

Within 48hrs long columns of Prussian infantry were observed descending obediently into tunnels that would take them under the North Sea and into the very heart of England.

(Okay, I was expecting another Martian encounter but the series of die rolls used to determine the game set up decided otherwise. This time the Prussians, skilfully painted by Lee, would be making an appearance).

The die rolls produced the following:

Enemy force encountered: 2 x 12 Prussian infantry

Friendly force encountered: Royal Navy Aether Launch

Extra equipment collected: 1 smoke pot. (+1 already held by Cpl Figgis).

New character traits: None. (Hobbes remains a bruiser and Figgis a scout).

British morale level: 3 

Prussian morale level: 3

Leader ratings: Sgt Hobbes (2) Cpl Figgis (1), Feldwebel Kraus (2), Oberleutenant Lange (3) Gefreiter Kurtz (1)

As usual I’ve tried to make a scenario meal out of the ingredients the die rolls gave me. The most obvious means of arrival for the Prussians for instance was by the Mole that I documented a few posts ago.

The Royal Navy Aether Launch I’d always considered as a one of a kind experimental vehicle, so I thought it’d make a great objective marker for both sides to try and capture. Since you’d have a hard time doing that if it was in mid air I assumed it had been forced to land through mechanical failure and would eventually be fixed and able to fly off again - unless captured.

The Prussians would have a 2:1 numerical advantage over No1. Section but I decided to limit their deployment to 12 men already out of the Mole’s tunnel with the others arriving at the rate of three per turn.

The objective for No1. Section is to hold off the Prussians until the aether launch can be fixed and flown away while for the Prussians it is simply the capture of the super secret British invention or Professor Brown - the egghead responsible for it’s construction.

To capture the aether launch the Prussians need to have more men on or in the vessels front hex than the British do at the end of any game turn, to capture the professor they just need to enter into close combat with him.

The aether launch needs 21 points to be “fixed” and this will be the rolling total of a single card drawn at the end of every turn. Once fixed it must spend a turn rising into the air (during which it could be shot at) before it can exit the board. The crew of the aether launch is made up of Sub Lt Hargreaves and Professor Brown. 

So then this is how events unfolded in what turned out to be a fairly interesting game. The rules used are Mr Lambshead’s diceless ones.

Sgt Hobbes and the remaining 11 men of No1. Section were heading north when the ground began to shake violently beneath them. The vibration became so intense that the chancel and part of a nearby church tower collapsed in an avalanche of stone. Determined to avoid whatever it was the Martians were up to now, Hobbes led the men off the road and through a gate into the cover of a walled field. 

It was while he was consulting his map that an object he would later describe as half boat, half carriage, came whistling overhead. Descending rapidly it skidded across the grass then ploughed nose first into the fields boundary wall. Initially stunned, the soldiers quickly recovered and gave chase.

The “driver” of the contrivance wore a Navy uniform and through a bull horn he ordered the soldiers to keep away. Sgt Hobbes was disinclined to take orders from some snotty “blue job” so he allowed the men to close up and gawp. A civilian descended from the craft, opened a panel in its stern and began tugging at a rats nest of wiring. 

The man was too preoccupied with fixing whatever had gone wrong in the machines engine bay to get into any meaningful conversation though Hobbes heard him muttering darkly about something called an electro inductive aetheric capacitor (oh come on…you’ve got to let me do a bit of technobabble).

The Sergeant was about to offer his assistance when a shout from Pvt O’Rorke got everyone’s attention. 

Prussians!

Almost beyond surprise by this point Hobbes ordered the men to take up defensive positions behind the high stone wall. He had no idea what the strange contraption was that had fallen from the heavens but he instinctively felt it was important to stop the Prussians from getting their hands on it.

Watching some of the men in blue march towards the church Hobbes ordered Corporal Figgis along with privates 232 Jones, 249 Jones, Edwards and Murphy to double around the crashed contraption to cover their right flank. As his own numbers dwindled more Prussians could be seen negotiating the woods to their front. The papers had been speculating for months that the Kaiser was up to no good - and now somehow his goons were here, as bold as brass, marching through Blighty!

Hobbes of course had the element of surprise, or at least he did until Pvt Davies let fly with his Martini Henry. The weapons discharge was followed by guttural shouts of “Achtung” and “Gott in Himmel” though not, it should be noted, the hoped for cries of a wounded target. The Prussians in the woods melted deeper into the undergrowth and those heading for the church rushed quickly into its cover. 

 

What Hobbes did not know was that fresh troops were continuing to exit from the tunnel bored through the rock by the mole. Soon he would be both outnumbered and outflanked!

Reaching the other flank as instructed Corporal Figgis could see that a determined rush by the Prussians would take them straight on to the deck of the defenceless contraption. Blocking that approach meant leaving cover and occupying the bow of the vessel himself. Reluctantly his men followed him over the wall. 

Sensing that the enemy were preparing to to encircle him Hobbes sent men to keep an eye on the road. When he was happy that Davies would not be firing off any more wild shots he went to join them.

After briefly climbing up the church tower, Oberleutenant Lange managed to get a good view of the British dispositions. Noticing his reserves were now gathering nearby he ordered the men below back out of the church in order to rush the enemy defences and seize the Britishers remarkable machine.

Back on the other side of the field Hobbes could hear the Prussians marching down the road as though they hadn’t a care in the world. Such effrontery was too much for the bold Sergeant, and with a curse that would have made even Figgis blush he ordered his men to climb over the wall and give the foreign johnnies what for! Cutting through a gap in the hedge the four British soldiers caught the enemy napping. Three shots rang out and three of the leading enemy soldiers went down. 

(I think that calls for a quick huzzah, don’t you?)

After blunting the enemies advance Hobbes led his men back to the wall, but what this…the downed Prussians have regained their feet?!

(In Mr Lambshead’s rules a downed figure is not necessarily dead. During a turn end admin phase a card is drawn for each potential casualty, red confirming their demise and black indicating that they were only lightly wounded or just took cover. As you can see from the picture, three black cards were drawn in a row and the Prussians dusted themselves down and got back up on their feet. While they were on the floor they’d have been almost helpless against melee, and had Hobbes closed to melee them rather than retreating to the wall they’d have likely have been gonners).

The reanimation of the three sausage munchers, wasn’t the only blow that Hobbes was about to suffer. Oberleutenant Lange and his men emerged from the church and moving quickly into position let rip a blizzard of lead at the British soldiers now arguing with the Sub Lieutenant over permission to come aboard. The doughty Corporal was the first to go down, swiftly followed by 249 Jones and Pvt Edwards. Disaster! With the opposition suppressed the square heads prepared to rush their target.

Just when all seemed lost Professor Brown finally realigned the polarity of the electrically stimulated lift crystal. (I knew he could do it!). Slamming the engine bay hatch closed he scrambled back over the wall and climbed aboard. 

In the wheelhouse Hargreaves watched the dials on the control panel flicker into life and gently he eased the lift lever upwards.

(The vehicle was always going to be fixed when the total of cards drawn at the end of every turn reached 21. Nice idea, but the turns in Mr Lambshead’s rules are of variable length, only ending when a joker is drawn by either player from the action deck. The British were very lucky in that several turn ends occurred quite close together and the cards drawn for repairs during this period were a Queen (12) a ten and a two. If the turns had been further apart, the total repair values drawn  were lower, or the Prussians had received more activations, they would have had plenty of time to capture the target).

The Prussians halted as their target rose slowly from the wreckage of the wall. 

(I’m pretty sure that if my 1970’s Battle Picture Library comics were anything to go by - this would have caused a lot more “Gott in Himmels”).

Unsure of what to do, Feldwebel Kraus fired. The machine seemed unaffected, but one of its occupants immediately slumped to the deck. Professor Brown had been hit! 

The aether launch rose higher and as the Prussians struggled to reload or draw a bead on it, it clipped the tops of the trees. 

Ignoring the dangers of extreme velocity the launch hurtled away from the scene at a mind blowing 30mph. What madness!

The fusillade of shots from the Prussians who’d downed Figgis convinced Hobbes that they were being enveloped from both flanks. With the strange contraption saved from the clutches of the cabbage crunchers (sorry, I’m running out of stereotypical epithets here) he ordered his remaining men to make for the hedge to their rear. 

But what of poor Figgis and co?

The lift off of the aether launch was only seconds ahead of two Prussian soldiers who’d run forward to seize its dangling mooring rope. Frustrated in this they turned their beastly attention to the British casualties lying helpless at their feet. Bayonets swiftly despatched 249 Jones and Edwards and they advanced with measured tread on Figgis. 

On the other side of the wall the remaining two soldiers of the flanking force had been steadying their nerve. The Prussians prodded the recumbent Figgis with the tips of their bayonets (I imagine they’d  have had an evil leer on their faces at this point?) but having recovered their composure 232 Jones and Pvt Murphy popped up from behind the wall and with rifles blazing at zero range, let rip. 

Blam. Blam!

The two Prussians fell where they stood.

232 Jones continued to give covering fire as Pvt Murphy climbed over the wall and hoisted Corporal Figgis onto his shoulder. Dragging him back into cover he made slow but deliberate progress towards safety as his plucky Welsh side kick held back the advancing blue horde.

The men of No1 section made it through the hedge and out of sight as the Prussians reached the wall and took brave 232 Jones prisoner. (Naturally the Huns clubbed him with a rifle butt first). 

Frustrated in their efforts to capture the strange British craft, the men of the 128th (Danzig) Regiment had at least managed to secure their initial bridgehead in Britain. Reinforcements would continue to flood in through their tunnel in the days that followed.

A few observations. 

The unpredictable length of a turn in these rules worked hugely in the British favour - on this occasion. It could very easily have gone the other way.

At the end of the game I drew a card for poor old Figgis and it was black, so he survived with what I’ll count as a superficial wound. 

Pvt Murphy should get a medal for rescuing his Corporal but will probably have to accept an annulling of the gambling debt he owes Figgis in its stead.

The whole shebang rattled along at quite a pace with its speedy card draw resolutions - taking just over two hours from start to finish on a 3 x 3 board. 

So Hobbes and his remaining men have survived this  encounter and will live to fight another day. 

I suspect I won’t get around to their next mission before the 2mm construction effort is complete. 

We’ll see.

TTFN