A weekend of games - several MeG games and Burrows and Badgers too!

The weather was glorious, lockdown genty easing, Roger was in country, Adrain had time off and Paul needed a break from real life, so we gathered at mine on Saturday for some games of Mortiem et Gloriam.

Then on Sunday, while Roger headed off to his new life as a diplomatic service husband, I catered for the guys and played with my youngest while umpiring in the morning, Rob came over to play Adrian at MeG, and in the afternoon, Mort struggled the quarter mile up our road for two games of Burrows and Badgers. 

A pretty cool way to spend the weekend. Worst thing was the sunburn on the back of my neck!

 

Game one and two

My Hausa Kingdoms with Tuereg allies vs Adrian's Hafsids.

Scouting, despite having 5 sugs of light horse and 5 sugs of javelinmen, Adrian had 5 scouting cards, three of which were black or white! My hand was slightly better! 80% out scouted, I went for a nap while Adrian deployed 13 units!!

On the other table, Paul's Archmedians faced off against Roger (borrowing my) Imperial Romans. Shootiness and dancing cav vs heavy foot and even heavier horse.

Paul's immortals looking for trouble. Beautiful figures.

It was that sunny that taking photos without my shadow was hard! I chose to avoid Adrian's centr, send my two camel units on the right to tie up half his army, while my cavalry and guard cavalry looked for targets on the left -hand section of the board, my light horse went hunting targets too. I swang my bow armed spears and archers right to try to deal with the shooty threat thundering down on me.

However, there appears to be a 'Valley of Death' to our right... My camels quickly engaged his foot beyond the wheat field, but could get nowhere. I realsied that a unit or two of spears following up the cavalry might be an idea, as my cavalry are good, but Adrian is short spear, integral shooters, shieldwall, so anything I throw in on the charge from my Guard horse will have their shatter nullified!

On the left my light horse pick a target to practise shooting at. One cavalry peeled off to join the light horse. I moved a unit of bows up on the right to support my spear armed archers.

On the hill, Adrian used overhead shooting to try to slow my progress, but my light horse with cantabrian shoot at a plus, so green dice hits soon starts making their marks on the warriors on the hill. On teh other side of the hill, guard cavalry and other cavalry hit Adrian's spear armed troops. Suasgae sandwiches for lunch - yum yum!


The charges crash in, and do very little, even with a superior, short spear, devastaing charge and legandary general! Humph!

 

 

The camelry is shedding bases, against 6 warriors, we had 12 bases, but Adrian's boys weren't moving! However, Adrain positioned four shooting units to pepper my camels, and was whittling them away rather too efficently.  They would cost me a vital 4 points in short order.

 

The heavies charge in, and have lost a base and a half already! So much for the army eilte (mutter mutter)...

Meanwhile, on the other table, Paul lost his camp, and his Immortals, and his second Immortals, and a unit of archers. He did destroy the Roman Praetorians though.

See, they were there, and now they are not!

It's quite a big hole they've made in each other's centres here as the action moves off to the flanks.

My cavalry breaks its first victim in the melee phase (muhahah) and I'm back to 2-4 as the battered guard smash into another foot unit.  However their flanks are somewhat vaulnerable and they die soon after...

Back on the Persian front, the centre lies empty as the two great empires warily vie to apply the killing blow. Paul succumbs to the heavy hitters and valiantly disintergrates on a 9-15 to Roger.

I mean, ridiculously empty! I swear they just positioned dice there to fill the space. That's quite some dead pile by Roger's beer!

On the hill, my skirmishers wear down a Hafsid spear unit, breaking them with javelins. My Guard collapses, and herself is wouned, twice! Then she falls, catastrophe! I chase a bow unit up the hill, and run down another in the open with two cavalry units, but more and more Hafsid are being fed into the Valley of Death, including his mercanaries. My great plan to sweep round his flank fails, and his camp remains unplundered...

In this space was two units of camels, torn to pieces.

 My archers are also about to be shot to pieces and steamrollered by the multicoloured Hafsid steamroller. However 4 units had held up eight of his.

Adrian helpfully points to where the battle was won, and my last cavalry unit disintergrates and flees, leaving him with a very enjoyable 10-15 win and me with a sunburnt neck! I only needed one more unit and the result would have been 15-10 to me! Great result, great game.

 

Games three, four and five

 Sunday dawned with slightly less heat early on. David was meant to join us, but was feeling indesposed. So Rob came up from Luton and played Adrian.

More Imperial Romans vs Hafsids. The two lines deployed as Barker intended.

This time Adrian had sorted out his command structure, and was happy to hold the Valley of Death 2!

My daughter's drink bottle in the way! Adrian was flank marching, how would this work out?

Without the water bottle, Adrain holds on eedge in depth while Rob come on in line.

The moment before contact, Rob, being a good Roman, adjusts his lines as he prepares to flank the Hafsid hill.

 

Battle is joined, and despite the Romans being better in almost every way, they could not roll the dice they needed, plus Adrian had deployed in depth compared to Rob's width, allowing his units to ablate his losses over three units to comapred to Rob's units sharing their losses over two.

In the brilliant sunshine, I let my shadow spoil a perfecly good expositional photograph! Where had stood three legions and the catafracts of Rome, now all remained were the bloody remains. Adrain's flank march had eliminated a unit of Equites, and the Catafracts had blown themselve sup on teh rocky hill. Severakl legions had been traded with Hafsid tribes men, but these were losses Adrian could afford with his massie army as he started to find Rob's flanks, especially on the units that had previously had protection!

 

Adrian would go on to win. Two games, two wins, not a bad weekend for the Hafsids really. At this point Mort appeared, and I scuttled over to the other shade of the other table as we set up for Burrows and Badgers.

Game 1 was a stand up fight, each gang waiting to take each other to pieces, and again, Mort's more combat heavy troupe did what it does best and closed in on my fighters and pounded them to the ground. My snipers did good work, and Batty did what he does best by taking a message straight off table, but this was always a hard fight for my less stabby gang

Bowie tried to head off the inevitable great weapon rush from Mort's characters, but even with three turns of 'Invulnerable' granted to him by L'Otter, it was not enough to stop the great swords of Mort striking him down.


Ouseux the Sparrow again fought off all comers with his shield of parrying that stopped almost every hit. Here he is trying to corner Mort's mage, who was busy calling in lightning on my Otter archmage!

 

Who herself was pounding Mort's Ferret 'Herladyship' with lightning too round the side of the house, joined by Sneaker who chased her down, injuring her with his sword after failing to hit her with arrows! Bloomin' rangers!

But L'Otter ws taken out of action soon after Bowie, and with Batty off table, even with Ouseux carrying a relic, the band could not stand and pulled back to safety. Bowie peaked up an enfeebling weakness, but at least Batty was well rewarded for his efforts which kept the gang afloat!

Game two was Mort's trail scenario, capture the Cart.

A cart of valuable contarband/food/material/stuff has had it's draught animal blot, your gang needs to recover it. A character yolked up could drag it off at half speed per action while the other gang tries to 'liberate' it for themselves.

Mort had a new cart and wanted to use it!
 

It was a good scenario, but unfortunately for Mort, I had the perfect gang for this! My two snipers positioned down table (abandoned burrow) where they could pepper an approaching character with arrows in a crossfire. My two fliers were always going to be quicker than Mort's gang, even at full sprint, and flew straight to the cart mid-table. Ouseux quickly entered the yolk, and started heaving the cart towards my base edge, guarded by Batty who inflicted some nasty septic wounds on 'Herself' who got too close to his poisoned blade, before he used his 'slippery' skill to break away to safety.

Strangly, as the little sparrow heaved at the cart, he started to glow with magical energies. L'Otter had cast 'Haste' (one of her five spells), and this allowed Ouseux two actions a go, so he soon had the cart was moving a very respectable 6" a go, which means Mort's gang could not catch it! As L'Otter kept pumping this spell onto Ouseux, the more certain we were of victory! It was the perfect storm for my gang really, right spell, right skills, right mission. We came away well rewarded and pockets jingling.

Two fab games, all done in an hour and a half! Most of my gang got their second skills from this game, But, oh the irony of upgrade dice!
After two top games...
Bowie the Cat, my 2iC and fighter: second presence upgrade (now d12)!
Snappy Squirrel, group sniper: As his second skill, rolled a fight skill (he spends his time actively avoiding fights, so picked up 'Parry' just in case).
Ouseux the sparrow, after pulling the cart away has strengthened his legs and he now has d8 movement as well as d8 fight!
Squeaker: Mouse sniper got his first upgrade of extra fortitude, so is now a d8!
Best of all: Batty, bat assassin. Second skill: shooting skill! So now has a set of batman type throwing knives and a shooting reroll, he might be as blind as a bat, but he is lucky with it!

I blame my daughter for rolling the die!

Most of my post game rolls were rerolled as I kept getting things like 'master crafted black powder' and I have no black powder weapons, or stone circles with no effect! On both games the local trader kept offering us magic extra heavy armour at 40+d8 pennies, we could not really justify that expense and feed and reequip our resources. Eventually, I got enough cash together to buy Bowie some light armour and enough materials to build an archery range for my HQ,  meaning I can actually pick some useful skills in future for my three two and a half shooters.

We did, however, earn the thanks of a slavetrader and aquired a new recruit to the gang, a Shrew called Berry Town (Shrew Berry Town - yes, it's worth it for the pun alone). A more likely backstory is the slaver tried to capture Bowie while he was wandering, and Bowie, with Berry's help, slit his throat and freed the other slaves. In return, Berry joined us after helping deal with the remains, so most of the rest of our cash was spent on light armour and a buckler as a welcome for him (we had a spare sword lying around from when the gang was created), as he will be adding some much needed combat muscle to the crew. He was ordered Sunday night, arrived Tuesday has had his first painting coats and ink washes,and will be finished for the weekend!

So five fabulous sunny games, summer is here at last!