Hot Lead: purchases

One of my aims of attending Hot Lead was to pick up some figures for Chain of Command. I had intended to use 15mm but I received a box of 28mm late war Americans by Wargames Factory for my birthday. This is a pretty good box but it suffers from two major flaws: there's only 30 figures in the box and there's no heavy weapons. One of the things I was looking to do was rectify these short comings.

My first stop was the bring and buy. I happened to spot a box of Afrika Korps Panzer Grenadiers for Flames of War for $40. That looked good to me.

Well, if your going to do Afrika Korps, you need somebody to face them. A short while later, a box of PSC American Infantry was in my hands. I can use them for Tunisia, Sicily, and early Italy. I'm not sure there's a significant difference between 1943 US infantry and a year later.

But I hadn't abandoned my search for 28mm. My Chain of Command book actually has two duplicate army lists for the Russians. I took this as a sign from Rich that I must have a Russian platoon to play with. Since my opponents already have Germans and Canadian/British, getting Russians fills a gap too.

This lead me to the Russian starter pack by Warlord Games. And if you are going use Russians, you need to provide them with plenty of support to help out against the Germans. This lead me to pick up a maxim gun and an 81mm morter, which I also use as a stand-in for a light mortar.

Hot Lead: English Civil War

The third and final game was an English Civil War assault on a fort using For God and Country rules. It wasn't until we got going that I realized that I have played these rules before and I'm not terribly keen on them. They are card driven with the cards determining whether you get 1-3 actions. Since it takes an action to attack and your opponent cannot do anything while you are doing your actions, drawing a 3 while in combat represents a huge and critical advantage.

The fort was in the center of the table. I was the commander of the Parliamentarians and I took the centre force. I rearranged my forces slightly to put the forlorn hope on the extreme left because I had spotted that the wall in that direction was largely undefended (circled in the pic).

I should point out that Gary Scofield, who was running the game, created the fort from scratch. He did a truly impressive job. It really looks the business.

Meanwhile, our left advanced to take out the Royalist horse and start the assault on the walls. The cavalry did their job relatively quickly. Then, having nothing else to do, they set off on a long journey behind our forces to join our right flank.

On our right, our horse rode up quickly to take out the opposing Royalist force of cavalry and infantry. The infantry formed square, the Royalist horse counter charged, and the dragoons peppered our cavalry from behind the wall. Our cavalry accomplished little except to keep the attention of the Royalist forces outside of the fort. This proved to be the deciding factor in the battle so their sacrifice proved worthwhile. My infantry was obliged to keep advancing because of their attack orders even though I would have preferred to keep them back. This, too, turned out to be a good thing.

Meanwhile, in the centre, I flung my forlorn hope rapidly against the fort and they overwhelmed the gunners defending the bastion. Meanwhile, I sent my infantry against the other bastion. I was far too cautious. I expected it too be much harder to advance against the defenses. However, I got their in the end, and with the luck of a 3 action card appearing, overwhelmed the defending regiment.

The forelorn hope then took out some fort defenders and then swung around to advance into the center of the fort. Infantry from the left flank followed the forlorn hope into the heart of the fort.

The rest of the fort defenders started to get overwhelmed, our cavalry from our left arrived on the right to face the Royalist cavalryr, and my infantry took advantage of that same 3 action card to crush a Royalist regiment.
 

We called the battle at this point with the fort's defenders being overwhelmed by a tide of Parliamentary troops.

Hot Lead: Dux Britanniarum

My second game was Dux Britanniarum from the Too Fat Lardies. I was unlucky and became the Saxon commander. Well, rank has its privileges so I took the elite troops. I put two bands of warriors on the left and one on the right. The general plan was for the left warriors to go after the levy while my elites threatened the British elites to pin them.

The warriors on the right were to keep the British warriors near the village occupied.

Because of how slow my elites were in the first two turns (I rolled a 7 and then a 5! on three dice for both turns), I was unable to prevent the British elites from moving up to support the two units of British levy. Time for a change of plan then. The Saxon warriors changed the British elites.

(There I am in the foreground sloooooowly mooooving fooooorward,)

After a bloody fight, the Saxon warrior routed the British elites. However, the British were able to avoid significant morale loss but the situation still looked grim for them. 

(Meanwhile, the Saxon warriors on the right decided they wanted to join in the party bashing the British elite but they arrived a little late.)

The British levy turned and attacked the weakened Saxon warriors and routed them. Meanwhile, I turned to the left to go after the British levy but again my progress was slow.

The routing Saxon warriors cost us some morale points. As did the British horse attacking the leader of the routing Saxons. Meanwhile the British warriors followed those Saxon warriors, who turned to face. In a bloody battle in the woods, our Saxons routed one warrior band but succumbed to the other. The British laughed off the loss but the Saxons were worried (yet another miserable roll on the Bad Things Happen table) 

 I was finally in position, ready to charge the levy.

However, before I could do so, the third levy unit joined the others. Then the Saxon morale hit rock
bottom and the battle was over.

This was lots of fun. It was looking like an easy Saxon victory for a while and then the British could do no wrong when rolling for injured or dead leaders and routing units and the Saxons just rolled 5s and 6s.

Even if I had been able to charge in, it would have taken a miracle roll to win that clash. So the Saxons were wise to slink away and eat the stolen sheep (by the Saxon horse who invaded the village)

Hot Lead: Magnesia

On March 22nd I attended Hot Lead. The signup sheets were far less crowded this year (or I was able to get to them quickly) but there were a lot more attendees in the convention. The bring and buy had a lot of stuff and there seemed to be more dealers too.

My first game was the battle of Magnesia using Impetus. I've played these rules a couple of times before and really like them (though I've not actually won playing them). Anyway, I ended up with the Roman left flank facing a mixed force of pikes, cavalry, and a warband of some sort. I've highlighted my forces here. Not shown are two stands that I would get a bit later.

My plan was to advance to about the bend in the river and try to engage the enemy there.

Rather than let my only cavalry unit be whittled down by the opposing light horse, I took the opportunity to chase them off and engage some medium cavalry lurking behind it.

Good plan but, it what would become a theme, the dice let me down. I rolled lots of 1s and 2s on the attack and 5s and 6s for morale checks. If you know Impetus, you know this is not a good thing. My cavalry disappeared and the opposing horse barely broke a sweat. I tried to follow up and engage that horse with my Romans while they were disordered but we ended up an inconclusive melee. Meanwhile my reinforcement spear arrived on the left,

The enemy pike moved and I engaged them. Meanwhile, the warband advanced. Remember those spears I received? Well, one stand proved be even less of a speed bump than my cavalry were. I couldn't even put a disorder on the enemy cavalry.

But things did start to look up for me. The warband disintegrated under a hail of pilums (pila?). I finally killed the horse I'd been sparing with. But it was not completely sunshine for me because it cost me two units of Romans.

My forces were slowly being ground down however. I was saved from complete and utter defeat by the onset of darkness (AKA reaching the end of the allotted time). You can see the ugliness of my position. The white markers are one hit, yellow are two hits, and red are 3.