On the last Saturday of March, I had my annual pilgrimage to Stratford. As was usual, Hot Lead was well attended and organized. After signing up for the first game session, I hit the vendor tables to pick up some more Warlord Russian 28mm soldiers. I also picked up a box of 28mm late war Germans. I then went to MeepleMart and pick up a 45mm gun to provide my Russians with a little AT support. Having spent my budget, it was time for some gaming.
Unfortunately, the game I had signed up for was a no-go. With the pickings being rather slim, I ended up in a DBR game set in 15th century Italy with the French attempting to exit with the Italians attacking to the flank and rear. I commanded the far right of the Italians acting as the cork to bottle up the French and prevent them from exiting to the right. Here is the general battlefield with the road that the French are on off camera to the right:
I did really well rolling to maneuver and get my troops into position. I did incredibly poorly rolling for combat, resulting in me losing a lot of troops or missing out on opportunities to destroy enemy units. Here are two shots of my rapidly disintegrating command:
Eventually, my command broke. The other Italian commander near me had his attention split between two separate commands. Unfortunately, he didn't realize how dire things were for me and wasn't able to get his units in position in time to exploit the gaps I had created. The game ended and the GM ruled that the French would have been able to push our troops aside and escape along the road. I have to agree.
In the second game, it was Barbarossa but with Romanians against Russians in a battle of tin cans with cannons and infantry. The rules were Brigade Commander and they are extremely simple and stripped down. A little too stripped down for my taste. The action was a meeting engagement with the Romanians tasked with capturing the village as their objective. I placed my artillery and mortar on the hill, T70s to the left and had my infantry run to the village to occupy it.
This game I had some pretty impressive die rolling and managed to take out half of the Romanian tanks before I suffered any losses. The Romanian tanks settled for dueling it out with my tanks. The infantry formed into a massive column and tried to assault the building held by my troops. It did not go well for them.
The third game was Dux Britannia, where the Britons were defending a village. It was pretty much laid out as three separate battles and stayed that way throughout. Here is the left of the Saxon line. I had the right.
It took me a while to work around the mine to engage the Britons actually in the town. The Saxon cavalry did manage to keep the Britons a bit distracted. However, while this was happening, the Briton cavalry charged the center Saxon units and wiped out two of them. The remaining Saxon unit did manage to hold its own and eventually defeat all of the cavalry units, with the assistance on one Saxon unit from the far left. On the far left, it was two Saxon units frontally against a British shield wall. Predictably, this did not go well and eventually the entire Saxon left routed.
On the right, things went much better for the Saxons. After an aborted charge, my second charge managed to break a two unit British shield wall. My other unit chased the third British unit from the walls and into the village. However, with the rout of the Saxon left, my attacks were just too late and my command had to break off because of the collapse in morale.
The third game was the most fun of the three.
