Lead from the front: KEGSCON 2021 (Better Late Than Never Review)

This quite a bit later than I had planned, but I've had a busy October.

So it's been a very long time since I went to a gaming event. The last one was the Trumpeter event in March or April of 2020. (Trumpeter has resumed as of this October but I'm no longer in BC.)

I knew that KEGS is in my area, and I've even gamed with some of its members in various Hot Lead conventions. But I learned that they planned to hold a one-day event at the end of September and I was all for it.

Come the day, I set out for Chatham early in the morning. I arrived in time to see a huddle of people waiting outside and for the GMs to be setting up. There were some interesting games on offer but I decided to go with Seven Spears, which is a Japanese variant of Sharpe Practice.

The scenario was two mirror image forces were to loot a village for rice and livestock. My good friend Stephen took the two groups of Red Ashigaru and I took the Red Samurai and archers. Stephen took his forces to the right to enter the village from the back gate. I took my forces to the left to cover the front gate.

As I was opposed by the Blue Ashigaru, I kept my Samurai back to minimize their exposure to the Blue archers. I was able to have far more success with my archers against the Blue Ashigaru than the Blue archers were having against my Samurai. Meanwhile, Stephen proceeded to thoroughly loot the village.

Opportunity came in the form of a nice hand and my Red Samurai charged the Blue Ashigaru, who were not in shield wall (or the Japanese rules equivalent). Quality told and eventually the Ashigaru routed for the cost of only 2 Red figures.

I then tried to pursue the Blue Samurai, who had looted the livestock. I could not get the chips to come out in a favourable way, so the Blue Samurai got away.

My second game was a Franco-Prussian battle using Bloody Big Battles. The French objective was to capture three villages, spread across the battlefield.

Turn 1 with green French on the far left. Prussians are capturing the middle village in the upper right.

The Prussians had a small force defending a hill on the close left edge. The French came on from that corner and later arrivals would echelon a cross the battle field. The Prussian later arrivals would similarly echelon across their edge.

Rolling up the Prussians on the left with French reinforcements arriving on the right

While my troops had better long range weapons, they were inferior in quality and lacked skirmishing. The Prussian artillery was also much better, so I figured that duking it out in a shooting match was not going to work out. I barreled forward and, to my surprise, was able to push the Prussians out of their defensive lines with relatively few casualties. It seemed that the greener my troops were on that flank, the better they did, with them eventually rolling up the entire Prussian flank and capturing the furthest village, for the cost of a brigade of cavalry and a couple of stands of the better troops.

The Prussians got to the central village first, but I managed to turn it into a reverse Verdun. I put two full brigades and their artillery against a weakened brigade defending it. Numbers eventually told as I first removed the supporting units before routing the defenders.

Rolling on the left, massing to attack the centre village, and reinforcements arriving on the right

On the right, I had basically conceded the right-most village to the Prussians, who had detached a regiment from the central brigade. My plan was to overwhelm the Prussians with my reinforcements. But the Prussians hesitated, so I occupied it instead. I instead concentrated on making enough room so that I could deploy all of my troops against the oncoming main Prussian force. The Prussians made an attempt to capture the village but they didn't sufficient numbers at the point of attack and got overwhelmed. At this point, the French controlled all three objectives and the Prussian left and centre were almost non-existent, so we called the game with a decisive French victory.

Capturing the left village, wearing down the Prussians in the middle, and defeating them on the right.

The French certainly benefitted from luck at two key moments: the mad rush against the Prussians on the first turn, especially by the green troops. I had expected them to hammered while I attacked with my better troops, so I was essentially using them as distractive cannon fodder. But they lived a charmed life throughout the game and bulldozed whatever unit happened to be in front of them. The second key moment of luck was the hesitation before the village. It meant that I didn't have to expend time and units taking the village and I could instead set about attacking the other Prussians.