KEGSCon 2025

 September is KEGSCon month and I made the pilgramage to Chatham. I had planned things well and was able to attend the whole day.

This year, attendance seemed slightly down, but the quality of the games being played was up. I participated in three games.

The first game was a battle between 18th century Mughals vs Durranis (Indo-Persian empire) in the battle of Manupur (I think). Historically, the Mughals got massacred. This game was much closer, but the quality of the Durrani troops and timely reinforcements made eventual defeat inevitable. I had command of the Turks on the right wing. Things went well for me at first but a couple of ambushes slowed me up. Additionally, there were a couple of times I failed my command rolls that also put sand in my gears. Eventually, I ran out of troops at the front and could not rally the troops in the rear. A similar thing happened to the rest of the Mughal troops but to a lesser extent.

Mid to late in the game. My units are pushing hard with some success but also with significant losses due to routs (the units to the bottom of the pic)

At the end of the game. Despite heroic charges by two units of cavalry that routed four units in total, I don't have any units available to follow up their success. I have five units in poor shape that I will not be able to recover. We called the game at this point. The other Mughal player was in similar shape.

My second game was General D'Armee 2 with French-allied Bavarians defending a village against a Russian attack from two directions. I had command of the division on the upper right plus a reserve force that I could have come on. I chose at the beginning of the game to have the come on to my right. 

The start of the battle.

Initially it was a mixed bag for me. I lost an infantry unit to a cavaly charge and some poor die rolling. The other Russian player lost his cavalry unit early and spent much of his time trying to protect against the Bavarian cavalry on his right while pressuring the Bavarian infantry to his left. 

Mid to late in the battle. The Bavarian cavalry is being stymied by my squares while my skirmishers, having previously sent off the Bavarian skirmishers, are now firing away at the advancing Bavarian line. My artillery was making life miserable for the line as well. The line routed shortly afterwards. 

Meanwhile, my cavalry units in my reserve hit the Bavarians in the flank, seeing off a unit of infantry and a unit of artillery. They pinned another unit into square, which the Russian artillery subsequently started to pound. The Bavarian cavalry continued to threaten the Russian right, but the square managed to hold them off long enough for my charge to take effect.

About the same time on the other flank. 

The Bavarian morale basically collapsed at this point, but they had been able to hold the village for long enough that the GM declared a draw.

The third game was a Wild West shootout with every figure for themselves. I think we started with 14 players.

The view down the main street before things heat up.

I started off in the blue building in the lower right.

I had placed my figure early. Three players joined and they placed themselves close to where I was. They started shooting at each other. One was shot dead right away and another one was wounded. I seized the opportunity to go to an open window and gun down another player in the back. Every man for himself!

Me about to shoot someone in the back. I guess my hat is more black than white.

After a while, I got tired of trying to kill someone who couldn't do much (down to one action per turn, severe movement and firing penalties). While it was easy to hit someone, killing them was tough to do.

This was near the end. Bodies everywhere. I'm near the fence and starting to draw fire from the buildings on the other side of the tracks. 

KEGSCon 2022

 Wow, it's been a long time since I posted.

In terms of gaming, it has been pretty quiet. I went to Hot Lead. I started to create a post for it but never got around to finishing it. I unpacked a couple more gaming boxes into my hobby area but that is far as I got.

But I did go to KEGSCon last weekend in Chatham. I ran a game of Chain of Command, which went fairly well. I find that most CoC gamers in conventions tend to be cautious, and this game was no exception. While the Russians were getting pretty shot up, since we were playing the Probe scenario, they did have a chance for a win if they got some good movement rolls and resolutely pushed on.

After the initial deployments, with Russians on the right and Germans on the left.

The Russians at the top have been massacred to ineffectiveness while the Russian pressure at the bottom is taking effect

Near the end of the game, the Germans advanced at the bottom as did the Russians at the top.

In the afternoon, I played in a game of late medieval Swiss against Burgundians. The Swiss really need to close quickly and get stuck in, but were doomed by poor morale rolls at inopportune times.

Swiss advancing against the steady Burgundians and then failing morale rolls. Only half the Swiss units are still on the board

Other games included an IABSM featuring a British assault on a German fortified hill late D-Day.

A Charlie Company game with the Viet Cong assaulting a US position.

Finally, a Mexican Revolution game (using Sharp Practice 2 rules)

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.

Final position with the French in control of all 3 villages

My thanks to both Mitch and Brian for putting the games on. It was so nice to go to a con and play games in person.