By Steve Cast
Mike “Knees” Newman and I had a couple of great games on Friday. What with the weather being hotter than my wife’s breathe after catching me looking at Prawn on the intraweb, we both struggled in the heat. We burnt our fingers on the figures so badly that they resembled miniature versions of David Carradines arms from Kung Fu, and every so often one of the card houses would burst into flame or a resin building would melt into a pulsating hissing blob.
However, we worked our way around these minor irritations and after the first game abruptly came to an end after only an hour and a half we played a second game this time changing sides but using the same figures.
Now, guess who won twice! Well, I’ll give you a clue. Mike was the sheep dog and I was the Coyote
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| I was out foxed by a sheep fox! |
Strangely for Mike, he turned up in trousers and trainers. I thought this can’t be right, Mike never wears arctic clothing not even sub zero temperatures.
He’s famed throughout the wargaming world for his manly knees and hollow legs, there must be something wrong with the poor fella, he must have got a touch of the old sun.
So, there I was standing in me back Garden not knowing how to broach such a delicate subject when all of a sudden it came to me:
“Mike, can you see those mountains over yonder dear boy?”
“Mountains” says Mike “Are you mad?”
“Well yes, remember who talking to. But forget all that and have a glug of my last stand Brandy....can you see them now?”
“By gad sir so I can”
“Welcome back to the known world old fella. Now about these trousers....”
It turned out that Mike had caught the dreaded red knees syndrome from drinking in too much sun. You see, I knew it was something to do with the sun.
It can do terrible things to a man can the sun, especially when he exposes his knees for too long, I should know, I’m a man with knees of me own.
Had it been anyone else I would have said that they were carpet burns but as it was Mike I took his story as gospel in that he’d been shuffling his way from Horsham to Winchester for the past week on the Pilgrims way only to find that he’d arrived a week too late for mass due to a typo in the illuminated itinerary and as such had missed out on the wine and biscuits.
As a penance he then shuffled all the way back to Horsham after which he purged his sins by drinking a whole case of wine and eating a cheesy biscuit, just to make sure that he had some solids in his stomach.
Now then, all joking aside as you know it was a really hot day on Friday but we did have ourselves a good couple of games despite the heat. Mike started the first game as the smugglers. I’d sent him all the info during the week so he’d had plenty of time to put his smuggling team together.
We did start by using the markers but these just blew away in the wind so we were forced to put the figures on the table which did take the edge off the game because you could see what everything was.
However, being the gentlemen that we are we got around this problem by mutual consent and used “Blank” figures in place of blank markers so there was still a bit of uncertainty.
The map was taken from a part of Crawley as it looked in 1874 and is not too far from where I work. Crawley was quite notorious for smuggling being on the London to Brighton road. Where it says “Farm” (Top middle square) it is in fact Jordan’s farm which is now the Toby Carvery. The road going towards ‘B’ leads to County Oak and where I work is just to the right of ‘B’.
It was a moon lit night and visibility was 1 Dav x 5”. On the first game Mikes route was from B to C going from B across fields 18 and 21.
His team consisted of 2 good leaders, 1 average leader, 8 smugglers armed with muskets, 8 armed with iron tipped staves and 2 figures leading 4 pack mules.
My team consisted of 10 militia with a good officer and an NCO plus 10 Dragoons with a good officer and an NCO.
I had the dragoons hidden in the farm and most of the Militia hidden in the houses to the left of the farm and 5 of them hidden along the left hand field boundary in the field numbered 18.
I managed to spot some of Mikes figures from the farm just as he came on table at B but I wasn’t prepared to spring my trap just at that moment, but perhaps I should have as you will see later. Mike managed to make it to field 18 at which point we both engaged in a fire fight.
As the sound of the shots would have been heard across the table this allowed me to roll my activation dice for the rest of my figures which unfortunately wasn’t very good. Being out gunned, one of my militia was killed, two bolted leaving the other two to be beaten up and captured.
Of the two that ran, the NCO recovered his composure and took shelter behind a tree in field 21 whilst his “Mate” continued to run off table.
The NCO did however put up a good fight despite his cowardly performance earlier but it wasn’t enough to hold back Mikes Smugglers and allow the rest of my militia to come into action.
As for the Dragoons they didn’t make it either thus allowing Mikes team to get off table at point C.
In game two we swapped figures and I thought I’d be clever which was probably my undoing. Mike had his dragoons hidden in the farm very much like I did and his Militia were hidden in the houses and in the small enclosure numbered 12.
My plan was to go from A to B by sending a group of smugglers (Team A) along the houses to find out what was there and deal with what they found, whilst sending the rest of the smugglers and the pack mules along the road.
Things went splendidly for team A, discovering a fair amount of Mikes militia but on trying to sneak into the houses and duff them up they found that the doors had been locked (Dice roll of a 4, 5 or 6) so all they could do was to skulk behind the hedges and wait for things to develop.
Meanwhile team B was working its way along the road but as word had reached it about the discovery of the militia in the houses it took the left turn and worked its way down road C in an attempt to cross field 21.
Sending scouts out towards enclosure 12 and not finding any enemy I became a bit too confident and on one turn I forgot to do any observation and moved a smuggler towards the enclosure only for it to be shot at with the muzzle of a militia musket rammed up its nostril.
This allowed Mike to roll his activation dice for his Dragoons and the rest of his militia. Finding a hornets’ nest of Militia in the enclosure and having sent half of my armed smugglers with team A I was badly outgunned and was getting the worst of it.
In the mean time team A had managed to break into one of the houses and was having it out with the 4 militia that they found in there. The rest of Mike’s militia came out of the houses marked 352 on the map and were working their way down road C.
I in the mean time was trying to regroup team B and fight my way into field number 18 but what with the Dragoons coming up fast from the farm and Mikes Militia breathing down my neck, it was a fair cop and the gallows awaited!
Now as far as Friday games are concerned, at the moment the factory is still working a 4 day shift so this leaves Fridays free for me so if any of you want to put a day time game on whilst the weather is still good we could always start at say 12pm. The person who is putting the game on could come round at 10am and set up.
However the game could only last the day so they’d have to be small enough so that we get a conclusion after say 5 hours allowing an hour to pack up. Anyway the offer is there if you want it.
