Hectic

I don't know where the time goes, up by 08 double oh, showered, bases on the new Romans painted, emails and Facebook sorted, shops, double espresso chocolate digestive, bases drybrushed, metal bits painted and now the club report, not to mention the finishing touches later this afternoon, starting on a new map project and the pub at four. Who needs exercise, no wait, most of that is sitting down.

I was introducing Julian to War and Conquest last night, as he wasn't sure about how the armies were organised I put together two which were the same size, with the same number of units but allowing for slight differences. 'The Last of the Romans' vs Saxon Heptarchy, Julian chose the Saxons, despite me pushing him as a novice towards the Romano-British, although a fairly stand up fight I do think the Brits have a slight advantage as the Saxon player needs to use the terrain to his advantage and also manoeuvre when he can.

We also used the objective cards as they are in the rulebook and I though he might as well play the first game the way it is meant to be played, I had to take the middle of the table and he had to kill my two most expensive units. Throughout the game I would of course answer questions and give him options on tactics when the situation arose.

The game was pretty straightforward and I pushed my infantry line on the centre, Julian, as new players tend to do in games took things more slowly and formed shieldwall but sent his cavalry at speed against my thinly held left. I dodged the cavalry and sent my own to help, this little action was a non event as the Saxon cavalry never managed to catch me and I didn't, until near the end, manage to inflict a lot of missile casualties on them. However, in the centre I had stupidly pushed one infantry unit up further than the others and it took some horrendous casualties from shooting, Julian could do no wrong during this phase and it was worrying me.

My shooting dice!

 I had taken the centre but kept quiet as I wanted a good fight, perhaps I should have mentioned it as it would have forced Julian to move his men out of shieldwall and towards the centre to stop me claiming it, but I didn't. Despite the talking and demonstrations we managed to get to move five with about 45 minutes left, we had not had a combat so I charged one of my units in to give an example of melee, to my surprise I won, but Julian's morale held up so we went on to his turn, he threw caution to the wind and charged where he could. I won all the combats, I was obviously better at fighting than shooting, but to my chagrin he made three morale rolls of three or under on three dice! The melees would continue, I was winning but time was running out and the Saxons should have been gentlemen and fled. Right on the last turn I did burst the first unit and that was it, as we surveyed the battlefield it looked like three to me and one to Julian as eventually his bodyguard got into the fray.

The main point was that he enjoyed the game and perhaps I have made another convert at the club, that is four of us now who are willing to play and enjoy the game, two of those are building or going to build an army as well, result.

Elsewhere we had Bloodbowl and two boardgames, one a typical wargame and the other looked to be a modern fantasy type game. In the yellow corner we had a demo game of Swordpoint between Late Saxons and Normans, there were a lot of troops on the table, which looked to disadvantage the cavalry army, but these suffer on most 6x4 tables I find, in 28mm anyway. I listened to some of the comments as the game was cleared away and they seemed positive. War and Conquest does what it says on the tin for me, so I'm sorted in that department, am I an old duffer who doesn't like change, no I don't think so as I have embraced several new games over the past two years or so, but once I get something I like it would take a bomb to shift me.

Swordpoint game.

The photographs are not very good with a slight blur, my apologies.