Taking Meg (or Pike me, baby, one more time)

We played our second game of The Pikeman's Lament this Saturday at The Panzer Depot in Kirkland, WA. We'd been pretty much on haitus through the summer, but now that Fall is here, there's more time to play.

The forces

We had four players on a 6' x 8' table. Mike Lombardy and I were on one side, Troy Wold and a new player named Ralph (or Malcolm depending on when you asked Troy) were on the other. The forces were two 24-point companies per side.

Mike Lombardy had his atomic Poles:
2 x Elite Aggressive Gallopers (wingéd hussars)
3 x Aggressive Gallopers (pancerni)

I had my 16th c. Irish in their first game:
1 x Elite Forlorn Hope (redshanks)
1 x Aggressive Forlorn Hope (gallowglass with my commander)
1 x Pike
1 x Shot
1 x Commanded Shot (kern with calivers)

Troy had a 30 Years War force:
2 x Elite Pike
1 x Pike
2 x Shot

Ralph had a force using my ECW figures:
1 x Aggressive Forlorn Hope (angry pikemen plus the commander)
1 x Elite Forlorn Hope (firelocks)
2 x Commanded Shot (dismounted dragoons)
1 x Field Gun ("Murderin' Meg")

Scenario and deployment

We played the Gå På scenario, basically a free for all. No objective other than the enemy.

The field I set up had a lot of terrain. I was fearing a replay of Mike's Pancerni division coming at me and wanted enough places to hide to make a game of it. It turns out that Mike was my ally this game and so I gave good ground to Troy, who was opposite Mike with his units taking position in difficult terrain and behind stone walls and hedges.

Ralph was opposite me. He had a bit of a problem in placing his field gun, which is immovable in the game, but can command the field—if you manage to keep rolling 8s for activation.

I put my pikes and shot just left of our center with the idea of advancing them up to fight on the hill that dominated the center of the board. The kern, redshanks, and gallowglass were on the far left in the town on the other side of the river. My plan for them was to advance up the side and attack Ralph's field gun from the flank while my pikes and calivers were getting shelled from three feet away.

Kern in the bog, gallowglass and redshanks in the town

The game

Mike's aggressive Poles couldn't help but quickly pitch into Troy's pikes. Aggressive Gallopers in TPL really aren't a subtle unit type. In a broader tactical situation, you might keep them as a force de frappe to be unleashed after you've softened up a position with shooting. But with no shooters, Mike had to go pretty much straight at 'em from the get-go.

It wasn't pretty.

Mike's Pancerni division crashes into Troy's pikes

Mike managed to inflict a lot of hurt on Troy, but at a cost. Hard-hitting 6-figure units can do a lot of damage, but can't take a lot before they're in trouble. In the initial clash, Mike managed to rout one of Troy's pike units, but had to struggle against another.

Donnybrook on the right

The advance of my pike and shot in the center was harassed by "Murderin' Meg." There were enough attempts where Ralph failed to activate—rolling an 8 is on the wrong side of the odds. However, when he managed to shoot, it was Katie-bar-the-door.

The Hiberno-Polish center advances

The shot wavered and rolled back from one shot, but the pikes seemed to stand it well, even after taking losses.

Irish pike crest the hill and on to glory (and death)

Working my flanking force along the river took a while and it was several turns before I got in range.

Gallowglass and kern leaving the town to march on the flank

By then, Ralph had moved his firelocks over to protect "Murderin' Meg" and there was a brisk firefight at long range between his firelocks and my redshanks.

Redshanks engage the firelocks at long distance

My kern, however, entered in and the weight of shot soon took out the firelocks.

"Murderin' Meg" and the firelocks

In the center, my pikes managed to crest the hill and drive one of Ralph's dismounted dragoon units out from behind a hedge. That was their high-water maker, however. I couldn't get them to advance across the hedge to the green fields beyond and Ralph's other dragoon unit and Troy's shot peppered away at me until I spectacularly failed my morale test. Good-bye pikes.

The pikes take the hedge

Troy and Mike kept at it hammer and tongs on our right. It seemed bad for Mike, he lost his commander along with his unit and two of his pancerni. But he rolled the blesséd 6-6-6 activation (boxcars followed a by a 6 on the special chart), which brought 4 points of units on the table for him. He resurrected on of his pancerni and went right back to it. Troy, meanwhile, had lost his other two pike units, including his general, and had his centermost shot unit—the one that shot up my pikes—in danger of being overrun.

Ralph blasted my shot unit down to three figures and I couldn't pass the moral test to keep 'em around. That left him free to turn "Murderin' Meg" towards my flanking force. But I was able to shoot his crew away before he could unleash a whiff of grapeshot at me. My gallowglass, The O'Sullivan at its head, rushed in to take the gun position.

The O'Sullivan and his gallowglass take "Murderin' Meg"

Mike had swept away Troy's shot unit in the center, leaving Troy with just his one shot unit that was over on the other flank. Mike then started to move towards Ralph's troops, ignoring Troy's surviving shot. He caught Ralph's dragoons, who failed their evade test, and killed every figure in the unti. Being Commanded Shot in the open, the dragoons had a stamina of 1, which is not what you want to have when you struck by Polish Wingéd Hussars.

At this point, all that Ralph had left was his Aggressive Forlorn Hope. Troy only had a single, damaged shot unit. My redshanks and gallowglass were in great shape, Mike's hussars and pancerni were both at full strength. We'd been rolling for game end for a couple turns and still getting to roll to play on, but Troy and Ralph threw in the towel. They'd lost 38 out of 48 points. We'd lost 22 of our original 48, but Mike had gained 4 points in reinforcements.

This is the end

The whole game lasted about 2 hours and we all had a great time at it. I've come to love the "Rampant" series of games from Dan Mersey. The Pikeman's Lament is especially nice because there's a lot of versatility with defining unit types. For example, I used the dragoon units in our first game as Dragoons, but made them Commanded Shot to try out how they'd work in a terrain-heavy game where they could skulk and shoot. Although Ralph put them in open ground and even my kern (also Commanded Shot) spend the game in the open. It never really came up to have to put them in cover.

I'm happy that my Irish did reasonably well in their first game as a company. When I made the ECW company list, I gave it "Murderin' Meg" thinking that I'd be the one throwing thunderbolts with it. It's not a pleasant thing to be on the receiving end—but I have the delight of having captured the gun by game's end.

Dice and accoutrements

I was able to get another of my unique "Rampant" barker markers into play.

I have two of these, which I got from Warbases in the UK. They're made of MDF and assemble quickly with a bit of white glue. After they were assembled, I distressed them severely with a small knifing file to make a lot of nicks in them. Nothing looks pretty after sitting in the Irish countryside for a few centuries.

I also went back to using my beloved Viking bone dice. My game, my misshapen non-cuboid instruments of chance.

They didn't fail me. My rolls were never spectacular, but I passed nearly all of my activation tests, even getting boxcars twice—and never rolled snake-eyes. My shooting and combat dice were well enough to do the job, so I was happy with the little guys.

They didn't get in the game—but might have if I'd rolled the 6-6-6 activation—however, I wanted to show a pic of the first of my English units for the Irish Project: Pikes.

Lizzie's boys looking formidable

The Timeline/Graven Images/Hoka Hey! line makes a nice command set for the "garrison troops," so I can add some flags for color. The flags I used for them are Pete's Flags, which are available from his eBay store. He only has one sheet of Irish flags, but three for the English. It's a pity, though, that there isn't a corresponding command for Irish pikes. Even with the flags, there's no one to wave them.

Rampant in Gig Harbor

This Saturday we had a Lion Rampant game day at the Gig Harbor, WA public library. Pat Lowinger runs this annually. I was all set to go last year, but Grendel's sickness and death took the mickey out of me and I didn't manage to get my El Cid Spanish retinue completed. (It is, in fact, still uncompleted, which necessitated my borrowing an army for the day.)

En route

Having 58 miles to cover, and always unsure of how the traffic will be, I took my trip south in stages. I started out from home around 9:00 and stopped to have delicious Swedish pancakes for breakfast at Family Pancake House in Edmonds.

From there I headed down I-5 and when I hit Tacoma, I turned off to visit the Tacoma Book Center. It looked even more packed than before. I meant to just stroll in and browse—the game day started at 12:00 and I was making good enough time that I had time to kill. However, I didn't manage to leave until I bought four books on Medieval warfare. I seem unable to ever leave a bookstore without books in hand. C'est comme ça.

From Tacoma Book Center, the next stop was the Gig Harbor library. To get there, I had to cross the Narrows Bridge, which was made famous back in 1940 for its spectacular collapse.

The only life lost back then was Tubby, the poor cocker spaniel who was left in the car and went down with it when the bridge collapsed. An attempt to rescue him before the collapse failed when he was too frightened to get out of the car and bit one of the people trying to pull him out.

My trip across the bridge (rebuilt in 1950 and with a second span completed in 2007) was much less eventful. No lives—animal or otherwise—were lost.

Doubly stable now

I got the the library just after 11:00 and we started setting up. The venue is very nice, with room to fit six tables comfortably (and more uncomfortably). There's access to the meeting room from outside and it was a very short schlepp to bring in our toys 'n' terrain 'n' stuff.

Setting up

We set up 6 tables and had about 10 people playing. There was no tournament, just find an opponent and play. I got two enjoyable games in.

Game 1

My army for the day was borrowed from Mike Garcia. He was playing Medieval Russians and I used his Mongols. I think I gave him reason to think he ought to have loaned me the Russians and played the Mongols himself.

We played on the table I set up with all my terrain. It was nice to get my new trees on a table. We set out the units in our retinues and I won the die roll to start first.

Mongols are, I have learned, a lovely army. I made a retinue with 2 x Mounted Sergeants with bows, 3 x Mounted Yeomen, and 1 x Bidowers. The whole army is fast-moving missile troops. The Mounted Yeomen can skirmish and evade, the Bidowers can scoot through terrain, and the Mounted Sergeants provide a bit of close combat backbone.

Opening moves

In the initial sparring, I lost one of my Mounted Yeomen units when Mike got off a nice shot at it, taking out two figures, and I rolled snake-eyes for my courage test. That had me worried because that unit constituted my entire right wing. Everything else was concentrated on the center and left.

But in the center, I managed to get the advantage on Mike's two Foot Yeoman units. They suffered under the Mongol bowfire. I charged one with my Mounted Sergeants and that was that. The other one broke from an extremely failed courage test.

Running down the oiks, Mongol style

Through bowfire and combat, I managed to wipe out Mike's center. Mike's dice didn't treat him well. I think I had better than average luck. I used my reliable, venerable bakelite dice. I brought my beloved Viking bone dice, but since they're only vaguely cuboid, I figured someone may object to agents of chance that couldn't possible be truly random (though I can attest that they fail me as often as they favor).

The ending action was the combat between Mike's general's unit and mine. We were both Mounted Sergeants, though I had bows. I took it badly in the combat, being beaten twice, but my supporting units managed to put enough arrows into Mike's unit that it evaporated.

Vladimir's last stand

Game 2

For game 2 of the day, Dean Motoyama and Ron Beery challenged Mike and me to a 2:2 game. They'd played each other earlier and were looking for another game. So we added another table to the one Mike and I played on and rotated my felt mat so it perfectly covered the 6' x 8' surface. (I was worried initially that the mat I brought would be too big.)

Table set, forces deployed

I was on our right, Mike was on the left. Opposite me was Dean with his bowless English 100 Years War army. Dean was trying to bring the minimal number of figure, so he had four expensive 6-figure units: 1 x Mounted Men-at-Arms, 1 x Mounted Yeomen with bows (+ expert), 2 x Foot Men-at-Arms. It looked to me more formidable than it turned out to be. Englishmen without bows are kind of a toothless dog.

Mike's force was the one he used in our earlier game: 3 x Mounted Sergeants, 1 x Mounted Yeomen with bows, 2 x Foot Yeomen.

Ron brought the big guns. The core of his force was 2 x Crossbowmen with pavises. They were formidable. The pavises make them hard to hurt, but they inflict hurt at 18". They felt kind of like Hussites without wagons, Foot Hussites, or Hussites zu Fuß. He also had an Archer unit and 2 x Mounted Sergeants.

Dean and Ron won the coin-toss, but elected to receive on turn 1. I pushed my troopies forward against Dean, whose units were all deployed back or behind trees. I was soon able to start pouring bowfire into one of Dean's Foot Men-at-Arms. It takes a lot of 5s and 6s to remove a figure, but I slowly whittled him down.

The fight on the right

I was troubled a bit by Dean's Mounted Yeomen, but I was ultimately able to bear more weight of shot against him—though they fought bravely to the last figure.

On our left, Mike had to contend with Ron's death-dealing Hussites zu Fuß. Actually, we both did, though Mike got the brunt of it. I lost two units in the game, both withering under a hail of crossbow bolts.

Attacking the Hussites zu Fuß (to no avail)

Mike managed to attack one unit with one of his Mounted Sergeants—and push it back, though without being battered—but the attack faltered when Ron started pounding him at close range with the crossbows. That was Mike's high-water mark. He soon lost hist two Foot Yeomen to arrows and crossbow bolts (mental note: Foot Yeomen = pin cushions), and had nothing left to challenge the center. By the end of the game, he was riding around the flank with his surviving two units to see if he could worry Ron's edges without coming into range of the fearsome Hussites zu Fuß.

On my end, I had eliminated two of Dean's units, which was half his force, and was working away on the second Foot Men-at-Arms with my surviving four units.

Hunting Men-at-Arms in the woods

I eventually got it, but not before it managed to charge one of my Mounted Yeomen, which failed to evade. They tore it up, but not fatally. Dean's Mounted Men-at-Arms never got into the fray. He held them back. That was the unit his commander was with and I suppose he didn't want it tearing around the field making unwise charges against units in rough terrain.

At this point, we called the game. Dean and Mike were effectively spent at one and two units remaining respectively. I was still above half strength, but barely. Only one of my units was at full strength and one was reduced to just 2 figures. Ron was sitting pretty. He'd taken just a few losses to one of his Hussites zu Fuß units and a few to his Archer unit, but was comfortably above half strength for both. Every other unit was pristine. His retinue hardly broke a sweat and I wasn't about to tackle him.

After that, we picked up and packed up. I had a long drive home and left just after 4:00. I stopped for lunch/dinner at the Carl's Jr. just over the highway from where we played. I grew up in California where we had Carl's. It's new-ish to Washington. There are a few somewhat near to me, but out of the way. Since there was one athwart my path, I had to stop. Carl's was as delicious as I remember it, though they've added menu items and changed their fries. I loved the Carl's fries I recall from my youthful days in CA. The new fries are good, just not as good as before—or maybe my memory is faulty. I left CA 30 years ago.

It was great to have a Lion Rampant game day. I'm quite chuffed to have been able to use my new Lion Rampant version of the "Barker marker."

Lion Rampant is one of my favorite games, though I hadn't played straight-up Lion Rampant in quite a while. Everything I've been playing has been focused on variants like Quetzalcoatl Rampant and Pikeman's Lament.

I have a renewed interest in getting my El Cid retinue finished and in making progress with all the Old Glory Medievals I bought 20 years ago for the Pig Wars Late Medieval variant I did. I'm also getting eager to play Chariots Rampant, Pat Lowinger's Late Bronze Age variant that was published in Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy 82—I've already priced out a Mitanni retinue using Foundry figures...