ADLG-R Polish v Ottoman Turks

My second ADLG-R game in a row had my Polish taking on Dave's Ottoman Turks. I thought it would be an interesting contrast between the arquebus armed Poles and the bow armed Ottomans. I had two commands of cavalry and a single large command of Polish foot, heavy artillery and the rarely-employed in FoGR war wagons!

The Poles won the initiative and attacked in the plains:

The mighty Polish cavalry on the left and centre:

The less mighty Polish foot on the right:

The Polish mounted rush forward to overwhelm the Ottoman horse while the Ottoman Janissaries (with markers for half their bases as Dave didn't realise that in ADLG-R "battle troop" infantry are two bases joined into one per element:

Ottoman cavalry try to escape the Poles but are forced to turn back and fight. Meanwhile the Janissaries are making short work of the Polish foot and war wagons:

At this stage the battle still looks in the balance, the Polish horse are doing well but the infantry are collapsing:

A whirling mass of men battling for supremacy!:

The Polish foot are wiped out and the army breaks:

A fairly short game with lots of action! Dave skilfully used his mounted wing to delay and hold up the Polish cavalry while his infantry overwhelmed the Polish infantry. 

As with FogR the arquebus seems to be a dismal weapon for foot units, against bows the bows have double the range (4MW compared to 2MU) plus bows get a +1 firing at mounted. The only positive for the arquebus is that everything has a protection of 1 but, by this period, armour is becoming less and less common. I suspect I'd even rather have bows than muskets as they still out range them (by 4MU to 3MU) and you get the +1 firing at mounted. Having said that we did miss one part of the rules where it states that in the event of a tie when shooting arquebus armed foot inflict a hit which might have made a little difference.

ADLG-R Italian Wars French v German City States

My French Italian Wars army took on Simon's German City States in an ALDG-R matchup. My army consisted of  a couple of powerful Swiss Kiel's, a Landsknecht Kiel and some supporting infantry and cavalry.

The French attacked in the plain and the terrain fell well for them. I deployed Gendarmes on the left, the Landsknecht's in the centre and the Swiss on the right:

Simon's army had a lot more Kiel's and fewer light infantry or mounted. Looking at the enemy deployment it seemed the Swiss and Landsknecht's had a clear advantage over the Germans facing them with skirmishers covering their front and units available to provide overlaps so forward they went! The Gendarmes began to redeploy to the right to face the German Gendarmes: 

The extra German Kiel's are struggling on the field-covered hill as French skirmishers rush up to delay them: 

One Swiss Kiel takes a hit from artillery but quickly rallies it off:

Some mounted archers hold the German Kiel's back to allow the Swiss and Landsknechts to move into place:

The French Kiel's charge home! The situation could hardly be better for them, two out of three are elite Swiss, one has a general included, there are overlaps on both flanks and two of the German Kiel's already have shooting hits on them. What could possibly go wrong?!

As it turns out everything can go wrong and the Swiss and Landsknechts take a battering:

From a very positive outlook things have declined with remarkable speed:

One Swiss and one Landsknecht Kiel's are broken, the other Swiss are tottering:

The French have little left in the fight apart from the Gendarmes who are too far away to influence anything:

The army is collapsing rapidly:

The last Swiss Kiel breaks and the army routs without managing to destroy a single enemy base!:

I don't think I've played a game for a long time where initially I'd been so confident of victory only to see everything collapse so quickly! The Swiss and Landsknecht's were both abysmal and were overthrown by the German Kiel's with barely a squeak of resistance. Maybe the King hadn't paid them  for a while......

 

ADLG Neo-Babylonian v New Kingdom Egyptian

An ADLG game against Ian's New Kingdom Egyptians. I had intended to use the Elamites again but, looking at the list changes in v4 of ADLG, the list had changed so much I didn't really have the figures for it.

Instead I went for Neo-Babylonian with an Elamite ally and an internal Arab ally, an army based more on these-are-the-figures-I-want-to-use than practicality! Unfortunately the pictures for this game are rather out of focus for some reason.

Initial deployment has the Babylonians on the left, Arabs in the centre and Elamites on the right. Winning the initiative was helpful as the Egyptians have desert terrain ideal for the camels:

The Egyptians have massed chariots facing the Babylonians and numerous medium foot opposite the Arabs. Sensing their might be an opportunity to attack on the left and centre the Elamite chariots redeploy to support the attack:

One potential issue with redeploying was the presence of Egyptian ambush markers in the plantation opposite the Elamite archers. The ambush turns out to be a large number of medium impact swordsmen, bad news for the archers!:

In their enthusiasm to get at the archers the Egyptian foot have exposed their flank to the Arab camels. Being bow armed and mediocre in quality the Arabs don't exactly fight well but it seems too good an opportunity to miss:

On the left the Babylonians close in on the Egyptians:

The gamble with the camels really pays off as the first Egyptian base is cut down and the camels follow up into the second:

With a couple of the Arab camels drawn away the Egyptians decide it is time to try to clear out the brush the Arabs occupy and move to contest it:

The fight on the right, after the initial success, appears to be turning against the Arabs:

However, they fight back taking out more Egyptian foot!:

Action almost all along the line either from shooting or combat:

Eventually numbers start to overcome the valiant Arab camel men who made the initial attack. Unfortunately the cavalry base in the shot is just a general marker, not an actual cavalry base:

Finally the camels and Elamite archer are defeated leaving only the Elamite light horse:

On the left the Babylonian cavalry charge into the Egyptians as do the Elamite chariots. Another Arab camel man attacks the badly separated Egyptian foot on the right:

Another Arab victory! The camels are doing sterling work:

The camels advance to attack the next Egyptian foot. Meanwhile more Egyptians assault the now lightly held brush where only a few light infantry and a single camel remain:

The Arabs continue to resist in the brush while on the left pretty much everyone charges home!:

The camels and Elamite light horse continue to mop up the Egyptian foot on the right. On the left both sides take hits:

Fighting continues on the left:

In the centre and on the right the Arabs and Elamites have very much gained the upper hand:

The last of the Egyptian foot fall to furious camel attacks:

A few more losses on the right as the Egyptian chariots break through the Babylonian archers but it is too late as the Egyptian army slides to defeat:

An excellent incident-packed game where the Arab camels were certainly the stars of the show! It was fairly close at the end with the Babylonians being 4 or 5 hits off breaking themselves. 

I think luck favoured me rather more than Ian (neither of my allies was unreliable for example and I got to attack in the desert) and the game could easily have gone the other way. As for the camels only one was killed out of four despite them fighting continuously for most of the game and they definitely deserved a men-of-the-match award!

Space Weirdo's Game 6: The Big Boss

Having missed game 5 in which the gang was attacked by Nova Corp heavies while celebrating in the pub Steed made a return for Game 6, the final confrontation with the head of the Nova Corp mining corporation. 

The gang had to break into the heavily guarded HQ compound and take control of the site. With only six gang members able to participate there was sadly no room for Mrs Peel!

As ever Gary and Jack's terrain was excellent:

The head of Nova Corp is in the office at the back. The compound is surrounded by a force field fence that needs to be disabled before the gang can enter by turning off the power in the bottom left building:

Steed and Zap Auto-cannon arrive in style in the Space Bentley and move down the elevator into the compound:

The rest of the gang wait outside for the power to be turned off:

Psycho Dave faces off a robotic guard dog:

Guards and gang members exchange fire:

Steed uses his 'Saville Row' stealth suit to sneak up to the generator building:

The interior of the HQ: 

Nova Corp boss plus the obligatory 'Mad Scientist': 

Steed enters the generator room and turns the power off: 

Two guards appear, Steed knocks one down with his deadly umbrella: 

The other pushes Steed back though and he dives for cover: 

While this was going on things had been going badly for the gang with three members down and only Steed and Space Ravi alive in the compound. The situation was very grim indeed as hordes of guards rushed towards Steed: 

A hail of fire puts Steed down and out but not (yet) dead with the guards closing in for the kill! Can anything save him at the last minute?!

Remarkably, YES IT CAN. In true pulp style Space Ravi runs through the largely denuded of guards HQ complex, cuts down the Nova Corp boss and takes control, immediately deactivating all the guards! Steed lives to fight another day....

A tough finale to what was a fun series of games. Gary and Jack's scenarios were all great fun and really brought to life by the wonderful terrain they built. Participants varied each game with everyone enjoying it greatly despite my tendency to refer to the other members of the gang as 'incidental characters'!

One of the gang, Neil, did a newspaper style write-up of the last game:

It also of course gave me an opportunity to use the Steed and Mrs Peel figures I'd painted up which I never thought I'd use (the Bentley at least made some appearances in 24 hours to Basildon CoC PSC!).