Fall In 2016: Poland Through the Ages

Attended the HMGS Fall In convention again. Unfortunately, my son Nick had college committments so I attended by myself.  Still, a great time and a particularly well-organized event.  Also, being of Polish descent, this convention's theme, "Poland Through the Ages" had a special appeal for me.  I put on two games, one set in The Deluge and the set in the Polish-Bolshevik War, more on them below.

The first game in which I played, on Friday afternoon, was Howard Whitehouse's delightfully retro A Gentleman's War, using classic toy soldiers with colorful, not-found-in-nature scenery.  Set roughly in a Victorian/Edwardian era, it involved an invasion of England by the dastardly French who sneaked over the Channel whilst no-one was looking 

A French onion seller/intelligence agent

I commanded the center of the French line but not for long.

A gallant charge by my curassiers was magnificently disastrous

The second game was the one I GM'd, this was Robbing Madonna, very loosely based on the siege of the Jasna Gora monastery near Czestochowa, the location of the famed Black Madonna icon, by the Swedes during the Deluge of 1655.  I used an adaption I had made of Science vs. Pluck, which is basically a role-playing game but where the players take the role of commanders of military units, all on the same side and the GM controls the opposition.  SvP is designed for the British colonial campaigns in the Sudan so I had to make a few changes to adapt it the Baroque era warfare, calling the modification Zagloba vs. Pluck.

In this game, the players commanded the Swedish forces tasked with capturing a fortified monastery containing a large treasury of donations, the capture of which would enhance the Swedish warchest.  I had 11 players, 9 commanding a regiment sized unit, one player I had assisting me in running the Poles' garrison and partisan forces and one player as Mother Courage, head of the Swedish camp-followers.  This latter was played with great aplomb by Howard Whitehouse himself. 

The rules provide for each turn to have a shifting time scale, from one minute up to days, based on the players intentions and the GM's plans for the opposition.  The players started with an attempt at a ruse, having the camp followers appear to be fleeing to the monastery chased by a regiment of Scottish mercenaries.  This attempt at a Trojan horse-type of attack failed when the Polish commander did not buy the ruse.  Being fired upon by the garrison, the camp followers and Scots rushed the walls.  Mother Courage herself attempted to drive a flaming vodka cart against the gate but ending up immolating herself.

In the mean time, another Polish regiment serving with the Swedes, this one of winged hussars, decided to switch sides and attacked the Scots as they retreated from attack.  Although the hussars inflicted some casualties, they were attacked from the rear and routed but not before the hussars' commander escaped to the fortress to become another Polish leader.  He later sneaked out of the fortress and organized the local partisan forces who would have devastating effect on the Swedish operations.

Initial siege operations began but the Swedes soon realized that their light guns were making too slow an impression on the walls and winter was indeed coming.  The Swedish commanding general set off for Krakow to seek heavier guns while much time was wasted in a mining operation rendered futile because the Swedes French engineering officer failed to realize that the ground under the fortress was solid rock.

There was some attempts for a negotiated surrender but the Polish garrison was feeling pretty confident.  The siege dragged on while the weather continued to deteriorate.  A Polish sortie proved to be unsuccessful due to the doughty Scots who nevertheless suffered heavy casualties.

The much hoped-for heavy guns were captured on the road by Polish partisans and the Polish light cavalry who had been serving with the Swedes managed to steal the Swedish payroll chest and set off to join the partisans.  The Swedes were left with a last do-or-die attempt to assault the walls in which a minor breach was achieved by use of a petard.  The assault was bloodily repulsed ending any chance of Swedish success and the game.  Despite the frustrating result, all the players seemed to have really enjoyed the game and threw themselves into it with gusto.

On Saturday I ran my other game, The Twelve Chairs. Set during the Polish-Bolshevik War, it was inspired by an old Mel Brooks comedy about a search for the family jewels belonging to the Vorobyninov family that had been secreted in the chair seats of the formal dining room set.  In the game, the tide of revolution and civil war resulted in them being scattered over old Ukrainian manor of the family.  I had six markers hidden on the table, each one representing two chairs.  At the end of the game, a player rolled a dice for each chair they possessed and a roll of a 6 indicated that they had a portion of treasure. So it was really like a giant scavenger hunt but with armored trains and heavy artillery.  Each player had several infantry or cavalry units, some type of vehicle, a commander and a group of "treasure-hunters" who had extra chances to search for the treasure.  I had four Polish players, five Bolshevik players, a Ukrainian player, a White Russian player, an Anarchist player, a player controlling the odd mix of nobles and retainers inhabiting the two manor houses on the board, and one player controlling a single very lost British armored car under the control of Capt Blackadder and his batman Baldrick.

The action in the game was too confusing to give a detailed narrative but it broke down into a battle between the main Red infantry force along with some Red sailors battling the Anarchist and Ukrainians over the manor houses.  This all went for naught when the manor inhabitants were able to sneak out of the mayhem with their chairs in tow.  The Red command armored train and heavy artillery battled the Whites while most of the Polish players ignored the fighting and searched the village for the treasure. 

 

There were some long range firing between the Red armored train and the Polish Blue Army train. The Red cavalry and Polish cavalry providing the fiercest battle, wiping each other out in repeated charges up the stairs to the second floor of an inn where some of the chairs were stored.  The remnants of the Polish cavalry were able to finally secure these chairs. 

Perhaps the highlight of the game was when pilot of the Kosciuszko Escadrille plane supporting the Polish cavalry - this was American flyer and future movie producer Merion Cooper, spotted some of the chairs in the railroad water tower.  Barrel rolling, he scooped the chairs out but then immediately ran into a wall of machine gun bullets put up by the Reds and crashed.  Surviving he still made it off the board with his chairs, thus ensuring that a movie about a giant monkey would be made.  The other memorable moment was when Blackadder managed to convince some of the Polish troops who had found a chair that Baldrick was really Queen Mary and they should turn over their chairs to her as a welcoming gift - amazingly they did so.
From a military standpoint, the end result was that half of the board was under red control and half under Polish control.  Three players, out of five who had gotten the chairs, ended up sharing in the actual treasure, the Red army player, the Polish cavalry player, and Blackadder.  I think all the players enjoyed the game.

Historicon 2012

My son and I attended Historicon this past weekend and had a great time. Saw lots of old friends, played in a couple of great games and ran two of my own.

We spent Thursday shopping in the dealer room/flea market and generally observing. Friday I ran my Conqueror Worm of Mars game and we played in a Gnome Wars game. Saturday I ran Goodbye to Guns and that night we played in Howard Whitehouse’s pulp extravaganza. Had a great time with it all.

I had the impression that there were a bit more “quality” games at this con than seemed to be the case with the past couple of conventions. That may just be a factor of most of the games being in a single locations but it did seem like there were more elaborate set-ups with some beautiful terrain.

I was very impressed with Bob Giglio’s Ango-Zanzibar War game, truly an epic sight.

Here’s some other games that caught my eye.

I don’t know if the John Carter movie was the influence but VSF games set on Mars seemed to be a sub-theme of the convention. There were a number of impressive GASLIGHT games put on by Chris Palmer and Buck Surdu (the authors of GASLIGHT) as well as Frank Chadwick’s game with some incredible scenery.

Regarding my own game, the Conqueror Worm, I think it went pretty well although a bit slow at time but that is probably the factor of having 10 players, most who had not played GASLIGHT previously. Everyone seemed to have a good time and got into the spirit of the thing.

As it played out, it ended up as a major but costly Imperial victory. On the Imperial right flank, the Earthling-led Martians of the New Model Army had a hard fought slugging match with the rebel Army of Protei with the latter slowly gaining the upper hand and capturing the Imperial supply base.

In the center the Worm cultists and Army of Tobansoor got in a long distance barrage with the archaic Imperial Guard army supported by the Edison Electronic Company that was led by a somewhat disgruntled employee, Nikola Tesla. The fight in this sector climaxed when Tesla (played with great mad-genius aplomb by Howard Whitehouse) jury-rigged a death ray out the generator that supplied electricity to a contingent of robots. The death ray disabled the Conqueror Worm, a huge war machine, artifact from a previous Martian civilization. While the cult priestesses struggle to repair it, they were attacked by a hidden hit squad of the Imperial Secret Service, the Silent Shadows. The priestesses were all killed.

On the Imperial left flank, the Imperial-allied Tharks, led by their favorite Earthing, Prince Ruprikt of Ruritanian, launched a flank attack on the Hill Martian forces of the cultists. Both sides were bloodied with the Tharks ultimately being wiped out except for Ruprikt. The American expatriate units were also chewed up pretty well. Things looked really dark for the Imperials when the rebel sky fleet came on in a body and moved directly to engage the hard pressed Americans. An incredibly lucky shot from the American dynamite gun saved the day, hitting the big sky galleon and knocking it from the sky with one shot. A bit later another lucky shot brought down one of the smaller gunships

The final point of the game was when the sand Martians reached a shrine in the midst of the Imperial lines and revived a buried Cephalopod war machine. Conventional weapons did little to machine. Amazingly, Ruprikt leapt onto the top, managed to open the hatch and engaged the Cephalopod pilot in hand-to-hand combat. They both managed to kill each other, leaving Ruprikt as a heroic martyr.

Friday night, we played in a Gnome Wars game. Consider that these have been around for a few years, are prominent at the convention and are in line with my personal taster for whimsical gaming, I’m surprised I never joined one previously. The rules are actually a very serviceable set of skirmish rules with plenty of humorous special rules. I played on the “allied” side of Highlanders (I ran two units of these kilted gnomes), Sikhs, cavemen, and leprechauns against a predominantly German force. The battle was for control of a village and after a rough start, we managed to get the upper hand on the Germans. Just as we were about to complete our victory, one of the other players had one of his gnomes desecrate a holy fountain by … using it as a rest room. This caused a vast horde of gnome zombies to appear but we fortunately had little trouble in vanquishing them.

On Saturday I ran Goodbye to Guns: All quiet on the Ruritanian Front. It was interesting to see how differently this one played out from when I ran it at Cold Wars. The game fell into to sections. The first was the Big Push, where American, Ruritanian, Angol-French, and Italian forces assaulted the main Central Powers trench line held by Germans and Austro-Hungarians supported by reserves of Turkish and German stosstruppen. In both games, the Central Powers proved surprisingly resistant against overwhelming odds. At Cold Wars, the Italians roundly defeated the Austro-Hungarians who were ensconced on a well-fortified mountain top while the rest of the Allies had trouble capturing the first line of German trenches. At Historicon, the Italians were unable to make much progress while the rest of the Allies captured the two German trench lines and, despite a heroic defense by some Fraulein troops, advancing well into the city.

The other half of the game revolved around the attempts to rescue the captured Princess Ludmilla. At Cold Wars, she was suitable rescued by the heroic efforts of American spy, G-8, and our hero, Ernest Hummingbird. At Historicon, the heroes failed completely, despite having the added assistance of a troop of Australian Light Horse and some Ruritanian partisans. It was suitably dramatic however, with the game ending, after a massive bombing strike by the Red Baron that wiped out friend and foe, when Hummingbird squared off against the skull-headed German villain, Der Schlager. They both rendered each other unconscious. As consolation, he awoke in the arms of Mata Hari who had switched sided as a double agent. There was also a glimmer of hope for the Princess when Joey the War-rat (the beloved pet that Private Baldrick was searching for and who had been held as lab rat in the villain’s lab) leapt into the lap of the driver of the staff car that was taking Princess Ludmilla to Vienna and the game ended with the car caroming off the board.

I had a great group of players who got into the spirit of the game, especially the role-playing aspect of it. Of particular note was our mad doctor who had the best maniacal laugh I’ve heard in years and also Walt O’Hara who played a deeply befuddled King Ruprikt.

That night we played in Howard Whitehouse’s Cairo Nest of Spies. With around 20 players, the action was too wide-spread and frenetic to give a coherent narrative but it had something to do with trying to keep a sarcophagus out of the hands of the Nazis. My son got to play a brutal Soviet agent with a penchant for sucker punching passers-by while I played the heroic British pilot Biggles who was much better behind the wheel of plane than a sports car. In appropriate pulp fashion, the good guys triumphed and the bad guys fell from airplanes.

Short-round parks the car at the Cairo Museum

A typical scene in one of Howard's games.

Biggles vs. the Traffic Circle of Death.

Overall a great time!

Tumbleweed Tank

I plan on running the All's Quiet on the Ruritanian Front game at Historicon. I decided to give the Americans a little more support. I've always liked the interwar concept Tumbleweed or Ball Tank:

RAFM just produced a version of the Tumbleweed Tank

Unfortunately, it's only in 15mm and I game exclusively in 28mm. So I decided to build my own. Here's my attempt:

It's made out of a toilet bowl float (never used!) and a couple of dome-shaped tops from Bionicle containers. The machine guns and tank gun are from old plastic toys and attached bits of sprue as the dirt-grippers. My son did the markings free-hand.