On Friday March 18th, 2016, I drove out to Stratford, ON, for Hotlead, the largest war gaming convention in Southern Ontario.
Typically, I only go on the Saturday morning but convinced the wife that if she came with me, we could go Friday night and she could have a night of relaxation away from the kids and do her own thing on the Saturday in Stratford. She agreed and grandma and grandpa stepped in to babysit.
I ended up taking loads of photos on my camera but haven't uploaded them yet, so I'm hoping to have a second post in the next few days showing the various games tables.
We checked into the hotel and then went out to dinner. We were back at approximately 6:00pm and I quickly scoped out the room.
I quickly found three contenders despite being a 28mm guy:
Chasing the Tiger: Inter-War 1924 China, a 20mm inter-war game using Osprey’s “A World Aflame” rules presented by Patrick Mooney.
The Bomb Factory, a 20mm modern skirmish game presented by Hotlead organizer, James Manto.
Dux Britaniannrum, a 28mm Arthurian era game from Too Fat Lardies presented by Cain Carter and Frank Kailik.
I've played games hosted by Frank in the past. He is a fantastic game-master, presenting rules clearly and modifying them appropriately for convention demonstrations. That and his terrain and miniatures are simply fantastic.
James'The Bomb Factory has beautiful terrain, I've been following it on his blog.
http://rabbitsinmybasement.blogspot.ca/
I love the interwar setting and Patrick's terrain was also fantastic.
I decided to sign up for Chasing the Tiger.
The scenario was this:
Rescue the Western Sailors taken captive by Chang Tso-Lin's Fengtien forces during the Second Chihli-Fengtien War in the Port City of Dongling.Can you lead international alliance made up of French Marines, FFL and American Naval landing forces? Or... can you successfully defend the port city of Dongling from the imperialist Western powers?
I joined the Fengtian forces and was "awarded" by having my troops guarding the dock. I was effectively just a speed bump the French and American alliance have to slow down for.
Anyway, on to the pictures:
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The view of the table. Port city in bottom left. Small village, top left and the water on the right.
The water with two allied landing ships and a fixed freighter.
My unit's starting position. I had 14 troops. 1 Officer, 1 grenadier, 1 SMG, and 11 rifles.
My unit's vitals. Just an average group of troops.
The first group of French land and some hand to hand fighting occurred. Despite rolling a natural 1, I held off the invaders as they rolled natural 1's as well. Not a great start.
More and more American and French troops land. I am alone and outnumbered, help is on the way but will it arrive in time?
I decide it won't and redeploy part of my force into a building leaving those in hand to hand to fend for themselves.
A unit of Chinese troops and Dare-To-Die fanatics have barricaded the lanes and are hampering the advance. My troops in the building were under attack and despite killing several allies eventually surrendered.
The allies push forward.
They over-run a second unit of Chinese troops, causing them to fall back and regroup.
At this point, the game was essentially finished. The allies had not achieved their objective and were running short on men. The Chinese units had slowed them down but at a severe cost. But we decided to fight to the death as the Chinese had 2 full units making their way from the village.
A great game and I went to purchase the rules, Osprey’s “A World Aflame” but one of my opponent's had purchased the only copy brought for sale to the convention.
and was in bed by 11:30pm.
I awoke early (5:15am) and was in line by 8:30am to register for the 9:30 game. I also had some wares for sale to drop off at the Bring & Buy.
Unfortunately, the line was ridiculously long at 8:30. I chatted with the fellow in line beside me and we both agreed we wanted to play Dark of the Sun, a 28mm skirmish game set in the Belgian Congo using game-master Danger Dan Hutter's own rules.
I played his African set Imagination game last year and was looking forward to playing Dark of the Sun. However, when I got to the head of the line, there was only one spot for Dark of the Sun. I let the fellow beside me take the spot and I signed up for Dux Britaniannrum instead.
My starting forces. Archers and skirmishers up front, two units of infantry, a command stand and cavalry unit to round it out. Each player (there were 6 of us) had similar forces. My side was Romano-British and we were facing off against Saxons. The Saxons were trying to plunder our supply cart and sack our watch tower. If either side's morale fell to 0, the game was over.
We started with 7 while the Saxon's had 8 morale.
Advanced my infantry, archers and cavalry and quickly lost 2 cavalry to archers on a hill. The dice God was very BIASED against the Romano-British for the ENTIRE game.
Those pesky Saxon archers and infantry hiding in the woods.
I moved my skirmishers into the town as Saxon skirmishers advanced. The Saxon light cavalry are on the hill.
My 2 man cavalry unit was charged by the 4 man Saxon cavalry. While we each suffered a fatality, my lone horseman turned tail and fled through my archers, shocking them.
There's the supply cart in the foreground. My allies can be seen between the field and the fort and on the far side of the fort.
The Saxon middle advances.
The Romano-British advance on the right to meet the Saxon left, but are crushed and flee the field.
Somewhere at this point we are down to 2 morale points remaining while the Saxons are at 7.
I whittle down the cavalry with arrows.
Skirmishers advance and both sides throw spears with no fatalities. But those Saxon infantry are getting close.
The red caped cavalry are heavy cavalry and just waded through 2 units of Saxon light horse. The tables start to turn.
The Saxon cavalry are eliminated and the infantry form a shield wall.
My skirmishers fall back against superior numbers.
The Saxon middle is charged by the heavy cavalry and elite infantry. Battle is fierce with the Romano-British causing severe casualties to the Saxons dropping them to 3 morale points.
The remaining troops locked in deadly combat. However, the Romano-British fell to 0 morale and the game was called.
All in all, a fun set of rules played with great figures on great terrain.
Another successful Hotlead!!
