Heliopolis, the first try

This was our first try of the Heliopolis scenario.  We didn't finish the game as we're still not very familiar with the rules but it was a decent test.

Set up initially uses blinds to hide deployment from the enemy.  If the units move they are revealed.  Also, enemy units within 12" of a friendly unit are revealed at the start of your turn.

The French deployed with their cavalry in the centre and advanced towards the forward Ottoman units.

Here, the French are attempting to flank the Janissary trench line, while the Ottoman cavalry launch spoiling attacks.  The Janissaries are losing the resulting firefight.

Two units of Mamelukes gang up on the French dragoons and a unit of Delis charge the flanking infantry. 

French skirmishes and attached artillery firepower breaks the end of the Janissary line.  The Dragoons are thrown back however, and the French infantry hastily form a prepared defence under pressure from the Mamelukes.    

The French infantry on their left storm the trench line and overrun the guns but the village is still help by a garrison of Janissaries.  The unit on the French far left flank held against a Mameluke attack but was forced into a prepared defence.  Another unit of Janissaries charged out of the palm groves and will soon destroy a French demi-brigade in close fighting.  They then pursued the fleeing fusiliers off the southern table edge into Cairo, from where they can raise the Fellahin in revolt.

The French and Ottoman cavalry clash on the right of the field near the ruined mosque.  The Hussars and Chasseurs send some Turkish horsemen packing but the Guides and Dromedaries cannot hold onto their flank.

Lacking infantry support and with the French forming prepared defences the Ottoman horsemen pulled back to regroup with a line of fresh reserves that had come up from the main army.

With time running out and the French heavily on the defensive we called it a day and headed home.

Here are a few bases I knocked up to give the battlefield a bit of ancient character.   They are meant to signify the Roman and Hellenistic ruins that dotted the area.

Not a bad first test.  It remains to be seen if the french can successfully advance in the face so so many sabre wielding horsemen but the rules seem to work well.  We may eventually need to add some house-rules for the "carré d’Egypte." but I think we should persevere with the rules as written for a bit longer. 

The Battle of Heliopolis, 1800

In the spring of 1800, the French Armée d'Orient was on the defensive. Cut off from Europe by Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile and having suffered defeat at the siege of Acre, they were then abandoned by Napoleon who returned to France with his favourites.  Nevertheless, now under the command of the redoubtable Jean-Baptiste Kléber, they were still a formidable fighting force and retained control in Egypt.

By mid March, a newly arrived British army had entered the campaign and peace negotiations had collapsed.  The Sultan's undisciplined but numerous forces, led by the one-eyed Grand Vizier, Yusuf Ziya Pasha, were closing in on the main French base at Cairo.  Despite this strategic weakness, his insecure supply lines, and being badly outnumbered, Kléber opted to go onto the offensive and engage the main Ottoman field army.

 

The Grand Vizier sent Nassif Pasha with a strong vanguard of Janissaries, reinforced by artillery and cavalry, to block the road out of Cairo at the village of Al Matariyya. Yusuf Ziya Pasha positioned himself further north near the village of Al-Khankah with the rest of the army.

The French advanced north, along the east bank of the Nile, with all the forces Kléber could pull together, and leaving only a skeleton garrison to defend Cairo against the inevitable uprising.

The following map, stats and rules present the historical scenario for the Battle of Heliopolis using the Blucher Napoleonic rules by Sam Mustafa.  

Set Up

Set up the table as shown in the map below. Al Khankah, Saryaqus, Al Marg and Al Matariyyah are urban areas. The green areas are groves of palm trees and count as woods. Birkat al Hajj is an impassable water feature. The ruins count as rough ground. The road is continuous from the north table edge to the south. Units may exit from the southern table edge into Cairo. The Ottomans deploy first. 

 

The Ottoman Advance Guard must deploy within three base widths of Al Matariyya village. The Janissaries and artillery may be deployed in entrenchments. One infantry unit may be garrisoned in the village. A single cavalry unit from the Cairo Force must deploy within one base width of the ruined mosque. The other units of the Cairo Force must be deployed within three base widths of Al Marg village. One infantry unit may be garrisoned in the village. The main army must be deployed within three base widths of the north table edge. One infantry unit may be garrisoned in the village of Al Khankah.

The The French army must deploy within three base widths of the southern table edge.

The battle starts at dawn with the French taking the first turn.

Victory Conditions

Breaking the opposing army is the primary victory condition.
If both armies exceed their morale in the same turn the game is a draw. 

If neither side's army morale is exceeded, victory is based on control of objectives and the Ottoman units that have exited the southern map edge into Cairo.

Count victory points at nightfall, or when both players mutually agree to end the game.

Each broken enemy brigade – 1 point
Control of each village – 3 points
Each unbroken Ottoman unit that exited via the southern table edge – 1 point

The Ottoman Forces

Ottoman Field Army [Army Morale - 8] - [179pts]

CinC Yusuf Ziya Pasha

Advance Guard [1st Corps] - Nassif Pasha - [42pts]
A♠ Janissaries - [Elan 5 Conscript, Impetuous, shock] – [6pts]
2♠ Janissaries - [Elan 5 Conscript, Impetuous, shock] – [6pts]
3♠ Janissaries - [Elan 5 Conscript, Impetuous, shock] – [6pts]
4♠ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
5♠ Mamelukes - [Elan 6 Impetuous] – [9pts]
6♠ Modern Artillery - [5,4,4,3,2,2 ] – [6pts]

3 Entrenchments [3pts]

Cairo Force [2nd Corps] - Ibrahim Bey - [44pts]
A♣ Mamelukes - [Elan 6 Impetuous] – [9pts]
2♣ Mamelukes - [Elan 6 Impetuous] – [9pts]
3♣ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
4♣ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
5♣ Provincial Infantry - [Elan 5 Skirmish, Conscript, Impetuous] – [7pts]
6♣ Provincial Infantry - [Elan 5 Skirmish, Conscript, Impetuous] – [7pts]

Main Army [3rd Corps] - Seraskier Mahomed Pasha – [93pts]
Suvarileri
A♦ Regular Cavalry - [Elan 6 Impetuous] – [9pts]
2♦ Regular Cavalry - [Elan 6 Impetuous] – [9pts]
3♦ Regular Cavalry - [Elan 6 Impetuous] – [9pts]
Janissaries
4♦ Janissaries - [Elan 5 Conscript, Impetuous, shock] – [6pts]
5♦ Janissaries - [Elan 5 Conscript, Impetuous, shock] – [6pts]
Topijis
6♦ Modern Artillery - [5,4,4,3,2,2 ] – [6pts]
7♦ Old style Artillery - [4,4,3,3,2,2 Heavy] – [6pts]
Delis
A♥ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
2♥ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
3♥ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
4♥ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
5♥ Provincial Cavalry - [Elan 5 Impetuous] – [6pts]
Sekhans
6♥ Provincial Infantry - [Elan 5 Skirmish, Conscript, Impetuous] – [7pts]
7♥ Provincial Infantry - [Elan 5 Skirmish, Conscript, Impetuous] – [7pts]
8♥ Provincial Infantry - [Elan 5 Skirmish, Conscript, Impetuous] – [7pts]

The French forces

French Armée d'Orient [Army Morale - 4] – [177pts]
CinC Jean-Baptiste Kléber - [Mobile] – [10pts]

1st Infantry Division [1st Corps)]- Reynier – [78pts]
Brigade 1/1 - Robin
A♠ 22e demi-brigade légère - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery] – [14pts]
2♠ 9e demi-brigade de ligne - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery] – [14pts]
Brigade 1/2 - Lagrange
3♠ 13e demi-brigade de ligne - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery] – [14pts]
4♠ 85e demi-brigade de ligne - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery] – [14pts]
Reserve - Songis & Sanson
5♠ Foot Artillery - [5,4,4,3,2,2 Heavy] – [9pts]
6♠ 25e demi-brigade de ligne & Grenadiers - [Elan 6 Skirmish Shock] – [13pts]

2nd Infantry Division [2nd Corps] - Friant – [56pts]
Brigade 2/1 - Belliard
A♥ 21e demi-brigade légère - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery ] – [14pts]
2♥ 88e demi-brigade de ligne - Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery – [14pts]
Brigade 2/2 - Donzelot
3♥ 61e demi-brigade de ligne - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery] – [14pts]
4♥ 75e demi-brigade de ligne - [Elan 6 Skirmish Attached Artillery] – [14pts]

Cavalry  [3rd Corps] - Leclerc d'Ostein – [33pts]
A♦ Horse Artillery - [5,4,4,3,2,2 Mobile] – [9pts]
2♦ Combined Light Cavalry (22e Chasseurs & 7e Hussars) - [Elan 5] – [7pts]
3♦ Combined Dragoons (3e & 14e régiment de dragons) - [Elan 6] – [10pts]
4♦ Régiment de dromadaires & Guides à cheval - [Elan 5] – [7pts]

   

This is a first draft of the scenario.  I will amend it as and when necessary , especially after play testing. 

Dragoman Magazine rediscovered

While doing a bit of online research I have stumbled across this online archive of the old Dragonman magazines.

Once upon a time, this was amongst the best information us wargamers could get on the Ottoman army of the Napoleonic period.  Sadly, I lost my saved copies in a hard drive failure years ago and with Magweb long gone I couldn't recover them.  However, it now seems the archives are available again here.  Research has moved on since the late 1990s but there is still a lot of good old stuff here and I look forward to a bit of nostalgia. 

Yet more wandering in the rpg underworld

Here are some more OSR RPG links, for my own record, but interspersed with some cool art from Hitoshi Yoneda.

Blogs

Campaign Conflict @deeper in the game

a comprehensive guide to secret doors @ goblin punch

The hidden goblin @ taleturn

The hazard die in Mothership @save vs. TPK

Negadungeons

 

Hex Crawls

Why 3-mile hexes make HEXCRAWLS fun by Mystic Arts

making hexmaps

 

Other Videos

Adversary Rosters @the alexandrian

Mike Mearls + Kelsey Dionne = An Hour of Happy @Reading D&D aloud

Deconstructing and Rebuilding RPG Design @Dungeon Masterpiece

Lazy DM Shadowdark Session 0 @ Sly Flourish

Points of light

Ruined Worlds filled With High Adventure @earthmote channel

Low prep D&D lore

Implied D&D setting 

D&D with no plot

Life on a medieval farm

D&D4E Points of light setting

Revisiting points of light as setting @ Dreams in the lich house

Miscellaneous 

I have been recently listening to the Between Two Cairns podcast.  It is good nurtured nerd fun, focusing on reviews of Old School adventures and discussion of RPGs, with Yochai Gal, author of Cairn RPG, Brad Kerr, author of adventures like Hideous Daylight, and guests, most often artist Sam Mameli of Better Legends.

A wiki on British Places Names - Nottingham is Snotta-ingas-ham, the settlement of Snotta's people 

A short article of types of forest and their distribution

My first ADLG competition!

I played in my first ADLG Competition this weekend.  The theme was 55BC, so any army from the lists for that date was allowed.  The event was organised by my club mate, and hosted at our club, so the entry bar was low.  I took a force of my newly painted Graeco-Indian troops.  Heavy on the elephants, bows and pikes but light on cavalry.  For my debut game I was facing a horde of Thracians, which almost outnumbered me two to one. 

This picture below was from later in the game but not quite at the end.  We both tried to outmanoeuvre each other.  I messed up moving my pikes at one point and was too slow engaging on the left but it wasn't a total disaster.  Fortunately, the Thracians rolled some bad command dice and that slowed their mass flanking movement on my right wing.  I did managed to kill some light cavalry, and eventually reached the guys hiding at the back in the swamp.  We ended facing off across the width of the battlefield when time ran out.

If I remember correctly, it was 11-8 to me at the close, but the much greater size of my Thracian opponents meant it was a losing draw for me on the points system.

Game two was against a Ptolemaic Egyptian army.  The main line were all pikes and elite armoured legions.  On the left I was facing four impact cavalry and a supporting unit of light cavalry.  I felt outmatched on all sides. 

I don't think my setup was great but I'm not sure what I could have done much better.  Maybe I could have placed my main Indian command on the left.  The cavalry on my right emerged out of an ambush to make matters even worse.

At first things didn’t go as badly as I feared and we held the cavalry on both flanks whilst closing in on the infantry.  The main lines clashed and again it wasn’t going too badly but then I had one especially disastrous turn and lost all along the line.  After that the collapse began in earnest.  The impact cavalry broke free on the left and holes started appearing everywhere.

I can't remember the final score but it was quite a comprehensive defeat.

Game three was against more Ptolemaics.  I deployed my pikes alongside the beach with the Indians massed on my left.  I forgot Elephants are heavily penalised in Plantations, confusing it with brush, which they ignore, but, after being reminded by my gallant opponent, came out just in time.

On the right the Egyptians advanced against my pikes with their main phalanx, and a mediocre elephant on the flank.  They also brought some mediocre pikes from reserve to face my Indians, with some scary rhompaia-armed Thracians in support.  

On my left the Great Pharaoh had more second rate Pikemen, another elephant and some skirmishers facing just a few of my cavalry.

Things went okay against the main Ptolemaic line.  The palace guards were obviously in need of some training, despite their supposed elite status.

Eventually the Egyptian right got into position to threaten my left but it was too little too late. The Thracian attack was also a damp squib and the Indians cut through them and a part of the Phalanx.

Although my army had suffered considerable losses across the whole front, and was getting close to breaking, it was holding together where it counted.   By the end, the main Ptolemaic Phalanx had collapsed and with their best Pikemen gone, and the included general killed, we tipped them over the break point. 

A surprise victory, 24-18.

Other than some very friendly WAB game days, years ago, that weren't very competitive, I had never played in any wargames competitions before.  So, I was a bit apprehensive going in but I'm glad to say my fears were unfounded and it was fun to play against new and challenging opponents.  Better still, the other players were very decent and didn't at all match the nightmare tales of 'competition wargamer' stereotype.  The day left me mentally exhausted but happy with my mid-table mediocrity.  I'm not sure I could take a two day tournament but I might try another one day event in the future.

One Hour Skirmish Wargames

We have recently played a couple of test games to try out One Hour Skirmish Wargames rules by John Lambshead.  They are simple skirmish rules in a somewhat old-school tradition but using some clever card-based mechanisms that give a fast a furious game.  I was previously put off by the lack of dice but after a couple of games I'm sold on this alternative.

John has just released a follow up Ancient and Medieval variant too, that obviously concentrates more on close combat.  We have so far tried one ancients game and one modern game.  We enjoyed both and will definitely be playing these rules again.

Here, some Roman legionaries have crossed the wall in a punishment raid against the northern Britons.  The Romans successfully burned the village but the fierce Celtic warriors made them pay in blood.
 

In our modern game we switch to the 1960s Congo War.  The mercenaries, pushing into the jungle, were ambushed by a platoon of Simbas.  The Mercs outgunned and outfought the Simbas but failed to push past the roadblock.   They were forced to withdraw with two dead and a damaged armour car.

The scenario-based games are a lot of fun and make for something different and challenging.

Graeco-Indians vs Early Achaemenid Persians in ADLG

My Graeco-Indians clash with the Early Achaemenid Persians of my club mate, Mick, King-of-kings.  I forgot to take one at set up, so this is after turn one.

Centre

Left

Right

We started fighting in the fields.  Not ideal to face Javelinmen with my elephant.

 Mick’s immortals drive off my skirmishers

 

We face off on the right.  Lots of bow armed cavalry and some camels pretending to be armoured cavalry.

My other elephant and swordsmen get stuck in.  How hard can come bowmen be to kill.  It goes quite well but disaster strikes on the right.

In the centre my cunning shift to the right crushes the reckless immortals

 

And we’re winning the archery on the right.

After compulsory pursuit the elephant is hit in the flank and destroyed!😱

Everyone else lines up

The collapse in the fields continues

The main lines clash in the centre

In the fields the Persian Javelinmen finally start to break.

As do the Sparabara who have been ground down slowly

The Persian cavalry start to outflank the Graeco-Indian right

Meanwhile a wide sweep by some Arachosian light horse threatens the embarrassingly improvised Persian camp.  Just one more hit on the disguised-camels and the camp sacking points are in the bag!

 A phoenix’ eye view of the closing stages

The last of the Javelinmen break and the Graeco-Indians salvage some honour from the wreckage on the left.

The reverse occurs in the centre as the phalanx flanks collapse.

 

On the right the Persian cavalry finally flank the Graeco-Indian line but it is too little too late.

 

 

Despite a desperate fight, the Arachosians cannot defeat the disguised camels and it is all over.

Both sides broke at this point, for the narrowest of winning draws to the Persians, 24-23.  Grrr!  So close and yet so far.