A Fistful of Pyrates; being the tale of how Lucky Jack wasn't and Don Lardo oppressed the Natives

 Unfortunately, this week's Algy game had to be postponed, so I stepped in with another pirate game. This time I opted to use Fistful of Lead, figuring it was both simpler, for the Zoom format, and more appropriate for a multi-player game.

I had intended this for our annual Christmas game but brought it forward a week; which gave me a mere few hours preparation. A shame, as I had planned a few more items of terrain and had some random events in mind, but needs must and we played the rough and ready version.

The scenarion background was that the Spanish treasure galleon, the Hispaniola, had foundered with its fabled treasure on board. The Brethren of the Coast have somehow obtained the ship's logs and charts, contained in two small chests, and hope to use these to locate the wreck. Unfortunately, one chest has been lost; it's guardian, Jim Lad Catchmole, mislaying it amongst the taverns and fleshpots of Rumtown.

Rumtown

I had designed the scenario for 5 players but, due to circumstances beyond our control, only had 3 players on the day. By dropping one force and the umpire running a force, we managed to play it as a 4 sided game.

Each force had a similar composition, in FFoL terms, and consisted of a Leader, a Specialist and 3 Grunts.

Brethren of the Coast (English faction)

Lucky Jack Quilp (pistol and sword), Mr Bangs (musket and grenadoe), 3 Freebooters swords and mixed musket / pistols

Brethren of the Coast (French faction)

Happy Dan Le Pew (pistol and sword), Pierre (musket and dagger), 3 Boucaniers (muskets)

Spanish

Don Lardo (pistol and sword), Jose (flintlock musket and sword), 3 Miliciano (matchlock muskets)

Kuna

Man Friday (bow and club), Poo Man (bow, poisoned arrows), 3 warriors (bows)

The rules were pretty much the FFOL core rules with a few tweaks for period flavour.

Grunts used a D10 and not a D8 (this kept it simple and I don't own any D8s in any case).

Poisoned arrows used the poison trait but delivered via shooting rather than close combat.

Grenades had to prepared the turn before use, taking two actions to light the fuse, and would explode at the end of the figure's next turn.

Bows had a -1 penalty on the Wound table.

Anything involving a match (grenades and matchlocks) couldn't be used in the rain.

The objective for the Brethren was to retrieve both chests and retire back to their boats. The English started with one chest but the second had to be located amongst the civilian populace of Rumtown. (Unfortunately, due to the batteries running out on my camera, I didn't get a shot of this but their were almost 20 civilians on the table). It was up to the players to decide whether they wanted to work together or contest the ownership of both chests.

The Spanish objective was to stop the Brethren, whilst the natives had the straightforward objective of killing the despised Spaniards.  

 The French began in the boats, whilst the English deployed on the opposite table edge, behind the church walls.

The Natives deployed in the fringes of the jungle on the left table edge, whilst the Spanish took the opposite edge.

What followed was an absolute hoot (or at least I thought so), despite the Zoom format, and would have been brilliant as a club game. Maybe one day.

The game got off to a flying start, on the very first card, with the Spanish playing a Joker. Unbeknownst to the players, this triggered the appearance of Baron Samedi and the potential of Shock on the activated figure.

Voodoo Chile

Inevitably, the Spanish player had activated his 3 Matchlockmen, who promptly took fright and buggered off around the back of the tavern. 

A Shocked group of Spaniards hide behind the tavern

On subsequent cards, the English approached the town square, intent on interrogating the populace, whilst the French disembarked  and began questioning the denizens of the docks - to no avail.

The English enter the Square

French scour the docks

Meanwhile, the Kuna natives were creeping from the Jungle and approaching the town.

Man Friday and Poo Man lead the warriors forwards

On turn two, after haranguing several unsuspecting citizens, in the town square, the Spanish intercepted Pedro the Pedlar and his donkey. A roll of the die revealed that said donkey was, in fact, carrying the missing chest. However, just as the Spanish were feeling smug, Man Friday and his warriors appeared at the edge of the town square and loosed a volley of arrows. Needless to say, they hit the donkey, which took fright and ran off towards the board edge, carrying the chest.

Pedro's Donkey takes fright

To add insult to injury, a second volley of arrows, aimed at the Spanish, killed Pedro.

Pedro bites the dust

With the chest located, and the civilians running for cover, it now became a race to catch the donkey. The French played a Joker, in an attempt to seize the initiative, but instead brought forth Baron Samedi. However, they weren't impressed and, shrugging off theapparition, the Boucaniers raced down the table edge to intercept the fleeing donkey.

It's that 'man' again

The English had also begun to cross the square in pursuit of the donkey but were on a collision course with the Natives who were sprinting across the square in pursuit of the Spanish. To make matters worse, a second Joker that turn heralded the onset of a tropical storm. Ranges were henceforth halved and any matches unuseable - so much for my much vaunted grenadoe!

Market square heroes

Not trusting the Natives, the English fired first and missed. This triggered the inevitable response and a volley of 6 arrows hissed towards Lucky Jack who was soon down and wounded with 2 Shock. Despite his nickname, on his subsequent attempt to recover, he rolled a 1 and promptly expired! The remaining English took the opportunity to retreat, with the second chest, and made their way back to the boats.

Leaderless English head for home

Meanwhile the French were also leading the donkey, which they had named bluebell, back to the boats.

Bluebell at the boats

With the Brethren fleeing with the chests, there then followed the funniest sequence of turns, which I apprently neglected to record!

I had given Don Lardo the Large trait, reasoning tat he was the fattest Spaniard on the Main. This meant he could take 4 wounds(instead of the usual 3) but was easier to hit. Arrow after arrow found their mark but Don Lardo kept finding the Queen of Hearts to remove wounds. That said he was wounded and down for several turns and failed to recover - he instead resorted to crawling underneath the market stall for cover. The model did actually fit, otherwise I would have disallowed it.

After another Queen of Hearts, Don Lardo recovered enough to mount his counterattack.

Don Lardo (behind the market stall) considers his options

With his matchlockmen useless in the rain, Don Lardo decided upon fistcuffs and propelled his large, and probably sweaty, body towrds the nearest native. A sword of good Toledo steel versus a bow string, what could go wrong? You guessed it Don Lardo  was wounded and down!

Another attempt to turn a Joker into the Queen of Hearts saw the appearence of Baron Samedi, once again. Fortunately, Don Lardo had had enough of this fellow, with a bone through his nose, and was unfazed.

Guess Who?

Subsequent cards, saw both sides throw more men into the scrimmage but eventually the Spanish swords took their toll and the natives ran for home.

Carnage in the Square as the Natives run for the jungle

French embark for a win

New Game - New Table

Now that we're all locked down for the foreseeable future it's an opportunity to review my home gaming resources. First up the table.

Since I joined the local wargames club, many years ago (16 maybe?) I've not really had a need for a decent table. That said I've still hung on to my old table which resides in the darker recesses of the garage. This consists of 3 boards, each 4 foot by 2 foot, that can be assembled to give a 4 by 4 or a 6 by 4 foot table. The boards are simply placed atop two old ironing boards which has the added advantage that they allow some height adjustment. One side of the board is painted blue, for naval games, and the other side is flocked. I quite like the flocked side,which is as hard as nails, being sealed with an interior varnish; none of the surface has come off in over 30 years.

So what's the problem? First off they're really too big for the available space. I played last week's What a Tanker game on the 4 by 4 configuration and it all but filled the back room (aka the War Office).

My old 4 by 4 foot table 

Secondly, these boards are heavy; they're made from chipboard and are actually off cuts from when I replaced the garage roof. Dragging them out of the garage is a right old faff and usually ends with me doing my back in.
Thirdly, although I quite like the flocked side, the blue side is not great. It does have the advantage that features such as shoals etc. can simply be chalked onto the surface but it really is a bit basic looking. So much so in fact that, last year, I splashed out on a nice new sea mat. Hence, this side of the board is now redundant.
So what is needed is something more appropriate for the available space, lightweight and easily stored. I do remember that when I was a young lad (yes I can remember that long ago - just) I used to game on my Dad's wallpaper pasting table and wondered if I could use one of these as the basis for my table. Hence, after a trip to the local DIY outlet I purchased a suitable pasting table; which was fortuitous as this turned out to be the day before lockdown.

It must be said that these things are cheap and nasty; the advantage is that they are CHEAP, lightweight and easily stored. In its folded state, the table measures 3 foot by 2 foot.

Folded table

When set up, the full table is 6 foot by 2 foot. Not a particularly useful size but I did have a moment when I realised that two of these would give a standard 6 by 4 foot table. However, sanity prevailed as the only place that I could use a 6 by 4 table would be the lounge and that was never going to happen!

The fully extended table

However, as these things are so simply made, I figured that it shouldn't be too difficult to take it apart and reassemble it  in a more useful configuration. So after a bit of trial and error I reconfigured the table into a more useful 4 foot by 3 foot.

The disassembled table

The only extra bit of work needed was to add a couple of extra legs to make the table stable. The whole thing is a bit flimsy and wobbly but I reckon this is more than adequate for its intended use.

That said, due to lockdown, it has seen more use as an 'office' desk so far - and is proving a godsend in that respect.

My new 'office'

So now equipped with a new games table, this week's lockdown game would see its first use. Once again I put on a game using WhatsApp. This time around it would be a game of our Lion Rampant variant (Rampant Fistful) and involve four players. Each team of two would run one 22 point retinue. Although this would work well with 2 players, I chose teams of two as I believe the social aspect of the whole exercise is important. This time around there would be little fog of war and the whole game would play out on a single WhatsApp group. Each team did have their own group so that they could discuss tactics and the umpire could inform them of the card draw but everything else was open to both sides. This week we also had a guest player based in Cyprus so we were also dealing with different time zones; it all seemed to work well enough although it was to be a late night for our Cypriot player!

Although we're all gearing up for our Crusades campaign I didn't have enough figures for a crusades game. However by re-purposing my crusaders as English I could pit them against my original Scottish retinue. So the table was set up to represent somewhere in the Borders.

The battlefield

I had originally intended to flock the table surface but as it is so thin and flimsy I suspect that it would warp. Hence, I used a green cloth (much greener than the photo would suggest) as the playing surface. Looks like I need to invest in a nice mat for this project. The terrain consisted of bits and pieces from my Dark Age (Dux Brittaniarum) - terrain is going to be something else I need to upgrade!

For the game we would use the 'Hold on Tight' scenario, where both sides fight over a central objective. In this case it was to be the old tumulus known as St. Kevin's Tump; a vital landmark in setting the local land boundaries.

The Scots Retinue

Foot Men at Arms*

2 Foot Sergeants

Archers

Fierce Foot

The English Retinue

Mounted Men at Arms*

Mounted Sergeants

Foot Sergeants

2 Crossbow

The game itself ran smoothly enough after the first few card plays; there was a small learning curve as players became used to the system but by and large were up and running pretty quick. For this game I dealt the cards and informed the two teams of their respective hands via their team WhatsApp groups. When activated, the players rolled their own dice and informed the umpire of the result. I then moved the figures or removed casualties as appropriate. This does require players to be honest with their dice rolls but as we're all gentlemen that was no problem.

From the outset, the English appeared to have the better plan (or a plan). Essentially the mounted and crossbows would cover the flanks whilst, in the centre, the Foot Sergeants headed for the Tump.

For their part the Scots were intimidated by the crossbow (I believe the comment was 'Two lots of crossbows? WTF?!!')

The English Plan

Both sides advance cautiously; the English to maintain a battleline, the Scots to stay in cover. In the end the English advanced to the tump and kept possession of it until the end. The Scots, for their part, seemed to have forgotten their mission and only contested possession of the tump in the last move. That said, their fear of the crossbows proved well founded as these wreaked havoc whenever they shot.

English Advance

Scots Advance

Scots seek cover 

Battle lines

English seize tump

Endgame

In normal circumstances, we usually play until 'pub o'clock' and then assess victory points. In this case we played until bedtime (or well past in Cyprus). In the end it was a decisive victory for the English with 5 Glory points versus the Scots 2 Glory points.

English Casualties

Scots Casualties

A Rampant Fistful

Well it seems I haven't blogged in awhile but with the unexpected and enforced time at home I thought I'd catch up with what we have been doing; this was meant to be a sort of wargames diary after all.
The big discovery of the year has undoubtedly been the introduction of the Fistful of Lead rules to the club repertoire (thanks Nellkyn).

A big problem we have at the club is that although there are many fine rule sets out there, for all sorts of eras and / or genres, not many cater for a large number of players. Many rules can be tweaked and house ruled enough to make them work for multiple players but not many are designed this way from the ground up. FFoL does exactly that; it will easily handle up to 8 players each with their own force. Now this is a skirmish game with each player controlling about five figures but this is perfect for a club environment where the entry level for each player is very low. It also allows us to try out all sorts of genres with minimum expenditure.
Our first game was over the Christmas period where one of our members introduced us to the rules with his rather nice collection of Border Reivers.

Clan Quilp go a-reiving

After one game I immediately took to the rules and bought a copy at once. With a bit of experimentation I also discovered that they work quite well solo as well. Looking around for suitable figures I grabbed a bunch of pirates from my son's old toy box and set to and had a blast.

After that, I thought I'd go to the opposite extreme and try something a bit more serious. I laid down a couple of my WW1 western front terrain boards and in no time at all I was carrying out a trench raid with 28mm figures.

A  Fistful of Mud

Once again the rules worked fine and I had a great time. So having tried the extremes of eight players and one player, I next went for a standard two player game; digging out a handful of figures from my 20mm VBCW collection.

Peaky Durham Blinders

Another hit and another great game.

After the Christmas break it was back to the club and a test game for this years summer campaign - the Crusades. Having put on a multi-player medieval campaign before I suggested that we use Lion Rampant as our base rule set. In a complete coincidence, it also appears that a crusading supplement for Lion Rampant was in the works and was said to be due out for Salute.

Everything seemed perfect then for the choice of Lion Rampant as our campaign rule set and we set to giving it a run out. We hit one snag though; not everyone liked it! Those players that had played before had a great time but the new players ranged from lukewarm to hating it.

Spot the veterans

The main problem was the activation system, which is probably the most contentious part of the Lion Rampant rules. With this system if you fail a unit activation then its also the end of your turn. For a multiplayer environment that can mean you can wait along time for your turn only to fail it on the first dice roll. Our veterans were fine with this but it was clear that this wasn't going to cut it with everyone. Then came the Eureka moment. A Lion Rampant retinue is in the region of 5 units per player and we have eight players. A Fistful of Lead handles up to eight players with about five figures each. If we consider each figure, in FFoL, to be a separate unit then the two games are identical in scope. Why not then use the FFoL activation system with the Lion Rampant game mechanics? After a quick solo test I believed I was on to something.

Half scale Lion Rampant play test

The system I came up with was to use the FFoL card system to determine when a unit is activated. Once activated then the Lion Rampant play sequence is followed for that unit. The unit still has to roll to move, shoot or charge but a fail only ends the turn for that unit not the whole retinue.

With some trepidation, I introduced the idea to our veteran Lion Rampant players and it was an immediate hit and , in our opinion, actually improves upon the base game to  some extent.

Having shown proof of principle, we then offered it to our would be crusaders. Once again, it was a great hit and it appeared that we had our crusades rule set.

Crusades play test

So it was game on and most of us have been frantically buying and painting figures for the Great Crusade. Although it has to be said not everyone is taking it seriously......

So everything was fine and dandy..........until the zombie apocalypse hit and the world changed. We're still forging ahead with preparations for the crusade though, it just might be postponed a bit. At least we all have painting time now.

A Fistful of Pirates

A Festive Diversion

Recently I was introduced to the skirmish rules 'A Fistful of Lead'. I'd seen several battle reports on the internet, which looked fun, but a multi-player-game with border reivers was my first game. My first thought was that these would work well with my pirates and I was impressed enough to buy the rules. Having received my hard copy yesterday I was keen to give them a go.
The author claims that they will work with virtually any figure scale so, in the spirit of Christmas, I thought I'd stretch the boundaries a bit. Now, for some unknown reason, I have pirates in several scales (come off it I'm a gamer - that's reason enough!). I have been running a solo Blood and Plunder campaign with my 15 mm collection as a stop gap until I paint up my 28 mm miniatures. I also have a handful of unpainted 54 mm plastic pirates that I had earmarked for an 'En Garde' game. However, for this game I decided to raid the boy's toy-box and use 90 mm plastic toy soldiers.
Typically, 'teams' consist of about five figures and the toy-box yielded enough for two teams of four.

So meet the rival pirate crews:

Crew one
Captain Jersey Al: leader, slow,  lucky, concealed weapon, pistol and knife.
Master Foo Yung: knife thrower, fancy footwork, axe and knife
Seaman Kato: ferocious, axe
Seaman Won Hung Lo: brute, boarding pike

Captain Jersey Al

Won Hung Lo, Foo Yung and Kato

Crew two
Captain Blessed Brian: leader, slow,  impervious, swordsman, cutlass
Quarter-Master Stinky Pete: drunkard, pet, determined, hook and pistol
Seaman One-eyed Jacques: flurry of blows, knives
Seaman Inigo Montaya : lunge, cutlass

Captain Blessed Brian

Inigo Montoya, Stinky Pete, One -Eyed Jacques

To add flavour the rules allow you to assign various character traits to the figures. I didn't follow the rules too closely in this and just assigned traits based on what the figure looked like. For instance both Captains had the slow trait - seemed appropriate as they both have peg legs. Similarly, the figure for Stinky Pete wouldn't stand up easily - hence drunkard. He also has a parrot on his shoulder so the pet trait is a given  really. Unfortunately, I never got to use this in the game but I found the idea quite amusing as the pet (monkey, parrot or whatever) has the ability to distract an opponent in close combat.
I only intended to play a couple of moves; which I reckoned would be enough as with mostly hand weapons it was always going to be quick. In the spirit of Christmas games and playing with toy soldiers, I eschewed any fancy terrain (truth be told I don't have any anyway) and just put down a board on one of the chairs in the lounge. With the addition of a couple of cannon this became my quarterdeck on which the rival crews would fight a boarding action.
The game is regulated by a standard card deck which drives a clever initiative system. Figures are activated one at a time depending upon the card draw. In general the higher value cards are played first.
First off was Foo Yung who stepped forward and threw a knife at Stinky Pete. The drunken Pete was obviously swaying about as the knife missed. Next Stinky Pete activated, with a one-eyed Jack which gave him a bonus in shooting. Firing off his pistol at Foo Yung he completely missed his would be assailant.

Rival crews face off on the quarterdeck

The initiative was still with Al's crew as Won Hung Low stepped forward, with his boarding pike, to poke at One-Eyed Jacques from a distance. Most tests use a D10 but Hung Low had the 'brute' trait which allowed him to use a D12. Some good rolling on his part saw One-Eyed Jacques put out of action.

One Eyed Jacques meets his end

Initiative would normally have passed to Blessed Brian's crew, on a three, but with a man down one card would go unused. Wanting to keep the better cards Brian passed on the three.
Next up were twos. Brian had the 2 of diamonds and the 2 of spades. However, Al still had an ace which is a wild card. Al declared it would be the two of spades but as Brian had the real two of spades he would go first.
Stepping forward Blessed Brian attacked Foo Yung with his cutlass. Activating on a two allows 2 dice to be rolled and the highest selected. With this advantage, Blessed Brian easily put Foo Young out of action.

With a step and a hop, Blessed Brian smites Foo Yung

Now it was Al's turn to activate on his two (Ace) and shoot his pistol at Brian. Again two dice were thrown and Blessed Brian was down and wounded.

Blessed Brian shot by rival captain

 Last to activate was Inigo Montoya who used his lunge ability to strike at Kato who was driven back a shaken.

Turn two and Kato activated first on a Queen of Spades, which removes shock, stepping back in and attacking Inigo. This time it was a draw and both were locked in combat.

Not now Kato

Next to activate was Blessed Brian whose only option was to try and recover from his wound and stand up. However, a roll of one is never good and Brian was out of action.

Won Hung Lo now attacked precipitating the first multiple combat of the game. For this combat each protagonist would roll a die - and in this case everyone rolled a 10!

How likely was that?

However, once I recovered from the surprise, I realised that Hung Lo should have been rolling a D12 due to his 'brute'trait. On the re-roll he only rolled 6 which resulted in Hung Lo out of action and Kato pushed back shaken.
Now Stinky Pete activated on a 6, which allows an automatic reload, and stepped forward firing his pistol at Al - and missing.
To end turn two Inigo Montoya used his lunge trait to attack Kato and also missed.

A bloody quarterdeck

I ended the game there after a very bloody fight. Both crews down to 2 men but with his rival Captain out of action the day obviously went to Jersey Al.

All in all great fun with some pretty simple mechanisms - I'm impressed.
I think this will be replacing En Garde as my game of choice for this level action. I now want to test it with my Samurai and see if it will also supplant Ronin.