Truants visit Venus

Our weekly truants game found four of us playing in Scott Murphy's treasure hunt on Venus scenario. The players divided into three factions-British, Venusians, and Germans. The Brits and Germans each had to struggle over rivers with limited crossing options. The Brits immediately opened fire on the Venusians when they came into sight. The Venusians, charmed by this friendly gesture, became instant enemies.

Scott's very nice Stonehouse Aztec Temple.  I have bits of this, but not the whole shebang. Al places his Venusians, while Steve and Rocky set up the Brits across the river.

 While Brits and natives tangled on the far side of the board, the Germans, run by yours truly, carefully crossed the river, only to encounter native wildlife of the large, reptilian Jurassic variety. First, a single Allosaurus kept me tied down as I tried to cross the a rope bridge in single file and keep my force intact.  Then a persistent pack of smaller, but more aggresssive velociraptors  pinned me down as formed a firing line to mow the little beggars down.

The nasty Allosaurus held up my initial advance across the rope bridge.  It also gave me a platform to provide myself plenty of fire support.

Thankfully, I planned to shoot my way across the river by placing my Seetruppen to on the river bank.  Slowed me down, but prevented a disaster with the big critters

A short lull in the action finally allowed me to move to one of the several treasure sites on the board with my unit of Schutztruppe, while my askaris and Marines advanced toward the chief objective, the large temple in the middle of the board.

All the while, the Venusians and British continued to tangle.  Generally, the limeys got the worst of this exchange.  The Venusians don't shoot much, but are difficult to kill. Both of them got to a treasure objective before I did, but often distracted by their fight were much slower about extracting wealth.  A giant crocodile that emerged from the river they fought over and repeatedly disrupted both forces kept things even more interesting.

A view of the Brits tangling with the Venusians.  While Sikh reinforcements rush to aid the failing British lines, the giant crocodile keeps both sides on their toes.

Despite a final Allosaurus attack on the German seetruppen, it was determined at the end of the game I was the winner. Yippee.

Slowly making my way across the bridge, the advancing velociraptors are visible in the distance.  Fresh meat tonight boys.

Moving slowly by the left to establish a firing line, I was eventually able to establish a firing line, with the schutztruppen on the left moved off to mine a treasure site.

This was a really fun game.  The rules, based on the Sword and the Flame, were the same as our Martian games.  We all had the right number of units to run-generally three infantry units and I had a Gatling as well. I really liked Scott's terrain, which was flashy enough to be interesting and attractive, but sparse enough to get around the board easily.  We agreed a fourth player, a second Venusian from a different faction, would give the Germans a little more to think about, and simply complicate the situation on the table.  Even so, a very fun game I would play again any time.

Kentucky Mounted Rifles

Another unit I finished painting but didn't get mounted before I left on vacation was a pack of ten Kentucky mounted rifles from Old Glory.  These are from the Mad Anthony Wayne's Legion range, and featured prominently in Wayne's campaign that ended at Fallen Timbers.  However, these troop types likely would have featured prominently in any late 18-early 19th century conflict in the American west.  Offering the advantages of speed and dismounted rifle fire, they would have appeared in a conflict with Spain, or if there had been some kind of military action tied to the Burr Conspiracy.

The Old Glory figures aren't special.  The riders are relatively simple and easy to paint.  They do have the virtue of sitting their horses properly without a lot of filing, sanding or drilling, which is not true of many OG mounted miniatures.  The horse are adequate.  While this doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, they do fit the bill and at a per figure cost of $3.50 are quite reasonable.

At the present time, I am wrapping up some more Wayne's Legion infantry, but I've written about them before.  These are mainly unit fillers for my Mississippi project.  Ideally I'd like three companies or twelve 12 figure units.  This brings me up to about seven and a half.

Also on my painting table are a couple of Knuckleduster War of 1812 units.  First up, and currently underway is the U.S. Marines at Bladensburg.  I hope to have something up about these guys by early next week if not earlier.  The second unit is the Knuckleduster version of the Maryland militia.  I will paint them as Annapolis militia, not that I know what Annapolis militia looks like or how it's different from the 5th Maryland.

German Men at Arms at Poitiers

Before I left on vacation, I was able to get a start on my Poitiers project.  I began working on the vanguard infantry.  The vanguard was led by Constable Brienne and was the only combined arms command at the battle.  There were the two mounted units led by Audrehem and Clermont, a significant number of crossbowmen, and a fair number of dismounted knights and men at arms. It's also likely that the crossbowmen were divided between Genoese mercenaries and feudal levies each fighting on a wing of the command.  Also divided were the men at arms, divided between a foreign contingent of Germans led by the Count of Saarbruck and some Scots, and French knights.

I've painted up my German command.  The figures are Old Glory from the Crecy and Poitiers range.  These are the French dismounted knights with shortened lances combined with the command figures from the same range.  They are relatively easy to paint.  The figures wear the jupon over their armor, which often makes painting the heraldic emblem a little difficult navigating around various arms.

The flags were printed off a color laser printer.   They are available free from Dansk Figurspilsforenings, a Danish miniature wargame site.  The site itself is in Danish, however there are many high quality flags available for download including AWI, ACW, the Crusades, later middle ages and others.  They also include a fine collection from the Hundred Years War, including specific standards/banners from Crecy, Poitiers and miscellaneous French, English and Gascon flags, as well as those from the guilds of Ghent, and the kingdom of Aragon.  I like my banners visible, so I left 'em big.  They are mounted on Northstar lances, shortened for the occasion.