Miniature game January WW1 Africa

Well, I am finally posting up pics and a brief AAR on another The Sword & The Flame's Dark Africa WW1 game from January of this year.  I just been lazy in getting around to typing up a report.  The game was held at Blake's house using his miniatures and terrain, plus him running the game.  Glenn was the cannibalistic Belgian evil-doers, while I run the peaceful and innocent Germans who were just enjoying their day in the sun relaxing and minding their on business.  

In the game, I played defensively and forced the evil Belgians to attack me using terrain to our advantage.  Glenn made good use of the terrain, but eventually the German Mauser rifles provided to be too accurate for the mean-hearted Belgians to win.  But the heartless Belgians did rout one of my two Askari units before the game ended.  

Below are some pictures from the game.

Castro and a new miniature project

Well, I hope everyone in the US had a good Thanksgiving.  I had to work on Friday and Sat. and since I am salary, I got no additional pay for working on days that I would normally have off.  8(

Anyway, I still have not yet started listening to my current audio book selection, The League. With Fidel Castro finally dying, I am very tempted to instead start listening to the audio book, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro at the Brink of Nuclear War, by Michael Dobbs.  I was actually planning to listen to that book and read 15 Minutes: General Curtis LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation, by L. Douglas Keeney, and The Fires of October: The Planned US Invasion of Cuba During the Missile Crisis of 1962, by Blaine Pardoe, and finally, Blue Moon over Cuba: Aerial Reconnaissance during the Cuban Missile Crisis, by William Eckers, Michael Dobbs, and Kennith Jack.  I was thinking of rounding up the lot with a book on the overall US nuclear deterrent called, To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction, by Edward Kaplan.  But again with the death of Castro in the news and the talk of the Cuban Missile Crisis again, makes me think that I might step up my time line on reading on that topic.  It is also got me possibly itching on pulling out my 1/300 Pentomic army to be worked on so I can start nuking the Russians.  Or at least play some games of "Toe-to-Toe Nu'klr Combat with the Rooskies" by Victory Point Games.

If you don't remember, back in August of 2013, I was part of the NSDMG game at Gen Con based on the Cuban Missile Crisis.  (blog entry here) I was in the session as the Cuban's and I was the Curtis LeMay equal for the Cubans and came really close to getting rid of Fidel so we could get the war started with the Americans.  

So anyways, what is the new miniature project?  I bought a painted 10mm Russo-Turkish War project for about 60% of the cost that it would take me to buy the miniatures and get them painted.  I got the first of the two boxes.  They are nicely painted, but I am going to re-mount them to a different base size.  I plan to use them with the Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames, or Neil Thomas' Wargaming the 19th Century Europe, or with Rick Priestley's Black Powder rules.  Basically I have almost everything for a Russian Infantry Division (12 battalions) and a Turkish Independent Rifle Brigade (8 battalions) plus each have their artillery batteries.  I don't have any pictures yet as I am waiting for the bases to show up so I and remount them first.  It is a large project, but oddly I will only need one 4L Really Useful Box with a tray and one 1.75L Really Useful Box to store the whole project.  So it really is not that large for storage.  

Be seeing you 

Sapper
 

Game AAR - Smiling Ali's Manpower, Inc. has a recruitment drive

Hello,

Well, Blake once again ran another Darkest Africa game at his home (big thanks!) and Glenn and I were the opposing players.  Blake was again using The Sword & the Flame's Sword of Africa supplement. The game was Arabs vs Azande natives and Glenn and rolled off for sides, with who every had the highest die gets the Arab and the lower die gets the natives.  I got the high die, so I played the free market temporary manpower corporation on another recruitment drive for unskilled labor for some clients, and like all good job headhunters, the name of my clients are confidential!

So, Glenn's pool of unskilled labor was six units of 10 spearmen, one unit of 10 bowmen, and one unit of muskets, plus a chief and a shaman.  My band of recruiters were three units of ten Arabic recruiters with a mix of muskets and rifles, two units of Ruga-Ruga talent scouts armed with muskets, an old cannon manned by Arab Health and Safety Officers, and finally Smilin' Ali, the owner and director of this corporation.  

The game started off will Smilin' Ali trying to persuade Chief Glenn to subcontract some of his employees to my manpower corporation and to avoid a messy legal battle with my recruiters.  Sadly he said no, so it was time to make an offer of new employment to Chief Glenn's employees by direct means. [Remember, by clicking on the picture, it will give you a bigger picture.]

I didn't take pictures of the initial set up, that this was about half way through the first turn and had not moved most of my units.  On the left flank are my three units of Arab recruiters.  On the other side of the trail is my Health & Safety cannon and Smilin' Ali standing behind them.  On the right is one of my two Ruga-Ruga talent scouts.  The other unit is just on the other side of that copse of trees.  Across from me from left to right is two units of spearmen, the unit of archers, another unit of spearmen, two units of spearmen in front of Chief Glenn's offices.  In front of those two units of spearmen is the musket unit.  Outside of the picture on the right is the final unit of spearmen.  Barely visible on the trail in the very back is Chief Glenn and his charmin' shaman.

 Here is a picture of the far right flank.

In the finest tradition of our Darkest Africa games the first fire is done by a cannon.  Since this is irregular crewed cannon, I have to roll a die before firing to see if can fire.  I passed every rolled to fire the cannon through the game.  However, since my cannon was crewed by Health & Safety officers, they deliberating shot to avoid hitting anyone!  Only on the first turn did they hurt anyone when they hit the leader of the native musket unit.  Of course, we think that guy was faking his injury so he could make a Workers' Comp. claim.   To give an idea how badly they fired, in theory, I should have averaged 12 hits over the course of the game, but I only got 1!  So this will be the last time we will mention the cannon being involved in the game.

On the left flank Chief Glenn got two units over the stream.  However, the range on my muskets and rifles could shoot up the native archers as they were out of range.  I shot enough of the archers in one round that they routed off the board.

Meanwhile on the right flank, the left unit of Ruga-Ruga traded shots with the native muskets.  While the right unit of Ruga-Ruga were actually Kentuckian riflemen lead by Davy Crockett in disguise, plus were cheating by using rifles with scopes!  Unlike my Health & Safety cannon (OK, this will be the last time I will mention it), these guys shot well over their average!  In theory, they should have hit four natives during the game.  In their first first fire, they hit five (!) figures.  In their next fire they hit four more natives! 

Yeah, that is how I image they were talking between themselves.

Back on the the left flank, the charmin' shaman tried to cast a spell on one of the recruiting parties.  It appears that he forgot that by wearing his mask that it will muffle his voice.

So the first group of job applicants rush forward to give their resumes to my recruiters!
 

After the first screening of the applicants, only six of the ten passed the drug testing screen.  Next was hands on testing for determining if they meet the job position's physical requirements.

I am sorry, but you just don't meet our requirements for a management position with Smilin' Ali's Manpower, Inc.  However, I feel that one of our customers, will be happy to contract you through us. 

At the end of the game, I have four Workers' Comp cases to file as three of my Arab recruiters and one Ruga-Ruga talent scouts (not from the Kentucky riflemen unit) got hurt. 

Unfortunately for Chief Glenn, he will have a bunch of positions to fill in the future.  He loss all ten archers, six musketeers, and eleven spearmen.  It also appears that he lose six elves and one ape wearing power armor!  I don't remember shooting them, but that Kentucky riflemen unit must have shot them while I wasn't looking to see what they taste like.

No worry about all of those open job positions, Chief!  Just call Smilin' Ali's Manpower, Inc., and ask for Babs!

On a serious note (What? Too late now), this game was way too weighed in favor for the Arabs.  Blake agrees in the future that he needs a lot more terrain for the natives to get closer to the Arabs with less losses so they got a chance to get in hand to hand and balancing the scenario.  Either that or a unit of Arabs should be remove or two or three more native spearmen units should be added.  Also, slavery is bad, but I couldn't help letting my dark humor come out.

Cheers,

Sapper