Wednesday, 7 February 2018

Camden 1780

 Battle of Camden, the first scenarion in our southern AWI minicampaign. The outnumbered forces of lord Cornwallis must push through and overcome the masses of militia and continentals.

After the defeats at Boston and Saratoga and the victory at New York, the british army faced stalemante, an army was then sent south under command of Cornwallis to turn the colonies there to the british cause, since it was believed that where large numbers of tories in the area. After disembarking and seizing Charlestown after a brief siege, the british met the main american army at Camden in the first pitched battle of the southern campaign.
 The british have an ace up their sleeves: Tarleton's dragoons
 The rebels americans are first to move, forming marching columns 
 The king's troops attempt a massed attack by the right, hampered by some cornfields
 The militia quickly forms into squares to fend off the incoming cavalry
 The dragoons however, weel left and charge for the guns

 The charge is carried off flawlessly
 But lord Cornwallis is killed at the head of his troops
 Undaunted, Tarleton leds his men against a unit of continentals
 Who form into square and repel the redcoat riders
 Badly mauled, the dragoons are now unable to charge
 Their charge has had a decisive second effect: dividing the american army in two. Now the royalists can attack both halves independently while maintaining their cohesion
 The regulars open up a disciplined fire
 In the american left, the infantry advances in waves against half their number of british
 A unit of continentals is sanwitched between the cavalry and the regulars, nowhere to run!
 The minutement charge into hand to hand, depsite their low rating
 A unit of american line had deployed in line and fires into a depleted british unit
 In the left, the british milita is keeping away more continentals at a healty distance
 The regulars are surprisingly repulsed by the supposedly cowardly minutemen!
 The sandwitched unit is cut to pieces, eventually
 The rightmost british unit pulls away behind the guns
 With the american center destroyed, the line unit in the left is facing two british units
 After a bitter hand to hand, the minutemen are routed by the vengeful english
 However, in the confusion the dragoons lose their nerve when they are passed through by the victorious infanty, and rout from the field
 A gunline covers the royal right
 Volley after volley pours into the americans on the left, who answer as best as they can
 They decide to go out in a blaze of glory, charging forwards into the militia
 A ravaged british unit now faces the double of militia without hope of rescue
 The americans on the right form a march column for unfathomable reasons
 Fire! Combined shots from the guns and the infantry almost kill the march column
 Fleeing the deadly field of fire, the column sneaks through the british lines
 The left americans are finally routed by concentrated musketry
 With the enemy on the left destroyed, the redcoats concentrate on the right
 There are still two units of minutement standing
 But american valour is lacking, and the army flees from the field after failing the morale roll
Great rejoicing ensues from the news of the victory, if a bit tarnished by the death of so a gallant commander as Lord Cornwallis

Saturday, 3 February 2018

Tournament day 40k

 Today there was a tournament at the local GW, since it chanced to be parallel to the long awaited custodes release I took the chance to sign in. There were games morning and afternoon, at 1250pts. The first game was against some death guard.
There were no less than three death guard players out of a total of six! The rotten guys seem to be quite popular, in no small thanks to the 8th ed starting box, which made the basis of all their armies. Guess people are quite tired of the vanilla marines and like something more... juicy 


 I brought my trusty combination of guards and marines
 Pask was also there
 Amongst the enemy were those cute crab things
 The impressive death guard rolls didn't save their bacon, as they were badly outgunned

 My warlord dropped on top of an objective in no man's land, giving me three victory points
 Objectives were also captured along the board by both sides

 Deamon prince and crabby gang up on the warlord
 That was the last they ever saw of him
 The last crabby was killed by laser devastators

 My gun line kept killing enemy units while the scions bagged some objectives midfield, giving me victory in the end
  The second game, later that afternoon, was against eldar, with objectives spreaded across the board
 My guard played more offensively, grabbing victory points early

 The eldar pulled of their outlandish moves, jumping 23" and charging in turn one

 The eldar bikes went straight for my tanks
 The annoying warp spiders kept popping all over the place
 More eldar jumped out of the webway and into the fray
 The eldar exarch dodged the overwatch fire that killed his minions and gutted an astopath
 My scions showed up, capturing two objectives

 In the last turn the eldar contested most of my objectives, but as we added up points we were tied, quite a surprise to me, specially against such a mobile army



 Last game was against, you guessed it, even more death guard. Since most of the players were nurglish there was plenty of fratricidal action amongst them all day
 Aboard their transports the chaos marines sped into my lines, shrouding them with spells
 I had to spend most of my firepower just to kill the two rhinos

 Note that the guard was hereticaly using chaos objective cards
 The plague astartes jumped out of the wrecked tanks and into the fray, swinging their deadly flamers all the way, seriously one of them has damage 3!

 The gunline was soon assaulted and put on the back foot
 As the guard was pushed against the wire...
 ...the chaos guys kept scoring points
 Even killing Pask
Ultimately the death guard won with ease

So, the final recap was one defeat, one draw and one victory, quite a balanced result, not enough however to pass onto the second round. I'm overall quite happy with how the army performed, but more movement in the shape of scions or somesuch could be useful next time.