Command & Colors Ancients: Epic Zama in 28mm

Here are some pictures and a brief write-up supplied by my friend Neil who has a wonderful set up for Command & Colors Ancients in 28mm.

Six of the North Phoenix Irregulars recently gathered at Imperial Outpost Games for another 28mm Command & Colors Ancients Epic scenario.  Our previous games have followed the career of Alexander the Great.  In this case, it was the decisive battle of the Second Punic War, Zama.  The scenario was played as written.  Two complete games were played over the course of a Saturday afternoon with players switching sides and roles (e.g., no one played the central sector/battlefield commander more than once).  While the second game was closer than the first (14 - 11 and 14 - 8), the Carthaginians were defeated in both games as their flanking cavalry tended to be out-classed and overrun while the five elephants in the center were never able to inflict sufficient damage  to fatally weaken the Roman center.  As before, a good time was had by all and we appreciate Imperial Outpost for hosting the game.

Command & Colors Ancients in Miniature: Guagamela in 28mm

On September 1, Neil put on another game of Command & Colors Ancients in Miniature using his 28mm collection.  This time he ran a slightly modified version of Guagamela.  He took out the three elephants from the Persian side in the C&C scenario and replaced them with another heavy chariot in the center and an additional medium cavalry in each wing located along the baseline.  Thus three units were exchanged for three units and the number of cards and banners needed to win remained the same.  Each side had players for each game.  I commanded the center of the Macedonian line in the first game as well as serving as overall commander; I kept feeding the right flank cards to help Alexander and the Companions crush their opposition while our left flank barely held on.  The first game ended in a Macedonian victory. 

We switched sides for the second game and I commanded the Persian left against Kevin whom had Alexander and the Companions.  Kevin is a notoriously good roller no matter the rules set and the die type, so I figured I was done for.  However, I managed to shoot both Companion units out from under Alexander!  In this game the Persians started off really well and had a comfortable lead in units destroyed then suddenly the Macedonians had two good turns in a row and they were only one unit behind.  The game ended though with Al committing the Persian heavy cavalry in the center and taking out the last unit needed for a Persian victory!

Here are some pictures from both games.  Thanks to Neil for bringing everything and for Imperial Outpost Games for hosting the game.  Until next time...

 Game 1 Deployment

 Game 1 Deployment

 Alexader and the Companions

 Persian Heavies in the Center

 Macedonian Center

 Game 1 Coming to a Conclusion

 I Hate Those Chariots!

 A View From The Persian Center

 Early In The Game

The Macedonian Center Advances

Command & Colors Ancients: Epic Battle of Chaeronea, 338 BC, in Miniature

Today I had a great time playing an "Epic" game of Command & Colors Ancients using 28mm miniatures.  There are several of us locally that really enjoy the boardgame, and a few of us have considered building armies for it using 28mm miniatures; largely due to the efforts of Neil.  Neil was the first in our gaming group to take the steps to play the game in miniature instead of a board; including building his own mat, basing troops so they are easily identified, and building appropriate terrain pieces for the hex mat.  Well today he took things a step further and put on a game of the Battle of Chaeronea, 338 BC in "Epic" scale.  The regular sized game is impressive enough, but I think it really shined in "Epic".  This was the first time I gamed using his rule variant; ideally each side has 4 commanders (one Commander and 3 generals for each sector) and the Commander doesn't move troops, but rather delegates cards and tries to orchestrate the battle with little, if any, communication.  Today we had 3 players on each side so the Commander also ran the center sector.  The first game was very close with the Thebans doing heavy damage to the Macedonian left before running into Alexander; the result was a very close 11 banner to 10 banner victory for the Macedonians.  We enjoyed it so much we reset the game, had the players switch sectors and played a second game; in it, the sides were tied at 7 banners each when suddenly things went south for the Greeks and they ended up on the losing end 12 banners to 7 or 8 I think.  All in all, it was a great time and Neil's armies are very impressive.  Thanks to Neil for putting the game on, the other guys playing, and Imperial Outpost for the table space.

Battle Deployment:  Greeks on left and Macedonians on Right

Chaeronea

View from the Macedonian Right

End of Turn 1

Theban advance on the Macedonian left



Theban breakthrough on the Macedonian left

Alexander facing the Thebans

Athenians motionless

Game 2 - Battle lines close

Looking Back & Looking Ahead

It’s that time of the year again…a time to look back on the year that was, and a time to look forward to the new year ahead…

Looking back, I have to say that 2011 was a “mixed bag” on the hobby/gaming front. It had several positives like:

Finishing 2nd in the Gathering In The Desert LOTR tournament which earned me an invite to the GW sponsored Throne of Skulls event in Vegas

Getting in a lot more games than the previous year. In 2011 I played a lot of Lord of the Rings and also a significant amount of Flames of War. I also played 15mm ancients using Might of Arms, got my feet wet with Clash of Empires using 28mm ancients, played some 28mm American Civil War, played Warmaster fantasy, 15mm Napoleonics, and a fair number of Command & Colors Ancients and Combat Commander board games.

Playing in my first Flames of War tournament using the 2nd edition rules (and now 3rd edition is on the horizon), and actually finishing 2nd which qualified me for the US Nationals; I will be going to Adepticon in Chicago in April to play in the Late War Nationals.

Contracting out some painting work to help clear up some of my pile o’ lead resulting in me having a large 15mm Mongol army as I posted on this blog and a really nice 10mm Orc army for Warmaster, both painted by Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service (with pics of the Orcs on that blog), as well as a nice 15mm German Panzer Company painted by Robert as documented on his Drunken Samurai Painting blog.

Clearing out some armies and misc. hobby stuff that I know I’d never use again.

On the negative side of the “mixed bag” for 2011 are the following:

As of yet not finishing the 28mm Republican Romans I’m painting up for Mike; the good news is that I’m working on the last of the infantry and have the cavalry all prepped & primed and ready to go.

As of yet not finishing the 17 chariots for the 28mm Mitanni army I’m working on; I had Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service base paint the chariots and horses for me and now I just need to go through and add some extra detail and color, mount the crews and do the basing and they will be done…after years of languishing…

Throne of Skulls LOTR tournament; as I previously posted, I like seeing a lot of the regular LOTR players, but really was disappointed in the scoring, the scenarios, and some of the cheese-ball army compositions that were there.

Not posting as much to this blog as I would like to; I would like to do more battle reports and post more pictures of stuff I have.

Not deciding upon a “Tom Project”. Let me explain this one…at one point in my gaming life I had a couple of projects that were mine…I could bring everything needed for the game from terrain to all of the painted figures needed to play, and I could host multi-player games in doing so. I can still supply both sides and terrain for games like Flames of War or LOTR or 28mm & 15mm ancients, but none of these are unique to the group of guys that I game with most frequently. I spent quite a bit of 2011 looking into various projects such as Eastern Renaissance/TYW, 10mm or 15mm WWI, 10mm or 15mm Russo-Polish War, and 15mm modern “what-if” or ”imagi-nation”. Maybe I’ll finally decide on one of these in 2012.

As for the year ahead, I think it’s going to be a good year. I hope to continue to game on a regular basis like I’ve been with the games I’m going to focus on for the first few months of the year being: Flames of War (with the new edition coming out and having to get some practice in for the Nationals in April), Clash of Empires in 28mm (I want to play more often and get some more of the locals interested if possible), Command & Colors Ancients – Miniature (several of the guys are giving serious consideration to doing 28mm forces to convert the board game to miniature and I’m jumping onto this and will be doing a Greek army for this project), and 28mm American Civil War (once I get the Rebs based up and ready to go I plan on getting in more games of Action Front and give Black Powder consideration too). After spring has come and gone, I’ll see where I’m at and take it from there; I have a lot of armies started that I need to finish as well as armies that I haven’t started that I would like to, and then of course there is always terrain to do…it never ends. As for acquiring new stuff in 2012, I’m sure I’ll pick up figures for at least one more project with the leading candidate right now being 28mm Napoleonics; I purchased the Waterloo set of rules and want to give them a try. Another possible candidate is doing some smaller fantasy games using 15mm minis with a set of rules like HOTT or Basic Impetus - Fantasy or ??? Only time will tell what I end up accomplishing in 2012, but I'm fairly confident it will be at a minimum the same amount as I did in 2011...