Monday, October 14, 2013

Rainy Day 28mm Raid on Bouches-du-Rhone

Burgundian privateers wade ashore to strike a Provencal village.
           A rainy Sunday afternoon and my son asked to play a game.  He's been painting medieval-era 28mm since Historicon this summer.  So I set up a scenario and wrote some quick-play rules.  The scenario is set in the 1400s.  A Burgundian kogge sails into the Rhone estuary and anchors close to shore near the village of Bouches-du-Rhone in the region of Provence.  The Burgundians consist of the kogge, a section of mercenary English longbowmen, Burgundian handgunners, and infantry, led by a knight and two sergeants.

           The Burgundians must come ashore, destroy the crops and buildings and return to the ship.  The townspeople, armed with bows, must hold off the raiders until reinforcements from a local noble arrive.  My quick-play rules (written down in 10 minutes) were as follows:

          Since one of my son's objectives was to destroy more than 2/3 of the raid force, I left one sergeant, some sailors, and two longbowmen in the kogge to cover my retreat.  That worked out well, in the end.

The townsmen are alerted to the raiders' advance and move to the rooftops.

Archers and handgunners cover the infantry advance and destroy
the village fields.

The townsmen wreak havoc on the English mercenaries, 
but the fields are destroyed, nonetheless.

The Provencal forces of the Baron du Bouches arrive in the village 
to push back the raiders.
The handgunners are engaged and routed by the Provencal left wing.
With my archers destroyed, the Burgundian infantry take cover behind the 
stone walls.

The Burgundians hold against the Provencal charge, with the help of the wall.  
The Provencal right wing is routed, but the Burgundians fall back to the kogge.

A foot-race to cut off the fleeing raiders.

The Provencal soldiers arrive before their heavy infantry counterparts and
a melee develops on the strand.  The longbowmen come in handy, evening
the odds and leaving a few corpses in the surf.
The Burgundians force the Provencals into the surf and reembark.  
All the surviving raidersfrom the fight on the beach make it on board, except...

...my knight, who, with an unluckily poor armor save roll, is killed by a 
 Genoese crossbow bolt.

The Genoese crossbowmen advance with the knights and add insult to injury.

     So in the end, I scored 10 pts for the destruction of the fields.  Although I killed all the archers in one building, the Provencal infantry arrived before I could torch it.  My son was able to destroy my handgunner unit: 10 pts and kill my knight: 10 pts.  A fun game that took about ninety minutes to play eight turns.  In retrospect, the longbows were too powerful, so I changed them to the 1d6 to hit you see here.  Additionally its darn near impossible to defeat infantry behind a stone wall...but then, that's realistic.  All in all a good afternoon.

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