Thursday nights at the club

This year I'll try to give a weekly report of what was happening at the Perth club. It'll be a mix of stuff, but hopefully it will give an idea of what goes on.  And in future weeks I'll try to remember to take pictures. 

Last Thursday, 8th Jan, 6 and later 7 of us gathered round a table to work through L'Art De La Guerre rules (ADG for short).  This was my first game though everyone else had played at least once before and a couple of chaps had played a few times.

Armies were 15mm Carthage and Rome.  I'd taken my Romans and we quickly worked out a 200 point army.  It was, 
    8 x Hastati and Principes 
    3 x triarii 
    6 x velites
    3 x roman heavy cavalry   
    2 x numidian light cavalry
    1 x auxilia thureophoroi
    3 x generals

So 23 elements in the army and 3 generals.  Not a bad size for a game. I found out later that the Romans should have had each legions balanced at 4 hastati, 4 principes, 1 triarii and 2 velites. But, hey-ho, we live and learn. I'll try to post pictures of ADG armies in a future post. 

Table was about 4 x 2 feet.  Each army was split into 3 commands and each player had a command. I took the Roman right with the cavalry. Having 7 people round the table meant there was plenty of discussion, questions, answers and agreement on rules points - along with the traditional slagging, cheers or groans whenever anyone rolled a 1.   

Mounted and skirmish units are represented by single elements and heavy foot are represented by 2 elements, one behind the other.  Apparently, this is only really for aesthetics and heavy foot can also be represented by single elements.   

The rules play well and fast. They are like a mix of DBx and Armati. There are no DBx style recoils and units take a number of cohesion points like Armati before they are eliminated and removed from the table.  Movement is based on pips like DBx, but about half the number you'd get in those games. Each command on a side has to roll its command points and complete its move before the next command. Movement seems more liberal than Armati but slightly more restricting than DBx. All movement distances and ranges are based on base-widths, called UD, units of distance in the rules.

Army loses are counted in both eliminated units and cohesion points and this creates a nice sub-game in deciding if it's better to rally and remove cohesion hits or to try to press an advantage.     

Overall, we had a good game. At the end of the night, the Romans lost slightly more than the Carthaginians - but we'll just gloss over that minor detail!

I'll skim through the ADG rules again with the understanding that comes from  having played a game.  I'll work out some armies from figures I have, but even at this point I reckon I only need about half the figures I needed for other games.  I may even end up thinning out the armies I have and selling off some surplus figures.

The only other game at the club last Thursday was some sci-fi thing, but I didn't look at it as my attention was focussed on ADG. 

Next week 6 of us are planning to play Legion of Honour, a card driven game where everyone starts as a low-ranked Napoleonic officer and then has to make their way in the world through a mixture of lying, cheating, stealing or deceiving (or something like that).  Just a typical multi-player card game that's played every so often at the club.  

till next time,
cheers.