Napoleonic Liberdy: The raid on Rider au bord de la mer

Owain put on an excellent 28mm Napoleonic skirmish game set in south-western France in 1814. We used Liberdy , our home-grown skirmish rules.

Capt Pickleton and his troops engage the troops of Capt Escargot and Lt Picard

British forces

Captain Pickleton, a Sergeant and 4 Line Privates
Ensign Fotheringay and 5 Line Privates
Sgt Smollett and 5 Line Privates
Sgt Obediah and 4 Riflemen

Objectives
1. Capture the docks intact
2. Capture the town magistrate and the port official
3. Stop any French troops escaping via the docks

Just another day in the sleep port of Rider au bord de la mer

French forces

Capitaine Escargot and 5 Légère
Sgt Chef  Grenouille and 5 Légère
Lieutenant Picard and 5 Ligne
Lieutenant Roquefort and 5 dismounted Dragoons

2 Supply wagons

Objectives
1.Get the supplies to the docks
2. Hold up the British as long as possible
3.Take as many boats as possible to hinder the British

 French troops under Lt Picard await the arrival of the supply wagons

and the same from a different angle

Capt Escargot sprints his troops into the town

Capt Pickleton and Ens Fotheringay rush to the docks

Capt Pickleton engages Lt Picard in a scrimmage

Capt Escargot takes up a position to aid Lt Picard

The supply wagons arrive escorted by Lt Roquefort's Dragoons

and the same from a different angle

British riflemen take up positions in the churchyard whilst Sgt Smollett's troops engage Sgt Chef  Grenouille's Legere in the middle distance.

Ens Fotheringay sees his men fall in a withering hail of bullets from Capt. Escargot's troops

Sgt Obediah's Riflemen advance to help Ens Fotheringay

Sgt Smollett's depleted troops follow up the Riflemen but Lt Roquefort's Dragoons can be seen across the town square

Capt. Pickleton's troops start to lose the firefight

The good townsfolk of Rider are not overly concerned by the action developing

With the help of the Riflemen, Capt Pickleton charges the boat whilst the Dragoons try to intervene

Sgt Smollett and Sgt Obediah push their troops towards the boat

As his men are shot down Capt Pickleton attempts to avenge Ens Fotheringay's death

Capt Escargot backed up by Sgt Grenouille engage the surviving Riflemen

Capt Pickleton forces his way onto the boat closely followed by Sgt Smollett

"The blood fell from the decks, like a river it did run"

Lt Picard deals a mortal wound to Capt Pickleton who falls next to Ens Fotheringay

Sgt Grenouille arrives to seal the fate of the British forces

A cracking game that was in the balance to the last. As with every game of Liberdy there is barely a man standing and bodies litter the streets. Objectives be damned, kill the opposition then sort it out.

And for those thinking of paying Rider au bord de la mer a visit - it is quite a pleasant place

The town square

The Port master

The smithy

Supplies for the Inn

All good Bonapartists

But every town has it's dodgy characters

Thanks to Owain for putting on the game and to Cameron, Dave Mike,Paul, Rodge and Shaun for playing.

A special mention must go to Paul for his outstanding shooting skills

The rules can be found here

Galaxy's Edge in 6mm - The Legion on Kublar

Not many Sci-Fi books inspire me to get the armies and refight the battles - the Galaxy's Edge series by by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole is an exception.

 This series was, probably inadvertently, written for gaming with actions from skirmishes to vast battles. I'm not going to go into any detail about the series - you need to read it.

This force represents the Legion on Kublar. They are based up for Future War Commander

The figures are Brigade Models' Pac-Feds and were painted by Richard Phillips at Fieldway Scenics

The combat sleds are by Scotia-Grendel. They don't quite match the description in the books but I really liked the look of them. They were painted by me - a rare occurrence these days.

Major 'Pappy' Hilbert (Command)

Lieutenant Ford (Command) aka Wraith plus scouts (Recce)

Scouts (Recce)

Scouts (Recce)

Twenties (Sniper)

Twenties (Sniper)

Lej Squad

Lej Squad

Lej Squad

Lej Squad

Lej Squad

The full force - KTF!

Kublarian Infantry and Heavy Weapons teams

I'm using Irregular Miniatures Not-Jawas for the Kublarians and I'm still looking for suitable vehicles to mount mortars on.

In the background are the clusters of Kublarian buildings made by Rodge and cast up by Shaun

I still have to work out the stats for use with Future War Commander so I'll do some test games to see what works best.

As I read through the series I keep thinking "that's a good force / game to do". I'm  currently looking at doing the Martian Light Infantry assaulting colony arks in 15mm using Gruntz

District 9 using Gruntz 15mm

Rodge has a lovely setup in 15mm for District 9. We tried it out with a Bolt Action variant a while back but it didn't quite work. We have now started playing Gruntz 15mm so we thought we would see how it worked.

MNU Security deploy from their APCs

There are 4 forces in the game - the Prawns, the Gangstas , the MNU Security Battalion and the MNU Quick Reaction Force. Rodge did the Gruntz stats so the forces were equal in points. Activation in the game was by cards - 1 card for each force.

The cat food shop

Each force had different objectives - most were centred around the cat food shop which, apart from cat food, contained Alien tech weapons.

Prawns about to have lunch

Gangstas defend a shanty

MNU Security cover their flank against a Prawn attack

The Prawn Mech under fire from the MNU QRF

MNU QRF terminate the Prawn Mech and support troops with extreme prejudice

MNU QRF collects souvenirs of the Prawn Mech

Prawns with their cat food run for cover

MNU Security prepare to assault the cat food shop

Prawns prepare to assault the cat food shop

Gangstas prepare to defend the cat food shop

Dolores prepares her gatling gun to defend the cat food shop

Prawns overrun a bunker held by Gangstas

The MNU QRF Assault chopper goes into action

The Ganstas' recoiless rifle goes into action

The MNU QRF Assault chopper spots a Prawn drone (bottom left) but fails to hit it

The Prawn drone after obliterating the MNU QRF Assault chopper

MNU Security assaulting the cat food shop

MNU Security capture the cat food shop and game over

Rodge has some excellent buildings to go with the game - a lot, if not all, of them are scratch-built. Here are a few photos of them

The Gangstas' quarter

The view from the Security fence

The checkpoint

A lovely day for washing

The Prawns' quarter

All in all it was a good game - the figures and the scenery are a joy to play with.

As we've only played Gruntz a few times we were not that familiar with the rules and it was the first time we had seen the stats for these forces so there was a lot of referring to the rulebook and the stats cards.

Having 1 activation card per force did mean a lot of sitting back and waiting for the other players to take their turn. Maybe 1 card per unit is the way forward. Gruntz does allow for a lot of variation in weapons, morale, etc so it works well for District 9 with it's disparate forces. 

Definitely worth another go