Steve's Fieldworks-DFW Irregulars: 3/29/15

Has it been three months since I posted anything? Seems as if this is true. The past three months have been a blur as my FIRST Robotics Team 3355 went to kick off, designed, built and competed our robot, my spouse of 36 years went into hospital for a month with infections associated with her leukemia and teaching multiple preparations just got in the way.
Found a bit of time to learn (sorta') a great set of Dark Age rules that are set in post-Roman Britain. I won't go into a long tome about how I like the rules, they're easy to learn but hard to master, are written to flow smoothly as honey and just fun enough to keep my interest through many rounds of Chocolate Double Stout, Dunkelbrau, and Fireball Whisky! These rules are a "winnah winnah-chicken dinnah" for me and a great compliment to Saga Dark Age rules. I've never been a "skirmish gamer" in 30+ years; but, these rules plus another Two Fat Lardies set "Chain of Command" have gotten my attention as our group really hasn't dusted off our HUGE ancients collections in years. OK, now on to the game report.

The game has a "game" within the game for pre-battle terrain set up and for pre-battle inspiration of a warlord's troopers and levies. The pre-game is really fun and sets the stage very well for the miniatures battle. We played on Rusty Parker's 6x4 table with a lot of beachfront property for the Saxons to wade through. The terrain game ended up with a set of marshy areas, a large forested area, two hills and some rocky/difficult ground

The Saxons hit the beach and got funneled into a small deployment area. The forest and marshy areas split the Saxons into three distinct forces. The Romano-Brits were deployed to take and hold the higher ground inland. The game has a really cool inspiration phase that can include giving a rousing, inspiring speech to the men, passing out copious amounts of mead and ale to your troops (liquid courage), consulting the gods, committing your champions to single combat or just saying "screw it" and getting straight to the battle. I proceeded to roll up a big hit of mead and ale. My army went to battle staggering drunk. Sometimes that is a good thing! I celebrated the fact with a long draft of Chocolate Double Stout! Rusty committed his champion to fight my champion (FiddyEuroson). FiddyEuroson wounded the Saxon dog and forced him to leave the field. The Romano-Brits were standing around gobsmacked as their previous encounters with the Saxons had some bad results. This battle would be the pivot point to whether or not the Saxon warlord Theoden could take the province defended by the upstart, wannabe' Dux Ludicrous Sexus. Game on!

This game was nip and tuck throughout. I'll post up pictures, comment and try to give some flavor to the pics. If you were thinking about playing a Dark Ages game, tried Saga, found out it was "game of the week" at your local game store and your collection is collecting dust; try Dux. You can easily play a two person campaign (we try to play weekly) or a larger battle where multiple warlords are utilized. The rules are written in a tongue in cheek style so it's a pretty easy read. If you play other TFL rules, you'll see a common set of mechanics in all of them. They work and work well. Enjoy the gallery! It was a great evening with a great friend!