Borgia, Sforza and Medici!

I got my three Italian commands (from Perry Miniatures) finally finished!

The knightly more martial, I painted as Cesare Borgia. I will probably use him as a command for my upcoming papal units. 

Then long ago I finished a Sforza command with a Swiss holding the reigns, this will be my Ludovico Maria Sforza, "Il Moro". I will use him maybe as commander for even Swiss or French. 

And the last one of the stooges, Alessandro de Medici, also an "Il Moro" (means "The Black", which could rightly be an interpretation of his character more than anything). This will help out Jack's Florentines as he is notoriously low on command stands, (must be the Medici banker in him).

The Flags are self designed and printed on normal copy paper (80gsm).

Luise, Luise, oh baby, we gotta go!

Early 1914, the little mine sweeper Königin Luise was detected by bad ass British destroyers inflagranti, while we had to wait 6 turns until we (some mini German destroyers without any mine and lesser firepower) were allowed to come to the table. No wonder the little girl was on fire in no time!
As the numerous enemies drew nearer a little torpedo action was taking place, but the system is more unreliable than the originals, so no terrific damage was done (even after a hit).

The Brits scored hit after hit, while we were always out of range (it felt a bit like a Sansculotte ship transferred just 100 years later) and our better repair skills were non-existent in the rules.
So if nothing is working, what do naval gamers do? They try to ram the enemy (just like the ancients), but even that didn't work out ... ecstatic!

A pretty little game and a nice set-up. The scenarios are getting more and more minimalistic over the time, maybe we end up with a fist fight in the port of Wangerooge near a pub called the Wunderbar.

Lemme put this into a poem ...
Oh, my little girl, 
She's waiting for me,
I'll sail a ship across the sea, 
On the ship you know
I'm all alone 
I wonder if I can make it home

Music and copyright by Motörhead
https://youtu.be/WDP7_h4wkgw

The "Kill-misters" and my only remedy

Poor Luise chased by some wicked Englishmen

"A smell rose in the air" 

Me the Köln, Mainz and Rostock were too late to help

The British with the "better fire power"

The British torpedoes hit but not bad enough

Luise still hot and the all the Rhineland smoking some cigars

We left some minefields

The "Cölner" Carneval had to close up to hit

Even ramming didn't help

Aut pontifex maximus, Aut nihil!

Amen, my friends of the late night music, I decided to stock up my Renaissance army with some finer clerical units of the Romagna and the Pope in the future, I'll have to aim for nothing less than canonization!

So I will supply Jack's Florentines with two additional commands for the next Renaissance game, I decided to go for the Gonfalonieri Cesare Borgias himself - Agreed on very selfish rationale (the other I still have to decide ...)

I also decided to design some more shields for Angus' Venetian heavy infantry and some flags for Bart as he finally decided to join our renaissannce rattle and to go for the Sforzas, Hurrah!

I will further design some Swiss flags for Donald, if he is doin' the research ... we might find something other than the obvious...

That should be enough to become holy!

Ah, well and some unfinished 28mm Normans/Ottonians were accidentally present  ... and some 6mm French, early WW1 ... Hach, too much to do ...

Perry oval Italian shields 

Unhappy Crusader Miniatures left for highlighting and finishing ...

French (and in fact British) Baccus 6mm without basing ....

Cesare and the Flag of HIS Father

The Flagbearer has a Spanish shield ... 

.... and was recruited from a Perry plastic box ...

Some Flags for the Sforza (and for Cesare)

In case Bart wants some crossbows with pavises ....

The Brittish defeat at the "Polish Wall"

Last Thursday, I just crammed some Hessians, Brits, French and Americans into my coffers and we played an introductionary game for David, our new club member.

First we started with Eve of Battle, to design an uneven set-up; and it was weird to play even after such a long time, but it did the job. 50% woods, a BUA and a looong wall, the Polish wall.

The Rebels played by Bart and his Nephew Czarek against the Brits played by me and David. The Americans were waiting for the onslaught of the Crown forces behind a long wall and rolled pretty good, none of their Militia was wavering. The Brits, apart from having half of the woods on their deployment side had "Low on Ammunition", an essentially very bad Eve of Battle card (1in6 the unit runs out of powder after a shot). Grrreat!

Bart played a very good delaying game, but his artillery dicing was abysmal. He never unlocked my Light Infantry out of the woods.  So the Redcoats slugged forward killing more and more essential Rebel until regiments. Until I decided to classically take advantage of the new useful rule "British Bayonet charge" (+1 on breaktest to the winner of the battle / at draw still for the British) and attack them with a follow me order of my CinC. The bayonet charge is a two edged sword, if it goes well its devastating, if it goes wrong its ... mainly also - there are no draws. I nearly managed to kill the wobbly, shaken French but sustained more hits and ... lost the combat by one. The following break test was killing the unit AND the CinC!!! Check matt, King is dead.

We called it a day, a very thrilling game and a good win for the Rebels.

Barts rap:
http://asienieboje.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/polish-wall-awi-polski-murwonsz.html

Initial set up  

The evil Hessians load their guns

The Rebels had to fall back 

And the Redcoats follow suite

All hold the line!

The Lobsters are going in! 

First they mash the 3rd New Yorkers

then the Hessian guns come up!

But the Grenadiers die and one gun runs out of Ammo!!!

so the Grenadiers must attack! Bayonet Charge!

... the last photo before the CinC got killed ... the rest was too brutal for british audience to show.

7 days in Sellières ... 1516 it was all Spanish ...

The French Comte has great Boeuf Bourgoine, loveley wine, and they do Piccon into their Leffe (which is bitter orange liqeur into their lager), which I do not abject and therefore defect from the 1516 German "Rheinheitsgebot".

The food is too good and too much, even for me, a reason why I have to do dieting now. If I would be a Spanish Landsknecht coming through here, I would have deserted or died at the road unable to roll on my cask-like belly any further.

We went to several old villages like Perrouges and Chalons de Chateaux,  a waterfall and abbeys, or how they all called, and discomforted the indigenous population with relentless requests for alcoholic beverages.

We had parties and visited the Saline Royale with some great architectural exhibitions, maybe an uncle of Vauban.

The whole land is flat, they have uncomfortable seatings in parks, huge wooden fish totems and gold fishies swimming in their local water supply.  And they do put ashes into their food, even in the cheese - and call it morbier. So no wonder most of the rurals live next to cementaries – very quiet neighbourhoods!

I can only recommend it!

An early-late Breughel