Introduction

I played this game at Bruce Meyers's house on November 22, 2003. The game was hosted by Dave Sullivan as one of the battles at the NHMGS Gig Harbor Game Day. Bruce has a truly wonderful gaming area in his "garage", really a carriage house complete with daylight basement workroom. Here Bruce has set up several large gaming tables, and lined the workroom shelves with hordes of beautifully painted 25mm figures, every period from ancients to World War Two. And another wall has closets filled with boxes of 15mm figures.

Background

The background of this game was that a Pictish raiding party, led by Connor of the Hundred Battles, was returning laden with plunder when it was ambushed in a mountain pass by two parties of angry Scotsmen. (Ok, I have to admit something: I can't remember if Connor's men were the Picts or the Scots, but we'll just go with what I said above ... )

I played Connor. Keith, another Gig Harbor gamer, played Connor's nephew Domnail. We each had ourselves plus twenty men, some armed with two- handed axes, others with javelins (a particularly useless weapon with its measly six-inch range, but I digress ... ). Dave and Bruce played the Scots. Bruce's men were armed exclusively with spears (as near as I remember), while Dave's men had a mixed force of light slingers (nasty weapons) and javelin-armed horsemen.

Game Conditions

The game board was a three dimensional mountainside sculpted from foamboard insulation and flocked in a very realistic manner, about five feet wide by six feet long. Dave has slightly changed the basic Pig Wars rules so that instead of using cards to decide shooting and combat results, you roll a twelve-sided die. Very good idea; D12's are great dice, and really should be used in more rules. There were four cards used, to determine which force moved when each turn. I was the ace of hearts, Keith the ace of diamonds, Dave the ace of spades, and Bruce the ace of clubs.

The map on page 2 illustrates the starting positions and first moves of the forces.

Most of the Picts were carrying barrels or herding pigs; there were also three carts they were pulling by hand. Normally the men would move nine inches per turn, but only six inches if carrying plunder. Our victory conditions were to get off the board with as much plunder as possible.

As usual, I completely ignored my objective, with results that you will read about below.

Connor's men were in the lead, heading off-map to the left. The ground climbed toward the center of the map, such that Domnail's men would have to climb a steep slope before heading down off the spine of the pass toward safety. Bruce's Scots were waiting on the highest ground on the map, the mountainside in the upper-left corner, ready to spring downhill. Dave's men were blocking the southern map edge but would have to climb the mouniainside to the center of the board to reach Connor's men.

The Course of the Battle

Connor very quickly saw that trying to keep hold of his plunder and escaping would be impossible, especially with cavalry coming up on his flank.

Therefore he told his men to throw down their burdens and draw their weapons; if he drove off the Scots, there would be plenty of time to retrieve it later.

He also decided (and this turned out to be a big mistake) to charge the enemy cavalry as they came up the hill. If the horsemen were wiped out, the rest of Dave's men should be no problem. Connor also sent a [one axeman to meet Bruce's charge, just to slow them down a bit; needless to say, he picked the biggest and dumbest of his axemen for this heroic task.

Keith seemed to come to a similar conclusion regarding the plunder. Unlike Connor, however, he drew his men up into a cohesive shield wall to meet Bruce's charge, and advanced steadily toward the mountain pass.

Bruce's tactics were quite simple: Charge the nearest force of Picts and slaughter them.

Dave sent his slingers off to his left a bit to start zinging rocks into Connor's men, and sent his horsemen scrambling up the steep slope to meet the charge of the Picts.

Dave's slingers turned out to be very effective: A missile weapon hits on a 1- 6 on a D12 at close range. Close range for a sling is 8". A javelin's total range is only 6", so the slingers could stand off and clobber Connor's men in safety. A partiallyarmored man gets a save on a 1- 4 on a D12, but even so, Dave picked off three or four of Connor's men as the rest hit the horsemen.

The first round of the combat went well for Connor; he lost one man but killed three horsemen. The rest of the cavalry, however, swept around a small woods and hit Connor's men again, and this time the luck favored the Scots, who killed several Picts. Connor's band had to test morale and failed miserably. Half his men routed back toward Keith's force, while the rest did a fall-back down the mountain pass.

In the meantime, Keith's shield wall held up well against Bruce's spearmen, driving the Scots back up the slope after two hard-fought turns. Both sides had to test morale, but neither routed.

Dave now sent his horsemen trotting down the pass at Connor's fleeing warriors, killing two and driving the rest off the table. Connor made his peace with God and charged desperately at Bruce's thinning spearmen. However, he was cut off by three Scots and slain after taking three great wounds.