Merry Christmas Blog-o-sphere

May your holiday season be bright with intelligent games and friends.

We here at the Penny Whistle wish your family a happy and blessed time of year.  Enjoy your hobby, your best friends, and family.

Current goings on here at the Lion's Den Wargames table include a very interesting DBA campaign set in the year 1135 +.

Cheers.

Autumn in Angevin

Loyal and Royal households,

We have word from Caen on the battle that rages between Duke Ryan the Raven and Baron Stephen the Bold.  The attacker , Steve, lost with the loss of a Knight General and a stand of Knights.  Desertion sweeps away the horde  and a psiloi. Duke Ryan prevails and defends the region of Caen.  

Word from Calais is the Baron Brian has launched ships from Dover.  There was a storm at sea and three stands of Knights were lost.  

Baron Brian returns to Dover and the season closes with Duke Ryan holding off an onslaught of assailants.

Great gaming gentlemen, look to the BGG site for the die rolls.

Precedent setting reactions are part of this game now and I think we are playing well within the spirit of the rules.  However, it appeared that Duke Ryan was given a lot of leeway to defend his realm.  So what we need to all be aware of is the way this campaign game can work and be satisfied with that.
Rules: A player may defend his demesne from attack even if previously active if within two moves of the location.  I read the rules to mean every movement is of two map segments.  So as the territories expand you wouldn't be able to be at all places at once unless ricocheted about like our last season.

Lady Paige is awaiting your spring city declarations.  She has declared me a huge dork for dragging her into the game, but I like the mechanic and she is wholly trustworthy to play along.

We will begin the year of 1136 when she declares that all Baron's have registered their start city.  Turn order remained the same.

Scribe Kenneth in Salisbury

Autumn 1135

Summer of 1135 the Battle of Avranches

The summer of 1135 in the Angevin Empire.

Another meeting at Mike's and some good DBA battles fought out for campaign and for fun.

So what happened at Avranches:

The attacking Duke Kenneth is pushed back into the channel!!  Result 4 with Lord Kenneth losing his general and three stands of knights as well as desertion of crossbow and psiloi!!  Utterly devastating.  He retreats to Salisbury and Duke Steve has a loss of one knight stand and 5 prestige points to fly from his rampart banners.

 Duke Brian did not send a move so he remains on English soil at Dover.

Damn the BUA.  These are so hard to hold.

A wide open skirmish in which the dice left good lord Kenneth on the field.  I shame those black D6 in the foreground as recreant and vile.

Next up the Autumn of 1135.  Same turn order and process.

Summer of 1135 DBA Angevin Campaign

The summer of 1135 is heating up and we have at least two battles as of the penning of this chronicle.

Duke Sanderson has marched on Toulouse and attacked Duke John.  The battle outside of Toulouse could have gone either way.

Duke John's demesne under attack once again.  The fields of Toulouse are scattered with bones.

Four actions were fought and the randomizer has picked result number one. (See BGG.)

The city holds and the attacker has lost  a crossbow a spear, psiloi and horde.  The defender has paid dearly with the loss of two knight stands.

I will announce this on our email thread and see you all Monday night.

I hope your feasting hall was filled with good cheer and family this holiday weekend.  I for one have played a lot of DBA which was my intent for this campaign.

Up next the attack on Avranches!!

Angevin Campaign 1135

A great night of DBA was had at M. Sanderson's gaming table.  We had five players table side to push some lead and talk of the campaign.   The spring move of 1135 is in the record book and we had the battle of Toulouse.  Wherein Duke John of Bayonne did offer field battle to the invading force of Duke Ted.  

Duke John lost one stand of knights and killed the opposing general and two stands of his knights.

A well fought set of outcomes and the city of Toulouse is safe for the spring.

A well fought battle involving two feudal armies from the campaign.

Some solo DBA to establish a catalog of results for the outcomes of map moves.

Thanks for looking in.  Next up the summer of 1135.

Dwarves in the Attic

The second Secondhand Lions Halloween game occurred this last Thursday.  Terry, an LDO (Lion's Den Original) has adopted the game Heroquest as an annual event for our gaming group.  Like all of us wargamers, Terry felt the desire and lure of building a 3D immersive environment for a dungeon crawl and so he tried his hand.

With a great sense of humor and no small respect for the task  Terry learned of all the variables a modeler will encounter in this  endeavor.

Secondhand Lions Present:

The Dungeon tied in to the last undead skeleton game where the leader of the Empire went impetuous and got himself killed.  And there is this book that if you can get it you will shore up the Empire's fight against the spawning undead - thingy.

Enter at your peril.

What we are looking at is foam core artfully covered in laser printed stone pattern paper.  

Truly a monumental building environment to explore and navigate and kill things.

Working doors that plug in to the door frame of the wall.  

 Top down 3D environment with accouterments from the original Heroquest board-game.  

 And odd bits of rpg gaming ephemera.

And then maths happened.

That's me.  The little dwarf thief exploring parts of the cavern where only I could fit.  The hallway dimensions were pretty cramped.

When we could no longer fit we went over the top.

And so we all had a good laugh about dwarves in the attic.

Using the plug doors we surfed over the map and carried on in stout gamer fashion.

We had a great laugh over the skeletons acting as the crew and soldiers from the movie Aliens.  "We've got life forms! 8 meters, 7 meters,6, 5, 4 - That can't be right that's inside the room..." You know the rest of the shtick.

And so we killed stuff.  Some of which was already dead.

And we explored rooms and got treasure.

I got a 300gp monkey statue.

We found the book described as our "target" treasure item.  There was some movie reference that I didn't get that was the clue to the ability to lift this off the table unharmed.  The elf ran off with the book leaving me puzzling over two of the three clues needed to solve this puzzle.

There was a keen-o hidden door behind the fireplace that we all did a fighting retreat through. 

The book of the dead Necromicon cliff note version - thingy.

Sweet surprise of the night was a splendid java stout as pictured above.  Wonderful beer that I will look for in my grown up candy store.

What was no surprise was the evening of camaraderie with the very best sort of friends.