BOYL The Engines of Avalone Siege game

Thantsants

Member
Here's my plans for a Siege game I'd like to set up for the Saturday (dependent on when we play the Epic game).

The basic outline of the game will be my Goblinoid horde besieging whoever wants to defend the mighty fortress



I hope to have around 7500 points worth of Goblinoids and allies painted up, along with a fair amount of artillery - Man Mangler, Skull Crusher, Lead Belcher, etc. There are also Giants, Wyverns and various siege equipment to contend with.

The game will be a slightly simplified version of the Siege rules to make it more manageable on the day. I'm happy for folk to join whenever they like - either as relief forces for the existing defenders or reinforcements for the bad guys.

So far Just John has volunteered his Dwarves to defend the fortress and Mr Furious is coming to his rescue with large amounts of Human Cavalry. I have Elves, Dwarves and Human infantry to add to the defenders. If I can get them done in time I also have several Dwarf and Human cannons I can donate.

I'd love to add in my Engines of Avalone scenario into the mix somehow - turning it on its head as a victory condition/side mission for the defenders. If I get the Human and Dwarf artillery painted it could be added to the objectives (take the Castle!) for the Goblinoids and other bad guys.

I envisage the game going on all day (on Saturday preferably) so let me know if you want to play from start to finish or just drop in at some point.

Any suggestions on how the game should be run are most welcome too.

Mr Furious has already suggested adding in various farm steads around the fortress which could provide a source of supplies/objectives/victory points for the defenders - or the attackers.

Players signed up so far
Thantsants - The Goblinoid Horde - Breakfast, lunch and dinner - Friday and Saturday
Just John - Halflings and assorted Treemen, Gnomes and maybe even Eagles! - Lunch (veggie)
Mr Furious - Human cavalry and artillery - Breakfast(?), lunch and dinner(?) - All weekend
Skarsnik - Either commanding my Elf/Dwarf/Human Alliance or joining in with the Goblinoid horde - Friday and Saturday
Vyper - Chaos Warband
Ollie - Khorne Warband - Breakfast, lunch and dinner - Friday and Saturday
Lenihan - Fimir (or maybe Sea Elves?) Lunch and dinner - Friday and Saturday
Rab - Bretonnians - Breakfast(?), lunch and dinner(?) - All weekend
Grumdril - Orcs and Chaos
Citadel Collector - Ass Cannon (and some other stuff...)
Erny - one or two Goblins - All weekend?
Snickit - Skaven - All weekend?
Harry - Merry Men (and knights) - Breakfast, lunch and dinner - Friday and Saturday
 

Mister Rab

Member
That sounds brilliant! I'm being torn in all directions, deciding where to go hobby-wise at the moment (RoC warband, RT, Bret army that keeps stalling), but this might tip me towards "good guy fantasy".

Ooh, look, squirrel!

:oops: :roll:
 

Thantsants

Member
You'd be more than welcome Rab and it'd certainly be nice to game with you as well as meeting you in person. I know what you mean though - there's at least another 5 different games I want to play over the weekend!

What else can I do to persuade you... ooh look at the shiny, shiny! (rattles house keys in the air)

I forgot to mention - I have two Fortresses and Mr Furious is also bringing another, maybe two if he can acquire another cheap in time. That means we'll probably build something like the Fastness out of the Siege Book or go with double ramparts so we can get whole units up there to repel attackers.
 

Golgfag1

Moderator
If, you want to borrow any kit (stone / bolt throwers for the O & G's) just say the word - can't help with anything else as I've my own plans to prepare for the weekend, sorry. ;)

See you there,

Paul / Golgfag1
 

Skarsnik

Member
I'd love to play in this, although I'm unsure as to whether I'll have any suitable models to offer.
 

Thantsants

Member
Vyper - I'm sure the Gobbo's won't mind any Chaos lads turning up as long as they leave a few Stunties for them.

Skarsnik - you're more than welcome. You can choose between my Elves, Dwarves and Humans to help out the good guys or there are loads of Orcs and Goblins to go round.

Cheers Paul - I appreciate the offer. If I can get everything painted up I'll have 6 Stone Throwers and Lead Belcher in terms of artillery. I'll see who else pitches in with the baddies and let you know if that's ok. I wouldn't want you lugging your stuff up for us not to need it in the end!

If I can make it over on the Sunday I can pledge my Slann to the cause - if not you're more than welcome to use my little band. :mrgreen:

Those pics are great Mr F. and I'm really liking the idea of having farm steads, fields of crops and woods and coppices as strategic objectives.
My thoughts so far on how the Siege rules might work for us are -

Have a strategic turn every 5(?) turns or so - this will make holding onto farms and coppices vital to keep the fortress supplied with food and materials for repairs and defenses.

Or dispense with the strategic turn and have farm steads and coppices as sources of supply tokens which can be exchanged for reinforcements or adding defence points to castle sections. For each turn a farm stead or coppice is held a certain amount of supply tokens are earned. We could make up a Strategic phase somewhere towards the end of the turn where all this book keeping could take place.

Or make farmsteads and the civilians in them, fields and coppices into objectives with victory points attached to them. VP's could be cumulative for the good guys. Once the bad guys get their hands on an objective the appropriate number of VP's could be knocked off the good guys total. This should make them hotly disputed! Of course the main aim of the game would be for the bad guys to get into the fortress and there would be other objectives with one off VP's attached to them. For example,

Good Guys -
Sally forth and destroy the Orc artillery 200 VP's
Killing enemy Generals
Saving civilians and getting them inside the fortress

Bad Guys -
Raze a farmstead 200 VP's
Destroy a Relief Force/Sallying force
Capturing/slaughtering civilians

What do yo think?

So far we have a large force of Halflings with Treemen allies, large amounts of Human cavalry and some artillery to defend the castle. I can lend an Elven force - mainly archers and a couple of Dwarf units, sapper teams and some human militia.

I have 7500 ish of Orcs and Goblins, some Undead if needs be and Vyper's Chaos warband, plus Paul's kind offer to lend what we want from his fantastic Goblinoid horde.
 

Mr Furious

Member
Brave Sir Robin surveyed the sprawling ramparts and fortifications of Avalone - for three generations his family had proudly held the vastness of the keep and secured civilisation's most easterly border. For three generations his family had secured an uneasy alliance between dwarves and men and during his family's protectorate the pass had never weakened nor fallen: not in the time of the rampage of Goresnot the Green; not during the Pointy-Sharp-Axe-Boyz wars; not even amidst the carnage of the greenskin tide led by Bloodtooth Snotlingmawler who ate a whole troll during the protracted siege before succumbing to a bitter mutiny...

With the recent reinforcements from the Moot, expert scouts, foragers and foresters one and all, sent by quartermaster Jamie Tall'iver, Brave Sir Robin was calm, confident, and prescient that everything would work like an engineer's pigeon clock.

Suddenly armour clad footsteps rang shrilly up the well worn grey stone steps. "Sire we have urgent reports from runnin' villagers...and they ain't good," puffed a red faced youth. "They sez there's mutants in the woods and orcs is raiding the farms...chopping the trees, making throwy things...cutting down crops, and eatings the animals and the farmer's big kids who don't run so good..."

Glancing down the eddy drop of the sheer walls of Avalone, Brave Sir Robin calmly steadied himself with the reassurance that the stone walls had been impregnable for three generations, before dumping his fears in his fine leather breeches.
 

Mr Furious

Member
I have read and considered your post (that took a while!).

In my experience every turn will take an hour (middle aged men with prostrate, hobbie and cigarette stops) plus brunch, lunch, tiffing, cakes and tea breaks.

So my suggestion is that we follow your lead to award VP and also set Strategic Time at every complete turn (i.e. orcs/chaos bash, 'umans/halfings bash). There is no way on Nurgle's clean earth that we will complete 5 turns then do ST.

It could be (and I have yet to delve into my Siege book) that at the start of each turn cycle we declare ST and those in base to base contact with supplies (woodland game, farmers crop or livestock, trees for construction of new war machines or fuel) then benefit in some specified way.

In addition, we have not considered the possibility of reinforcements. What if a fast cavalry group ran to the next border town in ST?

Of course, all this freedom is the beauty of WFB3.
 

Thantsants

Member
So my suggestion is that we follow your lead to award VP and also set Strategic Time at every complete turn (i.e. orcs/chaos bash, 'umans/halfings bash). There is no way on Nurgle's clean earth that we will complete 5 turns then do ST.

It could be (and I have yet to delve into my Siege book) that at the start of each turn cycle we declare ST and those in base to base contact with supplies (woodland game, farmers crop or livestock, trees for construction of new war machines or fuel) then benefit in some specified way.

I'm sure we've managed a quicker rate of getting through turns in the past but I take your point. I'm leaning towards the VP option myself and recording that every turn makes sense.What do we think about other benefits from coppices/farmsteads?

Farms/food sources give you back a certain number (D6, 2D6?) of casualties each turn. This could be used to create a reinforcement pool that could be drawn on in subsequent turns.
Woods give you a certain number of points that can be spent on adding defense points to castle wall sections/gates to represent them being shored up with additional timber. Farmsteads could also be fortified with these points - adding to the number of hitpoints/wounds the building itself has. Depending on having the scenery to use, you could also use these points to build palisades round the farm steads. We could use the Sapper rules for this - 1" per turn and 1 timber point per inch. As ordinary troops aren't as skilled as sappers then twice the number would be needed to build at the same rate of a 2 man sapper team - 4 troops to build 1" of palisade per turn. Troops building pallisades or reinforcing castle sections wouldn't be able to move. This could also be true of troops sending back food supplies from farms. This could also have an impact on the number of supplies consumed if we're going down that road.

For reinforcements I was thinking of just using the trailing force rules from 3rd ed. but after a certain number of turns had passed. Perhaps sending a messenger and bodyguard of fast cavalry could speed this up and bring on the reinforcements earlier on in the game. Or we could roll each turn to see if they turn up with a +1 modifier each turn so the more turns that pass the more likely they are to turn up?

As we'd discussed using some ideas from Warmaster too, here's my thoughts. I'd like to keep 90% of the WFB/Siege rules for combat, shooting, etc. I quite like the command phase from Warmaster though - issuing orders and making command tests depending on how far units are away from their officers/general or moving on their own initiative if close to the enemy. It also puts a little risk into the game that you won't be able to move all your troops if you fail a command test which would certainly speed up a turn!

If we added in the ideas for the strategic phase and combined it with the movement phase as the first phase of the turn then we could be onto a winner.

In fact in terms of food, we could assume that our game represents the final phase of a long and drawn out siege. The good guys start the game with a certain (depleted) number of supply points and we deduct the necessary number each turn in the command/strategic phase. Should they have insufficient supplies to feed the number of models inside the castle then they start losing troops to starvation and sickness. Defending farm steads would then give the defenders a steady income of supply points - hopefully enough to keep the castle defenders alive. Troops outside the castle walls would be assumed to be foraging.

Love the defender's eye view by the way - spot on! :lol:

Do we have the return of Brave sir Robin? :mrgreen:

Here's a few pics from my Orc's Drift game to give you an idea of the sort of scenery I've got for famrsteads

















 

Mister Rab

Member
I've got eight or nine of the pmc resin thatched village buildings I can bring, including a tower and a great hall/saxon church, if that would help.
 

Mr Furious

Member
Thantsants your scenery is wicked! Thanks for posting the pics - very inspirational and lovely painted minis. I imagine with Mister Rab's thatched offerings this will make a great scene.

In terms of scenery there are three things to my mind (listmania beware):

1. the physical geography of the field. If I remember your original scenario correctly it's hills on one side for attackers, a castle on the other deployment side for defenders with a river in between. I'm sure Foundry will have a board with a river and hills?

2. the structure and layout of the fortress. We plan on using four (or more) with doubled battlements so do we want to create a solid wall to bridge a pass (something like the Black Gate) with small urban settlement beyond, a marcher fortress with double entrance and toll gate or something else...Something to think about practically before we turn up and play big Lego. Also have you painted yours? (I'm hoping not!)

3. agreed objectives and scenario bonuses (farmsteads, coppices). I have a few hedges, walls etc and coppices - basically 3 trees per CD scenery base and about the same number of chopped down (does this open the avenue for Supply Points/ VP/ other conditions for D6 turns until the resource is depleted? and what about farmsteads? A unit of 20 will deplete a farm in a very short time, more rapidly if larger humanoids or halfings...). I have a couple of urban buildings (see 2 above) and - after a weekend of B&Q - a functional farmstead (once painted maybe Brave Sir Robin will inspect and I'll post it up).

I found a copy of Warmaster on line and the Command phase gets my vote. Love it! I'm still reading the Siege rules, especially the SP, which start differently for attackers and defenders and strongly hint on a GM. I was a bit concerned to read that halflings consume double SP and die twice as fast from starvation!
 

Just John

Moderator
I won't know exactly what I can bring over until I figure out transportation and weight but if I can I will bring a herd of sheep (as seen in the raid on Conflagration-on-Sea) and hopefully some siege stuff for the Moot. Things like cauldrons of boiling stew and the like.
 

Thantsants

Member
Mr Furious":yorbqr3p said:
Just John":yorbqr3p said:
Things like cauldrons of boiling stew and the like.

Sheep and stew. Excellent :grin:

I'm reminded of a certain exchange from Zulu...

Corporal, I want all these people out of here. Douse these fires and turn the boilers over.

- They’ve got soup in them.

- Pour it on the fires. Get a rifle.

- A rifle? But I don’t…

Mr Chard? Mr Chard?

- Commissary Dalton, is it?

- That is correct.

- You’ve just asked this man… To pour the soup on the fires.

See that he does it. All these bags of maize inside the perimeter. I don’t want these tents providing cover for the enemy.

Does he know what it’s like to make soup for 100 men in this heat?

Don’t distress yourself, dear fellow. There’s your own officer - Go and speak with him.

- Yes, sir.

... Alright, man, is it true?

Beg your pardon, sir.

About the soup, sir.

What about the soup?

This gentleman, sir, said to put it on the fire.

- He did?

- We have thatched roofs here. No need to make the Zulus a present of fire.

Yes.

Then get on with it.

I can also imagine a similar reaction from our Halfling contingent to such ruthless scorched earth tactics! :lol:

Which reminds me - we need to get in as many references as we can into the game to spice up the pun-fu and narrative. We've got Birnam Wood out of Macbeth hopefully showing up with John's Treemen coming to the rescue, not to mention any number of Tolkien refereces to the Eagles saving everyone at the end. Zulu references have become something of a nevessity/tradition since I did Orc's Drift. I'm sure Mr F.'s cavalry will be doing a good impression of the Light Brigade.

John - some sheep would be lovely as would cauldrons and stew pots. I'd love to see a Hot Pot Catapult in action if anyone has one.

Cheers Mr F. - it was good fun and most satisfying to put together. Your last post about scenery, fortress layout and objectives is just what I was going to ask everyone about.

I'm going to get in touch with Foundry to let them know what we're planning and what our requirements might be. I've got a list of players who have signed up already - can you all let me know whether you'll be wanting brekkie (a sausage sandwich at 9.30am I suspect), lunch or dinner so I can give Marcus a vague idea of numbers who want to be fed.

The other main thing we need to think about is what size of table(s) we want and any other scenery we might need.

The geography of the scenario can be flexible although we have used this table a few times at Foundry (assuming it has been moved to the new place) which features a river, tracks and other features.



As it's a bit lumpy, I think we'd need another (flat) table joined on the end to accommodate the fortress though which must make the whole thing 6 x 12 ft. Too big?

Otherwise I have a river, hills, woods, etc so a large flat table (three 6x4's pushed together?) might be better. As soon as we start placing farmsteads everywhere I can see it all getting quite dense with scenery - not a bad thing!



I also had a vague idea of making the edge of the table the ready zone with Orc camps and Siege machines so that units active on the "tabletop" would be deploying some way (1 ft?) into the table anyway and thus avoiding spending most of the day tramping across the table towards the distant castle.

As for the castle - I'm for a Marcher Castle or Fastness set up as near to the centre of the table as possible, completely surrounded by Orc camps and earthworks. :twisted:

(I have painted a lot of mine by the way and primed the rest I'm afraid! I've gone with a black undercoat and am drybrushing it grey and white.)

I'm going to have a more in depth think about farms, woods and supplies tonight but we are going to need a few of them. If an attacking army (and to speed up the game and make supplies more important - the defender as well) needs to expend 1 supply point per 20 troops, 2 points for 21 to 40 troops and more for large humanoids and Halflings we're going to get through quite a few supplies. A very rough estimate is that my Goblinoid horde would need something like 40 odd points each strategic turn!

Each army will of course start off with some supplies (say 3 turns worth unless you're a greedy Halfling with no idea of rationing!) and we could up the amount of supplies a farm/coppice yields to D10 or 2D6 but I do think we're going to need at least 5 farms and say 3 coppices. All numbers plucked fairly arbitrarily out of the air at the moment...

I found a copy of Warmaster on line and the Command phase gets my vote. Love it! I'm still reading the Siege rules, especially the SP, which start differently for attackers and defenders and strongly hint on a GM. I was a bit concerned to read that halflings consume double SP and die twice as fast from starvation!

Which is why I was so happy when John said he was bringing the little chaps over! :lol:

Should all fit well into the narrative I'm cooking up that should fit nicely with your intro too.

I think a strategic phase at the end/beginning of each turn could work quite well.

Sorry about the essay!
 
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