Sunday, September 03, 2023

Victory Without Quarter - Alpian Wars - solo game

 After much work on completing a downstairs bathroom and the first series of tests on my First Responder course I decided that there must be an Alpian Wars throwdown.

Lacking opponents, I decided to use my solo simple system to lay out a battlefield and set a simple objective.

The tabletop was 1/3 'swampy ground' in two of the six sectors, so this was likely something happening in the 'low-countries' where flooding is common.

a hill and a small town rounded out the battlefield.

For 'orders' the Stagonians ended up with the task of killing or capturing the enemy commander and they could use much resources to do this (King of Diamonds drawn); for Alpia it was more vague ... they had to use a 'plan' to win (the Nine of Clubs).

Stagonian Command

I have many photos of the table, yet the whimsy of the miniatures and the look generated by the clip to comic app seems to serve telling the overall story of an Alpian Wars game better than the many other shots.

I will still use a few of the photos, AND there is a time lapse of the whole game broken down by deck draws.  (at the end of the post)

the Alpians used their pike and shot to some effect
in guarding their commander

I randomly assigned the troops to the commands, three to each brigadier and two to the CiCs.

No artillery were used and the artillery cards were removed from the draw deck.

the Stagonians were in greater strength on their right
as were the Alpians to the right of the hill

the great story of this battle would be the
many times Stagonians rallied (like here)
and how most often the Alpians did not rally


Zuff P&S

and Queel P&S were great at blasting away

at Stagonian Knights, who were eventually
killed off the field ...

while the Alpian Knights simply withdrew
after taking some fire and having other troops
retreat through their ranks
(many, many failed rally rolls - the like the '2' seen here)

Alpian forces were down to minimal, with Brigadiers
attaching to help keep the men from fleeing

in the midst of the ninth deck,
the Alpian Commander decided that his life
was more valuable than any army and left the field

a score of 6 : 1 in favor of Stagonia
a tactical victory but a strategic draw ...

Fun to get the minis on the table again this month - looks like I might have an opponent for another game this long weekend - this time some FPGA.

Finally enjoy this longer form video of the whole process, from set up through each card deck and finally clean up.


2 comments:

nundanket said...

Was this before they became known as the Vile Stagonians?

MurdocK said...

Oh they are still known as most Vile