Geezers! Wages Snatch

I've been playing a bit of Geezers! Shut it!, playing the Midgate Wages Snatch scenario. I find the rules a bit sketchy. It covers a lot of the key bits of the genre very well, but misses out some basic stuff. I might have a go at expanding it out a bit. A weird thing, the rules neglect to even mention stuff like who goes when. I've assumed that they've assumed we would assume it's a standard sort of one side moves everything once, then the next side moves everything once, sort of format, but that's not explicit.

These are the geezers, Mad Harry's gang from the scenario in the book. They've been staking out a wages deliver to a local factory and are confident of the routine. Two of the boys will be hiding in the factory when the van arrives, while the rest of them will be ready to pounce from their trusty Capri (it's a transit in the scenario, but a brown Capri is extra 70s).

Unknown to Mad Harry (due to a random roll based on the respective Nouse of the two sides), however, DI Callan has got word that something a bit naughty might be going down. He has replaced the two security van guards with police officers. He will be driving around the area in his jag, with his two plain-clothed, pistol-armed sidekicks and there will also be a patrol car in the area with a couple of truncheon-wielding PCs.

Mr Smith, the factory owner, will be waiting in the factory at the crack of dawn, for the wages to arrive, and will have the two birds from accounts with him. There will also be a security guard at the factory. For some reason, the two fake delivery guards have disguised themselves as WPCs, to throw the villains off the scent that they are actually PCs. The real WPCs are of course back at the station putting the tea on.

Not wanting the area to feel suspiciously quiet, Callan has sent one PC off on his normal beat.

Right on time the security van arrives at the factory...

...and the guards get out.

Johnny 'Nostrils' and Arthur have been hiding in the factory grounds waiting for this moment.

Meanwhile, Mr Smith and the birds from accounts don't suspect a thing.

Two uniformed PCs are in a police car, waiting for the alarm to be raised.

While Callan and two more detectives are taking the jag for a spin. 'Blimey, Guv, 92p for a gallon of petrol. I remember when it was 4 and 6.'

The villains seeing the security van pull into the factory, pull down their balaclavas and start the Capri.

Forgot to mention, the villain player leaves a bunch of clues around the place, that the police can bother to pick up. Some of these are red herrings, but the good clues will help with bringing to justice any villains that they manage to apprehend.

In our first game, three villains were arrested, but two of them got off scot free, despite four police ending up dead and a couple of good clues being found. Only Mad Harry went down, and that was for a ten year stretch. The next scenario in the book is about springing someone from custody, so that works well, narratively.

So, Johnny and Arthur surprise the security van guards. Had they been normal neutral figures then they would be obliged to do what the robbers tell them. But, as they're undercover police, they're not. So, they attempt to arrest the robbers.

Meanwhile, the villains on their way to the blag see the beat officer, and can't resist...

...a quick hit and run. This isn't really covered in the rules, but was too good to resist.

The security van guards' arrest attempt wasn't successful. One gets hit by a shotgun blast and the other is forced to back away.

Then Johnny takes Mr Smith hostage. Having a hostage is pretty decent under the rules. It's much more likely that any police trying to shoot you will hit your hostage instead.

And Arthur gets the first bag of loot from the van. We played there are three bags, each with a grand in it. In used oncers, probably. One bag max per person.

The plan was for the Capri to steam into the factory grounds, pick up the rest of the money, and then make a swift getaway. Unfortunately, trying to take the tight gateway at 30 mph, it runs out of control and smashes into the wall.

End of

Part One

Masked Faction

I've finished a bunch of bebalaclavaed minis which I plan to use as a faction for Living on the Frontline. I'll probably call them the Bishopston and Horfield Popular Front, or something like that. (Not to be confused with the Horfield and Bishopston People's Front.)

Some of them look a bit urban guerilla, but some look more like criminals pulling a bank job, so much so that we were gonna play LotFL with them yesterday, but ended up playing Geezers, Shut It! instead.

They're from a bunch of different manufacturers but ended up looking pretty cohesive, together.

These guys are from Mike Bravo Miniatures, specially designed from Winter of '79, LotFL, and definitely look a bit more militaristic than the others. There should be more coming, in the same range, too.

These are from Crossover Miniatures, at minibits.net. They might look a bit modern for '79, but you can probably get away with it, when they're in with a bunch of other minis. Not sure I like the idea of one bloke walking around with his hands in the air, but this mini came in handy as a surrender marker in Geezers.

These are proper Geezers from Killer B. Again, the blokes with money bags don't really fit with LotFL, but they were great in Geezers for marking the villains who were holding the loot.

These are new from Crooked Dice.

This bloke is from Matchlock Miniatures. I bought a bunch of minis from them thinking they'd all be good for this faction, but I only ended up with one balaclava head, so will be looking out for more balaclava heads.

Victorian Terraces 12

Finished my final house terrace. Made a few lock-up garage bits to fill in the gaps, too.

Victorian Terraces 11: Garage

Finished a couple more blocks of streetiness for my seventies street. the whole thing is beginning to come together a bit. I've only got a couple more to do to get to my original plan of 12 blocks.

Soldiers of God AAR

I got hold of Soldiers of God, a tightly focused crusades oriented game by Warwick Kinrade. We had a bit of a trial run with it, and these pics are a recreation (from memory) of the game we actually played.

This was, from the scenario list, a small field battle. Despite being small, it filled a 6*4 table. I'm not sure how a large battle (twice as many points) might fit on the same table.

The thing about Soldiers of God is that it's card-oriented play. Essentially, you get 7 cards per turn, and play them to get your forces moving, or to help rally them, etc. Four of the cards you draw randomly from a deck. And each section (Battle) of your army (Right, Centre, Left) gets its own card which they keep every turn. This is your battle strategy.

For example, my Arabs decided to use the Advance and Harry strategy, which means every turn each flank can use the Advance, Loose, Retire card, and the centre can March.

The Crusaders chose the Double Envelopment strategy which gives them the above cards. There are 8 strategies in the rules, but I don't see much wrong with the idea of simply choosing any three cards that suit your set-up and what you plan on getting your forces to do.

Here's my right battle, with some Arab tribal cavalry, some horse archers, and some Arab infantry, backed by two units of Ghulams. The rules really call for square stands of consistent size to represent parts of a unit, but I was using my Deus Vult 46mm*66mm (I have to add the extra 6mm for the lips of the trays) infantry stands with my 56mm*56mm cavalry stands. I'm planning on making a load of 46mm*46mm infantry stands and leaving the cavalry stands, but istm it won't make too much difference to the game. Even playing with these non-square bases didn't seem to have much of an effect.

This is my centre battle, with some tribal infantry (pretty rubbish) and some Mujahideen (not rubbish) back by archers. Unit sizes can be anything between 2 and 4. Bigger units cost more but can stand more damage (or Disorder). A unit stays until it gets more disorder than it has stands.

And my left battle: tribal cavalry, horse archers, and some medium infantry. I didn't field any two-stand units, coz I was a bit frightened of how fragile it might make the army. Essentially, every unit brings some Morale Value to the army, regardless of its size. And every unit will cost morale if it routs. And bigger units will rout less easily than smaller ones. So creating an army seems to be a bit of a balancing act between unit sizes. Smaller units should make you more manoeuvrable and will give you higher morale, but you will lose units quicker and so your morale will shrink more quickly.

Here's my opponent's right battle. Technically, a bunch of invaders, sweltering in the hot sun, looking on enviously at the cooling oasis.

Centre battle: more uncomfortably hot infidels.

etc.

So, to start the game, the crusaders charged down both flanks, exactly as their battle strategy said they should. I got my 'Advance, Loose, Retire' thing going, using my javelins and horse archers. Light troops in open order can interpenetrate for free, so I was able to use them both to attack at once. Still, they didn't seem to annoy the knights much.

Same thing on the left. Two unsaved hits on the Men-at-Arms brought two disorder. If they collect five disorder they will rout (as they have four stands in the unit)

Of course, you can mitigate disorder. You can burn a card to remove one disorder. And there are a few special card functions that can get rid of a lot of  disorder at once. I did manage to pile up quite a bit of disorder against this unit over the course of the battle, but my opponent always seemed to find the right card to get rid of it.

My opponent had the initiative (to start with coz his strategy was more aggressive than mine, but later coz he had better morale), and so my rolling archy javeliny thing didn't work quite so well on the right. And the knights managed to charge them down. With help from the horse archers backing them in melee, they soon put a bunch of disorder on my Arab cavalry that I couldn't slough, and so they routed. Not only did they rout, but they ended up with more than twice their unit size in disorder, and so were massacred. I lost a bunch of morale for the rout, and even more for the massacre (and as I had started the game with a lot less morale than my opponent, I was already in trouble).

So, we had a bit of an issue with the game. You need to have the right card to make the action you want. And so at this stage it would have been ideal for me to charge my infantry into this melee, and get a load more dice, and bonus flanking dice. I feel that would have taken out his units quite convincingly. But, it never happened.

(EDIT: Actually this is wrong. I now realise you can enter into combat with an already engaged enemy unit with a simple March action, instead of requiring a Charge action.)

Similarly, I would have liked to have shot a bunch of arrows at the crusaders' centre, while he wanted to charge me. Neither thing happened. I did get the Loose card once, but I reluctantly used it to burn a disorder elsewhere. Had my strategy been slightly different, I could have had a Loose on hand permanently. The Hold and Harry strategy gives you Loose in the centre instead of March. I feel like I will probably try that next time.

So, the hard as nails knights ate their way through my light cavalry and headed for my Ghulams, and also hit my infantry pretty hard.

The blokes in the centre just stood and traded insults with each other. My opponent did remark that he felt this was a bit off. But istm, this is the sort of thing that can happen in the fog of war and if you play rules like these, you just have to accept it. And make up some sort of narrative for it, if you like.

So, by this stage, I had lost 8 of my 15 morale, and my opponent had lost just 3 of his 20, so it was pretty clear which way this one was going.

All in all, I really enjoyed the feel of the game. First time play-throughs are always a bit of a pain (especially when you have a memory for rules like I do) but I've re-read the rules and pretty happy that we did most things right (the rules are actually pretty short and sweet), and am already looking forward to my next attempt to rid the holy land of the infidel.