Outremer: Death in the Dust!

Popped down to BIG last night for some more Outremer with George, Matt and Tom. Unfortunately no plan survives contact with the enemy and Tom was unable to make it so I volunteered to "umpire" a game between George and Matt - the Caravan scenario.

This was good as it allowed me more time to get to grips with the rulebook with a real life game going on. At its heart Outremer is a really a very good game with some great ideas and mechanics and I do like it a lot. However it clearly has not been blind-playtested properly (I suspect people read it rather than played it). For example, the only reference to terrain is a line that "more is best" but the scenarios would benefit from some indication of what would be reasonable given the objectives of both sides and I can't imagine playtesters playing these scenarios would not have flagged this. That said it is not anything experienced gamers should not be able to cope with.

I suspect we should have had more terrain on the table as Matt's Crusaders struggled against George's Arabs with their missile fire advantage. That said he did manage to get his caravan to within one move of safety before his final character was taken down.

I then played George at the Rescue scenario. I had made a few changes to my warband. My new leader was now an Arif, I removed two Ahdath spear and added another Peasant with a bow. Having seen how kick ass George's two characters with the Sneaky trait were last week I had come up with a cunning plan to thwart them (which I promptly forgot and split my band into two like I did previously).

George's sneaky guys (bottom left) move up the sand dune having emerged from their hiding place...

His Sneaky guys took out one of my peasant bowmen in turn one and my Arif then failed a Faith test and ran off the board! My Mamluk tried to get into hand to hand combat but went down under arrow fire...

Mamluk and Peasant down! My Leader having ran off!

My other group had a bit of success taking down one of George's bowmen, but under bow fire from in front and the flank, I lost two more men before fleeing the battlefield and leaving the captured hostage in enemy hands.

One bad guy down, the Scavengers advance across the desert... 

Next time I shall try and remember my cunning plan to deal with them Sneaky types!

Outremer: Frankish Warband I

A rummage in the attic at Blease Towers looking for a Coolbox at the behest of SWMBO led to the re-discovery of a tin full of (very) old Citadel Norman infantry (the slottabase tabs say 1985). They are mainly infantry with a number of duplicates and whilst there doesn't appear to be enough of anything other than unmounted knights for use in Saga, there is enough useful models for Outremer!

So I have based up eight and undercoated them to make a Frankish warband to go alongside my Saracen one...

I won't need all the models for a 750 Livre warband but what I have pulled out the tin gives me some options to play with.

Outremer: Death in the Sand!

Played two scenarios from Outremer: Faith and Blood at BIG last night, with hugely differing outcomes...

Game One: Camp Assault

Salah's Scavengers surround and attack Tom's Crusader camp with the aim of seizing four loot objectives.

I split the Scavengers into three groups to surround and assault the camp from various points. I rashly advanced one peasant bowman straight over the sand dune and he soon found himself under fire from a Frankish archer. However he had Allah's blessing as the infidel arrows missed and he took the Frank down with his return fire (I must note here that Tom had the worst ever series of die rolls I have ever witnessed rolling five 1's and one 2 in a row at the start of the game which greatly helped my stupid tactics).

Nothing seemed to go well for Tom's Crusaders. I took down his second archer and one of my spearmen took out an axe armed warrior - again the Dice Gods looking after me. Another archer took out Tom's leader and his remaining warrior decided to flee the battlefield.



Tom's extremely poor dice rolls certainly worked in my favour in this battle which flagged up a few problems with the rules, the scenario Victory Conditions especially, as we were unsure whether I could claim the Loot as "seized" as I had not picked it up before Tom fled, although I controlled the battlefield within the game turns. As this meant 80 Livres for either the attacker or defender we applied common sense and gave the Loot to the victorious attackers, though technically the scenario victory conditions say objectives not seized give the defender the Livres.

This led to a lengthy discussion were we concluded it would actually benefit the Defender to flee the battlefield in turn one before the Attacker has the opportunity to seize any objectives and pocket the 80 Livres! :-)

Game Two: Skirmish

The Scavengers next battle was against George's Arabs and I think my guys had been smoking hashish with their winnings against the Franks!

George's band was a little more experienced than mine and had an advantage in two of his characters had the Sneaky trait allowing them to set up pretty much anywhere on the board after I had deployed.

As George was advancing from the opposite table corner (apart from his two sneaky guys) I decided to split my band into two and try and attack from two fronts. Unfortunately this did not work that well!

As one group advanced down the right hand side of the table, one of George's sneaky Arab's burst through a side door and attacked my spearmen taking his down. He then engaged my leader and after a couple of rounds of hand to hand combat took him down too.

Elsewhere the remaining spearmen in this group was shot by an archer and my archer having bottled his Faith test was cut down by George's remaining sneaky Arab!

With half my band down I decided I was going to flee the battlefield at the start of the next turn but was not able to do so before George slit the throats of my leader and archer to gain extra XP!

So unfortunately with Mohammed Salah viciously slain in his second battle, the leaderless Scavengers have disbanded and I will have to roll up a new Band of brigands before the next game...

Outremer: Salah's Scavengers

Off to BIG in a little while for another spin with Osprey's Outremer. I'm hoping I remember some of the rules(!) However I did manage to point up my own 749 Livre warband and finish off two more figures, conversions using Gripping Beast Viking bodies and Arab infantry heads, shields and equipment, to give me a couple of armoured figures that hopefully won't die quite as quickly as the rank and file.

Sub-Arif Mohammed Salah and Mamluk Amhed Hassan

Spear armed Adath's Essam El-Hadrid, Mohammed Awad and Ahmed Hegazi

Bow armed Peasant's Saad Samir, Sherif Ekramy and Ramadan Sobhi

Yes, all the character names are taken from the Egyptian World Cup football squad!

Outremer: Kick Off in the Kasbah!

Tom kindly ran a game of Osprey's new Crusades skirmish game Outremer: Faith and Blood yesterday evening at BIG. Matt, George, Steve and myself all used identical forces of Arabs in a four way battle of a leader, two spear and sword armed warriors and three peasant bowmen.

My guys advance into town!

The game was a free for all but largely developed into two separate skirmishes as the bulk of my and Steve's bands of brigands clashed in the marketplace.

Steve's leader and warrior burst into the market square!

The rules are fairly straightforward with some nice touches, like making a Faith roll to charge into combat, combat using different dice types depending on the skills of the fighters, modifiers generally seeing dice move up or down a type as appropriate. Each figure is allocated a playing card and this drives when they can take their two actions in the turn as the cards are drawn from a shuffled deck.

Bloodbath in the marketplace!

Combat between unarmoured or lightly armoured figures is pretty brutal and bows soon make you regret not using cover (Steve's archers atop a building taking out both fighters in Matt's and my band!)

We need find some issues that may or may not be covered in the rules (this was our first play and the rulebook layout is not the best) such as disengaging from combat but things generally went smoothly and the game sped up as we became more familiar with the rules and the card deck grew smaller as characters became hors d'combat!

Stand and Face Me You Cur!

Overall all four of us had a great time (thanks Tom) and are looking forward to taking part in a campaign over the next couple of months. If you have been thinking of getting hold of a copy of the rules, I recommend you do.

Outremer: Saracen Warband III

I painted the dip on the Saracens late Monday night so they would have 24 hours to dry whilst I was working on London on Tuesday. I should have guessed there was something wrong with the (rather old) tin of dip from the 5mm thick hardened crust on the surface that I had to hack through with a pair of scissors and whilst it seemed to go on ok, it seemed to dry very quickly. The next morning I had a quick look for heading off and was dismayed by the effect, it had dried matt and was akin to an ink wash not the dip highlight that normally saves time with shading.

I was rather despondent about it all day yesterday and decided as I sat on the train home at 1am this morning to treat it as an ink wash and highlight the figures. Looking at them in the cold light of day they aren't as bad as the quick glance on Tuesday morning so the tunics had a quick drybrush with thr original colour, as did the metal bits. I decided against touching the white areas so they are very grubby looking but wouldn't you be after months in the field chasing down the infidel?

I painted and drybrushed the bases and have had a crack at some hand painted shields (these still need a quick ink wash) which aren't too bad.

Not my best painting but they are almost done and a dozen will take to the field tonight!

Outremer: Saracen Warband II

I've decided that the quickest and most effective way of getting these figures painted and on the tabletop is the trusty old dip, so today was all about block painting!

I'm not too keen on figures being too bright given the rigours of the battlefield and the lack of Persil so I am hoping the dip with subdue the sky blue which is a little brighter than I would like.

Just got to decide what to do with the shield designs now, the LBMS decals are lovely but do I really want to spend six quid on buying them for dipped figures?

Outremer: Saracen Warband I

Tom at BIG has suggested we run an Outremer: Faith and Blood campaign in July and August (Outremer being the new Crusade skirmish rules from Osprey).

The game looks like a lot of fun requiring very few figures and having a box of the Gripping Beast  plastic Arab spearmen and archers I volunteered to join in. Whilst Tom has figures for both sides I thought I'd get gluing this morning and sat out in the garden snipping bits of plastic off the spures and sticking them together.

As everyone at BIG is well into Saga as well I decided to stick together enough figures for 3 points of Saracens as well!

I have a trial game of Outremer on Wednesday so will report back how it goes...