Saturday, May 19, 2018

CHAINMAIL! Viking Assault on Norman Seawatch Fort, Part II


A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of recreating this classic CHAINMAIL scenario, originally written by Gary Gygax!

I had the opportunity to play this scenario on the Legends of Wargaming sand table at GaryCon VI, thanks to Paul Stormberg and Kevin Maurice and special guest Judge Terry Kuntz.  I really enjoyed it and gained a new appreciation for the CHAINMAIL Man-to-man rules as a result.



When I started building my own sand table and wargaming room I was always mentally aiming to make this happen, and quite a few years later, it finally did.

In the first post of this series, I showed how I set up the table and put together the opposing armies.  In this post I will cover the scenario rules, army set up and initial moves.

Scenario Rules


I used the same base rules as the original scenario created by Gary Gygax, Chainmail, rules for medieval miniatures by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, finally legally available for less than a months' rent!  This scenario uses the Man-to-man or Siege rules located towards the back of the book.

These rules are pretty old and fairly difficult for the non-wargamer.  Most of my players for this game were not life-long wargamers and none had played the Man-to-man rules before.  I created the following documents to give them the basics of the game and some trimmed down tables for terrain and combat that applied to the units present in the scenario.





I made some minor changes to the rules as well.  For army set up, I allowed the commanders of each longship to pick their landing spot, anywhere on the beach areas around the headland, but not up the estuary.  The Normans could be anywhere in the fort but their were some units allowed to start deployed hidden in the woods on the fort side of the river.  Also, there were some advantages to positioning troops in the stone tower.




Another change from the original scenario is that I had the Viking crews deploy their troops in thirds, over 3 turns, within 5" of their ship prow.  I compensated by pushing back the arrival of Norman reinforcements by a few turns.





Initial Moves


The initial moves were fairly straight-forward.  The viking band led by Olaf Firehair charged for the palisade immediately.  So hastily, in fact, that they left a few ladders sitting on the ship.  A mistake that would prove costly later.

The second crew, led by Snorre Iron-Hat, tried to be a little more sly and work their way around the headland to the fort gate.  The Norman defenders took advantage of this caution by peppering Snorre and his men with several turns of bow-fire.




Olaf and his reavers reached the wall first and attempted a simultaneous escalade and axe attack on the wooden palisade.  




The yellow band on the model indicates he is climbing, and at the top of the ladder this turn.  Those bands are really great for miniature wargaming.  I found them because my daughters were into making these bracelets out of them.  They were all the rage a few years ago and you can buy a plastic box of about 12 different color bands for really cheap.

Snorre Iron-Hat and his men eventually made it up the estuary and began their assault on the main gate.



Middle Rounds


The battle was finally well and truly joined!





Unfortunately for the Vikings, the cheers from the Norman tower let them know all was not well...




The vanguard of Sir Hugh's cavalry had arrived!

Next post, I will cover the conclusion of the battle as well as some lessons learned from the whole affair, and how I may change things up for the next time.




Friday, May 18, 2018

CHAINMAIL! Viking Assault on Norman Seawatch Fort


After-Action Report           


A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of recreating this classic CHAINMAIL scenario, originally written by Gary Gygax!

I had the opportunity to play this scenario on the Legends of Wargaming sand table at GaryCon VI, thanks to Paul Stormberg and Kevin Maurice and special guest Judge Terry Kuntz.  I really enjoyed it and gained a new appreciation for the CHAINMAIL Man-to-man rules as a result.



When I started building my own sand table and wargaming room I was always mentally aiming to make this happen, and quite a few years later, it finally did.

In the next few blog posts I am going to discuss:
  •          The preparation for the game
  •          Army set-up and initial moves, and finally
  •          The main conflict and lessons learned

Needless to say it was incredibly fun and everyone involved thoroughly enjoyed the scenario, even the two 10-year-olds who more or less gave up on the battle and just played with my other miniatures!

The Models

Firstly, it took me quite a while to assemble all of the necessary miniatures for the game.  In total there were 60 Vikings and 49 Norman figures to collect.  I was able to find a few sets of painted figures as lots on eBay.  Most of these had to be, at the least, (re)based and flocked.  

The miniatures were assembled from several companies and are mostly metal, although some of the Normans are from the Conquest plastics line.

The Norman Defenders


The Viking Assaulters


The Norman cavalry are all mine from flash trimming to sealing and I’m quite proud of how they turned out!


The Table

The table set up was pretty straight-forward. The focal point of the map is the Norman fort, set atop a small hill on a headland between the English Channel and an unnamed small river estuary.  In the original scenario it was just a simple wooden walled fort with a single gate.  In my imagining, the Normans made use of an existing old Roman stone watchtower and added some dark age palisades to fill out the hilltop.


To accomplish this I had to wet the sand on the entire table to sculpt the right contours.  I stole the idea from somewhere on the interwebs to paint the top of my table blue so that all that is necessary to create water is to move the sand out of the way, and that is exactly what I did for the ocean and river on this board.

I set up the fort temporarily to get the dimensions just right, but then removed all but the stone tower, which I had to party bury to get the scale right, so that I could ‘seal’ the sand. 

I picked up this trick over at TMP – The Miniatures Page (a fantastic resource for all sorts of miniature wargaming).   This involves mixing a solution of PVE (Elmer’s style) glue with water (warm water works best) in a spray bottle.  A 50/50 mixture works best but sometimes will gunk up the spray bottle so I usually go with something less, closer to 3:1.  I add in a bit of Evergreen paint to give a subtle grass effect to the sand as well.  Once the water dries out on the sand it creates a ‘crust’ that will stand up to all but the most brutal finger stabbing or digging of mini bases.



I let that dry for about a day and then put the finishing touches on.  The road is of a dark brown craft sand and a simple ‘stencil’ made from cardboard to keep the edges crisp.  The woods were not a part of the original scenario but I thought they added a nice visual touch and gave me an idea to add into the scenario as well, which didn’t end up playing much of a factor at all.


Some loose green flock thrown liberally around the table completed the effect of the grass areas.  I then went back and used dry, un-sprayed sand swept up with a large brush to create the beach areas, which don’t show up particularly well in photos but were quite good-looking in real life.


The Final Result



The fabulous resin longships are from Adrian's Walls.  Palisade walls by Wargames Terrain Workshop.  Stone tower from Blue Moon Manufacturing.


In the next post I will cover the army set up and initial moves.