Wargames Weekend: Death in the Snow

In the afternoon we played our first Too Fat Lardies game, although with a twist.  Lenin put on a game of Sharp Practice but with a fantasy element using the Alternative Armies Flintloque figures and suitable amendments to the rules to cope with the elves and the undead.

The zombies were not permitted to spot, deducted 1 pip per die when moving, counted as Poor for shooting, couldn't act independently on the Tiffin card but ignored the morale element of Shock and kills were only 50% successful.  My Vampyre officers were also harder to kill but could not then be replaced but my Liche Commissars could be.

Following the catastrophic defeat of Mordredʼs Grande Armee du Norde, the Ferach forces are retreating as fast as they can out of the Witchlands. Most formations are in total disarray and are easy prey for roaming bands of Zombiski Cossacks. However, a few Ferach units have retained some order and dealing with them requires a more deliberate approach.


Aerial reconnaissance has identified one such formation in the vicinity of the village of Borscht, which KGB intelligence believes is being led by the infamous Ferach Marshal Chauchat. Of more concern, in a rare Ferach victory, Chauchat managed to capture a Graviski Reanimator and this technology must not be allowed to remain in enemy hands.

My orders were to ambush the Ferach column, kill or capture Marshal Chauchat and recover the Graviski Reanimator.  Completing either objective counted as marginal victory, completing both would have been a decisive victory.

There were two roads down the table, one through Borscht, and we both started on blinds.  The game of cat and mouse was a little short lived as my blinds were mostly in cover and hence more difficult to spot so I quickly identified that the elves had avoided the village route.  I deployed two of my zombie infantry units to cut them off.

The elven dragoons decided that they could shift my infantry with a quick charge, as we were only in line, but they were mistaken and fell back with their tails between their legs.

Meanwhile the elven Voltigeurs were slowly advancing towards the village in a vain attempt to spot my blind located there.  By the time they realised the blind was only a scouting party I had advanced the bulk of my force into positions to hold the elven advance.

Instead of charging into the elven infantry on the road I decided to enter a fire fight with them, which was a major mistake.  My two units only had Lieutenant Degtyarev (a Grade II Vampyre) whilst the elves had their Marshal Chauchat (Grade III) and Lieutenant Hotchkiss (Grade II) with them.  I started to rack up a lot of Shock points and soon my firing became rather ineffective.

Fortunately my main force under Count Kalashnikov, having learned the lessons of the other group, was making rather short work of the elven Voltigeurs by tackling their two groups individually and getting into close combat.

With my troops now in a position to outflank the remaining Ferach we called the game (mainly because we had started late and run out of time!)

We discussed the fantasy rule amendments and decided that they needed a little more tweaking as not allowing the zombies to act on the Tiffin card was a rather greater disadvantage than had been intended.