Phil on Ancients: Castle Defense Fantasy Battle

A Headless Body Production
Venue: Covenant United Methodist Church
Event: Games Day
Game Master: Bob Darretta
Players on the Side of Goodness and Light (Yeah!!!): Dave Peterson, Russ Orr
Players on the side of villainry and evil (booo!!!):Dave Peterson Phil Gardocki
Game System: Home brew

The Forces

The forces of villainry and evil (booo!!!) are a mix of goblins, black knights, giants, trolls elephants, spider and squib riders and reanimated things. Their equipment for a siege is a bit lacking consisting of a single siege tower and a couple of ladder teams.

The forces of Goodness and Light (Yeah!!!) are a mix of humans and dwarves. Well equipped with artillery and muskets,

Display Conventions: When you see a word bubble like "Ouch!" or "bugger!" this implies a disorder from missiles.

Inappropriately capitalized words are used to highlight terms that are specific to the game. For example Brilliant, Competent and Ordinary have specific game values for the commanders.

"XX" implies a unit killed in that location on that turn.

Any vagueness or inaccuracies in the descriptions is to be considered is to be considered Fog of War, and is to be considered part of the fun.

This was a perfect "con" game. Why?

Just one page of rules! With 1" margins and suitably sized font!

The Board:

The sun shines upon the castle of goodness and light.

As part of the castle defenses, the Dwarfs have donated their hybrid steam/mechanical powered mobile mortar machine.

Against it, the villains have camouflaged an elephant to act as a battering ram.

"Yeah, you blend."
Running escort for the Elephant are exquisitely well painted Spider Riders, and Goblins on Squigs.
I don't know what Squigs are, but my son described them as two legged mouths.
For the approach to the castle, there is a wooded, and muddy road. Ladder-men, described as "Slaves of Darkness", march next to the elephant.

On the left are evil knights. The Squigs and Spiders are on the right.
Each unit rolls 1 to 3 D6 for movement in inches.

Pikemen defend the barricade. A unit of dwarfs form up on the woods edge singing a joyful song.

On the other side of the table, a siege tower is pushed forward by a huge troll.

The castle defenders plan to deploy forward against the tower.
Turn 2:
Villainous knights ooze through the woods.
The reason for the dispersed structure are mortars on the castle towers, which have area of effect weaponry.
The elephant slogs through the muddy road.
The Slaves of Darkness trot at speed with their scaling ladders.
The Squigs keep up their skirmishing formation, or lack thereof. The Spider riders form up to assault the Dwarf line.

The Dwarf defenders break out in another verse!

After taking a round of mortar fire, the red demons of chaos charge! But there are two cannons on the machine, with gunners standing by.

The tower stops at the bottom of the bridge. It's escorts clearing away the blockade.
Things are about to get intense. Time for a quick bio-break and take pictures of other games.
Battleships laying down heavy fire on Omaha beach.

Americans about to land to assault the bunkers.

Napoleon's Grand Armee attacking the Prussians in the frozen winter.

Flames of War Shermans trading shots along a hedgerow.
Turn 4:

Villainous knights charge around the blockade into the pikemen.
While a Giant emerges from the woods to lift the barricade.
Going largely unnoticed, a Dwarf Berserker is trying to catch up with the main body. The Squib charge the corners of the Dwarf block for a temporary 2-1 advantage.

Each unit rolls dice independentatly for movement. I'm guessing the Berserker has made a number of poor rolls here.
The elephant just plods along. But at least the crossbowmen in the howdah are now in range.

The Pikemen have stalled the evil knights charge. What is that? The portcullis is raised, and an organ gun appears.

The Dwarfs fight back but the squibs seem to have the upper hand.

The Organ Gun captain has to make a choice. The Pike seem to be holding well, so he orders it to wheel left to support the Dwarfs.

Which does not go well for the beleaguered axe-men.

The Red Demons have wrecked the Dwarf war machine, and are now looking for fresh meat.

The siege tower realizes it is not going to make it to the wall and divests it's troops.

Turn 5:

The organ gun crew reloads (artillery can only fire every other turn) As black knights are now gaining the upper hand against the pike.

Most of the spider riders are "racing" for the wall, as they can climb it easily. But one decides to sample dwarf meat.

The Elephant almost clears the muddy road.
Turn 6:
The giant pushes the barricade aside. The elephant surges on firmer ground. One knight tramples a pikeman on the way to charging the organ gun.

The castle defenses, almost a dozen men with muskets, is loaded and ready.

The Green Knights charge, their goal to take down the tower.