Devilry Afoot in the Canadian North

This past weekend, Arthur and I visited Victoria, where Corey and Brian introduced us to Devilry Afoot (DA), an RPG-lite skirmish game based on 17th-Century monster hunters.  We had a great time hunting a pack of werewolves.  So of course I bought a copy of the rules so that we can play it ourselves!  Coincidently Arthur is currently painting up some of Bob Murch's Flint and Feather settlers in New France and New England.  They're not ready yet, however, so as an interim we decided to play in a proxy setting and instead played the Hunger scenario, relocated to 1920s Yukon.  Tyler and Oliver joined Arthur, each taking two hunters, while I attempted to be the gamemaster.

In the Hunger scenario, a group of hunters sets out in advance of a winter storm to protect a community from the raging of what I've decided to call a "forest spirit".  It's supposed to be a Wendigo, but my model looks more like a Sasquatch.

The board in DA is small, only 2'x2'.  In this case, the forest spirit is stalking a group of houses in one corner of the board, while the hunters arrive on the opposite corner.  The blue strips mark the boundary of the playing space.

Hunters arrive on the board.

Activation is randomly determined by pulling chits from a bag.  Here we can see a couple of hunters working to pin the forest spirit in place as other hunters work around on the flank.

Activations are never guaranteed, either!  The lady in the red coat was successful with multiple activations and advanced quickly across the table, but her friends had a few failures and as a result moved forward more slowly.  This did not work out very well for the goodwife in red!

The forest spirit then got a few consecutive activations, and was able to move and attack the goodwife, inflicting two wounds!

On the forest spirit's next activation, the beast chose an intimidate attack, which caused goodwife to flee from the table.  However, her comrades stood firm!

Despite the loss of the goodwife, the remaining hunters continued to stalk the forest spirit.

The spirit then turned on the wealthy gentleman's assistant, wounding him.

On his next activation, the gentleman, with no concern for his assistant's safety, turned and fired on the forest spirit, and ended the game!

As this was our first playthrough of DA without the guidance of a more experienced player, so as I re-read the rulebook I am certain I will find that we made many errors.  It was still great fun, and we will definitely play more games, both in the 1920s Yukon proxy setting as well as in the 17th Century once Arthur's new figures are ready.

For anyone interested, I simply used straight substitutions of weaponry for the hunters.  Modern rifles use the same stats as flintlocks.  Modern revolvers substitute for black powder pistols.  We handwaved reloading with the idea that anyone shooting will go full Hollywood-style blazing away, so they need to reload after each shot!  

Plains warriors again :)

 After only a year and a half, I finally returned to my Brigade Games' Plains War figures!  Here are 8 more warriors on foot.

None of these warriors have war paint on their faces or bodies, as I included in the warriors I painted a year ago.  These two are armed with hand weapons'.  I managed to break the spear on the warrior in the green shirt, so I patched it up with some green stuff which is poorly disguised as leather strapping.

The rest of the warriors are equipped with rifles.

Here's a group photo with all the warriors on foot.

And finally a group photo of all the warriors I've completed to date. 

Still to come are another group of mounted warriors.

Paddlewheeler

It's a bit embarrassing, but I was pretty much this many years old before it really sank in for me how important paddlewheelers were in Western and Northern Canadian history.  It really shouldn't have taken this long, as I've been exposed to them all my life, but when I see them I tend to think of them as a curiosity, rather than a crucial link in the development of transportation infrastructure.

As a kid, I enjoyed visting the reproduction of the SS Moyie at Heritage Park in Calgary.  

Heritage Park's Moyie is a half-size reproduction of the original SS Moyie, which Arthur and I visited in 2023 at Kaslo, BC, where she is in dry dock a museum ship on the shore of Kootenay Lake.

Another find on the shore of Kootenay Lake was this former paddlewheeler that's been converted into a home!

I've also read about paddlewheelers like SS Northcote, which participated in the 1885 Northwest Rebellion/Resistance, and the SS City of Medicine Hat, which sank after crashing into a bridge over the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon.  I suppose they never entered my consciousness the way railways did, as they didn't leave the same legacy.  My main cultural appreciation for paddlewheelers is tied to Mark Twain and the Mississippi paddlewheelers!

On our summer trip this year, however, Arthur and I encountered several more paddlewheelers that worked in Yukon, including SS Klondike in Whitehorse,

SS Keno in Dawson,

And the remains of SS Tutshi in Carcross.

As a result of my new appreciation for paddlewheelers, I purchased Sarissa Precision's colonial paddlewheeler.  This is a pretty massive model, and was tricky to build, especially compared to other MDF models.  The rails and supports are somewhat delicate and need to be handled gently.  The rear deck on the upper level is open, and so the supports are thin and also delicate.  After assembling, it still took me a while to paint this model.

By the way, thanks to Doug for the blue cellophane - it makes a great river!

The lake-based paddlewheelers like SS Moyie have splashguards for their wheels, like this.  It kept the water from splashing onto the ship.

The Yukon River paddlewheelers omitted the guard, as there was too much chance of ice or other debris getting caught in the guard, as visible here on SS Keno.  You can also see the red rudders that steer the ship.

The Sarissa paddlewheeler has no guard, so most closely aligns with the Yukon paddlewheelers.

The top and upper deck lift off to allow access to the interior, so figures can be moved around inside the ship.

Upper deck.

Wheelhouse.

Main deck.  Ship's wheel and the engine order telegraph.  This is the dingy-thingie that is used by the captain to send a signal to the engine room instructing the crew to power the engine "full ahead", "all stop", "reverse engines" or whatever.  Eventually I'll glue it down (or else I'll end up losing it!) but for now it can be lifted out.

Lower deck with a view of the engine room and the engine crew.  Bob Murch's railway men are well suited for this job!  Although it's worth noting that the Yukon steamers burnt the readily available timber, roughly one cord of wood per hour, rather than coal, so I may need to consider the crewman who is shoveling coal. 

River paddlewheelers had limited cargo space, so they often pushed barges to allow more cargo to be moved.  I picked up a pair of these Sarissa skiffs to represent the barges.  Barges were pushed rather than towed as of course the paddlewheel gets in the way.

Here they are with cargo loaded.

Cargo crates from Xolk.

This post is also an opportunity to show off this older, smaller, resin paddlewheeler from Eureka Miniatures that's been in my collection for many years.  I'm pretty sure it is no longer available.  It's smaller so can be more easily moved around the table.  The paddlewheels on each side are not glued down, so they can be removed to allow more deck space as well!

Neither of my two steamships have names, yet.  My first instinct was to name the big Sarissa ship the Alice May, after the derelict from Robert Service's Cremation of Sam McGee, but it doesn't feel right to name my ship after a wrecked ship.  I have the same reservation about naming her Mary Ellen Carter, no matter how much I love Stan Roger's song.  Feel free to make some suggestions for suitable names in the comment section below!

Chain of Command 2 - Flanking Action Sicily 1943

This afternoon, Craig and I had another play through of Chain of Command v2, this time using my Operation Husky 1st Canadian Division and Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 1. Hermann Göring.  We played the Flank Attack scenario, and allocated the maximum number of support points in order to make things interesting.  It was very, um, educational, for me.
Here is the table. Germans get to deploy in the upper right corner.

Another view of the table.  Interpretation of the circular olive groves turned out to be important and will change how I set up terrain for the next game.  Flank Attack lets the attacker have two groups of patrol markers, compared to only 3 for the defenders.  This is a deceptive advantage, as having fewer markers lets the defender lock their patrol markers quickly, before the attacker can move their markers very far onto the table.  It's a reminder of the importance of the patrol phase and how best to get a good position on the table.

The two tetrahedral anti-tank obstacles represent the two scenario objectives.  

The Canadian jump-off points (JOP), including the mule and driver, and,

a pile of supplies with a nice little hand-painted map of Sicily!

And a somewhat more generic German JOP inside the small house.

Early in the game, the Canadians deployed their Sherman.  The Germans dropped an AT gun on the hill opposite, and started shooting.  The Germans needed several shots to take out the Sherman.  Their first shot stunned the Sherman TC, and kept it from moving out of the way of subsequent shots.  In all, the Germans hit the Sherman three times before finally killing it, starting the gradual destruction of the Canadian force morale, as well as consuming 7 of the 18 support points.  Sorry no photos of this duel!  

Here the Canadian sniper and a section deploy.  In some of our previous CoC2 games, the snipers were a significant nuisance.  In this game, not so much!  The sniper only activates on a '1', and even when I activated him, his shot missed more often than it hit.  Luck of the dice!

The Canadian section beside the road intersection have dashed forward, in order to force the Germans to deploy to defend the objective.  

The Germans deployed the MMG and caught the Canadian section in the open.  Bad news for the Canucks.  A major error on my part, as I would not have left the section there if I realised that the MMG could deploy on this side of the road.  Another error was not spending the command points for the section to hit the dirt for two phases, which meant multiple phases of fire in the open.  

I took advantage of a double phase to move this section into this house, as it held a German JOP.  

Back near the crossroads, the first section was continuing to be hammered.

Destruction of the first section ended up pushing the Canadian force morale over the edge.  I stopped taking photos as I was trying to figure out how to get my guys out of trouble.

Here's a photo from earlier in the game that shows where definition of the terrain matters!  Each of the olive grove disks was a minor obstruction, as were the line of trees alongside the road, and also the low wall that the Canadian section is hiding behind.  In CoC2, this means three minor obstructions, so Germans firing from the farmyard have line of sight which allows them to fire on the Canadians with the only limitation being at effective range (>18").  Otherwise their chance to hit was no different than if they Canadians had been in the open.  This vulnerability was not intuitive for me, so I'll be more careful with how exposed my troops are next time.  In a future game, I'll emphasize that the olive grove is area terrain covering the full area in the space between, as with the orchard just visible on the right.  If I do that, then 6" of olive grove will block LoS.

There were a few more aspects of CoC that we didn't use, both existing rules as well as new rules introduced in V2 that we didn't use, including suppressing fire and smoke.  In V1, I would liberally drop smoke everywhere - in this game, I used my '1's to activate the sniper instead of dropping smoke.  Smoke could have protected that exposed section and provided cover for it to advance.  I was slow to use my CoC points to get the section to 'hit the dirt' after the MMG opened up on them.  

Ultimately, a good lesson for me in watching for hazards, and considering things that my opponent can do!  Thanks to Craig, a real gentleman to play with.  I'm looking forward to our next game!