The Ooh Shiny Complex

February is ... More Vikings!

2012-02-01T00:30:00.000Z

Primary Objective: add 100 points of Vikings to my Viking army.
Secondary Objective: begin work on remodelling the 15mm Bwendi army for our forthcoming sci-fi campaign.

After discussion with Steve, we have concluded that February will be another month of Vikings, because he wants to paint more of his Saxons. I had considered moving the Norman army to the painting desk, but Vikings it shall be for this month. We shall play Impetus using the small armies this month as part of the overall project and my goal will be to expand my Viking army so that we can play larger games next month once we have a better grasp of the rules.

My secondary objective will only be engaged if I meet the primary objective early enough. I do not hold out any great hope of that because Real Life(tm) is going to impinge even more on my gaming time this month, a problem that is compounded by it being a slightly shorter month. For our forthcoming sci-fi campaign, we are both preparing our forces. I have a version of the Bwendi army for the Laserburn universe, but it is not suitable for a Traveller-esque setting, so I bought some GZG New Israelis in the sale last year. These are part-painted and I plan to complete at least a platoon's worth plus transport for forthcoming Tomorrow's War games. The platoon transport is provided by QRF Ratel 20s, which seem suitable for the background of the army and the near future setting of our initial games. I have modified them slightly with bits from the GZG packs, but overall I think they look right regardless. If this objective is not achieved this month, it will become the March objective instead.

January Project ... Success!

2012-01-31T13:15:00.002Z

The January project is complete. I now have enough 6mm Vikings for a 200 point Impetus army. I did not achieve my secondary objective of painting enough for a 300 point army, but that is not particularly surprising given how the Real World(tm) impinges upon my time. On the other hand, I did manage to paint a whole bunch of casualty markers for the Vikings. So, without further ado, here is the Viking army:

Figures: Baccus 6mm
Bases: ERM 2mm mdf
Basing: Baccus basing system

Overview of the whole force

Viking axemen (used as veteran and guard huskarls)

Viking spearmen (ordinary huskarls)

Viking archers

Viking javelineers (basically spearman strips cut up)

And, just in case the worst happens, here are the casualty markers, based on plastic 20mm dia. slottabases:

The next part of this project will involve expanding the army and adding more casualty bases. I also need to sort out some disorder markers, but am undecided quite how to do these last. Casualty bases differentiated by having a red edge might be one way. Alternatively, a few 'live' figures cut from strips and placed at random and facing in all directions on a round base might be the way to go. This could require buying more figures though. Still, I met my target so I am allowed to do this by the terms of my agreement with myself. I shall wait and see. Now to sort out the February project.

Aeronef over the Aegean - Photo-Report

2012-01-26T23:06:00.002Z

We played this game absolutely ages ago and I have been promising myself that I shall publish it here, but I have never got round to it until now. Both Steve and I enjoy Aeronef and we both bought the Aeronef over the Aegean supplement when it came out. Steve also bought the scenario pack from Brigade Models so that he would have all the right figures for it. Because Steve had the Turks, I chose to use an Italian 'nef from my fleet as the raider. We gave it exactly the same stats as the Austro-Hungarian 'nef that is written into the scenario and just assumed that the Italo-Turkish War happened a tad earlier than in our timeline. I have been interested in this particular war for some time, particularly because it was the first war to feature aerial bombardment.

Anyway, you don't want to read me blathering on, so on with the pictures. I apologise in advance for the vividness of the Mediterranean in them. Steve produced all the terrain for this game and his ground cloth was rather bright!

Scenario 1
The Italian raider must navigate across the Med to Turkish held areas in his quest for revenge. Turkish 'nefs are in the area and may escape to warn the others back home, unless the Italian 'nef can get there before them, either by blowing them out of the sky or by just being quicker.

Four Turks went to fight an Italian raider:

And then there were three:

And then there were two:

The Italians made mincemeat of the Turks and crossed the Med easily with minimal damage.

Scenario 2
The Italians must bomb the town into submission so that the mayor will tell him where his target is.

An unsuccessful bombing run. Turkish reinforcements are already arriving:

The Italians attempt to withdraw to reload and return again tomorrow:

The Italians return to try to succeed on the second go, but are met with even greater Turkish reinforcements:

All too soon the poor Italian raider is overcome. This picture was taken moments before the Italian 'nef plummeted burning to the sea:

The poor Italian raider suffered heavily from the war balloons. This things are nasty! We never got to the third scenario but are going to try the mini-campaign again with a few rules amendments:

The campaign supplement suggests using inches instead of cm for movement but retaining the standard weapons ranges. This would make some aspects of the campaign easier for the Italians.
Discussion with the supplement's author informs me that the scenarios are designed for a 6' by 4' table using the above movement change. We shall do that next time too.
Bombing the town should be done using the rules from The Captain's Handbook. This would make it more feasible to actually succeed at the bombing run, so we shall use that too.

I am really looking forward to trying this mini-campaign again with these rules changes. It was fun before; I bet it will be a proper hoot next time.

What is Traveller?

2012-01-14T12:35:00.000Z

There was a recent discussion over on TMP about Traveller and what it actually was/is. With the discussion of our forthcoming campaign, that discussion triggered thoughts in me about what Traveller actually is, so I thought I would ramble on here about it. I hesitate to engage in the TMP discussion because, for the most part, people seemed to be digging into their positions and hunkering down rather than actually discussing the options. So, what follows is my view on this topic. It is not sacrosanct and it is not intended to convert anyone to my point of view, but it does relate to how I am approaching designing our science fiction campaign.

Traveller was originally just the three rulebooks and presented a particular type of hard science fiction environment. It was background free, but presented an easy way to generate your background. To this was added all the Third Imperium material. I first encountered Traveller when I bought the Traveller Deluxe edition in the early eighties. Those were great days as the players roared through the Spinward Marches creating chaos wherever they went. The ship's locker was awash with Battle Dress and FGMP-15s and I had a great time designing scenarios around all the Jack Higgins novels I was reading at the time. This gave the players plenty of opportunities to use all the hardware they had. Most excellent! Oh yes, and I really liked the idea that characters could die during character creation. :)

Looking back on Traveller I now find myself associating it more strongly with the background rather than the rules. The rules were a vehicle for exploring that background, but it was the background that we loved. What this means is that for me Traveller is more about the background than the specific rules. It is all about the organic growth of that background through the many publications that followed and it is about continuing to help that background grow within our campaign. As a result, when we start our new campaign, we shall be playing Traveller, regardless of the fact that we shall not be playing an RPG with the Traveller rules. We shall certainly be using elements of those rules for the metagame, but the rest of it will be played out with Laserburn, Tomorrow's War, Striker 2, 5150 and FutureWarCommander, among other rules sets. I can't wait.

I think that makes sense and, if you will excuse me, I now need to make sure that my air/raft is serviced and that the Type S Scout Ship Aurora is ready to fly. I'm off to survey the Spinward Marches for the IISS. Who knows what adventures I shall encounter on my twenty year mission to chronicle the development of this part of the Sprinward Marches?

January is ... Vikings

2012-01-07T13:19:00.001Z

Figures: Baccus 6mm
Rules: Impetus

My target for this month is a 200 point Viking army. This consists of:

2 Guard Huskarls
5 Huskarls
2 Skirmish Archers
2 Skirmish Javelinmen
Casualty markers

I had a bit of time free at the end of last week and also this morning so I was able to paint the Guard Huskarls, the Archers and the Javelinmen. I also painted a bunch of casualty markers. It's amazing how quickly you can paint 6mm figures if you just sit down and focus on painting. The figures are now glued to their bases and awaiting varnishing. The remaining Huskarls and some more casualties are sitting on the painting desk awaiting my tender attentions. Pictures will follow when the army is finished.

For the record, I still have a bunch of unpainted Vikings that are not allocated to the army yet. This pile consists of:

2 Veteran Huskarls
3 Huskarls
12 Hird (as the lesser Vikings are called in Impetus)

If my progress on painting continues at the current pace without distracting from my PhD then I shall add some of these to the painting desk and aim for a 300 point army. Looking at the pile of figures, I reckon I can field about 450 points of figures. I would like some more of the axemen to use as Veteran Huskarls and maybe some more ordinary Huskarls so that I can field a full 500 point army with some options for variety, but that will have to wait until the current batch of figures has been used a few times and I have painted their opponents.

Into 2012

2012-01-04T18:24:00.000Z

The year is only a few days old and it seems appropriate to comment on my plans for 2012 and review 2011.

2011, Done and Dusted
I have not written on this blog for a while largely because I burned out with the Rather Large Towton Project. The amount of painting and organising required to get this game to various shows was enough to put me off gaming for quite a while. Nevertheless, it was worth it. We had largely positive feedback for the game and I was rather impressed with the visual effect we achieved. I just wish our terrain had been up to the standard set by groups such as Bert Fegg with their ACW game. That would have really made it a satisfying project to have completed. The fact that we succeeded in fielding around 17000 to 18000 figures on the table and still completed the battle once per day at every show we attended was a great feeling.My other major gaming commitment of 2011 was our Talomir Tales campaign. This is our ongoing Rally Round The King / Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures fantasy campaign. It lurches along with games every so often and benefits for a lack of pressure. We play the games when we have the time and feel like it. That is a great way to proceed and it means that the campaign remains enjoyable. I particularly enjoy the interaction of the massed battle rules with the skirmish rules in the storylines that we run. I have some ideas for new adventures for Brother Cedric in this campaign and am also considering some Olde Skoole adventuring for both him and my own skirmish character, Ragnar. I reckon it could be good fun.Just for kicks I looked up my stats on BGG and this is how last year looks in terms of games played and how often. I'm not sure it presents a wholly accurate picture, because I feel sure that I have not logged some games, but it may just be that some of these games took several sessions to complete, so my recollection is faulty.

Played 4 times:
Odin's Ravens
Rally Round the King

Played 3 times:
Aeronef
Wings of War

Played 2 times:
Red Actions
Small World
Tomorrow's War (second edition)
Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures

Played 1 time:
Age of Conan: The Strategy Board Game
Laserburn
Outrider
Tusk
Warrior Heroes

To 2012 and Beyond ...
I hope to keep 2012 a quiet year in terms of new purchases. The only guaranteed purchase will be some more 15mm and 6mm sci-fi stuff from Ground Zero Games, because I have a discount voucher for them and science fiction is very much on the cards for this year. Terrain may well be on the cards too, because I could do with more and better terrain than I currently have. Other than that, I plan to limit purchases to those figures that are absolutely necessary for any given project.In terms of painting I am also planning a quiet year spent finishing a variety of projects that are currently stored in the attic. I do not plan to put any great pressure on myself because I have to finish my PhD this year, which is rather more important than painting little lead soldiers ... honest! This year will see the return of the project-a-month initiative. I shall set myself small targets each month and seek to achieve them. No miniatures purchases may be made in any month following one where the monthly project was not achieved.

January is Vikings Month
My plan for January is to complete a 200 point Baccus 6mm Viking army for use with Impetus. This should not prove too arduous. My plan is to assign months later in the year to the production of additional elements for this army to build it up to a 500 point army. I also have a Norman army that will be a project for a later month too.

Other Projects
The main focus of my gaming this year will be:

Talomir Tales - painting additiional skirmish figures and playing both skirmishes and massed battles.
The As Yet Unnamed Science Fiction Campaign - a 6mm and 15mm science fiction campaign set in the Traveller universe. The details have not yet been finalised but the basic idea is to play games that are set against the Traveller background using a variety of skirmish and massed battle rules. The individual games do not need to be directly linked but will provide the backstory for later games.
6mm 18th Century - Steve is planning a Lacepunk game that will use our 6mm GNW and SYW armies. I am also planning some historical battles that I need to paint figures for. No campaign is currently planned, but it may evolve as we get figures painted and play games.
Impetus - As mentioned above, I shall paint a small Viking army for Impetus in January and have a Norman army in the wings awaiting time for it. I also have the same armies in 15mm and a Viking army in 28mm. These may well become the focus of the monthly projects at some point this year. At the very least, 15mm Basic Impetus armies would make a nice change of visual appearance.
Terrain Building - I just never seem to have enough terrain. I need 6mm and 15mm terrain suitable for my science fiction campaign and I need to get more terrain built for our 28mm fantasy skirmishes. Terrain building will be the focus of my efforts at some point in the year too.

Crikey, the island's about to explode!

2011-12-10T15:04:00.001Z

We played Tusk ages ago and I have been meaning to post pics from it but never seemed to get around to it until now. The game involved two groups of Victorian explorers trying to get from one side of the board to the other, where their ship is waiting, before the volcano erupts and tears the island to pieces. Between the explorers and safety is a herd of Tyrannosaurs.

We both set out as fast as we could. I shot at the Tyrannosaurs in a bid to drive them towards Steve's group, but failed miserably in my goal of getting him eaten. He shot at the Tyrannosaurs and managed to kill three of them with his elephant gun, although brave Sir Harry did rather end up on the wrong side of one of them (its inside). As the countdown to doomsday continued, we both raced as fast as we could and managed to get two stands each off the table. My group consisted of hunters with my poor porters being left behind. I cannot remember what Steve's consisted of, only that I exited more points of troops. Still, it was a draw because we both got two stands off the table. Frantic stuff all round and great fun.

Figures: Irregular Miniatures 6mm

Pirettes!

2011-09-02T18:54:00.003+01:00

In a fairly recent blog post I showcased the Saucy Sue, a mobile den of scurrilous iniquity, or so the authorities would tell you. The Saucy Sue is a landship for our forthcoming Lacpunk game. She has some crew, but I thought she needed some extras and had these 28mm Black Scorpion pirates hanging around from an impulse purchase at a show. So, onto the painting table with them and slap some paint on. I don't think they look too bad, although my photography certainly still needs work and I have still not learnt to like painting 28mm figures:

My Love-Hate Relationship with GHQ

2011-08-30T12:17:00.002+01:00

It cannot have escaped the keen-eyed reader's notice that I use GHQ Terrainmaker tiles in a lot of my games. These are 4" across flat-to-flat polystyrene tiles of varying thickness according to need. The basic tile is 1/2" thick. Negative features, such as rivers, streams and ditches are constructed using two 1/4" tiles, while hills are constructed using 1" tiles. The whole system provides a fantastically flexible terrain system that is perfect for my normal games, which are fought on a 4' by 3' table for the most part.

I love this flexibility and I love the facility for making my own terrain as needed. You can do as much or as little with the tiles and they generally look fairly good even at the basic level of terrain-making that I do. Some people out in internetworld have done fantastic things with their tiles and make them look really good. For an example of this, check out Tom Stockton's website. His work is brilliant and an inspiration to me. Now if only I had the patience to do all that sort of work myself, but I do not, because I am a gamer more than I am a modeller.

However, I also hate the system. Why is GHQ's quality control so poor? The hexes I bought from Chiltern Miniatures when they were manufacturing them under licence over here were great. They were exact and fitted together well. The GHQ hexes that I have are occasionally squashed on the corners. They are not true hexagons and are often not precisely 4" across as they are meant to be. Some of the hexes I have are an eighth of an inch out in one dimension. It's a pain in the bum and ensures that my terrain often has fairly large gaps in it. I noticed this when photographing the Vikings earlier today. The 1/4" tiles that form an iced over river are smaller than the normal land tiles. They don't feature in any of the photos because of this problem with means that I had gaps in the terrain of 1/4" and more. Worse yet, those tiles then swum around within the terrain frame I was using because of the gaps. Bah! And Grrr!!

If only someone produced individual tiles like this that were precisely 4" across and were always perfect hexagons. Until then I shall soldier on, because I have rather a lot of the GHQ stuff and don't like the idea of all that wasted effort if I get rid of it. Of course, I suppose I could see about setting up producing stuff like this myself and trying to sell it. Might be a laugh. Anyone care to give me the start-up costs? I doubt I could manage it with the pittance I currently have in the bank.

There, I feel better for that whinge.

Some 6mm Vikings

2011-08-30T12:13:00.003+01:00

This is the first part of my Baccus 6mm Viking army. These are enough stands to cover their use in our Rally Round the King campaign. All units are based on 40mm frontage by 20mm depth while the heroes are on 20mm by 20mm stands. This means I can easily use the same forces for Warmaster Ancients, should I choose to expand the army that far. At present I am undecided and shall probably just crack on with producing a 6mm Viking army for Impetus based on 60mm by 30mm stands. Perhaps I shall produce the full WMA army in the future or it may just happen naturally if the Rally Round the King army is successful in the campaign and expands to that size.

Castle Caldwell - a couple of CC3 images

2011-08-18T08:59:00.006+01:00

I've been playing some more with CC3 and came up with the following image of Castle Caldwell (Basic D&D module B9). It is based on a revised floorplan that I found online somewhere.

The adventure map:

The castle on a bright spring morning:

I forgot to switch off the text from the player's plan of the area, but that is not too much of a problem. Time to switch to a scale bar, I reckon. I've also just noticed that the trapdoors on the towers are casting shadows so I shall have to move them to a different sheet from the rest of the symbols I used, but overall I am rather pleased with the effect and usefulness for our Labyrinth Lord game. I reckon I am going to get some nicely atmospheric maps out of this package. Yay! Money well spent, and I don't even have to paint it!!

I have produced maps of the interior and the dungeon beneath the castle, but I shall not post those until my players have battled through them, just in case they actually read this blog.

A Map of Northern Karameikos - More Adventures with CC3

2011-08-16T17:19:00.006+01:00

Ok, spent a bit of today fiddling with a map for our Labyrinth Lord game. The end result is this map of the area around the town of Threshold (Click for a larger version):

Looking at it displayed on the screen I notice some areas where I need to 'feather' the edges of the woods to give a less blocky feel. I could probably get away with fewer mountains in the mountainous areas too and the glow around the edge of the text needs fettling slightly to make the text more readable. Still, it gives the adventurers a visual aid, and I can fettle the map and add things they discover as I go along. The more I play with CC3, the more I wish I had this sort of technology in the late seventies when I first started playing Basic D&D.

Wargods and CC3 - Version 2

2011-08-15T23:52:00.002+01:00

Ok, a couple of instruction videos down the line and I think I am beginning to understand a few more things. Here's the next version of the campaign map. Have I made any progress? I think so. CC3 seems simple enough to get the basics quickly but probably has a lot more subtlety to it that I may well manage to learn later. Hmm, Steve's a CAD wallah. Perhaps I should just point it in his direction and see what he makes of it.

Mapping Aegyptus with Campaign Cartographer 3

2011-08-15T14:02:00.003+01:00

I have been considering putting together a Wargods of Aegyptus mini-campaign recently. It would be the first episode in a series that ideally would see the harbingers rise from lowly Ka1 wannabes all the way to Ka10 and possibly one of them becoming Pharaoh or restoring Osiris to the throne. The basic campaign idea is a simple one. The Harbingers must find the clues, which are located at significant named spots. Once all the clues have been found there is a climactic big battle. Each clue will add a bonus to the warband that finds it, so finding lots of clues will give an advantage to the warband that does this. So, I wanted it to be a map campaign and had drawn up a simple grid on paper. Then yesterday I weakened and bought Campaign Cartographer 3, primarily for mapping my Labyrinth Lord campaign but I produced an Aegyptus map first. This is the result, my first warts and all CC3 map using the basic package and no add-ons.

I was very surprised at how easy it was to produce this map. A quick whizz through the basic tutorial followed by a quick run through the CC3 Essentials pdf manual. A trip to the forum yielded a couple of clues about approaches and techniques too, as I read a few posts by first-timers getting their own work checked out, followed by looking up the topics in the main manual. So, that was Sunday afternoon filled up. I then spent an hour knocking this map together in the evening. I've tinkered with the settings a bit more today, in between running errands for my wife, but a small investment of time has yielded a perfectly usable map. It's not brilliant but I am quite pleased with it as a first effort. My next task is to try the same map using a different basic map type and see how that works. The range of icons available in the standard Vector style map is not as great as in the standard bitmap fill map, so let's see what I can do with the latter.

Overall I am very pleased with the basic CC3 package and how easy it is to use. I am not a great digital artist and have only sporadically used CAD packages in the past, so I am not an expert there. I use Photoshop Elements a bit, but this is not the same style of package and I am no great digital artist with PSE either, but I reckon that with a little bit more practice and thought I could be churning out competent maps for my games quite happily using CC3. I also suspect that I shall be spending a small fortune on the add-on packages too once I really get going!

Bwendi Aerospace Navy Gets New Fighters

2011-08-05T12:35:00.003+01:00

The Bwendi Bugle
Blowing the Bwendi Trumpet Since 1984 Old Earth Time

Gladcorp is very pleased to announce the development of the new Dendrobates Fast-Strike Interceptor. The Colonel's own Azureus Squadron took delivery of the first of these new fighters and may be seen here testing them above the Bwendi night sky.

Colonel Throckmorton P Gladiolus himself leads this squadron into battle and it is reported that he is very pleased with this new interceptor: "The flight was so smooth that I was able to perform combat manoeuvres while drinking my tea and I did not spill a drop. I can't wait to take a pop at the ADF in this beauty."

Figures: 1:300 Amrep Eagle by Brigade Models

Avast Behind! or The Saucy Sue Sets Sail

2011-07-09T04:13:00.000+01:00

Dave Graffam produces a nice range of card buildings for printing out and building. They use layers in the pdf so you can customise them and produce quite a variety of models from just the one download. At no more than $5 per pdf that makes them very good value, although you do need to factor in ink and card costs.

Anyway, I was browsing his stuff at Wargame Vault last night looking for some cheap retail therapy when I spotted his Patrol Boat model, which looked interesting. Then I spotted his Abandoned Wagon model. Well, that was it. Three quid for two models with many uses. I was sold.

Better yet, I could combine the two models. Steve has been talking about playing a Lacepunk game set on a lost continent in the mid-eighteenth century for some time now. I admit that I too have talked this one up. It sounds like fun to me. One of the ideas with this world is that it has a vast flat plain at its centre and the denizens thereof use landships to get around. Naturally, my group in the game will need their own wheels, so here is the Saucy Sue. She is a small cutter-like vessel, being swift and manoeuvrable but with not much room for crew. The next question that we need to answer is whether to raise the jolly roger or not.

Tarting up the Troops

2011-07-06T11:56:00.003+01:00

I mentioned tarting up my troops in the last post. Here is a before and after shot of Austrian (left) and Russian (right) stands from Irregular miniatures. In the background is the Russian general's new car, which I found in the bits box. All figures are Irregular miniatures and show how the WW1 infantry come based (three figures to a stand). I rather wish they did their WW2 infantry this way too. For some reason the modern infantry that I have is based similarly to the WW1 infantry but not WW2 stuff. Odd.

Orange Blossom Special?

2011-07-05T14:03:00.003+01:00

Train, trees, track and village by Irregular Miniatures
Hexes by GHQ and all flocked up by me

I started a Red Actions play by email campaign recently. I am umpiring it and my players (one in Australia and one at the opposite end of England) are busily plotting and counterplotting against each other. Steve and I are refighting the battles for them. You can read how the campaign is progressing on my Red Actions blog, but more importantly, this campaign has inspired me to revisit my WW1 6mm figures.

I have Russians, Austrians, Germans, Italians and British forces available to use but have not played anything with them in ages. These chaps are now proxies for the Estonian and Freikorps forces in our campaign. Railways are important in the campaign and I realised how bad our table looked without proper railways on it, so I ordered an armoured train pack from Irregular Miniatures and some track for making railway tiles. I ordered on the Thursday afternoon and the figures arrived on the Saturday morning. By Sunday they were all painted and I could start fixing railway track to hex tiles. I did the final basic work on the hex tiles this morning.

I chose to keep the train's paint job generic because I have not decided if I am going to choose one particular force to field and I currently want to be able to use it with all the forces available to me. The village and trees are from Irregular Miniatures too. I have had them for years and it shows. I really should get around to repainting them all. The hex tiles are GHQ. It is frustrating that they are not precisely cut but I still like the overall effect and flexibility. As my eyesight deteriorates with age I should become better able to ignore the gaps between the hexes! I also need to return to the hexes I made first and do more work on them because I am not happy with the colour of the scatter material. It is too dark.

Here is the result. An armoured train steaming through the countryside. Let's hope the village and woods do not contain partisans bent on blowing the train up!
(Click the pics for larger images)

Massacre at Umbobo Station [Laserburn]

2011-06-30T19:34:00.005+01:00

The Bwendi Bugle

The Truth Shall Make Ye Feer

News is just coming in of an assault on Umbobo Station in Mpele Province. Two gangs of Albion Symps have attacked the station, massacred the police troopers stationed there and stolen a consignment of valuable organs worth thousands on the black market. The whole are was littered with bodies. Initial reports say that four of the five troopers were found dead at the scene. Sergeant Friendly of the Police Sentinels lived long enough to tell a terrible tale of murder and treachery before she too died.

The perps drove up in two trucks from Natongo town and immediately murdered Officer Nicey, who was on guard. The other officers sought to arm themselves before confronting the villains, who were busily searching the supplies for their loot. Officer Lovely was first out of the door and managed to immobilise two of the gang members before being gunned down. One of the villains then burst into the barracks and gunned Officer Smashey down before he was immobilised by Sergeant Friendly.

Sergeant Friendly and Officer Super leapt out of the barracks to confront the remaining villains, only to find the villains firing on each other. Between them they accounted for two more of the villains before themselves being gunned down.

Forensic officers at the scene report that military spec technology was used including a Vortex Grenade that demolished a building and a tree. With such weaponry being used the perps must have been sponsored by the Albion Defence Force and it is odd that they seem to have turned on each other when they could. Investigators hope to find out more from the one living perp that was left at the scene. This man has been identified as Ezra Betterware a small-time crook. He is currently in intensive care at Sea Prison and will be questioned when he comes to. Two of his known associates, Esther DeVries and John Waldorf, were also found dead at the scene. A worldwide manhunt is now on for their other associate John Statler, who is thought to have been driving one of the trucks. If you see this man do not approach him. He is armed and dangerous.

Satellite imagery shown below shows another gang of four people, all of whom escaped in a stolen militia truck. They have not yet been identified. If you think you know them call our tips hotline on 5150-BAG-A-PERP.

(Click the images for larger versions)

The Scenario:
Mpele province is a real backwoods area of Bwendi Prime. It is sparsely populated and is known mainly for the logging industry in that area. As a result, it lacks many amenities but is generally peaceful. What it does have is a widely scattered series of automated hospitals staffed only by a small security team and a doctor whose function is mainly to keep the Autodoc in good repair. Each month new supplies are flown in to the hospitals and these include valuable organs that could be sold on the black market for a small fortune. You have decided that this sort of easy target will provide you with easy pickings and a means to improve your social status. So you have chosen Umbobo Station, which lies nearest to your hometown of Natongo and you have stolen a truck to get you there. Now all you have to do is intimidate the half dozen security guards and steal all the good stuff before police reinforcements can show. Next stop the big time. No more tagging and casual vandalism for you.

The Gangs
Each gang has 2000 Credits to spend on troops and equipment. You can only take four or five figures in total, because you need space in the truck for the supplies that you are about to steal. You do not have to pay for the truck.

The Police
One officer starts standing guard at the gate to the compound. The others are in the barracks building. No police officer will do anything until after the first shot has been fired, at which point they may now act freely. The points value of the police should be based on how many gangs there are. If there is only one gang, the police get 2000 Credits to field 4 or 5 officers. For each gang over one, add 500 Credits to the police budget. In a multi-player game the police are there to be an annoyance more than anything else. It is expected that the gangs will provide the main opposition to each other. We used the basic equipment listed for colonial police in Forces of the Imperium.

Set-up
We used a 4' by 3' table for two gangs. 4' by 4' would probably work well with 3 or 4 gangs. All gangs enter from off the table.

The table should have a lot of cover scattered around. Umbobo Station should be in the centre of the board, equidistant from all starting points. It has 6 piles of supplies lying around it. To find the organs, the gangers must search the supplies. It takes one full turn of uninterrupted searching to be allowed to roll to find them. Roll 1d6. If it is a 6 then the organs are in that supply pile. If the organs have not been found and only one supply pile remains, then they will be in it. There are four crates of organs in the pile. Each crate is equivalent to carrying a heavy weapon and requires two hands, so figures must drop the crate if they wish to shoot or melee.

Winning the Game
The winner is the gang that escapes with the most crates. Each crate is worth 500 Credits. Experience is awarded normally.

The Truck
Acceleration: 5m per turn
Deceleration: 10m per turn
Turning circle: Half current move distance
Armour: Mesh
Carrying capacity: 1 driver and 2 passengers in the front. 6 spaces in the back. Each space holds either one figure or one crate.

Squadron Commander: Reheat - First Impressions

2011-05-04T09:38:00.003+01:00

Rules: Squadron Commander: Reheat
Producer: Brigade Models
Type: 1/300 starfighter combat

Squadron Commander: Reheat is a reworking of Squadron Commander 3600. The rules are available as a free download from Brigade Models so the first thing to say is that the price is right. Apparently there will be a printed edition that includes points, campaign stuff and other bits not included in the pdf. The pdf edition of the rules contains the basic rules for play and the stats for the existing range of supporting miniatures so you can get started immediately.

The Rules - Table of Contents
Introduction
Game Set-up
Sequence of Play
Movement
Sensors
Cannons
Missiles
Resolving Damage
Damage Control
Leaving the Battle
Starfighters and Missiles
Squadron Generation
Designers' Notes

So, how does this game play?
The game shows its hex-based origins very clearly and is written as if the default position is to play on a hex grid. They also include a section on playing without a hex grid (read 1 hex as 1 inch and measure appropriately). We played without a hex grid and it works absolutely fine. The only thing we thought would come in handy was a turning key to help fighters turn, because turns are measured in increments of 60 degrees exactly if playing on hexes or up to 60 degrees if not. I shall get around to making one of those at some point soon.

Each fighter has its own data card with all the information on it and space for writing in its missile payload, damage received and current speed. The data card contains most of the information you need to play the game and is probably the main reason why you would not field a vast number of space fighters in this game. We're not sure on practical maxima at the moment, but the starter sets are a good clue to a base game size (two flights of four fighters on each side).

Normal movement is in straight lines or turns of up to 60 degrees. You set your speed at the start of the turn and then move when your turn comes. You have to move a set distance in a straight line, based on your speed and manoeuvrability, before you can turn. There are also options for side-slips, hard turns and barrel rolls if you want to get fancy. Fighters also have acceleration and deceleration limits so you do not have a totally free choice of speed.

Sensors are used to identify enemy fighters and can also be used to scan the enemy for damage or other information. Normally you cannot view enemy data cards and this is how you would find out just what damage has been done. Of course, fighters also carry jammers so your scanner has to beat the enemy jammer before you can get a lock and find stuff out. This same process is used for getting a lock on the enemy to fire missiles at them.

Fighters all carry cannon. This is a generic term for blasters, lasers, etc. Cannon are fairly short range and cause less damage than missiles but there are fewer ways to avoid cannon shots, so it probably balances out in the long run. Fighters can also carry missiles. The basic fighters may carry one missile per hardpoint with fighters having either two or four hardpoints. To fire a missile you need to get a lock on the enemy fighter. Once the missile is launched, the enemy fighter gets to drop decoys if it has any and use ECM to divert the missile before it hits, so there are plenty of opportunities to stop missiles, which might make them seem not much use. On the other hand, they have longer range than cannons and do a heck of a lot more damage when they do hit.

Some fighters have shields. These prevent a lot of damage completely and can recharge between turns. Other fighters have more armour, which reduces the amount of damage taken but does not completely stop it, unlike shields. It's a trade-off in design that played a large part in our game. A lot of games just give the figures damage points that are reduced when they are hit. SC:R uses a system of critical hits instead. This results in components of the fighter getting damaged or damage being taken to the structure of the fighter. If the structure is reduced to 0 then the fighter is destroyed. You can also cause a nice fireball by hitting critical components. This makes the game very interesting, because reduction in capability is not incremental. You either have a system or you do not. The number of critical hits inflicted is equal to the damage done divided by the armour rating of the fighter. So, as you can see a heavily armoured fighter will take fewer hits, while one with shields will take more hits once its shields are gone but no hits up to that point.

One final point to include is that you also roll for pilot skill and abilities before the game. Pilots can start with weakness such as being poor with scanners or strengths like being a Marksman. Presumably in the campaign game pilots can improve in skill and skills. That would be really cool.

The question is, how does this all work in practice?

Our Game
We decided to just play with two fighters on each side. I chose my Hornisse Interceptors while Steve chose a pair of Folgore multi-role fighters. My ships carried lots of armour but no shields while his had shields but little armour. I think it would be fair to characterise my fighters as great lumbering brutes, whiles Steve's were lighter, faster, stealthier and better in almost every respect except armour and ability to absorb damage.

We rolled for set-up and it turned out that my lumbering brutes had got the drop on the Eurofeds (Steve rolled a 1 and I rolled a 12). We deployed behind him, trying to get in close enough to tail him, but his fighters, being more agile and faster quickly turned around and were speeding towards us. Each of us tried to get position on the other but it was not going to work so we wound up in a head-to-head pass. As the fighters flew into range, my two ganged up on one of Steve's. There was a brief exchange of fire that stripped Steve's fighter of its shields and then I launched a couple of missiles right at him. He wanted to do the same but unfortunately I had shot his missile racks off that turn with my other fighter. His ECM failed to stop the missiles, but his decoys did take one of them out. Still, that was enough. Twelve critical hits later his pilot had ejected and the fighter was a brief fireball in the firmament. Steve's remaining fighter then came in to try its luck. One shot caused my rookie pilot to lose control of his craft as Steve did some damage to the main structure but the veteran pilot on the rookie's wing then fired a blaze of blasters at the Eurofed machine and blew it to pieces with a reactor hit. Job done, my boys went home to a well-earned cup of tea.

Impressions
We enjoyed the game. It was nicely crunchy, allowing for a small game that is still engaging. The critical hit system and the design of the two fighters is sufficiently different to require different tactics, which is great. The game play went smoothly enough. There were questions about the rules but we were able to resolve them based on my incessant interrogation of the chaps at Brigade over the past week on their forum.

If starfighters is your thing then I would recommend downloading the rules and giving them a shot. I really like the fighters from Brigade too, so buy them while you are at it! :-) I am now looking forward to more fighters for my faction, although I am tempted to buy a flight of the AmRep ones for an elite squadron. I am also hoping that the published rules are not too far off because they should include a points system, a design system and a campaign system. Then it will be time to add SC:R to our Bwendi versus Albion campaign properly.

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-04-29T22:08:00.005+01:00

This Stylish Blogger Award is doing the rounds and Donogh has been kind enough to nominate me for my documentation of my losing battle with the shininess of wargaming stuff. Wow, well, I am honoured and would like to thank my mother and father, without whom this would not have been possible. I must also thank my wife, who tolerates my addiction and my cats, who keep me on the straight and narrow and my buddy Steve who feeds the addiction and goes along with all my madcap plans and ...

1. Thank and link back to the person giving you the award.
Donogh of Land War in Asia nominated me as I mentioned above. Thank you and I am well chuffed that he appreciates my blog enough to nominate me.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

I started gaming because of my father. He saw his friend's children playing this game called Dungeons and Dragons and decided that we should play it. I'm not sure if he did me a favour or not, but I have had loads of excellent enjoyment from it.
When I was 16 and 17 I rode amateur flat racing with the Arab Horse Society.
I am a Norwegiophile. Not sure if that is a word, but Norway is very much my spiritual home.
Anyone that knows me will tell you that I am a total fanatic about Vikings. This extends to doing a PhD on Viking berserkers and trying to correct every nineteenth-century misconception that survives.
I like cats. I have two cats, both of whom dote on me. I think it is because I feed them.
My other hobby is growing orchids. I currently have around forty in the house.
My mother-in-law actually likes me!

3. Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award.
This list reflects those blogs that I follow that are most often updated with material that interests me. I was going to try to avoid blogs that have already received this award, but then it struck me that multiple awards just show that a blog is popular. If I like it enough to send the award its way then so be it. The blogger should be rewarded for appealing to a wide range of people. So, on with the awards. In no particular order:

Frugal Dave at A Year of Frugal Gaming got me blogging when he started his frugal year. I liked the idea and it has worked to some extent in that my expenditure actually has reduced. I know it might not seem like it from some of my posts, but it has, and various projects have been finished. Thanks, Dave.

Steve Blease of Bleaseworld has actually been responsible for a lot of my expenditure over the past year in particular. Stop tempting me with 'nefs and Land Ironclads, dashitall!

Andy McMaster is a decent chap and keeps reminding me on Another Slight Diversion that I am not alone in my constant distraction by shiny things.

Jet at Geektactica writes most excellent battle reports and is partially responsible for my interest in Impetus. Great set of rules but I was not planning to buy the full version. Ooh shiny ...

Steve at Little Legions is the main person responsible for getting me into Impetus. Thanks a bunch, mate! :-) Mind you, I did enjoy playing it. His beautifully painted Crusader army is tempting me to get a Crusader or Arab army for the first or second crusades, even though I have more than enough to paint in my lead pile. I have resisted so far though.

Javier at War feeds my need to read other people's Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventure reports. They are good fun to read and his figures are very well painted. We are planning a crossover between our adventurers at some point. It will be like Grendel versus Batman or something equally cool and epic.

The Gruntz guys along with Mark at Dropship Horizon feed my need for 15mm sci-fi goodness. I've been into 15mm sci fi since the early eighties when I first picked up Laserburn and some of the Laserburn figures from Bob Connor at Tabletop Games. Now there was a bloke that gave good mail order service.

Tactical Miniatures Gaming has a large number of most excellent battle reports. I want to move in over there because they always seem to be having such good fun.

Another blog that inspires me is Victoria's Boys in Red. It keeps reminding me that I have Martians still to paint for our Soldier's Companion games. I really must find time for that, although this month looks like being a write-off already. Also, while on the topic of VSF there is no way that I could leave out Yours in a White Wine Sauce.

I could pick more blogs but these will have to do for now.

Infinity Games UK

2011-04-28T21:14:00.002+01:00

I just joined the Infinity Games affiliate scheme in the hopes of boosting my spending power with them. I hope this will not put any of you off reading this blog. Basically, if you click through to IGUK from the box on the right of the screen, then it registers on my account and I get 5% of the total purchase price of anything you may buy.

I like IGUK because I have had excellent service from them. They were prompt to deliver my games and the website tells you if everything is in stock, so no waiting around to find out later that what you want is not available. They also sell most games with 10% or more discount off the RRP and include postage in the cost quoted, so you know up front what you will be charged.

I have put a link to the Age of Conan boardgame on the right at the moment. They currently have it at £31.89, a discount of 47% off the RRP, which is pretty good IMO. It was certainly good enough for me to buy a copy for Steve after he painted a bunch of figures for me. I really need to get around to writing a review of the game so it must be time to play it again, assuming that Steve is willing. After all, I beat him last time so we may never play it again! ;-)

Battles of Westeros

2011-04-26T13:10:00.003+01:00

Fantasy Flight Games recently announced a painting contest for Battles of Westeros. The idea was to paint a unit from the game including a leader, while staying faithful to the books. Best painted figures win a full set of the game. I don't reckon I stand much chance, as much because of my photography as my painting, but here is my entry.

Bwendi Militia receive transport

2011-04-24T12:39:00.005+01:00

President Throckmorton P. Gladiolus proudly announced last night that the Bwendi army had received its first consignment of the new Throckwoddle Industries Bullfrog All-Terrain Truck. Throckwoddle Gladiolus, CEO of Throckwoddle Industries, declared that he was pleased to have been able to do his patriotic duty in selling these trucks to the army. Minister for Procurement and Defence, Throckwoddle Gladiolus, stated that this was an historic moment. No longer would the Bwendi militia have to take taxis or the bus into battle. Now they had their own dedicated transport and the army would save a fortune on bus and taxi fares, and compensation payments for damaged public transport.

Captain Pangloss of the militia is quoted as saying, "These are surely the best of all possible trucks. Our militia troops here on Bwendi Prime and on our outworld colonies will surely benefit from their versatility."

A squad of Bwendi militia parade in front of their new transport:

Stats
Imperial Commander - Wheeled Softskin, Hull Class 2, Turreted MG, Autoranger, carries up to 10 passengers, 2 Crew (paid for separately), 34 points.
5150 - Hard Armour, DV 1, 1*HMG, Wheeled, Speed 16/12, Crew 2, 136 points.

The trucks and cargo crates are 15mm Ground Zero Games. Infantry by 15mm.co.uk.

Starfighters over Bwendi Prime

2011-04-23T16:27:00.004+01:00

My ninja shopper picked up a Squadron Commander:Reheat (Brigade Models) starter set at Salute last week for us to split. I got the ONESS German kit because I have the same for my ground forces, representing the loyal and heroic army of Bwendi Prime. He is working on the Eurofed victims, representing the evil imperialists of the Albion Defence Force. These starfighters are intended to be 1:300 scale, the same as the ground forces they sell, and I plan to use them in direct support, as well as for space battles. SC:R looks like an interesting rules set. I suspect that managing more than a couple of flights of fighters per person will be a stretch because of the record-keeping, but the game should have enough crunch to be interesting even with a small number of fighters and ought to come into its own in a larger multi-player game. I'll let you know when I have played it.

So, anyway, enough rambling. I completed painting them today (instead of writing my thesis, which is what I am meant to be doing) and here they are. Apologies for the shoddy photos. I am not happy with the eight-pointed stars on the wings either. Yes, those are meant to be stars (The Frog Star actually), not flying spaghetti monsters. My hands shake too much at times! I may replace them with decals if I find any suitable ones. Alternatively, there may be a schism in the Bwendi church with people turning away from The One True Frog and beginning to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The background is a board printed from WorldWorksGames' Sathrican Homeworld map. Click the pics for a larger version.

Hornisse Interceptor:

Galland Attack Fighter:

The Rather Large Award-Winning Towton Project

2011-04-19T18:22:00.004+01:00

The team took the Towton game to Salute last weekend. I could not make it because my friend had chosen to get married that day but it seems to have been a successful day even without my micro-management, because they came away with the Most Impressive Troops trophy. Nice. There's more about the show, including more photos over on the Towton project blog but here's a couple of photos just for the Ooh Shiny Complex followers. Click the images for larger versions.

0900 on a snowy Palm Sunday in 1461. Shivering, the troops line up as snow begins to fall:

As they realise that their arrows are not reaching the Yorkist lines, the Lancastrians begin their advance across Towton Dale:

Norfolk falls like a slightly asthmatic lion on the Lancastrian flank. The Lancastrian rout begins.

Only one week until Salute

2011-04-07T18:12:00.004+01:00

I now have a complete single iteration of the order of battle painted, based and ready to field. The last of the flags went on today. That's 288 stands with around 8500 figures in total on them. These photos were taken before I had finished all my figures so there are some gaps in the lines:

The terrain is completed, all 18' by 4' of it. There are just a couple of tasks left to do:

Print orders of battle for the game;
Print display material;
Rely on the other team members to turn up with their figures;
Work out how to fit everything in Steve's car.

I shall not be at Salute because my friend has decided to get married that day but the other team members will be there for you to talk to and the game will be there for you to ogle. I hope you enjoy it.

The orders of battle (each square represents one stand):

Snowing in March!

2011-03-27T21:58:00.000+01:00

Steve and I had a productive day yesterday (Saturday) working on the terrain. We covered the frames for the final two boards in plaster-soaked t-shirts, added green scatter material to the three boards that had only been painted and added snow to the first four boards that we had worked on. It looks like we might actually have a game to put on at Salute after all!

Towton terrain

2011-03-25T16:07:00.002Z

I have been slowly plugging away at the last of the figures I need for Towton, while Steve and I have been spending our gaming night progressing the terrain. We have a big day tomorrow as we have the whole day to crack on with it. We are planning to get the majority of the terrain finished or at least into an acceptable state for Salute by the end of tomorrow. Here's part of the terrain before the snow gets added with a view looking towards the Cock Beck and where Castle Woods will be.

Lead Wars: A New Beginning

2011-03-07T08:48:00.002Z

Following on from yesterday's post, it strikes me that I have too many rules sets that I want to try. Obviously, given my circumstances and my general levels of impatience, painting armies for all of these rules is out of the question, so I need to focus. It strikes me that focusing on a small number of rules sets might be a solution. However, rather than doing that, it seems that focusing on the figures used might provide a more satsifactory solution. So, I reckon that if I pick a figure set, a scale and a basing system then I can match the rules to suit. I shall allow myself half a dozen choices and see where it goes. My usual opponent, Steve, could do the same and that would give us monthly target once more. As I wrote yesterday, the Towton project is almost complete, but will still dominate our painting and terrain building until mid-April. It may also require additional input after that if we decide/are persuaded to expand the size of it for the Derby show in October. Anyway, here goes with my picks. As you will see in the list below, I like flexibility and variety.

1. 6mm Wars of the Roses on 60mm x 30mm bases
Rules: Poleaxed 2, Impetus, Warrior Heroes, Rally Round the King.
These are the figures for the Towton project. Their functionality covers all of the above rules sets, although it seems unlikely that we shall use them much for the latter two rules because those are a feature of our Talomir Tales campaign which uses 40mm x 20mm basing.

2. 6mm Fantasy/Ancients/Medieval on 40mm x 20mm bases
Rules: Warrior Heroes, Rally Round the King, Warmaster Ancients, Impetus.
We already have a selection of armies painted and based like this for our Talomir Tales campaign which currently uses Warrior Heroes for the massed battles and will upgrade to Rally Round the King at the end of the current campaign year. The campaign is on hold while we finish the Towton project, but I plan to add Vikings, Amazons and Elves (all Baccus 6mm) to it when time permits. I also have a painted WMA Hoplite Greek army, which will see use in Talomir Tales, and I could expand some of the Talomir Tales armies for WMA too. As a further option, there is nothing to stop us using these armies with Impetus either, which will expand the range of armies available to us.

3. 28mm Fantasy skirmish on individual bases
Rules: Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, Broadsword Adventures, Montjoie, Retinue.
Talomir Tales uses a variety of 28mm fantasy, ancients and medieval figures for the skirmish element. Combining the massed battles as background with skirmish games enables some great storytelling and allows us to have heroes that get involved in the events in the wider world rather than just having small adventures that focus solely on them. We already have a selection of painted figures for a small number of nations. I really need to paint more of the figures I have for this, so this must be on the list. We are both interested in playing Broadsword Adventures too. It requries very few figures and suits our schedules well, so we plan to play BA at some point soonish. Retinue is an old favourite of mine from back in the eighties. I might inveigle Steve into playing an occasional game just to feed my nostalgia. Montjoie is a game I am interested in trying because it allows for your character to start small and eventually command whole armies. As an alternative, I might transpose the advancement system from Montjoie into WHAA, because that would save learning a whole new rules set. WHAA would cope well with purely historical battles too.

4. 15mm science fiction on individual bases
Rules: 5150, Laserburn, Imperial Commander, Stargrunt II, Striker, Striker II.
I have had vast numbers of 15mm science fiction figures since the eighties, when I got into Laserburn and Imperial Commander. Some of them are even painted! We are planning to play a small campaign using the 5150 supplement 'First Contact'. The Bwendi will take the role of Earth Force, with the Albion Defence Force (Steve's mob) taking the role of Gaea Prime. Steve also has Sahadeen from Rebel Minis for this one. I shall need to rewrite the background slightly for this on the grounds that the official background winds me up a bit and the Bwendi cannot be seen as the bad guys. In every campaign I have ever used them in from their first incarnation as a fantasy army in a play-by-mail game back in the late eighties, they have been the good guys and this must not change. It should be easy enough to intersperse this campaign with Laserburn and Imperial Commander games. As for the other rules, well, they may well have to wait. I have a real yen to play Striker II, because it derives from my favourite WW2 rules set, Command Decision, but I am not sure if I can be bothered learning new rules at the moment. If we did play it, then the plan would be to either just put a couple of figures together and call them a stand, or use sabot bases, because Striker uses element bases rather than individual figures. Another option with these figures is to use them for a variety of post-apocalypse games. Steve is keen to play a 1980s post-apocalypse game and a lot of my less military figures would suit that.

5. 6mm 18th century on 60mm x 30mm bases
Rules: Polemos: Great Northern War, Volley and Bayonet: Road to Glory.
I already have two large armies for the GNW painted and based. I also have a small Saxon GNW army and a small Prussian SYW army. I would like to expand these latter and have a fair few figures for them awaiting the attention of my brush. I would also like to expand the Saxons into a full army for Kliszow by increasing the Saxon army size and painting the Polish army that I have, while the plan for the Seven Years War is to put together a Prussian army for Lobositz. The place of the Austrians in that battle will be taken by one of my other armies to save on painting. I know that Steve has a Russian GNW army to paint too, so I should encourage him to do that by playing games using my armies! Another consideration here is that I have a couple of campaign systems that I rather like the look of and it would be great to play some kind of imagi-nation 18th century campaign. Options could include running the campaign by email so that we can expand our player pool or just running our own armies and having a system for controlling non-player armies. Anyway, these plans aside, this period has the massive advantage that I should not need to buy any new figures for it.

6. 6mm World War Two on element bases
Rules: Command Decision: Test of Battle, PBI 2, Blitzkrieg Commander.
I have medium-sized British, Italian and DAK forces for the Western Desert in 1941 all designed for an Operation Brevity campaign that I have never yet run because each time I return to it I find new evidence that invalidates my previous research. I need to put a stop to doing research, finish basing these figures and start playing games instead. One thing I need to do with the DAK and Italian armies is add some more infantry to them for generic battles. As they stand, they are well-suited to the one campaign, but the basic army generation systems in all the rules sets proposed require more ordinary infantry than I currently have painted. Therefore, the project will be to add a couple of battalions of infantry to the DAK and Italian forces so that we can use the Test of Battle system in Command Decision and play the other two rules as written. With that done, I might well get around to expanding these armies further by painting more of the stuff I still have tucked away in the attic for them. It also occurs to me that I could use these armies with FutureWarCommander quite easily and so they will permit me to field my Bwendi 6mm army without deviating from plan! Cunning, eh?

So, that seems to be the main focus that I wish to aim for. I'm not sure how happy Steve will be with some of the rules choices. I suspect that Command Decision may be a bit too techy for him, but he will no doubt read this and tell me I am talking bollocks as usual. The next step will be for Steve to come up with his wish list and then we can agree a programme that will see our lead mountains turn to lead molehills ... ooh, was that an airborne pig that just flew past?

A lack of focus?

2011-03-06T08:10:00.002Z

Yesterday I suddenly had an urge to catalogue all the wargames rules that I owned. My idea was to review what I had and work out which rules I could focus on using this year. The result of this cataloguing process was quite startling. I only counted up the rules I had in my office, which is where I keep the rules I most want to play. I did not count all the rules in the attic or those that currently only exist as pdf files on my computer, and I did not count different editions of the same rules set as multiples thereof. I also only counted up actual wargames rules, rather than including all the boardgames that I own. It turns out that I am eager to play 68 different rules sets! Yes, sixty-eight!! Looking at this number, I realise that I am already stretching myself too thin, before I even start painting. Now, before I get all depressed at this state of affairs, many of these rules sets can be played using the same figures, so the various sci-fi skirmish rules sets can all be played with my 15mm sci-fi figures. This means that I can sample different rules if I feel the urge. However, I cannot help but feel that it would make more sense to focus on just a few rules sets, play them more and learn their subtleties better so as to enjoy a better game. I certainly think that it would make more sense to reduce the list to half a dozen rules sets and focus my painting and playing on those rules. The question really is how to take control of my butterfly mind and pin it down to just a few rules sets. If I could do that then I might well be able to focus my playing and painting properly. I think I shall have to return to the system of picking one set of figures each month to paint and focusing my painting on that, as I did when first I started this blog. At present all my painting and terrain building is focused on our Towton project. That debuts at Salute in April, so I shall be able to concentrate on other games once more from May. So, which rules and which figures should I aim to paint in May? I think it will probably be reinforcements for my 15mm Bwendi (sci-fi) army, because I have some armour that it desperately needs to support it, but then I did recently get some of the new Baccus 6mm Vikings and I am rather partial to Vikings. Oh the choices ...

Just in case you are interested, here is the full list:
5150
.45 Adventures
A Coat of Steel
Abteilung
Aeronef
Age of Blood
Battle Troll
Black Powder Battles
Blitzkrieg Commander
Chaos in Cairo
Chaos in Carpathia
Combined Arms
Command Decision
DBA
Dirtside II
Fantastic Worlds
Field of Glory
FutureWarCommander
Gloire
Glutter of Ravens
Hellfire
Hellswords and Sorcery
Hordes of the Things
Imperial Commander
Impetus
Larger than Life
Laserburn
Ludus Gladiatorius
Martian Empires
Metropolis
Montjoie
Over the Top
PBI II
Pieces of Eight
Poleaxed
Polemos: FPW Commandant de Bataille
Polemos: FPW Kommandant der Armee
Polemos: GNW
Polemos: Mythic Armies
Polemos: War of the Spanish Succession
Polemos: Wars of the Roses
Rally Round the King
Red Sand, Blue Sky
Regiment of Foote
Retinue
Rudis
Skjaldborg
Snapshot
Soldier's Companion
Song of Blades and Heroes
Square Bashing
Stargrunt II
Striker
Striker II
The Company Rules
Tusk
Urban War
Valhalla's Gate
Volley and Bayonet: Road to Glory
Wargods of Aegyptus
Warmaster Ancients
Warrior Heroes
Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures
Wastelands 3: Meltdown
Wastelands v1.2
Werod
Wings of War
Wings of War: Dawn of War

It's fun to stay at the ...

2011-03-01T11:29:00.002Z

Y - M - C- A

Mirholmen Death Dealers for our Talomir Tales campaign (aka fantasy Vikings from the new Baccus 6mm range). As usual click the pics for larger images.

I recently took delivery of some of the new Baccus Vikings and could not wait to put paint to lead, because these miniature beauties are just fantastic. Peter has produced a most excellent range of eleventh-century Vikings for invading England with, and he has also just released the Normans, who are also stunning. My painting efforts are currently focused on Wars of the Roses, so I decided to scratch the Viking itch with this stand of half-naked berserkir, who would be quick to paint. As naked berserkir belong in the realms of fantasy anyway, I did a base on 40mm frontage for our fantasy campaign, rather than a 60mm frontage base for the Impetus army I plan to produce. Naked berserkir are a nineteenth-century fiction that seems to be enduringly popular despite the total lack of actual evidence for them. They derive from confusion between Celtic and Norse cultures at that time.

‘Grenjuðu berserkir,
Guðr vas þeim á sinnum,
emjuðu ulfheðnar
ok ísörn dúðu.’ (1)
(Berserkers bellowed,
Battle was about to begin,
Wolfskins screamed
and shook steel.)
One emendation of the above verse reads 'ok ísörn bítu' 'and bit iron'. These Mirholmen heroes are clearly sword chewers.

(1) 'Haraldskvæði' in Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. by Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, Íslenzk fornrit, 26, 3 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 2002), I 4th edn, 116.

February Update - More 6mm Wars of the Roses

2011-03-01T10:06:00.005Z

This month we have mostly been building terrain for the Towton refight. My target for painting was to add two more contingents to the Lancastrian army, which I have done after a fashion. I did not paint them all myself though. Peter at Baccus kindly lent me his Warmaster Ancients army on condition that I rebased it to the 60mm x 30mm standard bases that he favours. The army was on 40mm x 20mm bases before. So, rather than spending the whole month painting, I have spent a large part of it rebasing stuff. This has actually put me ahead of schedule as I now only need to paint ten more stands to have a complete single iteration of the Lancastrian order of battle, once Steve finishes the contingent he is painting for me. With this done we should be ready to rock at Salute. I shall then get the rest of the figures I was meant to paint myself done so that we can add some extra figures to the battle when we attend Derby in October.

The Yorkist army has also benefitted from Peter's kindness to the tune of one contingent, but I forgot to photograph them when I took these other shots. This leaves just twelve stands of troops remaining for the Yorkist army. Those are currently in the capable hands of my friend John, who has promised them soon.

In addition to these figures, I have included a teaser shot of the Towton terrain at the bottom of this post. As usual click the pics for a larger version.

Here we see the whole Lancastrian command that I am working on(empty bases show what remains to be painted):

This is what I have painted this month:

And here we have some of the figures that I rebased for Peter:

Proto-Towton terrain (everything you need to build Towton properly):

Vapnartak 2011

2011-02-07T11:20:00.002Z

I went to Vapnartak in York yesterday. It's only 45 minutes from my house, which makes it a nice easy show to get to and the venue is pretty good. I really liked the Merchant Adventurers' Hall when it was there because of the atmosphere of the place, but the racecourse is much better in terms of lighting, space and parking. So, how was the show?

Socially it was brilliant. I met up with Andy (Another Slight Diversion), Meic (an old friend from my digging days in Wrexham), Mike with his newly sculpted Ottomans (very nice and can't wait to see them come into production: for a preview check the Baccus forum) and many others. I had a great chat with Peter Berry on the Baccus stand and Tony at East Riding Miniatures. All in all, the social side of things was really good and it was a great pleasure to meet up with people that I only see occasionally.

The down side to the show was that it was very busy in the morning and seemed rather overcrowded, which made looking at things difficult with people barging past all the time. The crowds thinned out greatly in the afternoon, which made it much better.

As far as demo games went, the show was rather disappointing. None of the games particularly inspired me. I found the wall-to-wall nature of the predominantly 28m games rather tedious and not particularly evocative of the periods being represented. Looking for the positive, The Lance and Longbow Society game did not suffer from this. I think it was Mortimer's Cross this time around and it did look like a game that one might wish to play. There was a demo of the forthcoming Viking Age rules from Gripping Beast that looked interesting. Again, it was not wall-to-wall figures and the table dressing of pigs and sheep was nice to see. The League of Extraordinary Kriegspielers had an interesting looking game going too with a nice town layout. The problem with this game though was that I found it hard to see what was going on for the backs of the players. Another major gripe of mine was that no one at any of the games even greeted me when I approached the table to have a look. A simple hello would have sufficed and might have given me the opportunity to ask questions without interrupting the game play. Instead, the players kept playing and the onlookers were ignored. As such I wonder why the players actually bothered bringing their games away from the clubs into a public arena.

On the buying front, I limited my purchases significantly due to lack of money. I bought some Figures in Comfort foam trays for my troops. You have to keep the troops happy or they will not fight well for you! I also bought a packet of each of the new Vikings packs from Baccus. They are beautiful little pillagers and I am looking forward to getting paint onto them so that I can field them en masse. Lovely stuff.

January - The Photos.

2011-02-01T15:25:00.002Z

These are the figures that I painted in January. It does not look like that many when I gather them all together, but it sure felt like a lot.

Parts of Exeter's Command slog their way across Towton Dale towards the Yorkist lines. Baccus 6mm figures as usual with a sneak preview of part of the Towton terrain included. Flags are all by Freezywater and bases from East Riding Miniatures.

Colonel Throckmorton P. Gladiolus stands proudly in front of the newest additions to the Bwendi army, Two HAMR suits (Rebel Minis). The Colonel (15mm Laserburn) is convinced that these will really help prevent further Albion Defence Force incursions into Bwendi territory. The Colonel's brother-in-law would appear to be adept at sourcing secondhand military hardware. "One careful owner, a little old lady who used it to go shopping, you know. Oh, don't mind that hole there. We can easily patch that up with a bit of plastic padding."

The Road Warrior stands proudly beside his new car. He is a 15mm zombie hunter that I bought through TwoHourWargames (might be Rebel Minis, I cannot remember). The car was one of a pack of thirty that I bought for £1 in my local Wilkos. The gun on top is a spare piece from a GZG tank. We are planning a small post-apocalypse skirmish and are slowly gathering forces. Rules of choice are currently one of the Wastelands variants.

Progress! January target met!!!

2011-01-27T22:46:00.003Z

Yes, I have been making progress. I painted the last of the January target figures today. This means that I have painted two stands of knights, six or billmen and eight of longbowmen this month (= 456 figures). Hooray! On a whim I also undercoated four stands of knights this morning and got them painted this evening (= 132 more figures). That puts me ahead of target. The last of the figures are still drying and all figures are gluing to bases as I type, but photos will follow in due course. I now need to prep and undercoat the February batch in readiness for the task ahead of me next month. Oh, and add another few thousand words to my thesis before the end of the month. Now, where's the coffee?

2010 passes, 2011 begins

2011-01-01T18:29:00.002Z

Things have been rather quiet on here this past year. I have posted some reports but seem to have been more focused on the Talomir Tales and Rather Large Towton Project blogs instead. Together with trying to actually write my thesis and starting teaching at the university, these time-sinks have occupied most of my time.

Looking at my painting log, I don't seem to have managed nearly as much as I did last year, where really should have made better progress on the Towton material. We shall be putting on the Towton game at Salute in April and still need to build the terrain for it. I also have rather a lot of figures to paint while still staying on course for handing in my thesis at the end of this year or very early next year. Sounds like rather a tall order to me. What it does mean is that I need to focus my efforts solely on painting figures for Towton and not to get distracted by any shiny new things that I happen upon or old projects that take my fancy along the way. Perhaps I should hire a time management expert to monitor my every move! One problem I feel that this year has suffered from is a lack of focus. I have known that the Towton project needs to be done and the rate at which I need to paint it. However, I have not really set myself any proper targets and deadlines. I think I should do this and allocate time to the project out of my meagre spare time allowance. This should keep me focused. I also think that this would be a good way to keep myself on track with the lead mountain after Towton is up and running. So, expect to see a return to the monthly project system this year.

Talomir Tales is a time-sink in a different way. The whole campaign is just fun and I want to spend a lot of time on it because of this. However, in the first quarter of 2011, I really need to focus on Towton, which means that all games in the campaign should only involve figures I already have painted, or I shall (shudder!) have to use them unpainted/ part-painted. I hate doing that and could never do it for character figures. I suppose it is just ok for the NPC enemies if I do not have time to paint them.

So, where does that leave me in terms of resolutions?

1. I shall get the Towton figures painted by the end of March.
2. I shall get the Towton terrain built by the end of March.
3. I shall return to the monthly project system.

With this in mind, I can map out the first quarter with the figures I need to paint for Towton:
January
1. Sir Alexander Hody's contingent (2 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).
2. Holland's contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).

February
1. Sir Lionel Welles' contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).
2. Sir Richard Welles' contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).

March
1. Lord Grey's contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).
2. Viscount Beaumont's contingent (4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).

Right, better get myself organised for this. Once Towton is done, I can look forward to a variety of other projects, as well as more boardgaming. Some of the options for this year are:

* 15mm post-apocalypse (possibly with zombies and probably with a 70s theme)
* More 6mm 18th century (possibly with a lacepunk twist)
* 15mm sci-fi (Imperial Commander and 5150: First Contact)
* Lots more Talomir Tales gaming and new armies for the campaign
* Possibly finally getting my 15mm Basic Impetus armies started
* Painting my 15mm Qin Chinese army for FoG/DBA
* 6mm WW2 using Blitzkrieg Commander and/or Command Decision
* Aeronef and Land Ironclads

So much to do, so little time!

Game More!

2010-11-28T16:36:00.003Z

Yes, play more games! Well, I have just had a most excellent weekend of gaming down in Chelmsford with m'buddies Derek and Brendan. Derek's sons were there too for part of Saturday and had a riot (not a student one!).

Nuclear War
I had not played this in ages but it is really easy to pick back up again. The games went quickly with much hilarity and picking on each other as much as possible. The first game proceeded with a clear demonstration that the participants of the game were largely warmongers with a couple of clods that might inadvertantly cause a war instead. The second game was much the same, but it also provided a clear demonstration of the insanity of mutually assured destruction as a doctrine; I was wiped out first, but my retaliation killed Derek and Elliot. Their retaliation then wiped the other two out. Ouch! All in all, it was a brilliant game and well worth returning to after all these years.

Groo the Wanderer
Groo is a very stupid barbarian who inadvertantly destroys pretty much everything around him. You are the mayor of a town that Groo is likely to visit. Your goal is to build up your town before the others while avoiding Groo's visits. This is a card game based on the brilliant comic by Sergio Aragones. The game plays quickly and saw all of us trying to ensure that Groo spent more time at our opponents' towns than at our own. We laughed, we howled, we cursed each other. Yup, definitely one to return to. Again, like Nuclear War, I have had this game for ages but not played it often enough.

Shadows over Camelot
I had never played this before. The idea is that each player is a knight of the round table. You are supposed to go on quests to recover the Holy Grail, Excalibur and Lancelot's Armour, which help you win the game. Each quest puts one or more white swords on the round table. When there are twelve there, you have won. The twist is that one player may be a traitor. A card is dealt to each player that tells them whether they are the traitor or not. The traitor is trying to get seven black swords onto the round table or to place twelve siege engines outside Camelot. Siege engines can get placed by the knights, because they have to take one evil action in their turn as well as their good actions. Black swords are placed by failure to complete quests or by falsely accusing a good knight. It is entirely possible that no traitor is present, but I wound up being the traitor. Not knowing the game, I just played it gormless and eventually wound up in position to place the twelfth siiege engine and win. I was never unmasked as the traitor (yay!) and enjoyed the game a lot. It was tricky trying to make sub-optimal plays all the time, but that just added to the fun.

Fire and Axe: a Viking saga
This has to be one of my favourite games ever. You play a Viking, whose goal is to trade, raid and settle your way into the history books. In this game you can settle the New World, pillage Rome or Constantinople, or sail down the Volga to trade in the East. The length of the game is controlled by the saga cards. There are nine of each type and the game deck is made up of six from each level. The saga cards describe activities that you must complete to score them. The person that completes the final element of the saga gets the card and the cards can be worth points at the end of the game. I really like the fact that there are several ways to score points and win the game, and the game play is tense as people compete to score the saga cards. It is rarely evident who will win until the end and the final scoring is done, which enhances the experience. This was a really competitive game and the final scores were close. Most excellent.

Overall, this was a brilliant weekend and all the games we played were fun. It helps to have great people to play with but the games themselves are all ones that I would recommend too and enhanced the whole thing. If you are tempted, you can check the games out at Boardgamegeek by clicking the links in the game list to the right.

Rally Round the King

2010-11-17T09:32:00.001Z

Rally Round the King has now been released. This is an updated and refined version of the Warrior Heroes rules that we use for our massed battles in the Talomir Tales campaign and very fine it looks too upon a first read through. I must admit to having had some input into this iteration of the rules, so I may well be a little biased, but I am thrilled to see the rules back in print and brought into line with the newer sets from TwoHourWargames. I really hope that they enjoy success.

More pics of Helsingborg

2010-10-19T12:00:00.000+01:00

Right, here are some more pics of our Helsingborg game. Click the pics for larger images.

First up is an action shot of my poor, long-suffering opponent Steve as he plots my demise.

Swedish cavalry on the right flank charge uncontrollably forward in pursuit of the fleeing Danes.

Meanwhile over on the left flank the Danish cavalry are doling out some hurt to the Swedes.

In the centre the Swedish Livregiment til Hest sidles crabwise from one flank to the other. I should probably make some column stands for each unit too, so that they can march properly.

The Battle of Helsingborg, 10th March 1710

2010-10-18T08:00:00.001+01:00

On a freezing cold day in March 1710 the Swedish army gulped down a shot of vodka for breakfast and set out on a march towards Helsingborg. Their march brought them down on the flank of the defending Danish army, which was forced to redeploy, leaving their guns behind. The progress of the Swedish march and the Danish redeployment can be seen in the picture below (Swedes in blue, Danes in red):

The Terrain of the battlefield was largely flat with marshy areas, streams criss-crossing it and a small number of low hills. You can check out a full description of the terrain on the Helsingborg page on this blog (see the toolbar at the top of the page. I plan to complete the full translation and post it there at a later date). For other images of the battlefield, you can view older maps on the Terra Scaniae website. These are really useful for understanding the terrain. We based our terrain for our refight on the map above and the maps on the Terra Scaniae website.

The Battle
Historically, the battle saw the Swedes advance on the Danish flank. The Danes had to redeploy to face the Swedes. The Swedish Centre and Right wing advanced steadily, but their Left wing seems to have had some difficulties, so a portion of the Right wing cavalry was redeployed to the Left wing and soon the Danes were being driven back. At the end of the battle, the Danes were in flight and the Swedes held the field.

So, how did our game go? Click on the pictures that follow for larger images.

The view from the Swedish lines:

The view from the Danish lines:

Overall view of the set-up:
We began the game with both armies deployed and ready to fight rather than modelling the approach march, largely because of lack of time, but also because we just wanted to get to the action as fast as we could.

Turns 1 and 2:
Both sides advance.

Turn 3:
I decided to try redeploying part of the Swedish right flank to their left flank, just to see if the rules would enable me to do this.

Turn 4:
The redeployment continues, while the Danish left flank cavalry have now crossed the stream and are ready to fall on my cavalry.

Turn 5:
The Danish cavalry learn the error of their ways, as the Swedish cavalry drive them off. Meanwhile on the Swedish left flank the Danish cavalry are looking decidedly stronger.

Turn 6:
On the Swedish left flank their cavalry are really getting the worst of it, but they are just holding on, while part of their force attempts a swift march around the flank. On their right, the victorious Swedish cavalry is proving hard to control, but the loss of the Danish first line of cavalry has caused that command to fail a command morale test. They are not happy.

Turn 7:
The failed command test causes the Danish left flank to begin disintegrating, while most of the Swedish cavalry comes under control again, with only one troop disappearing off into the distance in pursuit of the fleeing Danes. In the centre, both sides have started some desultory fire resulting in one Swedish battalion being driven back slightly, but no really effective fire. On the Swedish left flank, the cavalry is still struggling, but the flank march is now in place (and in view in this shot), ready to fall on the Danes just as soon as they have reordered their ranks.

Turn 8:
The Danish left flank is almost non-existant now. The Swedish right flank is close to routing and the infantry in the centre are now firing at close range, with the Swedish infantry getting the worst of it.

Turn 9:
The Swedish flank march falls on the Danes and drives off a number of them, while the rest of the cavalry on that flank has fallen back to regroup. The fighting in the centre still continues in a rather unenthusiastic manner.

Turn 10:
Things start to improve for the Swedes on the left flank as Danish units rout, but casualties have been fairly heavy and a Swedish cavalry troop has routed. Those that were fighting before are content to hold their ground and recover before charging again. In the centre a Swedish battalion has routed, but all is not lost yet.

Turn 11:
The Swedish flank march pays off. By falling on the enemy flank they are able to cause enough casualties to break the Danish right flank. With their left flank fled and Swedish cavalry swarming all around the Danish infantry surrender.

Conclusions
We had a good fun game using Polemos:GNW. I am warming more to these rules as we use them more, but the learning curve is steep and I can see how others might be put off. We managed to get a few rules wrong over the course of this game. I would like to refight it again and try to get the rules right, but even with the mistakes, the battle was enjoyable. In total, it took us about eight hours of playing time over three evenings, which was not too bad really, considering that we were busily relearning the rules as we went.

I have added some notes about terrain and orders of battle below, as I felt these comments needed more detail and sections of their own. Hopefully you can use the information here and on the Helsingborg page to refight the battle yourselves.

Terrain
We played the game on a 6x4 foot table with the terrain as closely modelled on the historical terrain as possible, within the limitations of the terrain tiles, etc, etc. We also set up the armies at the recommended 600mm apart so that we could get into the action quickly. Other rules might need to adjust that distance.

One area where we had to compromise was the stream through the deep gully on the Swedish right flank (closest to the camera in all the shots). Modelling that would have entailed raising the entire rest of the table, so we just agreed where the ravine went to and made allowances for that in our game play.

The streams are far too wide on the table, but we made some allowances for that in how we administered the terrain rules, once we saw how it was affecting the game. In a future refight, I would count the streams as rough going/area terrain so that they cause a level of shaken while you are in it but you lose that shaken level immediately upon exiting. What we found was that the Swedish infantry could not mirror the moves of their historical counterparts if we counted the streams as streams for terrain type.

The villages may have had too great an effect as well. I am not sure they hindered the real battle that much, so perhaps we should have just treated them as decorative features.

So, I suggest the following terrain rules for this battle using the Polemos rules:
Boggy areas, villages/farms and streams count as Rough Ground (does not hinder movement but disorders troops).
The Wall counts as a linear obstacle with an Obstacle Value of 1 (Reduces movement and disorders troops).
Roads are treated normally, even though they were barely more than muddy tracks at the time of the battle.

Orders of Battle
Another problem we had with the game was fitting in the troops into the space occupied by their historical counterparts. There were simply too many troops for the space available. Given that we modelled the terrain to the ground scale of the rules, the stands should have fitted in. Analysis of the orders of battle suggests to me that Nick, who wrote Polemos:GNW, has used the ration strengths of both sides to calculate the order of battle. This is fairly sensible because we know what they were for both sides. However, the Danish staff history records the field strength of the Danish army too so it is easy to work out what they actually fielded. The Swedish army is more problematic. On 17th March 1710 the Swedes reported that they had 4308 cavalrymen and that they had lost 1187 in the battle, which suggests that they had c.5500 cavalry at the battle. No records survive of the infantry losses. If we assume a similar level of loss for the infantry though, then we get a total army strength of around 14000 men versus a Danish strength of 14000 men. So, the armies are similar in numbers. How do their various arms compare though?

Danish Army:
Cavalry - c.1750 men
Dragoons - c.2250 men
Infantry - c.9600 men
Artillery - c.400 men (note that most of the Danish artillery did not see use in this battle because of the redeployment)

Swedish Army:
Cavalry - c. 5496 men
Infantry - c.8000 men
Artillery - c.400 men

So, the Swedish cavalry outnumbers the Danes while the Danes have more infantry. That should make the game interesting. So, where does this leave us in terms of numbers? For the Swedish army, I propose the following numbers and order of battle based on these calculations.

Swedish Army

Cavalry	Ration Strength	Probable Strength	Polemos Stands
Enkedronningens	976	770	3
Vestgöta	679	536	2
Vestgöta Tremänninger	632	499	2
Uplands Fyr- og Femmänninger	787	621	2
Skaanes Tre- og Femmänninger	678	535	2
Smalands	986	777	3
Østgöta	1000	788	3
Livregiment til hest	986	777	3
Adelsfane	250	197	1

Infantry	Ration Strength	Probable Strength	Polemos Stands
Elfsborgs	1216	959	2
Uplands Fyr- og Femmänninger	930	733	1
Sachsiske	700	552	1
Malmø Garnison	600	473	1
Uplands	1068	842	2
Østgöta	1165	919	2
Kalmar	1019	803	2
Vestmanlands	1141	900	2
Kronobergs	930	733	1
Jønkøpings	734	579	1
Sødermanlands	1167	920	2

I also suggest giving them two light guns and two field guns.

For the Danish army I propose the following order of battle:
Danish Army

Cavalry	Ration Strength	Field Strength	Polemos Stands
Livgarden til Hest	400	300	1
1st Sjællandske	452	250	1
3rd Sjællandske	392	200	1
1st Fynske	455	360	1
2nd Fynske	456	300	1
1st Jyske	456	330	1

Dragoons	Ration Strength	Field Strength	Polemos Stands
Livregimentet	992	700	3
Ungarske (Bulow)	994	660	3
Sjællandske Landdragonregiment	1200	900	3

Infantry	Ration Strength	Field Strength	Polemos Stands
Grenaderkorpset	1200	826	2
Garden til Fods	1344	925	2
Dronningens Livregiment	1365	940	2
Prins Christians	1408	969	2
Jyske	1352	931	2
Fynske	1335	919	2
Marineregimentet	1366	940	2
Prinsen af Hessens	1300	895	2
Leepels	1216	837	2
Vestsjællandske	1612	1110	2
Østsjællandske	1500	1032	2
Laalandske Bataillon	800	551	1

The Danish army could have one stand of light guns too.

Hopefully this should permit you to refight this battle. If you do, I hope you will post reports and let me know how it went. Any suggestions for ways to improve the details would be appreciated, as would any additional information on the battle. In the meantime, I shall continue trying to improve my html so that my tables take up less space and I shall also finish the translation of the staff history of this battle, when I can find a bit more time.

The Italian Aeronavy

2010-08-03T10:52:00.003+01:00

It's been a while since I painted the Italian torpedo flotilla, but I have finally managed to get around to painting the rest of my Italian Aeronefs. So, here is the whole of my Italian fleet overflying Orkney on their way to pay a courtesy visit to the British Aeronavy base at Scapa Flow:

This means that I have painted all of my Brigade Models figures. This is the only company of whom I can say this is true. I guess that means it is time to buy some more figures from them! I quite fancy the Aeroenef over the Aegean scenario pack. A lone Austro-Hungarian 'nef taking on the might of the Turkish Aeronavy is the kind of thing that stirring Boys' Own Tales are made of, and therefore it really appeals to me.

The Church What I Built

2010-07-24T18:03:00.004+01:00

Those of you that read my other blog, Talomir Tales, will already have seen my newest completed terrain. This post is for the rest of you. I have spent rather longer than I ought on building a set for the latest Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures game that we played, but I reckon it was worth it. The game consisted of Steve's character, Brother Cedric, getting into the church and then into the crypts followed by the undercrypt and then finally the denouement in the chambers under the undercrypt. You can read the battle report over on Talomir Tales, so here is just some of the eye candy. More pictures can be found in my Photobucket album. The whole lot is built using Worldworks Games card terrain. Click the pics for larger images.

The Church of St Lindorf

Some of the expensive stained glass windows

The upper level of the church

Ground floor of the church

Beneath the church lies the crypt

Beneath the crypt lies the undercrypt

Beneath the undercrypt lies under the undercrypt

"At last we meet, Brother Cedric. I have been expecting you."

Runebound - A mini review

2010-07-24T00:01:00.001+01:00

We played Runebound from Fantasy Flight Games recently. I had played it before and was not sure about the game. I really wanted to like it but the game play did not strike me as being that great. Then I was on the FFG website a couple of weeks back and found out that I had been getting a key rule wrong! Apparently, when it tells you to roll the dice to attack, it does actually mean both of them and not one die. Had the rulebook said 'roll 2d10', it would have been clearer. As it is, it could mean one die or two dice, because dice is used as both singular and plural by many people these days. Anyway, rambling aside, with this simple change the entire texture of the game improved massively and we had a great time.

So, what is it about?
Runebound is a fantasy quest game. You move around the map to adventure locations, draw an adventure card and try to defeat it. Defeating adventures nets you gold and experience, and sometimes a special reward. You can go to towns to buy equipment or recruit sidekicks with the gold and you can buy stat upgrades with experience counters. As you gain in experience you can take on more difficult encounters until eventually you take on the most difficult encounters and defeat the big bad guy. Meanwhile the other players are busily doing the same, so it is in essence a race game.

The basic quest in this game is "The Rise of the Dragon Lords". The evil necromancer Vorakesh is trying to find the ancient dragon runes and wishes to use them to resurrect the high lord of the evil dragons, Margath. As a heroic adventurer it is your duty to stop him.

What do you get for your money?
12 Hero cards and the corresponding plastic miniatures
84 Adventure cards
84 Market cards
60 Wound counters
54 Exhaustion counters
58 Adventure counters
60 Experience counters
6 Undefeated challenge counters
50 Gold counters
8 Doom counters

Game Play
The game board is a hex map with town locations, different terrain and a series of adventure locations marked on it. It is set up by placing adventure counters of the right colour on each adventure location. Adventures are rated as green, yellow, blue and red in increasing order of difficulty and the locations on the map are marked in these colours to show which counter you should put on each.

At the start of the game each player draws a hero card. That is their character for the game. Each hero is slightly different and has a special ability that relates to their character class. Some are stronger in melee combat, others in missile combat and others in magical combat. All characters start in the same town and set off from there to explore the map

With everything set up, the first player rolls the movement dice and moves as far as they wish, or can. The movement dice have terrain types on each side, so you need to roll the right sort of terrain to move into it. If you have no dice showing rivers, then you cannot move into a river hex. If they finish their turn on an adventure location with an adventure token on it then they draw an adventure card and resolve it. If they finish their turn in a town, they draw a market card, which may be an item or an ally, and place it in the market space for that town. There may already be market cards in that market space. If they have the gold, they may buy any item or recruit any ally that is in that market space. At the end of their turn, they may spend any experience counters they have to buy experience tokens that increase their stats. Once they have done all this, then their turn is over and play passes to the next player.

Adventure cards
Adventure cards may be challenges, encounters or events. Challenges always involve combat and every adventure must include dealing with one of these. Encounters usually involve skill tests instead of actual combat. If you draw an encounter you often get to keep the card and use it at a later date for some special effect. Events introduce global effects to the game. There can only ever be one event in effect at any given time, so newly drawn event cards tend to replace old ones, although in some circumstances they do not. If you draw an encounter or an event, you must draw another adventure card after resolving the immediate effects of the encoutner or event. This means that every adventure must finish with a challenge card.

If you fail to defeat the challenge card, then it remains at that location and someone else can come along and try to defeat it. Losing means you lose all your gold and one ally or item that you own, and then you are returned to the nearest town.

How does it play?
As I noted earlier, it feels more like a race game than anything else. There is little interaction between players, although it is possible to attack or trade with each other if you finish your turn in the same space as someone else but that is where it rests. Leaving aside this last, your actions only affect you. This means that there is potentially a lot of downtime between turns in a larger game. We got around the downtime by getting into the role-play and reading out the adventure cards in portentous tones. The social aspect of gaming comes in at that point too.

We only have a two or three hours to play games on our regular gaming evening and even with only two of us, we did not actually finish the game in that time. To some extent that was probably because neither of us felt up to dealing with the most difficult encounters at any point, but I get the feeling that a larger game could take much longer again. There is a mechanism for forcing a conclusion to the game using doom tokens. This system puts a limit on the length of the game based on the number of players. Once the limit is reached, each player must take it in turns to try their hand at the endgame confrontation, which consists of just drawing red challenge cards and trying to deal with them until you have achieved the game's victory conditions or you are defeated. This feels a bit contrived to me, but it might be worth using to ensure that the game actually does get completed within a reasonable time frame.

Overall, and with the addition of playing the rules correctly, I enjoyed our game much more than I did the times I played it in the past. I shall certainly play Runebound again. I am also keen to try the various character decks that are meant to increase interaction between players. It will be interesting to see how they affect the game play and the experience of the game for the players.

Coming Soon: Brother Cedric Rides Again

2010-07-04T19:45:00.005+01:00

At last I have completed the set for the next Brother Cedric adventure (to be found over on the Talomir Tales blog when we have played it). It has been far too long. Remind me not to embark upon any more large terrain projects in the future! Anyway, here are some shots of the exterior. Interior shots will follow in due course. The terrain is from WorldWorksGames. Click the pictures for larger images.

Treyine soldiers guard the church of St Lindorf (figures by Perry Miniatures)

General shots of the church

The Best of All Possible Mining Outposts - A 5150 report

2010-06-28T16:34:00.004+01:00

Captain Pangloss of the Bwendi Levy was engrossed in his book when the alarm call came; he loved reading about his ancestor in Old Earth history books.

"Captain," yelled Sergeant Candide through the commlink, "We've got incoming. Unidentified space skimmer approaching. We don't recognise the type or the markings. Looks like it might not be ADF this time."

"Very well," responded Pangloss, "Sound the alarm and get your men deployed to meet them. They could be friendly but let's not take any chances."

The Levy stumbled over each other as they took up positions, but Pangloss was not too worried. The men might be green but they had the best of all possible commanders in Candide and Pangloss. Sgt Candide had taken half the men and was covering the left flank from the roof of one of the supply huts, while Pangloss and the rest of the men occupied the main command hut, which provided both good lines of sight and a comfortably fortified position from which to observe the approach of these newcomers. They did not have long to wait. Gunfire from Candide's position indicated that the newcomers were indeed hostile. Then the gunner spotted one of the enemy, as did Pangloss. Blimey, these were proper aliens and of a type that he had never previously encountered. They were huge and heavily armed. Pangloss opened fire at the alien, scoring multiple hits but it just kept coming until the gunner stitched a burst of fire all the way across its head. (click the pics for larger images)

Over the intercom, Pangloss could hear the shouts of Candide's men and Candide's orders. It all sounded rather chaotic, but that was for the best because, if it were not chaotic there, it would have to be chaotic somewhere else, as likely in Pangloss' ad hoc command bunker as anywhere else! As he thought this, suddenly a hail of automatic fire ripped into the walls of the hut and several shots came through the window, tearing chunks out of the gunner and his number two. Both men dropped in a pool of blood. Pangloss immediately raced over to grab the gun and keep it in action. It's firepower could be crucial. Then Private Thunder-Ten-Tronckh collapsed in another welter of automatic fire. Their position had been flanked and the troopers Pangloss had left outside had been dispatched rather too quietly. Over the commlink he could hear Candide rallying his men, who had lost their courage in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower. Candide was now manoeuvring to assault the enemy again. Perhaps he could flank them as Pangloss had been. Still, it was just as well that Pangloss had been flanked because otherwise it would have happened somewhere else and Pangloss was better able to deal with such a situation.

Candide's men were now moving into position as Pangloss sought out the cause of the problems round his own command. It turned out to be a single alien with two unfeasibly large machine pistols. Pangloss was impressed despite himself. Surely those must be the best of all possible machine pistols! That did not stop him letting rip with the LMG though. His burst of fire tore visible holes in the alien's armour and made it duck for cover. Unfortunately it did not appear to be hurt.

As Pangloss adopted a suitable firing position, the alien suddenly appeared at the window again. Private Cunegonde was frozen with fear and the alien dropped her where she stood, with her weapon unfired. Pangloss was alone in the hut. Over on the other flank, the cries of the wounded could be heard, as were the exhortations of the routed. It sounded like Candide's command was running for its life. That was probably for the best. Pangloss dropped back into the corner of the hut and prepared to resist the aliens when they came for him. He was the last of his command and in this situation going down with his ship was the best of all possible outcomes. The end did not take long. The big alien stepped into the window and stood there as Pangloss opened fire until his gun clicked empty. With unfeasibly large machine pistols opened fire and Pangloss collapsed on the floor. As blackness overcame him he reflected that he had at least held the best of all possible commands in the best of all possible mining outposts.

Steve decided to field some aliens for a change and I had been making some 15mm terrain using the WWG Mars Station set, so we agreed a 1500 points battle and bought figures accordingly. He had 4 aliens using the Grath template. I had a 14 man levy squad, most of whom were Rep 3. The game progressed rather predictably. I did manage to hit the aliens but could not get the OD results I needed to kill them, except in one case. My efforts were not helped by the vast number of 1s I rolled to hit. I also spent half my time rallying my troops, instead of having them shooting back. Steve's shooting was much more effective. I think he has loaded his dice or something! It was a fun if frustrating game that saw my star (Pangloss) getting captured. I wonder what the aliens will do with him, and is he important enough for my troops to rally and try to rescue him? Half of them survived by routing very soon after the aliens started shooting, and a few could test for recovery if the aliens did not gather up the wounded and take them off to be probed.

The President's New Clothes

2010-06-18T17:25:00.007+01:00

President Throckmorton P. Gladiolus once more leads the fashions on Bwendi. He puts his fashionable forwardness down to generous credit terms with his brother-in-law Honest Throckwoddle Gladiolus (a first-class used car saleseman and Secretary for Attack). First on the catwalk today, we see the President clad in the finest ex-Imperial Dreadnought Armour. (click the pics for larger images)

"Look," said the President, "It had one careful lady owner and she only took it shopping on Saturdays. It's almost as good as new. Sure there's this small hole here in the helmet but we have patched that up with parcel tape. Apparently her dog chewed the helmet one day when she left it out."

Next up, the President models a suit of Power Armour with this year's must-have accessory, the plasma gun.

And finally, the President proudly parades an Imperial Power Armour suit with twin laser rifles and a grenade launcher mounted on the right arm, and twin hand flamers on the left. Just the thing for those country shooting weekends.

In other news, we are pleased to report that the Bwendi army has seen some new recruitment. In addition to the new Scout troops we reported on recently, the President has released funds for a new squad of Knights and a Men-at-Arms heavy weapons squad. Those Frogless Albion Defence Force types won't know what hit them!

Thanks to the offices of Honest Throckwoddle Gladiolus, the Bwendi army has also acquired two mortars. Throckwoddle is working hard to source some ammunition for them so that the army can train up crews.

And finally, the President paraded the army before their barracks this morning as part of this publicity drive. Captain Pangloss of the Levy was heard to remark upon seeing our brave soldiers, "This is surely the best of all possible armies."

The Bwendi Army for Imperial Commander

The Bwendi Army is organised similarly to the Imperial army in Imperial Commander. The elite of the army are the Knights, who form the President's personal bodyguard. A maximum of two squads of Knights may be fielded. If the President is leading the army personally then he and the Knights may be carried in the army's Scythe Class Squad Jetcopter.

The Men-at-Arms are the backbone of the army. They are grouped in squads of five men with one command squad, 3 combat squads and one support squad forming a platoon. They are often carried into batte in the army's Glaive class APCs. Usually two squads will share one APC, because there is a shortage of APCs in the army at the moment. Throckwoddle is trying to source some new ones.

The Scout Troops are a new force in the army. Their mission is to seek out the enemy and report their locations back. There are two types of scout unit in the army. The Combat Scouts are very heavily armed and are expected to engage and hold the enemy while the rest of the army catches up. The Recon Scouts are intended to locate the enemy and then call in artillery on the enemy positions. Once the army gets some ammunition for the mortars, they will be able to do this. In the meantime, they have grenade launchers and the army's only grav vehicle, an obsolete Imperial Scout Car. Both types of scout function as individual squads.

The Levy are usually only called out for home defence duties. Their equipment is variable, although most have an SMG or an assault rifle. They are grouped into squads with similar weapons and have one or two support weapons assigned to each squad. Levy squads can be as large as twelve men if the call-up is sufficiently well heeded.

President Throckmorton P. Gladiolus (pick one option)

Vet, AI, Jumpack, Bolt Pistol, Force Sword, Holtzmann Shield, Hero, Leader, 49 points
Vet, PA, Jumpack, Holtzmann Shield, Plasma Gun, Autoranger, Power Glove,Hero, Leader, 73 points
Vet, PA, Jumpack, Holtzmann Shield, Right Arm Pack (Autoranger, 2 Laser Rifles, 1 Grenade Launcher, Power Glove), Left Arm Pack (2 Hand Flamers), Hero, Leader, 77 points
Vet, DA, Jumpack, Holtzmann Shield, Right Arm Pack (Autoranger, 2 Hvy Bolters, Power Glove), Left Arm Pack (Hvy Laser), Back (3 Imperial DA Grenade Launchers), Hero, Leader, 95 points

Knights

5 figures, Elite, AI, Jumpack, Autoranger, Advanced Grenade Pack, 4 Bolt Rifles, 1 Heavy Bolter, all with Force Sword, 127 points
Scythe Class Squad Jetcopter, Transport Jetcopter to carry up to 12 people, Autoranger, Twin FF Missile Launcher, 65 points

Men-at-Arms

Command Squad: 5 figures, Reg, AI, Jumpack, Autoranger, Advanced Grenade Pack, 1 Leader with Bolt Pistol and Force Sword, 3 Bolt Rifles, 1 Heavy Bolter, 116 points
Combat Squad: 5 figures, Reg, AI, Jumpack, Autoranger, Advanced Grenade Pack, 4 Bolt Rifles, 1 Heavy Bolter, 107 points
Support Squad: 5 figures, Reg, AI, Jumpack, Autoranger, 1 Leader with Bolt Pistol and Force Sword, 2 Support Bolters, 2 Conversion Beamers, 133 points
Transport: Tracked APC to carry up to 10 people, Two Roboturrets mounting 2 Heavy Lasers each, 77 points

Combat Scouts

6 figures, Reg, LI, Scout Jumpack, Laser Pistol, Force Sword, Heavy Bolter, Advanced Grenade Pack, 1 Leader, 146 points
Glaive APC, Wheeled APC to carry up to 10 people, Two Roboturrets mounting 2 Heavy Lasers each, 77 points

Recon Scouts

2 figures, Reg, LI, Scout Jumpack, Laser Pistol, Force Sword, Grenade Launcher, Advanced Grenade Pack, 1 Support Autoranger, 1 Leader, 56 points
Imperial Scout Car, Grav Scout Car, FF Support Bolter, 30 points

Levy Troops

Con, LI, Laser Pistol, Force Sword, Leader, 16 points each
Con, LI, Basic Grenade Pack, SMG, 10 points each
Con, LI, Basic Grenade Pack, Assault Rifle, 12 points each
Con, LI, Basic Grenade Pack, HMG, 13 points each
Con, LI, Advanced Grenade Pack, Missile Launcher, 13 points each

The Bwendi Strike Back -a short 5150 report

2010-06-08T10:36:00.002+01:00

Following their disastrous performance last time around the Bwendi army has been training hard to retake Gondwoddle. Unfortunately, in the time it took to muster the troops and get them there, the ADF has already laid waste to the village itself and are preparing for a new murderous onslaught. The village was only occupied by the dregs of ADF society, the militia, but there were a lot of them. Like cockroaches they were swarming all over the place. Time to clean house.

The Bwendi squad advanced on one flank with the intention of eliminating the militia one piece at a time. By focusing their attack, they hoped to avoid unnecessary casualties. They came under fire quite quickly but suffered no casualties and were able pin the ADF while a flanking fire team worked its way around. With their flank under threat, the ADF chose to manoeuvre to defend it. Unfortunately, their supporting troops were all laid low by the flanking force.

The ADF chose to regroup in the lee of a large rocky outcrop, just in time for a reinforcing Bwendi squad to appear and mow all bar their leader down. He immediately surrendered and will be interrogated before being put on trial for his war crimes.

This was another quick game that showed the advantage of having higher Rep troops. My chaps were able to close quickly and lay down more accurate fire than Steve's were. On the last turn I received reinforcements and that totally sealed the fate of Steve's troops. It effectively doubled the strength of my force while Steve only had four figures left. For future games we have decided to field a platoon each rather than just a section. This should reduce the effect of any reinforcements that appear. We want them to be a fun addition and not a totally devastating, overwhelming advantage for the recipient.

ADF Attack Bwendi Again - 5150 report

2010-06-06T10:15:00.002+01:00

In a not particularly shocking development, the Albion Defence Force has recently attacked the peaceful Bwendi settlers once more.

The scenario was a perimeter patrol with the Bwendi defending. I chose to set up one squad in the woods and one in the village. Steve's ADF troops entered on turn one.

In a short but bloody firefight, the ADF troops captured the village of Gondwoddle and drove off the Bwendi settlers with overwhelming firepower.

Basically, Steve's troops entered the table, I passed a couple of In Sight tests and shot at him but missed. He returned fire and knocked down several of my troops, as well as putting one out of the fight. I failed to activate any of my troops for the first four turns of the game because of rolling too high on the initiative rolls and so he was able to waltz up and take out my troops at will. I did take out a couple of his soldiers but not enough to do any serious damage and certainly not enough to recover from my poor initiative rolls.

This was a quick and fun, but one-sided game. The Bwendi people will have their revenge!

Bwendi Reinforcements - The Scouts

2010-06-04T10:01:00.003+01:00

The Bwendi army has suffered for too long from the incursions of the mis-named Albion Defence Force. While the main army has been taking the strain, President Throckmorton P. Gladiolus has been spending his personal income on training up the Bwendi Scouts. While its primary role is reconnaissance, this new elite unit is equipped with the very best in heavy weaponry and the latest in technology so that it can fight its way out of any corner it may find itself in.

Here we see the first squad of Bwendi Combat Scouts parading in front of their newly acquired Glaive APC. They are armed with powerful Conversion Beam Projectors that will scythe down any ADF scum that get in their way and the wheeled Glaive is both fast and manoeuvrable while still providing adequate protection from the usual ADF weaponry.

(Click the picture for a larger image)

The Bwendi Recon Scouts are even more prepared than their Combat brethren. They have been equipped with the only grav vehicle on the planet. The president's brother-in-law, Honest Throckwoddle Gladiolus (he took his wife's name when they married as is the custom on Bwendi), just happened to have this Imperial Scout car sitting in his used car lot when the president announced his intention of forming the Scouts. It is powered by the latest in coal-fired fusion generators and comes with a full year's parts and labour warranty at a price that is literally stealing the food from Throckwoddle's childrens' mouths, or so he tells us. The Bwendi Recon Scouts are armed with Automatic Grenade Launchers and Support Autorangers. Their job is to find the enemy and make a mess before skedaddling and reporting back to base.

Massacre in the Market - a short Chaos in Cairo report

2010-06-04T09:36:00.006+01:00

Well, I have been somewhat remiss in posting to this blog of late. I have several battles to write up and some newly painted figures to post. Unfortunately I have also been snowed under with course work and with helping my wife out in her business. Anyway, here follows a short account of a battle that took place in the sukh in downtown Cairo. We fought this one a few weeks ago so my memory of the details is a little hazy.

The market was busy that day so it was pure bad luck that Sabine Blankensee encountered the Sword of Ra. In those crowds it would have been easy to walk right past him. She stared balefully at him as he yelled threats and the crowds cleared around them. Sabine manoeuvred to keep some of the bystanders between her and the burly warrior that faced her. Then, whipping out her pistol she blazed away. The fight was on.

(As usual click the pictures for a larger image)

Fortunately for Sabine her allies were close by and moving in to help her. The Sons of Set charged up the street while the others tried to flank the Swords of Ra, who seemed to be springing up all over the place. Unfortunately the Swords seemed to be well armed with rifles and swords. Sabine's .38 Special seemed rather lightweight by comparison.

While the others distracted the Swords with gunfire, the Sons of Set charged in and made short work of a dervish, who seemed better at posing with his swords than using them. While they were doing this, Benny Khotan was laid low by a rifle shot and an innocent bystander was also hit. The Sons charged on and engaged the first Sword that Sabine had seen in a wild swirling melee that dragged on as neither side could gain a significant advantage.

Another Sword joined this melee, using a passer-by as a shield. Just what you would expect from such dastardly foes! The fight raged on and the Sons of Set were whittled down as another Sword engaged them. Sabine leapt into the fray with her pocket knife and soon settled the hash of the Sword before her. The fight seemed to go out of them after that and the other one was also soon laid low.

Suddenly quiet fell over the sukh. The Swords were all down. Unfortunately, Sabine's allies Benny, Ahmed and Singh were also down. The Sons of Set had been whittled down to two remaining. Sabine was badly hurt and her dress torn. The only one of the group that remained unharmed was Otto, their leader, who had personally accounted for two of the Swords in his own quiet way. They gathered up their wounded and tended to their wounds. It was only after seeing to Benny and Ahmed when Otto realised that the Swords had slipped away despite their wounds. Worse yet, they had captured Singh, Otto's bodyguard! Benny and Ahmed were particuarly irked by this. They both swore blood vengeance against the Swords of Ra. Woe betide the Sword that got in their way in the future!

This battle went badly for me at the start. My attack rolls were poor and my defence rolls not much to write home about. Steve seemed to rolling an absolutely blinding game, yet, when it came to the end, I suddenly found myself holding the field. I have no idea how that came about, unless it was the careful use of innocent bystanders as cover and generally nasty tricksy behaviour on my part. However, despite winning the game I still found myself with one of my characters captured. How does that work out? The rescue mission should be an interesting one. As Steve put it, I won the battle but lost the war. We shall see.

More 6mm Prussians

2010-05-08T20:33:00.006+01:00

As those that are following the Towton Project will know, I have rather a lot of Wars of the Roses figures to paint. To keep myself fresh for painting Wars of the Roses figures I have also been working on some other side projects. One of these is the Prussian order of battle for Lobositz. This week I have painted four more infantry units and two cuirassier units for that project. I painted some artillery and half a dozen other infantry regiments some time back and you can see those HERE if you did not see them last time I posted.

I am using the order of battle in Frank Chadwick's Battles of the Seven Years War and plan to use his Volley and Bayonet rules for gaming this period. Conveniently, Lobositz provides a large enough force to use with the Road to Glory battle system in Volley and Bayonet too. I like it when things come together like that! The Road to Glory system is a battle generator designed to make even one-off battles slightly different by using a card-based deployment system. Players draw a card and deploy according to that card. This can mean that elements of the player's army are not present at the start of the battle and will only arrive as reinforcements. I am really looking forward to trying this out. I suppose I had better get painting if I am ever to do so!

Group shot of the new figures (click all pictures for larger images)

IR 30

IR 27

IR 21

Cuirassier Regiments 2 (back) and 10 (front)

Chaos in Carpathia - The Antagonists

2010-05-08T19:42:00.006+01:00

We are planning to play Chaos in Carpathia at some point. Hopefully it will form part of a blackpowderpunk (aka lacepunk) game that Steve has planned. It looks like the game will be largely skirmish using Gloire and Chaos in Carpathia. With that in mind, I have painted up a Monster Hunter warband for Chaos in Carpathia that will also suit the blackpowderpunk setting.

The Monster Hunters
Rogue Ridinghood and her followers are ready to take on the minions of darkness. Ever since her grandmother was eaten by a werewolf she has harboured a deep hatred for all forms of inhuman beast.

Her group consists of (from left to right):
Simple Simon Piemacher, a slayer. He likes to keep things simple ("Kill them all. God will know his own.")
'Ash Lad', a scholar. They always said he would never make anything of himself. That may be true but he makes mincemeat of monsters.
Rogue Ridinghood herself, their intrepid leader.
Dr Foster, a holy man. He preaches the word of God and smites both hip and thigh.
Bo Peep, a slayer. Her search for lost sheep rarely brings them living back to the fold.

The Vampires
You can't have monster hunters without someone to hunt. Steve has painted a Werewolf warband, so I decided to put together a Vampire warband. I've not thought through their background in detail but I have managed to paint them.

From left to right we have: a blood servant, a lesser vampire, a Romanian vampire (the boss) and a lesser vampire.

I am not particularly happy with the final result of the paint job on the chap second from the left, but I have too little motivation to return and redo him yet. Perhaps if he does well in the campaign, then he can be reworked.

I am a d20

2010-04-21T22:28:00.000+01:00

You are a d20: You are a ruthless warrior. Thinking is for idiots and nerds. Doing things is what gets things done. You are the type who stabs now, and then asks questions later. Much later. And it usually involves a priest. For you, the best defense is a good offense, and the best offense usually involves burning the whole place to the ground -- at least twice. You are a whirlwind of destruction, composed of rash decisions and reckless actions. Put briefly, you are a danger to yourself and others. Good thing nobody ever listens to you.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Gentlemen, start your zombies.

2010-04-10T20:49:00.005+01:00

I had a bit of spare time this afternoon after we finished our Blore Heath refight, which I have reported on the Towton blog, so I dug out Dead Heat from TwoHourWargames for a little light entertainment. A little zombie racing never really goes amiss, as long as PETZ* doesn't catch you. So, I dug out the board I had resized to suit my 15mm figures and those self-same 15mm figures, set them up and then we were off.

*People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies

The rules are really simple and use the reaction system that THW has made their own. Basically, zombies react to the presence of humans (the Zombie Baiters) and that determines how fast they will move down the track. It is possible for them to get confused or distracted if they roll badly for their movement, and it is also possible that they can catch their baiter and eat them. Nice. In addition to the race game, the rules include a system for betting on the races. This includes a means of calculating the odds as well as a handy table that shows how much you win for a win, place or show. This means that you can play the game on a couple of levels. You can just race, or you can bet, with the winner being the one that has the most money at the end of the day's racing.

Another nice touch is the idea that you can combine this game with your All Things Zombie games. First catch your zombie, then take it down to the track and race it. Most excellent.

So, how did my game go? Well, here is the track part way through the race (click for a larger image):

On the left, the rookie is getting eaten by two zombies, while the baiter in the yellow top tries to persuade her zombie to turn around and race to the finish. The zombie in the bikini being baited by the girl in the yellow jumpsuit was not very enthusiastic at all (second from the left). It took forever to get moving and then did not really want to do much after that. The favourite in the race is third from the left. His baiter in the natty purple outfit just forged ahead and led his zombie to the finish line miles ahead of the others. He is clearly a master baiter. The other two made a better showing than most but still struggled, despite using dirty tricks to try to get the favourite eaten.

The game featured a lot of zombie on baiter action as the zombies blundered into their baiters and tried to eat them, so I was surprised that only one of them actually did go down. Perhaps I have not sussed out the tactics properly yet, but it was certainly fun. I shall be forcing my buddy Steve to play this one next week. Let's see how he does.

The Battle of Blore Heath, 1459 - The Cavalry

2010-03-09T15:07:00.004Z

As part of our Rather Large Towton Project, we shall be putting on a small game of Blore Heath at Triples in April. Please come along and say hello if you are there. The Lancastrian army at Blore Heath had a cavalry wing and Blore Heath was one of the few Wars of the Roses battles to feature cavalry so it is fun to play it out. Here we see the whole of that cavalry wing, in this picture led by Exeter. Click the picture for a larger image.

I can't wait to see these guys thundering across the battlefield and then getting shot down by the heroic Yorkists! ;-)

Here are the knights on their own:

And here are the men-at-arms on their own:

As usual for the Towton project, all the figures are by Baccus. The banners are by Freezywater and the company flags on the men-at-arms are by Baccus. It has been fun painting some cavalry for this project instead of the masses of infantry that I have been working on and still have a lot of to paint. Mind you, I am behind schedule with my painting, so I had better get on and paint more infantry.

A-Roleplaying We Will Go ...

2010-03-06T15:22:00.004Z

Yup, I have made contact with roleplayers in the area! They appear to be friendly, or at least mostly harmless, so we have agreed to start up a game of Labyrinth Lord in about two weeks' time. Needless to say, I am excited about DMing a game again. I really enjoy the creativity inherent in building up a world for the players to investigate and tear apart. Hopefully this game will lead to others and we can continue to play a campaign for a while to come.

Labyrinth Lord is a Basic D&D clone that is available as a free download from the Goblinoid Games website. There is also an advanced expansion that takes the game into something closer to 1st Edition AD&D, but without any of the nonsense that went with that game. So, as part of preparation for this game, I have dug out all of my D&D Gazetteers which describe the world of Mystara, since this nostalgia-fest deserves only the best. I have also dug out all of my old B-series modules for it. Now all I have to do is read the rules and modules again in time for the players to ignore all of my plans and head off in a totally different direction. Wish me luck, and if not luck, at least good aim with the cowapult, when I feel they need to be taught a lesson. I have already loaded it with the Piano of Doom and the Heifer of Despair, so I just need an excuse to let rip ...

While doing all this preparation, I also realised that I did not have a Labyrinth Lord GM's shield, so I made one quickly by printing out the reference sheets and gluing them to a piece of 3mm foamboard. Here it is:

So now, no matter what the players do, I shall at least be secure behind my shield.

Chaos in Cairo versus .45 Adventures - Pulp Deathmatch

2010-02-28T13:12:00.004Z

Chaos in Cairo (CiC) and .45 Adventures (45A) are both pulp skirmish rules aimed at similar periods.

Chaos in Cairo
CiC is focused on battles in the streets of Cairo between four different types of warbands. It features archaeologists and mummies, both of which are pretty much self-explanatory. Then there are the Servants of Set, evil humans that are often twisted caricatures of humanity as they have meddled with That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know. Finally there are the Swords of Ra, a group of Bedouin-like warriors, who seek to prevent the secret knowledge of ancient Egypt from being taken by anyone (think the black-clad types that fight the Set warriors in The Mummy Returns). Each warband consists of characters (the heroes) and henchmen (groups of lesser humans). You can also recruit special characters, some of which are unique. Typically a warband consist of around 5 - 10 characters and henchmen.

The system uses goal rolls to determine success or failure. Each character has stats and skills that tell you how many dice to roll when testing. Each roll of 4+ is a success (a goal). You are either rolling to beat a task number, or another character's goals. In the former case, you succeed by scoring as many goals as the task number or more. In the latter case, the player with the most goals wins. The system is simple and elegant, using around 3 to 7 d6s for each roll. This system is used for everything from combat to jumping ravines.

Speaking of combat, characters in CiC do not get killed directly in combat. They can be knocked out once they run out of hits, in which case a doctor or character with medical skills can revive them. Once knocked out, you can administer the coup de grace to them, which renders them permanently out of the fight. Character death is dealt with in the post-battle phase. You roll to see what effect being knocked out has on a character. There are penalties on this roll if they have suffered a coup de grace, so it is more likely that they will die permanently in this case. This is only really relevant to the campaign game.

The game is geared towards campaign play and warbands are designed with that in mind. You can easily play one-off games if you want by agreeing how much to spend on each warband and rolling for or deciding on a scenario, but some of the skills that characters have are more suited to campaign play. Six scenarios are provided in the rules and each has three sub-plots that can be used with it. In campaign play you roll for scenario and sub-plot, play the game, roll to see the effect of being knocked out after the battle and pay for the upkeep of your warband. Characters can gain experience and become better or they can die and be lost permanently. You can earn more money and recruit new characters or henchmen during this phase.

Chaos in Cairo provides all the rules you need to get started with a campaign. The scenarios are given a little flavour by the sub-plots but are fairly generic. On the other hand, preparation is kept to a minimum, which gives you more time for playing.

.45 Adventures
45A is a rules set of another colour. Characters in 45A are graded according to their skill level. There are 3 grades of character, with Grade 1 characters being the spear-carriers. Grade 2 characters are the sidekicks, while Grade 3 characters are the heroes. Each character has skills, as with CiC and a set of stats but there the resemblance ends. Characters in 45A have hit locations, unlike CiC, and each hit on a location degrades the stats associated with that location. Thus, head hits reduce your Brains score. This means that characters slowly become less able as they take damage, until they are knocked out, while in CiC, characters are at full ability until they are knocked out. Typically, you will field 3-6 characters in 45A.

Instead of a handful of d6s, 45A uses 1d10 to resolve tasks. You are either trying to beat a standard target number of 10 or your opponent's die roll. You add your stat and skills to the 1d10 roll to see if you succeed.

45A generally uses more detailed scenarios than CiC. Instead of generic scenarios, the rules include a number of more detailed and specific scenarios. This really points up the major difference between the two rules sets. CiC encourages a more generic style of play, while 45A encourages you to write and develop scenarios that are suited to the characters you have created. The basic 45A rules do not include campaign rules, but these do appear in the later supplements, providing a framework for stringing your scenarios together and a system for improving your characters.

Conclusions
In my opinion, both games are great and each plays sufficiently different that I am happy to play either. So, that leaves me wondering which I should recommend. Well, that depends upon what style of play you want. Both systems work well but in different ways and both really have a different ethos behind them.

CiC offers a single package that gives you four warbands, six generic scenarios and a campaign system. It is focused on 1920s Cairo so you need to be interested in that if you want to play the game as written. If you want to play using this system but with different character types or warbands, then you will have to put a bit of work into your games.

45A offers a broader framework with more character types and greater freedom for creating your group. It does offer most of the pulp archetypes so you could play gangsters or archaeologists, but there are no supernatural elements in the core rulebook. 45A also focuses more on tailor-made scenarios and it encourages this style of creative approach. I have always felt that 45A wants you to put time and effort into making your terrain before the game and rewards a more creative approach.

When coming down to choosing between the two, I am hard-pressed to specify a preference. Both rules sets offer fun games with a different flavour. Each is simple to get into because of the low number of figures required. Really it will come down to what sort of game you want to play. CiC is slightly more generic in approach, like a more typical skirmish wargame, while 45A feels more like a light RPG in scope. Personally, I shall continue to play both for the different experience that each provides. If you prefer a single rules set with a generic approach then I think CiC will suit you better. If you want ot put a little more effort into your games and adopt the light RPG approach then 45A should suit you better. Or maybe, like me, you should just get and play both. After all, you can use the same figures with each.

One Night in Cairo - A Chaos in Cairo Battle Report

2010-02-28T12:23:00.007Z

It was a dark night on the streets of Cairo and few were abroad. Cordelia Case, Action Girl(tm), was grateful for this. Her sources had told her that a Shard of the Nameless One had been recovered by an Arab labourer during a recent dig and hidden in a relative's house. She had also heard that her arch-nemesis, Tutancomein, was hunting for it too. She rousted out her companions and headed for where rumour told her that the Shard was. As she approached this small suburb of Cairo, she realised that the evil mummy was already there too. This time he appeared to have a human guide with him. So that was how he had learned so quickly of this Shard! (Click the pictures for larger images)

Steve took a Mummy Warband while I took an Archaeologist Warband. We rolled for scenario and got 'The Package'. There would be six packages on the table.. One contained the Shard, but we would not know which one until the end of the game, so we needed to collect as many of the objective markers as possible. For a sub-plot we rolled The Traitor. One of us would receive an additional figure, but if we ever rolled no successes for initiative then the traitor would join the other side. We diced and Steve got the extra figure.

Cordelia and her companions advanced quickly towards the buildings where the Shard might be hidden. A shout from her left told her that her brash American companion, Colin Fraser, had found a package that might be the Shard. Fraser was a useful man to have on an expedition, not too bright, but good with a gun and his fists.

Fraser ran from the building with the package as Professor Bartholomew Bennett, Cordelia's research associate, found another package. Randolph Dacre, the expedition's backer had also found a package by now. He ran from the building where he had found it and passed it to the Professor. With both packages, Bennett headed for home. The others could deal with the situation that was developing. There would be fighting soon, because the mummies were closing on the heroic archaeologists of the Riverview Antiquarian Expeditions Society. The professor was not so handy in a fight, so better that he get the packages home and start checking them out.

Dacre and Fraser advanced to join Cordelia and Geoff Grimes, the final member of the team, just in time for Dacre to help Cordelia knock out one of the mummies that had shambled forward faster than its fellows. Grimes had climbed to the roof of a nearby building, from where he had a good field of fire with his rifle. He also found a package on that roof, which was an added bonus. Stuffing it into his pocket he began to lay down covering fire. The fight now developed in earnest. Fraser blased away at the shambling henchmummies with both pistols. Cordelia ran up behind them and blasted them with her shotgun. The mummies were soon a pile of rotting wrappings on the floor. Meanwhile Dacre shot down the human traitor, serving the mummies for his own profit and to the detriment of all humanity. Unfortunately, some of the other mummies had found more packages and were escaping with them. Time to give chase.

Cordelia and Dacre chased after them and were soon engaged in a close combat that saw the pair of them knocked out, but not before wounding the one remaining mummy. Geoff took aim and finished it off with a shot from his rifle. The silence that suddenly broke out was deafening. The remaining mummies had fled with their packages. All that remained in the streets of Cairo were the unmoving bodies of the wounded. Geoff moved forward and helped bring round his companions, more worried about helping them to safety than dealing with the mummies and their human stooge.

With the group home, they checked their packages and found the Shard. Success! They had won, but at a cost. Cordelia would be bed-ridden for a while (casualty check resulted in her missing the next battle), while Dacre was limping badly (-2" movement during next scenario). They hoped that the mummies would also have suffered equally (as it happened, Steve permanently lost a couple of henchmummies, but all of his character mummies will be present unhurt in the next scenario. Boo!). At least Cordelia would have time now to focus on her next action-packed book. The night's adventure had the makings of a great story and she was sure it would sell well.

The scenario played quickly for our first playing of Chaos in Cairo. It was very enjoyable and the only thing that we changed was the Coup de Grace rule. We agreed not to use it because of the increased possibility of permanent character death, which was just as well. Had we used it and had Steve had time to do so, Cordelia would have been dead dead dead, and, if I recall correctly, so would Dacre. In terms of experience, Colin Fraser gained enough to gain Combat Attack as a new skill. The others all gained some experience and should see advances after their next battle, if all goes well. Our next game will feature the Servants of Set (me) versus the Swords of Ra (Steve). Next time I get to be evil, bwa ha ha ha ha! I think that we shall be playing this system quite a bit more.

V-Day - Painted Vikings!

2010-02-15T17:16:00.005Z

Peter Berry of Baccus sent me some pre-production models of his 6mm Vikings the other day, as I posted earlier. So, my first priority was getting some of them painted and here they are. This is a stand of armoured Vikings. I apologise for my painting standard, although I blame the photographs too because the close up images show every single flaw. I reckon the figures still pass the 3' test quite adequately though. Click the pics for larger images.

V-Day Part 2 - 6mm Vikings

2010-02-13T15:48:00.008Z

Peter Berry at Baccus 6mm has made me a very happy man today. I returned home from delivering flowers to other people only to find something far better on my own doorstep; a small parcel from Baccus. Within lay two packets from Peter's forthcoming 11th century Viking range. These are pre-production models and they look rather tasty to me, but that means that we still need to wait before the general release.

The bags were labelled Armoured Viking Heroes and Unarmoured Viking Heroes (or words to that effect). Each consisted of 20 heroic Norsemen with spears and 4 command stands with semi-circular banners. They really are very fine figures and I can see them having greater utility than just the specific period they are designed for. After all, one bearded, spear-bearing Dark Ages warrior looks very like the next one. I can't wait to see the full range and had better start saving right now.

My apologies for the quality of the photos; my camera seems to be having a problem with white balance at the moment. Still, you can click on the pics for larger versions and should be able to get an idea of the glorious Viking-filled future that awaits us all. Excited doesn't even begin to cover how I feel about this range.

Armoured Viking Heroes

Unarmoured Viking Heroes

It's V-Day (that's Vikings Day)

2010-02-13T15:42:00.003Z

I have been meaning to finish tarting up my 15mm Vikings for use with Basic Impetus for some time now. I have had many of these figures since the early nineties and first used them for DBA 1.0 and DBM. As a result of their age, they are looking a trifle battle weary and could do with a spot of R&R to recover. I have not had time for that yet, because of other commitments (see my Towton project blog for more details of that). Nevertheless, I did get around to rebasing the Vikings and that has improved their look no end. One day soon I hope to redo their shields and repaint the chipped areas on each figure too. Still, even now I reckon they are ready for battle. I suppose I had better paint up some opposition for them soon! (click the pic for a larger image)

Against the Ungeheuer - A Broadsword Adventures AAR

2010-02-11T10:34:00.006Z

Carmen, the buxom daughter of the landlord at the Fang and Flagon had been captured by Ungeheuer! The regulars at the Fang and Flagon were horrified but endowed too well with a sense of self-preservation to go up against such fearsome monsters, so it was up to the newly arrived adventurers in town. Two of them looked fresh out of the warriors guild, while the other two were battle-hardened and scarred, clearly veterans of many fights. The promise of gold and free ale was enough to pique their interest, so they set out on the trail of the monsters and soon arrived at the entrance to a large cave. (click the pictures for larger images)

The area was strewn with chewed bones and remnants of equipment from previous adventurers that had dared to enter this place. It stank too, foetid and warm. Bravely they moved into the gloom within, pausing only to light their lanterns. All was quiet to start with, but as they explored the caves either side of the entrance, a shuffling gait was heard coming from deeper within. Soon a shaggy monstrosity was sighted by one of the younger warriors. He grasped his spear more firmly, sweat breaking out on his forehead in his nervousness at his first fight.

As the monster came towards him, he cold see that it was still drowsy from its last meal and sleep, but that did not stop it from letting out a howl of fury at this intrusion. The warrior, undaunted, charged forward, thrusting with his spear. The point took the monster in its eye and travelled on up into its brain. It stared disbelievingly at the puny-looking warrior, before slumping to the floor in a pool of blood and brains, dead.

More howling was heard from deeper with the cave and a new threat could be seen lumbering towards the adventurers. The monster's mate was furious at the treatment meted out to her companion and was clearly out for revenge, her gaze focused on the gore-encrusted spear of the young warrior.

As she attacked, the warrior was able to fend her off, and then he counter-attacked, deftly manoeuvring her around so that his companions were now able to surround and attack her too. She roared in pain as weapons stabbed at her and flailed around, desperately trying to hurt her tormentors, but the end was not in doubt. Soon she fell with a dozen cuts to her body and a sword in her head.

With the monsters dead, the adventurers were able to search the caves in peace and soon found Carmen alive and unharmed. They returned home in triumph.

This was a fun little scenario from the rulebook that went particularly easily for Steve's adventurers. He had two Grade 2 characters and two Grade 1s. In Broadsword Adventures, there are three grades of character available. Grade 3 is a bona fide hero, Grade 2 is a stalwart adventurer and Grade 1 is cannon fodder. Imagine my chagrin then when my first mighty monster was attacked by a Grade 1 spearman and slain instantly with a blow to the head! Bah!! Well, thought I, the second monster will at least take one of them out. I shall be revenged!!!!! With the first monster spotting the adventurers, the second one was no free to act. I rushed her to one of the interior cave mouths, thinking to use the narrow opening as a way to hinder the adventurers. Unfortunately the same devilish spearman as killed the first monster won the melee round by a large margin and was able to use his skills to swap places with her, turning her around and getting her surrounded by the enemy. In Broadsword adventures, certain skills give you combat manoeuvres like this that you can use. I then proceeded to try to hit the adventurers and failed miserably, while they cut holes in the monster's hide. The end was really not in doubt. Steve's dice were hot, and mine were ice cold. All in all, it was a great game. The scenario was simple but we wanted to learn the differences between BA and our more usual fare of 45 Adventures, so that was not a problem. We both had fun and Steve went home with a huge grin on his face, having won a game, so we can definitely account this one a success. Time to prepare the next scenario.

If you want to check out Broadsword Adventures, you can download the demo rules free from the Rattrap Productions Speakeasy. The download is in the Broadsword Adventures download section and includes the scenario that we played plus some characters for it.

Basic Impetus

2010-01-22T11:23:00.003Z

Steve and I played Basic Impetus last night using our 6mm Wars of the Roses forces. It was an interesting game and the battlefield looked huge with the small forces on it. Unfortunately I did not get any pictures of the game, but I shall do so next time we play. The game went very smoothly for a first-time playing and we had few questions about the rules, although we did forget half the rules for half the game. We shall get it right next time around! What was important was that the game flowed nicely and that we both felt like we had a chance to win.

Steve's Lancastrians (boo, hiss!) were the attackers, brutally assaulting my poor, heroic Yorkists. We both deployed in proper fashion with archers to the fore and billmen/men-at-arms behind the archers. I had a unit of mounted knights on my left flank and a unit of handgunners on my right. My plan was to pin his troops in the centre with my archers while the more mobile troops went around his flanks. Steve had chosen to dismount his knights and had two units of border spears, so he had the advantage in heavy infantry, while I had more archers than he did. My left flank was on a gentle hill, while Steve's right flank was anchored on a pond.

So, the battle began. We advanced towards each other until we got to archery range, at which point we began to exchange arrows. My knights and handgunners began their move around Steve's flanks. Feeling threatened by this, Steve pushed his billmen forward too quickly. My men-at-arms and billmen charged forward to counter their advance and routed them in short order. "Ha!" thought I, "He has let himself get sucked in and will pay for that mistake." I promptly charged my heavy foot forwards and suffered the same fate as Steve had. Oops! meanwhile, his spears were marching around my flank and trying to engage my archers from the flank. They did not quite manage this and were soon suffering as they took a couple of volleys of arrows and then found that the archers were actually a match for them in the melee too. Blimey! My handgunners were now causing problems by harassing the flanks of the rest of Steve's formation, but in return my men-at-arms were getting the worst of the melee in the centre. Then my knights finally finished poncing around on the flank and charged home against Steve's archers, driving them from the field in short order. They promptly turned around and charged home against the rear of Steve's dismounted knights. Caught between two of my units, his knights chose discretion rather than valour and fled the field. Game over.

The game took around an hour and a half to play through including time spent scratching our heads wondering what the rules meant, and was very good fun. There are some gaps in the rules, but that is hardly surprising because they are a stripped out version of Impetus, but they worked well, so I would recommend them to anyone else. I also like the smallish size of the armies in the game. It makes it easier to collect several different armies, which appeals to me. The armies are larger than DBA armies and the games are slightly longer, but I preferred the game play to DBA, which is the nearest equivalent style of game I can think of. So, which army shall I put together next?

A 2009 Retrospective

2010-01-06T11:14:00.002Z

Well, 2009 has been and gone and I have had a year of supposedly thrifty gaming. It has not been an easy year all round, beginning poorly and getting worse as the year progressed. As a result of the problems faced throughout the year, I seem to have spent most of it as a bit of a psychological train-wreck. Still, that is not the real issue. The question is whether I have succeeded or not, I suppose. So, what were my goals for the year?

1. Finish pre-existing projects;
2. Play newly finished projects; and
3. Spend my money more wisely.

Finishing pre-existing projects
Well, this worked to a certain extent. I began the year well by picking an old project and painting figures for it. Unfortunately, everything sort of fell away at the back end of the year. I managed to work on and complete a project for each month up to July. I skipped August because of university coursework that demanded my full time attention, but did manage a new project for September. After that, though, I did not allocate any new projects. I must only score a partial success for this part of the mission

Play newly-finished projects
Yes. Full marks for this. Each project that I completed was used in the following month. We also played a bunch of other games in addition to the project-based games, so this aspect of the mission was a success, in my opinion.

Spend the budget more wisely
I think I did manage to spend my gaming budget more wisely this year. I certainly spent much less on figures than I have in previous years and the lead mountain has decreased a bit in size. I think I would have accounted this part of the mission a total success had I managed to spend nothing on new figures, but I did buy a bunch of stuff. On the other hand, I also managed to paint most of what I bought, so it is not all bad. A quick glance at my progress log leaves me feeling relatively satisfied with progress but also feeling that I could have done better.

Final Score = Moderate Success

How did it go?
Well, I know that I could have done better at my goals, but I also know that I probably achieved more than I might otherwise have done in any given year. According to BoardGameGeek I managed to play 58 games throughout the year, which is pretty good going. My most-played games were Warrior Heroes, Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures and Wargods of Aegyptus. I managed to paint thousands of figures (literally, even though most were 6mm and therefore quick to paint). I managed to reduce my spending considerably too. I am happy with that for now.

By focusing on one game to paint and play each month, I was encouraged to keep going. Playing the game immediately after painting the figures made sure that I got some quick pleasure from the painting pain, so I was encouraged to keep going with the next project. I admit that I did not set myself arduous goals, but that was intentional. If completing each project was too difficult I might have given up. I also found myself painting more figures for non-mission projects, because I felt like it. Achieving the mission goals encouraged me to keep going in those other areas too.

Overall, I would say that the approach I took worked, and I would recommend it to others. Completing a series of smaller projects is easier than completing one large project and encourages you to keep going.

What is in store for 2010?
Rather stupidly I came up with the idea of putting on a 6mm Battle of Towton game in 2011, 650 years after the original battle was fought. Throughout 2010 I shall be painting figures for this project. I shall need to buy quite a few more figures for it, so my spending this year will be focused on that. Fortunately, this project is being supported by Peter at Baccus Miniatures, so I am getting a good discount on the figures I buy, which numbs some of the pain. However, it does mean that I shall have to think very hard before buying figures for other projects. To keep us going on the project, we shall be refighting some of the battles that were fought in the build-up to Towton, starting with Blore Heath (1459) at Triples. The idea will be to do games at three or four shows this year to give us practice of running show games and to also keep us enthused about painting our figures.

In addition to the show games, I have quite a lot of rules sets that cover the Wars of the Roses, so I am hoping that Steve and I can play one game a month using our Towton figures. This should keep us enthused for the project and also hopefully keep us painting.

With regard to other games, we are considering picking half a dozen rules sets, or possibly periods and focusing on those as our main projects for the year. This should hopefully provide some light relief from the Wars of the Roses stuff, while also not intruding too much on it. We shall see ...

The Prussians Are Coming

2010-01-05T16:49:00.004Z

I should be painting 6mm Wars of the Roses figures. Naturally this led to me getting distracted and gave me a desire to paint some Seven Years War Prussians that have been lying around for ages. Upon looking through my collection of unpainted lead, I realised that I had enough figures to produce a small Prussian force for Volley and Bayonet: Road to Glory. This is the start of that force.

Prussian infantry with a converged grenadier battalion at the back.

Prussian field artillery.

The figures are all Baccus 6mm and I still need to paint a few more battalions of infantry and several brigades of cavalry for the force, but it is more than half way there now. I am back to painting Wars of the Roses figures for the time being, but will return to these later this year. I really want to try out the new Volley and Bayonet rules but have other projects on my plate at the moment too. Once the Prussians are done, I plan to do a Swedish force for the Seven Years War too. It will look very similar to my Great Northern War army, but I think there are enough noticeable differences even in 6mm for it to be worth my while doing a paint-job conversion on the figures.

Maelynn, an Elven Mage

2010-01-05T16:39:00.003Z

My brother used to like Confrontation. I don't know if he still does, but he never talks about it now. While he was still enthusiastic, I picked up some Cynwall Elves, thinking that I could use them in skirmish gaming and also try Confrontation against him. That never happened, but I finally got around to painting one of them: Maelynn, an Elven mage with some kind of construct on her back. I am not completely convinced by my painting, but at least she is coloured in so I can use her. The only problem is that she towers over all my other ordinary elves that I plan to use for games of Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, so I may have to relegate her to ebay or to the display cupboard. The same problem applies to the other Cynwall Elves I have. Perhaps I need to rethink how I plan to use them. One thought that occurs is to use them on their own as a Song of Blades and Heroes warband. I have enough figures for that with a couple of extras for reinforcements.

Maelynn:

Chaos in Cairo - My Warbands

2010-01-05T16:23:00.006Z

I have intended to play Chaos in Cairo since I picked up the first edition rules a few years ago, but never got around to it. The rules looked like fun but I was not entirely sure about the approach to the game taken in them. With the release of the second edition, I find all my reservations removed. As a result of this sudden burst of enthusiasm, I dug out my pulp figures to see what I could do. I had enough figures already painted to produce a full Servants of Set warband, with plenty left over for reinforcements.

Servants of Set warband:

I had some figures ready for the Archaeologists, but needed to paint a couple more (the chap in the fez and the Connell look-alike):

It also spurred me on to paint some of my Wargods Eater of the Dead figures as well as their human accomplice. Here is the Mummy warband:

I am now looking forward to playing Chaos in Cairo and will report on our games as and when we get around to playing. Steve is also very keen to do a BlackPowderPunk version of Chaos in Carpathia, so I am working on a warband for that too. More on that at a later date.

Using all your figures at once - well, sort of

2009-11-09T21:48:00.002Z

Over on the Lead Adventures Forum someone mooted the idea of basing a game in the same universe as the comic Grimjack. I read it back in the eighties and have a complete set of the originals tucked away in the cupboard. I drank this comic up and could not get enough of it. Grimjack is actually set in the city of Cynosure at the centre of all the dimensions. The city actually consists of the intersections of many dimensions. Thus, you can cross the street and the rules of reality will change. Some dimensions are more stable than others, which means that you can be fairly sure of not getting stuck in some of the dimensions, while others might move off and drag you with them if you stay too long.

In some areas of Cynosure magic works but guns don't and vice versa. Occasionally both work together. In some areas people are gods, while they are just ordinary winos when they are in other areas. Worse still, some dimensions are totally inimical to most life forms. Better stay out of those. Still, it does provide plenty of variety.

So, what does this have to do with using all your figures at once? Actually, very little. What it really has to do with is using all of your figures in the same game setting. You see, and most of you will be way ahead of me on this, in a world where all the dimensions eventually meet, any type of figure could find its way there. So, your Conan figure could fight alongside your Space Womble figure in an epic battle to save the multiverse, or just a squalid fight to earn a few Creds and buy more beer. The question, though, is which rules to use. The setting is hard-boiled detective fiction; think Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. However, it also introduces science fiction and fantasy into the mix. So, the rules need to support the hard-boiled feel of the comic, while also permitting pure fantasy games, pure science fiction games, science fantasy games, the occasional superhero and a god or two. Not much to ask, eh?

My current thinking is that the core rules should be something like 45 Adventures. The narrative approach to the games and their small size would suit the episodic nature of a comic. You also have the other rules by Rattrap Productions, which use the same system and cover different genres: swashbuckling, Conan-esque fantasy and pulp science fiction. With a little work, these cover most of the bases, especially when you add in the Weird War Two and mad science supplements. The only problem I foresee is the need to work up some character archetypes that suit the core setting specifically rather than peripheral dimensions. Another alternative would be GURPS. Although it is a role-playing game, GURPS has at its core a solid skirmish game for its combat system. There are also zillions of supplements covering most genres that you could want. The only problem with that is the sheer expense of getting all the supplements you might want. Similarly, TwoHourWargames has several rules sets that could be combined to fit the setting and their Rep system makes characters easily portable between sets too.

My question to the audience is, what other rules might handle this well and have good flavour? Have any of you done anything like this before? Could this be the future of my skirmish gaming?

Shrike and Shuttle Models

2009-10-14T09:18:00.006+01:00

I've not done any painting in a couple of weeks now. Life seems to be driving me in other directions. However, I have also not bought anything, so I guess that means I have broken even overall. However, I did print out a couple of card models that I bought some time back as pdfs from Ebbles Miniatures, and I have now built them. Ebbles Miniatures sells a variety of downloadable pdf buildings, terrain items and vehicles and I have bought a few in the past. The prices suit me nicely and give me the chance to print out as much as I need for my games. The first model I built was this TA160 Shrike Transatmospheric Fighter (click the pictures for larger versions):

I now see from the picture that I forget to edge part of the base so there is an ugly white line showing. This is not actually as visible in real life as it is in the photo. The pdf is scaled to 15mm, but a 28mm version is also available. What you get when you buy the download is a zip file with instructions for building the kit, a pdf for the display stand and eight colour variants of the Shrike. This means that you could have eight different versions of the model without doing any editing for yourself. Woohoo! Of course, you could always drop the file into Photoshop and add your own touches if you are that way inclined.

The model itself consists of three pieces: upper body, lower body and wing structure. The wing is very easy to put together, while the upper and lower body are not difficult but do require a little care to get them to the right shape. Overall I am pleased with this model and I shall produce a couple more to provide air support for my 15mm Bwendi army.

The second model was a 28mm Utility Shuttle (apologies for the poor lighting on this one):

The utility shuttle is a neat little piece that measures approximately 4.5" long by 4" wide (110mm by 100mm). It has more parts to it than the Shrike but is not really any more difficult to build. The parts are: nose cone, central fuselage, rear fuselage, two engine pods, two skids and two landing skid supports. All of these are simple to fold together but I found that the fuselage sections did not want to sit exactly flush with each other. You can see the joins where I have edged them in black. As with the white line on the Shrike, these are not as obviously visible in real life.

The zip file for the shuttle contains three named shuttles and eight coloured shuttles, as well as a landing pad tile and the instructions. In the photo above, I have glued the landing pad tile to a WorldWorksGames concrete tile from their Urban Mayhem sets so that the landing pad will fit my other card terrain sets. I think it needs blast walls on three sides and a few more shuttles so that I can make a small spaceport set for our games.

Although the shuttle is designed for 28mm, it has no features on it that fix it to that scale. For this reason, although I do plan to use the shuttle for our 28mm games, it may well feature in our 15mm games as a dropship. It certainly looks about the right size to deliver an APC and its troops into the battle, so the Bwendi army now has near earth orbit delivery capability. If I wanted a 15mm version of it, it would be simple enough to print it at 60% size and my 15mm troops could have their own utility shuttles. There are no complex folds in the set that would make producing it at 60% scale difficult or impossible.

Overall I am very happy with both of these models, which I built while sitting watching TV with my wife and drinking wine. Admittedly the wine may have resulted in some less than careful building, but the finished products do not look much the worse for that and the brownie points scored for not hiding in my man-cave are worth it.

Another Slice of Pi

2009-09-29T12:23:00.002+01:00

My latest 28mm figure is one that has been on the painting desk for some time. I am not completely happy with the highlighting on her legs in particular but she is at least ready to lead my Syntha forces into action in Urban War now.

Neo Pi (click for a larger image)

Shadowforge Dark Temple Slingers - Mid-September Update

2009-09-19T15:55:00.003+01:00

Just to prove that I am actually still painting figures, here is a shot of my newest unit. These ladies are some of Shadowforge's finest and will feature in my warband at the Wargods tournament in Canterbury this November.

I like the Shadowforge figures, but agree with their critics that some of the figures have a distressing tendency to look like inflatable dolls. Well, at least their faces do. Still, I like the figures just the same. They have clean lines and nice animation.

I originally bought these figures to use with a Wargods of Olympus warband. Wargods of Olympus is the Greek variant for Wargods of Aegyptus. It has been in playtest since before I can remember now, so I do wonder if it will ever see the light of day, but at least the figures are pretty and I shall probably use them in our Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures games instead.

Demonworld Elves

2009-09-15T11:14:00.003+01:00

For about three or four years now I have had a unit of Demonworld Elven Unicorn Riders sitting undercoated on my desk. I finally decided to get them painted and so here they are in all their Elven glory (click the pics for larger versions):

I can honestly say that I did not enjoy painting them. To some extent this is the fault of the figures; they are too nice. These castings are exquisite, beautifully detailed and beautifully proportioned. They have little details on them that set them off just right too. And this is the problem. I wanted to paint them quickly and clear them off the desk. The figures wanted to be painted with oodles of shading and highlighting. They demand a level of attention that most would lavish only on 28mm figures and I did not want to do that. I wanted figures that look good enough at arm's length and I wanted to clear them quickly off the desk to make space for the next phase of the Towton project. Poor Unicorn Riders!

Some time back I painted these Demonworld Elven Heroes, so I thought I would photograph them while I was at it since they have not been seen here before:

I did not have the same problems with these heroes. Instead, my real problem with the heroes was that I was out of practice painting detailed figures. At the time I painted these, I was in a groove speed-painting 15mm Peter Pig figures for AK47 Republic and PBI2. I was out of practice painting the additional detail that these figures have.

Still, overall I am happy enough with the final outcome on both sets of figures. They are not great but I would not be shamed in front of the wargaming community putting them on the table. That leads me to my next dilemma. For the sake of completeness I have based them up for Demonworld. I have Demonworld and Empires and have actually played and enjoyed Empires, which I originally intended to use as a campaign system for other games. I have not played Demonworld yet and really wonder if I ever shall. I have enough figures for a small Elven army of about 1000 points (5 units plus characters) but the specific figures for it are OOP at the moment so I cannot add more of the same to my army and I do not have an opposing army, although I do have Harpies and Goblin Spearbearers. I could expand the armies using other ranges for the most part. Some troop options (e.g. Goblin Bear Riders) are not readily available though but I could proxy other troop types instead if need be. The problem is whether there is any point to this. After all, how many people actually have the rules and how many would want to play? So, what do I do? Sell the armies? Finish painting them and just keep them for display? Rebase them for another system?

I could always rebase them for HotT, which I have and have enjoyed in the past. That would give me three or four Elven armies and most of a Goblin army. I could add additional troops to the Goblin army from other ranges to complete it. I am tempted to use the Harpies as 6mm minor demons and 28mm imps for our Warrior Heroes campaign. That could certainly work. Whatever I decide in the end, at least I have cleared a bit more of the lead pile.

Black Tree Design

2009-09-12T12:42:00.004+01:00

BTD have a terrible and well-deserved reputation for abysmal customer service. On 4th August 2008 I ordered some BTD Normans to use as Border Kingdoms armies in our Talomir Tales campaign. About three months later, part of my order turned up. The infantry were fine but I was not impressed with the quality of the cavalry; one of the horses only had three legs and others had minor casting defects. Still, given how long it had taken to get even these figures, I was not going to send these horses back. For all I knew, I might never see them again or any others besides! So, I painted these figures up and waited for the rest of my order. A couple of months down the line, I enquired about my order by email and through their website queries forum. I received no reply. I repeated this every couple of months, even adding a couple of written enquiries by post. I received no reply. Then suddenly I actually received a response completely out of the blue on 31st July 2009 informing me that the rest of my order would be due in a few weeks and offering me a free pack of figures of my choice. I replied immediately that I still wanted the figures and informed them which free pack I would like. It all went quiet again and I never expected to see the figures.

- Cue fanfare -

Today (12th September 2009) I received the rest of my order! One year, one month and one week after I originally sent it in, it turned up on the door mat. It even included a pack of free figures as an apology. The freebie pack was not the one I had asked for, but it is still useful to me, so that is all to the good. I doubt I shall ever use BTD again. I shall certainly not use their mail order service again despite the hefty discounts available. I might consider buying from them at shows if they are present, because I do like the style of the figures. At least at shows I could check that the figures are not miscast, and I would know that I was getting what I wanted when I wanted it. It's a good job I still want these figures for our games. The Border Kingdoms can now recruit some new troops to their army.

Bwendi Heroes Save Bwendi From ADF - FWC BatRep

2009-09-11T10:12:00.005+01:00

Once more the perfidious aggressors from Albion have tried to invade Bwendi and been thrown back by the heroic Bwendi people. Their technology is truly no match for our spirit and elan. Thus spake Throckmorton P. Gladiolus, President for Life, at a press conference late yesterday following the startling news of a new Albion incursion onto Bwendi. The Albion invaders had landed in the back country of Bwendi near a vital industrial facility that produced much-needed fertiliser for the stout Bwendi yeoman farmers. The Bwendi Fast Response Team had reacted quickly (well, obviously!) to deal with the threat and had rapidly neutralised it. This is the story of that heroic action.

We played FutureWarCommander last night. It was my second game ever and Steve had not even read the rule book, so it was all down to me. I had played one game previously against Steve Kelly, who had played before so I had some grounding in the game but not much. At least I had read the rules though. That did help a bit. Nevertheless, I am sure that when I re-read the rules I shall find plenty of things that I got wrong.

The scenario was a simple 2000 point encounter battle. I had two troops of Thor MBTs, each with one Smart Missile carrier to provide heavy fire support, and one platoon of infantry in IFVs (Breakpoint 7). Steve had three troops of armour and two platoons of infantry, one of which was in APCs (Breakpoint 12). The game began with me taking the first turn.

The leader of the FaRTs looked at the oncoming enemy armour and ordered his tank commander to engage it at long range. There were a lot of guns heading their way and the FaRTs looked a little thin on the ground. His radio hissed and squealed as he spoke into the microphone and he watched as the entire armoured column advanced at full speed before suddenly stopping without even firing at the enemy. Fire was coming in thick and fast but the FaRT tankies were happily just motoring along. What the heck? Then he ordered the infantry forward to the small township of Gladioli ahead of them. The radio hissed and squealed some more and then it went dead. The IFVs stood stock still. Meanwhile the ADF commander was making the most of things and firing for all he was worth. Very soon three FaRT tanks were in flames and others were buttoned up and hoping for the best. Confusion reigned among the FaRTs and there was no doubt that their CO would be raising a stink about this if any of them survived. Things improved marginally as the missile tanks began to engage the enemy and smoked two of the enemy in return. The IFVs engaged an APC heading for the town, leaving it a blazing wreck too. "Well," thought Colonel Neryngia, "at least we are giving a reasonable account of ourselves."

(Click the pictures for larger versions)

Turns 1 to 3 passed very quickly in a welter of command blunders and failed command rolls for the FaRTS, while the ADF used the opportunity to engage and destroy a bunch of FaRT tanks. The FaRT HQ blundered with his first two command rolls, while the FaRT CO just failed the first three completely and my troops did nothing except fire using opportunity fire at the enemy. At least that did some damage although I was still losing on points at this time. Every vehicle of mine that was hit in these turns also managed to be suppressed, while none of Steve's were. It looked like the game would be a total walk-over for Steve.

After performing some percussive maintenance on his radio, Colonel Neryngia was finally able to talk to his troops properly. An ADF recce vehicle had taken up station in the woods near his command post so he ordered his infantry to assault the woods and clear them. This they did very easily before mounting up again and heading towards Gladioli. Enemy infantry had been sighted within the town and his men would have to clear it. The enemy armour was now advancing on the FaRT tanks though and another of his precious Thor MBTs was in flames. Things were really not looking good and it looked worse when one of the IFVs was hit as it tried to flank enemy positions within the town. Fortunately the infantry inside were able to dismount in time and survived. The rest of the infantry pushed into the town and assaulted the enemy troops there, only to find that they were power-armoured and pretty tough. The men retreated back through the town. At least Colonel Neryngia's radio was working properly now.

Turns 4 to 6 were much better from my perspective. My armour still spent most of its time suppressed, but at least my troops were able to do stuff as I passed a couple of command rolls. The ADF meanwhile was still pressing on and getting their command rolls just fine.

Then the battle really started to improve. Seeing the casualties caused by assaulting in the town, Colonel Neryngia ordered his men to just lay down as much fire as possible against the enemy. They would drive them out by superior firepower. The IFVs and the infantry concentrated their fire against one enemy position after another. Very soon they had cleared large areas of the town for only a few casualties. The armour was starting to get the range too. Several more enemy tanks went up in smoke. As night fell, the enemy withdrew in good order. The FaRTs held the field.

Neither of us reached our breakpoint by the end of the game. My force had taken 6 casualties in total and was one point away from breaking. Steve's force had taken 8 or 9 casualties and was further from its breakpoint than mine. We totted up the casualties. I had amazingly caused more damage than Steve had so I won a minor victory, which the Bwendi press wrote up as a stunning defeat for the ADF.

All in all it was a good game despite lack of familiarity with the rules. We played it straight and removed hits at the end of each turn. There is an option for retaining hits. Had we done that, I would have had no armour by the end of Turn 3 and the game would have been over much more quickly. Steve would have taken more casualties too, but not nearly as many as I would have done. My main problem was that most of my armour spent about half the game suppressed and unable to do anything except fire in opportunity fire. One it got moving though, it was able to do a bit of damage. The command system is really good fun in FWC. It is frustrating that you are not guaranteed at least one action per turn, but it also offers the opportunity for some really good bouts of action. At the end of the game, in the final turn, I managed to make loads of command rolls with my infantry and we were able to clear a large chunk of the town as a result.

September's Targets

2009-09-09T12:02:00.005+01:00

I just realised that August is over and that I have not set any targets for September. Eek! Time really does fly by, doesn't it. Anyway, looking at what I need to get finished and how much time I actually have spare for doing it at the moment, I am rather concerned that painting will have to go by the board for a bit. Still, I need some kind of distraction and there is the big Wargods tournament in Canterbury in November. As the reigning champion I must attend and ignominiously lose my title to some young whippersnapper. I have had an idea for a warband for the tournament but will not announce it here just yet. Suffice to say that it is a rather silly idea that has tremendous potential for amusement rather than for winning games. I look forward to seeing my opponents' faces when I lay out my army. Mind you, I did the same last year and won the tournament by accident. Oops! What I am trying to say here, in my usual, rather rambling manner is that my target for September and probably October will be to paint the additional elements I need for my warband. Pictures will follow as and when pieces are completed.

I have begun fettling my GHQ Terrainmaker hexes. Many have been damaged in the years since I first started collecting them. I am also not too keen on the shade of scatter material I used on them, because it is too dark. Given that I have a load of this scatter material left, I have mixed it with a lighter 'spring mix' and am much happier with the new colour. So, a secondary objective will be to fettle the rest of my hexes and finish the terrain for Helsingborg since I already have the armies. I am also planning to build more hexes, especially with a view to creating some pieces specifically designed for modern and future wars games in 6mm. The hex-fettling will also include additional detailing on all the hexes and finally getting around to texturing and finishing off the roads. The rivers need some additional work too, so they will receive a new coat of paint and probably a colour change. I just need to decide what colour to use for them. At least the blue indicates 'river' to people. Were I to go for a more realistic hue there is no telling what people would think my rivers were, especially given my inability to mix colours properly.

Old style hexes on the left, new style on the right (click for a bigger picture)

With the hexes fettled properly, I plan to use them a lot more for our games. I have more than enough to cover my 6' by 4' table and the addition of new hexes will help ensure that I have enough pieces to provide plenty of variety.

And finally, the other project is the Towton project. I shall continue with that over the next year. It will certainly be part of every month's project for the next year or so to complete several stands for this project each month, and it may well actually be a whole month's project in its own right.

But first, before I can properly begin on these, I need to complete the unit of Demonworld Elves that are sitting on the painting table taunting me at the moment. The figures are absolutely gorgeous, but I am really not enjoying painting them so they are taking an awful lot longer than they should.

Basic Impetus - Wars of the Roses Armies

2009-08-31T20:01:00.006+01:00

As those of you that have read the Rather Large Towton Project blog will know, I have embarked on a rather daft venture to refight Towton as close to a 1:1 scale as possible. One part of keeping this project fresh is making sure that I can use the figures I am painting before I have painted the whole Towton order of battle.

So, bearing in mind that I have tried the Impetus rules and enjoyed them when Steve Kelly dropped by, I have downloaded the Basic Impetus rules and produced a couple of armies for them. Basic Impetus is the free 'light' version of Impetus and there are dozens of army lists available for the rules. Having tried Impetus, I think that BI can help me regain the joy of my early forays into DBA when it first came out. The armies comprise around 7-10 elements, so it is possible to collect large numbers of armies if you wish, or just enjoy the game cheaply, a must for a thrifty gamer!

I already had a few packets of Wars of the Roses figures before I began the Towton project. Ok, well, maybe I mean more than a few. Not all of these will be used in the Towton project because they represent troop types that were not present. I dug these out and added what I needed to the painting pile. As a result, in short order I had enough elements to field all of the options for Lancastrian and Yorkist armies. Each army consists of 8 elements, and each has 3 options that can be added in exchange for elements already in the army. The number of options in BI armies is not ridiculously large, like in the most recent DBA rules, but reflects the sensible nature of the first edition of DBA. Hooray for Dadi e Piombo, say I!

The armies below are arrayed with their core elements at the front. The three optional elements are arrayed separately to the rear. The figures are 6mm Baccus, based on 60mm x 30mm mdf bases from East Riding Miniatures using the Baccus Basing System.

The Yorkist Army (click the pictures for a larger version)

The Yorkist army consists of the retinues of Edward IV, Lord Hastings and Lord Berners.

The Lancastrian Army

The Lancastrian army consists of the retinues of Lord Grey of Codnor and Sir John Heron of the Ford. It also features the retinues of Viscount Bourchier and Lord Fitzwarin standing in as Lancastrians until I actually get some more Lancastrian running dog lackeys painted.

Shiva - Urban War

2009-08-28T13:38:00.007+01:00

I have not painted much 28mm recently and Shiva has been sitting on my painting desk for a while, half completed. I decided to quickly paint her up the other day and have just finished her.

Shiva is a human that has been infected with the spores released by the Koralon (greebly aliens) when they invaded. She is a character figure for the Urban War game from Urban Mammoth. Steve and I both really like Urban War but we play it all too infrequently, because we keep getting distracted by other projects. It's a shame really because it is a game that is well worth playing.

Looking at Shiva, I think she may well appear in our Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures games. She would make a great minor demon figure, as would a lot of the other Koralon I have. Now, where can I find these figures in 6mm for our Warrior Heroes games too?

The Martians Are Coming

2009-08-28T13:02:00.006+01:00

I finally got around to finishing some more Martians. My poor Shastapshian Martians are still outgunned by the perfidious British of Syrtis Major, but at least we have more of a chance now. The figures are all 15mm and are from Black Hat Miniatures, except for the Small Bird sky galleon, which is a paper model produced by squirmydad. You can download this model from the Sky Galleons of Mars yahoo group. Big thatnks to squirmydad for that.

My forces are based around the Shastapshian army in the Space: 1889 rules. Their army is organised into 'flags'. Each flag is a combined arms battalion comprising two warbands of infantry, one artillery battery and one cavalry warband. My ultimate goal is to be able to field three or four of these flags with supporting walkers and sky galleons.

A Red Flag Warband

These new infantry are the first warband for the second flag that I am producing.

Small Bird Class Screw Galley

This is my first air support unit. The Small Bird is normally used to support troops in siege situations by providing high level bombing. I am hoping that its sweeper guns and aerial mobility can also level the playing field against the British machine-guns.

Storch Mk2 Walker

This light recon walker is armed with a 0.5" Gatling gun instead of the more usual two-pounder that the Prussian Storch walker carries. Prussian renegades have provided the Shastapshians with three of these walkers so I had better buy and paint the other two as well. Let us hope that they prove resiliant enough to deal with the British steam tanks that I have heard are in production.

Shastaphsian forces march on Syrtis Major.

This is all of my painted Martians so far. I need to add some cavalry to complete the Black Flag. They are currently sitting undercoated by the painting table awaiting their turn.

In the near future, I plan to complete the Red Flag by adding an infantry warband with melee weapons, because the Black Flag is the only flag whose troops all have rifles. They will also need the cavalry and artillery, so I shall have to buy these at some point in the future. I have also printed out another Small Bird and plan to build it shortly. I think I would like a squadron of three of them and it would be nice to have crew figures for the Small Birds, so I shall print and build another at some point.

In the longer term I plan to expand the army to three or four flags, as mentioned above, and add the extra two walkers. After that, who knows? I am tempted to add an allied Piedmontese mercenary battalion to the Shastapshian forces, with the Piedmontese taking the role of the Fenians and Prussians in the rulebook. Whaddya mean you never heard of the Piedmontese space effort or their holdings on Mars? Well, you will ...

Italians buy British boats shocker!

2009-08-25T10:31:00.002+01:00

In shock news, the Italian government has recently purchased a number of Stingray Class Torpedo 'Nefs from Britain. This is thought to signal British support for the newly formed Italian nation in its struggle against the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. The new Torpedo 'Nefs are the first part of a larger order that the Italian government has made. The 'Nefs, designated S1 to S5, made a fine site as they escorted a small flotilla of Italian vessels from the British naval dockyards at Scapa Flow. The Orkney islanders turned out en masse to cheer the ships as they left. Reportedly this new order has saved a number of jobs at the dockyards that were previously threatened due to a downturn in wars.

I finally got around to painting some of my 'nefs last week. Now I just need to paint the rest. Click the pictures for larger versions.

The Italian Fleet leaves Scapa Flow with the newly purchased Stingray Torpedo 'Nefs:

Palestro Class Destroyer:

Re D'Italia Battlenef:

Stingray Class Torpedo 'Nef:

More Clearing The Decks - TYW Swedes

2009-08-18T10:44:00.004+01:00

I recently rebased my Thirty Years War Swedes to make a couple of armies. OK, so technically it is not two completely separate armies. It is two armies with a core of models in common and additional elements to make up the rest. I played Impetus the other day and really enjoyed it, so I decided to quickly rebase my Thirty Years War Swedes for the Basic Impetus variant Basic Baroque. I am hoping that BI and BB return the same level of fun to ancients and renaissance gaming that DBA did in the early nineties. I have had this Swedish army for a goodly number of years but, like many other armies I own, it was never completed due to lack of opponents interested in the period. The army was originally put together for Renaissance Principles of War, which means I have quite a few spare bits for the BB armies now. I am thinking of reworking some of these to provide a Danish or Imperialist opponent for the Swedes. Given the small size of the armies, that should be feasible with minimum additional expenditure.

The figures are all 6mm by Irregular Miniatures on mdf bases from East Riding Miniatures.

The early Swedish army (Click the pics for larger images):

Later Swedish army:

The figures are all based on 60x30mm stands, because I had them to hand and am getting used to using them. I am not sure that this was the right choice but it is done now. I think I should have opted for 80mm frontage stands instead, which is another option that the game gives. This would have given the cavalry a bit more space for the commanded shot. Still, it gives me another army that is ready to use, and the point of wargaming for me is rolling dice and talking shite with my mates. This army is ready for another bout of that.

Play Day! (Impetus and FutureWarsCommander)

2009-08-14T09:56:00.004+01:00

Yup, I had a play day yesterday. Steve (of steves blog) was in the country visiting his brother, who lives about an hour or so up the road from me, so we arranged to meet up. He brought his Wars of the Roses figures with him (all Baccus 6mm) and a couple of Dark Realm Miniatures armies for FutureWarsCommander. If you have not read Steve's blog, you should at least check it out; his figures are beautifully painted.

He managed to find my house eventually, after a dreadful journey down past York. One brew later and we set up for the first game. Steve had mentioned Impetus on his blog before and I have been reading reports by other people too, like JET on Geektactica. These all made the game sound interesting. I had also downloaded Basic Impetus, a free DBA-esque version of the rules from the website, which had whetted my appetite for the game. It looked interesting, and I was not wrong. Steve had mentioned on the phone earlier in the week that he had some reservations about the rules after his first game, so I was wondering if they would live up to my expectations. We set up the game. I took a Lancastrian Wars of the Roses force and Steve took the Yorkists. Both armies were Steve's.

We deployed roughly opposite each other and commenced the archery duel, which was not particularly decisive but did disorder my archers fairly quickly. Our mounted units charged towards each other on my left flank, while the rest of the troops tried to remove disorder and advance. As we closed the archery became more furious and units started to really get hurt, with Steve's men taking the brunt of it. Meanwhile the mounted knights were in a ding-dong battle that raged back and forth across the field. My knights got the worst of it in that melee and were quickly reduced to a strength of 1. Ouch. However, despite, or possibly because of, being outnumbered they rallied and fought back even harder. Meanwhile, my archers had destroyed a couple of Steve's archer units and my melee troops stormed into the combat. Very soon the battle was over and the Yorkists were fleeing for their lives.

This was a great fun game. I don't think we used all the rules in the Impetus rulebook, but it flowed well and was thoroughly enjoyable. I liked the idea of selecting which body of troops you wished to move and dicing for their initiative versus your opponent rather than rolling initiative for the whole side. That keeps both players more involved in the game all the time and adds a layer of interesting decision-making to the game. I also really liked the fact that melee continues until one side is destroyed or has fallen back beyond the pursuit range of the other side. This makes melee quite deadly really but also led to a real back and forth battle between our knights. The quality of the rulebook is also exceptional. It has thick glossy pages that feel like they will last well. The illustrations are inspiring and there appear to be plenty of examples too. Overall, I have to say "thumbs up" for Impetus and it is now on my shopping list. Oh, and Steve's reservations about the rules? Well, it turns out that he had drunk rather a lot of alcohol before he even began that first game ...

We broke for lunch and then set up a game of FutureWarsCommander. I have had these rules for a while and it is on my regular opponent Steve's and my list to play. Yes, my regular opponent is called Steve too. That makes it rather confusing but I shall not mention him again so any references to Steve will henceforth refer to Steve of 'steves blog'. So, as I was saying, I have had these rules for a while and have been really keen to try them out. I painted up my Scandinavian Union force a while back, as regular readers of this blog will know, and had previously only used it for Dirtside 2. Steve used an Andrayadan force from Dark Realm Miniatures for this game. We picked 2000 points of troops and set up a quick encounter battle so that we could get rolling dice asap.

It all started so well. I discovered that my troops had firepower and range over Steve's force. Brilliant. In the first four turns and almost completely annihilated one wing of his army as it tried to advance on me and had reduced Steve to one point from his breakpoint. My own casualties were minimal so far. At this time I was feeling rather guilty. After all, I had won the first game and it would be rude to win the second game in such a manner. Then on Turn 5 both my HQ and my CO failed their first command rolls. My troops stood there like lemons while Steve's advanced. I started to take more casualties. On the following turn my CO again failed to activate anything while my HQ was trying to manoeuvre his wing over to the other side of the table. And that's when it happened. Steve's troops activated and activated and fired and fired and my troops started falling like flies. In the space of one turn the whole game was turned on its head and suddenly my troops reached their breakpoint. I now had to roll every turn to see if the commander would order a withdrawal. He passed the first time but the troops took so many casualties on that turn that there was only a minimal chance of succeeding at the withdrawal roll on the following turn. I rolled. I failed. My troops fled the field. Victory to Steve!

This game was brilliant. The command system is very neat and offers all kinds of possibilities for problems and amazing successes. The game flowed really well and there were no problems. We did spend a bit of time looking things up, but that was because neither of us was particularly familiar with the rules. I can't wait to get another game of this in and am even wondering whether I should collect a new army for it. The question is, which army?

So, a big thank you to Steve for an excellent day's gaming.