Only one week until Salute

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:

1. Print orders of battle for the game;
2. Print display material;
3. Rely on the other team members to turn up with their figures;
4. 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):

1-2 Thaumont 1000AC - Hobgoblins!

Breccia rolls to his feet, sword in hand. Espying the creatures attacking Miroslav he recognises them from their brethren's assaults on his mine. 
"Hobgoblins!" he shouts.
Quickly he moves to the corner of the passage and checks for more of the creatures, knowing that they generally hunt in packs. His infravision is blocked by the firelight and he can see no further than the edge of the area illuminated by the fire, but there are no more hobgoblins in immediate view.

Meanwhile, Miroslav is back-pedalling away from the hobgoblins, fending them off, while trying to draw them away from the passage. Seeing a gap in the hobgoblin's defense, he pauses in his retreat, lunges with his axe and catches the hobgoblin a mighty blow that half tears its head off. It collapses to the ground never to move again as blood and brains spatter all within several feet of the creature.

Lacrimos charges from his bed and charges the hobgoblin nearer to the passage, almost falling over Breccia as he does. The hobgoblin slams into the wall with a sickening thud and fresh blood spurts over Lacrimos' hand as he withdraws his sword from the body. The hobgoblin slumps to the floor dead.



The hobgoblins are dead. A quick scout of the passageway shows that there are no more in the immediate area and no sounds of alarm can be heard.

Returning to the bodies, the group recovers two short swords, two javelins and two small shields that have seen better days. The Hobgoblins have 8 Royals and 12 Crona between them. One of the Hobgoblins is also wearing a well-crafted thick leather belt covered in brass studs that might have some value.

The rest of the night passes uneventfully (unless there is an argument over the treasure!) and the group awakes in the morning ready to continue their journey or explore the tor. Elias is still unconscious though and will be for at least another two days as his body recovers from the terrible rat bites that it endured.

1 Thaumont 1000AC - Night Manoeuvres

The group debates the merits of giving the blue liquid to Elias for what seems an age before deciding to settle in for the night. Elias is tucked up in the corner, still unconscious and his wounds only seeping a little now. The rest of the group agrees the watch order: Miroslav, Breccia and then Lacrimos. Each is to take a four-hour watch. With that sorted, Miroslav tucks into a hearty meal of dried meat, while the others dine well on rat prepared by Breccia. This uses up all the rats, but leaves them with full bellies. Then Miroslav divides up some gold coins that he found in the room. Each group member gets 25 of them, although it will be fewer when they are exchanged for legal currency. By now the fires in the main room have died down and the only light comes from the fire in the side chamber where the group is. 

Miroslav takes the first watch. The night wears on. His eyes become heavy as he peers into the gloom and listens for the enemy but he hears nothing. Suddenly a javelin arcs out of the darkness hitting him in the shoulder (2 damage). Another follows it almost immediately, thumping into the ground next to Miroslav. Stunned he watches as two large humanoids suddenly sprint yelling into the firelight with swords drawn. Desperately Miroslav defends himself, only just turning the blades of his foes as they press their assault. The noise has awoken Breccia and Lacrimos, who leap to their feet unarmoured but with weapons to hand.

Snowing in March!

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

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.

Moving camp

Deciding that the chamber that Miroslav has just checked out would be a better place to camp, you spend an hour moving everything into there. The chamber has no secret doors, false walls or anything else as far as you can tell, so it seems safe enough. It contains a small stone chest full of ancient fruit pips in the centre of the floor. A stone lid lies next to the chest and small darts are scattered around the dusty floor of the room. Old faded and peeling paintings on the wall show humanoids (the paintings are too faded to determine if they are humans, elves, goblins or what) approaching a tomb with baskets of food on the walls to your left and right. On the far wall is an image of the tomb. The painting of the tomb shows a catafalque with an armoured warrior atop it at the centre with a small table in front of it. The humanoids are placing offerings on this table. 

Lead Wars: A New Beginning

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?