Thursday, April 12, 2007

The battle of Ostnerbuck 1380

I was accused by my opponent of showing off yesterday. His point being that I had taken pretty armies to the club once again, as if it were some sort of shop window. My view on that is why the heck not! My local club tends to have rather uninspiring looking games of an evening, saving its good stuff for shows and presumably shelves at home. I don't play that way; I like to look at as good a setup as I can. That tends to mean I take the big stuff to the club whenever I can, and you can't beat 28mm for visual impact.

And so last night it was another outing for the Medievals and Warhammer Ancients. In fact this was a really small game; 1200 points per side. I was playing a City state of the Holy Roman Empire (a western German city army in effect) whilst Chris took on the role of the Flemish. Initial deployment was something like this:


I had a centre focused on a hill, whilst the Flemings spread themselves thinly around woods and farmland.

The battle as it turned out was to swing each way several times in the course of the evening (not helped by us totally forgetting to do any panic tests throughout the game). Early on, my German knights, led by the city duke charged impetously at the Flemish Placonniers. With the aid of their own general the Placonniers destroyed the knights, and already the gig should have been up. However german firepower and the slow moving Flemish pike blocks gave me time to hastily revise my battle plan, getting my mercenary Diener (light horse) into the centre.


They were to do stalwart work there; routing the enemy general and destroying the Placonniers, before going on to eliminate the Flemish organ gun. It was buying me time.

Meanwhile the Flemish Pikemen advanced steadily. One of my most recent units, Old Glory Low Countries Pikemen and Front Rank Leaders painted in the colours of the city of Damme:

Heading straight for German spearmen. These are Black Tree figures with an ancient Citadel seargent.
A protracted fight on my right saw the Flemish pikes win through and advance on the hill. On the left the red pikes tried the same, but were frustrated by rallying crossbowmen. This bought enough time that my Infantry on the hill could advance to face the red pikes whilst my light horse charged the white pikes.

They were beaten off, but this drew the white pikes away from my spearmen. With the crossbowmen, my spears were able to then surround and destroy the red pikes. At this point Chris conceded defeat, in what was a very close game.

And I suppose he was also right about showing off, the terrain was nothing to write home about, but my figures attracted favourable comments from various other members; and that's always nice isn't it?

2 comments:

  1. I find that attitude odd. i would have thought most wargamers aspire to having all their figures well painted and presented. are you saying that gamers at your club paint to one standard for club nights and then another for "special" events? If that's the case how strange. For me I ant all my figures to be the best that I can achieve. The quality has improved over the years and will no doubt continue to imprve as casting quality improves (compare a 70's Minifig with a 00's Perry to see how far we've come).

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  2. I find that many of the clubs' game leaders (i.e main organisers) see the modelling side of the game as rather onerous. Although some have excellent figures, but seldom bring them to the club; no one aimsto inspire other members to get involved in a period by bringing sensational armies.

    There are a particularly large number of perfunctory 15mm and 6mm armies, and in some ways worse, prepainted and unpainted models.

    Mainly though 28mm is imagined to be a dead scale. A notion that seems to fly in the face of magazine content, shows and discussion forums...

    It's not like Grimsby at all!

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