Orc War Wyvern

Here's one I had sat around for a couple of years.  I picked up a Schleich dragon with a view to creating a Wyvern.  The original model cost a mighty £15, having been bought new, in an actual toy shop!

It was an appealing model, but the original paint job was not to my tastes, at least for the classic Orcish beast of war.  The model sat unused on a shelf for a long, long time however; it seeme like too much to do.

Eventually the muse and excuse to get on with it came.  I cobbled together a rider from a spare model and built a saddle from plasticard and green stuff.

 Basing was possibly the hardest choice

Then it was onto the painting; nothing special, but I wanted a decent job.  The Wyvern itself had to be green, and I was pretty happy with the colour.  Less satisfied with the bluish tinge to the wings, which just doesn't compliment the way I hoped, but it looks ok.

The Orc had a animal cloak added from the bits box, and was a swift paint job himself; not fixing him to the beast certainly helped.

I decided to try adding some blood effects to the monster; it certainly looked like it had just ripped through some poor victims, and I wanted to reflect that.

 I like the look, even if it makes the model look messy.  It is a fighting creature after all.

Another long idle project finished, and another couple of hundred points into my Kings of War Orc and Goblin army.

Hopefully it won't take another two years to get to the table.

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The Battle of Brampton 1643

I've managed to get a couple of Black Powder games in of late; nice to put some historical miniatures on the table again for the first time in a while.  Myself and James agreed to an English Civil War game based on my usual light modifications of the BP rules; for a scenario I took the very first from the venerable Charles Grant Scenario book.  Seriously, if you don't have a copy of it, track one down!

The scenario called for one force to defend a number of redoubts around the some critical villages at the head of a river crossing, and ideal situation for my West Country forces to face one another in.

I took command of the Parliamentarians tasked with attacking the redoubts, whilst James led the Royalists in defending them.  The scenario demanded he deploy three of his four guns to the redoubts, from which they could not move or redirect their fire.  Nevertheless , the position of these was such that the key approaches were well covered, on top of this he could deploy his final gun and selection of troops as he saw fit along a limited position.

For my part I had more infantry and cavalry, but less artillery, and would need to bring the latter to positions of deployable fire; not an easy task for 17th century guns.  I deployed my cavalry to the open right, expecting to face his Horse in return, whilst my infantry brigades deployed to storm the village defences.

 

My initial intent was to try to rush the artillery on the Parliament right, their flank covered by dense woodland, and then to turn on the rear of the village.  But alas my cavalry proved unwilling to the task and slow to rouse.  This allowed James to counter their advances and initially hold the advantage.  I was obliged therefore to advance on the village.

 

The initial attempt proved to be against the common ground on my left;  James had maintained a range of reserve regiments and began to redeploy one of these in anticipation of the attack.  However the position of his regiment in the hedged field proved unassailable; stymieing my assault.

 

Things progressed better elsewhere though, as my cavalry managed to force the open ground from the hands of the enemy; but effectively cross-fired by artillery as it was, were unwilling to push across it to the rear of the Royalists.  Additionally James had moved to occupy the village inn and its' grounds, obliging me to a heavy attack on the village; two regiments of foot attacking the inn whilst my forlorn hope attacked one of the enemy redoubts.

 

The pressure was mounting.

 

Having manged to cross the ground without loss to the largely ineffectual gunnery of the village artillery placements, the forlorn hope attempted to carry the day in a desperate fight.

 

On the other side of the village a cavalry charge against one gun was fought off with rammers and linstocks.  it took an infantry assault to take the gun, but this piece was not deployed to a redoubt.  The inn was wrested from the control of the royalists, but not without loss.  Likewise the forlorn hope overran the gun in the centre of the village; but by this time my left flank had collapsed and retired.

 

My chances of victory now depended on the original plan of overrunning the forest edge redoubt and threatening the royalist lines from behind.  But luck was against me.  Again James' canny use of reserves and the difficulty of attacking the dug in defences made such attempts lead only to failure. 

 

Eventually my cavalry broke, and with that all hope of taking control of the field drained away.  The Royalists held Brampton and its' critical ford, whilst the Parliamentarians had to withdraw and lick their wounds.

As ever, another scenario by Mr. Grant proves its' worth, avoiding the cliches of a simple line-'em-up-and-knock-'em-down game.

Personally, it's another defeat though.  I haven't won a battle in a while now!

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Scorax the Dragon - a Reaper Bones Quickie

I was able to knock out one of the new Reaper models really quickly, largely as my intention was to paint it basically black.  In the end I went with simple dry-brushed layers of purple, blue and deep red.

 

 

 

The basing is simple, to match my dungeon-crawl/Kobold army miniatures.  However, I am now thinking I'd like to add something to their bases, a tunnel specific scatter, coins, bones maybe...

Hmmm.

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Old War Reports 3

Still catching up, here is a brief tale of a Dragon Rampant game where Matt was able to reap some revenge for his previous defeat.

Pygmies and Ogres...

And a Cockatrice support the kingdoms of men

Meanwhile, Goblins joined the Kobold alliance

The two sides gamely approach one another (36 point game)

The Cockatrice quickly gave the men the upper hand

Proving a real challenge to fend off,
until it became stuck in a crystal forest

Big boys face off

It began to look more even as the Kobolds made a valiant stand

Outmatching human pikemen, ill-equipped to deal
with their close combat ways

Nevertheless, only the Kobold rangers survived

To endure a long chase and withering retreat

It was not as one-sided a battle as it felt at first, but out of a rare stubbornness, it went on far longer than it should.  My rangers had the only shooting left and were theoretically capable of pulling a draw.  Realistically it was a one in a thousand shot.

An enjoyable game nevertheless, as Dragon Rampant generally is.

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An Iberian Interlude

TML Towers was empty for a few days, whilst the author took some 'me time' in Lisbon; thus ticking another country of the list of places in Europe to visit.

Lisbon is a gorgeous city with plenty to see and do, not to mention great weather at this time of year; which when you are British, means any circumstance in which it isn't raining and the temperature is in double figures of any denomination.

The view over the city towards the Castelo de S.Jorge

 Plenty of my time was taken up with seeing some of the local culture, arts, and nightlife.

Roman and Muslim ruins at the Se de Lisboa

 But I also found the time for some gamer activities.  I mean quite by chance I found two gaming stores.

This one open at 9pm on a Sunday night!  Civilisation!

Board games were about 10% cheaper than the UK , and many came in English or with multilingual instructions.  However, for Miniatures games, 40k, Flames of War, and so on, prices seemed to be 10-20% higher than the UK.  So at least there's one thing we have on the continent*.

I managed to visit a couple of museums with a heavy slant on my wargaming/history interests.  Firstly the Museu de Marinha, which covered the maritime history of Portugal, both exploration and military

There's an enormous number of fine model ships

Plenty of artillery to tinker with

And a hall full of preserved vessels

Including naval aircraft

 Secondly the Museu Militar, is a much smaller affair, and has the less polished feel of the sort of museum school trips seemed to go to in the 1970's.  It has several small displays relating to the Peninsular War, World War One, and the Portuguese colonial conflicts; as well as medieval armour and war art.

One of several Napoleonic War mannequins 

and some of the Portuguese equipment of the period

 But the most impressive thing in the museum would be the enormous collection of artillery, surely over a hundred pieces ranging from regimental guns to enormous siege weapons.

Part of the collection

 This gun was particularly interesting for the clear evidence of it having seen combat.  It had obviously been a victim to counter-battery fire.

Look at those dents and gouges

 There are also a range of French pieces captured at Vittoria, though I suspect the main museum for the Peninsular War is elsewhere.

See below

See above

 There was also a range of guns from the Great War, where most of the Portuguese equipment was either British or French.

A British 6 inch howitzer IIRC

Prior to the war much of the Portuguese weaponry was German, so their expeditionary divisions were equipped with allied equipment at short notice.

It's not a big or especially great museum, but the artillery collection is great, and you can get up close and personal with much of it.  For the price of 3 euros, it was good value.  I could also have took in the Museu Confletto, for the more recent military history and apparently a huge collection of classic toy soldiers; but I only had so much time to indulge.  Maybe another time.

The rest of Lisbon; well worth a visit; and for historians, there's lots of interest.




*I mean, if that's enough to justify Brexit, then good luck to you in your misguided interpretation of economics and the future.

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Reaper Bones Third Set arrives

Two years ago I joined Matt in a small commitment to the latest Reaper Kickstarter, at that time.  Finally it arrived a few weeks ago; the best part of a year late it must be admitted.  Matt sorted out my selections and I've now had time to have a small look through them:

All my packs

 I'd picked a selection of items I - at the time - felt I could make use of .  Most if nothing else can serve in dungeon crawls, but many now are also useful for Dragon Rampant.  I managed to push fit the largest models for photographs.  Kicking of with the dragon:

Stan for scale

 Pretty impressive.  I'd also picked up two frost giants, thinking they may be useful; time has moved on of course!  I'm not sure what I might use these for now!

 

 The largest model, in effect is scenery.  I picked up the mystic stone circle as it wasn't the sort of object I could see as practical to make myself.  I have little clue where or how I'm going to store this though.

It's pretty big!

 There were also some mythical monsters, Orcs, Lizardmen, and some pseudo-space marines, for which I have a specific plan.  But the last set I got a picture of was these rather fabulous Ogres:

 

Overall, great looking models; but the delay in delivery?  Pretty rotten.  Their fourth Kickstarter recently finished, but given the delays on the two I've backed, I gave it a pass.  The world may not last long enough for the next one to deliver!  This is the fundamental shortcoming of crowd-funded projects, constant delays, frustration.  It may not be the case for all projects but of the dozen or so I've backed about half have been significantly later than intended.

It's something to expect rather than become annoyed at.  But if you are impatient, it is a good reason to stay away from what so often seems like an incredible bargain.

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