Rodensfeld: 1377

Laurie arranged a Medievals game with me for a week or two ago, and as I'm in one of those catch up phases on the blog, I'm only just around to posting the report.  Spurred on by our recent big game, Laurie had been rebasing and freshening up his collection of Teutonic and early High-Medieval troops.  To make use of my own forces I set up a scenario to pitch them against my Low Countries forces, of the Duchy of Luxembourg.

The Scenario was CS Grant inspired, from old faithful*,  A dawn attack on the camp of a Holy Roman Empire army.  Laurie commanded the HRE and had four pickets on patrol at the start of the game, he could choose where, so long as one was within three inches of the bridge over the fast-flowing river Roden.  The rest of his force was asleep.

At the start of each turn, he had to pick one of four coloured tokens, each corresponding to the four arriving battles of Low Countries troops, therefore the LC army could not be sure of the coordination of it's army.  Units were represented only be a counter marking their centre, until a patrol moved within 12 inches of them, or they themselves attacked the enemy.  The first LC force to arrive was that over the river from the camp.  and these quickly moved to engage the HRE crossbow piquet.  In the distance other troops moved unseen.

In some confusion the patrols moved first towards the camp, and the Crossbows sent back a runner.  However he was captured before he could raise the alarm.  The LC cavalry appeared out of the gloom and charged the slowly aroused Germans.  (Each turn once the alarm was deemed raised, Laurie could raise 2D6 worth of troops in Stamina points, carrying over to the next turn any remainder).

A pair of fierce engagements around the camp developed with the LC mounted troops pushing some of the HRE knights through the camp, but by then being in too uncoordinated a condition to stand a counter attack by roused troops.

FLemish infantry failed to cross the bridge, covered in the pre dawn light by German crossbows.  By now infantry were tumbling out of the camp in some order, and the LC general was setting off to look for his remaining men, still lost in the darkness.

At this stage LC handgunners came out of the woods to try to disorder the enemy, who had just routed one of their allied infantry formations.  This they did so with some success.

But with losses mounting the LC commander was finding the initiative had passed and the HRE commander was ranging his men further away from the camp in a hunt for opposition.

Late in the engagement the LC general as able to rush one unit of pie into the battle, but they were too late to swing the battle, in which the other LC commander had lost his heaviest troop in an ill advised attack on German infantry to the west of the camp.

The moment lost the Flemish forces began to withdraw before the Germans could become well enough arrayed to pursue.

The battle reflected a sharp defeat for my Flemish forces, who weren't able to coordinate a swift enough attack; though they did come within a whisker of achieving it.  Another fun little game facilitated by the Hail Caesar rules.

*If you don't know by now:

Victrix Spartans Arrive

The plastic miniatures I've been awaiting for several months now were finally released a few weeks back an I  managed to get my hands on a pack shortly afterwards.  Victrix have previously dealt exclusively with the Napoleonics Wars but practically from their first inception they suggested they would produce Ancient Greek Hoplites next.  Now the Athenian and Spartan sets are out, with Theban and Mercenary sets to follow; naturally I wanted to get hold of the Spartans.

What you get is the typical large Victrix box with enough parts for 48 figures:

Early Victrix figure sets, such as their British Infantry, were if anything, riticised for containing too many fiddly pieces, and resultantly requiring excessive cleaning and assembly.  Although the sprues here may still look busy, the same charge cannot be levelled at the Spartans:

In fact the reverse criticism could be made, that there is too limited a pose range.  There are only four torsos on the sprue, repeated twice and thankfully all standing at least; and the arms are largely either holding spear at rest, or thrusting.  Of course this does suit the appearance of these ancient Greek warriors, but a modeller or converter may be disappointed by the lack of variety in the set, something the gamer will be conversely glad is absent.

To see how they assembled, I put together a unit of 16, with Hail Caesar in mind.

My front rank are with thrusting spears and a commander and musician, the rear rank at rest.  As suggested the variety is limited.  But the finished quality of the figures is top notch, my only criticism at this stage being that the heads, as with previous Victrix sets are caricatured and somewhat oversized.  That aside, the posing and fit of the models is preferable, and the general level of sculpting better than the Immortal/Warlord Games Greeks.

Value wise they come out marginally better; based on RRP's Warlord work out as 50p per figure, whilst the Victrix are just under 48p each.  Each passes the price test, but the Victrix are slightly superior models in my opinion.

Overall a great addition to the widening range of plastic Ancients, now if one of these companies would do plast Greek cavalry or Thracians, I'd be a happy chap indeed!

Idol of Gork

It's definitely been a month for fantasy games, since the Warhammer Tournament reinvigorated my interest in painting and building fantasy models.  Obviously there has been a lot of Dystopian wars going through the paint queue, but also various bits for Warhammer have been worked on lately.


One for the club supplies is a Orc and Goblin shrine made from leftovers I got in a job-lot some while back. Rummaging through my O&G spares box (there's a lot of them!) for some Orcs to paint I found a much maligned Idol of Gork model from the old 7th edition boxed set.  It had a poor paint job from its' previous owner but was otherwise intact.

I took it, a couple of other bits, some rocks and some blue foam and knocked up a simple model:

Once I'd dry fitted everything in position to my tastes, I hot glue-gunned everything in place.  Then it was all given a solid coat of burnt umber acrylic.  Then it was simply a case of various layers of dry-brushing and picking out the details.  Make no mistake, this was done as a quicky, not a detail piece!  Painting finished, I added a little custom mixed scatter and the job was done:

Something suitable for a horde of hundreds or Goblins to fight over!

Du Nord d'Alger: 1870 guerres dystopienne

Given how quickly I got my French DW Navy painted, it seemed appropriate to get a game in fairly soon too.  To be fair to my opponent, Paul, on the day I was actually more than a little distracted and so didn't give the game all the attention I should have, so apologies to him.  Still it at least meant the sort of victory for him that keeps opponents coming back for more; and besides we all know the rule of newly painted models - that they will get nailed first time out, so what chance did I have anyway?!*

My fleet found itself facing the hated Les Rosbeefs in a small stretch of water filled with islands and sandbars - AKA fantasy game terrain.  In a naval game this level of terrain seems overwrought, why on earth would I sail my entire fleet through this channel that's less than 200 yards wide?  when you consider that in the game only one item of terrain had any effect on the game - the sand bar - it seemed unnecessary to be honest.  On top of that we both had aircraft, Paul a flying aircraft carrier and myself three surface skimming cruisers; so terrain became even less relevant.  All that sea and we chose to fight in the bit of it least suited to manoeuvres?  Really!

Enough ranting.  I made my way through the melange of terrain to advance on the Britannic Majesty's fleet.

My skimmers were able to sweep over the sand bar to target the monstrosity that was the British Dreadnought.

Alas the Dreadnought was to prove brutally invulnerable, whilst the Royal Navy's submarines played merry havoc with my frigates.  But a lucky shot from my Destroyers would bring down the flying carrier and briefly take the smile off my opponents face!

My pocket battleship swept around the rear of the sandbar, allowing it to fire on the enemy but protecting it from torpedoes.  Frigates had led the way and cleared the enemy screen, allowing it some security.  In the mean time the Dreadnought had destroyed one cruiser and captured another but his attempts gain further ships resulted in the loss of all his marines. And if I'd had any sense I'd have thrown my own marines onto here or one of the other defenceless submarines.

But I didn't, my Frigates nad interceptors tried to torpedo the Dreadnought out of existence instead.

To no avail.  Although with the loss of his aircraft carrier and several other vessels it was close, the destruction and capture of numbers of my smaller ships gave Paul a narrow victory.

Curse you English Imperial dogs!

Afterthoughts, I must read the rules next!  Would really have helped...


*apropro to what was distracting me too.

Swiss Handgunners - Painting Pleasure on eBay!

Partly painted to fund other projects, and partly to try out some alternate technique on basing, this unit of Swiss Handgunners were a joy to paint:

12 Perry Miniature plastics on 40mm square bases.  The painting is essentially a three layer highlight scheme, exaggerated somewhat compared to my own preference, to appeal to the Wargames buyer!

Like a lot of recent bits these are eBay bound.  These things happen, for these chas they are simply too late a period in appearance to fit in my Medievals collection.  A shame as I am quite pleased with how they look.

15mm Egyptians for Sale

I find myself in a glut of rationalising my armies.  It seems I'd rather focus on a smaller number of periods and be able to do them in grand scales (both size and or numbers) than piecemeal try to cover every period.  At the very beginning of this blog I was finishing up a New Kingdom Egyptian army; but other than one appearance at a DBA tournament, they have never been used.

And so it is time to sell up, after posting a few farewell pictures of them as an aide mémoire of what I'd done...

Based with DBM in mind, but a handful of half bases to allow for use in other games; these chaps are priced for a sensible sale on eBay.  Look them up here if you're interested!

I hope they find a good home.

:'(

More Hills...

Left over foam allowed me to make a suitable pair of ash mounds or hills for the Club's Warhammer 40K players:

Unlike the hills made recently these were instead textured with a thick layer of sand (bird sand is ideal and costs only a quid a bag! look for it in pet stores or Wilko's).  This was then sealed with a wash of dark brown, lightly over sprayed with black, and then drybrushed with browns and greys.  A real mass of techniques, but the results seem fine.

The club untention is to refurbish the undersides of a couple of tables to suit the urban hell that is the average Warhammer 40K hive world.  So hopefully these will fit right in.

Nightowls Fantasy Tourney - Not Bad Shocker!

So about once a year I dip my toe into the Warhammer Fantasy tournament playing scene, usually on a purely local scale, and to remind myself why I don't bother: getting beasted by netlists and filthy exploitative play is not my usual idea of fun.  Still once a year to support the club I'll give it a go.

James had organised a small event for the honour of the title (i.e .no prizes!) of Leeds Nightowls Champion gamer.  The rules of the day were simple, 2000 point armies with no special characters, and two hour games.  I decided on an all Goblin force, a tuned version of the list I'd had unexpected success against High Elves with in one of my few other games this year.

Built around a core of 93 Goblin spears with 3 heroes, and fanatic caddying units of bows, a large artillery park and numerous units of Cavalry and lone Trolls it was a very atypical Deathstar-esque list and far and away featured the largest single unit of the tournament.  Even I renowned club despiser of movement trays had to accept the need for a slab of MDF to shift the little beggars around on!

My first game was against Neil's Chaos Warriors, a compact list of Knights, Warriors and a pair of Warshrines (Whatever they are!).  Now no disrespect to Neil, but I felt I'd got a good draw in this game, Neil isn't the filthiest player and his tactics are conventional, I've usually fared well against him in the past.  The First scenario was a Dawn Engagement, and my typically disciplined Goblins pretty much all turned up, whilst Half Neil's army remained off table at the start.

I was also blessed with the first turn and managed to doom-diver his Chaos knights into a rout straight off the table.  From there on in it was downhill all the way for the luckless Neil, with only his army general way out on a flank making any headway.  The combined arms tactics of the Gobbos and my tendency to opt for fast outflanking manoeuvres, soon had him on the back foot.

The Chaos Warriors and another Warshrine advanced to the spears, but Perky the Troll made short work of the shrine and a combined assault by Wolf Boys, Spears and a fanatic made short work of the Warriors.

In the end I came out with a shocking 1766 point win, and so my next game was against a top teir player.

Rob is an entertaining opponent, but one I usually only play against at tournaments, which is a shame.  Also we always seem to be playing Watchtower scenarios, and this proved no different.  His Empire list looked pretty fearsome, featuring some 40 Greatswords, 13 Knights, a steam tank and an empire warshrine.  Although he won the tower, he chose not to occupy it and so we deployed around it.

In points terms I beat him about 3-2, wiping out most of his support troops.  But his Greatswords seized the Tower and his Tank kept the goblin spears away from making a counter attack.  So it was officially a Pyhhric victory for him.

And so onto my last game, with still a sniff of a respectable finish.  I wasn't dead last yet at least!  My final game turned out to be against James' "Red Orcs".  In the past I've been a jinx opponent for James but I think luck is beginning to even itself out on that score.  It was a conventional battle of unconventional forces...

James' red Orcs and Goblins come from deep in the Dwarven mines, and are competitively tuned through dozens of games:

Mine are more trad, and come from my last 25 years of irregular purchases of things Gobliny:

The battle was amiable, but unspectacular with me not being able to make much of an impact on him.  I spent too much time and effort trying to take down his Arachnarok spider, and ignoring his Savage Orcs.  A little luck went my way, but not enough to make a close fight.  I lost by about 700 points. 

But the end result was that with one victory and still having some 1300 game points I managed sixth on the day.  Shame it was only out of eight, but I did come above a Skaven and Vampire player, and beat Chaos and Empire on the table, even if scenario rules didn't always concur.  Pretty good for Gobbo's!

Lots of other photo's were taken on the day, which is just as well as fate had it that I never had to move from my table!  Al of FatSpider Casting took the following:

I can't feature the winning army/general as Daz - who it was - was the only player to bring an unpainted force.  For SHAME!! most of his cavalry didn't even have riders!  Not that it mattered, his killer list mauled all comers.

In conclusion, an acceptable foray into tournament gaming; though partly as I avoided the three armies/players I knew I had no chance against.  Lets give it another twelve months before risking another one though, eh!

La Marine Française à la Parade

You will recall a week or so ago I posted about my slightly impulsive Dystopian Wars purchase.  Well I've justified them somewhat by getting them already painted:

A nice little starter fleet - the contents of a fleet box plus a blister pack of destroyers for support.  Despite going overboard with the details, notably going for a dazzle pattern of camouflage and ship numbers, these were a breeze to paint.  It only takes so long to paint 1/1200th scale models for the wargames table!

I decided to add bases to the ships, not the convention in the game but it would make handling the models simpler and ironically, make storing the models easier.  The Spartan Games models are mostly a modern compound resinated plastic, which takes detail extraordinarily well, and it is also easy to see that they are computer designed and possibly the masters are produced on a 3D printer (given the precision of the work - though I'm guessing here!).  Only the large aircraft and the gun turrets are Pewter.

Everything, even the tiny aircraft on the flyer tokens, was given an heavily thinned ink wash for shading and to give something of a rusted look.

And yes, those aircraft are absolutely tiny!  Nonetheless you can see cockpit details, the engine exhausts and so on; given they are on a base all of 20mm square, they are remarkable!

So the fleet is ready for all hands action.  Overall I'm really impressed with the models, fine sculpts and great value.  Now to get a game o two in...

Drawing the Rebellion

Long before I devoted needlessly large portions of my time to painting tiny models made by other people, I used to spend a lot of time drawing.  In the last year or two I've started to get back to the habit, and have gradually re-learnt a lot of forgotten technique.

Stylistically, I'm more of an illustrator than an artist, and my influences are European comics (particularly Herge), Japanese manga and classic black and white illustration work.  Colour is something I've only dabbled with...

Anyway, this is a wargaming blog so ordinarily my other hobbies have no place here; but during the research for my developing Jewish Rebellion army I found that illustrations of the warriors of the period were pretty thin on the ground.  So in part as inspiration for my army, and to offer other potential gamers some inspiration too I began making illustrations based on my research of the period:

Above a Zealot wearing a Kippah, which may be apocryphal.  His equipment is spear and shield from the Herodian stores, and a long knife which is probably personal.

A village rebel, emaciated and relatively old for fighting.  He is nevertheless capable due to years of otherwise backbreaking labour of drawing a captured horse archers compound bow.  His cloak and tunic are cheap and unadorned.

Bandits were the Freedom Fighters of their age; with similarly conflicted motives.  This Parean bandit fought at Beth Horon and as a result is well equipped with Scutum, Gladius, an Auxilia mail shirt and rebel-made short javelins - most likely with bronze heads.  His cloak is unkempt but finely adorned, and so probably belonged to a member of the Jewish middle classes before being 'liberated'.

I hope you find these of interest, maybe I'll do more in future...