Strength & Honour Game Two.

While I am aware the designers had 2mm scale in mind when they were designing the big battle ancients game Strength and Honour.  We got  our   under used 15mm ancient armies out.  Giving them a dust off. They work really well. On my second outing of this ruleset down at the Central London Wargames Club. Dave was good enough to hold my hand all the way through the mechanisms. 

Tonight it was Romans verses Partians. I opted for the Romans on the bases I couldn't find Patria even if I wanted to, and I kind of know how Romans work.  

As is most important in ancients games I gave a little thought to the deployment before hand. Previously, when playing ancients I'd necessarily get this wrong, this would result in instant and catastrophic defeat during my foray in to Fields of Glory a number of years ago. This time it was different, more by luck than judgment if I'm honest. Although I did double check  where I to start my deployment.

Once deployed neatly in checker board legions I let loose with the cavalry on the flanks swooping deep into the flanks an drawing the Parthians out to cover their flanks. 

To be fair I did benefit for the struggles Dave had trying to cross the river bisected the table. While I confidently wedged my Legions betweena lake and some fields to protect their flanks.

I was delighted to see that my probing the flanks was working and I did benefit from so good dice roles, while Dave suffered so 'reversals of fortune' at key times. This is the mechanism, which  following a failed manoeuvre role  the initiative shifts back to the other player.

The skirmishers on the left flank was rolled up efficiently once my cavalry got around the woods and caused them to come out in to the open to protect the rear.  

But the real success was  to catch a unit of Dave's Cataphracts between my Roman Cavalry and a Legion causing them to ping back and forth until the broke and fled. 

The last act was concluded when, the right, a combination of Legion and Skirmishing flank attacks drove the second unit of Cataphracts from the table. 

Roma Victorinus!

I am sure we'll try some more of the Strength and Honour malarky.

German Artillery

Last May when I was at Campaign 2015, getting beaten around the MK Centre in the FOG AM competition, which was great fun. I made an impromptu purchase, a German 77mm Krupp field gun in 28 mm. This was my first in 28mm and I was interested to see what it was like. I guess I have been inspired by all the great larger scale displays I have seen at various shows. Particularly with regard to First World War  and the Exhibition games  of Crush the Kaiser.

Nearly a year later I’ve got around to painting it  up and I am quite  pleased with the result. 

The crew had their uniforms painted with a series of washes in different  shades of field grey then   shadows picked out with black ink washes. Finally I have finished the off  a couple of coats of dry brushing, The faces were  blocked out in various shades of flesh, which was then washed over with  a Games Workshop fleshshade wash which sunk into the recesses nicely  following this a touch of dry brushing  over the hand and face finished them off.  Their kit and boots were treated in more or less the  same way with blocking followed by washes and a little dry brushing.  

The field gun was brush painted although I think I will get the airbrush out and spray artillery pieces in the future. Next up will be to tidy up any rubs add some flock and give the a coat of matt varnish  to seal them.

Gallic Allies

According to the Field of Glory Mid-Republican Roman army list you have various  options to take units  other ancient tribes and peoples. So  after some consideration  I opted for a battle group of Gauls. I did this for two reasons firstly I thought they'd be fun to paint  and secondly they can be impact medium foot  and hide in the bushes  until they charge out an die heroically on the enemy's  spear tips.

Hopefully  this gives me enough  time to do something clever with my legions and turn the battle  in my favour. So far they have been very helpful in cancelling out the threat of my opponents medium troops. I guess I am beginning to think about this rules a bit more strategically and am starting to understand how to use different troop types for different roles,  rather than simply marching forward and dying.

I really enjoyed painting the Xyston figures, so much so that I am considering acquiring a few sets of Gaesati "tout  nu" guys to give me an extra  set of optional troops. It will  also give me a touch of practice painting some more Gallic shield designs.

Too Bloody Long.

A little while ago I completed six battle groups of triarii for my Mid-Republican Roman army. This means  that now I don't have to keep borrowing Dave and Clive’s figures every time I want to fight in the period before 50BCE.

These guys got there first run out a while ago against Simon’s Pyrrhic pikes and scraped a marginal victory! However, when packing them in the makeup box which I use to transport them, I noticed a fundamental flaw in the construction. I have left the offensive spear a tad too long. They don’t fit in to the box nicely and they have to be lying down. Aside from this minor hiccup I am quite pleased  with the end result, even the rendering of what is supposed to be a wolf on their  shields  is  quite  acceptable.

More soon, I promise!

Campaign 2015

Earlier this month I went to the Milton Keynes to attend Campaign the local club's annual show which is held in the massive MK shopping centre.  I participated in the Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval Competition over the weekend. It is always good fun to some of games under competition conditions to improve as a player. 

I found myself feeling a bit overwhelmed by the prospect of the competition and this allowed myself to become tentative and hesitant.  This is not a sound strategy when you are face with more experienced better players. Nevertheless, by the final game on the Sunday afternoon I managed to avoid a fourth route and being satisfied with a narrow loss.  It was good to score some points over the weekend. I was fielding Mid-Republican Romans, for three of the battles I faced Successor armies and the fourth battle was a civil war against a Mid Republican Roman army. 

Campaign is a great sceptical and the guys at Milton Keynes Wargames Club do a fantastic job to put on a wargames show in such a great venue. Along with the competitions  there were also a fair few traders and exhibitors,  One of  my  favourites  was   the  early First World War  Exhibition  battle  by the creators  of Crush the Kaiser  rules.  Here are some snaps showing a German advance on  the British lines.

I took the time to pop back to the game over the weekend to see the game unfold. The pictures illustrate the Germans closing in on the British positions, and taking some serious damage in the process. Although, their artillery did manage to get force its British counterpart to retreat.  It was interesting and informative to see the authors play their own rules. In my limited  experience of these rules I have enjoyed  and find  them  nice and  simple  and representative of the period playing  them.

Extraordinarii

I have been rather lax of late in the write of this blog. This has been due to a number of real world factor converging with my innate laziness. Nevertheless, despite this over. The last week or so. I have managed to paint up a set of Roman ally medium foot, Extraordinarii for my developing mid-Republican Roman army. 

These guys are from the Mirliton range from Italy. They are really excellent figures , beautifully proportioned and cleanly cast. Once the get a lick of paint the spring to like. 

A further advantage is that since their spears and shields are separate it is possible to get a range of poses. 

I must add that I feel the colours on the Italian style shield has worked well with these figures. Although I would not claim any historical accuracy.

Next up for the painting table will be some triarii.                                         

Hunnic Command Groups

I finished these Hunnic command groups sometime ago and was not over joyed with the way they turned out its all a bit monotone and undefined.  I suspect it all started to go wrong when I inadvertently created a Hunnic elf by painting a red hat on green coated figure. 

I feel I struggled with these command groups because I did not fully visualise the completed look figures prior to starting  to paint. 

    

After a break  I went  back  to the  figures and restarted on the command groups.  and this is what  we see now.  

The Lurkio starter army provides  three command groups with it's FoG starter army  added to this is a Germanic  which  once mixed up are passably  Hunnic command group which offers a touch of variety to the command bases. 

Worth noting at this juncture that  these Lurkio Huns are of a really high standard. The horses and men on the are beautifully sculpted to include a high level of detail. The figure are split at the waist  which allows you  to get a real variety  of poses.

Monday Night Mayhem

I managed a spot of Monday night mayhem at central London last week.  My Early Imperial Romans had their first outing of 2014  against Simon's Early Successors.   It is a fairly even fight between legions and pike blocks. So it is often down to who can utilise their other units best to get the upper hand. For this game I made some simple promises to myself which were to make a plan and  then stick to it. Easy enough one would think. 

Thankfully my deployment forced Simon to squeeze his army into just under half the board. This caused him serious problems in organising his battle line and meant he could not take advantage of his superior numbers and quality on the right flank. 

I had to  readjust my line to attempt to counter his strong flank. In doing this I over advanced on the left and did not leave enough space for my cavalry  to  put pressure on the right. 

 On the left was where the skirmishers met for their own private skirmish. Simon had two units of light horse against a unit of horse archers and a battle group of slingers. I used my advantage of greater range and focused my attacks on individual enemy battle groups to try to gain some sort of advantage. Luckily it worked out in my favour.

I had in reserve some roman cavalry to chase down one of Simon light horse units and then  swing around to the rear of his pikes.

The combat  between the main bodies of troops was pretty conclusive within a couple of rounds this was mainly due to really great dice which resulting in Simon’s pike blocks fracturing before he had the opportunity  to bring to bear this superior forces on the right flank. In the end I was pleased to claim a welcome victory, losing only a single base.        

The Huns Make Camp

Over the summer I invested in a Hunnic army, naturally most of which is still languishing in its box awaiting painting. Although the command stands are more or less done.  Regular readers  will  remember  I posted a little work on the camp back in September. 

Here are the almost finished pictures. It has turned out quite nicely. I am pleased with the muddy rained on look which the camp seems to have taken on.    

I picked up the component parts from the guys at Vexillia who always provide a top notch service.  This is worth mentioning for two reasons. Firstly, they supplied my Imperial Romans which have featured in previous postings. 

The second reason is to give them a mention is for including this blog on his customer blog stream. Yay! 

You too can have a lovely Hunnic camp just like this one by going along to Vexillia Limited a picking up some odds and sods out of the baggage section and couple of yurts! 

Imperial Romans come up against Galatians

Right lets give you guys a battle report. It has been a while since I wrote up a report from one of my games for the blog. On Thursday night I fielded my early Imperial Romans against Alan's Galatians. I won the terrain and optioned for hilly. Nevertheless, in the set up I isolated my light troops by placing them to far over on the flank in an effort to protect a poorly placed camp. This was clear at the end of the game having lost a battle group of light foot and my fortified camp.  

My basic strategy was to attempt to keep the attention of the enemy with a battle line of superior legionnaires accompanied by a couple of battle groups of  cavalry who can pile in  at the appropriate moment to cause mayhem on the enemy's right flank. This was fifty percent successful with the Contonii lancers making short work of one warband  which allowed then to come in to the right flank  of his main battle line. The plan was very close to coming off. However, on reflection while my cavalry left me slightly flat footed. Despite being a little disconnected I felt I could prevail. 

When it came down to it was a game of nip and tuck. Alan killed one of my commanders and then in the following round I kill one of his. I dropped a cohesion level at one end of the melee while Alan dropped a level at the other end. I break a unit of his in the impact phase, he breaks a unit of mine in the melee round. 

At the end of the game I was sure I could edge it with a charge to the rear of the end of his battle line. Alias my brave legions charged in carrying a disrupted marker and lost the impact and double dropped to broken and ran away giving Alan a well deserved victory nine points against four.   

   

Hunnic Camp

Over the summer months I have managed to fit in a good bit of wargaming. Back in May I took part in my first wargames competition which was Campaign in Milton Keynes. I really enjoyed this first experience of competition gaming it was good fun. CLWC had a big contingent and we all went off for a curry on the Saturday night. For my first competition I was very impressed by Milton Keynes Wargaming Club’s organisation of the Show, which hosted the local shopping centre outside a branch of John Lewis it provide a spaciious and bright environment for gaming.  I look forward to going again next year and defend my last place.   

I have managed to have a few games back in CLWC mainly concentrating on Field of Glory and in recent weeks I’ve even won a couple games conclusively, by more than by a couple of points. This I assume, is a sign I am improving. 

Another effect of this flurry of Field of Glory activity was that I bought myself an other army which I am currently working on to the detriment of all other projects. I opted for an Hunnic army made up predominantly of Light Horse backed up by shooty cavalry which provides me with different challenges to the Early Imperial Romans and their steamrolling legions. Tim, over on the Madaxeman has a good article on running a Light Horse Army.   

I opted for Lurkio figures. on the bases that they provide ready made armies ad their figures look absolutely fantastic.  But more about these guys in later posts.  Today I wanted to introduce you to the newly created army camp.  I opted to use six individual 40x40mm bases to give a touch of flexibility to the camp.  I hope you enjoy seeing the project developing. I hope it continues to developing!

“Probably the most one sided game I've played to date”.*

That game was a great fun! Phil and I lined up with our Early Roman Imperial 800 point Army against Simon and Mark who fielded a later Macedonian pike army. True to form we lost the initiative. Despite this under the new rules Simon handed the choice of terrain back to us. After much discussion we opted for a hilly battlefield terrain. During the terrain placement Simon rolled all odd numbers so all the terrain pieces ended up on our side of the table. This dictated our set up, allowing the Legions to set up between terrain pieces.

Battle kicked off in the usual way we have lined up our heavy foot opposite one and other in preparation for the pike and legions units to mix it up. The medium foot set up on the left flank with some cavalry and light horse.  I noticed Simon placed some Cretan archers on my far right flank positioned to attempt to take the high ground. I felt it was important not to allow him take this high ground so because it would overlook my the main battle line of legions commanded by Phil. Using horse archers I charged them up the hill on to the high ground which not only deterred this Cretans from advancing on the high ground but it also gained the attention of a battle group of superior cavalry.          

On the far left we found ourselves outnumbered 2-1 on cavalry battle groups. I felt this could have got a little sticky at some point if my superior cavalry got flanked. Nevertheless, Mark opted for the direct approach and steamed in with both his cavalry units. Two to one he must have thought he'd have me. I survived the impact well getting the better of it on the right. In the following melee with two dice against four I got two hits to nil which on the cohesion roles dropped Mark's cavalry two levels. This was bad luck on his part. 

After lousing up my deployment of Numidian light horse and running them backwards and forwards in my usual manner. I let my medium foot form up into the battle line. All that was left for me to do was to march forward. 

While the legions matched up against. Simon's massed Macedonian pike for a slogging match which were basically evens. After the impact the roman medium foot found themselves with an advantage. In a couple of round the protected Macedonians broke and headed for the hills. This freed up Phil’s forth legion to create an overlap on the left of Simon's pike block and my pursuing auxiliary foot broke off their pursuit to hit the disordered pikes in their flank. Considering the number of disorder markers the pike had this was the end of the game, marking the most emphatic victory to date by winning six points to nil, (unadjusted for army size).

*Mark's remark after the game over email.