Needing some scenery for Ian's snowy gaming cloth I created 3 snowy hills from a chunk cut off the large piece of insulation sheet that friend Chris had given me a while ago. This was a quick and easy project, although it made a right mess in the garage! I also painted up 4 new companies ready for this weeks game, 2 companies of skirmishers, an extra company of two handed swordsmen and a weird looking daemon thing, painted blue to fit in with the Ice Elves.
The War Crow
The adventures of a wargames butterfly.
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Dingly Dell back on thin ice! more Fantastic Battles in 15mm
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
15mm Royalist v Roundheads using the Epic English Civil War rules.
We are in the happy position that between the three of us we now have more than enough 15mm English Civil War units to do some decent sized games (with plenty more units to come). Using the Warlord Epic Pike and Shotte rules we set up an encounter scenario based on one out of a magazine again. I had also devised some random event cards based on some ideas of my own and a few borrowed from other rule sets. Ian as commander of the Roundhead forces selected a card which made an opposing commander drunk with a minus on his Command level. Ian played it on Oliver Cromwell who was leading my cavalry. For us Nigel pulled a 'Bluff' card which we also placed with our cavalry in a weak attempt to 'bluff' Ian into thinking it was something more worrying...I am not sure it worked.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Battle on the Ice Fields: 15mm Fantastic Battles.
With Ian having acquired a new snow and ice themed battle/gaming mat it seemed a good idea to christian the mat with a game of Fantastic Battles using my Ice Elves in their natural element. We placed a few patches of grey felt on the snowy mat and deemed these to be ice fields. Any unit or company moving over an ice field had to throw a dice and on a '6' fell through the ice to their doom. If a unit or company opted to stay on the ice for more than one turn the chance of falling through increased by 1, so a unit staying on the ice for a second turn would fall through on a 5 or 6 and so on. I did wonder about making it easier for my Ice Elves to avoid this fate as the ice is their natural home but decided that for a one off game this would be unfair but perfect for a campaign.
This game would also be a first battle for my new unit of Ice Wyrms (fantastic beasts, mounted, furious charge and poison). I only have two of these old DandD battlesystem Miniatures but hope to have a couple more soon.
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
More 15mm ECW
We had another 15mm ECW game using the Warlord Games Epic Pike and Shotte rules today. I set up a more open table, using less scenery than last week to hopefully allow us to get more units into battle in our 650pts per side game. Once again, it was a straight forward encounter battle. A quick set of dice throws decided that Ian was on the northern edge as the Royalists and Nigel and I were the Parliamentarians facing him. Ian also had to start the deployment, his dice throwing was poor and this seemed to set the tone for him for the rest of the game.
Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Trying Warlord Games 'Epic Pike and Shotte 'rules using our 15mm figures.
In recent weeks we have been play-testing the 'in development' rule set 'Never Mind the Matchlocks' by Billhooks author Andy Callan. These have given us some fun games but as we played we also painted and now have enough figures for bigger battles that are perhaps beyond the intended scope of 'Matchlocks'. So today we tried a bigger battle using Warlord Games 'Epic Battles'. Having read the rules they seem a fairly straightforward adaptation of the Black Powder Pike and Shotte rules with the main exception being Pike and Shotte units are now treated as a single unit rather than 3 connected units.
I set up the table with a deliberately open centre to encourage a straightforward encounter battle. Nigel and I commanded the Parliamentarians and Ian and Stuart were in control of the Royalists.
Dingly Dell back on thin ice! more Fantastic Battles in 15mm
Needing some scenery for Ian's snowy gaming cloth I created 3 snowy hills from a chunk cut off the large piece of insulation sheet tha...
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Having enjoyed my first game of War and Conquest last week I was delighted to be invited over to new gaming friend George's house for ...
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The fantasy rules 'Fantastic Battles' has been an instant favourite amongst my friends and I since we first discovered them 3 year...
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Friend Chris and I met up today for our first game of Fantastic Battles using our recently painted 6mm armies. The figures are nearly all ...