28mm Sub Roman British

A recent interest in the 'To the Strongest' rules has seen me return to the Dark Ages/Early Medieval period and try to complete a 130 point army. This army will be used in club/friendly games but also in the TTS Competition at the end of February down in Chalgrove. 
First up is my most recently completed unit, some Pedite Spearmen.

Then we have some light cavalry which have also been painted in the last couple of weeks. All these figures are Gripping Beast plastics. The light cavalry have already featured in a couple of games recently and did not last longer than turn 2 in both games!

The rest of the army has been painted for a while and it is about time I got the force table ready. I am imagining the army being based around Vortigern's forces just after he has invited some Saxon Mercenaries under Hengist and Horsa to come and help him retain his kingdom. His son Vortimer, who is still loyal to Vortigern at this time will command the cavalry. I need to paint up Hengist and Horsa, note the GW figure below is Morganna le Fay who will feature more when I get Arthur painted up too. 

All flags and shields are hand painted. For the flags I take black and white line drawings of celtic designs and paint over them, adding patterns of my own-apart from Vortimer's religious banner on his command stand which was hand drawn then painted. 

Many more to come in the next few weeks. 

TTS and KOW

A bit of a wargames fest over the last few days with 2 games of 28mm Ancients and one game of 15mm KOW 3rd edition. 
On Friday John and I drove to Pete's house to get some practise games of To The Strongest in to help prepare us for the competition we have entered in February. 
In the first game Pete used his Persians against my Sub Roman Britons. Initially it looked good for Pete, despite his scythed chariot rampaging back through his own lines. Happily for me he could not break through my centre and my troops wrapped up both wings and bagged the victory.

In the second game John completely foxed me with his deployment which put me on the back foot from the start of the game. His Romans proved to be quite tough to kill and he soon wore my chaps down. I really enjoyed playing in 28mm and TTS always gives a good game without too much brain ache. 

Then Chris came up for another game of 15mm Kings of War. For this game I had devised the following scenario...

Gold Rush

A Kings of War scenario set in Brynglan, based on 'Fools Gold' on p62.

Recent storms and torrential rains have caused severe landslides deep in the Gernuk Mountains. The heavy fall of rocks and earth have torn open a rich seam of gold that has now spilled out across the plains leading down to the river Eck.

King Kra'ag has eagerly ordered his goblin forces to collect as much of the gold as they can. Whilst the goblins toil to collect the gold they are alarmed to hear that a large host of Ogres is heading their way intent on claiming the gold for themselves. Re-acting quickly King Kra'ag assembles his forces ready to meet the rapidly advancing Ogres challenge.

The table should be set up with a couple of low foot hills and/or woods with two areas of muddy, marsh land, one in each half of the table. The marshes represent the boggy conditions caused by the landslide and count as difficult terrain.

Each side selects a force of 1,500 points and has 5 gold counters. Two of the counters are marked with a 0, two are marked 1 and the final counter is marked with a 2.

Each player throws a dice, the higher score chooses his table edge and deploys his first gold counter in the opponents half, following the rules for placing 'Loot Counters' on p59. Players then alternate placing counters on their opponents side of the table until all of them have been placed. Note that for this scenario players may not look at the counters value before deploying them, they should be placed totally randomly.

Only 1 counter may be placed in each of the marshy areas.

Each player now throws a dice with the higher score deploying one of his units in his deployment area. Players then alternate placing units until all units are on the table.

Players then dice again, the higher score chooses whether to take the first move or let his opponent move first.

Game length is 6 turns then throw a dice, score 1-3 = game ends, 4-6 = play one last turn.

Victory goes to the player who can collect the most gold: this is counted by adding up the total on the gold counters collected. The '0' counters represent 'Fools Gold'!

The armies deployed

As usual, as the game progressed Chris and I concentrated a little too much on killing each other rather than amassing gold. At first Chris's ogres did really well and I was a very worried Goblin King by the end of turn 2. Not much later I was a very dead Goblin King but had started to claw my way back into the game.

By the end of turn 7 there were very few units left on the table. There were more ogres still standing than goblins but the goblins had managed to grab more gold than the ogres thus claiming a narrow victory. A great game as always.  

Battleground Show 2019

Today we at the Old Guard gaming club put on our Bolt Action Demo game at the Battleground Wargames Show hosted by Pendraken. Several players contributed figures and scenery to help create a great looking gameas can be seen in the photos below. 

We never actually completed the game due to too much chatting and too much shopping!

I must say a big thankyou to all the players who both made and painted the tanks and figures and all the wonderful scenery that helped make the game look so good. 

Shopping wise, I got some 15mm Xyston Ancients from Col Bill, 28mm Romano British Spearmen from Newline and off course, my 10mm Dark Elf army from Pendraken. Plus lots of mdf bases for a whole variety of projects. 

A bit of Bolt Action

Today Pete came across to my house for a test game of Bolt Action in preparation for our larger demo game at the Battleground show on Saturday. I couldn't help playing at parading my DAK vehicles whilst setting up the table.  

In the actual game we were very rusty with the rules to begin with but after a few turns we were speeding through them. I made an ill-fated dash to control the central building which cost me dearly and my forces never really recovered from just how many 6's Pete was throwing. Best moment of the game for me was my AT gun blowing up Pete's armoured car first shot! Although both sides were badly battered it ended a convincing 4-1 win for Pete as he had destroyed four of my units whilst I could only claim the armoured car despite having lots of pinned markers on his other units. . 

To the Strongest in 28mm

I went over to Pete's house today for a couple of games of To the Strongest between my Gauls and Pete's Persians. Pete's Persians are a very balanced army with a good mix of infantry, cavalry and missile troops. My Gauls are full of Warriors with a few bases of cavalry and skirmishers. 
In the first game Pete won the scouting and soon put me under pressure with his shooting so I felt that I had no choice, in went the warriors and being 'deep units' they are a hard nut to crack. It was very close fought game but my Gauls just won.

In the second game I managed to win the scouting and opted to rush straight in at Pete. On my left flank Pete got around my line with some light cavalry whilst I managed to threaten his right flank with my cavalry. End result was Pete destroyed my entire cavalry command in one turn whilst I then destroyed most of his right command. My brave warriors in the centre were badly damaging Petes heavy infantry and starting to threaten his camp. Sadly for me Pete's light cavalry captured my camp and thus won all my victory coins just ahead of me captruing his. Final score = 1 v 1.

These were great games and To the Strongest is a good set of rules. There were one or two things that did not seem quite right, the all singing and dancing scythed chariot being the main one. They are far to versatile under the rules as written and need some serious thought for any fiuture second edition. 

15mm Ancients

I recently finished re-basing my 15mm Greeks onto bases more suitable for rules such as 'To the Strongest', 'Impetus', 'Hail Caesar' and 'Sword and Spear'. I also had to add a few extra figures to most of these larger bases plus a few individually based figures for 'heroes' in TTS. I have continued to work on my Persians too. Here are some photo's of the most recently finished bases, some Hoplites and Egyptian Marines-note the differing shield patterns on the units of Marines.

 The bulk of the figures are from Westwind/Forged in Battle and they are really nice 15mm. I owe a huge debt to Westwind as when I first placed an order with them for the Greeks it went astray/missing and they very kindly replaced the whole £80+ order at their own cost, now that was terrific customer service and a very relieved wargamer! There are some Xyston and Magister Militum figures mixed in too. 
As I was placing the new figures into their army boxes I decided to have fun taking some photo's of where I am up to so far...

I am really enjoying painting these and adding in a variety of buildings and baggage elements. So far I have 20 bases of Greeks and 11 bases of Persians completed with plenty more to paint. The army of Alexander the Great will be added to these at some future point. 

First Battle with Kings of War 3rd edition.

Chris and I managed to get in our first  game of Kings of War new 3rd edition using our 15mm ogre and goblin armies. Happily we can report that this is essentially the same fun game. Movement has become more intricate but I am sure we will soon master the changes. There are also tweaks to some of the army lists and a few new spells and magic items. 
We decided to play scenario 6 where the two armies battled to control the board which is divided into 6 squares, the winner being who could control each square by the end of the game. This is how Chris set the scene for the 1,000 point battle 

ABOVE THE COLD PLAINS: Goblins vs Ogres, 1,000 pts each

Brak-na-Hak looked out on the goblins scurrying around before him. It seemed they never learned the natural order of things, and kept trying to oust his people form their rightful homes (i.e. where ever they wanted to live). Clearly they must be taught a lesson, though he was aware that the goblins themselves would be doing their best to take his lands.

So be it then; let the best ogres win.

The goblins have sneaked a force into the barren lands above Cold Plains. Fortunately, the ogres’ Red Goblin allies have got word of this and alerted their masters, so a response has been mounted.

The scenario is the Control scenario, (p 60).

Here is a birds eye view of both sides deployment, with the ogres at the top and the goblins coming in from the south. This picture shows how we use bases cut to 60% of the normal 28mm size and also shows our gaming mat also reduced to 60% of 6x4 foot. 

The ogres started strongly, wavering my new bolt thrower and causing me all sorts of problems. By tiurn 2 I was convinced we were going to lose again. 

However, I managed to get a couple of deadly flank attacks in and suddenly it was the ogres that were in trouble and I managed to wipe them all out by the end of turn 6 to record a first ever win for the goblins (about time too!). I think the dice gods were definately on my side this game.

As always it was a really fun game played in our usual gentlemanly manner. We even found time to pop to the Halifax Model shop so I could purchase the first box of figures for my 2020 project...more of which another day! 

Testing our Bolt Action demo game.

Today the Old Guard club met for a trial run of our demonstration 1942 Western Desert themed game of Bolt Action for the Battleground show in November. Setting up on a 12x6 foot table with a huge ridge across the middle. The scenario was the 8th army set up to defend the ridge from the advancing Italians. The Afrika Korps were sweeping around the 8th armies flank. 

Here are Pete's Italians trying to advance, the fact that none of us really knew the rules very well slowed the first few turns down. 

After a couple of turns we were progressing much better. 

Amidst much confusion and laughter the game moved along quite quickly. Here, Stig's armoured car moves to intercept the Italians. 

 John's Panzer 3 proved to be quite effective.

 The British position on the ridge.

Soon the Axis forces with their superior numbers and fire power seemed to gain the upper hand and after 5 turns the 8th army players conceded the game as their casualties began to rise. 

Overall the scenario played well but the 8th army needed a bit more fire power, a couple more vehicles or AT guns and we should have used a few more bits of scenery for them to cower behind. Hopefully we will all have read the rules by the end of November. 

And a few more photos, thanks to Steve.