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!