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.