Trying Hail Caesar 'The Wars of the Roses' supplement.

 Just before Christmas the new Hail Caesar supplement for the Wars of the Roses arrived and I have to say I am pretty impressed. There are lots of ideas within the 144 page book to help players add WOTR specific flavour to your games.  There are also numerous historical scenarios and a simple campaign system that our little gaming group really must try. 

Thus inspired more WOTR figures soon found their way to my painting table to be assembled and painted. There are at least four of us within our group with lots of figures already painted and based for the 'Never Mind the Billhooks' rules which are going to be ideal for this game too. We used the armylist out of the new supplement but added in the small light troops from the lists in v2 of the main rulebook to give us some skirmish style troops, limited to one unit per division. 

Here is how we will represent a Household unit, a 'Billhooks' base of 6 figures of billmen with a base of longbowmen on each side.

The longbowmen are from Trollope's retinue and are fresh off the painting table...but would they suffer the curse of newly painted units?

Happily, an opportunity arose to squeeze in a quick, last game of this year. Ian popped round with his figures for a quick trial game using just two divisions a side and randomly raised commanders per the rules on p.47 of the new supplement. So here is a truthful and honest account of the infamous battle of 'The Battle of the Broken Manor'. (You won't find that battle in any Book!). 

So our randomly generated commanders created Lord Percy Thrower and his aide Lord Summer in charge of the Lancastrians (led by me) and Lord Trevor Cleverly (Clever Trevor) and Sir Archie the Bald  commanding the Yorkists (led by Ian).

Yorkist deployment, note the light cavalry at the bottom of the photo. 

Both sides deployed. 

Lancastrian deployment. 

As Ian started the game, a blunder saw his own skirmish crossbowmen forced to retire almost off the table. They then blundered again next turn moving to their right. We both laughed at this. 

Ian held his line but raced his light cavalry around the woods to threaten my left flank. I was fairly confident that my Household unit with support from the crossbowmen in the woods would soon sort out the enemy cavalry. How wrong was I, the arrowstorm from the household unit was pretty ineffective and so were the crossbowmen. Ian then charged his cavalry into the household unit and with some truly appalling dice throws from me, they routed them from the field.  

Inspired by the success of Ian's light cavalry I quickly advanced my own unit around the wood on his flank. This turned into a complete disaster and my cavalry was destroyed having had very little impact on Ian's household foot.  Ian was the only one laughing by now. A blunder by Lord Percy Thrower saw his own household foot wander left, blocking the line of sight of my cannon's. Trollope's newly painted archers failed a Break Test caused by enemy missile fire so broke and fled the table as predicted. 

Ian's light cavalry then dismounted and attacked my skirmishers in the woods, supported by a skirmish unit of his own. My skirmishers gave up without much of a fight and then threw a very poor score on the Break Test so off they went.  

Desperate times call for desperate measures so I tried to get my mounted Men at Arms across to threaten Ian's advancing troops on my left. This just caused Ian to advance his left hand division too and with some very effective archery and cannon fire and yet another dire Break test throw from me, my Knights broke and took the rest of their division with them. 

My Men at Arms about to become pin cushions. 

So a clear victory for Ian and his Yorksist's but a fun game despite my awful dice throwing. The new rules in the supplement certainly add period flavour to the game and our randomly generated characters with their varying traits influenced the game. Overall we like the supplement and hope to play again next week. This time we will be a little more historical and try the Battle of Hexham scenario on p88.  

Back to Billhooks

 Today we played a 4 player game of 'Never Mind the Billhooks' as our last game before Xmas. We hadn't played Billhooks in quite a while so it was fun to return to this game. With the Hail Caesar 'Wars of the Roses' supplement due any day it will be interesting to both play and compare the two systems. 

Today's scenario was quite simple. It was a basic encounter battle with a twist. The twist was created by writing a few cards with objectives on them then each side had to pick one. To win, you needed to defeat the enemy and achieve your objective. Simple fun at 150 points and two players per side. 

Lancastrians (Nigel and myself) on the left and Yorkists (Ian and Charlie) on the right. 

Nigel and I had to try and gain control of the central crossroads whilst Ian and Charlie had to try and get their commander off the opposite side of the table (as well as win a battle of course). 

A few Yorkists bowmen get ready to give battle.

My Lancastrian cavalry, who proved to be as brittle as ever. 

The Yorkists advance.

End of turn 2 and troops are moving into missile range.

My light cavalry charge some Yorkist skirmishers and due to some shockingly poor dice throwing get beaten.  

So my knights get into position to show the light cavalry how it is done.

Lord Clifford's archers throw 11 dice needing '6's to hit and get five!

The Lancastrian artillery exploding as usual.

The battle was a very close fought affair despite some interesting differences in troop choices. Ian and his Yorkists had more men at arms, bowmen and skirmishers but no artillery. My mounted Knights and their Light Cavalry support were next to useless although they did survive the battle...just. The Yorkists lost a couple of units quite quickly which narrowed their missile advantage but their two units of Men at Arms seemed to be turning the battle their way. Nigel on the Lancastrian right was doing very well and I just managed to hold my position on the left. 

As the game was coming to a close (the Yorkists ran out of Morale tokens in turn 6) Ian rushed his commander forward (leaving his badly mauled troops behind) and off the table to claim his objective. The Lancastrians won the battle but were not in possession of the crossroads as these were actually surrounded by the few remaining Yorkist units.

This 4 player game was great fun and could have gone either way. We were a bit rusty on a few of the rules but fudged our way through and really enjoyed ourselves.  

Trying 'RAMINSEAS', another set of ancient naval rules.

 After last week's disappointing game of Ancient Naval Warfare we tried another set of rules today. American gamer Tim Wineland got in touch with me after reading my blog last week and he very kindly offered to share his self written set of Ancient Naval rules' Raminseas'. Thankfully this is only a few pages long and after a quick read through Ian and I opted to choose a small equal number of ships (in two squadrons) and play a simple first game scenario of just trying to destroy each other to get used to the game mechanics. 

At the Recon wargames show on Saturday I purchased two 3D printed island harbours and managed to get them painted up quite quickly. They didn't actually get used today but looked good on the table. 

A simple deployment set up. The dice indicate and record how many 'Action Points' (AP) a ship has left. Various movement rates, and actions such as ramming or grappling cost varying amounts of AP so spend them wisely.

Movement is quite easy. The blue and green markers depict tokens for each sides squadrons  and the numbers the order in which they were drawn. This denotes then the order of play for each squadron (as we played it, not 100% sure we got this bit right?). 

Ian gets in the first strike by ramming me. 

Note here we switched Ian's colour of dice representing AP to red to help differentiate whose ships were whose. 

Pretty soon ships were engaged in melee all over the board. 

The different colours of counters represent different types of damage which a canny general can use AP to 'Repair'.

Ships can also catch fire for which we used cotton wool. 

The dice were very much on my side today as my fleet destroyed 3 of Ian's ships and were in the process of battering his two remaining ships when he graciously conceded the game. 

Ian and I both agreed that these rules gave us a much more enjoyable game even though we were using less ships. Each ship does trail quite a few counters and dice behind it but we will look at a way of simplifying this. Being a first game we came across a few situations that we need a bit of guidance on so a series of questions have been sent across the pond to Tim who will hopefully let us know how best to proceed in our next game. Our idea is to create a 'ship list' for the various Greek, Persian and Macedonian fleets to match our little 1/1200 scale models and our wargames armies in case we tempt ourselves into a campaign where the Naval aspect of war can play a part. 

Our thanks to Tim for sharing his rules with us, they are great fun and they will see much use in our future games. 

Trying 'Poseidon's Warriors'

 Over the last few weeks Ian and I have been painting up our 1/1200 ancient fleets. Our models are from Navwar (who are happily still in business) and are mainly from the Hellenistic era. These are super little models that paint up very well. For rules we opted to give 'Poseidon's Warriors' from Osprey a try. 

For our first test game we chose a couple of matching squadrons and set to. One side had to try and destroy a small galley carrying a messenger trying to get into the estuary the other side had to try and protect the messenger. 

Visually we were very pleased with how the game looked. The sea coloured gaming mat we bought on the bring and buy for just £20 from the Phalanx show at St Helens. I have made a couple of sandbanks and some semi-submerged rocks as hazards but do intend to make some more themed terrain pieces. 

Initially the rules seemed to work well. Players alternate moving a squadron at a time which certainly made us think about our moves. 

However, once we got into melee the game suddenly seemed over simplified to us. As these two squadrons ram each other, all hits are automatic and none of the ships have a save so, only having one point of hull damage each, all 6 ships were sunk! 

To be fair to the rules, as one looks at some of the larger ships with their varying points of hull damage and number of rams, marines and artillery etc...the rules seemed like they would be more entertaining. Sadly for us, our Hellenistic Battle packs that we bought from Navwar contain mainly smaller ships. Also, as our main interest lies in the Greek, Persian and early Macedonian era we need rules to suit the smaller ships. 

Some of my Quinquiremes sail off in search of bigger ships or new rules. 

So for a quick second game, we upped the number of ships and both took a larger flagship. This was just a simple attack each other scenario to further test the rules.  We enjoyed the greater capabilities of our larger ships but the morale rules seemed very simple and both fleets fled the battle upon losing a quarter of their number. 

Overall, although we enjoyed our afternoon of gaming we decided that there were two ways forward. We could work with the basics of 'Poseidon's Warrior's' and develop them to suit our needs, perhaps writing our own armylists and upping the abilities of the smaller ships of our chosen era, or, we could try another set of rules. We shall give it some thought. 

Fantastic Battle: The Battle of Lemdoff Moor

Having enjoyed last weeks game so much Ian and I decided to play Fantastic Battles again, a re-match between my Barbarians and his Undead. Could my Barbarians get their revenge? I tweaked a few traits and swapped a mage-lord in to replace Thor. This would give me more spell-casting power, would it help? 

Once again I borrowed a scenario map from Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy magazine to set up the terrain. We then diced for who would be attacker or defender.   

 Whilst Thor is away gathering re-enforcements, the Barbarian's ancient Mage-Lord Snalkasteg rallies the his forces. Lord Kroogan Hymax marches his victorious Undead army deeper into Barbarian territory. The two forces clash again upon the open plain of Lemdoff Moor close by Jut's Hold. Can Snalkasteg and his Barbarians beat back the Undead hordes?

The dice decided that Ian's Undead would be the Attackers and my Barbarians the defenders. 

The Barbarian's about to deploy. 

Half of the Undead horde

Other half of the Undead horde. 

Overview of positions after mishaps and first moves. 

The Barbarians took 9 damage and had two late units from mishaps. 

The Undead had 3 late units. 

Mordius's phalanx just after taking 5 damage from the Barbarian archers. 

The Barbarian Sworn Cavalry smash into one of the Broken Legions and ...erm... break them! 

A good start for Snalkasteg and his men although Kraug the Killer is killed in the melee!  This left the Sworn Cavalry out of command and they scored a 'lets not be hasty result' so they stayed where they were, just ripe for being charged by Drax the undead dragon and attacked in the rear by a pesky vulture.  The Sworn Cavalry were broken for the second battle in a row. 

On the other flank Bodvoc supported by Smogfeld the Great await the advancing undead. 

The Undead had 3 flying scavanger vultures but the Barbarian Wyvern tried to eat one of them. 

Slowly Kroogan Hymax's Undead fought their way back into the battle. The Sworn Cavalry were destroyed but the battle now raged across the whole battlefield. Modeius Drudge trid to 'Blink' the Undead phalanx into melee only to fail on all 4 of his dice, (he was in possession of a mystical tome). My mage, Skaemthe unwashed tried to 'Blink' the undead phalanx away only for Lord Hymax's little black butterflies (a prophecy dice) to cancel, this was getting desperate.  

When the 'Bearserkers' were destroyed the rest of the Barbarian army seemed to collapse and suddenly, from being a close fight the Barbarians were broken and victory belonged once again to Lord Kroogan (the Jester from Leicester) and his Undead. The ripple effect of so many losses also saw off the Barbarian scouts and the heavily wounded Wyvern.

Chariots are fun but when skirmishing and caught by the Undead heavy cavalry it was only going to end one way. They were broken too. 

Well done to Ian and his tough Undead army. This was another great game where all seemed to be going well for the Barbarians in the first half of the game and then it all went wrong after our cup of tea and flapjack! 

Orctober Painting Challenge update

 Chris and I both agreed to take part in the Orctober painting challenge by creating a new 6mm fantasy army each based for Fantastic Battles of course plus a piece of 6mm terrain or scenery for our games. Chris was doing Orcs as one would expect but I opted for elves as I had a number of unpainted elves and various allies they could field; this was just a bit of fun afterall and we would both end up with a new army. The bulk of the figures come from 'Irregular Miniatures' charming 6mm fantasy range. These just fit on a 25mm base so we have been using bases that are 25mm square, increasing the depth a little bit if need be. 

So here is what I managed to paint, 14 companies of Elves and allies plus 3 characters and for the terrain part of the challenge I opted to create a simple set of statues on a large plinth. Not very ambitious but I was struggling to come up with something elvish that I could make in this tiny scale. 

Probably over 700 points at a rough guess. 

Some elf skirmish bowmen being followed by an ent with a chariot riding up to the two character bases. The Irregular Miniatures elf chariot is cast with 4 horses in two pairs so I cut the front two horses off to make a more traditional looking chariot. 

A Reaper Bones baby dragon makes a good 6mm dragon, even if his face is not very well cast! Next to the dragon we have two companies of Elf Knights. 

4 companies of giant eagles soar above some High Elf swordsmen plus a mounted character. 

Hopefully my elves with their eagle allies will rule the skies.

A closer look at the scenery piece. I got the 4x 3-d printed statues from Chris; made a simple base from some mdf bases and gave it a quick paint job. I tried to get the statues to look like they had once been painted but now most of the paint has worn away over time. 

I still have more chariots, some High Elf Bowmen and Wood Elf cavalry to paint plus a few more characters so well over 1,000pts eventually. All my figures have been based and undercoated ready for painting. I know Chris has been busy painting Orcs, I wonder how well he got on with completing the challenge?