Infamy Infamy, it all went horribly, horribly wrong.

Hello again, it's time for another random update. 

Last post I talked about the new ruleset from the Too Fat Lardies. My plan is still going ahead, although I am unsure which figures to get for my Caesarian Roman force. Warlord's plastic figures are cheap, but the two different boxes are not so different with the same figures and different weapons, while Wargames  Foundry are a bit to pricey due to the current financial state. So, decisions are still to be made on that part. I have started rebasing my existing Ancient Britons, which will suffice for that force, but I really want to do a Gallic force. Sadly I missed the boat and now the Victrix Gauls are about as common as hen's teeth. Apparently a vast mountain of plastic was delivered to a suspect family in Wiltshire. 😉

Anyway, we have played a couple of games now, using the extended furlough to game in Andy's back garden and keeping a safe distance. Not that safe as Pingu can throw his dice a fair way when they upset him, but fairly safe. Anyway, we played the first game and things went badly for the Romans. Lets just say that Panjo was not prepared for the ambushes and completely forgot about his drill. Apparently the dice gods hate him and the card gods loath him too, so he took a hell of a beating. 

We had to take a few liberties with troops as we didn't have anything based correctly, but we made do. We were also very lacking in Roman archers, so some Gondorians were drafted in. Anyway. it all started out well for Pingu and the Romans. The Legionaries advanced from the village with archers on their right and skirmishing auxiliaries off to the left. A few slingers appeared ahead of them, but they were few and far away. 

Initial troops appear

After a few volleys of sling stones though, the Roman attitude changed. Two legionaries lay dead and Centurion Curious Odus was not happy about it. He ordered Felonius, leader of the auxiliary infantry, to push ahead a clear the slingers from the far side of the river. Whilst one group was well up for this moving ahead and getting into javelin range, the other group decided to stay far back and see how things went. So, only 8 javelins were loosed needing 5 or 6 to hit. Two or three would be an average result.

So the dice gods hate you do they Pingu?

Pingu got seven hits! Hated by the dice gods my a**e, that was a phenomenal first roll for the Romans. Maybe today was to be their day after all. So Andy gathered up seven dice and rolled them, expecting to lose several men. The dice gods quite liked Andy as well though as he only lost 1 man and got 2 points of shock.

Curious Odus was incensed, how dare those smelly barbarians not die from good Roman(ish) javelins. So he seized the initiative and pushed on with the Legionaries. A quick order and pilums were loosed at the other slingers in the wood. Now we made a bit of a mistake here and rolled a few too many dice, it should have been 12 dice not 14, but the gods smiled on Pingu again as he got 12 hits. "That'll show 'em" Odus yelled. 

50% hits on average, Pingu gets 85%

The leader of these Slingers, known far and wide as Nigel, picked up his 12 dice. Luckily they were in cover, so only 6's would kill while 3 to 5 would cause shock.

Oh dear, that's a lot of dead Britons

It did not go well with 5 slingers falling skewered by pilums, including Nigel. The sole survivor promptly legged it, suddenly remembering he had to visit his mum. Meanwhile the Roman archers pushed up and to the left a bit, forgetting that the woods were potentially full of hairy barbarians.

The Britons chieftain, Aedan Know, seized his chance and unleashed his cavalry. Admittedly they are skirmish cavalry and, again, we got some rules wrong. In hindsight the archers would have been better off standing and fighting but instead they evaded. They evaded very poorly, running a grand total of 4". The end result of that can be seen in the picture below.

 

Nobody likes to be taken from the rear by a horse!

The result after two rounds of fighting was a lot of dead archers and 8 shock. This broke them and they ran away screaming something about "Orcs not having horses". Anyway, they out distanced the donkey wallopers and thought "Phew, we may survive this". However, Aedan wasn't finished with them yet. They had strayed within 12" of another unscouted wood, this one was full of Noble warriors led by Drest Nicely, who promptly leapt out and shouted BOO!
                                             
I couldn't bring myself to take any more pictures (alright, I forgot to), but unsurprisingly all the archers died. The struggle went from bad to worse for the Romans from there, with the Legion then being ambushed by the remaining 4 groups of warriors. But not until the support rank had been detached under Optio Superflous to face off the noble warriors. It went badly for the Romans, very badly and the majority of the Legion died. 

Things we learnt were 

• Romans need to scout the ambush points if they can, buy Exploratores and cavalry!
• Romans need to close up ranks as they get close to unscouted ambush points
• Big mobs of Barbarian warriors are very nasty in the first round or two of combat
• Gondorian archers have no place in a Romans vs Britons game

Anyway, it was fun and a good way to spend a sunny Wednesday afternoon in June. My thanks to Andy for hosting, feeding and watering us and to Pingu for losing so competently.

Who knows there may be another write up soon. Maybe. I will leave you with this picture, a purple bearded Pingu!

New rules, yet another project and problems with Fv432s

Hello again folks, I'm back again with another rambling post.

First thing is to point out that Too Fat Lardies have a new set of rules covering skirmish actions in the Roman period. Infamy, Infamy looks like it will be a lot of fun to play and doesn't require masses of figures like most ancient rules do. Have a look at the videos on YouTube to see what size the typical forces are. I'm looking forward to it arriving and, hopefully, the lift on the Covid rules so I can play it.

This leads to an obvious new project, Romans and Barbarians for this set of rules. I have a few Ancient British troops already, but they are based on 40mm squares and don't really work for a warband skirmish. One problem is that I like to have both sides for games so that I can run games for friends who don't have forces for it. So what to get. I am waiting for the rules to turn up before I decide what to buy, but initial thoughts are Ceasarian Romans and Gallic types. So that's going to take up my money for this year I think. Also this is subject to me being able to see well enough to paint the damn things at some point soon. 

Finally for this ramble it's back to the Cold War project. I was up late as I couldn't sleep again, this can prove to be a bad thing and it was for me on this occasion. In a moment of weakness at 3am I was browsing and came across an online store that had Team Yankee Fv432s and British infantry in stock. A couple of minutes later and I had ordered said Fv432s and infantry. My willpower at 3am is obviously weak. Anyway, they duly arrived and were opened up. The infantry are fine and match up with my existing Armies Army infantry nicely. The Fv432s though are another story. Now, if I had been looking at ordering these at a normal time of day I would have done a search for a comparison of the two, but at 3am this doesn't spring to the front of the queue. Once I had them though I thought they looked a bit small. So I did a search and lo and behold, a review pointing out the size difference is out there. Arse! So the Team Yankee model is smaller than the Armies Army one, noticeably so. Also it doesn't have the option of a peak turret, although it does have the options for a Swingfire armed Fv438. So now I have 5 Fv432's that are smaller than the 5 existing Fv432's I have. I am now going to have to decide if I want to keep them or wait and hope that Scotia Grendel are going to release the Armies Army models at some point. 

Ah well, decisions for another day as I am off to drop presents for one of the grand kids birthday. Adios for now folks, stay safe and keep gaming

Legionary 2019, To the Strongest game

Yesterday was the local Exeter wargames show Legionary, hosted by the Exmouth Imperials who are as fine a group of folks as you can hope to meet....at least in Exmouth! 😉😁

As we usually do, Nathan(aka Stumpy) and I put on a game. Sadly we couldn't do the game we originally planned so we decided to do a 28mm ancinets game using the "To the Strongest" rule set. These rules use no tape measures and no dice, so Stumpy was at a disadvantage as his usual rubber tape measure would be of no help to him. Sorry mate, I had to get it in, hehehehe.

The game was Romans(nasty invading types) marching into Dacia and being surprised when the locals got all shirty about it and started shouting "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The forces were 180 points each, just to give some extra scope for an all day game. The Romans had 5 generals, 6 Legion, 4 Auxiliary, 5 skirmish infantry, 2 cavalry and 2 light cavalry units. They were marching along the road and had to react to the Dacians arrival on the flank.

The Dacians had 4 generals, including a Sarmatian and a Bastarnae in command of their own country men. Their troops were 8 units of warriors, including 2 Bastarnae, 2 skirmish infantry, 2 light cavalry and 4 Sarmation lancers. 

Below are some pictures of the game as it went on. Things did not go too well for the Romans!

Bastarnae units getting as close as they can to the Roman column

The massed Dacians advancing through the rough ground as
quickly as they can.

A view from behind the Dacians, with the Basternae
way ahead on the right

The massed ranks of Sarmation cavalry, but even they couldn't
keep up with the Basternae

Turn 2, the Basternae failed to move as their General
pulled an ace. Oops

They did manage to chop some Romans up a bit first though.

The Dacian mass struggles through the rough ground as the Roman
 general "Minimus" and his dog "Rex" look on

On the left flank Roman arrows spelt doom for one of the Dacian
light cavalry units

The right flank was going well though as the Sarmatians
drove the Roman light troops back

Battle was joined in the centre as Roman gladius
met Dacian falces

Where are all the Roman veterans?
Oh dear, the Sarmatians are coming!

The Roman cavalry was trying the same on the left flank though. 

The Roman light troops do their best to slow down the Sarmatians

The Roman cavalry is threatening the left flank........

Oh, no it's not. 

The last of the Roman light troops prepares for the worst.

Basternae look on as the Sarmatians claim all the glory

Veteran lancers on the flank, it's not looking good for the Romans
as General Myxamytosis looks on

The Roman last stand as Dacians, Basternae and Sarmatians
all roll up the flanks

The Romans fought back valiantly after initially getting a right good kicking. At one point they had 3 medals left and the Dacians had 18! At the end the Dacians only had 5 left as the Roman camp fell. The MVU(most valuable unit) was the Sarmatian "Red Lancers", who rolled up four Legion units including both veterans. The best Roman units were two of the Auxilia, who did all the real fighting.

All in all it was a cracking game to watch. After a couple of turns I let my son Christopher take control of the Dacians and Nathan managed the Romans with Andy as a unwilling subordinate. Thanks for playing the game lads.

The show was good again, seems to go from strength to strength each year. See you there next year.

Clotted Lard and To The Strongest

As a long time attendee at the OML days up in Evesham I happy to share this forthcoming event in Exeter. The Devon Wargames Club is teaming up with Too Fat Lardies to host a day of Lardie games on September 8th. Details are included above, but there will be nine or ten games put on ranging from ancients, pike and shot, Napoleonics, Colonial and World War 2. It's all about having a fun day out and moving toy soldiers around a table.

Saxons on the right, Britons on the left.

Last Saturday the DWG club meet included a game of To The Strongest, put on by yours truly. A force of nasty Saxon raider types was out to cause mischief, but had been intercepted by the heroic Britons in all their Romanised glory. I have only watched the game played before so it was a bit of a dive in the deep end, as none of the others had played it either.

I sorted out the armies from my recently expanded Dark Ages figures, although options are limited for the Saxons. They can have warriors, warriors and more warriors, plus a single unit of cavalry and two of skirmishers. So the Saxon force was three generals(one senior) with three units of warriors each. The senior general had the single unit of noble cavalry and the other two each had a single unit of javelinmen skirmishers.

The Romano-British had a few more options. They had a senior general with three units of spearmen with added bows and one each of light cavalry and skirmisher javelinmen. General two had the same force except the skirmishers had bows. General three was mounted and led the cavalry arm with three units of javelin and one of lance armed cavalry plus another unit of light cavalry.

The game went fairly well, the Saxons gained the upper hand quite early as neither Jack nor myself could hit anything.  Luckily the youthful generalship of Charlie(aka son of Jack) was doing better against Christophers Saxon warriors. Jacks center line managed to steady after some good hits and my cavalry managed to lure some of JJ's warriors out of the woods and then outflank them on both sides.

Nasty Saxon Warriors ready to pillage etc

The sole unit of Saxon cavalry

Massed ranks of British cavalry

The British center, a thin line of spearmen

British right flank, deployed with a bit more depth

The woods are full of hairy Saxons

And so are the hills!

Nathan's warriors chase of the British skirmishers

They are just bullies really. 12 against 3!

Roman light cavalry try to get around the left flank

Saxons occupy the hill and dare Charlie to charge them.

In the end the game was won by some really unlucky armour draws by the Saxons, as the flanking cavalry routed two units and then Charlie saw off another. I like the way the rules play, it gives a fairly quick game and doesn't take long to get the system into your head. I plan to get my Republican Romans out and restart painting them, so more may be seen of this set of rules soon.

Thanks to Jack, Charlie, Christopher, Nathan and JJ for playing the game and JJ again for the pictures.

Big Dux Brit game and some painting

It's been a long month but I am still kicking.....just.  I have had a bit of a downer for a while, but things are a bit better now.

Despite the really bad start to the month I have managed to get some painting done, some for me and some for Nathan.  He had a mixed load of Dark Ages figures that he has picked up from ebay and various shows that he asked me to paint for him.  So far I have done over 50 of them with another 30+ to go.

 Here are some of them, a mixed lot of Romano-British first.

 Followed by a couple batches of Saxons.

So that's 36 of them, I also did another 20 that I gave back to him without taking any bad photos first.

 Also I have finally finished replacing the Dark Ages Wargames Factory figures I had in my Dux forces with Gripping Beast ones.
Here are the "Romano-British", actually a mix of Dark Age warriors and Saxon Thegns.  18 Levy, 12 Warrior and 6 Elite foot, supported by 4 archers and 4 skirmish javelinmen.  I have painted up a few extra command figures to make up the command bases.  There are a grand total of 7 metal figures in this force, cheap is my middle name.

Then the Saxons, 18 Warriors and 12 Elites with 4 archers and 4 skirmishers again.  Same basing system for the leaders as the Brits.Again there are just 7 metal figures in this lot.


Finally I got some cavalry painted up as well.  The 4 at the back are Gripping Beast figures from the lead mountain that came from somewhere long ago.  They are used to represent light cavalry for either side.  The front 4 are Black Tree late Roman cavalry.  They have painted up nicely, but the amount of prep work to get the horses cleaned up was ridiculous.  I think there was more mould leaked metal on these horses than there was metal actually in the horse castings themselves.  Anyway, they will be used as shock cavalry eventually.

Yesterday was the Devon Wargames monthly meet again and, for the first time in several years, I actually managed to stay for the whole day and get some gaming in.  It wiped me out for today but it was worth it.  The game was great, with multiple players on each side and about 200 figures a side.  Not bad for a 2 player skirmish game.

Jon put up a nice report on the blog and took some cracking photos, so please pop over and take a look.  Don't mention the size of his warband though, he gets all defensive about it.  ;)

I am now going to bed, so I'll catch you all next time.

Happy 2016 and all that Jazz

Happy New Year, yes I know it's a week late but I have been busy.  Well, sort of anyway. 

So Christmas came and I got what I had bought for myself and then given to the family to wrap up for me.  So a couple of Airfix 1/48 modern kits joined the "to do" pile, a couple of rulebooks joined the ever increasing shelf of rules and some figures joined the painting list.  The surprise was my Secret Santa and I can only say a big THANK YOU to whoever it was.  I received four extremely well painted WW2 28mm figures which will join in the forthcoming Chain of Command games. So here they are in all their glory, sporting an apparently "modest" paint job.  Puts my work to shame.








The rules I got were a physical copy of Kings of War to replace the free set from the Mantic website and a copy of Dan Merseys Dragon Rampant.  The plan is to inspire me to paint some of the hordes of Lord of the Rings figures I have here.  That was the plan anyway, but the "ooh, shiney" syndrome has kicked in already and buggered up my plans for 2016 within a week.

Anyway, we gathered for our annual all day game at Zob's on the 28th and played a cracking game of Zulu.  More information can be had on Nathan's blog, but fair to say a good time was had by all.  After tea and biscuits we finished the day off with a game of Zombicide:Black Plague and just managed to win it, which was nice finale.

I then managed to get an infection in the partially done root canal work the dentist started back in early December.  Typically it kicked in on New Years Eve, after the dentist had shut for 3 days.  Luckily I got in to see the emergency dentist on the Sunday and got some anti-biotics and pain killers to tide me over.  Unluckily the infection was still there when I went to have the root canal finished and she couldn't do it, so I am back there in 2 weeks (hopefully). 

So while I was in pain and grumpy I stayed out of the familys way and looked at my projects for 2016.  As I said in my previous post I have a few projects on the go.  They have now been joined by a new one, more about which can be found at the end of the post.

After the New Year we played a game of Kings of War, 3000pts a side and 3 players a side.  Opinions were mixed, the 3 "elder statesmen"(50 plus) of the group were not overly impressed while the three "young pretenders" (in our late 40's now) liked them and plan to play them again.  So that was good.

Painting wise I have done very little really.  I still find it hard to concentrate, although being up all night for a few days did allow me to get some paint on lead plastic.  So here they are, just waiting on some bases to arrive from those nice people at Warbases. 











Fireforge Games Templar Knights with decals from Battle Flag.  One box gives 12 figures which is enough for 2 units in Lion Rampant.  I have decals for the Hospitallers, Knights of Jerusalem and Knights of Ibelin as well, so things are moving in the right direction on this project.  Just a few more to do, I have plans for about 120 cavalry and over 200 infantry in the end.  Yes, I know that Lion Rampant is a skirmish, but I want enough to do big battles as well.

Finally we come to the first unexpected new project that has already screwed my plans for 2016. I have pledged for this 15mm Cold War kickstarter to give me some Cold War British.  If I can afford it I will up my pledge later to get some VDV too, but I really want the British.  I am in for a platoon so far, but will be adding some Chieftains at the least.  This could get ugly!



So, there it is.  I am still ticking while waiting on the hospital to "get funding" for a gastric pacemaker so until then I will be up and down health wise.  Gotta keep smiling though, so bear with me folks.  Have a good one until next time.

Pre-Christmas Painting

Part 2 and the figures I have painted.  I have struggled to concentrate on anything really so it's been a case of doing whatever took my fancy.

GW Character figures

I have had most of these figures for years and have finally slapped some paint onto them.  Back row on the left is the Witch Hunter from Warhammer Quest, the other two are from the Mordheim range I think.  The front two are Bretonnian "Not Little John or Friar Tuck".

Ogre

This is an Ogre figure that I have had so long he's gone bald.  Nice details on the figure, he has obviously been in his share of fights and not come out unscathed. He will join my Ogre Mercenaries to make them 6 strong.

Pegasus, with BIG wings

 A Pegasus that I got from somewhere.  It's GW again and should have some sort of rider I think, but if it did he is long gone.   The wings are painted up to look something like those of a red kite, because I like them.

Big Unicorn

Another "horse" creature, no wings but a big sharp horn instead.  Again, it should have an elf rider but I don't remember ever having him/her.

Thrud, strong of arm and thick of head

A figure that needs no introduction to gamers of my age(old!).  Thrud the Barbarian has finally been painted and may well fill in as another Ogre.

Ripper Blgrot, Star Player Troll

An old Blood Bowl Troll that I have repainted.  It was green and really badly painted, it's now blue and hopefully looks better.

Minotaur, GW 1991

Another monster, this time it's the only Minotaur I have with a head.  I have another 8 bodies without heads......

Small, grumpy.......they are all called Nathan!

Four old Dwarves, just a small selection of the masses of unpainted Dwarves I have.

Stone thrower Roman device

Historical stuff finally.  A Roman stone thrower type thing that came from Gus.  No idea what it's called or who makes it, but it's a nice addition to the Roman force I haven't painted yet. 

Slithery warrior of Chaos

A 1980s Chaos snakeman.  I just liked this figure when it first came out and bought it.  It's only taken me over 30 years to paint it.

RB leader, finally painted to a fair standard

A Romano-British leader type.  Can't remember where I got him from or when, but a nice figure and a welcome addition to the warband.  Not a complete paintjob, more of a touch up and refurb.

 

Finally some more Romano-British.  These are Wargames Foundry figures that I have painted up for Nathan.  They have Gripping Beast shields as their originals were misplaced.  

All in all I have done alright.  there is another photo that I could put up, but it's for somebody else as a "Secret Santa" present, so pictures will appear after they have received them.  

Take care, I'm off now to do something less creative.