Byzantines vs. Normans WAB Battle Report

Some time ago Conscript Greg told me he was planning a trip back to Winnipeg, and wanted to set up a game. "What would you like to play?" I asked. The answer was Warhammer Ancient Battles with Greg's Byzantines against my Normans. Wow, what a blast from the past! And a couple weeks ago Greg was here with his beautiful Byzantine army and we played a game of WAB - here is the report!

Greg proposed the battle of Montemaggiore, 1041 as the scenario. Basically this was a pitched battle between the Byzantines (led by their Catapan, Michael Dokeianos) and the Norman/Lombard rebels led by William "Iron Arm" d'Hauteville. The place of the battle was near Cannae, itself the site of not only Hannibal's victory over the Romans in antiquity, but also of a Byzantine victory over the Normans some 20 years earlier. The Normans had been mercenaries in the employ of the Byzantines and served their masters well, but the factions had fallen out over (what else) pay, and William et al decided that seeking their own destiny was preferable to serving under the penny-pinching Byzantines. So Dokeianos seeks to put the Normans in their place and re-establish the authority of his own boss, Emperor Michael IV (the Paphlagonian) over southern Italy, once and for all. 

Greg and I each created army lists of 2,350 points (nice round number eh?) - a sizeable battle by WAB standards, but Normans and Byzantine troops (especially Normans) can be crazy expensive - a Norman mounted knight is something like 35 points! Above you see some of the Byzantine host.

More Byzantines.

Some of their Norman opponents, seen from behind the Norman lines.

Very annoying Turkish horse archers in Byzantine employ. Hope they got paid in advance.

Byzantine heavy cavalry.

One of the Norman mounted milites (knights) units, screened by skirmishing archers. 

Opening moves, view from the Norman table edge... the Normans fielded three units of mounted milites center left, center, and in reserve at center), three of dismounted milites (two in the center and one at far right), a unit of skirmishing archers (at left) and one of skirmishing crossbowmen (barely visible at far right). 

A sturdy unit of mounted milites (containing William Iron Arm and his younger brother Drogo, the army standard bearer) stakes out its position, waiting for the other mounted unit in support to arrive. 

It faces off against the Byzantine heavy cav unit. Typical of the Byzantines, it incorporated a rear rank of archers that continually loosed off arrows. Super annoying.

The kataphractoi advance in support. Even scarier than the heavy cav, these guys rocked a 2+ save on their barded mounts, PLUS had archers in the rear rank!

Action shot here from behind the Byzantine line. Byzantine skirmishing javelinmen are about to get swept by the main unit of Norman mounted milites who crash into the heavy cav (center). After a (brief) moment of consideration, the second milites unit (led by Bishop Hugh of Eu) charges the Varangians to the left.

How wouldja like to see this coming at you! Norman milites are super-scary - good saving throw of 3+, lances give +2 S on the charge, and most terrifyingly of all, "Ferocious Charge" ensures that as long as they win the combat in which they charge, the enemy automatically fails their morale check and runs. And this includes counter-charges against enemy cav who charge the milites!

And that's what happened - main milites unit evaporated the Byzantine heavy cav, swept through and reforms to charge to their right. Second milites unit (led by Bishop Hugh) ran over the spearmen facing them, took two turns to blow up the Varangians (they were Stubborn so Ferocious Charge only works half the time) and swept on into the spear block behind.

Meanwhile over on the Norman right flank the axemen get stuck in.

Propaganda shot for "Byzantium Today" - this was about the only part of the battle that went right for Greg. His kataphractoi absolutely levelled a unit of dismounted milites spearmen but in doing so, took themselves out of the main fight... just as well for them, they could legitimately disavow all knowledge of the disaster unfolding behind them. 

And with that, we called the battle as a Norman victory - even though the axemen on the Norman right would likely be overcome by the large Byzantine spear units it faced, the Byzantine centre and right flank had largely evaporated. While the scary kataphractoi still were hanging around, they were only one unit and there were still three Norman knight units milling about in the Byzantine backfield.

This result certainly wasn't inconsistent with the historical one - although outnumbered by the Byzantines, the battle was a Norman win, attributed largely to the fighting prowess of their heavy cavalry. In WAB, these mounted milites are indeed game-breakers - 3+ save, +2S on the charge with their lances, and most importantly, Ferocious Charge. They are a point-and-shoot weapon though - while they're likely to take out whatever they hit, it'll take them awhile to get themselves oriented for another assault. Of course it's best if you can wipe out the first target and sweep forward into their supporting unit, as happened both at the real Montemaggiore battle, and on our tabletop.

I'm thankful to Greg both for proposing the WAB game and for bringing his beautiful Byzantine army all the way to Winnipeg. The game looked fantastic and was super-fun to play; WAB (and its inspiration, Warhammer Fantasy Battle) were long-time favourites of our group and it was great to get back to some square-based wargaming. Hope we can do it again soon!

Painting Challenge Submission #17 - Varangian Guard for 28mm Byzantines

Varangian Guards prepare to take to the field in the name of the Emperor of Byzantium!

The "catch up" process of posts covering my submissions to the recently-completed Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge continues. After a slew of Space Marines, for submission number seventeed we turn to a completely different ongoing project - my 28mm Byzantines. Here we have a unit of Varangian Guard, the elite mercenary guards of the Byzantine Emperors. These are 28mm metal figures from Gripping Beast, with flag and shield decals from LBMS.

Some fine swordsmen, present and correct!

Challenge participant Darrel H has already covered the Varangians earlier in AHPC XIII - and done a totally amazing, lights-out job on the paint work, holy cow - go check it out now if you missed it - but this particular unit is a fun one to have on hand in my collection, and I have been waiting for a couple years to paint some up, focused on other, more basic units to build and paint first.

I love the character of these sculpts. Don't the poses make you flinch, just a bit? Here comes a two-handed axe!!

And I did not even expect to be painting any Byzantines during this edition of the Challenge...but you know what they say about plans...anyway, I was planning a visit to Winnipeg, and as part of that, playing a game with the guys. Dallas and I were texting before the trip, mulling possible options for a game, and we settled on having my Byzantines finally take to the gaming table to battle his Normans. Great! And, he casually asked "if I had any Varangians painted"?

"Clear out for the wind up!"

So naturally I tore into my pile of shame, dug these figures out, and got cracking on them! In response, Dallas found some unpainted Normans in his pile, and before you know it, a mini-Challenge-within-a-Challenge was born...and here is my part of it! This unit is modest in size, but the Varangians hit hard (or, at least, they do in theory...) and this will do just fine for a game of Warhammer Ancient Battles. 

Banner bearer.

Tried to make the commander's outfit a touch fancier...

Gripping Beast metal figures are so strange...they look odd when they come out of the blister...they have strange proportions, and you think to yourself that "this is going to be odd". But when you start painting them, I find they have so much character, and I just love them. While I could do without the separate weapons for the figures, I overall really, really loved painting these...except, of course, for the shields. 

Fighting now, drinking later!

The shields have LBMS transfers on them - no way I could hope to freehand designs like that - but wow, are they ever a massive, massive pain in the @ss to work with. I wish these were available as waterslide transfers...the peel-stick-water system these things use is fiddly as f*ck, and the results can be pretty uneven, and you will still need to paint the edges - and do so carefully. Even a liberal dose of Mircosol only does so much...anyway, I got there in the end, but I continue to wish for waterslide transfers for shields...

"Charge - and leave some room for the axes!"

These 12 fellows in 28mm were good for another 60 points toward my personal painting goals during the Challenge. They were also present and correct for the first-ever deployment of my 28mm Byzantine figures on to the table for a game...but for more on that, you will have to wait for another blog post. For now, thanks for reading, and please stay tuned!

A Brief Byzantine Detour

28mm Byzantines - metal figures from Gripping Beast's characterful Thematic Byzantine range.

As the summer of 2022 drew to a close, my painting took a few detours away from Horus Heresy themes and into a couple of older projects.  One of those is my oh-so-slow-but-still-growing 28mm Byzantines, last seen on the painting desk in March of 2021! At around that time, I had also assembled and primed a couple of mounted figures to use as officers...and I finally painted them just now :) What is that - a 17-month-or-so turnaround time? Not great - but I still got to them at some point! Anyway, here are two mounted Byzantines, 28mm metal figures from Gripping Beast's Thematic Byzantine figure range. 

The officers are mounted individually, in bases that will allow them to merge with my other mounted units, and so they participate in anything from a skirmish-style game such as Lion Rampant or SAGA, while still playing in games of Warhammer Ancient Battales, as well as games like Hail Caesar or even Swordpoint.

All of the best officer sculpts are pointing at something...

While I usually prefer decals for my shields, it has been so long since I have been painting Byzantines that I had managed to, um, lose track of where I had stashed the shield decals...so I just tried my best to do a freehand pattern on each shield. It turned out OK. 

I might still attach a banner of some kind to the spear, but for now, this fellow will serve as a minor officer for my Byzantines.

It was fun to do a bit of work on an older project, and painting these two fellows served as something of a palette-cleanser, a break from the recent painting of Horus Heresy stuff. I also tend to associate painting Byzantines with Curt's annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, and so working on these fellows caused me to consider what specific painting projects I might try and line up for that...

That's all for now - thanks for reading! Stay tuned for more Space Marines of course, but also posts on some other painting detours from this August and September. Cheers!

Painting Challenge Submission 19: Potpourri of Mostly 10mm Stuff

A random assortment of completed stuff as I scrape for points!

This is another one of my final-week submissions to Curt's recently-concluded Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  There is a potpourri of stuff, mostly 10mm, covering a wide assortment of periods. This was basically a "what stuff have I finished but not counted for points yet" post - I intended that each bit be part of a larger submission, but realized that time for the Challenge had run out that other figures would not be finished as part of it. This motley assortment is the result - I hope you enjoy!

10mm WW2 German Panzers

Late model Panzer IIIs - 10mm castings from Pendraken.

 These 10mm tanks were painted and based as German "test models" for my ambitions to (re)build my collection for the game "Spearhead". They are late-model Panzer IIIs from Pendraken, based on 50mm squares (to represent platoons) and one on a 50mm round (to represent a battalion command element). 

At these smaller scales I try and exaggerate the colours a bit so the contrast pops a little more.

Ready to roll out...but they'll need reinforcements first...

Obviously still a long way to travel on my 10mm WW2 efforts. I went into this edition of the Challenge so sure I would get more of these done...oh well. Next time, right? At least I have some starters to inspire me.

10mm FPW Command

10mm Prussian Command for Franco-Prussian War - figures from Pendraken.

In this edition of the AHPC I was able to finish a fair bit of 10mm stuff for the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. These command figures - a senior command base for the Prussians, and a lower-level command for the French - got finished along the way, and I kept intending to add them in with another submission of a larger unit before the end of the Challenge. This "larger unit" part was not going happen before the Challenge ended, so here we are...all figures and the flag are from Pendraken.

Having a flag on the base helps him stand out a bit on the table...plus flags are more fun.

The three-figure base, including a standard, will be used to represent a senior commander (i.e. corps command) on the table. 

Have to love those French uniforms from 1870...so lovely...

This individual French officer will likely lead a brigade, but of course there are all sorts of ways to scale rules up and down...bottom line, he will lead gloriously!

10mm Byzantine Cavalry

Byzantine heavy cavalry from Magister Millitum - based for "Warmaster Ancients".

When I love something in this hobby, I tend to paint it in multiple scales...but that doesn't mean I make progress, of course...oh well.  This unit of 10mm Byzantine heavy cavalry is comprised of figures from Magister Millitum, and they are based for use with the rules system "Warmaster Ancients".

These Magister Millitum Byzantines are lovely castings.

Perhaps in the next edition of the Challenge you will see some of the other figures that came with this impulse purchase back in the day?

28mm Arab Spearman

Ah, the poor test model, waiting for friends...28mm plastic figure from Gripping Beast.

I actually did manage to paint up a fair bit of 28mm Byzantine stuff during this edition of the Challenge. While my hope is to use these models to fight Dallas' Normans, I am also thinking of opponents for the Byzantines. That is where this figure comes in - a 28mm plastic figure from Gripping Beast, he is a test model for a unit of Arab Spearmen. The "test model" part happened during this edition of the Challenge, but the "OK, let's paint the rest of the unit" part did not.

Anyway, this variety gives you an idea of the many project percolating in my scattered hobby brain. You may see more of these very shortly, or in the summer, or perhaps during the next Challenge (if Curt proceeds with one again). Whatever happens, I thank you for reading - stay safe!

Painting Challenge Submission 15 - 28mm Byazntine Infantry

28mm Byzantine infantry stand ready to defend the Roman legacy! Figures from Gripping Beast.

My 15th submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge is another element for my 28mm Byzantine collection. This is a mixed unit of spearmen and archers. They are metal figures from Gripping Beast's "Thematic Byzantine" collection. The spears are steel spears from Gripping Beast (with one exception - more to follow). The shield design is freehand painted. The banner is from LBMS. As with all of my recent 28mm Byzantine stuff, they are based individually.

Two ranks of spears at the front, two ranks of archers at the rear.

We all love this hobby, but we all encounter projects, or parts of project, that feel like a real drag. This bunch was one such project, and I am pleased to have them completed. While I overall really love Gripping Beast's Byzantine range, and I don't want to be too critical of sculptors (who, after all, have an incredible talent that I certainly do not), the metal spearmen are some of the weakest sculpts in this range. The arms sort of don't always add up, and the bodies are quite tall - these are big lads. Add to that some unfortunate mold lines on some faces and...well, it was not the most fun to paint these. Furthermore, I ignored common sense - the "attacking" pose with the spears looks dramatic, but it will be a right pain in the @ss to rank up properly with these individual bases. Not something I thought through properly...although that is hardly a big surprise. Anyway...

Dispersed view of the archers - they can also skirmish if needed.

But they had to be painted! The Byzantine army depended in many instance on their cavalry to deliver the decisive blow, but steady blocks of infantry, combining tough (and apparently very tall) spearmen in the front ranks with archers in the rear, were a rock for that cavalry to rally around. These stout fellows will perform just such a service for my steadily growing Byzantine forces!

This pose is dramatic, but also a pain when it comes to ranking up the models.

Very boring freehand patterns on the shields...but at least they are bright! I like bright sometimes...

The even split between spears and archers has an added bonus...they can break into two different 12-man elements for the game "Lion Rampant", while serving together in an infantry block for games of "Warhammer Ancient Battles", "Hail Caesar" etc. 

And here is is...the first Byzantine figure I had ever painted...test model from circa 2017. Now he has a unit to join, all these years later!

There is one fun bit of history in this submission...there are 24 figures in the photo, but only 23 of them were painting during this edition of the Painting Challenge. The 24th figure is older - in fact, he goes back a ways...it is the first Byzantine test model I had ever painted, back when I ordered a 4-point starter box for the skirmish game "Saga", circa 2017. I wonder if Curt can find the photo I sent him on his iMessage bragging "hey, I painted a test model". Some Conscripts may even recognize this as the lone Byzantine spearman on a single base sitting on my shelf for quite some time. Anyway, I've kept him for years, and thought it would appropriate that I paint this unit to match his colours. I left him with his original soft lead spear too. I'm hoping it brings some good luck with the dice when this bunch gets to see action on the table.

"Ready with those spears!"

Foot commander, ready to get stuck in with the rest of these fellows...that horn should inspire them too!

So there we go...a fourth Byzantine unit completed. We are nearly ready to tangle with Dallas' lovely 28mm Normans! Thanks for reading - stay safe and stay sane!

Painting Challenge Submission 12 - 28mm Byzantine Light Cavalry

Light Byzantine cavalry - 28mm figures from Gripping Beast's line of Thematic Byzantines.

My 12th submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge saw my brushes return to a previous project...thanks to the timely arrival of some parcels in the mail,  my 28mm Byzantine project has been able to resume! Freshly resupplied with LBMS transfers and banners, as well as some steel spears, I  completed the next unit in my Byzantine collection. No surprise - more cavalry! These are lighter, skirmishing cavalry - although they can form up to fight in a pinch. The figures are 28mm metal castings from the fine folks at Gripping Beast, and the banner and shield decals are (obviously) from LBMS.

I enjoy the character of these castings - particularly the commander!

As with all of the Byzantine units there is a mix of arms/capabilities within the group. Six of the models are meant to be armed with a mix of throwing spears and or javelins, and four of them are mounted archers. They are meant to skirmish and harass larger enemy formations on the battlefield, and keep enemy skirmishers from doing the same to key elements of the Byzantine battle line.

Steel spears!! I love those things!! They make a difference for figures like these.

These castings from Gripping Beast have oodles of character, and were quite a lot of fun to paint. The LBMS transfers were, as ever, a real b*tch, but still 1000% better than trying to paint shield patterns on my own. The headaches those things cause are so worth it in the end!

Mounted archers in the mix, helping to pepper the enemy with missile fire.

I figured a musician would be important for a light cavalry unit like this, to directing them and their maneuvers.

These models are all based individually, so in addition to representing a unit of light cavalry in a game of Warhammer Ancient Battles, this group could be split up into various elements for a game of "Lion Rampant". The mounted archers in particular are flexible - they could be dispatched to join the heavier unit of cavalry to bulk it out, depending on the scenario. 

Off we go!

Thanks for reading - stay tuned for more everyone! Hope you are staying safe and, as always, staying sane...