T'other Partizan 2021

Here are some images of Dave Lycett's wonderful 90mm Macedonians and Persians from our game at the recent Partizan show. All of the miniatures are from Expeditionary Force and painted by David. I wrote a scenario called "Gaugamesque" because of its similarity to Gaugamela, and we fought it out on a very austere table with no terrain. I posted some pics on Facebook on Sunday, but there are more here.

Scythed chariot, above and Persian foot, below- hand painted shields! All of the minis are of this quality.

Above, Dave converted some Schleich camels by adding a howdah and crew- Queen Semiramis would have loved these! Below, Darius' command chariot.

Above the Macedonian army (lovely Prodromoi in the foreground), and below the Persians.

Above, mid battle. We used To the Strongest!, of course. The Persians crushed the Macedonian left, and the Macedonians, the Persian left. 

Below Phil Garton, David and Matthew Hotston who helped us to play the game and as the Persians, eventually crushed Alexander (but not before we gave them a few scary moments!).

The obligatory picture of wargamer, pointing. ;-)

Myself, above and Dave, below!

These figures really are terrific. There's a surprising amount of variety in the poses, more than some 28mm ranges!

The elephants are also converted from Schleich models, they are huge and quite stunning. 

A huge thank you to Dave for bringing all his wonderful toys! Alas time was so short that I took no photos of any of the other games, and there certainly were some splendid ones at the show! It was a great show, kudos to the Newark Irregulars for scoffing in the face of Covid. It was great to see so many chums, after such a long interval, and oh so many miniatures!

Aventine archers

David Imrie very kindly sold these lovely Aventine Miniatures Hellenistic archers to me last year.

I felt the original 3mm thick bases were a little too thick, so I soaked and trimmed away the MDF, leaving only the grout and minis behind. I then rebased them on a single 18cm-wide card element (for use with a 20cm grid with To the Strongest!) and overflocked with mid green tufts so as to better match my "plains" gaming mat. They will see action in Pyrrhus' army on  Friday at the Wargames Holiday Centre! Doubtless, as a beautifully painted unit in the front rank, they will last for less than a minute.  ;-)

Pydna at Partizan

My brief tour of the Midlands culminated with our Pydna game at Partizan.

The Pydna Project was a joint venture between myself and friends Keith Branagh from Aventine, Craig Davey, David Imrie and his friend Jack Glanville, Dug Page-Scott, John Thompson, Shaun "Bunker" McLaughlin and Andrew Fielden, most of whom brought miniatures to the event.

I had initially planned a Zama-sized 1500-mini game, but the project spiraled upwards until we had 2,850 miniatures on the table on the day, recreating the battle at 1:30 scale. The phalanx (not including supports) was 2.8 metres wide, and 4-6 miniatures deep.  David Imrie was kind enough to re-base his Roman legion in a similar style to those we already had, giving us the required 4 legions of around 200 miniatures each.  Simon MacDowall kindly let me use the briefing and order of battle from his recent piece in Wargames Illustrated.  

Here's a shot of the deployment (all pictures expand when clicked):

View down the phalanx, looking up the hill towards the legions

I build the terrain, which was roughly 6 metres wide by 1.6 metres deep, with a nearly invisible grid. To recreate the slopes of Mount Olocrus upon which the Roman formed up, I jacked up the rear  nine boards by 130mm and supported it underneath with timber and Really Useful Boxes, so that a giant slope ran the entire length of the battlefield.

Here's a link to a 30 second video showing the table after deployment; this is too good to miss!

The rules we used were my "To the Strongest!" set (to be published in November), which I originally designed to play large games at shows. I was able to shout (!) the basics across the table to the players in around 15 minutes, and field questions as they went along.  We didn't need to consult the rules. The game took 3 hours and ten minutes to come to a suitably bloody conclusion.   

Mid battle

The Macedonians attacked fiercely from the outset, all along the line. From my position on the Roman right (assisting a 13 year old tyro called Solomon), I could see that the Keith's Macedonian Agema were making fast progress, successively carving their way through Dug's velites, hastati and principes. There were some local Roman successes, with Solomon pushing forward with the Numidian elephants. 

The killer taxis

However Aventine Keith managed to kill a unit of triarii and get a taxis of the Macedonian guard phalanx (above) to the top of the hill, turn it through 90 degrees (not easy) and march through the rocky terrain at the top of the hill (not at all easy) to kill the four more units of triarii (pretty darned difficult) required for a Macedonian victory. 

We all had a terrific day and it was great to catch up with friends made at previous Partizans and through blogging. An especial thanks to everyone who helped with setup and knock-down! My hat goes off to Richard and Laurence for organising the event, and dealing efficiently with the curve-ball delivered by the Kelham owners (an unexpected stage in the main hall). 

Onwards to the next big game; perhaps Magnesia?

Alexander!

I've had these miniatures for 5 or 6 years, and I believe were painted by Andy Bryant; superb paint work.  Last week I was finally inspired to base them, but I need to paint three more to form a third rank of the wedge, and indeed a couple more wedges to go alongside them.  The rounded front edge of the wedge is to indicate the presence of a general.